HOW 'PROGRESSIVE AMERICANS' - INCLUDING JEWS - SUPPORT PALESTINIAN HISTORICAL FALSIFICATIONS AND ABUSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Why the Left does not understand the Arab war against Israel.


French Hill, Jerusalem
 

By Lee S. Bender and Jerome R. Verlin, Algemeiner

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz likes to say that if you are for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, basic freedoms of speech, press, association, open democracy, and an independent judiciary, there is only one country in the Middle East that espouses those values you support: Israel. And he is absolutely correct.

 

But there appears to be a major disconnect among American Jews.  Today, too many Jewish Americans are ambivalent about Israel, or even openly hostile towards it, believing erroneously  that Israel acts in ways that contradict their “progressive” or “liberal” ideals.   Jews are even at the forefront of some of the most vicious anti-Israel organizations in the U.S.

 

This subversion of American Jewish support for Israel has been one of the greatest accomplishments of the elements that seek to deny the Jewish people their right to sovereignty in the one tiny Jewish state on the planet.

 

The writer Peter Beinart has seemingly made a career out of arguing that Israel has forced American Jews to choose between their liberalism and Zionism. But this is incorrect. The truth is that a perversion of liberalism is making some American Jews into the “new anti-Semites.

 

When did this start? After the Six Day War, Yasser Arafat was advised by the Soviets to turn the story around: instead of there being a small Jewish state standing up against the “Goliath” of a racist, genocidal Arab-Muslim world, he was told to present the conflict as the struggle between Israel, and its victims – the powerless ‘Palestinians.’

 

It did not matter that this required a major warping of history – all of a sudden, Arabs from Syria, Jordan, or Egypt who had been in Palestine for perhaps one or two generations were now to be presented as the remnants of a millennia-old ‘Palestinian’ civilization.

On the other hand, Israelis, where Jews have lived for three millennia, and which absorbed more indigenous Middle Eastern Jews from vast Arab lands than Arabs left tiny Israel, were now portrayed as post-Holocaust European “colonialists.”

 

This fit in flawlessly with the civil rights movement in the U.S., and the decolonization movements throughout the world.

 

Incredibly, this language of “civil rights” reached its zenith with the 1975 ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution in the UN, and then at the UN-sponsored 2001 Durban Conference in which Israel was accused of being an ‘apartheid state.’ The rhetoric was so intense that large numbers were ready to believe the worst things about Israel, with virtually no proof or evidence.

 

The degree of animus against Israel on the Left has become so vast that it is disjointed not only from the facts, but from logic.

Natan Sharansky has described “the Three Ds:”

 

Israel is demonized, such that every accusation against her is believed (i.e. the medieval Jews were accused of poisoning wells and making matzah from Christian blood).

A double standard is applied, such that Israel’s every action in self-defense is subjected to microscopic scrutiny (to the exclusion of the horrendous human rights violations committed by other countries, including many in the Arab-Muslim world).

Finally, Israel is delegitimized, such that its enemies argue that its evil is so inherent that (unlike every other country in the world), it should not even exist.

 

Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has unequivocally stated that Israelis will not be welcome in the new “Palestinian” state. Even though Arabs living in Israel have far more rights than in any other Arab country, it is Israel that is accused of apartheid, racism, and ethnic cleansing.

 

Frankly, the Palestinian Arabs should be celebrating their dumb luck that they happen to live next to and among Jews in Israel, where biology trumps ideology, and where Israel’s actions don’t mirror how they are treated by the Palestinian Arabs: with acts of terrorism, hatred, and glorification of murderers.

 

If the Palestinians lived anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world they would be persecuted and the media and world would not report nor care about their fate. That is really how most of the rest of their so-called Arab brethren treat them – as political pawns and pariahs in their war on the Jews.

 

Peace is a long way away. It’s not helped by the moral narcissists and useful idiots on the Left. Too many on the Left, including in academia, engage in Stockholm syndrome, becoming emotionally attached to and sympathetic with the victimizers, the terrorists (who, ironically, would slit their throats if given the chance).

 

The status quo is far from ideal. But all of the alternatives to date are existentially dangerous to Israel. The onus must be on the Palestinian-Arabs to prove they truly are interested in recognition and peaceful co-existence with Israel. For the past 66 years, they have in fact proved the exact opposite.

 

The Left’s jealousy and envy of Israel’s amazing success and humanitarian accomplishments; their self-hatred; failure to listen to what the Judeo-Christian world’s enemies advocate; appeasing them; excusing them is breathtakingly presumptuous and arrogant.

 

(Photo above:  Jerusalem's French Hill neighborhood, where Arab youths stone Jewish motorists.  Photo Wikimedia via Algemeiner.com)

 

Authors:  Lee Bender is the co-President, and Jerome Verlin is the co-Vice Present of the Zionist Organization of America-Greater Philadelphia District, and they are the co-authors of the book “Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-Z” (Pavilion Press).

