What's In a Name
by Bob Finch
Introduction:
Bob Finch, a friend of earth, a man who knows
the value of words, once an ardent follower of Hannah Arendt,
deals with a question of a name we may use for the Jewish State
in Palestine.
Well, what's in a name, said the Bard. Won't
Julia be as loveable if called something else? I am not sure
Romeo would be equally infatuated if she were called Mabel or
Synecdoche. Much of the West’s present infatuation with the
Jewish state is due to its name, which is being proclaimed and
extolled in churches every day for two thousand years. I wonder
whether we would ever see the Jewish hold over Europe and the US
coming to its present stage of fruition if the Jewish state were
to be called Birobidzhan and be located in the upper reaches of
Amur River. In the witty words of Lady Michele Renouf, Zionists
pirated the best promoted (by Christians and Muslims) brand,
Israel&Jerusalem, on the planet. If a name and logo of Nike
or Coca Cola are worth billions, and are the biggest asset of
these companies, I won’t be amazed if the biggest asset of the
Jewish state turned out to be - not the Dimona bomb, neither
tanks and jets, nor the orange plantations, - but the brand
names of Israel and Jerusalem. Let us find a suitable
comparison.
The White House belonged to the family of
George Washington, and this family is still around. They are
mainly black, and some of his descendents lost their houses in
the great disaster of New Orleans. Would not it be just to
return the White House to the George Washington family? It is
the same house, but meanwhile the brand of the White House was
promoted by all the American people. So the Washington family
will receive – not just a house in Washington DC, but also a
multibillion brand name. Similar thing happened with Zionism:
they asked, and got back, not just a piece of land, but also the
best promoted brand name. Clever New York Jews are for peace
with Palestinians, (while retaining Jerusalem for themselves)
for they understand the comparative value of the shiny brand
names “Israel & Jerusalem” and of the run-down real-estate like
Gaza or Nablus. We can’t re-conquer the Holy Land by force of
arms but we can take the brand names back. The name of Israel
rightfully belongs to the Christian Church, while from the
Christian point of view, the Jews are illegal claimants for the
title of Israel. Whoever uses this name for the Jewish state,
denies Christ and Church, the only True Israel. We may learn
from the Greeks who wisely did not allow their neighbours to use
the brand name “Macedonia” for their country, and forced the EC
to call them FYRM (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia).
We may call the Jewish state by the name they
prefer and use, “Yisrael”, in a modern Jewish-American way of
spelling, as I suggested in
The Pardes. If they like it, let them have this spelling.
Yidland, the state of Yids :-) is a possibility. Yid is not a
swear word, but self-appellation, like Deutsch for German.
We may and should desist from using the holy
name of Jerusalem for the synonym of the Jewish government. The
West never surrendered the well-promoted brand name of Berlin to
the German Democratic Republic: they called its government ‘Pankow’,
after the neighbourhood of Berlin they were based in. Likewise,
we may refer to the Jewish authority by the name of Yirushalayim
or of their de facto seat, Tel Aviv, and seek to replace it with
one rule from Jerusalem the Holy. Bob Finch proposes to call the
state: “The Jews-Only State in Palestine”, or JOSP. Somehow, it
sounds quite reasonable to wipe the JOSP off the map. The names
matter!
Israel Shamir
What's In a Name
by Bob Finch <
carbonomics@yahoo.co.uk >
This article is a personal account of my
reasons for using the phrase ‘Jews-only state in Palestine’ in
preference to commonly accepted phrases such as ‘the Israeli
state’ or ‘the Israeli government’.
