This article is by a New Zealander - a country not madly favourable to Israel. Did Israel have a government delegation this year? UN imbalance thwarts aim of moral fairness. This affects all Women's NGOs in their opinions about Israel and the Palestinians. There seems to be an inability by the Israeli and other sympathetic Women's International NGOs to alter this climate of anti-Israel rhetoric and the passing of unbalanced Resolutions at the Un and its agencies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UN imbalance thwarts aims of moral fairness.
7 April 2006
New Zealand Herald
Jane Norton explains how exposure to the United Nations has damaged her faith in its stated intent to show no bias
THE United Nations states that its central purpose is to preserve world peace. To this end it has played a major role in helping to defuse international crises and resolve protracted ones. It has worked to prevent conflicts from breaking out and, where a conflict breaks out, takes actions to redress the underlying causes and lay the foundation for durable peace.
Or so it says. And so I thought until I was present - at the 50th session of the Commission on the Status of Women - for the passing of a resolution that was so biased and irrational that I wondered how the UN could make the claims with a straight face.
That resolution was the one condemning Israeli treatment of Palestinian women.
We all accept that the situation in the Palestinian territories could be better. Much better. I wonder, then, how this resolution helps solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict let alone helps Palestinian women. I have tried to think how it does help, but could not. I could, however, find four reasons why it does not help.
First, the resolution is horribly one-sided. It condemns Israeli treatment of Palestinian women but omits to condemn Palestinian treatment of Palestinian women and Palestinian treatment of Israeli women.
I am a fierce advocate for women's rights regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. That is largely why I found this resolution so galling.
Once again a political battle is being waged with women's bodies as the weapon for political attack.
This resolution was not really concerned with Palestinian women and their suffering. If that had been the case then it would have deplored the practice of encouraging Palestinian women to become suicide bombers and human shields. It would have condemned the limited citizenship rights given to Palestinian women living in Jordan. It would have criticised the treatment of Palestinian women labourers throughout the Middle East.
Instead, it solely condemned Israeli treatment of Palestinian women.
Second, the resolution breached a fundamental principle of the rule of law. If it is thought important to be governed under law rather than the whim of an individual or government, then the law must be the same for everyone. This is the case in the UN. Here it is also essential that the language of these resolutions be general.
All resolutions passed in this session of the Commission on the Status of Women were in this general form - except one.
Third, it prejudges the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, thus hindering future negotiations. If the UN is truly serious about playing a role in fostering peace between Israelis and Palestinians then it is counterproductive to repeatedly pass resolutions condemning only one party to the conflict.
To persist in doing so makes it nearly impossible for the UN to present itself as a mediating body in peacemaking.
Fourth, resolutions of this sort threaten the credibility of the UN and the willingness of states to participate in the future. As most of its resolutions are not binding, the UN depends on member states to implement the resolutions themselves.
If the UN demonstrates constant bias against one member state then that state's willingness to participate in its processes is severely diminished. And the credibility and effectiveness of the UN is threatened.
So why is a resolution that is ridiculous at best, and dangerous at worst, able to be passed?
The answer lies in the composition of the UN, whose 191 states have agreed to the obligations of the charter. Each state has one vote. There are almost 60 Muslim states and just one Jewish state, so you don't need a doctorate in mathematics to figure out why a hugely disproportionate number of resolutions are passed against Israel.
Research by Professor Anne Bayefsky, of Columbia University, shows that more than a quarter of the resolutions over 40 years condemning human rights violations have been directed at Israel. Yet there has never been a single resolution about repression of the civil and political rights of 1.3 billion people in China, or the million female migrant workers in Saudi Arabia kept in what amounts to slavery.
Every year, UN organisations are required to produce at least 25 reports on alleged human rights violations by Israel, but not one on an Iranian criminal justice system which mandates punishments such as crucifixion, stoning and amputation. Or against Nigeria whose Islamic courts have sentenced women to death by stoning for adultery (ironically, it was Nigeria who proposed a very similar resolution against Israel), or against Muslim nations that give impunity to men who murder female family members in the name of preserving the family's ``honour''.
Or against Libya, which has arbitrarily imprisoned women and girls indefinitely because they were seen as ``vulnerable to engaging in moral misconduct''.
All this means that while the UN claims to be neutral - with each state having the same voice as any other regardless of wealth, size or population - it is open to the same sort of manipulation as any other political forum. The difference is that the UN presents itself as being above all that.
Since working at the UN, I have seen behaviour more akin to that of petulant teenagers rather than that of an organisation boasting the lofty ideal of promoting world peace. I have seen states argue for days over the irrelevant matter of a document's punctuation in order to stop the passing of resolutions protecting the rights of women. Examples of such stonewalling are endless, but the resolution against Israeli treatment of Palestinian women shocked me the most.
I had naive faith that the UN might actually have the potential to create a better world - a world committed to resolving conflicts between states, not fuelling them.
Sadly, it is now hard to see the UN as anything other than a vehicle for manipulation by member states with their own political agendas.
If that is the case, the UN should relinquish its claim to moral legitimacy.
Jane Norton, an Auckland lawyer, is an associate-in-law at Columbia University in New York and a Fulbright scholar studying for her master of laws.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Bush's October surprise?
The Iranian President at the moment is the sort of villain Hollywood's Central Casting would gladly source for its productions, as Spengler says below.
He is goading Bush, threatening Israel and the Jewish people with the most evil-inspiring language, which is being repeated verbatim on ourTV screens and on all the airwaves and in cyber-space, ad nauseum!
Why give him this publicity? Are there not enough evil people who will want to follow him ? Does he see himself as a Hitler incarnate, intent on finishing off what Hitler set out to do?
Thank God that there are still some people who may try to shut him up,- but at what cost?
Why does the world keep throwing up another madman dictator every few years? No sooner do we get rid of one, than a whole new bunch of loonies sprout up!
They are looking for a Messiah,- both the Jews and the Christians,- but I wish that whichever one would come first,- let him/her come already, before we are all blown up by this Iranian or Nth. Korean or another lunatic! MM.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.atimes.com
Bush's October surprise - it's coming
By Spengler
One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.
Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional
elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.
One factoid encapsulates Bush's opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80% of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59% said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as "not yet", for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. President Bush earned overwhelming support by toppling Saddam Hussein, a caricature villain who appeared to threaten Americans, but earned opprobrium by committing American lives to the political rehabilitation of Iraq, about which Americans care little.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is the sort of villain that Central Casting once sourced for studio film productions in Hollywood. No more than Napoleon Bonaparte could stay away from Russia can Ahmadinejad abandon Iran's nuclear ambitions. He represents a generation that has bled for its country and its sect for a quarter-century and now has come into its maturity and must demonstrate its mettle. The Revolutionary Guards of 1979 now are middle-aged men who now at last have a chance to lead. Ahmadinejad has salted the regime's middle ranks with thousands of men like himself.
America's discomfiture in Iraq provides Iran with an opportunity to restore its regional greatness, the last one for centuries, if not millennia. If Iran stands down as a prospective nuclear power, it faces a rapidly graying population, declining capacity to export oil and discontent among rural folk and the urban poor. The promise of the Islamic Revolution will have melted into mediocrity and cynicism, and the generation of Ahmadinejad will have turned out a damp squib. I made this case half a year ago (Demographics and Iran's imperial design, September 13, 2005). And I have predicted a US-led attack on Iran with Western as well as Saudi support all year (Why the West will attack Iran, January 24).
Now we have from Seymour Hersh an instantly celebrated report in The New Yorker claiming that President Bush is preparing war against Iran, including the prospective use of tactical nuclear weapons. The president, according to one of Hersh's interlocutors, is "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" and believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do", and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy". So broad was the consensus among foreign-policy experts cited by Hersh that the White House had to deny that the use of force was imminent, insisting that it was intent upon a diplomatic solution.
Certainly the use of force is not imminent. Even under the most alarmist estimates Iran cannot field a serviceable bomb during 2006. The Bush administration has considerable time to attempt a diplomatic solution, certainly until the eve of the congressional elections.
To be very precise, I am not accusing the White House of manipulating the Iranian issue for political purposes. On the contrary, if the US president thought only in terms of political consequences he never would have risked so much on the Quixotic quest for Iraqi democracy. Still, Bush has the opportunity to shift the subject away from the unpopular campaign to improve the politics of the Middle East, and back to the extremely popular subject of killing terrorists. He believes (and I am long since on record agreeing) that Washington will have to put paid to Ahmadinejad before very long, and there is no reason not to look for a political benefit as well.
In fact, some of Bush's supporters are citing my thesis that confrontation with Iran cannot be avoided. In its weekly e-mail newsletter, the Weekly Standard, the most neo-conservative of all US publications, offered the following note by online editor Jonathan V Last:
Iran is a looming crisis, but it's still far enough away that you can find smart, interesting writing on the topic without having to wade through too much dross. One of the most intriguing writers on Iran over the last several months has been the anonymous "Spengler" from the Asia Times [Online].
Spengler has been arguing for some time now that a Western attack on Iran is nearly inevitable because, he says, Iran's demographics - the country's average age is soaring upwards at an alarming rate - are pushing the country toward an attempt to establish a Persian empire:
"Re-engineering the shape of Iran's population, the central plank of the new government's domestic program, should be understood as the flip side of Iran's nuclear coin. Aggressive relocation of Iranians and an aggressive foreign policy both constitute a response to the coming crisis.
"Iran claims that it must develop nuclear power to replace diminishing oil exports. It seems clear that Iranian exports will fall sharply, perhaps to zero by 2020, according to Iranian estimates. But Iran's motives for acquiring nuclear power are not only economic but strategic. Like [Adolf] Hitler and [Josef] Stalin, Ahmadinejad looks to imperial expansion as a solution for economic crisis at home ...
"Iran's ultra-Islamist government has no hope of ameliorating the crisis through productivity growth. Instead it proposes totalitarian methods that will not reduce the pain, but only squelch the screams. Iran envisages a regional Shi'ite empire backed by nuclear weaponry" [Demographics and Iran's imperial design].
So what if Spengler is right and a military conflict with Iran is on its way? Blogger Dan McLaughlin noted ... something troubling in the way liberals are approaching the possibility of this showdown. McLaughlin pointed us toward the bright and engaging Washington Monthly writer Kevin Drum, who says of Iran: "If Democrats don't start thinking about how they're going to respond to this, they're idiots. We don't always get to pick the issues to run on. Sometimes they're picked for us."
McLaughlin also highlights something Drum wrote last February: "Democrats ought to figure out now what they think about Iran. After all, we've got the Ken Pollack book, we've got the referral to the Security Council, we've got the slam-dunk intelligence, and we've got the lunatic leader screaming insults at the United States. Remember what happened the last time all the stars aligned like that?"
