Clinton & Axelrod See "insult," "affront" to United States in Israel's Decision to build homes, but no Insult by Arabs Honoring Murderess of American

Hilary Clinton claims that Israel's announcement of building housing for Jews in Jerusalem is "insulting" to the United States. White House flunkey David Axelrod called it an "affront" to the United States. Just parenthetically, it's always nice to see a stalwart old "leftist" like Axelrod worry about the honor of the United States.

Hilary said:

"But we have to make clear to our Israeli friends and partners that the two-state solution -- which we support, which the prime minister himself says he supports -- requires confidence-building measures on both sides," Clinton told CNN's Jill Dougherty. "And the announcement of the settlements the very day that the vice president was there was insulting." [CNN here]

Of course, she would never ask whether the "two-state solution" would really bring peace, or whether it would be any more than a second Final Solution. Nor does she mention any "confidence building measures" demanded of the Palestinian Arab side. But there may have been one, albeit not very significant. And here Clinton missed what was clearly an insult to the United States. The Palestinian Authority was supposed to hold a ceremony while Biden was in Israel that was to honor an Arab terrorist who led a mass murder gang that slaughtered 38 Jews. They were to honor her --yes, a fine specimen of Arab-Muslim womanhood-- Dalal Mughrabi who led the notorious Coastal Road massacre of 1978. Because of Biden's presence in the country, the PA postponed the honoring ceremony until after Biden left, that is, for a few hours. That could be called a "confidence building measure." The honor was to dedicate the main square of Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority capital, to Miss Mughrabi.

Now where does American honor come into this? The first Jew that Mughrabi and her terrorists murdered in their paroxysmic cavalcade of mass murder, was an American citizen, Gail Rubin. Miss Rubin, a renowned nature photographer, was --just coincidentally-- the niece of a Democratic United States senator, Senator Abraham [Abe] Ribicoff. Curiously, American honor does not enter into the equation when the American victim is a Jew, not even the niece of US senator who belonged to Clinton and Obama's own Democratic Party.

White House Flunkey Axelrod said that "what happened was an affront, was an insult." He said this after kapo Jake Tapper of ABC News fed him some questions that Axelrod himself had probably supplied to Tapper. Anyhow, Tapper lied by calling the neighborhood in question "an Arab" area or neighborhood. The existing houses of Ramat Shlomo probably reach to about 1/2 kilometer on the west from the large, prosperous Arab houses of the Shu`afat neighborhood [doubters can come look and see for themselves]. However, I think that the planned new housing is to be built to the west and/or north of present Ramat Shlomo houses. But if Axelrod, Clinton and Tapper don't want Jews to live near Arabs, then that means they want apartheid to be enforced against Jews. Of course, the Palestinian Authority wants that.

Our main point is that American honor is insulted --as Obama, Clinton, and Axelrod define it-- when Jews build houses where the State Dept and Arab advocates of apartheid don't want Jews to live. In other words, when Jews get out of their place, when Jews rise above their station. The fact that the Palestinian Authority [basically run by Fatah] honors a murderess of an American woman does not dishonor the United States, not even when that victim was the niece of a US senator who happened to belong to the Democratic Party of Obama and Clinton. After all, the victim, Gail Rubin, and her uncle, Sen. Ribicoff, were Jews.

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The Elastic Honor of the United States, according to Obama, Clinton & Axelrod
Honors for Dalal Mughrabi by Palestinian Authority long before the square in Ramallah was named for her [here]
Other comments on this affair [here] & [here]&[here]&[here]
Unfortunately, the commentaries that I link to do not mention the connection with Senator Ribicoff.
Sultan Knish [here]
PLO Arabs draw encouragement from Obama gang's excoriation of Israel and incite their masses to violence, "protesting" against rebuilding and rededicating an old synagogue in the Old City, first built in 1700, that the Arab Legion blew up in the summer of 1948 [here]

Joe Biden Blames Israel for future attacks on American troops -- Yet plays up to Syria, the major facilitator of terrorism in Iraq

UPDATING 3-15-2010 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

In a typical hypocritical or know-nothing outburst, US Vice President Joe Biden blamed Israel for future jihadist attacks on American troops because of Jerusalem housing plans. Yet the Obama administration plays up to Syria which has been actively facilitating the entry of jihadist terrorists from throughout the Arab world into Iraq for seven years. Here is Biden:

But in closed conversations, Joe Biden took an entirely different tone. . . .

