Monday, May 2, 2016
The Red Herring of "The Occupation"
"Israelis cannot 'end the occupation' on their own," writes Paul Michaels in the CJN.
That's a given, but the problem here is that Michaels' piece presupposes that there can be a "two-state solution" when the truth is that the only "occupation" that Palestinians and their supporters really care about and wish to terminate is the Jews' "occupation" of Israel--every last bit of it.
That's a given, but the problem here is that Michaels' piece presupposes that there can be a "two-state solution" when the truth is that the only "occupation" that Palestinians and their supporters really care about and wish to terminate is the Jews' "occupation" of Israel--every last bit of it.
Bernie Baby and His Secular Ilk Bid Buh Bye to Zionist Israel (And It's THEIR Loss, Not Israel's)
Bernie Sanders may be the quintessential "post-Zionist" American Jew--secular, "progressive" as hell and, in siding with the Jews' enemies (purely for "humanitarian" reasons, of course), not unlike a Jewish quisling.
In fact, a good argument could be made that he and his ilk are responsible for American Jews' drift away from Israel, a separation they may (or, then again, may not) come to regret in years to come.
Update: The paradox of secular Judaism
What can I say? It sucks to be them.
Update: Michael Chabon: Israeli Occupation 'The Most Grievous Injustice I've Ever Seen in My Life'
In fact, a good argument could be made that he and his ilk are responsible for American Jews' drift away from Israel, a separation they may (or, then again, may not) come to regret in years to come.
Update: The paradox of secular Judaism
What can I say? It sucks to be them.
Update: Michael Chabon: Israeli Occupation 'The Most Grievous Injustice I've Ever Seen in My Life'
Boo hoo for you, Mikey. (FYI, Chabon is so "Ashamed" of Israel that in one of his novels, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, he imagines Jews showing up in the "promised land" of Alaska following Israel's defeat in its War of Independence. Wishful thinking on Chabon's part, obviously.)
A NatPo Letters Trifecta
Letter #1 was published last week:
Gaps in his argument
Re: Don’t Blame The Media For Islamophobia, Jonathan Kay.For many years I have challenged Haroon Siddiqui over his thinly veiled hatred of Israel. Although he was always sure to temper his incessantly anti-Zionistic columns with the disingenuous balm that Israel has the right to exist, he never lost an opportunity to rely on the deceptive and inciting tactics that he now uses to so accuse the National Post.
Letter #2 appears today:According to one such column, Siddiqui espouses that Shias and Sunnis, despite their centuries-old distrust and hatred for one another, would immediately cease hostilities coincident with Israel making peace with the Palestinians. More commonly, to disguise his true feelings about Israel and to fool those who had no vested interest to challenge his Middle East propaganda, many columns reliably inserted a quote from a Jewish, anti-Zionistic spokesperson-du-jour, provided to prop up his biased viewpoints by misleading his readers into trusting he knew of what he spoke. Correctly, Siddiqui is the pot that is calling the kettle black.
Joel L. Goldman, Toronto.
Re: Don’t Blame The Media For Islamophobia, Jonathan Kay; Gaps In His Argument, letter to the editor, April 26.
In a speech at the Aga Khan Museum on “Media, Muslims and Free Speech,” I argued that the media — especially the Post group of newspapers, which now includes the Sun chain of tabloids — have aided and abetted Islamophobia in Canada. Jonathan Kay, writing in the Post, took issue with that. Fair enough.
Along comes letter-writer Joel L. Goldman, accusing me of having a “thinly-veiled hatred of Israel” and being “incessantly anti-Zionist.” This is a reference to my past columns in the Toronto Star critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, now approaching 50 years. Many Jewish Canadians take exactly the same position, as do many Israelis.
None of this, however, has anything to do with Kay’s column or the excerpts from my speech published in the Star, on which he based his commentary, or my entire 40-minute speech, in which Israel was not mentioned once. The Post could have easily checked that out.
Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page editor emeritus, Toronto Star, Toronto.And I just sent off letter #3:
Nowhere in Joel L. Goldman's letter does he state that Haroon Siddiqi cast aspersions on Israel during his recent talk at the Aga Khan Museum. Instead, Goldman was pointing out that, given Siddiqui's well-known views on the subject of Israel (clearly, he's not a fan), ones which have had the tendency to fan the flames of Israel-hate, it is pretty rich of the Toronto Star's "editorial page editor emeritus" to blame certain media outlets, the National Post included, for "aiding and abetting Islamophobia in Canada." Hence, Goldman's "pot-calling-the-kettle-black" quip, which, granted, may be somewhat overused, but which was entirely apropos here, whether or not Siddiqui mentioned Israel during his 40-minute lecture.
