Methodist missionary to Israel: having portrait of Golda is "not very American"

In honor of the Fourth of July holiday, Janet Lahr Lewis, the United Methodists' chief liaison for Methodist visitors to Israel and Palestine, has published a column on the Methodists' official website in which she complains that the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Israel has on its walls

"portraits of ... Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, even Theodore Hertzl -- not very American in my view."

She goes on to write that

"For me, though, the Israel independence day evokes visions of slaughter and destruction, of forced marches and imprisonment. The U.S. Independence Day evokes thoughts of “freedom fighters” and “patriots.” ... Why don’t we refer to Palestinians fighting for the same rights as “freedom fighters” and “patriots,” instead of as “terrorists” and “extremists”?"

Lewis' column is published in the July 13, 2009 edition of the "Faith in Action" newsletter published by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, which can be read here.

Lewis serves as the coordinator of Methodist missionaries working in Israel and Palestine. A biographical statement on their website states that

"Lewis ... educates visitors about the realities of the situation, organizes conferences, develops media campaigns, offers worship opportunities, hosts delegations to the area and oversees other special events ... (She) is the main contact for Volunteers in Mission teams and United Methodists who wish to follow the recommendation of the denomination’s General Conference to spend a significant amount of time in the area with local Christians."

While serving as the United Methodist liaison to Israel and Palestine, Lewis simultaneously served for many years as one of the leaders of the Palestinian organization Sabeel, working in Sabeel's Jerusalem office and organizing their international outreach. Sabeel is one of the main promoters of the anti-Israel boycott and divestiture movement. (Read here.)

The Methodist church may have their reasons for questioning how "American" their countrymen are. They should make those reasons explicit, rather than snipe in an offhanded manner. If they consider having portraits of Israeli leaders to be un-American, they should explain exactly why. If they cannot, they should apologize for promoting the view that friendship with Israel represents disloyalty to the United States.

Moreover, the United Methodist church needs to explain why their liaison in Israel and Palestine, charged with facilitating both missionary visits and church tours to the area, would characterize the founding of the State of Israel in such a biased, distorted manner.

Lastly, the United Methodists should clarify whether they agree with Lewis' characterization of Palestinian military actions against Israel as patriotic freedom-fighting.

Do these views represent the official policy of the United Methodists or are they only the personal views of their chief missionary representative in Israel?

Shimon Peres on Zionism, the "one-state solution", and hope

Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with Shimon Peres is well worth reading for a number of reasons. Here are three excerpts:


from Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic: Shimon Peres on Iran: Overreaction Is Better Than Underreaction

Zionism started, in fact, at the Dreyfus trial, 100 years ago. And in the Dreyfus trial you had Herzl as a journalist. You had two different reactions to Dreyfus. Jewish journalists asked questions: "Why is that? Why are they hating the Jewish people? What are the reasons?" And there were two different answers: One is, the world is wrong, the other is the Jews are wrong. The ones that say the world was wrong became Communists or revolutionaries. They said, we have to change the world to one without nations, without classes, without religion. They say if there won't be those differences, the Jews won't be different. The others said: "There's not a chance to change to the world. The right thing we have to do is change ourselves." They became Zionists. Let's go back to our land, let's return to our history. Let's go to normalcy. And this is the real lessons of Jewish history in the last 100 years.

In connection with this blog, I spend far too much time reading the sort of anti-Israel propaganda that conflates Zionism (frequently a code-word for Jews) with a variety of real or imagined ideologies or interests which share a common feature: a desire for a one-world government. (Is Zionism the only national movement condemned for being excessively nationalist and anti-nationalist?) As Peres so clearly articulates, Zionism at its core is really an ideological opposite to radical anti-nationalism.

With respect to the so-called "one-state solution" being pushed on the left by Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi and others, Peres points out that the name is misleading:

There is not a one-state solution; there is only one-state conflict instead of two-people conflict. Look, you have a conflict in Iraq; it's one state. You have a conflict in Lebanon; it's one state. You have a conflict in Sudan; it's one state. Who says that one state puts an end to the conflict? On the contrary, it makes it more dangerous. You have one state in Pakistan. You have one state in Afghanistan.

On his hopes for the future, Peres says:

You know, there is an Arab poet that I admire very much, Nizar Qabbani. He said, "The time has come for the Arabs to get rid of the yoke of imperialism. Thousands of years we live under the imperialism of words. We are victims of our words." So I wouldn't understand the Arab position by words alone. So I think, to be fair, I wouldn't judge everything said as though it is everything they think. I think many of them are sick and tired of war, of backwardness, of stagnation. I think there is a young generation, that watches television -- even their television -- and they see there is a different world.

You know, today, we have in Israel close to 1.1 million Arab citizens. Sixty thousand of them are university graduates. Where are they? Many of them are doctors. There is no hospital today in Israel that doesn't have Arab doctors and Arab nurses. Now look, an Israeli who would be reluctant to employ an Arab is not reluctant to enter the hospital, to lay on the bed and an Arab doctor will come with his knife and open his stomach. And he'll say, "Thank you." My hope is that what happens in a hospital with sick people will happen in the land with healthy people.

An Israeli-Palestinian agreement: Forget about it

from the Jerusalem Post: AARON DAVID MILLER: An Israeli-Palestinian agreement ... forget about it

I've been a Palestinian firster for most of my professional life. I believe that the Palestinian issue is the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the key to regional peace, and the sine qua non for preserving Israel as a Jewish democratic state.

These arguments remain valid. What's changed is that a conflict-ending agreement between Israelis and Palestinians may no longer be possible. I choose my words carefully here. Varying kinds of accommodations cease fires, informal cooperation and temporary arrangements may still be possible. But an agreement now or perhaps for the foreseeable future that revolves conclusively the four core issues (borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security) isn't.

Three realities drive my pessimism and should force experts, politicians and would be mediators to keep their enthusiasm for quick or easy solutions under control.

First, there are the issues. There is a myth out there driven by the Clinton parameters of December 2000, the Taba talks in 2001, the Geneva accord a year later, and the hundreds of hours of post Annapolis talks between Israelis and Palestinians that the two sides are "this close" (thumb and index finger a sixteenth of an inch apart) to an agreement. The gaps have now narrowed, perhaps impressively, but closing them, particularly on the identity issues such as Jerusalem and refugees, is still beyond the reach of negotiators and leaders.

It's not that there are metaphysical or magical reasons why these core issues can't be resolved; it's that the political will is lacking among leaders to reach an agreement and that the current situation on the ground between Israelis and Palestinians makes it impossible for them to do to. That everyone knows what the ultimate solution will look like (an intriguing notion that is supposed to make people feel better) is irrelevant if the circumstances for an agreement don't exist.

THIS BRINGS me to my second point. The dysfunction and confusion in Palestine make a conflict-ending agreement almost impossible. The divisions between Hamas (itself divided) and Fatah (even more divided) are now geographic, political and hard to bridge. Until the Palestinian national movement finds a way to impose a monopoly over the forces of violence in Palestinian society, it cannot move to statehood. The hallmark of any state's credibility (from Sweden, to Egypt, to Poland) is its control over all the guns. Criminal activity is one thing; allowing political groups to challenge the state, or its neighbors, with violence is quite another. What Palestinian leader can claim to speak for all Palestinians or negotiate an agreement against the backdrop of a separate entity which controls 1.3 million Palestinians, possesses a different view of governance and nation-building and often attacks its neighbor? And what Israeli prime minister could ever make concessions to a Palestinian leader who doesn't control all of the guns? There is no solution to this problem now. Only by restoring unity to the Palestinian house will a conflict-ending agreement be possible. And that agreement will have to take into account the needs of both Israel and a unified Fatah-Hamas negotiating position which doesn't reflect Hamas's extreme views and irredentism.

Third, there is serious dysfunction at the political level in Israel as well. Israel has its own leadership crisis. The state is in transition from a generation of founding leaders with moral authority, historic legitimacy and competency to a younger generation of middle age pols who have not quite measured up to their predecessors or to the challenges their nation faces. The leadership deficit is a global phenomenon, but not all states are sitting in a dangerous neighborhood on top of a political volcano. Is there an Israeli leader today who has the authority and skill to make and sell the tough choices required for Israeli-Palestinian peace?

So what to do? My days of giving advice to Israelis and Palestinians are over. I would, however, respectfully suggest to President-elect Barck Obama, in my capacity as an American who doesn't want to see America fail again, that he recognize there's no deal in this negotiation now. Manage it as best you can: help support an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire, train PA security forces, pour economic aid into the West Bank and Gaza, even nurture Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the big issues, but don't think you can solve it; you can't.

