Amtrak
LOS ANGELES New York Israel Italy Chicago New Jersey Philly London San Fran

The God Blog

Email | Print | Text - Text +

December 29, 2008 | 8:39 am

Anti-Semites and Israel’s assault on Gaza

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo

And I thought Bernard Madoff brought out the worst in anti-Semites. Don’t be fooled. Nothing can compare to the virulence espoused when Israel retaliates against its attackers.

The latest comment moderated by The Web Guy starts: “Jews are a filthy self-centred - bigoted and arrogant circumsized anthropoids who still beleive they are the chosen one.” And that’s the complimentary part.

Commenter Kirk, whose email address begins with KKK, goes on to promote a modern-day Kristallnacht. That leads me to believe Kirk and this Greek politician, who is comparing Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas compounds in Gaza to Hitler, would get along just swell:

The statements Monday by George Karatzaferis, the leader of the far right LAOS party, come a day after a daily newspaper in Greece blamed Jews for the world financial crisis and the Israeli operation in Gaza.

Karatzaferis released a statement that read, in part, “Someone has to pull the ear of the darling child of the West, Israel. Its aggressiveness and malice against non-combatants, whose only precedent can be found during Hitler’s time, cannot leave the international community indifferent.”

Israeli Ambassador to Greece Ali Yahya said in response to the statement, “Racism is not in Greece’s culture. I’m saddened by the pathetic statement made by Mr. Karatzaferis; it shows, if nothing else, complete historic ignorance. It is the Jewish people that were the prey of racism.”

Meanwhile, the Avriani newspaper led its front page with anti-Semitic accusations for the second time in several weeks. Sunday’s headline read: “After the American Jews acquired once again the world’s wealth and plunged the planet into an unprecedented financial crisis, they started rehearsing for WWIII.”

Midway through the paper’s story on Israel’s operation in Gaza, the story, under the heading “The Plan,” explains that a Jewish plutocracy, having made the “wealth of the century at the expense of the economies of the world,” is preparing to put in motion “war machines” in various hot spots around the world in order to control the price of oil, redistribute the world’s natural resources and start a new cycle of weapons production.

Avriani is the same Greek paper that on Nov. 4 ran on its front page this headline: ““The anticipated victory of Obama in the U.S. elections signals the end of Jewish domination. Everything changes in the USA and we hope that it will be more democratic and humane.“

There is no question that the loss of life in Gaza is a tragedy. And Israel’s military has before been too careless when operating in civilian areas—human shields or not. But Israel’s weekend assault on Gaza needs to be understood as an attack on Hamas militants that for years have been shelling the border towns. Not Jewish settlements, but communities well within the Green Line of 1948. Those actions, by operatives of the government, should be seen as hundreds of acts of war.

Regardless, no one is “winning”—or stands to. As Ruth Wisse says, the Palestinian refugee crisis—60 years later—is still about the political power of the Palestinians’ neighbors. The question is what should the Israeli response be.

Many are calling now for a ceasefire; Egypt is trying to broker one. Here’s what the Jewish Alliance for Peace & Justice had to say:

Though some Israeli action is an understandable response to continued rocket fire from Hamas, and the idea of contained surgical strikes may be compelling, these airstrikes represent a huge escalation of the conflict—a crisis that may end in a wider war in which many more Palestinians and Israelis die in the weeks to come.

The now familiar sequence of escalating mutual hostility, invasion, and withdrawal without security arrangements has never worked—in Lebanon, the West Bank, or in Gaza itself. The United States and the entire world community must intercede to help reestablish a ceasefire, put an end to rocket attacks on Israel, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Brit Tzedek calls on President Bush to initiate an international effort aimed at negotiating an immediate ceasefire. Such a ceasefire must halt all attacks from both sides and allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

Further, we call on President-elect Obama to make clear that he will, as President, urgently assert US leadership to achieve a comprehensive diplomatic resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts.

5 Comments — Leave your comment

Share this post: del.icio.us Favicondel.icio.us Digg FaviconDigg Facebook FaviconFacebook Google FaviconGoogle Reddit FaviconReddit StumbleUpon FaviconStumbleUpon Technorati FaviconTechnorati YahooMyWeb FaviconYahooMyWeb

COMMENTS

We welcome your feedback.

Privacy Policy

Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details.

Speaking of historic ignorance with respect to the Greeks, this week was Chanukkah which commemorates a successful Jewish overthrow of the Greek dictatorship and the brutal imposition of Hellenistic culture upon Judea. I seenothing wrong with reminding that Greek fool of that fact.

