I've Heard That Song Before

---

By most measures, it would seem the Israelis are winning the Palestinian-Israeli war. They control and colonize Arab lands, enjoy military superiority and total American support, and unilaterally define most diplomatic parameters of the conflict. Yet this may be a mistaken assessment:

---

The Daily Star (Lebanon)
by Rami G. Khouri - 12/30/06

Israel's dominance may be going into slow reversal

The Palestinians and Arabs are perhaps starting to win some battles, while Israel is losing some of its dominance. Seven events in the past five months seem to lend credence to this view.

The first was Hizbullah's ability to fight Israel for 34 days this summer, and on the 34th day to keep firing hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory. Morality and political consequences aside, this reflected a truly historic combination of political will, technical military proficiency, and a capacity to remain shielded from Israeli, Western and Arab spies and infiltrators. No Arab party had ever crossed this threshold in the century-long conflict with Zionism and Israel.

The second event was Israel's (and Washington's) having to accept the August cease-fire resolution at the United Nations, after the United States had given Israel weeks of extra warfare to hit Hizbullah. A determined Arab group forced Israel and the US to accept a political resolution instead of military victory, and the cease-fire resolution included measures that Israel had previously always rejected - addressing the occupied Shebaa Farms area in the context of the Israel-Lebanon conflict, rather than as occupied Syrian land, and specifying the return or exchange of Israeli and Lebanese prisoners.

Israel quietly dropped its previous position that the two Israeli soldiers snatched by Hizbullah on July 12 had to be returned unconditionally. The stationing of over 20,000 Lebanese and international troops in Southern Lebanon has long been an Israeli demand, but also came at a price: limiting Israel's scope of action in Lebanon and its overflights.

The third noteworthy development was Israel's accepting a cease-fire with the Palestinians in Gaza in late November, after it had said that it would not end its attacks and would do anything required to retrieve Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Palestinian guerrillas had snatched from an Israeli Army post on the Gaza-Israel border. The juxtaposition of events in Lebanon and Gaza this summer was powerfully telling. Israel's once vaunted military prowess and frightening deterrence failed to stop Lebanese and Palestinian fighters from abducting three of its soldiers from border areas. Israel's subsequent severe, savage military attacks and mass punishment of civilian populations failed to make the Arabs cough up the soldiers. Weeks or months later, Israel swallowed its words, put away its ultimatums and threats, and accepted cease-fires in both cases.

The fourth important recent development is that Israel has been unable to stop the firing of rudimentary Qassam rockets into its southern region by Palestinian militants. Israeli military might and intelligence capabilities - along with killing some 400 Palestinians since June - have not stopped determined young men from firing these rockets into Israel.

The fifth striking incident occurred in early November, when Israel had pinned down a group of Palestinian fighters in a mosque in Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, expecting them to surrender or be killed. Instead, over 200 Palestinian women broke through the siege, swarmed the mosque, and provided cover for the young fighters to escape, with two women being killed and a dozen injured. Battle lines that had been defined by Israeli troops fighting a handful of Palestinian youths were transformed into the Israeli Army's finding itself helpless - and defeated - in the face of the Palestinian civilian population.

The sixth incident happened in mid-November, when the Israeli Army telephoned the home of a Palestinian militant in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza and warned the inhabitants to leave the three-story residential building because it was going to be destroyed. Instead of fleeing as they had usually done, hundreds of civilians swarmed into the residence, stood on the rooftop, and dared the Israelis to kill them all. Faced with civilians who no longer feared death, the mighty Israeli killing machine and its befuddled political leaders suddenly became much less impressive - for they had lost much of their capacity to intimidate.

The seventh incident, earlier this week, was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, where it was announced that Israel would release $100 million of withheld Palestinian tax revenues and remove some checkpoints in the West Bank. Reversing his previous refusal to make such gestures or meet with the Palestinians before Shalit was released, Olmert met, talked and made concessions to the Palestinians with Shalit nowhere in sight.