So: What would be the Democratic response if (a) Bush asked for an authorization of force against Iran or (b) simply launched an assault without asking Congress? The chances of this coming up as an issue this year are strong enough that it would be foolish not to be prepared to deal with it.
As McLaughlin observes, there's something troubling in the idea that one of [the US political] parties should be crafting its stance on this subject not by looking through the lens of US policy, but by using the filter of domestic politics. I am somewhat surprised to find myself quoted so generously in a publication whose views I have treated rather roughly these past three years, and the US president's political fortunes were far from my mind when I wrote the demographic analysis of Iran's imperial design. No matter: if conflict with Iran is indeed unavoidable, the Bush administration can re-emerge as a war government rather than as Wilsonian nation-builders, with every expectation of popular support. The Democrats already have begun to game the responses to a US attack on Iran before the election, as Last reports, which is to say that the Republicans have begun to game the Democratic response.
Just as in the 2004 elections, the Democrats will have a losing hand if the White House orders force against Iran. Americans rally behind a wartime leader; the one exception was Vietnam. America's engagement with Iran would resemble the Bill Clinton administration's aerial attack on Serbia rather than the Iraq wars, for there is no reason at all to employ ground groups.
God takes care of drunks, small children and the United States of America. Improbably, destiny has a surprise in store for George W Bush.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .) http://anivlam.blogspot.com
Etc.
He is goading Bush, threatening Israel and the Jewish people with the most evil-inspiring language, which is being repeated verbatim on ourTV screens and on all the airwaves and in cyber-space, ad nauseum!
Why give him this publicity? Are there not enough evil people who will want to follow him ? Does he see himself as a Hitler incarnate, intent on finishing off what Hitler set out to do?
Thank God that there are still some people who may try to shut him up,- but at what cost?
Why does the world keep throwing up another madman dictator every few years? No sooner do we get rid of one, than a whole new bunch of loonies sprout up!
They are looking for a Messiah,- both the Jews and the Christians,- but I wish that whichever one would come first,- let him/her come already, before we are all blown up by this Iranian or Nth. Korean or another lunatic! MM.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.atimes.com
Bush's October surprise - it's coming
By Spengler
One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.
Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional
elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.
One factoid encapsulates Bush's opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80% of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59% said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as "not yet", for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. President Bush earned overwhelming support by toppling Saddam Hussein, a caricature villain who appeared to threaten Americans, but earned opprobrium by committing American lives to the political rehabilitation of Iraq, about which Americans care little.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is the sort of villain that Central Casting once sourced for studio film productions in Hollywood. No more than Napoleon Bonaparte could stay away from Russia can Ahmadinejad abandon Iran's nuclear ambitions. He represents a generation that has bled for its country and its sect for a quarter-century and now has come into its maturity and must demonstrate its mettle. The Revolutionary Guards of 1979 now are middle-aged men who now at last have a chance to lead. Ahmadinejad has salted the regime's middle ranks with thousands of men like himself.
America's discomfiture in Iraq provides Iran with an opportunity to restore its regional greatness, the last one for centuries, if not millennia. If Iran stands down as a prospective nuclear power, it faces a rapidly graying population, declining capacity to export oil and discontent among rural folk and the urban poor. The promise of the Islamic Revolution will have melted into mediocrity and cynicism, and the generation of Ahmadinejad will have turned out a damp squib. I made this case half a year ago (Demographics and Iran's imperial design, September 13, 2005). And I have predicted a US-led attack on Iran with Western as well as Saudi support all year (Why the West will attack Iran, January 24).
Now we have from Seymour Hersh an instantly celebrated report in The New Yorker claiming that President Bush is preparing war against Iran, including the prospective use of tactical nuclear weapons. The president, according to one of Hersh's interlocutors, is "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" and believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do", and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy". So broad was the consensus among foreign-policy experts cited by Hersh that the White House had to deny that the use of force was imminent, insisting that it was intent upon a diplomatic solution.
Certainly the use of force is not imminent. Even under the most alarmist estimates Iran cannot field a serviceable bomb during 2006. The Bush administration has considerable time to attempt a diplomatic solution, certainly until the eve of the congressional elections.
To be very precise, I am not accusing the White House of manipulating the Iranian issue for political purposes. On the contrary, if the US president thought only in terms of political consequences he never would have risked so much on the Quixotic quest for Iraqi democracy. Still, Bush has the opportunity to shift the subject away from the unpopular campaign to improve the politics of the Middle East, and back to the extremely popular subject of killing terrorists. He believes (and I am long since on record agreeing) that Washington will have to put paid to Ahmadinejad before very long, and there is no reason not to look for a political benefit as well.
In fact, some of Bush's supporters are citing my thesis that confrontation with Iran cannot be avoided. In its weekly e-mail newsletter, the Weekly Standard, the most neo-conservative of all US publications, offered the following note by online editor Jonathan V Last:
Iran is a looming crisis, but it's still far enough away that you can find smart, interesting writing on the topic without having to wade through too much dross. One of the most intriguing writers on Iran over the last several months has been the anonymous "Spengler" from the Asia Times [Online].
Spengler has been arguing for some time now that a Western attack on Iran is nearly inevitable because, he says, Iran's demographics - the country's average age is soaring upwards at an alarming rate - are pushing the country toward an attempt to establish a Persian empire:
"Re-engineering the shape of Iran's population, the central plank of the new government's domestic program, should be understood as the flip side of Iran's nuclear coin. Aggressive relocation of Iranians and an aggressive foreign policy both constitute a response to the coming crisis.
"Iran claims that it must develop nuclear power to replace diminishing oil exports. It seems clear that Iranian exports will fall sharply, perhaps to zero by 2020, according to Iranian estimates. But Iran's motives for acquiring nuclear power are not only economic but strategic. Like [Adolf] Hitler and [Josef] Stalin, Ahmadinejad looks to imperial expansion as a solution for economic crisis at home ...
"Iran's ultra-Islamist government has no hope of ameliorating the crisis through productivity growth. Instead it proposes totalitarian methods that will not reduce the pain, but only squelch the screams. Iran envisages a regional Shi'ite empire backed by nuclear weaponry" [Demographics and Iran's imperial design].
So what if Spengler is right and a military conflict with Iran is on its way? Blogger Dan McLaughlin noted ... something troubling in the way liberals are approaching the possibility of this showdown. McLaughlin pointed us toward the bright and engaging Washington Monthly writer Kevin Drum, who says of Iran: "If Democrats don't start thinking about how they're going to respond to this, they're idiots. We don't always get to pick the issues to run on. Sometimes they're picked for us."
McLaughlin also highlights something Drum wrote last February: "Democrats ought to figure out now what they think about Iran. After all, we've got the Ken Pollack book, we've got the referral to the Security Council, we've got the slam-dunk intelligence, and we've got the lunatic leader screaming insults at the United States. Remember what happened the last time all the stars aligned like that?"
So: What would be the Democratic response if (a) Bush asked for an authorization of force against Iran or (b) simply launched an assault without asking Congress? The chances of this coming up as an issue this year are strong enough that it would be foolish not to be prepared to deal with it.
As McLaughlin observes, there's something troubling in the idea that one of [the US political] parties should be crafting its stance on this subject not by looking through the lens of US policy, but by using the filter of domestic politics. I am somewhat surprised to find myself quoted so generously in a publication whose views I have treated rather roughly these past three years, and the US president's political fortunes were far from my mind when I wrote the demographic analysis of Iran's imperial design. No matter: if conflict with Iran is indeed unavoidable, the Bush administration can re-emerge as a war government rather than as Wilsonian nation-builders, with every expectation of popular support. The Democrats already have begun to game the responses to a US attack on Iran before the election, as Last reports, which is to say that the Republicans have begun to game the Democratic response.
Just as in the 2004 elections, the Democrats will have a losing hand if the White House orders force against Iran. Americans rally behind a wartime leader; the one exception was Vietnam. America's engagement with Iran would resemble the Bill Clinton administration's aerial attack on Serbia rather than the Iraq wars, for there is no reason at all to employ ground groups.
God takes care of drunks, small children and the United States of America. Improbably, destiny has a surprise in store for George W Bush.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .) http://anivlam.blogspot.com
Etc.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Real ZIONISM: From Khartoum to the Kibbutz.
Zionism to make us proud: Kibbutz shelters Darfur refugees
Postad at Posted at ZioNation Web log
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000036.html
14.04.2006
A feature story in this week's Ha'aretz newspaper, From Khartoum to the Kibbutz could serve as a reminder of what Zionism is really all about. Two refugees from Arab persecution in Darfur, in Sudan. found their way to Israel through Egypt, and ultimately were rescued and given a home by Kibbutz Tze'elim. This good deed can be added to those of the Kibbutzniks who are helping Palestinians harvest their crops and repairing the damage done to olive trees by settlers, and to that may be added the role of the Kibbutz movement in organizing rescue efforts for earthquake victims in Turkey and genocide victims in Kossovo. What were these two youths fleeing?
M., who is 16, managed to escape when his village was attacked almost three years ago by Arab militias. Like many others, he wandered from village to village and town to town until he reached the capital, Khartoum. There he was told by a group of survivors that his parents, sister and two brothers had not been so lucky; they had all been killed....The story of A., who is 17, is very similar to that of his friend. He fled for his life, along with his family, when his home village of Kurma was attacked in 2003. His first stop was at a refugee camp in a nearby village, Nalma, where they arrived one night after a massacre in that village. "Everyone was dead there," he says. "There were men, women and children and we saw all the bodies. There were many bodies. I saw my father was in shock. He was never the same after that." A few days later, the camp where they were staying was attacked. In the flight from the camp at night, A. lost touch with his parents, brothers and sisters, and to this day has no idea whether they survived or what happened to them.
Why did the Kibbutz people rescuse them?
Why do they do it? "Because we can't just stand on the sidelines," says Yankele. "As Jews, as people who were themselves refugees that no one wanted, we have a special obligation not to look the other way but to take care of those who have fled from the valley of death." He believes the state should care more for refugees in its midst and absorb them like it absorbed the Vietnamese boat refugees in the 1980s.
