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Total number of comments: 144 (since 2009-09-05 23:35:02)

Mikhael

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• Israeli gov't warns Israelis in U.S. not to marry Americans but come home
  • Mikhael November 29, 2011 at 9:46 pm with 1 replies

    I recall, pre-recession, several years ago, walking around Park Slope and seeing an ad on a bus shelter urging Irish expats to return home and enjoy the prosperity of the Celtic Tiger's boom years. This isn't much different.

    (Of course the ephemeral nature of the Irish economic miracle sent most of them backing right back to the US, Australia and elsewhere.)

• In memoriam: Hanan Porat, an extremist by any other name
  • Mikhael October 25, 2011 at 2:38 am

    Hostage October 16, 2011 at 8:21 am

    No I did not. Here is another report from the Israeli press that labels similar incidents racism. link to ynetnews.com

    Again, a non sequitur and irrelevant, just like your buddy Shawket's bringing up "white" Israelis versus "non-white" Arabs.

    Does racist sentiment exist among some sectors of Israel society and are there manifestations of discrimination, official and unofficial? Sure it does. Israeli Jews are human beings like everyone else, and like every human society, everywhere, we have racists among us. One would have to be a fool to deny it. And one would have to be a fool, if not an utter bigot, to insist that racism is more uniquely prevalent in Israeli Jewish society than it is elsewhere.

    If you would spend any time among the white Bedouin Arabs in Negev communities like Rahat in southern Israel, you would hear how often many of them refer to their fellow black Arab Bedouin neighbors with the disparaging epithet "'abd "(slave). Now, I would not condemn all of the white Arabs (yes, indeed, Arabs can be white too!) as racists just because many of them refer to their fellow, darker-skinned Arab neighbors as 'abd and make absurd claims that their society is permeated by pervasive racism. I'm not a bigot like you.

    The article cites a number of post-Zionist Mizrahi leaders, including Ella Habiba-Shohat,... who says that, alongside the Palestinians, Mizrahi Jews are Zionism’s “other” victims.

    Shohat is basically a movie reviewer who managed to get herself a doctorate in a pretty meaningless field of study. She can pass herself off as a scholar, I suppose, but a "leader"? Of what, people like you?

    I'm a Mizrahi Jew on my father's side (on the maternal side we are 18 documented generations in Galilee and in Jerusalem. On my father's paternal side we "only" go back three generations, when my great-grandfather made aliyah from Syria in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire). My ex-wife is Iraqi-Jewish, my brother-in-law on one side is Yemenite-Jewish, my other sister's husband was born in France to Tunisian-Jewish parents, and I can assure you that none of the Mizrahi Jews in my immediate or extended family view ourselves as victims of Zionism and we don't look to Shohat as a "leader" of our communities. Go take a stroll in Mizrahi-dominated marketplaces like Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda or Tel Aviv's Shuk haCarmel, take a poll of Mizrahi Jewish attitudes next time you are in Israel,most Mizrahi Jews are very favorably predisposed to Zionism and have been for a long time. Only a few ivory-tower elitists like Shohat or Yehuda Shenhav, write stuff like "Mizrahi Jews are victims of Zionism"

    The author does not attribute the problem to Zionism, but unlike you, he does not pretend that it is restricted to the Haredi religious community.

    Have you ever taken a reading comprehension test? I am curious as to how you fared.
    Anyway, dummy, I did not pretend that racism or bigotry was restricted to the Haredi community, and that racism and bigotry does not exist in Israel--obviously it does--just like it exists everywhere else on the globe--but I addressed, with accurate facts, the specific case you pulled out of your ass when I responded to Shawket's "Israelis are whites" nonsense. Again, let's review. Your comrade-in-ignorance, Shawket, alleged or implied that Israel was a "white" society, and implied that it escapes punishment or censure from the West or the international community as a result of that. I chose to ignore the obvious falsehood that Israel escapes criticism (it actually receives more criticism, for lesser offenses, than other countries do for far worse, but again, I chose not to address that) and I chose to concentrate on the obvious counterfactual that Israel is a "white" society and that Arabs constitute a non-white society. First off, it is true that most Jews---Mizrahim included--in Israel are white. However, most Arabs are also white. (To anybody but a racist of the white nationalist variety.) My father, a Mizrahi Jew of Syrian heritage, was white. My ex-wife, an Israel of Iraqi-Jewish heritage (and typical Mizrahi that she is, a proud Likudnik, unlike me, a secularist with dovish tendencies despite being of half-Mizrahi heritage), is white. When my teenage daughters came to visit me in NY, nobody referred to them as colored girls. Your inspiration, movie reviewer/professor Ella "Habiba" Shohat--she is white. Yasser Arafat was white, Mahmoud Abbas is white, dead Syrian Arab tyrant Hafez Assad was white, and beloved Arab-American actor Tony Shalhoub of "Monk" fame is white. So get off that "Arabs and Mizrahi Jews are non-whites" nonsense. Nevertheless, there are non-whites in the Israeli Jewish population (primarily the Ethiopian Jewish community) just as there are non-whites among the Arab"Palestinian" population (primarily amongst Negev Bedouin). Both national communities in the territory that Jews have historically called Eretz Yisrael for millenia and that Arabs have recently started calling "Falastin", the Jewish and Arab, are racially heterogeneous. I simply answered Shawket's distortion with that simple truth and made no assertion about whether racism or bigotry exists or does not exist in our society. What was your reply, Mr "Hostage'"? Oooh, a story about a religious girls' school in a settlement where some of the parents wanted to restrict the number of girls who came from a non-chassidic background in the classrooms and who didn't observe the same chasssidic customs as their daughters did. In other words, dunderhead that you are, you brought up something that has zero relevance.

    Many of the examples cited are racist remarks based upon ethnicity, not religion.

    Again? So what? What is your point? The discussion was not whether racist bigotry exists or does not exists within Israeli society, but my answer to Shawket's erroneous assertion that Israeli society is somehow "white" and Arab society is "non-white". Why did you bring up something that was extrinsic to that discussion? Can you not focus? Do you have ADD as well as bad reading comprehension?

  • Mikhael October 15, 2011 at 11:17 pm

    Hostage October 13, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    You forgot to mention that his parents part of an illegal Jewish militia unit that deliberately attacked an Arab Legion convoy on the main road between Hebron and Bethlehem

    His parents assisted in the relief of a Jewish-populated village that was being starved to death and was having its population picked off one by one during a state of siege. Shame on them for "illegally" disobeying the orders of the Mandatory government, which had mere months left to its existence. Of course, the relief convoys to Kefar Etzion were unsuccessful in breaking the siege and providing succor to Kefar Etzion and its inhabitants, that's why the village finally surrendered and had most of its all of its residents summarily executed. But sure, in your warped view, you think the Jordanian Arab Legion was just enforcing the law against Jewish rebels and protecting the legal authority of the British Mandate--never mind that when the Kefar Etzion massacre occurred there was a mere day left until the expiration of the Mandate and most British forces had already evacuated the country. Also, why the square quotes around the word "village"? Is "village" a word that you think only Arabs of the former British Mandate of Palestine were entitled to use for their communities?

  • Mikhael October 15, 2011 at 6:55 pm

    Hostage October 15, 2011 at 10:59 am

    So, is there really a “nation of Israel” or are there “two Jewish peoples”?

    Sure there is one Jewish people. Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews always belonged to the same nation, even if their ancestors were dispersed in different Diaspora countries. With the exception of the USA, most of whose Jews will no longer be identifiably Jewish in a few decades, most of the descendants of these diasporas live in Israel, where on the whole, they mix and mingle with each other at a very high rate. I am a typical product of such mixing; soon, most Israelis, like me, will be products of Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Mizrahi heritage. The fact that there are some communities in Israel who cling to old Diaspora ways in terms of religious custom and comportment doesn't imply "two Jewish peoples."

    My point is that there were tens of thousands of bigots who didn’t hesitate to put on a public demonstration regarding an order to desegregate a state funded religious girls school – and no one had or has the option to not pay taxes.

    No, first you answered my reply to Shawket's nonsense (i.e., that Israeli Jews are somehow "white" and that Palestinian Arabs are somehow "non-white") with a complete non sequitur. Now, you highlight the fact that a small group of religious fundamentalists protested about the idea of state interference in the pedagogical methods of their school as an example of inherent intolerance in Israeli Jewish society and ignore the fact that the Israeli court system ordered said segregationist policy to stop and ruled in favor of the parents who objected to the hassidic only (NB: not Ashkenazi only) "school-within-a-school." Now, as an Israeli Jew who is of mixed Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi descent, and who was educated in Ashkenazi and Sephardi yeshivoth in Israel and the New York area, I think Slonim hassidim take their zealotry to an absurd extreme. That's why, even if I was still a religious Jew (obviously I am not because I am using the computer on Shabbat and the first two day of Sukkoth, which is a Yom Tov), I would never send my children to that type of school--even if I thought that they would be accepted.

    
    

    The bigots exerted more than enough political influence to circumvent the Supreme Court order which had directed that both the fathers and mothers responsible for the illegal segregation be jailed for contempt.

    43 overzealous parents were sentenced to 2 weeks' jail time, essentially for insisting that their kids attend a breakaway school-within-a-school with a stricter interpretation of Jewish law, and not be exposed to kids whose families did not uphold the same religious practices with the same standards as they did. In turn, thousands of other fundamentalists came out to protest the idea of parents being separated from their families and the idea of state interference with the pedagogical methods in the school. So, people exercised their right to demonstrate at what they felt was an unjust court order. In the end, a compromise was reached and the civil suit that initiated the whole thing was withdrawn and the matter was referred to arbitration by a rabbinical court. Now, again, what does any of this have to do with my correctly replying to Shawket's false dichotomy assertion that Israelis are "white" (=bad guys) and Palestinian Arabs are "non-white" (=poor victims)?

    I notice that you are simpleminded enough to claim there was no harm and no foul. What a jerk.

    No, dummy. Nothing in what I wrote suggests that I endorse the idea that Jewish students in a state-supported school in Israel should be segregated on the basis of how they look and/or where their parents or grandparents made aliyah from; I even wrote several times that the policy at the Beit Yaakov school was "asinine"and an example of religious fundamentalist intolerance. It is not, however, an example of skin-color prejudice or "racial" intolerance. However, you, in your doltish way, brought up the Immanuel/Beit Yaakov controversy in response to my reply to Shawket's counterfactual implication that Israelis are uniformly "white" and Palestinian Arabs uniformly "non-white." As much as I disagreed at the time with supporting the Beit Yaakov school parents whgo refused to comply with the order (I don't think the school in general should be supported for a bunch of other reasons as well--it's a haredi non-Zionist school that discourages its students from participating in the army or even alternative national service and it's located in a post-1967 West Bank settlement that should be dismantled), it's a total mischaracterization to classify the parents' who demanded the segregation policy as based on the communal origin of the students' families in the past rather than on the way their families religiously comport themselves at present. Since you are a simpleton, it's obvious that you believed it was the former, otherwise there can be no other reason for bringing up the issue.

  • Mikhael October 15, 2011 at 4:04 am

    annie October 13, 2011 at 7:39 pm

    so what? most americans have not even heard of him. the nyt is an american paper.

    The NYT routinely publishes obituaries about people they deem noteworthy from the USA and abroad. I know I've learned about hundreds of people I'd never heard of before they died through NYT obits. But since according to you, "the nyt is an american paper", they had no business reporting the recent passings of Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Ramiz Alia (him I knew of), or Jagjit Singh, since they were foreigners who most Americans never have heard of.

    link to nytimes.com

    link to nytimes.com

    link to nytimes.com

  • Mikhael October 15, 2011 at 3:45 am with 7 replies

    Elliot October 13, 2011 at 10:29 pm
    Have you got anything to contribute to Mondoweiss?

    What didn't you understand in what I wrote? I wrote quite clearly that I think people like Hanan Porat and those who advocate similar views (including members of my own family) are a danger to Israel as a Jewish state, which, I as a Zionist fervently believe in. As praiseworthy as some of his contributions were and his family's defense of Israel was - the "Greater Land of Israel" ideal comes with the unacceptable price of too many Arabs in our tiny Jewish country. It's better to have a smaller country and fewer Arabs even it means giving up historically Jewish territory, and that is what will inevitably happen.

  • Mikhael October 15, 2011 at 2:34 am

    Hostage October 13, 2011 at 10:04 pm

    Yeah right:

    Reporting from Jerusalem —Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested Thursday against a Supreme Court decision to jail parents who have refused to comply with its order to desegregate a religious girls school.

    Yeah, right! :-)

    Thank you for confirming that I am right and that you are one of the simpleminded folk.

    My post was in response to an equally simpleminded ignoramus using the sobriquet "Shawket" who characterized Israeli Jews as "white" . While it is in any case morally lazy to equate "white" with "oppressor" and "non-white" as "victim", the shorthand assignation of "white" status to Israelis and "non-white" status to Arabs (including the Arabs who have recently adopted the name "Palestinian" to describe themselves) ignores basic reality and I was addressing this false equation. To anyone but a racist of the white nationalist/neo Nazi variety a la Stormfront--most Jews and most Arabs are white people, and people who would be considered "black" (at least in an American racial context) are minorities in both these national communities. There are some black Israeli Jews who are of Ethiopian Jewish descent and there are some black "Palestinian" Arabs who have roots in places like Sudan and Zanzibar, notably amongst certain clans of Negev Bedouin and in and around the Jericho area.

    Now, in your lazy, hazy, confused response to my calling Shawkat on his bullshit, you appended a link about a year and-a-half-year-old controversy regarding intercommunal segregation at a state-supported haredi girls' school in the settlement of Immanuel. Your point is?

    Never mind.

    While the Immanuel Beit Yaakov case you cite is an example of internal religious intolerance among a certain subset of Ashkenazi haredim, it has ZERO to do with the skin color of the children affected, but had everything to do with the religious practices and fanatic interpretations of certain rabbinic leaders and Ashkenazi parents at that particular school who wanted to limit the exposure of their children to other kids whose families' religious practices (e.g., the pronunciation of prayers and observance of certain Orthodox Jewish customs such as the consumption of legumes on Passover) were at variance with the way they want their kids to be brought up. Is this an example of narrowminded and intolerant extremist religious fundamentalism in a small segment of Israeli Haredi society? Absolutely--but it's not an example of skin-color prejudice. First of all, the school in question did not segregate Mizrahi children whose families adopted wholeheartedly adopted the minhag (customs) and nusakh (liturgical rite) of the Slonim hasidim, an Ashkenazi haredi (ultra-Orthodox) group that dominates that particular school. The main issue of the parents at the school who demanded that the kids be segregated was that they wanted total religious conformity--it was not enough that all the kids be Sabbath- and kosher-observant and from Sabbath- and kosher-observant families, but they wanted their kids to learn only the Ashkenazi pronunciation of prayers, and observe only Ashkenazi customs... they wanted to minimize their little ones' exposure to any kids whose families' practice of Judaism--no matter how strict--even slightly differed. Again, this may be asinine and deplorable, but it's not skin-color prejudice. (And of course, the non-Ashkenazi families who protested this had a simple solution to this discrimination--i.e., not sending their kids to that ridiculous school.) Moreover, children from Ashkenazi non-Orthodox families as well as as Ashkenazi kids from other Orthodox groups, whether modern Orthodox, or Lithuanian-style "mitnaged" haredi Judaism or other Hassidix sects such as Lubavitch whose style of dress and Hebrew pronunciation differed, would be equally discriminated against at said school, whose main goal was to observe Jewish ritual as practiced by that particular hassidic sect--Slonim. And I'll say it again, don't forget--there there is no shortage of olive-skinned, swarthy Ashkenazi haredim, whose families made aliyah to Israel from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, etc. There are likewise plenty of light-skinned, fair-haired, blond- and blue-eyed Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews as well. So again, what was your point in bringing that up?

  • Mikhael October 13, 2011 at 6:12 pm with 3 replies

    flyod October 8, 2011 at 9:46 pm

    the obit should have read; the world today would be a better place if porat died 65 years ago

    Nice to know that you support the massacre of children. Porat's parents evacuated him to the relative safety of Jerusalem to escape his village, which was ultimately destroyed by the Arab Legion in 1948. Not that Jerusalem was so safe in that period either; a fair number of Jewish children were killed in West Jerusalem while it was under siege during Israel's independence war, too.

  • Mikhael October 13, 2011 at 6:05 pm

    shawket October 9, 2011 at 9:44 am

    Israel’s “national aspirations” constitute a war crime big guy, which they aren’t being punished for because they’re white

    Typically, Israeli Jews' skin tones tend to range from "white," to "olive," to brown, or "black." (Black Israeli Jews are mostly descendants of the Ethiopian-Jewish community.)

    Typically, Palestinian Arabs' skin tones also tend to range from "white," to "olive," to "brown" or "black."
    (Black Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas are usually Bedouin with sub-Saharan ancestry whose ancestors migrated to the region about 200 years ago.)

    Both national communities have people with a wide diversity of skin tones, which really has no relevance in a discussion of the national aspirations of the two national communities, except for simpleminded folk.

  • Mikhael October 13, 2011 at 5:51 pm with 2 replies

    Being deemed obituary-worthy in the NYT does not necessarily mean the NYT endorses the views of the decedent, which is something that the writer of this post can't seem to comprehend. He was a major figure in Israeli politics and society for a time. I personally think that Hanan Porat's ideology and those like him who insist on Eretz Yisrael ha Shelema is dangerous to Israel's existence as a Jewish state, but the one-staters who dominate this site should be very pleased with it.

    Ratner's snarky critique of Bronner's obituary also ignores the fact that Porat was raised in Kfar Etzion, whose Jewish inhabitants were ethnically cleansed by Jordan's Arab Legion in 1948, but that attitude jibes well with the Mondoweiss's prevailing ethos.

• Co-oping BDS, part II: Filling up the Israeli boycart
  • Mikhael August 22, 2011 at 11:23 pm

    Come to think of it, it's still not worth re-joining the Coop and putting up with all their BS. Luckily, I can always find Osem products such as Bamba at the Yemeni all night news kiosk on Montague Street and other Israeli-made products like Beit ha Shitta canned pickles (Hamutzim) at the numerous small Arab-owned grocery stores that dot 5th Avenue from Bay Ridge to Sunset Park to the outer edges of Park Slope.

  • Mikhael August 22, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    I've been forced out of the Slope to Bay Ridge by ridiculous rents, and I let my coop membership lapse long ago (I never reclaimed my deposit either), but maybe I'll try to rejoin to get that seltzer-making thingie.

    Sabra Salads is an American brand, by the way (although it was founded by expat Israelis). I'm a bit annoyed at them though for relocating from Astoria, Queens for anti-union Richmond, but whatever.

• State Department beneficiary, MEMRI, is dedicated to bringing Israeli ideas about Arab world and Iran into U.S. establishment
  • Mikhael August 22, 2011 at 1:54 am

    RE: Walid August 15, 2011 at 2:50 am
    Historically, most of the people “min al-muheet ila al-khaleej” had the language and religion rammed down their throats

    Walid, if you believe that millions of Arabized Berbers, Assyrians and Phoenecians had a foreign Arab language and culture imposed on them centuries ago, then why would you insist on perpetuating this identity for Hebrew-speaking Israeli Jews whose parents and grandparents came to Israel from Arab countries decades (and in some cases, centuries) ago? Your average 25-year-old Israeli Jew whose family came from Iraq, Yemen or Egypt cannot speak Arabic and does not view himself as an Arab. In most cases, even the Arabic-speaking grandparents reject an Arab identity.
    In my own case, my father's side of the family spoke Arabic as one of their primary languages (my father continued to be fairly fluent in spoken Arabic, but not written for his whole life, although he was more comfortable in Hebrew and English, both of his parents spoke Arabic as their first language), but I'm pretty sure they never referred to themselves as Arabs.

    it’s just as bogus and politically motivated as the one about the Jews being all of one cultural nation rather than of one common religion. Now the Jews are pulling the same stunt with their newfound “nation” claim to help them dispossess the Palestinians.

    But if you were familiar with Jewish history, you would see that the idea of Jews constituting a nation rather than merely a religion is not a new idea and existed long before the concept of modern political Zionism or of a Palestinian national identity ever arose.

    Re:the blue-eyed Christians of Lebanon that you talked about (BTW, there are more blue-eyed Shia Muslims there than blue-eyed Christians),

    I'm not aware that there has ever been a census done of whether there are more blue-eyed, fair-haired Shia than Christians, but having spent some time in southern Lebanon
    (I'm sure you can guess why a 41-year-old Israeli citizen was in Southern Lebanon in the late 1980s/early 1990s), I am quite aware of the existence of Shiites fitting this description. My point in referring to "blue-eyed Christians" was that you seemed to dismiss the idea of phenotypically dissimilar Yemenite Jews and German Jews possibly belonging to the same national community, yet Arab nationalism (which in its pure form is supposed to transcend religious and sectarian differences and bind all Arabic-speakers in one national community) has no problem including Muslim Sudanese and Lebanese Christians (and theoretically, the mysterious "Arab Jew") in the same nation. Granted, you now claim that you reject that theory, but if they can all be part of the Arab nation, then a Yemenite Jew and a Polish Jew can be part of the same Jewish nation, all the more so since they actually do share much common history, culture and ancestry.

    In your concept of Jewish nationhood, can you explain why in 1948 the majority of Jews in Lebanon refused to have anything to do with Israel... continued doing so until the civil war broke out in the early 70s and they started leaving along with other Lebanese for better economic opportunities elsewhere with most refusing to go to Israel? Where was Jewish nationhood in this?

    Sure. Money, property and assets (not to mention physical well-being). Proclaiming loyalty to an enemy Israeli state when you have a vested economic interest in Lebanon and the physical security of you and your family depends on your neighbors seeing you as a loyal Arab Lebanese wouldn't have been such a smart move for Lebanese Jews, would it? As for more emigre Lebanese Jews preferring New York, Montreal and Paris to Israel in the 1970s, it's human nature to go where there is better economic opportunity and less perceived political turmoil. There's no doubt that you could make more money opening an electronics retail shop in NY circa 1976 than you could in Israel (crime-wise, NYC in the 1970s was no piece of cake either, but that's another story), and if you could wangle a visa to the USA, that's what many Jewish Beirutis did. Nevertheless, if you go to the Sephardic Community Center in Gravesend, Brooklyn (which is composed mostly of Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian Jews, many of whom have roots in Alleppo), you'll see that these first-generation American Jews of Lebanese descent will proudly celebrate Israeli Independence Day (and the 4th of July), but not Lebanese Independence Day (nor will they celebrate Syrian or Egyptian national holidays).

    It's always human nature to want to stay where you are unless you are forced to do otherwise. That's why many in the American Jewish community have historically given lip service to Zionism over the past 60 years, but most who do, wouldn't ever think of moving to Israel. Jewish history also teaches that when Cyrus the Great of Persia announced that the Jews exiled to Babylon were free to return to their homeland in 538 BCE, most preferred to stay in Babylon. By the same token, today, you can find passionate Palestinian-American nationalists who've lived in the US for decades and own gas stations and candy stores in Brooklyn. Most of them will also probably be staying in the USA even if their wildest fantasy comes true,and Israel vanishes forever and a maximalist "Dawlat Filastin" min al-baHr ila al-nahar takes place, with a full right of return, Jerusalem as its capital and all the Jews leave.

    It is a fairy tale to say that all Jews had been happy in Arab countries but it’s also a fairy tale to say that all Jews from Arab countries left as a result of persecution.

