Rabbi Sacks on the connection between Judaism and Israel

Video Of The Week"Why I am a Jew" by Rabbi Sacks https://tinyurl.com/y4wjzdq8

For the full article go to Jonathan Sacks- https://tinyurl.com/y33f6ogl

 How can Anti-Zionism be the new Anti-Semitism? Surely there’s no connection between them. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews as a people, a race, an ethnic group. Anti-Zionism is objection to a country, a nation, a state. What’s the connection between them?

 Anti-Semitism is a virus that mutates, so that new anti-Semites can deny they are anti-Semites at all, because their hate is different from the old. In the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated for their race. Today they are hated for their nation state, Israel.

 What then is the connection between Jews as a people, Judaism as a religion, and Israel as a state? The connection between the Jewish people and Israel goes back long before the birth of either Christianity or Islam. Jews created a society there in the days of Joshua, a kingdom in the days of Saul, and a nation with Jerusalem as its capital in the days of King David: all this more than 3,000 years ago.

 Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there. At all other times in the past 3,000 years it was merely an administrative district in an empire whose centre was elsewhere: the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans, and finally the British. Jews are the only people who have maintained a continuous presence in the land. They are its indigenous, original inhabitants.

 The November 1947 United Nations vote to bring Israel into existence was a momentous reversal of imperialism. It gave back to the Jewish people the home taken from them by empire after empire. Israel was the only non-artificial creation in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The rest ­– among them Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – were artificial creations that hadn’t been states before, which is why most of them still exist in a condition of ethnic, religious and tribal strife. Only Israel had previously existed as a nation state.

 That’s the unbreakable connection between Israel and the Jewish people. The connection between Israel and Judaism is equally ancient and fundamental. It is more than just as Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Read the Hebrew Bible and you’ll see immediately that it isn’t about the salvation of the soul. It’s about creating in the holy land a society based on the biblical ideas of justice, welfare, the sanctity of life – and caring for the stranger “because you know what it feels like to be a stranger.”

 Judaism began with two journeys to the land, one by Abraham and Sarah, the other by the Israelites in the days of Moses. At least half of the 613 commandments of the Bible are only applicable to the land of Israel. And though in the centuries of exile and dispersion Jews lived in almost every land under the sun, Israel has remained a focus of their prayers and the only place where they have been able to do what every other nation takes for granted, construct their own society in the light of their own ideals.

 Judaism differs from the other Abrahamic monotheisms, Christianity and Islam, in that it is the only one of the three that never created or sought to create an empire. It was the imperialism of the Roman emperor Hadrian that led him in the 2nd century to change the country’s name to Palestine, one of the first, but certainly not the last, deliberate falsifications of history by those who seek to deny the Jewish people’s right to their land.

 There are 56 Islamic nations, and 159 in which Christians form the majority. There is and only ever has been one Jewish state, tiny and vulnerable though it is and always was. That is why Anti-Zionism, denying Jews the right to their one and only collective home by misrepresenting Judaism, is the new anti-Semitism, every bit as virulent and dangerous as the old.

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More Questions And Answers

 Q.  Why do you say there is no peace partner?

    A.

•    Can you identify even one Arab country or political movement that hasn’t wanted to destroy Israel, and has recognized Israel’s right to exist, other than Morocco? Egypt and Jordan have signed peace agreements with Israel?

•     State the truth about Islamic responses to peace negotiations; the resolution since 1967 being “No Peace with Israel, No Negotiations with Israel, No recognition of Israel.” Several countries have sought peace and several emirates are now considering it, but that is not the case with the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

•     Israel will join peace in the Middle East when there is peace in the Middle East. Reference to “the Middle East Conflict” rarely references all the wars in which Arabs are killing Arabs, but focuses on the conflict between Israel and residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, but that is minor in comparison. The conflicts in the Arab Muslim world have been that way for centuries!

•     Consider this—there is no peace among the Arab tribes that currently reside in Judea and Samaria—here is a solution for peace: http://www.palestinianemirates.com

•     End the Palestinian Authority and deal with 8 tribal groups as a solution to the conflict.

Q.  I disagree with Israel’s policies, so don’t I have the right to boycott Israel?

       A.

•     Would you give up your cellphone, medicines or other products invented or produced by Israel? See the hypocrisy if you won’t.

