Israel – a Jewish State

The following facts show that the modern State of Israel was created in Palestine because of the historic connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, and not in response to the Holocaust, as many Holocaust deniers and Antisemits falsely argue.

Fact 1: The Jewish people have had a continuous presence in the Land of Israel for nearly 3500 years.

• Circa 1400 B.C.E. – Joshua leads the Israelites into Canaan.
• 866 B.C.E. – King David declares Jerusalem capital of Israel.
• 825 B.C.E. – King Solomon builds the First Temple in Jerusalem.
• 423 B.C.E. – Destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians.
• 325 B.C.E. – The Second Temple is built in Jerusalem.
• 70 C.E. – Fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Second Temple.
• 135 C.E. – Defeat of Bar Kochba by the Romans.
• 231-254 C.E. – Early Church Father and theologian Origen “visited Erez Israel a number of times and came into contact with leading Jewish scholars there.”1
•  614 C.E. – “The Persian army of Chosroes II approached Jerusalem in 614 and besieged it with the help of its Jewish allies.”2
• 670-740 C.E. – “During the first century after the Arab conquest, the caliph and governors of Syria and the Land [Palestine] ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects.”3
• 985 C.E. – The Arab writer Muqaddasi states that “The mosque is empty of worshippers…The Jews constitute the majority of Jerusalem’s population.”4
• 1099 C.E. – A synagogue is burned during the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem. Jewish correspondence following the destruction of Jerusalem marks “the earliest account on the conquest in any language.”5
• 1267 C.E. – Ramban moves to Jerusalem.
• 1492 C.E. – Mass immigration of Jews to Palestine following the Spanish expulsion.
• 1884 C.E. – Beginning of the First Aliya.

Fact 2: Throughout the ages the Jewish people have kept Jerusalem and Zion foremost in their prayers. 

Preceding the Shema Israel

Bring us in peacefulness from the four corners of the earth and lead us with upright pride to our land.

SHEMA ISRAEL

In the Amidah

Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise the banner to gather our exiles and gather us together from the four corners of the earth. Blessed are you, God, who gathers in the dispersed of the people of Israel.

And to Jerusalem your city, may You return in compassion, and may You rest within it, as You have spoken. May You rebuild it soon in our days as an eternal structure, and may You speedily establish the throne of David with in. Blessed are You, God, the builder of Jerusalem.

Psalm 126:

A song of ascents. When God will return the captivity of Zion, we will be like dreamers. Then our mouth will be filled with laughter and our tongue glad with song. Then they will declare among the nations, ‘God has done greatly with these.’ God has done greatly with us, we were gladdened. O God – return our captivity like springs in the desert. Those who tearfully sow will reap glad song. He who bears the measure of seeds walks along weeping, but will return in exultation, a bearer of his shaves.

Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat and also wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows within it we hung our lyres. There our captors requested words of song from us, with our lyres playing joyous music, ‘Sing for us from Zion’s song!’ ‘How can we sing the song of God upon the alien’s soil?’ If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue adhere to my palate if I fail to recall you, if I fail to elevate Jerusalem above my foremost joy. Remember, God, for the offspring of Edom, the day of Jerusalem – for those who say Destroy! Destroy! To its very foundation.

Musaf for the High Holidays, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot:

Draw our scattered ones near, from among the nations, and bring in our dispersions from the ends of the earth. And bring us to Zion, Your City, in glad song, and to Jerusalem, home of Your Sanctuary, in eternal joy.

Fact 3: As the First Aliyah brought large groups of European Jews to Palestine, the leadership of the Zionist movement expressed their claim to a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland.

“Zionism seeks for the Jewish people a publicly recognized legally secured homeland in Palestine.” (From the program of the First Zionist Congress, Basel, Switzerland 1897.)

“My plan is simple enough. We must obtain the sovereignty of Palestine – our never-to-be-forgotten, historical home.” (Theodor Herzl, quoted in The New York Times, August 31, 1897.)

“That the Zionist Congress firmly maintains the principle for the foundation of the colony in the Jewish-father-land, Palestine, or in that vicinity. The congress thanks Great Britain for the offer of African territory, the consideration of which, however, is terminated…” (Resolution adopted by the Seventh Zionist Congress, July 1905.)

Fact 4: Following World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious nations began the re-division of Ottoman territory. Recognizing the historic connection between the Jewish people and Palestine, they committed to establishing a Jewish state therein.

“When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection. (British White Paper of 1922)

“Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration [the Balfour Declaration] originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” (Conference of the Principle Allied Powers at San Remo – July 24, 1922.)

Fact 5: Even before the wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine as part of the First Aliyah, a Jewish majority has existed in Jerusalem.

***

Notes:

1 Encyclopedia Judaica. Jerusalem, Israel: Keter Publishing House, 1971, Page 1467.

2 Encyclopedia Judaica. Jerusalem, Israel: Keter Publishing House, 1971, Page 1971.

3 Parker, James. Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine. Great Britain: Harmondsworth, 1970, Page 66.

4 Kahler, Erich. The Jews among the Nations. New York City, NY: F. Ungar, 1967, Page 144.

5 Kedar, Benjamin Z. “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades.” The Crusades. Vol. 3. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2004, Page 63.

6 Tal, Eliyahu. Whose Jerusalem. Tel Aviv, Israel: International Forum for a United Jerusalem, 1994, Page 94

Earl Shugerman’s Corner: Life in Israel

Earl Shugerman will bring every week a series of stories about Anglo-Saxon immigrants to Israel. This project is aimed to promote a more realistic view of life in Israel. The following story was written at a summer camp during Tisha B’Av (Jewish Fast).

A Nation of Remembrance 

by Earl Shugerman

Understanding the culture of Israel is a great challenge to many new olim. Israel is a nation where the Jewish faith and history are very much a part of daily life.

Yesterday was Tisha B’Av, a day of evel or mourning in Israel. This day mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and all suffering endured by the people of the Book. It is a day of fasting and other acts of observance. Businesses and schools may be open depending on the type of service or affiliation.

A Fusion of Past and Present: Worshippers attend the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Temple complex.

Forty kids aged six to ten enjoyed various summer activities including volleyball, soccer, and dodge ball. The director, Jaffa, also gave a one hour presentation describing the building and destruction of both Temples. We also discussed the holocaust and Israel’s memorial day. More than twenty thousand Israelis have died in open conflicts or by acts of terrorism since 1948. The Holocaust is almost always in the minds and hearts of Israeli Jews. We must never forget the murders of millions whose only sin was being born Jewish or having Jewish ancestors.

We had a short question and answer period after the presentation. I was surprised that none of the kids asked why we talked about these topics during summer fun time or complained. I asked my two English speaking “friends” in the group Naomi (8) and Shachar (7) to explain everyone’s cooperation. Naomi spent two years in Boston and answered in wonderful English; “most Israeli kids understand that remembering the past protects us in the present and future”. Shachar an American olah agreed and showed great pride in her new Israeli citizenship.

Today we had a group of visitors from Boston come to visit the Synagogue. The group was composed of roughly one hundred adults and kids from a sister congregation. We enjoyed dinner together and then went on a tour of the Temple’s bomb shelter. The shelter is an area of three hundred square feet that also includes a separate bathroom, shower, and first aid room. During the second war with Lebanon the twenty kids from our day school and fifty local children spent their days alternating between the shelter and our school facility. Each time a siren wailed the kids and staff ran down the three floors from the classroom to safety. Our previous past congregation president Jesse led the tour and explained to us that many Haifa residents left the city during the fighting but many chose to stay. Jesse who is a physician and American born mentioned to me that my friend Naomi and her family chose to stay.

About the author: Earl Shugerman is a retired American Government public relations specialist, who specialised in promoting programs for people with disabilities. Earl Shugerman is currently spokesperson in Haifa for The Jewish Agency and a writer specializing in interfaith relations. He has worked together with the Catholic and Southern Baptist Movements, the Reformed Jewish Movement and Muslim groups in interfaith activities.

China’s public relations strategy

Thousands of Chinese military forces have been deployed into Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, in an attempt to control turmoil that has led to over 150 deaths in recent days.

A BBC correspondent in Urumqi says the situation “feels like martial law in everything but name.” The troop deployment comes after disorder yesterday when thousands of angry ethnic Han Chinese wielding improvised weapons engaged in sporadic revenge attacks against Uighurs after deadly riots Sunday.

Meanwhile, Chinese President Hu Jintao left the G8 summit in Italy and returned to Beijing to deal with the violence. The Wall Street Journal says Hu’s departure from the G8 summit underlines the severity of the challenge the Xinjiang violence presents to China’s leadership.

Newsweek looks at the evolution of China’s public relations strategy, as evidenced in the latest crisis.

Read full story.

Terrorist Plot in New York against Synagogues

Four New York residents have been arrested for an alleged plot to attack two synagogues in the Bronx and to shoot down planes at a military base in Newburgh, New York.