Which segues nicely into what is wrong with Israel’s Gaza policy, and why it is doomed from the start. Israel should be reminding the world that Gaza is a historically Jewish land, part of the tribal territory of Judah (after the Philistines who the ‘palestinian’ Arabs have nothing to do with) had been destroyed), and that Arabs are invaders and occupiers of Gaza. Once Israel says that they have no intention of occupying or exerting control orcertainly not sovereignty over Gaza, it calls into question Israel’s right to exert military force over it and it does not matter what gains or strikes they make. Israel’s concession of the moral high ground is one the Arabs are happy to claim for themselves.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/29/08 at 7:19 pm

the attackers are ducks forced to swim in a barrel by some Israelis and their leaders. scouting or anti-semitism like a lot of injustice-collecting only a motivation for revenge. shooting at ducks in a barrel with all the pain your article refuses to mention is an easy and an unfair inhumane target, certainly nothing to be proud of or defend. like groucho said:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” trouble is that your rhetoric above isn’t real or fake, it’s self-defeating. do you have any idea Brad what certain fate such disproportionate killing and anger and incarceration of those robbed of their homeland too will unlock, and that is not in any insane anti-semitic community, but just in those who look for peace on Earth? please don’t be your brothers’ keeper. clean your own house up and respect all children of the Earth equally. get the message and stop the denial routine. you’re too intelligent to live much longer in such a denial. question your principles as Groucho does above. humor helps.

Comment by ay_man on 12/30/08 at 5:26 am

Stay alive - don’t drink and drive.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 1/01/09 at 4:52 am

REVISING THE TERMINOLOGY OF TERROR:

A significant consequence of the escalation of armed Israel-Palestinian violence is that events on the ground are able to speak with a startling clarity as to the wider realities of this on-going conflict. Over time both sides have built up an armoury of words with which to battle for justification and control of the historical, legal and humanitarian context of this war. Many of us have drifted in accepting this lexicon of crafted terminology, however it is now looking very exposed indeed.

Perhaps one of the most striking illustrations of actual events is the ratio of 1:100 Israelis to Palestinians killed in the conflict. In this stark light talk of ‘Proportional Response’, ‘Precision Targeting’ and ‘Unfortunate collateral damage’ is very hollow indeed. It has become evident to the majority of observers how the words ‘Proportional’ ‘Unfortunate’ and ‘Precision’ are both miss-leading and not relevant in describing the situation.

This reveals a broader issue for the Israeli military and political establishment as they struggle to find a new global/US friendly narrative with which to align the cause and update their PR lexicon. The ‘War on Terror’ had proved a strong geopolitical narrative to replace the ‘Cold War’ and use in aligning Israel’s interest closely with the US. The ‘War in Terror’ lexicon is now looking pretty barren and suffering from extreme exhaustion courtesy of the Bush administration. So what next?

More of the same mantra of ‘Terror’-

“A necessary war on terror does not end with an agreement. We don’t sign agreements with terror; we fight terror.” (Israeli foreign minister January 2009). Tzipi Livni very succinctly excuses Israeli aggression as defensive, with ‘terror’ as a justification for Israel’s rejection of any form of peace process to end the occupation of Palestinian land.

However events on the ground provide a stark revision of who now owns the word ‘Terror’. If the Palestinians are clearly the more ‘Terrorised’ party, it surely begs the question who are the real ‘Terrorists’. There has been an assumption that ‘Terrorists’ work outside the structure of the nation state, do not come in the form of a disciplined uniformed national army. However the Israeli army’s ‘Terrorising’ of a dense civilian area and its stated strategic aim of using this military action to achieve a long term deterrence effect, does require us to reconsider the Israeli army as one of the best organised, equipped and most powerful ‘Agents of Terror’ in the world. Hamas’ action against the citizens of Sderot, makes them look like home-spun amateurs by comparison.

Comment by graham sullivan on 1/06/09 at 10:47 am

Of course the Palestinians children you murder are also Semites which makes Israel the most anti-semetic nation on Earth.

Comment by sdfhlksjdhf on 1/14/09 at 2:12 pm

Post a Comment

Name:  
Email:  
URL:  

Type the word you see below:

Comment:

About this Blog

Blog Home
About the Blogger(s)
Contact

RSS


Blog Archive

Newspaper

Serving a community of 600,000, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angles is the largest Jewish weekly outside New York City. Our award-winning paper reaches over 150,000 educated, involved and affluent readers each week. Subscribe here.

© Copyright 2010 The Jewish Journal and JewishJournal.com
All rights reserved. JewishJournal.com is hosted by Nexcess.net. Homepage design by Koret Communications.
Widgets by Mijits. Site construction by Hop Studios.

counter fake hit page