•     Do you agree with all Canadian government policies?

•     Do you boycott other countries which ignore human rights such as China, Cuba, Russia, Uganda (where it’s illegal to be LGBTQ), to name a few?

•     There is no apartheid in Israel and there is equality for women, minorities and LGBTQ folks in Israel so rather than support the annual Anti-Israel Apartheid Week which perpetuates lies, isn’t it time to create Arab Apartheid Month at universities?

•     To combat the profs who support BDS and spread lies and anti-Semitism, organize seniors to register and audit classes, then publish names of profs and courses that do spread lies.

•     What about the jobs created by Israeli companies that employ Arabs and do you realize that boycotts kill Arab jobs?

 Q.  How can you claim Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism when Israel has policies we don’t support

  A.

•     Does Canada have policies we don’t support? Does Canada have the right to exist? (Or any other country?)

•     Israelis have many disputes with the government so isn’t the matter their national concern and not ours?

•     To say Jews can’t defend themselves is anti-Semitism.

•     There is a Double standard, one should compare Israel to other democracies, and note it often fares better.

•     One should also hold the Arabs accountable, rather than having such low expectations of Muslim countries.

•     Neo/New anti-Semitism is anti-Zionist, blaming the only Jewish state for matters outside of its control, hate-mongering, character assassinating, demonizing and stereotyping.

•     Let’s “Take back Zionism” which is the positive view of Jewish nationalism in the Jewish homeland.

•     Read The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray.

•     Multiculturalism should not be cultural relativism as not all cultures are equal.

•     Political Correctness = danger, read Israel: Reclaiming the Narrative by Barry Shaw and Eurabia by Bat Ye'or.

Q.  Isn’t Israel a racist – apartheid state given the Nation State Law?

      A.

•     No, the Nation State Law does not infringe on the civil and human rights of minorities.

•     Define apartheid which existed under state legislation in South Africa, denying rights to a majority of the citizens, whereas in Israel all residents are equal before the law and share in human rights under the law.

•     Name an Arab or Muslim state in which there is equality for all of its citizens?

•     The Nation State Law is not the only Basic Law; other Basic Laws protect the rights of all people in Israel.

Q.  Why is Israel attacking civilians in Gaza?

      A.

•     How many missiles would you allow on your city or town before reacting? Would any Country choose not to defend its own citizens when attacked? Are you aware that Hamas pays people to participate in their rallies and attacks and punishes those who don’t?

     Q.  How can Israel deny the Right of Return to Arabs who fled in 1948?

     A.

•     I support the right of Arabs to return to the Arab countries from which they came in the late 1800s and early 1900s when Jews began to settle in Palestine and created more opportunity and improved standard of living. Most came from neighboring lands that were designated countries after Partition, just as Israel was.

•     If the Palestinian Arabs deserved a state, why didn’t Jordan give them one during its 19 years of occupation of Judea and Samaria, which they renamed the West Bank. The Jordanians did not recognize the Arab inhabitants as a separate people during its 7000 days of occupation.

•     Jerusalem was never the capital of any state but the Jewish state, and it was never important to the Arabs until after the 1967 war, at which time the concept of a “Palestinian people” emerged.

•     According to the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), one can only be a refugee for a maximum of 10 years, but under UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) there is no end to the time an Arab can claim refugee status and it’s an inherited status, thus after 70 years, even Arab Palestinians settled abroad are consider refugees.

•     Why have Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt denied citizenship, permanent residency status and access to jobs, education and services to Arabs who fled Israel 70+ years ago?

•     Why have over 889,000 Jews who were forcibly expelled from 8 Arab countries never been recognized as refugees or received any funds from the UN or its agencies?

     Questions from either the Left or Right are often intended to undermine Israel’s right to exist or to defend herself, and they are often couched in bias, in ignorance or in oft repeated lies. We encourage people to read and practice responding. You will no longer feel impotent in defending Israel, the only Nation State of the Jewish People.

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Protesting Anti-Israel Bias

Video Of The Week-Heat Wave and Arson Balloons -https://tinyurl.com/y3nz2h82

 UN- Watch - By Philippe Val - https://tinyurl.com/y3dwm3ww

Despite my disdain for the government, I continue to feel great love for my Italian friends, and for Italy herself, which, like all states that observe the rule of law, is like a second homeland for me. Nowhere do I hear talk of anti-Italianism; nowhere do I hear it said that Italy must be wiped off the map.