The men, who were fuelled by their hatred of America and the Jews, reportedly began surveillance of several synagogues and a Jewish Community Center in the Bronx in April. The plot is one of several terrorist plots in the U.S. in recent years motivated by anti-Semitism and radical interpretations of Islam.

Several terrorist plots in New York were also motivated by a hatred of Jews or Israel.  These include:

• A group of men plotted to attack New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in 2007, in part because they wanted to take revenge on the U.S. for its diplomatic relationship with Israel.
• James Elshafay and Shawar Matin Siraj plotted to bomb New York’s Herald Square subway station in 2004 to show solidarity with the Palestinians because of their hatred of the “Zionists.”
• In July 1997, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer plotted to blow up a subway station in Brooklyn in order to “kill as many Jews as possible.”  He testified that he chose the Atlantic Avenue station as a target because there are “a lot of Jews who ride that train.”
• Ali Abu Kamal, a Palestinian man who went on a shooting spree atop the Empire State Building in 1997, carried a note in his pocket indicating the attack was meant to vent his anger at the U.S. for using Israel as an “instrument” against the Palestinian people.
• In 1993, five Islamic extremists detonated a car bomb below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing 6 people and wounding more than 1,000 others. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the attack, first planned to bomb Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn, but settled on the World Trade Center because “the majority of people who work in the World Trade Center are Jews,” according to Abdul Rahman Yasin, a co-conspirator in the attack.
• Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian cleric and alleged leader of the terrorist group Gama’a al-Islamiyya, plotted to bomb five major landmarks in New York in 1993, including the United Nations Headquarters, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge and the FBI office in New York.  In addition, he plotted to attack New York’s diamond district, an area largely populated by Jews, which according to one of his co-defendants would be like “hitting Israel itself.”
• In 1973, Khalid Al-Jawary plotted to blow up cars parked out of three Israeli targets in Manhattan to coincide with a scheduled visit to New York by then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.  The targets included El Al air terminal at John F. Kennedy International airport, the First Israel Bank and Trust Company, and the Israel Discount Bank in New York City.

Read full story.

Austrian Jewish community concerned over anti-Semitic rhetoric of Jörg Haider’s followers

The head of the Austrian Jewish community, Ariel Muzicant, has accused extreme-right politicians in his country of stoking hate in the run up to elections for the European Parliament in June 2009. Muzicant said in an interview that the tone of the campaign by the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) was directly responsible for a recent series of anti-Semitic incidents in the country.

The FPÖ encouraged “right-wing extremism in their own ranks and systematically want to make it socially respectable,” Muzicant said. He also likened the agitation of the party’s general secretary, Herbert Kickl, to those of Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

FPÖ leader Norbert Hofer demanded in a statement released Saturday that Austrian president Heinz Fischer and Parliament speaker Barbara Prammer condemn Muzicant’s words, but there has been no official response.

While most Austrians are likely to support the governing Social Democrats (SPÖ) and Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) in the elections, far-right parties won nearly 29 percent of the vote in last year’s national elections. Recent incidents in Austria include an attack by four right-wing youth on Holocaust survivors in the town of Ebensee; anti-Semitic statements made by Austrian students visiting the Auschwitz memorial; the refusal of a hotel in Tyrol to accept Jewish guests; and an Austrian far-right columnist blaming Jews for the current world financial crisis. An FPÖ campaign ad suggested that not only Turkey but also Israel, which is not a candidate for accession, should be prevented from joining the European Union.

Meanwhile, the Simon Wiesenthal Center warned that voter indifference across Europe could empower anti-Semitic parties in the upcoming European Parliament elections. “In the past, low voter turnout has played into the hands” of European parties and their allies which “are openly anti-Semitic and some include convicted Holocaust deniers,” said a statement released by the center. The Wiesenthal Center is arguing that votes can influence the Israel-Europe relationship and Jewish life in Europe because the EU Parliament will address issues such as anti-Semitism, the Iranian nuclear threat, dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah, and trade agreements with Israel. Some 736 members of the European Parliament will be elected by proportional representation to represent 500 million Europeans in the 27 member states.

Jüdisch-arabischer Fußballverein zu Gast in Berlin

Pressemitteilung des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland

Berlin, 20. Mai 2009 – Nächste Woche kommt die Jugendmannschaft des israelischen Fußballvereins FC Hapo”el Abu Gosch – Mevasseret Zion nach Berlin.

Auf Einladung des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland hält sich die Jugendmannschaft des israelischen Fußballvereins FC Hapoel Abu Gosch – Mevasseret Zion vom 25.-28. Mai 2009 in Berlin auf. Mit der Einladung würdigt der Zentralrat das Engagement des Vereins für die Koexistenz jüdischer und arabischer Israelis und möchte das von den Spielern und Amtsträgern des Vereins vorgelebte Erfolgsmodell des gutnachbarlichen Zusammenlebens auch in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland vorstellen.

FC Hapoel Abu Gosch – Mevasseret Zion ist der einzige jüdisch-arabische Fußballverein Israels. Selbstverständlich spielen jüdische und arabische Fußballer in vielen anderen israelischen Teams zusammen, doch hat sich FC Hapoel Abu Gosch – Mevasseret Zion nicht nur sportliche Erfolge, sondern auch die Förderung der Koexistenz beider Volksgruppen ausdrücklich als Ziel gesetzt. Der Verein stellt eine volle und paritätische Partnerschaft zwischen den beiden westlich von Jerusalem gelegenen Ortschaften, dem jüdischen Mevasseret Zion und dem arabischen Abu Gosch dar. Der sechsköpfige Vorstand besteht aus drei Arabern und drei Juden.

Zum Turnier zwischen FC Hapoel Abu Gosch – Mevasseret Zion, Hertha BSC und der Axel-Springer-Journalistenschule sowie zum Freundschaftsspiel zwischen der israelischen Mannschaft und Makkabi Berlin sind Medienvertreter herzlich willkommen.

Das Turnier findet am 26.05.2009 im Amateurstadion Hertha BSC, Hanns-Braun-Straße, am Olympiastadion statt. Der Anpfiff ist für 17.30 Uhr geplant.

Das Spiel gegen Makkabi Berlin findet am 27.05.2009, Julius-Hirsch-Sportplatz, Harbigstraße 40, Berlin-Charlottenburg statt. Spielbeginn: 18.30 Uhr

Eine Akkreditierung ist nicht erforderlich.

Ansprechpartner vor Ort ist Herr Wladimir Struminski, Tel: 00972-522 576 865.

Guest Editorial by Rabbi Benjamin Blech on Pope’s Visit to Israel

Our beloved friend and colleague Rabbi Benjamin Blech took time to serve as guest editor, commenting the Pope’s visit in Israel. In January 2005, Rabbi Blech became one of the first rabbis in history known to confer the priestly blessing on a Pope, when he visited the Pope John Paul II  in the Apostolic Palace.

My Encounter with the Pope

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

New York, May 17, 2009

Was I wrong at that moment to believe it’s at last possible to cast off centuries of mistrust, misunderstanding and religious intolerance?

How does a rabbi feel when he meets the pope?

As a 10th-generation rabbi who has spent a lifetime teaching Torah to Jews, that’s something I thought was about as likely to happen to me as winning a gold medal at the Olympics. My world is the ivory tower of Jewish academia, not the Vatican. The people I’m used to seeing with yarmulkes on their heads are congregants, not cardinals. The holy city I most often visit isn’t Rome but Jerusalem.

But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and Divine providence put me together not just with one pope but with two.

Before I share with you the circumstances of these remarkable meetings, a little personal background is important. My parents came from Poland, and when I was a child they would tell me about their early lives there. On Christmas and Easter they knew they could not dare be out in the street. Their church-going neighbors would search for any of the Jewish “Christ killers” who their priest had impressed upon them in his sermon were guilty of killing their Lord. Anti-Semitic attacks were almost everyday occurrences, the expected price that Jews understood they had to pay for residence in a non-Jewish land. It’s sad to say but for Jews, Christians were the villains – because we were constantly victims.

If my parents ever wondered whether a time might come when this would all change, the Holocaust put an end to whatever optimism they dared to allow themselves. No, they concluded, and constantly reinforced in their admonitions to my siblings and to me. The rift between us and “them,” as they saw it, was unbridgeable. Only a fool, they never failed to tell us, would deny the lesson of so many centuries.

So in my mind, the pope became the general of an opposing army. Nothing personal, mind you, but surely sufficient to make me suspicious of any gesture on his part to improve our relationship.

It was with this mindset that I fortuitously became involved with a gentleman who had connections with the Vatican and offered to help when I informed him that there were many precious Jewish items in the hands of the church that we would love to bring back to their original owners. With his assistance and unbelievable good fortune we were invited to the Vatican Library to view some extremely precious manuscripts and initiate plans to bring some of them out on exhibit in Israel.

And then there was one more remarkable thing that happened. It explains what a nice Jewish septuagenarian like me was doing in the Apostolic Palace standing before the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics in the week before what proved to be his final illness.

