Canary In The Coal Mine

Peace Trains’ Jews Against Israel

by Giulio Meotti | www.FrontPageMag.com | June 25, 2012

Karl Marx died long before the State of Israel was created. But what made the founder of Communism an anti-Zionist before Zionism was his opposition to the very idea of a Jewish identity. The explanation can be found in his writings. In the second of his two early essays, together known by the title “On the Jewish Question,” Marx made many antisemitic assertions, such as: “Money is the jealous god of Israel, beside which no other god may exist.” “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”

If one believes that mankind has to be emancipated (read it: liberated) from Judaism, one then insists that Jews be powerless and assimilated. That’s why the new Jewish Marxists have turned anti-Zionism into one of their very highest priorities.

From the 1970s, Israel’s universities and Western intellectual circles had become home to a new generation of Jewish intellectuals who demonize and boycott Israel, and ultimately undermine the survival of the Jewish people after the Holocaust.

More than 90% of the allegations of “Israeli war crimes” cited in the shameful Goldstone Report were provided by 16 NGOs who received close to $8 million from the New Israel Fund, an organization headed by former Meretz MK and neo-Marxist Professor Naomi Chazan.

The list of “deranged Jew-haters which, if listened to, will do nothing other than pave the way to the next calamity” (as the brave Caroline Glick once called them), is long and very rich. Steve Plaut has drawn up a thorough list of them for the Middle East Quarterly and in his Freedom Center pamphlet, Jewish Enablers of the War Against Israel.

Tel Aviv University students and professors recently commemorated the “Nakba,” the “catastrophe,” as the Arabs call the date of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Ayal Nir, a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, in his Facebook page, called to “break the necks of right-wing activists.” Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand achieved celebrity status in Europe by publishing a book denying the existence of the Jewish people, while Professor Oren Yiftachel called Israel “a white… pure settlement colonial society.” Larry Derfner, a former senior staff writer for The Jerusalem Post, publicly stated that the killing of Israeli citizens was a justifiable weapon for Palestinians in order to overcome the “occupation.”

At the Ben-Gurion University, Neve Gordon accused the IDF of being “war criminals” and promoted the boycott of Israel in a Los Angeles Times editorial.
Two days after two Jewish boys were murdered near their homes in Tekoa, Professor Ze’ev Sternhell published an article entitled “Against the lunatic government,” in which he wrote: “If the Palestinians had more sense they would direct their struggle against the settlements. They would also avoid placing explosive charges on the western side of the green line.” In other words, Sternhell, one of the most famous symbols of the defeatism of the lunatic Israeli Left, permits bombs to be exploded against Jews on the eastern side.

The new Hebrew publication “Tachlit Re’uya” by Ruti Eisikowitch sheds light on this “de-humanization of the settlers” committed by Israeli figures. Moshe Zimmerman of Hebrew University said he regards Jewish children in Hebron as Hitlerjugend. After Arabs sadistically bashed the skulls of two “settler kids” in the Judean desert, Israeli psychiatrist Ruchama Marton declared that “the settlers raise little monsters.” Anat Matar of Tel Aviv University openly supported boycotts of her own university, while University of Haifa professor Ilan Pappe accused the Jewish State of “ethnic cleansing.” Ran Hacohen from Tel Aviv University described “Israel as fulfilling Hitler’s dream” and referred to the assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin as “a milestone in the process of the barbarization of mankind.” Lev Grinberg of Ben-Gurion University accused the Israeli government, in a Belgian media, of “state terrorism.”

In recent years, the most unremitting criticism of Israel in the Anglosphere has come from Jewish intellectuals. Every day, celebrated Jewish personalities – writers, artists, academics – are depicting Israel as a “racist,” “vicious” and “inhumane” entity that has to be dismantled. Many of them have assumed pivotal roles in the campaign to divest from the Jewish State. Their relentless attacks could well play out in ways that indeed puts an end to Israeli life.

George Steiner, who has been proclaimed “the most important literary critic in the world,” questioned whether Israel should have come into being at all. Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most famous living historians, supported the Second Intifada, endorsing the “the cause of liberation.” Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, wrote letters to “Palestinian partisans” during the Intifada. The late historian Tony Judt had been outspoken in his rejection of Israel’s right to exist and offered Israelis the fate of other religious minorities in the Middle East. United Nations envoy Richard Falk is one of the most radical demonizers of the Jewish State. Historian Norman Finkelstein (Pictured below) is one of the staunchest Western supporters of Hezbollah. Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and film directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have been the most famous anti-Israeli figures in the UK. The initiative for an anti-Israel boycott in London was taken by Stephen and Hilary Rose, two renowned Jewish academics. The linguist Noam Chomsky, “the intellectual godfather” of the US anti-Israel campaign, openly proclaims the abolition of the Jewish State. Jewish philosopher Judith Butler is leading the divestment from Israel. Michael Lerner’s magazine, Tikkun, is the most virulently anti-Israel screed ever published under Jewish auspices.

