Words of the Week, II

Ellen Willis, z”l, “Is There Still a Jewish Question? Why I’m an Anti-Anti-Zionist” (essay originally published in 2003; reprinted online this week by Tablet):
And yet I count myself an anti-anti-Zionist. This is partly because the logic of anti-Zionism in the present political context entails an unprecedented demand for an existing state—one, moreover, with popular legitimacy and a democratically elected government—not simply to change its policies but to disappear. It’s partly because I can’t figure out what large numbers of displaced Jews could have or should have done after 1945, other than parlay their relationship with Palestine and the (ambivalent) support of the West for a Jewish homeland into a place to be. (Go “home” to Germany or Poland? Knock, en masse, on the doors of unreceptive European countries and a reluctant United States?) And finally it’s because I believe that anti-Jewish genocide cannot be laid to rest as a discrete historical episode, but remains a possibility implicit in the deep structure of Christian and Islamic cultures, East and West.

Oren Kessler, “Hamas Lies–and the Media Believed It” (U.S. News):
“It’s the Mideast equivalent of ‘Dog bites man,’ but it took the media nearly a month to recognize its sheer obviousness: Hamas lies.”

Shia Altman, “To My Facebook Friends, I Apologize” (The Times of Israel):
“With so much anti-Israel and yes, anti-Jewish, media out there, with so many Jew-haters taking to the airwaves, and to the streets, at times violently, and with unfortunately so many timid Jews staying silent, I along with others had to speak up. People are being brutally murdered, hundreds of thousands of them all around the world, all the time, many of them Muslim in fact, by Muslim dictators and terrorist states and groups. And heaven-forbid a tiny Jewish nation dares to fight back, and the world goes nuts. “It’s genocide!” Really? If Israel wanted to, it could have flattened Gaza in less than an hour and killed everyone there. “Gaza is occupied and needs to be free!” True. Gaza is occupied, by Hamas terrorists who enslave their own people.

Here is the history, and it’s not that complicated. To try and make peace, and with much consternation, Israel pulled out of Gaza, every soldier, every Jew, in 2005. Thriving multimillion dollar businesses in open land on the Gaza Strip, businesses purchased by philanthropic Jews to give away to Gaza, were left for the Palestinians there to take over and work. Millions and millions of dollars in aid from all over the world flooded into Gaza so it could jumpstart its economy and make life better for its people. There was no occupation, no embargo, no blockade, no incursions into Gaza from Israel. What happened? The businesses were destroyed and the money was pocketed by corrupt terrorist overlords. The Palestinians elected Hamas as their leader, and being it is sworn to destroy Israel and kill Jews – this is in the official charter, rockets and missiles and terrorism began nearly immediately after Israel’s withdrawal. And it hasn’t stopped.”

Letter to University of California President Janet Napolitano (reprinted by one signatory, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law):
“Teaching undergraduate students one-sided propaganda which falsely alleges that Israel is a “settler colonial” and “apartheid” state worthy of elimination and promoting an antisemitic boycott of Israel do not constitute education but unabashed political indoctrination, which is expressly forbidden by the UC Regents in their Policy on Course Content (also known as the Regents Policy on Academic Freedom).”

David Horovitz, “When the History of This War Is Written” (The Times of Israel):
“If there remained a temptation to believe that anti-Semitism had been well and truly marginalized after World War II, the past weeks indicate that the immediate post-war period was a blip, and that the oldest disease is flaring to epidemic proportions again — with potentially drastic implications for many Jewish communities around the world, and indeed for Israel.”