One of the comments I received on the post about Jonathan Freedland's article was "1300 Palestinians were killed."
[Has anyone verified these numbers? Remember the initial reports of a massacre in Jenin? The results of a check was that approximately 50 Palestinians and 26 Israeli soldiers were killed. The out of proportion was on the Israeli side.]
My response was to ask if this justified antisemitism.
Now from Michael Trapido in South Africa comes a similar critique.
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1300 has now reached the critical mass of truth by repetition.
A Gazan doctor here claims a total less than half that, with the mass being HAMAS.
But the truth doesn't matter. The number is a TOOL and we all comprehend its use.
If it was 50 or 5000 the idea of the rules established by well meaning people like Mr Acheson in 47-48 could, despite the bombings in Israel during 47-48, have hardly imagined an ENTIRE SOCIETY deluged in the idea of killing itself in order to kill or drive out the jews or the west. The rules of war are an absurdity (IMHO) anyway.
The Gazans have the govt which accurately mirrors their most heartfelt desire, that Israel be reclaimed as the waqf it is, and on a river of blood.
HIDEOUS.
The worst lead people in the world since the ascent of Haj Amin Husseini nearly a century ago.
A Haaretz article written today (Feb. 13, 09) cites an IDF report "listing 1,134 Palestinian fatalities" two-thirds of which were terrorists. Haaretz continues, "Only 288 were innocent civilians, the report says."
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1063883.html
My sense of Freedlander's piece is that he soft-lobbed his criticism to protect mainly himself, since he is a media standard bearer of precisely the kind of political liberalism in Europe that is increasingly and pathologically more concerned about anti-Muslim bigotry than it is rising anti-Semitism. As for the deafening silence Freedland laments, isn't it possible the reason so many on the political left in Britain and the continent have declined to "stand firmly against anti-Jewish prejudice" is because such a significant number are in fact anti-Semites?
You have quite rightly pointed to an aspect of European anti-Semitism Freedland is apprantly indifferent to: increasing numbers of acts of violence or threats of violence against Jews or Jewish property--of which there has been little or no public condemnation by the political left.
Melanie Phillips has also written about the violence, which she attributes in part to the "gathering momentum" of the "common front between the Jew-haters of the Arab and Muslim world and the Jew-haters of the west."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1110573/Violent-Gaza-protests-reveal-gentle-civilised-Britain-changed-ugly-indeed.html
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3306141/the-western-front-of-the-jihad-against-the-jews.thtml
Few have examined with greater moral courage or clarity than
Phillips how Europe's political left has used anti-Zionism "to cloak a terrifying nexus between genocidal Arab and Islamist hatred of the Jews and deep-seated European prejudices."
"The key motif," she writes, "is a kind of Holocaust inversion, with the Israelis being demonised as Nazis and the Palestinians being regarded as the new Jews. Israel and the Jews are being systematically delegitimised and dehumanised — a necessary prelude to their destruction — with both Islamists and the Western media using anti-Zionism as a fig-leaf for prejudices rooted in both mediaeval Christian and Nazi demonology.
This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred of the Jews now marches behind the Left’s banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel in the media but also to mainstream articles discussing the malign power of the Jews over American and world policy."
Moreover, Holocaust denial is "central to Arab anti-Semitism, the prejudice which such historical falsehood has helped to forge a strategic alliance with Europe. For it absolves Europe of its guilt over the Jews, and replaces it with European guilt towards Arabs displaced as a result of the Holocaust.
Europe has waited for more than half a century for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction. So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, Europeans have eagerly embraced the Nazification of the Jews . . ."
While warning of a "new anti-Semitism" in the United States, Bernard-Henri Levy has joked that Americans and American Jews have "reason to be relieved not to be European but nevertheless to sleep with one eye open only, and not glued to the pillow."
A slightly different but similar take on the anti-Semitism double standard: if the bar is set high for the Catholic Church why not then for European Muslims?
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/meinung/kommentare/auf-den-punkt/Papst-Benedikt-Antisemitismus;art15890,2722329
Deborah, you will find when this report was filed, the count of dead in Gaza was 884 and considered plausible by the UN Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs based on reports he was getting. I thing Jenin was cut off for a long time, and misinformation took the place of accurate reports.
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=961&CategoryId=32
"Anti-semitism", like its related word "racist", can cover a multitude of behaviours. Nothing justifies pointless fear, death or injury deliberately targetted on innocents. I would not condone any cowardly assault an any innocent Jewish (Muslim, Catholic, or Hindu) person, citizen of Israel or not.
That being so, I think the state of Israel has disgraced itself by a pointless series of violent acts which have killed and injured many people, both guilty and innocent. Were they all guilty (even the children?), and if not please tell us how many innocents are worth killing to erase one guilty person. One for one? Two for one? One for two?
My main point is that I fear for the long term future of Israel. It is clear to any observer that this President will change the USA's relationship with the Middle East. If not this President, then the next one. That may happen in a way to suit Israel, but it also may not. Israel cannot stand in the way if America decides its vital interests no longer coincide with those of the Israelis.
While there is a powerful lobby of Israel supporters in the USA, its members are aging and young American Jews do not identify with Israel as much as their parents. The Israeli lobby can win many battles with the US administration, but it only has to lose one, and it will, sooner or later. Long term, the world situation is turning against Israel.
With recent elections, it looks like people like Avigdor Friedman now have real power and influence. Will Israel really put its own Arab citizens into South-African style "Bantustans" and use them as dormitories for cheap labour? The idea is shocking, and unworthy of a democratic state. Yet Friedman will probably be a cabinet minister and a powerful voice in the new Israeli cabinet.
