Continuing our survey of the shameful response of Jewish communal leaders to the crisis in Gaza, reader Michael Levin alerts us to the appalling silence of Rabbis for Human Rights - North America.
You would think that an organization with "human rights" in its name would respond to the well documented and ongoing human rights violations in Gaza. Think again. The only article relevant to Gaza that I found on a quick perusal of their website was "Hamas and the Preaching of Hatred" by Rabbi Ed Feld.
Well, Levin wanted to help the Rabbis out so he sent them this great ready-made and very hip poster for them to voice their opposition to the destruction of Gaza. So far he hasn't heard back.
Exquisite. "Who wants to stand on one foot anyway?"
Brian Cloughley's eloquent description of Israel-Firsters, including the supposedly spiritual:
"On Sunday January 4 I heard a rabbi on the BBC's morning religious program saying that he supported Israel's air strikes on Gaza. A man of God actually endorsed the killing of hundreds of people. To say that I was â and am â aghast at the sentiment expressed is to put it very mildly. This religious leader, a person supposed to spread and preach tolerance, patience, charity and peace, was supporting war crimes of immense gravity. His approval of the killing of Arabs was blood-chilling.
And this rabbi was British. Here we have a British citizen supporting hatred and bigotry on a BBC religious program. But of course he isn't really British. He is an Israeli religious propagandist of British citizenship whose main allegiance is to Israel. There are thousands like him in the UK and the US. They unconditionally promote Tel Aviv's plans and policy and wield amazing influence over politicians and businesses. Killing Palestinians is Israeli policy, and these people spare no effort to justify it.'
Cloughley on Israel's other war crime, the use of white phosphorus:
It was reported on January 5 that Israeli troops are using white phosphorus (WP) artillery shells in Gaza, supposedly to create smoke screens to conceal their advance.
American troops used WP â fondly known as Willy Pete â in their destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, and the US tried to lie its way out of the war crime, but junior officers unintentionally blew the lies apart by writing in the magazine Field Artillery that "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions . . . and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against insurgents in trench lines and spider holes . . . We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents using WP to flush them out and high explosive shells (HE) to take them out." In fact WP is an effective killer, and anyone who inhales particles will suffer a particularly hideous and painful death. As recorded by The Independent newspaper in Britain "In the aftermath of the battle [at Fallujah], the State Department's Counter Misinformation Office issued a statement saying that WP was only "used very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night [which isn't the propose of a smoke-shell], not at enemy fighters." When The Independent confronted the State Department with the first-hand accounts of soldiers who participated, an official accepted the mistake and undertook to correct its website." Big deal. Lie, lie and lie again, until you're found out and it's impossible to deny the facts. And the Israelis seem to be taking the example, as usual, and are stoutly denying what has been seen by independent witnesses.
Article two, Protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons states: "It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by incendiary weapons." But Israel is only following the US example. "Shake and bake" is such an attractive military option that it would be a shame to spoil their fun, especially when it has rabbinical approval."
Cloughley is also fascinating on 'the hearing on the so-called Israeli-Palestine peace process in the US House of Representatives in February 2007? Of course not. It was a farce. And why was it such a revolting and hideous charade? â Because it was a three card trick.
The main witness, of the three cards who were called, was one Martin Indyk, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which is the richest and most powerful lobby group in the country (two of whose members are currently under a mysteriously delayed investigation for spying for Israel). From there, inevitably, he went to be US ambassador in Tel Aviv. (And, incidentally, whose book on the Middle East was the subject of a glowing review in last week's Economist.) Another witness was David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (founded by Indyk; it's all very chummy in pro-Israel sewers), which is funded extensively by American interests that support Zionism. (Among other connections, it is closely associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.) And was the third witness a counter-balance to two energetic supporters of Zion? Could he or she present a rather less biased view of the Middle East? Perhaps a person who would make the point that Israel has contemptuously ignored UN Security Council resolutions concerning illegal occupation of Palestinian lands?
Not a bit. The third member was a comic quasi-intellectual character called Daniel Pipes who once declared that Muslim immigrants to the US were "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene." (Germanic? â How quaint.) Pipes founded the Middle East Forum (MEF) which encourages university students in America to report lecturers and professors who they consider to be anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. (In Hitler's Germany there were awards given to young people who identified and reported those they thought to be pro-Jewish; I know a very elderly German lady who did this when she was 15. She is now terribly ashamed at the memory, because she actually informed on her own father. How times change. Or don't, of course.)'
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley01052009.html
See other valuable and essays today and always.
Given that three of the key sponsors of Israeli violence — George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton — are nominally, allegedly adherents of the United Methodist Church, one might wonder what their church has to say about their actions in light of Biblical teachings.
The answer, as you will not be surprised to learn, is — nada; nothing; zilch.
http://www.umc.org/
The church's serene disengagement gives a rather Buddhist feeling, don't it — as if to say, 'This world is an illusion which will soon pass.'
Rapture me up, Jeez. This place is drivin' me nuts.