Along with Jewish speculators like George Soros, the worldwide patron of liberal activism believes that American foreign policy is guided by a “Zionist lobby” and its money goes to anti-Israel organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. You also find most of the influential Jewish intellectuals in the US who abandoned and attacked a modern Jewish hero like Jonathan Pollard, by calling him “a fanatic” (Robert Friedman of The Washington Post), “an aberration” (Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg), and “a viper” (Marty Peretz of the New Republic).

Like Karl Marx, these Jewish personalities gained fame by trashing their own people. They are the self-professed “better Jews” who set themselves apart from the Israeli masses and pusture as the possessors of greater cosmopolitan, liberal, humanistic and really Jewish wisdom. The more they attack other Jews, the more they prove that they are not defined by being Jewish. They are more dangerous than the proud anti-Semites. “Good Jews” who are trying to deliver Israel to what Hillel Weiss, evoking the wagons that carried Jews to Nazi concentration camps, superbly called “the peace trains.”

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/25/peace-trains-jews-against-israel/

Alice Walker and Israel

by Yvette Alt Miller | www. Aish.com | June 24, 2012

The Nobel Prize winner’s fanatical worldview has morphed into Jew-hatred.

I'll never forget the first time I watched the film version of Alice Walker's masterful 1982 novel The Color Purple. Both book and movie brilliantly depict the savagery and violence against blacks in the American South and in South Africa in the 1930s.

The story is about Celie, beaten and impregnated by her step-father; Celie's friend Sophia, unjustly jailed and horribly abused in prison; and Celie's sister Nettie, a missionary in South Africa, ministering to brutalized people denied civil and political rights. It's a depressing novel, but also an important one, stirring readers to fight injustice. For this, Alice Walker was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

You'd think after writing about these abuses, author Alice Walker would enjoy visiting a country like Israel: a robust democracy in which conflicting views are forced to coexist. After all, Israel has an open and vibrant press. In Israel, the vote is extended to all, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Members of Israel's Arab minority serve at all levels of government, from Parliament to Supreme Court justices. The U.S. State Department describes Israel as a liberal democracy where minority rights are respected, and disputes are settled fairly without prejudice in the nation's courts.

But instead of finding in Israel a common liberal sensibility, Walker recently announced that she won't let The Color Purple be translated furthermore into Hebrew. (A previous Hebrew version came out in 1984.)

Why? Because, according to Walker, life in Israel today is "worse” than the segregation she suffered as a youth in the Jim Crow South, and also "worse" than South African Apartheid.

Perhaps Walker's criticisms say more about her than they do about Israel.

Walker's parents were impoverished sharecroppers. Calling Israel "worse" than the Jim Crow South in which they lived cheapens their history and the histories of millions of African Americans who for years couldn't vote (a right extended to all in Israel) and who couldn't even to sit on busses and in restaurants with white people.

No such barriers exist in Israel, where people of all religions and ethnicities mingle in public and private places.

And to call Israel - with its universal suffrage, internationally-recognized judicial system, and rainbow society of immigrants (including thousands of political refugees from African and Arab countries) - "worse" than a regime like apartheid South Africa is just plain wrong. Again, it cheapens the history of those who suffered and died under apartheid.

At the Core

What lies behind this irrational hatred for the Jews?

Alice Walker's daughter, Rebecca Walker, offers some insight with a searing description of her unusual childhood.

For starters, Rebecca was fathered by Mel Leventhal, a Jewish lawyer and the son of Holocaust survivors. A mixture of guilt and disdain may have played some role here.

Yet more – ideology was always more important to Alice than people, and she espoused the radical view that childhood enslaved women. Walker ignored and neglected Rebecca for years. Resentful of the chain of motherhood, she essentially left Rebecca to fend for herself from age 13.

Ultimately, Alice took the radical step of severing their relationship: “saying that our relationship had been inconsequential for years and that she was no longer interested in being my mother.” (London Daily Mail: “How My Mother's Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart”)

With Walker's latest salvo against Israel, her family's personal tragedy has lately become a tragedy for the entire Jewish community, as well. Alice Walker has turned her naïve, one-dimensional view of the world away from the crucible of her family and onto the world stage, bringing the same warped view to bear.

The Oldest Hatred

Anti-Semitism has been called the world’s oldest hatred. Through the years, it has provided people with an easy scapegoat for the world's suffering: if only there weren't Jews, everything would be great.