Source - http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/04/14/why-the-left-doesnt-understand-the-arab-war-against-israel/
Via - http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/0414-links-pt2-left-doesnt-understand.html#.U00m4sqPKM8

RELATED

Discrimination and abuse against Palestinians by Arab countries
http://www.ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/01/discrimination-and-abuse-against.html

Christian Arabs, persecuted by Muslim Palestinians, demonstrate in favor of Israel
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/03/christian-arabs-demonstrate-in-favor-of.html

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PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH DISTORTION OF HISTORY - ARABS ARE PORTRAYED AS VICTIMS - OMITTING THEIR HISTORY OF VIOLENT CONQUEST

 ACKNOWLEDGING THE OBVIOUS

By Michael Lumish

Americans, particularly those of us with liberal inclinations, think of Arab peoples as persecuted minorities who are struggling, to this day, to free themselves from the ongoing social and economic implications of western imperial and colonial aggression in the Middle East.  

For centuries white-Anglo westerners dominated that part of the world and, therefore, progressives who care about universal human rights are not surprised at the Arab push-back, including the Palestinian-Arab push-back against Israel.

Certainly those of us who marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan largely perceived the peoples of those countries as innocent victims of western and American hostility. We understood that those wars were racist wars that needlessly slaughtered innocent Arabs in number of lives going to at least the hundreds of thousands, if not considerably more.

What we tend not to appreciate in the United States is that the great Arab-Muslim nation was one of the foremost imperial endeavors within recorded human history. The Arab peoples are not merely pawns batted around by powerful, racist, white westerners, but peoples with long and proud histories that cannot be reduced to a demeaning history of victimhood.

MAKING EXCUSES FOR EVIL - BLAMING IGNORANCE, FLAWED THINKING, OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES - Where's personal responsibility?

The following notions refer to attitudes regarding Israel, but the concept of personal responsibility in dealing with evil  is universal.  We can confront evil, we can endorse it, or we can remain silent. 

 

Those who endorse evil actions cannot be dismissed with the excuse that they lack awareness or understanding of the situation, or that their flawed psychological makeup compels them to think that way.  They too are responsible, no matter what their motivations.

 

Similarly, those who remain silent or passive in face of evil also share culpability and become part of the evil perpetrated itself.   They clear the way for the easy passage of those actions.

 

You may skip the introduction and go to right to the columns discussed on this post. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The issue discussed below is Jewish attitudes towards the existence of Israel, the rightful and ancient land of the Jewish people. 

 

Jewish attitudes range all the way from rejection of its legitimacy - to advocacy for the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to create an Arab terror state - to the defense of that heartland as historically and legally belonging to Israel - to outright passivity in letting government administrators decide.

 

All that in a setting of ongoing terror, where Arabs swear every day to destroy Israel and the Jews, and with the present PA leadership regarding the partial takeover of Israel - what they call the future state of Palestine - as only a phase in their plan for the complete conquest of all of Israel.  

 

One of the following writers rejects outright those Jews who delegitimize the very existence of Israel.  But he has a soft spot for those who endorse its partition, regarding them as simply misguided.

 

Partition is not an option. 

 

It would leave the country even more vulnerable that it was in 1967, when Arab countries attacked Israel.  Those countries were not as well armed and trained as they are now, thanks to the United States that has provided them with the latest war technology and armaments, and the best training available at United States facilities.  (Draw your own conclusions.)

 

It would leave Israel only nine miles wide at some point.  Its neighbor would not be Jordan but the Islamic State of Palestine, rife with Islamist factions that have sworn to destroy Israel.  Palestine would be within sight of Israeli communities, vulnerable to snipers and rockets.  Tunneling into Israel to kill men, women and children would be another horrifying prospect.

 

The Palestinian Authority is already cultivating warm relations with Iran, which is on its way to become a nuclear state (facilitated by the United States government).  Nuclear states inspire respect (just look at North Korea) and no Western country would risk annoying Iran with even the notion of protecting Israel.  Russia recently took over Crimea, with barely a grumble from the West, although both the US and the UK had signed a solemn agreement promising to protect Ukrainian borders.

 

The west bank (and Gaza too once it becomes part or associate of that Palestinian state) - would become Iranian enclaves armed to the teeth, threatening not only Israel but the whole Middle East.

 

The United States government has for decades pushed for partition - completely disregarding the consequences.  Why it does so is open to speculation.  Republican and Democrat presidents have pursued this partition, and have already achieved the surrender of Sinai - which is now a nest of Islamic terror, and of Gaza, a dysfunctional entity that feeds on hate for Israel and foreign aid.

 

So, in face of such a clear situation  you would think that Jews all over the world would rally behind Israel's right to Judea and Samaria - whether for historical, religious, legal or security reasons.  But they don't.  Actually, some of the most vocal enemies of Israel are individuals with Jewish roots.  I hesitate to call them Jews.

 

The Diaspora is generally favorable to partition.  Many are liberally-minded individuals who like to be part of the crowd that clamors against occupation.  They feel a little less Jewish that way. 

 

But many Israelis too endorse partition.  Their reasons are varied, but they can all be classified under "excuses".  They have experienced first hand what the Palestinians are all about, and still they choose to give them the Jewish heartland. 

