Hamas-Islamist crimes against humanity

Concerning the Simchat Torah massacres by Hamas:

The following short essay was published first on my blog at The Times of Israel, here:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/eternal-jew-in-israel-today/

Einsatzgruppen murder and nazi murderers, Photo credit: Library of Congress, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

In the past most analyses of the origins and history of the conflict between indigenous non-Jewish Palestinians and Jewish-Zionist emigres have focused primarily on two matters:
1. the politics of national identity, and
2. the right of Jews to claim Israel/Palestine as a homeland.
This latter argument often frames Zionism as a colonial enterprise.

However, neither of these two analytical/ideological approaches hold any water. The first postulates a pre-existing Palestinian national identity. This is merely an illusion, and whether that illusion is a product of inept historicity, projecting the historical present onto the past, or mendacious propaganda, it remains a false basis of analysis. This conflict is NOT the product of two national identities vying for the land. Palestinian identity had NO nationalistic basis until the early 20th century, and even then only by a very few ideologues. Real national identity takes centuries to develop, and it did not begin to emerge in the Palestinian population until after the founding of Israel and the rise in the 1960's of the PLO, led by Yasser Arafat. And even today, twenty years after Arafat’s death, Palestinians still do not have a meaningful national identity. In short, the Palestinians were, and still are an indigenous people, but not a nation.
* Request my Identity Addendum on some necessary markers of national identity.

As for the assertion that Jews have no historical claim to the land, and that Zionism is colonialism, this is nothing but mendacious propaganda. I need not reference the vast number of historical texts and the abundance of archeological evidence that prove three millennia of Jewish life in the land of Israel. Rather, one text is sufficient. The whole Hebrew Bible is a text about Jewish identity, an identity co-existent with the Land of Israel. And this text is universally acknowledged by Jews, Christians, and Muslims (and thus virtually the whole population of the region) as holy and canonical. Further, chapters 13-23 of the Book of Joshua is a verbal geographical mapping of ancient Israel, with a large number of descriptions that are incontrovertibly associated with locations in Israel today. It is an indisputable deed. So let me simply say, Zionism is a national liberation movement meant to reclaim the historic homeland of the Jewish people from the real colonialists, Muslims.

Therefore, we need to rethink the causes of Palestinian fury. An accurate and honest analysis of this historical conflict will assess it as a conflict of
1. status and privilege, coupled with
2. religious ideology.
National identity and the political canards that buttress such arguments are largely diversionary matters. I am not saying this in a void. Quoting the words of Imam Karim Abu Zaid, the imam of CMCC of Aurora, Colorado and the director of Salahuddin Future Academy:
“Brothers, Palestine... is not a national territorial issue, it is an issue of belief and disbelief. This is a religious issue in the depth of theology. ... Allah decreed only the believers to live there.... Only Muslims must be in control of this land....”
This is mainstream Islamic belief.

Long before the U.N. voted in 1947 to create Israel and Palestine, Arabs (they did not yet think of themselves as “Palestinians”) began their pogroms. It was not because of “the occupation” or “the settlements” or the “blockade of Gaza.” It was because suddenly Jews, not Muslims, were becoming the moving economic and political force in Palestine. In 1919 local Muslims and Christians saw their Ottoman government crumbling. And like their empire, the status of local Muslims was crumbling too. Their response was not a pursuit of unity, not economic initiatives, not dialog and a pursuit of re-education. Their response was violence promoted by religious leaders.

1919 marked the beginning of Arab terrorism against Jews in Palestine. Another wave of terrorism began in 1929, then 1936-1939, and then continually up to the present moment, with periods of relative quiet morphing into periods of intifada and war.

By late 1947, while Jews were actively consolidating and uniting their resources and action-plans preparing for nationhood, Palestinians continued to squabble without effective leadership and without any kind of self-directed vision of their future. They largely threw their hopes and their lot to the Arab nations around them, especially Egypt and Transjordan. In May of 1948, after Israel declared its independence, Egypt and Transjordan, among others, attacked the nascent nation intending to absorb it into their own borders. They had no intention of establishing a Palestinian nation, and for the most part the Palestinians seemed satisfied with that solution. Even well into the 1970's and beyond, many Palestinian warlord-leaders simply hoped to confederate with Jordan and take on Jordanian nationality. For example, consider this quote by Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member in a 1977 interview:
“…The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel…”
Or this by Walid Shoebat:
“Why is it that on June 4th, 1967, I went to bed as a Jordanian and woke up as a Palestinian? We considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then, all of a sudden, we were Palestinians.”

And it wasn’t until 1994 that Jordan itself relinquished its territorial claims to the West Bank, then, and only then acknowledging an independent Palestinian claim to this disputed territory. As for Gaza, it was held as Egyptian territory until the 1979 peace deal with Israel (again, with no acknowledgment of any independent Palestinian national claim), when they insisted on transferring control to Israel in spite of Israel’s deep reluctance.