Pope John Paul II was a different kind of pope. With all of my mistrust ingrained since my youth I had to attach significant meaning to the things I learnt about this spiritual leader of others who ironically enough was born in Poland, not far from my ancestors. I discovered that he was someone sensitive enough when he assumed the papacy to make one of his very first acts a visit to Auschwitz to in order express remorse at the fate of the 6 million victims.

More, he became the first pope since Saint Peter to visit a synagogue. He journeyed to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and left an inscribed message within one of its crevices asking for forgiveness for the sins Christianity committed against the Jews throughout the centuries. He denounced anti-Semitism as a “sin against God and humanity.” He normalized diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. He epitomized love, reconciliation and the healing of ancient wounds.

And because he had a profound feeling of affection for Jews, he made an amazing decision. Realizing his advanced age he made a personal and private request that was relayed to me. Pope John Paul II indicated that he would like to receive a blessing – a blessing from the spiritual leaders of the people who had for so long been the victims of its misplaced, virulent hatred. That is how I came to be a part of 150 rabbis and cantors who went to meet with the pope and fulfill his request.

At this historic moment three of us stepped forward to personally recite a blessing. It was then that I uttered the words recorded in the Talmud for a time when a Jew meets a great leader of the nations of the world: “We bless You O Lord for having granted of Your glory to Your creations.”

Was I wrong at that moment to believe it’s at last possible to cast off centuries of mistrust, misunderstanding and religious intolerance?

What went through my mind?

I heard the past speaking to me. I don’t know how it was possible for time to become so compressed that in those few moments, I could clearly make out so many conversations in my mind, all of them vying for my attention, all of them claiming my conviction. Some were filled with anger. Some were disbelieving. Some advised caution. Some were overcome with joyous emotion. All were battling for my agreement. It was simply too difficult for me to decide, too momentous a moment for me to come to any conclusion.

But with all the voices fighting to be heard within me one seemed most recognizable. I could swear that in the Vatican itself I heard my father, of blessed memory, whisper in my ear,” Perhaps. Perhaps.”

Not too long after that I was invited to be a member of the group that accompanied Pope Benedict, newly appointed after the death of John Paul II, when as one of the first acts of his papacy he too went to Auschwitz to pray, to request forgiveness, and to vow that civilized mankind would never again permit an atrocity of this horrendous magnitude to every again occur. I know that this pope is a German whose biography leaves us with some unanswered questions. I know that he has committed some serious errors of judgment in his response to Holocaust deniers within his own faith. And yet I saw him at Auschwitz. I heard his words. I spoke with him. I know that he, too, in his visit to New York last year chose to go to a synagogue to make clear his warm feelings towards Jews.

Pope Benedict was in Israel last week. He too has placed a prayer in the wall. He too has gone to the memorial for those who perished during the Holocaust. For some he didn’t say enough and he didn’t do enough. For others there is still the lingering and strong suspicion that he is the head of an organization that forever stands in opposition to our survival, at the very least theologically.

Only time will tell whether we may place our trust in the sincerity of these new gestures of friendship. But I would like to believe, seeing things with my own eyes that I know my parents and grandparents would never have deemed possible, that it is not too far-fetched and too naive to respond to these apparent attempts at reconciliation, with one word: “Perhaps. Perhaps.”

About the author: Rabbi Benjamin Blech,  is the author of 12 highly acclaimed books, including Understanding Judaism: The basics of Deed and Creed. He is a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University and the Rabbi Emeritus of Young Israel of Oceanside (California) which he served for 37 years and from which he retired to pursue his interests in writing and lecturing around the globe. He is also the author of If God Is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?

Reprinted with kindly permission of Aish HaTorah International.

Professorenpapst Joseph Ratzinger

In einem Kommentar erschienen in der heutigen Ausgabe der Frankfurter Rundschau erläutert Prof. Dr. Micha Brumlik, Mitherausgeber der Monatszeitschrift Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, warum der Papst-Besuch in Israel nicht wirklich von Erfolg gekrönt war.

“Diese Aufgaben auch nur halbwegs sinnvoll und erfolgreich miteinander zu verbinden, bedarf es authentischen religiösen Charismas, machiavellistischer Klugheit und eines auf Lebenserfahrung beruhenden und in Krisen gefestigten moralischen Urteils. Joseph Ratzinger verfügt über keine dieser Eigenschaften. Sein Leben ist … das eines sozialen Aufsteigers, der sich mit Fleiß und Intelligenz aus dem Kleine-Leute-Milieu seiner Eltern hochgearbeitet hat, persönlichkeitsbildende Freund- und Liebschaften weitgehend vermieden und sich entschlossen dem gewidmet hat, was Sicherheit verhieß: die als unumstößlich wahr angesehenen Dogmen jener Institution, in der allein er zu dem werden konnte, der er jetzt ist.”

Zum Artikel.

Joining Hands with the Pope in Nazareth

Rabbi David Rosen, American Jewish Committee (AJC) international director of interreligious affairs, joined with Pope Benedict XVI and a group of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Druze religious leaders in Nazareth, Israel, for an oecumenical meeting and to sing a song of peace.

“It illustrated dramatically that religion does not have to be the problem but the solution and that it is up to politicians to engage religious leaders in the search for peace,” Rabbi David Rosen said.

Pope Benedict’s Historic Visit to Israel

Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Israel is a historic and positive step forward for Vatican-Israel relations and the Catholic-Jewish dialogue. This important trip reaffirms Pope Benedict’s commitment to continue to strengthen relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel, begun under his predecessor Pope John Paul II. 

Benedict XVI’s visit – nine years since the last one by Pope John Paul II – is being hailed both as a reconfirmation of the Vatican’s commitment to meaningful and respectful dialogue and relations with the Jewish people, but also as a missed opportunity to deliver more unambiguous and emotive messages of a German pope’s remorse for the church’s past persecution of Jews. The Pope was criticized by some leaders in Holocaust remembrance, other commentators and Holocaust survivors for not having cited at Yad Vashem the number “six million,” for having used the term “killed” instead of “murdered,” and for not having specifically affirmed remorse for Germans’ or Christians’ actions.

In a op-ed published in the newspaper Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Abraham Foxman explains the true meaning of Pope’s visit to Israel.

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The Importance of the Pope’s Visit to Israel

by Abraham H. Foxman
National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)

When his plane touched down at Ben Gurion International Airport, Pope Benedict XVI became only the second pope in the history of the Catholic Church to officially visit the State of Israel.

Israeli, Jewish and Vatican leaders expressed high hopes for a smooth visit that would enhance the Catholic-Jewish and Israel-Vatican relationships.

Yet almost from the minute he got off the plane, Benedict’s actions and words have been severely scrutinized, dissected and criticized from all sides. This extraordinary level of public and media scrutiny has led to a series of controversies, expressions of dismay and failed expectations by some Israeli leaders.

It must be recognized that Benedict is following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the beloved Pope John Paul II, whose groundbreaking pilgrimage in March 2000 hit all the right notes and captured the hearts and minds of Jews and Catholics around the world. From the get-go it was always going to be unfair to measure Benedict’s trip by John Paul’s, especially since Benedict has stepped into a roiling political, religious and social climate that is vastly changed from the more hopeful regional environment just nine years ago.

It is not only the region that is different. The two popes have vastly different personalities and public personas. Where the Polish-born John Paul II was a grand communicator able to project his charm and personal story to a wide audience, Benedict, a native of Germany, is a reserved theologian who conveys a professorial tone.

Beyond style, there are the words themselves. In this there is room for debate.

Prominent officials have sharply criticized Benedict’s much-anticipated speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for failing to live up to expectations.

When Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem he referenced the Nazis by name, condemned the murder of millions of victims and mourned the loss of his Jewish friends.  He met at length with 30 Polish Jewish survivors.

By contrast, Benedict failed to mention Nazis or Germany, as well as his own personal history in Germany during the war. He did not use the word murder and ignored the issue of Christian responsibility for the Holocaust. A historic opportunity was squandered.

Yet a close examination of Benedict’s text and actions shows that he did deliver an appropriate speech focusing on the concepts of remembrance. He also met briefly with Holocaust survivors. It must be noted also that in recent months, Benedict has made strong statements repudiating Holocaust denial.  And in the past, Benedict has talked about his personal experiences as a member of Hitler Youth and the Germany Army.

Therefore, it would do us well to keep things in perspective and recognize what this pope has said and done.

By coming to Israel at this time, the 82-year-old pontiff is solidifying the Vatican’s formal relationship with the State of Israel, launched when a historic diplomatic agreement was signed in 1993. His trip demonstrates the Church’s commitment to the security and survival of Israel as a Jewish state.

Benedict is also establishing a track record for future popes. No longer will Pope John Paul’s journey be able to be portrayed as an aberration or a personal mission. Indeed, Benedict’s trip will institutionalize that every pope visit Israel and commit the billion-member Roman Catholic Church to the importance of Israel as the Jewish state.

