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Sarah Palin’s Latest ‘Blood Libel’ Travesty

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Mendel Beilis, victim of a real blood libel

How does Sarah Palin demean Jewish suffering? Let me count the ways. Today, she comes forth with the absolutely disgusting, outrageous claim that those who accuse her of creating an environment of hate that fed Gabrielle Gifford’s shooting commit a “blood libel” against her:

“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” Ms. Palin said in a seven-and-a-half minute video posted to her Facebook page. “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

I swear, my jaw dropped when I heard that. Her statement is so noxious, so self-serving, so self-pitying, I simply don’t know where to begin.

First, let’s explain that the term “blood libel” derives from the anti-Semitic charge by Chrisitian Jew-haters that Jews stole Christian children and used their blood (hence that term) to make matza for Passover. Many Jews were persecuted, even arrested and imprisoned under such claims, most notoriously Mendel Beilis in 1913. This was one of the first times that Jews worldwide fought back against the charge and campaigned vigorously to defend the victim. In short, Jews died over the charges of blood libel. That’s why we take the phrase seriously and refuse to allow a cheap politician like Palin to demean it.

That being said, the subtext of what Palin is charging is that her detractors have fomented hatred and violence against HER (and not the other way around). When you think about it, this is an absolutely heinous and brilliant manuever to turn the tables on her attackers. Instead of being the perpetrators, she becomes the victim. How can you attack someone who claims she’s become the victim or persecution?

Not to mention that Palin has also introduced an element of religious devotion and imagery into the debate as another subtext of this monstrosity is that she’s calling on her followers to rally around her to defend her from this attack. As a devout radical evangelical, the imagery of Jewish persecution invoked by blood libel would resonate deeply with her given similarly imagery regarding Jesus’s suffering and those of later Christian martyrs.

We must not allow Sarah Palin to appropriate the blood libel or any other Jewish symbolism or suffering to which she is not entitled. This is simply an outrage. She cannot do this. She must pay a price for smearing the memory of Mendel Bailis and all those who suffered for their religious beliefs. Again, if anyone is guilty of political blood libel here it is Palin and her followers. They are the ones who use violent political rhetoric. They are the ones who express their rage all too easily on their enemies. They are the perpetrators, not the victims.

I am outraged. This is a hillul ha-Shem (“desecration of the Divine Name”).

Abe Foxman issued a tepid slap on the wrist in which he said he “wished” she hadn’t used the term. C’mon Abe. Do you only wield the big guns against liberals and Democrats like Ted Turner when they misuse Jewish suffering?

Tags: abe-foxman, anti semitism, anti-Arab
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Politics & Society | 62 Comments »

Israel’s Orthodox Rabbis: ‘Palestinians to the Ovens!’

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Israeli editorial advocating genocide against palestinians

Editorial in Orthodox 'family magazine' advocating death camps for Palestinians

Back in the days of the Shoah, one of the slogans of the Jew haters was: “Jews to the Ovens.” Now, it causes me anguish to say, we have Israeli Orthodox rabbis saying the same about the Palestinians.

Thanks to Cicero for pointing me to a shocking passage in an Israeli Orthodox “family magazine,” Fountains of Salvation, which suggests that Israel will create death camps for Palestinians in order to wipe them out like Amalek. The article attacks Israeli rabbis who dispute the letter recently circulated from pro-settler extremist rabbis which urged that no Israeli Jew rent apartments or homes to Israeli Palestinians. It chided them for being “politically correct” and refusing to do their jobs and educate the populace in the true path of Torah (which is presumably to hate Palestinians).

The last paragraph (page 4 of the original) though is the whopper:

It will be interesting to see whether they leave the assembly of the Amalekites [Palestinians] in extermination camps to others, or whether they will declare that wiping out Amalek is no longer [historically] relevant. Only time will tell…

A few words of explanation. There is a Biblical command for Jews to wipe out Amalek because of the viciousness with which that people attacked Israelites. Essentially, this is a Jewish call to commit genocide against Amalek. We should note that the Bible records such Jewish campaigns against other tribes as well (Moabites, Jebusites) and no doubt others did the same to their enemies.

Rabbis throughout the ages have allegorized the reference to Amalek to connote any sworn enemy of the Jewish people from Hitler to Barack Obama (yes, prominent American Orthodox Jews wrote such garbage before the last election). But this is the first time I’ve ever read any Orthodox publication calling for committing genocide against Palestinians.

