Jews and Blacks: the Ethiopians ..., by Bernice Dubois

Source: Judeo-Black Fraternity of France

"The press of current events caused me to postpone recounting a rare happening that I watched on Guysen cable TV, the Israeli French-language channel broadcasting from Jerusalem. Hundreds of Israelis of Ethiopian origin were demonstrating in front of the apartment of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. They were calling for the admission into Israel of those of their families still in Ethiopia.

Indeed, various Israeli governments had long ago begun to organize the famous Operation Moses, that helped Ethiopian Jews to return to the land of Israel. At great cost, and with the help of the United States, Israel had obtained permission from Colonel Mengistu, the Red Negus, to repatriate these Ethiopian Jews to Israel. But a serious question was raised. Were they Jews? If so, they must be circumcised, eat kosher, respect the repose and the solemnity of the Sabbath, etc… Some of you may have seen that very beautiful film: "Go, Live and Become".

If this demonstration was taking place, it was because the government had decreed the end of this immigration, considering that there were no more Jews in Ethiopia, whereas these people claimed that members of their families had remained behind... A painful dilemma! If the Israeli government decided to stop this immigration, it is because numerous refugees, fleeing the massacres in the Sudan and, particularly in the Darfur region, decided to seek refuge in Israel, sometimes passing through Egypt where they braved the dangers of the Sinai crossing to reach Israel.

I myself saw some, in the luxury hotels of Eilat on the Gulf of Eilat, working as waiters in these hotels and telling clients, in a rusty Hebrew that they were not Jews but wanted to become Jews, because the Zionist state would bring them peace and security. In the evening, strolling in the souk that remains open until the early hours of the morning, one can see their children walking by the shops or working in some of them…

All these details of daily life show that the Zionist ideology is not what some decry with poorly concealed hatred…

That Africans, persecuted in their own countries, cross a broad desert at the risk of their lives and threatened by Egyptian border guards who mistreat them, in order to seek refuge in Israel and remain there, is a notable fact that should lead many to rethink their prejudices.

If I am allowed a philosophical-religious parallel, this is the Messianic vision of the Prophet Isaiah (VIIIth century B.C.E.) that links up with the wish expressed by the German philosopher Kant (1804). He spoke of a peace pact uniting all humanity from one end of the world to the other. Knowing how quickly some can shoot arrows sharpened by their ignorance and their prejudices, I ask to be read attentively and even twice. As Michel Jobert once said, "Read me attentively; you will understand me better"."

Operation Solomon - from Ethiopia to Israel, 1991

Anti-Semitism: Anatomy of an Obsession

The Day After the Auto-da-Fé, by Francisco Duarte Azevedo

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Sources: TJP, an article by Haviv Rettig, and Rua da Judiaria

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"Being special is never easy. According to Dr. Avi Beker, an expert on international relations and former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, the idea that the Jews are special, are "chosen," has been the source of the greatest troubles they have faced across history.

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Yet, at the same time, it is "the key defining concept of Judaism," and an important factor in the development of the other major monotheistic religions. It is also one of the Jewish people's most controversial ideas both within and without the Jewish fold.

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In his new book, The Chosen: The History of an Idea, and the Anatomy of an Obsession, Beker attempts to explain the strange life and complex repercussions of this stubborn idea throughout Jewish history.

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Perhaps the key claim of the book is that the idea of chosenness has brought the Jewish people its greatest enemies and its most faithful friends.

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"The concept of chosenness has been and still is the driving force behind Jewish-Gentile relations," Beker writes. (...)

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"I don't accept classic theories of anti-Semitism that state that it's a hatred of the other, of the rich, of the different," Beker told The Jerusalem Post in an interview last week. "There's something deeper here, an obsession. You can't describe anti-Semitism as hatred of the type directed at Roma [Gypsies]."

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While the expressions of hatred can be similar - "there are other genocides" - anti-Semitism remains "the deepest, the oldest, and it doesn't change its characteristics across time and place. The Roma may be denigrated and dehumanized, but this isn't combined with conspiracies of world domination. If Henry Ford could write The International Jew, an irrational and counterfactual American version of the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion], then there's something obsessive going on here."

