Max Blumenthal & Yoav Shamir, cruising for hate in Jerusalem and elsewhere

Max Blumenthal went to Jerusalem in search of hate, a specific kind of hate,
Max came to Jerusalem shopping for racial hatred and followed the booze,
The easy way, not the most reliable way,
When the booze talk, sometimes the heart talks, sometimes stupidity talks.
If people have something strong to say about president Obama Cairo speech on the eve that speech, that usually suggests stupidity.
Stupidity is no excuse, but did anyone even tried to listen or the title and the slurs were enough?
“I’m a tea bag,” said the first one between the slurs and the insults and the alcoholic mist, “President Obama is going to take way my gun”, he said.
Now, what was it? Tea bag? ‘Take away my gun’?
These are all American things, right wing American issues.
He may be Jewish but the anger he expressed has nothing to do with Israel or with anything Jewish, rather with domestic American matters. The ‘tea bags’ is a right wing American movement that opposes president Obama domestic policies. In Israel those issues are mostly unknown, because domestic American issues, such as the gun debate, important though they are, they also have the good fortune of not affecting the world’s oil supply, thus remaining internal for Americans to solve among themselves. So this particular drunk in Jerusalem, expressed anger over concerns other Americans share, though in a more civil and sober manner. Most of them by the way are not Jewish.
Whether his conduct represents all the American right and all the ‘Tea bags’ I don’t know, but did the 9-11 conspiracy fruitcakes represent the entire American left? No they did not, and the things they were saying about their president at the time, were far worse, and without the help of alcohol.
The second star of the clip said that he worked in the Obama campaign, and remembered his grandmother’s tattooed number from Auschwitz.
From the few coherent sentences this young drunk spat, it was clear he felt betrayed by his idol, president Barack Obama, that is an ugly fleeing, but not the racial hatred Max Blumenthal prepped the viewers to expect. If the surrounding political environment were different, no doubt these two drunks would have been at each other throat.
There was a third star on that clip, an ultra orthodox looking American Jew who admitted without the help of alcohol for not voting for Obama and for not liking president Obama. What a shock, someone who did not vote for president Obama.
Max Blumenthal tried to paint the whole Israeli society as racist in its hatred to the US president, by using a few intoxicated non Israeli Americans that had no common theme of complaint among them, other then alcohol and bad language. It was an act of deception that had clearly worked, as all the ugly offshoots on YouTube show.

It may not be useful to cry over spilled milk, except this has a sequel so to speak. Yoav Shamir is a known Israeli documentary filmmaker whose politics are closer to that of Blumenthal’s. In his latest film ‘Defamation’ he went touring the world in search of anti-Semitism in order NOT TO FIND IT. Early in the movie he came upon an incident at a mixed NYC neighborhood where Afro American and ultra orthodox Jewish live together. In that incident an Afro American youth throw a stone at a bus with 3 years old Jewish children inside. Shamir followed that story to the streets of that neighborhood, were he asked 4 randomly encountered young Afro American residents for their version of the story. The 3 men and one woman he interviewed knew nothing about that incident but they knew Jews very well, “Jews always complain”, “Jews always the first to get welfare”, “Jews have a lot of influence”, “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion tells you how Jews control things”. If they were white, even Yoav Shamir would have to agree they are anti-Semites. And they were not drunk, they weren’t stoned, they did not slur, but they had strong coherent yet despicable views on Jews.
So what am I, an Israeli Jew who lives miles away from NYC, should conclude about Afro Americans from that scene?
Should I follow Max Blumental example and generalize, or should I also remind myself that Stephen T. Johns, the guard that was killed at Holocaust museum shooting in Washington DC was also an Afro American?

There is no doubt that racial hatred is a bad and evil thing, when it is there, and alcohol is no defense, nor does stupidity. But when expressed without the help of alcohol, it is far worse. And when someone acts upon it, as Max Blumenthal did, creating a lie, and generalizing it on an entire population in order to agitate between nations, that is far worse.

