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The betrayal of the Jewish Left
JPost.com - 06/13/2013 20:50
Protester burns Israeli flag with swastika on it in El Salvador Photo: REUTERS
Last Monday in the Toronto Star, Rabbi Dow Marmur wrote an article criticizing what he referred to as my “customary rants against Islam,” saying that they would “create tensions between the two communities.”
“Rants against Islam,” i.e. condemnations of Islamic anti-Semitism, hatred of infidels, wife beating, honor killing, clitoridectomies, murder of apostates, denial of the freedom of speech, and so much more. On the heels of three anti-Semitic attacks in Montreal, another Canadian rabbi saw fit to condemn a fellow Jew for the crime of telling the truth about how jihadists use core Islamic teachings to justify various kinds of violence.
Nor was he the first rabbi to do so – a chorus of rabbis have condemned my work, claiming that it interferes with their dialogue with Muslims. But what are these rabbis really accomplishing with his dialogue, other than to obscure the root causes of the Islamic anti-Semitism that is increasing around the world? Rabbi Eric Yoffie recently published a vicious and defamatory piece attacking me in The Jerusalem Post. Where was Yoffie countering “hate” when Islamic jihadists murdered the Fogel family in Israel? Or when jihadists targeted the Chabad house in Mumbai for a savage and bloody attack? Or when Christians are persecuted on an increasingly frequent and violent basis in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere? Instead, he opposes me for standing up against this real hatred.
Jewish dissembling and obfuscation about the religious motives behind the jihad against the Jews only serves the enemies of the Jewish people. Now it has become common to assert that if Israel returns to the 1967 lines, there will be peace. But before 1967 the war against the Jews raged, and before 1948 the same war raged against the Jews – led before and during World War II by the then-leader of the Muslim world, the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Hitler’s ally, Husseini lived in Berlin during the war, raised a Muslim SS division, and cited Koranic chapter and verse as the mandate to annihilate the Jewish people. This is clear from the texts of his weekly pro- Nazi radio addresses to the Axis powers and the Islamic Ummah.
The 1,400-year history of Jews living in Muslim lands is brutal and oppressive.
Has Marmur never read Bat Ye’or or Andrew Bostom on Islamic anti- Semitism, or Sir Martin Gilbert’s history of the Jews in Muslim lands, In Ishmael’s House? All of them show that Jewhatred is a constant of Islamic history.
Historian Phillip Hitti states: “The caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e. yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves... and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle.”
Andrew Bostom’s work shows much more. One thousand years later, in 1888, a Tunisian Jew lamented a similar situation: “The Jew is prohibited in this country to wear the same clothes as a Muslim and may not wear a red tarbush.
“He can be seen to bow down with his whole body to a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking him in the face, a gesture that can prove to be of the gravest consequence.
Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has been the custom from time immemorial.”
In 1291, Isaac ben Samuel, a Palestinian Jew, said: “In the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field.”
The philosopher Maimonides said: “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins G-d has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us.... No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have.... We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.”
And today, because of this mass Muslim immigration, the Islamic anti- Semitism has increasingly rendered Europe hostile to Jews. Norway’s Jewish population is almost nonexistent, French Jews are fleeing in droves, and a Jewish school in Belgium has been forced to shut down. In Sweden, Muslims shot rockets and hurled pipe bombs at Jews and attacked Jews at a peaceful pro-Israel rally. In Germany, Muslims rioted, chanting “Jews out, Germans out, Allahu akbar, kick the Jews out, burn the Jew!” A Hezbollah courier was found guilty of playing a role in a Cyprus jihad terror plot. Hezbollah was also behind the bombing of a bus full of Jewish tourists in Bulgaria. In Italy, a Muslim was jailed for a Milan synagogue bomb plot.
There are now sweeping “no-go areas” for Jews in Europe.
Why are rabbis more comfortable condemning me than candidly discussing the ideology that drives the war on the Jews? Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that any peace deal Israel might sign with the Palestinians will fail as long as Palestinian children are taught that it is a good thing to kill Jews and that Israel must be destroyed. Yet they are taught this as part of the mandate of Islam.
At Vatican II, the Catholic Church repudiated Christian anti-Semitism – why can’t we get any Muslim groups to repudiate jihad, Islamic supremism, Islamic Jew-hatred, Islamic oppression of women and non-Muslims, etc.? It is not wrong to challenge them and ask Muslims who supposedly reject “extremism” to address the Islamic teachings that give rise to that “extremism,” and to reject and reform those teachings. Genuinely peaceful Muslims should be calling for the same thing, and standing with us.
