All Entries Tagged With: "Zionism"
5 Reasons Israel Is Losing the Public Relations Battle
There are some very good reasons — none of them anti-Semitic — why Israel is si
nking in the perception of the outside world.
Israeli Turned Palestinian Activist
Popular 1965 Hal David/Burt Bacharach lyrics said “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
Beinart’s Other Proposal
At the end of his new book, “The Crisis of Zionism,” Peter Beinart offers two controversial
A lament for America’s Jews
Inside the corridors of power, there we sat down and wept
Burned Quran found outside Islamic community center in SF
By: Omar Ali | Source
Fueled by campaign against proposed Islamic community center in New York City
On Sept. 12, workers found a burned Quran, the holy book of Islam, in a trash bin outside the Islamic Society of San Francisco. Khaled Olaibah , the administrator of the ISSF, reported the bigoted act to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and CAIR reported it to local authorities.
The ISSF has functioned as a community center in San Francisco for almost 15 years, helping Muslim immigrants and providing a venue for weddings and other religious ceremonies for the Muslim community. The ISSF serves over 800 people.
The Quran burning in San Francisco is a direct result of recent anti-Muslim rhetoric targeting the proposed Park51 community center in New York City, falsely referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, had issued a provocative appeal to mark 9/11 as an international day to burn the Quran. Jones used as a pretext for the threatened burning opposition to Sharia law and honoring the victims of 9/11.
The threat to burn 200 copies of the Quran did not happen as planned, due to pressure from sectors of the U.S. ruling class who feared their interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other predominantly Muslim countries would be adversely affected.
Since 9/11, Muslims and Arabs have been racially profiled in the United States as well as Europe. The U.S. government used the 9/11 attacks as well as claims to be delivering freedom to women as justification to invade Afghanistan. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was carried out based on bogus claims that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction and was harboring terrorists. In reality, the goal was to turn Iraq into a colonial-type state.
Anti-Muslim bigotry has also been used to portray the Palestinian struggle as a religious holy war, when in fact it is a struggle of the Palestinian people against imperialist-backed Zionist colonialism. The scapegoating of Muslims is necessary for the U.S. ruling class to create an artificial enemy and prevent working-class unity.
All progressives must stand against anti-Muslim bigotry and join in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters and against imperialist oppression.
The Connection Between Zionism & Organized Islamophobia – The Facts
Aubrey Chernick, Major funder of Zionist Orgs & Islamophobic Orgs
Conspiracy Theory?
Much has been said about the disproportionate Zionist presence in the world of organized Islamophobia. Now we learn that there is more to that claim than unfounded conspiracy theories. It turns out the main funder of anti-Muslim blogger/anti-Park51 organizer Robert Spencer and his hate site JihadWatch are husband and wife duo Aubrey and Joyce Chernick, the same couple are ardent supporters of Zionist causes and major funders of pro-Israel groups across the country.
Aubrey Chernick according to Politico,
A onetime trustee of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aubrey Chernick led the effort to pull together $3.5 million in venture capital to start Pajamas Media, a conservative blog network that made its name partly with hawkish pro-Israel commentary and of late has kept up a steady stream of anti-mosque postings, including one rebutting attacks by CAIR against Spencer — who Pajamas CEO Roger Simon called “one of the ideological point men in the global war on terror.”
Politico lists some of the Zionist propaganda organizations and pro-occupation front organizations that Aubrey and Joyce Chernick have funded over the years:
- The Zionist Organization of America
- MEMRI, a group that distributes translations of inflammatory Arabic language material
- The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a group that tracks what it depicts as the threat of radical Islam, run by notorious Islamophobe Steven Emerson
- CAMERA, a group that tracks what it says is anti-Israel bias in the media and that is associated with Daniel Pipes
- The Central Fund for Israel, a clearinghouse for moneys directed to pro-settler groups
- A number of conservative think tanks that are aligned with the Likud.
The Chernicks are also major funders of Jewish groups including: The American Jewish Congress, The Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, and The Anti-Defamation League.
Lauren Rozen goes into more depth as far as the contributions and think tanks such as the Hudson Institute, Defense of Democracies, Central Fund of Israel, etc. (via. Richard Silverstein), including some well-known anti-Muslim and Islamophobic initiatives (in bold below).
