IDF Chief Rabbi Endorses Book that Says Non-Jews Do Not Have Equal Rights in Israel

A book endorsed last year by the Israel Defense Forces Rabbinate says the presence of non-Jews is no reason for an army base not to affix mezuzahs to its buildings.

One ruling on Jewish law in the book, “Laws of the Mezuzah,” states: “The idea that views non-Jews as having equal rights in the state goes against the opinion of the Torah, and no representative of the state is authorized to act against the will of the Torah.”  

The book deals with questions about mezuzahs, which are fixed to doorposts by Jews as a sign of faith, on army bases, and was endorsed by the IDF’s chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Rabbi Rafi Peretz.

One issue it discusses is whether or not mezuzahs need be installed in army bases, because rulings have been issued over the generations that in buildings where both Jews and Gentiles live, there is no obligation to put up a mezuzah, and in light of the fact that both Jews and non-Jews live on IDF bases.

The issue, according to the authors, is whether state property can be said to be a kind of a cooperative. In the latter case, “Even if we say state property is like a cooperative, since the public in general is Jewish, and in any case, as long as non-Jews have not purchased a part of the assets, they have no right to the state property.”

The authors cite biblical verses whose message is that, if a mezuzah is in a Gentile’s possession, there is the fear that “it will be desecrated.”  The question thus arises: What should be done on military bases? The authors state, “As the owner, the military establishment must see to it that mezuzahs are installed in all dormitory rooms, including those where Gentile soldiers live.

Nevertheless, in places where there is the danger that the mezuzahs might be desecrated, the unit’s rabbi must see to it that the unit’s commanders sign the required form signifying that they are personally responsible for the mezuzahs so that they can be placed on trial should there be a need for doing so and so that the danger of the mezuzahs’ desecration can be prevented.”

The authors also address another issue: What is to be done with the mezuzahs on the buildings in a military base when a battalion of Gentile soldiers arrives to assume operational responsibility for the area?  Their response: “If mezuzahs have been installed on a structure that has been transferred to the jurisdiction of Gentile officers, the rabbi’s unit must brief the soldiers on their arrival in the area regarding the importance of keeping the mezuzahs intact and must see to it that the unit’s commanders sign the required form signifying that they are personally responsible for the mezuzahs so that they can be placed on trial should there be a need for doing so.”

The chief editor of the book, which was published 14 months ago, is Col. Rabbi Eyal Karim, formerly of the Sayeret Matkal ‏(the general staff’s elite special-operations force‏).

The book was written by three other rabbis, Capt. Alexander Rones, Capt. Dov Berkovich and Capt. Hananiah Shafran.  The book also deals with the question of affixing a mezuzah to the door post of a dormitory used for female soldiers.  “Must a mezuzah be installed in a dormitory where female soldiers live and can a senior female officer affix a mezuzah when a new building is officially opened on a military base?” it asks.

The book’s authors rule that is that the commandment regarding mezuzahs applies to females as well as males and that most rabbinical authorities have ruled that a woman is permitted to install a mezuzah. However, the authors point out, since IDF bases constitute a public area, “it would be preferable to be strict on this point” and to prohibit a senior female officer from installing a mezuzah.

The reason, they note, is that, as is it is written in the Book of Psalms, “All glorious is the king’s daughter within the palace” (45:14); thus, they write, “in a public area, it is much more suitable for a male to install the mezuzah.”

In response to a query on the book, the IDF spokesman’s office said: “The book ‘Laws of the Mezuzah’ is a clearly a book on Jewish law dealing with questions that are part of the daily reality in the army. Although the quotes presented are in response to specific questions, the answers cannot be viewed as relating to a specific group; the answer given is true for any unit in which there is concern the mezuzah will be disrespected.

via. Haaretz

Related:

Ex-IDF Chief Rabbi Who Put Together Book Saying It Was OK to Kill Gentiles in War Without Regard to Age Says Recently IDF Publishing of Jewish Discriminatory Law Was Mistake

by Garibaldi

Introduction

This is the first in a series of articles that will discuss the relationship between Zionism and Islamophobia. The impetus for this series is what many have already observed:

1.) Islamophobic polemics within trends of Zionism, the preponderance of Zionists within the Islamophobia movement, the usage of Israeli state symbols and the symbiotic relationship between anti-Muslim groups in the USA and Israel are a present-day reality.

2.) There is a confused and malformed understanding amongst some individuals of Zionism on the one hand and its relationship to Islamophobia. Zionism is not understood in its proper historical context: Why did it form? How has it evolved? What is its effect on Jewish and world history? What is its relationship with the ‘other’?

Some who are confronted with the present day reality of Zionist Islamophobia are in denial of its very existence while others propose answers to the aforementioned questions not based on facts but rather emotional, even hysterical inaccuracies and conspiracies.

The Zionist relationship with Islamophobia enmeshes the discussion of racism, nationalism, human rights and the liberation struggle of Palestinians. It will be the task of this series to clarify these concepts and provide a much-needed dose of realism to any analysis of the subject, beyond the histrionics that can at once serve as a distraction and muddle our conscience.

Initial Encounters with Islam and Muslims

“[T]he Zionist view of Palestine has always considered all Palestinians without regard to class, creed, or locations, as bodies either to be removed or ignored (if possible); and on the other hand, that the Palestinian opposition to Zionist settler-colonialism was a national struggle, enlisting, as it did, segments of political life (in various complex ways of course).” (Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims by Edward W. Said, p.10)

The quote from Edward Said accentuates an obvious truth that is important for us to comprehend from the outset: Zionists could care less what creed Palestinians followed. Ever since the publication of Theodor Herzl‘s (1860-1904) Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) and the First Zionist Congress (1897) Zionists have organized their collective energy on colonizing the land of Palestine, then a territory under Ottoman control.

The fact that a majority of Palestinians followed Islam was generally inconsequential to Zionist aims. Indeed, if the majority of Palestinians had been Hindu we may very well be discussing Zionism and Hinduphobia today.