    Every Arab country was different and the situations for the Jewish communities in those countries were different also. On the one hand, you'll always hear stories that there were always good personal, neighborly relations between some Jews and some Arabs in Arab countries, but that doesn't mean everything was always well and dandy. Even in countries that had relatively stable governments that were friendly to the Jewish community (e.g., Morocco), there were instances of anti-Jewish riots against the local Jewish community in 1948. Jews who left perceived Morocco as a hostile place because it was hostile, no matter that the king was friendly to the Jews.

    most Tunisian Jews left their country about 15 years after the creation of Israel and half of those chose to go to France.

    And large numbers of French Jews (who are often the children and grandchildren of Tunisian Jews who moved to France in the 1950s-1960s) have been making aliyah from 2000.Many of them cite hostility to them from French Muslims as a principal reason.

    RE:You said it yourself that Yemenis went to Israel for their aliya long before Israel was established

    My point in stating that was to show that Mizrahi Jews were not infantile victims of European Zionism, as you seem to portray them. They were themselves often active participants in Zionism, whether it was religiously or politically motivated, but granted, there is always a push/pull element in Zionism . Most Jews who made aliyah from the Arab world post-1948 did so because because of a "push", even if they were sympathetic to Zionism, but Jews from Arab lands (just like Jews from elsewhere) had been making aliyah for centuries because of the pull of Zion, too.

  • Mikhael August 21, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    annie August 21, 2011 at 10:20 pm
    bloggers are people who write on blogs. like you are doing.

    I'm afraid dictionary.com doesn't agree with you, but more or less conforms to my definition:

    "Main Entry: blogger
    Part of Speech: n
    Definition: a person who keeps a Web log (blog) or publish an online diary
    Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon

    (Of course, language and usage changes with time (especially internet-related words) so this definition may not always be correct, but in my experience a "blogger" is someone like
    Phillip Weiss, i.e., someone who maintains a blog. People who merely comment on others' blogs (such as yours truly) are merely blog commenters. My ego has never been big enough to be a blogger, and like, I said, I work for a living.

  • Mikhael August 21, 2011 at 11:06 pm

    annie August 14, 2011 at 11:38 pm
    think i’ll forgo anymore conversation w/you Mikhael,

    Thanks!

    you either jump the shark (w/your end of israel allegation applied to me for heavens sake)
    As I said, it was very obvious where you were going with your smug little comments about the fact that some Israeli citizens who immigrated to Israel in the 1990s have returned to Russia to live. What else would you bring that up if not to make a smug insinuation about Israel's non-viability?
    ignore the argument altogether as you did w/Shenhav’s (and use the ad hominem against him to boot),

    My calling Shenhav a misfit is not an ad hominem attack against the man. He is by definition, a "misfit" in the most literal sense, regardless of whether his scholarship is academically sound or not. Declaring himself an Arab Jew by definition makes him a misfit, as it puts him at odds with the vast majority of Israeli Jews whose families came to Israel from countries in the Arabic-speaking Diaspora.
    pretend you already made the same point (wrt russian immigration which you certainly did not)
    A point I made several times already, but that you don't seem clever enough to to understand. In an earlier post, Walid alleged that a significant number of people immigrating to Israel from the former USSR under Israel's "Law of Return" underwent dodgy conversions to Judaism to do so, and I replied that such was not the case and that nearly all of the immigrants from the former USSR to Israel, even if they were not Jewish by a traditional interpretation of Jewish law, were either of partial Jewish ancestry or married to a Jew or someone of partial Jewish ancestry, whereupon you brought up an article discussing cases of some Israeli citizens originating from the former USSR who practice various forms of Christianity, as if that disproved my point. I responded to you that the article you copied/pasted onto Mondoweiss about the many Russian-speaking Orthodox Christian Israeli citizens discussed people who immigrated to Israel under the scenario I outlined, i.e., people who were able obtain Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return through family connections to Jews. Whether some of these former Russian, Ukrainian, or Byelorussian (or whatever) citizens practice Christianity or not, nearly all obtained Israeli citizenship either (A)through Jewish descent or (B) marriage to someone who is of Jewish descent, which I've said several times already. You responded with a non sequitur that the article in question was about the prevalence of Russian-speaking Christians in Israel. Whether they practice Russian Orthodox Christianity or believe in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is irrelevant and does not negate my point that contra to Walid's allegation, nearly all of the non-Jewish Israeli citizens from the former USSR have some Jewish ancestry or were the spouse or stepchild of someone with Jewish ancestry and are from families that immigrated from the former USSR post-1990.

  • Mikhael August 21, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    Re:annie August 14, 2011 at 11:38 pm

    let’s see. you’re a blogger and he’s an iconoclastic misfit professor at tel aviv university.

    I'm neither a "blogger" (as I understand the correct use of the term, a blogger is someone who maintains a blog, like Phillip Weiss) nor am I a professor.

    I work for a living.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 11:37 pm

    eljay August 14, 2011 at 9:30 am

    Mikhael, would you please provide some clarification of statements made by Tal and Michael W

    Eljay, I don't know. I have a daughter in the States through a non-Jewish woman who never converted and my daughter is not being raised by her mother with any sort of Jewish identity, so I would say yes, Jews are becoming extinct in the USA through intermarriage, I've been part of that process myself. They will probably hold on in the Orthodox enclaves, but outside of that, intermarriage in the USA will lead to people just being Americans of Jewish descent and that's it.

    2. If he is correct, how does that work? For example:
    - How many generations of intermarriage are required for someone of the Jewish “people” to stop being Jewish

    It could take as little as one generation, as I've just illustrated above.

    - How does one stop being part of a “people” simply by foregoing religious beliefs and practices?

    The same way any any 3rd-generation immigrants lose their cultural and national identity in a country like America. It's a natural process. You either segregate yourself in your own communities and stall the process as much as you can or you return to the country of your forebears, or you assimilate.

    3. How does a religious conversion (I say “religious conversion” because there is no such thing as a “secular conversion”) make one part of a “people”, and not just of a religion?

    I look at this way, as a secular/agnostic Jew. Conversion to Judaism (as Orthodox Jews have always understood it anyway) involves more than simply adopting a religious creed and a set of doctrines about man's relationship to the Deity, but involves the individual's binding his or her fate with the entirety of the Jewish people. The archetypal convert in the Jewish narrative is Ruth the Moabitess, who said to Naomi "Your people shall be my People." I think of conversion to Judaism as a tribal initiation rite or a naturalization process.

    4. And if one is undeniably and eternally part of a “people”, why would one have to undergo a religious conversion to “become again” one of that “people”?

    I, for one, don't think conversion to Judaism is the only valid way to become a Jew. I have no problem accepting someone of partial Jewish ancestry who chooses to identify as a Jew as such (for example, in addition to my own daughter,the Russian-speaking Jews who have moved to Israel who have Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers). However, I defer to the Orthodox rabbinate; if they wish to be accepted in Orthodox Jewish communities then they must undergo full conversion. If at some future date my American daughter, when she reaches adulthood, chooses to identify with her paternal Jewish roots, then I would consider her a Jew, and I think it's fair that she should be entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return (technically under Israeli law she's Israeli already through me, her Israeli citizen father). If she wants to become part of an Orthodox community at a later stage and marry within that community, she would then have to undergo the difficult process of Orthodox Jewish conversion. Right now, she's a child, and these things are the furthest thing from her mind. I never discuss any of it with her, and I'll be perfectly happy with her if she does not become Jewish either in a religious sense or a cultural sense, although I would be pleased if she chooses to embrace a cultural.ethnic identity as a Jew and identify with the Jewish nation and Israel, even if she would still not be Jewish according to the strict dictates of Jewish law absent conversion. But seeing as I leave her religious education (or lack thereof) with her mother, I am resigned to this not happening.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    annie August 14, 2011 at 10:09 pm

    i was referencing a different kind of russian immigrant

    It’s no secret that myriads of Russian Christians (hundreds of thousands?) were able to “make aliyah” via Law of Return loopholes, forged documents,

    But that's exactly what I described...people from the former USSR who "exploited loopholes" to make aliyah to Israel--i.e., people of partial Jewish descent (one proveable Jewish grandfather suffices) can make aliyah. That's quite different from a deliberate false conversion in order to make aliyah.In the chaos of the breakup of the USSR, there are also people who forged documents too to claim Jewish ancestry that never existed, but that probably happened a lot less often.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    annie August 14, 2011 at 9:39 pm
    because it’s cool? or because it explains how european jews used arab/iraqi jews for zionism’s theft.

    Israeli Mizrahi Jews (not Arab Jews) were not used by anyone. Mizrahi Jews are and were at the forefront of Zionism and are capable of making their own rational decisions to identify with Israel and Zionism before accepting an "Arab" identity. You asked me before if I think I represent all Mizrahi Jewish opinion in Israel. Clearly, I don't. It's a free country and you can always find self-styled iconoclastic misfits like Shenhav, he can think and write what he wants and gets paid handsomely for it by the Israeli taxpayer by teaching in a publicly supported university. But don't delude yourself that opinions like his will find any resonance in the broader community of Israelis of Mizrahi-Jewish descent, outside of academe. On the whole, Mizrahi Jews in Israel will cast their lot with their fellow Israeli Jews of Ashkenazi background before they would consider themselves part of any broader Arab community. Misfits like Shenhav, Shohat et al. are the exception.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    annie August 14, 2011 at 9:47 pm
    by your reasoning you might as well say german jews weren’t german and american jews aren’t american.

    German Jews are German to the extent that they lived in or had citizenship in Germany but they were not ethnic Germans, American Jews are American if they lived in or had citizenship in the USA. Ashkenazi Jewry, however, extended far beyond the borders of what is now known as Germany. For example, my mother's Hungarian-Jewish family (actually she was born in what is today called Slovakia in an area that was once controlled by Hungary) is Ashkenazi, but they are NOT "German." A century ago, they spoke Yiddish, which is a German/Hebrew hybrid, they subsequently changed their language to Hungarian, in Israel they spoke their ancestral Hebrew tongue.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    annie August 14, 2011 at 8:57 pm
    but last i heard more russians are returning than coming. so much for the land of

    And many of those that return to Russia are those that have no Jewish family roots, who married into Jewish families (or partially Jewish families), the marriage ends, and they go back to their homeland. Or they are people who go back and forth. Anyway, Israel is a normal country, we are not like the former USSR, which outlawed defection. Despite all of its problems, more Israelis choose to stay than leave, and many of those who leave ultimately come back. I don't think anyone would point to the fact that people have migrated from Ireland for centuries that that means Ireland should give up the ghost. In the years of the Celtic Tiger boom in the early 2000s Irish expats in NY, London and Sydney were returning in droves, Irish Argentines who had one Irish grandparent lined up at the Irish Embassy in Buenos Aires in 2000 so they could take out Irish citizneship and move to booming Dublin. Now that the Irish economy collapsed again, all the young Irish with university degrees are leaving again to work as bartenders in Woodhaven, Queens. That's life. It's not the end of Ireland, and the fact that some ex-Soviets who moved to Israel 20 years ago are moving back to Moscow is not the end of Israel either.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 9:38 pm

    Shmuel August 14, 2011 at 8:57 am
    With regard to Ashkenazim, you are mistaken. The name Ashkenazi means German, and Yiddish is referred to in Yiddish as “Teitch” – a variation of Deutsch. It is a Jewish-Germanic identity for sure, but its Germanic point of reference is clear.

    By that reasoning, you may as well say that Haitians are really Frenchmen, because the Haitian Kreyol language is mostly French-derived. Or you may as well say that Bukharan Jews, who a generation or two ago mostly spoke a Persian dialect, but the younger generation of which has largely been Russified, are really "Russians."

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    RE:
    annie August 14, 2011 at 8:57 pm
    i read there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 russian immigrants who have converted and now those conversions are comingg under scrutiny.

    No. There are in the neighborhood of a few hundred thousand immigrants from the former USSR in Israel who are not Jewish by the strict definition of orthodox Jewish law, which requires one to have a Jewish mother or to undergo a conversion deemed valid by the Orthodox rabbinate. Many of these immigrants came in the early 1990s and thereafter. They were eligible to receive Israeli citizenship by dint of having a Jewish father, or even only one Jewish grandparent, but the Orthodox rabbinical establishment did not regard them as Jews. In addition to these people of partial Jewish ancestry, their non-Jewish spouses or stepchildren (who often had no Jewish ancestry) were allowed to immigrate with them. Many of these people have subsequently underwent processes of conversion to Orthodox Judaism in Israel, for a variety of reasons. Some, I am sure, were exposed to Orthodox Judaism and decided they believed in it and wanted to choose its lifestyle. Many others, I am sure, simply converted to ease the process of marriage, as having a non-Jewish maternal grandmother who never converted renders them as non-Jews under Orthodox Jewish halakha and they cannot marry someone who is regarded as a Jew in Israel because there is no civil marriage in the country. A lot of these people may have regarded themselves as ethnic Jews in the former USSR and were so considered by the Gentiles amongst whom they lived. (I knew one guy who looked stereotypically Jewish, his last name was Kogan--a stereotypically Jewish name and a Russian version of the name "Cohen", both of his father's parents were Jewish, his mother's father was a Jew, but his mother's mother was not, ergo his mother was not a Jew, ergo he was not a Jew. The "5th Line" denoting nationality on his Soviet passport described him as "Yevrei"--Jew--and he was taunted for his Jewish name and looks in Kiev. He was shocked upon his immigration to Israel that he was not considered a Jew by the rabbinical authorities and he underwent conversion to Orthodox Judaism in Israel. He subsequently abandoned the practices and rituals of Orthodox Judaism after going through all the motions to satisfy the rabbis in order to get a conversion certificate, but he always regarded himself as a Jew. It's cases like these that you speak of when you say "conversions are coming under scrutiny". However, what you and Walid suggested, that Russians are converting merely for the chance to immigrate to Israel is false. Those Israelis from the former USSR who have converted to Judaism are already in Israel and have already obtained Israeli citizenship, like I said, either through partial Jewish ancestry or marriage to someone else who is a Jew or has partial Jewish ancestry. Those that convert do so for a variety of reasons, practical and sincere (or a mixture of both), but they're already inside the country and already have citizenship in most cases.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 8:42 pm

    annie August 14, 2011 at 6:31 pm
    i am aware of a definite push to completely eradicate any ‘arab’ away from ‘jew’ as a defining feature...it’s just the latest trend of brainwashing people.

    The brainwashing attempt (an attempt that will fail outside of the target audience of anti-Israel cultists) is being done by people like you, who are insisting on foisting an "Arab" identity on people who overwhelmingly reject it.Of course, Arab societies have done the most to make the notion of "Arab Jews" noxious to Jews whose families have always stayed in the Middle East.
    NB: Israelis with family roots in Iraq, Morocco, Tunis, Syria, Yemen, etc.. have no probably describing themselves in Hebrew as "'Eraqim," "Moroka'im," "Tunisai'im," "Surim," and "Teimonim" etc...there is no sense denying that they have family roots in countries bearing those names. But to call themselves "Arab" is illogical. For one thing, there would have to be a country called "Arabia" for them to be from (there is a country called Saudia Arabia, which has a population of zero Jewish citizens.) Of course, there is a wider pan-Arab nationalism (on the decline with the rise of pan-Islamic fervor), however, which encompasses all the Arab countries. This ideology has largely excluded Jews, but more importantly Jews in Arab countries were largely uninterested in it, preferring Zionism over Arab nationalism if they had to choose between two nationalist ideologies. The feelings were mutually unrequited. Insisting that Israeli Jews whose families came to Israel from Arab countries are fellow Arabs is nothing but a transparent attempt to drive a wedge into Israeli society and in this case will not succeed (of course, there are other more exploitable fault lines), especially as Israelis of Mizrahi, Sefaradi and Ashkenazi descent are increasingly intermarried. In another 5o years or so, the communal distinctions in Israeli Jewish society will be largely gone, but will be preserved in various synagogue rites and customs, that's all.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 8:22 pm

    Walid August 14, 2011 at 5:56 pm

    I’d like to add to the ongoing discussion between Mikhael, Shmuel and others about Arab Jews, from my experience with several Lebanese Arab-Jews, these were all very much Arab in their looks, culture, and so on but with the only difference being that their religion was Jewish.

    Walid, people are always influenced by the culture of the place where they grow up. Despite having two Israeli parents and speaking Hebrew as my first language, the fact that I was born and educated primarily in the United States has always caused me to be labeled "American" during the periods in which I've lived in Israel. I was constantly berated and made fun of as "the American" during my IDF service, despite the fact that on my paternal side my roots in Israel went back probably further than anybody else in my army unit.
    My Pakistani-American friends and Arab-American friends who were raised in NY and Nebraska also always get called "Americans" by their relatives when they visit their parents' homelands. If it happens to the first generation of immigrants, how much more so would it be expected to happen with Jews who've lived in Arab countries for many generations. What matters is how one defines oneself. By and large, Jews in Israel whose families came from Arab countries do not define themselves as Arabs; and no, this is not because they hate their own Arab culture or because the Ashkenazi Zionist establishment caused them to be ashamed of their roots. Although the persecution their families underwent in Arab countries has a lot to do with it, many Mizrahi Jews identified with Zionism, in its political and religious forms, well before Israeli independence. Yemenite Jews were coming to Eretz Yisrael in immigration waves from the 1880s as part of the First Aliyah. Some of my cousins came from Iraq in the 1920s. It's a fairytale to state that Mizrahi Jews were entirely happy in their Arab homeland and had no desire to go to Israel until the Ashkenazi Zionists forced them to leave their brother and sister Arabs.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 7:57 pm

    RE:
    Walid August 14, 2011 at 5:20 pm
    when the arguent is thrown at me that the Jews of Israel have had to do the things they did to the Palestinians for the survival of their “nation” and that the land belongs to their nation, even if it includes Russians that converted simply to get a free ticket out of the USSR, I feel I have to put the “nation” thing into question

    I don't think any Russians converted to Judaism simply to get out of the USSR. There are indeed a significant number of non-Jewish Russians who have immigrated to Israel, in practically every case they have done so with their Jewish or partially Jewish family members who were eligible to make aliyah under the Law of Return. I really don't see how that's the business of someone who is not an Israeli citizen, anymore than it would be my business as a non-Greek citizen to criticize the Greek government's policy of granting automatic citizenship to ethnic Greeks from outside Greece. Members of the Pontian Greek ethnic minority from the former USSR can receive Greek citizenship, as the Greek government in Athens recognizes that group's ethnic ties to Greece; their ethnic Ukrainian spouses are also eligible to receive Greek citizenship.

    When you try to convince me that a Jewish guy in Santiago and another Jew with slanted eyes in Shanghai are part of the same nation and not simply part of the same religion, it gives me a reason to question it and arrogance has nothing to do with it.

    I've met many black Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem and in the Jericho region (also a lot of black Israeli Bedouin near Rahat) who look like sub-Sharan Africans (most likely of Southern Sudanese or Zanzibar descent) and I have met blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Arabs who could pass for Irish or Dutch in the Galilee region. All these people are supposedly members of the same Palestinian Arab nation. According to wider pan-Arab nationalist ideology, all Arabic-speakers min al-muheet ila al-khaleej, form one indivisible Arab nation. People in Mauritania can barely understand a Kuwaiti, can they?--yet they are all Arabs. Black Arab Muslims in Khartoum look a lot different and act a lot differently than blonde, blue-eyed Christians in Beirut, yet supposedly these are all people of the same nation, and I can accept that, if that's how they wish to define themselves. As a non-Arab, it's not my business to tell them otherwise. And as a Jew with long roots in the region, I have the right to opt out of their big happy Arab family (assuming that it exists) and choose my own Jewish/Hebrew/Israeli national identity. And the vast majority of Mizrahi Jews* in Israel, aside from a few ideological cranks, will agree with me.

    * (By the way, it's even more of a misnomer to blanket-label Mizrahi Jews "Arab Jews" when one considers that many Mizrahi Jews in Israel have families that lived in non-Arabic speaking places like Persia, Bukhara, Georgia, etc.)

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 7:47 am

    RE:annie August 14, 2011 at 3:09 am
    you know who Yehouda Shenhav is don’t you?

    Shenhav is one of a handful of ivory tower academics in Israel of Mizrahi Jewish background who says stupid things like "I am an Arab Jew" because in identity politics it's cooler to embrace what is perceived as belonging to a victimized people. People like Yehuda Shenhav have influence with people like you, but go ask the average Israeli of Iraqi-, Egyptian-, or Yemenite-Jewish ancestry if they've heard of the guy and you'll get a blank stare. Then explain who he is and ask if they agree with his formulation that they are "Arabs". Very few will agree.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 7:38 am

    RE: annie August 14, 2011 at 3:24 am
    lol, who’s arrogant?

    I would say that non-Jews who boldly declare that Jews don't constitute a nationality (ignore thousands of years of evidence that Jews have traditionally considered themselves as such) are arrogant, lumping Israeli Jews of Mizrahi background with "Arabs", simply because some of their ancestors spoke Arabic once upon a time, whilst ignoring the fact that the vast majority of them regard themselves as proud, Zionist Israeli Jews and not as "Arabs" and have no wish to identify as "Arabs" is arrogant .

    It's the same kind of arrogance that regimes in Turkey displayed when they denied that there was such a thing as a Kurdish national minority, just "mountain Turks".

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 7:29 am

    Shmuel August 14, 2011 at 4:49 am

    Ashkenazi Jews do refer to themselves as “German” (possibly a matter of wishful thinking, as Sand suggests) in a supranational rather than modern nation-state sense, and that is how they are referred to by others.

    Jews whose families spoke German rather than Yiddish, and the Orthodox among them who follow certain minhhagim (like waiting only 3 hours before eating dairy after consuming meat) are typically referred to as "Yekkes", and occasionally as "Germans" (to designate the country they immigrated from), but Ashkenazim in general do not perceive themselves to be Germans, either in a supranational sense of being part of a broader German nation (Volk)--like the Volga Germans or the Germans in East Prussia, for example nor in a nation-state sense. For example, Jews living in Tsarist Russia and the USSR were classified as a separate nationality by both regimes, whereas Volga Germans constituted their own nationality in the Russian and Soviet system. Ashkenazi Jews, whose Yiddish language was somewhat related to the Volga Germans who settled in Russia, were never lumped together with them. It's true that assimilated Jews in Germany proper did embrace German nationalism for a time, but this feeling of love for Deutschland was not requited. Mizrahi Jews who declare their fealty to the Arab watan would be repeating the same mistake that their Ashkenazi brethren made generations ago.

    Libyan Jews in my family generally refer to themselves as Tripolitans to make a clear distinction between themselves and “the Arabs”

    Libyan Jews in Israel who generally refer to themselves as Tripoli'taim to distinguish themselves from the Cyrenian Jews, or the Benghazi Jews or the Jews living in the interior of the culture, who were closer to the Berber way of living. Tripoli had its own distinct culture.
    This certainly has to do with their being Jewish (and Zionist), but also with the fact that they were Italianised,

    Historically, when Diaspora Jews assimilated, they typically adopted the culture of the dominant political power. Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian Jews wholeheartedly adopted French culture; in the case of Algerian Jews, they were awarded French citizenship en masse. The same goes for Ashkenazi Jews. My mother's family came from what is now Slovakia, which was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 150 years ago, most Jews in Slovakia spoke Yiddish and lived mostly in their own insular communities, as they assimilated and left the ghettoes and shtetls at the end of the 19th century, they aspired to speak proper German, then when the influence of Vienna waned, they migrated over to Hungarian. It never occurred to most Jews living there that they should identify with the language and culture of the Slovakian peasants who were the majority population in the region, because there was little benefit to be derived for a Jew from being a Slovakian patriot in what was known as "Pressburg" German and Yiddish and "Pozsony" in Hungarian (and today is known as "Bratislava" in Slovakian. Same goes for Quebec. Most immigrant Yiddish-speaking Jews settling in Montreal in the 20th century saw no reason to send their kids to French-language schools, it's remained true until Bill 101 forced them to send their kids to French schools.

