Ilana Diamond's complaint about Israel advocacy on campus is common to many of us. Progressive and Middle of the Road Zionist groups are conspicuous by their absence. Surely a large group like Arza should have some campus presence in the fight for Israeli legitimacy? Ilana writes:
It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today's college campuses it seems that that's what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.
Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.
Indeed, it is sad that what "works" among these "budding intellectuals" is blood, gore and sensation, "personal messages" and the like, rather than facts and rational argument. The cult of Rachel Corrie and Yasser Arafat is a much more effective advocacy tool than a dozen boring tracts about international law.
Many people put much faith into average college students, assuming that they are curious enough to explore every facet of information given them. But people who think this of college students are severely misguided.
The majority of college students are looking for something to believe in. So when pro-Palestinian on-campus groups wave around posters with pictures of "mutilated" Palestinian children, it's easy for students to fall into the "Israel is the aggressor" trap.
This is a widespread problem on numerous college campuses - not only in the United States, but Canada and European countries as well.
On the University of Texas at Austin campus, where I am a student, it's a daily problem. There are some five pro-Palestinian student groups currently active on campus. Guess how many pro-Israel student-run groups there are. One.
Well, maybe two. There is also the Union of Progressive Zionism, but I am not yet convinced that their main battle won't be fighting the "occupation."
Meanwhile, one could say there are about seven institutionalized forces working against Israel on the UT campus.
This year alone, these groups have brought in speakers such as John Mearsheimer, author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book denouncing AIPAC; Alison Weir, journalist and the founder of If Americans Knew, a group that argues the US is sending too much money to Israel and that the Palestinian plight is underrepresented in American media; Neturei Karta Rabbi Dovid Weiss, who attended Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference and is a member of Jews United Against Zionism; and Anna Baltzer, a pro-Palestinian American Jew.
Needless to say, the Palestinian sympathizers at UT know how to make their events look credible, and the events are usually well attended. This is the part where putting too much faith in college students starts to go wrong.
STUDENTS ATTEND these lectures and hear how AIPAC is supposedly wasting taxpayer's money, how Israel is supposedly brutalizing and killing innocent Palestinian children, and so on. The organizers of these events know these issues are compelling, and that any Joe-shmoe is going to sympathize with their cause.
The average college student attending is likely to be hearing about the Arab-Israel conflict for the first time, and can end up believing that what they've just learned is the whole story, thus creating a large problem for pro-Israel activists.
It is especially undermining when some of these anti-Israel speakers are of Jewish heritage. Students interpret that to mean that if a Jew doesn't like Israel, then Israel must be really bad - so it's ok if I don't like Israel either.
In fact it is not uncommon to see scattered clueless middle-class kids schlepping to class with a keffiyeh around their neck because they sympathize with Palestine and believe they are wearing a "freedom scarf," as is called by the clothing store Urban Outfitters.
To combat anti-Zionism on campus, TFI (Texans for Israel) has brought in speakers such as Middle East expert and former Jerusalem Post editor David Makovsky, Nonie Darwish, the Muslim-born Christian who founded Arabs for Israel, and David Brog, the founder of Christians United for Israel.
However when speakers like these appear, Palestinian sympathizers come and make accusations against them. A member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee got up to ask Nonie Darwish a "question" which began: "You can't be serious. You are not a serious speaker. What are you trying to accomplish by speaking to a bunch of white American Jews?"
Nor can these relatively few speakers compete with the onslaught of weekly posters put up around campus with pictures of bloodied Palestinian children, body bags, and misquoted statements from Israeli officials seeming to suggest that Palestinians are asking for it. For some reason - perhaps the way the media covers the conflict - many college students seem to be more skeptical of pro-Israel speakers than anti-Israel ones.
SO FAR TFI has taken a non-confrontational stance when addressing the gory posters and signs claiming "Zionism equals racism." The Palestine Solidarity Committee even protested at an Israeli cultural event that had nothing to do with politics - proving that it is not aiming for peace or even dialogue.
However in response to the recent "Apartheid Week" (that actually went on for two weeks) and the Campus Anti-War Movement to End the Occupation which displays posters with cartoons comparing Gaza to Auschwitz, TFI is stepping up our game, and preparing exhibits on the current situation in Sderot, minus the overwhelming gore.
It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today's college campuses it seems that that's what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.
Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.
But is it right for pro-Israel groups to capture attention by exhibiting photos of suicide bombing victims? Or life under continuous rocket attack?
Israel prides itself on being able to quickly pick up the pieces and move on. By stooping to the level of showing bombed-out homes, are pro-Israel groups helping or hurting the country? I am not sure.
Luckily the semester is almost over, and we will have a whole summer to gear up for another 10-month-long war of words and rethink the tactics we are using.
The writer is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin studying journalism and Middle Eastern studies. She was a Jerusalem Post intern last year.
"..where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?"
Disappearance of Bishop Tutu
By Simon Deng Friday November 16, 2007 Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston's Old South Church at a conference on "Israel Apartheid." Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.
The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools, and get the best medical care in the world. I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu's South Africa.
I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than Apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders. Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.
Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people "humiliating" your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.
Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that inconvenience than about Jewish lives?
Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela's freedom, we Africans all over Africa joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.
Today, black children are enslaved in Sudan, the last place in the continent of Africa where humans are owned by other humans. I was part of the movement to stop slavery in Mauritania, which just now abolished the practice. But you were not with us, Bishop Tutu.