Laura Rozen has discovered that Chernick’s charity-giving is done through the Fairbrook Foundation ($66-million in assets). According to its 2008 IRS 990 report, among the far-right pro-Israel groups he’s funding are:
- Ateret Cohanim ($30,000), involved in the Judaization of East Jerusalem through “appropriation” of Arab homes
- Muslim-basher Bridgette Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth ($50,000)
- Aish HaTorah, funders of the anti-Muslim films Obsessed and Third Jihad ($14,000)
- the anti-Palestinian media advocacy group MEMRI ($100,000)
- American Freedom Alliance, another Muslim-bashing group, founded by Avi Davis, which defends western civilization from the unwashed hordes ($120,000)
- Gary Bauer’s American Values ($80,000)
- Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture ($160,000)
- The anti-Arab media advocacy group CAMERA ($25,000)
- The Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an Arab-bashing group established by a Pakistani neocon ($160,000)
- Defend the West, yet another Muslim-turncoat group founded by Ibn Warraq ($130,000)
- Hudson Institute ($50,000); Heritage Foundation ($50,000)
- The Jewish neo-con security think tank JINSA ($15,000)
- The anti-Arab media advocacy group Second Draft ($40,000)
- Stand With Us ($20,000); and Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum ($180,000).
- In 2005, Chernick gave $60,000 to the Central Fund of Israel, one of the largest pro-settler ‘philanthropic’ advocacy groups.
This information is quite disturbing on a number of levels, foremost amongst them being the scant media attention being given to it as opposed to hyped-up stories such as the most recent attempt to sabotage the Park51 project with ten degrees of seperation/guilt-by-association smears against one of the investors in Park51, Hisham El-Zanaty.
The non-news story smears Zanaty by claiming that his one time donation to the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) of $6,050 in 1999 indicts him as a terror supporter. HLF was accused of giving aid to Hamas in the guise of charitable work.
So Zanaty was supposed to have foreknowledge about the HLF that even the US government didn’t have? Is it reasonable then to assume that everyone who gave money to the HLF in 1999 knew that the HLF was giving money to Hamas?
This AP news story sums it up quite nicely,
Many other donors to the foundation gave thinking their donations would fund humanitarian programs.
Other people and companies who donated money, equipment or services to the foundation the year Elzanaty gave included NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon, the Microsoft Corp., and a medical equipment company owned by General Electric, according to tax records.
When the foundation’s leaders were indicted, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, the case was not “a reflection on the well-meaning people who may have donated funds to the foundation.”
Even the Attorney General under George Bush, the one who was instrumental in the implementation of the Patriot Act affirmed what is obvious common sense, the case was not “a reflection on the well-meaning people who may have donated funds to the foundation.”
However, for some reason this non-story about Zanaty eclipses the very real story about the implications surrounding the funding of leading Jewish and Zionist organizations, JihadWatch, and Conservative groups many of which are the chief proponents behind the anti-Mosque drive.
How comfortable do the leaders of the ADL, AJC and others feel about receiving money from a couple who at the same time are the chief funders of an organization and a group of anti-Muslim bigots who are leading the charge in fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment across the United States?
Will they be coureagous enough to return the money they have received from the Chernicks and say that they do not want to be tainted by people such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer who as we have documented are thoroughly anti-Islam and anti-Muslim? Will the media drop its willful ignorance and double standards and begin to look into the glaring data out there?
ei: Why Americans should oppose Zionism?
Steven Salaita, The Electronic Intifada
Source
Israel has been subject to some bad publicity recently. In 2008-09, it launched a brutal military campaign in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 400 Palestinian children. In May 2010, bumbling Israeli commandos murdered nine nonviolence activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s Mavi Marmara. It only got worse for Israel when it was revealed that soldiers stole and sold personal items such as laptops from the ship. Last week, former Israeli soldier Eden Abergil posted photos onto Facebook showing her preening in front of blindfolded and despondent Palestinian prisoners, in some instances mocking those prisoners with sexual undertones. The photos were part of an album entitled “IDF [Israeli army] — the best time of my life.”
