Has The Organized Jewish Community Lost Its Collective Mind? Shari Goodman
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9595/pub_detail.asp
It has been a distressing week for those of us who support the Jewish State of Israel. While we lament Obama’s call for pre-1967 borders which would render Israel defenseless, we are heartsick that many in America’s organized Jewish community praised Obama’s call for Israel to commit national suicide.
It has been apparent from the get-go that Obama has no affinity for the Jewish State. Aside from the few token Jews on his staff, he has surrounded himself with anti-Semites and anti-Zionists. Suzanne Powers, Rashid Khalidi, William Ayers, Jody Evans, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Islamist Edward Said, his intellectual mentor, are just a few that come to mind. Obama has traveled the world, but has not set foot in Israel, not even during his first official visit to the Middle East. He has bowed to the prince of Saudi Arabia, but one only has to observe his uncomfortable body language while sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to deduce that this President has a dislike for the Jewish state. From the time he took office, his emphasis has been to seek concessions from the Israelis while asking relatively little of the Arabs. For those of us who have followed his foreign policy, it was not that much of a shock to hear his latest reprehensible proposal.
The shocker is the continuous support he is still receiving from the organized Jewish community. Both the Anti-Defamation League and the National Jewish Democratic Council issued press releases in support of Obama’s proposal. It begs the question: has the Jewish community lost its collective mind? Israel cannot return to borders that at its narrowest point is eight miles wide. It cannot return the Golan Heights where artillery fire reigned down from above onto Israeli villages down below. It cannot divide its capital, Jerusalem, anymore than we can or should divide Washington, D.C.
The Arabs gave up the right to that land when they waged war upon Israel. They lost and Israel won. Through time immemorial the spoils of war have gone to the victors, not the losers. Not only would it be morally reprehensible to reward those who wage war, but it would be strategically unwise. The Middle East conflict is not, nor has ever been, about “territory”. It is a religious conflict that stems from Islamic doctrine which commands its followers to “slay the unbelievers wherever you may find them” (Surah 9:5) as do many other versus within the Koran and the Hadith. Approximately two-thirds of Islamic doctrine contain verses which call for the slaughter of the infidels or “kafirs”. It is Islamic intolerance of religious pluralism that drives the aggression by Islamic Arabs against the Jews of Israel. They will not tolerate a Jewish state within their midst anymore than they are willing to tolerate the Coptic Christians in Egypt.
Throughout the globe, Christians as well as Hindus are being persecuted and annihilated by the practitioners of the religion of peace….Chechnya, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, Sudan, Russia, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq and in previous secular Turkey. It was only a year ago that Turkey’s Catholic Bishop was decapitated by his Muslim driver and bodyguard who told police he was “commanded by god” to slay the man he was hired to protect.
Thus, it is with dismay while reading this week’s Los Angeles Jewish Journal that I came upon two unsettling propaganda pieces that I would expect to see in the New York Times or on Al Jazeera, but not in a Jewish paper that should have the interest of America’s Jewish community as a priority. The editorial “Street Smarts” (May20-26, 2011) written by Peace Now activist and editor, Rob Eshman, objected to the use of the term “Arab Mobs” in a headline by the Israel Project. Instead, Eshman described the Arab mob as “peaceful, organized, and disciplined”. 846 people were killed in those “peaceful” demonstrations and over 2000 were wounded. Where was the “discipline” when television journalist Lara Logan was brutally raped by a gang of 300 Muslim rapists chanting “Jew” as they repeatedly ignored her screams? Is he ignorant of the millions of Egyptians chanting “death to the Jews” as they marched in protest through Tahrir Square or is he so blinded by his ideology that he refuses to report events accurately?
Appearing alongside Eshman’s Islamic propaganda piece was an opinion piece (“Death of an Ideology”) written by none-other than Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a known front group for the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1988, the Los Angeles Times printed an ad by MPAC comparing Israel to Nazis. The Investigative Project on Terrorism compiled an in depth report on MPAC and concluded that throughout the years MPAC has defended terror organizations, opposed counter-terrorism efforts, and engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric. Daniel Pipes, a leading U.S. scholar on radical Islam described the difference between CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and MPAC in a column dated 7/21/04.
“The two organizations can be compared to the PLO and Hamas. Their goals are roughly the same (the destruction of Israel) but the former says what’s needed to gain Israeli or American concessions, while the latter sticks to its principles. In like fashion, MPAC says what’s necessary while CAIR (not coincidentally, a step-child of Hamas) sticks closer to its principles.”
Shamefully, now we have an Islamist practicing “Taqiyya” (deception permissable in the advancement of Islam) writing an opinion piece for a Jewish Journal.
In that commentary, Marayati stated “the death of Osama bin Laden marks the end of a dark era for the Muslim world, and it will, hopefully, usher in a new era for Muslims in America and abroad, an era that can emphasize democratic leadership, not totalitarian ideology, an era of constructive engagement, not destructive confrontation; and an era of religious pluralism, not religious exclusivism.”
What Marayati fails to mention is that the ideology did not emanate from Bin Laden, but from a 1400 year old Islamic doctrine known as the Qur’an, a doctrine that continues to inspire millions world-wide. When we look around the Muslim world, where do we see religious pluralism? Where is the construction of churches and temples in Saudi Arabia or Iran? Instead they are being destroyed along with its practitioners. Can we as Jews and Christians travel to Medina and Mecca? Instead we “kafirs” are forbidden from stepping foot in those cities. Where are the calls for religious pluralism from the Imams, the Islamic media, or Islamic texts? Instead we are bombarded by Islamic clerics who openly call for the destruction of the Jews… not only Israel, but the Jews.
On May 11 of this year on Al-Aqsa T.V., Cleric and Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal stated the following: “The Jews were brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians and the Islamic nation behind them will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang….in just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.” Not only didn’t Obama condemn such rhetoric, but he insists that Jews relinguish territory to these murderous barbarians without a word of protest from the organized Jewish community or the Jewish press with the exception of the Zionist Organization of America.
So is it any wonder that we have an American Jewish community totally misled by a Leftist leadership whose allegiance is not to their Judaism, but to their socialist ideology. A leadership that has mistaken the commandment of “Tikun Olam” (to fix the world) for Judaism. As Chapter Leader of ACT! For America I am frequently asked by our Christian members why Jews support an administration that is hostile to Israel? As Christians who are in the front line in their support for a Jewish State, they are frustrated why they – and not the Jewish community – are standing alongside Israel. I think the answer is pretty clear. Judaism has been hijacked by Leftist Jews just as the Democratic Party has been hijacked by the secular Left. There is now a clear division between the Jewish elitists on university campuses, media boards, rabbinical seminars, Hollywood, and individual mainstream Jews who are not receiving the information they need to make informed decisions.
Jews are not the annihilators, the killers, or the oppressors! We will begin to take back our narrative and as we do Jewish leadership must begin to answer whether they are with us or against us?
Family Security Matters Contributor Shari Goodman is Chapter Leader at Calabasas-West Valley ACT! For America, Calabasas, Ca. The views expressed here are hers and do not necessarily represent the views of ACT! For America or of Family Security Matters.
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