Speaking of which, kudos to audience members for sitting through that lengthy peroration. I, for one, lack the "sitzfleisch" to do so, especially when it consists of a lecturer hectoring non-Muslims for their purported but largely chimerical racism. No doubt that goes over well with certain audiences, ones which are as disinclined to acknowledge the jihad imperative embedded in Islam's sacred texts as Siddiqui is.And, I venture to say, ones which share Siddiqui's far from chimerical animus towards Israel.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
A Muslim Chick With a Pronounced Animus Toward the Jewish State? Wow, That's So "Interfaithy"!
Hey, all you interfaithers out there. Do I have an event with your name(s) on it:
I say we fixate on the evident pathologies of interfaithiness instead.
Update: But wait--there's more (my bolds):
Not only is that not interfaithy, it's not even sane.
As for Israel's "colonial nature"--how can you "colonize" something that was yours from waaaay back; certainly long before Islam's founder (a huge "colonizer" himself) was even a gleam in his mama's eye?
30th Annual Event – Wednesday May 25
Please join us for our 30th Annual Event, being held at 7:30 pm on Wednesday May 25, 2016 at Grace Church on-the-hill, 300 Lonsdale Road (at Russell Hill Road).
Program
Interfaith Panel Discussion | The Language of War and Peace in our Religious Traditions, with
Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl (Senior Rabbi, Beth Tzedec Congregation)
Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton (General Secretary, Canadian Council of Churches)
Azeezah Kanji (Legal Scholar, Noor Cultural Centre).
Reception with Light Refreshments
Tickets : $10
To purchase, please contact your congregational representative; or event co-chairs Gary Posner(gary@posnerma.com) and Samira Kanji (skanji@noorculturalcentre.ca).
Purchase Deadline – Friday May 20 at 5 pm
Now, here's where I get to grouse about these "interfaith" interactions. They count for nada if you can't even mention Israel because doing so is likely to destroy the veneer of civility that's been established and disrupt the superficial feelings of amity that suffuse the room. And, anyway, how can one really forms bonds with the likes of Azeezah Kanji, a woman who writes for hard leftist, Israel-despising website rabble.ca, where she has expressed disturbing views re the Jewish state? Here's but one example:We look forward to seeing you on May 25!
Gary Posner (Beth Sholom) and Samira Kanji (Noor Cultural Centre)
Event Co-Chairs
If incarceration and torture have long been staple technologies of colonial assertion of power over subject populations, their current employment by states like Israel and the United States is (just) one salient vector of continuity between the colonial past and neocolonial present.
Tracing these continuities Abdo argues that "a proper understanding of the Palestinian anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle requires a comprehension of the imperialist and colonial context within which the Palestinian struggle has unfolded and continued to unfold ... [I]nsofar as the Palestinian women's struggle was/is concerned, the imperialist context within which they were/are viewed has been largely one of an ideological nature ... that was and has remained characteristically Orientalist and racist in essence."
Mired in Orientalist logic, dominant Western representations of Palestinian women activists -- including by ostensibly feminist scholars -- portray them as nothing more than victims of patriarchal Palestinian society, driven by "shame and dishonour" (as well as rabid anti-Semitism) to engage in acts of "terrorism."
As Abdo points out, these representations not only completely discount the political agency of Palestinian women, but also erase the context of colonial violence which produces their resistance -- instead fixating on the supposed pathologies of Palestinian culture."Fixating on the supposed pathologies of Palestinian culture"? Yeah, why on Earth would anyone want to do that?
I say we fixate on the evident pathologies of interfaithiness instead.
Update: But wait--there's more (my bolds):
On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Samira Kanji and Azeezah Kanji talk about the work of the Noor Cultural Centre in support of a vision of social justice grounded in Islamic teachings.
Many non-religious progressive and radical folks in North America have trouble wrapping their heads around the grounding in faith that is crucial to many who work for social justice. And to the the extent that this is understood, it often goes as far as a nod to strands of Christianity like the social gospel and liberation theology, and no further. The ways in which, for many, Islam is a powerful resource for understanding and acting in the world that calls for and guides towards social justice is often completely off the radar.
