Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links
May it be a Shabbat Shalom for all.
Posts Tagged‘Israel’
Words of the Week
The list goes on: shootings, stabbings, and stonings are all rampant, and they’re almost always perpetrated or encouraged by Palestinian officialdom.
Western leaders and even a portion of diaspora Jewry justifies its refusal to notice or name the current wave of murderous Palestinian terror attacks on the grounds that the deceased are mostly “settlers”—a special category of civilians whose murder is always, if not justified, then easy enough for those who attended the right universities and who read the right newspapers to understand.
Source: Liel Leibovitz, “The Murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin” (Tablet)
Words of the Week
What to do? Well, individually and as a community, make sure you know as much as you possibly can. Be fully informed. And then fight back — through academia, or journalism, or political action, or whichever is your area of expertise. Help others understand what Israel faces.
You won’t persuade the haters. But you can help prevent fair-minded people being manipulated and misled by the haters. And the benefits of meeting this challenge are enormous: you’ll be protecting Israel, and you’ll be working toward a smart, more knowledgeable climate for Jews in the UK and Europe. We are inextricably linked — the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the UK and the rest of the Diaspora. Our well-being is linked. We had better stand together.
Source: David Horovitz, “Strategies for Israel, and those who love her” (Times of Israel)
Words of the Week
“In an apparent softening of party tone, Corbyn’s warm-up man, the journalist Owen Jones, recently reprimanded the Left for its ingrained anti-Semitism. Welcome words, but they will remain only words so long as the Corbynite Left – and indeed the not-so Corbynite Left – refuses to acknowledge the degree to which anti-Semitism is snarled up in the before and after of Israelophobia. The Stop The War Coalition is a sort of home to Jew-haters because its hate music about Israel is so catchy. It simplifies a complex and heartbreaking conflict, it elides causes and effects, it perpetuates a fable that flatters one side and demonises another, it ignores all instances of intransigence and cruelty but one, inflaming hatred and enabling the very racism it declares itself opposed to.
Let’s forget whether or not anti-Semitism is the root of this. It is sufficient that it is the consequence. Face that, Corbyn, or the offence you take at any imputation of prejudice is the hollow hypocrite’s offence, and your protestations of loving peace and justice, no matter who believes them, are as ash.”
Read the full text of author Howard Jacobson’s “Corbyn may say he’s not anti-Semitic, but associating with the people he does is its own crime” on The Independent‘s website.
A note: I’m sorry that the final “Words of the Week” entry for 5775 is not exactly upbeat. But as a writer, I found that Jacobson’s piece took on greater urgency for me because just as I discovered it I also ran across news of a “Poets for Corbyn” project. And then, this morning, came the news from Britain that Corbyn has been elected Labour Party leader.
Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links
Shabbat shalom.