While Abergil’s pictures may not seem as abhorrent as the Gaza and Mavi Marmara brutality — Abergil, for her part, described her behavior as nonviolent and free of contempt — all three actions are intimately connected. First of all, we must dispel the notion that Abergil’s photos are nonviolent. As with the Abu Ghraib debacle, a sexualized and coercive humiliation is being visited on the bodies of powerless, colonized and incarcerated subjects, which by any reasonable principle is a basal form of violence. There is also the obvious physical violence of Palestinians being bound and blindfolded, presumably in or on their way to prisons nobody will confuse with the Ritz Carlton.
More important, these recent episodes merely extend an age-old list of Israeli crimes and indignities that illuminate a depravity in the Zionist enterprise itself. What is noteworthy about Israel’s three recent escapades is that more and more people are starting to pay attention to its crimes and indignities. In so doing, more and more people are questioning the origin and meaning of Zionism — that is, the very idea of a legally ethnocentric Israel.
I would like to address this piece to those who have undertaken such questioning or to those who are prepared to initiate it. I would urge you not to limit your critique of Israel only to its errors of judgment or its perceived excesses; it is more productive to challenge the ideology and practice of Zionism itself. There is no noble origin or beautiful ideal to which the wayward Jewish state must return; such yearnings are often duplicitous mythmaking or romanticized nostalgia. Zionists always intended to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, a strategy they carried out and continue to pursue with horrifying efficiency.
Likewise, Zionism was always a colonialist movement, one that relied on the notions of divine entitlement and civilizational superiority that justified previous settlement projects in South Africa, Algeria and North America. Zionism, by virtue of its exclusionary outlook and ethnocentric model of citizenship, is on its own a purveyor of fundamental violence. The bad PR to which Israel sometimes is subject today is a reflection of changed media dynamics, not a worsening of Israel’s behavior.
The 2008-09 Gaza invasion, the attack on the Mavi Marmara and Abergil’s Facebook photos aren’t anomalous or extraordinary. They are the invariable result of a Zionist ideology that cannot help but view Palestinian Muslims and Christians as subhuman, no matter how ardently its liberal champions assert that Zionism is a liberation movement. Zionism has the unfortunate effect of proclaiming that one group of people should have access to certain rights from which another group of people is excluded. There is nothing defensible in this proposition.
Here, then, are four reasons why Americans (and all other humans regardless of race or religion) should oppose Zionism:
1. Zionism is unethical and immoral: Because Zionists claim access to land and legal rights that directly obviate the same access to an indigenous community, it operates from within an idea of belonging that is cruel and archaic. Israel bases its primary criterion for citizenship on religious identity. Imagine having your religion on your driver’s license. And imagine having limited access to freeways, farmland, family, education, employment and foreign travel because the religion by which the state has chosen to identify you is legally marginalized. Such is the daily reality of the Palestinian people.
2. Zionism is racist: This claim isn’t the same as saying that all Zionists are racist. I would make a distinction between the categories of “Zionist” and “Zionism.” However, inherent in the practice of Zionism is a reliance on racialist judgments about who can fully participate in the benefits and practices of a national community. Many Zionists view themselves merely as supporting freedom and safety for Jewish people. I would suggest that people who identify themselves as Zionist look more closely at the ideology they support. Such freedom and safety, both of which are in fact mythologies, come at the direct expense of people confined to Bantustans and refugee camps.
3. Zionism contravenes the geopolitical interests of the United States: Many Americans have heard former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert boast that he once pulled George W. Bush off the dais while Bush was giving a speech, or more recently current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that “America is something that can be easily moved.” Israel costs the United States billions of dollars in direct aid and in bribe money to Jordan and Egypt for their docility. Israel also is the main reason for disgruntlement about American foreign policy in the Arab and Muslim Worlds. I raise this point with some hesitation because I believe all citizens of the United States should challenge and not celebrate American geopolitical interests. I would also point out that Zionism’s narrative of salvation and redemption resonates deeply among Americans because of the US’ origin and continued presence as a nation of settler colonists. In the end, America itself needs to be decolonized and the vast sums of money that support the imperial projects Israel so brazenly exemplifies need to be directed toward the well-being of those who pay the government its taxes.