So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?
Simon Deng, a native of the Shiluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, is an escaped jihad slave and a leading human rights activist.
In The Nation, Larry Cohler-Esses attacks what he calls "The New McCarthyism," which he describes as attempts by pro-Israel groups to discredit faculty with unfavorable opinions of Israel. As examples, he cites the case of Norman Finkelstein, who did not get tenure at DePaul university. It is a fact that Finkelstein has very shaky ideas about the Holocaust, and attacked Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel" on specious grounds. Be that as it may, there is a sufficient stock of anti-Israel academic figures in every university, whose bids for tenure do not seem to have been hurt by their political views, whether they are factual or not.
The centerpiece of Cohler-Esses' attack is the movement to deny tenure to Nadia abu al - Haj. Paula Stern, who initiated the petition against Nadia abu al-Haj, replies below to an article by Cohler-Esses in Jewish Week, that made identical charges, and was apparently recycled for The Nation.
Ami Isseroff
Editor with a Hatchet: Larry Cohler-Esses
By: Paula R. Stern October, 2007
Larry Cohler-Esses is a man on a mission. He's an editor with a hatchet, ready to wield it in the noble cause of "gotcha" journalism. Of course, he refuses to focus on the little details, like the voices of experts on the very subject on which he writes nothing about his inability to focus on the forest when the tree beckons. During a recent interview, so fascinated with one petition, Cohler-Esses managed to miss the forest: that Barnard College is about to give tenure to a professor who has written a wholly inferior and highly political book which fails completely when measured against the scales of truth, integrity, academic honesty and simple facts.
Like many newspapers, the Jewish Week was interested in a story about the tenure decision of Barnard professor Nadia Abu El Haj. I became aware of the ongoing controversy more than a year ago and read her book to see if it could possibly be as inaccurate and filled with anti-Israel propaganda as the experts claimed. A quick read suggests this is true; a more in-depth study confirms it. At the time (a year ago), I made notes, highlighted sections, and decided to do what I could to make certain that Barnard and Columbia did not give tenure to a professor who is more of a propagandist than a qualified scholar.
I wrote to the Barnard administration and contacted other Barnard graduates. Barnard doesn't want their alumnae to mess with the process; we are there for giving donations only, it seems. When the administration was unresponsive, I started an online petition. I was in a hurry, after all, the decision was to be soon and Barnard was refusing to give any details of the time schedule (plus I have a business to run, a daughter was getting married, a son was going into the army, three other children needed my attention, etc.). I did a quick review of my notes, wrote up a petition, and posted it.
I asked dozens of people to sign it. I later noticed a couple of minor errors in my text. Little things like El Haj is virtually ignorant of the Hebrew language instead of completely ignorant. That her reference to one specific dig was wrong, but named a different dig instead. These minor corrections should have been made, but once a petition is posted at petitiononline.com, no corrections to the text are possible.
Historians James Davila and Ralph Harrington concur that the petition was correct in its criticism of El Haj, except that : "I doubt that it is accurate to say that Abu El-Haj did not know Hebrew when she wrote the book. But in it she does make elementary errors that someone with a decent knowledge of the language would not have made, which raises the question whether she knew it well enough to pull off the ambitious project she undertakes in the book."
Several journalists have contacted me and interviewed me. Each focused on the forest - the Barnard tenure decision. Cohler-Esses called me moments before the Jewish Sabbat was to begin and we agreed he would call me back after the Sabbath ended in New York - that meant having a discussion at 12:30 a.m. in Israel. I asked that he speak to the experts on the subject for a detailed analysis of her work, but welcomed him to speak to me about my efforts. Little did I know that Cohler-Esses is a tree-man and likely wouldn't see a forest, even from way up high in the sky. The real question one must ask, is not why the petition is 100% accurate or not, but why Abu El Haj's book isn't accurate. And, of course, why attack-journalist Cohler-Esses devoted his time to seeking tiny criticisms in my petition instead of noting that Barnard is considering giving tenure to Abu El Haj on the basis of a single book that is riddled with serious errors of fact and of methodology.
The petition continued to grow, gaining more than 2,500 supporters, many of whom are Barnard and Columbia graduates. It's a fine showing, a clear message to Columbia University that its graduates are against this latest attempt to add yet another documented Israel hater to its ranks.
During this whole process, I've acted as an archive, posting many articles written by experts on the subject of El Haj's past and current research. It was on the basis of these articles, and not my opinion, that I asked concerned Barnard and Columbia graduates to make a decision. I asked the same of many reporters who contacted me. Most understood that the petition was an expression of concern and condemnation. Only Larry Cohler-Esses gave it the holiness one would normally equate with the Bible. Each word, he studied more than he probably has ever bothered to study the Torah.
Cohler-Esses' mission can best be summed up in his own pre-determined prejudice, "This is the modus operandi of the New McCarthyism. It targets a new enemy for our era: Muslims, Arabs and others in the Middle East field who are identified as stepping over an unstated line in criticizing Israel, as radical Islamists, as just plain radical or as in some way sympathetic to terrorists."
In other words, Cohler-Esses was the most dangerous of hatchet editors a man with a preconceived conclusion and the power to wield it. Sadly, he wasn't honest enough to make his opinions known, but hid behind innocuous questions and then minimized El Haj's 281-page manifesto as merely "criticizing Israel."