In modern times, this hatred is often redirected to Israel, painting the country and its citizens as uniquely evil and sinister on the world stage.

Sadly, Walker isn't the only famous person to tarnish her reputation and legacy by spurious attacks on the Jewish state.

In recent years, Nobel Prize-winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu has become known less for his struggle against South African Apartheid, and more and more for his obsession with Israel and Jews: saying it's time to forgive Hitler; talking about sinister Jewish lobbies; and repeating other bizarre anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tropes.

Plenty others allow their legacy to rot into anti-Israel rhetoric. Mairead Corrigan Maguire won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for her work to end violence between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, but lately she's been squandering her moral capital bashing Israel obsessively, comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and embracing radical anti-Israel campaigns. José Saramago, the Portuguese writer who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, was better known in the last years for lurid statements comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Tom Paulin was once known as one of Britain's greatest living poets: an Oxford professor and frequent fixture on British television and radio programs. Until lately, that is, when he's compromised his considerable legacy by questioning Israel’s very right to exist and calling on some Israelis to be "shot dead."

In all these cases hostility toward Israel begins to spill over into hostility toward Jews. Alice Walker's opposition to people reading her books in Hebrew is a move against the language of the entire Jewish people. To target the language in this way is to move vilification out of the political realm and make it personal.

What can we do in the face of such anti-Israel mania, especially on the part of well-respected cultural figures?

On one hand, we can and must educate ourselves to counter factual inaccuracies. There is no shortage of pro-Israel websites; the Jewish Virtual Library contains a treasure trove of information.

On a deeper level, perhaps the most effective way to counter anti-Israeli hatred is to recognize it for what it often is, a poisonous world view that hurts its host as much as its object. It appeals to those looking for a simplistic answer to complex questions; to those to whom the world is either black or white, good or evil; to people who lack the will to explore more complex understandings.

Sadly, Alice Walker's extreme views on Israel indicate a pervasive problem with fanaticism that, according to her daughter, has distorted her entire life. The danger for the rest of us is that her statements create an atmosphere in which ever more virulent rhetoric about Israel becomes the norm.

Source: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Alice_Walker__Israel.html

Erick Stakelbeck Video: Boldness in the Face of Evil

by Erick Stakelbeck, CBN News Terrorism Analyst  |  Blogs.CBN.com  |  May 31, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was honored to guest host the Glenn Beck Program on GBTV yesterday. In my opening monologue, I discussed the unholy alliance between radical Islamists and the radical left, which I experienced personally at Portland State University recently.

I also talked about the united front against America and Israel and why we must stand together. All with some Scripture blended in.

Hope you enjoy it. Click on the viewer below to watch:

 

 

 

Source: http://blogs.cbn.com/stakelbeckonterror/Default.aspx

No Country for Old Incumbents by Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield  |  SultanKnish.Blogspot.com  |  June 2, 2012

 

A storm is not a good time to be at the wheel of a ship and a worldwide economic disaster is not a good time to be at the wheel of the ship of state. Hard times are supposed to bring great men to the fore, but instead we have some of the sorriest men in history trying to find the wheel, sleeping off a bender in their cabins or debating whether a wheel even exists.

Obama is bad, but he's not exactly up against rival statesmen. After parading around with a one-man cult of personality, launching international projects with no purpose, and displaying all the symptoms of a Napoleon complex, without a world famous conqueror in sight, Sarkozy's only reelection platform was that the alternative to him would be worse. He was right. But you can hardly blame quite a few Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who stayed home, rather than hold their noses and vote for him.

In the UK, Cameron cut the military and launched a war. Labour's career idiot, Ed Milband, now has a higher approval rating than the Prime Minister. Cameron has the same reelection platform as Sarkozy and he's also right, but that won't help him when the public gets the chance to cast their vote. And the vote will be the international refrain, translated many ways in many languages, but that always means, "Throw out the bums."

Russia has become a virtual armed camp for the sole purpose of keeping Putin in power. The man who successfully set up his own Stalinesque cult of personality, now has to use extraordinary measures to protect himself from his own people, who don't care so much that he stole the election, but who are sick and tired of the spectacle of Vladimir and his ten-thousand good friends from the Committee for State Security, better known by three ominous letters, gorging themselves on the best things in life while everyone else suffers.

China's rulers should be paying careful attention to Moscow. If the express train of Western exports ever falters, what they will face will make Tiananmen Square look like a fond memory. The Princes of the PRC won't be up against a bunch of idealistic students, but the farmers whose land they stole, the workers whose children they killed and that rising middle-class which tasted prosperity only to have it snatched away. If that day comes, they won't be stopped by tanks, and the army may just take their side.

