Anti-Zionism and Anti-Israelism are the Modern Anti-Semitism

 

There are reports that the European Union has distributed a list to its twenty-eight member states detailing sanctions to be taken against Israel as punishment should the Israeli government refuse to bow before European demands regarding activities beyond the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice Lines, refusing to reengage in peace negotiations with the Palestinians, though there is no mention that such might be impossible as the Palestinian Authority has been refusing to negotiate until Israel surrenders to all of their demands granting them their state within the entirety of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) with all of East Jerusalem as their capital and total control over the Temple Mount and Old City, or refuse any other demands made by the European Union in the name of as part of agreement with the Palestinians. Of course the list was to remain secret and concealed from the Israelis as per instructions given, according to Haaretz, from the drafters and designers of the sanctions regimen, the European External Action Service (EEAS), who distributed these instructions to the numerous European diplomats. But this economic assault on Israelis as punishment for Zionist activities, defined as inhabiting and claiming the ancient lands of the Jewish ancestors, or Israeli defiance to European directives and demands for their submission to Palestinian demands, attempting to strike at Israel economically is simply the latest of those assaults on Israel and Zionism using economic punishments much as was used against the Jewish people both in periods of European and Islamic history throughout the many states and under numerous rulers within both.

 

Another economic assault on Israel is better known as it has been very public and have made their demands well publicized is known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Movement (BDS). The BDS movements is nothing but the modern-day interpretation to the medieval banishment against permitting Jews to own land which often forced Jews into the towns where they learned trades, dealt as money lenders and financiers, learned sciences and medicine or tended stores becoming the retailers of later ages. The BDS economic assaults on Israel have similarities to the barring of Jews entering many guilds, governments banning Jews from certain professions during the ages of the inquisitions and purifications across Europe or restrictions placed on Jews economically as Dhimmis living in Muslim ruled lands.

 

The history of economic and legal warfare against the Jewish communities during their existence within the Diaspora is well known, well documented and had numerous peculiarities making each episode and each age having their own identifiable peculiarities. There were often cases where Jews were restricted in where they were permitted to live, often in places referred to as the Jewish Ghettos while other times at one end of town separated by a short distance almost as if they were relegated to their own town separate from the non-Jewish peoples. One recent example of a generally held suspicion of Jewish perfidy which existed into the middle of the last century was that the Jewish People had some unfair advantage when it came to business acumen which gave them an unfair advantage over other business people. This suspicion was not actually valid as there were just as many Jewish businesses which failed and the percentage breakdown of Jewish successes and failures were just slightly over the statistical deviance. Still some back then pointed to that slight margin above statistical error as sufficiently significant that without some viable explanation there should be an investigation into why the Jews are more successful. I heard this argument made by some classmates (yes, I’m ancient) and could not help but laugh at which point I found myself challenged to explain what I found so amusing. I asked them if perhaps the obvious reason that Jews might be slightly more practiced and have a wellspring of knowledge within their community was due to the fact that while much of the Christian world was farming Jews were forbidden to own or work land and were forced into the towns where they ran were practitioners of skilled trades, or ran businesses such as money lenders (the predecessor to modern banks facilitating trade), taverns, provisionary, clothiers and other businesses which gave the Jews centuries of experience over those who held the wealth of land ownership or those who worked the farmlands or tended flocks.

 