4. Zionism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy: Israel, as a result, is undemocratic and will be as long as it uses religious identity as the operating criterion of citizenship. We hear much in the US about Islam being incompatible with democracy, a belief that is historically untrue and that elides the massive military and monetary support the US provides to the assortment of dictators and plutocrats that rule much of the Arab World. Neoconservative and mainstream commentators both evoke Israel in opposition to Islam as a symbol of democratic achievement. In reality Israel performs one of the most barbaric forms of oppression today in the West Bank and Gaza Strip while simultaneously discriminating against the Palestinian citizens of Israel who constitute approximately twenty percent of the citizenry.
The alternative media engendered by new technology have allowed more people to witness the unremitting violence that has been Israel’s stock in trade for decades. Many consumers of this information and these images believe that Israel is guilty of excess when a simpler explanation exists: Israel is acting out the requisites of an exclusionary and inherently violent ideology.
These days all it takes is a little braggadocio from an ex-soldier such as Eden Abergil to so perfectly symbolize the callousness of Zionist colonization. Ten years ago, the Israeli government’s lies about the killings aboard the Mavi Marmara would have been unchallenged by gruesome footage distributed through alternative news networks and social media. Nobody these days could have stopped the images of white phosphorous exploding and spreading over the Gaza Strip from being aired; Israelis themselves were foolish enough to capture Jewish children writing messages on soon-to-be-launched missiles.
Americans now have all the evidence they need for a reasonable and morally-sound conclusion, that Zionism produces a cruelty and truculence that they bankroll with their taxes and legitimize with either silence or consent. As a result, I am not arguing that Americans should reassess their level of support for Israel. I am arguing that Americans should oppose Zionism altogether. Perhaps in this way we might begin the long and difficult process of redeeming our own nation of its imperial sins.
Steven Salaita is author, most recently, of The Uncultured Wars: Arabs, Muslims, and the Poverty of Liberal Thought. A version of this essay was originally published by Foreign Policy Journal and is republished with the author’s permission.
The spiritual convergence of Rosh Hashanah, Eid al-Fitr and 9/11
Source
By Rabbi Marc Schneier and Imam Shamsi Ali
As American Muslims observe the last days of Ramadan and American Jews prepare to begin their observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, members of both faiths–and all Americans– are being confronted with a responsibility to speak out in defense of the values of religious liberty and mutual understanding upon which this country was founded.
The contentious issue of the proposed Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan has kicked up a political and social firestorm that has left many American Muslims feeling vulnerable and in fear of an upsurge of anti-Muslim bigotry. The recent stabbing of a Muslim New York City taxi driver by a deranged college student and the desecration of a Queens mosque by a drunken intruder are the evil fruits of a situation in which the vilification of an American religion–in this case Islam–has been allowed to become mainstream discourse.
As children of Abraham, there is no question that Jews and Muslims share a common bond, theology and history. Not only in our faith and teachings, but also through the perceptions of us by others. Earlier this year, a Gallup poll found that 43 percent of Americans admit to at least “a little” prejudice against Muslims, and that such self-reported feelings are strongly linked to the respondent’s views on Jews. Remarkably, those who say they feel “a great deal” of prejudice toward Jews are about 32 times more likely to report feeling a “great deal” of prejudice toward Muslims, according to the polling company. If hatred of Jews and Muslims is linked then so should be our responsibility to fight it.
Whatever one’s position on the highly emotional question of whether the Islamic community center should be built at its present site or be moved to a location further away, it is past time for all Americans of conscience to step forward and say, ‘Inciting to religious hatred is unacceptable.’ Specifically, with both Rosh Hashanah and the feast of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, falling this year on September 10–one day before the ninth anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks– American Jews and Muslims must stand shoulder to shoulder against all manifestations of religious hatred, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. If we can rise to the occasion at this fraught moment, our two communities can play a significant role in stopping the disturbing spread of bigotry and intolerance in this country.
Muslims and Jews should undertake this mission in the spirit of the very similar messages transmitted by our holidays and the deepest shared values of our two faith traditions. Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah are both based on timeless principles of the unity and brotherhood of all human beings. Rosh Hashanah commemorates the creation of humankind itself and reminds us that all people,, regardless of ethnic or religious background, are created in God’s image. As President Obama noted in a recent message to the American Muslim community, Ramadan is a time when Muslims “reflect on the responsibility human beings have to each other and to God.”