The American media has become virtually indistinguishable from the Russian and Chinese media, in its hysterical support for the regime and vindictive smears of opponents. The only difference between Newsweek, Pravda and Xinhua is their level of sophistication. Pravda and Xinhua have never been anything more than vulgar organs of the regime, but the American media is descending into savagery while leaving behind a legacy of civilization. Like a citizen turned cannibal, it still has some of the cultural trappings of its past, but it's discarding them as quickly as Newsweek can photoshop new covers. Like the Russian media, the favorite topic of its American counterparts is the inscrutable divinity of its leader, who has not so much failed, as succeeded on a higher level that mere mortals, concerned with paying their bills and having a job, are not privy to. If he has failed, it's only because of the obstructionism of the running dog Republican capitalists who would rather see the country burn than concede his unearthly genius.

The problem with propagandists is that they get so taken in by their own illusion of power, that they stop noticing when no one is paying attention to them. Barely a quarter of the country digested and accepted the swill that the media had poured out over it in 07 and 08. What the public noticed was that there seemed to be a consensus that the One was the one. They didn't notice it by reading every screed that the American heirs to Goebbels were scribbling up at Time and the New York Times. Like a television that is on in the room, while you're vacuuming or doing laundry, they noticed it mainly as background noise in their lives.

Mostly, like the Russian and Chinese workers, they had no reason to pay attention. Politics was for politicians and all politicians are alike. As long as things worked, they were willing to let it go on. When things weren't looking up, they switched and voted for the other guy. It's only when things got really bad that they were forced to pay attention. It's only then that the game changed.

The Obama reelection campaign is running on the same theme as Sarkozy's reelection campaign, the same theme as every incumbent's reelection campaign-- the alternative is worse. Except Obama is wrong. The alternative isn't worse.

For the alternative to be worse, it would have to be Putin or Ahmadinejad; not Romney. But there's no other available theme. Not for an incumbent who has nothing positive to show for his time in office, except giving the go-ahead to kill a wanted terrorist, while blowing the war in Afghanistan. Obama's original platform of change won't work anymore. Not "Change We Can Believe In", not "Safe, Sustainable Change" and not, "Can You Spare Some Change for My Campaign."

Obama would have gone negative anyway, but he has no choice now. It's either go negative or go home. The only way to be reelected, aside from the usual standbys of voter fraud and nuking Florida, is to convince the public that the alternative really is worse. And that's hard because Romney is so bland that he's darn hard to demonize.

Give the media a Gingrich or Santorum, and it would quickly trot out a grotesque caricature, but all they can do with Romney is keep calling him a stiff rich guy, which is true, but doesn't go very far. After plumbing the depths of anti-Mormon bigotry and perhaps running a few stories on how the Mormon Church is plotting to bring back polygamy and some feature stories on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, it's back to the stiff rich guy shtick.

Obama won on emotion the last time around. He has to win this one on emotion too, and if he can't, then he loses. But the emotions in play aren't his anymore. The media imagines that it controls public discourse in its echo chamber, but all it can do is shape it. After a prolonged bout of bad economics, the emotions are a lot harder to massage with the usual pro-Obama con-Republican pieces because the people who count just don't care. They're worried about whether they will still have jobs, not about Trump or the spelling of "America" in a campaign app.

The media runs stories on an issue that it creates, then blames Romney for creating the issue. "Trump upstages Romney" is the media narrative, followed by three pages blaming Romney for allowing Trump to upstage him, when the upstaging is only happening because the media is hunting for hit pieces, like wolves waiting outside a 7-Eleven to feed. It's the old "Stop hitting yourself" trick being played by men and women who are still trying to pretend that they're something more than White House or Media Matters staffers, just because they have a card that says "Press" on it.

But that doesn't matter either, because it's a bad season for incumbents. You can be a liberal dosing out heavy spending and debt, or mildly conservative pushing austerity and serious cutbacks, that slash services without reforming the system, and voters will still hate you when they can't get a job. The only defense is having an opposition that is so toxic that no one wants them in power.

While liberals think that way of Republicans, most of them admit that Romney wouldn't be too bad. Liberals need to believe that the man they're agitating against is the Republican Devil, who's going to ban abortion, gays and modern art, while burning a cross outside the NAACP and preaching the apocalypse. Like the sheep-like audiences sitting in Oceanian theaters, waiting for Emmanuel Goldstein's face to flash on the screen, so they can begin their Two-Minute Hate; they just need someone to hate.

McCain nearly denied them that in '08, until the arrival of Sarah Palin gave them a unifying figure whom they could believe was plotting with megachurches to blow up America in order to bring on the end of days. If Romney doesn't give them a Palin, then we can look forward to months of editorial cartoons featuring a capering Romney with slicked-down hair tossing money into the air. Along with every conceivable distraction that the government and the media can summon up.