History will clarify if these events indeed signify a change in the military or political balance of power in Arab-Israeli confrontations. We must hope for now that the trend these events signify will open the eyes and brains of Arab and Israeli leaders who have relied mainly on military force to achieve their goals, and instead propel them toward negotiations as a more effective and humane route to achieving their rights, and living a normal life in peace, security and mutual recognition.

Website: dailystar.com

"The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism"
by G. Neuburger
Human life is sacred and human rights are not to be denied by those who would subvert them for "national security" or for any other reason. No one knows this better than the Jews, who have been second-class citizens so often and for so long. Some Zionists, however, may differ. This is understandable because Judaism and Zionism are by no means the same.

Indeed they are incompatible and irreconcilable: If one is a good Jew, one cannot be a Zionist; if one is a Zionist, one cannot be a good Jew.

For over 60 years I have fought Zionism, as did my father before me, and I am therefore quite familiar with it. For those who have been in this fight for only the last 10 or 20 years, what I have to say may be surprising or even shocking. Nevertheless these matters must be stated clearly and openly, because unless the disease of Zionism is diagnosed accurately, it cannot be cured.

Too long have those opposed to Zionism engaged in daydreaming and wishful thinking. In order to recognize Zionism for what it is, one has to know about Judaism, about Zionism -- the opposite and negation of Judaism, and about Jewish history. In the time allotted to me, I am not going to talk about the actions of the Zionists; they will be adequately dealt with by others. As a Jew, I plan to discuss Zionism, which is rebellion against G-d and treason to the Jewish people.
Let us make this completely clear: The Jewish nation was not born or reconstituted a generation ago by some Zionist politicians. The Jewish nation was born on Mount Sinai when the Jews by their response, "let us do and let us hear," adopted the Torah given to them by G-d for all future generations. `This day you become a people," though valid still today, was spoken thousands of years ago.
In what way are the Jews a "chosen people"? Every Jewish man anywhere and at any time when called to the reading of the Torah [biblical books] says, "Who has chosen us from all the peoples and gave us His Torah." This is the way in which the Jews are chosen. The Jewish people are chosen not for domination over others, not for conquest or warfare, but to serve G-d and thus to serve mankind . . .

Of all the crimes of political Zionism, the worst and most basic, and which explains all its other misdeeds, is that from its beginning Zionism has sought to separate the Jewish people from their G-d, to render the divine covenant null and void, and to substitute a "modern" statehood and fraudulent sovereignty for the lofty ideals of the Jewish people.
Neither the founder of political Zionism nor any of the prime ministers of the Zionist state believed in the divine origin of the Torah nor even in the existence of G-d. All prime ministers were members of a party that opposed religion in principle and that considered the Bible a document of ancient folklore, devoid of any religious meaning.

And yet these same Zionists base their claim to the Holy Land on this same Bible, the divine origin of which they deny. At the same time they conveniently forget the Jewish holiday prayer "and for our sins have we been exiled from our land," and ignore the fact that the present exile of the Jewish people is divinely decreed and that the Jewish people are neither commanded nor permitted to conquer or rule the Holy Land before the coming of the Messiah. The Jewish people do, of course, recognize special spiritual ties to that land they call Eretz Yisrael.
Agudath Israel

A Jewish world organization was founded in 1912 on the German-Polish border with the specific purpose of fighting Zionism. This organization, Agudath Israel, "Union of Israel," was to represent the true Jewish people in the world and to unmask the unwarranted and unjust claims of the Zionists.

Rabbis everywhere joined Agudath Israel, as did masses of observant Jews. Anti-Zionist congresses were convened in Vienna and in Marienbad. In countries such as Poland, Agudists were members of parliament. Under Agudah leadership more than 50 years ago, Jews in the Holy Land opposed to Zionism obtained permission from Britain, the mandatory power in Palestine, to declare in writing that they did not wish to be represented by the Zionists or any of their groups, particularly not by the Zionist quasi-governmental organizations such as the Va'ad Leumi, "National Council."

