Opposite and the Same
“It is not the anti-Semitism of men; it is above all, the anti-Semitism of things, the inherent xenophobia of the body social or the body economic under which we suffer” [Vladimir Jabotinsky, Testimony to the Peel Commission House of Lords, London, February 11, 1937].
What did Jabotinsky mean? He was trying to convey the fact that absent the opening of Palestine, millions of Jews were going to die. Jabotinsky, as the Zionist leader, famously distinguished between the “anti-Semitism of persons” and the “anti-Semitism of things”. The former category, made up of individuals [including some Jews] with their particular moral or political shortcomings, can be fought, at least up to a point.
The latter, which has to do with deep-seated social factors, with demographics, and/or with hard, obdurate, ingrained ideology, is another matter entirely. The “Anti-Semitism of Things”, he claimed, is “steady, constant and immutable, and therefore much more formidable” than the “Antifeminism of Men.”
According to Jabotinsky, the “Anti-Semitism of Things” derives from the instinctive discrimination which every normal person makes between his or her “own kind” and all outsiders. It is not the form that matters, but he spirit. In the “climate” of Eastern Europe, it becomes the Jew’s death sentence.
In Jabotinsky’s book, “The War and the Jew”, he assigns 3 chapters to Anti-Semitism. Here, he makes some extraordinary observations. No restoration, in Central or East-Central Europe, will ever make for a durable peace unless the ulcer of Anti-Semitism is exercised. Among the factors, whose interaction has produced this war, the Jewish bane was omnipresent. The war will have been fought in vain, the victory will be worse than a lie if that seed is “left in the ground to poison the future.”
The one special and accursed peculiarity of anti-Semitism [is] its unremitting vitality, its power of accumulating social toxins. It was akin to a bad chronic cold in the head, not a serious disease in itself, but a constant invitation to all other kinds of disease.
Everybody knows that in propaganda, the appeal of love is slow and lumbering in comparison with the appeal of hatred. Hatred is the piquant sauce which accelerates both the swallowing and the digestion of ideas and policies. There is only one ideal object for mass training in collective hate, and that is the Jew.
The author is neither a historian nor a sociologist; he does not profess to explain precisely why this lubricant of anti-Semitism, should be indispensable. Why does it appear so necessary now? He refutes the belief that the cancer of anti-Semitism can be cured by such means as liberal constitutions and League supervision.
Writing in the Washington Examiner on March 07, 2019, Eddie Scarry’s , “Tying Omar’s anti-Semitism to her overseas roots”, interestingly raised a question, “no one is bothering to ask.” He quotes Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C. who had queried, “Why does Omar hold these views about Jews?”
He notes that she has accused Israel, a Jewish state of having “hypnotized the world” and is constantly talking about “their money.” Further, she is sympathetic with Iran, a US adversary and is hostile to Israel, all of which is well documented.
However, Clyburn then defends Omar by “lamenting that many of the media reports surrounding [her] recent controversy have omitted mentioning that Omar, who was born in Somalia, had to flee the country to escape violence—” and adds, “It’s more personal with her. I’ve talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.” His remarks suggest that Omar’s beliefs may seem foreign precisely because her beliefs didn’t form in America.
Admitting that she had to escape violence in Somalia which is about 100% Muslim, one has to wonder how she came to embrace anti-Semitism. Famed author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has the answer in what follows.
Records show that Omar was born in 1982, the youngest of 7 siblings. When she was 2, her mother died. After her father, a teacher, recognized that Somalia was falling apart beyond repair, he elected to engage in a harrowing trip with his children to spend 4 years in Dadaab, a disgusting refugee camp in Kenya.
Thereafter, the family sought asylum in New York in 1992 “the way my father’s family escaped Russian mayhem in 1921.” Omar became a US citizen in 2000, at age 17, six years prior to Melania Trump.
No one is asking what prompted her anti-Semitic prejudice. Whence comes the voluble contempt for the Jewish people? So insightfully, does Andrea Levin, executive director and president of CAMERA [Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America], also pose the question.
She opines that Omar would have likely been exposed to this bigotry in Somalia and Kenya, and might not have escaped it even when she got to America. As MEMRI has documented, numerous mosques in the United States echo the same rabid messages.
It is easier to assess Rashida Tlaib, given her “Palestinian” heritage. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project, Harvard Kennedy School, and author of the books “Infidel” and “Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations”, provides a précis of the given subject in her NY Times “Raised on Hatred” of January 17, 2013.
She, as Omar, hails from Somalia, and informs us that as a child growing up in a Muslim family, constantly heard her mother, other relatives and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered their darkest enemy. Her religious teachers and Mosque preachers set aside extra time to pray for the destruction of Jews.
All over the Middle East, hatred for Jews and Zionists can be found in textbooks for children as young as 3, complete with illustrations with monster-like qualities. Mainstream educational television programs are consistently anti-Semitic. Millions of Muslims have been conditioned to regard Jews not only as the enemies of “Palestine”, but as the enemies of all Muslims, of G-D and of all humanity.
In her appearance on the Skullduggery podcast, Tlaib promoted the argument that her “Palestinian” ancestors suffered “in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust. Because of this, she had a “calming feeling “when thinking about the Holocaust. In the Atlantic famed historian Benny Morris reminds readers that Tlaib’s revisionist account conceals and upends what actually happened. Far from “providing” shelter, the “Palestinian” leadership violently opposed a safe haven for Jews, even collaborating with Hitler.