But the real question is will any of these distractions, distract people from their wallets? In times like these elections aren't won by rhetoric, they're won by worry. Obama has made Americans worry, and now they're returning the favor. The economy has not been kind to incumbents and there is no reason to believe that it will be any kinder to Obama, than it was to the European and Arab leaders it has already displaced. While Obama is still humming about an "Arab Spring", the winds of an "American Spring" may be blowing his way.

 

Source: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/06/no-country-for-old-incumbents.html

 

 

Senate Distinguishes Between Palestinian Refugees and Descendants

From: JTA.org | May 24, 2012

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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved language that would distinguish between Palestinian refugees alive in 1948 and their descendants.

The amendment to the foreign appropriations bill, initiated by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and passed Thursday, requires the State Department to report within a year on approximately how many people are receiving assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency "whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who were displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and who are descendants" of those people.

The State Department had expressed concerns about the language in the amendment, but Kirk prevailed.

"This will have major implications for future negotiations over final status issues with regard to refugees," said a senior Senate aide involved in shaping the amendment.

Should the Obama or any subsequent administration heed the new requirement, it would deliver a diplomatic blow to Palestinian efforts to leverage their refugee status in peace talks with Israel by aligning U.S. policy with Israel on the matter.

Palestinian negotiators have spoken of a "right of return" of refugees to Israel, and have suggested they would concede this in exchange for a final status package.

UNRWA, the main body assisting Palestinians, unlike other U.N. agencies assigns refugee status to descendants of Palestinians who fled the area during the 1948-1949 war, although in its definition it is careful to distinguish between the two populations. As a result, 5 million Palestinians are currently eligible for UNRWA services.

An estimated 30,000 Palestinians would fit the stricter definition of refugee.

The United States is a major UNRWA funder.

Source: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/05/24/3096476/senate-distinguishes-between-palestinian-refugees-and-descendants

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Israeli Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Bethlehem's Existence in Jerusalem Dig

by Nir Hasson | Haaretz.com | May 23, 2012

A piece of clay was found during archaeological excavations at the City of David, in Jerusalem, bearing the name of the city of Bethlehem in ancient Hebrew script. The piece of clay dates back to the First Temple period (1006 – 586 BCE), making it the first tangible evidence of existence of the city of Bethlehem in ancient times.

The artifact, called a “bulla,” is a piece of clay typically used as an official seal on a document or object. Impressed with the seal of the sender of the document, an intact “bulla” upon deliver was proof that a document had not been opened by anyone unauthorized to do so.

The “bulla” measuring around 1.5 cm was found during the sifting of soil removed from archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out in the City of David.

The sifting is underwritten by the ‘Ir David Foundation’ in a project being conducted in the Emek Tzurim National Park.

Three lines of ancient Hebrew script appear on the artifact, including the words “Bat Lechem,” an ancient name for Bethlehem.

The artifact is of significant importance because that the area of biblical Bethlehem has yet to be archaeologically excavated, making the “bulla” the only proof of the city’s existence found outside of the bible. Elik Shukron, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said “There’s a difference between reading the name of a city in the Bible, and reading that name written in ancient Hebrew script on an artifact.”

Shukron provided some historical background for the object. “It seems that in the seventh year of the reign of a king (it is unclear if the king referred to here is Hezekiah, Manasseh or Josiah), a shipment was dispatched from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem.The ‘bulla’ we found belongs to the group of ‘fiscal bullas’ – administrative ‘bullas’ used to seal tax shipments remitted to the taxation system of the Kingdom of Judah in the late eighth and seventh centuries BCE,” said Sukron.

“This is the first time the name Bethlehem appears outside the Bible, in an inscription from the First Temple period, which proves that Bethlehem was indeed a city in the Kingdom of Judah, and possibly also in earlier periods,” continued Shukron.

In the Bible Bethlehem is first mentioned in the verse “in Ephrath, which is Bethlehem”, and it was on the way there that Rachel died and it is where she was buried (Genesis 35:19; 48:7).

In a video accompanying the IAA's announcement of the finding, Shukron says the bulla was evidence of tax being sent from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem.

“We know the name Bethlehem appears 41 times in the bible,” he said, adding that the unearthing of the bulla was a “one-time finding, you don't excavate these kinds of things every day.”

“After many years of digging here, it's the first time I found written evidence from the time of the First Temple that links Bethlehem to Jerusalem in an amazing way,” he said, adding that it was a very “exciting and important thing for this place [Jerusalem].”