This is not a rhetorical question: to what degree does Jewish doctrine's dehumanization of the "other" prevent organized Jewry from regarding gentiles as deserving of "human" rights when those rights might come at the expense of the power interests of organized Jewry?
I know that diaspora organized Jewry has a reputation for liberalism and "compassion" on any number of issues, but oddly, they are always issues where it is in organized Jewry's interests, as a minority, to advance the minority perspective. As I've noted before, when organized Jewry is the power dictating policy (ie American Zionists/Neocons/Neolibs) or in the majority (ie Israel) suddenly the "human rights" imperative is dropped, or blatantly subordinated to organized Jewry's power and financial interests.
It seems to me this is an outgrowth of the naked bigotry of the Talmud, and the whole "the Chosen" canon of Jewish doctrine. This would also explain why the overwhelming majority of self-identifying Jews (80%?) are Zionists. With numbers like that, Zionism IS Judaism — and will continue to be until anti-Zionist Jews violently split with Zionist Jews and drop the wimpy, J-Street style "let's split the difference" appeals to the Judeofascists. But maybe they donât think they can and still be authentic Jews, given that organized Judaism, according to this interpretation of its doctrine, seems to be an innately supremacist enterprise.
I really donât see anti-Zionist Jews ever accomplishing anything substantial until they develop and anti-supremacist interpretation of Jewish doctrine and inculcate an epochal split from Zionist organized Jewry on the level of Protestantismâs split from the Catholic Church, which required not only demonizing the Catholics, but considerable violence as well. The split has to be such that it is absolutely and irreversibly permanent, not just a few tepid complaints and critiques around the edges, which the Judeofascists laugh at before patting their effete critics on the head, tucking a dollar bill into their palm and sending them outside to play with their toys.
Check out JM's blog on the on-going proof of assimilation in Europe:
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/
Jim, re the Methodist Church–did it's call to divest from Israel fall?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950666.html
Just asking.
Yep.
————
Caterpillarâs response to The United Methodist Church … was deemed âpositiveâ by the denomination, which subsequently announced that it would withdraw its petition of divestment.
"Caterpillar's products are designed to improve quality of life. … We do not condone the illegal or immoral use of any Caterpillar equipment. … We expect our customers to use our products in environmentally responsible ways and consistent with human rights and the requirements of international humanitarian law,â the company expressed in a statement. "We are committed to further conversations and possible philanthropic activities in Palestinian areas,â the company added.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080419/united-methodists-to-withdraw-caterpillar-divestment-plans.htm
————
I can see it now — 'Caterpillar scholarships' for Palestinian students. You gotta have a dream …
JH, the word for you is hypocrite, not 'ventriloquist'.
Ed makes very uncomfortable yet essential points.
What is the point of organized Jewry's moral-leftist veneer? Does it have any ethical substance at all? Is it just a sham (a la Kevin MacDonald) to attack Christianity and promote unrestricted immigration?
Secular Zionists sound exactly like the ultra-orthodox when Israel is concerned. Palestinians are "halakhic non-entities"–they literally don't exist as human beings, and the idea that someone would find their interests as important as those of Israelis is literally incomprehensible to them.
"You can either take the universalisitic statements of Torah and turn them into refined moral principles. Or you can take the particularistic principles — perfectly justifiable and commendable within limits — and turn them into mafia principles."
…and the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of Jews are Zionists shows that the overwhelming majority of Jews take Jewish doctrine and interpret it as validation of ethnic fundamentalist mafia principles.
If anywhere near the percentage of Christians supported institutionalized Christian supremacism as the percentage of Jews that support institutionalized Jewish supremacism (Zionism), liberals and those on the left would rightfully decry Christianity as inherently fascist (and some do anyway). Yet when organized Jewry does this, the left-liberals insist: "Jewish doctrine isn't the problem, the problem is Zionism." A child can see how intellectually dishonest this is.
Why do left-liberals insist on this distinction? Because they have been bought off by organized Jewry, and because their own multi-cultural creed demands no one study non-Christian creeds too closely even as they pick apart Christianity. Why do they want to pick apart Christianity? Because they want to replace it with their own secular humanist/materialist religion as the basis of Western civilization. But that's been tried, and the Soviet Union was a humanitarian, environmental and social disaster.
I'm all for organic multi-culturalism, but only in a libertarian, realist-naturalist context with some kind of refined morality allowed to predominate and thrive. But the left-liberals want to use the State to cage the lions and put the rats in charge of forest. This will result in massive moral disaster and epic human tragedy time and again.
I think you are taking a very parochial view here, Ed, when you say "If anywhere near the percentage of Christians supported institutionalized Christian supremacism as the percentage of Jews that support institutionalized Jewish supremacism (Zionism), liberals and those on the left would rightfully decry Christianity as inherently fascist (and some do anyway)." Globally, "percentage of Christians support institutionalized Christian supremacism" is extremely high, and the further you get from the middle-class liberal enclaves of the metropolis, the higher it is.