 

The vast majority of Israelis - regardless of where they stand over the issue - remain passive.  They have allowed their government - mere administrators - to make decisions about Israel's borders that will have catastrophic consequences not only for Israel but for all world Jews.

 

This passivity is also part of the wave of evil that threatens the land. 

 

If the above reminds you of the choices Germans had when Nazi thugs became part of their government, with a leader who had written about his plans to exterminate Jews - that's not coincidental.  But Israelis seem oblivious to this similarity, as they are to the fact that the Palestinian Arabs, through their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, were part of the design and implementation of the Final Solution.  

 

How can Jews be agitating for handing over Jewish land to Arab Nazis is perhaps the greatest irony in all of human history.  

 

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TWO DIFFERENT COLUMNS  -  WITH AN INTERESTING CONNECTION

 

Israeli media posted two separate articles today that are unintendedly connected, although they come from writers with different very levels of awareness about the issue of Jewish attitude towards evil.

 

Israel and the Jewish Moral Narcissists by Lawrence J. Epstein attempts to expose Jews who, to put in very simple terms,  choose to side with the enemy.  Why do they do it? 

 

He separates them between those who are downright bad people, and we don't need to bother analyzing them, he says, 

 

... some Jews who are outright opponents of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. They are hostile to the Zionist enterprise, and they simply need to be opposed not analyzed. It is not worthwhile to engage with them because their hostility is immune to honest debate.

 

and those who are nice Jews but support the Arabs because they are misguided or have personal psychological issues.

 

... some Jews whose differences with Israel have more to do with their own psychology than with Israel’s policies. They are worth thinking about.

 

Epstein, calls them "moral narcissists".

 

Moral narcissists have a desire for and profound need for moral purity in an impure world. They eschew military power because such power hurts others, because they see power itself as inherently evil or the instrument to enable evil to rule. They are therefore unsurprisingly unhappy with Israel’s application of such power.

 

They feel guilty that Jews aren’t victims but victors. They are intensely proud of famous dead Jews for such Jews are simultaneously sources of pride and safely beyond the point of embarrassing them with disagreements. 

 

They are so guilty about the supposed crimes Jews and the West committed against Islam, that they are blind to or justify various evil acts committed by the Arab world.

 

But in the end Epstein excuses these ones by saying

 

It is cruel to call these people what they are, but the danger they cause requires it.  They are useful idiots, not fully aware that they serve the cause of those who oppose Israel’s existence. Those opponents use these well-meaning, often very kind Jews in a cynical way to undermine the Jewish state.

 

It is time that these good Jews see Israel’s enemies for what they are. In that way, their morality can become genuine and, while their purity may be tainted by reality, they will have attained a true morality.

 

"Not fully aware"?  By excusing them and attributing their treason to convoluted psychological reasons Epstein is basically doing the same thing that traitors do when they refuse to acknowledge the terrorist nature of the Palestinian movement, its Nazi history and ideology, and its explicit goal of killing Jews and destroying Israel.

 

So there you have two main opposite groups making excuses for the inexcusable.

 

Lee Kaplan, an investigative journalist who has advised the Israeli government with his intelligence research, had this to say about Epstein's column on the comments section:

 

Good Article but Epstein is naïve

 

He still thinks that a lot of these people are really good at heart and mean well; nobody is evil. I have gone undercover to training meetings of so-called Jews who support BDS and the destruction of Israel. These are supervised by Arabs and no matter what proof you show them about something they will insist it's a lie. At the same time they teach an encourage each other to lie, the "end justifies the means". They engage in Groupthink and the mantra is destroy Israel by any means necessary. Yes, they are evil. Sami Awad who slit a Jewish infant's throat is being presented on US campuses as an innocent victim of Israeli "oppression". Despite Awad's confession these phony Jews run around calling for his release. Yes, Mr. Epstein, there are truly evil people, not well-meaning narcissists..

 

Lee Kaplan ,

Berkeley, USA

(04.05.14)

leekaplan@dafka.org

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 

The other column, Should the People of Israel become the Jews of Silence by David Bedein takes issue with Israelis who - in spite of first-hand familiarity with Arab terror and knowledge of the roots of  Palestinian Nationalism - are passively silent as their own government calls for the partition of Israel to create another Arab terror state next to Jewish towns.

 

Bedein quotes from activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who wrote The Jews of Silence, where he described two kinds of silence:  Jews in the Diaspora who were silent about the fate of their brethren in the USSR, and the Jews who were silenced in the USSR itself.  

Then Bedein recalls what Elie Wiesel said at a Philadelphia school commencement address on the night of June 6, 1967, the 2nd night of the Six Day War, following a three week siege permeated with Arab threats of total destruction which frightened the Jewish world to its very soul. 

Wiesel tossed out his prepared text, and addressed “an Israel that stood alone” in May 1967, (a time when it was clear that Arab nations were ready to pounce on Israel, and no country came to Israel's aid). 

