Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

#Zionismis aJewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews (Hebrew: Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel).

A religious variety of Zionism supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity defined as adherence to religious Judaism, opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies, and has advocated the return of Jews to Israel as a means for Jews to be a majority nation in their own state.

The term Zionism was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum.

Its general definition means the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces.

From inception, Zionism advocated tangible as well as spiritual aims. Jews of all persuasions left, right, religious and secular formed the #Zionist movement and worked together toward its goals.

Disagreements in philosophy has led to rifts in the Zionist movement over the years and a number of separate forms have emerged, notably: Political Zionism; Religious Zionism; Socialist Zionism and Territorial Zionism.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

This blog has been submitted as part of a wider campaign, which is being run by the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) entitled Theodor & I Zionism and Young European Jews. Being launched on Yom Haatzmaut, the campaign seeks to start a discussion on Zionism, towards challenging the existing conversation surrounding the concept and ultimately highlighting the plurality of Jewish European identity and Zionism.

I recently wrote a blog post for the Times of Israel which, among other things, emphasised the need that there is for us, as Jewish people, to define the term Zionism effectively and bring it into the political mainstream as a way of increasing societal understanding of the term. The fact that Zionism has become a dirty word or even a slur in societys vocabulary, serves to demonstrate how the term is so grossly misunderstood. For many young Jews in the diaspora, Zionism is an integral part of their identity and yet the (potential) dismay that would be met by such a declaration, to my mind, impacts on how young Zionist Jews talk about and feel about their identity.

Yet, Zionism is not exceptionalist nor hierarchical. It does not place the interests of Jews higher than that of others. Zionism merely posits that Jews have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, in much the same way that any other nationality has. It is a movement which implicitly recognises Jews as a people and nation, not simply a religion, and promotes that Jewish people should be able to exert control over their own affairs.

What is true, however, is that the lack of societal understanding of the term, wilfully or otherwise, is a major hindrance in fostering conversation and dialogue to be had on Zionism. The externally-imposed binary on the discussion on Zionism good or bad limits the genuine space that there is for a nuanced understanding of the term to be had, and much nuance does exist. Among Zionists, for instance, many different views and opinions are propagated one of the very reasons for this campaign in the first instance.

As my colleague Bini Guttmann wrote in his piece as part of the wider EUJS Theodor & I campaign, Zionism is often equated with Israel advocacy and this could not be more true. Quite apart from the misunderstanding that such a simplistic and absolutist assumption demonstrates with regards to the term Zionism, the supposition then is that all Zionists support all of Israels actions which is clearly false. Many young Zionist Jews that I know are greatly supportive of Israels actions, yet many are not, and it often seems that this nuance and diversity of opinion to the discussion on Zionism is forgotten or ignored. Therefore, I believe that such a plurality of opinion is vitally important to the Zionist umbrella, not only from a democratic perspective but, also, as a promotion of dialogue to be had, formally and informally, amongst and between Zionists and those who would not describe themselves as such.

There is also a tendency to exclusively define and describe Zionism in relation to antisemitism. Yes, antisemitism is a necessary talking point in any discussion on Zionism, after all, the increased international sympathy and support towards Zionism that came following the horrors of the Holocaust undoubtedly played a role in the adoption of the 1947 UN Partition Plan and subsequent creation of the state of Israel. However, its monopoly over the discussion on Zionism must be challenged. Zionism is an inherently positive movement in many ways, not least in the way in which it promotes the principle that Jews, as a nation, should have the ability to govern themselves. Zionism promotes the ideals of sovereignty, of respect and of equal rights, and in practice is the enactment of a longstanding, accepted principle in international law of over a century. So, we must engage in conversation on Zionism to encourage dialogue and a plurality of opinions within this umbrella.

The need to define Zionism exclusively in relation to antisemitism strikes me as a defence mechanism against those who question Israels right to exist, those from the camp of Zionism = bad. Such a defence mechanism may indeed be an effective counter-argument against anti-Zionists and anti-Zionism, but when this argument is used by itself, it is rather static and does not progress discussion on Zionism, as it does not allow for greater meaning and nuance to enter the conversation. Thus, antisemitism should continue to play a central part in discussion on Zionism but should not characterise it. In doing so, this will help to encourage increased engagement with the concept more broadly, and will also allow for a greater plurality of voices and opinions when it comes to defining and discussing Zionism.

So what next? How can the conversation on Zionism not be consumed by antisemitism when much of the discussion on Zionism, in the first place, is hijacked with accusations of Zionism being a racist or colonialist movement? Yet, at the same time, surely in diversifying discussion on Zionism to begin with, by introducing to the conversation more of its inherently positive elements, then Zionism will be a more attractive concept to engage with, particularly among an audience with a limited personal experience and understanding of antisemitism. In my opinion, step one must be to bring others into the conversation. Widen the discussion. Teach Zionism in all of its variants so as to make it more accessible, to develop dialogue and foster understanding of the concept. It is then, and only then, that Zionism can be mainstreamed and more meaningful and nuanced discussion can take place.