The catalyst for the change in terminology
was a political protest. In September 2001 Jack Straw, the
left-leaning British foreign minister, went on a tour of Middle
Eastern countries in order to ascertain whether there was any
common ground for reviving peace negotiations in Palestine. He
promptly ran straight into a Zionist brick wall. While he was on
tour a letter he’d written prior to the tour was published and
members of Ariel Sharon’s cabinet reacted to it with rage. “Mr
Straw, who started a four day tour of the Middle East yesterday,
prompted controversy by writing a letter in which he twice
referred to Palestine. The Israelis do not recognize the term
for that part of the middle east. An Israeli cabinet minister
called Mr Straw’s comments an “obscenity” which, he said, turned
Israel from the victim of terrorism into the accused.” (Mirror
25.9.2001 p. 5). In what would have been an unprecedented
political rebuff, Ariel Sharon refused to meet him. The meeting
went ahead only after the personal intervention of Tony Blair
who agreed that henceforth his foreign secretary would comply
with Sharon’s wishes. “The row began when Mr Straw said anger
over the plight of the Palestinians was helping to breed terror.
He also referred to Palestine, a term Israel does not recognize.
Downing street said “no offence was intended” by Mr Straw’s
remarks. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said the government will
go back to referring to the “Palestinian-controlled authorities”
instead of Palestine. Mr Straw said, “I stand very firmly
against the terrorism which the Israeli people have suffered.”
(Mirror 26.9.2001 p.5). Just in case this might be thought to
have been solely a matter between Britain and the Jews-only
state it ought to be pointed out that according to one
commentator, “(Jack Straw) dares to say the “P” word - Palestine
- which Washington fights shy of.” (Paul Routledge, Mirror
26.9.2001 p.5).
Despite my long acquaintanceship with Middle
East politics, I was shocked to learn of a ban on the word
‘Palestine’. How was it going to be possible to bring peace to
Palestine when Jewish racists were able to force Western
governments to stop using the name of the country to which those
governments were trying to bring peace? Thereafter, as a
personal political protest, I stopped using the phrases ‘Israeli
state’ or ‘Israeli government’. I tried various replacements
such as ‘the Zionist state in Palestine’ before settling on the
admittedly rather ugly, and convoluted, phrase ‘the Jews-only
state in Palestine’ or ‘Jews-only state’ for short. I thought it
objectionable to allow racists to define which concepts I should
use. The use of racist concepts such as ‘the Israeli state’
makes racism seem normal and thus politically acceptable.
Incidentally, Jack Straw returned to England a politically
chastened man and thereafter never failed to reiterate the
Zionist line emanating from the Jews-only state.
At the time I decided to stop using the word
‘Israel’ I supported the United Nations’ two state solution to
the conflict in Palestine. I then came across an article by
Joseph Massad proposing a single state solution. Without
realizing it, I’d become so conditioned into supporting the
conventional two-state solution it took me a long time to think
through the merits of his arguments and change my mind. The more
I agreed with Massad, the more redundant terms like ‘Israel’ and
‘Israeli state’ seemed to become. This added to the political
necessity for finding an alternative formulation.
One of the alternative phrases which
attracted my attention was “the Jewish state”. Its implication
of a monocultural state seemed to correctly convey the Jewish
racism rampant in Palestine. And yet gradually I realized the
phrase was not merely far from satisfactory but highly
dangerous. It was a phrase used by Jewish racists to indicate
their desire for the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The big political advantage of their use of the phrase was that
to non-racists it created a favourable impression of the
Jews-only state as being as harmless as the British state or the
French state. It implied ‘the Jewish state’ was as
multi-cultural as Britain and France. But ‘the Jewish state’ is
not multi-cultural - members of different cultures do not have
exactly the same rights. On the contrary, it is a racist state.
Jewish racists were thus cleverly using the phrase to parade
their racist goals whilst camouflaging the racist nature of the
Jewish state behind benign connotations of multi-culturalism.
Whilst it was transparent that a Jews-only state was a Jewish
state, it was not at all transparent that a Jewish state was a
Jews-only state. There is surely something wrong with racists
and anti-racists sharing a common terminology.