In sum, Palestinian hatred and violence long pre-existed Israel and even rudimentary Palestinian national identity. Nor is that hatred founded in “unfair treatment.” Rather, it is about status and Islamic ideology. It is about reducing upstart Jews to their proper place in the Islamic order.

Often this hatred is “justified” by accusing Israel of apartheid and colonialism. This is profoundly ironic, since it is the Muslim world that is truly apartheid and colonialist. These values are institutionalized thru three fundamental Islamic principles: jihad, dar al Islam/dar al Harb, and dhimma. Jihad is the colonialist act of conquest. Dar al Islam/Harb is the colonialist ideology justifying jihad. The terms mean respectively “region of peace” and “region of war.” Islam divides the world into two regions: the Muslim nations and the non-Muslim nations, with the non-Muslim regions being subject to jihad. Consider: currently 17 African countries have active jihadist insurgencies against moderate Islamic or non-Islamic governments! This is well documented by the Geneva Academy,
https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts

And dhimma is that aspect of Islamic law that deals with non-Muslims. Euphemized as “protection,” it really represents the medieval exclusion of non-Muslims from full and equal legal rights and protections. It is quite literally Islamic apartheid, and it is an integral part of Islamic dogma and ideology. These principles are the real underpinnings to Palestinian terrorism.

Still, we must ask: why did so many members of Hamas’ military commit such blatant atrocities? And why did so many civilians on Gaza’s streets celebrate the atrocities as acts of bravery and glory, and not with horror and revulsion? The answer must include understanding that these acts are the result of decades of a Palestinian program of teaching hatred on a societal level. In schools, thru all forms of media, in the mosque and at home hatred is taught, and those who promote hatred the most are rewarded the most. This is precisely like the nazi program of demonizing Jews in every sector of society thru every means of indoctrination.

And yet, the world turns a blind eye to this constant inundation of hate-teach, preferring to focus on simplistic and vapid political causes, refusing to acknowledge that many, if not most Muslim-majority nations pursue the same kind of hate-indoctrination with similar ferocity. From Algeria in the west to Indonesia and Malaysia in the east, we see the vilification of Israel thru politics, media, and educational policy. And this helps explain why Muslims around the world celebrated and continue to celebrate the atrocities.

The viciousness the world has witnessed in the Simchat Torah massacres is a product of unbridled hatred that has been taught and promoted aggressively across the Muslim world. Where hatred is institutionalized there can be no hope of peace. This not a conflict founded in politics. This is a conflict generated by the institutionalized demonization of the Jewish people thru religion and government.

Dvar on Shelach Lecha and Israel haters

Two weeks ago Jews around the world read the portion Shelakh Lekha (Shelach Lecha), “Send out men for yourself” to scout the land of Canaan. Moshe sends out twelve tribal leaders as scouts, and 40 days later they return with their report: it is truly a land of abundance, cultivated and forested, with well built cities and towns. But 10 of the 12 scouts go on to report, “we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers” (13:33) to those people, who were giants. “The people in the land are too strong” for us (13:28). Only 2 scouts, Joshua and Caleb provide a minority report. In the words of Caleb, “We can indeed go up and take possession of it. We are truly able to do so.” (13:30) And who do the masses of Hebrews listen to? They listen to the nay-sayers and fear-mongers. “All the sons of Israel murmured against Moshe” and “the entire community said, ‘would that we had died in Egypt or the desert...’” (14:1-2) And by that choice they earned the fate they chose: dying in the desert. Only those not born into a life and an ideology of servitude were privileged to join Joshua and Caleb in taking possession of the land promised to them.

And here we are, some 3300 years later, and listen to the throng continuing to murmur and complain about our having taken possession of the land. They believe the scouts (journalists from the New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR) who bring back exaggerated, false, and slanderous reports, and they learn their history, if they learn it at all, from those who hate Israel.

So let me take you on a high speed tour to make sure you have a basic understanding of Palestinian history.

Since the Roman conquest and colonization of Judea 2000 years ago, the only people who have ruled the land of Israel (renamed Palestine by the Romans) prior to 1948 have been colonizers. Byzantines, Abbasids, Seljuks, Mamluks, Crusaders, and others all colonized this land to serve rulers who lived in cities far away. In the 16th century the Ottoman Turks conquered the land and it was still in their grip at the end of the 19th century. Although there were some limited indigenous nationalisms emerging in the Ottoman empire, notably by Kurds and Armenians, in Palestine the few inhabitants living there were more interested in survival than political philosophy. The land was a ruins, a fact comprehensively documented in many dozens of books, some produced by individuals, some produced by groups, and some produced as the result of large-scale expeditions that included artists and photographers. I have pored over dozens of these books. There is not a single drawing, etching, or photograph showing anything but a depopulated land pervaded by extreme poverty. Nor is there mention of even the slightest murmurings of a “Palestinian national identity.”