Instead, go all-out for an Israeli-Syrian agreement which is doable and will enhance American credibility to confront Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran over time with tough choices, and improve America's regional standing. Then, perhaps, your chances on the Israeli-Palestinian track may be better. In the interim, I'm afraid sadly that the bottom line for Israelis and Palestinians is not a good one: Israelis will have their state, but Palestinians will never let them completely enjoy it.

The writer, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, worked as an advisor on the Middle East for six Democratic and Republican secretaries of State. He is the author of The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive search for Arab-Israeli Peace.

Hamas blames "Jewish lobby" for financial crisis

from AFP: Hamas blames US 'Jewish lobby' for financial crisis

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip on Tuesday blamed what it called a "Jewish lobby" in the United States for the global financial crisis.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement that the crisis was due to "bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby."

While pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into a rescue package, US President George W. Bush has remained silent about "the Jewish lobby that put the US banking and financial sector into place," he said.

He said the lobby "controls the US elections and defines the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to retain control of the American government and economy."

Abie Nathan, Israeli peace pioneer, dies aged 81

from Haaretz: Israeli peace pioneer Abie Nathan dies aged 81

Abie Nathan - Israeli peace pioneer, pirate radio station founder and former Royal Air Force pilot - has died in Tel Aviv at the age of 81, officials at the city's Ichilov Hospital said Wednesday.

Nathan burst onto the world of Middle East diplomacy in 1966 with a dramatic solo flight to Egypt in a rattletrap single-engine plane, more than a decade before Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty.

Although he failed in his initial bid to talk peace with the Egyptians, his daredevil escapade won the affection of many Israelis, and he launched a long and often eccentric one-man crusade to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Over time, he earned a reputation as a maverick peace activist who often took diplomacy into his own hands. He was called a crackpot and a prophet. But many admired the daring of the former Israel Air Force fighter pilot as he pounded on Egypt's doors, sailed his pirate radio ship into hostile Middle East waters or risked his life on hunger strikes for peace.

Yossi Sarid, the former leader of the leftist Meretz party, said Nathan paved the way for Israel's peace movement. "He was ahead of his time, and he did everything himself," he said.

Abraham Jacob Nathan was born April 29, 1927 in Iran, educated in India, and served in Britain's Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot, before joining the Jewish immigrant influx into newborn Israel in 1948.

A short, dark man, he flew for Israel's national airline and ran an art gallery and restaurant that became the center of Tel Aviv's bohemian life. His American-style diner even helped pioneer the hamburger in Israel.

Convinced that people power could succeed where the diplomats had failed, Nathan bought a 188-foot, 570-ton freighter that was partially funded by John Lennon. He anchored it off the coast of Tel Aviv and turned it into a pirate radio station, The Voice of Peace, with a mix of pop songs and peace messages.

"Shalom, salaam and peace to all our listeners," Nathan declared in his maiden broadcast in 1973. "The Peace Ship is a project of the people. We hope through this station we will help relieve the pain and heal the wounds of many years of suffering of the people of the Middle East."

Over the next 20 years, The Voice of Peace became especially popular among youth. It was the only radio station in the Middle East that broadcast music from the world's Top 40 charts and used English as its primary language, yet offered both Israeli and Arabic news.

Apart from his peace efforts, Nathan flew or shipped emergency supplies to victims of war, earthquakes and famine around the world, including to Biafra, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Lebanon and the former Zaire.

In the 1970s, Nathan went on repeated hunger strikes to try to force the Israeli government to make concessions for peace with Egypt and talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

He saw the first wish come true when Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979. But it would be years before Israel would reverse a law making meetings with the PLO a crime. Nathan broke the law several times by meeting with members of the PLO.

In recent years, he had been confined to a retirement home and had rarely been seen in public. In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, Nathan said that during one of his prison hunger strikes, he was certain he was going to die. He bought a grave and a tombstone.

When asked what he would want written on the stone, he replied "Nisiti" - the Hebrew for "I tried."

from Haaretz: Abie Nathan laid to rest; Peres: 'he was greatest freedom fighter'

Hundreds of people attended the funeral, including President Shimon Peres who eulogized Nathan, saying "he was the greatest freedom fighter." Uri Avneri, a close friend of Nathan's said "Abie did not address people's minds, but rather their hearts. He wanted to bring peace, and did that through feeling."

from the Jerusalem Post: Abie Nathan - from right to left

Even Abie Nathan's detractors spoke warmly of him on Thursday, a day after the maverick peace activist passed away in Tel Aviv at 81 years of age.

Abie Nathan.

I believe that he always meant well," said Pinchas Wallerstein, former head of the Binyamin Regional Council in northern Samaria. "And I was absolutely inspired by him and his tactics, just in the opposite direction. If it weren't for his radio station, we wouldn't have Arutz Sheva."

Others praised Nathan's global charity work, spanning from Guatemala to China.

"I was with Abie in Rwanda in 1995," said former Meretz MK Yossi Sarid. "We were there during the civil war delivering humanitarian aid, and Abie was told that a village full of sick children was out in the jungle. We made our way through the brush, and when we got there, the children were in their last moments of life - they were all suffering from cholera.

"And I remember seeing Abie take them in his hands, bringing them to our field hospital for help. They were all treated and every one of them survived."

"It's still unclear if the time he spent sitting in jail brought peace," said Meretz MK Yossi Beilin. "But that he traveled the world and helped so many different people, that can be said without a doubt. He made an enormous contribution to the world."

Others said they had never personally met Nathan, but were moved by his efforts at starting dialogues between enemies. Rabbi Menachem Fruman, the rabbi of the Gush Etzion settlement of Tekoa, spoke of Nathan as he took part in the Sulha Peace Project at Latrun - a three-day gathering of Israelis and Palestinians that aims to begin the process of dialogue and reconciliation.

"My children often say that I meet with all the crazy people in the world," Rabbi Fruman said. "But I never got a chance to meet Abie Nathan. That said, I think that what he did was an inspiration to all of us. Pursuing peace is not a natural desire... It's truly a holy task."

"I feel that I am following in his footsteps," said Jeff Halper, an Israeli professor who was on board one of the two boats that sailed into Gaza port last week to protest the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. "I don't compare myself to him, but I certainly draw from him as an inspiration."

Halper made two correlations between Nathan's efforts and his own, the first regarding Nathan's own sea voyage to Gaza in 1972.

"He sailed there in '72 to bring toys to kids in Gaza, and later he organized a summer camp in Ashdod for Israeli kids and kids from Gaza," Halper said. "The second thing is that he said in 1966 that Nasser wanted to talk peace with the Israelis, and no one listened to him. If they had, think of the countless lives that might have been saved and the terrible violence that might have been prevented."

Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann, who works for Rabbis For Human Rights, called Nathan "a very positive figure. I'm a rabbi that belongs to a dovish group, and we're a bit of a minority. But something about Abie Nathan that is in contrast to Peace Now and other peace groups is that he was not anti-religious.

"He seemed to rise above the divisions on the left and was a character that put his money where his mouth was. I think that's something that he was respected for even on the right, even if they didn't agree with him."

What Palestinians want more than a state

Although I disagree with the absolute statement which is the premise of the below-linked piece (i.e. that Palestinians do not want a state), I believe the contrast between Israel's willingness to compromise and Palestinian unwillingness to do so is very telling. In fact, it's essential to understanding Zionism's success and the impasse in efforts to reach Arab-Israeli peace.

Palestinians do want a state, but want one without compromise. They want a state, but want military victory more. In other words, they don't want any state that is conceivably possible. This unwillingness to compromise has been at the heart of the Arab leadership's inability to contend with Zionism from the time of the First Aliyah. Nothing has changed in this regard except the rationalizing rhetoric, which has evolved in two discreet and contradictory paths in response to two groups of supporters: the European and American left on the one hand, and the Muslim masses on the other. The European and American left produce and consume the rhetoric of a peace movement and remain largely oblivious to the violent fantasies of eliminationist anti-Zionism which dominate the media in the Muslim world. Sadly, these two sets of rhetoric frequently replace the facts in public debate. That's why you should click on the link below.

from Elder of Ziyon: More proof that Palestinian Arabs don't want a state

French court overturns Karsenty libel verdict

breaking news from Augean Stables » Karsenty Wins Court Decision!!

More details to follow. But word from Paris is that the court dismissed charges against Philippe Karsenty today. Now we get to see how the French (and Western) MSM handle this. It’s a stunning victory for Karsenty and loss for Enderlin and France2 who initiated this case when they didn’t have to.