The solution of course is peace. But soon there will be nobody to make peace with. Hamas still rules the roost in Gaza, and Abbas has been undermined yet again, perhaps fatally. What Ehud Olmert calls the "Apartheid Solution" is staring Israel in the face. Can the democratic state of Israel really turn itself into a Fascist entity and retain its self-respect?
Haaretz: 1 Feb 2009 ... Around 1300 Palestinians were killed and more than 5000 were wounded during the fighting. 13 Israelis also died .
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060303.html
CNN: More than 1300 Palestinians died and about 5400 others were wounded during Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza, the Web site of the Palestinian ...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/19/gaza.war/
Fox News: In the wake of Israel's 22-day Gaza offensive — which killed nearly 1300 Palestinians — it's one of the few businesses experiencing a postwar boom. ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483968,00.html
Do I need to show more?
The only one i find somewhat trustworthy is Ha'aretz. Reporters simply took the Hammas figures at face value in most cases. And would you trust a group that puts its headquarters in the basement of a hospital????
And let's say it was 1300. does that justify antisemitism???
No, of course it doesn't. Still, the casualty issue is interesting. Here's a fair review of the controversy by the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7855070.stm
In addition, CAMERA has attempted to sort out the civilian vs. combatant deaths:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1603
TOby, I find this particularly unpersuasive .."I think the state of Israel has disgraced itself by a pointless series of violent acts which have killed and injured many people, both guilty and innocent"
It's called a religious war of the peoples.
In war innocents ARE killed. Fewer jews are dead not by less effort, but only by lack of skill.
These are not some kind of organized bank thieves, whose arrest by court evidence which would pass the Bill of Rights by some sort of civilizational acceptance test.
The reason Gaza suffered this is THIS:
Peaceful Solutions, Initiatives and International Conferences:
Article Thirteen:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know."
Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Muslim problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Muslims as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?
"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah." (The Cow - verse 120).
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the honourable Hadith:
"The people of Syria are Allah's lash in His land. He wreaks His vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves It is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among them should prosper over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and desperation."
If you don't recognize this text, why are you even in this discussion? If you do, how can it be pushed aside? THAT is the policy of the freely elected govt, and the choice which accurately reflects the wants of the people
Remove this from the argument and you have a political dispute which can be resolved QUICKLY.
A religious war can be resolved only when one side is flat on its back or worse.
More, anyone who has seen Nancy, France may notice the lack of old buildings one can see all over France. Of course the reason is the we bombed the living day lights out of them from 43-45, killing innumerable innocent Frenchmen in the thousands, or worse (L'Orient and the U boat base).
Are the B-17, B-25 and Lancaster pilots to be equated with what you perceive of the IDF and the Israeli leaders? FDR? WSC?
I have no love for the settlements growing as a consequence of lack of peace. But they ARE growing because the Palestinians and their backers (all of whom were nazi allies, btw ..See Kunztel, Jennie Lebel et al, ad infinitum) demand the end of Israel, and like HAMAS really only offer a temporary Hudabiya, which can have but one purpose. Even the offer of the Al Saud which is a non starter would not pass the bar of HAMAS, and then you can bet the far less religious PLA, which WILL LOSE OUT TO HAMAS, anyway would follow .. even the gulf states like Kuwait and Qatar have now swung behind HAMAS as opposed to Abbas the denier (see Bill Gertz's articles on the web).
Remove the idea that Israel sits on an Islamic waqf and peace can be made. Do not, and this will remain a religious war of the peoples, with WORLDWIDE SIGNIFICANCE.
Now if you can get the Quran out of it, I will in the future condemn the actions of the IDF and the leaders of Israel which do not aid the effort to end all this (and meet you in Oslo), but if the Quran cannot be removed, there simply is nothing to discuss and this people's war MUST GO ON. One side must fight it to live, and the other to fulfill their individual responsibilities before their god.
"Gaza terrorists fired a rocket Friday night at Kibbutz Yavneh, the deepest penetration into Israel since Operation Cast Lead. The kibbutz is located northeast of Ashkelon and Ashdod.
"The IDF said it holds Hamas responsible for all attacks from Gaza.
"The long-range Grad rocket was discovered about 400 yards east of the kibbutz by local security officers as they patrolled the area on Sabbath morning. No early warning siren was sounded before the explosion, which occurred at around 8 p.m. Friday night."
Arutz Sheva A7 News
The devout Muslims of Hamas don't care one whit about the Palestinian civilian population. And this guy is condemning Israel? He should direct his efforts at the cruelty of Hamas. Does he know that Hamas has been singled out by the UN (I know, this sounds incredible, literally!) for stealing humanitarian aid intended for the civilian population of Gaza? How many Palestinians will suffer because of this theft committed by "devout" Muslims of Hamas? These terrorists do not care about the welfare of the citzens who elected them! What callousness!
A great scholar once wrote scathingly about a phenomenon they called 'Immoral equivalence' - that is, when individuals imply that lessened numbers attenuate bloodshed. Time and place should not be specifics.
A Guardian Journalist has written several articles about Gaza, which are worth reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/28/gaza-attacks-israel
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/31/israelandthepalestinians-middleeast
he also wrote a critique of Elizabeth Wurzel's recent piece about (supposed) anti-Semitism :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/16/israelandthepalestinians-judaism
His name's Seth Freedman, and he's not only an excellent journalist, but he's also a left-wing Jew. There's a complete list of his atricles @:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sethfreedman
Worth reading re. 'the collusion' of 'the left'.
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