While it is true that Zionists were not concerned with Islam as such it is vital to investigate what the early ideologues of modern Zionism had to say about Islam and Muslims; at the very least noting to what extent this has a bearing on how contemporary Zionists relate to Islam and how this relationship has developed over the years.

A necessary overview of the history of Zionism will be the subject of the next article in this series but suffice it to say that Zionism formed in the milieu of 19th century European nationalism, in the heyday of Imperialism, Colonialism–and renewed Antisemitism. Considering that Zionism was a product of 19th century Europe, it is reasonable to presume, and has served as the thesis of several historians that the Orientalist worldview with its inherent biases and prejudices pervaded the Zionist view as well.

Influence of the Jewish Golden Age

One important caveat is that there was amongst 19th century Jews Islamophile trends and a recognition of a Jewish Golden Age under Muslim rule, particularly in medieval Andalusia. Jewish historians such as the early Zionist Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891) were prominent advocates of an idealized version of the Jewish Golden Age, a history that Graetz and others used to serve as a rebuke to the Christian European treatment of Jews.

In this regard there is a glimpse into the attitude of the most pivotal leader of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, a mercurial figure whose tactics in the Ottoman Empire were well known. One would think his interaction with the Sublime Porte (the seat of Ottoman authority) would reveal much in the way of his view on Islam and Muslims, however it does not.

It is in Herzl’s Utopian novel titled, Altneuland,(Old-New Land), that we see some semblance of his views on the subject. Herzl portrayed the Arab characters such as Rashid Bey in a patronizing manner, characterizing them as being grateful to the Jewish immigrants for the “immense benefit” they have brought to the land’s Arab residents. In an echo to Graetz’s work we see Herzl describing Bey as regaling visitors to the land on the “tolerance demonstrated by the Arabs toward Jewish immigration, in the best tradition of Muslim society, which was always more tolerant of the Jews than Christian Europe.”

Another anecdote highlights that the Golden Age views were also imparted on the likes of a young Yigal Allon Paicovitch (1918-1980). In a biography on Allon’s life we are told that Allon viewed Christianity with suspicion, as an age-old persecutor of the Jewish people whereas he did not have similar “misgivings” about Islam and Muslims,

“In Allon’s imagination the Crusades were so tied to the Inquisition that when he traveled to Nazareth with his father he was careful not to bend down near a church lest it be understood as kneeling before the cross. He had no such misgivings about Islam, having learned in school that Muslims were tolerant of Jews, with the emphasis on Spain’s Golden Age.” (Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography by Anita Shapira p.33)

Allon who would later become the commander of the Haganah’s Palmach (strike force) between 1945-1948. During the 1948 war, he commanded several military operations (i.e. Operation Yiftah, Dani, and Yoav), and he became famous for being one of the engines behind cleansing the most populated Palestinian areas (i.e. Lydda, Ramla, Safad, Hebron hills, Faluja pocket).

Palestinian Muslims: the descendants of ancient Hebrew farmers

David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), one of the ‘founding fathers of Israel’ was a hawkish advocate of the dispossession and expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, who stated, “We must expel Arabs and take their places.” (Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs: From Peace to War by Shabti Zeveth, p.189)

Interestingly, in Ben-Gurion’s On the Origin of the Falahin he held the view, to be repeated later in his life (in a letter to Charles De Gaulle), that Palestinian Muslim farmers were descendants of ancient Hebrew farmers and that “much Jewish blood flows in their veins.” He describes Palestinian embrace of Islam as a “travesty of [the] times,”

The agricultural community that the Arabs found in Eretz Israel in the 7^th century was none other than the Hebrew farmers that remained on their land despite all the persecution and oppression of the Roman and Byzantine emperors. Some of them accepted Christianity, at least on the surface, but many held on to their ancestral faith and occasionally revolted against their Christian oppressors. After the Arab conquest, the Arabic language and Muslim religion spread gradually among the countrymen. In his essay “Ancient Names in Palestine and Syria in Our Times,” Dr. George Kampmeyer proves, based on historico-linguistic analysis, that for a certain period of time, both Aramaic and Arabic were in use and only slowly did the former give way to the latter.
The greater majority and main structures of the Muslim falahin in western Eretz Israel present to us one racial strand and a whole ethnic unit, and there is no doubt that much Jewish blood flows in their veins—the blood of those Jewish farmers, “lay persons,” who chose in the travesty of times to abandon their faith in order to remain on their land.  (Leverur Motsa Ha’Falahim, Luach Achiezer, pp. 118-27, reprinted in Anachnu U’Shcheneinu, pp. 13-25.)

There is an apparent contradiction in Ben-Gurion’s statement that Arabic and Islam spread gradually and that Jewish farmers embraced Islam “in order to remain on their land.” The former implies a conscious and free conversion over a period of time and the latter forced conversion. Ben-Gurion’s 1967 letter to De Gaulle would indicate that he advocated the idea of forced conversion.

In either case, Ben-Gurion’s statement is highly interesting in light of the work of Israeli historian Shlomo Sand,

Countering official Zionist historiography, Sand questions whether the Jewish People ever existed as a national group with a common origin in the Land of Israel/Palestine. He concludes that the Jews should be seen as a religious community comprising a mishmash of individuals and groups that had converted to the ancient monotheistic religion but do not have any historical right to establish an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land. In short, the Jewish People, according to Sand, are not really a “people” in the sense of having a common ethnic origin and national heritage. They certainly do not have a political claim over the territory that today constitutes Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.

Sand’s work also concludes that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were the ancient Jews.

This raises numerous questions: if Ben-Gurion held that many of the “Muslim falahin” were descendants of indigenous Jews why didn’t this factor into his ideology and how did he square this with advocating their expulsion? According to his own ideology aren’t Palestinians more entitled to live in their ancient homeland than European settlers? Do not the Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homeland?