In order for an appeals court to reverse a decision, they must have strong evidence to the contrary.

The fact that they did indicates that their written decision will be very critical of France2. The implications of this decision are immense. We’ll be following up in the days, weeks and months to come.

In the Emperor’s New Clothes when the boy (Shahaf, Juffa, Poller, me, Karsenty) said the emperor (France2, MSM) is naked, the father turned on his son and tried to hush him. But someone else then says, “Listen to the boy!” That happened today in Paris.

UPDATES:

AP in Nouvel Observateur

Juffa in MENA

Israel Matsav

Franceinfo in which Maitre Amblard, the lawyer for France2 suggests that her clients are seriously considering appealing the decision to the “cour de cassation.” Those whom the gods would destroy, first they drive mad.

Breath of the Beast: brilliant analysis by a man I’m proud to call my associate.

Noah Pollack at Commentary’s blog, Contentions.

Ed Lasky at American Thinker.

Haviv Rettig at the Jerusalem Post: Rettig’s is the most informative item out so far, with responses from both Karsenty and Enderlin/France2 (who seem like they’ll take this to the supreme court).

Phyllis Chesler, an interview at Pajamas Media.

Tom Gross at the Media Blog of NRO

AP, typically about six steps behind the curve (still discussing who killed the boy).

(Hat tip: Solomonia)

Marcy Winograd: Hates Israel, "Loves to Hava Nagilah"

Charter school teacher and long-time political activist Marcy Winograd is the founder of L.A. Jews for Peace. Winograd is an executive board member of the California Democratic Party and president of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles. She is also on the list of potential Obama delegates to the Democratic convention, after having been removed from the list, complaining about it in her blog on the Huffington Post (read here and here), and subsequently being returned by the Obama campaign to their list of delegates (read here).

Winograd ran against Rep. Jane Harmon for the Democratic nomination in California's 36th District in 2006, as an opponent of the Patriot Act, Iraq War enabling acts, bankruptcy bill and other Bush initiatives which Harmon supported. She got endorsements from Tom Hayden, Gore Vidal, Ed Asner, Ed Begley Jr. and Daniel Ellsberg. Although she had campaigned on behalf of Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman Henry Waxman, both endorsed Harmon over Winograd, who ended up losing the primary with about 1/3 of the vote.

Winograd is also an ardent opponent of Israel and a member of Friends of Sabeel. Sabeel is the Liberation Theology-based organization largely responsible for promoting anti-Israel divestment and spreading bigoted anti-Israel propaganda within the mainline Protestant churches. Their view of Jews and Judaism is sometimes called Replacement Theology, sometimes supercessionism. This theology maintains that Judaism is obsolete -- an oppressive regime against which Christianity rebelled as a liberation movement. (Read here and here and here and here and here. Christians for Fair Witness analyzes Sabeel’s opposition to the existence of Israel here. Sabeel uses the deicide trope as a spur for the second intifada here. For more on Liberation Theology's use of Jews as symbolic of oppressors see Amy-Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew.)

Winograd participated in Febraury's Sabeel conference at All Saint's Episcopal Church in Pasadena. (Read about that conference here.) According to the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles (read here), on February 16, Winograd promoted the following views to the Friends of Sabeel:

She explained her advocacy for a single Arab-Jewish state by saying, "We are not talking about 'destroying' Israel, but about a transformation to a one-state solution."

Among Winograd's targets is the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance, and she urged pressure on school boards to stop transporting students there on educational trips.

She claimed that the museum's Holocaust exhibits are used for pro-Israel lobbying and demanded exhibit space for the Palestinian nakba.

Winograd posts her text version of her speech in Pasadena on her organization's website, (read here) including the following:

LA Jews for Peace was born in the midst of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon two summers ago, almost immediately following my congressional challenge to Jane Harman in the 36^th District. During my campaign, I prayed no one would ask me to clarify my position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. On my candidate web site, I said I supported the Geneva Accord, a two-state solution....

Personally, I think it is too late for a two-state solution...

Not only do I think a two-state solution is unrealistic, but also fundamentally wrong because it only reinforces heightened nationalism.

In her speech, Winograd also pointedly recounts her refusal to answer a CNN interviewer who had the temerity to ask her whether she believes that Israel has a right to exist. She stonewalled that question. Clearly, she's a candidate who feels she has something to hide from the general public, even as she touts it to her anti-Israel allies.

The hypocrisy of sometimes claiming not to oppose the existence of Israel and sometimes actively opposing its existence and advocating a "single-state solution" is so obvious that it should require no elucidation. This hypocrisy is entirely consistent with that of Sabeel which has both advocated land-for-peace and opposed it, and supported the second intifada as it opposed violence.

Concluding her speech, Winograd claimed (in poetry no less) to oppose all nationalism. It appears that she would like to put this opposition into action only against the existence of Israel.

To compound the hypocrisy of her purported "peace" proposal, Winograd opposes Holocaust education because it denies equal time for dissemination of pro-Palestinian propaganda. Moreover, she is organizing those who oppose Holocaust education to pressure local school boards to cease support for public school students visiting L.A.'s Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance. (Click here for the museum's website.) Below (from the LA Jews for peace website) is a photo of their demonstration outside the museum on October 19. Six protesters and one pedestrian. That may be Winograd on the left in shades holding an illegible sign.

Blogger Ami Isseroff was emailed the following:

Marcy Winograd is the co-founder of the LA Jews for Peace collective and a long-time anti-war activist in Los Angeles. Inspired by author Joel Kovel's book Overcoming Zionism, she is interested in assembling and publishing an anthology entitled: From Zionism to Humanism: Personal Stories of Jews Who Dare to Speak Out...If you know of Jews who might be interested in contributing to her anthology, please encourage them to submit their story to Marcy at Winogradcoach@aol.com.

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Though I identify with persecuted Jews, I grow up longing to be part of the dominant culture. I hang little red and green lights on plastic Christmas trees and rarely visit temple except to hava nagila at the boys' bar mitzvahs or to pray on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we never atone for the sin of theft, slaughter, or occupation.

In response, Isseroff wrote, in part (from Zionism-Israel Web Log: "A Jew who dares to speak out about Zionism")

It is no secret that I am what is usually called a "leftist." I cofounded a dialogue group of Jews and Arabs and I am director of an NGO that promotes peace education and dialogue. I am committed to rights for the Arabs of Palestine, as I am committed to rights for the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of Israel.

I am a leftist from a family of leftists. My great uncle Noteh (Nathan) was a Bolshevik. He fled Russia in 1905 for the safety of Poland. I am told that he was known as "The angel of the Warsaw Ghetto." Being a citizen of the world, he was killed along with all the other Jewish citizens of the world, who happened to be in the way of the Nazis, and discovered that "the world" would not grant passports to anybody. Had he stayed in Russia and survived, there is no doubt that along with many other "citizens of the world" of the Yevsektsia, the Jewish Communists, he would have found himself in Lyubjanka prison or Siberia. That's what the progressive forces did to Jews who were not afraid to speak out. My great uncle was not afraid to speak out, you see.

I noticed that there were several segments of public opinion that were actively working against peace and dialogue, and in favor of genocide and denial of the right of self determination to one side or another in the conflict. There are the extremists of the Kahana Hai movement, who call themselves Zionists, and there are also extremists on the other side. There are those who blacken and distort Islam and Arabs, and there are those who blacken and distort Judaism and Zionism.

Understandably, there are groups like Stormfront who have no use for "Zionists" because they are Nazis. We all know what Nazis are, don't we? We all know that not long ago, American fascist white supremacist racists coined the acronym ZOG - Zionist Occupied government for example. The typical fascist argument features the Jew as a sly, greedy and evil creature out to control the world through the International Jewish Conspiracy. Until recently, this was the property of a tiny, benighted, reactionary minority, spurned by all decent folks.

But about three or four years ago, I became painfully aware of a new phenomenon. The racist arguments of the fascists against Jews were now being used against "Zionists" and the "Israel Lobby" and were indistinguishable from the old fascist claims. Searching the Web, I found hundreds of sites telling the world about Zionist plots, all about Zionism and its pernicious influence, explaining that the Zionists started World War II, the Zionists started World War I, and even that the "Zionists" were responsible for the French revolution. The Zionists are also responsible, according to them, for the Holocaust Myth, created for the financial and political benefit of Israel. And on Yom Kippur, the "Zionists" do not ask forgiveness for the French Revolution. Indeed, as Ziopedia notes, the "Zionists" say the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur. According to the progressive and peace-loving citizens of the world edit Ziopedia, Kol Nidre is the sneaky "Zionist" way of getting out of their obligations to non-Jews.