As Cicero pointed out to me, the articulation of this passage doesn’t only refer to Palestinians (though most likely this was specifically who the writer had in mind given the context). It can refer to any enemy of the Jewish people including you or me.

Now a word on who is behind this publication: it is the cream of the crop of the radical right-wing Israeli Orthodox rabbinate. It was founded by the former chief rabbi of Safed, whose son currently holds that position and who circulated the letter I refer to above. Another is the chief rabbi of Ramat Gan and finally Rabbi Avinar, suspected of sexually abusing a troubled woman who approached him for spiritual advice. Each of them holds paid government sinecures, allowing them to spew hate on the dime of the Israeli taxpayer.

This raises the important question: why does the U.S. government allow tax-deductible contributions to Israeli charities like Chabad given their propagation of such genocidal rhetoric?

Cicero first learned about the Chabad article from Udi Aloni’s Ynet column, which pointed it out. He points out that it has been his custom in criticizing Israelis who support the Occupation to attack the liberal elite which is characterized by the slogan “shooting and crying.” Instead, he says he now will have to pay closer attention to the radical Orthodox who “shoot and laugh.” Aloni imagines the young Orthodox boy reading this publication in his synagogue where it’s distributed, who conjures to himself with a smile on his face the picture of Palestinians standing behind barbed wire in such a camp. This is the legacy these rabbis are bequeathing to their young followers.

Finally, since I know people of all ideological stripes may read into this story what they wish, I want to make clear that this is not Judaism. These wicked men may be Jews and rabbis, but they don’t represent normative Judaism any more than Osama bin Laden represents normative Islam. Do not make the mistake of conflating this idiocy with all of Israel or all of Judaism. Yes, these men are dangerous, they are hateful, and they must be challenged. But there is another face of Judaism and another face of Israel (though that is becoming increasingly difficult to see I concede).

Tags: bible, east-jerusalem, genocide, palestinians, rabbi
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace | 88 Comments »

Loughner: In Dreams Begin Murders

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Delmore Schwartz‘s most famous short story is entitled In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. It is about a young man who dreams he is in a movie theater watching a movie which turns out to portray his parent’s courtship. As he watches it, he worries that his parents may not actually end up marrying each other and he volubly urges them not to break up. Otherwise, he might not be born. When he wakes up, he realizes it is the morning of his 21st birthday. His dreams teach him his responsibilities toward life, his own and his parents.

Today’s NY Times features an eerie journey into the dreaming subconscious of 22 year-old mass murderer, Jared Loughner. Instead of leading him to life, the killer’s dreams brought him to the dark side. That’s why I used the title for this post In Dreams Begin Murders:

Mr. Gutierrez said his friend [Loughner] had become obsessed with the meaning of dreams and their importance. He talked about reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s book “The Will To Power” and embraced ideas about the corrosive, destructive effects of nihilism — a belief in nothing. And every day, his friend said, Mr. Loughner would get up and write in his dream journal, recording the world he experienced in sleep and its possible meanings.

“Jared felt nothing existed but his subconscious,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “The dream world was what was real to Jared, not the day-to-day of our lives.”

And that dream world, his friend said, could be downright strange.

“He would ask me constantly, ‘Do you see that blue tree over there?’ He would admit to seeing the sky as orange and the grass as blue,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “Normal people don’t talk about that stuff.”

He added that Mr. Loughner “used the word hollow to describe how fake the real world was to him.”

Another NY Times article today notes a mental health expert who speculates that Loughner suffers from severe paranoid schizophrenia. Those on the right who are fending off responsibility for the violence he wrought on Tuscon, Arizona and the nation, are fond of noting that the shooter was insane and not making a coherent political statement:

It is also not clear, some doctors said, that today’s partisan climate had any bearing on the assault. “The psychosis picks up on the grand themes of the day, whether those are antigovernment or something else,” Dr. Stone said.

In the logic of delusion, a grievance may be conflated with some larger mission, whether religious, political or artistic. “It’s not political thinking,” Dr. Torrey said. “It’s psychotic thinking.”