Next time someone tells you, "Zionism is racism," remember these two refugee boys, remember what they fled from, and remember who gave them a home. Israelis as a whole may rush to take credit for these acts of humanity. In fact however, they are mostly due to the decency and involvement of the Kibbutz movement and its members. Once the cornerstone of Israeli society and Zionist pioneering efforts, the Kibbutz was long eclipsed by the settler movement, which claimed to be the vanguard of pioneering Zionism. Changing government policies and economic realities moved agriculture and the "conquest of labor" off the Israeli national agenda and out of the forefront of Zionism. The kibbutz idea however has not died. It has undergone, and is undergoing, a transformation. From time to time, we hope increasingly so, the "moribund" kibbutz movement surprises everyone pleasantly with its vitality, commitment to humanitarian ideals and its ability to project a positive image of Zionism, and remind us all what Zionism is supposed to be about. Ami Isseroff
Copyright 2006 by Ami Isseroff and ZioNation Posed at http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000036.html. where you may read the Ha'aretz article and comment on the Web. Please forward with this notice. Other uses by permission only =========================================================================ZNN - Zionism News Network - is for distribution of information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism and telling people about your Web site or activist issues. Please do circulate posts from this list by email with all list information and URLs to publicize ZNN and Zionist Web sites. Your submissions are most welcome and will be posted in accordance with list guidelines. To join send an email to ZNN-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Contents are the responsibility of the posters.We invite you to discuss issues at these Web forums: http://www.zionism-israel.com/cgi/yabb/YaBB.cgi http://www.zionismontheweb.org/boardsV
isit these Web sites: http://www.zionism-israel.com http://www.zionismontheweb.org http://www.zionism.netfirms.com========================================================================
Postad at Posted at ZioNation Web log
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000036.html
14.04.2006
A feature story in this week's Ha'aretz newspaper, From Khartoum to the Kibbutz could serve as a reminder of what Zionism is really all about. Two refugees from Arab persecution in Darfur, in Sudan. found their way to Israel through Egypt, and ultimately were rescued and given a home by Kibbutz Tze'elim. This good deed can be added to those of the Kibbutzniks who are helping Palestinians harvest their crops and repairing the damage done to olive trees by settlers, and to that may be added the role of the Kibbutz movement in organizing rescue efforts for earthquake victims in Turkey and genocide victims in Kossovo. What were these two youths fleeing?
M., who is 16, managed to escape when his village was attacked almost three years ago by Arab militias. Like many others, he wandered from village to village and town to town until he reached the capital, Khartoum. There he was told by a group of survivors that his parents, sister and two brothers had not been so lucky; they had all been killed....The story of A., who is 17, is very similar to that of his friend. He fled for his life, along with his family, when his home village of Kurma was attacked in 2003. His first stop was at a refugee camp in a nearby village, Nalma, where they arrived one night after a massacre in that village. "Everyone was dead there," he says. "There were men, women and children and we saw all the bodies. There were many bodies. I saw my father was in shock. He was never the same after that." A few days later, the camp where they were staying was attacked. In the flight from the camp at night, A. lost touch with his parents, brothers and sisters, and to this day has no idea whether they survived or what happened to them.
Why did the Kibbutz people rescuse them?
Why do they do it? "Because we can't just stand on the sidelines," says Yankele. "As Jews, as people who were themselves refugees that no one wanted, we have a special obligation not to look the other way but to take care of those who have fled from the valley of death." He believes the state should care more for refugees in its midst and absorb them like it absorbed the Vietnamese boat refugees in the 1980s.
Next time someone tells you, "Zionism is racism," remember these two refugee boys, remember what they fled from, and remember who gave them a home. Israelis as a whole may rush to take credit for these acts of humanity. In fact however, they are mostly due to the decency and involvement of the Kibbutz movement and its members. Once the cornerstone of Israeli society and Zionist pioneering efforts, the Kibbutz was long eclipsed by the settler movement, which claimed to be the vanguard of pioneering Zionism. Changing government policies and economic realities moved agriculture and the "conquest of labor" off the Israeli national agenda and out of the forefront of Zionism. The kibbutz idea however has not died. It has undergone, and is undergoing, a transformation. From time to time, we hope increasingly so, the "moribund" kibbutz movement surprises everyone pleasantly with its vitality, commitment to humanitarian ideals and its ability to project a positive image of Zionism, and remind us all what Zionism is supposed to be about. Ami Isseroff
Copyright 2006 by Ami Isseroff and ZioNation Posed at http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000036.html. where you may read the Ha'aretz article and comment on the Web. Please forward with this notice. Other uses by permission only =========================================================================ZNN - Zionism News Network - is for distribution of information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism and telling people about your Web site or activist issues. Please do circulate posts from this list by email with all list information and URLs to publicize ZNN and Zionist Web sites. Your submissions are most welcome and will be posted in accordance with list guidelines. To join send an email to ZNN-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Contents are the responsibility of the posters.We invite you to discuss issues at these Web forums: http://www.zionism-israel.com/cgi/yabb/YaBB.cgi http://www.zionismontheweb.org/boardsV
isit these Web sites: http://www.zionism-israel.com http://www.zionismontheweb.org http://www.zionism.netfirms.com========================================================================
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Dershowitz wrote a book "The Case for Israel".
Kichael Neumann wrote: The case against Israel.
Now below is
The Case Against The Case Against Israel
Jacob Amir
Book Review
Neumann, Michael: The Case Against Israel, CounterPunch and AK Press, January 2006, ISBN 1-90485-946-1, 220 pages, $16.50 (paperback) [ed.
Dr. Amir wrote a Letter to the Editor following Gilles d'Aymery's review of Prof. Neumann's book and the two of them went on to have an extended exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, published over two months in the Letters to the Editor (we intend to reconcile that exchange in one file to be published on April 24). Aymery sent a pdf copy of the book to Amir, who in turn sent the following review.]
(Swans - April 10, 2006) Here is my impression on Michael Neumann's book.
The author states in the preface that his biases are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. That statement is inaccurate. He thinks that Israel was founded in sin by an illegitimate movement and its foundation was wrong. He may have pro-Jewish bias but he has definitely anti-Israeli bias.
The author spends a lot of time trying to debunk the right of self-determination, calling it "alleged." He writes that Woodrow Wilson made self-determination an inalienable right for disenfranchised people around the world. But in Neumann's opinion: "Neither international approval nor the UN's Charter are sufficient to bring rights into existence." And then he brings a most bizarre comparison stating that if the UN said that people have the right to eat their children, would that make it so? And he adds: "There is no right of self-determination of peoples. The whole idea is a bad one." This outlandish comparison speaks volumes about the substance of this book.
One has the impression that this total denial of the right to self-determination of peoples is there so that the right of the Jewish people to self-determination could be denied. The author writes that "when Zionism began, the Jews had no common language and their traditions were in many cases widely dissimilar" and that "Zionism was a movement that advocated not so much the defense of an ethnic group as the formation of such a group in Palestine." The author could not be more wrong. One can understand the reason for him being wrong. After all, there is not a single case in the whole of recorded history that a people lost its territory, was dispersed all over the world for more than 1900 years, and in spite of that, did not disappear from the world stage. It was able to preserve its historical memory, its religion, its strong emotional attachment to what it calls Eretz Israel (later known as Palestine). That is why on Passover, a Jewish family in Yemen, or in Russia, or in Germany, or in Morocco, would say "Next year in Jerusalem." Without that common historic memory and this attachment to the land, the Zionist movement would not have existed because the Jewish people would not have existed. Zionists did not have to "form" an ethnic group in Palestine. It simply gave the Jewish people the push to strive to reestablish its sovereign nation state in the place of its origin.
The author is unwilling or unable to accept those undeniable historic facts.
I would like to live in a world without borders, without nation-states, without armies and warfare, without crime and prisons. But, as long as the world is full with nation-states, Israel, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, will continue to exist.
The author is also wrong when he states that the membership of mainstream Jewish organizations does not greatly exceed the membership of dissident Jewish groups, implying that a large part of world Jewry does not support Israel. In fact, the overwhelming majority of world Jews support the existence of Israel as a Jewish nation-state. Some of them disagree with certain policies of Israel, just like some Israelis do, but they support its right to exist.
The author says that some Zionists doubted the existence of a Palestinian people. The fact is that the term "Palestinian Arab people" was not in wide use. The inhabitants of mandatory Palestine considered themselves part of the Arab nation and especially part of Syria. One of the witnesses in front of the Peel Commission said that the term Palestine is a "Zionist term." And indeed several institutions of the Zionist movement in Palestine bore that name. The Palestine Post was the English language Zionist paper. The Anglo-Palestine Bank was the name of the most important financial institution of the Zionist movement.
In fact, the Zionists knew very well that another people lived in Palestine. The sentence "A land without a people for a people without a land" was written by the British Jewish writer, Israel Zangvil. It was NEVER the official position of the Zionist movement. In fact, already in 1923, the prominent Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinski wrote that in the future Jewish state, if the Prime Minister is Jewish, the vice-Premier will be Arab and vice versa. In a poem he wrote one can find the line: "There [in the future state] will be prosperity and happiness for the son of the Arab, the son of the Christian and my son." In his article titled "The Iron Wall" he writes that the Arab people in Palestine, being a normal people, will object the establishment of a Jewish state. That is why the Jews have to be strong enough, so that the Arabs will understand that they have no chance to overrun them militarily.
The author quotes Trotsky who said that every state is founded on force. And he adds: "If Zionism attempted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, it attempted to establish a Jewish monopoly on violence in Palestine." And then he remarks that "there are many states which are democratic, constitutional, respecters of human rights. Why mightn't a Jewish state be like that?" But then he says that there is no state whose protections could not vanish. And then he makes another bizarre assertion: "Canadians or Americans can decide to revoke their constitution and draw up another one, perhaps specifying that all redheads born on Tuesdays should be executed." This is as bizarre as the "right of parents to eat their children." In fact, the Israeli Declaration of Independence clearly states that ALL Israeli citizens, regardless of their gender, religion, or ethnic origin, have equal rights. That is why one can find Arab citizens of Israel in the schools and universities, as teachers and students, in the police, army, and the judiciary, all the way to the Supreme Court. This means that contrary to the author's assertion the "monopoly of violence" is not only Jewish...
The author asks: "Were or were not the Zionists going to accept a state in which, perhaps in matters of life and death, it was possible for the citizens to decide against the Jews?" Now, it would be more than interesting if the author could point to a single state in which the citizens will decide against themselves. Again, one of his more than bizarre statements.
I agree with the author that bi-nationalism was never a real option. Only a miniscule minority of Zionists supported the idea and it had no chance whatsoever of being implemented.
The aim of the Zionist movement was clearly spelled out in the title of Herzl's book, The Jewish State. It is true that most of the political observers were sure that this was just an inaccessible dream. But Zionism proved all of them wrong.
The author writes about the Jewish National Fund. This is one of the best examples of how the worldwide Jewish community contributed to the Zionist idea. The small blue and white saving box of the Fund could be, and still is, found in many Jewish homes all over the world. That is why the land purchased in Palestine was the land of all the Jews. Again, a concept difficult for the author to understand.