More bizarrely, it seems that a great number of Jews have joined in this campaign. Many of them call themselves "Jews for Peace" and similar names. They do not realize apparently, that when people say that "the Jews" are responsible for the war in Iraq, the accusers mean them,

I don't know if Marcy Winograd has read Ami Isseroffs' reply to her request for the testimony of Jews who promote human rights. I'm pretty sure that she won't publish it.

If you happen to see her demonstrating against Holocaust education outside the Wiesnthal Center's Museum of Tolerance, maybe you can read it to her.

A couple of notes on Winograd's organizations views of Israel

• Winograd's Progressive Democrats of L.A. website accuses AIPAC of interfering with a resolution against the Iraq War which was under consideration by the California Democratic Party (read here under the headline "Anti-War Resolution Passes California Democratic Party Convention"), alleging "severe pressures to water down or derail the resolution by more hawkish Democrats, including delegates associated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)." They offer no evidence of this purported AIPAC intrusion into the agenda of the state Democratic party, and no basis for the purported connection to Israel at all. Did someone say "conspiracy theory"?

• Winograd's L.A. Jews for Peace website includes their endorsement of a fire-breathing anti-Israel screed by Scott Ritter reposted from the paleoconservative isolationist website Antiwar.com. (The Jews for Peace website links to a politically neutral website to avoid the taint of association with the paleo-conservatives, read here.) Here's a taste of Ritter's writing:

Israel's current policies, rooted in ethnic and religious hatred, are the antithesis of tolerance. Israel at present can have no friends, because Israel does not know how to be a friend. Driven by xenophobic paranoia and historical grievances, Israel is embarked on a path that can only lead to death and destruction...Israel has been drunk on arrogance and power.

More to follow on this...

Housekeeping, Hamas style...

70-year-old grandmother killed by Palestinian rocket attack on southern Israel

from Ynetnews (by Yonat Atlas):

Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for rocket attack on small Israeli community in which 70-year-old grandmother of five was killed

Qassams claim another victim:

Shuli Katz

Shuli Katz, a 70-year-old resident of Kibbutz Gvaram, was killed early Monday evening by a Palestinian Qassam rocket which crashed into the backyard of a residential home in Yesha – a small community belonging to the Eshkol Regional Council.

A widow, Katz is survived by four children, five grandchildren and her 90-year-old mother, who lives in a retirement home.

She sustained critical injuries from the impact and MDA paramedics alerted to the scene fought to resuscitate for some time before ultimately calling the time of death. Medics also treated a 50-year-old man for shock.

The al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

The trip to Yesha had not been planned. Katz had intended to meet with her sister-in-law, who was visiting from the US. But the two decided to relocate the reunion from Gvaram to Yesha after a Qassam barrage earlier in the day landed near the city of Ashkelon - which is near Gvaram.

Katz had been waiting outside one of the houses while her son went inside to determine if they had found the right address. Seconds after the rocket alert sirens sounded the Qassam struck a mere dozen inches from her.

Qassams rain on

Earlier on Monday several Qassams were fired from northern Gaza towards Israel, one landed near an elementary school in Ashkelon. A number of buildings were damaged but no injuries were reported.

Yesha council chairman, Yehuda Madmon, told Ynet the rocket alert sirens had sounded prior to the impact. "There was the 'Color Red' alert and I had a very bad feeling. This is the first time I have run for cover from a Qassam. All of a sudden there was a horrendous blast," he said.

Hamas responds to Carter request for cease-fire: attack Israeli border

First fruits of Jimmy Carter's amateur diplomacy? Hamas conducts a major attack on one of the key points where goods enter Gaza. I expect that the world outcry against Hamas' attempt to starve the Palestinians will be forthcoming shortly.


from the New York Times:Palestinian Suicide Bombers Attack Crossing Into Gaza By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Palestinian suicide bombers from Gaza drove three explosives-laden vehicles into the Kerem Shalom goods crossing on the border with Israel early on Saturday, detonating two of them, the Israeli military said.

Three bombers were killed in the blasts and 13 Israeli soldiers were wounded, three moderately and the rest lightly, the military said.

Hamas, the Islamic group that controls the Gaza Strip, claimed responsibility for the attack. It came on the eve of the weeklong Passover holiday in Israel and hours before former President Jimmy Carter held a second meeting in Damascus with exiled leaders of Hamas, reportedly to explore the possibility of a cease-fire and a prisoner exchange between the group and Israel.

Hamas is holding an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was captured in a border raid on an army position not far from Kerem Shalom and taken into Gaza in June 2006. The group is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in return for the Israeli corporal.

Two more Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Saturday, one a member of the Hamas military wing and the other a member of the Hamas police.

Saturday’s attack on the Kerem Shalom terminal, from where essential goods are transferred into Gaza, appeared to be part of a concerted campaign by Gaza militants against the border crossings. Hamas officials have issued threats in recent weeks about an impending explosion along Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt. This attack was the fifth to have occurred along the border with Israel in the last 10 days, according to Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli Army spokeswoman.

Israel has strictly limited the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza since Hamas took control of the area last June, and since late last year has further restricted the flow of goods, including fuel supplies, as a sanction against continued rocket fire.

With the passenger crossing on Gaza’s border with Egypt mostly closed, Gaza’s population of 1.5 million is completely reliant on goods allowed in from Israel.

About 200 trucks of essential food and medical supplies currently pass through Kerem Shalom each week. On Friday, 48 trucks delivered goods including wheelchairs, babies’ bottles, meat and fish, the military said.

Israel says that by attacking the crossings, Hamas is trying to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that would lead to international pressure on Israel.

Hamas says it is trying to open Gaza by all available means. A spokesman for the group’s military wing, Abu Obeidah, told reporters in Gaza that Saturday’s attack was “a gift for the people under siege” and warned that there is “worse to come.” Asked why Hamas was attacking the entry points when the population was in such dire need of supplies, he replied that Saturday’s attack was “a purely military operation.”

Kerem Shalom is always closed on Saturdays and will be closed Sunday because of Passover, but Major Leibovich said the crossing was likely to reopen in the days after.

The vehicles entered the Palestinian side of the crossing at about 6 a.m. under cover of heavy mortar fire and the early morning mist. They included two jeeps painted to resemble army vehicles and an armored personnel carrier, Major Leibovich said. Israeli forces came to confront them as they headed toward the Israeli side. The soldiers escaped more serious injury because they were in a fortified space.

Another armored personnel carrier was spotted half an hour later by soldiers at a border position north of Kerem Shalom. That vehicle was blown up by Israeli fire before it could reach the border fence.

Abu Obeidah said that four booby-trapped vehicles had headed for Kerem Shalom, and that three had exploded and one had withdrawn.

On Thursday, Israeli forces shot at an armed Palestinian group approaching Kerem Shalom, killing one, and Palestinian snipers fired at Nahal Oz, the only fuel depot along the border.

On Wednesday, three Israeli soldiers and four militants were killed in an ambush laid by Hamas near the border, and 14 Palestinians, mostly said to be civilians, were killed in subsequent Israeli strikes.

Two Israeli civilians working at the Nahal Oz fuel depot were killed in an April 9 attack by Gaza militants, which caused the terminal to close down for a week.

On Saturday afternoon Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, director of the emergency medical services in Gaza, said that Health Ministry ambulances would stop running at 6 p.m. because of a shortage of gasoline.

Israel insists there are enough fuel reserves in Gaza to avert a crisis, but the Gaza association that distributes the gasoline has been on strike in recent weeks in protest against the reduced supplies.

On Friday night, four rockets fired from Gaza slammed into the Israeli border town of Sderot, causing damage to property but no injuries.

Before his meetings in the Syrian capital, Mr. Carter met with Hamas officials in Cairo on Thursday, where he asked them to halt rocket attacks against Israel and sharply criticized Israel for causing suffering to the residents of Gaza by restricting supplies.

Mr. Carter angered Israeli and American officials by meeting with Hamas, which Israel, the United States and the European Union classify as a terrorist organization.

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.

West Bank pollution threatening Israeli groundwater

from Haaretz

_{By Zafrir Rinat}

For several years now, a white river has run through the Hebron Hills. The color comes from pollution - waste from a sawmill near Hebron. And according to a recent Israeli-Palestinian study, pollution from this river and others like it is threatening the groundwater inside Israel, and is impeding attempts to rehabilitate Israel's rivers.

Israel has tried to deal with the problem by collecting and purifying the waste at the Green Line, the boundary between Israel and the West Bank. But that is insufficient, because much pollution enters the groundwater in the West Bank and spreads to Israel underground.