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors [Netanyahu & other Israelis]. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
[quoted by Laura Rozen on Politico]

Syria actively trains and dispatches terrorists going into Iraq to kill American troops and fellow Arabs. But Syria is OK. Syria has been allowed by the United States to take over Lebanon using its terrorist proxies, the Hizbullah, but Syria is OK. No harsh words for Syria that actively endangers American troops in Iraq. But harsh words for Israel that is trying to provide housing for the Israeli population. Now if the Arabs are so bigoted about Jews exercising their human rights, then maybe Obama and Biden ought to take them to task for that.

Furthermore, blaming Jews for future war was a trick that Hitler used, blaming the Jews in advance for bringing about a future world war when he himself was planning what became the world's most lethal war, with more dead than any previous war.

Biden went on:

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism. [quoted by Laura Rozen on Politico ]

So the human rights of Israeli Jews depend on whether prejudiced, bigoted Arabs are bothered by the Jews' exercise of those rights. In fact, neither the PLO/Palestinian Authority nor the Arab League made a halt of Jewish housing construction anywhere a condition for negotiations, until Obama's administration demanded that Israel stop building housing for Jews. But neither the PLO/PA nor the Arab League could afford to be "less Arab" than the president of the United States, so the Arabs followed suit after Obama & Co. So the Obama administration and State Dept are promoting the denial of Jewish human rights in practice. Actually several Arab governments are bothered more by Obama's inaction on the Iranian bomb project --and the concealment of --misrepresentation of-- Arab fear and opposition to the Iranian bomb, than they are by Jewish construction in Jerusalem. What Obama, Biden, H Clinton and the State Dept are doing is using the Arabs' presumed sentiments and prejudices as a tool or pretext for pressuring Israel to give up Jewish rights. Truly a sinister policy in line with that of the Euro Nazis [see our previous post].

Here's more Biden:

Beyond his desire to allay Israel’s fears about the Iranian nuclear threat, Biden asked the Israeli decision-makers to show the same degree of understanding and sensitivity to the United States’ interests in the Middle East and the military campaign that it is currently waging against radical Islamic agents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. [here]

How about Biden showing "understanding and sensitivity" for Jewish human rights?

Washington is getting itself into a very ugly and repulsive mood that they justify by fake concern for American troops fighting Islamic terrorists. Where was and is Washington's concern over Syrian help for the terrorists operating in Iraq since 2003?? When did any US official ever vehemently denounce Syria, using strong words like "condemn," for facilitating the mass murderous terrorism in Iraq?? Of course, there may have been some powder puff words of mild indignation about Syria from time to time, which told the Assad gang that the United States government was really not very upset with them. But neither Obama and his crew nor George Bush II and his crew ever said anything to compare with the word "condemn" now used for Jews building homes in Jerusalem.

The Obama administration is an enemy of Jewish human and civil rights. Decent Jews will stand up against the Obama policy of anti-Jewish racism. David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are kapos.

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Jennifer Rubin on Beiden & the White House's outburst [here] & [here] & on AIPAC's criticism of Obama [here]
3-15-2010 Barry Rubin on how the UN too indulges Syria and its friends [here].
Noah Pollak on Appalling Obamanoid hypocrisy [here]
US State Dept twists Ambassador Oren's arm [sounds like imperialism to me, indeed an ultimatum. Do you call that a friend?] [here]

Europe Promotes Apartheid in Jerusalem

"The negro . . . had no rights which the white man was bound to respect"
[Dred Scott v. Sandford, US Supreme
Court decision, 1857]

We are living in the era of total war, mass murder and the Big Lie. The last named facilitates the first two. The currently fashionable Big Lie is that Israel is an "apartheid state." It seems that apartheid has become a smear word for one's enemies that no longer has a specific, objective meaning. What it meant in South Africa is far from Israel's reality. But the Israelophobes don't care. At the same time, ironically, countries where this Big Lie is commonly propagated actually advocate, even demand, apartheid in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem, a city which has had a Jewish majority since the mid-19th century, although Arab irregular forces starting in December 1947, later joined by Transjordan's Arab Legion, ethnically cleansed Jewish neighborhoods in what became "East Jerusalem" under Arab rule. Jews were forbidden by Jordanian law [Transjordan changed its name to Jordan circa 1950] to live anywhere under Jordanian rule, including formerly Jewish neighborhoods of Hebron and "East Jerusalem" plus a number of farming settlements such as in the Gush Etsion area, `Atarot and Neveh Ya`aqov in northeastern Jerusalem, etc.