Therefore, as I reflect on the current conversation surrounding Zionism this Yom Haatzmaut, it is clear that much needs to be done. The need to mainstream Zionism represents a necessary step to allow more young Jewish Zionists in the diaspora to feel comfortable in their identity, and to subsequently provide greater depth to the current conversation on Zionism. To me it seems that the discussion on Zionism, in its current form, ensures that Zionists are more occupied with justifying their ideological standpoint than they are about explaining and engaging others with it. And so, in order for the discussion to move forward, there must be an increase in societal understanding of the term. This would ensure that we could move past the deliberately obtuse and simplified pre-ambulatory discussion on Zionism, which in turn, would create space for a more meaningful and nuanced discussion to be had on the term, in which a plurality of views and opinions would be represented.

Based in Brussels, Belgium, Ilan Selby is both the current Policy Officer at the European Union of Jewish Students and the European Affairs Officer at B'nai B'rith International. He is a double graduate from the University of St. Andrews in International Relations MA (Hons) and from King's College London in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies MA.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address on Sunday that the promise of Zionism would be realized in just a few months, when Israel extends its sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria under the aegis of the U.S. Peace to Prosperity plan.

In a video message to the European Coalition for Israel, an evangelical Christian group, marking the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Resolution, in which the world powers recognized the national rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, Netanyahu said that soon Israel and its supporters would be celebrating another historic moment in the history of Zionism.

President Trump pledged to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish communities there [Judea and Samaria] and in the Jordan Valley. A couple of months from now, I am confident that that pledge will be honored, that we will be able to celebrate another historic moment in the history of Zionism. A century after [the] San Remo [Resolution], the promise of Zionism is being realized, because we never stop fighting for our rights, said Netanyahu.

He thanked the conference participants, saying, Your efforts are part of that fight. Thank you for celebrating this historic occasion and securing the Jewish future.

Under the Trump plan, the political component of which was published in January, Israel can extend its sovereignty to almost all Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, as well as to the Jordan Valley. Then, after four years, a Palestinian state would be established if the Palestinian leadership had met a set of conditions, chief among them renouncing terrorism and ensuring rule of law.

According to the coalition agreement reached last week between Netanyahus Likud Party and Benny Gantzs Blue and White Party, annexation can be brought to the Knesset for a vote on July 1.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Israel Hayom.

The post Netanyahu: A century after San Remo, the promise of Zionism is being realized appeared first on JNS.org.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

For months, a terrible dilemma vexed four principled patriots. To Bibi or Not to Bibi, that was the question. When two decided to Bibi, and two decided not, their uneasy alliance blew up.

Yair Lapid and Bogie Yaalon could not stomach working with Bibi, justifiably. Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi could not bear standing by during a pandemic and electoral stalemate, understandably. So they divorced. But now, they must stop fuming and cooperate, working from within and without, united by a common vision of Zionist muscular moderation.

Gantz should enter the government touting his exit plan, primed to blast any expressions of bigotry, block any subversion of democracy, and boost Israeli unity during this crisis, which is why he chose to cooperate with Netanyahu. Now, before the Bibi-antics begin, Gantz and his allies must map out how to follow through on these moral issues which transcend politics.

First, Gantz must demonstrate zero-tolerance for demonization and bigotry. Like a teacher handling a juvenile delinquent, Gantz should spell out for Netanyahu that at the first whiff of Arab-bashing, Gantz will object, privately at first, then increasingly loudly and vehemently. Persistent Arab-baiting will prompt Gantzs party to disrupt business as usual, even contemplate resignation, until the offenders apologize.

Lapid aptly notes that using fear and hate as weapons in the battle of ideas has been Netanyahus unforgivable sin, polarizing Israelis, leaving us more tolerant of intolerance and intolerant of our fellow citizens. Gantz must not collaborate in such evils, while articulating a critique as eloquent as Lapids.

Similarly, Netanyahu must stop his demagogic attacks on national institutions and his subversive tricks to weaken Israeli democracy. Gantz must defend democracy from within, calling out divisive rhetoric, while sabotaging attempts to sabotage the Knesset, the courts and the police. He must be prepared: war-game likely scenarios, its going to happen.

Finally, with Gantz as defense minister and Ashkenazi as foreign minister, the two allies will occupy the two jobs beyond prime minister that most facilitate national unity. When we look beyond our borders, when we are attacked, or when our kids enlist, we bury our differences.

Constructive tone-setting, true leadership, could start healing Israel from the Bibi years even before they end. For example, regardless of what they think about annexation, Gantz and Ashenazi cannot allow Netanyahu to use the corona crisis as a cover to force through such a dramatic move hastily.

Ultimately, this discussion is less about Israels image abroad; its about Israels soul - and Gantzs.