Shortly thereafter, Jacob de Haan, a former distinguished Dutch diplomat who was then leader of Agudath Israel in Palestine, initiated talks with Arab leaders with a view toward the eventual establishments of a state there in which Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. In this way he hoped to forestall the creation of a Zionist state. Despite threats to his life, de Haan, fully aware of the ultimate dangers of a Zionist state, continued his talks and negotiations.

On the eve of his departure in 1924 for Britain to meet with authorities there, he was assassinated by the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary force, in the center of Jerusalem as he came from evening prayers. More than a half a century ago, this devout and visionary Jew gave his life in a fight that he considered paramount, at a time when the world at large was still blind and deaf to the difficulties and problems that a future Zionist state would entail.

As a result of such terrorism and increasing Zionist pressure, Agudath Israel gradually began to weaken and to compromise. During the Nazi period, it entered indo deals and arrangements with the Zionists, despite the fact that its fundamental aim had been to combat Zionism. After the Zionist state was established, Agudath Israel broke off with its past, participated in the Zionist government on the cabinet level and elected Agudists to the Zionist parliament . . .

Rabbi Blau

In view of these developments, those Jews who wanted to continue the fight against Zionism without any compromise left Agudath Israel and constituted themselves as the Neturei Karta, an Aramaic phrase meaning "Guardians of the City," i.e. the city of Jerusalem. The Neturei Karta in turn became a worldwide movement, known in some places as "Friends of Jerusalem."

The greatest leader of the Neturei Karta was Rabbi Amram Blau, an inspired and dedicated leader whose compassion equaled his courage. He could not keep silent in the face of injustice, immorality, or hypocrisy. He was beloved by Jews and respected by Christians and Muslims. Born in Jerusalem, he never left the Holy Land during his entire life. In his writings he stressed many times that Jews and Arabs had lived in harmony until the advent of political Zionism.

Rabbi Blau was imprisoned in Jerusalem, not by the Ottoman authorities, not by the British, and not by the Arabs, but by the Zionists.

What was his crime? He defended with vigor and honesty, without regard for his own safety, the holy character of Jerusalem against the "innovations" and encroachments of the Zionists. He fought for the sanctity of the Sabbath and actively opposed the inroads of indecency and immorality made under the Zionist regime. Unceasingly he denounced the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah as an acct of infamy and blasphemy.

Under his leadership, the Neturei Karta declared year after year that they did not recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state or the validity of its laws.

During the first period of fighting between the Zionist state and the Arabs, the rabbis of the Neturei Karta went toward the combat lines, carrying a white flag, and stated that they wanted no part in this war and that they were absolutely opposed to the creation of a Zionist state. In his last proclamation, Rabbi Blau deplored the actions of the Zionists against the Muslim and Christian Palestinians and the grievous harm done by the Zionists to the Jewish people in endeavoring to change them from
"a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" to a modern state . . .

Rabbi Blau in his last statement severely condemned the UN for recognizing and accepting as a member the Zionist state, thus giving the Zionists unprecedented prestige and power. It is high time that the anti-Zionist nations listen to him, heed his plea, and undo this great wrong and correct this fatal error.

It is well known that no action was taken concerning the expulsion of the Zionist state because of the fear that financial support for the UN would be withdrawn. Let those states, opposed to Zionism, who have become affluent during the past generation, show that they mean what they say by offering to replace any financial loss the UN may suffer as a consequence, and let the member states vote their conscience without fear and regardless of any intimidation.
It must be stated explicitly that while not all Jews are Zionists, not all Zionists are Jews. The motives of some of these non-Jewish Zionists, e.g. Lord Balfour and General Smuts, are at least open to question. From the beginning of the Zionist movement, some of the most articulate and fervent Zionists have been Christian clergymen, especially "fundamentalists," who hail Zionism as an important "religious" movement and welcome it as a fulfillment of prophecy. They also, and significantly, serve the cause of Zionism.