Rather than attack Cohler-Esses (as a response to his attack on me), this reporter will focus on the "facts" he raised and the answers he should have provided:
The four statements about her book that Cohler-Esses claims are false are that Abu El Haj:
claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication,"
denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews,
does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise,
is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.
Let's take these statements point-by-point and demonstrate how wrong Cohler-Esses is:
Nadia Abu El Haj claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."
I stand by this statement. El Haj does indeed claim that the story of ancient Israel is a "pure political fabrication." Here is a link to an essay that shows Cohler-Hess was incorrect, despite his almost desperate attempt to find some other meaning in El Haj's words. http://blog.greycat.org/2007/10/23/nadia-abu-el-haj-and-pure-political-fabrication/
Both these scholars agree that El Haj's characteristically convoluted language does not mask her true intent to say that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."
Nadia Abu El Haj denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews.
What Abu El Haj actually says is that that Jerusalem in the times of Jesus was not Jewish. "...for most of its history, including the Herodian period, Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one integrated into larger empires and inhabited, primarily, by 'other' communities." pp 175-6. El Haj is simply wrong, and pretty much everyone except El Haj (and maybe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) knows it. To claim Jerusalem, whose very name is an Anglicized version of its Hebrew name, as anything but the Jewish city it has always been recognized to be, is a mockery of history, revisionism most insidious.
El Haj then makes herself ridiculous by asserting, with regard to the fires that destroyed a particular site in ancient Jerusalem, that there are "several alternative but equally plausible accounts." Some two thousand years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Nadia Abu El Haj has set herself as the defender of Rome. It is her goal to acquit the ancient Roman Empire and to do so, she must find a culprit. Since there were but Jews and Romans present at the time, she is limited in her choices. Limited but not defeated, she makes her wild and undocumented suggestion, nonetheless, by suggesting that "some of the evidence could just as convincingly be read as evidence of a class or sectarian conflict within Jewish Society " pp 145
Here is yet another essay showing how El Haj got this wrong. http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2007/05/nadia-aby-el-haj-and-use-of-evidence.html. Cohler-Esses continues his attack on the petition by focusing on the exact wording while missing the main point that El Haj did, in fact, attempt to shift blame for the burning of Jerusalem to the Jews. That she did this for only a section of Jerusalem and not the entire city, as one might interpret from the petition, means nothing to Cohler-Esses. He can take the petition word for word, but cannot manage to do the same with El Haj's book - again, because that might disagree with his own intention.
Two points down, and one can begin to see a pattern to Cohler-Esses writing, but let's continue.
Nadia Abu El Hajdoes not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise.
Here one must concede, again, that the petition is correct in its conclusion, but with the added explanation that it seems that El Haj knows some Hebrew, just not enough to read and write intelligently on her chosen topic.
As I wrote on my site, "Any Israeli reading the book will quickly see that the numerous mistakes she makes are a clear indication...this woman is as uncertain and unskilled in her Hebrew skills as she is in her research, her documentation, her ability to draw logical and intelligent conclusions based on real facts on the ground." See http://www.paulasays.com/articles/nadia_el_haj/does_nadia_abu_el_haj_know_hebrew.html
When I tried to admit that the petition was correct in its essense, if not phrased as best as could be expected, one can almost hear the glee in Cohler-Esses pathetic attempt to misplace this "admission" to devalue the entire petition. But luckily, the only thing devalued in this process is the integrity of Cohler-Esses and any newspaper that would print his article without further investigation.
Nadia Abu El Haj is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.
Abu El Haj's ignorance of archaeology is monumental. As I mentioned previously, if Cohler-Esses wanted a professional discussion of all facets of El Haj's work, he should have spoken to the experts and he should have conducted a professional interview, not one with someone at 12:30 a.m. who is sitting in her bed wanting to go to sleep, or someone who was not informed that her notes and a copy of the book would be required to answer his questions. Cohler-Esses did a hatchet job because he wasn't interested in truth or the facts on Abu El Haj, but because he wanted to put forth his conspiracy theory of a new McCarthyism sweeping American colleges. Do not take my opinion on this.
As I asked Cohler-Esses to do, those who wish to be informed, should read the opinions of leading scholars, including these:
The academic boycott of Israel proposal that had achieved so much notoriety, was squelched Friday when the UK University and College Union (UCU) announced, after seeking legal advice, that a boycott would be unlawful and could not be implemented. This episode should make Israel boycott opponents think really hard about their strategy in the future, and gain a better understanding of the reasoning behind the Boycott Israel campaigns.
A union resolution last May had called for discussion about the boycott in union branches, but curiously, nobody checked if the proposal was legal. After finally getting legal advice, the union's strategy and finance committee unanimously adopted the recommendation of UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt that the union should immediately inform branches and members that a boycott call would be unlawful and cannot be implemented.
The legal advice given to the union stated that: "...It would be beyond the union's powers and unlawful for the union, directly or indirectly, to call for, or to implement, a boycott by the union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and other academic institutions; and ... the use of union funds directly or indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful."
The advice further warned that "to ensure that the union acts lawfully, meetings should not be used to ascertain the level of support for such a boycott."
So what is the point? The point is that it would have been no problem to investigate the legal aspects of the boycott before the vote, especially since the UCU motion was based on previous motions. UCU was the product of a merger of two unions. The Association of University Teachers (AUT) had passed a boycott motion and then reversed it, and then the NATFHE (National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education) voted to Boycott Israel. They went even further and voted to support the nice Hamas.