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In the book he asks starkly, "How have the Jews, of all people, come to represent at once the epitome of both the good and the odious? The priestly and the pariah? A source of envy and of enmity?"

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The question is not theoretical, he believes, because this tension "still informs new expressions of anti-Semitism and has a major impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict."

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In pinning Christian anti-Semitism on the doctrine of supersession, the ancient idea that Christianity is the "New Israel," Beker does not break new ground. But he offers a new perspective on even the Christian context when he places it alongside the Muslim doctrine of supersessionism that continues to this day.

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This widespread Islamic idea, a denial of Jewish legitimacy from koranic days to the present, is "one of the deep, serious stumbling blocks on the way to peace" between Muslims and Jews, Beker believes. It is rife throughout Islamic discourse, from the koranic view that Jews should remain in a state of humility to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's war against a "Zionist-dominated" world.

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Indeed, following a discussion of Muslim religious figures and the public discourse in Islamic countries, Beker concludes that the Muslim problem with Zionism is more theology than politics.
"The Jews are supposed to be humbled, scattered. Theologically, they're not supposed to win wars in the place that is part of their narrative of chosenness."

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Yet the idea of Jewish chosenness is also the intellectual wellspring for some of the most ardent supporters of Jews and Israel, groups such as Christian Zionists in America and elsewhere.

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Beker never explicitly offers his own view of "chosenness," instead focusing on the religious, social and political influences of the idea. In this, he cannot escape dealing with the often-tortured Jewish reflections on this idea.

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The Jews themselves, he believes, do not understand the root of the obsession with them. He quotes author A.B. Yehoshua's grave misgivings about the Jews' "ambiguous identity":

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"I have a fear because of the partial identity of the Jews. With their ability to penetrate the life of others. To live without borders, without taking responsibility... It is about time we should understand that our ambiguous identity is causing individuals and groups who suffer a chaos of identity to cast on us awesome implications."

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Yehoshua is "perplexed," Beker writes, because he is unready to recognize that it is "the religious dependency of millions of people" on the idea of chosenness that leads to obsessive anti-Semitism. (...)"

Lyn Julius reviews "Jews and Power" by Ruth Wisse

Lyn Julius reviews Ruth Wisse's Jews and Power in Democratiya

"For those who find John Walt and Stephen Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy persuasive, Ruth Wisse's Jews and Power is the perfect antidote. In contrast to Walt and Mearsheimer's account of a shadowy Jewish cabal manipulating US foreign policy, Wisse's book is a study of Jewish powerlessness. (…)

"At first Jews did not take easily to the idea of using force – a key component of power. As the 19th century Zionist movement to restore a national homeland gathered pace, Ruth Wisse contends that 'noticeably absent from Jewish planning was the military force that every nation assumes it needs to retain, or regain its land'. In his book Altneuland, Theodor Herzl, the so-called father of Zionism, 'replicates the adaptive policies of the Diaspora'. Of all the prerequisites of a modern state – land, central political authority and means of self-defence – Herzl focused only on land.

A character in a play by Israel Zangwill ends up shooting himself when his attempts to unite Jews in self-defensive action end in discord and factionalism. It seemed almost that the Jew was congenitally 'too sophisticated for so primitive and savage a function.' Nevertheless, half a million Jews donned the uniforms of the European powers to fight in the Great War, often against each other. The regiments of Palestinian Jews who fought for Britain reaped no political dividend.

The restoration of Jewish sovereignty after 2000 years should have normalised Israel's status in the family of nations. Instead, the Jewish strategy of accommodation collided head-on with 'the Arab political tradition of conquest and expansion'. Thus the Jews swallowed their reservations and accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan, while the Arab League unleashed five armies on the fledgling Jewish state as soon as Israel was declared.

Once-powerless Jews are now accused of being too strong. The Palestinians present themselves as surrogate Jews, defining themselves in opposition to them, appropriating Jewish symbols, history and identity. Every milestone in the Palestinian calendar is a defeat or disaster inflicted on them by the Jews. Wisse wryly observes that 'they are so focused on what belongs to the Jews that they cannot focus on what is theirs to enjoy'.