European Union member states with representations in Jerusalem actually work to promote apartheid between Jewish and Arab Jerusalemites. According to EU rules, the national day celebrations and festivities held by the consulates of these states in Jerusalem must comprise separate receptions for Jews and Arabs. Teddy Kollek protested against this policy repeatedly when he was mayor, to no avail. The Euros insisted on apartheid.

Moreover, in order to promote Arab nationalism and Islamic interests, the EU wants to divide Jerusalem, where, as said above, Jews have been the majority since the mid-19th century, since 1853 at least. The EU went so far as to sponsor a "concert" for youth with the Irish singer, Sinead O'Connor, circa 1997, that was to call for division of the city. Fortunately, this racist "concert" did not take place because not enough tickets were sold.

Kollek protested this European practice of apartheid in the way that he thought most practicable. He boycotted national day celebrations by the Euro govts that practiced this racist policy.
This use of the "apartheid" label by those, both Arabs and Westerners, that in fact want to impose apartheid on Israeli Jews, is another sign of the Orwellian character of our times. Here is one report on Kollek's policy:

Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek's office announced today that Kollek is planning to boycott next week's Bastille Day celebration sponsored by the French Consulate here to protest the longstanding diplomatic practice of holding separate social receptions for Arabs and Jews.

The policy of separate receptions is one of several western diplomatic practices Israelis contend deny the reality that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and, since 1967, has been united under its rule. But many Palestinians argue that to hold only one reception in the Jewish part of the city, where most of the consulates have their main offices, would amount to tacit recognition of Israel's 1967 annexation of their sector. [Washington Post, July 7, 1987][see here]

Now the EU govts as well as the US State Department, demand that Jews not be allowed to live in what was "East Jerusalem" for 19 years, not even on Jewish-owned real estate. Those were 19 years of exclusion of Jews, of refusal to allow Jews access to Jewish holy places, of taking Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives and using them to pave a path to a Jordanian army latrine, etc. The govts now members of the EU never complained about Jordanian abuse of Jewish tombstones in that demeaning way. But now they echo all sorts of bizarre Arab complaints. This is most repugnant when coming from the British who facilitated the Arab expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem neighborhoods in the period of civil war in the country initiated by the Arabs shortly after the UN General Asssembly recommended partitioning the Land of Israel ["palestine"] into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an internationally governed enclave in and around Jerusalem [also meant to include Bethlehem, Beyt Sahur, and Beyt Jala]. Now Britain and the other Euro friends of Arab fascism deny the Jews the right to return to places whence Jews were expelled in the period from 30 November 1947 up to the first truce in June 1948. That is, according to the EU and the US State Dept, Jews don't have the right to come back to Jewish-owned real estate. Jews today are in the position of the American Blacks according to the notorious Dred Scott decision of the US Supreme Court:

"The negro . . . had no rights which the white man was bound to respect"

Just change "negro" to Jew and change "white man" to Arab or Westerner --or both together-- and you have the situation today.

Fiamma Nirenstein, a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, formerly an Italian journalist stationed in Jerusalem, wrote on the "apartheid" Big Lie. I intend to translate the article in full or nearly so. Here are excerpts from it:

Apartheid Week against Israel . . . is one of the most intellectually repugnant events ever conceived. . .
In Israel everything is in contrast [with South African apartheid]: Each and every institution is multiethnic and multireligious. Racist theories and racial discrimination are forbidden by law; in the hospitals Arab and Jewish women give birth in beds side by side, cared for by Arab and Jewish staff, children and patients in general come from throughout the Arab world to be treated. They are welcomed with love. At the university, the Arab and Jewish students study together and also Arab professors, sometimes very aggressive towards Zionism, teach with Jews and to Jews, while Arab books of every kind are translated. Arab citizens sit in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, and in the government [the cabinet]. They raise their dissent (always!) without fear that someone is lying in wait for them to punish them, the only Arabs in the Middle East [to have that freedom of expression]. [Il Giornale, 7 March 2010]

I should add that there is an Arab judge on the Supreme Court, and Arabs have highly responsible positions in other public and state institutions. Further, about our hospitals, my wife went to the eye clinic at the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus yesterday. She told me that half or more of the patients waiting there were Arabs. While waiting her turn, she had a pleasant conversation there with two other patients. One was an Arabic-speaking Christian young woman, from Nazareth, who was studying in a course in Jerusalem to become a radiology technician. The other was an Armenian young man living in the Old City.