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Source: http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=8150

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Pictured below: – The artificat found bearing the name of Bethlehem in ancient Hebrew script. Image courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Hamas-Run Schools Set Out to Teach ‘the Language of the Enemy’

by Jodi Rudoren | TheNewYorkTimes | May 22, 2012

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Photo Below: Wissam Nassar for The New York Times.
A Hebrew class for adults in Gaza City. This fall, high school students in Gaza will have the option of studying Hebrew.

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GAZA — There are few electives in the Hamas-run high schools here. Students can study health and the environment, or they can learn French. And, starting this fall at some schools, they will be able to sign up for a new course called Know Your Enemy.

It is a Hebrew class, beginning with the Aleph Bet — there is a six-word Arabic acrostic of the 22 Hebrew letters to help students remember. It has been nearly two decades since the language was taught in Gaza’s schools, and last month, after much debate, Hamas officials chose to add it to the optional curriculum rather than Turkish or German.

“Through the Hebrew language we can understand the structure of the Israeli society, the way they think,” explained Mahmoud Matar, director general of the Hamas-run Ministry of Education here.

“The Arabic language is a basic thing for the Israelis, and they use it to achieve what they want,” Dr. Matar added. “We look at Israel as an enemy. We teach our students the language of the enemy.”

For all its problems of poverty and restricted movement, the Gaza Strip is a place that prides itself on education: illiteracy among its youth was less than 1 percent in 2010, according to the World Bank, and there are five universities within its 139 square miles. There are many mountainous challenges for its forlorn schools, with their dilapidated buildings where classes of 50 or more meet in triple shifts; the United Nations World Relief Agency is building eight new schools, but officials here say the population, 1.6 million and expected to double in a generation, needs hundreds more.

The schools teach English, though with mixed success. Wandering through the alleyways of the beach refugee camp, children and teenage boys call out, “How are you?” to a foreigner but have no reply when faced with a “Good, how are you?”

Now, seven years after Israel’s withdrawal from the strip and five years after Hamas wrested control of it from the Palestinian Authority, students will begin grappling with Hebrew.

The Education Ministry has not yet settled on curriculum materials, though it is far more likely to rely on photocopied worksheets than to buy textbooks from its estranged neighbor. There will eventually be four levels, starting in ninth grade. The program will be offered to both girls and boys, who attend classes separately here. It will begin in 10 to 20 schools in September, depending on interest and the availability of teachers, Dr. Matar said, and expand to all of Gaza’s 180 high schools if successful.

Menna Malahi, 14, will be one of those first students. Her parents, like many here, speak some Hebrew: her father, like thousands of his generation, did construction work in Israel years ago; her mother studied the language in school when Israel occupied Gaza. They taught Menna to count from 1 to 10, “echad l’eser,” when she was young.

“French language is not useful for us, because we study English, and when you study English you will not need the French,” she said in an interview in Arabic. “With the Hebrew, it is a different language for people who live close to us. The Israelis used to come to Gaza and might come again in the future.”

Hebba Ayoub, who is 13, said her eighth-grade teacher encouraged the class to choose Hebrew, and most did. But not her. “I have a friend who speaks French, and I admire the language when I listen to her,” she said.

The Palestinian Authority does not teach Hebrew in its schools, and has no plans to do so. In Israel, Arabic has long been a staple of the curriculum: it is a compulsory subject in middle school, with about 350,000 students enrolled, officials said, and recently was introduced as an option in fifth and sixth grades, attracting 15,000. Among high schoolers, 10,000 are studying Arabic, according to the Education Ministry.

Here in Gaza, many adults speak some conversational Hebrew, learned decades ago on the job or more recently while serving time in Israeli prisons, but cannot read or write the language, officials said. While some see the classes as training for future spies, others have more practical, even mundane goals: to fill out paperwork for medical procedures done in Israel, to understand the news — and the cartoons — broadcast via satellite.

Both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages that share as much as 40 percent of their grammar and word roots, experts say. The numbers and parts of the body sound similar — head is “ras” in Arabic, “rosh” in Hebrew — as do the words for right and left, and every day: kol yom. Both are written and read from right to left.

While Hebrew has not been taught in Gaza’s public schools since 1994, there have been a smattering of classes available for adults, though enrollment has dwindled from several thousand a year to a few hundred, according to Jamal al-Haddad, who heads the program. Government employees pay 50 shekels — about $12 — for three months of classes three times a week for two hours. (Others pay twice that.)

At one such class last week, a half-dozen students were reviewing for their final exam. They went over the names of languages themselves: ivrit (Hebrew), anglit (English), tzarfatit (French). The teacher asked where they were yesterday (“ba’avodah sheli,” at my work; “babayit,” at home). One woman in a hijab went to the chalkboard to write words in their masculine and feminine forms: “ish” and “isha” (man and woman); “tov” and “tovah” (good); “katav” and “katvah” (past tense for “write”).