    I wonder whether their forebears, a couple of generations back (who had Arab names, like Masoud and Johara – later generations were given Italian names), would have referred to themselves as “Arab Jews”.

    Most Jews in what was then Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (it only acquired the name Libya through Italian colonialism) lived as an impoverished community until Italian colonialism, so I think Arab nationalism was the furthest thing from their minds (as it was for most Arabs as well). I am not justifying the Italian conquest, but it's a fact that the Jews in Libya directly benefited from it, at first. (Naturally, when Mussolini started implementing the race laws in Italy during WW2, in which some Libyan Jews were even deported to European concentration camps, it was a different story.) But I really doubt that there was much of a place for the Jews of Libya in the Grand Senoussi's legions, just as there was none for them amongst sincere Qadhafyyites.

    In terms of liturgy, the Jews of Tripoli consider themselves Sefaradim (although the community itself predates the exile from Spain by many centuries).

    The Tripolitanian and Cyrenaican Jewish communities are among the oldest Diaspora Jewish communities, predating the formation of Jewish communities in Spain, but they follow Sefaradi nusakh because many of the expelled Spanish Jews settled amongst them in the 16th century (most came via Tunis and Algiers) . That migration included many rabbinical scholars. Prior to the arrival of the Sefardic Jews, the Jewish scholarly level in Tripoli and Cyrenaica was low for many centuries. By the same token, there were Arabic-speaking Jews in Eretz Yisrael and Syria (most of my father's ancestry comes from these communities) who were revitalized by Sefaradic immigrants.
    The Libyan prayer book I have states that it follows the traditions of “the holy Sefardic communities of Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey, Eretz Yisrael and others” – a geographical area that extends beyond the Arab world, but excludes countries such as Yemen.

    Those are countries in that had significant influxes (to varying degrees) of Spanish Jewish refugees and their descendants that were absorbed by the previously existing Jewish communities, and the Sefaradim exerted a strong influence on the local Jews. Babylonian, Persian and Yemenite Jewry never had significant Sephardic immigration, so their nuskhaot were not influenced by those traditions. Still, lazy people (often Ashkenazim) sometimes call Yemenite or Iraqi Jews "Sephardim", which is completely inaccurate, but in the case of Syrian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Libyan Jews, etc... there is more of an overlap.

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 6:23 am

    RE:
    annie August 14, 2011 at 3:09 am

    mikhael, aren’t there millions of mizrahi jews? why do you think you can speak for them all?

    Yup, there are millions of Mizrahi Jews, and fortunately for them, the vast majority of them live in Israel (with smaller concentrations in Western Europe and the USA), The native language of most Israeli-born Mizrahi Jews younger than 45 is Hebrew, not Arabic. If you read my comment above, I said that people like Shohat are entitled to delude themselves that they are Arabs if they wish, as Israel is a free country (she currently lives in the US, and the US is a free country too). She can call herself Mongolian if she wishes too, but that wouldn't make it any more true. Assimilated Jews living in the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire also convinced themselves that they were Magyars of Jewish faith. They eagerly adopted that language, took Hungarian names and became sworn Hungarian patriots at the beginning of the last century. Many in my mother's family made this foolish mistake. As I said above, Jews wholeheartedly identifying with the host culture (a kind of Stockholm syndrome) has historically been an Ashkenazi trait. Ivory-tower Israelis of Mizrahi background who declare themselves "Arab Jews" are committing the same foolishness that deluded German and Hungarian Jews committed a century ago (albeit for different reasons). However, luckily for this elite of Mizrahi Israelis, they get to say this nonsense from the comfort of their own country, Israel, so they won't have to deal with being as harshly disabused from that fantasy like the stupid Jews in Hungary were by their "fellow Hungarians".

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 1:08 am

    RE: Shmuel August 13, 2011 at 7:17 am

    Ashkenazi means German.

    "Eretz Ashkenaz" was a geographic term of convenience used by medieval Jews to describe the Germanic dialect-speaking territories they found themselves in --the name was adapted from a Biblical place name found in the Tanakh which, if it ever existed, was probably in today's modern Turkey. The traditional Jewish names for Spain and France (Sefarad and Sarfat)were similarly acquired from place names mentioned in the Tanakh.

    If Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews are "Germans", how come when Hitler invaded Poland he wasn't pleased at all the fellow German-speakers of Jewish faith he found there?

    When Arab rioters in Jerusalem chanted "filastin baladna wa al yahud kalabna", was my father's uncle Nissim who was slashed supposed to have realized they weren't talking about him, because he was a "fellow Arab", an "Arab Jew"?

  • Mikhael August 14, 2011 at 12:59 am

    RE:
    Walid August 13, 2011 at 6:28 am
    Mikhael, you seem somewhat disturbed by your partial oriental roots

    Nope. Just as I wrote, I am no different from most Mizrahi Jews in Israel; Israelis of Mizrahi-Jewish heritage are proud of their long history and maintaining their distinct Jewish cultural and national identity, their religious traditions and prayers (which said prayers and liturgical traditions expressed an identical hope to the traditional liturgy of Ashkenazi Jewry, i.e., an ingathering of Jewish exiles in Zion). That's why I say people like Ella Shohat, despite her declaring herself "an Arab Jew" are much more akin to Ashkenazi Jews in denying their heritage, after all, it was the Reform Jewish movement in Germany which began by excising all the prayers for a Jewish national renaissance and a return to Zion from the traditional Jewish liturgy--Jews living in Exile in Arab lands never did that. Moreover, I am not of "partial" Oriental heritage. Ashkenazi Jews, just like Mizrahi Jews are descended from people who once lived in Israel and are thus just as "Oriental" in that sense, and they were often regarded as alien Orientals by the Europeans amongst who they lived.

    [you]don’t see anything wrong with the way Arab Jews were treated by Israel starting with spraying them with DDT to leaving them for years in tent cities and treating them as a lesser people.

    Sure, it was deliberate policy to shave the heads of Moroccan Jews and spray them with DDT in the 1950s simply because it was a way for the evil Ashkenazi Zionists who dominated the Labour Party, which was in power at the time because they wanted to humiliate them because they were Moroccan "Arab Jews" and to show them who was boss, right? It had nothing to do with the fact that there were infestations of lice, mosquitoes and other vermin on the immigrant ships from Marseilles and that Israel had only recently beat back malaria and didn't want further further outbreaks; it had nothing to do with the fact that DDT spraying was perceived as an effective way of dealing with that problem (back in the early 1950s, when this practice was common for a a year or two in Israel, the toxic effects of DDT were not well known). Ashkenazi immigrants were also sprayed with DDT in many instances. So were American soldiers in WW2.

    leaving them for years in tent cities and treating them as a lesser people

    Jews arriving in Israel from Arab lands (refugees from Arab riots and pogroms), as well as Jews from Europe (Holocaust refugees) alike were housed in the ma'abarot (transit camps, some of which initially only had tents) in the early 1950s because there was a lack of adequate housing at the time. There was no deliberate policy of keeping "Arab Jews" there because they were a "lesser people", but certain socioeconomic factors among some groups of some of the immigrants (particularly Moroccans) caused them to stay there in relative poverty longer than other groups. Ashkenazi Jews and Iraqi Jews in ma'abarot were usually out after a couple of years, while many Moroccan Jews stayed much longer. The era of ma'abarot occurred when Israel was a desperately poor country whose population basically doubled in the space of a few years--most of the ma'abarot were closed by the mid-1950s.

    You are getting into the argument on whether Jews are really a nation as you’re saying or simply a religion as I’m saying and we won’t get anywhere discussing it.

    One reason we won't get anywhere is because as a non-Jew, you really have no valid input on this and it would be arrogant of you to declare otherwise.

  • Mikhael August 13, 2011 at 4:03 am

    RE: Walid August 13, 2011 at 2:03 am

    Mikhael erroneously think[s] that Ella’s Arabness is a coincidental accident de parcours,misread[s] her message; there was no self-hatred and no disavowal of culture on her part or on the part of any other Arab Jews.

    No, Shohat disavows and holds in disdain her Israeli Hebrew culture, her native language and the culture of her country. She disavows any connection to her fellow Jews who are not so-called "Arab" Jews, but has adopted pan-Arabic watanniyeh.

    Like many Israelis, I am of mixed Mizrahi/Ashkenazi background. Shohat's declaration that she belongs to some purported Arab nation would be like me declaring myself to be part of the Magyar nation, because my mother's family were Jews who once lived in a Hungarian-speaking part of what is now Slovakia and they spoke Hungarian for a generation or two after they abandoned speaking Yiddish (like many Jews in that region) in a futile attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Hungarian authorities.

  • Mikhael August 13, 2011 at 3:39 am

    Walid August 13, 2011 at 2:03 am

    Re: Ella is a proud Arab Jew.

    Pfft. She's a glorified movie reviewer whose grandparents found refuge, after fleeing an Arabic dictatorship that was a hostile place for Jews. She knows a few words of Arabic and has adopted an Arabic identity because it is fashionable identity politics. But since Israel (and the US) are free countries, if she wants to identify with an alien culture, that's her prerogative.

    That we have spoken Arabic, not Yiddish;

    Among various other languages. Those Mizrahi Jews who lived in Arab lands, adopted the language of their host countries, just as Ashkenazi Jews adopted the languages of the host countries in Europe. What Ashkenazi, Sephardi and and Mizrahi Jews have in common is retaining a sense of belonging to the Jewish nation and maintaining a separate and distinct identity apart from the culture of the host nation that expressed itself through language just as much as through religion. Take Iraq, for example,. Before Arabic became the lingua franca of the Mesopotamian Jews (where dear Ella's ancestors lived in Exile) Aramaic was the language of the Jews there. Until the late 19th/early 20th centuries and the assimilation of Jews into a modernizing nascent Iraqi state, most Jews in Mesopotamia (excluding Jews in the Kurdish regions, who spoke lishna didan, an Aramic dialect) spoke their own unique Judeao-Arabic dialect, which was significantly Hebrew-influenced (just as Yiddish is a Germanic dialect with heavy Hebrew influence) and which was written in Hebrew characters. Calling Arabized Jews "Arabs" is like calling Ashkenazi Jews "Germans", and is disrespectful to both.
    Ella is a proud Arab Jew. I love to hear someone describing himself or herself, like Ella does above. I’m also happy that this term upsets other black-hearted Jews that could never stand hearing it.
    My paternal family tree is composed of Jews some of whom traced their ancestry in Jerusalem, Sefat and Tiberias (and other places in Galillee) going back at least 600 years, as well as relatives who arrived more "recently" to Israel between the 1880s and 1920s from what is now known as Syria and Iraq. Arabic was the most commonly spoken language at family gatherings, in my paternal grandparents' generation, but I can assure you they never thought of themselves as "Arabs". This has nothing to do with Ben Gurion and the Zionists "de-Arabizing" them or feeling shame of the beauties of the Arabic language. When my father's Uncle Nissim was slashed by an Arab during the 1929 riots, they always said "an Arab slashed Nissim," not " he was slashed by a fellow Arab." Arabic is a fine language that is useful for any Israeli Jew to know, and we "Mizrahi" (aka "Mashriqi") Jews of Israel whose ancestors have lived amongst Arabs take pride in the religious, cultural and national traditions that were developed in those lands. Having a strong commitment to Zionism, which recognizes the national connection of the entirety of the Jewish people Ashkenazi, Sepharadi, or Mizrahi alike is the opposite of "self-hate" and the fact that for the most part Israeli Jews of Mizrahi background, whose ancestors once lived in foreign lands under Arab regimes do not identify or consider ourselves to be "Arab" does not render us "blackhearted" per your formula--and it is only "upsetting" to be so misidentified. We know what we are, and you can't impose your culture imperialism on us.

  • Mikhael August 12, 2011 at 11:02 pm

    Ella Shohat has written well about the self-hatred and disavowal of culture that Mizrahi Jews suffer in Israel:

    Aside from her coincidental Iraqi-Jewish heritage, Ella Shohat fits the profile of an ashamed Ashkenazi Jewish liberal. Israeli Jews of Mizrahi descent do not typically regard ourselves or our culture with self-hatred, we are proud Jews and proud Israeli Hebrew patriots who love the Jewish nation and our country.

• Portland's 'friendliest' markets refused to meet boycott advocates, and stocked many Israeli brands, and so--
  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 4:24 pm

    Good point. What use is voting when you live in a theocrtic state anyway right?

    I live in New York City and New York State, and if I wanted to vote in Israel, I'd have travel there every time I wanted to vote. (Except for government workers posted abroad, such as embassy staff, Israel has no absentee ballot). Nevertheless, Israel has had more dramatic electoral changes than New York has had in its legislature for over a century. I voted in an American election for the first and last time in the New York City mayoral election of 1989 (for Dinkins and against Giuliani), and also voted in Israel just once (in 1992, for Yitzhak Rabin).

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 4:15 pm

    Citizen June 27, 2011 at 9:05 am
    So, Mikhael, do you look like Woody Allen too?

    It was Groucho Marx, not Woody Allen. And no, I don't look like either of them. I'm often told in Israel that I resemble Meir Banai (google image him if you're curious).

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 8:43 am

    So are you a member of Shas or not?

    Hahah, you're punny.

    I'd never join a political party that would have me as a member and voting is for suckers anyway.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 8:40 am

    There is no dispite that the British habded over the bases, weapons, tanks etc to the Israelis.

    There is the one prominent example I gave of a British officer who was bribed to let the Israelis know exactly when they were evacuating Schneller Camp, but otherwise in most cases, the British did their utmost to leave their bases in as damaged a condition as possible, and sabotaged as much equipment as they could (they also took as much as they could with them). Their first priority was to get their personnel and equipment out as quickly as possible. Most of their stuff they managed to take with them, much was sabotaged.

    No Arab forces occupied the Tel HaShomer base, becasue the British had denied the entery of the Arab forces into Palestine.

    It's true that between November 1947 and May 14 1948, the Mandate had not yet been invaded by the neighboring Arab states' armies, but fighting between Jews and Arabs had broken out right after the UN vote. The Haganah conducted a raid on Tel HaShomerthe base in November to get weapons, but by April it was occupied by Arab irregular forces--the main concern of the British was pulling their own people out. The battle for Tel HaShomer (built, incidentally on land the British confiscated from a Jewish village) occurred soon thereafter, a month before the final British evacuation in 1948; it was fought between Haganah and Arab irregulars--several Jewish and several Arab fighters were killed--the British didn't just throw the Haganah the keys and say "Have fun!"

    The “spare parts” were left behind in pristine order

    Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, this was usually not the case. My grandfather had the job of taking parts from smashed British wireless sets and cobbling them together to make working field communications devices. The British didn't just hand over their installations and equipments as gifts.

    There were no British army bases, spare parts, government buildings and paved road in the West Bank.

    Well, technically speaking, the term "West Bank" was not used for Judea and Samaria until the Jordanian occupation and annexation from 1949-1967--but nevertheless, the British had maintained several bases in the area, including at Jenin, Tulkarem, Ramallah. Some were former Ottoman Turkish bases that later became Jordanian bases. After 1967, they served as Israeli army bases. I served in one for part of my army service.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 8:07 am

    Shingo June 20, 2011 at 7:24 amI see that you’re every bit as much of a religious fanatic as the shahs.

    I see that you don't even know the difference between the late Shah of Iran, a secularist if there ever was one and the the ayatollahs and mullahs who supplanted him.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 8:05 am

    Shingo June 27, 2011 at 6:51 am

    Jews did not consistently use terms like Israelis or Hebrew to describe themselves even as recently as 60 years ago.

    The corpus of Jewish literature is full of references to am yisra'el , going back thousands of years. I showed you several examples to major Jewish organizations going back to the early 1800s that used the term "Israelite" and "Hebrew". Additionally, the term for Jew in certain European languages (e.g., Russian "Yevrei" and Italian "Ebrei" ) means "Hebrew". You're being ridiculous again, and you don't help the just cause for the Arabs who have recently started referring to themselves as "Palestinian"--a state of their own next to the Jewish state of Israel and a right to compensation for their refugees, along the right of Jewish refugees to be duly compensated for assets lost fleeing Arab countries as well as what became the Jordanian-ruled West Bank for 19 years. Next you'll be endorsing this theory:

    link to revisionism.nl

    It tuerns out that genetic testing does NOT reveal any conclusive connection to Palestine.

    Again, I don't know about "Palestine" (the name the British revived, in imitation of the Romans and Byzantines, as an official name for their brief 31-year colonial Mandate); but genetic testing has revealed that , with the exception recent individual converts, pretty much every historical Diaspora Jewish community worldwide, whether Ashkenazi, Sefaharadi, Mizrahi, shares a high degree of consanguinity and genetic markers indicating Middle Eastern origins. This has been extensively researched in the past decade and shows that Jews share a common origin, most likely in our own historic homeland of Eretz Yisrael. It's conclusive. So far you've claimed there's a a non-existent Weizmann Institute study and repeatedly invoked Shlomo Sand's work of fantasy.
    Basically your rhetorical tactic is just to deny without any solid backing up of anything you state. You're a dim kiddie, but you're not cute.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 7:16 am

    RoHa June 27, 2011 at 3:42 am
    So Australian Jews ... should never be allowed to become Members of Parliament, since that is only permitted for people whose sole nationality is Australian? They should regard Israel and not Australia as their homeland?

    If it is indeed the case that Australian law states that one cannot be a dual citizen and be a member of Parliament, then nobody holding a citizenship other than Australian should be a member of Parliament. If a Jewish citizen of Australia regards himself as belonging to the Jewish nationality or ethnicity (which you are mistakenly conflating with citizenship) but has no citizenship other than Australian, then he or she should have the same right as any other Australian to stand for Parliament, and likewise, the same right to nurture a connection with their ancestral country of origin. While I agree that it may be inappropriate to be involved in politics of one country whilst retaining citizenship of another country (Israeli law also does not allow Members of Knesset to hold non-Israeli passports) I don't believe that countries like Australia, Canada, or the USA, founded by immigrants should demand that their citizens sever all ties with their countries of origin.

    If that really is what Judaism teaches, and what Jewishness is, then it is an evil doctrine, and the sooner we can expunge it, the better it will be for everyone

    Judaism teaches "Dina de Malkuta Dina"-- that the Law of the Land is legally binding on all Jews in matters pertaining to the secular sphere--and that Jews have an obligation to obey the laws of the countries in which they reside--if it does not conflict with Jewish religious duties. Therefore, Jews in Australia have a religious Jewish obligation to pay their income tax (despite the fact that many Orthodox Jews nevertheless cheat on them), but if they passed a law banning circumcision or forcing Jews to violate the Sabbath then Jews are supposed to resist those laws. Religious Jews are also enjoined to demonstrate "hakarat ha tov" (a recognition of good) for governments that have treated Jews well. Countries like the USA, Australia, etc...have mostly been good to their Jewish populations, in contrast to the historical experiences of Jews in the Old World under Christian and Islamic rule. But forcing Jews to "expunge" from Judaism concepts such as of Eretz Yisrael and shared Jewish peoplehood, as you suggest, doesn't sound like a benevolent policy and is reminiscent of the misguided attempts your country (I'm assuming you're Aussie by your repeated references to Australia) to forcibly assimilate your aboriginal peoples and erase their heritages.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 6:44 am

    annie June 27, 2011 at 4:54 am that is about as far as i got.

    So you admit you have a low attention span?

    you’re so full of crap. maybe even i know more about judaism than you do.

    Really? Why do you think so? I've been resolutely and openly agnostic since my early 20s, but the first half of my life was spent in an assortment of yeshivot on two continents. I still know the contents of the various Siddurim backwards and forwards, pretty much every prayer service, including the Grace after Meals makes numerous and explicit mention of Jews returning to Israel. Now, like I said, many religious Jews have historically disavowed the modern political Zionist program of establishing a modern state in the here-and-now (some stubborn elements within Orthodox Judaism still reject it), nevertheless, even modern political Zionism's most vociferous opponents within religious Judaism would never deny the centrality of Eretz Yisrael and Jewish peoplehood, core tenets of Zionism. The only difference is that Orthodox Jewish "anti-Zionists" believe that a Jewish national revival will not come until a future Messianic Age, but all those black-hatted men in the Neturei Karta group who demonstrate for Palestinian rights, denounce the State of Israel and meet with Hamas and make statements that "Judaism and Zionism are diametrically opposed" also believe that one day God will sweep out all the heathen Gentiles and reestablish the Jewish kingdom and rebuild the Temple when the time is ripe. The only form of "Judaism" that negated the centrality of Eretz Yisrael ws 19th century Reform Judaism in Germany and the Americas, in a they excised most of the ancient traditional prayers from the liturgy dealing with the Land of Israel and also translated almost all of the prayers into German and English, moved the day of rest to Saturday, basically they recast Judaism as High Church Protestantism without Jesus. That's basically the only kind of Judaism that existed without the idea of Eretz Yisrael and Jewish peoplehood, and it didn't last long.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 6:11 am

    Shingo June 20, 2011 at 6:38 amThere is no such thing as Jewish nationality.

    Jews have regarded themselves as a nation apart and been so regarded for most of our long history.

    Israel offers one form of citizenship/nationality and only one pasport.

    I think every country only offers one passport. However, in the Israeli context "nationality" and "citizenship" are two separate categories--just like in the former USSR, one could be a Soviet citizen but be considered to be of Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Moldavian or Jewish nationality ("Jewish" was regarded as a nationality in the USSR.) In Israel one can be an Israeli citizen and be of Jewish nationality, Arab Muslim nationality, Druze nationality, Arab Christian nationality, Circassian nationality, or "other".

    Germans and Greeks will regard anyone who embraces their new nationality as fellow countrymen. After all, Germany wouldn’t be the preferred destination for Russian Jews (rather than Israel) if they were not made to feel welcome and at home.

    Germany was preferred by some Russian Jews fleeing the chaos of the failed USSR in the early 1990s at a time when Israel's economy was in shock from absorbing all of them at once, and not long after Israel had been battered by Iraqi SCUDs. It wasn't a hard choice to make for people who were raised with very little Jewish cultural awareness. Anti-immigrant sentiment nevertheless remains high in Germany, don't delude yourself.

    The term “Israelite” was a Biblical term that only became synonymous with Jews after Israel was created in 1948. Same thing with Hebrew,

    You're embarrassing yourself again, kiddie. Besides the fact that Jews have referred to themselves collectively as "am Yisrael" (the nation of Israel) for millennia long before 1948, "Israelite" and "Hebrew" have also been common synonyms for "Jew". Indeed, it was considered rude in many circles to say "Jew" and "Israelite" was perceived as more genteel and politically correct. Like your absurd claim that there is no evidence for any predecessor Jewish states in Eretz Yisrael prior 1948, your assertion here is demonstrably false. Major Jewish communal organizations existed using the name "Hebrew" and Israel" long prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. A few examples: Le Consistoire Central Israélite de France, which was created by Napoleon in 1808 to oversee Jewish affairs in France, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, founded in 1852 in Vienna as a communal organization in that city, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French-Jewish educational organization that had its origins educating Jews in the Middle East in the 19th century, the The American Israelite, a Jewish newspaper founded in Cincinnati in the 1850s, the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Associations , the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

    Of course, I was answering eljay's assertion that "Israeli" is the nationality of Israel, and "Jewish" is not, when he/she stated "I cannot become Jewish by moving to Israel. I can become Israeli. That is the nationality of Israel. “Jewish” is not.
    If he/she insists that only "Israeli" can be a nationality (thereby conflating nationality and citizenship) and not "Jewish", then conferring "Israeli" status to non-Jews arguably can confer a pseudo-"Jewish" status in a national/civic (if not a religious) sense, and that people not of Jewish ancestry can become integrated into the "Israeli nationality", and as I have amply demonstrated "Israelite" is nothing but another word for "Jew"

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  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 5:26 am

    Cliff June 19, 2011 at 7:16 am
    . I honestly feel scared to go there as someone with dark-skin and who could pass for an Arab.