I began using the phrase ‘Jews-only state in
Palestine’ because it explicitly denotes an apartheid state. The
Jews-only state denies Palestinians in the Jews-only state the
same rights as Jews. The use of the phrase Israeli Palestinians
was being used to deceive the world into believing that the
Palestinians inside the Jews-only state had the same rights as
Jews. Even today there are anti-Zionists in the peace movement
who promote the idea that Palestinians and Jews have the same
rights within the Jews-only state. Whether these peace activists
are ignorant of the truth or Zionists just pretending to be Jews
in order to promote Zionist propaganda is difficult to say. But,
either way, they shouldn’t be allowed in the peace movement. Of
course, Palestinians in the occupied territories have no rights,
and thus no protection, from the Jews-only state. For instance,
the Jews-only state in Palestine has recently decreed the newly
elected Hamas government to be part of an axis of evil and has
thus embarked on a policy of crippling the Palestinians’ economy
in order to starve them into submission and perhaps even forcing
them to leave their own country.
Another benefit of the phrase Jews-only state
was its historical accuracy. The Jews-only state is becoming
increasingly a state only for Jews. Ever since the establishment
of the Jews-only state Palestine has been acquiring an
increasingly Jewish identity whilst correspondingly losing its
Palestinian identity. For example, Palestinian villages have
been demolished and all traces of Palestinians’ connection to
the land deliberately eradicated. Even to this day Palestinian
property homes continue to be expropriated and demolished. The
Jews then build new homes to give the land a Jewish identity.
Jennifer Loewenstein indicates the variety of ways in which the
Jews-only state is removing all traces of Palestinian existence
from Palestine. “With every new brick laid for the settlements,
every new road paved to Ariel, Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion and
beyond, with every permit denied for work, education, medical
care and travel, every truck left waiting with rotting produce
at Sufa and Karni, every tax and customs dollar stolen from a
people interned on their own land, Israel parades its contempt
for human decency and gets standing ovations in the US Congress
and elsewhere.” (Jennifer Loewenstein ‘Watching the Dissolution
of Palestine’
http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein02242006.html
February 24, 2006). Palestinians, whether inside or outside the
Jews-only state, now own far less land in Palestine than they
did in the past. Even if Palestinians still own land within
occupied areas, the squatter state has placed so many
restrictions on their freedom of movement that Palestinians’
attachment to their property is being increasingly severed.
Historically, the Jews-only state is also
increasing the political rights of Jews whilst decreasing the
political rights of Palestinians. Eventually the Palestinians
trapped inside the Jews-only state will be made as stateless as
the Palestinians outside the Jews-only state, “Here we are
really talking about almost genocide, in the future. Although I
don’t think this will really happen and I hope that the world
will not stand aside. But for the Palestinians in Israel, where
this danger is not that imminent, the future means even less
rights, social rights, civil rights, human rights, than they
have now. They still have limited of these, but it will become
worst. The Jewish state will become more ethnic, more racist,
more exclusive, and anyone who is not a Jew, or is not regarded
as Jew, will suffer from it more in the future than he or she
suffers today.” (Prof. Ilan Pappe quoted in Steve Zeltzer ‘Ilan
Pappe on the Israel-Palestine conflict’ Labor Video Project
cable TV program
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=16276 October 29,
2005).
The phrase “Jews-only state” is also more
politically accurate than its alternatives in the sense that it
implies there are many Jewish racists in Palestine, and around
the world, who want to deport, or exterminate, the Palestinians
still left in Palestine. Genevieve Cora Fraser is but the latest
commentator to conclude that the Jews are intent on genocide
against the Palestinians. “If Israel gets its way, how long will
it be before Palestine is in a similar situation – especially
if, once again, Israel unleashes a reign of terror through
unrelenting military assault? For nearly six decades
Palestinians have been systematically ethnically cleaned -
driven off their land, and Israel has all too often prevented
food deliveries as well as access to medicines and water (as
documented by hundreds of UN Resolutions against Israel).
However, the complete economic deprivation that Israel insists
on, in this writer’s opinion, is far beyond a slap in the face
at democracy by refusing to acknowledge a Hamas-led government,
but an attempt to commit genocide against the Palestinian
people.” (Genevieve Cora Fraser ‘Israeli Defense Minister
Declares Palestine “Axis of Evil”
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb06/Fraser23.htm
February 23rd 2006). Yes indeed, for some Jews the
best way to eradicate the stigma of living in an apartheid state
would be to remove all traces of Palestinians from Palestine!