As for black and Jews relationships, we can all choose which path to take.

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Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the core problem, David Masters and Si’akh Lokhamim

In Btvs booklet about the 40^th anniversary of the occupation, Steven David Masters, their second president elect, demonstrate the core problem with his co believers approach to the realities Israel and Israelis face.
In his piece he glorifies an anthology of conversations with veterans of the 1967 war made by Amos Oz, Muki Tzur and other members of the kibbutz movement a year after that war. It was called “The seventh day; soldiers talks about the six day war”, or in Hebrew ‘Si’akh Lokhamim’, (si’ahk is Hebrew for a conversation that is more meaningful then just talk).

This Si’akh Lokhamim was an important soul searching experience for a lot of Israelis in the years after the victory of the six-day war. But with 40 years insight it had generated some criticism. That criticism focuses on the exclusion of combatants who were not members of kibbutzim from Si’akh Lokhamim. Most notably among them are the students of ‘Mercaz Harav’ the religious academic institution in Jerusalem from which the settlers’ movement came, but also and probably more important are the non European Jews from the development towns and the low-income neighborhoods in the cities.
The reasons for this exclusion may have been just a matter of convenience, both social and psychological. It is easier for a researcher to interview people with the same background as his, and it is easier for them open up to him. The may have also been an element of elitism, as some critics here in Israel will say, after all many of the country leaders in those days did came from the kibbutzim, others will point to the heavy price the kibbutzim paid in that war, because they where the elite they served in and lead many of the combat units in the IDF and the price they paid was disproportionally higher then other segments of the society. An inner discussion was therefore badly needed.
Whatever the reasons, this exclusion, which Masters applauds, is now blamed for what is now known in Israel as the left wing bubble or the Tel Aviv bubble, the inability of major left wing movements such as ‘Peace Now’ and the Meretz party to reach to other sections of the Israeli society beyond the kibbutzim and the Urban Ashkenazi elite.

Glorifying a bubble suggests that the glorifier himself lives in a bubble. And a good indicator of that is the image he has of Si’akh Lokhamim, because that image, of a moral outcry against the occupation is wrong. Si’akh Lokhamim did discuss morality, the morality of war, of killing other people, of getting killed, and leading others to their death, and the feeling towards those responsible to that death, the leaders of both sides.
Back then in 1968 the Israeli equation of Ashkenazi kibbutznic = left wing peace activist did not exist, and not all the views expressed in Si’akh Lokhamim will be considered left wing peace activists talk today, such as the views of Aharon and Lotan at the beginning of the book, about the Israeli relation to Jerusalem and the security importance of the newly gained territories. Lotan also recalls how in the days leading to the war a Jewish shop keeper started making a lot of many selling knives to local Israeli Arabs, who were buying them in big numbers, when he realized what they were for (killing Jews, though the book does not say so explicitly) he closed his bossiness. In Ramat Yochanan a discussion between two generations took place, and in it both father and son said the war strengthened their connection to the land, and other war veterans spoke of hating the enemy, the Arabs. These are hardly left wing views, especially not the kind that fit the rigid worldview of Btvs, the most dominate of them was the realization the if the war had ended differently the other side would not have such soul searching conversations.
It is an irony of history that this left wing bubble sees its own origin through the crust of its bubble. Here in Israel since the beginning of the Oslo process, Palestinian mass murder campaigns had blown it up into more and more diminishing sizes. What is the situation on the other side of the Atlantic I do not know, but clearly with at least one group of political activists it as strong as if the Oslo process hasn’t even begun.

This is a continuation of an earlier post.