Benedict’s voyage also demonstrates the continuity of the Church’s commitment to enhance relations with the Jewish people. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was Pope John Paul’s chief theologian and, therefore, the many positive improvements in Jewish-Catholic relations over the past three decades were done in consultation with him.

To be sure, there are a series of outstanding serious issues challenging the Vatican-Jewish dialogue, including the recent troubling regressions in Catholic theology and liturgy about Judaism. Israel and the Vatican also have complicated property and tax issues to resolve.

However, the focus on this trip should be in recognizing the positive contributions of the current pope. Benedict has pledged to keep strengthening Catholic-Jewish relations and reaffirmed the Church’s unqualified repudiation of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. He has taught that Christians should gain a new respect for the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. And he has asserted that God’s Covenant and promises to the people of Israel are alive and irrevocable, further demonstrating his belief that the Jewish people “are beloved brothers and sisters.”

While we believe that Jews must remember and honor the past, we cannot change it. What we can do is create a future where Catholics and Jews deepen and expand our dialogue and work together with mutual respect and understanding in the interests of tikkun olam (i.e. Restoration of the World).

***

About the author: Born in Poland in 1940, Abraham Foxman was saved from the Holocaust as an infant by his Polish Catholic nanny who baptized and raised him as a Catholic during the war years. His parents survived the war, but 14 members of his family were lost.

After he arrived in America in 1950 with his parents, Mr. Foxman graduated from the Yeshiva of Flatbush, in Brooklyn, NY, and earned his B.A. in political science from the City College of the City University of New York, graduating with honors in history. Mr. Foxman holds a law degree from New York University School of Law, and did graduate work in Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary and in international economics at New York’s New School for Social Research.

On October 16, 2006  Foxman was awarded as Knight of the Legion of Honor by Jacques Chirac, the President of France at the time. This award is France’s highest civilian honor.

Abraham Foxman is also author of the bestseller The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.

Prozessauftakt in Paris um den antisemitischen Mord an Ilan Halimi

Fotos: Gottesdienst am 23. Februar 2006 mit Frankreichs Staatspräsident Jacques Chirac, Ehefrau Bernadette Chirac und Premier Ministre Dominique de Villepin in der Pariser Grossen Synagoge de la Victoire zum Andenken an Ilan Halimi (© Fotos von A. Roiné, Pressestelle des Elysee-Palastes)

Ilan Halimi war ein 23-jähriger französischer Jude marokkanischer Herkunft, der am 21. Januar 2006 von einer Gang muslimischer Einwanderer, genannt die “Barbaren”, entführt und anschließend über einen Zeitraum von 24 Tagen zu Tode gefoltert wurde. Hauptmotiv des Verbrechens war Antisemitismus.

Die Tageszeitung Die Welt berichtet über den ersten Verhandlungstag im Pariser Schwurgericht im Prozess um den Mord an Ilan Halimi, der am 9. Februar 2007  in Jerusalem beerdigt wurde.

Zum Artikel.

61. Unabhängigkeitstag des Staates Israel

Heute Abend beginnen auf dem Herzl-Berg in Jerusalem die offiziellen Feierlichkeiten zum 61. Unabhängigkeitstag des Staates Israel. Mit der Staatsgründung im Jahre 1948 wurde die politische Souveränität des jüdischen Volkes nach 2000 Jahren Unterdrückung und Verfolgung wieder hergestellt.

Grußwort von Israels Präsident Shimon Peres an die Diasporagemeinden

 „Der Vorabend von Israels 61. Unabhängigkeitstag ist – neben den Feierlichkeiten – eine Zeit zur Besinnung und für Gebete für das Wohlergehen des jüdischen Volkes in Israel und auf der ganzen Welt. Es ist auch die Zeit, die Banden zwischen dem Staat Israel und den jüdischen Gemeinden im Ausland zu festigen und zu stärken. Denn wir sind ein Volk mit einem gemeinsamen Erbe, vereint in Zeiten von Freude und vereint in dunkleren Stunden.

Das vergangene Jahr hat die Operation Gegossenes Blei gesehen, die von Israel in Selbstverteidigung begonnen wurde und nur das einzige Ziel hatte, den bösartigen und nicht zu rechtfertigenden Raketenbeschuss auf Israels Bürger – unschuldige Männer, Frauen und Kinder – zu beenden, der in den vergangenen acht Jahren Verwüstung und Schmerz angerichtet hat.

Der Iran hat weiterhin zu Israels Zerstörung aufgerufen und strebt danach, Atomwaffen zu entwickeln, die Israels schiere Existenz gefährden. Die dunklen Wolken der Wirtschaftskrise, die die Welt einhüllen, haben auch einen langen Schatten auf Israel geworfen und Auswirkungen auf Tausende von Haushalten im ganzen Land gehabt. Der Antisemitismus in Form des Antiisraelismus wächst, und Gilad Shalit wird noch immer gefangen gehalten.

Seit seiner Gründung hat Israel stets mit komplexen Sachverhalten ringen müssen. Und immer hat sich Israel durchgesetzt. Auch heute wird Israel sich durchsetzen. Das Land hat enormes menschliches Potential, und seine Kreativität floriert. Unsere Vision einer strahlenden und hoffnungsvollen Zukunft für das jüdische Volk wankt nicht. Um sie zu verwirklichen, müssen wir heute intensiv in die zukünftigen Generationen investieren, durch Bildung von der Wiege bis zum Erwachsenenalter. Wir müssen weiterhin Hervorragendes leisten und eine Führungsrolle in Forschung und Technik, Medizin und erneuerbarer Energie übernehmen. Es ist von entscheidender Bedeutung, dass der wachsende Wassermangel durch geeignete Entsalzungsprojekte behoben, die Wüste begrünt und die Ernährung gesichert werden. Arbeitsplätze müssen geschaffen und soziale Klüfte geschlossen werden. Jegliche Teilung in unserer Gesellschaft muss überbrückt werden, und unser Streben nach Frieden muss weitergehen.

Dies ist unsere Mission. Wir sind aus der Asche auferstanden, und am Beginn des siebten Jahrzehnts der Existenz des Staates Israel gibt es viele Gründe dankbar und stolz zu sein.

Lassen Sie uns gemeinsam Israels 61. Geburtstag feiern, als ein vereintes jüdisches Volk mit unermüdlicher Hoffnung in unseren Herzen.

Yom Atzma’ut Sameach!”

***

Grußwort von Israels Ministerpräsident Binyamin Netanyahu an die Diasporagemeinden

„Heute feiert Israel seinen 61. Geburtstag. Jedes Jahr, in dem wir die Wiedergeburt des jüdischen Staates nach Jahrhunderten des Exils markieren, ist ein großer Grund zum Feiern.

Nach Jahrhunderten der Machtlosigkeit ist das jüdische Volk auf die Bühne der Geschichte zurückgekehrt und an seinen rechtmäßigen Platz unter den Nationen. Durch die Wiedergeburt Israels sind wir abermals in der Lage, über unser eigenes Schicksal und über unsere eigene Zukunft zu bestimmen.

Die vergangenen 61 Jahre haben gezeigt, was eine freie und unabhängige jüdische Nation zu erreichen vermag. Mit spärlichen Bodenschätzen haben wir ein ausgedörrtes Land zu neuem Leben erweckt und Millionen von Einwanderern aufgenommen. Durch Innovation und Entschlossenheit hat die Genialität unseres Volkes uns zu einem Spitzenreiter in Landwirtschaft, Medizin und Wissenschaft gemacht; unsere Kreativität hat eine High-Tech-Industrie hervorgebracht, die die Welt weiter in Erstaunen versetzt. Wir haben Frieden mit Ägypten und Jordanien geschlossen, und wir werden weiter nach Frieden mit allen unseren Nachbarn streben.

All das wurde erreicht, obwohl Israel seit 61 Jahren unter ständiger Bedrohung lebt. Bedauerlicherweise bleibt Israel bedroht. Ein iranisches Regime, das fieberhaft nach Atomwaffen trachtet, ruft dreist zu unserer Zerstörung auf. Die Terrororganisationen an unserer Süd- und Nordgrenze werden stärker Tag für Tag. Und eine Flut von Antisemitismus überschwemmt die zivilisierte Welt.

Um diesen Herausforderungen in den kommenden Jahren zu begegnen, wird die Einheit unseres Volkes, sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb Israels, wichtiger sein als je zuvor. Daher ist es existentiell wichtig, dass wir die Bande zwischen Israel und der Diaspora weiter stärken. Diese Bande sind eine Quelle wechselseitiger Stärke und eine kraftvolle Erinnerung an die einzigartige Rolle, die Israel auf der Welt und in der Geschichte unseres Volkes spielt.

Lassen Sie uns an diesem Unabhängigkeitstag stolz sein auf all das, was wir erreicht haben, und nach vorn blicken in eine Zeit von Sicherheit, Wohlstand und Frieden. Wenn wir als Brüder und Schwestern zusammenstehen, wenn wir mit Mut und Überzeugung zusammenstehen, wird diese Zeit gewiss kommen.

Chag Sameach!”