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Also see:
Two earlier posts on Emet m'Tsiyon for photos of reality in Israel [here & here].

Seth Frantzman on EU funding of Arab and Palestinian Authority bodies that work to undermine Israeli society and besmirch Israel's image around the world.

Soft Euro colonialism, high handed Euro arrogance in Israel [here]. This EU statement against Jewish housing in formerly Jordanian-occupied parts of Jerusalem is a racist, pro-apartheid declaration. It speaks in the name of law, international law, using false representations, misrepresentations, of international law, in order to impose on Jews in the Land of Israel the same territorial segregation of Jews and disregard for Jewish property rights that prevailed for centuries both in Europe and the Arab lands [conquered by Arab invaders in the 7th and 8th centuries], both in Christendom and the Islamic domain. The Euro fakers use "human rights" rhetoric and slogans to promote apartheid against Jews, as NGOs funded by the EU slander Israel as an "apartheid state."
Catherine Ashton, an uppity British upper cruster, elected foreign affairs commissioner of the EU, had this to say about Jewish residential rights in Jerusalem, a city made important to the world by and through Jewish history where Jews have been the majority since the mid-19th century:

Ashton condemned Israel's plan to expand a Jewish neighborhood in disputed east Jerusalem, saying it should reverse the decision and "refrain from unilateral decisions and actions that may jeopardize the final status negotiations."

"The EU reiterates that settlements are illegal under international law," Ashton said in a statement. "They undermine current efforts for restarting peace negotiations ... and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible."
[Jerusalem Post, 10 March 2010]

Ashton and other EU Judeophobes & imperialists misrepresent international law with the claim that building homes for Jews in Jerusalem is "illegal under international law."
For Ashton's ilk, "law" and "international law" are only useful for bashing states that they don't like. When Iran violates the UN Charter [Article 2, clause 4] by threatening war against Israel and threatening to destroy Israel, that does not especially bother her if at all. The constant hate-Israel, hate-Jews agitprop coming out of Arab states, as well as from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas-ruled Gaza does not bother her. She may well agree with much of it. Indeed, one of Ashton's British upper crusty sisters, Baroness Jenny Tonge who sits in the House of Lords, claimed that Israel's medical mission to Haiti to aid earthquake victims was stealing organs from patients for resale [medically impossible, since organs for transplant cannot be shipped around like a commodity].
3-17-2010 Emmanuele Ottolenghi analyzes Catherine Ashton's Cairo speech. Ottolenghi informs his readers that Ashton is a "lady," specifically Lady Ashton [here]. I call her a Euro bitch. When it comes to Europe's new Nazis in "liberal" anti-imperialist garb, I am not a gentleman.

Brit Elite Rag -- The Financial Times -- Assaults Israel Again

UPDATING 3-4-2010 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic, has done another expert job of highlighting the Israelophobia [Judeophobia] of the British elite daily, the Financial Times. Recall that the FT is not a "leftist" paper. It is solidly pro-capitalist. Hence, Israelophobia or anti-Zionism, the up to date form of Judeophobia, is not limited to "leftists" or socialists. It is a mental disease cutting across class lines and supposed ideological divisions. Emet m'Tsiyon has featured the FT's anti-Zionism before [here]. Martin Peretz' latest response to FT agitprop is here. Some excerpts follow:

Hardly a day goes by that the Financial Times doesn’t do a hit job on Israel. The otherwise sober pink sheet has such an obsession with the Jewish state that I’ve come to wonder what its views were on the rescue of Jewish children into England during the Nazi onslaught on them and on their parents.
. . . . .
The paper simply refuses to name Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But it’s much worse than that. The Financial Times writes about the “government in Tel Aviv.’ This is not just weird. It is a lie. The FT wants to rewrite the history of the Middle East. If it can’t tell the truth about a simple geographical fact, on what, pray tell, can it be trusted?