Both the Torah and Quran contain numerous passages enjoining Jews and Muslims respectively to love and protect the ‘stranger’ in their midst. In Leviticus 19:34, God commands the Jewish people, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The Quran praises, “Those who show their affection to such as came to them for refuge, and entertain no desire in their hearts for things given to the (latter), but give them preference over themselves” (Surah 59, (Exile) Verse 9). When the great Rabbi Hillel was asked to sum up the entire Torah in concise fashion, he responded, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” Similarly the Quran enjoins “That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind.”
Both of our faiths teach us that every person, whatever his or her station in life, has the power to make a positive difference in the world. The shofar (ram’s horn) which is sounded during the Rosh Hashana service, is meant as a goad to conscience; to awaken each of us to our moral obligation to raise our voices on behalf of justice. During Eid-al-Fitr, Muslims are urged to reach out to people with whom they have become estranged and to do good deeds on behalf of the poor and unfortunate.
Animated by these values, the two of us are writing a book together in which we address the ‘difficult passages’ in the Torah and Quran, which appear at first glance to preach hatred of outsiders; in order to show that when taken in full context, both Holy Books transmit messages of universal justice and the Oneness of all Humankind. In short, we are truly enjoined to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. While we may not agree on all issues, we must never allow ourselves to forget that those of other faith traditions are not aliens to be hated, demonized or, God forbid, violently attacked because of their faith, but rather fellow human beings with the same hopes and aspirations for themselves and their families as we have for ourselves and our own loved ones.
If Jews and Muslims, mistakenly perceived by many to be irreconcilable enemies, can reach out to and embrace each other, it will send a powerful message to all Americans that, for the sake of the values we hold dear in this country, we must resist the temptation to fear and hate those we may perceive as ‘the Stranger,’ but instead make a place at the table for all members of the American family.
Imam Muhammad Shamsi Ali is the spiritual leader of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Rabbi Marc Schneier is president of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.
Haneen Zoabi: The largest threat to Zionism is democracy
Haneen Zoabi speaking in Tel Aviv, July 2010. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
Haneen Zoabi: The largest threat to Zionism is democracy
Max Blumenthal, The Electronic Intifada,
On 13 July, the Israeli Knesset voted by a large margin to strip the parliamentary privileges of Haneen Zoabi, a member of the Palestinian Israeli party Balad. The measure was a punishment for Zoabi’s participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As described in the Israeli daily Haaretz, during the raging debate, Member of Knesset (MK) Anasatassia Michaeli rushed toward Zoabi and handed her a mock Iranian passport with Zoabi’s photo on it. “Ms. Zoabi, I take your loyalty to Iran seriously and I suggest you contact Ahmadinejad and ask him to give you an Iranian diplomatic passport that will assist you with all your diplomatic incitement tours, because your Israeli passport will be revoked this evening,” said Michaeli, who is a member of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s explicitly anti-Arab Yisrael Beiteinu party (“Knesset revokes Arab MK Zuabi’s privileges over Gaza flotilla,” 13 July 2010).
The debate over revoking Zoabi’s parliamentary privileges was nearly as rancorous as her appearance at the Knesset speaker’s podium in the immediate wake of the Flotilla massacre. While Zoabi attempted to relate her experience on the Mavi Marmara, where she coaxed Israeli commandoes to stop shooting and beating passengers, Knesset members from a broad array of parties leapt from their chairs to shout her down. “Go to Gaza, traitor!” shouted MK Miri Regev of Likud. “One week in Gaza as a 38-year-old single woman and we’ll see how they treat you!” barked Yohanan Plesner of the supposedly centrist Kadima party. Finally, Moshe Mutz Matalon of Yisrael Beiteinu lamented that the Israeli commandoes “left only nine floating voters” (“MK Regev tells Zoabi: Go to Gaza, traitor!,” YNet, 2 June 2010).
I met Zoabi at her office in the bustling center of Lower Nazareth on 12 June. While preparing a spread of biscuits and chocolates for me, she told me that a reporter from Nablus who met her earlier in the day had been detained at a checkpoint and had her laptop seized. Zoabi was convinced that the Shin Bet (Israel’s General Security Service) was monitoring her communications and movements as it does with many Balad Party leaders. Despite the tense climate and violent threats against her, she spoke without restraint about her experience on the Mavi Marmara, the predicament of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and what she considered the fascist direction of Israeli society.