One can also see the kind of disdain which Ben Gurion held for the “spirit of the Levant” in popular views that he and many fellow Zionists expressed in regard to “Eastern/Sephardic Jews,”

Ben Gurion…described the Sephardi immigrants as lacking even “the most elementary knowledge” and “without a trace of Jewish or human education.” Ben Gurion repeatedly expressed contempt for the culture of the Oriental Jews: “We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish values as they crystallized in the Diaspora.”…Ben Gurion who called the Moroccan Jews “savages” at a session of a Knesset Committee, and who compared Sephardim, pejoratively (and revealingly), to the Blacks brought to the United States as slaves, at times went so far as to question the spiritual capacity and even the Jewishness of the Sephardim. (Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims by Ella Shohat, p.4-5)

Imagine, if these were Ben Gurion’s views about the “Oriental Jew,” how much more magnified was his animus towards native Arabs and Muslims?

Exorcising the Islamic Soul From Palestine

Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) the founder of the Revisionist movement within Zionism was perhaps the most explicitly unabashed and hawkish modern Zionist proponent of colonialism, racism and expulsion; central subjects in many of his writings and speeches. Jabotinsky is most famous for his exposition of the “Iron Wall” ideology that no compromise with the Palestinians was possible. Revisionism would eventually spawn the Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists which made names for themselves by using terrorism against innocent civilians.

Lenni Brenner, writing in 1984 noted that Revisionism, once considered the lunatic fringe of Zionism “is now the dominant ideological tendency in present-day Zionism.” (The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism From Jabotinsky to Shamir by Lenni Brenner)

I would argue that this holds true today as well (and add Religious Zionism is on the rise), as we have seen with the administrations of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and high profile politicians such as Avigdor Lieberman and others.

Jabotinsky’s views were quite emphatic in their degradation of Arab society, especially Muslim society: here he responds in a vitriolic manner to Max Nordau’s (1849-1923) statement that Muslims and Jews share a kinship,

“When he [Jabotinsky] approached Nordau during the war about the establishment of a Jewish legion which was to fight against the Turks, he was told, ‘But you cannot do that, the Muslims are kin to the Jews, Ishmael was our uncle.’ ‘Ishmael is not our uncle’ Jabotinsky replied. ‘We belong thank God, to Europe and for two thousand years have helped to create the culture of the west.’” (A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel by Walter Laqueur, p. 228)

In his famous “Iron Wall,” Jabotinsky alludes to his belief in the deficient “spirituality” of Palestinian Arabs,

“Culturally they are 500 years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of will” (Iron Wall by Jabotinsky)

A theme in Jabotinsky’s views is his emphasis that Jewishness is opposed to the East and a “part of the West,” (of course he is speaking only of European and American Jews and completely ignoring Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews), he also alludes to Islam as some sort of demonic spirit that must be exorcized from “Eretz-Yisrael,”

“We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East. . . . The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz-Yisrael. . . . [Muslims are] yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags.” (Expulsion of the Palestinians by Nur Masalha, p.29)

Anti-Judaism as Anti-Islam

Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943), one the founders of Brit Shalom, was a proponent of warped racial theories and eugenics who despite his bi-national views still supported the expulsion or in the euphemism of his day “transfer” of Palestinians. Ruppin, like many of his peers and contemporaries was very severe in his criticism of traditional Judaism. In Ruppin’s view Judaism’s main fault is that it is “similar to Islam,” in that it is supposedly anti-intellectual, opposed to criticism and modern science.

Ruppin explained the success of Hassidut as a result of the hard material conditions of the Jews in Eastern Europe: “The spiritual energy of the Jewish people created an imaginary world when the real world was lost to him.” This was the reason the Jews took refuge in the mysticism and superstition offered them by the Hassidic Rabbis.

As already mentioned, Ruppin’s views concerning the Jewish religion were identical to those of Haeckal and Bismark regarding Catholic clericalism. Ruppin, indeed, saw a similarity between Judaism and Catholicism since both of them he believed, were based on prayer, and from that concluded that, like Catholicism, Judaism was still anthropomorphic. However, the most important fault he saw in Judaism was its similarity to Islam. Jewish Orthodoxy and Islam had the same type of faith, a “blind faith,” which did not permit any critical doubts and rejected all the discoveries of modern science. These characteristics differentiated them from “the protestant skeptic type of faith of our times.” What defined the Jewish worldview, according to Ruppin, was its lack of skepticism, its fear of any doubt and its inability to cope with conflicting thoughts: “As soon as he begins to doubt, his fate is sealed, his secession from orthodoxy is a necessary result. The skeptic will never more be a pious Jew.” (Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Pre-Israeli Culture by Etan Bloom p. 79)

These views are, to say the least, overly simplistic and presumptuous, disregarding the variegated and complex nature of both Judaism and Islam.

Judah Leon Magnes

Judah Leon Magnes (1877-1948), a prominent American born Reform Rabbi, was a life-long pacifist, proponent of a bi-national state and vocal critic of attempts to create an exclusive “Jewish state.” Towards the end of his life, in 1948, he withdrew from the AJJDC for ignoring his plea to help Palestinian refugees.

Rabbi Magnes no doubt wrote the following with good intentions,

“It is in derogation of the actual importance of the living Jewish people and of Judaism to place them on one side of the scale and have it balanced by the relatively unimportant Arab community of Palestine. The true parallels and balancing forces are Jews and Judaism on the one side, and the Arab peoples and even all of Islam on the other. In this way you get a truer perspective of the whole and you increase the significance of Palestine as being that point where in this new day Judaism meets Islam again throughout all its confines, as once they met centuries back to the ultimate enrichment of human culture.” (Like other Nations? retrieved from The Zionist Idea ed. by Arthur Hertzberg p.447)

Magnes attempts to relay a hopeful and positive vision of the future in which Judaism and Islam meet together “to the ultimate enrichment of human culture,” but one cannot help but also note the glaring condescension towards Palestinians, crassly described as the “relatively unimportant Arab community of Palestine.”