In condemning Jews who speak out against jihad and Islamic supremacism, leftist rabbis are enabling the worst enemies of the Jewish people.
The writer is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of the new book Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic Extremism & American Complacency.
“Rants against Islam,” i.e. condemnations of Islamic anti-Semitism, hatred of infidels, wife beating, honor killing, clitoridectomies, murder of apostates, denial of the freedom of speech, and so much more. On the heels of three anti-Semitic attacks in Montreal, another Canadian rabbi saw fit to condemn a fellow Jew for the crime of telling the truth about how jihadists use core Islamic teachings to justify various kinds of violence.
Nor was he the first rabbi to do so – a chorus of rabbis have condemned my work, claiming that it interferes with their dialogue with Muslims. But what are these rabbis really accomplishing with his dialogue, other than to obscure the root causes of the Islamic anti-Semitism that is increasing around the world? Rabbi Eric Yoffie recently published a vicious and defamatory piece attacking me in The Jerusalem Post. Where was Yoffie countering “hate” when Islamic jihadists murdered the Fogel family in Israel? Or when jihadists targeted the Chabad house in Mumbai for a savage and bloody attack? Or when Christians are persecuted on an increasingly frequent and violent basis in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere? Instead, he opposes me for standing up against this real hatred.
Jewish dissembling and obfuscation about the religious motives behind the jihad against the Jews only serves the enemies of the Jewish people. Now it has become common to assert that if Israel returns to the 1967 lines, there will be peace. But before 1967 the war against the Jews raged, and before 1948 the same war raged against the Jews – led before and during World War II by the then-leader of the Muslim world, the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Hitler’s ally, Husseini lived in Berlin during the war, raised a Muslim SS division, and cited Koranic chapter and verse as the mandate to annihilate the Jewish people. This is clear from the texts of his weekly pro- Nazi radio addresses to the Axis powers and the Islamic Ummah.
The 1,400-year history of Jews living in Muslim lands is brutal and oppressive.
Has Marmur never read Bat Ye’or or Andrew Bostom on Islamic anti- Semitism, or Sir Martin Gilbert’s history of the Jews in Muslim lands, In Ishmael’s House? All of them show that Jewhatred is a constant of Islamic history.
Historian Phillip Hitti states: “The caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e. yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves... and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle.”
Andrew Bostom’s work shows much more. One thousand years later, in 1888, a Tunisian Jew lamented a similar situation: “The Jew is prohibited in this country to wear the same clothes as a Muslim and may not wear a red tarbush.
“He can be seen to bow down with his whole body to a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking him in the face, a gesture that can prove to be of the gravest consequence.
Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has been the custom from time immemorial.”
In 1291, Isaac ben Samuel, a Palestinian Jew, said: “In the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field.”
The philosopher Maimonides said: “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins G-d has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us.... No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have.... We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.”
And today, because of this mass Muslim immigration, the Islamic anti- Semitism has increasingly rendered Europe hostile to Jews. Norway’s Jewish population is almost nonexistent, French Jews are fleeing in droves, and a Jewish school in Belgium has been forced to shut down. In Sweden, Muslims shot rockets and hurled pipe bombs at Jews and attacked Jews at a peaceful pro-Israel rally. In Germany, Muslims rioted, chanting “Jews out, Germans out, Allahu akbar, kick the Jews out, burn the Jew!” A Hezbollah courier was found guilty of playing a role in a Cyprus jihad terror plot. Hezbollah was also behind the bombing of a bus full of Jewish tourists in Bulgaria. In Italy, a Muslim was jailed for a Milan synagogue bomb plot.
There are now sweeping “no-go areas” for Jews in Europe.
Why are rabbis more comfortable condemning me than candidly discussing the ideology that drives the war on the Jews? Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that any peace deal Israel might sign with the Palestinians will fail as long as Palestinian children are taught that it is a good thing to kill Jews and that Israel must be destroyed. Yet they are taught this as part of the mandate of Islam.
At Vatican II, the Catholic Church repudiated Christian anti-Semitism – why can’t we get any Muslim groups to repudiate jihad, Islamic supremism, Islamic Jew-hatred, Islamic oppression of women and non-Muslims, etc.? It is not wrong to challenge them and ask Muslims who supposedly reject “extremism” to address the Islamic teachings that give rise to that “extremism,” and to reject and reform those teachings. Genuinely peaceful Muslims should be calling for the same thing, and standing with us.
In condemning Jews who speak out against jihad and Islamic supremacism, leftist rabbis are enabling the worst enemies of the Jewish people.
The writer is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of the new book Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic Extremism & American Complacency.
By PAMELA GELLER
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