Three of the students were teachers, hoping to perhaps take on the new Hebrew classes. Three were young women who were not currently working. One was an accountant who needed to translate documents for businesses dealing increasingly with Israel.

“Hebrew for Arabs is not difficult,” said Subhi Bahloul, who supervises language programs at Gaza’s Education Ministry. “The Hebrew is very, very simple grammar. The grammar of Arabic is very, very difficult. The English and the Hebrew, I master it; the Arabic, no.”

Mr. Bahloul said he had a master’s degree in Hebrew from Tel Aviv University and hoped to soon earn a Ph.D. in the language. “Inshallah,” he said, using the Arabic for “God willing,” which he sprinkles freely into his Arabic and English as well as his Hebrew.

Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza City, and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/world/middleeast/hamas-run-schools-in-gaza-set-out-to-teach-hebrew.html?_r=1

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Islam’s Cultural Revolution

by Giulio Meotti  |  FrontPageMag.com  |  May 24, 2012

 

Mao’s Cultural Revolution was one of the darkest chapters of the 20th Century: communist zealots, known as “the Red Guards,” attached revolutionary messages to Buddhist statues; seventeen professors from the Shanghai Music Conservatory committed suicide; intellectuals were harassed in public trials during which they had to confess their “sins,” kneeling on makeshift rostrums; thousands of churches, temples and monasteries were demolished; ancient libraries went up in smoke; imperial ceramics were smashed and religious relics melted down. Millions of people were killed.

A new Cultural Revolution is now taking place in the Middle East, where Islam’s Red Guards are obliterating the non-Muslim heritage. If Mao’s Guards took inspiration from the “red book,” Islamic zealots have the Koran. Their targets are Jewish shrines, Christian churches, ancient monuments and  cultural masterpieces.

A few days ago in Timbuktu, Mali, Islamists destroyed the tomb of a Sufi saint, Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar. Timbuktu is known as “the city of the 333 saints”, classified as Unesco World Heritage Sites. Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam, but extremists believe Sufi shrines are “sacrilegious.” The UN cultural body didn’t raise its voice against this Islamic iconoclasm.

A few weeks before, Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, issued a religious fatwa, saying it is “necessary to destroy all the churches in the Arabian Peninsula.” The most important Muslim cleric in the land that gave birth to Islam called for the destruction of churches without his rule attracting any global condemnation.

While in Libya Jews have been throw out again after trying to restore Tripoli’s ancient synagogue, Egyptians are planning to block Israelis from making the pilgrimages to the tomb of a Jewish saint, Yaakov Abuhatzeira.

An Islamic mob destroyed the Institute of Egypt in Cairo, founded by Napoleon and containing 192,000 books and documents from as far back as the XIX century. Now, it’s gone. Napoleon’s legendary “Description de l’Egypte” is also lost (in 1822 Jean-François Champollion used this document to unveil the mistery of the hierogliphycs). Unesco, again, stood silent. As it stood silent when Egypt’s former cultural minister, Farouk Hosni, said he “would burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries”.

Like in Mao’s China, Islamic salafists are trying to ban ancient statues that dot Egypt and suggested that the pagan treasures “could be covered with wax”. The sirens that embellish the fountain of Zeus in Alexandria have already been deemed “inappropriate” by the Salafist party, which decided to “veil” them completely with a sheet. Salafi leaders are also terrifying liberal intellectuals by calling for banning the novels written by Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab Nobel Prize laureate for Literature who has been called “Egypt’s Balzac”, because his works “encourage drinking alcohol and using drugs”. Mahfouz’s novel “Awlad Haretna” is labelled as “atheistic”. Islamists also want to ban the greatest masterpiece of oriental literature, “One thousand and one arabian nights”, because it’s “depravity” and “offensive to the public good”.

In Israel, Palestinian Muslims are erasing any Jewish trace on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most holy site. In 2005 thousands of Arabs torched the synagogues in Gaza’s Katif Bloc. It was an orgy of hate, like that of the Red Guards. Twelve years ago, Arabs destroyed Joseph’s tomb, Judaism’s fourth holy site, smashing the stone structure and ripping it apart, brick by brick, as the Red Guards did with Tao’s temples. The arson attack on the Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho and the continuing gunfire at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem are two other examples that come to mind in the Israelo-Palestinian conflict.