Religious Zionism

Religious elements, both Orthodox and Reform were generally late to join the political Zionist caravan which was led mostly by secular and non-religious Jews. In time however the religious sects would, with notable exceptions, reconcile themselves to Zionism through compromise and accommodation with the state of Israel.

Instrumental in this process was the main ideologue of modern Religious Zionism, Rabbi Abraham Itzhak Kook (1865-1935).

“Kook saw Zionism as a part of a divine scheme which would result in the resettlement of the Jewish people in its homeland. This would bring salvation (“Geula”) to Jews, and then to the entire world. After world harmony is achieved by the refoundation of the Jewish homeland, the Messiah will come.”

Historically Judaism’s relationship with Islam and attitude towards Muslims has been unique. Maimonides formulated the decisive majority opinion that Islam like Judaism was definitely a monotheistic faith, this had all sorts of repercussions for Halacha (Jewish law). For instance Jews could worship in a mosque whereas they could not worship in a church, Jews could take benefit from wine handled by a Muslim whereas they could not by a Christian.

While Islam was viewed as special this should not mislead us into the relativist belief that Judaism advanced some sort of Perennialist theology. Indeed, like all religions Judaism in its Orthodox form is exclusivist, especially when it comes to the ‘Promised Land.’

In fact there are sources within Orthodox Judaism that can be used to dehumanize the non-Jew, to view and treat the non-Jew as inferior and unequal. We have witnessed many such cases in the past few decades with the rise and expansion of extremist Jewish fundamentalism in Israel.

Early modern Religious Zionists were not immune from expressing such racist views. Rabbi Kook has been quoted as saying that the souls of non-Jews are inferior “in all different levels” to that of Jews. (Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, p. xix)

In the wrong hands such attitudes can reinforce the mentality and culture that produces and celebrates terrorists such as Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, that offers no compromise when it comes to dismantling and evicting settlements and reaching a just solution to apartheid occupation.

Reconciliation?

I believe it is appropriate lastly to cite Yitzhak Epstein (1862-1943), one of the few Zionists who was a Palestinian. Epstein lived with Bedouins for eight months, an experience that led him to publish two books in Hebrew on Bedouins. At the same time he worked in intelligence gathering for the Jewish Agency Political Department and became a leading “Arab specialist.”

Epstein uttered what I believe are prophetic words regarding his belief that Zionists must reconcile themselves to the “peoples of Islam.”

“We must reconcile ourselves to all the peoples of Islam; if we don’t we are lost.” (Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question by Neil Caplan)

If one were to ask if such a reconciliation has been reached today the question would be treated as rhetorical, as present day circumstances reveal the answer to be a resounding “no.” The question is why is this the case? Why are so many Zionists today violently opposed to Islam and Muslims, in fact holding onto the belief and strategy of a war with Islam? (This will be answered in a future article in this series).

Conclusion

This article has not exhausted the topic of the initial encounters between modern Zionism, Islam and Muslims, for instance I have not discussed the work of Zionist authors such as Moshe Smilansky (1874-1953) who wrote a number of novels involving Arabs and Muslims. It does however uncover what I feel are fairly representative views from a wide spectrum of currents; Socialist, Revisionist and Religious–including very influential leaders of Zionism.

It is helpful in the context of the period discussed in this article to speak about Zionism in relationship to the paradigm of Orientalism, in fact there is a wealth of historical literature on this topic over the past few decades. The imagination of Zionist literature, film, ideology and political policy has been infused with Orientalisms of one variety or another from the very beginning,

“Several writers on Israel and its neighbors have suggested in recent years ways to apply Edward Said’s fascinating thesis on the connection between Orientalism as a profession and deep-seated anti-Islamic attitudes in the West in general. Aziza Khazum has shown how the history of the Jewish people in modern times can fruitfully be described as a continuous series of “Orientalizations,” that is, an elite trying to block the advance of an upcoming minority group by dubbing it “Oriental,” meaning devoid of “real” culture and hence not worthy of equal treatment. Ella Shohat has applied the same idea to the history of early Zionist films, where the Arab is depicted as a brutal and cultureless creature whose objection to Zionism lacks rational grounding. Said himself first analyzed Orientalism as a cultural outgrowth of the West and then started to apply that idea to the Zionist venture itself.” (Zionism, Orientalism and the Palestinians by Haim Gerber, p.1)

I have not in any depth covered the deep racism against the indigenous Palestinian Arabs, seeking to separate that out from views regarding Islam and Muslims; at times it is not possible, as the two are interwoven. What we have then are attitudes that comport to well known bigoted Orientalist racism, stereotypes, prejudices, and a few romanticized notions of the ‘other.’

The view of many of the early leading Zionists is a reaffirmation of the presumed ontological distinction between West and East, i.e. that the very being of Western Jews is essentially different than that of the Palestinian Arabs and Muslims.

Islamophobes were all in a tizzy to pass the pictures off below as Gazans (i.e. Muslims) celebrating the bombings in Boston but in fact that is false, the pictures are from March 2011.

The images are far from a comforting-type of celebration, according to the AFP/Getty it shows a sole individual passing out sweets after the murder of an Israeli settler family from Itamar. The murders horrified many Palestinians and was opposed by a majority of Palestinian society who believe resistance to Israeli theft of their land, occupation and daily violence does not equal cold-blooded murder.

This does not take away from the fact that the Islamophobes attempted to recycle the images by creating a fake story to thereby perpetuate their civilizational war and anti-Muslim/Palestinian narrative.

(h/t: DN)

Muslims Dancing In Streets After Boston Terrorist Attack?

EDL Review

Far-right sites, blogs and hate groups such as the Israel News Agency, BareNakedIslam, Seraphic Press, Atlasshrugs, Mr Conservative and the Gateway Pundit (amongst many others) have claimed that ‘Muslims’ were ‘dancing in the streets of Gaza’ after the horrific Boston marathon attack and handed out sweets.

This fake story can now be exposed as a blatant attempt to demonize Islam, Muslims and Palestinians. And we’ll show you why.

(SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)

(SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)

Circulated stories reuse pictures over one year old!

Stories using these pictures (like the ones shown above) are not new. These pictures provided by Getty Images (here) go as far back as March 2011!

It shows a Palestinian offering sweets to some people in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, after a terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Itamar where five family members were murdered in their sleep.

The story, which was picked up by an Israeli tabloid, was then circulated by the press which reported jubilant Muslims crowding Gaza’s streets, handing out candy and sweets in the wake of the murders, even though no “jubilant Muslims” are seen in the above pictures.

It is only one man in these pictures, so this is being over-dramatized by the far-right, who are making it look like many Palestinians were celebrating.

We can therefore, conclude these pictures do not show anyone ‘celebrating’ the Boston bombings, seeing as they are over a year old whilst the bombings in Boston were only three days ago.

Circulated video is over one year old too!

Islamophobic hate websites and blogs such as BareNakedIslam are also circulating a video (here) that supposedly shows Palestinians celebrating.

But the uploader of this video uploaded this video one year ago, so it can’t be recent! Furthermore, the video title on Vimeo says it is a midnight dance party, not a “celebration” of the Boston attacks.

Conclusion – Fake story

In conclusion, this story has been exposed as unreliable. The makers of this story have reused pictures and videos which were on the net more than a year ago and are making the story look new. The sources circulating this false story have been exposed as being misleading bias sources of information.

There is no proof that any ‘Muslim’ was ‘dancing in the streets of Gaza’ after the horrific Boston marathon attack took place. These stories are fake pieces of propaganda.

Please scroll over website names referenced for article snapshots.

Further reading:

1. EDL Share FAKE ‘Muslims Celebrate Boston Bombing’ Story
2. EDL Leader Shares FAKE ‘Muslims Celebrate Boston Bombing’ Story

Real News reports on the dramatic rise in racist attacks and discrimination in Israel over the past few years, especially amongst the youth.

You will note that some of the most vitriolic rhetoric comes from fundamentalists and settlers but it is not limited to them, highlighting a systemic and structural problem in Israel. (h/t: Fred A.)

A photo Andrew took in Israel.

When people are enemies, they tend to dehumanize one another. When people want to make peace, they emphasize their common humanity. I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of bridging the divide through music, food, and art.

A visit to Israel inspired Andrew Roseman to bring Israelis and Palestinians together through a music festival called Man of a Thousand Teas. Some may question whether this is an attempt to normalize the occupation, or argue that it doesn’t do anything to help but I see it in the same vein as the effort of Edward Said and David Barenboim’s West-East Divan Orchestra.

The American Student Who’s Planning an Israeli-Palestinian Music Festival

By Harry Cheadle, Vice

Andrew Roseman, like thousands of American students, visited Israel last year to experience the country’s culture and history. But unlike some young tourists, who spend their days getting drunk and tan in Tel Aviv or secretly pleasuring each other in tents in the desert, the junior from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, embarked on a project to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, at least for a day. Since spending four months in Jerusalem, he’s been working to create a festival (called Man of a Thousand Teas) that would feature musicians from both sides of the Green Line. I haven’t heard of anyone trying anything like that before, so I called Andrew to see how it was going.

VICE: What inspired you to try to organize a festival in Israel?

Andrew Roseman: Well, I was in the process of trying to book a [music] show in Jerusalem and I was talking to my [Palestinian] friends, and I was like, “Hey, I’m going to be playing in Jerusalem in a couple of weeks.” And they couldn’t come, obviously, because people from the Palestinian territories aren’t allowed to just enter Jerusalem without a special pass, and it’s very difficult to get. And on the other side, when I was booking shows in Bethlehem, my Israeli friends said, “Oh, I can’t go because I’m not allowed in Palestinian territory.” After a while, we were like, “You know, it would be kind of sweet if we could start a music festival that would bring together Palestinians and Israelis in a politically neutral area that both Israelis and Palestinians have access to.” There aren’t many places like that, but there are a few and with my friends’ help we were able to find a spot that you don’t need a pass or any sort of form to access—a Bedouin area in the Jerusalem wilderness, basically in the Judean desert. Little by little, it’s coming together, and I’m pretty excited about it.

What’s your perspective on how Palestinian and Israeli youth feel about the conflict between the two sides?

I was there when the most recent Gaza conflict was happening and the rockets were going back and forth. There were a bunch of protests and during one, you had Israelis on one side waving Israeli flags and shouting, “Get Hamas out of Gaza,” and then on the other side you had Palestinians waving Palestinian flags and yelling something—I don’t speak Arabic—about the Intifada. Those are two very different messages. I think young people from this part of this world just kind of grow into their context and they don’t necessarily get many chances to intermingle with each other and actually chill. Most of the people I’ve spoken to have really good intentions—at times, it appears that the issue is too complex and people are dug in too deep for anyone to make any sort of difference—but with that attitude we’ll never get anything done.

Have you got a lineup of bands and artists in mind?

Yeah, we’ve reached out to a bunch of bands. We’re in the process of talking to some booking agents. One artist that we’ve made a lot of progress with is Ben Blackwell—he’s a black Israeli rapper, and he’s got a song, “Israel We Go Hard,” that’s pretty sweet. I’d never heard of him before but he’s got a nice following on YouTube and after listening to his stuff we figured he’d be really cool to get on the bill. We’re also trying to get Shadia Mansour, who is a Palestinian female rapper—she’s unreal, she’s got incredible charisma. One big name is Balkan Beat Box, a pretty famous band from Israel, and we’re hoping to get them to be one of the headliners. Ninet Tayeb is this Israeli singer and she’s so talented and really, really sexy.

What’s the hardest part about trying to put this together?