From 1933 onward, “Palestine’s” Arabs – led by the cleric Muhammad Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – mounted a strident campaign to pressure the British, who governed Palestine, to bar all Jews from entering the country. To press home their demand, in 1936 they launched an anti-British and anti-Zionist rebellion which lasted 3 years. Apart from ejecting the British, the rebellions aim was to coerce London into halting all Jewish entry into “Palestine”.
It has now become firmly established what Tlaib and Omar had in mind when applying for a visit to Israel. The Middle East’s Alexander Joffe spells it out in his “The Tlaib-Omar Show, Controversial Curriculum” of August 28, 2019.”After the ban was announced, it was revealed that the trip was to have been sponsored by a ‘Palestinian’ NGO called Miftah, led by PLO stalwart Hanan Ashrawi.”
Miftah is a leading BDS supporter and has previously posted a variety of literal blood libels regarding Jews on its website while glorifying “Palestinian” terrorists. It should be noted that the proposed itinerary only included “Palestine” and meetings with “Palestinian” and NGO officials.
Israel had every reason to ban Omar and Tlaib according to James Sinkinson, as expressed in his August 25, 2019 article published by JNS, “Omar-Tlaib fracas distracts from the real problems: Anti-Semites in Congress”. He summarizes them :
* Both are anti-Semites. They continue to employ ant-Semitic tropes including Jewish dual loyalties and Jews paying off US politicians.
* Both support the hateful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] movement, which is clearly anti-Semitic, since it denies the right of Jews – unlike any other ethnic group – to self-determination and a nation state in their ancient homeland.
Not always appreciated, because BDS stands for Israel’s destruction, the movement has been overwhelmingly condemned by Congress in bipartisan votes. In addition, Israeli legislators recently passed a law barring supporters of BDS from entering Israel, which Israel has every right to enforce.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out that barring a visit by US Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar was meant t prevent them harming Israel. He stated further that there is no country in the world that respects the US and the American Congress more than Israel. “However the itinerary showed that the Congresswomen’s sole intention was to harm Israel.”
Michael Rubin, author of the widely read, “Trump and the Jews”, is reported in OneNewsNow.com on August 20, 2019 as saying that “Israel kept out hateful troublemakers.” The author, a former mayor of the Israeli city of Shiloh, echoed the established consensus that Omar and Tlaib’s singular goal was to make trouble, by promoting the boycott of Israel and encouraging people to act politically against Israel.
What Rubin has done, in a grand style, is to debunk the key myths which have beset the Jewish nation. As such, Tlaib, Omar and indeed, all those who have been besotted by “Palestinians”, settlements and occupation could regain a lost perspective on major history, commencing with the origins of their flawed beliefs. He asks the question, “have you ever wondered how this whole dispute began ?” and answers, “In the year 63 CE, the Roman rulers exiled the Jews from the Land of Israel, where they had thrived as a sovereign nation for well over a 1.000 years.”
He explains how the Romans renamed the Land, “Palestina”, a Roman derivative of the term “Philistines”, which referred to the nation that was an arch enemy of Israel. It was their attempt to erase Jewish identity of a homeland of a sovereign people. The few who remained, lived in poverty.
Rubin asks yet another significant question.
What nation has ever been exiled from its land, bounced from country to country, suffered unparalleled horrors, yet despite everything, returned to establish itself again as a sovereign nation in its ancient homeland? In parallel, the reality that many of those who know but prefer to ignore, is that the “Palestinian “people were created by the Arabs in 1964, but only becoming official in 1974.
Until then, the Jews were identified as Palestinians and most of the Arabs of the Land of Israel, considered themselves part of “the Arab nation”‘ refusing to use the term Palestinians. At the Rabat Conference in 1974, 10 years after the founding of the PLO, the Arab League by way of a unanimous resolution declared the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, while reaffirming the armed struggle against Israel.
Thus , emerged the illusion of an indigenous, formerly sovereign “Palestinian” people, perhaps the greatest hoax of modern times. One designed to deceive an uninformed public. That it has gained such traction over the years is undoubtedly the fault of most Israeli governments. Governments who continuously speak of peace while the Arabs arguments were formulated on “rights” which were entirely fallacious. As for the so-called refugees, since they arose as a result of the Arab initiated war of 1948,should they not become an Arab responsibility?
As David Rubin astutely proclaims, “Peace can only be achieved if we have a realistic understanding of who we are dealing with and what the facts are.”The fact is each and every Arab leader who has shown willingness to accept Israel’s existence is insistent on East Jerusalem being a capital of a Palestinian state. Indications are that the Israeli majority will entertain this idea.
Despite denials, Jason D. Greenblatt, Assistant to the President [Trump] and Special Representative for International Negotiations has resigned, presumably because he recognizes this impasse. Trump would be well advised not to proceed with his “Deal of the Century “unless he has some extraordinary plan and this is very doubtful.
Our claims when based on history and international law are the only option. Donald Trump is reminiscent of the British officer, Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, who as the representative of Balfour’s Foreign Office in Palestine, found himself “alone out here among gentiles, in upholding Zionism”. Nevertheless, he argued that support for the Jewish National Home was unassailably in Britain’s interest “—We cannot befriend both Arab and Jew. My proposal is based on befriending the people who are the more likely to be loyal friends – the Jews—-Though we have done much for the Arabs, they do not know the meaning of gratitude, moreover they would be a liability; the Jew would be an asset—-the Jews have moreover proved their fighting qualities since the Roman occupation in Jerusalem. The Arab is a poor fighter, though an adept at looting, sabotage and murder—“.