There’s a great deal to be said for this. Psychotics who kill may formulate ideas that sound like coherent political statements and it may appear that such thoughts drive their behavior, often such ideas are inchoate and confused. After all, one of Loughner’s friends of seven years ago called him a leftist. Yet his MySpace profile notes among his favorite books are Mein Kampf (and The Communist Manifesto!) and he tried to kill a Democratic Congresswoman with moderate to liberal views. Similary, Naveed Haq, the Pakistani-American who forced his way into the Jewish federation building in Seattle and shot five people, killing one, once had himself baptized in his search for religious meaning.

It seems to me that in some ways the violently mentally ill are, whether consciously or unconsciously, attempting to wreak upon the world some of the same internal anger, violence and chaos that rages within them.

Yet Haq, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, received no mercy from the Jewish community here, which argued that Haq was perfectly competent, knew right from wrong, and should get what he had coming to him. Bright lights like Pam Geller, in commenting on the Haq trial, even called Islam a mental illness. To many Jews, Haq was a murderous anti-Semite who had to get a life sentence. And that he did though it took the prosecution two trials to do it. The prosecutor refused to accept a plea of insanity and confinement to a mental institution, which is what Haq really needed:

“The insanity defense, which may be tried in this case, is often unsuccessful,” Dr. Torrey said, “and one reason is that juries are afraid to send people to state hospitals, where they belong. They’d rather lock them up for longer, in prison.”

On a related subject, I’m rather amused by the claims from the right that violent political rhetoric characterizes both sides of the debate and not just their side alone. On Warren Olney’s To the Point, one interviewee noted the extremism voiced on sites like Daily Kos. There’s one major difference between the tone of the discussion on the right and left. On the left the vituperative, intolerant rhetoric comes from the knuckleheads at the bottom of the heap like those in the DK talkbacks. On the political right, the violence comes right from the top: from the talk show hosts, elected politicians, presidential hopefuls.

As Paul Krugman noted in his column this week, while Keith Olbermann is passionate and angry, he will never adopt the hateful swagger of a Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly. He won’t physically threaten, he won’t use language that is violent. Among elected officials, you won’t find any Democratic candidate who places crosshairs over the districts of Republican rivals as Sarah Palin did. While Democrats can be just as cantankerous in their views as Republicans, they don’t tend to use eliminationist oratory as a good number do on the other side.

Someone needs to clean up their political act and it ain’t Democrats.

Tags: democratic-party, israeli assassinations
Posted in Politics & Society | 11 Comments »

Shabak Humiliates Female Arab Journalists at Netanyahu Press Event

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Shabak exposes dangerous Arab female journalist-terrorists

The Shabak demanded that three female journalists from Al Jazeera TV remove their bras before allowing them to enter an annual toast hosted by Bibi Netanyahu for foreign journalists. When they refused they were ejected from the event. Turkish journalists also claimed they were humiliated during their security check. After complaining to the government press office about their treatment, the Turkish contingent decided to attend but the Al Jazeera reporters did not.

The Israeli press flak who organized the event apologized for the treatment, but the matter was solely in the Shabak’s hands and not his own. That’s what happens in a state in which major decisions are made by the secret police and removed from the hands of political leaders.

The Shabak typically and cavalierly dismissed the complaints with a sniff of the nose saying that these are its standard security procedures for events of this kind; and that those who don’t wish to undergo the check are at liberty not to attend. I’m now trying to check whether all female journalists were forced to remove their bras before entering this event. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of shekels that this is a lie and that Arab journalists were the only ones strip searched in this fashion. Oh and I wonder whether the Shabak agents stuck their hands down the pants of male Arab reporters. You never know what you’ll find down there. Perhaps something explosive?

Why does the Shabak insist this woman take off her bra to drink a toast to Bibi Netanyahu?

[UPDATE: A female foreign journalist who attended the toast said that not only wasn't she asked to remove her bra, none of the other female reporters who she was with were asked either. Which makes the Shabak claim a lie. Further, this new Ynet story recounts the story directy from the Al Jazeera journalist:

They told me to take off my blouse. The girl [Shabak agent] groped every part of my body you can imagine for an entire fifteen minutes. She fingered my bra under my slip. Then she told me to take the bra off. I told her I was pregnant. The bra I refused to remove.

When the Israeli press officer saw I was in a slip he came over to see what was going on. I explained to him. He replied: “Don’t be a drama queen.”

Our photographer called me before the event began, terribly angry. They’d asked him to come two hours before the event began. They allowed everyone else to enter but him. They tore apart all his equipment and then made him take off his pants.