Back during those earlier times some Jews amassed varying degrees of wealth with some by the twentieth century had become extremely wealthy. The Rothschild family which owned one of the oldest and largest banks in France had amassed sufficient wealth to cause conspiracy theorists to accuse them and other wealthy Jewish families of controlling governments and having unhealthy influences. There were theories during the Middle Ages that blamed the Jews for plagues or other mass illnesses, such as the flu or other viruses, which struck towns which resulted in some instances in pogroms or even the burning at the stake of a town’s Jews. One could interpolate that the same may be behind some of the hatreds and conspiracy theories concerning Israel as simply the ancient hatred and accusations made against the Jewish People have now been adapted, possibly subconsciously, and applied now to the Jewish state. Part of this theory can be proven when one realizes that one of the current demands made of Jews in Europe and was made against the majority of the Jews within the Islamic world from 1947 through the early 1960s where Jews were told with all the hatred and ferocity a society could muster to take themselves to Israel with the rest of the Jews as they were no longer welcome amongst the real citizens and accepted members of the society within whom these Jews resided. Now the exact same thing in reverse is part of the Arab and Islamic demands for the Jews to leave Israel and return the lands to their rightful Arab owners, similar to the demands for the Jews to leave many nations, regions, localities or other dominion which resulted in the Jews often moving from one place to another only to need to relocate once again within a few years or maybe longer time and time again. The Jews were then told to take themselves back to where they belonged, which then was to the Middle East to Jerusalem or anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, exactly where Israel is today. But there are other similarities.

 

When Israel first established her independence she had to fight a war against over a half dozen Arab nations’ armed forces, many militias and forces under the command of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who spent almost all of World War II within Hitler’s Germany where he added his approval for the ‘Final Solution’ for European Jews and demanded Nazi assistance in dealing with the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa after they had conquered Europe and moved on to the Middle East and beyond, for which she received little assistance from Western Europe and the United States imposed an arms embargo and despite of which the tiny nascent state of Israel not only survived but gained some lands they had not initially held at the initial time of the intended genocidal invasion. After the initial survival of Israel she became a predominantly socialist, agrarian society which, despite hard work reclaiming their lands from the swamps, rocky terrain and desert which composed much of their new homelands. Early Israel was well received and accepted by most of the world and for the first time in almost two thousand years the Jews were free, in their own ancient homelands, had self-rule and were joining and had a belonging amongst the nations of the world and a member of the United Nations. Slowly the nation of Israel began to develop a more technically advanced society and economy. Upon the winning the release for Russian Jews to make Aliyah and immigrate to Israel the Israeli economy took on a whole new facet and the technology explosion erupted expanding the Israeli economy. Very soon after Israel became a much wealthier nation and also saw the turning away by many of the nations who not long ago were friends but now were siding with her enemies. Many of these nations had gone from their position which immediately after the June 1967 Six Day War had supported and fully expected that Israel would retain some, if not a fair amount, of the lands she had gained as a result of a defensive war started by Egypt and Syria and one day later they were joined by Jordan over Israeli warnings and pleadings for Jordan to remain peaceful, but soon after the October 1973 Yom Kippur War and the fuel embargo by OPEC, these nations started drifting to the Pro-Palestinian Arab position initially fearing further embargoes and eventually as representative of their hate for capitalism and wealth gained by Israel moving from a socialist society towards a capitalist free trade society. Israel returned all of the Sinai to Egypt upon making peace, a somewhat surprising generosity as many had thought Israel would retain the parts of the Sinai east of the central spire of mountains. The largely agreed belief was that Israel would retain the Golan Heights and all of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as retaining these lands would provide Israel with the security of defendable borders, the exact wording from the United Nations resolution which had called on Israel to return lands, not all the lands, just lands, and retaining those regions which would provide for Israel to have defensible borders. Today and since soon after 2008 Israel has been pressured to return to within the Green Line. Israel has been treated with great amounts of animosity from much of Western Europe, much of the Islamic world, the nations which make up the Non-Aligned Nations (NAM), and now even the United States, or at least the administration under President Obama. The increased levels of animosity and hatred from around the world against Israel had been directly proportional to her increasing economic wealth, much like what the Jews faced in many of these same areas as they individually gained wealth.