Right now it’s funding. It’s the most difficult part and it’s so stressful. We’re talking to a bunch of fairly affluent influential people and they seem pretty interested… but they keep trying to make sure the festival will have some sort of political slant—kind of like conditional sponsorship—and we didn’t want to deal with that at all. We’re not trying to establish any political agenda, we just want these people together, listening to the music they like and having a good time with each other. The funding part has been difficult but I think if we all do what needs to be done we can make this happen, because it would be unreal, it would be indescribable. Anyone interested in helping Andrew and his friends out should email manofathousandteas@gmail.com @HCheadle

AIPAC gives its seal of approval to Islamophobe Steven Emerson

by Alex Kane (MondoWeiss)

The annual Israel lobby confab has once again put its seal of approval on Islamophobia. A key member of what has been termed the “Islamophobia network” appeared Sunday at an officially scheduled session at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference.

Steven Emerson, the head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, has been a lead pusher of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. since the 1990s. On Sunday afternoon, he led a session at AIPAC titled “The Threat From Within: Islamic Radicalism in the United States.” Here’s the description, taken from AIPAC’s website:

Islamic extremists operating within the United States pose a serious risk to America’s security. Acts of domestic terrorism, as well as various attacks that have been thwarted by intelligence agencies and law enforcement, point to the severity of the threat. What can and should the United States do to combat these homegrown radicals?

Emerson, who has given testimony to Congress, also appeared at AIPAC’s conference last year, where he spoke on a similar topic. It’s unclear what exactly he said.

But the evidence that has come out in recent years about “Islamic extremists” in the United States points to the conclusion that Emerson’s session likely hyped the threat. The latest study released by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in North Carolina revealed that only 14 American Muslims last year were indicted for violent terror plots. That’s a decline from the 21 Muslim Americans indicted in 2011. What’s more, almost all of the plots from last year involved undercover agents and informants. Critics have called plots egged on by undercover agents entrapment, and many of the plots involve law enforcement agents targeting young, unemployed and/or mentally ill Muslims.

Unbiased evidence, though, is not a concern to Emerson, who has been pushing anti-Muslim politics since before the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 1991, the New York Times called one of Emerson’s books “anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian.” One of his most infamous moments came in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Emerson told a reporter that the bombing bore a “Middle Eastern trait” because it intended to “inflict as many casualties as possible.” It turned out the attack had nothing to do with Islamic extremists.

In 1995, Emerson said that “the level of vitriol against Jews and Christianity within contemporary Islam, unfortunately, is something that we are not totally cognizant of, or that we don’t want to accept.We don’t want to accept it because to do so would be to acknowledge that one of the world’s great religions — which has more than 1.4 billion adherents — somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.” Emerson also opposed the Park 51 Islamic center in lower Manhattan.

What’s more, AIPAC is giving space to a man who engages in some questionable financial activities. In their landmark report on the “Islamophobia network,” the Center for American Progress took note of Emerson’s cash:

Emerson’s nonprofit organization IPT received a total of $400,000 from Donors Capital Fund in 2007 and 2008,133 as well as $100,000 from the Becker Foundation, and $250,000 from Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, according to our research. Emerson’s nonprofit organization, in turn, helps fund his for-profit company, SAE Productions. IPT paid SAE Productions $3.33 million to enable the company to “study alleged ties between American Muslims and overseas terrorism.” Emerson is SAE’s sole employee.

Even more intriguingly, a review of grants in November 2010 showed large sums of money contributed to the “Investigative Project,” or “IPT,” care of the Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation. An examination of CTSERF’s 990 forms showed that, much like the Investigative Project, all grant revenue was transferred to a private, for-profit entity, the International Association of Counterterrorism and Security Professionals…

This kind of action enrages Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group. He argued that “basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, and all that money going to a for-profit.”

The increasing influence of Islamophobia donors to Emerson’s nonprofit and for-profit work has focused more recently on anti-Islam, anti-Muslim expertise. Indeed, according to an investigation by The Tennessean newspaper, the Investigative Project now solicits money by telling donors they’re in imminent danger from Muslims.

The appearance of a major fomenter of Islamophobia at AIPAC is a prominent example of how Islamophobia has become entwined with strong support for Israel–particularly the right-wing brand of Zionism, though more mainstream Zionist organizations, like AIPAC, also legitimize anti-Muslim sentiment.

Emerson’s appearance is in line with how the Israel lobby utilizes Islamophobia to further its own goals by trying to marginalize Muslim American political organizing and by casting the Israel/Palestine conflict as a civilizational clash between Christianity and Judaism on one side and Islam on the other. Yet another prominent example of how mainstream Israel lobby groups legitimize Islamophobia was exposed in this post, where I reported that a former member of the Israel Project’s board funded anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller in 2010.

AIPAC’s seal of approval for Emerson also runs counter to the Israel lobby organization’s pronounced goal of making AIPAC look “more like America,” as its president said on Sunday.

Ironically, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren told the AIPAC conference–on the same day that Emerson appeared–that his main message was to “reach out to the churches in your community, to the African-Americans, the Latinos, to the mosques” to boost pro-Israel sentiment. Having Emerson as an official speaker at your conference is probably not the way to do that.

But support for Emerson serves a much more important political purpose–so don’t expect AIPAC to drop him any time soon.

Settler tells Palestinian farmers he is the son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and so their land belongs to him. He also proceeded to interpret the Quran for them and tell them that their religion says they must relinquish the land to him. For good measure he lets them know they will be his slaves when the King Messiah returns–if he so wills.

Another absurd scene of the occupation play. Hit CC on the bottom right of the video for the English subtitles:

Related:

-Hundreds of Beitar Jerusalem fans walk out after Muslim player scores

-Israel to launch ‘Palestinians-only’ bus service

Palestinian assailed by Israeli women, stripped of hijab

(Al-Akhbar English)

A Palestinian woman waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem on Monday was attacked and stripped of her headscarf by religious Jewish women, Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported Tuesday.

According to bystanders, a young Jewish woman punched the Palestinian suddenly as she was passing by the station. A friend of the assailant began aiding her in beating the Palestinian, pushing her against the wall, and ultimately ripping off her headscarf.