She also notes that when she arrived she was shunted to a line and waited 30 minutes before anyone spoke to her. All other Arab journalists were sent to this line:

In actuality, they had a line of Arab reporters and a line for everyone else. It burned me up.

I found laughable another rejoinder the press officer made to her. To justify her treatment, he noted they did the same to the Turkish journalists and that even in the U.S. they make him take his pants off (!). I’d like to know where in the U.S. he suffered this treatment. I guess lies come easy when you’re in his job.]

* *

You’ll recall that U.S. academic researcher Heather Bradshaw was treated the same way during a security check at which a numbskull Shabak agent looked up her name on Google and confused her with another Heather Bradshaw who was born in an Arab village and professed an interest in third world relief projects. Prof. Bradshaw was forced by the Shabak to remove her bra and had to endure a male agent entering the room while she was disrobed to hector her for causing her flight to be delayed and inconveniencing all the other passengers.

The Shabak seems to be confusing the country they work for with North Korea or Iran. They seem also to be confusing the purpose of their job with harassing Arabs rather than providing security to their country. You’d think too that the Shabak would think about the fact that Al Jazeera is the only Arab news service broadcasting within Israel and that this will no doubt make a very juicy story for them to cover. But, hell, they don’t care.

The Al Jazeera journalists who were barred from the program didn’t miss much. Ynet reports that Bibi’s pearl of wisdom for the assembled journalistic multitude was:

Our first biggest problem is Iran. Our second biggest is Iran. And our third is Iran.

Not a word about making peace with Palestinians or easing the deep divide between rich and poor in Israel. There must be no domestic problems in Israel with which Bibi has to deal for him to have the luxury of declaring his sole political agenda to deter Iran.

Tags: Aljazeera, bibi netanyahu, shin-bet
Posted in Mideast Peace | 30 Comments »

Amnon Dankner: ‘I’m Ashamed of Being Israeli’

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Amnon Dankner and his moral conscience? (Gabriel Baharlia)

Amnon Danker, former editor of one of Israel’s most popular dailies, Maariv, has written a scathing essay (English translation here) excoriating Israel and the current political situation there. The terms he uses are savage and unsparing. It’s rare for such mainstream cultural and media figures to speak in such unconditional terms about the state of latter-day Israeli society.

Here is my translation of the most important passages:

It’s quite clear that if our [national] life continues in the manner it has been evolving, good, moderate, balanced and humane individuals will no longer be able to live here. Before our very eyes with results that grow every stronger, Israeli society is changing, the political culture is changing. Checks and balances are violated and are swept to the winds by this awful spirit which blows through our lives and dyes them with an ever-deepening shade of black.

It seems that things that were repressed within the Israeli soul and well-hidden through shame are suddenly bursting forth with a sense of liberation, dancing obscenely in the public square. It’s now acceptable to be overtly racist and to be proud of it. It’s acceptable to disparage democracy and be proud of that. Acceptable to steal and rob and trample on rights when it concerns Arabs. And acceptable to be proud of this. There are Knesset members for whom this is one of their specialties and they do it with smiles they don’t even bother to conceal. There are entire parties whose tenor and tone arouse feelings of horror and terrifying memories [a reference to Nazism].

How is it possible for example that there are people who sat and calculated the needs for feeding children and removed these necessities from the list of products permitted to enter Gaza? They sat and counted sweets and halva and toys and who the hell knows what else and crossed them out with an “x” and explained to us that this was a critical part of toppling Hamas’ rule. And we took these wicked fools seriously and put our faith in them. After what happened with the Marmara we lifted the sweets siege and even permitted the import of coriander into Gaza. No disaster happened besides that we remained in this great exposed space loitering in front of the gates of Gaza though our own naked, wicked stupidity.

Worst of all is that the this wickedness wears a kippah on its head and is an observant Jew. His head is bursting with rabbis letters [directing Jews not to rent apartments to Arabs] and books advocating murder [of Arabs, a reference to Sefer HaMelech by a settler rabbi advocating murdering Palestinian children], and racist publications, and pogroms perpetrated on Arab villages, and neo-Nazi expressions in the Knesset. How it makes the blood boil to hear this stance advocated too many times by one rabbi or another, who truly does us a favor by not quite saying what we’re all really thinking. That is, that it’s acceptable to think this way and that only for fear of the evil eye we have to quiet ourselves until the day comes when we can say what we really think and then we’ll really stick it to ‘em [the Arabs].