Let's put that claim that Israel's capital is Tel Aviv in historical context. It was a regular feature of Soviet and Communist anti-Israel agitprop before the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, this pretense is employed by the --shall we say it again?-- capitalist Financial Times.

Right now the FT is screeching at Israel for the assassination of top Hamas murderer and operative, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai, which quite plausibly may have been carried out by Israel's Mossad spy agency. Maybe the FT regrets that there is one less top Hamas operative running around the Middle East, working to perpetrate mass murder against Jews. Anyhow, in order to properly chastise Israel for --presumably-- killing him, the FT minimizes his importance. It describes him as a mere "Hamas gun-runner." Well, if he was not so important, then why is the FT so upset? Mass murder goes in the Middle East almost every day. In Iraq, dozens of non-combatant civilians are slaughtered regularly. Those murders do not evoke as much gall and spleen from the FT --if any-- as does the assassination of one leader of Hamas whom that Iranian-sponsored mass murder organization officially mourned. Peretz comments:

. . . the FT has dismissed his [al-Mabhouh's] importance by calling him “a Hamas gun-runner in Dubai.” This is so far from the truth that it is actually laughable. He was a murderer, a certified murderer, and is an official of the far-flung Hamas movement, which specializes in the murder of Israelis. He is more than a gun-runner. But even gun- running for Hamas, recipient of military hardware from Iran and Syria, cannot be seen with indifference by Jerusalem.
http://www.tnr.com/print/blog/the-spine/another-hit-job-the-financial-times

Just to clarify the situation. Dubai is officially in a state of war with Israel as part of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has been in a state of war with Israel since it became a state. The Hamas is not only in a state of war with Israel but openly proclaims the desirability of murdering all Jews. It does this in Article 7 of its charter. The Hamas TV in Gaza constantly brainwashes its population, starting with small children, with reasons for slaughtering Jews and for continuing war against the Jews until Israel and the Jews are destroyed. There is no possibility that any Hamas official could be extradited from Dubai to be put on trial in Israel or from elsewhere in the UAE or from Syria where Hamas has its headquarters or from any Arab state, be it the most "moderate" Arab state of all. Obviously, in a state of war the rules applying in relations between countries at peace do not apply.

The United Kingdom can rightly be seen as the most dangerous center in the world for anti-Israel agitprop. There must be a reason why British NGOs lead in smearing Israel for alleged "human rights" violations, why the movement to boycott Israeli universities is centered in Britain, why Muslim fanatics are allowed to preach murder of Jews [and all non-Muslims] in British mosques and to demonstrate publicly calling to "behead those who insult Islam", without being charged with sedition. Moreover, we may ask why terrorists who placed bombs on the Paris subway, the Metro, in the mid-1990s were taking directions from leaders based in -- London. It was French investigators who dubbed the British capital -- Londonistan. Why?

If there really is such a thing as an Israeli-Arab "peace process," then an expression of regret by the British government for the British government's role in the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945 would be helpful. Surely, the UK government should not be allowed to take part in any supposed "peace process" without an admission of guilt for the British government's past pro-Holocaust policies and without an expression of deep regret.

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UPDATING 3-4-2010 Martin Peretz updates the story of FT's mourning over the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He links to an excellent article by British historian Andrew Roberts that puts the whole subject into a truthful, historical and contemporary perspective [here]. Apparently, even in Britain, a land so much of which is benighted, voices of outrage over the mad attacks on Israel in the FT were such as to lead the FT to publish Roberts' rebuttal of the anti-Israel fanatics.

The British, Judeophobia & Anti-Zionism -- Lewis Feuer

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

Writing about George Orwell's typically socialist or Marxist approach to Judeophobia as a problem, Lewis Feuer refers to the attitude of other British intellectuals and identifies the likely purposes and/or results of anti-Zionism.

In his quest for rationality, Orwell, like so many Englishmen --Shaw, Webb, Wells, Russell-- tended to belittle the importance of anti-semitism. As far as Orwell could see, "anti-semitism is only one manifestation of nationalism," that can be cured only when the larger disease of nationalism is cured. Long before nationalism, however, became a historic force, in mediaeval Europe, anti-semitism was endemic, and always its manifestations linked first to the relative defencelessness of the Jews, and second, to the sense, as Charles de Gaulle put it, that the Jews were an elite people, gifted inordinately with intellectual abilities. Anti-semitism has thus always been a concomitant of anti-intellectual and populist movements. And anti-Zionism, as the current form of anti-semitism, aims precisely to restore the Jews to such a state of defencelessness.