In a better world, it would not occur to academics to support a group of reactionary gangsters like Hamas, or to delude themselves that such support represented a "progressive" cause, or to boycott the universities of a country because they disagree with the political policies of that country. Legal coercion would not be necessary. But we don't live in a better world, we live in this one.
In all the time that has passed since the boycotts were first proposed, it would have been no problem at all to check the legal implications of such decisions, but nobody did it it. Either that, or they had checked and didn't care. The point of the boycott resolutions is not in the actual results they might or might not obtain, but in the great stir and discussion they cause, putting the spotlight on Israel. A good part of this publicity is due to well meaning supporters of Israel. In effect, tiny groups of fanatics are able to use these boycott calls to leverage on the substantial resources of supporters of Israel and ordinary decent union members in order to bring their odious ideas to the attention of the public and lend them the air of legitimacy that comes with notoriety.
And so, I ask again - "Are we victims of the Israel boycott con? "
The chairman of Egypt's Actors' Union said Thursday that the group planned to investigate one of the country's brightest young movie stars for appearing in an upcoming miniseries with an Israeli actor.
The controversy began when the group discovered that Amr Waked, who starred in the Hollywood film Syriana, was in Tunisia filming a four part series on Saddam Hussein's life opposite Yigal Naor, an Israeli of Iraqi descent.
"We found out Amr Waked was participating in a movie with an Israeli artist and so when he returns from abroad he will be investigated," union chairman Ashraf Zaki said. "The Actors' Union here is against normalization with Israel."
Media and artistic circles in Egypt remain deeply opposed to improving cultural relations with Israel even though the country is one of only two Arab nations that has made peace with Israel.
Nearly a dozen articles have appeared over the past week condemning Waked for participating in the series, titled Between Two Rivers and backed by the British Broadcasting Corporation and Home Box Office.
"Who will hold Amr Waked accountable?" read a headline Monday in Egypt's opposition daily el-Wafd.
Zaki said Waked would be questioned by a committee made up of two members of the union's board and a senior judge from the country's Administrative Court.
Waked declined to comment on the upcoming investigation, but in earlier interviews with Egyptian media, the actor said he did not know the nationalities of every person involved in the project.
The Egyptian actor also indicated he has no intention of leaving the series, in which he plays the role of Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who defected from Iraq to Jordan but eventually returned and was executed.
Naor, who played a Palestinian character in Steven Spielberg's film Munich, stars as Saddam in the series. Many in the Egyptian press found it disturbing that an Israeli was playing the former Iraqi leader, who is still lionized by many Arab nationalists.
Though Egypt was the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, professional and artistic associations have resisted opening up to Israel, citing the continued occupation of Palestinian lands.
Anti-Israeli sentiment flared in the country during the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, much of it led by left wing academics and artists who have long been Israel's fiercest critics in Egypt.
"The [film] industry is in general very left wing and stays away from normalization as a whole," said Richard Woffenden, the former cultural editor of the local Cairo Times weekly.
Woffenden, who hailed Waked's emergence onto the Egyptian film scene in 2001 as part of a new generation of Egyptian actors, noted that he was one of the few Egyptians in recent years to surmount the language barrier and cross over to Western films.
Egyptian actor Khaled el-Nabawy appeared briefly in Ridley Scott's crusader movie Kingdom of Heaven - for which he was also criticized by the Egyptian media.
The investigation could have serious ramifications for Waked's career in Egypt, where the majority of his films are still made.
When Egyptian actress Sawsan Badr appeared in the 1980 film Death of a Princess about Saudi Arabia, it caused a furor for allegedly being anti-Arab, and it was years before she appeared again in an Egyptian film.
Hamas speaks. What part is a lie and what part is true? Consider this:
No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month. Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day.
This guy has to be kidding. There are no Jews in Nablus, though there once were. But about four decades before the Balfour declaration, my grandmothers were born in Jerusalem. Five years before the Balfour declaration, my mother was born in Hebron. As for my aunt, her family had lived in Tiberias for over 300 years by the time of Lord Balfour and his declaration. One of my grandfathers was a soldier in the Ottoman army, not a transient with an Ottoman permit. The other grandfather was excused from service because he sold charcoal to the Ottoman army to run their trains.
The rest of what he has to say is equally fictitious. He has been smoking too much Lebanese blond, or too many Lebanese blondes.
There is one part I believe though:
...the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out.
So much for peace deals with the Hamas.
Ami Isseroff
Special Dispatch-Hamas/Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project August 16, 2007 No. 1682
The following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007.
August 06, 2007
Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan Justifies Suicide Bombings in Buses: Israeli Soldiers Ride Those Buses
Following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007:
Interviewer: Islamic law has forbidden aggression during Jihad – by forbidding the killing of women, children, the elderly, clerics who devote themselves to the worship of God, and other non-combatant civilians who do not serve in the enemy's army. Do you consider all the Jews in Palestine to be combatants who have plundered the land? We've witnessed martyrdom operations that targeted buses and restaurants.
Osama Hamdan: First of all, let me clarify something very important. What is the ruling regarding those who live in Palestine, in the co-called Israel, and who are aggressors and plunderers of the land? The way we see it, they all came to Palestine from abroad, whether before the declaration of the Zionist entity or after it. If you were to conduct statistics within the Zionist entity, you would find that all these people have their origins in other countries – they came from Europe, Eastern Europe, from American, South America, or other places.