What adds to my sense of depression is the awareness that demographic processes are turning our society more and more religious, more and more racist and venomous, more and more withdrawn and violent.

For a man of my age who wasted serious parts of his life writing in newspapers about these issues, to see that I did all this out of great hope that has come to naught and was based on illusions and naiveté; what happens now is a particular type of bitterness and disillusion. To see Israeli society change its nature so quickly, becoming something you never thought you’d see outside of nightmares, it breaks your heart. To begin to feel ashamed at being Israeli, and to know with not a small amount of confidence that such a feeling will grow, it depresses you utterly.

I regret to say that there was a time when such a heartfelt cry moved me to tears, made me proud in a depressing sort of way that there were still Israelis who felt this way, who had a conscience, even if they were a beleaguered minority. Now, I’m a bit more jaded. Dankner is, no doubt an important voice, perhaps even an Israeli bellwether. But there’s been too much “shooting and crying” among Israeli liberals. This may be more of the same.

Or it really may portend the sort of wake up call that Israelis need to hear. When the former editor of Israel’s most popular daily newspaper says he’s becoming ashamed of his own country, many may sit up and take notice. So I give Dankner, Churchill’s famous two and a half cheers.

Tags: gaza-siege, israeli fascism, knesset, maariv
Posted in Mideast Peace | 69 Comments »

Iran’s Fake Israeli Spy Ring

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Iranian TV beams 'confession' of alleged Mossad agent

Today, Iran paraded an Iranian alleged Mossad spy before a national TV audience. The man, who wasn’t named, made his show confession telling the audience how he planted a bomb that killed an Iranian scientist in Teheran last year. It was all so tedious, predictable and a sham. The poor shlub made a few errors which gave away the scripted confession and showed his Iranian torturers hadn’t done their homework in preparing his script.

He confessed to the following:

“There were two new men that I met [presumably in Iran], two Israeli officers who knew Hebrew perfectly,” the man told the camera. “We arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv and at passport control I was asked a question and since I didn’t know Hebrew it aroused the suspicion of the border agent.”

“At that moment, the person responsible for me came and presented a ticket, took my passport and we went a different way,” he said. “We exited Tel Aviv on the highway towards Jerusalem and after half an hour arrived at Mossad headquarters, which is located on the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.”

The man described…”Mossad headquarters”: A building surrounded by a 3-4 kilometer long wall and encircled by an electric fence.

A few glaring problems. First, I find it highly unlikely that there are any Israelis speaking impeccable Hebrew inside Iran. Second, I find it weird that a Mossad spy would go through passport control at Ben Gurion Airport. Why would he go through any public security check? Third, Mossad headquarters is not where the “spy” locates it. It is actually north of Tel Aviv in Herzliya, not south (in the direction of Jerusalem) as he claims. Fourth, the layout of the building doesn’t correspond to Mossad headquarters. Fifth, I don’t believe the Mossad would take the chance of bringing an Iranian spy to Israel for training. It just doesn’t make sense.

This is a sham operation meant to burnish the tarnished reputation of Iranian intelligence. It was done purely for domestic consumption and perhaps to warn Mossad. But these boobs couldn’t even do basic research to ensure their script hewed even marginally to well-known facts. As a result everyone and their brother now knows that this is a fraud.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that the Iranian regime killed Ali-Mohaamadi because, while at one time he had played a significant role in Iran’s nuclear program, he had turned against the Revolution and become a supporter of the Green Movement. Here is what noted Iran-watcher Muhammad Sahimi, with good sources inside Iran, has to say on the matter:

Tehran Bureau has obtained new information on the circumstances surrounding the murder of Professor Ali-Mohammadi…[It] reveals, in particular, that before changing his political views and becoming a supporter of Iran’s reformists and the Green Movement, Ali-Mohammadi, while not a nuclear physicist as claimed by the hardliners, was deeply involved with Iran’s nuclear program.

According to an informed source in Tehran who was Professor Ali-Mohammad’s friend and classmate, the day before his assassination, his house was searched by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence. After his murder, his family was threatened with criminal arrest and prosecution if they made public any information about the search.