But the lopsided Arab war against Israel, the author reminds us, pits five million Jews against 270 million Arabs – with infinitely more land and resources – abetted by one billion Muslims. Clearly, Jewish sovereignty is not the same as power. Arab and Muslim political clout at the UN has made up for repeated military defeats at the hands of the tiny Jewish state. As Abba Eban once put it – 'Israel is the only country to win a war and sue for peace'. The creation of Israel has reproduced in the Middle East a 'political imbalance almost identical to the one Jews had in the diaspora'.

While dictatorships parade their military might, Israel makes foreign dignitaries tour the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem – as if to say, 'all we want is to be spared this fate'. In the 1990s wishful thinking led to Israel signing what Wisse views as the 'suicidal' Oslo accords. As Wisse puts it, 'No other people had armed its enemy with the expectation of gaining security.'

The Jews are self-consciously preoccupied with their moral performance – what Wisse describes as 'moral solipsism'. Golda Meir greeted president Sadat of Egypt on his historic peace-seeking mission to Jerusalem with, 'We can forgive you for killing our sons, but we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.' But Sadat came not out of regret that he had killed too many Israelis but because he had not killed enough to defeat them.

The French intellectual Jean-François Revel once observed that democracy contained the seeds of its own destruction when faced with an enemy without moral scruples and self-criticism. In Israel, obsessive self-examination stops short of draft-dodging, but to its enemies is an admission of weakness.

Ultimately, no amount of Jewish self-flagellation and self-blame for Israel's permanent state of war with the Arabs will make a difference. Just as antisemitism is the antisemite's problem, so the 100-years war of the Arabs against the Jews reflects the overriding need for a political target in the absence of unity and democracy.

Wisse concludes on the comforting note that Israel, the Jew among nations, has been forced to innovate and develop a military and scientific edge valuable to its allies – just as the particular skills of stateless Jews once made them indispensable to their host societies.

Besides, Israel is in the front line in the fight against terror. But here Wisse's American optimism is out of synch with the prevailing European view. European elites are far from ready to acknowledge Israel's role on the front line in the war on Islamist terror, and rather too many consider Israel as the main cause of it."

Have the anti-Zionists overdone it?, by Haviv Rettig

Are these genuine initiatives on the part of Europeans or just the usual window-dressing exercises that makes them feel good?

Article by Haviv Rettig in TJP:

"Are we witnessing the beginning of a backlash against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, at least in the English-speaking world?

On Wednesday, the UK's minister for higher education, Bill Rammell, told Britons that only a small minority of the country's academics support a boycott of Israel.

Coming a day after Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor's accusation that "Britain has become a hotbed for radical anti-Israeli views and a haven for disingenuous calls for a one-state solution," the minister's confidence should offer some reassurance to worried Jews, right?

Perhaps it was merely bad timing, then, that the following day Prosor was the subject of a new boycott, with the refusal of Welsh Assembly Presiding Officer Dafydd Elis-Thomas to meet the ambassador when he arrives in Cardiff at the end of the month to meet with First Minister Rhodri Morgan, head of the Welsh government.

Invited to a reception for Prosor hosted by another assembly member, Elis-Thomas replied that "I am unwilling to accept the invitation to meet the ambassador, because of my objection to the failure of the State of Israel to meet its international obligations to the Palestinian people of the Holy Lands [sic]. I would invite other colleagues to [do] the same." (...)

His excuse - a broad, ill-defined dissatisfaction with Israeli fulfillment of obligations - is targeted at a country that has withdrawn from 89 percent of the land it conquered in 1967, and he fails to deal with the complexity of a Gaza Strip controlled by ruthless radicals who mete out death penalties to gays.

Worse, the notion that there is nothing an Israeli could say that would be worth hearing - the language of boycott - seems to be respectable.

The bigotry may not surprise readers of The Jerusalem Post. But this might: Next February, the British Foreign Office, together with the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism, will host a conference on anti-Semitism for parliamentarians from around the world.

The conference is the first fruit of the newly-established Inter-Parliamentary Coalition, and is intended to be an international response to "the longest hatred," a hatred manifested most recently in the hysterical demonization of Israel with which Prosor has become so familiar.

They key to this project: Though Irwin Cotler, the Canadian MP and jurist who helped initiate it, is Jewish, the initiative is not.