Max Blumenthal: Were you surprised to be greeted with such hostility when you returned to the Knesset after the flotilla incident?
Hanin Zoabi: I was not so surprised. I expected to be called traitor, to be asked, “Where are your knives?” Or to be told, “You are the one who killed them!” But they shouted at me without any political argument and such shallowness. I thought, this couldn’t be a parliament, these are just gangsters. If I gave them guns, they would shoot me. I said the soldiers on the flotilla treated me more respectfully than them. At least after the soldiers killed nine people they tried to ask me for help.
MB: What does the attack on you in Knesset say about Israeli democracy?
HZ: Israel has a general atmosphere of a fascist state that has no critical sense even of its image in the world. It used to be sensitive to its image of democracy. [Knesset Speaker Reuven] Rivlin wants a liberal state and wants others to believe Israel is a democracy. But listen to what they are saying in the Knesset: that we should only pay attention to what we want to; it’s not important to pay attention to the goyim. We must believe we are the victim as if victimhood is an ideology.
MB: Are you concerned about threats to your physical safety?
HZ: This is a dangerous time and it is dangerous for Jamal [Zehalka] and others in Balad. I am worried but what worries me more is not the personal threats but the long term political effect of this campaign because it represents a delegitimization of our party and our political platform.
MB: What about the planned measure in the Knesset to strip you of parliamentary privileges?
HZ: The three parliamentary sanctions are nothing — I mean nothing — because I can still use my civic passport.
MB: When you were attacked in the Knesset, I was reminded of an incident in 1949, when the first Arab member of Knesset, Tawfiq Toubi, took to the floor to denounce Israeli army brutality against Palestinian villagers living under military rule. Jewish members of the Knesset went crazy just as they did against you, but Toubi was defended by one of Israel’s most prominent cultural figures, the socialist poet Nathan Alterman. Did any prominent Israelis speak up in your defense, and if not, why not?
HZ: Hardly anyone spoke up for me. Jamal [Zehalka] said the Knesset is the worst we’ve ever had. The guards and the workers who’ve been around the Knesset for 30 years said it’s never been this racist before. I think when you have a government led by the likes of [Foreign Minister] Avigdor Lieberman it means that the extremists are not the margins of the Knesset, they are the mainstream. Those who shouted at me were from Kadima, not from the extreme right. Even [the traditionally left-wing party] Meretz is becoming very center. And because of this it has lost power.
[Knesset Speaker] Rivlin was more afraid of hurting the image of the Knesset than of my rights being violated. There are no limits and the famous slogan of Lieberman is now the slogan of everyone: “Citizenship depends on loyalty.” He of course means loyalty in a fascist sense. Even when [Interior Minister] Eli Yishai asked to revoke my citizenship there was only one article in the Israeli media saying that this was crazy. What kind of state is this? I read just one article about this!
[Yedioth Aharanot columnist] Amnon Levy was the only one who defended me. He said what’s happening is so absurd, you should thank Haneen that she is serving in this Zionist Knesset. You should thank the Palestinians for participating in our game.
MB: Is the anti-Arab atmosphere inside Israel a new phenomenon or the acceleration of a process than began some time ago?
HZ: This is not a new process, and it didn’t begin after the flotilla. It really began after the second intifada, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Israelis went to demonstrations not to rally about internal issues but to support the intifada. This was a clear message for Israelis that the state had failed to create the model of the new “Israeli Arab.” This is what the state was trying to do, trying to create us an Israeli Arab, someone who was not 100 percent Israeli because we were not Jews but of course not 100 percent Arab either. We were told we could preserve our language and our culture but not our historical memory, our culture, or our identity except on an emotional, romantic level. Essentially we couldn’t be Palestinian.
The second intifada was the turning point. It told Israel that it might control the schools, our history and the media but they couldn’t stop us from asserting our identity. This led directly to the declaration of Yuval Diskin, the Shin Bet director, who said in 2007, we will fight against any political activity that doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state even if the activities are conducted openly and democratically. He clearly was referring to Balad when he said this. By the way, no Israeli paper was shocked by his statement.
MB: The founder of the Balad Party, Azmi Bishara, was forced into exile after being accused of spying for Hizballah. Ameer Makhoul, the Palestinian civil society leader in Israel, has been placed under administrative detention and is facing similar accusations. Omer Said and many other activists are under investigation by the Shin Bet. What is the government trying to accomplish by its crackdown?