One of the basic aims of Zionism is aliyah, the immigration to the Zionist state of Jews from all countries. Nevertheless, during the past few years hundreds of thousands of Israelis have outgathered themselves [emigrated] from the Zionist paradise, and American Jews have "voted with their feet" and have chosen not to be ingathered [immigrate to Israel]. These Jews recognize that the Zionist state is in fact nothing but a giant ghetto.

Zionist Occupied Government

Instead of being able to render assistance to Jewish communities in other countries, American Jews have been mobilized to concentrate on helping the Zionist state, making the USA the real and major source of Zionist power and influence. The Zionists, true to the nature of their movement, rely on technical superiority and on a forbidding military deterrent -- provided largely by the USA [Israel lobby] -- for their security.
One most vital point deserves mention.

A former president of the World Zionist Organization has stated explicitly that a Zionist owes unqualified loyalty to the Zionist state and that, in the case of a conflict, the first loyalty of a Zionist must be to the Zionist state. According to Jewish law, however, a Jew owes allegiance and loyalty
to the country of which he is a citizen, and, of course, no faithful Jews owe any loyalty or allegiance to the Zionist state which has been condemned by the foremost rabbis of our age.

It is not my purpose to detail how Zionism should be dealt with. Let me state, however, that isolated or spontaneous acts against individuals or the mere adoption of resolutions in the UN or elsewhere are not effective means of bringing an end to Zionism.

Let me state also that the battle against Zionism must be waged first, not on the shores of the Mediterranean, but in Zionism's most powerful bastion -- the USA.

As an American citizen, I deplore that our government and our politicians have adopted an attitude that is in complete contradiction to the advice of the father of our country George Washington. Instead of shying away from foreign entanglements and permanent alliances with foreign powers, the establishment in Washington [Israel lobby] has embraced Zionism so wholeheartedly that any criticism of the Zionist state and any opposition to political Zionism in the UN by any nation has become a punishable offense. And the docile American media do not dare to speak out against such an absurdity. [Most of the major media in the US is owned or controlled by Zionists]

Unfortunately, thus far, each year sees still further gains in influence by American Zionists. This fact has made possible events and developments that were unthinkable even ten years ago. It takes a lot of courage to be opposed to Zionism in the USA today. It also took a lot of courage during the Second World War to be anti-Fascist in Italy or anti-Nazi in Germany. In the long run Zionism is nothing but a passing aberration in the long history of the Jewish people and of the world.

Full Text

---

---

CounterPunch - 08/16/06
by John Walsh

"My fellow American," Howard Friedman, President of AIPAC, begins his letter of July 30 to friends and supporters of AIPAC, "Look what you've done"!

After warning that "Israel is fighting a pivotal war for its life," by which he means Israel's wanton slaughter and all-out destruction in Lebanon, Freiedman condemns "the expected chorus of international condemnation of Israel's actions" and Europe's call for "a cease-fire immediately."

Then he exults:

only ONE nation in the world came out and flatly declared: Let Israel finish the job. . That nation is the United States of America--and the reason it had such a clear, unambiguous view of the situation is YOU and the rest of America Jewry.

Here I must take issue with President Friedman since I bet that most Jewish Americans, in contrast to the AIPAC crowd, were horrified by the slaughter in Lebanon. In fact if anyone other than President Friedman wrote this, he would be accused of fabricating a Jewish plot and labeled a nutty conspiracy theorist and scurrilous anti-semite.

How do we do it"? President Friedman asks a little further on. The answer is "decades of long hard work which never ends." Not only is it hard work--but it's eternal.

However, President Friedman is not content with generalities and gives us some of AIPAC's trade secrets. Here are two notables:

AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask each candidate to author a 'position paper' on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship--so it's clear where they stand on the subject.

Would it not be great to see these "position papers"? I wonder how many candidates would release them? And what do the candidates get for all this effort? A pat on the back?

Members of Congress, staffers and administration officials have come to rely on AIPACs memos. They are VERY busy people and they know that they can count on AIPAC for clear-eyed analysis.. We present this information in concise form to elected officials. The information and analyses are impeccable--after all our reputation is at stake. This results in policy and legislation that make up Israel's lifeline.