 

Wiesel said that the moments of trepidation in May 1967 brought him back to World War II. when Jews stood alone and to the fate of his family in the crematoria -  when no one cared, and when few spoke out when it counted.   Wiesel's message that night was that the Jews are indeed alone. which meant that they cannot be silent in the face of overwhelming odds.

 

Similarly these days, when we are well aware of the Palestinian agenda, and increasing virulent anti-Semitism in Europe and other places, some Jews continue to indulge in denial of the obvious and support plans that under the euphemism of "peace" are nothing but the surrender of the Jewish heartland to the enemy without even firing a shot.

 

Bedein is an investigative reporter and his website, Israel Behind the News, has published news reports and studies with facts and figures over the years exposing the "Peace Partner" and the "Peace Process" as deceitful and clear threats to Israel's survival.  He writes:

 

The Palestinian Authority does not mask its genocidal purpose, to wipe out the state of of Israel and to replace it with an Arab Palestine.

All you have to do is to watch PA TV, listen to PA radio, read PA newspapers  peruse PA school books and follow all publc statements of the PA. Most people in Israel prefer not to see the PA as it is.

 

Most people do not even know that the Arab League pioneered the creation of the PLO to join the continuing 1948 war to exterminate the entity that is  Israel.

The people of Israel do not have a peace partner.

Most people in Israel prefer not to see the PA as it is.  That is indeed a frightening statement, considering that what is at stake is the survival of the country and of the Jewish people. 

 

Without Israel Jews could very easily be rounded up and exterminated once again.  The signs are all there.

They are in the visceral hatred against Jews that is resurging in Europe, both from the fascist right and European Islam. 

And in the United States government, where sympathies to Islam grew, not diminished, after the 9/11 attacks.  At the same time the US ruling elite watch their country, once a superpower that inspired fear and respect, decline both in the economic and international political spheres and realize that even if they wanted to, they can't protect Israel any longer.

 

Israel stands alone. 

And in such a crucial moment in several thousands years of Jewish civilization it is heart-wrenching to see how so many Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora choose to side with evil - whatever their excuse may be. 

REFERENCES
 
Israel and Jewish Moral Narcissists by Lawrence J. Epstein
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4506549,00.html
 
Should the Jews of Israel become the Jews of Silence by David Bedein
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14799#.U0DEqpuPKM8
 
Lawrence J. Epstein -
http://www.lawrencejepstein.com/wp/about-lawrence-j-epstein/
 
Lawrence J. Epstein - articles
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ix_author.php?aid=46399
 
David Bedein
http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/aboutus.html
 
David Bedein - articles
http://israelbehindthenews.com/bin/bedein.cgi
 
Lee Kaplan's websites:
 
Stop the ISM
http://www.stoptheism.com/
 
Dafka
http://www.dafka.org/
 
Lee Kaplan's articles on Arutz Sheva
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Author.aspx/436

 
RELATED

Where in this ongoing war of physical and psychological Arab terror is it that Jews find a sign that what they want is to live in peace, when not even Arabs can live in peace with one another.  Just watch what is happening in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other places, and in their own communities, with parents killing their own children in the name of "honor".

This Ongoing War - a website about Arab terror
http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.ca/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

For a people who lost 6 millions at the hands of Nazis and collaborators, it is indeed ironic that they are now ready to give up their Biblical heartland for the creation of a Nazi Arab state.

THE NAZI ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT

• - Palestinian official admits they supported Hitler during World War II
• - Photos & Documents - Minutes of meeting of Palestinian leader with Hitler, and photos of Muslim Nazi troops with their Palestinian leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem
• - Research Study - The Nazis and the Palestinian Movement
• - Video - 15 min - The Nazis and the Palestinian Movement

 
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IT'S NOT THE OCCUPATION - IT'S ABOUT KILLING JEWS AND DESTROYING ISRAEL - Anniversary of the 1920 Arab riot and massacre of Jews

The Arab pogrom that started it all

by Michael Freund
The Jerusalem Post

 

Today marks an important anniversary, that of a tipping point in the modern Middle East which not only continues to shape our current reality but also serves to remind us of some very important truths about the nature of the ongoing conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.

 

It was the middle of the morning on April 4, 1920, precisely 94 years ago, during the intermediate days of Passover, and the Jews of Jerusalem thought the danger hanging over them had mostly receded.

 

Muslims were marking the third and final day of the Nebi Musa festival, and despite fears of large-scale Arab violence, the holiday had thus far passed more quietly than anticipated.

But all that was about to change.

 

Tens of thousands of Arabs gathered in Jerusalem's Old City and several speakers began firing up the horde, including the nefarious Haj Amin al-Husseini, who would subsequently be appointed the city's Mufti.

 

Amid chants of "Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs!" the crowd descended into a violent frenzy and went on the offensive.

 

Arab assailants proceeded to attack innocent Jewish men, women and children on the streets, punching, kicking and beating them, as well as hurling stones and other objects.

 

They broke into Jewish homes, raped Jewish women, and plundered property. Cemeteries and yeshivot were also attacked, with tombstones and Torah scrolls falling victim to the Arab mob's fury.