IF GANTZ has to know when to fight and not just unite, Lapid has to know when to unite and not just fight. Lapid should study the greatest Israeli opposition leader, Menachem Begin, who had 29 years of practice. Begin believed that without an opposition, there can be no democracy; without it, the essence of human liberty is in danger. But he reassured Yitzhak Rabin and other prime ministers that we both have the same goal. Despite the differences between us, we are one people."

For most, such abstract paradoxes would confuse. But Lapid recently gave an important speech - Only the Center Can Hold - drawing a blueprint for effective opposition and constructive cooperation with his former allies, carving a path forward toward the post-Bibi era (may it come speedily).

Rejecting the false choices between liberalism and nationalism, between democracy and Judaism, blasting right-wingers like Netanyahu who want a Jewish state in which democracy is subservient to nationalism and hyper-individualist left-wingers so hostile to nationalism they would set us on the path to becoming a bi-national state, Lapid boldly embraced the center. If we take one of the sides, we lose our way, he warned. Centrism offers the necessary balancing act.

Lapid understands that we are complicated beings and that the role of government is to chart a course among the contradictions inherent in each of us as individuals and as a collective. He endorses what the Menachem Begin Centers Paul Gross calls an inclusive nationalism, and what I call muscular moderation.

Resisting the lures of formulas, rejecting extremes, remaining principled, centrists sift, balance and juggle, seeking alliance and building consensus. Israeli centrism puts democracy front and center as a method and a value, while championing the Zionist building blocks that make Israel work: community, tradition, historical memory, love of our homeland.

This communal, centrist democracy brings down... the walls isolating religious communities and the significant walls of isolation of Western individualism. We are not being asked to place our nations democratic identity before its national identity; we are choosing its democratic identity as the highest expression of its national identity.

Lapid essentially proclaims: Choose community, build unity, practice decency. Unlike most modern politicians, Lapid offers a vision not just a strategy. By working together, Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside, Lapid and Gantz, can do what they failed to do during three campaigns: move beyond ABB - anybody but Bibi - to the ABCs of a nuanced, centrist approach ushering in a new era flourishing thanks to our old values. To achieve that, theyll have to work together, albeit separately, and work hard separately, to keep us together.

The writer is the author of the newly-released The Zionist Ideas, an updated expansion of Arthur Hertzbergs classic anthology The Zionist Idea; a 2019 National Jewish Book Award finalist; a distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University; and the author of 10 books on American history, including Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

In many cities around the world May 1, 2020 will be distinguished by the absence of demonstrations for International Workers Day, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, many will mark the occasion within their homes, as the crisis lays bare the deepening struggles faced by working-class people as a result of failed neoliberal policies, inequality and colonialism.

Palestinians in the West Bank face increased attacks from Israeli settlers, while concern is mounting in the Gaza Strip over the shortage of vital medical equipment including ventilators, as a result of Israels illegal siege. It is no surprise, given the systematic oppression Palestinians face under Israeli occupation, that expressions of solidarity with Palestine have for decades been integral to the global socialist movement, and in normal years Palestinian flags are a common sight among the red flags of workers parties in May Day demonstrations.

Yet International Workers Day has a contested history in Palestine itself. Like other aspects of socialist rhetoric, though not practice, the May Day tradition was brought to Palestine in the early twentieth century by Zionist settlers, seeking to build a Jewish society on European lines. While socialism calls for, to paraphrase Marx, the workers of the world to unite, regardless of nationality or any other divisions, Zionist socialism was always intended for Jews only.

As Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg write in Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism, early Zionist settlers saw themselves as peasant warriors who made the desert bloom and dispersed the Arab gangs, muscularhaloutz[pioneers] who conquered the land with plough and rifle, unstayed by any obstacle. In the 1920s, even the immigrant Jewish leadership of the Palestine Communist Party believed Jews were the only modern, truly property-less proletariat, Arab Palestinians being backward economically and culturally. Hostility to Palestinian national aspirations characterized the Zionist socialist movement, from mainstream labor Zionism to the left-wing fringes.

Divisions among Jewish immigrants did exist, however, leading in 1921 to the most infamous incident associated with May Day in Palestine. Two rival demonstrations of Jewish workers, one wholeheartedly espousing Zionism and the other advocating a more nuanced relationship with Palestinians, clashed in Tel Aviv; violence then spread to the neighboring Arab city of Jaffa, with clashes between Arabs, Jews, and the British authorities who occupied Palestine from 1917 to 1948. As Wasif Jawharriyeh recorded in his memoirs, The flames of the uprising spread all over Palestine and lasted for fifteen days during which 146 Jews and members of the [British] armed forces and 147 Arabs were killed, and 700 people were injured, prompting senior clergymen and Arab leaders to intervene and end the uprising.