Similarly, late last month, former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski lent his name and credibility to a new European Forum of Tolerance. While the forum was the brainchild of the European Jewish Congress, it has found resonance with a non-Jewish Kwasniewski and other non-Jewish European leaders.

It is significant that the slow growth in non-Jewish advocacy against anti-Semitism comes with an understanding that an unfair obsession with Israel tends to overlap with - and is often motivated by - anti-Semitism.

Are we witnessing the beginning of a response? Have the anti-Zionists gone too far, becoming impossible to ignore and so, finally, impossible to tolerate?"

"Israel should be defended as if it were a part of the democratic West", Christopher Hitchens

Can Israel Survive for Another 60 Years?, by Christopher Hitchens, Slate

"It is a moral idiot who thinks that anti-Semitism is a threat only to Jews. The history of civilization demonstrates something rather different: Judaeophobia is an unfailing prognosis of barbarism and collapse, and the states and movements that promulgate it are doomed to suicide as well as homicide, as was demonstrated by Catholic Spain as well as Nazi Germany. Today's Iranian "Islamic republic" is a nightmare for its own citizens as well as a pestilential nuisance and menace to its neighbors. And the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, where the Web site of Gaza's ruling faction blazons an endorsement of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This obscenity is not to be explained away by glib terms like despair or occupation, as other religious fools like Jimmy Carter—who managed to meet the Hamas gangsters without mentioning their racist manifesto—would have you believe. (Is Muslim-on-Muslim massacre in Darfur or Iraq or Pakistan or Lebanon to be justified by conditions in Gaza?) Instead, this crux forces non-Zionists like me to ask whether, in spite of everything, Israel should be defended as if it were a part of the democratic West. This is a question to which Israelis themselves have not yet returned a completely convincing answer, and if they truly desire a 60th, let alone a 70th, birthday celebration, they had better lose no time in coming up with one."

Israel at 60: Herzl's Altneuland

Altneuland: "Wenn Ihr wollt, Ist es kein Märchen."

Via Carlos Botelho @ O cachimbo de Magritte

"Anti-Semitism may be a good starter but it is a bad finisher", Winston Churchill (1932)

Saving Civilization From Itself - Churchill understood that the Jews are the bedrock of Western tradition.
Arthur Herman reviews Churchill and the Jews by Martin Gilbert in the WSJ:
"A student of history, Churchill came to feel that Judaism was the bedrock of traditional Western moral and political principles - and Churchill was of a generation that preferred to talk about principles instead of "values." For Europeans to turn against the Jew, he argued, was for them to strike at their own roots and reject an essential part of their civilization - "that corporate strength, that personal and special driving power" that Jews had brought for hundreds of years to Europe's arts, sciences and institutions.
To deny Jews a national homeland was therefore an act of ingratitude. Churchill became a keen backer of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which broached the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As a friend to Zionist leader Chaim Weizman, and as colonial secretary after World War I, Churchill made establishing such a homeland a matter of urgency. "The hope of your race for so many centuries will be gradually realized here," Churchill told a Jewish audience in Jerusalem during his visit in March 1921, "not only for your own good, but for the good of all the world." …
Churchill was to be disappointed by the results of his Middle Eastern efforts, as Arabs hunted down and murdered Jewish settlers by the hundreds in the 1920s and 1930s - just at the time when Adolf Hitler was building his own regime around the persecution of the Jews in Germany. As early as 1930 Churchill realized that the Nazis' anti-Jewish policies carried the stench of an ancient evil. "Tell your boss from me," he said to a Hitler acquaintance in the late summer of 1932, as the Nazi Party was on the verge of power, "that anti-Semitism may be a good starter but it is a bad finisher." …
Today the existence of Israel is apparently something to be regretted, even deplored, not only in Arab capitals but in European ones and on American university campuses. Paradoxically, such feelings intensified after 9/11, an event that should have made us all aware of who the friends of Western civilization really are - and who its enemies. Martin Gilbert's book reminds us that anti-Semitism is the dark turn of the modern mind against itself, and a form of cultural patricide."
Arthur L. Herman's "Gandhi & Churchill" will be published by Bantam in April.