Al-Awda: "Jews are our dogs"
Once again, the idiot left delivers up propaganda ammo to the reactionary New York Sun on a silver platter. Are these claims true? If they aren't, Al-Awda should sue. If they are, Al-Awda should be generally repudiated by the American left. But they won't be. The left seems incapable of grasping that incessant intonation of the "anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism" mantra is utterly meaningless if we fail to oppose real anti-Semitism. From the Aug. 22 edition (just brought to our attention, emphasis added):
'Jews Are Our Dogs'
by Jospeh Wahed
A man brazenly shoots his way into the Jewish Federation of Seattle, kills a woman, and wounds four others, three critically. As he opens fire, the alleged assailant shouts, "I am a Muslim and I'm angry at Israel," as if to indicate that his religious affiliation gives him permission to kill Jews.
In a second incident, Mel Gibson, a Hollywood director and actor, is arrested in Malibu on suspicion of drunk driving. He allegedly screams at the officer, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," not realizing that nearly all today's wars are Islamic wars. He also asks his arresting officer, "Are you Jewish?"
While Jew hating is not a new phenomena, it has recently become the insult de riguer in many parts of our society. And it isn't just gun-toting rampagers or drunk celebrities — the hatred is evident in the streets. Nowhere is that clearer than in a third recent incident, in which Palestinian Arabs in the streets of San Francisco chant proudly in Arabic and without fear of being castigated, "The Jews are our dogs."
It happened at an anti-Israel demonstration in front of the Israeli consulate in San Francisco on Thursday, July 12, organized by a Palestinian group called Al Awda. The demonstration was loud, boisterous, and passionate. Suddenly, demonstrators began chanting in Arabic "Al Yahud Kelabna," "the Jews are our dogs."
As troubling as it is to hear such sentiment voiced on a street in America, it was even more distressing for me since it conjured up terrible memories of when I was a young boy growing up in Egypt. These memories included Egyptian mobs descending upon the Jewish quarter of Cairo chanting "Al Yahud Kelabna," followed by violence that left some Jews dead and injured and the community dazed.
Egyptian Muslim mobs no longer do this, but only because there is no longer an Egyptian Jewish community to speak of. We once were over 80,000. Today there are fewer than 50 Jews remaining in Egypt, according to one official tally. Indeed, once thriving Jewish communities in 10 Arab countries were likewise cleansed. Today, only about 5,000 Jews remain in the Arab Muslim world, mostly in Morocco and Tunisia. Arab sympathizers blame the creation of Israel, but in reality Middle Eastern Jewry began to deteriorate years before Israel was established.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Egypt was a much more cosmopolitan place than it is today. Whatever the broader ills of colonialism, Egypt under British rule was at least a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians got along fairly harmoniously. But all this began to change as the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group two of the offspring of which are Hamas and Al Qaeda, began agitating against both the British and the Jews.
Along with the rise of Arab nationalism and Arab independence, life for Jews in Egypt and other Arab countries became intolerable. All this started happening years before Israel was established. Within a 20-year period starting in 1945, nearly a million Jews were forced out of Arab countries. Being Jewish was criminalized in Egypt in the late 1940s. Other Arab states such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria, passed similar laws. Jews began facing iron walls of discrimination and harassment by the authorities. Most of us were dispossessed. Our schools, homes, synagogues, businesses, farms, and hospitals, were all confiscated by Arab governments. Our rich, 3,000-year-old culture and heritage was decimated. No trial, no jury, no justice.
The demonstrators in San Francisco last week attacked Jews, not Israel. They did it in Arabic, perhaps thinking that only they would be in on the "joke." They didn't count on a group of indigenous Middle Eastern Jewish "dogs" being present at the counter rally across the street. In Arab culture, dogs are considered filthy, dirty beasts, and negotiating with "dogs" is not an option. Jews were often identified this way because for centuries we were living as a subjected people under the dominant culture of Islam.