Visual analysis of settler and indigenous artwork produced for International Workers Day shows the divergence of Zionist/Israeli and Palestinian attitudes to the event. As shown in the May Day posters produced in British Mandate Palestine and the first decades of the state of Israel, the Zionist movement manipulated International Workers Day for state ends, rather than as a celebration of socialist principles. In posters commissioned by the Histadrut, the Zionist trade union which operated as an arm of the Labor Party-dominated state, designs paired the red workers flag with the Israeli flag; Jewish workers in Palestine/Israel were not only workers, but simultaneously also settlers and soldiers against a perceived Arab threat. Hebrew slogans called on workers not to fight a class struggle, but to be a builder of the state, a lever for the state, and do everything [] for the security of Israel.

After the emergence of the Palestinian national movement in the 1960s, composed broadly of secular and socialist factions, an alternative vision of May Day began to be put forward by Palestinians and their supporters. Posters commissioned by the Palestine Liberation Organization emphasized the ties between the Palestinian struggle and leftist and anticolonial causes globally, as opposed to Zionisms narrative of settler socialism. The artwork drew on the aesthetic of socialist realism, glorifying peasants and workers, which was a common thread in the visuals of revolutionary movements the world over.

As Kamal Boullata has written, artists from the Palestinian refugee camps promoted a populist form of figurative expression, their pictorial narrative often borrowing images from popular metaphors. The general thrust of their art sought to express a voice that would represent the Palestinian experience and solicit support for the national cause. In Zaid Wahbas 1969 poster Glory to the Workers and Fighters, a man and woman are caught in mid-pose as they till the soil, with more than passing resemblance to the heroic figures of socialist realist art. While the posters title and text pay homage to workers, it is the peasantry or fellahin which the image captures, reflecting Palestines pre-1948 largely agrarian society, Palestinians tie to the land, and the collective nature of both their agricultural labor before the Nakba and of the exiled refugees struggle after it, which in both cases included both women and men.

Further innovation was brought to the Palestinian May Day poster by the Swiss-born artist Marc Rudin, also known as Jihad Mansour, who produced many striking graphics for the leftist PLO factions over a career allied to the Palestinian cause. In sharp distinction to the posters produced for the labor Zionist movement, in which socialism was limited on an ethnic basis to Jewish Israelis, a constant theme in Rudins work is international solidarity and the interconnectedness of anti-colonial struggles. Rudin has explained that in his May Day graphics, he sought to demonstrate a link between the national struggle for liberation and proletarian internationalism. An example is his poster Consolidating the Unity of the Working Class and the People. A red flag tied to a hammer is a symbol of the workers movement and the industrial proletariat, and simultaneously a keffiyeh scarf, quintessential symbol of Palestinian nationalism, soaked in the blood of those slain in the cause and the victims of the Israeli occupation. Rudins work subsequently articulated the First Intifada of the late 1980s as a class, as well as a national, struggle: a poster presented the Workers on the Front Line of the Intifada, a group of workers, some carrying industrial tools, working together to tip a large stone onto a tank.

It was the efforts to solidify the solidarity between the Palestinian struggle and class and anticolonial struggles from Algeria to South Africa, Cuba to Vietnam, epitomized in the Palestinian attitude towards International Workers Day, which has meant that support for Palestine has remained strong on the global left. Meanwhile support for Israel on the professed left, once common in the post-war period, has dwindled in parallel with the decline in fortunes of the once-imperious Israeli Labor Party to its present moribund level. Yet as attacks against the principle of solidarity with Palestine continue, and as Palestinians need our support more than ever, this May Day provides us with the opportunity to consider the interconnectedness of all struggles for justice, even if from our own homes if necessary.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

One hundred years ago this month, the map of the Middle East was radically redrawn by the major powers at a long-forgotten summit in a pretty resort town in northwestern Italy.

The San Remo Conference, which took place in 1920 between April 19-26 at the Villa Devachan, officially ratified the breakup of Turkeys Ottoman Empire into League of Nations mandates, thereby creating a new international order in the region.

Britain would administer Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine, which included Trans-Jordan, and France would be charged with administering Syria and Lebanon.

An argument can be made that the conference was an exercise in imperialism, that it was nothing less than a mechanism for Britain and France to expand their colonial empires at the expense of Turkey and the Arab world.

But the hard truth is that the mandates were established with the ultimate intention of guiding Jews to self-governance in Palestine the Jewish ancestral homeland and Arabs to statehood in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Trans-Jordan, which later became known as Jordan.

For the Zionist movement, the conference was a milestone inasmuch as it instructed Britain to implement the Balfour Declaration. Taking the form of a brief letter sent to Zionist leader Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour on November 2, 1917, it viewed with favor the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine on condition that the civil and religious rights of its Muslim and Christian inhabitants remained intact.

The conference effectively recognized the Jewish peoples historical connection to, and right of self-determination in, Palestine, the ancient Land of Israel.

The resolutions adopted by the conference were incorporated into international law by the Treaty of Svres in August 1920 and unanimously approved by the League of Nations several years later.

The conference was convened in the wake of World War I, which upended the territorial status quo in the Middle East.

The Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople, encompassed much of the Middle East and a good chunk of the Balkans. Palestine, having been overrun by invaders ranging from the Persians to the Romans, was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1516.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Ottomans aligned themselves with Germany and its allies. As battles on the Middle Eastern front raged, during which the Turks steadily lost ground to British and allied forces, Britain and France cooked up plans to divide up this vast polyglot empire.

The first step in that process occurred in 1915, when Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt, reached a momentous understanding with the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. In exchange for instigating a revolt against the Turks, Britain held out the promise of independence and sovereignty to the Arabs. T.E. Lawrence, a British army intelligence officer who would be dubbed Lawrence of Arabia, was directly involved in this military campaign.

In 1916, Britain and France signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement carving up spheres of influence in the Middle East. Britain would be granted control of southern Palestine, Trans-Jordan and southern Iraq and be given port privileges in Haifa and Acre. France would receive Syria and Lebanon, as well as parcels of land in southwestern Turkey and northern Iraq.

As 1917 dawned, British and Australian troops under the supreme command of General Edmund Allenby began driving the Turks and their German advisors out of Palestine, which by then was populated by a minority of 80,000 Jews in a population of some 500,000 Arabs.

Most Jews had been uprooted from Palestine by the Romans, but in the late 19th century the eruption of pogroms in the Russian Empire impelled a small number of Eastern European Zionists to settle in rudimentary farming communities in Palestine.

Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Austrian Jewish journalist born in Budapest, was the founder of political Zionism, which fed on the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine. He was converted to Jewish nationalism while covering the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer of the Jewish faith who had been falsely convicted of treason in a case that reeked of antisemitism, which persisted in France a century after Jews were formally emancipated.

At the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, delegates voted for a resolution backed by Herzl the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. In a remarkably prescient comment, Herzl predicated that Jewish statehood would be achieved within 50 years.

With the Balfour Declaration, the fulfillment of the Zionist dream reached unprecedented heights.Zionist diplomacy, spearheaded by a Russian-born chemist living in Britain named Chaim Weizmann, was successful in convincing the British government that its strategic interests converged with the Zionist project in Palestine.

By that juncture, France had warmed up to Zionism. Five months before the advent of the Balfour Declaration, the secretary-general of the French Foreign Ministry, Jules Cambon, issued a letter endorsing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In 1918, Frances prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, acceded to a request by his British counterpart, David Lloyd George, that Palestine should be handed over to Britain in exchange for its recognition of Frances claim to Syria and Lebanon. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, France announced it would not stand in way of the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Yet opposition to Zionism was building to a crescendo,particularly among the Palestinian Arab residents of Palestine. Their cause was keenly supported by Arabs throughout the Middle East.

Fierce opposition to Zionism was detected by the 1919 King-Crane Commission, which was dispatched to Palestine by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to gauge local public opinion regarding the possibility of continued Jewish settlement.

As a direct result of the Paris Peace Conference, the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers (France, Britain, Italy and Japan, with the United States present as an observer) convened in San Remo to ratify the allocation of mandates in the Middle East.

The chief participants at the conference were the prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy, respectively David Lloyd George, Alexandre Millerand and Francesco Nitti. Japan was represented by its ambassador, Keishiro Matsui.

They settled the affairs at hand within a week, setting into motion an historic process that intrinsically reshaped the geopolitics of the Middle East.

And yet this seminal conference gradually faded into the mists of obscurity, overtaken by subsequent political earthquakes. As the Israeli historian Ephraim Karsh writes, There is probably no more understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo Conference.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

Jews of non-Ashkenazi background are used to the downplaying of their experience of antisemitism.

Episodes such as the Farhud, the massacre of hundreds of Jews in Iraq, by Arab nationalists, in June 1941, or the wave of pogroms in 1945 Libya, are rarely mentioned, even in academic pieces of research.

The knowledge of these pages of Jewish history is covered by layers of myths, lies and omissions, to quote Lynn Julius, such as the perennial referral to shared culture and language of Arabs and Jews. To which has been commented: a shared culture and language with the Arabs did not save the Jews of Iraq, any more than the Jewish contribution to German culture saved German Jews from Nazism [Lyn Julius, Uprooted, 2017; p. 236].

Not to mention the ever-persistent attempt to blame Zionism for the persecution of Jews in Arab Countries, despite the fact that most of these massacres took place before Israel was founded. Apparently, blaming Jews (or a Jewish political movement, such as Zionism) for antisemitism, is a temptation too strong to resist.But over the last years, a line has been crossed, and now if you try to speak of the above-mentioned pages of history, you may well end up silenced with the accusation of being a racist.

A blatant example of such intellectual dishonesty can be found in the Intelligence Squared debate Is anti-Zionism the new antisemitism [at 00:54]

When a member of the audience, a son of Iraqi Jewish refugees, mentioned the tragic fate of the Jewish communities in Arab lands, Peter Beinart went into a tirade about the anti-Palestinian bigotry, which is so deep that its often unconscious in our [Jewish] community [] the notion [] that Palestinians have some kind of instinctive desire to kill Jews simply because they want to kill Jews []

Now let it sink in. A child of refugees is trying to tell the story of his family, and a journalist, rather than expressing empathy, diagnoses an undercurrent of bigotry. And you know what happens with the undercurrent (which for some strange kind ofpower Beinart is entitled to detect). It runs so deep that the more you try to deny it, the more evidence there is that you are affected by it.