175 years to the Great Plunder of Safed

On June 15 1834, in the midst of a regional crisis due to a war between Muhammad Ali’s Egypt and the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Arab mob, incited by a ‘prophet’ named Muhammad Damoor, attacked the Jews of Safed, forcing them to flee and hide in the inhospitable conditions of the surrounding mountains. For 33 days they brutalized the Jews of that holly city, seeking hidden treasures in the Jewish houses that they decimated. In the middle of that carnage they stopped, assembled and democratically decided to continue, and did so until forces from the Lebanon interfere on the 17 of July and stopped that forgotten pogrom.
That crime is worth remembering for two reasons, it shows that the Palestinian conduct of attacking and murdering unarmed Jews predates not only the 1967 occupation and even the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, but it also predate Zionism. In 1878 Jews from Jerusalem and Safed got organized and founded the first Zionist communities of Petakh – Tikvah and Rosh – Pinah, marking the official beginning of the Zionist movement as far as mainstream history is concern. The second reason is that this was a regular pogrom, no different then any other experienced by Jews in other parts of the world throughout the 19 century, in Russia, Yemen, east and central Europe, North Africa and Iran.
It was the consistency of these pogroms throughout the Jewish world, not only in 19 century but also before and after, that had lead to the evolvement of the Jewish national liberation movement, Zionism. Each pogrom alone demonstrated the helplessness and hopelessness of the Jewish condition. Jews felt they had become a dust of a people, both as a collective and as individuals. But it wasn’t just one pogrom, it was endless, and Zionism showed one way to end it, one that worked.

We have every right to be afraid of a Palestinian state.

It may be the right solution.
It probably is the right the solution, two states one besides the other, but given history, given the fact of what they did with every territory we handed them, we the Israelis, have every right to be afraid of a Palestinian state.







And there is no need to explain why.

Akiva Eldar article in the SF Sentinel, hatemongering in America

One can only wonder and speculate as to what drove Akiva Eldar, the political commentator of Haaretz to publish such an irrational and emotional article at the SF Sentinel.
Under the inflaming title “What would happen if Israel defeats Obama” Eldar builds into a short remark of disappointment from the current US administration that was made by an unnamed “senior Israeli official” in Jerusalem things that are not there. With the opening sentence “You had to read it twice to believe it” he create the false impression that this remark was somehow surprising, while in fact due to the opposing views the two governments has over the settlements issue, various analysts had expected worse, and still do. Through the literary tool of false/imaginary quotes from the Israeli government such as “What chutzpah on the part of Barack Obama…”, and “Otherwise Jerusalem will reassess its special relationship with Washington,” he baselessly attributes to Israel and its government attitudes of arrogance and dominance towards the Obama administration. He then goes on with and the apocalyptic question “What will happen if we destroy the prestige of the strongest man in the world and portray him as an empty vessel, incapable of halting the settlement program of a U.S. protégé? Will an Israeli “victory” strengthen the status of the U.S. in the international campaign against Iran?” this is a fear that isn’t grounds in reality, even billion illegal outposts cannot affect the American administration; they can only serve to alienate Israel. Yet Akiva Eldar seem hysterically convinced such conspiracies are on their way. And all that paranoid fantasy he bases on a short, minimized, and totally expected remark by an Israeli official.
This could have been excused as some sort on sarcastic inner Israeli humor, but he did not write this to an Israeli public but to an American one and on the eve of Obama speech in Cairo. And it is this that makes it a hatemongering piece and all the mudslinging at the Israeli right that composes the rest of his SF Sentinel piece; shows clearly his motive, he hates the Israeli right – a lot.
The question thus is not WHY he tried to agitate Americans into an internal Israeli dispute, but what came over him.
A more calculus Akiva Eldar exist elsewhere. This is clearly not a representative of one of his finer moments. Sadly that happens a lot to the Israeli left recently.

Something for Shavuot: Ancient Judaism and physical (racial) differences

Today is the holiday of Shavuot, the Jewish festival of the first harvest also called Bikurim, first harvest in Hebrew. It is also the commemoration of the day when the law of the Torah was given to people of Israel on Mount Sinai. Such a day is as good as any to bring some of that ancient Jewish wisdom to view and see how wise it truly is or not. This particular episode is more relevant to our times then to Shavuot.
In the Mishna, the precursor of the Talmud, at treatise Bekhorot (firstborn), chapter 45, section 72, Reish Lakish (also written Resh Lekesh in English), a rabbi from the late second centaury AD, says:
“A tall man shall not marry a tall woman or they might bring a mast, a dwarf man shall not marry a dwarf woman or they might bring a pinky. A white man shall not marry a white woman or they might bring a bohak (an ancient word for albino), a black man shall not marry a black woman or they might bring a tapiakh (a supposed opposite condition to albino).