The same source in Tehran stated that after the fatal bomb explosion, neither the police, nor IRGC security agents, nor agents of the Ministry of Intelligence were dispatched to the explosion site to collect evidence. Instead, the debris from the explosion was simply swept away — peculiar in any circumstance, especially so given that the hardliners attribute the assassination to foreign agents.

…Ali-Mohammadi was extensively involved with the Institute for Applied Physics (IAP) at the Iran University of Science and Technology. In 2008, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publicized evidence that the IAP was a military-related institute…

The IAEA also asked Iran to clarify any possible role that IAP staff had played in testing high explosives and the design of a missile reentry vehicle. Questions were raised about the involvement of one particular IAP scientist in the development of exploding bridge wire and detonators, and procurement for borehole gamma spectrometers. Iran responded that the staff scientist had no involvement in the work related to the exploding bridge wire. In fact, the work and the instruments both have application in the oil industry, particularly in well logging, and are thus of dual use…

According to the source in Tehran, Professor Ali-Mohammad was for quite some time the head of the IAP, which is now defunct. During his tenure, he worked closely with Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi (also known as Abbasi Davani), a senior science official in Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics. Both Abbasi and Ali-Mohammadi were also instructors at Imam Hossein University, run on military brigade lines by the IRGC…

It is clear that, as the head of the IAP, Ali-Mohammadi had been involved in the procurement of dual-use technology. Those activities and his deep connections with Iran’s Defense Ministry and the military-run Imam Hossein University constitute solid evidence of his involvement in Iran’s nuclear program.

There is nothing a revolutionary hates more than a former trusted comrade who turns against it. In short, Mohammadi knew too much to be left alone. As a new recruit to the Green Movement, the regime couldn’t be sure what he might do with his former knowledge. He was too dangerous to live. If they killed him then it’s all the more imperative that they cover their tracks by blaming others for the crime.

I believe that it is highly likely that agents working on behalf of the Mossad and a domestic Iranian dissident groups assassinated other nuclear scientists who’ve died in the past two years. But those who killed them are long gone or long back in deep cover either outside or inside Iran. Iran hasn’t uncovered the perpetrators of the Mossad terror attacks. It’s identified a few patsies it could put up for the crimes.

The Iranian intelligence claims that it’s broken the back of Mossad terror inside Iran will be disproven the next time Jundallah or MKO mounts an attack on behalf of their collaborators in the Mossad. The Iranians are bargaining that neither their fellow citizens nor the rest of the world will remember their boasts today when that happens.

In case anyone reading this isn’t familiar with my previous writing on this subject, I deplore Mossad terror against Iran (just as I deplore any terror attacks against Israelis) as counter-productive and violations of international law. But I also deplore railroading innocent men for the crimes of others.

Tags: iran, mossad
Posted in Mideast Peace | 20 Comments »

EU Lays Basis for Sanctions Against Israel

Monday, January 10th, 2011

In late Apartheid-era South Africa, the momentum among the international community shifted inexorably toward toppling the discriminatory system. Crippling sanctions took their toll on the country’s economy and psyche. While the white regime clung desperately to power, finally a spark of realism emerged within the ruling party which allowed the rise of a leader like F.W. de Klerk, who negotiated a peaceful transition to democracy and majority rule.

In the past few months, a similar process has emerged outside Israel with multiple Latin American nations (the latest being Chile) recognizing a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. Now, Haaretz reports on a sensitive new EU report drafted by consuls general in Jerusalem and Ramallah which would lay the groundwork for a possible EU sanctions regime against Israel as long as it continues the Occupation and rejects a Palestinian state.

Among the recommendations:

1. a boycott of all Israeli products, services and businesses operating outside the Green Line including East Jerusalem

2. refusal to attend meetings with Israeli officials outside the Green Line (including East Jerusalem)

3. creating a settler black list forbidding entry to EU countries of those suspected of committing violent acts against Palestinians

4. discouraging citizens of EU countries (most likely directed at European Jews) from purchasing property in East Jerusalem

Returning to the South African analogy, the chief difference is that there seems to be no realism whatsoever within the Israeli political system nor any moderate or pragmatic leader capable of being the Israeli de Klerk. In that event, it seems that Israel’s future is deeply clouded. Without political leadership, and with the gathering storm of opprobrium against the Occupation and denial of Palestinian national rights, it seems something has to give. It could be an international diktat jointly negotiated by the U.S., EU, and Quartet compelling Israel to yield. Or it could take some other form. But it appears more and more likely that Israel simply cannot come to terms with what it must do and that the rest of the world must help or even force Israel to get where it needs to be so that both that country and the rest of the region can find stability and peace.