Victims of racist persecutions are censored with the accusation of being racist. This is the way White supremacists make their case when they want to show off their pseudo-intellectual face. Open racism is for their extreme fringes to express. Those who deal with the media prefer to claim that their movement is about defending their community from Black supremacists, Muslim fundamentalists, Cultural Marxists and the like. Its not racism, they claim; on the contrary, they are defending the rights of the white minority.

Obviously, no one is fooled by their pretentious nonsense.

But if the victims of this callous inversion are Jews of Middle Eastern background, then the argument becomes legitimate, and prestigious columnists sign up for it.As the saying goes: Orwell was an optimist.

Obviously, no one wants to deny that racism in Israel exists. Racism can be everywhere. As a British citizen of Italian background, I endure almost daily anti-Italian jokes about disorganisation during the current pandemic. Sometimes the authors of these racist tweets are British Jews. But I do not diagnose any deep undercurrent of anti-Italian racism in British Jewry!

Opposing racism, everywhere: in the UK or in Israel, is obviously a moral duty. Incidentally one may point out that Israel is not doing a bad job. According to serious researches, the percentage of non-Jewish citizens who feel that they do not belong is currently in single digits.

Shouting accusations of racism and censoring the victims of antisemitism, is not a great help in the much-needed process of building a common national identity in the Jewish State.

Italian by birth, Israeli by choice, Rabbi of the largest synagogue in Sussex (UK). Uncompromising Zionist.

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

This forced the British government to at least talk formally to the US authorities. The US authorities said that the government could not change the law by itself but if a private senator could be found to introduce such a bill then it could be made possible.

Of course, such a private senator could not be found. This made Dr Khare even more determined.

A private senator could be found for a law amendment for the Chinese but not for Indians?

Now the US authorities said that after the war they would consider the question of Indians, but bundling them together with Malays and Indonesians. Dr Khare was livid. He did not want Indians to be grouped along with Malays and Indonesians which would place Indians at a disadvantage.

In this context, he protested stating that grouping Indians with "half-civilized Malays and Indonesians" as "positively an insult". Those were times when even a Jawaharlal Nehru with more international exposure was speaking of being impressed by "well-bredness and aristocracy" of the Chinese.

Thus, the insensitive and erroneous language that Dr Khare used to refer to Malays and Indonesians by calling them "half-civilized" could be forgiven though definitely not acceptable. But what is of importance here is Khares determination to get Indians the same advantage that the Chinese had earned through their war contribution.

Dr Khare had clearly made it known to the world that India as a nation was dissatisfied. This was when the issue had not even touched the national conscience overtly. He also appealed in his own way to then president Franklin Roosevelt, stating that though the president of the US was sympathetic to Indians, he could not do anything.

In the US, there was one senator, who was also sympathetic to the Indian cause. After the Chinese were granted citizenship and annual emigration concession to 100 of them, the Indians in the US had started demanding the same benefits.

Congressman Emanuel Celler (1888-1981) would later become 'the longest-serving Congressman' from New York. Raised as a secular Jew during the First World War, reading Herzel, the architect of Zionist movement, Celler had become a Zionist.

During the Second World War, he was busy using all his diplomatic talent to rescue Jews from Germany and get them into the US. In some, he had failed like in the Wagner-Rogers Act to allow 20,000 German Jewish children under the age of 14 to come to the US and in persuading Roosevelt to challenge the British blockade of Palestine.

He also wanted the US to establish full diplomatic ties with Vatican so that it could be used to rescue the Jews. He was known for fighting the covert anti-Jewish elements inside the establishment. ('Rep. Emanuel Celler - an unsung hero', The Jerusalem Post, 3 May 2019).

It was Emanuel Celler, who would take note of the agony of Indians, which had been registered and made public.

In the US, a movement was underway for more than a year to acquire citizenship for east Indians. So he as private senator moved the bill "for granting citizenship rights to the Indians domiciled in America and also allowing an annual quota of 100 immigrants from India to settle as citizens in America.

Thus, today, the non-resident Indian (NRI) population of India, who have American citizenship, should thank these two unsung and forgotten heroes.

Celler was not aware of even the existence of Dr Khare. But he was aware of the more commonly known faces of India Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Nehru.

He had great regard for Nehru in particular.

However, all such perception of Nehru would change later. He would call not only Nehru as "a Commie but even his son a Commie", and when pointed out Nehru had no son he would snap back saying, "then his daughter is a Commie.

In India, the role of Dr Khare had been largely forgotten. He was a straightforward angry man, and too straightforward for petty politics. He was also magnanimous to a fault. But both his anger and magnanimity shared a common factor love for his countrymen.