    Again. Plenty of Israeli Jews have dark skin (including yours truly). Plenty of Arabs have light skin. Skin color has ZERO to do with the Arab-Israeli dispute. Unless you speak Arabic flawlessly and fluently with no accent and have an Arab name, probably you can't pass for an Arab, no matter what skin color you have.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 5:18 am

    RoHa June 15, 2011 at 3:12 am
    Are you saying that Australia is the homeland of some Australians but not Australian Jews? That looks like some sort of anti-Semitism to me. It seems to suggest that Australian Jews are not “real Australians”.

    The real Australians are the Aborigines. As a non-Australian, it's not for me to comment on what a real Australian is, but I should think anyone of whatever ethnicity who holds citizenship in that country and affirms his or her civic duty there is as "real" as anyone else. Having an attachment to an ancestral country of origin does not preclude being loyal to the country of citizenship.

    “they have a duty to be loyal citizens –but that does not and should not diminish their attachment to their ancestral homeland “
    On the contrary. The country in which they have been born, in which they grew up, and were educated, and in which they have made their lives is the country which supported them. They have a very strong reciprocal obligation to support that country, and no obligation to care at all about the country of their ancestors.

    I think I stated very clearly that Jews who live in Australia, the US, Canada, etc...if they choose to and wish to live there should fulfill their civic duties in the countries where they hold citizenship and that in no way should diminish their attachment and support for their ancestral homeland either. There are many Greeks in Australia who have very strong feelings for Greece and often retain citizens of that country. I don't think that should make them any less Australian. It is no different for Aussie Jews. If they choose to make their home in Australia, they must be loyal to that country, but they have the same rights as any other hyphenated Australian (i.e., an Irish-Australian, Maltese-Australian, a Greco-Australian, a Sri Lankan-Australian) to cherish a connection with their ancestral country and maintain and nurture in their children a sense of connection to those countries. There should be no controversy about any of this, and indeed, I think it's accepted with equanimity for any of the other immigrant groups.

    I would like to see the demonstration. Where are the genealogies?

    Genetic testing has indeed confirmed common origins for most of the world's Jewish communities in the Middle East. Migration routes and movements of Jewish populations are also well known to historians.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 4:48 am

    Shingo June 15, 2011 at 2:31 am
    Did you also headd of Hitelrs 150,000 Jewish troops

    There were no openly Jewish troops in the Nazi forces, although there were German soldiers of partial Jewish heritage (known as "Mischlinge" under the Nazi racial law) who did everything they could to hide their family background from the authorities (in most cases, they were themselves completely unaware of their own family background). In some very few cases, their Jewish background was discovered and "erased" by the authorities because they were deemed valuable to the Reich. Bryan Mark Riggs, who wrote the book on the subject, "guesstimates" that up to 150,000 Germans in the Wehrmacht has some Jewish descent (in many cases a single great-grandparent). There were also some Southern whites with hidden black ancestry who fought for the Confederacy in the US Civil War, such as Randall Lee Gibson. Are you stupid enough to believe that bit of trivia means that there was a black alliance with the Confederacy?

    and the 53 documents linting the Stern gang to the Nazis?

    As for Lehi's contact with Nazi Germany proposing an alliance, you are talking about an alliance that never came about, proposed by a fringe element within a fringe group that never commanded much support within the Yishuv, in contrast to the Mufti, arguably, the main leader of the Arab community in the British Mandate, who quite successfully formed an active alliance with the Nazis. In any case, I was answering Mooser's snarky comment expressing doubt about there having been Arab violence against Jews in Europe. You added nothing to that exchange.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 4:26 am

    Shmuel June 21, 2011 at 3:24 am You are playing games, Mikhael. The totality of your statement was untrue – letter and spirit.

    Look, Shmulik, it's very simple. When I stated that non-Jewish foreigners can and do gain Israeli citizenship through a variety of channels, I was telling the truth, whether it's "arduous" or not. I pointed out, quite reasonably, that it can't be both "arduous" and "untrue."

    You pretend that Israeli immigration policies are comparable to European immigration policies, but nothing could be further from the truth.

    There is no one uniform European policy for immigration. Immigration to Greece or Portugal is quite different than immigration to the UK or Switzeland, for instance.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 4:13 am

    How can you refer to Palestinian nationalism as an anachronism, and still cite Eretz Israel in the same breath?

    Shingo, did you ever take any standardized tests that measured reading comprehension ability. I'm sure you did very poorly if you did. I stated quite clearly that discussing "Palestinians" as if they ever constituted a distinct nationality in the past is clearly anachronistic--it is simply false to do so and projects modern-day nomenclature on a group that did not consistently use that term to describe themselves even as recently as 60 years ago. If there is a group of Arabs that has recently adopted the name "Palestinians" to describe themselves today, that is certainly their right--the name has been up for grabs ever since the 31-year British Mandate for Palestine ended in 1948--and the Jews reverted the name of part of the country to its historic Yisrael.

    In other words, you can’t refute Zand. The harshest criticism you can produce is that he lacked originality, which in fact implies that his thesis (which has not been refuted) is actually widely accepted.

    Sand's thesis is easily refutable, in large part on the basis of genetic testing which has revealed that almost every single Diaspora Jewish group shows a clear consanguinity to every other Diaspora Jewish group that it does not share with the non-Jews of the host country. The only people who accept Sand's thesis are those who have a political motivation to do so.

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 4:04 am

    The Arabs armies made no attempt to invade Israeli territory

    They didn't "attempt" to invade -- they invaded. Syrian forces penetrated well into the areas of the former British Mandate to be designated a Jewish state according to the UNSCOP Partition Plan, battles were fought at Deganya, which was destroyed during fighting. A decisive battle was also fought between Israelis and Egyptians at Yad Mordekhai. The argument that somebody here will undoubtedly make that the only reason the Egyptian forces attacked Yad Mordekhai, which fell within the boundaries of the proposed Arab state, was to defend that proposed Palestinian Arab state and they had no intent in any Israeli territory within the Partition Plan falls apart when you consider that Israel and Egypt also fought extensively in and around Bir 'Asluj and Revivim, areas clearly designated to fall within the boundaries of the Jewish state. How is that Egypt and Israel engaged in decisive battles within Israeli territory if no Arab army had any intent to invade Israel?

    I guess the Jews in Germany were victims of genocide because they persisted in seeing themselves as persecuted.

    You guess wrong, again. There is no comparison and it takes a sick mind to see any similarity. Among the indignities that Jews in Germany had to face under the Nuremberg Laws but prior to them being subject to extermination under the Final Solution were being dismissed from professions and the universities, were forced to sew patches into their clothes identifying them as Jews, were forbidden by law from sitting on public benches,having their businesses boycotted; all in the pre-war years and before eventually facing the death camps along with their fellow Jews from across occupied Europe after the war began. There is nothing even remotely similar to the situation of Arabs in Israel who, yes, face some discrimination and casual bigotry, but can and do succeed in Israel. Nevertheless, if Arab citizens of Israel persist in seeing themselves as second-class, sure, they will stay second-class. If they don't see themselves as victims but seize the opportunities for social, economic and political advancement that are available to them in Israel, and take advantage of the privileges of Israeli citizenship and exploit their own talents to the fullest, they can succeed wildly in Israel. Sadly, many Arab-Israeli leaders and Knesset members in Israel, of course, have also succeeded wildly in Israel by establishing political careers based on being professional victims and encouraging members of their communities to see themselves as permanently second-class.

    False again. No other democracy defines itself as a theocracy the way Israel does.

    Israel doesn't define itself as a theocracy, because it is not a theocracy. A theocracy is a state where religious law is the supreme source of civil law and where religious leaders run all aspects of government. Most of Israel's citizens are not strictly religious, and with the exception of Begin, who was a traditional Jew (though not strictly observant), all of its prime ministers to date have been resolutely secular in outlook.

    In fact, Henry Siegman points out that Israel is the only apartheid state in the West.

    In fact, Henry Sickman's slanderous assertions are a non sequitur that do not prove your first point.

    Jews were allowed into the Western Wall throughout those 19 years. The ban applies to all Israelis due to the fact that Israel and Jordan were in a state of war.

    In strict contravention of Article VIII of the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan, which provided for"free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives," Israeli Jews were forbidden from visiting the Western Wall during the entire 19-year period Jordan exercised control over the Old City. Moreover, foreign Jewish visitors were routinely asked about their religion by Jordanian authorities and Jordan reserved the right to ban Jews from visiting, and often did so (similar to Saudi Arabia's policy today). No organized Jewish prayer was permitted at the Western Wall. One prominent foreign Jewish visitor for whom an exception was made was the outspoken anti-Israel Reform rabbi, Elmer Berger. He was presented with a Torah scroll that had been plundered from one of the synagogues in the Old City in the early 1960s. Instead of attempting to return it to the congregation that it rightfully belonged to, what that point in time were located on the Israeli-held part of the city, he donated it to a Reform Jewish congregation in the US.

    When Pakistan implements a right of return for Hindus who fled after partition and India does the same….

    You can carry on like an infantile brat all you like, but a child molester being read his sentence doesn’t get to insist that he be granted clemency until all the other child rapists in the state get caught.

    It's fair to demand that Israel be held to the same standards as other states in similar situations. Other refugee problems have been resolved through compensation of the injured parties, and there has been no suggestion that those situations can be resolved only through a "right of return" for those refugees and their descendants .

  • Mikhael June 27, 2011 at 3:26 am

    Shingo June 20, 2011 at 7:18 am
    It is not even 200 years old, so was never part of part and parcel of Judaism,

    It's tiresome to repeat myself, but whether or not the word "Zionism" was coined 110 years ago is irrelevant. It doesn't alter the fact that modern political Zionism took one of the central tenets of Jewish religion, i.e., that Jews collectively constitute one nation and have their home in Eretz Yisrael into a goal-oriented, programmatic movement to establish a modern state (or at the very least, a "national home") for the Jewish nation.

    made obvious by the fact that there are so many non Zionist Jews. The word “Zionism” was coined in the 19th century because that was when it was invented.

    Whether or not there are or were individual Jews opposed to the idea of modern political Zionism and who declare themselves as "non-Zionist," i.e., who reject(ed) the goal-oriented, programmatic movement to establish a modern nation-state for the Jewish people, doesn't change the fact that the roots of Zionism inhere in every aspect of Judaism. Judaism simply does not and cannot exist without the premise of a Jewish nation and a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael. It is not simply a theology with doctrines based around mankind's relationship to the divine (as other religions are) --but the national cult of a specific nation existing in history--the Jewish nation.

    Netanyahu campaign on a platform of rejection of a two state solution, as did Sharon and most Likud leaders.

    Again. Every single Israeli government since Rabin since 1993 has explicitly endorsed a negotiated settlement based on the idea of Israel making territorial concessions.

    The building of illegal settlements and the Jewish only roads that divide the West Bank, along with the apartheid Wall has been a blatant land grab.

    Whatever. All I know is that the "apartheid wall" has reduced suicide attacks in Jerusalem by 99% and I feel much more at ease with the idea of my twin daughters riding the bus to school without some maniac detonating himself and his fellow passengers. By the way, not a single "new settlement" since Oslo has been built (the Accords, by the way, do not specifically ban new settlement construction), although already existing settlements have seen new construction. Unauthorized outposts have been dismantled by the Israeli government. We don't consider building in Jerusalem any part of our capital to be a "settlement" and we'll continue to do so.

    FYI Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel.

    I see you can't stay on topic, but no, Jerusalem, where the Knesset, Prime Minister's office and the Israeli Cabinet meets is the capital of Israel.

    Israel didn’t murder Bernadotte, the Lehi group did. Ben Gurion was seriously considering Bernadotte’s proposals, which would have been a terrible mistake.

    False. The Lehi Group (under Shamir’s leadership) formed the commando unit of the Haganah and were under Ben Gurion’s command. . Ben Gurion never considered Bernadotte’s proposals, indeed, he rejected it as a matter of principal.

    Ben Gurion accepted Bernadotte's June 1948 truce recommendations, as Israel was in a weak military position at the time. His July 1948 peace plan would have forced Israel to give up all the Negev, all of Jerusalem, give the Jordanians access to Haifa, and would have restricted Israel to an enclave in part of Western Galilee and the area around Tel Aviv--a fraction of the patchwork borders that UNSCOP allotted to the proposed Jewish state. The first to reject this offer were the Arab belligerents--even this fraction was unacceptable to them.

    Ben Gurion did not defang the Etzel and Lehi. The leaders were absorbed into the Israeli government and the Hanganah.

    Subsequent to the Bernadotte assassination, Lehi was disbanded. All of Etzel, Lehi, PALMACH, Haganah and their members all had to recognize the authority of the central government and consent to be placed under the command structure of the newly formed IDF. That's how a responsible government takes charge and builds the institutions of a state.

    Israel was never in a weak and desperate position.They were armed to the teeth and the British had left them the British bases and camp, along with weapons, arms, tanks and vehicles and ammunition.

    In the initial stage of the war following Israel's Declaration of Independence (and during the fighting that broke out after November 1947 leading up to the 5th of Iyyar 5708 (aka May 14, 1948) , when Israel declared its independence) the Yishuv was at a clear disadvantage in terms of weaponry, although the situation had changed dramatically over the course of a year's fighting with the acquisition of smuggled-in weapons. The claim that the British willingly gave bases to the Israelis is also patently false. In the period between the UN vote of November 19 1947 and May 14 1948 (the date by which the British had agreed to quit the country), the British did their best to prevent the Jews from taking over bases and destroyed as much usable weaponry and supplies as they could before their own hasty departure--the "spare parts" you refer to had to be repaired and salvaged. For instance, the strategic Tel HaShomer base on the Jaffa-Lod airport road (today housing BAKUM, the main recruitment center of the IDF) was occupied by Arab forces as the British were evacuating and a pitched battle was fought for control of it. There were some cases, though, such as Jerusalem's Schneller Compound, a former German-run orphanage that served as a British army base, where Haganah managed through bribing the British commanding officer to get advance notification of precisely when the British would be abandoning it and managed to occupy it before the Arabs. Official British policy was non-interference and getting their personnel back home safely and quickly, the reality was that although individual commanders could have their palms greased (e.g., the commander at the Schneller compound), they did their best to prevent the Yishuv's forces from taking control of their bases prior to May 1948, and once Israeli independence was declared, British officers commanded King Abdullah's army. Don't forget all the former British army bases, spare parts, government buildings and paved roads (did you expect the British to unpave the roads?) that they left in the West Bank for the Jordanians to inherit and take over.

  • Mikhael June 21, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    Citizen June 20, 2011 at 7:25 am
    So how long did you live in these respective countries that you know this, Mikhael?

    I lived in Greece for a little over two years. Greece is a great country and Greeks are generally terrific people, but even the native-born, Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews are not viewed as true Greeks, even though their ancestors have lived there for over a thousand years. It's a very homogenous society--most of the population is ethnically Greek--there are a few well-defined and easily identifiable ethnic minorities (Albanian-speakers, Turkish speakers, Jews, Roma Gypsies, Slavic speakers, Vlachs--and a small (but increasing) number of immigrants from the Third World and people from other countries who have established residence and obtained citizenship in Greece through marriage or other means. These people may hold Greek citizenships, and belong to any one of the aforementioned minorities, but they are not considered Greek Hellenes--and there's nothing wrong with that!

    And, are you recommending this POV be the norm in the USA too?

    As I stated before, the USA is not an ethnic nation-state, although obviously you know that it has a history of Anglo-Saxon nativism that endorsed precisely that view from colonial times to the present day. The collective sense of American nationhood is supposed to come from shared civic values, not a shared ancestry. The USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand are one kind of liberal democratic state--and many other countries exist in today's world such as Israel, Greece, Japan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Germany, Estonia (to throw out a few examples) fall into the second category of of liberal democracies---nation-states where the sense of collective nationhood is based on belonging to a common majority ethnicity. There is nothing wrong with either form--a country like Greece should not be like the USA and the USA should not try to be like Greece.

    Should us single citizen Americans regard you as not a real American too?

    Jews are used to being regarded that way. I am very fortunate though to also hold Israeli citizenship, and indeed every Jew in the USA is very fortunate that Israeli exists in the eventuality that their fellow Americans suddenly decide that they're not "real Americans"

    Your long response (above) does not deny this. It simply hems and haws, premised on your “it all depends on where and when.”

    You made a sweeping generalization that Jews were "often treated better than the native masses by the ruling class that were of the same ethnic/religious background as the natives" and I replied quite accurately that it depends when and where. That's not hemming and hawing.

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 11:53 pm

    Shingo June 20, 2011 at 7:10 pmThat could be applied to most tribes throughout Antiquity who were noto considered states.

    Jon S. gave a pretty good overview of the basic prerequisites of a state. Although the forms of political organization of states have evolved over the millennia, you really have no leg to stand on when you make your nonsensical and absurd claim that no states existed in antiquity. The Persian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Roman Empire–not states? They didn’t control territories, collect taxes, mint coins, enact laws?

    And yes, there are numerous extrabiblical source references to the existence of ancient Jewish states in territory that Jews have traditionally known as Eretz Yisrael for more than 2,000 years and that some Arabs have recently started calling “Filastin”. There is archaeological evidence and coins bearing the name “Yehuda” in Hebrew. bearing witness to the existence of ancient Jewish polities in Eretz Yisrael–it’s not a subject that’s up for debate and you make yourself look foolish by denying it.

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 11:50 pm

    Since all Americans have an ancestral connection to Africa, we have a right to colonize it according to your way of thinking, Mikhael, and so do the people of the EU.

    A terribly weak analogy. Modern anthropological science indicates that all human beings have an ancestral connection to Africa. Not all human beings, American or otherwise, have a national, historic and cultural connection to the various countries that exist on that continent. Nearly all Jews are direct lineal descendants of people who once lived in Eretz Yisrael, and Jewish national culture is intimately bound up with that land.

    So, you were against the dismantling of the apartheid state of S Africa, I assume.

    Your assumption is false. Apartheid South Africa was a racial supremacist state that disenfranchised the non-white majority and privileged the white minority, which never exceeded 20%. Israel is a Jewish nation-state that has always allowed its minority citizens the right to vote and extends equal protection under the law to them, just as other liberal democratic nation-states extend similar protections to their minority ethnicities.

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 10:52 pm

    That could be applied to most tribes throughout Antiquity who were noto considered states.

    Jon S. gave a pretty good overview of the basic prerequisites of a state. Although the forms of political organization of states have evolved over the millennia, you really have no leg to stand on when you make your nonsensical and absurd claim that no states existed in antiquity. The Persian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Roman Empire--not states? They didn't control territories, collect taxes, mint coins, enact laws?

    And yes, there are numerous extrabiblical source references to the existence of ancient Jewish states in territory that Jews have traditionally known as Eretz Yisrael for more than 2,000 years and that some Arabs have recently started calling "Filastin". There is archaeological evidence and coins bearing the name "Yehuda" in Hebrew. bearing witness to the existence of ancient Jewish polities in Eretz Yisrael--it's not a subject that's up for debate and you make yourself look foolish by denying it.

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 10:34 pm

    Citizen June 20, 2011 at 7:56 am
    Yeah, Mikhail sure does reveal his insufferable sense of privilege and entitlement–

    It's spelled "Mikhael"--it's a transliteration from the Hebrew, not the Russian.

    –he reminds me of an old hardline KKK guy.

    You don't say! I've never heard of any KKK guy who celebrates the achievements of minorities in the US. I was very proud when Abdel Rahman Zuabi and Salim Jubran became the first Arabs to serve on the Israeli High Court---Jubran was a favorite professor of my brother when he taught at Haifa University's Laws faculty so we basked with pride in the family connection--are you saying that KKK members celebrated Thurgood Marshall's nomination? I had no idea that the KKK had so many liberal members. That's so interesting. You learn something new every day.

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 10:24 pm

    Shmuel June 20, 2011 at 4:17 am non-Jewish newcomers can become naturalized citizens of Israel as well, either through marriage to an Israeli citizen (of any religion or ethnicity) or through a process of legal residence.
    This is not true. The naturalisation process for non-Jews married to Israeli citizens is arduous,

    Since when is "arduous" a synonym for "not true"? I said non-Jews from abroad can become naturalized Israeli citizens, and it remains true that they can do so. Arduous or not, t non-Jews from abroad nevertheless can (and do) become naturalized Israeli citizens through a variety of methods.

    and Palestinians are not eligible (according to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law [temporary provision] 5763 – 2003).

    Exactly as you said, an emergency temporary provision that applies to Palestinian Arab residents from the territories (and not "Palestinians" in general) enacted during the worst days of suicide bombings of the 2nd Intifadato prevent Palestinians from places like Jenin from easily gaining Israeli documentation through a quickie marriage to an Israeli Arab and then moving freely around Israel to commit terrorist outrages (this happened on a few occasions).. The PA-controlled areas, at the time the law was enacted were de facto enemy territory during what amounted to a state of war (as Gaza remains today) and it's quite normal to limit citizens/residents of an enemy territory from gaining citizenship in your country.

    On the off chance that a non-Jew does manage to obtain legal residence of a kind that would allow naturalisation (other than family reunification), the decision is ultimately at the discretion of the minister of the interior, and citizenship is rarely granted.

    Typically several hundred people a year successfully petition for Israeli citizenship,and sure it's reviewed on a case-by-case basis...that's how it should be done. A few years ago, nearly a thousand Darfur refugees were granted Israeli citizenship en bloc

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 2:20 am

    eljay June 18, 2011 at 11:50 pm
    Yeah, damned shame about that ethnic cleansing. Didn’t get ‘em all, though.

    Well, they did get 'em all from the West Bank in 1948-49 from what later became the Jordanian West Bank and East Jerusalem. Every single Jew was forced to leave, including cousins who were still living in the Old City at the time. Israelis had no doubt at the time (and the sane among us still have no doubt) that had we lost our independence war the same fate would have befallen the Jews in the rest of the country.

    And the ones who remain are second-class citizens.

    If they want to be second-class and persist in seeing themselves as second-class, then they will be second-class. Nobody with his eyes in his head denies discrimination against Arabs in Israel exists. There is casual bigotry and institutional obstacles to overcome--but Arabs can and do achieve positions in Israeli society that belies a permanent caste-like "second-class status". They serve as Supreme Court justices, cabinet ministers, brigadier generals who have led the Home Front command and the Givati Brigade, senior diplomats and hospital directors. One of the biggest property developers and builders in Tel Aviv is an Arab.

    I can become German by moving to Germany, Greek by moving to Greece, Albanian by moving to Albania…

    You may or may not be able to become a German citizen by moving to Germany, a Greek citizen by moving to Greece, an Albanian citizen by moving to Albania--but assuming you manage to become naturalized and obtain citizenship in any of those countries, the likelihood is that few Germans, Greeks or Albanians will ever regard you as a German, Greek or Albanian...perhaps after the passage of much time and prolonged residence there your native-born children and other descendants in the aforementioned countries could be accepted as Germans, Greeks or Albanians.

    but I cannot become Jewish by moving to Israel. I can become Israeli. That is the nationality of Israel. “Jewish” is not.