HZ: They are trying to establish borders on our political identity and say that we cannot have relations with the broader Arab world. They want to redefine the margins of democracy to exclude any political program that calls for full equality. We are calling for equality without Zionism. This is what the Balad Party says. The fact is, to demand full civic and national equality is actually to demand the end of Zionism. So we don’t hate Zionism. Zionism hates democracy.
If the state continues in the direction it is going it will actually change the rules of the game. Balad says there are clear margins of democracy. We believe in democratic values and the system and we will utilize these margins of democracy in order to suggest our vision of full equality. If Israel wants to delete these margins so my vision can no longer be legitimate in the Israeli scene I think a totally different game will develop between us and the state. In this way, the state is pushing us to a crisis. If they disqualify Balad then no Arab party would enter the Knesset and this would provoke a huge crisis. Arabs without a parliamentary role would result in a different kind of relationship between us and the state. This would be the end of democracy. But we know this is what a Jewish state will lead to — the end of democracy is an inevitable outcome.
MB: How did your prominence after the flotilla impact the situation of Palestinians in Israel?
HZ: It is possible that the flotilla was the beginning of a new historical moment. Israel enjoys keeping us [Palestinians in Israel] out of the agenda of the world. They oppressed us behind the scenes just as they conducted the Nakba behind the scenes. They continued to limit our identity and the world didn’t treat us as part of the Palestinian issue because it believed that Israel was a democracy and we were only part of it. The world only looked at the siege of Gaza. So what the Knesset did by attacking me was they showed the world who they really are. And if the world starts to pay attention, especially the part of the world that doesn’t traditionally support the Palestinians and believes Israel should be a real democracy, I hope they see from the flotilla and its implications that Israel has a deep structural problem, not a problem of policies. The problem is not an extremist government. The problem is that the largest threat to Zionism is democracy. This is the issue.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author working in Israel-Palestine. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al-Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
Muslims need to tackle Jewish Islamophobia
Directed from GMBDR?
Please read this: Anti-Semitism!! Seriously??
By Khalid Amayreh
From Sydney to California , Zionist Jews are spreading venomous hatred against Islam. A few years ago, we were witnessing mere instances and isolated occurrences of Jewish hatred and/or fear of Islam and Muslims. Now, it is very much morbid mass hysteria sustained by rampant and unrelenting incitement and distortion of facts.
In New York , for example, fanatical Zionist Jews don’t stop invoking the 9/11 events to generate hatred against Muslims as if Islam and its estimated 1.6 billion followers condoned the diabolical terrorist acts.
In recent weeks, the sick supremacists have been at the forefront of a maliciously racist campaign aimed at inciting local politicians and officials to outlaw the planned construction of a Muslim house of worship in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural melting-pot city of eight million people.
The Jewish supremacists’ message is as hateful as it is brazen: Islam is terror and Muslims are terrorists. This is the same message the Third Reich disseminated against European Jewry prior and during the Second World War.
Of all people, Jews ought to realize that vilifying and dehumanizing an entire religious or ethnic community of people can lead to genocide, since incitement generates hatred and hatred can easily lead to murder. Words do kill.
This virulent Jewish Islamophobia is by no means confined to the American arena, where the Jewish-controlled media and show biz have been inciting against Islam for ages.
In Europe, Zionist Jews have been encouraging European neo-fascism as long as the ultimate target is Muslims, not Jews. The messages go like this: Islam is about to take over Europe, wake up before it is too late!!
In many instances, Zionist agents fabricated anti-Semitic incidents, like scrawling anti-Jewish epithets or even setting Jewish property on fire, and blamed it on Muslims
More to the point, Zionist Jews are using the media, which gives them ample space to spread their hateful messages, to spew their poison everywhere. The ultimate message they are trying to communicate is “kill the Muslims, kill the terrorists.”!
Moreover, in many instances certain Jewish circles have courted Muslim renegades, given them money, in order to use them as mouthpieces to malign Islam. This is very much similar to Jewish apostates who converted to Christianity in medieval Europe and were used by the Church to malign Judaism and its practices, ultimately leading to pogroms against Jewish communities.