The two-year study was conducted by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University and the Palestinian Water and Environmental Development Organization. It focused on the Alexander River, which runs from Nablus to the Mediterranean north of Netanya, and the Basor River, which runs from near Hebron to the Gaza Strip. Major investments have been made in rehabilitating both rivers in recent years, including by establishing waste treatment plants along them.

However, the study found, the Basor is now full of both municipal waste and toxins emitted by the stone- and leather-working industries around Hebron. It estimated that anywhere from 45 to 90 percent of the pollution seeps into the ground before the river reaches the Israeli treatment plant, thereby endangering the groundwater. Moreover, some of this underground waste then reenters the river downstream of the treatment plant.

The study found that faulty sewage systems in Israel also pollute the river.

While the Alexander River has improved substantially, the study said, it still is being polluted by municipal waste and the olive oil industries around Nablus and Tul Karm, as well as various sources within Israel, such as fertilizer and insecticides from nearby farms. In this case, too, about half of the pollution on the Palestinian side seeps into the groundwater before reaching the Green Line.

Amos Brandeis, chief planner of the project to rehabilitate the Alexander, noted that the German government plans to build waste treatment plants for Nablus and Tul Karm, but they will not be operational for several years. He also noted that the amount of municipal waste on the Palestinian side has grown, due to population growth and because many more houses have been connected to the sewage system in recent years - and this system flows directly into the river, rather than to a treatment plant.

Hydrologists Lior Assaf and Hila Ackerman of the Arava Institute said that more could also be done on the Israeli side - for instance, said Assaf, "planting buffer zones of vegetation along the river banks, which would help prevent pollution from entering the river."

Professor Alon Tal of the Blaustein Institute, in his summary of the research, noted that Israelis and Palestinians had managed to work together to reduce pollution despite the political tensions. "Nevertheless, what has been done to date is only the first stage," he wrote.

(via Solomonia)

Anti-Israel propagandist touring US churches

The traditional covered dish dinner of the small town American church has changed. Along with the pot roast and macaroni and cheese, you may now be served a helping of anti-Israel propaganda delivered by a professional propagandist. These propagandists are insinuating themselves into the mainstream via the grassroots, attending regularly scheduled suppers and meetings to deliver a carefully crafted anti-Israel message. It has now become commonplace within many churches in this country to view Israel in only the most negative terms, and to dismiss all Christian support for Israel as a form of fundamentalism. In fact, it has become difficult to discuss the issue at all within many churches unless you adhere to the views of people like Janet Lahr Lewis.

Janet Lahr Lewis is a professional anti-Israel activist who (according to her bio) worked for Sabeel's main office in Jerusalem for 10 years and has since served as the executive director of Friends of Sabeel for two years, in which position she runs their international outreach operations. She has also achieved a level of prominence within the United Methodist Church, which is the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. Her UMC profile lists her as the UMC "liaison between ecumenical groups and Israel and Palestine"... Janet is the main contact for ... United Methodist visitors who wish to follow the recommendation of the General Conference to spend a significant amount of time in the area with (Israeli and Palestinian) Christians." In other words, the United Methodist Church has installed a strident anti-Israel activist as their primary contact person for groups wishing to conduct fact-finding tours of Israel and the Palestinian territories under church aegis. (More here in this piece on Sabeel)

Lewis, who worked as a civil engineer and "troubleshooter" at a Old Cast Stone Products in Thompson, OH, says she received a calling on a visit to "the Holy Land". According to the bio she posts on the official website for United Methodist missionaries:

“After taking a typical Holy Land tour and seeing the devastating consequences of the ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, I experienced not only a ‘call’, but rather an undeniable ‘push’ to go back to that not-so-holy land and do whatever I could to help bring about ‘freedom for the oppressed,’” Janet recalls. She sold her house in the U.S. and volunteered for several years, first in the Galilee, then Bethlehem where she “lived with my neighbors under the heavy hand of injustice and military occupation.”

I'm not sure how that bio corresponds to the more than 12 years working directly for Naim Ateek at Sabeel, but, putting that aside, the main point is clear: she is the most senior United Methodist missionary in Israel and she is an outspoken partisan for the Palestinians against Israel.

I was wondering what she's been doing lately , so I googled her name and found that she's on a peculiar type of speaking tour. One targeting small town Methodists with her slick, well-honed message. Lewis has been a woman on a mission of late, going from church to church on a tight schedule, spreading her message of opposing the existence of Israel in the name of peace. On September 26, she hosted a conference with Naim Ateek in Bethlehem. (read here) After that, both his and her U.S. tour began. He went to the Sabeel conference in Boston, and she went on a speaking tour of small town America.

On September 30, Lewis spoke at the Angola, Indiana United Methodist Church, which describes her as "the missionary this church supports" (by which they must mean they send her funds).

On October 25, she addressed the Reno, Nevada First United Methodist Church: "News from Holy Land": "Lewis has served in the Holy Land since 1994, coordinating relations between ecumenical groups and their hosts. She is an educator, organizer, journalist and worship leader, working towards a peace for Palestinians and Israelis."

She was in California for a meeting with the good people of Chico, California's Trinity United Methodist Church on October 27. More here, this time featuring an "Arabic Dinner" (in a covered dish?).

On November 2, Lewis "gave the message" at a worship service and an "in-depth presentation of her work" at a potluck dinner at the St. Thomas United Methodist Church of Glen Elyn, Illinois. "Come and learn a little about one place where the church is at work in the world."

From November 2: Wesley United Methodist Church, Naperville: Announcements:

"UM Missionary in Israel/Palestine to Speak at Wesley; Friday, Nov. 2 @ 8 pm
The End the Occupation (ETO) group has invited Janet Lahr Lewis to come to speak at Wesley after their monthly potluck, at 8 pm on Friday, November 2.
Janet Lahr Lewis is a missionary with the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church and is serving as a liaison between ecumenical groups in Israel and Palestine. Come and hear the story that isn’t told in the American press about life in the occupied territories and the justice of the Palestinian cause. You may wish ~ are welcome ~ to come to the ETO potluck which precedes her presentation at 7 pm."

Then this notice of another event from a local Illinois paper:

"Nov. 4: Good Samaritan United Methodist Church will feature missionary Janet Lahr Lewis at 10 a.m. Nov. 4 at the church, 960 W. Army Trail Road, Addison. She will describe her Mission of Peace in Palestine and Jerusalem. Donations for her work will be taken and a luncheon will follow. For details, call (630) 543-3725."

Then this from the Downers Grove Illinois First United Methodist Church calendar:

"Tuesday, November 6, 2007: Stories from the Holy Land: Janet Lahr Lewis
Time : 7:00pm to 9:00pm Description: Janet is a UM missionary working in Palestine, sponsored by our Conference. Location: Chapel Hall Organizer: Jonathan Dean"

Then this from Fairview United Methodist Church of Ohio's Miami Valley area:

Monday, Nov. 12 at Fairview UMC, Dayton, 7:00 p.m. Reception following.
828 W. Fairview Avenue, Dayton, OH 45406 Ph: (937) 274-2178

Tuesday, Nov. 13 at Aldersgate UMC, Huber Heights, 7:00 p.m. Soup Supper at 6:00 p.m.
5464 Old Troy Pike in Huber Heights, OH Ph: (937)-233-8151.

Janet Lahr Lewis, a missionary through the General Board of Global Ministries, serves as the Coordinator of Friends of Sabeel-International at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, Palestine. Friends of Sabeel support the work of Sabeel-Jerusalem by promoting nonviolent solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Janet's responsibilities are numerous. She circulates updates about developments in the ongoing crisis and suggests courses of action people can take to address it. She educates visitors, organizes conferences, develops media campaigns, offers worship opportunities, hosts delegations to the area and oversees other special events.

“Christ calls us all to be ministers of justice,” she observes. “Through my work with the Palestinian Christian community, I will be able to answer this call by working for a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis, so that reconciliation and healing can occur.”

A native of Cleveland, OH, Janet earned an associate degree in civil engineering and architectural design from Lakeland College and has studied theater arts at Texas Christian University. Prior to her current assignment, she worked for twelve years with
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. She has also worked closely with Archbishop Elias Chacour, a prominent Palestine Christian peace activist.

The United Methodist Women geographic mission study for 2008 is on Palestine, so this is an excellent opportunity to receive current, first-hand information about the area. We invite you to join us for these presentations.

