RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/03/27/the-scourge-of-jewish-self-division-or-the-court-jews-are-busy-at-work-n1681976

I have seen these people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people. (Exodus 32:9).

EXCERPTS

The Jewish epic across the wilderness of history may be described as divide and be conquered. Surah 59:14 of the Koran tells us something very true about us Jews: “There is much hostility between them: their hearts are divided…” It seems that the wise counsel of Judaism’s great sage Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah has no resonance for the backsliders: “All of Israel and those who are joined to it are to each other like brothers. If brother shows no compassion to brother, who will show compassion to him?”

Who, indeed? We see the sorry spectacle of division acting itself out today in the violent civil protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to reform a hard-core, self-appointing, Leftist Supreme Court, which regularly thwarts the will of legitimate right-wing governments. It was on this platform that Netanyahu was elected by a massive majority of the vote. But the Left is good at civil disruption. There have been resignations and firings of dissident members of the government and raging animosity against the prime minister for his perceived temerity in trying to overhaul the judicial system and redress a long-festering political sore. The Left is having none of it. Netanyahu’s critics argue that the plan is pushing Israel down a path to autocracy, a path they themselves appear to be treading.

Similarly, Melanie Phillips remarks that Netanyahu is reacting against the anti-democratic rule of an interventionist judicial activism, a system in which “judges have substituted politics and ideology for law,” superseding duly elected parliaments. Seen from a larger perspective, the demonstrations and irruptions express the principle of “liberal universalism that…would prefer rule by judges” who promulgate universal laws determined by the globalist Left over rule by an elected government administering the laws of the nation. Military and security professional Ben Kerido aptly comments in The Western Standard that “Israeli protests against Netanyahu resemble the American radical Left.” What we are observing, in my estimation, is another manifestation of the Court Jews at work.

This history of self-estrangement, political strife, and cultural rupture has been played out from the biblical era through the centuries of religious factionalism and reciprocal ex-communication culminating in our own epoch. The legacy of the celebrated Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and the equally acclaimed Jewish political writer Hannah Arendt, who could never forget their German patrimony and were corrosively suspicious of the Zionist project, has been broadly and unambiguously noxious. In the present moment we observe their offspring, that is, left-wing “peace activists,” liberal rabbis, “post-Zionist” intellectuals, power nabobs, social ingratiators — in other words, Court Jews — who strive to erode the Jewish character of the state of Israel and so deprive it of its legitimacy. The Jewish Left, as it dances around the golden calf of a utopian project, represents perhaps the gravest danger to the survival of the country.

Thus, its adherents pursue their fugitive merit, ignoring the rain clouds until they are drenched and catch pneumonia, as the 19th-century Jewish philosopher Max Nordau put it.

These are the “degraded” Jews whom the great Jewish patriot Vladimir Jabotinsky denounced. They are reminiscent of the spies that Moses sent out to reconnoiter enemy territory, ten of whom on returning compared themselves to frail grasshoppers before the fearsome Anakim and recoiled from their destiny (Numbers 13: 33). They do not understand, in the words of Nurit Greenger, that “Israel is the last station in the Jews’ Via Dolorosa” and that “beyond this station is the Jews’ final crucifixion,” nor do they realize how profoundly they themselves are at risk. They have forgotten that the Jewish sense of security is always a false sense of security, that over the past 2,000 years, as Melvin Konner points out in Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Jews have been expelled from 94 countries. They do not think to ask themselves why the future should be any different.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/369298

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to the nation this evening (Monday) on the government’s planned judicial reforms.

“There is an extreme minority that is ready to tear our country into parts. It tends towards violence. It ignites fire. It threatens to harm elected officials. It talks about civil war. And it calls for insubordination, which is a terrible crime,” Netanyahu said.

“The State of Israel cannot exist without the IDF, and the IDF cannot exist with insubordination. Insubordination by one side will bring about insubordination on the other side. Insubordination is the end of our state. Therefore I demand that our security forces and the IDF’s commanders to oppose the phenomenon of insubordination. Not to contain it, not to understand it. To stop it,” he said.

“For three months, I have called for dialogue. I also said that I would leave no stone unturned in order to reach a solution. Because I remember, we remember, that we are not facing enemies: we are facing our brothers. I say here and now: we must not have a civil war.

“We are now on a path towards a very dangerous collision in Israeli society, which jeopardizes the basic unity between us, and such a crisis obligates all of us to act responsibly.

“Out of national responsibility, out of a desire to prevent a rift in the nation, I have decided to postpone the second third reading of the law in this session of the Knesset in order to give time to try to reach a wide agreement on the legislation in the next session of the Knesset. This way, we will bring about a reform that will restore the balance which has been lost, while maintaining and even strengthening human and individual rights,” he declared.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19532/meaning-of-pro-palestinian

Inviting Hamas and PIJ officials to participate in such events shows that the real aim of the so-called pro-Palestinian groups is not to help the Palestinians, but to incite and spread hate and libels against the only democracy in the Middle East: Israel.

[I]t sends a message to the Palestinians that the students and professors at the universities around the world support terrorism as a means to kill Jews and destroy Israel.

The participation of the terror leaders in the “Israel Apartheid Week” shows that the real intention of the anti-Israel groups on campus is not to criticize Israel, but to eliminate it.

If the “pro-Palestinian” groups really cared about the Palestinians, they would be speaking out against the repressive measures and human rights violations perpetrated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

It is hard to see how support for a mass murderer such as Soleimani and Iran’s proxy terror groups – Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah – does anything good for the Palestinians. On the contrary, those who are empowering these terrorists are doing a massive disservice to the Palestinians, especially those who continue to suffer under the rule of Hamas and PIJ in the Gaza Strip.

Instead of building schools and hospitals for their people, Hamas and PIJ are investing millions of dollars in smuggling and manufacturing weapons and digging tunnels that would be used to infiltrate Israel and kill Jews. Instead of improving the living conditions of their people, Hamas and PIJ leaders are imposing new taxes and leading comfortable lives in Qatar, Lebanon and other countries. Instead of bringing democracy and freedom of speech to their people, the terror groups are arresting and intimidating journalists, human rights activists and political opponents.

All these violations are, needless to say, of no concern to the so-called “pro-Palestinian” students on the campuses. Have these students ever denounced Hamas for suppressing public freedoms and depriving its people of a good life? No. Will these students ever call out the Palestinian leadership for the financial corruption and persecution of political opponents and critics? No.

The “pro-Palestinian” individuals and groups might also understand that by siding with Hamas and PIJ, they are harming, not helping, the same people — the Palestinians — they claim to support.

The silence of the “pro-Palestinian” students towards these arrests actually causes harm to Palestinians: it allows Hamas to continue its brutality without having to worry about negative reactions from the international community.

The real “pro-Palestinian” advocates are those who want to see a good life for the Palestinians, not those who encourage them to embrace terror groups.

[T]he “pro-Palestinian” activists should, for example, wage campaigns to demand democracy and freedom of speech for the Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

These activists should be defending the rights of women and gays in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. That is the way to be a real “pro-Palestinian” activist. Being “pro-Palestinian” does not necessarily mean that one has to be anti-Israel.

Instead of calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel, the “pro-Palestinian” students should invite Israelis and Palestinians to their campuses to build, not destroy, bridges between the two peoples. If these students want Palestinians to boycott Israel, they should offer the Palestinians jobs and salaries, not more messages of hate.

An anti-Israel group called Palestinian Solidarity Forum (PSF) on March 20 invited officials from the Iranian-backed Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to speak at an event at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.