Interviewer: In other words, there were no Palestinian Jews?
Osama Hamdan: No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month. Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day. The Palestinians regard them as part of the makeup of Palestinian society, and they number no more than several hundred. As for those who immigrated from various countries – they are not Jews. Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform. That's one thing. Secondly, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance force intentionally killed civilians. You mentioned the buses. What's an easier target – a bus, which is protected by various security measures, or a school, a theater, or a stadium, for example? These civilian targets – in which the killing of women and children is intentional – were not targeted by the resistance. Why were buses targeted? Because they are the means of transport used by the soldiers as well. The Zionist soldiers, who go from their homes to their bases and back, use public transport, because it is free or almost free. In my opinion, the occupation soldiers also have a security motive in using public transport: They shield themselves behind the so-called "civilians" within the Zionist entity. Therefore, the way I see it, they need to stop using public transport, or else society should prevent them from using it, because it is the soldiers who are targeted. Just to prove it, in the dozens of operations that were carried out, the Zionists never announced, for example, that 20 children were killed, or that 50 women were killed. On the contrary, if you were to examine who was killed in martyrdom operations that targeted buses, you would find that 70% were occupation soldiers, and they may even have been in uniform at the time of the operation.
[...]
We are making the preparations for a confrontation. This is not because we need to be prepared for an Israeli act of aggression – after all, aggression is intrinsic to this entity – but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out.
Interviewer: Do you think that Mahmoud Abbas, who has found himself in the crisis of the confrontation with Hamas, plays the role of a policeman, who thwarts the Intifada, the resistance, and the Jihad against the Zionist occupation in the Palestinian lands?
Osama Hamdan: He plays a role that is even worse than that. Mahmoud Abbas is doing this out of ideological conviction. He has been calling for a settlement ever since 1973. It was Mahmoud Abbas who created the Oslo Accords, and who was brought in by the Americans to serve as prime minister in order to confront Arafat. In my opinion, he plays this role willingly and out of conviction, which is worse than if he were doing so due to commitments to the occupation.
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This little item below, that appears on a few Web logs such as here, was apparently written in April of 2007. But it deserves a much wider audience. Please do listen to the recording of the BBC from the good old days of 1945, and the recording of Hatiqva ( http://genealogy.org.il/BergenBelsenHatikva.mp3 ) made in the liberated Bergen - Belsen concentration camp.
It is a simple reply to Ahmmadinejad, to Norman Finkelstein and to their friends. It is a reply to anyone who denies the Holocaust, and to anyone who denies the meaning of the Holocaust for Zionism and the Jewish people. For those people, the Jewish state that did not yet exist, represented hope that the Jewish people would literally rise from the ashes.
For those who forgot what Zionism is really about, this is a reminder.
Ami Isseroff
Scott Simon of NPR reports on a rare recording of "Hatikva " from almost 62 years ago. If this doesn't give you goosebumps I don't know what will.
It was recorded by a British reporter on April 20, 1945 in Bergen-Belsen when the British army liberated the few thousand survivors in the concentration camp, half of which were Jewish, most of them at the extremes of their strength. It was recently discovered and apparently was loaned to NPR by the Smithsonian Institute.
The British priest organized prayers for Kabbalat Shabbat for the Jews. It was the first time after six years of war and after more than 10 years of persecution. With a lot of effort the Jews organized themselves and, knowing they were recorded, sang " Hatikva".
As you can hear they sang the original version as it was written by Naftali Imber. Picturing them in the midst of the concentration camp singing after all they had been through renders this a very moving scenario.
Journals are filled with "good cheer" stories about overcoming the effects of anti-Israel boycotts. Shall we overcome? According to the Guardian, Israeli universities signed a new European Union agreement that allows the nation's scientists to take part in the next six-year research program. The Guardian notes:
Israel's participation in European research programmes was called into question in 2002 when two British academics had a letter published in the Guardian advocating a moratorium on all grants and contracts to Israel from European cultural and research institutions.
Janze Potocnik, the EU's research commissioner, said: "Israel's association to the framework programme has proved to be of mutual benefit for both sides over the last couple of years. Whereas the European research area will benefit from the renowned excellence of the Israeli research community, Israel will gain full access to the biggest research programme in the world.
Of course, that doesn't prevent journals from boycotting articles by Israeli scientists and other academics, and it doesn't force researchers to treat Israeli post-doctoral applicants equally. There have been cases of discrimination in both areas and many others, even without the boycott initiatives.
The Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has been accepted to a presitigious international consortium of such institutes. According to a Hebrew University announcement:
Membership for the Hebrew University's IAS was voted by the consortium's existing members -- considered the Ivy League of advanced institutes. These include the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study; and Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Institute for Advanced Study at Berlin. The Hebrew University is the tenth member to join the consortium.
The IAS in Jerusalem was accepted for its unique approach in hosting collaborative research groups and its academic achievements. It hopes that membership will open doors to further academic exchange and collaborative projects.
"We are looking forward to sharing experiences with these distinguished institutes for the benefit of all," said director of the IAS in Jerusalem, Prof. Eliezer Rabinovici. "Science should move forward by the tradition of openness and sharing and not by the ill winds of exclusion. Membership status in the SIAS consortium is a testament to the high caliber, innovative and collaborative research Israel engages in."
