ReDiscover 9/11

Peter Beinart
The New York Review of Books
12 May 2010

In 2003, several prominent Jewish philanthropists hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz to explain why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel. In response, he unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen.

The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported. “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”

That Luntz encountered indifference was not surprising. In recent years, several studies have revealed, in the words of Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.” In 2008, the student senate at Brandeis, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, rejected a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state.

Luntz’s task was to figure out what had gone wrong. When he probed the students’ views of Israel, he hit up against some firm beliefs. First, “they reserve the right to question the Israeli position.” These young Jews, Luntz explained, “resist anything they see as ‘group think.’” They want an “open and frank” discussion of Israel and its flaws. Second, “young Jews desperately want peace.” When Luntz showed them a series of ads, one of the most popular was entitled “Proof that Israel Wants Peace,” and listed offers by various Israeli governments to withdraw from conquered land. Third, “some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.” When Luntz displayed ads depicting Palestinians as violent and hateful, several focus group participants criticized them as stereotypical and unfair, citing their own Muslim friends.

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South African Judge May Be Kept From Grandson’s Bar Mitzvah

By BARRY BEARAK / April 16, 2010

JOHANNESBURG — For the past few days, many South African Jews have concerned themselves with a question perhaps better put to Talmudic scholars: Is it ever right for protesters to keep a grandfather from his grandson’s bar mitzvah?

That grandfather is Richard Goldstone, one of this nation’s most eminent jurists and head of a United Nations investigation that said it found evidence of war crimes during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Many of his countrymen not only took issue with the findings, they called the judge a traitor who had sold out his Jewish brethren.

Next month, Judge Goldstone’s grandson is to celebrate his bar mitzvah at Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, an Orthodox synagogue in Sandton, a Johannesburg suburb. Ordinarily, this would be nothing but a joyous event, signifying the boy’s ascent into manhood.

But Jewish leaders here recently began to speak darkly among themselves of threatened disruptions to the ceremony. Their concerns were taken to the synagogue, and the anxieties of its leadership were then shared with the family.

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Zionism Unmasked: The Dark Face Of Jewish Nationalism

By Dr. Alan Sabrosky / March 10, 2010

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu once remarked to a Likud gathering that “Israel is not like other countries.” Oddly enough for him, that time he was telling the truth, and nowhere is that more evident than with Jewish nationalism, whether or not one pins the “Zionist” label on it.

Nationalism in most countries and cultures can have both positive and negative aspects, unifying a people and sometimes leading them against their neighbors. Extremism can emerge, and often has, at least in part in almost every nationalist/independence movement I can recall (e.g., the French nationalist movement had The Terror, Kenya’s had the Mau Mau, etc.).

But whereas extremism in other nationalist movements is an aberration, extremism in Jewish nationalism is the norm, pitting Zionist Jews (secular or observant) against the goyim (everyone else), who are either possible predator or certain prey, if not both sequentially. This does not mean that all Jews or all Israelis feel and act this way, by any means. But it does mean that Israel today is what it cannot avoid being, and what it would be under any electable government (a point I’ll develop in another article).

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Jews Against Zionism

By Stephen Lendman / 7 December 2009

They’re numerous, outspoken, and range from secular to orthodox to one group calling itself “True Torah Jews Against Zionism.”

They believe that “traditional” Jews don’t support Zionism, an ideology they call “contrary to Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah.” They say Zionism:

– advocates “a political and military end to the Jewish exile;”

– fosters “pseudo-Judaism” based on secular nationalism;

– coercively seeks “armed materialism” in place of “a Divine and Torah centered understanding;”

– endangers all Jews worldwide;

– wants to disassociate Jews and traditional Judaism from ideological Zionism; and

– calls Israel a “Zionist State,” not a Jewish one.

They:

– cite their concern for “peace and safety of all people throughout the world including those living in the Zionist state” and in Occupied Palestine;

– say from ancient times until 100 years ago, Jews and Arabs lived in peace and friendship until Zionism changed the relationship;

– believe Zionists abandoned the Torah and traditional Judaism, demanded political sovereignty over the Holy Land, and aroused anger in the Arab world; and

– Torah Jewry doesn’t recognize or support a Zionist state; nor do they represent world Jews; even the name “Israel” is a “forgery,” they believe, because the Torah forbids violence in the words of the prophet Isaiah who said:

“And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. No nation will lift its sword against any other, nor will they learn warfare anymore.”

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Pro-Zionism: Defending the Indefensible

By Stephen Lendman / 30 March 2009

This article responds to a March 15 Los Angeles Times Judea Pearl one headlined: “Is anti-Zionism hate?” Pearl teaches computer science at UCLA, is the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. It was “formed….to continue Danny’s mission and to address the root causes of this tragedy in the spirit” of the man it represents, including “uncompromised objectivity and integrity….and respect for people of all cultures….”

Some of its honorary board member belie this purpose:

– former president Bill Clinton, an unindicted war criminal and backer of neoliberal plunder;

– Elie Wiesel, a shameless self-promoter, “Holocaust” exploiter, and apologist for the most outrageous Israeli crimes;

– Jordan’s Queen Noor, wife of King Abdullah II, who, like his father Hussein, rules with dictatorial police state powers; and

– Christiane Amanpour and Ted Koppel, two notables in the corporate media who never let facts conflict with their views and support for the powerful.

Pearl calls anti-Zionism “hate more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East.” Zionism is precisely the opposite as numerous Jewish writers, including this one, have addressed.

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