The author spends some time on the Biblical and historic claims of the Jews in Palestine. He quotes archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman's book, The Bible Unearthed, to show how unreliable the Bible is. He has to remember the old saying: In archeology the lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. But, most importantly, even a minimalist like Finkelstein does not deny that the Jews became a nation in what later became known as Palestine. In his opinion, there was no conquest from the outside. The Jews apparently evolved from local people. They had kingdoms, they had prophets, they wrote the Bible. What counts is not how big their kingdoms were. What counts is that the Jews originated in Palestine and remained emotionally attached to it through the centuries of dispersal. That is what prompted them to try and resume their independence there. And recent genetic research shows clearly that modern Jews from many different countries are much closer to each other and to Palestinians and Syrians than they are to their non-Jewish neighbors. This indicates that they originated in the Middle East.
Yes, the Greeks ruled over much of Asia Minor, including Turkey. The author says that if the Greeks would claim Turkey they would be considered insane. But the fact is that nobody in Greece has ever claimed Turkey. And the descendants of the ancient Saxons, Danes, Jutes, and Bohemians are not pressing their historical entitlements, precisely because they all lost all connections to those entitlements. But the Jews did not lose their historical memory. That is why when a Jew in Poland builds a new home he will leave a small part of the outer wall unfinished as a reminder of the destroyed Temple. That is why the bridegroom in a Jewish wedding to this day will break a glass; again, a reminder of the destroyed Temple.
The author writes about the Arab uprising of 1936, but says nothing of the Jewish uprising of 1946, when the same Palestinian Jews revolted against the British colonial power. They were able to cause the UN intervention and very possibly the end of the British Mandate.
Also, because Zionism was not a religion-based movement it really does not matter how the ultra-Orthodox Jews felt about it. It is totally irrelevant that some Judaic scholars see Israel's military exploits as blasphemy. The Jewish claim on Palestine is based primarily on national reasons, not religious ones. And this claim is both valid and legitimate.
The author thinks that the Palestinians were justified in rejecting the 1947 UN partition plan, because it would have allowed those terrible Zionists a base from which they would have attacked and taken all of Palestine. This is nothing but supposition, which the author cannot prove. On the other hand, nobody denies that Israel was stronger than Jordan from 1948 to 1967. It could have easily taken the whole of the West Bank. It did not, for the simple reason that Israel was ready to make the Green Line its permanent border had the Arabs accepted the territorial compromise. In 1967, Israel warned King Hussein to stay out of the war. If he had complied, the whole of the West Bank would have still been Jordanian.
Had the Palestinians accepted the UN plan their state would have been 58 years old today.
The only reason they did not was their refusal to accept a Jewish independent state in Palestine regardless of its size. And they did all they could to destroy this state. They failed. Jabotinski was right when he said in 1925 that a strong Jewish army will prevent any effort to destroy the Jewish entity. Now, Egypt and Jordan recognize Israel and some Arab countries have economic relations with Israel. In the Oslo accords, the PLO (representing the Palestinians) accepted the principle of the territorial compromise and recognized the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
I agree with Neumann's opinion on the West Bank and I hope Israel will be able to withdraw (with agreement or unilaterally) from most of the West Bank.
In short, in my opinion, the author's premise that Zionism was illegitimate and that the founding of Israel was an immoral act, is totally wrong. Zionism was, and is, the movement of national liberation of the Jewish people, and ended up being one of the most successful national liberation movements.
I do not think that this is an "elegant intellectual" book as I found its basic premise flawed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Self-determination for the Jewish people should have come much sooner, then we would not have had to suffer the fate my grandfather and my mother's sister did in ww2.
MM]
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/01/bukovina-now-ukraine-romanias.html
Kichael Neumann wrote: The case against Israel.
Now below is
The Case Against The Case Against Israel
Jacob Amir
Book Review
Neumann, Michael: The Case Against Israel, CounterPunch and AK Press, January 2006, ISBN 1-90485-946-1, 220 pages, $16.50 (paperback) [ed.
Dr. Amir wrote a Letter to the Editor following Gilles d'Aymery's review of Prof. Neumann's book and the two of them went on to have an extended exchange on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, published over two months in the Letters to the Editor (we intend to reconcile that exchange in one file to be published on April 24). Aymery sent a pdf copy of the book to Amir, who in turn sent the following review.]
(Swans - April 10, 2006) Here is my impression on Michael Neumann's book.
The author states in the preface that his biases are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. That statement is inaccurate. He thinks that Israel was founded in sin by an illegitimate movement and its foundation was wrong. He may have pro-Jewish bias but he has definitely anti-Israeli bias.
The author spends a lot of time trying to debunk the right of self-determination, calling it "alleged." He writes that Woodrow Wilson made self-determination an inalienable right for disenfranchised people around the world. But in Neumann's opinion: "Neither international approval nor the UN's Charter are sufficient to bring rights into existence." And then he brings a most bizarre comparison stating that if the UN said that people have the right to eat their children, would that make it so? And he adds: "There is no right of self-determination of peoples. The whole idea is a bad one." This outlandish comparison speaks volumes about the substance of this book.
One has the impression that this total denial of the right to self-determination of peoples is there so that the right of the Jewish people to self-determination could be denied. The author writes that "when Zionism began, the Jews had no common language and their traditions were in many cases widely dissimilar" and that "Zionism was a movement that advocated not so much the defense of an ethnic group as the formation of such a group in Palestine." The author could not be more wrong. One can understand the reason for him being wrong. After all, there is not a single case in the whole of recorded history that a people lost its territory, was dispersed all over the world for more than 1900 years, and in spite of that, did not disappear from the world stage. It was able to preserve its historical memory, its religion, its strong emotional attachment to what it calls Eretz Israel (later known as Palestine). That is why on Passover, a Jewish family in Yemen, or in Russia, or in Germany, or in Morocco, would say "Next year in Jerusalem." Without that common historic memory and this attachment to the land, the Zionist movement would not have existed because the Jewish people would not have existed. Zionists did not have to "form" an ethnic group in Palestine. It simply gave the Jewish people the push to strive to reestablish its sovereign nation state in the place of its origin.
The author is unwilling or unable to accept those undeniable historic facts.
I would like to live in a world without borders, without nation-states, without armies and warfare, without crime and prisons. But, as long as the world is full with nation-states, Israel, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, will continue to exist.
The author is also wrong when he states that the membership of mainstream Jewish organizations does not greatly exceed the membership of dissident Jewish groups, implying that a large part of world Jewry does not support Israel. In fact, the overwhelming majority of world Jews support the existence of Israel as a Jewish nation-state. Some of them disagree with certain policies of Israel, just like some Israelis do, but they support its right to exist.
The author says that some Zionists doubted the existence of a Palestinian people. The fact is that the term "Palestinian Arab people" was not in wide use. The inhabitants of mandatory Palestine considered themselves part of the Arab nation and especially part of Syria. One of the witnesses in front of the Peel Commission said that the term Palestine is a "Zionist term." And indeed several institutions of the Zionist movement in Palestine bore that name. The Palestine Post was the English language Zionist paper. The Anglo-Palestine Bank was the name of the most important financial institution of the Zionist movement.
In fact, the Zionists knew very well that another people lived in Palestine. The sentence "A land without a people for a people without a land" was written by the British Jewish writer, Israel Zangvil. It was NEVER the official position of the Zionist movement. In fact, already in 1923, the prominent Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinski wrote that in the future Jewish state, if the Prime Minister is Jewish, the vice-Premier will be Arab and vice versa. In a poem he wrote one can find the line: "There [in the future state] will be prosperity and happiness for the son of the Arab, the son of the Christian and my son." In his article titled "The Iron Wall" he writes that the Arab people in Palestine, being a normal people, will object the establishment of a Jewish state. That is why the Jews have to be strong enough, so that the Arabs will understand that they have no chance to overrun them militarily.
The author quotes Trotsky who said that every state is founded on force. And he adds: "If Zionism attempted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, it attempted to establish a Jewish monopoly on violence in Palestine." And then he remarks that "there are many states which are democratic, constitutional, respecters of human rights. Why mightn't a Jewish state be like that?" But then he says that there is no state whose protections could not vanish. And then he makes another bizarre assertion: "Canadians or Americans can decide to revoke their constitution and draw up another one, perhaps specifying that all redheads born on Tuesdays should be executed." This is as bizarre as the "right of parents to eat their children." In fact, the Israeli Declaration of Independence clearly states that ALL Israeli citizens, regardless of their gender, religion, or ethnic origin, have equal rights. That is why one can find Arab citizens of Israel in the schools and universities, as teachers and students, in the police, army, and the judiciary, all the way to the Supreme Court. This means that contrary to the author's assertion the "monopoly of violence" is not only Jewish...
The author asks: "Were or were not the Zionists going to accept a state in which, perhaps in matters of life and death, it was possible for the citizens to decide against the Jews?" Now, it would be more than interesting if the author could point to a single state in which the citizens will decide against themselves. Again, one of his more than bizarre statements.
I agree with the author that bi-nationalism was never a real option. Only a miniscule minority of Zionists supported the idea and it had no chance whatsoever of being implemented.
The aim of the Zionist movement was clearly spelled out in the title of Herzl's book, The Jewish State. It is true that most of the political observers were sure that this was just an inaccessible dream. But Zionism proved all of them wrong.
The author writes about the Jewish National Fund. This is one of the best examples of how the worldwide Jewish community contributed to the Zionist idea. The small blue and white saving box of the Fund could be, and still is, found in many Jewish homes all over the world. That is why the land purchased in Palestine was the land of all the Jews. Again, a concept difficult for the author to understand.
The author spends some time on the Biblical and historic claims of the Jews in Palestine. He quotes archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman's book, The Bible Unearthed, to show how unreliable the Bible is. He has to remember the old saying: In archeology the lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. But, most importantly, even a minimalist like Finkelstein does not deny that the Jews became a nation in what later became known as Palestine. In his opinion, there was no conquest from the outside. The Jews apparently evolved from local people. They had kingdoms, they had prophets, they wrote the Bible. What counts is not how big their kingdoms were. What counts is that the Jews originated in Palestine and remained emotionally attached to it through the centuries of dispersal. That is what prompted them to try and resume their independence there. And recent genetic research shows clearly that modern Jews from many different countries are much closer to each other and to Palestinians and Syrians than they are to their non-Jewish neighbors. This indicates that they originated in the Middle East.
Yes, the Greeks ruled over much of Asia Minor, including Turkey. The author says that if the Greeks would claim Turkey they would be considered insane. But the fact is that nobody in Greece has ever claimed Turkey. And the descendants of the ancient Saxons, Danes, Jutes, and Bohemians are not pressing their historical entitlements, precisely because they all lost all connections to those entitlements. But the Jews did not lose their historical memory. That is why when a Jew in Poland builds a new home he will leave a small part of the outer wall unfinished as a reminder of the destroyed Temple. That is why the bridegroom in a Jewish wedding to this day will break a glass; again, a reminder of the destroyed Temple.