Another way to read this is that the pea-brained hillbillies who make up most of the Congress can be led by the nose if the memos are simple enough. Testimony to this fact enters my mailbox, as I write, in the form of a must-read interview with Noam Chomsky, which details just how distorted the discussion of Israel and the war on Lebanon has become in the U.S.
President Friedman closes with the exhortation: "Now is the time for us, American Jews, to stand up and tell our elected officials that they must demand Iran halt its pursuit of atomic arms."

In other words, next stop Iran if AIPAC can swing it. And in that lies a great danger. The Bush administration is losing ever more of its base and only the neocon establishment and AIPAC remain securely in its camp. (Even some of the born-agains are deserting.)

With the November elections coming, Rove and Bush desperately need AIPAC support, and so they may be even more susceptible than usual to its demands for going after Iran. Indeed this is a dangerous time.

Read Article

National Prayer Network
by Rev. Ted Pike

Rabbinic Council In Israel Says Bombed Children In Lebanon Not Innocent

Yesha Rabbinical Council is the recognized authority on Jewish religious questions in Gaza and the West Bank. This week it decreed that at least 56 Lebanese citizens of Kfar Qanna, including at least 34 children, targeted by an Israeli air strike, were not “innocent.”

The Yesha Rabbinical Counsel announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such thing as ‘innocence’ among the enemy.” ¹

The council’s edict reflects existing Israeli military/religious law. The chaplain for the IDF forces says, “In war, when our forces storm the enemies, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians that are ostensibly good.” ²

Such official standards come from binding Jewish law, or Halakah, contained in the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud is the highest religious and ethical authority for the state of Israel and religious Jews. The Talmudic ‘proof text’ for Yesha’s decision came from treatise Abodah-Zarah 26b, where Rabbi Simeon Ben Yohai says:

The best among the gentiles deserves to be killed. The best of snakes ought to have its head crushed.

Is the author of such bloodthirsty racism denounced in our time? Hardly. Rabbi Ben Yohai is one of the earliest and therefore most respected of Talmudic rabbis. He is so beloved by Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel that every year at his birth place, in Meron, tens of thousands gather for days in the festival of Lag Ba Omar to sing and dance in honor of his memory. The prestigious Encyclopedia Judaica, in its article on him, describes Ben Yohai as one of the giants of Judaism for all time.

Ben Yohai’s bloodlust against Gentiles is enshrined in the State of Israel itself, a nation whose apartheid laws caused the United Nations to term Zionism “a form of racism and racial discrimination” in 1976. They were putting it mildly.

But Zionism isn’t the root cause; it’s one black fruit of the poisoned root of the religion founded and guided by the ancient Pharisees, those whom Christ so bitterly rebuked. "Rabbinic" Judaism is not the Hebrew monotheism established by God through Moses. Rather, it is what that pure religion became after its leaders rejected and crucified Christ.

---

1 ynetnews.com 7/30/06
2 Booklet published by the Chaplain of the Israeli army Central Region Command quoted
by Dr. Israel Shahak in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, page 76

Read Article

Related Posts ---- 04/26/05 ---- 05/05/05 ---- 05/07/05

EI News 06/30/06
by Jonathan Cook
Until the advent of Zionism at the turn of the twentieth century, Jews for whom their Jewishness mattered believed either that their identity was of a strictly religious nature or, if they were secular, that it was a meaningful marker of their ethnicity. In other words, Jews who wanted to identify themselves as Jews were either Jews in that they practised a religion called Judaism or they were Jews in that they believed they belonged to a distinct ethnic group.

But Zionism added a third possible category of Jewish identity. A Jew no longer had to regard the choice simply in terms of either-or: the Jew either as a believer in a Jewish God or as a member of a group that shared a biological inheritance.