Lewis Feuer wrote this in 1984 in Survey, a Journal of East & West Studies [Summer 1984; p 163]. He wrote it long before Judeophobia in its "anti-Zionist" guise became a highly emotional fashion among a variegated set of publics: BBC TV editors, editors of ostensibly "liberal" British newspapers like the Guardian and the strongly pro-capitalist Financial Times, not to mention assorted Communist and Communist-Trotskyist sects, Arab and other Muslim jihadists, British opportunists and race haters like George Galloway, and so on.

Feuer rightly points out that for many of the respected "leftists" and "socialists" in Britain --and not only there-- the problems of the Jews were secondary and would be solved by the coming of a socialist messianic age, the renewed Golden Age of Man, as some viewed a socialist society. In other words, socialism would solve all the problems of the Jews, so they argued. Intelligent people would be much more skeptical about a socialist Golden Age today. Anyhow, before we get to True Socialism, we could all be dead. That was especially true for the Jews of Orwell's time. About a third or more of the Jews in the world were murdered in Orwell's own lifetime. True Socialism did not come soon enough to save their lives, let alone their honor and their rights.

Today, we see that many self-styled socialists could not care less about the rights of Jews, or are indeed hostile to them. Some, like Ken Livingstone, openly mock Jews and scorn their human rights and dignity. Lest we forget, Livingstone, the mayor of London for several years, was long a Trotskyist and became notorious after the 9-11 mass murder for inviting Yusuf Qaradhawi, a notorious Muslim hate preacher, to London. But is Feuer right in calling Judeophobia, whether or not in its anti-Zionist form, a populist movement? He gives part of the answer to that question himself, whether or not he recognized that. General De Gaulle, later President De Gaulle, was hardly a "populist" nor was he anti-intellectual, but he was Judeophobic. Of course De Gaulle's remark after the Six Day War that the Jews were an "elite and domineering people" could be said to play to the masses of non-Jews as an instrumental tactic or strategy for influencing French public opinion. Maybe De Gaulle wanted to play up to the Arabs with that remark. It was indeed followed by a ban on Israeli military purchases. For those who don't know it, France was Israel's major weapons supplier before the Six Day War. Israel won the war with French fighter aircraft, etc. Probably many people don't know it because they believe that the United States was always supporting Israel and furnishing it with weapons. Indeed, this has been one of the commonplace Big Lies about Israel told by the "leftists" of the last 43 years. France was much more supportive of Israel up to the Six Day War than was the United States.

So the fact that De Gaulle made his Judeophobic remark after the Six Day War was not only a signal of an approaching French switch to a pro-Arab policy but a use of Judeophobia, a stimulation, encouragement, incitement of Judeophobia made by an elitist politician backed by big money interests in his own country. On that Feuer was wrong.

Then Feuer refers to the Judeophobia of the Middle Ages. It was not simply "populist" nor "anti-intellectual." After all, very intellectual Christian theologians loathed or hated Jews on religious grounds. And when some of the non-Jewish poor attacked Jews for real or supposed Jewish wealth, was it solely a mood of resentment of those wealthier whereas the pogrom mobs seldom attacked the rich of their own religion or ethnic group? What may have happened is that poor folk, who often and commonly resent those wealthier or more prosperous than themselves [not always nor at all times and places], may have especially resented the fact that Jews who --they were taught-- were religiously evil, Christkillers or whatnot, were able to obtain wealth. After all, if those people religiously defined as evil [Jews], could obtain wealth or any respectable social standing, then that was an injustice. An injustice which sometimes required violence to redress. Possibly the devil's work, a conspiracy, etc. Of course, this is theoretical and I am open to discussion about it.

What is most sinister today, it seems, is that members of elites use psychological warfare techniques, propaganda tricks that really go beyond mere propaganda, in order to produce hatred of Jews among their masses, especially the lower-middle brow masses, not to mention among the mass of ill-educated academics, truly nutty professors, and so on. One way to keep the population in line and to get them to follow the will of the elite, what C Wright Mills called the Power Elite, is to use all sorts of tricks from the arsenal of psychological warfare. That goes on all the time and in many places.