 

Arab policemen, whose task was to maintain order, instead joined in the fray, while the British Mandatory authorities responded with their characteristic lethargy and incompetence.

 

Over 100 Jews were injured in just the first few hours, and the rioting intensified the following day, leading the British to impose martial law. Finally, after several more days of unrest, the violence was finally quelled.

 

When the dust had settled, a total of five Jews had been killed and more than 200 wounded, while four Arabs were dead and 25 injured.

 

Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann along with a senior British military officer insisted that the British Mandatory authorities had actively encouraged Arab leaders to incite the violence due to their hostility towards Zionism.

 

One month later, in May 1920, the British government dispatched a commission of inquiry, known as the Palin Commission, to investigate.

 

In predictable fashion, the final report sought to place blame on both sides, criticizing the Zionists for "impatience to achieve their ultimate goal," as if that would somehow justify an Arab pogrom.

 

Nonetheless, the commission did note that it was clear that "the incidence of the attack was against the Jews and… was made in customary mob fashion with sticks, stones and knives. All the evidence goes to show that these attacks were of a cowardly and treacherous description, mostly against old men, women and children, and frequently in the back."

 

The repercussions of the riots were profound.

 

Among other things, they led to the organization and establishment of more Jewish self-defense units which became the core of the Hagana, thereby accelerating the process of Jewish independence.

 

And among the Arabs, the riots crystallized the formation of a "Palestinian national consciousness."

 

As Dr. Daniel Pipes noted in "The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine" (Middle East Review, Summer 1989), "In January 1920, Palestinian nationalism hardly existed; by December of that critical year, it had been born."

 

But beyond the fact that we are still feeling the impact of the riots even today, it is worth recalling what happened so long ago in the streets of Jerusalem because it serves as an important reminder of what the Arab-Israeli conflict is truly all about.

 

Simply put: it has nothing to do with Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and everything to do with Jews.

 

Unless they had extraordinary paranormal powers enabling them to gaze into the future, the Arab rioters of 1920 did not spill innocent blood because Jews would later settle in Beit El and Kedumim in the 1970s and '80s.

 

And they did not go on the rampage because they believed in two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side in peace and security.

 

They attacked Jews then, as they do today, because they are unwilling to accept a permanent and sovereign Jewish presence in the region.

 

Their dream today remains what it was back in 1920: to scare us off and clear us out.

 

Then, as now, the Palestinian Arabs are unwilling to recognize the biblical, historical and moral right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

 

And then, as now, they are willing to employ violence and terror to advance their goals.

 

And this is why all the plans, from the Rogers plan to the Reagan plan, from the Oslo accords to the Kerry plan, have accomplished little, because they ignore the cold, hard truth that has been staring us all in the face for the past century: there can be no peace because the Palestinian Arabs do not want peace. What they want is Israel.

 

Source - http://www.michaelfreund.org/14626/arab-pogrom

 

 

ALSO READ INTERESTING TAKE BY SARAH HONIG

 

She sees the British reaction of blaming the victimized Jews as a key point in the ongoing Western attitude that undermines and even rejects the Jews' right to defend themselves.  She writes:

 

The pivotal murder-drive of 1920 and its aftermath are vital for understanding why John Kerry’s peace pageant is a flop and why Israel so profoundly displeases him, his boss Barack Obama and their pet-Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas.

 

It established the prototype whereby Jews are punished for Arab crimes against Jews. It highlights the pattern of appeasing Arab wrath and of Jews paying – as if Jewish existence is in and of itself a casus belli.

 

Read more

http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/04/when-british-blamed-victims-for-arab.html

 

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CHRISTIAN ARABS DEMONSTRATE IN FAVOR OF ISRAEL - "ISRAEL IS OUR SAFE HAVEN"

From ISRAPUNDIT
Some 150 Israeli Arabic-speaking Christians on Sunday demonstrated outside the EU mission in Tel Aviv, demanding that the international community stop nitpicking against Israel and start combatting the severe persecution of Christians everywhere else in the Middle East.

Israel Today “Nations, organizations and international missions are quick to raise an accusing finger against Israel at every opportunity,” said Father Gabriel Nadaf, spiritual father of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, which organized the rally. Those same nations and organizations “don’t life a finger against the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East,” the priest continued.

Arab Christians protesting against EU intimidation and slander against Israel in front of the EU mission in Tel Aviv
 

Father Nadaf went on to explain that from Syria to Egypt to Iraq to the Palestinian Authority, Christians on a daily basis suffer intimidation, harassment, desecration, coercion, torture, rape, physical abuse and murder. “According to the statistics, a Christian is murdered every five minutes [in the Middle East], and the Western world is silent about this,” he lamented.

In messages posted to its Facebook page during the Tel Aviv rally, the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum insisted that “there is no place but Israel that is safe for Christians in the Middle East!”

While the rally was largely ignored by the mainstream Western media, the Israeli press took great interest, and forum spokesman Shadi Khalloul, a veteran of the IDF, was interviewed by various television and print media outlets. Khalloul has spoken numerous times with Israel Today regarding the Christian awakening within Israel, and the bonds of brotherhood than bind local Christians to the Jewish people and the Jewish state.