    No. Wrong. "Israeli" currently refers to your citizenship status in Israel, not "nationality". An Israeli citizen can be a Jew by nationality (an agnostic non-observant individual such as yours truly still remains a Jew), or an Israeli citizen can by nationality be an Arab Muslim, Christian, or Druze--an Israeli citizen can also be a naturalized Darfur Muslim refugee or the child of Buddhist Thai restaurant owners who have become legally naturalized in Israel. But to have Jewish nationality, you have to be born Jewish or convert to Judaism. Nevertheless, when one considers that even until the recent past, words meaning "Israelite" and "Hebrew" were synonyms for "Jew" in many European tongues (and even in polite company in English), you can easily argue that having "Israeli" citizenship confers some kind of Jewish citizenship on anyone who possesses an Israeli ID card anyway.

    Do those countries have laws that benefit one group above all other groups? If ‘yes’, then they are supremacist countries. If ‘no’, then they are not.

    Many modern, democratic, liberal states such as present-day Greece (and Israel) have laws that privilege people of their own ethnicity and national origin when it comes to granting citizenship. People of remote Greek ancestry and people of remote German ancestry can immigrate to Greece and Germany, respectively, and get Greek and German citizenship much more easily than people who cannot prove such a claim. It is right and just that those states have such policies, just as it is right and just for Israel to prefer immigrants of Jewish background. It is not right and just to perpetuate discrimination and deny equal opportunity and other civic rights to people who are already citizens based on their national origin; and if such states do so as a matter of policy then they are practicing ethnic supremacism.

    I believe it should be the nation of the Palestinians, Arab or otherwise.

    Good for you. A fair number of those calling themselves Palestinians today don't have such a liberal definition of what "Palestinianness" entails, and many of them would even exclude non-Muslims. FWIW, I really don't give a toss how a possible future Palestinian state defines itself--Arab, Islamist, anarcho-syndicalist or Maoist, it's not up to me. My main concern is that it not represent a security threat to the Jewish state of Israel.

    Secular, democratic and egalitarian? If so, that’s wonderful.

    Israel is essentially a secular society, despite the influence of religious political parties. It is democratic, and has all the flaws and blemishes that other democracies have, and it's as egalitarian as any other society in the Western world--which is to say not very. There is a degree of class mobility, but most of the wealth is still concentrated in a few dozen super-rich oligarchic families and industrial concerns. Most Israelis manage pretty okay and get by month to month.

    I notice that your ex-wife’s family does not have to present claims and have those claims validated. Is this an intentional or unintentional omission?

    Naturally they should have to present claims if they ever seek to be compensated for assets and property they were forced to abandon in Iraq. I thought that was implicit. But the Iraq-born generation is nearly gone now, and they've all made good lives for themselves in Israel and elsewhere--I don't think it's very high on their priority list.

    >> Justice was done when Israel captured the Old City in 1967 …

    That’s what you consider “justice”? Hmmm…

    Absolutely. I think it's much more just than the city divided by barbed wire where Jewish worshipers were forbidden to pray at the Western Wall for 19 years.

    I don’t support an “en masse” return. I support a limited return, with the option of compensation in lieu.

    Good for you. When Pakistan implements a right of return for Hindus who fled after partition and India does the same, when the Czech Republic and Poland re-admit ethnic Germans, when Slovakia implements a right of return to ethnic Hungarians, then maybe Israel should follow their examples. But those countries solved their population transfer issues in the context of compensation, there's no reason why Israel and the Palestinian Arab refugee issue should be different.

  • Mikhael June 20, 2011 at 12:47 am

    Shingo June 19, 2011 at 12:29 am because no one here cares one way or another what Israel’s aspirations are within the confines of Israel’s recgonized borders,

    Speak for yourself. Many people here expressly take issue with Israel's definition of itself as a Jewish state within any borders.

    and furthermore, you refue to recgonize the fact that Zionist aspirations have materialized in such a way that Palestinians aspirations are being sacrificed.

    One "Palestinian" aspiration that Zionism will always have a problem with will be an Arab or (Muslim) "Falastin" min al-bahr ila al-nahr--from the sea to the river--in other words the destruction of Israel within any borders and a frequently chanted slogan by extremists supported by witless people like you.

    How could you be so lame? All you’ve done is cite one anecdotale example and tries to pass that off as a typical scenario

    I didn't bring up Kletter v Dulles in a contorted attempt to prove that there was such a thing as an internationally recognized sovereign Palestinian state. You need to improve your reading comprehension skills.

    It also happens to be true. There is only one Zionism (the Zionism that exists today). Zionism is and has always been a political movement, which has exploited religious Judaism for pragmatic and cynical reasons.

    Modern political Zionism is a political movement that can have many manifestations, religious, secular, socialist, capitalist, etc., but Zionist precepts are part and parcel of Judaism and the Zionist impulse has always been present in Judaism--although the word "Zionism"wasn't coined until the 19th century. Judaism is as much about the idea that all Jews collectively constitute one nation and will return to their ancestral home as it is about Mankind's relationship with a Deity. Although many religious Jews reject the programmatic attempt to build a contemporary Jewish nation-state (which is what modern political Zionism has so successfully achieved in doing), there can never be any such thing as a "Judaism" without the central tenet of Eretz Yisrael and the idea of Jewish nationhood.

    Whether the Mizrahi-Sepharadi were more receptive to Zionism is irrelevant, thy weew still in the minority, no matter how desperately you try to spin it.

    Mizrahim/Sepharadim were the majority in the Old Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael) just as they are in present-day Israel, and, in contrast to the smaller Ashkenazi communities in the Old Yishuv, they tended to be very receptive to Zionism, in contrast to "Hostage"'s assertion that the "The majority of the indigenous Jews were not Zionists."

    What do you mean by massacres ? There was only one massacre at Hebron.

    1928-29 saw Arab-led pogroms against Jews and massacres in Sefat, Hebron, Jerusalem, and Jaffa. My father's Uncle Nissim was slashed during the Jerusalem riots, survived and bore a long ugly scar until he died in his 80s.

    The riots were a response to Zionist immigration and expulsion of Palestinian from their land, as well as well publicised declarations of plans to get rid of the Arabs.

    The immediate catalyst and excuse for the riots and subsequent massacres is that some Jews dared to put up a temporary partition, basically a curtain hanging from a rod, to separate the men's and women's prayer sections at the Western Wall during Yom Kippur services, which was a technical breach of the status quo, Jews under Muslim rule for centuries were traditionally only given leave to make use of a small section to pray in near the remnant of their former Temple.

    Nor was there ever a sovereign state geopolitical entity known as Israel prior to 1948.

    Actually, there were predecessor Jewish states in Eretz Yisrael, the kingdoms known as Yisrael and Yehuda. This is not really up for debate.

    None of Israel’s claims to the West Bank or Jerusalem have been recognized by the international community, yet you celebrate the seizure of both.

    Israel has never since 1967 made any official claim to all of the West Bank and has never applied Israeli law there, which would be tantamount to de facto annexation; and indeed every Israeli prime minister from Rabin to Netanyahu ahas endorsed the idea of territorial compromise and relinquishing most of the West Bank to allow for the creation of the first-ever Palestinian Arab state in history. Jerusalem is another story. Although the Zionist leadership did initially accept the internationalization of Jerusalem and the UNSCOP boundaries, they were rejected by all the Arabs and Jordan subsequently annexed the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem, from which all Jews were ethnically cleansed for 19 years. Indeed, Israel should celebrate the reunification of our capital city (where generations of my ancestors were born) and the fact that Jerusalemites of all religions and national backgrounds are free to move anywhere within the city.

    Had Israel ahd a leg to stand on legally, they would not have murdered Bernadotte.

    Israel didn't murder Bernadotte, the Lehi group did. Ben Gurion was seriously considering Bernadotte's proposals, which would have been a terrible mistake, putting the Negev and Haifa in Arab hands, as Israel was in a much weaker and desperate position than it would find itself in a few months later, but he did take advantage of the Bernadotte assassination to defang the Etzel and Lehi.

  • Mikhael June 19, 2011 at 11:47 pm

    Citizen June 18, 2011 at 6:43 am
    10% of German citizens are not of German blood.

    And more than 20% of Israeli citizens are not of Jewish ancestry .

    Contemporary Germany allows in-comers to take citizenship,

    And non-Jewish newcomers can become naturalized citizens of Israel as well, either through marriage to an Israeli citizen (of any religion or ethnicity) or through a process of legal residence. However, Israel, as a Jewish state, quite naturally jumps Jews ahead in the line ahead of say, a Thai immigrant to Israel who opens up a restaurant and resides legally in Israel for a decade or so before applying for and obtaining Israeli citizenship. In exactly the same manner, the Federal Republic of Germany, as a German state, will jump people of German ancestry ahead on the line. A descendant of ethnic Germans (Aussiedler), whose family has lived in Russia for centuries and who can't speak any German will be able to obtain German citizenship much more quickly and expeditiously than a child of Nigerian workers who was born and raised in Germany.

    though they have to choose between the country of their birth and Germany – no dual citizenship.

    It's my understanding that you can have dual German citizenship along with citizenship of another country--but that may be in cases when one parent is a German citizen and another a non-German citizen.

    People born in Germany are now automatically awarded citizenship.

    Provided that their parents were lawfully residing in Germany for a certain period of time. It's not like the US's or Canada's automatic jus soli granting of birthright citizenship regardless of the immigration status of the parents. In my opinion countries like Germany have a much more rational approach--and I say this even though I admit I am a beneficiary US birthright citizenship--my parents were on student and worker visas at the time of my birth and only later did they get green cards--but for a quirk in the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, I don't see why I should have been automatically granted US citizenship at birth--as my parents were pretty sure they would be returning to Israel in a mere two years' time.

    You identify as a Jew because that’s your tribal affinity, your blood line and childhood culture.

    Absolutely. It's the same reason most members of the human species identify with their national group, and something that most so-called erroneously named "progressives" consider self-evident, natural and legitimate for Inuits, Roma, Cherokee and "Palestinians", yet indefensible for Jews.

    Ireland recognizes all forms of marriage, including civil and pagan marriages.

    That's why I wrote "Ireland was in the same boat a few decades ago" (Past tense.)

    Israel recognizes civil, interfaith and same-sex marriages that happen abroad, but all other marriages in Israel have to be performed by the country’s Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical courts—both which do not allow interfaith marriages, same-sex marriages or civil marriage.

    You won't find me defending the ridiculous system of marriage and divorce in Israel. It's something that needs to be reformed ASAP, but civil marriage is on its way, albeit slowly. Nevertheless, as you pointed out yourself, marriages solemnized by a recognized jurisdiction abroad are extended full faith and credit by Israel, whether it was interfaith or same-sex. Additionally, same-sex civil unions and common-law interfaith marriages are officially recognized in Israel, with attendant inheritance and hospital visitation rights. As for "all other marriages hav[ing] to be performed by the country’s Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical courts", that's also false. Muslim citizens of Israel can have their marriages solemnized in Israeli Sharia courts (and Muslim 'ulema clergy in Israel can also officiate at the wedding of a Muslim male and a Jewish or Christian female--not the other way round, though!), Christian citizens of Israel can be married in various recognized Christian denominations, Druze can be married by their clergy, etc.... It's still a better system than what exists in Egypt or Lebanon (which have no civil marriage either) or Malaysia, which is generally considered a democracy, and where civil marriage is allowed--but for non-Muslims only--in other words, Malaysia isn't concerned if its Chinese Christians or Buddhists get married outside their faiths to each other, as long as a Muslim is not involved.
    As one who is twice divorced and currently paying child support for three daughters on two continents, I personally look forward to the day when all marriage is banned!

    So how free are Israelis to be as religious or non-religious “as they want?”

    As I said before, I don't defend the absence of civil marriage and divorce in Israel, but any Israeli still has the option of taking an hour's flight to Larnaca, Cyprus and legally registering their marriage in Israel on the same day. They can then live their lives practically religion-free, and eat pork at the nude beach on Yom Kippur if they so choose, nobody will harass them.

    BTW, the Hamas charter included a passage conferring full civil rights on Jews in any HAMAS state.

    Sure, and Mein Kampf was merely a plea for interethnic understanding. Unlike the PLO-drafted Palestine National Covenant, which makes some attempt to finesse the issue with some duplicitous lip service about recognizing Jews who had "resided normally" in Palestine prior to the "Zionist invasion" and granting them the dubious honor of being "Palestinian," the Hamas Charter does not mince any words-- and expressly refers to Palestine being an Islamic Waqf in perpetuity and openly discusses the Day of Judgment for the Jews (Jews, not "Zionists") who will have to hide behind rocks and trees that will call out "O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!" The Hamas Charter is a blatant, shameless document endorsing genocide.

    World history shows that in both the West and the ME under Muslim rule, Jews often were treated better than the native masses by the ruling class that were of the same ethnic/religious background as the natives.

    Depends when and where. On the whole, perhaps, Jews were treated a few degrees better in medieval times as a "tolerated" minority rather than as the "despised" minority they were regarded as in Christian-ruled countries during more or less the same time period, and on balance Jews endured fewer outrages under Muslim rule, but they were still discriminated against and occasionally persecuted outright. Jews have lived under Muslim rule at different times and places for approximately 14 centuries and there have been highs and lows. The "Golden Age" in Spain is often invoked as a high point, it lasted for a century or two of approximately 700 years of Moorish Muslim rule in different parts of Spain. To be sure, Jews in Spainthen enjoyed a higher status than anywhere in Christian Europe during the same time period, it's a huge mistake to extrapolate from that that Jews always lived charmed lives under Muslim rule. (Jews in Spain also suffered under Almoravide and Almoahide persecutions--the latter were a fanatic Muslim sect that was the al Qaeda of its day.) Jews living under Muslim rule have been subjected to forced conversions in Mashad, Iran as recently as the mid-1800s and were forced to observe Judaism secretly, much like the crypto-Jews in Spain who converted outwardly to Christianity.

    Prior to 1948, one has to look back to biblical days to see how Jews treated non-jews when the Jews were in full power; it’s not a pretty sight for the goys. And neither is the current view of contemporary Israel.

    To the extent that ancient Israel and Judah followed the halakhic system, there was a system in place that recognized non-Jews as members of a protected class--called ger toshav. It's not too dissimilar from the Islamic system of categorizing non-Muslim adherents of monotheist faiths as dhimmi--or ahl al kitab (People of the Book). Neither is appropriate for a modern 21st-century state--except the Jewish proponents of ger toshav status for non-Jews in Israel aare a tiny minority, whereas Islamist proponents of dhimmi status for non-Muslims win elections in Gaza. Meanwhile, non-Jews still enjoy equal rights under the law in modern Israel, yes, discrimination persists in many quarters, but non-Jews in Israel can and do reach the pinnacle of political, economic and academic success. Their numbers includes High Court justices, cabinet members, brigadier generals and ambassadors. This would not be possible in a so-called "apartheid" state.

  • Mikhael June 18, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    Hostage June 17, 2011 at 11:30 pm
    I was responding to a ignorant bigot who accused Arabs of “ethnic supremacist chauvinism”.

    No, I was responding to a bigot who can't see the obvious hypocrisy of denying the moral validity of Jewish aspirations for national self-determination in a Jewish state while simultaneously endorsing the validity of Arab national aspirations, "Palestinian" or otherwise.

    . As for the claim that the Palestinian nation can’t be proven to have ever existed, this is not very difficult. The United States was a signatory of the Treaty of Lausanne and the Anglo-American Palestine Mandate Convention. It did, and still does, recognize Palestinian nationality as a matter of inter-temporal law. See for example Kletter v. Dulles (1950).

    It's amazing that you cite a case which appears to deal with someone who was an Ashkenazi Jew (judging by the surname) and who was born an Ottoman citizen in what was then part of Ottoman Syria and acquired Palestinian citizenship under the British Mandate, as somehow proving that there was once a sovereign state called Palestine. How can you be so dishonest? "Palestinian citizenship" in this context is merely a term of art used to refer to legal residents of the former British colonial entity known as the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine--my Jewish parents and grandparents also held Palestinian citizenship during the Mandate era (my father's parents were born in Ottoman Jerusalem and were legally classed as "Palestinians" from 1917-1948, my mother and her parents, Hungarian- and German-speaking Jews who were among the few Jews to receive legal immigration certificates in that period from the British were also legally deemed "Palestinians" until 1948 and the end of the British Mandate). Informed, reasonable people know that that existence of the British Mandate for 31 years was not quite the same as the existence of a "Palestinian" nation or state.

    The majority of the indigenous Jews were not Zionists.

    That's an oversimplification. The majority of the Ashkenazi haredim in the Old Yishuv were theologically opposed to modern political Zionism and suspicious of most of its proponents' secular outlooks. (When we speak of "Zionism," however, a distinction must be made between "modern political Zionism," the goal-oriented movement to establish a sovereign Jewish polity in the ancestral Jewish homeland which has proven to be so dramatically successful, and the simple Zionism that inheres in all forms of religious Judaism, to whit: that the Jews collectively constitute one people, that we have our roots in Eretz Yisrael, and that one day a Messianic promise will be fulfilled and the Jewish nation will be ingathered in Eretz Yisrael--even the Neturei Karta, the most recognizable, vituperative and shrillest Haredi critics of modern political Zionism and the existence of the State of Israel can be said to adhere to "Zionist" principles as such tenets happen to be embedded in Orthodox Judaism.) That said, the Mizrahi-Sepharadi eidoth in the Old Yishuv happened to be much more receptive to the Zionist message than the Ashkenazi haredim--this had much to do with the fact that the Sepharadim/Mizrahim in the Old Yishuv were more engaged in commerce and politics within Eretz Yisrael and were open to new ideas whereas the Ashkenazim of that time were more passively dependent on the halukka system (donations from pious Jews from abroad) for subsistence. In the 19th century/early 20th century, Sepharadi/Mizrahi Jews with roots in the Old Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael sent their children to the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools and later to Hebrew-language schools that were being established after the times of the 1st and 2nd aliyoth. By the time of the 1929 riots and massacres of Jews, most of the Jewish community, whether they had roots in the Old Yishuv or in subsequent immigration waves, was squarely behind Zionism and the idea of muscular Jewish self-defense. So many in the Arab community were inimical not just to "Zionists", but to Jews--the attacks of the Mufti's followers on apolitical non-Zionist religious Jews, Mizrahi, Sepharadi and Ashkenazi alike left little doubt of that.

    Re: Your passage quoted from Jabotinsky -it was a wonderful clarion call to put an end to Diaspora Jewish passivity and helplessness. Why do you have such discomfiture at the notion of Jews not being submissive? Jabotinsky, by the way, was a firm believer in full Arab political participation in a Jewish state, and envisioned the possibility of an Arab head of government for said state and explicitly called for a power-sharing system between ethnic groups and confessions similar to what existed (and eventually broke down in) Lebanon.

    "I said that “Jordan” was created as a result of a political union between the central districts of Arab Palestine and Transjordan.
    So, the West Bank was indeed Jordanian territory for a while.

    .
    There was never a sovereign state geopolitical entity known as "Arab Palestine," but Transjordan was carved out by the British from the original League of Nations Mandate for Palestine on the East Bank, and later came to occupy and annex some of the former British Mandate on the West Bank between 1949-1967, which was never de jure recognized by most of the international community.

    The Palestinian refugees have patiently explained that principle and the fact that it applies to their own children (and to every other refugee who has children born abroad).

    When and if an independent Palestinian state is established, it can decide whom it wishes to grant citizenship to on the basis of ancestry or otherwise and whom it can admit under its "right of return" to within its own territory, but Israel has no obligation to admit or grant citizenship to putative "Palestinian" refugees or descendants of same any more than the Czech Republic or Poland has an obligation to readmit descendants of Sudeten or Silesian Germans who were expelled post-WW2.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 10:09 pm

    Shingo June 17, 2011 at 8:49 pm
    Genetic testing by Israel’s Weizmann Institute has found that Mizrahi Jews have genetic ties to the Palestinians, whereas Ashkenazi Jews have no genetic ties to either group.

    Sorry, no such study has come out of Weizmann. I challenge you to show that research. Actually, all the recent population genetics studies indicate pretty much the opposite, that Ashkenazi Jews unambiguously share a genetic profile and cluster quite closely with Mizrahi and Sepharadi Jews, and all three main Jewish population groups share similarities to Arabs, including the ones who have recently adopted the political identity of "Palestinians". Of course, Ashkenazi Jews also have descent from the Europeans amongst whom they lived for a millennium or so, it's hard to imagine that there would be no mixing after a thousand years.

    This has been largely refuted by Shlomo Zand...

    A guy who was way out of his depth. His area of specialization is 19th century European intellectual history and cinema studies, and he had little background in Jewish history, but he was strongly influenced by his Marxist biases to claim that there historically was never a Jewish nation. Not only that, but there was nothing particularly original in his research. Clever marketing, a provocative title and cover design made his book a bestseller in Israel and made him a mint (maybe he's a capitalist after all), because his real area of specialty would put people to sleep. He did one good thing in his life and that was participate in the battle for Jerusalem in 1967.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 9:36 pm

    Shingo June 17, 2011 at 7:55 pm
    Eretz Yisrael is a mythical concept that never existed.

    It's a term that was in common use by Jews for thousands of years to refer to a certain geographical area (long before Arabs adopted a European-invented name for roughly the same area) , and "Yisrael" and "Yehuda" were both the names of Jewish states, definite geopolitical entities that existed in more or less that same territory in the past.

    So your father was indeed a Palestinian, though you are loathed to admit it.

    Because there was a British Mandatory government that existed from 1917-1948 that imposed that name on the country--all lawful residents of the country had "Palestinian" citizenship within that time period, whether they were born in the Mandate or not--even if they did not go back multiple generations as my father's family did. My mother's family managed to leave Europe in 1935, she was a "Palestinian" too for 13 years.

    There was no such thing as a Jerusalemite passport.

    There's also no such thing as a Martian passport, but just like a Jerusalemite passport, I never mentioned one either. There were, however, Ottoman birth registration certificates--and it's been a while since I've seen them, but my late grandparents, who were both native Jerusalemites born at the turn of the 20th century, have no mention of nationality or place of birth as "Palestinian" or "Palestine" on their Ottoman documentation from that era

    As for belonging to any “Palestinian” people, thet “people” eupahmism was a European concept, so it’s true it never existed as such in the Middel East.

    Finally, a breakthrough! Now, it's not my place to object to the existence of a genuine Palestinian national identity today, it clearly has come into existence, and I appreciate their longing for self-determination in their own state, but it's just a total anachronism when people talk of "Palestinians" as if they constituted some national unit in the past.

    You’re being blatantly dihonest. The Arab nationalist movement was mobilized in response to a colonialist settler movement (that claimed to represent the Jewish population) while openly threatening to disenfranchise the indigenous population.

    Arab nationalism had its first modern stirrings even prior to the emergence of modern political Zionism as a viable force and it at first was not concerned much with Palestine, but with casting away Ottoman rule throughout the Arab-populated parts of the Empire. It largely excluded Jews from the very beginning, so it's disingenuous to quote the Memorandum of General Syrian Congress, as "Hostage" did, to imply that the local Jews saw themselves as part of any "Palestinian" nation. It's as if I would invoke the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement to claim that there's no inherent conflict between Zionism and Arab nationalism.