He was a Hindu Mahasabha supporter, a staunch Hindutvaite. At that time, partition politics was at its peak. Yet, when Second World War stopped the Haj pilgrimage and the ban prolonged, he persuaded the Viceroy and made the Haj possible with the ships carrying the pilgrims being given protection by naval forces.

He was an uncompromising Hindutvaite, and a patriotic humanist par excellence. This made him seek support of every and any leader of Indian polity in his attempt to remove the distress of Indian people abroad whose interests he was taking care of zealously even with the limited power available to him then.

Historian Rakesh Ankit points out this legacy of Dr Khare:

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The Indian-Americans Owe It To These Unsung Heroes A Hindutvaite And A Zionist - Swarajya

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

Joseph, you should honor Israeli soldiers, whether they are Jewish or not, because they protect millions of Jewish lives. As a Jew, you are required to be concerned about the safety of any center of Jewish population, and especially one that now has close to half the Jews in the world. Zionism has nothing to do with this.

And those who died on that job surely have a special place in the Next World, just like chassidei umos haolam, even if they didnt keep the 7 mitzvos.

See the Gemara in Avoda Zara about yesh koneh olamo beshaah achas; it gives three examples, two of whom were nochrim, and especially the one who gained his olam haba by sacrificing his life to avert a decree against the Jews, and then circumcised himself on the way to his execution out of a desire to bind himself to the Jewish nation. Gentile soldiers who fell in IDF service surely have a similar din.

And of course the vast majority of the IDF fallen, who were Jews, deserve your greatest honor without question. They are kulam kedoshim, because of the Jewish lives they saved with their sacrifice.

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Time to remember the soldiers - Yeshiva World News

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Posted By admin on May 1, 2020

The creation of the modern Hebrew language around the end of the 19th century sought to resurrect an ancient language which had hardly been spoken colloquially among Jews, to become the new unifying national language of the Jewish nation.

This effort built upon romantic and messianic concepts of return to the promised land, where the speaking of Hebrew would serve as a symbolic bridge to times immemorial. This was far from an exact science; had the intent really been to return to days of a Judean state pre-70AD, the language to be resurrected would better have been Aramaic.

Nonetheless the modern Hebrew served as a symbolic bridge to the bible, and the Jews were supposedly the people of the book.

I pay no emotional tribute to this mythology. My concern is the function that this linguistic maneuver has played, and still does play, in the Apartheid reality of Israel a state of affairs that is wholly to do with the settler-colonialist nature of the Zionist venture and its brainchild, the state of Israel.

Here I compare Israel with South Africa in this linguistic context, because there is a striking similarity. The essence of the return to Hebrew is to accentuate a sense of nativity. This is a typical colonialist inversion, where the actual natives who have lived there from time immemorial are reduced to unattached others, and the newcomer colonists substitute themselves as the actual natives.

In South Africa, the language of the colonists, derived from Dutch, was and is Afrikaans. The suggestion in the name Afrikaans is obvious: the European colonists are the natives, and the others are but savages who are to make way for the enlightened and serve them. The details of the mythology are not really important. Theres always a mythic story a bible falls from the heavens upon the besieged colonists in 1600s, whatever. What is really important is how the mythology is exploited.

Though Apartheid stems as a term from the South African model, it is by now an international crime against humanity that stands in its own right, and does not require precise mirroring of historical South African policies. It is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts [of a character similar to other crimes against humanity] committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Afrikaans served as a central symbol of White supremacy in Apartheid South Africa.

The white South African colonists became only about 10% of the population, but their European-derived language was supposed to distinguish them as the dominant class. Less than 14% of South Africans have Afrikaans as their mother tongue. A plurality speak Zulu (almost 23%), and 11 other languages are spoken in the country. But Afrikaans was supposed to be the language of the real South Africans, those who had full citizenship rights, and thus it was supposed to be the real national language.

In Israel, the term Hebrew has multiple connotation. In biblical times, say of the story of Israel in Egypt, the sons of Israel are also described as Hebrews. Thus, the linguistic notion of Hebrew also serves a nationalist idea, when extrapolated from ancient tribal times and applied into a modern national paradigm.

In fact, the term Hebrew was regularly used by Zionists in pre-state days to connote nationalist efforts. The supposedly socialist motto of the Zionists in their attempt to dominate and ethnically cleanse the work market was Hebrew work (avoda ivrit), not Jewish work. It was immediately understood that Hebrew really meant Jewish, and that it meant it racially so. The application of Hebrew rather than Jew also served to distance the Zionists from the old Jew of the diaspora, and connecting back to the roots through tilling of the soil and so on.

There are a myriad of contradictions in all this, between messianism and secularism, between old and new, a contradiction that prevails through the whole history of Zionism until today. One need not be dumbfounded by this contradiction it is a part of the settler-colonial mechanism and its mythologies, where reasonability is a moot subject. Reason is good to have when it serves the colonialist purpose, and when it is absent, this is forgiven all in service to the colonists purpose. As Israeli historian Ilan Papp said, Zionists dont believe in God, but they believe God promised them the land. This is of course a generalization, since many Zionists do believe in God, but it portrays the ability to handle and contain this contradiction and apply the one or the other as befits the occasion.