Last month, Israel’s Knesset took the first important step toward recognizing local Christians as an independent minority separate from the Arab Muslims. Both Nadaf and Khalloul say this is necessary, since local Christians were here before the Arab Muslim conquest around 600 AD.

A growing number of Israelis, including lawmakers and opinion shapers, are likewise waking up to the strong Christian minority in their midst, a minority that has been long neglected, but which is now beginning to boldly take its place alongside the Jews..
.

Neither Israel, nor those whose acknowledge its right to exist, are to blame for the suffering of Christians in the Middle East.

The reality is that Israeli is the safest place in the Middle East for Arab Christians. A September 30, 2013 column by Steve Apfel in The Commentator notes that “in 1949, Israel had 34,000 citizens of that faith [Christian]. Today the number is 168,000.” Exclaiming over the irony that although Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are protected and thriving, Western Christians are more focused on condemning Israel and championing the cause of Palestine (including those Palestinians that are killing their co-religionists), Apfel writes:

If Muslims are off limits and  sacrosanct; you’re allowed to say what you like about Jews, provided you call them Israelis or, better yet, Zionists. And you can write a made–to-order record of that people, replete with blood libels, ethnic cleansing, Apartheid and all manner of crimes a Jew can inflict upon humanity. Say about Zionists or Israelis whatever you like, only avoid the fatal ‘J– word trap.’

In a gentler vein, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, also wrote in a March 2012 Wall Street Journal opinion editorial, quoted byArutz Sheva, that Israel has become the only safe haven for Christians in the Middle East. This is not an idle boast – Oren based his statement on facts concerning the treatment of Christians and their increasing flight from the ancestral homelands where they were once the majority population.

 

Twenty percent of the  population of the Middle East was Christian a century ago according to Oren. Today only five percent are Christians, with the numbers continuing to go down, he continued. But he was writing in early 2012, before the most recent pogroms against Christians throughout Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, and the intensified victimization of Syrian Christians by the Obama administration-supported jihadists of the Free Syrian Army.

.

Strikingly, although Arab Christians “are granted full rights and privileges within Israel’s borders, the treatment they receive by the ‘Palestinian’ population is quite different,” Oren said. He said that “since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, half the Christian community has fled.” In the Palestinian state, “Christmas decorations and public displays of crucifixes are forbidden,” Oren revealed. What’s more, ”In a December 2010 broadcast, Hamas officials exhorted Muslims to slaughter their Christian neighbors,” the Ambassador reported. 

 

Although you would never hear it from the anti-Israel Left, Christians are persecuted and forced to convert to Islam in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip. It has nothing to do withanyone’s perspective on Israel.  In July 2012 CBN News reported that Christian men, women, and sometimes whole families, were disappearing for extended periods of time and then there would be an announcement that they had converted to Islam and they would reappear with armed people around them for “protection.”

 

One especially brutal case was the kidnapping and murder of Arab Christian, Rami Ayad, in October 2007. The Guardian reported how the body of Ayad, who worked in Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, was found in the street. He had multiple stab wounds and had been shot in the head. 

 

The reaction of Arab Christians living in Israel to the treatment of Christians elsewhere in the Middle East demonstrates the difference in their situation. The July 2013 Israel Today article reported that in Israel, ”local Arabs see what is happening across the Middle East and realize that Israel is the only place in the region where Christians can feel safe and belong.

 

The paper quoted Arab Christian Moran Khaloul who said,”We don’t live in Syria, where Christians are not allowed to speak…or in Iraq, where churches are bombed. We live in a Jewish state, which is democratic and free. As Israeli Christians we see ourselves as part of this state and not as part of those who oppose it.” 

 

The  Israel Today report also told of the growing number of Arab Christians that are serving in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), saying ”For a number of years now, a group of Nazareth Christians who are officers in the Israeli army have been actively recruiting young local Arabs to follow in their footsteps and serve the Jewish state.” Many Arab politicians oppose Arab participation in Israel’s defense forces for fear it will “legitimize the existence of the Jewish state (which pays their paychecks).” But, as one Arab Christian said, “more and more of us are realizing that there is no other country here that is worth fighting for.

Arab Christians are becoming increasingly emboldened. The paper reveals that some “even refer to themselves openly as ‘Israeli Christians.’” And one teenager who plans to join the IDF explained that “Ultimately, from a religious point of view, we are one. Jesus was a Jew, his mother was a Jew, and his 12 disciples were Jews.”

 

But guess what? To point out the difference between Israel’s civilized, respectful treatment of Christians and the savage, supremacist treatment they receive elsewhere in the Middle East that is causing the region to be emptied of Christians is. . . Islamophobia!

 

 

Source - http://www.israpundit.com/archives/63595090

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More concerned with denigrating Israel and promoting the creation of another terrorist Muslim country. 