But Feuer was right to say that anti-Zionism is "the current form of anti-semitism." And in a time when "anti-imperialism" is supposed to be taken for granted as the right way to think, the right position for all decent and right-thinking folk, anti-semitism [Judeophobia] has to take on the coloring of anti-imperialism. A principle of psywar is to seemingly accept the values and basic beliefs of those one wants to persuade or bring around to another way of thinking. The basic beliefs and values of the target audience are the platform for moving to new beliefs --perhaps added on to the old, not necessarily replacing them-- desired by the psywar practitioner.

Feuer's conclusion that anti-Zionism means to restore Jews to their state of defenselessness, as in the Middle Ages, is insightful. Certainly, weakening Israel would have that effect and would likely lead to renewed persecution of Jews in many parts of the world.

The Tomb of Simon the Just [Shimon haTsadiq] in Jerusalem, a focus of Jewish pilgrimage for centuries

The enemies of Israel and the Jewish people are now working feverishly in high gear. Among other things, they falsify, even deny, Jewish history. The fanatical hatred of our enemies goes so far as to deny that Jews were ever a nation or ever in the Land of Israel or that modern Jews have any ancestral connection with ancient Jews. One of the current denials perpetrated by Arabs who deny the Jewish history of Jerusalem is the denial of Jewish holy places and Jewish residence in various place before 1947-48, when Jews were driven out of their homes in what became Judenrein "East Jerusalem" under Arab rule.

When the controversy over Jewish-owned real estate in the old Shim`on haTsadiq Quarter of Jerusalem erupted [here] in mid-summer of 2009, I visited the area and interviewed the spokesman for a group of Arabs belonging to a family, some of whom had been evicted from a house there for refusing to pay rent to the Jewish owners, the Sefardic Community Council. A group from this family were sitting outside a house where some of them had been living before being evicted. Other family members lived elsewhere in the city.

This spokesman, al-Hijazi by name, as he told me, changed his story several times as I showed that I had information about the history of the site. When I said that Jews said that the Tomb of Simon the Just [Shim`on haTsadiq שמעון הצדוק ] was on the site, he claimed that Simon's tomb was really in Jish Village in the north, that is, in the Galilee. Jish Village כפר ג'יש was called in ancient times by the Hebrew name Gush Halav גוש חלב, distorted by the Arab pronunciation of Jish, with the second word, Halav, left out. The spokesman's name al-Hijazi indicates a family origin in the Hijaz, northwestern Arabia, where Mecca and Medina are located.

As we spoke, we were both sitting about 100-150 feet away and slightly downhill from the location of the Tomb --which always has some visitors/pilgrims around-- although our view of the tomb, located in a cave, was obscured by Arab houses built on the Shimon haTsadiq plot [about 18 dunams = 4 1/2 acres]. Arab houses were built on the plot about 1955 at the initiative of the Jordanian custodian of enemy property. That is, Jewish-owned property under Jordanian control between 1948 and 1967 was considered enemy property by Jordan. Furthermore, Jordan did not allow Jews to visit Jewish holy places under Jordanian control in that period, in violation of the Israel-Transjordan armistice accord of 1949. [Transjordan changed its name to Jordan circa 1950]

The houses built by Arabs circa 1955 are on a flood plain, that of the upper Qidron creek [Nahal Qidron or Kidron נחל קדרון] which is usually dry. When I responded to al-Hijazi that there was an old synagogue uphill [it is on a cliff over Simon's Tomb] with an old Hebrew inscription on it [see here], he claimed that the area had been a quarry before 1948. This was a ridiculous claim, although there is an adjacent plot where ground had been dug out for construction purposes. I believe that that plot was dug out only after 1967. When I said to al-Hijazi [we spoke Hebrew]: The Jews say that Jews lived here before 1948,
he answered: Not true [לא נכון]!!

So much for the credibility of Arab witnesses. I must say that al-Hijazi had the trimmed short beard typical of Hamas believers and most likely supported Hamas rather than Fatah.