What adds to the legitimacy of the phrase
‘Jews-only state in Palestine’ is a tendency amongst Jews in the
west to set up ‘Jews-only’ organizations. In Britain, there is
‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians’; ‘Jews Against Zionism’;
‘Jews for a Just Peace’; ‘the Jewish Socialists Group’. In
Scotland, ‘Scottish Jews for a Just
Peace’. In America, ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’. A new
organization has just been formed called ‘Jews against
anti-Christian Defamation’. It’s objective is to do for
Christians what the Anti-Defamation League has done for Jews! Is
it possible we’re now going to get Jews spying, and compiling
files, on Americans for the sake of protecting Christianity?
These are just groups I’ve come across by accident so it has to
be wondered how many more could be found with a bit of research.
Personally, I’d never come across so many examples of political
separatism outside of feminists’ women-only groups.
The above mentioned groups are not blatantly
Jewish supremacist organizations like the World Zionist
Organization or AIPAC dedicated to furthering the political
dominion of Jews around the world. On the contrary, some are
supposedly pro-Palestinian; others avowedly anti-Zionist. But
there is a self-evident common denominator between the Jews-only
state and Jews-only organizations. Beyond the common elements of
separatism and exclusivism, however, it has to be wondered how
much the specialness or even supremacism of the former is
dripping into the assumptions of the Jews in the latter
organizations.
Paul Oestreicher seems to have personal
knowledge of some of those involved in a Jews-only organization
which dispels any misgivings he might have had towards such
organizations, “In Britain, Jews for Justice for Palestinians
organises to give Jewishness a human face. Tell them they are
anti-semites and they will laugh bitterly, for the charge hurts
deeply and is a lie.” (Paul Oestreicher ‘Israel's policies are
feeding the cancer of anti-Semitism’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329416218-103552,00.html
February 20, 2006)[i][i].
Despite Oestreicher’s moral authority, his personal ratification
of Jews-only organizations is not going to make the doubts
disappear. Jews-only organizations raise a host of questions
about their real agenda. Why do Jews feel a need to organize by
themselves? What are they hiding? What are they frightened
about? Are they trying to promote a sense of Jewish victimhood?
Why can’t they organize an anti-apartheid movement in which
everyone could help to fight Jewish racism? Are they secretly
trying to nullify Jewish opposition to the Jews-only state? Are
they radical gatekeepers for criticisms of the Jews-only state?
What are the benefits of excluding non-Jews? The questions go on
and on. At the very least, non-Jews are going to waste time
pondering on what these organizations are really up to. There is
also the problem that such organizations will distract attention
from the causes for which they are allegedly fighting. At worst,
they are going to breed suspicion and mistrust. It is virtually
impossible for such Jews-only exclusivism not to raise doubts
about latent supremacism especially given the supremacism of
Jewish racists in the Jews-only state. It is absurd for
Jews-only organizations to copy the practices of the Jews-only
state and then expect non-Jews to believe they are opposed to
the Jews-only state. Israel Shamir’s quip about such
organizations exposes their preposterous political stance, “The
concept of Jews for Justice, Jews for Peace and other separatist
all-Jewish groups in pursuit of common goals appears to me about
as justifiable as that of Whites against Apartheid. Equality in
South Africa was achieved by overcoming such dubious groupings,
by the colour-blind force of the ANC. It appears that the cause
of justice in Palestine should not be different. Why, then, such
groups exist?” (Israel Shamir ‘The New Bund at Old Tricks’
http://www.israelshamir.net/Left/Left1.htm July 11th
2005).
Jeff Blankfort also questions such
organizations but from a different perspective, “In this country
it has been used to silence so many people. And this is one of
the reasons I am against specifically Jewish organizations
wanting to lead the fight for Palestine. What happens is that
there are many anti-Zionist Jews, or who claim to be
anti-Zionist, who say "we, as anti-Zionists Jews, should provide
the leadership so that other people will see that not all the
Jews are for Israel”. And I am totally against that because all
Americans pay their taxes and thus support Israel. And this is
an American issue. And by putting it out that Jews are the
leaders, that Jews, anti Zionists Jews are doing this, what it
says to non-Jews is: they can do this because they are Jewish.