The IAS is the only one of its kind in the Middle East and was the fifth in the world to be established in 1975 the first one being at Princeton. Twelve Nobel Laureates are associated with the Institute in the fields of chemistry, physics, medicine and economics.
And in the United States, labor unions roundly condemned the British boycott initiatives. An initiative begun by the Jewish Labor Committee was endorsed by a host of unions and union leaders, including the presidents of the AFL-CIO; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Teachers; United Food and Commercial Workers; Communications Workers of America; Masters, Mates and Pilots / ILA; American Postal Workers Union; International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; UAW; American Federation of School Administrators; Office and Professional Employees International Union; American Federation of Government Employees; UNITE-HERE; United Mine Workers of America; Sheet Metal Workers International Association; International Union of Painters and Allied Trades; Transportation Communications Union; American Federation Musicians; Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union; International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers; and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the presidents of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
Others may join the initiative as well.
They signed the statement appended below. It is comforting and heartening to know that Israel still has friends who will speak up for fair play, but the ignorance and hate demonstrated by the boycotters is nonetheless unnerving, and the trend seems to be growing, despite the rise of the Hamas, and despite the Israeli disengagement from Gaza. The boycotts and divestment initiateves are a well organized and well financed pseudo-grass-roots campaign, conceived by people who are experts in organizing "spontaneous" movements and demonstrations. It has been been planned for years, and Jewish organizations were caught napping. (See Israel Boycotts and Divestment )
It really would have been better if we did not need this show of support.
Ami Isseroff
Statement of Opposition to Divestment from or Boycotts of Israel
July 18, 2007
We view with increasing concern the phenomenon of trade unions in a number of countries, including, most recently, the United Kingdom, issuing resolutions that either directly or indirectly call for divestment from and boycotts of Israel.
With the large number of local, regional and international conflicts, with the diverse range of oppressive regimes around the world about which there is almost universal silence, we have to question the motives of these resolutions that single out one country in one conflict.
We note with increasing concern that virtually all of these resolutions focus solely on objections to actions or policies of the Israeli government, and never on actions or policies of Palestinian or other Arab governments, parties or movements. We notice with increasing concern that characterization of the Palestinians as victims and Israel as victimizer is a staple of such resolutions. That there are victims and victimizers on all sides, and that many if not most of the victims of violence and repression on all sides are civilians, are essential items often not mentioned in these resolutions.
Any just and fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be brought about through meaningful negotiations between their elected representatives. We believe strongly in a two-state solution, brought about through meaningful negotiations, with the involvement and encouragement of the world community.
Trade unionists and their organizations seeking such a just and fair resolution should be assisting those working to bring the two sides together in direct talks and then negotiations. In this regard, we call for increased engagement of trade unions with their counterparts on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We support efforts of Palestinian and Israeli trade unionists and their organizations to maintain contact and cooperative and mutually supportive activities, even in the midst of tumult and political change within their respective communities and polities.
Calls for academic boycotts of Israel are inimical to and counter to the principles of academic freedom and freedom of association, key principles for which academics and educational unions have struggled over many years. Rather than limiting interactions with Israeli educators, academics and educational institutions, we see the importance of maximizing, rather than proscribing, the free flow of ideas and academic interaction between peoples, cultures, religions and countries.
Similarly, calls for journalistic boycotts of Israel are inimical to the free flow of information and journalistic objectivity, and must be opposed.
Rather than divestment from Israel, we believe that investment of time, energy and material aid is the best means to alleviate the ongoing suffering of Palestinians and Israelis. Engagement, rather than disengagement, with the Israeli people and the Palestinian people is needed, so that a just and fair resolution of this conflict may be pursued, and so that meaningful progress towards achieving the legitimate needs of Palestinians and Israelis can be made.
We offer our support to assist trade unionists as well as interested members of the community-at-large who are grappling with these matters, and who share our concern over simplistic and non-constructive approaches, whether in the form of misguided resolutions or other statements on the tragic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Stuart Appelbaum President, Jewish Labor Committee President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union / UFCW
Edward J. McElroy Secretary, Jewish Labor Committee President, American Federation of Teachers
Morton Bahr Treasurer, Jewish Labor Committee
John J. Sweeney President, AFL-CIO
Clayola Brown President, A. Philip Randolph Institute
Timothy A. Brown International President, International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots / ILA
R. Thomas Buffenbarger International President, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
William Burrus President, American Postal Workers Union
Larry Cohen President, Communications Workers of America
Barbara J. Easterling Secretary-Treasurer, Communications Workers of America
John J. Flynn President, International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers
John Gage President, American Federation of Government Employees
Ron Gettelfinger President United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union
Michael Goodwin President, Office and Professional Employees International Union
Joseph T. Hansen International President, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Edwin D. Hill International President, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
James P. Hoffa General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Frank Hurt International President Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union
Thomas F. Lee President, American Federation of Musicians
Jill S. Levy President, American Federation of School Administrators
William Lucy President, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
Gerald W. McEntee President, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Bruce S. Raynor General President, UNITE HERE
Cecil E. Roberts President, United Mine Workers of America
Robert Scardelletti International President, Transportation Communications Union / IAM
Michael J. Sullivan General President, Sheet Metal Workers International Association
George Tedeschi President, Graphic Communications International Union / IBT
James A. Williams General President, International Union of Printers and Allied Trades
(Due to the nature of YouTube, these links may be taken down in the coming days. If you intend to watch it I would advise watching it as soon as possible.)