What is also interesting is that in Hebrew, the term for Arabic and the term for Hebrew (language) are almost identical Aravit and Ivrit respectively. In Hebrew language, the two terms have the same letters, though the first two are inverted.

In the application of the terms as national terms, that is Hebrew and Arab, it is basically the same Ivri and Aravi. This appears once again to be this paradoxical affinity, where the two are almost interchangeable.

Of course historically, there is a linguistic affinity between Arabic and Hebrew, an affinity that is known today as Semitic. Yet the purpose of the Zionist colonists was completely opposite from affinity. As a settler-colonialist venture, they had essentially followed a logic which Patrick Wolfe called elimination of the native. They did not come to merely interact with the local Arabs and play Semitic language sharing. They came to replace the Palestinians, and to make the Hebrew Zionists the new natives, returning from the ancient past.

The Zionist model was designed to separate the Jew from the Arab, even when the Jew was an Arab, as in the case of the many middle-Eastern Arab Jews who came to be called Mizrahim, that is, literally Easterners. Israel applies a national definition of these two terms Jew and Arab, and they cannot overlap.

This elimination-logic also manifests itself in the renaming, Hebrewization, of destroyed Palestinian villages as Moshe Dayan said in 1969:

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

The faux affinity idea can also be seen in the Afrikaans example. These colonists were not there to share in the African nativity they were there to dominate and exploit the natives.

This brings us to the territory of cultural appropriation, which is a very known and insidious aspect of colonialism. Falafel, pita and hummus become Israeli food. Some words are borrowed from Arabic as a tongue-in-cheek, like Yalla, and the colonists think they are integrated. The term poel aravi Arab worker becomes standard for those Palestinians who work in construction, and the Palestinian Arab is reduced to a second-class citizen, at best.

Palestinian citizens of Israel have had good reasons to learn to speak Hebrew, since they live in a society dominated by Hebrew-speaking Jews. In fact, 60% of them speak Hebrew. On the other hand, only 17% of Jewish Israelis speak Arabic. While the need to speak Hebrew for the Palestinian is in order to get by in a Hebrew-dominated society, the need to speak Arabic for the Hebrew-speaking Jew is often control: to be able to understand what the enemy is doing, to infiltrate it and to spy on them.

Less than two years ago, the quasi-constitutional Nation State law was passed in Israel, reducing Arabic from being an official language to merely having a nebulous special status. This was yet another milestone in the Zionist project of elimination, which again demonstrates how language is used as a means of identity and domination.

There appears to be a hope among some non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews, that there would, in the future, be a bi-national solution of a one state, where they perceive the one nation to be the Palestinian Arab, and the other to be a Hebrew one, that is, disconnected from the religious notion of Jewish. While this idea entails the fact that Hebrew speakers today have an attachment to the place not because of mythological times but because of recent history, there is a problematic notion here. The vision ignores the fact that Hebrew has been applied as a central means of colonization and colonist identity.

It doesnt really matter that the religious component of the colonial project has been reduced when it is descibed as Hebrew not Jewish. The mythological idea and romantic attachment are basically the same.

I think that the idea of a Jewish nation (or a Hebrew nation, if you will), is the central myth of the Zionist project, and it needs to be dismantled, on the way to a modern and liberal paradigm of nationhood in historical Palestine.

Palestine needs to be decolonized. Part of that decolonization has to involve language. How that will happen exactly I do not know. In South Africa, English is a language that is used as a primary language in state discourse. This is despite the fact that less than 10% have it as their mother tongue.

Israel is today where South Africa was active Apartheid.

I speak Hebrew with my Hebrew-speaking Israeli friends and family. But in my daily life, I most often express myself in English. Probably every language has attachment to unfortunate or downright horrid historical aspects, also English. So I try to be very detached from the romanticism about languages. I dont think they should be condemned because of the political history. For example, I know that there are Jewish Israelis who are revolted by German, because of the Holocaust. I try to actively disconnect from this response, because I think it serves bigotry, and I have no animus to Germans today because of the Holocaust.

While Israels colonialist Apartheid must be distinguished from Germanys genocidal Nazi nationalism, still, Israels Apartheid is a living reality, it is not in the past. When language is being actively exploited as a means of present domination, it is right that people should have an acute awareness about that. It does not mean that I avoid the language, but I am acutely aware of that insidious aspect, and I am certainly not romantic about it quite the opposite I apply it for pragmatic reasons on occasion.

In the end, it doesnt really matter in which language you say Apartheid. If it walks, talks and looks like it, it is what it is. I try to write about it, in English.

I long for the days when it will be over, whatever words and whatever language I must use in order to help make that happen.

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Hebrew, Arab, and Apartheid - Mondoweiss

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