***

Grußwort von Israels Außenminister Avigdor Lieberman an die Diasporagemeinden

„Da wir unsere Freiheit und unsere 61-jährige Unabhängigkeit feiern, möchte ich mit Ihnen vor allem anderen meine tiefe und aufrichtige Sehnsucht nach Sicherheit, Frieden und Wohlergehen des jüdischen Volkes weltweit teilen.

Vor 61 Jahren einte die Unabhängigkeitserklärung das jüdische Volk, in Israel und auf der ganzen Welt, und jede andere Nation, die die Idee eines wiedergeborenen jüdischen Staates unterstützte. Der Geist des jüdischen Volkes half uns den Unabhängigkeitskrieg zu gewinnen und den Staat Israel zu gründen; er half uns über jene zu obsiegen, die uns zerstören wollten.

Wir haben einen hohen Preis für den Erhalt unserer Unabhängigkeit bezahlt. Ich spreche von den beinahe dutzendfachen Kriegen und den Tausenden von Terroranschlägen, die fast 25 000 Tote und Abertausende von Verletzten gefordert haben. Der Preis, den wir zahlen mussten, hat unsere Entschlossenheit gestärkt, unsere Feinde zu überwinden, und wir sind mehr denn je verpflichtet, die Bürger Israels zu schützen, wo immer sie leben.

Jetzt ist die Zeit für Einheit, daheim wie auch im Ausland, denn nur gemeinsam werden wir den Bedrohungen durch Terrorismus, antiisraelischen Hass und Antisemitismus begegnen können.

Wir müssen gemeinsam und solidarisch handeln, um die Fortdauer der Rechte und der Lebenskraft des jüdischen Volkes sowie seines Beitrags zur Verbesserung der Welt, in der wir leben, zu gewährleisten.

Trotz seiner geringen Größe ist Israel ein Land mit enormem Potential und unglaublichen Errungenschaften. Israel hat bewiesen, dass es ein globaler Pionier in einer Vielzahl von Bereichen geworden ist, von Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft bis zu internationaler Zusammenarbeit, und eine pulsierende Demokratie mit seiner Rede- und Religionsfreiheit. Gemeinsam verfügen der Staat Israel und die Juden der Diaspora über ein gewaltiges Potential, um zur Förderung des Wohlstands in globalem Maßstab beizutragen, und können auf der Grundlage unseres Erbes, unserer Werte und unseres Respekts vor jedermann die jüdische Existenz festigen.

Gewiss müssen wir einen friedlichen Umgang untereinander und einen wirklichen Frieden mit unseren Nachbarn vorantreiben. Gleichzeitig müssen wir die Maßnahmen ergreifen, die für den Schutz jüdischen Lebens,  wo immer es sein mag, für den Schutz von Israels Sicherheit und für den Schutz der Rechte des jüdischen Volkes in seinem Heimatland notwendig sind. Wir müssen die nächste Generation jüdischer Führungskräfte ermutigen und unterstützen, da wir seit der Gründung des Staates Israel Partner im zionistischen Unternehmen sind und nun Partner dabei sein müssen, unser Volk in eine strahlende und hellere Zukunft zu führen.

Ganz persönlich kann ich Ihnen aus erster Hand von der Stärke des zionistischen Unternehmens erzählen, und ich möchte jeden einzelnen von Ihnen einladen, sich uns hier in Israel anzuschließen, wo wir absolut an Träume glauben und sie wahr werden lassen.

Ich freue mich darauf, Sie in Ihren Gemeinden zu treffen und hier in Jerusalem, der ewigen und ungeteilten Hauptstadt des Staates Israel und des jüdischen Volkes.

Chag Sameach!”

Happy Passover 2009

Read here the editorial of Rabbi Benjamin Blech on Passover 2009: Passover 2009 & four questions for a financial crisis.

Passover 2009 & four questions for a financial crisis

    

“The Jews’ Passover”-facsimile of a miniature from a 15th century missal, ornamented with paintings of the School of Van Eyck

No Bread
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

What insights does Passover provide into our current financial crisis that can help alleviate our collective pain?

A fresh look at the Seder’s traditional four questions offers much food for thought around your Seder table.

1. Why is it that in all other years we eat bread and matzah, but this year we eat only matzah?

Bread is the staff of life. Matzah is the symbol of poverty. To make money, in slang, is to “make some bread.” To be blessed with much is to “have a lot of dough.” But this year as we look at our bank accounts, our retirement plans and our depleted wallets, we are all too often reminded of the “bread of affliction” our ancestors subsisted on in the land of Egypt.

Why did this happen to us? Perhaps it’s because God wants us to understand a biblical truth that we seem to have forgotten. “Man does not live by bread alone” the Torah teaches. We dare not confine the strivings of our lives solely to accumulating money. We must not make material gain our sole priority. There comes a time when we have to learn to negate our overriding emphasis on “making more bread.” While society stresses wealth as the primary measure of personal worth, Judaism insists that once a year on Passover, we demonstrate the moral courage to renounce the power of bread as the ultimate ruler of our lives. Surrounded by our families we declare we can survive without the trappings of luxury.

It’s ironic that one of the wealthiest men in the world didn’t learn this lesson until it was too late. Sam Walton was the multibillionaire CEO of Wal-Mart, the fourth largest US Corporation. As he was lying on his deathbed, he struggled to get out his last three words on earth. He had given his life for his business. In that area, he succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Yet, it was at a price. He hardly spent any time with his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. He didn’t allow himself the moments of loving interaction, of playing and laughing with his loved ones. His final three words? “I blew it!” He had the billions, but by his own admission he had failed. Maybe we now should be thinking about and thanking God on Passover for this important reminder.

2. Why is it that in all other years we eat all kinds of vegetables, but this year we eat only bitter herbs?

Why does a good God sometimes make our lives not better, but bitter? The Jews asked it in Egypt with regard to their servitude. We ask it today with regard to our dwindling financial assets. It is a problem that every believer has to face in one form or another.

We can learn a great deal from a story that is told about the saintly rabbi, the Chafetz Chaim. Meeting a former student after many years, the rabbi asked about his welfare. The student, in difficult straits, responded, “Unfortunately things are very bad.”

The rabbi immediately shot back, “God forbid, you are not permitted to say that. Do not ever declare that things are bad. Say instead they are bitter.”

Perplexed, the student asked, “Bad, bitter – what’s the difference? My life is terrible.”

“No, my son,” the rabbi answered, “there is all the difference in the world between them. A medicine may be bitter but it isn’t bad.”

True faith requires an understanding that life often presents us with challenges – bitter moments that temporarily leave us with an acrid taste, but help us to grow, to mature and to eventually become better human beings.

God planned the Egyptian experience for a purpose. In Deuteronomy He refers to it as “a fiery furnace” – the way in which precious metals were purified. As harsh as it seemed at the time, it was all for a reason. The Torah tells us that the Jews who had endured and survived were all the better for it. And that too must be our hope as we confront our contemporary crisis. Yes, it is bitter – just like a medicine that will make us better.

3. Why in all other years do we not dip even once, but in this year dip two times?

The past led many of us to believe that we could expect no dips in the economy. The good times would always roll without interruption.

It was in 1929, just before the Great Depression, that many of the brilliant economists of the time predicted that the “age of cycles” was over. The rules that limited human progress were no longer applicable. The stock market could now only go up and up. They claimed unlimited wealth was inevitable. The hubris of man clearly needed to be humbled. The crash of the 30s silenced those who had previously put all their trust in “my might and my power.”

The prognosticators of our new millennium proved to be just as blind as their predecessors. They, too, assured us the old rules no longer applied, that we could spend without regard to the future, that we need not save because the value of our homes would only keep rising, that in short we were invincible and almighty.

In a striking passage, the Talmud explains why Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel were all barren from birth, requiring divine intervention in order to conceive. It was, the rabbis teach us, because “God desires the prayers of his beloved.” When things come too easily to us we fall victim to a sense of entitlement. We think we no longer have to pray for blessings to come to us if they arrive even without being asked for. Prayers answered before they are spoken deny us the need and the opportunity to express them. Blessings too freely granted can also make us lose sight of our requirement for gratitude.

So we have dips in our fortunes. The good news is that they need not be permanent if we learn from them. All they ask of us is that when times are once again good we don’t forget the source of our blessings.

4. Why is it that in all other years we eat either sitting or reclining, but in this year we eat only reclining?

To recline is to lean. And this year there are many who are forced to lean on others for assistance. The demands placed this year on charitable organizations are unprecedented. No one can simply sit back comfortably in his or her own chair, insensitive to the suffering of those around them.

That, in fact, is the very reason God tells us he forced our ancestors to spend all that time in Egypt before he brought them back to the Promised Land. “Be kind to the poor and to the stranger,” He commands us, “because you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The purpose of Egyptian slavery was meant to teach us to empathize with the oppressed in every generation. We know what it means to be poor, to be hungry, to be mistreated. We were schooled in misery precisely so that we would not fail in our mission to be a light to the world, teaching compassion and kindness.