Tags: 1967-borders, east-jerusalem, european-union, palestine
Posted in Mideast Peace | 35 Comments »

Dagan’s Holocaust: A Monster That Will Not Die

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

Image claimed to be that of Rabbi Dov Ehrlich z"l, Meir Dagan's grandfather, which hangs in his Mossad office

I wrote last night about Meir Dagan’s famous office photo, ostensibly showing his grandfather on bended knee wrapped in his tallis before what appear to be German or Polish soldiers or police, one of whom wields a billy club. Dagan claims, according to Ronen Bergman and this Ynet story (thanks to IlanP for drawing my attention to it), that the photo was taken moments before his father was shot. Dagan uses the picture as a prop in his motivational speeches to Mossad operatives before they embark on important covert missions:

“Look at this photograph,” Dagan tells the Caesarea fighters. “This is what must guide us and lead us to act on behalf of the State of Israel. I look at the picture and vow that I will do everything I can to ensure that something like this will never happen again.”

In yesterday’s post I wrote about my disquiet at this use of such past personal family tragedy to justify Israel’s current political agenda. I have some further thoughts on this subject because the image and way Dagan uses/exploits it still bother me.

First, let me say that the Holocaust is undoubtedly a singular trauma in Jewish history and one that has left an indelible mark on all Jews, certainly today and likely for all time. There can be no doubt that survivors and descendants of survivors each have to find a way through the pain of this experience. In most cases, I refuse to judge the ways in which victims and those related to them (several great uncles and aunts of mine perished in the Holocaust though I never knew them) do this. But in the case of those who exploit the Holocaust for political or nationalist purposes, I draw the line.

Dagan, like Israel itself, treats the Holocaust not just as a historical event, but as one that continues to happen or threatens to happen to Israel today. Dagan’s enemies (and those of the State of Israel) are no different than the Cossacks, Nazis and Inquisitors who’ve inflicted pain on Jews throughout our history. The genocide perpetrated on our people during World War II is the same genocide that our current enemies (in Gaza or Iran) would inflict on us given half a chance.

Whatever one thinks of this psychological profile, one has to admit that it is a powerful one. One that roots itself indelibly in one’s identity and provides basic, rock-solid principles to carry one through life. It is how Dagan can be such a focussed, monomaniacal advocate (or killer) on behalf of his people.

But really when you look at this set of beliefs, it is pathological. It views the Holocaust as an event that happened but never ended. It views every possible threat to the Jewish people as a looming Holocaust. It sanctions grievous acts against our fellow human beings in order to protect us from these imagined dangers.

Here is the illness: the conditions and context in which Israel finds itself now have nothing to with the Holocaust. It has everything to do with where Israel finds itself in the contemporary Middle East. It has to do with the precise set of Arab neighbor states it has and their own political conditions. Israel must come to terms with the real conditions in which it finds itself, and not imagined historical ones which are irrelevant to latter-day circumstances.

If your policies are governed by historical trauma instead of clear-eyed analysis of where you find yourself at the present moment, you are doomed. You will be fighting the battles of 1938 instead of 2011.

The final grave disservice that the Holocaust-obsessed do to contemporary Israel is that they turn today’s enemies into eternal sworn genocidal monsters (i.e. Amalek). You cannot negotiate with a monster. You cannot make peace with a monster. Nazis were monsters. But Palestinians are not monsters. Iranians are not monsters. Neither people seek to annihilate the Jewish people as the Nazis did. Perhaps in their wildest dreams the most extreme among them might harbor such delusions. But rational human beings do not act based on what the most lunatic human beings do or say. They act out of pragmatic self-interest.

We must not let the Bibi Netanyahus or Meir Dagans turn the Israeli-Arab conflict into the Holocaust. This is not a Holy War nor a Crusade nor a fight to prevent the annihilation of the Jewish people (or even Israel). This is a political struggle over land and power. Political conflicts can be resolved. Existential conflicts between good and evil cannot. For the Dagans of this world it is a fight to the death between Israel and its enemies. We must not allow it to become that, because that way lie death and self-destruction.