    You cannot claim reasonably argue that the local Jewish population, who were largely non Zionist and opposed to the idea of a Jewish satte to begin with

    Actually, the elements of the local Jewish population in the Old Yishuv who were strongly hostile to modern political Zionism were mostlyAshkenazi haredi pietists. Most Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews were quick to join the Zionist camp.

    (indeed Zionism was founded on the premise of Goyim being hostile)

    A premise grounded in reality, and operative in Eretz Yisrael even during the Ottoman years, before the emergence of modern political Zionism--Jews were massacred in Tsefat and Hebron in the 1830s, 50 years prior to the arrival of the First Aliyah from Europe.

    What do you mean by “common homeland”? Did that include the indigenous population

    Sure, I can appreciate that Arabs living in Eretz Yisrael have an attachment to the same land and regard it as their homeland, too. I can even appreciate that a Filipino child of migrant workers born and raised in Tel Aviv sees Israel as his homeland. But be aware that the Arab nationalism of the time didn't only claim "Falastin" for the "indigenous people" (who were small in number) but for all Arabs everywhere--from Morocco to the Gulf

    or were your family among the minority who had already embraced the Zionist ethnocentric, supremacist movement?

    My family never supported any supremacist movement, but has always espoused equal rights and equal obligations for all citizens. We definitely rejected the Arab ethnocentricism and Islamist fervor prevalent among the Arab opponents of Zionism, for obvious reasons. However, we were also among the majority of Mizrahi/Sepharadi Jews in the Old Yishuv of Eretz Yisrael who joined the movement for Jewish national revival and self-determination of the Jewish people in its ancestral land, aka modern political Zionism.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 8:33 pm

    Shingo June 17, 2011 at 7:40 pm
    Had you been a pilot or a sailor on a torpedo boat in 1967, would you have fired on the USS Liberty or refused the orders

    Considering that the Israeli pilots who took those orders didn't realize they were firing at an American ship until it was too late, it's not a very relevant example. Shit happens in wartime. Israeli pilots also bombed their own tanks in 1967. The USS Liberty incident was not that different from the US attack on Canadian forces in Afghanistan in 2002. Get over it.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 8:22 pm

    eljay June 15, 2011 at 7:22 am
    So, because the Arab residents of Mandate Palestine rejected a foreign-devised plan to partition the land in which they resided, they deserved to be cleansed from their homes and properties so that these foreigners could divvy up that land and create a “Jewish state” for (predominantly) foreigners of the Jewish faith.

    The Arabs (quite a few of whom were also born outside of the the then British Mandate or descendants of recent immigrants into the country) could have chosen to have continued living in the part of Mandatory Palestine to become a Jewish state as loyal citizens and/or permanent residents or accepted the creation of an Arab state in Mandatory Palestine, and let the Jewish inhabitants stay there.

    Jewish is not a national identity. I can become American, French or German simply by emigrating to one of those countries. I cannot become Jewish simply by emigrating to Israel.

    Jewish is most certainly a national identity. I do not believe in or follow most of the precepts of Judaism, yet I remain a Jew by nationality. One can be a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany today without being an ethnic German--but few regard the ethnic Turks, Vietnamese, Albanians and others who have acquired German citizenship as truly and authentically German. Countries like the USA, Canada, and Australia are different from other democratic nation-states such as Germany, Greece, Japan or Republic of South Korea, in that the former examples shared nationality is attached to a notion of a shared common civic heritage (i.e., the US Constitution) and the latter examples shared nationality rests upon a notion of shared ethnic/ancestral heritage. Foreigners can acquire citizenship in Germany, Greece, Japan, or Korea by various routes--but they and their descendants are usually not considered to be ethnic Greeks, Germans, Japanese or Koreans. Israel resembles the second category of democratic nation-states.

    Palestine should be the nation of the Palestinians, Arab or otherwise.

    According to the ostensibly secularist vision of the PLO, as outlined in the Palestinian National Charter, "Palestine" would be first and foremost an Arab state, which would of necessity exclude me and any other Jew who has no desire to see himself as an Arab (despite the current humorous tendency of some on the misnamed "progressive" spectrum to categorize Jews with Mizrahi roots such as myself as "Arab" Jews). Zionism's detractors constantly make the argument that an Arab citizen of Israel can never be an equal citizen as long as Israel continues to define itself as a "Jewish" state, so why are they so eager to force non-Arabs into living in a state that exclusively defines itself as "Arab"?

    Window dressing. It remains a supremacist state, not an egalitarian state.

    Israel has had non-Jewish High Court justices, cabinet members, and brigadier generals drawn from its Arabic-speaking minorities. How many non-ethnic Greeks or Swedes serve in such high positions in those countries, respectively? Looking at the wikipedia article on the cabinet of Greece, I see that every single name looks Greek--even though Greece has large communities of Albanians, Roma and Slavic speakers--is Greece a Hellenic supremacist state?

    Israel should be the nation of Israelis, Jewish or otherwise.

    It can be a state of the Jewish nation and all of its non-Jewish citizens without any contradiction--just as the Hellenic Republic (aka Greece) can be a statefor all ethnic Greeks (it extends citizenship to members of the Greek Diaspora, including Pontic Greeks whose ancestors lived on the shores of the Black Sea in what's now Ukraine for thousands of years) and it can be a state for all Greek citizens of non-Greek ethnicity, whether members of traditional ethnic minorities or recent immigrants.

    Both countries should be secular, democratic and egalitarian.

    Despite the influence of and imposition into of religious political parties and factions into many aspects of public and private life, Israel still largely remains a secular country in its character. Yes, there are is no such thing yet as civil marriage or divorce (I believe Ireland was in the same boat a few decades ago) but Israelis are still free to be as religious or non-religious as they want. I doubt the same degree of religious freedom would exist in a Hamas-run state.

    It is a wrong that cannot be excused and which must be rectified. People must be held to account. Justice must be done.

    Justice was done when Israel captured the Old City in 1967, but my family's ancestral home in the Jewish Quarter was actually nationalized with most of the other properties there.

    Can you say the same for the ethnically-cleansed Palestinians?

    If and when there is a peace agreement, Arabs who lost properties and assets in what became Israel should be entitled to present their claims for compensation and they should be compensated if those claims prove to valid, just as my ex-wife's family should be entitled to be compensated for the assets they were forced to abandon in Iraq in the 1950s. But, no, they don't have a right to "return" en masse to Israel.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 5:25 pm

    Hostage June 16, 2011 at 11:46 am
    So, the real “Israeli Arabs” are the Mizrahi Jews of Palestine. They were always considered an integral part of “the Arab Palestinian people”.

    You are referring to what is correctly called the Old Yishuv of Eretz Yisrael , and many Jewish Israeli citizens (such as yours truly) have family with roots in the Old Yishuv, which, by the way, also included large numbers of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Haredim (from the 1600s onwards) as well as Mizrahim and Sepharadim.

    "The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion are considered Palestinians."

    That's great, but I'm pretty sure very few Jews would be willing to accept the dubious "honor" of being considered members of a nation that can't be proven to have ever existed. As someone partially descended from a formerly Arabic-speaking family (the last grand-uncle that spoke it with perfect, native fluency died in 2002), I can tell you that my Mizrahi Jewish family members never, ever, considered themselves as belonging to any "Palestinian" People. My father had British Mandate Palestinian citizenship, and even his birth certificate states that he was born in "Palestine," but his parents' birth certificates show their place of birth as the Ottoman Empire even though they were native Jerusalemites as well.
    For the most part, Arabic-speaking Jews in the former Ottoman Empire were more likely to be drawn to Zionism than the Arab nationalist movements and not many attempts were made to include them in it. Our family was very happy as more and more Jews came to Eretz Yisrael from abroad to help build up our country throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. How could we see our kin returning home from afar to rejoin us in our common homeland as an "invasion"?

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 4:28 pm

    Hostage June 14, 2011 at 10:05 pm
    Jordan was that Arab State and it included the Central Districts of Arab Palestine. Israel signed an armistice agreement with “Jordan” which formally preserved the claims of both of the parties.

    It seems like you're just endorsing the hard-line Herut argument that "Jordan is Palestine", but it's interesting reading.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 4:22 pm

    Citizen June 15, 2011 at 5:10 am Mikhael, if the two countries you are a citizen of from birth fought a war against each other, which one would you fight for?

    It's a counterfactual, hypothetical question, but if I were convinced that one of the countries was absolutely in the wrong, and the other absolutely in the right I would choose the country I felt was right.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 4:16 pm

    Citizen June 15, 2011 at 4:33 am>We await Mikhael’s response; perhaps he will tell us if he served in either the US military or the IDF too?

    Of course I served in the IDF, I think I already stated that somewhere else. I had a duty to do so under Israeli law, as an able-bodied Israeli citizen living in Israel at the time I did my mandatory military service. I never had any obligation to serve in the all-volunteer US military, as the draft ended when I was three years old or so. Of course, I registered for US Selective Service when I was 18, and I've complied with my other civic duties as a US citizen and paid taxes in the US (in fact, according to US law, I was required to file US tax returns even when I was living and working in Israel) and I've done jury duty several times.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    Shingo June 15, 2011 at 2:35 amWhile Judaism can be traced back to palestine, the majority of world’s Jews have no ancestrial link to the place.

    To "Palestine," no-- but yes, the majority of the world's Jews do indeed have a definitive ancestral connection to Eretz Yisrael. Genetic testing has confirmed that most of the world's Jews, whether belonging to Ashkenazi, Sepharadi or Mizrahi communities--have a common ancestral lineage originating in the Middle East. Excluding very recent individual converts to Judaism, practically every Diaspora Jewish community evidences common ancestry to a founder population originating from Eretz Yisrael, which usually subsequently mixed with the host population of the country they lived in to a certain degree. Among the largest non-Jewish population groups sharing these same genetic markers are the Arabic-speakers who have recently started to style themselves as "Palestinian", clearly evidencing a common origin in the same geographic area for both groups.

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 2:04 pm

    Shingo June 15, 2011 at 2:21 amHow did you become a citizen of of 2 countries without immigrating?

    In my case, I was born in the US to Israeli citizen parents (who were at the time technically not immigrants, but pursuing post-doctoral education and fellowships). Therefore, I am a citizen of two countries from birth by default. But a lot of people are citizens of more than one country without being an "immigrant"--for example, if you are born in the USA to a Canadian citizen mother and a British father, you can have three citizenships at birth without being an immigrant.

    And next time someone provides you with a free education, the polite thing to do is say thank you.

    I'm very grateful to my parents for having paid tuition to various private Jewish day schools and helping me with some of university tuition (at 41, most of my loans are finally paid off), as well as for being responsible tax-paying legal residents of the US in high tax brackets (green card holders pay taxes) who subsidized the local school districts in the various places in the US where we lived, despite the fact that for most of my childhood and adolescence I didn't attend public school there. Thank you, Abba and Imma!

  • Mikhael June 17, 2011 at 1:25 pm

    Chaos4700 June 14, 2011 at 11:34
    you were born in the US and were extended Israeli citizenship by default, right?

    Maybe I was extended US citizenship by default. An Israeli citizen born abroad to an Israeli citizen parent or parents remains an Israeli citizen--just like the Detroit-born Palestinian-American ISM activist, Huweida Arraf, who has Israeli citizenship from her father, a Christian Arab from Galilee. (I don't believe her American-Jewish husband, Adam Shapiro, ever acquired Israeli citizenship, despite being eligible for it both as the husband of an Israeli citizen and as a Jew under the Law of Return.)

    Seriously. Are there any Israelis who don’t hold two passports here?

    Seriously, who cares? (Although I confess your curiosity about my national origins is somewhat flattering.)

  • Mikhael June 14, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    Chaos4700 June 14, 2011 at 7:47 pm
    Nobody really cares about a Russian immigrant’s views on whether the Palestinians deserve a state.

    If you're addressing me, pimplebrain, I've never been to Russia and none of my ancestors are from there either, not only that, but I've never had to "immigrate" to any country-- but I'm a citizen from birth of two countries. I'd like to go visit Russia though--maybe I'll be able to afford a vacation to see the Hermitage one day. But you should learn to speak for yourself. I don't presume to say "Nobody cares what a dolt like you from the US cares about the Middle East," as obviously there are people stupid enough to care about what you think.

  • Mikhael June 14, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    foreigners who assumed the political identity of “Israeli”, rather than migrating to and existing as loyal citizens or permanent residents of a (post-Mandate) Palestinian state with the existing residents of that region, opted instead to

    I think it's a shame that the Arab residents of Mandate Palestine rejected the opportunity to have a sovereign state of their own six decades ago. As someone who is descended from an "Old Yishuv" family that has continuously resided in the region for a long time, my father's maternal line goes back in Jerusalem for at least the entirety of the Ottoman period (and probably before); I can tell you that the Mufti's followers would have expelled all the Jews--no matter how long their families had lived in Eretz Yisrael.

    - establish a supremacist “Jewish state”

    A "Jewish" nation-state will not be necessary when every other nation-state gives up its national identity--talking about ethnic supremacist chauvinism, the first article of the Palestinian National Charter states that:

    "Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."
    (Emphasis mine.)

    I am very proud to be a citizen of a Jewish state that accords democratic, participatory rights to its non-Jewish citizens.

    undertake “necessary” ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and land

    Hey, talking about ethnic cleansing, all of the former British Mandate that fell to the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948-49 was completely and totally ethnically cleansed of its Jews--including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, where my grandmother was born and where several of my father's uncles, aunts and cousins were living; all Jews were kicked out and their properties plundered by their neighbors in the Old City (people who a few decades hence would start styling themselves as members of the "Palestinian People")--what was Jordan's excuse for expelling all of the Jews in 1948? At least a few hundred thousand Arabs stayed in Israel. Why should we feel sorry for not losing a war?

  • Mikhael June 14, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    Yeah, remember all those years Palestinians used to sweep through Europe and America killing Jews?

    Although I'm too young to remember the Munich massacre, I actually do vividly remember the grenade and machine-gun attack on a kosher restaurant in Paris in summer 1982 that was committed by Palestinian Arab terrorists--it occurred just a day or so after my family ate at that restaurant when we were visiting friends in France. I also seem to remember hearing on the news about another Palestinian grenade attack on Jewish schoolchildren in Antwerp back in the 1980s--and everyone knows about the Mufti's collaboration with Hitler and recruitment of a Yugoslav Muslim SS division; so yeah, Palestinian Arabs do have a history of committing violence against Jews in Europe. Why are you bringing it up, Mooser?

  • Mikhael June 14, 2011 at 6:53 pm

    What do you mean by “the homeland of the Jewish people”?

    I mean the piece of real estate where the majority of world's Jews ultimately trace their ancestry to and collectively originate as a national unit (although in the traditional Orthodox Jewish religious formulation--Jewish national identity is formed at Sinai)--that piece of real estate conforms more or less to historic Eretz Yisrael lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

    Australia is the homeland of Australian Jews... [a]nd so on for Jews in other countries.

    I hope and expect for Jews who choose to live outside their ancestral homeland and live abroad that they participate in the national life of the countries in which they make their homes as loyal citizens, and that nothing is done to diminish their rights in those countries.. Australia and Britain are also home to Greco-Australians and Greco-Britons who have citizenship in Australia and the UK as well. If ethnic Greeks choose to live in Australia or the UK, they have a duty to be loyal citizens of the UK and Australia; those countries have an obligation to treat them well--but that does not and should not diminish their attachment to their ancestral homeland of Greece--and many of them hold Greek citizenship. The same, obviously, goes for Jews living outside their ancient national homeland of Israel.

    Certainly some Israeli Jews have Israeli ancestors, but many of them have ancestors from other countries. For them, Israel is not their ancestral land.

    Aside from very recent individual converts to Judaism--nearly every Jewish community worldwide has a demonstrable historical and ancestral link to the Land of Israel.

    Are you not concerned about them?

    Most Jews outside of Israel will assimilate into the surrounding population and lose their Jewish ethnic/cultural/national identity or self-ghettoize in insular Orthodox communities like NYC's Boro Park or London's Stamford Hill. I wish them all good luck.

  • Mikhael June 14, 2011 at 7:02 am

    congrats on the very strong attempt at racially tinted propaganda.

    Maybe you should direct that at people like "Chaos4700" or "Avi" who have repeatedly invoked skin color with frequent irelevant references to "white Israelis" and "pasty-white"Ashkenazi Zionists, on this and other threads. Why is it ok for them to drop those allegations, but "racially tinged propaganda" when somebody calls them on their bullshit?

  • Mikhael June 14, 2011 at 6:55 am

    You have not earned the right to condescend to Avi,

    It's not in my nature to be condescending to anyone, even to an fool like "Avi", but he called me a "liar" several times over the past few months, because once, when replying to another bigot who mischaracterized and portrayed me as someone who believed that all Arabs hate Jews, I had the cheeky
    hutzpa for saying that I could never think such a thing of all Arabs, because as someone who has had Arab neighbors, schoolmates and friends would never characterize an entire ethnic group that way. For daring to say that I would never think that all Arabs are an inherently a Jewhating bunch based on my privilege to have known many who are not, every time this twerp sees a comment of mine, he sneers at me and calls me a liar. What fucking arrogance on his part.

    What, you mean the “Israeli cuisine” and dancing gets boring to you?

    I've always thought that all dancing, of any sort, is inherently boring. Dabka, hora, disco, ballet, waltz--you name it--boring, boring, boring. I don't like doing it and I don't like watching others do it--except for pole dancing, maybe. I endured and even did some pro forma dancing at two of my own weddings, but my next wedding--I swear there will be no reception! As for the food, I like all kinds of food.

    Palestinians still exist, and will always exist, on their ancestral land.

    I sincerely do hope that the Arab-speakers who have recently assumed the political identity of "Palestinian" will continue to exist in our shared homeland--either or both in an independent state adjoining the Jewish state of Israel, the ancestral land of the Jewish people (see, I can use bold HTML tags too!) or as loyal citizens or permanent residents of Israel. I look forward to the day when Arabs internalize that Israel is also the homeland of the Jewish people, and that Israeli Jews will also continue to exist in their ancestral land.

  • Mikhael June 13, 2011 at 8:42 pm

    Next, along the same false claim that every Arab is your friend, you will also claim that you know maaaaany non-Ashkenazi Jews.

    Please show me when I ever said every Arab was my friend. I just reviewed some old posts, and it jogged my memory--you definitely are the idiot who is incensed by my mentioning my Arab friends, who I only brought up in reply to Chao4700's baseless accusation that I think all Arabs hate Jews. Not only that, I only mentioned it once, and I actually did so to defend Arabs from the calumny that they all hate Jews, something I know is false from my personal experience, but you, Avi, have mockingly brought up the fact that I mentioned that my social circle includes some Arab friends several times. Why does my having gone to Arab weddings and having some good Arab friends unbalance you so? Are you jealous because you've never been invited to an Arab wedding? It's no big deal, really. You shouldn't be jealous. The food is usually good, but you still get bored out of your mind like at any other wedding.

  • Mikhael June 13, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    calling me a liar is inappropriate when your past assertions had been proven to be not only false, but deliberately misleading.

    I call you a liar because you are falsely stating that darker-skinned and Arabs are denied entrance to nightclubs, in Israel, as if that was an official policy. Has it happened? It most likely has, and there was one well publicized incident last year when a club allegedly refused to admit an Ethiopian soldier on leave. After the incident was publicized, the club was sued and it attracted a lot of negative attention. You portray this as if it is something routine, therefore, you are a liar.

    But, for someone who admits to have been born and raised in the US you sure make a lot of grandiose statements about an Israeli society you know very little about.

    According to you, my having been born in Boston and spending my childhood and teen years in the Midwest and NYC must negate everything I've learned about Israeli society through having Israeli parents, attending middle school in Israel, serving in the army service (sadir and miluim) spending about a decade of my adult life post-army, post-college, marrying an Israeli woman and having fathered Israeli-born daughters who still live there and whom I visit four times a year, all that is of no consequence, because yes, I "admit" that I was born in the US. I gather that I have spent more cumulative time in Israel than you have. When did you come to the US, when you were 4? Your mental age hasn't changed.

    Make sure you use sunblocker when you get your tan, though. I hear skin cancer is nasty.

    Everybody should use sunblocker if they spend too much time in the sun, even sub-Saharan black Africans are susceptible to skin cancer. The thing is, aside from commuting to work by bike, I rarely get much sun, but I still seem to have this dark complexion all year round--even in the middle of a cold New York winter when I'm indoors all day. I don't make a big deal about it or think about it much, I'm not race-obsessed like you or "Chaos", but for some reason my father, a Mizrahi/Sefaradi Yerushalmi guy of partial Syrian-Jewish heritage, and my mother, a Hungarian Ashkenazia, shared the same Mediterranean complexion.

  • Mikhael June 13, 2011 at 12:21 pm

    Yes, but the difference I’ve learned is that Palestinians have no different terminology for darker or lighter skinned people among them.

    Israelis do.

    By the way, what exactly do you think constitutes the "different terminology" that Israelis use "for darker or lighter-skinned people among them" is? Indeed, kushi is used in impolite circles for all black people (including Israelis of Ethiopian Jewish heritage), and kushi has acquired a pejorative connotation in modern Israeli Hebrew. Similarly, racist Arabs will throw out the 'abd bomb at the black Arabs among them (and black people in general), but I can't think of any specific Israeli term to differentiate between light-skinned Jews and dark-skinned Jews. What exactly are you referring to? You seemed to think "Mikhael" is a Russian name, I wonder what other silliness is in your head.

  • Mikhael June 13, 2011 at 12:08 pm

    It’s really funny to get this sort of lecture from someone with a Russian-derived name.

    And it's even funnier that you think my name is "Russian-derived". "Mikhael" (מיכאל‎) is a Hebrew name, common among Jews and others, and is found in our Torah. It is the basis of the English-language "Michael". I transliterate it online with "kh" to represent a more accurate pronunciation of the Hebrew letter "כ"--if I spelled it "Michael", English-speakers would think it's pronounced "My-Kull" and well, that would be silly.

    Where are you from exactly?

    Not that it's any of your business, but I was born in the States to Israeli parents, and have lived in nearly equal measure in both countries . Part of my father's family has been in Jerusalem for 18 traceable generations--a lot longer than some Arabs who've started calling themselves "Palestinian" recently.

  • Mikhael June 12, 2011 at 11:29 pm

    If you’re a dark skinned Jew or an Arab of any kind, then you are prevented from entering clubs by Ashkenazi bouncers, for example

    That certainly is reported to have happened in some isolated instances, and when it did, there was widespread outcry and denunciation, followed by bad press for the clubs in question, but you are outright lying when you state that's the status quo. (Although I have heard of such things occurring in New York.) . I really can't speak to how many darker-skinned Israelis I've seen in nightclubs, as I've only been to a nightclub once in my life about 20 years ago, but I know that I've seen many young, drunk, stupid Israelis of all skin tones and backgrounds acting like asses outside clubs, going into nightclubs and exiting nightclubs, on Allenby and around Nemal Tel Aviv. (I can think of better ways to spend one's time and money than to go to a nightclub, whether in Israel or anywhere else. ) As stupid as going to a nightclub is, it's indefensible to deny anyone entrance to one on the grounds of skin color, and I believe the club in question that allegedly barred an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier on leave is getting sued and has lost a lot of business.

    But, then again, skin has nothing to do with it. Right?