We were a "protected" minority living under a religious caste system where we had to wear identifiable clothes, pay a special tax, were not allowed to ride horses, were forced to live in ghettoes, and were subjected to other indignities. Our fortunes fluctuated with the benevolence of whoever was ruling at the time. When the ruler was fair and just, Jews prospered. Otherwise, watch out. Massacres of Jews by Arab Muslims were not unknown. While most people know how European Jews suffered, little is known of the Jews of the Arab world.
Today, the Middle Eastern Muslim world is the most anti-Semitic of any region. Much of their media — television programs, cartoons, editorials — promote the kind of anti-Semitism not seen or heard since the time when Hitler walked the earth. In many mosques, too, throughout the region, religious leaders who are quick to take offense over such matters as cartoons about Islam regularly teach the vilest anti-Jewish defamation.
The effects of this "education" are seen and felt even in San Francisco, where a crowd of young Arab men and women feel perfectly free to chant "Al Yahud Kelabna." As long as Palestinian and other Arab children are taught such dehumanizing hatred of Jews, there is no hope for them, and there is no hope for us. Peace in the Middle East will not come with the next ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, but only when tolerance, compassion, understanding, and respect for religious freedom become the dominant value in Arab society. When Arab young people honestly feel too ashamed to chant about Jews being "our dogs," then there will be real hope.
Mr. Wahed is a co-founder of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.
See our last posts on Jew hatred and the idiot left.
SF Anti-War Demonstration Draws Fire
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=4454732
Organizers Accused Of Tolerating Hate
By Mark Matthews
Aug. 11 - KGO - An anti-war rally set for Saturday in San Francisco is already drawing fire. It's a demonstration against Israel's involvement in the conflict in Lebanon, and U.S. support for Israel. Members of the Jewish community relations council say the organizers are supporting war and tolerating hate.
The Jewish community council sent out a DVD entitled "Hate on the Streets of San Francisco". It purports to show how the organizers of Saturday's rally at Civic Center Plaza are actually pro-war and anti-Semitic. Or at the very least refusing to condemn anti-Jewish messages at their rallies.
We've seen a number of demonstrations in San Francisco aimed at criticizing Israel and U.S. support of Israel in the fight with Hezbollah and Hamas. The Jewish community relations council or JCRC says its complied clips from those demonstrations showing people chanting in Arabic an anti-Semitic slur: "Palestine is our country and the Jews are our dogs."
We played the clips for one of the organizers of tomorrow's march.
Mazda Majidi, A.n.s.w.e.r.: "The Jews are our dogs? Well I don't know Arabic so I can't confirm that that translation is accurate but in any demonstration there are various things that might be said."
Mazda Majidi says the A.n.s.w.e.r. coalition can't be and is not responsible for everyone at their anti war rallies. And the audio is so poor on the clips it's hard to say what is being chanted in Arabic.
Arabic speakers at an anti-Israel rally say they've never heard that chant. And the organizers of tomorrow's march say there will be plenty of Jewish people marching with them. An argument discounted by the JCRC.
Yitzhak Santis sent out the JCRC's video clips to Bay Area news organizations. He says the rallies support Hamas and Hezbollah which the state department has labeled terrorist organizations.
Yitzhak Santis J.C.R.C. "They're supporting violence these are violent organizations and they are supporting violence so I don't see how these could be anti war movement."
The clips do show people chanting: "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea."
We heard that same chant at a Muslim unity rally Friday.
ABC7's Mark Matthews: "When you say Palestine will be free from the river to the sea are you saying Israel has no right to exit?
Abel Rahman, Muslim marcher: "Absolutely they have to leave our country and go back where they came from which is Europe, Eastern Europe where they came from Russia, Poland that's where they came from they need to go back there."
I called Mazda Majidi at the a.n.s.w.e.r. coalition to see if he would condemn that statement at his anti- war march, he wouldn't. The rally and march starts Saturday morning at 11 at Civic Center Plaza.
Copyright 2006, ABC7/KGO-TV/DT.
Bogus response
"Mazda Majidi says the A.n.s.w.e.r. coalition can't be and is not responsible for everyone at their anti war rallies."