Now what did the rabbi mean?
It is clear from his words that the physical differences we refer today, as racial differences did not exist 1900 years ago, but why should interracial couplings be favored over same race couplings?
Here are some possible answers, none of which are offered by mainstream Judaism since this story is largely forgotten.

1) He was a fool, there is no such thing as an opposite condition to albino, and there are black people that are albinos.

2) “Brown skin rules”, since the dominate shade of skin in the ancient civilized was brown and that’s a fact of history, maybe he was a brown supremacist, even though no such movement or philosophy is known.

3) He was an incurable romantic who truly and whole-heartedly believed in opposites attract.

4) There really is a Jewish conspiracy to have black man mate with white daughters and Reish Lakish is behind it all.

5) Good business and good politics, here is another historic fact, back then what we call today interracial marriage was good business and good politics, since tribes on both sides of the Mediterranean had accesses to resources and or various skills. This was the background to the rise of the Severan dynasty in Roman Empire, an Afro Phoenician Italian dynasty of emperors from the same time frame.

6) Metaphors, marriage as a metaphor for thinking differently, outside the box, outside ones own tribe. This is possible for several reasons; first, metaphors were vastly used by the rabbis of the era. Second, the rabbi’s nickname Reish Lakish indicates that his specialty was in challenging his pupils and listeners to think. Reish means head or top of.., Lakish is the one who presents a kushia, kushia is Aramaic for question, a question that challenge people to think even if they do not intend to answer, therefore Reish Lakish, was the top man of his era in challenging people to think. Forth, this is not a commandment or a verdict, god isn’t mention, and there are no references to verses from the bible or to verdict of previous rabbis, all mandatory in passing Jewish religious legislation then and now. Therefore the albino and its opposite condition are metaphors just like the mast and the pinky, metaphors for something silly; something silly that people become when they close their mind. Fifth his own biography shows that he was the kind of person who would know what it is like to “step out of the box” out of one life style and into another. Before been a rabbi he was a ruffian, maybe even a bandit, who made his living as a gladiator. The tragedy of his story is that he fell prey into the kind boxed thinking he advised against. While debating the issue of purity of weapons with his close friend and brother in law, Rabbi Yochanan, his friend burst at him saying “You would know” a familiar expression of intolerance and prejudice from our own era. Having something like this coming out of his best friend mouth, and may be even heart, broke his heart, and he fell ill and died.

Now, putting aside this tragic turn, each can choose his or hers idea of what is the more likely interpretation, I of course go for the last 2 options. There is always room for other ideas, on the comic side as well as the serious side. I just hope like Reish Lakish, it will challenge us to think.
And though Shavuot is nearing its end Happy Shavuot Everybody.

Demonstrating my argument, Jonathan Steele at the Guardian

Honestreporting points to this pro murder article by Jonathan Steele the Guardian senior foreign affairs correspondent. An article that proves exactly what I was worried about, in my previous entry. In it Jonathan Steele’s sympathies to the Palestinians crosses the line into pro murder advocacy when he says that all Arab must support Palestinian resistance, a “resistance” that is overwhelmingly the deliberate systematic mass murder of unarmed civilians. Even more so when, through someone else’s quote, says there is no moral ground for boycotting Hamas, according to such an argument it is moral for Hamas to murder women and children and to break the international agreements their Fatah rivals signed on; and to all those he added a twisted perception of the Israel US relationship.
But what is his starting argument? Lieberman’s statement of no to a Palestinian state. Now, it is true that Jonathan Steele and others like will say what they say, and argue what argue no matter who is Israel’s PM, but why should we make it easy for them?