So, when it comes to Israel, obviously, one can criticize the policy of the Israeli government, but one also hears talk of wiping Israel off the map. This reflects a bias that shows how unwise we were to have put up so long with the term anti-Zionism, which was clearly a form of anti-Semitism, just as anti-Italianism would be a form of racism. I now believe that, all doubt having been removed, anti-Zionism is modern jargon that stands in for anti-Semitism.

The state of Israel is threatened on its borders; it is menaced by most terrorist organisations. It has a duty to protect its citizens. That cannot be forgotten. And now I would like to say that there are two types of votes to condemn Israel within the UN organization: there are votes by dictatorships and votes by states governed by the rule of law.

What do the votes and condemnations of the dictatorships reveal? These dictatorships, which are unable to run their own countries properly, which prefer corruption and personal enrichment over progress for their people, over building hospitals, over working for the public good, enrich themselves.

To be able to continue to exert their dictatorship, they rely on tricks that are as old as humanity: they find a common enemy that they can all hate, and Israel fills the bill. Israel is appointed to serve as an alibi, to create cohesion among the dictatorships, as well as popular cohesion, cohesion among people who have been duped and robbed by their leaders.

And I would like to say one thing very quickly, which is that as long as hatred for Israel is exploited by the leaders of these countries, Muslim countries will enjoy neither progress, justice, prosperity, or freedom. Anti-Semitism is the trap in which their dictators confine them. That’s what is revealed by the votes from the dictatorships.

Now, what is revealed when democracies condemn Israel at the UN? Most of the condemnations come from countries with large numbers of citizens of Muslim origin. And the politicians and shapers of opinion, acting out of demagogy and electoral calculation, are seeking to capture the votes of these Muslim-origin populations, whom they assume hate Israel.

They are unconcerned about the fairness of their condemnations of Israel, and even less so about living up to the ethical foundations of the United Nations. Such condemnations are political acts taken for domestic consumption—demagogy pure and simple.

The combination of these two betrayals—dictatorships betraying their people and democratic politicians betraying their voters—the confluence of these two betrayals has consequences that are very serious indeed. Simply put, the two types of condemnation are a catalyst for anti-Semitism.

The UN, set up after World War II to preserve peace among nations, is in the process of reigniting one of the major pieces of propaganda that triggered that tragic war—namely, anti-Semitism.

The struggle against anti-Semitism is a question of life or death for all states ruled by laws. That is why we will fight to end; that is why we will never surrender; and that is why we will prevail.

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Strivers, sulkers and the State of Israel

Video Of The Week - Nikki Haley interviewed by UN Watch - https://tinyurl.com/y47ocdj2

For the full 45 minute video go to- https://tinyurl.com/y47ocdj2  

From Asia Times, by David Goldman. For the full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/yx8qr6mo

Nothing succeeds like success, and the State of Israel’s success in a range of fields has created more goodwill for the Jewish people than at any time in history, and also more enmity. The world’s strivers see Israel as an example, and the world’s sulkers view Israel as a humiliating reminder of their misery.

Joseph Dana argued in a March 25 opinion article on this site that “political Zionism raises the risk of anti-Semitism.” That is true only to the extent that success breeds envy. Success also elicits admiration, though, and Israel is admired by ambitious and upwardly mobile people around the world. On balance, political Zionism has brought about far more philo-Semitism than anti-Semitism.

Half a million tourists visited Israel in December 2018, twice the number of the previous December. South Korean high-school students are adopting traditional Jewish learning techniques. Books about Jewish success are best-sellers in China. Chinese students are applying to Israeli universities; 200 now attend the University of Haifa compared with just 20 in 2013, and nearly 200 are enrolled at the Technion, Israel’s elite science university.

Retired Israeli ambassador Yoram Ettinger wrote in January that 2018 was “a banner year for Israel diplomacy,” marked by the move of America’s embassy to Jerusalem, soon to be followed by Brazil.