“This is the bread of affliction – let all those who are hungry come and eat with us, let all those who are needy come and share our festive meal with our family.” This is the way we begin our Passover Seder. It is the most fitting introduction to the holiday whose very story took place in order to teach us this lesson.

We all strive to be happy. We search for different ways to achieve this goal. What is the best way to secure it? We have tried so many different ways unsuccessfully. Social scientists have recently come to a remarkable conclusion. A recent issue of the prestigious Science magazine reveals that studies prove helping others is perhaps the most surefire way to gain personal happiness.

Strange then, isn’t it, that we spend so much of our days dedicated to getting, when we would be so much better off if we put more of our efforts into giving. We could all learn much from Michael Bloomberg, the self-made billionaire founder of the Bloomberg financial information firm and New York Mayor, who donated $235 million in 2008, making him the leading individual living donor in the United States, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In explaining his philosophy, he said he intends to give away most of his fortune, because “the best measure of a philanthropist is that the check he leaves to the undertaker bounces.” And that will insure that he dies a very happy man.

These explanations may not resolve our pressing contemporary problems, but they do permit us to realize that there are profound issues implicit in the divine reaction to our difficulties that transcend our understanding. Our struggle for meaning must always be matched with our firm belief that the God who cared enough for us to perform miracles in days of old continues to love us in the same measure to help us overcome our present crises. That is, after all, why we celebrate Passover.

About the author: Rabbi Benjamin Blech is the author of 12 highly acclaimed books, including Understanding Judaism: The basics of Deed and Creed. He is a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University and the Rabbi Emeritus of Young Israel of Oceanside which he served for 37 years and from which he retired to pursue his interests in writing and lecturing around the globe. He is also the author of If God Is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?

Reprinted with kindly permission of Aish HaTorah International.

Obama Administration to Join anti-Israel U.N. Human Rights Council

The Obama administration has revoked a decision by the Bush administration to boycott the Geneva-based United Nations’ premier rights body to protest the influence of repressive and racist states, according to The Washington Post.

The U.N. Human Rights Council is wholly owned and operated by Islamic states that legitimize Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism, supported by an automatic majority from China, Cuba, and other repressive regimes. Canada, now the true America,  is the only country in the world that has been willing to stand up and resist Orwellian resolutions that are destroying the true principles of human rights.

The resolutions of the U.N. Human Rights Council failed to address human rights violations of Muslim countries, notably Iran’s persecution of Baha’is, Saudi Arabia’s banning of all religious practice aside from Islam, and the persecution of Christian communities in Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq. Instead of this, the U.N. Human Rights Council recommended to criminalize the defamation of Islam.

David Harris Remarks at Gorbachev-Shultz Reunion

AJC Executive Director David Harris was invited to give substantive opening remarks at this afternoon’s historic reunion between former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, moderated by Charlie Rose. Below is the text of what Gorbachev publicly praised as an outstanding speech that, he said, helped him to gain a new understanding of the Jewish community’s view of Russian and Soviet Jewish history.

Opening Remarks by David Harris
Executive Director, American Jewish Committee (AJC)

A the reunion between former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz

American Jewish Historical Society
New York, March 26, 2009

I am grateful to the American Jewish Historical Society for organizing today’s historic lunch and for giving me the privilege to speak.

In 1974, I traveled to the USSR for the first time, part of a U.S.-Soviet teacher’s exchange program. I was sent to School No. 185 in Leningrad.

Shortly after arriving, I was walking in the hallway when a young girl passed by and quietly put a piece of paper in my hand. When I was alone, I read the note. It said: “David Harris, I feel you are a Jew. If I’m right, please know that my family are refuseniks. Won’t you come visit us?”

I did. It was one of several such families I eventually met. Why did they want to leave? Her father, an engineer, explained that his children had no future in the Soviet Union. The barriers were too high, anti-Semitism too endemic.

So why were they denied the right to emigrate?

The father told me a joke which was then making the rounds:

Shapiro was called into KGB headquarters and told he would never be allowed to leave. “But why, comrade major? he pleaded. Because you know state secrets. What state secrets, comrade major? In my field, the Americans are at least ten years ahead of us. Well, said the KGB major, that’s the state secret.”

I asked the girl, who was about 14 at the time, why she thought I was Jewish and risked approaching me.

She told me that in the USSR no one in their right mind would give a boy the first name David unless he was Jewish, or else they had cripple him for life. She assumed it was probably the same in other countries.

It’s why she and other students insisted that Abraham Lincoln was the first Jewish president. Nothing I said could convince them otherwise.

The plight of the engineer’s family was but one episode in a difficult history, involving millions and spanning centuries.

It’s hard to know where the story begins.

Perhaps in 1648, when the Ukrainian Cossacks, led by Bogdan Khmelnitsky, went on a murderous rampage and killed as many as 100,000 Jews.

Or in 1791, when Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement, forcing Jews to live in this confined space for well over a century.

Or in 1827, when Czar Nicholas I began conscripting Jewish boys into the army for a 25-year tour, during which every effort was made to convert them to Christianity.

Or in 1881, when the assassination of Czar Alexander II triggered a deadly wave of pogroms, which would recur in the ensuing decades, often led by the Black Hundreds, whose slogan was, “Kill the Yids and save Mother Russia!”

Or that same year, when Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, argued that the Jewish problem could be solved only if one third of Russia’s Jews emigrated, one third converted, and one third perished.

Or in 1903, when the czarist secret police fabricated the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed that Jews plotted to control the world.

Or in 1911, when Mendel Beilis was arrested in Kiev and put on trial for the supposed ritual murder of a Christian child’s blood libel.

Or in 1917, when Jews were accorded equal rights, creating the short-lived hope that better times were ahead.

Or in 1918, when that hope was proven illusory, as the Civil War resulted in an estimated 2,000 pogroms and tens of thousands of Jewish deaths.

Or in the 1920s, when emigration was no longer possible, and it became clear that Jewish religious life in the Soviet Union would be proscribed.

Or in the 1930s, the decade of the Great Terror, when many Jews were among the millions purged by Stalin.

Or in the 1940s, when Soviet Jews fought valiantly in the Red Army, losing hundreds of thousands of lives and winning a disproportionate share of medals of valor, only to return home to taunts that they had sat out the war in Tashkent.

Or in 1948, when Solomon Mikhoels, the legendary actor and chair of the wartime Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was killed on Stalin’s orders in a feigned traffic accident.

Or the same year, when Golda Meir, as Israel’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union, came to Moscow’s only remaining synagogue, alarming the Kremlin when 50,000 Jews took to the streets to welcome her.

Or in 1952, when Mikhoel’s colleagues, having been charged with “treason, bourgeois nationalism, or other crimes against the state,” were executed in the night of the murdered poets.

Or in those years when the first copies of Leon Uris’s Exodus, the story of Israel’s birth, began circulating in Russian in samizdat, or self-publication, awakening kinship with the Jewish state.

Or in 1967, when Israel, faced with extinction by enemies armed with Soviet weaponry, vanquished the threat in just six days, electrifying Soviet Jews.

Or in 1970, when, to dramatize their plight, nine Jews and two non-Jews sought to hijack a plane in Leningrad and leave the country.

Or perhaps, perhaps, there wasn’t a precise date at all, just a sense for many that, despite Jews’ deep roots and love of Russian culture, something wasn’t right here, and time alone wouldn’t make it any better.

Maybe it was the knowledge that the Soviet internal passport, with its pyataya grafa, fifth line nationality” was a lifelong handicap for any Jew.

Maybe it was the recognition that prestigious universities and institutes were too frequently off-limits to Jews.

Maybe it was the awareness that certain jobs were denied to Jews, and that Jews who had jobs had to work harder to prove that they deserved them.

Maybe it was the fear that Jewish children would be subjected to taunts and jeers in school, and that school officials wouldn’t necessarily defend them.

Maybe it was the anguish that, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the legendary poet, reminded us when he spoke of Babi Yar, there were no memorials to the countless Jews slain by the Nazis on Soviet territory during the Holocaust.

Maybe it was the reality that Jews could not satisfy their most basic curiosity about being Jewish history, religion, tradition, language without endangering their families.

Maybe it was the relentless demonization of Israel and vilification of Zionism in Soviet officialdom.

Or maybe it was the recognition that Maxim Gorky’s words in Russian Fairy Tales were applicable for all time: “Once upon a time, in some czardom, in some state, there were Jews, simple Jews” for pogroms, for slander, and for other state needs.

Whatever the cause, by 1971, there was a full-fledged Soviet Jewry movement in the USSR and a growing support network around the world.

For the next two decades, history was written.

Soviet Jews cried out in Russian: “Otpusti narod moy.”

They cried out in the Hebrew they were beginning to learn clandestinely, “Shelach et ami.”

And they cried out in English for the world to hear the famous Biblical words, “Let my people go.”

These Soviet Jews, few in number at first, were extraordinarily brave.

They challenged the power of the state not just of any state, but the might of the Soviet Union.