Re "secular Zionistsâ: I believe that secular Jewish Zionists who are ignorant of the bigoted Jewish doctrine source material have actually absorbed their Jewish supremacism culturally from religious Jews ("the core") who are well versed in religious Jewish supremacist doctrine. The diaspora core has calculated that if even if it canât indoctrinate all fellow ethnic Jews or all of its own young into religious Jewish supremacism, well it might as well indoctrinate them into âliberalâ secular Zionism in order that liberal secular Jews can at least provide religious supremacist Jews useful cover to hide behind when their Judeofascist exploits inevitably blow back on the entirety of Jewry.
âSecular Zionistsâ are among the most intellectually challenged and confused of all Jewry, and donât even realize they are being manipulated and used by the religious Jewish supremacist core. They just repeat their liberal platitudes about the importance of âtoleranceâ and âinclusivenessâ ad naseum on behalf of diaspora Jewish supremacists even as the latter pursues the opposite of those concepts through its Judeofascist Zionist political program.
The talmud is not a source for principles of universal equality, anymore than the word Jew is. Man, neighbor, brother–look to
the original words and commentaries of the talmud defining such words taken to be of universal application only by Christianity and its
secular offspring, secular humanism.
Ed, I agree with you, but I would stress that the pseudo-secularised versions of the JHVH cult, or if you prefer of 'the meaning of being a Jew', are extremely sophisticated and require a good degree-level training in modern philosophy to really take apart. For instance, there is a thriving hegelian judaism, if I may call it that, which I suppose could be attributed to some extent to Shlomo Avineri among others, which evidently if implicitly regards 'the Jews' as the immanent spirit of world history in the hegelian sense. Then there is the Kantian secular judaism of Hermann Cohen's school, which influences all sorts of unlikely people, and there is Buber's existentialist judaism, Ber Borochov's proletarian judaism, and so forth, all expertly perverting the philosophies they claim to have adopted as 'jewish'.
JH, the word for you is hypocrite, not 'ventriloquist'.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | January 05, 2009 at 02:57 PM
You're welcome masochist. How else should one call a guy that reads a blog whose author he despises.
The problem is you drown out the more interesting voices with your unsubstantial babbling. Like this IRmep. Thanks IRmep interesting collection.
IRMEP is certainly interesting. I can't see how my presence here gets in its way, though.
Re "Christianity and its secular offspring, secular humanism."
If secular humanism is the offspring of Christianity, then itâs definitely patricidal (in the same way that Christianity became?). Yet conventional wisdom today is that enforced Christian universalism was wrong. Where is the conventional wisdom decrying secular humanismâs patricidalism in the form of Communism, particularly given that the current predominating Western status quo of State organized/enforced secular-universalist materialism is just another variation of secular humanist Communism?
It seems the realists conservatives who appreciate and want to preserve/return to the Greco-Roman-Christian-Western tradition while allowing for the existence of alternative belief systems/ideologies (but willing to expel those like Judeofascism, Islamic totalitarianism, Communism and its various versions of secular materialist universalism that seek to overthrow the G-R-C values of the West) are the only sane people in the room, because they are the only ones advocating a self-sustaining system that allows for civilizationally internal freedom and civilizationally external self-determination. The others do not.
@RB,
I would imagine most Jewish scholars who find a way to trace great secular philosophies and traditions to "Jewish thought" are, in fact, committed Jewish supremacists, even the ones who profess to be secular liberals.
This is a different question than the one of Jewish liberal "secular Zionist" masses being used by Jewish supremacists, and being played by them for fools (although no doubt a good portion of even these are aware of the Jewish supremacist project, and are just playing dumb.)
I guess my point is that most of them are ignorant that they are playing with fire, because most of them are ignorant that a good portion of the blame for the Holocaust can be traced to the murderous precedents established by the Jewish supremacists in their Jewish Bolshevik incarnation, which has been traded in for Jewish Zionism and Jewish Neoconservatism/Neoliberalism.
On the other hand, the hard core Judeofascists are all well aware of this interconnectedness, and choose to proceed anyway out of sheer ambition, and out of the beleif that if things go bad, they can simply throw the others under the bus (yet again), and escape to Israel. They will then argue that the others got what they deserved for being liberal Zionists instead of hard core Zionists.
Ed, I don't disagree with what you have said. Self determination is everything; the various isms (Left and Right) so prevailing in the 20th Century all sought to mask elite power grabs in the name of the underclass, the one Nietsche said spawned addiction to biblical Christianity. What's the difference between Spartacus and Jesus?
Use of violence as the means to the intended good end?
The major powers in the world today all act like Spartacus, yet
talk Jesus-speak.
Everybody claims to be David, not Goliath.
Given such official rhetoric and manipulation of public opinion to
believe it, and the stranglehold by the Fourth Estate and government branches on informative data, what do you suggest we do to kick the pricks out of the governmental temple?
They're so entrenched, corrupt, cynical and brainwashed, its almost like trying to defeat Communism. Barring a second American revolution, clearly they're going to ride this country until it hits rock bottom, just like the Soviet Union.
I think it was the russians who always used to say that the jew cries out in pain while he is kicking you.