There was this fund-raising appeal from the November newsletter of the First United Methodist Church of Bloomfield, Indiana:

November Outreach Spotlight:
UM MISSIONARY LIAISON IN JERUSALEM
What it is: The United Methodist Church liaison in Jerusalem is a ministry established in 1987 at the request of Palestinian churches. Janet Lahr Lewis has recently succeeded Rev. Sandra Olewine in this mission, serving as Coordinator of Friends of Sabeel-International. Friends of Sabeel is a network of international organizations that promotes nonviolent solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With seemingly endless challenges in the Middle East, it is important that we continue to support this vital United Methodist mission. Please consider making a donation by cash or check in this month’s yellow mission envelope. Make checks payable to FUMC with Missionary in Jerusalem on the memo line.

What it means: “After taking a typical Holy Land tour and seeing the devastating consequences of the ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, I experienced not only a ‘call,’ but rather an undeniable ‘push’ to go back to that not-so-holy land and do whatever I could to help bring about ‘freedom for the oppressed,’” Janet recalls. She sold her house in the U.S. and volunteered for several years, first in Galilee, then in Bethlehem where she “lived with my neighbors under the heavy hand of injustice and military occupation.” “Christ calls us all to be ministers of justice... Through my work with the Palestinian Christian community and Sabeel, I will be able to answer this call by working for a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis, so that reconciliation and healing can occur.”
-Janet Lahr Lewis

And this notice of fund-raising from the ground up: The Lake Villa, Illinois United Methodist Church collected $26.85 in pennies for Lewis between April and September. (They had a collection bucket in the back of the sanctuary).



That's just what I found in a brief google search, so I assume I'm missing most of her speaking engagements. Too much information? Why am I boring you with this trivia? Grassroots organizing can shape debates and influence policy-making virtually unseen. The religious anti-Zionism of Sabeel, Janet Lahr Lewis' message, is intrinsically anti-Semitic and is aimed at delegitimizing the state of Israel. This very extreme message is working its way into the mainstream because professional propagandists like Lewis are given a forum in American churches. That's how public opinion is being shaped from the ground up.

During the Great Depression, Father Coughlin spun a yarn about Jewish bankers taking control of the world. Father Coughlin proved that a virulently anti-Semitic message can be made acceptable to millions of American Christians given the right climate. He used the mass-media to spread his hatred, so everybody knew what he was saying when he said it. Sabeel activists like Janet Lahr Lewis are largely flying beneath the radar, helping to frame the debate and shaping future generations outside the awareness of the mass media. That's how the divestment campaigns have gotten as far as they have. In spite of the fact that they haven't yet succeeded, they have become part of the mainstream debate. That is, in and of itself, a sort of success for Sabeel. They can wait for the political climate to change to see if the ideas they're planting will grow.

So now these ideas are promoted in small town churches, by people respected and liked within their communities. That is why Janet Lahr Lewis' speaking tour is important.

We must not let a new generation of anti-Semitic demagogues put a friendly, acceptable face on bigotry.


Janet Lahr Lewis

Palestinian claims just don't add up...

from B'NAI ELIM: "Palestinian Arab Math" by Lee Kaplan:

Since 1993, the world has been the victim of the biggest welfare scam in history.
I'm referring specifically to the Arab League's and Gamal Nasser's creation of
of a "Palestinian" Arab nationality to justify the unremitting attacks on the Jewish state of Israel.

Billions of dollars in aid money have been given to the "Palestinians", yet they are still
dispossessed and poor, or so they say, and victims of the "greatest genocide" in history by the Jews of Israel. You hear this constantly in America on college campuses, and now even in mainstream media, particularly by those lovely folks in the International Solidarity Movement.

Most Israelis know about the "festering wound" of Arabs who were displaced by the War of Independence in 1948. Many were put into refugee camps after the war by other Arabs to sit until the Jews would be driven into the sea at a later date. Still, others among the Arabs made lives for themselves but still claimed they were "refugees," and, by 1964, the official front of the PLO was organized under the Egyptian, Yasser Arafat, to organize the movement even further.

Arafat was a whiz at Palestinian math. He got all the Arab League to give separate passports to "Palestinians" and to not let them assimilate, and, for good measure, he got them to make every "Palestinian" tithe to Arafat's PLO. After all, when Palestinian mathematics makes numbers appear and disappear at random, more welfare money is always needed by the leadership that spends it on themselves.

And, organize he did; creating liaisons with the Soviet Union's KGB, training worldwide terrorists also brought in money, and UN and American foreign aid money that came in was invested wisely and developed into what British intelligence has claimed is a daily profit margin of $5 million (US) per day even today. At the height of the Oslo Peace Process, the PLO was getting $155 million dollars a month from the US, the UN, the EU and the Arab League not to mention private NGO funding for the 3.2 million Arabs who lived in the West Bank and Gaza. But by Palestinian mathematics, that wasn't enough to create a country. Nope, not nearly enough.

Palestinian Arabs have their own unique sense of mathematics. It isn't limited to just how much money they actually have to make peace and feed their people, it's
also based on their need to complain about how they are suffering to keep the welfare scam going.

Oh, yes. And they need more money to buy more guns and other weapons.

Dennis Ross, who negotiated at Oslo for the US with the Palestinian leadership, once picked up a flyer handed out by "Palestinians" and members of the ISM at UC Berkeley that said Barak only offered 93% of the West Bank and Gaza and that Arafat had to walk away. Ross explained they were offered 100% of the territory discussed, 97% outright, and 3% in a land swap to guarantee Israel's security. Today, if you look at maps distributed by the "Palestinian-led" International Solidarity Movement on US campuses and in US churches, the Israelis have really offered only 34% of Judea and Samaria and the Palestinians don't even count Gaza. You see, they say it's still occupied because the Israelis control the borders to prevent the importation of those guns.

Those poor, poor Palestinians just have problems with math—except when it comes to stealing money. Suha Arafat had a great grasp of math when Arafat succumbed to AIDS. And we of the world should all take comfort that our tax dollars and foreign aid money was well used by the Palestinians after his death. But, you know, somehow it's never enough according to Palestinian math. Hamas, since taking over the Palestinian Authority was receiving more foreign aid to the PA then ever before, but they screamed they had none. Abbas needed 86 million dollars for guns because according to Palestinian math he had only five bullets per terrorist (in that case Israel met his needs without questioning his math as did President Bush who also has t rouble with math).

Census totals by the PA itself revealed they were wrong about the actual numbers of Palestinian Arabs in the territories anyway, and that the number may have been one million over the mark to request additional aid money. Go on the Internet and read how there are 4 million, no wait, 5 million, no wait, 7 million, no wait, TEN million Palestinian…NO WAIT! ELEVEN MILLION Palestinian refugees worldwide who must be allowed unconditionally to return to their "homes" in what was once "Pal estine," but is now Israel.

Pay up with those welfare payments or we'll kill you, too, is an absolute theory in Palestinian math.

Of course, the normal Malthusian paradigm of increasing populations in the world can be easily unproven by Palestinian math as blatantly false, even in the Palestinian Authority. As the Palestinians undergo "genocide" by the Israelis, somehow their population only increases while the population of Israel decreases slightly or remains steady. Even if the population density of Gaza is no worse than that of San Francisco, Palestinian world renowned leaders like Saeb Erekat can claim that Gaza has "the most crowded living conditions in the entire world."

Poor Saeb, a victim of Palestinian math, no longer appears on national US television after he mathematically explained the town Jenin stood no more after its people had been wiped from the map by the IDF. It seems only 58 Arabs were killed, 48 armed terrorists along with 23 Israeli soldiers. His niece, Noura, has taken over with Palestinian math as an aid to Dennis Kucinich in Congress where she continues the proud tradition of Palestinian Arab math..

But the best example of Palestinian math is the Palestinians unswerving claim to all the land of Israel. Visit the website www.palestineremembered.com . Here you can see a prime example of Palestinian math at its best. Take, for example, the Israeli community of Qiryat-Gat in the Negev. Allegedly, by Palestinian mathematics standards there were 5,400 Arabs who lived in the same spot in 1948 that was called Al-Faluja. But Palestinian math now claims there are 33,000 Palestinian refugees from that village who must return. And that's only one village, mind you.

Maybe we Americans should start grabbing up property and land in Europe, and Asia, because many of us were driven out of those locales, too, due to wars and there are over 220 million of us today who should have the non-negotiable right to return. Think about it, we could take Paris, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and the UN might even help us and give us all that aid money while we work on the scheme. Maybe there is something to Palestinian math. Hmmm…

The only math worse than Palestinian math is US and Israeli math. In the US we can't figure out that by funding the Arabs with more dollars they will use them against us one day, so we keep throwing greater numbers at them. Israeli math is even worse, since we can't figure out then each time a Jew is murdered as part of the result of Palestinian math it results in a subtraction of the Jewish population worldwide. Israeli math only understands diminishing returns whereas Palestinian math only allows for growth at the expense of Israeli mathematic paradigms.