    Right. I've never felt oppressed by Israeli society because of my sexy, swarthy year-round tan. Although racism against
    darker-skinned people certainly does exist in some quarters of Israeli society, just as it does in Arab society and everywhere else (and even in Africa, India and Haiti) skin color has zero to do with the Jewish/Arab conflict, which is really about two competing national claims for the same land. Both national communities, the Jewish national community and the Arab national community are composed of people who can be either dark-skinned or light-skinned. Constant references to "white" Israelis and "brown" Palestinians that I've seen on MW and other sites are simply not relevant and are an emotional appeal meant to draw sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs from know-nothings and witless undergrads by appealing to emotions of "racial" injustice.

    Next, along the same false claim that every Arab is your friend

    I would never make any such claim, as there are so many Arabs I detest. (Just like there are so many Jews I detest.) Nevertheless, I have been fortunate to have had many Arab friends, neighbors and colleagues, who I have respected and admired. One of them is one of my best friends. I think I read some post where some idiot expressed skepticism that Israeli Jews such as myself could have Arab friends and called me a liar. Were you that idiot?

    you will also claim that you know maaaaany non-Ashkenazi Jews. Get over yourself.

    Considering the fact that I am of Mizrahi/Sefaradi descent and half my family is not Ashkenazi, it should not be surprising that I know many non-Ashkenazi Jews. Indeed, although my mother is of Ashkenazi background, if I were to meticulously follow traditional guidelines, I am not Ashkenazi at all (although Jewishness is determined matrilinealy, one is supposed to follow the father's liturgical and ritual customs. Therefore, religiously at least --if I were still religious--I am considered Sefaradi/Mizrahi, as I am only supposed to follow my father's Syrian-Jewish communal nusakh or minhagh).

    By the way, many of my relatives in my father's and my ex-wife's extended Mizrahi families (laughably and erroneously called "Arab Jews" by doofuses like you) are lighter-skinned than many of my Ashkenazi mother's relatives, quite a few of whom are "olive"-complected.

  • Mikhael June 12, 2011 at 10:25 pm

    but the difference I’ve learned is that Palestinians have no different terminology for darker or lighter skinned people among them.

    That's a funny notion. Racism is quite widespread in Arab society, like most societies. Most of the minority of Arabs who are black can tell you that they are routinely referred to as 'abd (slave) by other Arabic-speakers (very dark people of clear sub-Saharan African ancestry are found among the Negev Bedouin, for example, many are part of the Tarabeen tribe, and there are also pockets around Jerusalem and Jericho).

  • Mikhael June 12, 2011 at 7:20 pm

    @"Chaos"

    Jon S is right--anyone reading your posts could only conclude that you do have a skin-color obsession. It might hurt your poorly functioning chaotic brain, but whatever your stance on the Israeli Jewish-Palestinian Arab conflict, skin color has absolutely no relevance. Israeli Jews come in a variety of hues and skin tones, hair and eye colors, as do the Palestinian Arabs. Anyone familiar with this region of the Middle East would know that one can just as easily encounter Arabs who are fair of skin, hair and eye color, and dark-skinned Jews as the other way around, so your constant harping on about "white-skinned" Israelis is a silly trope.

• Obama won't have to write another speech for AIPAC on Monday
  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 9:56 pm

    what i noticed was the new use of the phrase “Middle East North Africa” rather than “Muslim and Arab world”. I also noticed this was used on NPR before the speech. Hillary also referred to the region as “Middle East North Africa” seems like an interesting departure and I am curious what instigated this new language?

    Maybe "Middle East and North Africa" is more neutral, less biased than "Muslim and Arab World"--which either plays into the Islamist thesis that the region is inherently Dar al Islam--the "Domain of Islam" or pan-Arab notions that the region belongs to Arab peoples and only Arab peoples when the reality is that there are many non-Muslim and non-Arab peoples who have deep history and roots in the region--non-Arab majority Muslims such as Berbers,Turks and Kurds as well as non-Muslim peoples such as the Assyrian Christians, Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Maronites, and yes, ISRAELI JEWS. Both pan- Islamists and pan-Arabists must learn that MENA (Middle east North Africa) belongs to others as well.

• Desmond Travers on Geo Mitchell: Irish-American Diaspora wanted an end to the troubles, Jewish-American Diaspora hasn't opened its eyes
  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    Funny. I’m quite familiar with that news program and don’t recall any such usage. Are you sure you’re not making this up the same way you made up your claim about ‘Arabs’ in Israel being treated equally across the board?

    You won't find any instance of me saying that Arabs are treated equally across the board, but I know that you like to put words in other people's mouths.

    There were frequent references to "ha oyev ha tsiyyoni" and ha kovesh ha tsiyyoni". I admit I used hyperbole by saying "every sentence". It was probably more like every OTHER sentence began with that description of Israel.

  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 9:34 pm

    More hypothetical and irrelevant scenarios. Nice. It’s comical that your knowledge about the country you salivate over is negligible.

    It's very relevant to offer a counter-example because you explicitly stated that “speaking Arabic in public while in a Jewish town will often draw slurs.” It's no doubt true that this sometimes can happen (just as Hispanic-Americans can face bigotry and/or violence when speaking Spanish). It's also true that the same thing can happen to a Jew who speaks Hebrew in an Arab town in Israel--FOR EXAMPLE in Umm al Fa7m. I've actually visited Umm al Fa7m (and yes, I've spoken Hebrew there), in fact I've even gone to the recently opened art museum and had a nice time, but there are certain Arab towns and neighborhoods that one is advised to avoid to walking in while Jewish. Back in the day when I wore a kippa (I am no longer religious and no longer don one routinely-- my baldspot is exposed for everyone to see), I was told explicitly by Arab friends who were concerned for my welfare (I am sure you will again accuse me of lying for my assertion that I have Arab friends) that I was taking my life in my hands for strolling around Akko's Old City with my kippa and tsitsit. I was shocked and surprised, because even though it was the tense times of the 1st Intefadeh, I always felt perfectly safe in Akko.

  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 9:22 pm

    That you used Umm al-Fahem as an example, the Palestinian town in Israel which Kahana supporters have relentlessly attempted to enter, march and provoke, speaks volumes.

    I used Umm al Fahm as an example because it's the town that elected the virulently anti-Semitic, Islamist hatemonger Raed Salah as mayor.

    The same group calls for the “Transfer” of Palestinians from Umm al-Fahem.

    I most certainly do not condone Kakh's platform calling for transfer of Israel's Arab citizens or the imposition of Halakha as the law of the land. Kakh and Salah's 7arakat al Islamiyieh fi falastin '48--the Islamic Movement of "Palestine 1948"-- are mirror images of each other. Both call for imposition of a theocracy, ethnic incitement and ethnic cleansing. But in your book, Avi, nothing Raed Salah says or does can be as bad as Kahanism. They are two sides of the same coin.

  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    What was that claim of yours again? “I’ve lived among Arabs. I’ve worked with Arabs. I’ve studied with Arabs. I’ve served in the army with Arabs. I’ve eaten with Arabs. I’ve danced with Arabs. I’ve sung with Arabs.” Anything else?

    Your sneering skepticism of the above says a lot about you and your sick prejudices. Nevertheless, I most certainly never said I've lived among Arabs--that would imply that I was raised in their houses. Would you be so kind as to not misquote me? Nevertheless, I have indeed been fortunate to have Arab friends and neighbors in the US and in Israel. Why does this seem so odd to you? As for "dancing" at their weddings, that could only have happened at the most urgent coaxing. Just as it is when I am a guest at Jewish weddings--including my own-- I try to avoid dancing as much as possible. Since I don't like dancing, I seriously doubt I ever made that claim. Of course it's true that I've studied with Arab- and Muslim-American students, one of whom was my college roommate for two years in row and naturally I went to his wedding--where I am pretty sure I avoided dancing as much as possible. Again, none of this remarkable or interesting. You're obviously an ignorant bigot, so it's really not worth convincing you of anything.

  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 8:53 pm

    And yet, like a good Zionist tool, you use your fascist friends — the Kahana supporters — as representatives of Judaism, what with the mention of the Kippah.

    Oh, so everyone who wears a kippa is a Kahana supporter? Moreover, how dare you presume to tell me who my "friends" are? I have more friends who are Arabs than who are Kahana supporters. Of course, little creep that you are, think that you know who I am and and my friends better than I do.

  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 11:29 am

    Then you go and say something crude like this. Evidently the expulsion of the Palestinians is just a nonevent to you and so if Palestinians mourn it, they aren’t mourning a real catastrophe which happened to Palestinians, but the fact that a similar catastrophe didn’t happen to Israeli Jews.

    War almost always exacts a harsh toll on civilian populations, and that toll is inevitably worse for the losing side. I am glad that my people were not on the losing side. It is a fact that between 1947-49 that Arabs hoped to entirely ethnically cleanse the country of its Jews. My father was a native Jerusalemite. He lived in the Western side of the city. He and his parents, brothers and sisters survived the Arab siege of Jewish Jerusalem, when they were constantly shelled for months and survived starvation by eating the hubeiza weed and "bread" baked with sawdust. His aunts, uncles and cousins were expelled by the Jordanians from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, where my grandmother was born. The Palestinian Arab Nakba is that there was no Jewish Nakba in Eretz Yisrael on the heels of the Shoah. We Israeli Jews don't need to feel remorse that we weren't kicked out of our country.

  • Mikhael May 23, 2011 at 11:13 am

    Why would they be ashamed ? Do they make the announcements in arabic at Beitar games ?

    A false accusation was made that people are afraid and/or ashamed to speak Arabic publicly. I offered a counter-example of my sister's Jewish in-laws, who speak Arabic frequently and publicly.
    Most Beitar fans speak Hebrew as their main language , there is no reason to make announcements in Arabic.
    (Although when one considers that much of Beitar's fanbase are Mizrahi Jews, they often understand Arabic too.)

    How about the younger generation ? What’s their attitude to arabic ?

    Different people have different attitudes. My nieces and nephews who live in Israel study Arabic in school, and they enjoy it, but they would rather have fluent English.

  • Mikhael May 18, 2011 at 10:14 pm with 3 replies

    Israel has decreed that Palestinian students must study the Holocaust, but outlawed study of the Nakba.

    Really, "outlawed"? You mean Arab citizens of Israel must convene in secret study groups hidden in basements to study their version of history and post a lookout lest the SHABAK disrupt their meetings where they teach their youth about the Nakba? Not exactly. Arab citizens of Israel are free to indoctrinate their youths as they please, but they should not expect that the state will subsidize their teaching their youths that the failure to entirely ethnically cleanse Israel of its Jewish inhabitants was a catastrophe.

    And the principal of a public high school in Yafo, with 50% Palestinian-Israeli students, has forbidden them from speaking Arabic amongst themselves

    You mean he tried. The Ministry of Education promptly reprimanded him and told him he exceeded his authority as principal. Kids at Yafo Ironi Zayin can still speak in whatever language they wish outside of the classroom. Although it has an ethnically mixed student population it still remains a Hebrew-language school, though, so Hebrew remains the language of instruction there.

    link to mynet.co.il

  • Mikhael May 18, 2011 at 9:50 pm

    It’s much better and more nuanced than the Hebrew-language propaganda service of Press TV! (

    I didn't mean Press Tv, which is the English-language broadcasting arm of Iran, I meant "Kol David", which is the Iranian's crude propaganda arm in Hebrew.

    Is this where you get your favorite Hebrew-language news from, Avi?

    link to hebrew.irib.ir

  • Mikhael May 18, 2011 at 9:24 pm

    That is simply not true.

    Off the top of my head, I can think of the Israeli passport which contains no Arabic text whatsoever. And that is but one example.

    Government documents such as safety announcements must be published in Arabic by law, and official policy documents are supposed to be made available in Arabic upon request. A passport is a travel document that contains limited space, and it is in Hebrew (the principal language of the country and the language spoken by nearly all of the population, Jewish and Arab) and English (most customs officials in foreign countries know what "Name", "Date of Birth", "Place of Birth" etc. mean). Since Israeli citizens can't use their Israeli passports to visit most Arab countries, there is little reason to crowd Arabic on to to the limited space available for printing text on a passport.

    The vast majority of Israeli Jews do not speak Arabic. ...The scope of Arabic language curriculum in the Jewish sector is limited to basic conversational Arabic.

    That is indeed a shame, although lately the Ministry of Education has mandated more of an Arabic curriculum in Jewish schools. Whether or not there are fewer Israeli Jews who know Arabic fluently has no bearing on whether Arabic is an official language or not. Outside Quebec and the Maritimes, few Canadians speak French fluently, yet even in British Columbia or Manitoba, which have hardly any Francophones, French is still official. So it is in Israel. In the days of the Old Yishuv, most Jews, even Ashkenazim, had to know Arabic for advancement. (My great grandparents had to know Turkish too.) Things have changed. Most Israeli citizens, Jewish or Arab, given a choice over a foreign language would rather know English fluently.

    And, it serves the purpose of preparing students for their post-highschool military service.

    A very important thing, indeed. They must put more emphasis on Arabic teaching in the Jewish sector for that reason if no other. Sadly, having been raised and educated primarily in the United States, I did not learn Arabic in any formal setting until much later in life.

    Both state radio and TV broadcast programs in the Arabic language. Alas, the majority of these broadcasts are aimed at the public relations aspect, i.e. Hasbara,...

    It's much better and more nuanced than the Hebrew-language propaganda service of Press TV! (I remember back in the 1980s watching the Hebrew language news from Jordan, every sentence began with האויב הציוני"", maybe they are less crude now.)

    Speaking Arabic in public while in a Jewish town will often draw slurs. I am personally familiar with several cases in which Palestinian families were attacked when they spoke Arabic in public.

    Go and have obvious Hebrew conversations, while wearing a kippa and tsitsit hanging out in certain neighborhoods in places like Umm al Fa7m and see how friendly people will be to you.

  • Mikhael May 18, 2011 at 8:48 pm

    Try speaking Arabic in West Jerusalem some time and seeing the tolerance level.

    Bull.
    Most Israeli Jews in West Jerusalem in 2011, unfortunately don't know Arabic fluently, so an Arab-speaker wishing to use Arabic would have a difficult time in most situations, but one can see and hear Arab Jerusalemites on Jaffa Road in West Jerusalem who are not afraid to speak Arabic loudly and publicly amongst themselves. However, many Israeli Jews of a certain age still speak Arabic fluently. My father, a 15th-generation Jerusalemite on his mother's side, spoke Arabic nearly as well as Hebrew (Arabic was his mother's first language) and I remember my grandparents, aunts and uncles speaking Arabic all the time (often mixed with Hebrew, French and Ladino) , in Jerusalem, whenever I went home to Israel on family visits. My sister's Iraqi-born in-laws still frequently lapse into Arabic and are not ashamed or embarrassed to do so in public in Givatayim, right outside Tel Aviv.

  • Mikhael May 18, 2011 at 1:57 am

    Hear that guys??

    Israel actually LOVES Palestinians. I mean if it didn’t, why would it make Arabic the 2nd language for 20.4% of it’s Israeli Arab population?? (Israeli Jews account for 75.4x%).

    A simple-minded response from a simpleton. It has nothing to do with Israel "loving Palestinians" (especially as the concept of an Arabic-speaking "Palestinian" nationality did not exist, among Arabs or Jews--or anyone--when Israel became independent in 1948 and when Arabic became the official language of the state alongside Hebrew).

    "Herp derp" yourself. My comment was in response to "Seafoid," who lives up to his Gaelic moniker when he blatantly lied and claimed that Israel suppresses the Arabic language.
    There are two official languages in my country, Hebrew and Arabic.

  • Mikhael May 17, 2011 at 9:46 pm with 46 replies

    As Hophmi points out, not only is there no prohibition, Arabic is still an official language of the state alongside Hebrew. Official government documents must be published in Arabic as well as Hebrew, Knesset speeches are allowed to be made in Arabic (although most Arab MKs use Hebrew), State radio and television broadcasts in Arabic, etc.

    I'm listening to the Israel Broadcasting Authority's Arabic service right now. You can too.

    link to iba.org.il

    How can it be possible if Arabic is being virtually prohibited?

• My Sharia
  • Mikhael May 10, 2011 at 9:32 pm

    That was written when I was under the mistaken impression

    As if you have ever had any other kind of impression?

    And even if Di Tseytung was a newspaper published in Israel, you would still have no valid point. Yes, Yiddish was the language of a large segment of Jews in the Diaspora (and is today mainly used by the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel and the Diaspora, along with a few dilletante secular hobbyists). Yes, much of its vocabulary is derived from Middle High German (as well as Hebrew and Aramaic). It is essentially a Germanic/Semitic creole.What point do you think you are making?

  • Mikhael May 10, 2011 at 6:04 pm

    You’re the one to talk. I haven’t forgotten your fabricated post in which you claimed to have known Arabs in the US, have grown up around Arabs, have lived with Arabs in Israel, have gone to school with Arabs, have attended Arab weddings…….Are you Michael Werdine’s cousin

    I don't know who Michael Werdine is. Who is he and why should I care? I never stated that I "lived with" Arabs , but I have indeed grown up around them. Part of my childhood was in the Galil haElyon, and if you ever lived in Israel, you would know that there are many Arabs resident in the area. Some of my late father's closest colleagues in the US were indeed Arabs, and our family was invited to their weddings when I was a kid (in Nebraska, of all places). When our family moved to Brooklyn and I was eventually kicked out of yeshiva and attended public high school, my classmates included Arab and Muslim students. My university roommate was Pakistani (not Arab) and I indeed attended his wedding. Why should someone like you think this is unusual? None of this would be important or remarkable, except twisted, hateful freaks like you baselessly accuse people like me of racism and hate against Arabs. According to some contorted logic, since my father's family (like many Israelis) had deep roots in the Yishuv ha Yashan and his father's first language was Arabic, some people would say that would make me an Arab!

  • Mikhael May 10, 2011 at 2:20 am

    The article didn’t say where the paper is published and its headlines are clearly in Hebrew.

    It's published in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, and it's a Yiddish-language paper--(not Hebrew)--and it is a Satmar-run newspaper--Satmar is a hasidic sect that actually is quite anti-Zionist.
    The actual headline does happen to be in Hebrew and quotes a biblical verse--not that you would know anything about that.

• The documented record still stands: Israel intentionally targets civilians and civilian infrastructure
  • Mikhael April 4, 2011 at 2:48 am

    "Korean navy was intercepted Chinese fishermen who resisted at least as much as Turkish activists; some Korean sailors got broken bones, but they detained the Chinese without killing anyone. "

    Really? That's not what I read.

    link to boston.com

    "China fishing boat capsizes in scuffle; 1 dead
    In this photo released from the South Korean coast guard via Yonhap, a Chinese fishing boat is seen capsized in western South Korean waters off Gunsan, South Korea, Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010. The fishing boat capsized in a maritime scuffle with a South Korean coast guard ship trying to curb its illegal fishing activities Saturday, killing one fisherman and leaving two others missing, a South Korean official said."

    "Thu Mar 3, 9:30 pm ET

    SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea's coast guard says a Chinese fisherman and a South Korean coast guard officer are being treated at a hospital after a confrontation off South Korea's west coast over illegal fishing.

    The coast guard said Friday that it detained a Chinese fishing boat Thursday afternoon within South Korea's exclusive economic zone in the Yellow Sea.

    Officials say the Chinese crew wielded axes and hammers when the coast guard tried to inspect the boat, injuring one South Korean officer. The South Koreans opened fire, injuring a Chinese crewman in the thigh."

• Goldstone op-ed praises Israeli investigation of Gaza war crimes, but UN committee paints a different picture
  • Mikhael April 5, 2011 at 10:17 am

    Then why aren’t you confronting jon for attacking Danaa’s and Avi’s citizenship, Mikhael?

    Because I don't know who "Jon" is, and I didn't read about his "attack" on Dana's or Avi's citizenship, neither of whom I know either. I don't sit on the computer monitoring Mondoweiss all day, you know, to see who is attacking whom. I just skimmed the comments and saw someone named Avi some comment regarding the onerous and inhumane requirements Israel imposes on renouncing Israeli citizenship and felt I should fact-check him on that; and let him know that my understanding was that the US (and other countries) make renunciation of citizenship difficult also.

  • Mikhael April 4, 2011 at 8:33 pm

    Here's a dual US-Swiss citizen who's asking for advice because he's anxious about if he can get into trouble by flying into the US with his Swiss passport only as he has misplaced his American passport:

    link to flyertalk.com

  • Mikhael April 4, 2011 at 8:25 pm

    I don't know if they check, but by law American citizens holding dual citizenship are supposed to present their American documents at the border/airport customs. I suppose if someone hands over a foreign passport and the dual citizen was born in the US, US Customs would see that they were born in the States and request the US, rather than the foreign passport. I don't know what advantage would accrue to a US citizen by not presenting US travel documents, though.

  • Mikhael April 4, 2011 at 7:29 pm

    If you have ever been an Israeli, no matter how long you reside outside the country, be it 10 or 20 or even 50 years be it 10 or 20 or even 50 years, Israel requires that you enter the country with your israeli passport,

    Just as the US requires that I present my US passport when I enter and leave the US, and not my Israeli passport.
    My Israeli cousin who has resided in the UK and been a naturalized British citizen for 3 decades must also present her British passport at Heathrow and her Israeli passport at Ben Gurion. What is so unusual or controversial about this? It's standard practice for all countries that recognize dual citizenship.

  • Mikhael April 4, 2011 at 7:22 pm

    It only makes sense that Israel would make its Jewish citizens jump through hoops to renounce citizenship.

    It's much harder renouncing American citizenship.

    How many Jewish converts did they get out of the “humanitarian” mission to Haiti?

    Ummm...none.

• Rebranding
  • Mikhael March 29, 2011 at 12:45 am

    "See, most Americans who actively condone the murder of other Americans by foreign governments would be traitors. "

    See, I don't automatically assume that someone who deliberately places him or herself in a dangerous conflict zone and unfortunately gets killed a "murder" victim, just because they happen to hold a US passport. (In the case of the late Ms. Corrie, she was not very fond of her Americanness, as the photo of her burning the US flag should make clear.)

    I would not call the death of US photojournalist Brad Will, who was killed by Mexican troops in 2006 while covering a violent demonstration strike in Oaxaca "murder" either, although there is more evidence that he may have been deliberately targeted (unlike Corrie or Anderson). When you go into an active conflict zone, you run the risk of being hurt or killed. Unlike Mr Will, Corrie was kneeling in mud, and not visible to the D9 driver.

  • Mikhael March 29, 2011 at 12:01 am

    "Well, so have I on occasion, but I was very drunk. Maybe he was, too."

    Well, if he was, then he has no business running the Islamic Movement in Israel, as pious Muslims are supposed to abstain.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    "But apparently, you can’t do it while condemning terrorist attacks on hotels and aid workers, Mikhael"

    The King David Hotel was British military headquarters, plain and simple. What part of that don't you understand? I suppose people like Rachel Corrie were aiding Hamas in smuggling weapons, I guess you can call her an "aid worker" then by a very stretchy definition, still if she hadn't been hiding in a ditch out of view of the D9 operator she might be alive and commenting on Mondoweiss today. Do you think the members of the IHH group chanting the "Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud" chant before they went on their stabbing spree were "aid workers"?

    "And you call yourself American?"

    I call myself an American because the US State Department calls me an American, in accordance with the 14th Amendment. Anyone born in the US or territories thereof has that same privilege. My parents nearly went to McGill University in Montreal rather than MIT slightly before I was born. Had my father accepted that offer, I would have been Canadian rather than American. Canada, like the USA, is also a nice country and I would have honored my minimal obligations to it and complied with its laws just as I have honorably done with the USA.