“Netanyahu’s breakthrough diplomatic travels in 2018 included an official visit to the Arabian Gulf Sultanate of Oman, where he held talks with Sultan Qaboos Bin Said…. Also significant was Chadian President Idriss Déby’s historic visit to Israel, with Netanyahu planning to visit the Central African country next year, at which time the two nations expected to declare a renewal of diplomatic ties.

“Other landmark meetings strengthening economic ties with leaders from China, Japan and India. Chinese Vice-President Wang Qishan visited Israel, as did Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Netanyahu met with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Delhi, leading to a joint declaration of the ‘dawn of a new era’ in bilateral relations.”

In related developments, British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt last week announced that the United Kingdom would vote against many anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations rather than abstaining, as in the past. And Hungary opened a trade mission in Jerusalem, the first de facto recognition of the Israeli capital by a European Community member state.

By any objective gauge of success, the State of Israel is uniquely successful.

Most remarkably, Israel is the only industrial country with a fertility rate above break-even. Israeli Jewish women have three children on average (2.5 children excluding the very religious). In practical terms, that means that Israel’s population of young people will be equal to that of Germany and Japan by the end of this present century if current fertility trends persist.

Asia’s fascination with Israel has more to do with material success than religion, to be sure, but Asians’ philo-Semitism has something in common with that of the evangelicals: Nothing succeeds like success. Asian strivers will continue to admire Israel and emulate its path to success, while sulkers in various failed states will continue to nurse their grudge against Israeli success.

As an American Jew, I see the matter differently than Joseph Dana. I am grateful that Israel enjoys the admiration of striving Asians, and am resigned to the fact that Israel will be hated by sulkers like Representative Omer and Mr Dana himself.

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When Anti-Zionism Tunnels Under Your House

Video Of The Week - What Is Hezbollah? - https://tinyurl.com/ycf3hhzf

By Bret Stephens -

For full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/ydfd9otk

In 2002, Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, was said to have given a speech noting that the creation of the state of Israel had spared his followers the trouble of hunting down Jews at “the ends of the world.” The Lebanese terrorist group has prominentapologists in the West, and some of them rushed to claim that Nasrallah had uttered no such thing.

Except he had. Tony Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tracked down the original recording of the speech, in which Nasrallah carries on about “occupied Palestine” as the place appointed by Allah for the “final and decisive battle” with the Jews. By “occupied Palestine,” he wasn’t talking about the West Bank.

Sometimes anti-Zionists are — surprise! — homicidal anti-Semites, too.

That’s a thought that can’t be far from the mind of anyone living in northern Israel, where in recent days the Israeli Army has discovered at least three tunnels dug by Hezbollah and intended to infiltrate commandos under the border in the (increasingly likely) event of war. Given the breadth of Hezbollah’s capabilities, the depth of its fanaticism, and the experience of Hamas’s excavation projects in Gaza, it’s fair to assume other tunnels will be found.

What would Hezbollah do if it got its fighters across? In 1974, three Palestinian terrorists crossed the border from Lebanon and took 115 hostages at an elementary school in the town of Ma’alot. They murdered 25 of them, including 22 children.

Another infiltration from Lebanon in 1978 left 38 Israelis dead. Given Hezbollah’s long record of perpetrating massacres from Buenos Airesto Beirut to towns and cities across Syria, it’s a playbook it wouldn’t scruple to follow in a war for the Galilee.

Note: Anti-Zionists are not advocating the reform of a state, as Japan was reformed after 1945. Nor are they calling for the adjustment of a state’s borders, as Canada’s border with the United States was periodically adjusted in the 19th century. They’re not talking about the birth of a separate state, either, as South Sudan was born out of Sudan in 2011. And they’re certainly not championing the partition of a multiethnic state into ethnically homogenous components, as Yugoslavia was partitioned after 1991.

Anti-Zionism is ideologically unique in insisting that one state, and one state only, doesn’t just have to change. It has to go. By a coincidence that its adherents insist is entirely innocent, this happens to be the Jewish state, making anti-Zionists either the most disingenuous of ideologues or the most obtuse. When then-CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill called last month for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” and later claimed to be ignorant of what the slogan really meant, it was hard to tell in which category he fell.

The good news is that the conversation about anti-Zionism remains mostly academic because Israelis haven’t succumbed to the fatal illusion that, if only they behaved better, their enemies would hate them less. To the extent that Israeli parents ever sleep soundly, it’s because they know what they are up against. And, to borrow Kipling’s line, they never make mock of uniforms that guard them while they sleep.

