"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
"It happened, therefore it can happen
again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it
can happen everywhere." - Primo Levi, 1986 The Drowned and the Saved
Never Again is Now.
Six months later, and the hostages are not back home, and the war ignited by an unprovoked attack on October 7, 2023 against Israelis rages on.
1,200 Israelis massacred on October 7, 2023 by terrorists. May the memory of the victims be a blessing.
All proceeds from the OK song/video will go to non profits combatting anti-semitism. I am grateful and humbled by so many of you who continue to share this message around the world. This is a time for choosing. #WeAreNotOKhttps://t.co/JjeTYEXwZW
My definition of terrorism is the systematic and deliberate attack,
the murder, maiming, and menacing of innocents, of civilians, for
political goals." ... "Those who fight with terroristic means end up
being masters of terrorist states." - Benjamin Netanyahu, Firing Line (May 30,1986)
"If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very
heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish a
peaceful coexistence." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, London’sDaily Worker (1962)
"My definition of terrorism is the systematic and deliberate attack, the murder, maiming, and menacing of innocents, of civilians, for political goals." ... "Those who fight with terroristic means end up being masters of terrorist states." - Benjamin Netanyahu, Firing Line (May 30,1986)
..."It describes so many other post-colonial states that came into existence from people who described themselves as freedom fighters, but used terroristic means and then ended up creating despotisms in their own societies. Its not unique to the Palestinians." - Bret Stephens, Firing Line (October 13, 2023)
This is the third blog entry on the unfolding events in Israel, and the
international reaction to the Hamas terrorist attacks against innocent
Israelis provides a profound reflection by journalist Bret Stephens on
the October 13, 2023 episode of Firing Line with Margaret Hoover. It is
required viewing, and available here.
The other entries raise different concerns, and are complementary to this one.
The first entry, a fact sheet was posted on October 11, 2023 which documents that the Jewish people are both the indigenous and ancestral people of the land they currently live in known as Israel.
A fourth, and related blog entry was posted on the eve of the October 7th attacks on the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack against Israel by Muslim states, North Korea, ad Cuba.
It also explains why the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini was making visits to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to obtain "a German-Italian declaration recognizing the independence of
Arab states and their right to work to prevent the establishment of a
national home for the Jewish people in the Holy Land." He did not succeed in his mission.
According to Yad Vashem, "Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was
a despicable antisemite and ardent Nazi
supporter. Nevertheless, the role he played in the Holocaust was
marginal."
Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, 1941Credit: German Federal Archives
The Jewish people without their own homeland since 70 AD had endured centuries of pogroms, persecution, ethnic cleansing, forced religious conversion, and in the 20th century in Europe the Holocaust. The revulsion of the international community in the aftermath of opening the death camps underscored the Zionist case for a Jewish homeland. What goes unmentioned in the conversation over Israel and Palestine is that there had never been a Palestinian state or kingdom prior to its creation together with the reemergence of a Jewish state in 1948.
Let’s be clear:
Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state. -Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state. -Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a Palestinian state.…
Although the United Nations had authorized a two state partition: One Jewish and One Palestinian Arab. The Palestinians allied with their Arab neighbors in a coalition to invade and destroy the new Jewish nation, and although outgunned in the first Arab-Israeli War 1948-49, Israel survived, and gained territory against their aggressors.
Wars would continue with the Suez Crisis in 1956, and the Six Days War in 1967. Israel's victory in the Six Days War redrew the map of the Middle East with the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank
and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria taken over by the Jewish state.
The Arab states together with communist Cuba tried to destroy Israel in
another war of aggression fifty years ago October 6, 1973 during high holy
Jewish holidays in what became known as the Yom Kippur War.
Operation SIG is the KGB operation to sow worldwide disapproval for the US and Israel. SIG is the Russian acronym for Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Jewish (or Zionist) Government.” The operation started shortly after 1967, when the drive for Arab unity collapsed along with the economies of the armies that attacked Israel (Shlaim, 2003). ...“After defeat of Soviet-controlled Arab states in the 1967 Six-Day war, the Soviet Union started a widespread under-cover campaign against Israel, involving propaganda as well as direct military support (funding, arms, training) to terrorist groups declaring Israel as their enemy. Additionally, the USSR took the decision to increase anti-Israeli sentiment by disseminating anti-Zionist propaganda and even referencing previous anti-Semitic tropes from Western culture… The overall goal of the campaign was to spread the idea that the state of Israel was an oppressive, imperialist state which was built on unjust terms operation “SIG” (“Zionist Governments”) that was devised in 1972 to turn the Arab world against Israel and the United States”
This effort officially ended in 1988, but may have been resumed by former KGB officer and current Russian despot Vladimir Putin.
The rest of this blog entry focuses on the history of the Jewish people in the land currently known as Israel, and seeks to dispel this disinformation.
I have attended meetings in the United States were folks who identify as progressive would begin the meeting with a land acknowledgement. The Smithsonian Museum's National Museum of the American Indian on their website Native Knowledge 360° provides the following description of the practice.
Land acknowledgment is a traditional custom that dates back
centuries in many Native nations and communities. Today, land
acknowledgments are used by Native Peoples and non-Natives to recognize
Indigenous Peoples who are the original stewards of the lands on which
we now live. Before public events and other important gatherings hosted
by the National Museum of the American Indian, a speaker offers this
acknowledgment displayed in the quote container on behalf of everyone
present.
After millennia of Native history, and centuries of
displacement and dispossession, acknowledging original Indigenous
inhabitants is complex. Many places in the Americas have been home to
different Native Nations over time, and many Indigenous people no longer
live on lands to which they have ancestral ties.
The Jewish people are indigenous to the land they live on today, and lands inhabited by Palestinians, such as Gaza and the West Bank. Three thousand years ago the state of Israel was dominated by a Jewish community, until they were taken over by the Roman Empire in 63 BC and turned into a protectorate to rule over them, until the Romans crushed them, and drove many of them out of their homeland for violently resisting imperial rule beginning in 66 AD, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD and Jewish resisters to occupation were scattered across the Roman Empire in modern day Iraq, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Eastern Europe.
The Romans erected the Arch of Titus which depicts the Emperor's sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD to celebrate their victory. It still survives today in Rome just outside of the ruins of the Colosseum. This past week following the start of the wave of terrorist attacks against Israel by Hamas the emblem of the modern state of Israel was projected onto it.
The Romans built this arch to celebrate their defeat of the Jewish people in ancient #Israel. The Roman Empire is long gone, but 2,000 years later, the #Jewish people and Israel are still here. !!!עם ישראל חי pic.twitter.com/T1IUKydKet
The term Palestine has a long history, but the word is a European invention. According to historians the name first appeared in the 12th century BC and derives from the Greek word Philistia, the name Greek writers gave to the land of the Philistines, and revived by the Romans 1,400 years later in the 2nd century AD as "Syria Palaestina." However the name Palestine, following the collapse of the Roman Empire, had no official status until the British took over the land from the Ottoman Empire after WW1 through the League of Nations and it was called the Mandate for Palestine, but it also recognized the right to a Jewish homeland.
Centuries of history in 18 minutes – @MelanieLatest unravels the truth and myth of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This is not to say that the self-identified Palestinians do not have a right to a sovereign state, but the problem has been when repeatedly offered one, many have preferred to take the opportunity to wage a war of extermination against Israel with the aid and encouragement of neighboring (or nearby) Islamic states. The Palestinian problem is truly a Palestinian problem with the existence of a Jewish state in a sea of Muslim ones. It has been compounded by communist misinformation first spread by the KGB in an active measure against Israel and the United States.
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