Couldn’t the Kremlin simply crush them, make examples of them? And hadn’t the word emigration been missing from the Soviet lexicon for decades?

Repatriation to Israel, as the first activists demanded, seemed absurd. After 1967, there weren’t even diplomatic ties.

And yet, and yet, they weren’t crushed. Their numbers grew. The word emigration surfaced. And Israel became the overwhelmingly preferred destination for those who began leaving in 1971.

Many paid a heavy price.

Thousands were not fortunate enough to get permission to leave. Either they ended up in limbo, often for many years, as refuseniks. Or they became Prisoners of Zion, jailed for their activism and beliefs.

But nothing deterred them. And they knew they were not alone.

Jews from around the world, unwilling to sit silently while millions were once again targeted, organized, rallied, petitioned, fasted, lobbied, advocated, and traveled.

Governments responded, most notably the United States and Israel, but others as well.

For our country, the plight of Soviet Jews became a central item on our bilateral agenda and for the Congress.

Israel, despite the absence of direct links with the USSR, found many ways to give hope and support to Jews in the Soviet Union.

The Helsinki Final Act, signed in 1975 by 35 nations, including the USSR and all of Europe, gave the Soviet Jewry movement an additional lever by calling for the protection of human rights.

And countless non-Jews responded.

From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Bayard Rustin, from Sister Ann Gillen to Father Robert Drinan, they represented many races, religions and creeds.

They stood up, their voices were heard, and their message was clear, “Let them live freely as Jews in the Soviet Union, or let them go.”

Try as the Soviet Union might, it could not quell the growing storm of protest.

If the Kremlin relaxed its stance on emigration, as it did in 1973 and 1979, more Jews rushed to seek permission to leave.

If it tightened its stance, as it did after the Moscow Olympics in 1980, then the global outcry intensified.

And so we come at last to the Reagan-Gorbachev era. Few could have predicted its auspicious outcome.

Certainly, when we were asked to organize a mass rally in Washington, on the eve of President Gorbachev’s first visit in 1987, little could we have foreseen the extraordinary events of the next four years.

And little could I have imagined, as the chief organizer for that rally, as the son of one of the last emigrants from the Soviet Union in the Stalin era, and as a person who was expelled from the USSR in 1974 because of my contact with Jews, that I would be here today in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev.

We had about five weeks to organize the rally from scratch. The largest Jewish rally in Washington till then had only drawn 12-14,000 people, which didn’t give us much hope. Plus, it was slated for December, with its notoriously tricky weather. And, not for the first time, it wasn’t easy to get Jewish groups to put aside differences and unite around a shared goal.

But Natan Sharansky, released from the Gulag the previous year, kept pushing our sights higher. We set a goal of 250,000 people, never really believing we’d reach it. In fact, we exceeded it.

People from all walks of life came. They felt they had to be there. They understood that silence or indifference to human suffering is never an answer.

And they were joined by Vice President Bush and a parade of Washington dignitaries.

Not too long afterwards, President Gorbachev opened the gates, and the Jews came streaming out.

Of course, only President Gorbachev knows the degree to which this and other rallies and protests affected the decision-making of the Kremlin.

I do know that, for the mood and morale of Soviet Jews, they were vitally important.

The knowledge that the United States stood with them in their struggle was extraordinarily powerful. And there are few American officials who embody that support more than George Shultz.

No words are sufficient to describe the central role he played, or the message he sent, when, as secretary of state, he hosted a Passover Seder for Soviet Jewish activists at the American Embassy in Moscow in 1987.

At a moment when the world needs symbols of hope and possibility, today’s lunch couldn’t be better timed.

It’s a perfect reminder of the power of individuals to dream dreams and fulfill them, as Soviet Jews did.

And of the capacity of true statesmen to chart a brighter future and achieve it, as our two distinguished guests did so magnificently

Neue Kontroverse um die Schriftrollen vom Toten Meer

Die Tageszeitung Die Welt berichtet, dass die israelische Historikerin Rachel Elior an der Existenz der antiken Sekte der Essener zweifelt: Rachel Elior hält sie für eine Erfindung des Geschichtsschreibers Josephus Flavius, hebräische oder aramäische Quellen gebe es nicht.

“Daraus zieht Rachel Elior den Schluss, dass es sich bei den Schreibern der Rollen nicht um fromme Essener am Toten Meer, sondern um Sadduzäer handelte, also Angehörige der Gruppe im antiken Judentum, die zahlreiche Hohepriester stellte und bis zu ihrer Vernichtung im Jüdischen Krieg die gemäßigte Elite des Volkes repräsentierte. Die Texte von Qumran wurden demnach im Jerusalemer Tempel geschrieben und in Jerusalemer Bibliotheken verwahrt. Erst bei Kriegsausbruch wurden sie ans Tote Meer gebracht, um sie vor den Römern zu schützen.”

Zum Artikel.

Israel’s New Government and the Future of the State

B’NAI B’RITH INTERNATIONAL cordially invites you to attend the first

B’nai B’rith World Center – Jerusalem

Post-Pesach Symposium for visiting B’nai B’rith Members

Israel’s New Government and the Future of the State

Programme

10:30 – 11:00 Reception

11:00 – 11:15 Greetings

Graham Weinberg, President, B’nai B’rith Europe

Ralph Hofmann, Senior Vice President, B’nai B’rith Europe

11:15 – 11:30 Introduction to  B’nai B’rith World Center – Jerusalem

Dr. Haim V. Katz, Chairman

Alan Schneider, Director

11:30 – 12:30  Session 1: A View from the Knesset

MK Benny Begin (Likud)

MK Nachman Shai (Kadima)

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 14:30 Session 2: A View from the Fourth Estate

Ben-Dror Yemini, Op-Ed Editor, Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv

Amnon Lord, Editor-in-Chief, Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon

15:00 – 16:00

Tour Menachem Begin Heritage Museum

Friday, April 17, 2009

Menachem Begin Heritage Center, 6 Nachon St. Jerusalem

Fee per person: $30 US

Please register your participation by return e-mail message to worldcenter@012.net.il by March 26, 2009.

Transportation from Tel Aviv will be arranged per request at cost.

Telling Lies About Israel

Watch Vilified: Telling Lies About Israel

AJC’s hard-hitting, 5-minute video about the lies and libels targeting Israel.

Deutschland soll sich dem Boykott der antisemitischen UN-Propaganda-Konferenz „Durban II“ durch Kanada, die USA und Italien anschließen

Gemeinsame Pressemitteilung des Koordinierungsrats deutscher Nicht-Regierungsorganisationen gegen Antisemitismus, der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin und des Jüdischen Forums für Demokratie und gegen Antisemitismus

Pressemitteilung lesen.

British Premier Gordon Brown First World Leader to Sign Anti-Semitism Declaration

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown became the first head of government to sign the London Declaration against anti-Semitism, while encouraging other heads of government to add their names to the document.

The London Declaration, adopted on February 19, 2009, called for various practical measures to combat manifestations of anti-Jewish bigotry around the world. The London conference, hosted by the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA), the British Foreign Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government, which brought together more than 120 lawmakers from over 40 countries, devised an effective framework and forged new strategies to confront anti-Semitism on a global scale.

Among its recommendations, the London Declaration calls for the creation of an international task force of Internet experts to develop metrics for online anti-Semitism and policy recommendations for governments to combat it, the establishment of parliamentary inquiries to determine the state of anti-Semitism domestically and to develop policy recommendations, and a commitment to oppose discrimination against Israel in international organizations such as at the U.N.’s Durban II conference.

Addressing the Problem of Global Anti-Semitism

In the aftermath of Israel’s Gaza offensive and the global economic crisis, a pandemic of anti-Semitism has erupted around the globe, the national director of the Jewish think tank Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Abraham H. Foxman told a group of lawmakers from 40 countries.

“Since World War Two we have not seen so many attacks on Jews, Jewish institutions, synagogues,” said Mr. Foxman.

The parliamentarians were part of a London international conference organized to devise practical solutions to counter and combat global anti-Semitism.

In the News:
Reuters
The Philadelphia Inquirer

American Jewish Committee Annual Meeting 2009

With hundreds of outstanding thinkers and activists from the U.S. and abroad, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) invite you to connect with people whose experience, intellect, and commitment will inspire you. They are all converging on AJC’s 2009 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., who will take place on May 2009.

Will you join us?

You will have an opportunity for an intimate dinner with one of AJC’s overseas office directors, an ambassador or other distinguished guest.

And, you will participate in small, hands-on sessions, each geared to help you develop key skills for becoming an even more effective activist.

Now, when the need for informed, energized advocacy has never been greater, connect with principles close to your heart and people equally dedicated to them.

Featured speakers include:

• Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico
• Franco Frattini, Foreign Minister of Italy
• Stuart A. Levey, U.S. Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence

Register at www.ajc.org  by March 1, 2009 to get the Early Bird $100 discount. Or call 212-891-6718.