The Palestinian was accompanied by an old man who tried to push the attackers away to no avail.

https://twitter.com/Karim_AboHatab/statuses/306533291123695616

The event occurred at about three o’clock in the afternoon. It is unclear whether the incident involved only the two assailants mentioned in witness accounts, or a larger group shown in the photo.

“There were about 100 Orthodox and yeshiva students who disembarked the tramway and spotted an Arab woman accompanied by an older man,” a witness, who photographed the event, told Ma’ariv.

“It developed into arguing and yelling, and I don’t know what the content was that everyone jumped on her.”

According to the witness, an activist named Dorit Jordan Dotan, a municipality security officer passively watched the event and seemed to be smiling. Many residents also stood by.

“The entire time, the guard stood and smiled and did not even try to break up the fight,” a witness said.

Dotan confirmed that the incident took place at the station where a group of young people had just arrived from the train, but seemed to downplay the event by suggesting the attackers were intoxicated.

“Young people drink a lot of wine for Purim. Screams were heard everywhere. A woman tried to fight [the Jewish students] but they yelled at her not to dare touch the Jews and continued to beat [the Arab woman],” Dotan said.

Following publication in Ma’ariv, police launched an investigation into the case.

“It’s a shame that the Arab whore didn’t die”

On the day the report was published, Israeli police officer Ariel Shapiro re-posted the article on his Facebook page and issued a chilling endorsement: “Very good,” wrote Shpiro “It’s a shame that the Arab whore didn’t die.”

The message was publicized by Palestinian Member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi.

Israeli army and police officers have come under fire in recent weeks for showcasing dehumanizing images of and slogans about Palestinians. The most famous of these is an Instagram photo of Mor Ostrovski, 20, showing the crosshairs of a rifle being aimed at the head of a Palestinian boy.

(Al-Akhbar)

Kamal Hachkar, director of the documentary “Tinghir to Jerusalem” gestures from a balcony in Casablanca , Friday, Feb, 15, 2013. Once home to some 300,000 Jews, the largest population in the Arab world, Morocco is increasingly taking a fresh look at its long history with Judaism. (AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar)

French Moroccan, Kamal Hachkar’s movie has sparked controversy amongst some Moroccoans because it is perceived as “normalizing” relations with Israel. One Moroccan Jewish critic, Sion Assidon, described strangely in the AP article below as a “surprising critic” (as if Jews cannot criticize Israel) of the movie says,

“The film is effectively a vehicle for the message of normalizing with Israel,” Assidon told the AP. “The people we see are never once questioned about the essential issue, which is that they are colonizers occupying the land of another people that were earlier expelled.”

That would be an important question to ask.

This AP article touches on the subject of why Moroccan Jews left Morocco, though it does not go into much depth on the issue. What it does say however belies the Zionist narrative that all Arab Jews left their ancient homes because of Muslim or Arab persecution.

I have not seen the film but I do think it would be very interesting to watch. Have any loonwatchers seen the film? What are your thoughts?

Morocco film searches out Jews who left for Israel

RABAT, Morocco — Hundreds of members of Islamist and left wing political groups demonstrated outside the Tangiers Film Festival earlier this month against a documentary about Moroccan Jews living in Israel. They claimed that director Kamal Hachkar was promoting “normalization” with the Jewish state.

But Hachkar was not expelled from the artists’ union, nor was his film banned, and he wasn’t ostracized from Morocco’s intellectual class, as has happened in similar cases in Egypt and elsewhere. Instead, directors and actors circulated a petition of support, and his film went on to win best work by a new director at the festival.

Once home to some 300,000 Jews, the largest population in the Arab world, Morocco is increasingly taking a fresh look at its long history with Judaism and is spurning the flat rejection of all things Hebrew found in so many other Arab countries.

In the film, “Tinghir-Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah,” Hachkar talks to people in Berber villages high in the Atlas mountains about their memories of the Jews suddenly leaving for Israel in the 1960s. He then travels to Jerusalem and finds many of these Jews, still speaking Moroccan Arabic and the Berber language, fondly reminiscing about the land they left behind.

“It tells the story of a forgotten part of Morocco’s history, a history that is not taught at school,” Hachkar told The Associated Press. “My goal is to tell the human story and to defend the plurality of Moroccan history and identity.”

The director, who was born in Tinghir but left to live in France with his father at the age of 6 months, has toured all over Morocco showing the film to what he says were packed houses. Most people were initially suspicious, but warmed to the subject when they saw Jews speaking Moroccan Arabic and even the Berber dialect of the High Atlas, he said.

According to Zhor Rehihil, the curator of the Museum for Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca — founded in 1997 and unique in the region — Jews have been part of Morocco since Jewish merchants came to North Africa with the Phoenicians hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

For centuries they were found in the mountain villages alongside Morocco’s Berbers — the original inhabitants of North Africa — who mostly converted to Islam with the arrival of the Arab tribes in the 7th century.

Morocco’s Jewish population was invigorated in 1492 when Spain expelled Muslims and Jews, most of whom fled to Morocco and brought with them the sophisticated urban culture of Andalucia.

“The Jews in Morocco were everywhere, in the cities, in the small villages. It was a country with a large and vibrant community of Jews and with their departure, Morocco lost a large part of its history,” said Rehihil.

At its peak in the 1950s, there were an estimated 300,000 Jews in Morocco out of a population of some 8 million.

With the establishment of Israel and the encouragement of Zionists, Morocco’s Jews left. Some went for religious reasons to seek the long promised land, some for a better life than in economically troubled post-colonial Morocco, still others who feared persecution.

Unlike elsewhere in the Arab world, the creation of Israel did not spark widespread animosity or attacks on Jews. There were isolated incidents but no national campaign. Many Jews left, however, after being told by Zionist agents they were in danger, said Rehihil.

“Each time there was an Arab-Israeli war, there would be tensions and the Jews would become afraid and some more would leave,” she said, adding that most had left by the 1973 war.

Some 5,000 now remain, almost all in Morocco’s commercial capital of Casablanca.