It all just doesn't add up, does it

Solomonia: Video Blog: A Conversation with Dexter Van Zile on Sabeel and the Old South Church (Updated)

If you read this blog, you know a little about Sabeel, the anti-Israel lobby group driving the anti-Israel agenda within mainline Protestant denominations. (Read more here: Sabeel and the Palestinian Lobby vs. History).

To learn more about Sabeel and their upcoming conference in Boston, check out this from Solomonia: Video Blog: A Conversation with Dexter Van Zile on Sabeel and the Old South Church (Updated)

The Unpeaceful Rest of Mohammed Al-Dura

from the Columbia Journalism Review: The Unpeaceful Rest of Mohammed Al-Dura

By Gal Beckerman

No single event was responsible for igniting the Second Intifada, which began seven years ago and effectively killed off the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians. Or, rather, there are specific causes for why violence erupted in the occupied Palestinian territories and in the cafes and markets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but the reasons depend more on who you’re talking to than on what actually happened—either it was Ariel Sharon’s inflammatory visit to the Temple Mount or Yasser Arafat’s scheming that provided the first push.

Regardless, once the killing began there was one media event that, indisputably and instantaneously, fanned the flames and primed the Palestinian people and the wider Arab world for confrontation: the televised death of twelve-year-old Mohammed al-Dura.

The fifty-nine seconds of edited footage, aired on France 2, was repeated thousands of times on September 30, 2000 and in the days and weeks that followed. A young boy and his father at the Netzarim crossing in the Gaza strip are caught in the crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police and gunmen. The child cowers behind his father who tries to protect him with his arm — a still image that has been reproduced over and over again on posters and postage stamps - and then in the last series of frames he is slumped over, dead. Al-Dura became the Palestinian martyr, a symbol of Israel’s ruthlessness, its disregard for innocent life, the life of a defenseless boy.

The Israeli Army initially took responsibility for the death. But in the years since, a cottage industry of both conspiracy theorists and honest researchers have questioned whether al-Dura really was killed by an Israeli bullet or even - and this, until recently, was mostly the provenance of conspiracy theorists - the whole event was staged as Palestinian propaganda (or “Pallywood,” as one obsessive has described it). James Fallows, the respected correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, had the most thorough examination of all sides in a June 2003 article. The conclusion he came to, as he reiterated on his blog yesterday, was this:

I ended up arguing in my article that the ‘official’ version of the event could not be true. Based on the known locations of the boy, his father, the Israeli Defense Force troops in the area, and various barriers, walls, and other impediments, the IDF soldiers simply could not have shot the child in the way most news accounts said they had done…. I became fully convinced by the negative case (IDF was innocent). But I did not think there was enough evidence for the even more damning positive indictment (person or persons unknown staged a fake death — or perhaps even a real death, for ‘blood libel’ purposes).

Fallows felt the need to remind readers of his conclusion because there has lately been a flurry of news surrounding the al-Dura case. As Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet political prisoner and Israeli politician, pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday, French courts ruled last year in favor of France 2 in a defamation suit that it had initiated against Philippe Karsenty, a self-proclaimed media watchdog. Karsenty had called for the firing of the channel’s Jerusalem bureau chief and its news director for allegedly covering up the true story behind the al-Dura footage. France 2 won it’s case and the courts ordered Karsenty to pay a fine for insulting the two journalists with his accusations. Last month, Karsenty appealed the ruling, and the decision on the appeal is pending. Sharansky was writing as a way of pressing the Israeli government, which had been reluctant to step into the fray over the past seven years, to make a definitive statement on what really happened on September 30, 2000.

France 2 itself is largely to blame for the fact that this controversy refuses to die. The initial news report on al-Dura’s shooting was based on video shot by a sole Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rahmeh. He collected twenty-seven minutes of raw footage that was edited down to the infamous fifty-nine seconds. Though numerous legitimate researchers have demanded to see the unedited video, France 2 has consistently refused. The one time it did air the additional twenty-seven minutes for a panel of three French journalists, this jury concluded, according to Sharansky, that full footage included “blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.”

Possibly in response to Sharansky’s op-ed, the Israeli government, through the director of its press office, announced today that it too had come to the conclusion that, “the events of that day were essentially staged by the network’s cameraman in Gaza, Mr. Tilal Abu-Rehama.”

The story might be settled soon, though. As part of Karsenty’s appeal, judges in the appeals court last week ordered France 2 to show them the full twenty-seven-minutes of footage in November.

This is good news, if only to clear up an episode that has inflamed passions on both sides. Israel may be moving too fast by asserting that the killing was staged. But it is telling, as Fallows points out, that those trying to prove foul play “seem more fervent about turning up all available evidence and getting to the bottom of things than their antagonists do,” though he does add that he’s “skeptical that large-scale conspiracies can be pulled off — and kept secret for seven years, which is how long it has been since the original event.”

I tend to trust Fallows in this. I imagine the tapes will probably show that the Israeli soldiers did not kill the boy, and that the cause of his death was either unclear or the result of a Palestinian bullet. Either way, it should be pretty obvious that when you’re dealing with such murkiness, the best thing to do is throw as much light as possible on the story. It just seems strange that it has taken two court cases to force France 2 to do just that.

Dutch church "hijacked" by pro-Arab activists

Looks like Sabeel and their friends have been at work in the Netherlands spreading propaganda and installing anti-Israel activists in key posts within the leadership of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN) .

from Haaretz: Dutch church to rethink its policy of solidarity with Israel By Cnaan Liphshiz

After 37 years of boasting of "inalienable solidarity" with the people of Israel, the Netherlands' second largest church plans to reexamine its stance this fall. A group of notables from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN) warned last week that the organization, which has over two million members, is in danger of being "hijacked" by pro-Palestinian activists.

The warning - coauthored by Dr. Jan van der Graaf, who served for 35 years as general secretary within one of the three churches that make up the PCN, and three other prominent church figures - was an open letter against changing the reference to Israel. It was addressed to Minister Henri Veldhuis, a General Synod member who said the clause made the church adopt a biased view that ignored Israeli actions against Palestinians.

At a speech last month in Utrecht for Friends of Sabeel (a Jerusalem-based Palestinian organization), Veldhuis said the church should commit to a bond with Israel "as people of the Torah" instead of the "Jewish people as an ethnic group." Veldhuis also complained that currently, "the church has a stronger bond with a non-believing Alaskan Jewish person than a Palestinian Christian."

The open letter accused Veldhuis of a slanted and hypocritical approach. "We were astonished by your address before a Palestinian liberation organization that pretends to be promoting reconciliation," it read. "You accused Israel but ignored Hamas's Jew-hating ideology. You overlooked the alarming anti-Semitic upsurge in Arab countries."

Veldhuis responded that the signatories "were regrettably and falsely" trying to portray Sabeel and himself as radical left-wing activists. In a conversation with Haaretz, Veldhuis said: "It is important to preserve the lessons of the Holocaust and never forget the Jewish roots of church and bible and to fight anti-Semitism, but we have to take a more realistic position on the Jewish people as an ethnic group and on the State of Israel. The PCN's theology is now idealizing both."

He added that he believes the coauthors - Van der Graaf, Dr. Theo van Campen, Dr. Wulfert de Greef and Dr. Henk van der Meulen - are circling the wagons because of "mounting criticism of Israel's policies."

Van der Graaf said that those who advocate changing the church's charter are "only a highly motivated minority" within PCN, and he believes the clause will ultimately remain unchanged.

The PCN, which was formed in 2004 as a merger of the country's three largest protestant churches, is scheduled to discuss revising its stance on Israel in November.

Cologne Cardinal agrees with Nazis on "degenerate" art

He proclaims art without a religious basis to be "entartete Kunst", the term the Nazis used to designate art it suppressed. (Background on "entartete Kunst" here and here.) He also thinks that it would be better suited to a mosque or "other house of worship". (Read about that here).



from BBC NEWS: "Cardinal in 'Nazi art term' row"

A German archbishop has sparked controversy by calling some modern art "degenerate" - a term used by the Nazi regime in its persecution of artists.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, was speaking as the Church inaugurated its Kolumba art museum.

Cardinal Meisner warned that when art became estranged from worship, culture became degenerate.

The cardinal had not intended to pay tribute to "old ideologies", a spokesman said.

The BBC's Marianne Landzettel says this was no off-the-cuff remark by the cardinal, delivered in a sermon in Cologne Cathedral, but was precisely scripted.