 

The ironies and insanities displayed by the nations of the world when it comes to Israel, Zionism and the hatreds of both and the Jewish People is astoundingly absurd. Just a few weeks ago Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called for the Jews in Israel to return to the nations from whence they had come. The Iranian leader implied that all Israeli Jews arrived from Europe and the United States. There is a gaping hole in this theory which the Ayatollah Khamenei is perfectly aware of, half of the Israeli population originated outside of Europe and North America and instead arrived from across the lands of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) including his own Iran. One must wonder whether or not the Ayatollah Khamenei would be willing to accept the return of the near one-hundred-thousand Iranian Jews and their descendants into Iran with welcoming arms? This has been one of the most persistent and ignorant errors and suppositions about Israel that all Israeli Jews originated from Europe, Russia, Canada and the United States. The truth is that half of the Israeli Jews arrived from the Arab world with many arriving with at best one suitcase, no funds, stripped of their valuable possessions, monies, jewelry, business stocks and other supplies and valuables, homes and anything else of value. This includes such nations as well as Iran of Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan and numerous others. There are a residual group of Jews remaining in some of these nations but there are some which have completely lost their Jewish population just as the Palestinians expect there to be no Jews permitted to remain in whatever lands they make their nation just as has already been executed in Gaza where there are no longer even a single Jews, IDF soldier or Jewish person of any kind. This is despite the fact that Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian spokespeople and other sympathizers continue to claim Gaza as being under occupation. The same can be said for Area A in Judea and Samaria as at the same time that Israel removed all Jewish presence from every square millimeter of Gaza, Israel also removed every last vestige of Jewish or Israeli presence in Area A in Samaria which was made-up of almost a half dozen towns, kibbutzim and farming communities. Somehow, none of these sacrifices are recognized nor appreciated by most of the world with the European Union leading the charge ignorant of the real history of Israel, the British Mandate, Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, the San Remo Conference, or the entirety of the history of the ancient Jewish lands described in the Old Testament. These truths and the obligations of the world to respect their promises to Israel which are being ignored much like the reasons that the Jews were fist permitted to arrive in an area and the economic growth they facilitated when there came a crisis the local leaders found a need for a scapegoat which almost always became those Jews, those who are different from the real and original inhabitants of the lands. The difference is now the locality that is being defined where the Jews are no longer welcome is approaching the entirety of the planet as the Europeans and so many more want to grant the Palestinians the entirety of their defined homeland which they define in their chant which reads, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Upcoming Midterm United States Elections, a Slightly Different Look

Who is ahead in the different races depends on the state and even on the political leanings of the news or talk shows one follows. If you go to polling it gets even more confusing. Not only are the polls often slanted depending on who ordered the polling but it also depends on what the subject the poll is covering. Here are a few examples from some polls. A CBS poll recently showed that fifty percent of those responding said the Democrats are the party that “cares more about the needs and problems of people” while only 34 percent chose the Republicans. Meanwhile, the Republicans have a nine point lead concerning the economy, an eleven point lead on foreign policy and a twenty-one point lead on addressing terrorism in an October CBS poll. So, who wins; the party of the people or the party which appears to be more competent? These numbers are nothing new as often the Democrats have polled well on sympathy and feeling the people’s pains while the Republicans historically win on foreign policy and confronting threats from the outside world. The fact the Republicans are polling slightly ahead of Democrats on the economy is not nationally definitive enough to be applied to every race. The probability is that in the traditionally Democrat leaning states the Democrats will probably poll even or ahead of the Republicans while in traditionally Republican states the Republicans will poll ahead. The place where that mere nine point lead for the Republicans becomes evident will be in what is often referred to as the ‘purple’ states where the parties have split the wins between them would thus likely give the Republicans a slight lead on the economy. Unfortunately that may not transfer to votes as there is also the personality of the candidates as well as the effectiveness of their campaigns and whether there are third party or independent candidates on the ballot and from which side they will draw away votes. Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates tend to take more votes from Republicans while Green and sometimes Libertarian Party take more votes from the Democrats. But other than their campaign, their affability or their campaign commercials and use of media and social networks, the most important determining item will simply be which party gets the voters to the polls, period.