What is most outrageous is that in much or most of the media coverage of the controversy over the Shim`on haTsadiq Quarter, it is never mentioned that Simon's Tomb was a focus of Jewish pilgrimage for centuries, especially on the Lag b`Omer holiday, like the tomb of Shim`on bar Yohai in the Galilee at Meron, which attracts much much larger crowds on Lag b`Omer. Here are three illustrated, illuminated tables of Jewish holy places in the Land of Israel that show that it was considered a Jewish holy place and a focus of pilgrimage centuries ago. These illustrated, illuminated tables were exhibited by the Israel Museum in a show in Winter-Summer 1996, two years before 1998 when Jews came back to live in some of the old Jewish homes from which Jews had been driven in December 1947 [one family stayed until the 8th to the 10th of January 1948. Their date of flight is uncertain to a surviving family member]. These tables show the long-standing Jewish reverence for this tomb.

The illustration above shows the Tomb of Shim`on haTsadiq in the lower right corner. Unfortunately, the original document suffered a crease going through the letter shin [ש ] of the name Shimon [שמעון]. The picture shows the tomb or tomb marker [ ציון] inside a cave, which is correct. The table was published in 1659 [click on photo to enlarge].

In this illustration, the tomb of Shim`on haTsadiq [here the name's two parts are in reverse order: צדיק שמעון ] appears at the left middle of the table, just below the depiction of the Western Wall כותל מערבי [Wailing Wall] and between the names of the Sanhedrin tombs [here: שבעים סנהדרין ] and Kalba Savu`a [ כלבא שבוע ], a former name for what is now called the Tombs of the Kings, a Jewish holy and historical site under French government control under the name Tombeau des Rois. The location of the tomb's name on the table shows that it was in Jerusalem, along with the other sites mentioned just above and adjacent to Shim`on haTsadiq on the table. The table dates to the Hebrew year TAQPAH [ תקפ''ה ]. That is, 1824-1825 on the Gregorian calendar. The table is drawn with watercolor and ink on paper and was made in the Land of Israel.

On this table, the name Shimon haTsadiq appears on the left side on the second tier from the bottom. This table is dated to 1829-1830 [the year on the Hebrew calendar תק''ץ]. It too was produced in the Land of Israel and is watercolor and ink on paper.

The attack on Jewish history in general and Jewish history in the Land of Israel in particular is common in English-speaking countries, especially Britain and the United States, it seems to me. See my post on the Financial Times out of London [here]. The FT, a pro-capitalism, pro-free market newspaper, was trying to promote the asinine and wildly dishonest book of Shlomo Sand, a Communist on the faculty of the University of Tel Aviv. Sand claims that the Jewish people was "invented" in the 19th century. Nadia Abu el-Hadj, a degree-holding "anthropologist" ["palestinian" Arab by her background] appointed to the Columbia University faculty in New York, despite many objections, denies aspects of the history of Second Temple Times [here & here]. The assault is happening now. Among other venues of attack, Arab nationalists, Islamists, anti-national Israelis, American and other Western apologists for Arab terrorism have seized on the issue of the Shimon haTsadiq neighborhood in Jerusalem.

This endeavor to eliminate Jewish history is obviously an obstacle to peace.

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source of illustrations:
Rachel Sarfati, ed., Offerings from Jerusalem: Portrayals of Holy Places by Jewish Artists
(Jerusalem: The Israel Museum 2002)

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Nails the UN "human rights council"

The "peace" intended by the Peace Process is Peace of Mind for Antisemites.

Jeffrey Goldberg shows how the UN "human rights council" gives hope and encouragement to bigots, friends of terorism and mass murder. He quotes what the Muslim Student Union at Univ of California at Irvine said in a flyer protesting the appearance there of Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren.

09 Feb 2010 04:38 pm

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tried to give a speech at UC Irvine but was shouted down by Muslim protesters, who apparently weren't equipped to argue with Oren, just drive him from the stage. All this is par for the course, but I did find this one bit of information amusing:

The Muslim Student Union said in its statement: "We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined."

To the Muslim Student Union, the fact that the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more than all the other countries of the world combined means that Israel is worse than all the other countries of the world combined. To more rational, less prejudiced people, this fact means that the UN Human Rights Council is not a serious organization, but one under the control of dictators and despots. [The Atlantic Monthly, Jeffrey Goldberg blog]

Goldberg's last sentence is fully confirmed by previous posts on Emet m'Tsiyon regarding the moral incompetence of the UN"hrc" and the initiation of the goldstone report by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which wields great influence over the UNhrc where much of the membership belongs to the OIC.

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Also see: here & here & here & [in Italian] qui.