As in the rest of the region, however, there has been a heavy focus in Morocco on the plight of the Palestinian people and many Moroccans have started equating Jews with Israel. In May 2003, a series of al-Qaida-inspired bombings in Casablanca attacked, among other targets, a Jewish cemetery and a community center, which was empty at the time.

Protests against Israeli military actions are a regular occurrence, the most recent in November over the latest clashes in Gaza. Tens of thousands marched through Casablanca and Rabat in demonstrations attended by members of the governing moderate Islamist party.

“It’s not a matter of denying the history of Moroccan Jews nor attacking freedom of expression, but defending one of the principal foundations of the nation, which is to say, no to normalization with the Zionist entity,” said Mohammed Khiyi, a member of parliament with the Islamist Party for Justice and Development who demonstrated against Hachkar’s film on Feb. 5.

He contended that the film “is trying to do Zionist propaganda. The real Moroccan Jews were those which stayed in their country and were proud, not those the film tries to portray as victims of deportation to Palestine.”

A surprising critic of the film is one of Morocco’s Jews, Sion Assidon, a leftist activist, former political prisoner and a member of a group advocating the boycott of Israeli products.

“The film is effectively a vehicle for the message of normalizing with Israel,” Assidon told the AP. “The people we see are never once questioned about the essential issue, which is that they are colonizers occupying the land of another people that were earlier expelled.”

The Moroccan Jews in the film do look back fondly on how well they got on with their Muslim neighbors and lament the daily violence and hatred that characterize the tense relations in Israel today with the Palestinians.

About 1 million Jews of Moroccan origin now live in Israel. Some 50,000 Israelis — many of them Moroccan — visit Morocco every year, said Sam Ben Chetrit, the head of the World Federation of Moroccan Jewry, who moved to Israel from Morocco in 1963.

Ben Chetrit said that on a visit last year, “we were told (by legislators) ‘we are happy you are here, this is your home, but make sure you bring your children too.’”

Israel has had a friendlier relationship with Morocco than with other Arab countries, and over the decades, the two have had trade, diplomatic and intelligence links, which have dwindled since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000. Tourism, however, has remained constant over the years.

Morocco’s monarchy, the real power in the country, has had a complex position of balancing advocacy for Palestinians with a historic role of defending the Jewish community.

On one hand it has presented itself as a protector of Muslim Jerusalem, founding the Jerusalem Committee of the Organization of Islamic Conference to fund projects to help the Palestinians living there. In a speech at an OIC meeting on February 6, King Mohammed VI condemned “the Israeli government’s aggressive, unilateral practices against the Palestinians,” namely the expansion of settlements.

Morocco played a behind the scenes role in the 1990s getting Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other and hosted Israel’s then prime minister, Shimon Peres, in 1986. Tzipi Livni, then Israeli opposition leader, attended a conference in 2009.

The monarchy has recently spoken more about preserving the Jewish heritage, and Judaism is enshrined as a component of the national identity in the 2011 constitution.

In a ceremony this month that included German parliament speaker Norbert Lammert, the king sent Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, of the same Islamist party whose members protested Hachkar’s movie, to inaugurate the renovation of the 17th century Slat Alfassiyine synagogue in Fez.

“We are calling for the restoration of all Jewish temples in the different cities of the kingdom so that they are not only places of worship but also spaces for cultural dialogue to renew the founding values of Moroccan civilization,” declared the king’s speech, which was read by the prime minister.

Rehihil said young Moroccans visiting the museum of Moroccan Judaism on school trips were often hesitant, until they saw how the clothes, caftans and other Jewish artifacts were familiar to them as just Moroccan.

Then the stories come out, she said, as people recalled their grandparents’ experiences with Jews.

“I am part of this new generation that did not live with the Jews,” said Rehihil, referring to those born after 1960.

“The Muslims were traumatized by the departure of the Jews as well. You will not meet a Moroccan who didn’t have someone in the family with a Jewish friend, a Jewish neighbor, or worked with a Jew, or whose grandmother learned embroidery with a Jew or whose grandfather did business with a Jew.”

Associated Press reporters Smail Bellaouali in Rabat, Morocco and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

This “price tag” assault and numerous attacks like it do not represent Judaism, which calls for respect and tolerance for other religious traditions and especially the dead.

These settlers who act in the name of G-d, and a supposed exclusive claim to the land in the West Bank by desecrating tombs are the lunatic fringe; every religion has them.

What if they were Muslim? (h/t: JD)

Jewish settlers vandalize Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem

(Al-Akhbar)

Suspected Jewish settlers damaged 30 graves and scrawled anti-Arab graffiti on the headstones in an ancient Muslim cemetery in west Jerusalem, Israeli police and witnesses said on Thursday.

“The words ‘price tag’ and Stars of David were scrawled on around a dozen tombs in the Muslim cemetery in Mamilla in central Jerusalem,” a police spokeswoman told AFP, saying an inquiry had been opened.

An AFP correspondent at the scene said the vandals had also written “Mohammad is dead” and “Maale Rehavam” on the tombs some of which date back to the 12th century.

Maale Rehavam is an illegal outpost in the southern West Bank where Israeli police removed six caravans a day earlier.

The move sparked angry protests by settlers and their supporters in and around Jerusalem.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation, a Jerusalem-based religious and archeological preservation group, said wine glasses were found in the area and 30 graves were damaged.

In a statement, the foundation held Israeli Israeli authorities responsible for the attack and urged Islamic countries to intervene to end attacks on Muslim and Christian sites in the holy city.

Price tag is a euphemism for hate crimes carried out by Israeli extremists which generally target Palestinians or Arabs and their property.

There have been several attacks on Mamilla graveyard, known in Arabic as Ma’man Allah cemetery, which dates from the 12th century and is the resting place of several Sufi saints.

Descendants of those interred in the west Jerusalem cemetery say it also houses the remains of soldiers and officials of legendary Muslim ruler Saladin.

(AFP, Ma’an, Al-Akhbar)