    "No bonus points for pushing the “All Arabs are anti-Semites” canard. Again. All Zionists do that."

    I don't get the bonus points because I have not written anything even remotely indicating I feel that way even once. You cannot even show me one place where I indicated that those were my sentiments. Having grown up with Arabs in the USA and Israel, having attended school with them, having served with Arab soldiers in the IDF who I would trust my life with, and having been invited to their weddings, I would NEVER say that "ALL" Arabs are anti-Semites. It surely is a falsehood and a canard that I said it once (much less "repeated" it), and it surely is a canard that all Zionists feel that way.
    Again. Show me one place where I said that. Or are you just going to lie again and repeat that I said so? No doubt that's easier for you.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 11:16 pm

    "You said a HOTEL was a “military target”

    If a hotel is used as military headquarters for a foreign occupying regime, it's hard to argue that it's not a military target. Regardless, the leadership of the Yishuv condemned Etzel's attack.

    "Your a traitor, plain and simple. "

    How am I a traitor? What laws have I broken? America is a nice country, I am very fond of it and I have always complied with all the duties required of me as a US citizen that I am obligated to comply with.

    "You know, at least the Palestinians who make their home in the US, even temporarily, don’t actively undermine American lives."

    Like Nidal Hassan, the Palestinian-American who swore an oath to his country's armed forces and murdered his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood? I could name other cases, but I don't want to be a bigot like you and blame a mostly law-abiding and patriotic American immigrant community for the terrible acts of a few.

    "Now you’re trying to write off a deliberate attack on a US vessel as “fog of war.”

    There is no reliable evidence that the attack on the USS Liberty was deliberate. Shit happens in wartime. During the 6-Day-War Israeli planes also fired on their own tanks as well. You think that was deliberate too?

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    I have much sympathy for the family of the late Rachel Corrie, who either committed suicide by hiding in the mud out of view of the operator of the D9 operator.Likewise, we must recognize that in the case of people like Tristan Anderson, there is a likelihood of injury in a tense situation. Luckily from him, the Border Police and the soldiers had the restraint to only use tear gas, unfortunately injuries will occasionally occur. Having experienced similar demonstrations as a soldier, I can say with assurance that the "demonstrators" also aim to harm me and my fellow soldiers. Sometimes things may get out of hand.

    The young Turkish fellow was not a civilian though. When you attack a soldier and use a metal rod or knife to harm him while he is lawfully enforcing a blockade of a hostile entity , you lose the right to call yourself a civilian. The soldier has every right to protect his and his fellows' life and limb, which is what happened on the Mavi Marmara.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 10:27 pm

    ""Yeah, keep right on believing that, Prince."

    Yep, I have done more than my fair share of duty to the US, obeyed the law and paid my taxes. I have mostly declined to participate in American electoral processes, among other reasons that it is not inconvenient to me (as I move frequently every few years and can't be fussed with updating my addresses with various Boards of Elections) and additionally, since ultimately I will not make my home here but in Israel, it's really not so fair for me to vote in national elections that concern Americans. Therefore, although it is by my own choice, I am taxed without proper representation, ergo, the US benefits more from me than I do from it.

    By the way, what does Daddy have to say about the USS Liberty?

    My father was a scientist and not interested in politics. Since you are speaking to me, and not my father, I can tell you 1. It was a tragic case of friendly fire during the fog of war, not unlike the US attacking a column of Canadian troops in Afghanistan several years ago. But I can tell you have a low attention span, and can't resist bringing up non sequiturs and ad hominem attacks.
    Can you focus, or does your chosen name reflect the chaotic workings of your brain? You still haven't shown me any evidence of where I made any assertion that "all Arabs are filthy Jew haters" or anything suggesting that I feel that way, or shown me where I advocated Israelis killing civilians. Can you show me where I said that instead of asking irrelevant questions about the what my father thought of the Liberty?

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:52 pm

    "Condemning the skinheads in an effort to frame Raed Saleh as the Palestinian equivalent is a nice tactic, but it is dishonest. "

    Saleh and Kahane Chai "activists" are all cut from the same cloth. They are belligerent, demagogic and dangerous people. I can condemn Jewish hooliganism without praising Arab thugs like Saleh, unlike you, Avi.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:49 pm

    "Raed Saleh does not promote or condone hate speech, despite Israel’s attempts at re-branding him."

    Raed Salah has been recorded saying that Jews baked blood into matzah.

    If that isn't hate speech and incitement, what is?

    Despite Salah's odious statements, I don't think he should have been prosecuted for that--I'm a free speech fundamentalist.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:43 pm

    The worst thing about the Hurndall shooting was the railroading of Tayser al Heib, the young Israeli Bedouin soldier who was convicted of it. I sent him a special Eid package during his incarceration.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:41 pm

    "Then explain to me why you think your country was justified in killing Rachel Corrie and Tristan Anderson."

    Rachel Corrie effectively committed suicide by playing hide-and-seek in the mud where the bulldozer operator could not see her. Last I heard Tristan Anderson was still alive, although it should be remembered that the Nilin/Bilin demonstrations are not peaceful protests. I've done reserve duty on similar occasions, and the so-called "demonstrators" are out to hurt me and my fellow soldiers and border policemen. We try to avoid using lethal force as much as possible. In the case of Anderson, he was unfortunately injured by a tear gas canister. Certainly, he chose to participate in a dangerous activity, however, if it was the intent to kill him, we would have no problem doing so.

    As for Furkan Dogan, is he one of the Turkish Hamas supporters who refused to let the boat be boarded during an inspection that was part of a lawful blockade? Was he one of the gang that attacked, stabbed and shot at the IDF soldiers that were enforcing the blockade? Sounds like he was risking his life by participating in such activity. Oh, well. I hope more young people don;t get such a stupid idea in their head.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    "One minute you’re a people come to recover their ancient land all for one, one for all, and the next, just a poor old guy with a long beard and a religion everybody hates you for."

    We did indeed regain sovereignty in a mere *sliver* of our historic homeland in 1948-49, nevertheless many of us were expelled from significant parts of it--namely the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem as well as the Gush Etzion villages. In war and its aftermath, tragic consequences often befall civilian populations. So it was for many of the Arabs in areas taken by Israel in 1948-49 (although many Arabs remained to become part of the thriving Israeli Arab population, which includes cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, brigadier generals and ambassadors for Israel) and so it was for all the Jews in areas that fell to Jordan's Arab Legion until Israel recovered those areas in 1967.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:12 pm

    "Oh! Your Israeli parents shuttled off to the US so that you could be born with dual citizenship! You wouldn’t believe how often we hear that story."

    You still haven't shown me where I said that all Israeli violence against civilians is justified, nor have you shown me where I stated that "all Arabs are filthy Jew haters". But you were very confident that I said that--when you tick off "check", "check. on your list of my "sins." So far, only one "count" of your "indictment" against me has been accurate--that I'm Israeli. You want me to make a confession like Daniel Pearl?

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 8:03 pm

    "Oh! Your Israeli parents shuttled off to the US so that you could be born with dual citizenship!...I guess there’s no better way to plant a fifth column."

    Sure, every Israeli who is a post-doc at MIT like my dad was in the late 196s0 and who accepted teaching positions in the Midwest really just wanted his kids to be a "fifth column" in the US. I guess it had hing to do with the educational quality of MIT.

    So are all the Arabs who attend and teach at American institutions of higher learning also doing it merely to surreptitiously obtain US citizenship for their kids?

    FYI, although I've been living in the US on and off for the past two decades of adulthood, I've paid my share of taxes in the US, but I've only once deigned to vote in a US election (New York City mayoral), so I think the US benefits more from me than I benefit from it.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 7:53 pm

    "Say what? I thought the friggin British gave us the country, you know, the “Balfour letter” and all that."

    The Balfour Declaration was one of a contradictory series of promises made to Jewish nationalists (aka Zionists) , where theyt said "His Majesty's government looks with favour upon the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish Natianal Home" and Arab nationalists, where the Brits promised a greater unified Arab state in the wake of the defeated Ottoman Empire.

    In any case, the British had backtracked and reneged on Balfour Declaration in the White Papers of 1930 and 1939, and by the 1940s were openly hostile to the idea of an independent Jewish polity in their colony.

    "Anotherwords, you got what you wanted out of them, and then were ready to murder them, women and children included,

    Actually, when it came to the King David Hotel bombing, the mainstream leadership of the Yishuv condemned the Etzel's attack. Although many civilians were indeed killed in the attack (in large part because of the failure of the British to evacuate the hotel despite the warning given by Etzel prior to the bomb detonating), it must be remembered that the King David Hotel served as British military headquarters and a very good case can be made that it was therefore a legitimate military target.

    " when it looked like they might in any way support the rights of the natives.""

    You mean "natives," like most of my father's family, who were indigenous Jews with deep roots in the country going back generations and who were fervent supporters of Zionism? By the 1940s, the British clearly did not support any of the Jews, natives or otherwise.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 7:26 pm

    "Right. And as long as there’s a military person somewhere in a one kilometer radius, Zionists declare open season on any and all civilians nearby as well."

    If that was the case, the Arab civilian death toll would be much higher. You are confusing Israel with today's Libya or Syria in 1982(or Sri Lanka in 2009 in its final assault on the LTTE) .

    But your attention span is not that good, is it? We were disuccing the climate of tit-for-tat violence that existed during the British Mandate in years leading up to the independence of the Israeli state, but your muddled mind brought up a non sequitur regarding IDF retaliations against Hamas rockets.

    "I didn’t say anything about “Arab” bombs. Why do you people always say Arab anyway?

    It's much shorter to say "Arab bombs" rather than "bombs rigged by, deployed and detonated by Arabs," isn't it? A discriminating reader understands that the explosive devices themselves has no ethnic leaning. Since we are discussing the 19320s-1940s during the British Mandate, I have no problem calling bombs set up by groups such as Etzel and LeHi "Jewish bombs".

    And why are you sensitive about calling Arabs, Arabs? I wasn't aware that it was a pejorative term. This would have been news to Fawzi al Kaukji, who headed the Arab Liberation Army in 1948 to fight against the Jews. (Again, NB: The word "Palestinian" was not yet favored by most Arab nationalist opponents of Zionism.) Why do you think it was named the ALA and what do you think is the proper way to discuss munitions deployed by Arab groups that use the word "Arab" in their names?

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 6:48 pm

    "Show me where the ethnic Germans invaded the lands of the German Jews, drove a million of them from their homes and set up a German state while leaving the indigenous Jewish population in refugee camps."
    I can also show you where millions from the ethnic German civilian populations in places like the Sudetenland, East Prussia, Silesia were expelled to join their ethnic kinsmen in Germany after Germany lost a war that it started. It often happens that the civilian populations that support the losing side in a war suffer consequences.

    I can show you that Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Old City of Jerusalem by Jordanian Arab forces who wanted to create a Judenrein area in the parts of the former British Mandate of Palestine that they occupied and annexed. But I guess you think that's ok.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 6:39 pm

    "“Palestinians never existed!” Check.

    You have awful reading comprehension, don't you? My own father was a "Palestinian", his birth certificate and British Mandatory ID documents said so. However, at the time nobody thought of "Palestinian" as describing a particular nationality. It was the name the British called the area--and residents of the Mandate were dubbed Palestinians--nothing more. Nevertheless, I (and other sane people) recognize that the local Arabs have an attachment to the land and I appreciate that they have started to call themselves "Palestinians". It's certainly their right to adopt that name. They can call themselves Leprechauns or Hobbits if they wish, too!

    “Israeli violence against civilians is justified!” Check. “All Arabs are filthy Jew-haters!” Check"

    Now, the first thing I quoted from you might just be faulty reading comprehension on your part, but the above goes beyond that. Show me where I said violence against civilians is justified or that all Arabs are filthy Jew-haters. Really, find one word in anything I wrote that suggests I believe that "all Arabs are flithy Jewhaters" One word, one sentence.

    "Well, at least there’s no doubt this guy is Israeli."

    I am indeed an Israeli citizen, and actually my father was the 18th generation in his family to be born in Eretz Yisrael (that can be counted--on his mother's side they go back at least 500 years that can be verified). That's a lot longer than many of the Arabs that have recently started calling themselves "Palestinian".

    I was born in Boston and raised in weird-ass places like Lincoln, Nebraska, though.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    Come on, Mikhael, don’t you wish they’d blown up a few more Nazis when they had the chance? Wouldn’t you really like to go back in time and show them how to make suicide belts?

    If one believed in childish counterfactuals, and rewriting history it would be lovely if an independent and strong Israel existed prior to the Nazi rise to power. Since I'm not a psycho, I would not have condoned wanton terror attacks on German civilian buses and trains in the 1930s, prior to the outbreak of the war, although they certainly got what they deserved when Bomber Harris let loose on them.

    In any case, the fondest wish of the Jews of pre-WW2 Germany was to integrate and assimilate into German society, not to replace it with a Jewish state. Obviously, this was a tragic delusion on their part. Certainly, Palestinian Arabs do not wish to assimilate and integrate into Jewish Israeli society, nor should they. Many of them do, however,wish to eliminate the Hebrew-speaking Israeli-Jewish society.
    Moreover, the thuggish behavior of the Kahane Chai skinheads described in this article (which I don't condone and neither does the Israeli government) is a reaction to things like terror bombs in the central bus station, whereas in 1930s Germany Nazi thugs were encouraged to smash Jewish shops and attack German Jews by the government.

    There is no comparison and anyone who thinks there is is a fool.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 5:34 pm

    "See? No visible bruises, no crime! Gee, thanks for your input, Mikhael."

    If someone is physically assaulted, they have the right to press charges, bruises or no bruises. Did the woman press charges who was allegedly attacked by the so-called activists press charges, yes or no? Yelling at someone on the street is not the equivalent of physically attacking someone. If they persisted in their activity after the police instructed them to stop and refused to leave the area, then I agree they can and should be arrested for disturbing the peace.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    No, as I admitted, the article didn't use the word לעצור --which denotes "arresting" someone in the context of police activity (which has a specific legal meaning)

    As you stated it said לעכב , which in the context of police work can also mean "to detain", which is how it is properly translated -rather than "delay"

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    "Oh I get it. Potsherd is questioning Israel so obviously he must be an anti-Semite."

    No, you don't get it.

    "justicewillprevail" said the similarities between 1930s Germany and modern-day Israel were staggering. Show me where the German Jews routinely targeted ethnic German civilians and made territorial demands of Germany in the 1930s. I don't justify the thuggish behavior of the Kahane Chai hooligans. If they commit a crime, they should be arrested.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 5:18 pm

    "Zionist violent attacks including the use of hand grenades, letter bombs and machine guns against British and Palestinian targets predates any so-called “Arab” violence. "

    You want me to make a list of outrages where Jewish civilians were targeted by Arabs during the British Mandate? Were there also attacks on innocent Arabs by Jews? Sure. This was a time of internecine strife where extremist elements on both sides sometimes targeted civilians on both sides. If you're concerned with the attacks on the British (are you saying that British military personnel were not a legitimate target of resistance?), have you forgotten about the Arab uprising against the British? I guess that was the "good" uprising against British rule, and when the Jews did the same thing a decade later, that was the "bad" uprising.

    "This is no different than holocaust denial. Both are attempts at revising history to fit a political ideological agenda. "

    Holocaust deniers contend that there was no Nazi plan to exterminate the world's Jews, despite abundant documentary and physical evidence.
    On the other hand, I and other sane people don't deny that there was a pan-Arab nationalist movement that sought to impede the progress of the Jewish national movement. Said national movement regarded all of the Middle East where Arabs once ruled to be an indivisible unit, that belonged to the Arab watan in perpetuity, including the part of Suriya Kabira that came to be ruled by the British in 1917 following the defeat of the Ottomans. I don't even deny that in recent decades a particular unique "Palestinian" Arab identity has emerged since the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish people's historic homeland. I do deny that there was a specific "Palestinian" national identity in the first half of the 20th century, or at any period of time prior to that. Therefore, it is an anachronism to speak of "Palestinians" during that period if one is referring to a specific national group. My father was born in Jerusalem in 1932--technically he was a "Palestinian"(as that was the name British colonial overlords bestowed upon the territory). His mother, who was also born in Jerusalem in 1907 ,was somehow born in Ottoman Turkey though. Nobody spoke of "Palestinians" as constituting any distinct ethnicity or national unit during this period, not even the "Palestinians" themselves.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 1:42 pm with 12 replies

    "Mikhael seems to equate a mere removal from the scene for an israeli where any chance a group of palestinians caught beating up a jew woukld get off with a scolding and set free is unthinkable"

    The Hebrew language of the article doesn't make clear if the Arab woman was physically attacked by the Kahane Hai skinheads. The word used is "taqfu", which could also suggest verbal harassment. Sounds like there was a shoving match. If the woman was physically assaulted, she should press charges. At any rate, as I said before, even if they were treated too leniently why does Mondoweiss say that the police did "nothing", when the article clearly says the troublemakers were detained and escorted from the scene?

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 1:36 pm with 16 replies

    "They would have removed Palestinians doing this directly into prison"

    Not necessarily. Raed Salah head of Israel's Islamic Movement and a provacateur if there ever was one, led several demonstrations and most of his participants were not arrested.

    In the case of these Jewish d*ckheads, these guys were yelling and harassing members of the public. The police stopped them, interrogated and escorted from the scene. If charges had been pressed against them, or if they had not complied with the police's lawful order to cease their unruly behavior, then they could be arrested for creating a public disturbance. That did not happen.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 1:28 pm with 2 replies

    "ahhh, not really. as you said yourself the police made no arrests."

    The police made no arrests, but they detained, interrogated and removed the miscreants from the scene. For an arrest to be made, a criminal complaint has to be lodged. Even if one feels that that the troublemakers were dealt with too leniently, the post deliberately misquotes the article and omits those details so as to give the impression that the police did *nothing* when such is clearly not the case.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    "And how did that peaceful, passive nonprotest thing work out for them?"

    I guess it didn't advance the German Jews' cause of dismantling the German state, expelling its people and replacing it with a Jewish state. Because the situations are so exactly alike that must be what the German Jews wanted, right?

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Jews in Jerusalem in the 1940′s, on the other hand, were quite fond of using explosives against hotels and such.

    Are you trying to say that there were no Arab bombs during the British Mandate period against Jewish civilian targets in the 1930s and 1940s? It certainly is true that there was tit-for-tat terroristic violence from both sides, Arab and Jewish alike (although there was no "Palestinian terror" at the time because the concept of Palestinian nation did not yet exist).

    Of course it's true that the Etzel bombed the King David Hotel in 1946, which served as headquarters for the British military during their occupation of our country.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 11:53 am with 23 replies

    "The police made no arrests when a group attacked a Palestinian woman last week near the bus station."

    Actually, the Hebrew text says that although the police made no arrests, they detained the skinheads on suspicion of racist incitement and removed them from the scene.

    The article was deliberately mistranslated to make it seem as if the police did nothing and stood idly by and let these kids harass innocent passersby.

  • Mikhael March 28, 2011 at 11:44 am with 55 replies

    "I am struggling to see the difference between the pre 1939 atmosphere of intimidation"

    Yeah, Jews in Berlin and Frankfurt regularly detonated themselves and fellow passengers on commuter buses and left explosives full of nail bombs at the Hauptbahnhof. It's exactly the same.

• Is this anti-Semitic?
  • Mikhael January 4, 2011 at 7:54 pm

    We proud Israeli Jews have overcome the diaspora complexes of American Jews like Phil with their girly parking skills.

• Israeli spoof of brainwashing -- in kindergarten
  • Mikhael March 7, 2011 at 9:24 am

    "zionists chose their neighborhood "

    They chose it the same way any nation "chose" its neighborhood. Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people in its historic homeland, and in the case of the Jewish people, that homeland happens to be Israel.

  • Mikhael January 4, 2011 at 8:11 pm with 27 replies

    Ethan--

    Yes, and after that Hezbollah-mocking satirical clip was aired, Hezbollah supporters rioted and the show was taken off the air, as the link you posted makes clear.

    As hophmi pointed out, Israel is a free society where self-criticism and satire reign--this is often lacking in Arab/Muslim societies.

    Back in the 1990s, shortly after the PA was established in the West Bank, al Jazeera aired a documentary about the PLO in Lebanon and there was a brief clip of an anti-Arafat protest in Beirut where it showed a demonstrator holding a poster of Arafat with a shoe draped over it, a mortal insult in Arab society. Al Jazeera was banned for months from the Palestinian territories as a result of that offense and its reporters could only operate from inside Israel, of all places.

• Mystery solved: flotilla cargo contents revealed!
  • Mikhael June 1, 2010 at 7:26 pm with 2 replies

    Notice what sheer bloody vandalism has been carried out on the cartons and palleted goods in these inspections.

    Doesn't look like anything was vandalized to me. The boxes were opened and inspected. This could have been avoided. Last year, they went through the same charade, the be macho, Israelis boarded last year's flotilla, the "activists" made their little speeches about how the blockade is bad, the cargo was inspected and then it made its way to overland to Gaza. This year, the other ships went through this, but the Mavi Marmara had hotheads who decided to be macho and stab Israeli soldiers, and beat them with rods and they got themselves dead.

• Why do they hate us?
  • Mikhael June 1, 2010 at 5:14 pm with 5 replies

    It was war. In int’l waters, the Turkish ship is Turkish territory. That means that Israel did declare war on Turkey for its intrusion and massacre.

    Not exactly. Israel is at war with the regime in Gaza, for good reason, and thus has the right to enforce blockades against a belligerent entity that is de jure and de facto at war with it. That means anything going in and out of Gaza must at the very lease be inspected and vetted by Israel. This flotilla chose to ignore this. The other ships let themselves be boarded, and the Shayetet 13 were expecting at most a little agitprop theater, some pro forma mugging for the cameras (as was the case with last year's flotilla) but these thugs chose to be macho and put up a resistance. They stabbed several shoulders and shot at them, and they got themselves killed. Mission accomplished!

• A window into the rightwing American mind re Israel/Palestine
  • Mikhael January 30, 2010 at 11:43 am with 1 replies

    Avi wrote:

    "The Cannon group brought us such garbage as Delta Force (with Chuck Norris) where the bad guys are Palestinian “terrorists” who hijack a plane with a few Holocaust survivors with American passports and Jewish names on board. Of course, the Holocaust survivors get singled out by the hijackers and are forced to relive the horror of yesteryear at the hands of the evil Palestinians."

    While I might agree that films in the Cannon Group's ouvre (Golan and Globus) were lacking in artistic merit and subtlety--did it occur to him that the scene he mentioned that was depicted in "Delta Force" of the elderly Jews being singled out and killed by Palestinian terrorists were shown because it actually happened? Leon Klinghoffer and the Achille Lauro, anyone? Do you really have such short memories?

  • Mikhael January 30, 2010 at 11:36 am

    Richard Parker wrote "Jews deserve some recognition, with conspicuous partying events at the heights of American politics--But Muslims get nothing of the sort. Eid al Fitr is not celebrated at all, anywhere"

    Leaving aside the question of whether it is appropriate for the US to officially to recognize the establishment of any religion--I wonder where Richard Parker has been . G.W. Bush held an official White House iftar dinner every year during his term, marking the conclusion of Ramadan fasting.Obama is continuing the tradition of public commemoration of Ramadan, Hajj, Eid and Hajj begun by Bush.

    Moreover, as someone who resides in NYC, I can attest that the city publicly recognizes Eid as a holiday where alternate side parking rules are suspended to help Muslim worshipers find convenient parking next to their mosques, just as these rules are suspended for Jewish, Christian and Hindu observances.

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