She says the phrase degenerate art - "entartete Kunst" - in German has only one connotation: that of Nazi Germany and the persecution of artists, the banning of paintings and the burning of books.

Entartete Kunst" was the name of an exhibition of works organised by the Nazis in 1937 in Munich as a warning to the German people.

In a newspaper interview, the North Rhine-Westphalia culture secretary, Hans-Dietrich Grosse-Brockhoff, said it was appalling that Cardinal Meisner had used such a word.

Former minister Michael Vesper also said he was shocked.

"I thought all this was history, and then it is a high-ranking member of the Catholic clergy who uses it," he said.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi government started to bring art under its control.

All modern art, and Expressionism in particular, was labelled degenerate and was not to be shown in public.

More than 15,000 paintings were removed from German museums.

Recently Cardinal Meisner expressed opposition to a new stained-glass window in Cologne Cathedral.

The abstract work by renowned artist Gerhard Richter contains thousands of squares.

and from the Associated Press: "German Cleric Criticized for Nazi Phrase"

A Roman Catholic cardinal used the term "degenerate" at the opening of an art museum on the ruins of a church, drawing criticism Saturday for employing a phrase strongly linked to the Nazi persecution of artists.

Joachim Meisner, the influential Cardinal of Cologne, warned in a sermon at the opening of a museum built on the ruins of Cologne's St. Kolumba church that it was dangerous to allow art to break away from religion.

"Let us not forget that there is an indisputable connection between culture and religion. Where culture is uncoupled from ... the worship of God, religion becomes moribund in rituals and culture degenerates," Meisner said Friday.

In German the phrase "degenerate art," or "Entartete Kunst," carries deep associations with the Nazis' attempts to ban artworks they deemed did not uphold their ideals. In 1937, they staged an exhibit in Munich called "Entartete Kunst," which included 650 artworks confiscated from museums and considered unacceptable, including many by Expressionist artists.

Germany's main Jewish group said the cardinal's remarks went too far.

"Meisner ... is a notorious spiritual firebrand who tries not just to test the boundaries of what is allowed, but to deliberately overstep them," said Stephan Kramer, a leader in Germany's Central Council of Jews said in a statement.

Meisner was one of three German bishops who made controversial comments comparing the separation barrier in the West Bank to the Berlin Wall. He also recently criticized the taste of a leading artist who designed stained glass windows for Cologne Cathedral.

Theodor Lemper, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and responsible for culture in Cologne, said use of the word "entartete" should be taboo.

"In addition, culture does not grow only out of the worship of God," Lemper was quoted as saying by the Cologne daily Express. "The absolutism preached by Cardinal Meisner is false and inappropriate."

Some background on Cardinal Meisner: first, he's no friend of Israel. In March of 2007, a group of German Cardinals and Bishops which he led on a tour of the West Bank raised some eyebrows by comparing the West Bank to the Warsaw ghetto. Meisner went on to add that the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank reminded him of the Berlin Wall, thus comparing Israel both to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. (Read about it here: "German Bishops, B'Tselem Criticize Passive Counter-Terrorism".)

Der Spiegel religion reporter Peter Wensierski has described Meisner as the most feared man in the German church -- "the spokesperson of Germany's fundamentalists." In the Cologne diocese "extreme-right obscure groups are at the lead--from Opus Dei, whose German headquarters are in Cologne, to dubious missionary and pietistic circles." (Read it here.)

He has compared abortions to the Holocaust, women who have abortions to Hitler, and RU 486 (the "morning-after pill") to Zyklon B.

He has been a strong opponent of equal rights for gays, and has been the subject of a number of lawsuits for discrimination on that basis. (More here in German.)

Key figure in Presbyterian anti-Israel movement will resign PCUSA post, continue as president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches

from the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal: "Top Presbyterian official will leave in '08: Kirkpatrick in 3rd term as stated clerk" by Peter Smith

A top official in the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will be leaving his post when his term expires in June of next year.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, who has been elected to three terms as stated clerk of the denomination since 1996, announced his impending departure yesterday.

"This has been the best job I have ever had," he said in a written statement, but "the time has now come for me to conclude my service."

He could not be reached for further comment last night.

In his statement, Kirkpatrick, 62, said he plans to spend more time with his family and in his post as president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a body of more than 200 Protestant denominations.

The stated clerk is the top church officer in the denomination, responsible for such things as church property, research, church legislative sessions and legal matters.

Even before taking the World Alliance position, Kirkpatrick regularly traveled the world, visiting with partner churches and speaking out on crises in Sudan, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Kirkpatrick has been a frequent target of conservative critics within the church. They have cited the denomination's membership decline -- which began in the 1960s but continued unabated during his tenure -- and his handling of ongoing controversies over homosexuality in the church.

His office announced plans earlier this year to cut seven positions, or about a 10th of its staff, because of declining donations. He has acknowledged some of the decline is due to congregations withholding funds out of protest, but has said the churches' economic struggles are a bigger factor.

Other Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) offices also have cut staff in recent years.

In his statement, Kirkpatrick said that while his work "has been a great blessing, it has also taken a significant amount of time and energy and has been accompanied by more than a fair share of stresses and strains. A change in my life patterns is probably in order."

In case you don't know about Kirkpatrick's history with respect to anti-Israel advocacy, here's a little background, starting with Kirkpatrick's two-step regarding whether or not Israel practices apartheid (from this webpage called "Presbyterian double-talk"):

"Although the decision to 'initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel' may be presumed by some to invite comparison of Israeli policies with those of apartheid South Africa, the assembly has not asserted any moral equivalency between the two. The two situations are distinct."

- Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, "Statement from the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)," Presbyterian Church (USA), July 20, 2004 (emphasis added).

"Surely you can understand the frustrations of Palestinian Christians and Muslims forced to live under a clear form of apartheid."

- Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, "Letter from Clifton Kirkpatrick to President Bill Clinton," Presbyterian Church (USA), undated (emphasis added).

Two years ago, Solomonia had some discussion of Kirkpatrick's tendency to defend terrorism while opposing preventing or responding to terrorism. He believes and consistently portrays violence against Israeli civilians as the fault of Israel, not as part of the ongoing war against Israel's existence. Meanwhile, he casts all anti-terrorist measures by Israel as rooted in irrational fear, not as responses to a real threat.

Solomonia linked to a letter Kirkpatrick sent to Presbyterians in Dialogue for Peace, a group of Presbyterians with a different view of the Israeli Arab conflict than his own. (That link is now dead, but the letter can be found here.) Kirkpatrick, while purporting to take an evenhanded approach, in fact disparages Israeli security concerns and inflates their responsibility, as is his wont. He also "praises" Presbyterians in Dialogue for Peace for reaching out for Jewish views on the conflict, but chooses some very odd language to do so, stating "(y)our decision to put yourselves in the hands of (emphasis added) the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Houston Rabbinical Association as a way to see something of the situation 'on the ground' in Israel-Palestine demonstrates your interest in getting a fuller understanding of the complexities you describe." That phrase "put yourselves in the hands of" draws attention to itself by its strangeness. It speaks to Kirkpatrick's fear of being manipulated by Jewish groups, and may be a deliberate disparagement of Christians he believes to be under Jewish control.

Kirkpatrick has an unnerving habit of taking contradictory positions. His letter goes on to both deny (and disparage) charges that his group is biased against Israel, and to defend that bias as a necessary counter-balance to Israel's power.

The ability to be "fair" and "balanced" (note quotation marks) rests upon the recognition that at present, things are grossly out of balance with respect to issues of power, economic stability, living conditions and even the issue of daily survival. Until that imbalance is acknowledged and addressed, rather than exacerbated, there will be no resolution. Indeed, as Phillips remarked: "I returned with two others who were with me, believing that in the name of security, Israel is destroying security."

I believe that we, along with most Presbyterians, long for the same outcome for the people of the region, which is a secure future for both Israelis and Palestinians within viable, internationally recognized borders, in which there is no justification or need for violence, one against the other. Or, as the Bible puts it, "…neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid." (Micah 4:3-4)

This raises the question (as Will Spotts was quoted asking here), how can Kirkpatrick claim to both advocate peace and use phrases like the "need for violence"? That phrase rationalizes acts of terrorism without addressing the issue directly. Kirkpatrick, although unable to understand why a neighbor might want to build a wall to keep out neighbors intent on killing grandmothers at seders and schoolgirls in supermarkets, CAN understand the "need" for the killing to take place. That kind of understanding is better called misunderstanding.

Goodbye Rev. Kirkpatrick...