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U.S. taxpayers unknowingly funding Christian anti-Israel group - while Christians are murdered in Muslim countries

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 http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-vatican-continues-support-for-arab.html

Book review - The Vatican against Israel - by Giulio Meotti
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/02/book-review-vatican-against-israel-by.html

 

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How the CIA Helped The Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrate the West

by Jerry Gordon (August 2011)

Muslim Brotherhood and founder Hasan al-Banna

In April of 2007, then House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer had an encounter with Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood representatives in Cairo. Fox News reported:

ISRAEL'S WATER ISSUES - EUROPEAN UNION HEAD ADMITS NOT LEARNING THE FACTS BEFORE LAUNCHING ATTACK ON ISRAEL

THE FACTS ABOUT THE PALESTINIAN WATER SUPPLY

 

By Mark Langfan 

 

European Parliament head, Martin Schulz, admitted that he hadn't checked the facts before he castigated Israel - from the Knesset podium - for denying Palestinian Arabs water. Here they are.

The State of Israel Water Authority (IWA) released a PowerPoint report entitled “The Water Issue Between Israel and the Palestinians.” (the “IWA Report”) in 2012.. 

 

The IWA Report debunks the BDS (boycott-divest-sanction) myth that “Israel is stealing West Bank water from the Palestinians,”

 

In fact, the IWA Report provides documentary and graphic evidence that the Palestinians have ““stolen”” water from Israel in direct, and constant “breach” of the Oslo Accords. 

 

The IWA Report is full of clear and colorful graphics which illustrate many of the "West Bank" Water issues.  For example, the graphic below shows how the Tel Aviv Yarkon-Taninim coastal aquifer is recharged by rainfall in the "\West Bank" (Judea and Samaria).

Water in Israel (IWA)

The IWA Report’s main conclusions are:

 

Israel supplies to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria 46 million cubic meters (MCM) a year more water than Israel is obligated to under the Oslo Accords.

 

Israel supplies to the Palestinian Arabs, as a whole, 52 MCM a year more water than Israel is obligated to under the Oslo accords.

 

In direct breach of the Oslo accords, the Palestinian Arabs have drilled over 300 unauthorized wells in the "West Bank". (This “off the books” extra water, drawn by the Palestinian Authority, is in addition to the extra 52 MCM of water Israel has allocated to the Palestinian Arabs above the required Oslo Accords allotment.)

 

The Palestinian Arabs do not treat their sewage water which is contaminating the Western Samarian aquifer that topographically runs westward down the western half of the Samarian "West Bank" Mountains to the Tel Aviv coastal plain aquifers. (See this reporter’s graphic compilation.) 

 

In direct breach of the Oslo accords, the Palestinian Authority is not developing any new sources of water, either through sewage treatment or desalination.

 

Recently the BESA Institute released a report by the internationally renowned, Hebrew University water-expert Dr. Haim Gvirtzman entitled “The Israeli-Palestinian Water conflict: An Israeli Perspective” which asserted that “despite there being a $500 million international Donor fund available” for the building of sewage treatment plants, “The Palestinians refuse to build sewage treatment plants.” 

 

The Gvirtzman BESA Report is an excellent and thorough explanatory paper that fills in the IWA Report, and clearly elaborates many of the underlying "West Bank" water issues. 

 

The two reports are a “must read” for anyone trying to counter the BDS “water” blood-libel against Israel.

 

This article was first posted on Israel National News on March 22, 2012. The situation has not changed.

Tags: aquifer, Water Authority

 

Mark Langfan

The writer, who specializes in security issues, has created an original educational 3d Topographic Map System of Israel to facilitate clear understanding of the dangers facing Israel and its water supply. It has been studied by US lawmakers and can be seen at www.marklangfan.com.

► More from this writer

 

Link to original article

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14524#.UzBn6ZuPKM8

 

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THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BEDOUIN IN ISRAEL - PART 2 - ARE THE BEDOUIN VILLAGES HISTORICAL?

For part I, click HERE

Six part series on the claims of Bedouin tribes in the Negev, based on research by REGAVIM and aerial photographs.

 

Myth 2 : Are the Bedouin Villages Historical?

 

In the past few years, the Bedouin of the Negev and extreme left non-government organizations (NGO’s) have repeatedly claimed that most of the Bedouin villages are “historical” and that Bedouin have inhabited these villages since before the creation of the State of Israel. Take, for example, the Joint Position Paper: Bill on Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev, of May 2013).[4]

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BEDOUIN IN ISRAEL - PART I - ARE THEY "INDIGENOUS"?

 

6 Part Series: The Truth About the Negev Bedouin, Pt. I

 

A comprehensive research paper in six parts, divided into "myths".

 

By Jewish land rights organization REGAVIM

 

 

Myth 1: Are the Bedouin “Indigenous”?

 

Around twenty-five years ago, a global  discussion began surrounding the term “indigenous peoples” as it relates to ethnic minorities throughout the world.

 

International law, however, began to address the issue of indigenous peoples as far back as the 17th century, and by and large the matter was left to the discretion of the individual states. With the passing of the years, the law began to recognize the independent status of indigenous ethnic groups (such as the Indians and the Aborigines) in a way that was bound together with previous legal agreements regarding preservation of culture, holy sites, and other factors.