With this year not being a Presidential election year, the national party machines are operating but there are far fewer volunteers and fewer funds for them to make a large determining difference. This means that it will be up to the State and even more local party machines and the candidate supporting campaign staff which will make up a significant part of the get out the vote efforts. States with Gubernatorial elections this election will have more party influence than those without. What makes these midterms so difficult to make predictions is because there is no real enthusiasm evident in the electorate and it is very possible that both of the major parties will suffer from miserable voter turnout and thus calling the elections near impossible. There will be some states where polling data is so skewed to one candidate that there is almost no challenge to picking the likely winner short of an unseen stumble where the leading candidate is caught in a criminal act or other compromising situation. They do not even need to actually be guilty as that will depend on a court of law, but such accusations can sway the court of public opinion and that is exactly what elections are, the court of public opinion choosing those they feel are less guilty of potentially bad leadership. That has been the truth in all too many elections in the United States in recent times where people are literally trying to choose which evil is less harmful. Some have gotten to the point that they have finally refused to vote for the lesser from two evils and they refuse to ever again vote for evil no matter how slight. These voters are demanding the parties to put forth candidates who are capable of leading and representing the people with integrity and virtue. This might even lead to making a third party or independent candidate to have a real possibility to take elections and possibly change the American political landscape once again. Perhaps it is time for a new political movement as the last great movement was the Abolition Movement which birthed the Republican Party and the Whig Party was laid to rest. The more likely bet is that the two major parties have so slanted and poisoned the election laws throughout the United States that it has become next to impossible for any third party or independent candidate to make the ballot, let alone have any funds remaining should they manage to make ballot, and trust I know from where I speak. This is really a sad problem as this may prevent a new direction to be proposed and placed before the American electorate and instead continue forcing them to choose between two toxins, progressive Democrats who want to double the size of government every decade, or the progressive Republican who wishes to slow government growth so that it doubles only four or five times each century. Since both the major parties are in favor of growing government and the sole difference is exactly the rate of growth the American people can rest assured that over time the Republicans will seem like the Democrats of a few decades back while the Democrats will be breaking new ground which the Republican will fall in love with a few decades hence. Should this trend not be reversed soon the United States will continue in decline and only accelerate with time.

Beyond the Cusp

Ebola: To Quarantine or Not to Quarantine

There has been more than sufficient debate and even beyond to the point of hyperbole. Even mentioning quarantine and you are accused of racism because closing the border to flights originating in the areas which are stricken with the Ebola epidemic will only cause the disease to spread faster across the world and the United States. Statements such as this, which fly in the face of logical thought, are really as ridiculous as any thinking person would first believe. But we are supposed to forgo logic and ordered thought and instead believe those thoughts which we are told solely because these truths are self-evident under the correctness as dictated by political correctness and multiculturalism and the chosen deciders of that which will be considered acceptable thought. We are told that the first person who succumbed to the Ebola virus was a person of color that the treatment he received was racist otherwise he would have lived if he were not a minority. It was due to racism that he was initially sent home when he went to the hospital emergency room with severe flu-like symptoms which should have been diagnosed immediately as Ebola but the hospital sent him home after treating him and the computer misdiagnosed the patient’s high risk for contracting the Ebola virus. Later the hospital readdressed the situation “in the interest of transparency” and stated in writing that “There was no flaw in the EHR in the way the physician and nursing portions interacted related to this event.” The latest statement from the hospital released stated, “Texas Health Dallas has relocated the travel history documentation to a portion of the EHR that is part of both workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa. We have made this change to increase the visibility and documentation of the travel question in order to alert all providers. We feel that this change will improve the early identification of patients who may be at risk for communicable diseases, including Ebola.” None of this addresses the debate of whether to quarantine or not, it just restates the fact that even hospitals are staffed by humans and their procedures come from humans and as such are potentially flawed. There was no racial judgmentalism in the mistaken diagnosis and treatment nor was the treatment for Ebola for Thomas Duncan was exactly the same that any person upon diagnosis for Ebola would have been and the result would likely have been the same in any similar case of Ebola.

