9 thoughts on “Reform Jews Ape Settler Rhetoric in Kotel Protest – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. To be fair, I don’t believe there to be a nefarious reason in the Reform Movement’s advertising, it is entirely apposite in appealing to the memory of the slogan (from the 2005 Gazan disengagement) on many people’s cars (inter-alia) and appropriates it for an opposite meaning. The other poster/broadsheet that you are conflating it with here also appeals to that memory. I don’t believe that because you disagree with the slogan in the past that it automatically means that any allusion to it in the present now is wrong de-juris

  2. Another point: Whereas you are correct that the Jerusalem Temple(s) were referred to as הבית (HaBayit), I don’t know that it is fair to construe that reading in (or from) the billboard.

  3. Richard, Thank you. It might be supposed that the reform folks who wrote the ads were totally tone-deaf to the echoes you found in their ad. It happens. For example, remember the problem the Chevrolet NOVA had when advertised in Spanish-speaking countries (NOVA = NO VA = doesn’t go), suggesting the naming committee at Chevrolet-central was tone-deaf or didn’t care about sales in Spanish America.

    However, taking USA Jewish big-shots as a group, I think they have the wherewithal to test the meanings and echoes of their Hebrew pronouncements (advertisers do focus groups, don’t they?) and the more so Israeli Jewish big-shots. And they all seem to be lock-step with current Israeli politics, whatever that may be; nowadays it is settlerism. So the echoes do indeed seem to be appeals to the heart-strings of settlers and settler-sympathizers.

  4. If there is something that I abhor more than settler Zionism, it’s liberal Zionism. At least the settlers – vicious and stupid as they are – are doing what they do out of a firm ideological footing.

    The lib-zios, on the other hand, have no firm ideology. The one thing that seems to guide them is an adherence to an imagined status quo through which they can continue to fool themselves that Israel is a mostly benign state that is merely waiting for Palestinians to become Swedes in order to strike a deal with them. In fact, Israel enjoys its virtual impunity by catering to the lib-zios and putting them to sleep with the sweet talk that Netanyahu excels at (being a professional furniture salesman).

    It’s time for lib-zios like Peter Beinart to pick a side and stick to it. Are they okay with apartheid, ethnic cleansing and occupation? If they’re not, then let them reject Israel and everything it stands for! The day the lib-zios tell finally tell Israel to take a hike, is the day Israel will begin to change for the better!

    1. It beggars belief that a binary construct can be applied here, “Zionism” as purported in your comment is either pure in its “settler form” or devoid of meaning in some “lib-zio form”? I think you’ll find most Israelis are neither that… not that.

      1. @gefilte: Actually, the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews are either settlerists or lib Zionists. There are, of course, leftists & traditional free market Likudists like Rivlin who don’t fit this mold. But they are a minority.

      2. I’m not talking about Israelis. I’m talking about American liberal Jews who define themselves as liberal (and even progressive), yet seem to be okay with the apartheid state of Israel.

        I have zero expectations from Israelis. Most of them are rabid Arab haters, and outright racists. They need to have a rude awakening in the form of economic sanctions that force them to change their ways. Short of that, I have no use for any dialogue with them.

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