Fall Morsal: mutiger Hamburger Richter wagt gerechtes Urteil

Dass ein Mörder lebenslang bekommt, sollte selbstverständlich sein. Dass deutsche Richter bei Straftätern mit muslimischem Hintergrund unfreiwillig ein Auge zudrücken müssen, ist auch bekannt (wer ist schon lebensmüde genug, um freiwillig unter ständigem Polizeischutz leben zu wollen?).

Im spektakulären Prozess um den brutalen Mord an der Hamburgerin afghanischer Abstammung Morsal Obeidi (am 7. September 1991 in Masar-e Scharif geboren; am 15. Mai 2008 in Hamburger Stadtteil St. Georg von ihrem Bruder mit 23 Messerstichen in den Ewigen Osten gefördert worden), die sich nur von menschenunwürdigen Traditionen befreien wollte, hat sich dennoch der Richter Wolfgang Backen von Islamisten nicht einschüchtern, und eine gerechte Strafe gegen den 24-jährigen Täter verhängen lassen.

Das Landgericht Hamburg sprach Ahmad Obeidi des heimtückischen Mordes aus niederen Beweggründen schuldig und verurteilte ihm zu lebenslanger Haft.

Der Vorsitzende Richter am Landgericht Hamburg sagte in seiner Urteilsbegründung, der Angeklagte habe aus “reiner Intoleranz getötet”. “Für den Tod Ihrer Schwester, die Sie als großer Bruder eigentlich hätten schützen sollen, müssen Sie nun die volle Verantwortung übernehmen”, fügte er hinzu.

Bei einem Prozess in Kabul wäre er “längst draußen”, unterbrach ihn der Angeklagte. “Wir sind hier aber nicht in Kabul”, erwiderte der mutige Richter.

HIRAM7 REVIEW meint dazu: Anstiftung zum Mord (gemäß §§ 212, 211 und 26 des deutschen Strafgesetzbuches) ist ein Offizialdelikt, das von der Staatsanwaltschaft bzw. vom leitenden Staatsanwalt Boris Bochnick (der vom Angeklagten nach Urteilsverkündung als “Hurensohn” verunglimpft wurde) verfolgt werden muss. Die Reaktionen der Mutter und der anderen Angehörigen vor Gericht lassen keinen anderen Schluss zu: Sie haben den Bruder angestiftet, seine Schwester zu töten, und gehören ebenso vor Gericht.

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil

My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA. (February 21, 2002, Daniel Pearl forced to state his identity in the video produced by his murderers, before being slain.)

In The Wall Street Journal, Professor Judea Pearl wrote an op-ed in memory of his son Daniel, who was brutally murdered seven years ago by Pakistani Islamists, only because he was Jew.

By Judea Pearl

The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2009

When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail.

Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of “the resistance.”

Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny’s murder would be a turning point in the history of man’s inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of “resistance,” has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words “war on terror” cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism – the ideological license to elevate one’s grievances above the norms of civilized society – was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable “tactical” considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man’s second nature. “In an unfair balance, that’s what people use,” explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel.” Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter’s logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas’s rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: “They should end the occupation.” In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society’s role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera’s management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn’t seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a “resistance” movement, together with honorary membership in PBS’s imaginary “cycle of violence.” In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that “each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man’s terrorism becomes another’s resistance to oppression.” He then stated — without blushing — that for readers of the Hebrew Bible “God-soaked violence became genetically coded.” The “cycle of violence” platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror’s victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas – the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains – to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, “Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza,” to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph – another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny’s picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Author Biography: Judea Pearl is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, an organization committed to interfaith dialogue, and co-editor of I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl.

Falsche Toleranz am Beispiel der Kapitulation der europäischen Aufklärung vor dem Islamismus

Jede Niederlage beginnt damit, dass man den Standpunkt des Gegners anerkennt. (Winston Churchill)

Und noch etwas passierte, nämlich, dass die Israelis sich selber geholfen haben, ohne die Hilfe der deutschen Linken oder der französischen Linken. Und da erkennen Sie das Wesen der Sorte Gutmenschen: Die sind nur dann für jemanden da, wenn Du ganz tief in der Scheiße sitzt oder wenn sie glauben, dass Du tief drin sitzt und sie glauben, man müsse Dir helfen. Aber jemand, der sich selber helfen kann, für den interessiert sich dieser Typ Gutmensch nicht mehr. [...] Und da haben sie die armen Palästinenser entdeckt. (Ignatz Bubis im Gespräch mit Bettina Röhl)

20 Jahre nach der vom iranischen Ayatollah Khomeini ausgesprochenen Fatwa bzw. Mordaufruf gegen den britischen Schriftsteller muslimischen Glaubens Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, zieht Thierry Chervel – Mitbegründer des Kulturmagazins perlentaucher – eine düstere Bilanz über die Unterwerfung Europas vor der islamistischen Reaktion (Islam bedeutet Unterwerfung auf Arabisch, sprich Aufgabe der Individualität, und nicht Friede wie Multikulti-Apostel bzw. Grüne Opportunisten à la Cem Özdemir uns perfiderweise weis machen wollen) und über die Frage, was der Islamismus im Westen und der Linken seitdem angerichtet hat:

“Die Linke hat in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Islamismus ihre Prinzipien aufgegeben. Sie stand für Loslösung von Sitte und Tradition, aber im Islam setzt sie sie im Namen von Multikulti wieder ins Recht. Sie ist stolz, die Frauenrechte erkämpft zu haben, aber im Islam toleriert sie Kopftücher, arrangierte Ehen und prügelnde Männer. Sie stand für Gleichheit der Rechte, nun plädiert sie für ein Recht auf Differenz – und damit für eine Differenz der Rechte. Sie proklamierte die Freiheit des Worts und gerät beim Islam in hüstelnde Verlegenheit. Sie unterstützte die Emanzipation der Schwulen und beschweigt das Tabu im Islam. Die fällige Selbstrelativierung des Westens nach der kolonialen Ära, die von postmodernen und strukturalistischen Ideen vorangetrieben wurde, führte zu Kulturrelativismus und Kriterienverlust.”

Zum Artikel.

Anti-Semitism on Rise in Venezuela

The violent anti-Semitic attack on a Caracas synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath did not happen in a vacuum. It was the latest manifestation of anti-Semitism in Venezuela, a country whose president, government officials, media commentators and others foster an atmosphere of intimidation against the Jewish community, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

In the weeks since Israel launched its operation against Hamas in Gaza, Venezuela’s Jewish community of approximately 15,000 has been the repeated target of hateful rhetoric, intimidation, vandalism of property and threats of organized boycotts, according to the ADL report, Chavez’s Venezuela: The Jewish Community Under Threat.

“The anti-Semites in Venezuela feel emboldened and empowered by the rhetoric and actions of President Hugo Chavez and his government,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.

“What is troubling about Venezuela is that anti-Semitism is being used as a political tool,” Mr. Foxman said. “Anti-Semitism is fostered by those at the highest levels of government, trickled down the government apparatus and left unchallenged by officials in the Chavez regime, the government-controlled media, and civic and religious leaders who support the regime in Venezuela.

Among the ADL’s findings:

• President Chavez engaged in a series of statements and actions in response to Israel’s operation in Gaza which were anti-Israel to the extreme, and even bordered on anti-Semitism.  In response to the conflict, Chavez expelled Israel’s ambassador to Venezuela along with six other Israeli diplomats and officially severed relations with the State of Israel. He made statements calling in the Venezuelan Jewish community to speak out against the actions of Israel, and promoted a conspiracy theory that the Israeli Mossad and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were responsible for poisoning former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.  In other statements, Chavez trivialized the Holocaust and equated Nazi efforts to exterminate Jews with the military actions of Israel against Hamas.
• The political machine built by Chavez echoed his statements in the press, on radio and television, in the streets of Caracas and in cities across Venezuela.  During the Gaza crisis, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements were made by the foreign minister, interior minister, the president of the national assembly, a number of congress members, and governors across the country who support Chavez.
• A number of anti-Israel rallies were held in Venezuela, with many rallies co-sponsored by government officials.  Nearly all of the rallies contained anti-Semitic references comparing Israel’s military actions to those of the Nazis during the Holocaust and used Nazi imagery to portray Israel’s policies.  These rallies typically left behind anti-Semitic graffiti on synagogue walls, city plazas, Jewish owned businesses and the Israeli embassy.
• Opinion articles appearing in official government media and Web sites echoed anti-Semitic canards and promoted conspiracy theories and myths of Jewish financial influence, Jewish control of U.S. foreign policy, Jewish “responsibility” for the death of Jesus, and claimed Jews are “double agents” of Israel.  Some openly called for the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Venezuela as well as multinational companies believed to be owned by Jews.
• A raft of anti-Semitic comments appeared on mainstream and government-related Web sites.  The posts spread age-old myths about Jewish control of finances and economic interests and conspiracy theories about the Jewish lobby controlling the United States and its policies.  Holocaust references abounded, with some comparing Israel to the Nazis, and others sending the message that “Hitler did not finish the job.”

Check out also this article in The New York Times.