The author writes about the Arab uprising of 1936, but says nothing of the Jewish uprising of 1946, when the same Palestinian Jews revolted against the British colonial power. They were able to cause the UN intervention and very possibly the end of the British Mandate.
Also, because Zionism was not a religion-based movement it really does not matter how the ultra-Orthodox Jews felt about it. It is totally irrelevant that some Judaic scholars see Israel's military exploits as blasphemy. The Jewish claim on Palestine is based primarily on national reasons, not religious ones. And this claim is both valid and legitimate.
The author thinks that the Palestinians were justified in rejecting the 1947 UN partition plan, because it would have allowed those terrible Zionists a base from which they would have attacked and taken all of Palestine. This is nothing but supposition, which the author cannot prove. On the other hand, nobody denies that Israel was stronger than Jordan from 1948 to 1967. It could have easily taken the whole of the West Bank. It did not, for the simple reason that Israel was ready to make the Green Line its permanent border had the Arabs accepted the territorial compromise. In 1967, Israel warned King Hussein to stay out of the war. If he had complied, the whole of the West Bank would have still been Jordanian.
Had the Palestinians accepted the UN plan their state would have been 58 years old today.
The only reason they did not was their refusal to accept a Jewish independent state in Palestine regardless of its size. And they did all they could to destroy this state. They failed. Jabotinski was right when he said in 1925 that a strong Jewish army will prevent any effort to destroy the Jewish entity. Now, Egypt and Jordan recognize Israel and some Arab countries have economic relations with Israel. In the Oslo accords, the PLO (representing the Palestinians) accepted the principle of the territorial compromise and recognized the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
I agree with Neumann's opinion on the West Bank and I hope Israel will be able to withdraw (with agreement or unilaterally) from most of the West Bank.
In short, in my opinion, the author's premise that Zionism was illegitimate and that the founding of Israel was an immoral act, is totally wrong. Zionism was, and is, the movement of national liberation of the Jewish people, and ended up being one of the most successful national liberation movements.
I do not think that this is an "elegant intellectual" book as I found its basic premise flawed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Self-determination for the Jewish people should have come much sooner, then we would not have had to suffer the fate my grandfather and my mother's sister did in ww2.
MM]
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/01/bukovina-now-ukraine-romanias.html
Monday, April 10, 2006
The Imam is not a Mufti after all!
[Governments would rather deal with one leader of a community than with several leaders or many individuals. Hence the title of "Imam" as the leader of all the Muslims in Australia was given to someone who should have been deported long ago for his antisemitic utterings, were it not for the patronage of one Paul Keating at the time,- in whose electorate most of the Moslem and the Sheikh's devotees reside.
Waleed Aly from Melbourne agrees that this Imam certainly doesn't represent anyone outside his own Mosque!
The Jewish community here is also not represented by one Chief Rabbi,- although they do have one in England and in a few other Countries, plus two in Israel- Ashkenazy and Sephardi. Given the multiplicity of streams of Judaism today,- it would be like having a Catholic Bishop representing all Christians. Who would allow this to happen?!]
Further information received:
"An Imam is like a Rabbi. A Mufti is also an Imam however he has the extra responsibility of leading religious affairs within a major City or a Country. Each major City or country has one Mufti. Eg. Istanbul has a Mufti. The Mufti of Australia does not really exist. The Mufti of Lebanese Muslims in Australia may be considered as Sh Taj Hilaly. But not of Turkish or other. Turkish religious affairs are handled by the Religious Affairs Ministry of Turkey. They have an appointed Imam from Turkey at all Turkish Mosques. In Sydney and regions around Sydney, the Turkish mosques are in Auburn, Redfern, Erskenville, Mt Druitt, Wollongong and Bonnyrigg. All of the Imams are from Turkey and they are changed every 4 or so years. The 5 Imams have a leader who is also an Imam and who reports in to the Turkish Sydney Consulate. That leader may be considered as the Turkish Muslims Mufti in Sydney, however, he really plays a low key role and not one of stardom. That position also rotates every 4 or so years."
Cheers,
Elizabeth
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waleed Aly: No one can be a leader to all Muslims.
The idea of a national mufti is utterly meaningless
10apr06
TO his supporters, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali is a tireless, selfless, charismatic community worker and scholar who gives hope and guidance to disadvantaged youth, and who bravely risked his life to rescue Australian hostage Douglas Wood from the clutches of terrorists in Iraq. To his opponents, he's the shady imam who doesn't speak English and relied on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Tsarist forgery, to construct wild anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world through sodomy. When such an enigma is given the grand sounding title of Mufti of Australia, controversy is inevitable.So there was a monotonous familiarity to speculation surfacing last week of a move by the Muslim Council of NSW to depose him. The council insists this is not its intention and that it supports al-Hilali, but al-Hilali's backers were out in force anyway, placing abusive calls to the council and warning it would be a huge mistake to undermine him.
So, the fervour in Sydney is undeniable. But the view from Victoria of this undignified scenery is utterly bemusing. For all the considerable public attention he has attracted over the years, and for all the unshakable support we are told he has in Lakemba, al-Hilali remains of more interest to tabloid columnists than to Victorian Muslims. All the voices in the debate are from Sydney. The arguments in defence of al-Hilali focus on his following in Sydney. Elsewhere, the conversation evokes little more than a giant, collective yawn.
The reality is that al-Hilali's controversy has more to do with the murky community politics of south-western Sydney than anything else. That might be fair enough if he was the mufti of Bankstown, but this is being played out on a national stage. Sydney is not yet Australia. It is madness that the rest of the nation's Muslims are involuntarily caught up in this mess.
The problem is not so much al-Hilali as it is the office of the Mufti of Australia. Traditionally, the job of a mufti is to be a source of religious guidance to the community on contemporary religious questions. But the reality in Australia, as in all Western countries, is that religious authority is radically decentralised. People tend to find someone local with whom they feel comfortable, or borrow from a range of religious sources to navigate their own path through the spiritual challenges of contemporary life.
No wonder so many Muslims are regularly bewildered by descriptions of al-Hilali as the "spiritual leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims" (as though there is one) or "the nation's most senior Islamic cleric" (as though Islam were a church with a formal hierarchy). In truth, no one in Australia, however brilliant, fits these descriptions. Nor is it possible in a Muslim community as dizzyingly diverse as Australia's. In that context, the idea of a national mufti is utterly meaningless, which is why no other Western country has one.
Perhaps unwittingly, al-Hilali's supporters have admitted as much. Take Keysar Trad, who asserted that even if al-Hilali was deposed, this could not "undermine the sheikh's standing in the community". Or al-Hilali himself, who quipped: "A position does not make a man; a man makes a position." The fact is that no one seeks al-Hilali's guidance because he is called the Mufti of Australia. His support base will remain without the title, and his knockers will continue to malign him with it. The only difference it makes is that it falsely projects that Muslims across Australia have a sole religious representative.
With the position itself being such a nonsense, it should be abolished.
Waleed Aly, a Melbourne lawyer, is an executive member of the Islamic Council of Victoria.
© The Australian
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/03/world-congress-of-imams-and-rabbis-for.html
Waleed Aly from Melbourne agrees that this Imam certainly doesn't represent anyone outside his own Mosque!
The Jewish community here is also not represented by one Chief Rabbi,- although they do have one in England and in a few other Countries, plus two in Israel- Ashkenazy and Sephardi. Given the multiplicity of streams of Judaism today,- it would be like having a Catholic Bishop representing all Christians. Who would allow this to happen?!]
Further information received:
"An Imam is like a Rabbi. A Mufti is also an Imam however he has the extra responsibility of leading religious affairs within a major City or a Country. Each major City or country has one Mufti. Eg. Istanbul has a Mufti. The Mufti of Australia does not really exist. The Mufti of Lebanese Muslims in Australia may be considered as Sh Taj Hilaly. But not of Turkish or other. Turkish religious affairs are handled by the Religious Affairs Ministry of Turkey. They have an appointed Imam from Turkey at all Turkish Mosques. In Sydney and regions around Sydney, the Turkish mosques are in Auburn, Redfern, Erskenville, Mt Druitt, Wollongong and Bonnyrigg. All of the Imams are from Turkey and they are changed every 4 or so years. The 5 Imams have a leader who is also an Imam and who reports in to the Turkish Sydney Consulate. That leader may be considered as the Turkish Muslims Mufti in Sydney, however, he really plays a low key role and not one of stardom. That position also rotates every 4 or so years."
Cheers,
Elizabeth
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waleed Aly: No one can be a leader to all Muslims.
The idea of a national mufti is utterly meaningless
10apr06
TO his supporters, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali is a tireless, selfless, charismatic community worker and scholar who gives hope and guidance to disadvantaged youth, and who bravely risked his life to rescue Australian hostage Douglas Wood from the clutches of terrorists in Iraq. To his opponents, he's the shady imam who doesn't speak English and relied on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Tsarist forgery, to construct wild anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world through sodomy. When such an enigma is given the grand sounding title of Mufti of Australia, controversy is inevitable.So there was a monotonous familiarity to speculation surfacing last week of a move by the Muslim Council of NSW to depose him. The council insists this is not its intention and that it supports al-Hilali, but al-Hilali's backers were out in force anyway, placing abusive calls to the council and warning it would be a huge mistake to undermine him.
So, the fervour in Sydney is undeniable. But the view from Victoria of this undignified scenery is utterly bemusing. For all the considerable public attention he has attracted over the years, and for all the unshakable support we are told he has in Lakemba, al-Hilali remains of more interest to tabloid columnists than to Victorian Muslims. All the voices in the debate are from Sydney. The arguments in defence of al-Hilali focus on his following in Sydney. Elsewhere, the conversation evokes little more than a giant, collective yawn.
The reality is that al-Hilali's controversy has more to do with the murky community politics of south-western Sydney than anything else. That might be fair enough if he was the mufti of Bankstown, but this is being played out on a national stage. Sydney is not yet Australia. It is madness that the rest of the nation's Muslims are involuntarily caught up in this mess.
The problem is not so much al-Hilali as it is the office of the Mufti of Australia. Traditionally, the job of a mufti is to be a source of religious guidance to the community on contemporary religious questions. But the reality in Australia, as in all Western countries, is that religious authority is radically decentralised. People tend to find someone local with whom they feel comfortable, or borrow from a range of religious sources to navigate their own path through the spiritual challenges of contemporary life.