It has been tried, so far it has been a failure.” (Jeffrey
Blankfort quoted in Réseau Voltaire ‘The Chomsky/Blankfort
Polemic’
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/signs_TheChomskyBlankfortPolemic.php
February 20, 2006).
The phrase ‘Jews-only state’ also acquires
legitimacy because it encompasses the phenomenon of the
holocaust industry’s myopic transformation of totalitarian
slaughters during the 1930s and 1940s into a Jews-only
slaughter. As someone who still regards the works of Hannah
Arendt as being of profound political and historical
significance, the massacre of Jews has to be understood within
the broader context of the rise and fall of totalitarianism.
During the lifetime of totalitarianism tens of millions of
people were killed. However, today ask any British person (and
probably any westerner) what they understand by ‘the Holocaust’
and they will almost invariably regurgitate “the slaughter of
six million Jews”. Although the
Nazis sent Jews, Communists, POWs, the aged, the sick,
homosexuals, Seven Day Adventists,
Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians,
Gypsies, etc. into the concentration
and extermination camps, the holocaust industry has
transformed this avalanche of death into a Jews-only slaughter.
Uri Avnery has described the way that many Jews have come to
believe that Jews were the only people killed by the Nazis or,
even worse, that amongst those slaughtered the only people that
mattered were Jews. “The
centrality of the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness caused the
Jews to insist on its absolute exclusiveness. We are shocked and
furious when somebody tries to remind us that the Nazis
exterminated other communities too, such as the Roma, the
homosexuals and the mentally ill. We get very angry when
somebody comes and compares "our" Holocaust with other
genocides: Armenians, Cambodians, Tutsis in Ruanda and others.
Really! How can one compare?” (Uri Avnery ‘Memory of the
Holocaust - from Jewish property into human possession’
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives.html#articles March 19th
2005). The highly profitable Shoah business has transformed
totalitarianism into a racist Jews-only holocaust.
A huge number of British people were killed
during the second world war. It was one of the biggest losses
the country has ever suffered. Since that disaster the British
media has continually produced documentaries about, or dramas
set against the backdrop of, the second world war. The British
try to remember their losses, they honour their war dead each
year, and celebrate their military victories which brought peace
to Europe. And yet despite these losses, and there are still
many people alive today who lost relatives or friends because of
the war, despite the continual remembrance of those dark days,
if you ask British people what is meant by ‘The Holocaust’ they
will overlook their own history, their own suffering, and their
own losses, and say, “The slaughter of six million Jews.”
Perhaps this concern for other people rather than themselves is
just a product of the compassion of the British people. But it
has to be suspected that this is not true. The British show next
to no interest in the horrendous losses suffered by the Russians
during the rise and fall of totalitarianism. It has been
estimated that around twenty million Russians died during this
time. In other words, three times more Russians were killed than
Jews and yet nobody in Britain, or the west, ever mentions a
Russian holocaust, or thinks about 20 million dead Russians, and
there is no Russian Holocaust Day in Britain. This situation is
even more anomalous since it could be argued that if the
Russians had not sacrificed their lives in such vast numbers to
defend themselves against, and help to defeat, the Nazis then it
is quite possible Britain would have lost the war. The British
people therefore owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Russian
people. And yet amazingly even though the Russians did far, far
more than the Jews to help Britain in the war British people are
not even aware of the need to feel any gratitude to the Russians
but instead devote their sympathies to the Jews caught up in the
so-called Holocaust.