The BBC shelved this program when they heard it would focus on British anti-Semitism, and it was instead shown on Channel 4.
While some mainstream reviewers in the British media welcomed Littlejohn's program, some on the left were extremely nasty about it. No doubt they felt uncomfortable having their anti-Semitism pointed out to them and tried to change the subject. One reviewer in the Guardian, for example, started talking about "Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians" -- an interesting remark given the fact he was meant to be writing about British anti-Semitism -- and called the subject of anti-Semitism "tedious".
On British radio, George Galloway, MP dismissed the program by saying: "Richard Littlejohn is a driveling guttersnipe who long ago fell out of the gutter into the sewer. This man is a moron."
As Littlejohn, a leading British journalist, is finding out, when non-Jews condemn anti-Semitism, they can themselves become the target of anti-Semites.
One of the problems is that the mainstream media just don't report many anti-Semitic attacks in the UK, which are only mentioned in the Jewish media. For example, a British ultra-orthodox Jew was thrown into a river in north London by a gang making anti-Semitic remarks two weeks ago. They smashed his glasses on the ground before doing so, so that he wouldn't be able to see clearly once in the water. He was rescued by a couple that walked past shortly after.
Still, anti-Semitism in Britain remains below that of other countries. For example, in Ukraine yesterday, there were three anti-Semitic attacks in a single day. No serious injuries were sustained.
In related developments:
* The latest prominent international personalities to sign a petition condemning the proposed British academic boycott of Israel are the Dalai Lama and Mikhail Gorbachev.
* The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday passed a resolution criticizing the proposed British academic boycott of Israel. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D- Pennsylvania) is the resolution's prime sponsor.
In this reply to Shlomo Avneri's article on Post Zionism (See Post-Zionism: the bumph that wouldn't die ) Uri Avnery claims that it is he who invented the term "Post-Zionism." For him, Post-Zionism is not anti-Zionism. Rather, he takes the tack that Zionism accomplished its purpose in building the state, and now we must move on and address other issues. Quoting Ben-Gurion, he tells us that Zionism is the scaffolding that was used to build the state of Israel. Now the scaffolding must be removed.
Apparently, the bumph really has nine lives or more.
Ben-Gurion did not, obviously, mean that after the Jews have a Jewish state, the Jewish state must be abolished, and replaced by a non-ethnic non-national state. Ben-Gurion was always insistent that every Jew should come on Aliya. How could he believe that the purpose of Zionism is accomplished, when most Jews still live abroad? Moreover, Ben-Gurion could not, and did not, foresee some of the problems we have now, some of which are partly his own creation. The original Zionists of Hibbat Tziyon, the Maskilim faction, feared that Zionism in the land of Israel would be overwhelmed by orthodox Jewry and the ghetto, Halukka mentality of the ultraorthodox Jews of the old Yishuv, or by messianists wishing to rebuild the temple. We can see this nightmatre coming true. In five years, state education will be overwhelmed by the non-Zionist, ultra-orthodox schools (see Anti-Zionist plot: End of State Education ). At the same time, the voice of extremists who want to rebuild the temple and institute animal sacrifice, still a tiny minority, grows stronger within the "Zionist" movement, simply because moderates are less and interested in the fate of Israel.
The scaffolding cannot be removed until the work is really done.
A week ago, Haaretz published an article by Shlomo Avineri, a respected professor and former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Office. I tried to refute his views in a letter to the editor.
Being restricted by the format of a letter, my remarks were necessarily brief. Haaretz cut the letter even more. I am sending here the ...full (unabridged) text of my letter.
Uri Avnery
Post-scaffolding for Israel A letter of Uri Avnery
In response to The Lie of post-Zionism [Hebrew title of article] by Shlomo Avineri (Haaretz 4/7)
In 1976, a Jerusalem periodical wrote that I and my colleagues - i.a. Gen. Matti Peled, Eliyahu Elyashar, Col. Meir Pa'il - the founders of the "Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace", are anti-Zionists. We sued them for libel, won the case and were awarded considerable compensations.
In the course of the proceedings, I testified at length, on the basis of my book "Israel Without Zionists". When the judge interrogated me about my attitude towards Zionism, I used, for the first time, the term "Post-Zionist".
"Post-Zionism" in its true meaning is a long way from "anti-Zionism". It recognizes Zionism's historical achievements: the formation of a new society, the revival of the Hebrew language and the creation of the state [of Israel.] It does this without ignoring the dark aspects the historical injustice done to the Palestinian people.
The essence of post-Zionism lies in recognizing that Zionism had fulfilled its role with the foundation of the State of Israel. Since then a new nation was born, the Israeli nation, composed of the citizens of Israel, much as the American nation is composed of the citizens of the United States. Jewish citizens feel a natural affinity to the Jewish world while Arab citizens feel a natural affinity to the Arab world.
An Israeli who is asked abroad "What are you?" answers automatically: "I am an Israeli." It would not enter his mind to say "I am a Jew", unless asked specifically about his religion.
David Ben-Gurion said that the Zionist Federation played the role of the scaffolding in the building of the state of Israel. That is true for Zionism as a whole. A building is not the anti-scaffolding, it is the post-scaffolding.