The claims that quarantine would cause more Ebola cases which would also spread faster within the United States. The claim that the United States should have a special relationship with Liberia because Liberia was founded because America had slavery misses one crucial factor, had the United States continued to allow slavery there would have been no founding of Liberia; Liberia was founded as a result of the United States ending slavery. Why would this be turned around and made to be that Liberia was founded because America had slavery without even bothering to mention that Liberia was founded for freed slaves because the United States ended slavery is an intentional attack on the United States meant to stir up anger and feelings of the death of Mr. Duncan had a racial element. But why would there be a need to quarantine the areas of the world which are facing an epidemic from Ebola and a closure of the border to flights and passengers coming from Western Africa. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) which had initially stated that there was almost no chance for the spread of Ebola from one person to the next because the Ebola patient is not contagious until they have symptoms and then the virus is not airborne and one needs to have contact with bodily fluids in order to become infected which makes prevention easy. They did not bother to mention that one of those bodily fluids was the spray which results from sneezes and coughs and even sweat and that the Ebola virus could potentially remain active for as long as the moisture from any of the above remained at some residual level. This means that Ebola was far more easily spread than the CDC had initially stated especially considering that sweating, coughing, sneezing and projectile vomiting are all symptoms of a person with Ebola. How long before the CDC informs the public that any surface contaminated with bodily fluids, such as spittle from a sneeze or cough, can potentially remain contagious for hours which means that taking the shopping cart offered in a friendly manner from a person who just emptied it into their car on a busy Saturday where carts are at a premium might become a life threatening event and that you should wipe down the handle area of the cart before touching it and wipe the rest down discreetly out of the friendly person’s sight, especially if they sneeze after handing you the shopping cart. No, there is no reason to initiate a policy which would ban passengers from areas of the world where the Ebola virus is still an active contagion, is there?

The question of whether to quarantine or not to quarantine is even necessary can be blamed upon the invention of aircraft and airlines, especially international direct flights from anywhere in the world to any place else in the world directly. Before airlines shortened travel times between all places on Earth to all other places on Earth within a single day the fastest manner of travel was a steamship which took as much as three weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. This meant that Ebola carriers would more likely show signs of the contagion before the ship ever made port in New York allowing for precautions to be taken. Crossing the Pacific took even longer which would really allow sufficient time for Ebola and most other diseases to become evident long before the ship makes port. This was why the immigrants arriving in the United States until World War II landed on Ellis Island where even if a passenger was sniffling they were sent to a neighboring island for medical quarantine and treatment to determine if they should be permitted entry or be returned to Europe or wherever their originating port was. We no longer have that luxury in the modern world where the longest it takes to fly between destinations including stopovers where you do not necessarily need to deplane is under twenty-four hours. The discussion on quarantine is a new one for the United States. In Europe it is an old subject which has already been settled from past experiences and Europe will more often than not opt for quarantine without any concern for political correctness or multiculturalism as their experience where quarantine became their default position has much to do with a small plague which came from the Orient, the Bubonic Plague. From that horrendous time forward quarantine became the default in Europe and Britain but the United States has not yet to discuss quarantine nor have they been forced to before now. The only other time the United States faced an epidemic which was imported came after World War I when the returning soldiers brought the Spanish Flu with them and it spread throughout the United States like a storm, an ill wind blowing across the plains. There was no real alternative as the nations soldiers were already in transit and it was unthinkable to ban them or place them in quarantine, but some towns and even cities enforced short quarantine procedures where they basically had all stores, schools and other places where the public interacted including houses of worship to close and instructed the people to remain in their homes for as long as three or four days which did serve to stifle the spread and such places had far lower death rates than places where they continued life as normal. This is a discussion that should be argued and thought through to a complete and accepted policy for the future which will be applied in all cases of potential pandemic for the future. Any action which simply ignores the subject and dismisses any discussion simply claiming that there is no real need as the Ebola threat is over so there is no pressing reason to address the quarantine subject with any urgency. Such is simply doing what public officials too often use and get away from taking up sensitive subjects known as kicking the can down the road. The problem is nobody can predict when the next Ebola like disease will strike forcing the discussion once again on whether or not to impose quarantine on transit from the effective regions. Starting the discussion while under the gun, so to speak, is waiting too long and is the reason to force the discussion now. Hopefully the people elected to serve the public welfare and wellbeing will take the responsible path and make a reasoned decision now, and if they do not choose to perform their assigned tasks the public must force the discussion until a definitive decision is reached and a definitive policy has been defined and articulated in law, nothing less should be acceptable.

Beyond the Cusp