The same can’t be said for that class of scolds who excel in making excuses for the wicked and finding fault with the good. When you find yourself on the same side as Hassan Nasrallah, Louis Farrakhan and David Duke on the question of a country’s right to exist, it’s time to re-examine every opinion you hold.

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The singling out of Israel by Airbnb

Video Of The Week -Super Rich Palestinians - https://tinyurl.com/yb9qw3km

From The Spectator- 22.11.2018 - By Brendan O'Neill

Brendan O’Neill on the singling out of Israel for Leftist opprobrium

This well-argued Spectator piece by Brendan O’Neill is behind a paywall, but I’ve put some excerpts from it below.  His argument, with which I happen to agree, is that the singling out of Israel among all states for special opprobrium by the Left reflects anti-Semitism constantly disguised with the euphemism “anti-Zionism.” As you’ll see in the excerpts below, O’Neill answers some Leftist arguments for why Israel deserves to be singled out, and, at the end, he argues that the hysterical anti-Israel sentiment of the Left may be responsible for the rise in anti-Semitism in the West.

Airbnb has taken the extraordinary decision to stop advertising homes for rent in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It is extraordinary because Airbnb still advertises places to stay in Tibet, a place many Tibetans consider to be unjustly dominated by China. And in Crimea, recently annexed by Russia. And in Northern Cyprus, a Turkish-ruled statelet since the mid-1970s, which only Turkey recognises as a legitimate state, and to which Turkey has sent huge numbers of settlers in recent decades. Why are Turkish settlers less offensive to the Western conscience than Jewish ones? Why is it OK to rent a holiday apartment in Turkish-settled Northern Cyprus but not in Israeli-settled parts of the West Bank? Anyone?

What’s more, you can still get Airbnb places in countries which in recent years have executed far worse acts of war and militarism than Israel has.

. . . It is only Israeli-claimed territory that is singled out. It is only Jewish settlements that are punished. It is only apartments being offered for rent by Jewish people who believe in the idea of Greater Israel that are delisted. Only those people. But we shouldn’t be surprised. It is always only those people. Israel is always singled out. It is treated by right-on Westerners as being more wicked, more toxic, more evil and more destructive than any other state on Earth. That is why they boycott it, rage about it and take to the streets about it in a way they never do about Turkey, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. They hate Israel more than any other place. The question is: why?

Their attempts to answer this question of why are spectacularly unconvincing. ‘Our governments support Israel, so we have a special responsibility to kick up a fuss about this’, they say. Our governments support the Turks and Saudis too. ‘The Israeli conflict is an old and bloody one and deserves our attention’, they insist. The Turk-Kurd conflict is old and bloody too. ‘Palestinians are asking us to take these kinds of actions against Israel’, they protest. The Kurds would also like some solidarity, only you can’t hear them over the din of your obsessive, myopic loathing of Israel above every other state. Their attempts to explain why — why they loathe Israel so much — only makes the whole thing more mysterious.

And then they wonder why some people think there is a whiff of anti-Semitism to this peculiarly passionate contempt for Israel and for every piece of fruit, piece of art and piece of academic literature it produces. They wonder why some people think the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is an increasingly thin one and that perhaps the special hatred for Israel might have echoes of the older special hatred for Those People.

‘It is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel!’, they say. And they are absolutely right. Every single nation and government should be up for debate, ridicule, protest. But we aren’t talking about straightforward criticism of Israel here. We are talking about the singling out of Israel above all nations for a ceaseless and intense programme of boycotting, protesting and hysterical accusations, primarily that Israel is ‘genocidal’, ‘apartheid’, ‘racist’. Show me the gathering of 100,000 people in London who said those things about Saudi Arabia and then I’ll buy the idea that Israel is just being criticised as all other states are criticised.

It is becoming so clear: hating Israel is now second nature in certain Western political circles and this is unquestionably stoking up prejudice. If you treat the Jewish State as nastier and more insane than any other state, then please do not feign surprise when anti-Jewish sentiment increases.

. . . It looks increasingly ridiculous to deny that respectable Westerners’ singling out of the Jewish State for special punishment is stoking racist Westerners’ singling out of the Jewish people for special hatred.

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