Samira and Azeezah Kanji are a mother and daughter who are part of Toronto’s Noor Cultural Centre, a place of Islamic worship and education. Samira is the centre’s President and CEO, and Azeezah works with both her mother and her sister to organize the programming at the centre. A key element to the centre’s work is a concern for social justice along multiple axes, grounded in Islamic teachings and ethics. Samira and Azeezah talk with me about the critical education work they do with the congregation and beyond around questions as diverse as poverty, animal rights, and globalization; about the ways that their vision of justice is integrated into worship at the centre; and about their work against Islamophobia in local, national, and global contexts. Particularly timely is their role in organizing a recent public statement calling for an end to the “callous devaluation of Palestinian life communicated by [Canadian] political leaders,” and signed by hundreds of academics and cultural luminaries from many places, institutions, disciplines, faiths, and communities across the country.Update: Azeezah writes:
To learn more about the Noor Cultural Centre, please click here. To see the statement calling on Canadian political leaders to take a more just stand in response to the massacre in Gaza, click here.
You mean Hamas, a jihadi terrorist entity and the local branch of the Ikwan, a.k.a the Muslim Brotherhood, can "invoke the privileges of engaging in international armed conflict" too?Israel invokes the privileges of engaging in international armed conflict but denies Palestinians their corresponding entitlements under the same body of law. This is the colonial nature of Israel’s legal logic.
Not only is that not interfaithy, it's not even sane.
As for Israel's "colonial nature"--how can you "colonize" something that was yours from waaaay back; certainly long before Islam's founder (a huge "colonizer" himself) was even a gleam in his mama's eye?
Abbas Sings ABBA!
The JPost employs the wrong ABBA tune, I think--"Mamma Mia" instead of the Eurovision-winning "Waterloo" --in describing "PLO outrage" over the song contest's decision to ban the Palestinian flag. And, whadya know? The ABBA lyrics, with but one minor alteration (which I've bolded), fits Abbas' situation perfectly. How easy it is to imagine him singing these infamous words:
My, my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself
Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - Promise to hate you for ever more
Waterloo - Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - Knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - Finally facing my Waterloo
My, my, I tried to hold you back but you were stronger
Oh yeah, and now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight
And how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose
Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - Promise to hate you for ever more
Waterloo - Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - Knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - Finally facing my Waterloo
So how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose -
Waterloo - Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - Knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - Finally facing my Waterloo
Choosing a Chick to Be On a Canadian Bank Note: Why's It Gotta Be So Complicated?
The exquisitely PC short list of 12 Canadian women (only six of whom I've heard of) who have a shot at being Tubmanized has been released. Sadly, it does not include the woman I had nominated for the honour.
Obama Slays 'Em Again and For the Very Last Time
In his guise of Comedian-in-Chief
Obama beggars belief.
He brings on the funny;
They eat it up like honey.
(I'm sensing a recurring motif.)
Obama beggars belief.
He brings on the funny;
They eat it up like honey.
(I'm sensing a recurring motif.)
The Ontario "Human Rights" Racket: What a Lemon!
Two letters in the National Post decry the lunacy of having a large, taxpayer-funded "human rights" apparatus that rewards the aggrieved for petty, picayune complaints, ones that have zilch to do with genuine human rights:
Re: Steakhouse Loses Case Over Lemon In Water, April 22.When human rights are a matter of having or not having a piece of lemon in your glass of water at a restaurants, they become a parody and a laughing stock of the concept. It is high time we shut down the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and use the funds allocated to this useless bureaucracy to care for autistic kids, or something equally worthwhile. People with disabilities are generally being treated with kindness and consideration in our society, but they should remember that the world does not revolve around them. Making demands that cause hardship for other people is not a right, it is wrong.
Kristina Tomory, Toronto.
The sad fact about this issue is that it was not a legal case at all. The Ontario Human Rights Commission is not a court. It usurps citizens’ rights under the law and dispenses kangaroo justice on behalf of those who “feel” wronged. If this issue was brought before a court of law, I bet it would be thrown out as nonsense. The complainant may hope, at best, to be placed in a whole position, relative to others who frequent the restaurant.
Other patrons enter the establishment, order their chicken dinner from the menu and are served. If they ask for a variation on the fare, like a special potato, the restaurant decides and the client may then decide to return or eat elsewhere. If the latter sues, he can expect no more than other patrons, not a cash benefit. If a patron confined to a wheelchair enters, he can expect to be served as others, not treated with deference. The Ontario Human Rights Commission simply wants to justify its existence, expand its influence by policing citizens’ feelings, not rights. It is time we abolished this mockery of Canadian justice.
Larry Sylvester, Acton, Ont.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)