No wonder so many Muslims are regularly bewildered by descriptions of al-Hilali as the "spiritual leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims" (as though there is one) or "the nation's most senior Islamic cleric" (as though Islam were a church with a formal hierarchy). In truth, no one in Australia, however brilliant, fits these descriptions. Nor is it possible in a Muslim community as dizzyingly diverse as Australia's. In that context, the idea of a national mufti is utterly meaningless, which is why no other Western country has one.
Perhaps unwittingly, al-Hilali's supporters have admitted as much. Take Keysar Trad, who asserted that even if al-Hilali was deposed, this could not "undermine the sheikh's standing in the community". Or al-Hilali himself, who quipped: "A position does not make a man; a man makes a position." The fact is that no one seeks al-Hilali's guidance because he is called the Mufti of Australia. His support base will remain without the title, and his knockers will continue to malign him with it. The only difference it makes is that it falsely projects that Muslims across Australia have a sole religious representative.
With the position itself being such a nonsense, it should be abolished.
Waleed Aly, a Melbourne lawyer, is an executive member of the Islamic Council of Victoria.
© The Australian
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/03/world-congress-of-imams-and-rabbis-for.html
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Quotable Quotes!
Quotable Quotes.
The spokesman for the Palestinian government, Gazi Hamad has said that Israel ''is a terrorist state that must disappear and be isolated''. ''We are amazed at Europe's attitude in the face of the increase of violence on the part of Israel'', he added. (Guysen.Isra×›l.News,9/4/06)
Nabil Abu Rudeina, Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman, has said that the PA plans to bring up the issue at the Security Council of the UN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.(WND 9/4/06)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re this quote:
It was published 106 years ago.
It was written by Winston Churchill who became a household name only a long, long time after its origin.
It was impossible for him to even imagine a fraction of the changes in technology or world politics yet to come!
What insightful observation!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WINSTON CHURCHILL ON ISLAM !
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
REF:Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Did anything change much for the "Mohammedans" since then?
Did anything change for Europe,- or is it as he predicted?
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/03/jewsquotable-quotes.html
Friday, April 07, 2006
Pesach in Jewish Australia-on-line.
April 2006
http://www.americancomedynetwork.com/FLASH/matzo_man.htm
The first Pesach seder (the feast and story-telling of the Exodus on Passover eve),- this year is on Wednesday evening April 12.
More than any other Jewish festival or celebration, the Passover seder is celebrated in more locations around the world, and certainly more unusual and exotic ones, than any other.
There are seders in the Himalayas. On American aircraft carriers at sea. In Darwin, in Australia's Northern Territory. In Beijing, Baghdad and Barcelona. And of course, in every nook and cranny of Israel.
Nowadays we take it for granted that the Seder is celebrated openly and proudly all over the former Soviet Union. Yet it was not always so.
What ties all these seder celebrations together is the sense of Jewish peoplehood and connectivity.
This is the same spirit which has guided and motivated the Jewish people through 2 millenia of dispersion from Israel. The last words from the Haggadah which Jews in the diaspora have always read on these first 2 nights are :"next year in Jerusalem". In Israel they celebrate only one night and day as the main holiday,- but altogether we all observe the dietary laws for 8 days. (No bread or bread-products are eaten during the Passover period,- only Matza.)
There are Passover Seder songsheets on Hebrew Songs.com printed out and used widely around the world to enhance this special night.
To view and print Songsheets for the first and second parts of the Seder
(before and after the meal) click here http://www.hebrewsongs.com/pesach.htm
To view our many Passover links on our Jewish Australia Pesach page click here
http://www.jewishaustralia.com/?Page=pesach
From all of us here at Jewish Australia Online,
our best wishes for an enjoyable and meaningful Passover.
(Aura Levin Lipski
Publisher - Jewish Australia Online Network)
The internet home of:
Jewish Australia.com - The gateway to Jewish Australia
http://www.jewishaustralia.com/
Hebrew Songs.com - Your Online Library of Hebrew Songs
http://www.hebrewsongs.com/
Israeli Dances.com - The Global Resource for Israeli Dances
http://www.israelidances.com/
This eNewsletter sponsored by:
Chabad Youth Pesach Family Fun Day
17th April 2006 - Geelong Adventure Park
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/03/details-as-listed-at-end-of-my-blog.html
http://www.americancomedynetwork.com/FLASH/matzo_man.htm
The first Pesach seder (the feast and story-telling of the Exodus on Passover eve),- this year is on Wednesday evening April 12.
More than any other Jewish festival or celebration, the Passover seder is celebrated in more locations around the world, and certainly more unusual and exotic ones, than any other.
There are seders in the Himalayas. On American aircraft carriers at sea. In Darwin, in Australia's Northern Territory. In Beijing, Baghdad and Barcelona. And of course, in every nook and cranny of Israel.
Nowadays we take it for granted that the Seder is celebrated openly and proudly all over the former Soviet Union. Yet it was not always so.
What ties all these seder celebrations together is the sense of Jewish peoplehood and connectivity.
This is the same spirit which has guided and motivated the Jewish people through 2 millenia of dispersion from Israel. The last words from the Haggadah which Jews in the diaspora have always read on these first 2 nights are :"next year in Jerusalem". In Israel they celebrate only one night and day as the main holiday,- but altogether we all observe the dietary laws for 8 days. (No bread or bread-products are eaten during the Passover period,- only Matza.)
There are Passover Seder songsheets on Hebrew Songs.com printed out and used widely around the world to enhance this special night.
To view and print Songsheets for the first and second parts of the Seder
(before and after the meal) click here http://www.hebrewsongs.com/pesach.htm
To view our many Passover links on our Jewish Australia Pesach page click here
http://www.jewishaustralia.com/?Page=pesach
From all of us here at Jewish Australia Online,
our best wishes for an enjoyable and meaningful Passover.
(Aura Levin Lipski
Publisher - Jewish Australia Online Network)
The internet home of:
Jewish Australia.com - The gateway to Jewish Australia
http://www.jewishaustralia.com/
Hebrew Songs.com - Your Online Library of Hebrew Songs
http://www.hebrewsongs.com/
Israeli Dances.com - The Global Resource for Israeli Dances
http://www.israelidances.com/
This eNewsletter sponsored by:
Chabad Youth Pesach Family Fun Day
17th April 2006 - Geelong Adventure Park
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/03/details-as-listed-at-end-of-my-blog.html
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Conflict which no one wins and everyone loses.
How Israel Can Win
by Daniel PipesNew York SunApril 4, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3496
Since I argued in a column last week that Israel can and must defeat the Palestinian Arabs, a barrage of responses have contested this thesis. Some were trivial (Ha'aretz published an article challenging my right to opine on such matters because I do not live in Israel) but most raised serious issues that deserve an answer.
The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu observed that in war, "Let your great object be victory," and he was echoed by the 17th-century Austrian war thinker, Raimondo Montecuccoli. His Prussian successor Clausewitz added that "War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to fulfill our will." These insights remain valid today: Victory consists of imposing one's will on the enemy, which typically means compelling him to give up his war goals. Conflicts usually end with one side's will being crushed.
In theory, that need not be the case. Belligerents can compromise, they can mutually exhaust each other, or they can resolve their differences under the shadow of a greater enemy (as when Britain and France, long seen as "natural and necessary enemies," in 1904 signed the Entente Cordiale, because of their shared worries about Germany.)
Such "no victor, no loser" resolutions are the exception in modern times, however. For example, although Iraq and Iran ended their 1980-88 war in a state of mutual exhaustion, this tie did not resolve their differences. Generally speaking, so long as neither side experiences the agony of defeat – having its hopes dashed, its treasury wasted, and lives extinguished – the possibility of war persists.
One might expect this agony to follow on a crushing battlefield loss, but since 1945 that has usually not been the case. Planes shot down, tanks destroyed, munitions exhausted, soldiers deserting, and land lost are rarely decisive. Consider the multiple Arab losses to Israel during 1948-82, North Korea's loss in 1953, Saddam Hussein's in 1991, and that of Iraqi Sunnis in 2003. In all these cases, battlefield defeat did not translate into despair.
In the ideological environment of recent decades, morale and will matter more. The French gave up in Algeria in 1962, despite out-manning and out-gunning their foes. The same applies to the Americans in Vietnam in 1975 and the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989. The Cold War ended without a fatality.
Applying these insights to Israel's war with the Palestinian Arabs points to several conclusions:
Israel hardly enjoys freedom of action to pursue victory; in particular, it is hemmed in by the wishes of its primary ally, the American government. That is why I, an American analyst, address this issue with the intention of influencing policy in the United States and other Western countries.
Israel should be urged to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost, to influence their psychology.
An aggressive step like "transferring" Palestinian Arabs out of the West Bank would be counterproductive for Israel, prompting greater outrage, increasing the number of enemies, and perpetuating the conflict.
Contrarily, perceptions of Israel's weakness lessen the possibility of Palestinian Arab defeat; thus did Israeli missteps during the Oslo years (1993-2000) and the Gaza withdrawal inspire Palestinian Arab exhilaration and more war.
Israel needs only to defeat the Palestinian Arabs, not the whole Arab or Muslim populations, who eventually will follow the Palestinian Arab lead.
I refrain from suggesting specific steps Israel should take in part because I am not Israeli, and in part because discussing tactics to win is premature before victory is the policy. Suffice to say that the Palestinian Arabs derive immense succor and strength from a worldwide network of support from NGOs, editorialists, academics, and politicians; that the manufactured Palestinian Arab "refugee" problem stands at the dank heart of the conflict, and that the lack of international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital festers. These three issues are clearly priorities.
Ironically, Israeli success in crushing the Palestinian Arab war morale would be the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinian Arabs. It would mean their finally giving up their foul dream of eliminating their neighbor and would offer a chance instead to focus on their own polity, economy, society, and culture. To become a normal people, one whose parents do not encourage their children to become suicide terrorists, Palestinian Arabs need to undergo the crucible of defeat.
To comment on this article, please go to http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3496#commentTo see the Daniel Pipes archive, go to http://www.DanielPipes.org
To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list, go to http://www.DanielPipes.org/subscribe.php
(Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings 2-3 times a week.)
You may freely forward this information, but on condition that you send the text as an integral whole along with complete information about its author, date, and source.
--
by Daniel PipesNew York SunApril 4, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3496
Since I argued in a column last week that Israel can and must defeat the Palestinian Arabs, a barrage of responses have contested this thesis. Some were trivial (Ha'aretz published an article challenging my right to opine on such matters because I do not live in Israel) but most raised serious issues that deserve an answer.