Jewish Islamophobia is much more than a mere protest phenomenon against Muslim opposition to Nazi-like Israeli policies in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and South Lebanon . It is actually a deliberate, organized effort aimed at besmirching Islam and hurting the feelings of Muslims by vilifying Islam’s symbols such as the Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him). Just think of any Islamophobic group anywhere in the world today, and you will find that some Zionist Jews stand behind it in terms of financial backing or political support.
But organized Zionist-Jewish hatred of Islam is not going to benefit Israel, or Jews in the long run. Alienating hundreds of millions of Muslims, by calling them terrorists, will sooner or later boomerang on Israel and generate hostile reactions from the Muslim community.
The boomerang effect is actually already occurring. Just think of Turkey, the secular Muslim country and Israel’s erstwhile most important regional ally. The anti-Islam policy on the part of Israel, which manifested itself in the Gestapo-like approach toward helpless Muslims in Gaza and southern Lebanon, has already infuriated millions of Turks. Now, Israel is the most hated country in Asia minor.
Apart from the bleeding Palestinian wound, there are really no intrinsic contentious issues between Muslims and Jews.
Indeed, contrary to common misunderstandings, Islam is not against Jews as Jews. Islam never lumped Jews in one category and has always sought to make a careful distinction between good Jews and bad Jews, e.g. God-fearing Jews who truly follow the teachings of the Torah, on the one hand, and, on the other, those duplicitous, dishonest and disobedient Jews who views the rest of mankind as cattle.
In the final analysis, we all know that Jews lived their golden age under the rule of Islam whether in Egypt, or Iraq or southern Spain. This situation, more or less, continued until the advent of the cancer of Zionism in the 20th century. The creation of the evil state of Israel in Palestine in 1948 helped spread this cancer in the Middle East and beyond as most Jews were effectively transformed by Zionism into worshipers of the modern golden calf known as Israel. This satanic calf has effectively morphed Jews, or most Jews, into mass murderers, certified war criminals, child killers, land thieves and pathological professional liars.
Today, Israel and its hasbara agents and barking dogs around the world leave no opportunity without vilifying Muslims. In some countries, like in the Netherland, Zionist-induced anti-Islam neo-Nazism is reaching unbearable proportions. Nazi-minded populist leaders are cordially welcomed in occupied Jerusalem by Israeli political and religious leaders.
In short, a real alliance is being forged between Zionism and European neo-Nazism. It is a marriage of convenience between the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Jews who perished during the holocaust on one side, and on the other side, the ideological children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the exterminators of Jewish victims.
In the final analysis, it makes no difference whether the ultimate target of fascism is Muslims or Jews or others.
Of course, Jews can’t all be blamed for the evils of Zionism. But it is also true that the task of neutralizing and ultimately defeating Jewish fascism can’t be left to a small minority of conscientious Jews who oppose Zionism on moral and religious grounds. Such a task is simply beyond these good people’s ability.
And while this minority ought to be complimented, even saluted, for their moral courage to openly denounce the moral apostasy of Zionism, it is obvious that the direct would-be victims must do much more than just be on the receiving end of Zionist hatred and venom.
We must therefore counterattack, using the smartest weapons available. We should flood the internet with billions of messages that would communicate to the world the truth and the facts about Israeli Nazism. We must expose Israel for what it is, a Nazi-like state that is based on murder, ethnic cleansing and lies.
Today, Israel’s image around the world is suffering the most since the mid 1970s when most nations viewed the deformed entity as akin to other racist entities such as the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa.
We, Muslims, along with honest and conscientious people from every creed and race under the sun, including Jews who are opposed to oppression, must make every possible effort and go to any extent necessary to expose Israeli Nazism to all peoples. Zionism can’t be defeated by prayers alone.
Israeli Nazism has a fixation, namely controlling the world by controlling governments and regimes, as is already the case in the United States, Canada and several other western countries.
Needless to say, the main obstacle hindering the consummation of Zionist global hegemony is the Muslims the world, or more correctly the vital Muslim forces that are mindful of the task of shielding the dignity of Muslim peoples from the ghoul of Zio-Nazism.
The battle against evil Zionism is going to be anything but easy. It will take years or even decades of bitter struggle, and there will be ups and downs. But Zionism is not omnipotent and will be destroyed eventually.
Evil powers can’t sustain themselves for ever. ?