Islam’s cultural revolution began when the Taliban destroyed the two wonderful Buddhas in Bamyan, Afghanistan. It was a turning point for a proto-Nazi ideology bent on the physical eradication of its enemies and their religious symbols. If Mao’s Red Guards destroyed the imperial Chinese heritage, Islam’s Red Guards want to cancel any non-Muslim trace in the Middle East. It’s a Koranic Inquisition.

 

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/24/islams-cultural-revolution/

The African BDS Disgrace

by Debra Mankowitz  |  Ynetnews.com  |  May 24, 2012

 

Op-ed: As South African case shows, BDS replaces healthy debate with totalitarian way of thinking.

The recent cancellation by University of KZN of the invitation to Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to South Africa Yaakov Finkelstein to freely address students and staff of smacks of racism of the worst kind. Surely, an academic institution is a place where minds should be able to hear all points of view

Instead, students are now being coerced into witnessing official representatives from Israel being singled out for opprobrium and sanction, with only insidious disinformation and the proselytizing anti-Israel campaign of the BDS movement available to them.

Does BDS tell the students that the territories were won in defensive wars against Israel? Did BDS inform the students that it is unprecedented in history that a country is obliged to give up land taken in a defensive war? Both Japan and Germany lost land as a result of their aggressions in WWII.

This self-same BDS movement is now trying to force South Africa through the Department of Trade and Industry to label goods made in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria as being manufactured in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” unless of course Israel withdraws back to 1948 lines.

This demand is ludicrous and ignorant in the extreme. What are the 1948 lines anyway? Do they form part of the 1947 Partition or are these the armistice lines after the War of Independence? So Israel at the insistence of BDS is going to give up its towns and cities and go back to Auschwitz- type borders, or otherwise "Ahava" will have a new label.

This would be laughable if it were not so tragic that a bunch of deluded individuals who actually don’t give a damn about Palestinian rights or their future can honestly believe that Israel, a sovereign United Nations member, will capitulate to their new demand, which smacks of arrogance, delusion and racism.

Is this organization even representative of Palestinian interests? I don’t think so. Do they know, or even care, that 13,000 Palestinians and their families may lose their jobs if companies are forced to relocate because of the campaign against Israel?

BDS has not helped the Palestinians one iota but has given free, unexpected and very welcome publicity to "Ahava." Their profits internationally are growing exponentially.

Ignoring global atrocities

BDS claims to be humanistic in its outlook but from what one can see only has selective humanism towards one conflict in the world, while conveniently ignoring atrocities in Syria, massive human rights violations in China, endless torture and detentions without trial in Iran. The list is endless. Is this because it is acceptable for Muslims to kill Muslims, and for dissident Chinese and activist Tibetans to be incarcerated and tortured by these respective countries?

It is very interesting that it is not acceptable for Jews in the only Jewish state in the world to defend themselves in what is now a 100 year old terror-war against the Arabs. Despite an intractable conflict and numerous peace overtures to uncompromising neighbors who do not want peace, these same eight million Jews, Muslim Arabs, Druze, Bedouin, Circassians and Christians too - all Israeli by the way - have contributed in unparalleled ways to the upliftment of the world.

South Africa too has benefited enormously from Israeli innovations in agriculture, medicine and technology. Is South Africa now going to ban the use of all these marvelous inventions for a misplaced and propagandist ideology that serves no-one, least of all our needy population?

Who cares about the Kashmiri dispute or millions of Zimbabweans struggling and suffering on the other side of the border? Who cares about Eritrean and Sudanese people who, in attempting to flee from some of the worst atrocities perpetrated on them, run to pariah Israel which does not shoot them, torture them or incarcerate them like Egypt does, but allows them to live freely and even feeds them and sends their children to school? Many of them are black Muslims, hated by their fellow more lighter-skinned Muslims. Talk about racism!

Sadly the reality is that Israel’s case dates from time immemorial. It fits in comfortably with popular Jew-prejudice, it is fashionable to pick on Jews and the only Jewish country in the world – in truth, it is a soft target and few besides the Jewish people care enough to take a stance.

It is undoubtedly the BDS campaign that has prevented Israel’s deputy ambassador from stating his country’s position. Could it be that something frightens them? Could it be that he will speak the truth, enough of the truth to change the mindset of impressionable young minds?

BDS is doing all it can to destroy healthy debate and replace it with a totalitarian way of thinking that smacks of intimidation and Apartheid-style tactics. That is not democratic; it is not just; and in the end, it will be defeated, for history has proven that the truth will out, no matter what.

 

Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4233847,00.html

Video: Pennsylvania Textbooks Blatantly Lie About History, Promote Islam

From: FamilySecurityMatters  |  May 24, 2012

 

 

 

 

Source: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/blog/detail/pennsylvania-textbooks-blatantly-lie-about-history-promote-islam