Occupy Wall Street Branches Out

 

A Grad rocket hit in Beer Sheba during the 200...

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Israel National News is reporting today that a group of thugs attempted to barge into the Israeli Consulate in Boston to protest Israel’s seizure of the Canadian-Irish flotilla ships that attempted to sail to Gaza.  I would like to remind anyone who agrees with these thugs that the naval blockade of Gaza has been declared legal under international law.

According to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

A maritime blockade is in effect off the coast of Gaza. Such blockade has been imposed, as Israel is currently in a state of armed conflict with the Hamas regime that controls Gaza, which has repeatedly bombed civilian targets in Israel with weapons that have been  smuggled into Gaza via the sea.

Considering the number of rocket attacks on Israel that have originated in Gaza, this makes perfect sense.

The Israel National News further reports:

The activists were “spillovers” from the Occupy Boston protests, one of many Occupy Wall Street protests, some with anti- Semitic undertones, being held in the U.S. demanding social justice. At least three people have been arrested on drug charges in the protests over the past several days, and police report numerous knife fights between homeless individuals who are participating in the protests. Police also report a significant rise in vandalism in downtown Boston.

If Occupy Wall Street does actually represent more than 5 percent of the American population, we are in serious trouble.

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When Politics Trumps Responsibility

The Jews are the canary in the coal mine. Whatever cruelty is done to the Jews will be eventually aimed at the rest of us. That is the reason we need to pay attention when anti-Semitism is expressed. Usually the Anti-Defamation League (ADF) handles that job very well. However, they are currently ignoring what is in front of them because it would interfere with their politics.

Yesterday Big Government pointed out that there have been a number of anti-Semitic statements and signs at the various Occupy Wall Street protests and the ADF has been strangely silent.

This is one picture from one of the protests. The picture is from Pajamas Media.

One quote from a protester (cited in the Big Government article) was posted on October 12 at Reason.tv.  Patricia McAllister, a self-described employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and a demonstrator at Occupy LA:

“I think that, uh, the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks, and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government–they need to be run out of this country.”

This is not acceptable and Americans need to speak out against this kind of anti-Semitism. If this sort of statement were directed at certain other favored groups (pick your group), there would be outrage, charges of hate speech, and charges of whateverphobia the liberal press thought might apply. We need to protest the double standard that is at work here.

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Israel And Palestine Made Simple

A Field of Flowers and Mount Tabor

Image by Oregon State University Archives via Flickr

The struggle of the Jewish people to live in peace has gone on since the days of Ester. AntiSemitism seems to be something that shows up in the world periodically, and it is generally followed by bad things. Sometimes when we look at the events of the moment, we forget the history of these events.

Yesterday, Scott Johnson at Power Line posted a cartoon-style video detailing the history of the State of Israel and its negotiations with the local Arabs. The video is about ll minutes long, but it is worth watching to the end. There are a lot of facts in it that are currently not mentioned in the discussion at the United Nations.

 

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Legitimizing AntiSemitism

Street in Jerusalem Old City

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I expect that sometime in the next few days, the United Nations will vote on whether or not to recognize a Palestinian State. There has never been a state of Palestine, although Jordan was originally established as a home for Palestinians, but the United Nations will be voting on one shortly. What would that state look like?

Haaretz reported on September 14th that:

Answering a question about the legal status of a Jewish minority in the future state, Areikat apprently rejected the issue, saying: “I believe, I still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated,” adding “I think we can contemplate these issues in the future.”

“After the experience of the last 44 years, of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interest that the two peoples should be separated,” Areikat added. 

USA Today reported on September 15th:

Habbash’s comments come after the ambassador for the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, Maen Areikat, said when asked Tuesday whether he could foresee a Jew being elected mayor of Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank: “I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future.”

Areikat, speaking at a breakfast for reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, continued: “After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated first.”

These statements have been walked back slightly, but I believe the original statements are probably the truth. I would like to remind anyone too young to remember that prior to 1967, when the Arabs controlled the Old City of Jerusalem that Christians and Jews did not have access to their holy sites. In recent years, the Jews have controlled the Old City, and the area is open to people of all faiths. It seems to me that history tells us what a Palestinian state would be like.

There seems to be an effort on the part of some Palestinians to claim that Palestine would be a peaceful, equal-opportunity state. USA Today reports:

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have called for a secular, pluralistic Palestinian state, says Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine, which advocates a non-militarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The article in USA Today further reports:

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said he read Areikat’s comments to mean a ban on Jews.

“That’s the state that the Palestinians want to declare unilaterally, without negotiations, and have recognized by the U.N.,” Oren said

I think I agree with Michael Oren. I have a hard time believing that the large number of weapons currently being smuggled into the West Bank are for peaceful purposes.

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Anti-Semitism In England

Yesterday Scott Johnson at Power Line posted a story about protests that took place in London last Thursday when the Israeli Philharmonic, led by Zubin Mehta, participated in the annual eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts known as the Proms. The concert by the Israeli Philharmonic was disrupted to the point that the BBC cut off its live broadcast.

The New York Times reported:

…the repeated disruption of its (the Israeli Philharmonic) concert at Royal Albert Hall in London on Thursday night by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, to the point that the BBC cut off its live broadcast and played recordings of the evening’s program instead. 

Stephen Pollard in the UK Telegraph had a slightly different take:

But Thursday night’s events can only be understood in the context of anti-Semitism. When have there been similar protests against “violations of international law and human rights”, as was chanted on Thursday, by any other country? And this in the middle of the Arab Spring, when genuine protesters for human rights are daily risking their lives in Syria against a murderous dictatorship.

If, indeed, this was a protest against the actions of the Israeli government, rather than against Jews, where have been the similar disruptions of performances by Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Iranian or any number of other nations’ musicians? What about disruptions of British national companies, in protest at British human rights abuses? To pose the question is to answer it. There’s little doubt in my mind that this was an action motivated specifically by the fact that the performers were playing in the national orchestra of the Jewish state. 

If the Jews are the canary in the coal mine, we need to pay attention–the gas is rising. As the day nears when Palestine will unilaterally declare itself a state–regardless of the fact that it has never adhered to the Oslo Accords, we can expect to see more accusations against Israel and more anti-Semitism under the guise of supporting human rights. This is the same kind of upside down logic that has been used in the past to persecute Jews. We need to our own research on what is happening rather than believing everything we see in the news.

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