The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu observed that in war, "Let your great object be victory," and he was echoed by the 17th-century Austrian war thinker, Raimondo Montecuccoli. His Prussian successor Clausewitz added that "War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to fulfill our will." These insights remain valid today: Victory consists of imposing one's will on the enemy, which typically means compelling him to give up his war goals. Conflicts usually end with one side's will being crushed.
In theory, that need not be the case. Belligerents can compromise, they can mutually exhaust each other, or they can resolve their differences under the shadow of a greater enemy (as when Britain and France, long seen as "natural and necessary enemies," in 1904 signed the Entente Cordiale, because of their shared worries about Germany.)
Such "no victor, no loser" resolutions are the exception in modern times, however. For example, although Iraq and Iran ended their 1980-88 war in a state of mutual exhaustion, this tie did not resolve their differences. Generally speaking, so long as neither side experiences the agony of defeat – having its hopes dashed, its treasury wasted, and lives extinguished – the possibility of war persists.
One might expect this agony to follow on a crushing battlefield loss, but since 1945 that has usually not been the case. Planes shot down, tanks destroyed, munitions exhausted, soldiers deserting, and land lost are rarely decisive. Consider the multiple Arab losses to Israel during 1948-82, North Korea's loss in 1953, Saddam Hussein's in 1991, and that of Iraqi Sunnis in 2003. In all these cases, battlefield defeat did not translate into despair.
In the ideological environment of recent decades, morale and will matter more. The French gave up in Algeria in 1962, despite out-manning and out-gunning their foes. The same applies to the Americans in Vietnam in 1975 and the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989. The Cold War ended without a fatality.
Applying these insights to Israel's war with the Palestinian Arabs points to several conclusions:
Israel hardly enjoys freedom of action to pursue victory; in particular, it is hemmed in by the wishes of its primary ally, the American government. That is why I, an American analyst, address this issue with the intention of influencing policy in the United States and other Western countries.
Israel should be urged to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost, to influence their psychology.
An aggressive step like "transferring" Palestinian Arabs out of the West Bank would be counterproductive for Israel, prompting greater outrage, increasing the number of enemies, and perpetuating the conflict.
Contrarily, perceptions of Israel's weakness lessen the possibility of Palestinian Arab defeat; thus did Israeli missteps during the Oslo years (1993-2000) and the Gaza withdrawal inspire Palestinian Arab exhilaration and more war.
Israel needs only to defeat the Palestinian Arabs, not the whole Arab or Muslim populations, who eventually will follow the Palestinian Arab lead.
I refrain from suggesting specific steps Israel should take in part because I am not Israeli, and in part because discussing tactics to win is premature before victory is the policy. Suffice to say that the Palestinian Arabs derive immense succor and strength from a worldwide network of support from NGOs, editorialists, academics, and politicians; that the manufactured Palestinian Arab "refugee" problem stands at the dank heart of the conflict, and that the lack of international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital festers. These three issues are clearly priorities.
Ironically, Israeli success in crushing the Palestinian Arab war morale would be the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinian Arabs. It would mean their finally giving up their foul dream of eliminating their neighbor and would offer a chance instead to focus on their own polity, economy, society, and culture. To become a normal people, one whose parents do not encourage their children to become suicide terrorists, Palestinian Arabs need to undergo the crucible of defeat.
To comment on this article, please go to http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3496#commentTo see the Daniel Pipes archive, go to http://www.DanielPipes.org
To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list, go to http://www.DanielPipes.org/subscribe.php
(Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings 2-3 times a week.)
You may freely forward this information, but on condition that you send the text as an integral whole along with complete information about its author, date, and source.
--
Monday, April 03, 2006
The Jewish Lobby?....conspiratorial minds deviate wildly from reality!
THE AUSTRALIAN
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18690293%5E2703,00.html
Realist school's conspiratorial minds deviate wildly from reality
A study on the power of the Jewish Lobby is only good for coffeehouse chatter in the Arab world, writes Martin Peretz
03apr06
THE Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a "faculty research working paper" recently produced for Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government by Stephen Walt, its academic dean, and John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, weighs in at nearly 35,000 words.
But the word "oil" appears in the document exactly seven times - all of them generic or trivial. None of the references relate to the US dependence on foreign crude or to the truly powerful lobby that has worked for many decades to satisfy it through arranging that the producer governments get what they want: mainly protection against radical Muslims and against fuel-efficient cars.
(See the rest at the site.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. Re "the Jewish lobby".
Whether in the USA or in Australia or anywhere else,- according to the Government critics, anything that the Government happens to do or say in defense of Israel, is due to the "Zionist" or "Jewish lobby"? There can be no self interest involved here, nor fair-play, nor plain common sense?
As Martin Peretz debunks the supposed academics who claim that American foreign policy is forged by the "Zionist lobby", he also suggests that we are all,- those of us who are people of good-will and good-sense at least,- part of the pro-Israel "lobby"! We advocate,- but in the end,- Governments do whatever is in their best interests!
The left-leaning media would rather see us in the pockets of the oil-oligarchs of the ME, - or worse!
MM.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18690293%5E2703,00.html
Realist school's conspiratorial minds deviate wildly from reality
A study on the power of the Jewish Lobby is only good for coffeehouse chatter in the Arab world, writes Martin Peretz
03apr06
THE Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a "faculty research working paper" recently produced for Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government by Stephen Walt, its academic dean, and John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, weighs in at nearly 35,000 words.
But the word "oil" appears in the document exactly seven times - all of them generic or trivial. None of the references relate to the US dependence on foreign crude or to the truly powerful lobby that has worked for many decades to satisfy it through arranging that the producer governments get what they want: mainly protection against radical Muslims and against fuel-efficient cars.
(See the rest at the site.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. Re "the Jewish lobby".
Whether in the USA or in Australia or anywhere else,- according to the Government critics, anything that the Government happens to do or say in defense of Israel, is due to the "Zionist" or "Jewish lobby"? There can be no self interest involved here, nor fair-play, nor plain common sense?
As Martin Peretz debunks the supposed academics who claim that American foreign policy is forged by the "Zionist lobby", he also suggests that we are all,- those of us who are people of good-will and good-sense at least,- part of the pro-Israel "lobby"! We advocate,- but in the end,- Governments do whatever is in their best interests!
The left-leaning media would rather see us in the pockets of the oil-oligarchs of the ME, - or worse!
MM.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Anti-Israel and/or Anti-Semitic?
When being anti-Israel is anti-Semitic
by Bernard Pinsky http://students.washington.edu/israeluw/info-anti.html
There has been much discussion and finger pointing about criticism
of Israel, its actions and its policies, and Israel's defenders'
claims that much of the criticism is based on anti-Semitism. Critics
of Israel say they cannot speak out for fear of being labeled anti- Semitic. Defenders of Israel are concerned that anti-Semitism is the
basis for the criticism in many cases. It is therefore important to
know when in fact anti-Israel rhetoric is founded in, results from
or itself creates anti-Semitism.
(See the rest on-line.)
by Bernard Pinsky http://students.washington.edu/israeluw/info-anti.html
There has been much discussion and finger pointing about criticism
of Israel, its actions and its policies, and Israel's defenders'
claims that much of the criticism is based on anti-Semitism. Critics
of Israel say they cannot speak out for fear of being labeled anti- Semitic. Defenders of Israel are concerned that anti-Semitism is the
basis for the criticism in many cases. It is therefore important to
know when in fact anti-Israel rhetoric is founded in, results from
or itself creates anti-Semitism.
(See the rest on-line.)
Saturday, April 01, 2006
REMEMBERING THE SHOA: (Council of Christians and Jews).
REMEMBERING THE SHO'AH
IN ST MARY'S CATHEDRAL
By Cliff Baxter
St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney will be in darkness at
6pm on Thursday April 27 when a solitary voice will
ring out through the gloom:
All the gleaming lights of the heavens
Were extinguished
And darkness spread throughout the land.
Blackness, deep, dark despair
NIGHT, darkest night
This startling moment in a house of worship will unite
Jews and Christians in an historic, solemn, mutual remembrance of last century's Holocaust or Sho'ah which offered the greatest challenge either of the two great faiths ever encountered.
The narrator will exclaim:
Judaism and Christianity do not merely tell
Of God's love for humanity.
They stand or fall on their fundamental claim
That the human being is of ultimate and absolute
value.
The Sho'ah poses the most radical counter-testimony
To both Judaism and Christianity.
No statement, theological or otherwise,
Should be made that would not be credible
In the presence of burning children.
Christians and Jews have worked together on the April
27 liturgy, sponsored by the NSW Council of
Christians and Jews.
A Hebrew term for catastrophe, Sho'ah refers to the
systematic, deliberate murder of nearly six million
Jews by the Nazis.
Many prefer this term to Holocaust, because the latter originally referred to the most sacred of sacrifices in biblical Israel.
Some might ask, why rake over the dreadful coals of
the concentration camp ovens? Why not just heal and
forget?
We know that anti-Semitism, mosque and synagogue
defacement and destruction, interfaith rivalry,
racialism, militarism, stereotyping, scapegoating,
official and unofficial terrorism are on the rise. Who
is safe?
Power, Force and Greed are loose on our threatened
planet.
One cannot watch the TV headlines without flinching
over the deaths on the streets of Baghdad, Jerusalem,
the West Bank or any city or village in so many
places.
Arabs, Jews, Christians, indeed all peoples, crave
peace and yet are denied the right to live their lives
without threat. The merchants of death are in full
swing as much as in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
We cannot run away from dark forces, or say with fools
or manipulators 'the Holocaust did not happen', which
would be just as ridiculous as claiming more than a
million and a half Armenians were not done to death in
Turkey in 1918, or Rwanda atrocities did not happen.
Racial killings are continuing in our own time. Pick
up your daily newspaper and look!
For the Christian, it is essential to face up to two
thousand years of persecution of the Jews,
culminating in the horror of the Sho'ah.
We need to remind ourselves of the words of the 1965
decree from the Second Vatican Council, 'Our Time',
(Nostra Aetate):
Even though the Jewish authorities and those who
followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ,
neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor
Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed
during his passion.
Much work needs to be done to cleanse the minds of all Christians from the notions that the Jews have
suffered down the ages because they are guilty of
deicide calling out 'Let his blood be upon us and upon
our children.' Such notions persist, and they made the
Sho'ah so much easier for the Nazis to perpetrate
their crimes in the name of racial purity and
patriotism with popular support , including that of churchgoers.
The shadow of the Sho'ah falls still on all of us down
the corridors of history. We need to move into the
Light.
We also need to rid our minds of any idea that
Christianity has made Judaism redundant, that they
lost their Covenant because of their refusal to hail
Christ. From ancient Israel to our own day, Jews have
lived in covenant as well.