 

The International Labor Organization (ILO) associated with the United Nations tried to advance two international treaties concerning the rights of populations that define themselves as indigenous, yet were unsuccessful in formulating a statement, due to the differing views of each country on sovereignty and indigenous populations.

 

In the past few years, key figures in the Bedouin sector in Israel began to apply this term to themselves as defining their independent status, together with a demand for recognition of their historic ownership of lands across the Negev.

 

Despite the lack of an international agreement as to the definition of “indigenous”, the general recognition of indigenous peoples uses several parameters, focusing on the following:

• Original Inhabitants – Indigenous peoples are descendants of the first peoples to inhabit a particular territory.
• Extended Period of Time – Indigenous peoples have lived in a territory “from time immemorial”, over a period of thousands of years.
• Pre-Colonial Sovereignty – Indigenous peoples had territorial sovereignty before the arrival of a  developed nation that took possession of the region.
• Group Connection to the Land – Indigenous peoples have a spiritual connection to the land on which they live.
• External Validation – Indigenous peoples are recognized by other external groups which affirm that they are in fact indigenous.

Professor Ruth Kark of the Geography Department of the Hebrew University, considered an expert on issues of land ownership in traditional and pre-modern cultures, in an article that appeared in the “Middle East Quarterly,”[1] enumerates the generally accepted parameters of the term “indigenous,” and explains why the Bedouin cannot be included in this category. Here is the synopsis of her conclusions:

 

Original Peoples – Many groups preceded the Bedouin in Palestine in general and in the Negev in particular, including Jewish inhabitants who maintained an uninterrupted presence in the land since the days of the Bible. Therefore, the Bedouin cannot claim that they were the original inhabitants of the land.

 

The Dimension of Time – The variable called, “from time immemorial” requires a long-standing presence on the territory. The Bedouin tribes currently living in the Negev have been there for about two hundred years [2]. As such, they cannot claim that their presence predates the arrival of a foreign power, such as the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the current Bedouin tribes present in the Negev by hundreds of years.

 

Sovereignty –The Bedouin of the Negev never had sovereignty over the region. When they arrived, the Negev was already under Ottoman control, followed by British and then Israeli control.

 

A Unique Spiritual Connection to the Territory – Nomadic life precludes any specific fixed connection to the land. There is no long-standing proof in Bedouin tradition establishing a spiritual connection between them and the Negev, a logical result of their relatively brief presence there and to their nomadic lifestyle. Indeed they claim the Arabian Peninsula to be their historic homeland.

 

Today, the Bedouin are not claiming collective rights to the land, but are rather demanding fulfillment of private land ownership claims of individual families, giving them the possibility of selling the lands and transferring them to a third party.

 

Such individual demands are contrary to the spiritual dimension, and point to the fact that the main aspiration of the Bedouin is financial gain, with no collective character that would support their campaign to be recognized as indigenous.

The Group Defines itself, and is regarded by others, as indigenous inhabitants of the Territory – The claim of the Bedouin as indigenous is quite recent, and was first mentioned only a small number of years ago [3]. Previous studies did not find that the Bedouin regarded themselves as indigenous and no researchers made the claim as such.

 

Although the UN Committee on Indigenous People did bestow indigenous status on the Bedouin of the Negev, the fact that no other Bedouin tribe in the Middle East ever made a claim of being indigenous raises questions as to the motives and authenticity of such a claim.

 

The fact that the Bedouin of the Negev, in many cases, are part of the same tribe that dwells in neighboring countries, also makes it illogical to say that only the Bedouin who live on the Israeli side of the border should considered indigenous.

 

Conclusion:

 

The narrative according to the Bedouin claim that they are “indigenous” does not fulfill the world’s accepted criteria for being considered indigenous.

 

 

Sources:

1. “Are the Negev Bedouin an Indigenous People? Fabricating Palestinian History”. Havazelet Yahel, Dr. Seth Frantzman & Prof. Ruth Kark. Middle East Quarterly. Summer 2012, pp. 3-14

 

2. Ottoman tax records from the years 1596-97 specify the names of forty three Bedouin tribes in what was to become the Palestinian Mandate, including three in the Negev, yet the names of the tribes living today in the Negev do not appear in this list.

 

3. The first articles to relate to this claim appeared about ten years ago in the platforms of organizations identified with the radical left in Israel such as “Adalah,” “the Negev Co-existence Forum,” and “Human Rights Watch.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14722#.Uyw9EZuPKM8

Tags: Bedouin, Regavim

 

Regavim

 

Regavim is an organization whose purpose is to ensure responsible, legal and accountable use of Israel’s national lands, and the return of the rule of law to all areas and aspects of the land and its preservation through proper management of this most precious resource. Based on this assumption, Regavim's activities are directed at influencing all the State of Israel's government systems in order to bring them - and effectively the whole country - to act based on the fundamental principles of Zionism and protect Israel's lands and national properties.

► More from this writer

 

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A Native and a Zionist - An Canadian Native supports Jews as the Aboriginal people of Israel

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