As a student I was an enthusiastic supporter
of Hannah Arendt’s works ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ and
‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’. I believe these works are still valid
and I have not yet come across an author who has a better
interpretation of the events leading to the rise and fall of
totalitarianism or a better political analysis of this novel
form of government. I remain confident about the facts she
presented and on her political theory of totalitarianism. In the
past I looked upon revisionists with contempt. However, after
reading Norman Finkelstein’s book on the holocaust industry I
became much more suspicious about the conventional view of the
past and when I re-read Arendt’s great works I’ll keep in mind
some revisionist questions to check the validity of her facts
and analysis. I remain confident about the historical veracity
of her works. I am not what I would call an empirical
revisionist or an empirical holocaust denier. In other words, I
do not challenge the facts about the rise and fall of
totalitarianism. However, I have become a conceptual revisionist
or a conceptual holocaust denier. What I deny, or more
accurately condemn, is ‘the Holocaust’ as a Jews-only slaughter.
Such a concept is inherently racist. I would indeed wear a badge
"Conceptual Holocaust Denier" with pride.
Totalitarianism is fading into the past but
it has undergone a vital distillation so that politically it
serves as a fundamental lesson of history, a warning of
political dangers that ought to be avoided. However the
slaughter of the Jews is not fading into the past. On the
contrary, it has been hyped up out of all proportion, like a
Hollywood blockbuster, into ‘The Holocaust’. Political emotions
over the issue are constantly being fanned until it has become a
fanatical secular crusade sucking everyone in the western world
into a vortex of hysteria or guilt. Throughout his life Ariel
Sharon denounced everyone who disagreed with him as a new Hitler
– he even denounced George WMD Bush as a Chamberlain. Every
single anti-Jewish comment no matter how mild or innocent is
instantly reported to Jewish authorities and converted into cast
iron evidence that the concentration camps are on their way
back. These days whenever someone mentions ‘The Holocaust’ as
the slaughter of six million Jews I usually retort ‘And what
about the Jewish dehumanization, demonisation, of six million
Palestinians?’ It is the height of human folly to allow
Holocaust propaganda to reach such levels of pathological
irrationality that it can be used to bring about the genocide of
six million Palestinians who played absolutely no part in the
slaughter of Jews during the rise and fall of totalitarianism.
Sympathy for the suffering of the Jews in the long distant past
cannot under any circumstances be allowed to condone what the
Jews-only state is currently doing to Palestinians. There is a
clear difference between keeping the past alive as a guide to a
civilized future and using it as a cudgel to re-enact the past.
Jewish racists in the Jews only state are inflicting on the
Palestinians what the Nazis inflicted on European Jews. They are
becoming increasingly indistinguishable from Nazis. They cannot
be allowed to play out their Nazi nightmares on an innocent
people such as the Palestinians.
The phrase ‘Jews-only state’ is also superior
to its alternatives in that it possesses obvious overtones from
other apartheid systems where public signs such as ‘Blacks-only’
or ‘Whites-only’ were commonly in evidence. Considering the
degree to which many Jews around the world have tried to pretend
that the Jews-only state in Palestine is nothing like the former
apartheid state in South Africa, the phrase ‘Jews-only state’
makes such a comparison unavoidable. It might also draw
attention to the fact that a great deal of support for the
racist Jews-only state currently emanates from former apartheid
states in America’s deep south.
Of course, Jews are free to define their
state in whatever way they think fit. But I have no desire to
use their concepts and provide them with any terminological
justification for their illegal, murderous, racist, and
genocidal, state. The Jews-only state, and its Jewish allies in
the west, proclaims itself to be a modern, secular, liberal,
democratic, western state but it is easy to dismiss such claims.
It is time to get more fundamental and challenge the name that
racist Jews give to their state. I believe the phrase ‘the
Jews-only state’ is much more historically, politically, and
morally, precise than the alternatives.
For a more in depth look at the Jews-only
phenomenon please see
‘The Jews-Only State in Palestine: The Utter
Filth of Jews-only Racism’
http://www.geocities.com/carbonomics/MCtfirm/10tf26/10tf26mg.html
The same work also appears on my blog site at
http://mundiclub.blogspot.com/2005/03/jews-only-state-in-palestine-part-one.html
Bob Finch
carbonomics@yahoo.co.uk
Commentators Highlighting Jews-Only
Phenomena.
