Jewish Humour

Jewish Humour

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Anti Semitism , collective punishment , Genocide , the case for a Jewish homeland (not exclusively Jewish), Values and what is right

A case for the State of Israel 


I know this blog should be for Jewish Humour - but there are sometimes articles and issues that are close to my heart and I believe should be shared . 

These are excerpts from an article written in “The Times is Israel By my friend Paul Mirbach - a passionate Zionist who “made Aaliyah” (emigrated to Israel) in the 80’s - with whom I had the honour of sharing a room with at boating school in Cape Town 


Paul  talks about antisemitism , collective punishment , genocide , the case for a Jewish homeland (not exclusively Jewish), Values and what is right 


Antisemitism - unadulterated 


“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him”. (Hamas Charter, Article 7).


This is exactly what transpired on October 7. To the letter, right down to seeking out and killing Jews hiding behind “stones and trees” in the orchards of Reim, and the eight-hour massacre and rape, that seemed to go on for an eternity, in the kibbutzim and settlements; Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, Nirim, Zikim, Kissufim, Netiv Ha’Asara, Ein Haslosha, Erez, and in Sderot and Ofakim. Jews, as is written in their Charter. Not Israelis. Not Zionists. Jews.


When hundreds of thousands of you march and chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, you are calling for the genocide of Jews in Israel, while in typical Orwellian gas-lighting, you accuse Israel of genocide. 


But, all it took was for Israel’s vulnerability to be exposed, and for there to be a hint of doubt about its ability to protect its inhabitants, and all the anti-Semites came streaming out of the woodwork, like an army of termites, and flooded the streets of Washington and London, Madrid and Cape Town, spouting their vitriol against Israel and Jews alike..


Instead, upon witnessing the merciless massacre of 1,200 Jews, perpetrated with gluttonous glee, your response was to “whatabout” it, and pivot to Palestinian suffering, as if these innocent civilians deserved what they got.


When the extent of the savagery was revealed to the world, the beheadings of babies and the mutilation and dismemberment of men, women and children, the unrecognizable charred remains of victims burned alive that X-Rays show two spines, telling a story of a father hugging his child as they were devoured by the flames, and the abduction of 240 civilians, your callous, dispassionate response was, “what did you think decolonization would look like”? This, from you, the self-appointed banner bearers of truth and morality. Humaneness is the right of all people, except the Jewish Israelis.


Even before the shock of what happened had time to register, you condoned the actions of the Hamas, declaring it a “legitimate resistance” of the Palestinian people. When hundreds of Palestinian civilians joined in the slaughter-fest, and streamed into the kibbutzim, participating in the rapes and the looting, unconcerned about having to step over the bloody corpses lying on the floor of their homes to do so, you explained it away as an understandable release of their frustration.


Until Israel retaliated. Then, suddenly, you say that the people of Gaza are not involved. That they are innocent, even when they can be seen in the streets, ecstatically celebrating the news of the slaughter. That they are not responsible for what Hamas did. Then, you denounce us saying “Israel is targeting innocent civilians” (were the people massacred in the kibbutzim and Sderot not innocent civilians too?). 


“Collective punishment!”, and “War crimes!” you decry. But when your hordes of protesters attack Jews on the streets and on campuses in America, Europe, or South Africa, reflexively assuming that because they are Jewish, they are complicit in Israel’s actions, even from thousands of miles away, 


it is you who are guilty of  collective punishment! 


But apparently, you are too far down the rabbit hole of you own self-righteousness (or is it a Hamas tunnel) to see it, or care.


I’ll tell you what it is: it’s unfiltered, classic antisemitism. The same kind of antisemitism that plagued our predecessors in Europe for centuries. And in doing so, you yourselves expose the canard of your hypocrisy, your assertions that being anti-Israel is not being anti-Semitic; you prove that it is. And while you take to the streets and chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, ironically you make the case for Israel’s necessity for the Jewish people, for us.


A Call for Genocide 


When hundreds of thousands of you march and chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, 


you are calling for the genocide of Jews in Israel, while in typical Orwellian gas-lighting, you accuse Israel of genocide.


*The meaning of genocide is the annihilation of a race; for Palestine to be free, Israel as a sovereign state would have to cease to exist. What would be the fate of the 7 million Jews currently living in Israel, today? We no longer need to speculate, we now know. October 7 was a preview. 


It will be a genocide.


As for the accusation that Israel is committing genocide, I will leave you with the facts. In 2007, when Israel withdrew from Gaza, the Palestinian population in Gaza was 1,416,543. Today, there are 2,226,544 inhabitants, a whopping 57% population growth in only 16 years? It seems to me that if Israel, with the strongest army in the Middle East and with a reputation of being so efficient and clinical, intended to commit genocide, we are doing a piss-poor job of it. Unless our intention is not genocide.



Israel - The Jewish Homeland 


There are many things about Israel and this government with which I don’t agree. I have just spent nine months fighting to preserve our democracy. I have spent the better part of 40 years protesting and opposing the occupation. I have been an advocate for peace and co-existence since the day I made my home on Kibbutz Tuval. I have been a proud socialist and left-wing Zionist since I was 20. But there is one thing that has been constant and unchanged; the belief in our right to a homeland and the absolute necessity for its existence, warts and all.


After 2000 years as a people without a homeland, dependent on the grudging hospitality of host countries when things were good, and pogroms, inquisitions, persecutions and a Holocaust when they weren’t, it was made abundantly clear to us that we were not wanted among you, our “hosts”. That was when we decided we need a homeland of our own. And the place of that homeland is Israel, where the heart of our heritage beats, and where irrefutable archaeological evidence proves that it has always been our home. 


Not exclusively ours, because over the 2000 years of our absence, others also made their home here. 


But also ours.


And now, you, the so-called “Progressive” Left, want to deny us our right to self-determination, even that. 


So where are we to go? 


That is antisemitism.


Values - what is right? 


I will always hold onto my beliefs and my values. With my conscience I sleep. But you are not the banner bearers of what is right and just, anymore. By qualifying your selective application of morality, and by your prejudice, you have lost that right.

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