It is about time someone wrote this article, called Post-Zionism doesn't exist. I wrote one like that a while back (2004): Post-Zionism: Requiem for an intellectual fad, but nobody seemed to be listening. Yoav Gelber wrote about it in Midstream, and that didn't make much of an impression. Even before all of those, Dalia Shechori wrote in Ha'aretz, in 2004 Post-Zionism is dead or in a deep freeze, and nobody paid much attention either. One of the most interesting aspect of Post-Zionism is that it is a term that seems to be applied to people, who insist that they are not post-Zionists at all. Ilan Pappe insists he is not post-Zionist. Those, like Avneri, who criticize his "post-Zionism" may be tilting at shadows. Can someone find an actual person who will say "I am a post-Zionist?" No matter, there is a lot of Israel hate around, and a lot of it shelters in the benevolent canopy of "post-Zionism."
Avnery's arguments are not quite like those of Yoav Gelber on Post Zionism , but they are pretty similar. In fact, it would be surprising if Avnery's article was not inspired by Gelber's which appeared first. However, Avnery's argument, while generally correct, is not very deep. Here's the opener:
In recent years a phenomenon called "post-Zionism" has developed in the political-intellectual discourse in Israel. Fundamentally, this is a radical criticism not just of Israel's policy; at its base is total denial of the Zionist project and of the very legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish nation-state.
Firstly, post-Zionism is no longer so recent. Uri Ram claims to have invented the term in 1993. Secondly, we can't say that Avnery is right, because there is not one, but many "post-Zionisms" - in fact, there might be as many "post-Zionisms" as there pretenders to be "post-Zionists," and they operate on two or more dimensions. Ephraim Nimni wrote:
Definitions of post-Zionism are hard to find, and when they appear they are often not consensual. Supporters and detractors attribute to it different and sometimes conflicting meanings. Chaim Waxman (1997) identifies three contrasting contributions to the term. The first is the anti-colonial argument sustained by old radical 'anti-Zionist' groups in Israel. The second results from a generational change in Israeli universities, as the generation of the 'founding fathers' retires and a new more 'eclectic' generation takes over. The third contribution results from an 'a-Zionist' interrogation of fundamental questions of Jewish nationalism, Judaism and ethnicity questions that, according to Waxman, accompanied the Zionist enterprise from its origins.
That is fair enough, and there are other dimensions too. But if that is the case, then it makes no sense to discuss "post-Zionist" critiques of Israel and Zionism as if they were all based on the same premises or had the same ideas. That didn't prevent Nimni from singing the praises of "post-Zionism." He can't tell us what it is, but he is sure it is good. Avneri probably can't tell us what post Zionism is either, but he is sure that it doesn't exist, while Gelber can't tell us what it is, and he is sure that it is bad. Here is more of Avneri:
The arguments called "post-Zionist" have various aspects - not only political but also cultural. They view Zionism as a colonial phenomenon, not as a national movement that is contending with another, Palestinian, national movement over its claim to the same territory. Some of those who are called "post-Zionists" go even further in their argument that the very existence of a Jewish people is a "narrative" that was invented in the 19th century, and that the Jews are at base a religious community. The attitude of Zionism, which has most of its roots in Europe, toward Jews from the Muslim countries is also perceived in the context of colonial exploitation.
Avneri is wise to write "The arguments that are called 'Post Zionist,'" but there is in fact a collection of such arguments and they have different bases. Avnery tells us:
This approach also wants to de- legitimize Zionism's conceptual world: Because some of the so-called "post-Zionist" arguments are drawn from the post-modernist discourse, their spokespersons understand that the terms they use have a force of their own. He who controls the terms controls the debate. Therefore they insist on referring in Hebrew to pre-1948 Eretz Israel as "Palestine;" Jews who come to live here, whom Zionist discourse calls "olim" (from the Hebrew root "to ascend"), are "immigrants," and so on.
Avneri hints at one of the problems of some "post-Zionism." Some of the "post-Zionists" like Ilan Pappe are post-structuralist and post-modernist. Neither of these terms can be defined either exactly. Attempts to define them generally go on for pages and pages with no conclusion, beyond repetition of the statement, "there is no meta-narrative." Ok, so there is no meta-narrative. There is no "God's plan" that can be discerned in history or sociology. But if there is no meta-narrative, then the Marxist meta-narrative cannot be a true description of reality either. People like Pappe, despite his denial of "post-Zionism," and other anti-Zionists like Nadia al-Hajj, turn post-structuralism and post-empiricism into post-logicalism. They are talking words and making sentences, but they don't make any more sense than Dadaism, because they start from false premises and use false syllogisms to arrive at whatever conclusions they like. They use "post-empiricism" as a blanket license to simply invent whatever suits their fancy. That is a good program for English literature, but it is disastrous as a way to analyze history and society. Pappe has said that facts only interest pedants, and that attitude is quite evident in his treatment of historical materials. There is no way to argue about facts with someone who insists that facts don't matter.
This use of post empiricism is of tremendous value to Pappe. The problem of classical Marxist critiques of Zionism was that every one of their predictions regarding Zionism turned out to be false. They predicted that no Jews would come to the land of Israel, that if they came, they would be unable to defend themselves against the Arabs, that if they were able to defend themselves against the Arabs, the Jewish state would nonetheless not be economically viable, and that it would fall apart because of irreconcilable differences between Sephardic or "Mizrachi" and Ashkenazi Jews. None of these predictions came true. It is the Arabs of Palestine who have been unable to form a cohesive society, and who have drained away billions in foreign aid with nothing to show for those sums excep