This is seen in the circumcision of Abraham and his
offspring, the kingship of David, the gift of the
Torah at Sinai, and the appearance of the rainbow in
the heavens. Israel's prophets proclaimed God's
faithful intent to establish a new covenant with the
people, a 'living covenant written on their hearts'
(Jer.31:33) even embodied in a 'new heart'
(Ezek.36:26).
This would not supersede the existing covenant, but in continuity would renew and extend Israel's hope and confidence in God's loving commitment.
For those of us who live in the new covenant
established by God in Jesus Christ we need to
recognize that we are joined in continuity to those
who have already been made God's people in the
covenant of Sinai, and recognize that covenant, old
and new, is a gift that is 'irrevocable' (Rom.9:4,
11:29),
Do I hear you say, that Jews and Christians are
'different' and ask how that all of this relates to
the Sho'ah celebrations in the Cathedral? What
positive things can we reflect upon?
We need to realize that an understanding of Jesus is indispensable for those who wish to comprehend the relation of Christianity to Judaism and the Jewish people. In spite of the fact that a movement emerged from him that later and gradually separated from Judaism, Jesus himself lived and died as a faithful Jew. In the century previous to ours the Nazis would have hunted him down and put him into a gas chamber. He would have had to arise like a phoenix from ashes.
Great attempts have been made to 'de-Jew-ify' Jesus by
false portrayals that his teachings opposed Jewish
teachings, that he opposed the Torah and that his
death was due to Jewish opposition.
The April 27 service in the darkened Cathedral will be
an occasion for great reflection by both Jew and
Christian, for as the narrator will proclaim, while a
solitary viola plays:
We are gathered here to express our deep remorse
At the vile atrocities of the Shoah,
The darkest stage of human history
The allowing of the utter annihilation that swept away
six million Jews
And five million others,
That made unwanted human beings vanish.
Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped,
the imperfect.
The Holocaust of innocent victims
The coming of stifling, asphyxiating darkness
The falling down into a bottomless pit of
Destruction, of hatred -
The attempt to wipe out a whole people from the face
of the earth
The Jews
Who gave so much to humanity.
The service , although its focus is upon the darkness
of the gas chambers, will also recall how another
darkness dissolved when God said 'Let there be
light' (Gen 1:3) and then made humankind in his own
image.
The gathering will be reminded how human beings have
corroded the divine image and murdered in the name of
religion, that six million Jewish images of God were
wiped out by the deliberate miscasting of others. It
will also reflect on an earth soaked with the tears of
the innocent, and the fact that if Jews can be
consigned to such horror no Christian is safe. Nor
Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, or Hindu. No one is safe.
Six candles will be lighted on the Cathedral's high
altar.
Each represents one million lives lost.
Those present will commit themselves 'to
responsibility for one another, that together we may
build a world that has no room for hatred or revenge.
But only love and respect for the other.'
As I read those words from the program of the coming
service I must include in my prayers the beleaguered Palestinian people and the anxious Jewish settlers on the West Bank. How can we free both from the threat of the soldier's bullet, the helicopter gunship, or the suicide bomber?
Those who attend the service will be reminded of our
'one-ness' with God as the Shema is recited in the
Cathedral.
The Shema, proclaiming the oneness of God, said at
daybreak and at fall of night has been on the lips
of Jews for thousands of years. These words came to be
the last words recited by many going to their death .
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One: and
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul and with all your might. And
these words which I command you this day shall be upon
your heart: and you shall teach them diligently to
your children and you shall talk of them when you sit
in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when
you lie down, and when you rise up (Deut 6: 4-7).
Cliff Baxter is a journalist, adult educator and a
member of the NSW Council of Christians and Jews.
Marianne Dacy (NDS), 2 Devine St, Erskineville 2043 Tel: 61 2 9557 2752 (h);
61 2 9351 4162 (W)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Yahoo!7
Messenger: Make free PC-to-PC calls to your friends overseas.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
IN ST MARY'S CATHEDRAL
By Cliff Baxter
St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney will be in darkness at
6pm on Thursday April 27 when a solitary voice will
ring out through the gloom:
All the gleaming lights of the heavens
Were extinguished
And darkness spread throughout the land.
Blackness, deep, dark despair
NIGHT, darkest night
This startling moment in a house of worship will unite
Jews and Christians in an historic, solemn, mutual remembrance of last century's Holocaust or Sho'ah which offered the greatest challenge either of the two great faiths ever encountered.
The narrator will exclaim:
Judaism and Christianity do not merely tell
Of God's love for humanity.
They stand or fall on their fundamental claim
That the human being is of ultimate and absolute
value.
The Sho'ah poses the most radical counter-testimony
To both Judaism and Christianity.
No statement, theological or otherwise,
Should be made that would not be credible
In the presence of burning children.
Christians and Jews have worked together on the April
27 liturgy, sponsored by the NSW Council of
Christians and Jews.
A Hebrew term for catastrophe, Sho'ah refers to the
systematic, deliberate murder of nearly six million
Jews by the Nazis.
Many prefer this term to Holocaust, because the latter originally referred to the most sacred of sacrifices in biblical Israel.
Some might ask, why rake over the dreadful coals of
the concentration camp ovens? Why not just heal and
forget?
We know that anti-Semitism, mosque and synagogue
defacement and destruction, interfaith rivalry,
racialism, militarism, stereotyping, scapegoating,
official and unofficial terrorism are on the rise. Who
is safe?
Power, Force and Greed are loose on our threatened
planet.
One cannot watch the TV headlines without flinching
over the deaths on the streets of Baghdad, Jerusalem,
the West Bank or any city or village in so many
places.
Arabs, Jews, Christians, indeed all peoples, crave
peace and yet are denied the right to live their lives
without threat. The merchants of death are in full
swing as much as in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
We cannot run away from dark forces, or say with fools
or manipulators 'the Holocaust did not happen', which
would be just as ridiculous as claiming more than a
million and a half Armenians were not done to death in
Turkey in 1918, or Rwanda atrocities did not happen.
Racial killings are continuing in our own time. Pick
up your daily newspaper and look!
For the Christian, it is essential to face up to two
thousand years of persecution of the Jews,
culminating in the horror of the Sho'ah.
We need to remind ourselves of the words of the 1965
decree from the Second Vatican Council, 'Our Time',
(Nostra Aetate):
Even though the Jewish authorities and those who
followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ,
neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor
Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed
during his passion.
Much work needs to be done to cleanse the minds of all Christians from the notions that the Jews have
suffered down the ages because they are guilty of
deicide calling out 'Let his blood be upon us and upon
our children.' Such notions persist, and they made the
Sho'ah so much easier for the Nazis to perpetrate
their crimes in the name of racial purity and
patriotism with popular support , including that of churchgoers.
The shadow of the Sho'ah falls still on all of us down
the corridors of history. We need to move into the
Light.
We also need to rid our minds of any idea that
Christianity has made Judaism redundant, that they
lost their Covenant because of their refusal to hail
Christ. From ancient Israel to our own day, Jews have
lived in covenant as well.
This is seen in the circumcision of Abraham and his
offspring, the kingship of David, the gift of the
Torah at Sinai, and the appearance of the rainbow in
the heavens. Israel's prophets proclaimed God's
faithful intent to establish a new covenant with the
people, a 'living covenant written on their hearts'
(Jer.31:33) even embodied in a 'new heart'
(Ezek.36:26).
This would not supersede the existing covenant, but in continuity would renew and extend Israel's hope and confidence in God's loving commitment.
For those of us who live in the new covenant
established by God in Jesus Christ we need to
recognize that we are joined in continuity to those
who have already been made God's people in the
covenant of Sinai, and recognize that covenant, old
and new, is a gift that is 'irrevocable' (Rom.9:4,
11:29),
Do I hear you say, that Jews and Christians are
'different' and ask how that all of this relates to
the Sho'ah celebrations in the Cathedral? What
positive things can we reflect upon?
We need to realize that an understanding of Jesus is indispensable for those who wish to comprehend the relation of Christianity to Judaism and the Jewish people. In spite of the fact that a movement emerged from him that later and gradually separated from Judaism, Jesus himself lived and died as a faithful Jew. In the century previous to ours the Nazis would have hunted him down and put him into a gas chamber. He would have had to arise like a phoenix from ashes.
Great attempts have been made to 'de-Jew-ify' Jesus by
false portrayals that his teachings opposed Jewish
teachings, that he opposed the Torah and that his
death was due to Jewish opposition.
The April 27 service in the darkened Cathedral will be
an occasion for great reflection by both Jew and
Christian, for as the narrator will proclaim, while a
solitary viola plays:
We are gathered here to express our deep remorse
At the vile atrocities of the Shoah,
The darkest stage of human history
The allowing of the utter annihilation that swept away
six million Jews
And five million others,
That made unwanted human beings vanish.
Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped,
the imperfect.
The Holocaust of innocent victims
The coming of stifling, asphyxiating darkness
The falling down into a bottomless pit of
Destruction, of hatred -
The attempt to wipe out a whole people from the face
of the earth
The Jews
Who gave so much to humanity.
The service , although its focus is upon the darkness
of the gas chambers, will also recall how another
darkness dissolved when God said 'Let there be
light' (Gen 1:3) and then made humankind in his own
image.
The gathering will be reminded how human beings have
corroded the divine image and murdered in the name of
religion, that six million Jewish images of God were
wiped out by the deliberate miscasting of others. It
will also reflect on an earth soaked with the tears of
the innocent, and the fact that if Jews can be
consigned to such horror no Christian is safe. Nor
Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, or Hindu. No one is safe.
Six candles will be lighted on the Cathedral's high
altar.
Each represents one million lives lost.
Those present will commit themselves 'to
responsibility for one another, that together we may
build a world that has no room for hatred or revenge.
But only love and respect for the other.'
As I read those words from the program of the coming
service I must include in my prayers the beleaguered Palestinian people and the anxious Jewish settlers on the West Bank. How can we free both from the threat of the soldier's bullet, the helicopter gunship, or the suicide bomber?
Those who attend the service will be reminded of our
'one-ness' with God as the Shema is recited in the
Cathedral.
The Shema, proclaiming the oneness of God, said at
daybreak and at fall of night has been on the lips
of Jews for thousands of years. These words came to be
the last words recited by many going to their death .
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One: and
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul and with all your might. And
these words which I command you this day shall be upon
your heart: and you shall teach them diligently to
your children and you shall talk of them when you sit
in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when
you lie down, and when you rise up (Deut 6: 4-7).
Cliff Baxter is a journalist, adult educator and a
member of the NSW Council of Christians and Jews.
Marianne Dacy (NDS), 2 Devine St, Erskineville 2043 Tel: 61 2 9557 2752 (h);
61 2 9351 4162 (W)
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