Instead a Jew could identify himself as belonging to a “nation”, whose rights derived from but could never be entirely satisfied at either the biological or metaphysical level. For the Zionist (or at least almost all those who identify themselves today as such), Jewishness as a national identity needed also to be realised at the territorial level. At the minimum the Jews required a state where their sovereignty could be exercised.

The new kind of Jewish identity was a strange hybrid from the outset. Zionists believed a Jewish state must exist for the Jews to be able to identify themselves as a nation but at the same time the only criteria by which to judge membership of this state were religious or ethnic, or both. In fusing the religious and ethnic identities, the Jewish nation became greater than the sum of its two parts.

So for a Jew to claim citizenship of the Jewish state -- to become an Israeli -- he needs to prove either that he is a practising Jew or that he has inherited Jewish genes. This is the legal basis, the 1950 Law of Return, for determining who is admitted to the Jewish state.

No one should deny Jews the right to reinvent their identity and strive in so far as it is legal and moral to realise such an identity. Identity, by its nature, is fluid. For each of us it changes over time at the personal, political, social and cultural levels. But at the same time, for the sake of consistency and justice, Jews should not deny others the same rights they claim for themselves.

As far as Israeli Jews are concerned, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who demands that his Palestinian identity be recognised automatically raises doubts about where his loyalties lie, the assumption being that he cannot be at once a Palestinian and loyal to Israel. Of course, no Jew would accept such an attribution of double loyalties in his own case. An American Jew, however Zionist, would denounce as anti-Semitic any suggestion that he is not always a loyal American citizen.

Why are the Zionists so determined to refuse the Palestinians a right they demand for themselves?

Because the territorial homeland to which Palestinians lay claim has been under Israeli dominion for only a few decades. The Palestinians, like many other national groups in the colonial era, may not have had sovereignty in their homeland after centuries of occupation (in their case, by the Ottomans, Britain, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel) but it was nonetheless their homeland. After all, they could not have been occupied had they not been living there for generations.

By contrast, the Jews’ claim to nationhood in Palestine (rather than somewhere else) cannot be derived from either national or ethnic claims. Until the dispossession of the Palestinians began a century ago, the number of Jews living in Palestine had been minuscule for nearly 2,000 years. Their numbers were far higher almost everywhere else: in America, Europe and the rest of the Middle East.

Instead, Zionists seek legitimacy for their claim to Palestine from a religious claim: that the Jews were promised the land by God. This mostly unspoken assumption among Zionists has two problematic consequences.

It raises to the point of irrational dogma the belief that Israelis should never make concessions either on sovereignty or on the territory they now possess. It means that there can be no discussion of a right of return for dispossessed Palestinians, of power sharing, of a binational state, of democratising Israel (changing it from a Jewish state into a state of all its citizens).

It also continues to obstruct the emergence of a separate Palestinian state, and certainly a viable one. Because, according to the Bible, God did not promise Tel Aviv or Haifa, he promised the West Bank cities of Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem and Jerusalem -- parts of the Holy Land which under international law still belong to the Palestinians.

Given this context, the international debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict applies a terrible double standard. While the West accepts the conflict as one between two rival nationalisms fighting for the same territority, it places the onus on the Palestinians (a dispersed non-people) to recognise Israel (a nation state), to such a degree that the international community is currently starving the Palestinians and their Hamas leadership into submission through sanctions.

But in truth, the conflict endures because Israel and its Zionist supporters refuse to recognise the Palestinians, and because they continue to act in bad faith in peace negotiations. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s convergence plan, like the Oslo process before it, is a way of dressing up an illusory territorial separation that ensures continuing recognition of a Jewish national identity in Israel while denying a meaningful Palestinian national identity in Palestine.

---

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

---

Read Article

In his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion Dr. Israel Shahak of Hebrew University reports that the Israelis burned hundreds of New Testament Bibles in occupied Palestine on March 23, 1980.

-- Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, p. 21

-- As it is written in the Talmud:

Jews Must Destroy The Books Of The Christians. -- Shabbath 116a

Related Posts -- 04/26/05 -- 05/07/05 -- 08/09/06