Assuredly not, but when something that monstrous is said, you have to take some responsibility. This is a real test. Either a.) Al-Awda should sue the people making these claims for libel, if in fact the chant was not used; or b.) Al-Awda should admit the chant was used and unequivocally repudiate it; or c.) Al-Awda itself should be unequivocally repudiated by the rest of the anti-war and anti-occupation movement. Until one of these happens, all the left's protestations of "anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism" are repugnant hypocrisy.
Failure to condemn is approval
The failure of ANSWER, Al Awda and other groups to condemn the racist and anti-Semitic chanting at the rallies they organize speaks volumes about their hypocrisy and extremism. Failure to condemn racism is approval of racism.
As long as the left tolerates anti-Semitism, the left will be correctly seen as being morally bankrupt. It was this "socialism of fools" of the New Left in the '60s that drove so many Jewish members of the Left to seek support elsewhere, and that was often the right. The right's gain of this intellectual trust was the Left's loss. Now history repeats itself. Fools.
The Pro-Palestinian Anti-Lobby
It seems to me that this is the third factor in the debate over US support for Israel. Factor one is that Israel serves US interests, but that still begs the question as to why Israel enjoys so much active popular support (in comparison, say, with the US's links to Saudi, which are a subject of continuous complaint across the political spectrum). Factor two are the pro-Israel lobbies, but that in turn begs the question as to why those lobbies enjoy such success. Anti-semites and the ill-informed will mutter about supposed Jewish control of the media and misuse of the Holocaust etc., but a far more obvious reason, it seems to me, is factor three: the sheer stupidity and callousness of so much pro-Palestinian discourse, which acts as a hugely toxic anti-lobby.
Al-Awda has done a lot of work (in both the UK and the US) keeping the case of Palestinian regugees on the agenda, but that's now all gone down the toilet. I recently wrote about a "Stop the War" meeting in London, where an Islamist's ranting about Hezbollah and Hamas apparently got a rapturous response. We can blame the likes of Israel Shamir or Paul Eisen for poisoning the discourse (and I've seen the intellectual and ethical decline of one pro-Palestinian discussion list where their ideas became popular), but that doesn't lessen the responsiblity of all those who have taken them seriously.
I think, though, the nadir was probably reached during the attack on Lebanon, when Adnan Hajj managed to turn photos of Israeli-caused destruction and death into pro-Israel talking points. Either he was working for the other side all along, or he's the Ed Wood of propaganda.
Bartholomew
There are hardline elements w/in al-Awda. There have been major splits/purges & repudiations in the last year.
The failure of the world to lift a finger to stop the daily slaughter of Palestinians and the theft of their land, and indeed the international cheerleading for it, makes it little surprise support for radicalism grows.
This is something I wrote about the ICJ ruling two years ago:
http://classic.countervortex.org/static/hague.html
Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser to the PLO, described the court's ruling as "a real bolstering for Palestinian moderates who have long argued that violence is not the way to victory." Tarazi warned that "if the international community sends a message that this can be ignored, it only enforces the extremists who prey on the fact that most Palestinians feel abandoned." (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10)
As if to underscore Tarazi's point, the day after the ruling, Hezbollah secretary general Sheik Hassan Nasrallah opined: "What will remove the barrier in occupied Palestine is the intention, will, jihad and resistance of Palestinians and the [Arab] nation." Nasrallah pointed to UN Security Council Resolution 425, issued in 1978, which demanded Israel's immediate withdrawal from Lebanon. Israel did not pull out until 2000, after years of Hezbollah guerrilla attacks. "This international resolution was not able to return for us one inch of our occupied lands," Nasrallah said. "Arabs might be happy for hours or days because of the international court's ruling but everybody knows that this ruling is non-binding." (Ha'aretz, July 10)
The Jews are our Dogs
So the Arabs who said this are lumping the Jews all into one group and not taking them as individuals?
Well then yes the Jews are their Dogs and so are the Christians as the Arabs killed 3,000 of us on 9/11.
Video
From YouTube:
Arab-American paper criticizes behavior at rallies
From Brooklyn-based Aramica, Aug. 22-29:
War
"There's no such thing as winnable war... It's a lie we don't believe anymore!..." - Sting