In the late 19th century Jews once again decided to end their wanderings. So began the saga of Zionism, and the advent of the modern Jewish restoration of the land. It was a true national liberation movement, and it was the first, yes, the first time since Judea was conquered by Rome, that colonizers were being confronted by an indigenous people, a people with a highly developed national identity: Jews. It was Jewish emigration and Jewish investment that began to repopulate the land and bring about its revival. This included a concomitant Arab emigration, as they responded to the economic growth generated by the Jews.

Fast forward to the Gaza war of May, 2021. The excoriating journalistic attacks against Israel by so-called liberals pile up. Social media institutionalizes the lies and slanders. The outspoken, the latent, and the secret Jew-haters all gorge on the news (and vomit it wherever they go). Their numbers include not a few Jews. Should you be surprised? Read Shelakh Lekha. It tells of a mixed multitude of nay-sayers, and no doubt each had their own excuse, each had their own favorite distortion or lie.

Of the modern Jewish Israel-haters, some are angry and accusing; some are ashamed; some are wagging their fingers and moralizing with their insipid and fake morality. But I would suggest, beneath it all most of them are driven by the same fear those ten scouts in Shelakh Lekha felt. They see themselves as grasshoppers and the Israel-haters as anakim, giants. They read their NYT and listen to their NPR and BBC and Al Jazeera and become afraid like the Hebrew wanderers in the desert, who trembled in their imagined inferiority. They hear lies and take them for chastisements. They hear slanders and imagine they are truths. They prefer to see themselves as victims so they can be worthy of sympathy. They prefer obeisance so they don’t have to make hard, existential choices. But if Israel were left to such weak hands and such weak wills, it would quickly cease to exist. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and many others in the region are not bound by moral restraints (as the Arab Spring so brutally showed), and would love nothing more than the opportunity to make every Jew in the land a victim.

What then can be said about the far greater problem of Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred with its focus on denying Israel’s right to exist? As the ADL report on worldwide anti-Semitism clearly shows (ADL Global 100, An Index of Anti-Semitism), the Muslim world is the epicenter of Jew-hatred in the modern world. Public and private schools from Morocco to Bangladesh teach Jew-hatred; the various media promote Jew-hatred; religious leaders preach Jew-hatred; and governments enforce Jew-hatred. And from this epicenter, Jew-hatred in all its forms is being promoted in every country of the world. This is a problem the obeisance-lovers don’t know how to address. Indeed, they are afraid to even acknowledge it, much less, to acknowledge that it is the basis of their own thinking.

Surely the news is bad and I am often dismayed, but I have not lost hope. The news and social media may be sick with abuse and hatred, and this Torah portion highlights how easily disinformation can prevail. However, our Torah reading includes a contrasting Haftarah. Here we read the story of the scouts sent to Jericho (Joshua 2:1-24). Finally, after long wanderings, the Jewish people has found its courage. The scouts report with prophetic insight (v. 2:24), “Adonai has delivered into our hands all the land.” And so it is today, as well. We have been granted, and we are earning the opportunity to rebuild our nation. But if you look just a little deeper, you will see we are not alone. Our allies are many, and not a few are Muslims, who have stepped up to become partners in Israel’s effort to exist as an accepted neighbor in the region. When that day has been firmly established, let us then see how Israel measures up to our highest expectations.

So let me modernize Joshua’s exhortation:

May all Jews, and may people of all faiths and philosophies stand with Israel and be strong and of good courage. May we pursue truth and be strengthened with righteousness. To quote the modern prophet, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” And so I have faith that history will affirm our vision, and will affirm the justice and righteousness of Israel.

Musings on trans-personal consciousness

Sitting on a ridge in the Mojave Desert, just north of Joshua Tree National Park, watching a rain storm blow in…

Like fronts of weather moving across a landscape, similarly, emotions and beliefs blow across human societies and through human consciousness, and we, without the “meteorological” tools to see, measure, track, or forecast those fronts of emotion, instead experience them as arisen from ourselves, individually, and thus with no capacity to prepare for and shelter ourselves from them, so that we might be able to remain largely unaffected and undamaged by the storms such fronts can bring on. Instead, we are overwhelmed by them, and blown like tumbleweeds across the emotional landscape; a society, a world of tumbleweeds blown about without shelter or stability.

We have yet to understand that causation in history works at a higher level than individual motive and action.

Indeed, individual motive and action is as inconsequential and derivative in the emotional “storm fronts” that blow across our world, as local and momentary differentials in pressure in the midst of a passing gust of wind. And I am speaking here not just of the “common people”, but of presidents and dictators, lords of industry, and the phantasms of popular culture — musicians, sports figures, movie stars — all mostly tumbleweeds with a little will and a little luck thrown in.

Ah, but we love to idolize and project authority and awe onto blow-hards and other puffs of wind. Why? Partly because we imagine that we might be, or yet become one of those “shakers and movers” in world history, tumbleweeds that we are.