Edward S. Herman.
“Second, the Israeli state has been allowed
to ignore numerous Security Council resolutions and the Fourth
Geneva Convention regarding its occupation of the West Bank, as
well as the International Court of Justice ruling on its
apartheid wall, and simply dispossess the Palestinians of a
large fraction of their land and water, demolish thousands of
their homes, cut down many thousands of their olive trees,
destroy their infrastructure, and create a modern network of
roads through the occupied West Bank for Jews only while
imposing serious obstacles to Palestinian movement within the
West Bank.” (Edward S. Herman ‘Western Approval for Long-Term
Israeli Ethnic Cleansing’ Z Magazine March 2006).
Jennifer Loewenstein.
“Judea and Samaria which are, or were, the
northern and southern West Bank, have been subdivided and
parcelled out over decades to hundreds of thousands of Jewish
settlers for their houses and orchards and gardens. They have
been crisscrossed and circled with Jewish-only roads that bind
the land, the houses and orchards and gardens, to Israel. They
have been manned with guards and gunmen and tanks and blue and
white Israeli flags that defend, protect and assure the
settlers, their houses and orchards and gardens, that they are
in fact Israelis belonging to a single Jewish state.” (Jennifer
Loewenstein ‘Watching the Dissolution of Palestine’
http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein02242006.html
February 24, 2006).
Ilan Pappe.
“Israel controls the life of two groups of
Palestinians: there are the Palestinians citizens inside Israel
and there are the Palestinians under Occupation. These are very
two different groups. I think the group under Occupation is
under grave threat, there is still a very serious possibility
that this people will be ethnically cleansed, once again, and
that mass killing will be performed against it.” (Prof. Ilan
Pappe quoted in Steve Zeltzer ‘Ilan Pappe on the
Israel-Palestine conflict’ Labor Video Project cable TV program
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=16276 October 29,
2005).
John Spritzler.
“This is why Israel makes Palestinians
prisoners inside of refugee camps and inside areas surrounded by
military checkpoints, why it subjects them to harsh curfews,
excludes them from Jews-only roads ….” (John Spritzler ‘Should
People Opposed to Bigotry and Anti-Semitism Support Israel?’
http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Should-People.htm
February 6, 2005).
_________________________________________________
[i]
I wrote a letter to the Guardian editor regarding
this article of Oestreicher:
Sir,
I do understand the words of Paul Oestreicher (20th
February, 2006) for I live in the Holy Land, and while
being born of Jewish parents, I accepted Christ as he
did. I understand him, but disagree profoundly. He
writes "Hatred of Judaism - now commonly called anti-semitism
- is a virus that has infected Christendom for two
millennia". Every word is wrong in this diatribe. Not
"Hatred of Judaism", but its profound rejection, is not
a "virus", but the very essence of Christendom. Every
trouble of the Holy Land - and Paul Oestreicher lists
them (the wall, creation of bantustans, discrimination
etc) - is a derivative of Judaism, or if you wish, of
the Jewish character of the state. I equally reject the
Anglican priest's claim that the events of 1930-1940s
are somehow connected to the Christian faith. Other way
around, Adolf Hitler was an enemy of the Church and
explicitly wished "to trample it as a frog", in his own
words. I am shocked by his claim that "as a Christian
priest [he]shares the historic guilt of all the
churches." Jesus Christ removed our guilt by His own
blood. In my view, Paul Oestreicher failed as a priest,
for a man who feels guilt of this sort can't and should
not offer the sacrament of communion to his flock. He
failed when he calls the Jewish state by the sacred name
of Israel - while every Christian priest knows that
Israel is the Church, not the sacrilegiously-named
Jewish state. He failed when he declares "[Jewish]
people are my people", for the people of an Anglican
priest should be the Christian people of England. The
transformation of a Jew into a Christian is a clear
break with his past, and one can't sit on these two
chairs, as he tries. Ironically, this is a tradition the
Church shares with Judaism a proselyte (according to the
Jewish law) does not even inherit his Gentile biological
parents.
Israel Adam Shamir
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