Anti-Semitism – About Things That Matter

In Defense of Higher Education: How To Address Genocidal Congress-members

As a life-long academic, I’m still smarting from watching Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, being bullied during her nearly four-hour testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The House committee was convened to uncover anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses in the context of students protesting the genocide taking place before our eyes in Gaza and on the West Bank.

It was embarrassing to see President Minouche Shafik grovel before congress-members who evidently know nothing about higher education. Adopting her best baby fundie voice and attitude, she squirmed, smiled, and assured her interrogators that student “mobs” protesting Zionist genocide would be duly restricted and professors exposing students to Palestinian history and viewpoints would be fired.

Previously, the committee exuding full redolence of the McCarthy era, had been successful in forcing the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The resignations resulted from the women’s alleged failures to restrict student demonstrations on their campuses against the slaughter taking place in Palestine over the past six months.

Evidently, the intention in grilling president Shafik was to add a third victim to their list of forced presidential resignations.

While my disappointment with the Colombia president was real, my heart went out to the poor woman. She seemed intimidated, anxious to please, fawning, and frankly fearful of losing her job.

Imagine having to answer questions like the one posed by Representative Lisa McClain (R Michigan). She demanded a “yes or no” answer to her question: “Are mobs shouting, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ or ‘long live the infanttada (sic)’ – are those antisemitic comments. Yes or no?

In response, poor Ms. Shafik was at a complete loss for words.

She shouldn’t have been.

As an academic, she should have had the wherewithal to say, “Ms. McClain, that’s not a yes or no question. It’s like the old saw, “’Yes or no, are you still beating your wife?’ Or like my asking you, ‘Tell me, yes or no, are you still accepting bribes from the military-industrial complex.’ I mean, it’s either a trick gotcha question or (with all due respect) an ignorant one. The answer is complicated.

“For example, Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ to define Israel’s ambitions in Palestine. Yes, he has. You can Google it. Was Netanyahu’s (as you put it) an anti-Semitic comment? Remember the Palestinians are Semites too. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten that.”

“Do you see the complications I’m talking about?’

And as for your questions about Intifada. . .. (And by the way, it’s pronounced ‘in-teh-fah-dah’ not ‘infant-tah-dah’) Do you know what the word means? Yes or no, do you?

“In case you don’t, let me tell you it refers to aggressive nonviolent resistance to illegal Zionist occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem by the apartheid Israeli government. You can Google that too.

“And even if such protests turned violent, are you familiar with Article 51of the UN Charter? Yes or no.

“I can see by your hesitation, that perhaps you don’t. So let me inform you that Article 51 gives the right to those in illegally occupied territories to use violence against their occupiers.”

It would have been fun to see Ms. McClain squirm a bit and to hear her comments.

Can’t be done, you say?

Yes, it can.

Left-wing member of the British Parliament George Galloway showed how. In 2005 he testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He had been accused of making a questionable oil deal on behalf of his campaign to end the Iraq war. Had the deal included a kick-back to the then villain of the hour, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein? Yes or no.

Here’s a shortened version of how he addressed his questioners. (It’s also worth reviewing his entire 48-minute statement):

Had President Shafik adopted George Galloway’s confidence and tone, she would have said something like this:

“Honorable congress-members, thank you for inviting me here today and offering me opportunity to defend the University of Colombia and its students from the slander, calumny, and outright lies endorsed by this committee. Let me assure you that Colombia University today under my leadership is the same institution of higher learning that its proud history has always shown it to be. In that tradition, we have a first-class faculty that has been vetted, constantly peer-reviewed, and evaluated, and held to the highest standards. Those standards require professors in every discipline to introduce students to all sides of every debate. There can no limits to topics addressed. Absolutely none. So, for you to summon me here under accusations that a topic or point of view forbidden by the state has been addressed, discussed, or expressed by members of our faculty is frankly insulting. It is also insulting for you to demand that I dismiss Columbia faculty members on the mere accusation of their engaging in speech forbidden by the state. We have rules and procedures at Colombia that restrict such precipitous termination without hearings and deliberation by faculty commissions. That is, your demands reveal a profound misunderstanding of the function and democratic procedures governing higher education. Similarly, your evident desire to prevent students from taking sides with the victims of genocide now unfolding in Gaza flies in the face of our university’s valued tradition of freedom of expression, and of our nation’s Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and the right of petition. In this committee, you seem unaware that more than 34,000 Gazans (fully half of them children and their mothers) have been slaughtered by the Zionists over the last six months before our very eyes. At Colombia, we are proud that our students can recognize such genocide and reject the very crimes that you, are aiding and abetting. I mean, everyone here who has voted to supply the Zionists with arms is guilty of genocide. Shame on you all! Your participation in that crime reveals this present reincarnation of McCarthyism for what it is. This hearing is nothing more than a smokescreen to divert public attention from your crimes and from those of Zionist apartheid settler-colonialists. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.”

Yes, Ms. Shafik could have responded just as George Galloway did. That she didn’t shows how not only our representatives and the mass media have become agents of state propaganda. So has higher education.

Following Zionist Logic, Hamas Has the Moral Right to Commit Genocide against Israel

This past week, the world held its breath as South Africa’s top legal team pressed its case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The lawyers argued that the state of Israel is guilty of genocide by prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.

On Thursday, the South Africans made their case in exquisite detail. It cited chapter and verse proving, the lawyers said, that Israel not only committed acts of genocide, but that according to its leaders’ own admissions, Israel did so with full genocidal intent.

On Friday the Israeli defense team gave their reply. It basically held that all of Israel’s actions including the deaths of 30,000 Palestinians (at least half of them children and women) are justified by the Hamas attacks of October 7^th, 2023.

Final resolution of the case may take months or even years. Now however, we await the court’s preliminary directives.

Whatever those judgments and injunctions might be, the very fact that the world was forced to listen to the South African case against Israel represented a victory for the Palestinians and an education for the world at large – especially for the United States. That’s because the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) has largely excluded the Palestinian viewpoint from public awareness. In fact, to give sympathetic voice to the Palestinian perspective has been all but criminalized here.

Accordingly, since October 7^th, Americans have been subjected to nonstop Israeli propaganda that presents the conflict in Gaza as though it began on October 7^th — as though it was initiated without provocation by blood thirsty terrorists driven by irrational anti-Semitism.

So understood, that scenario gives to Israel the right to overlook international law and to follow a “morality” of revenge, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide. It is a “morality” completely supported by the United States.

The argument here is that such morality can have only highly disastrous effects.

To show what I mean, allow me to (1) summarize the case so eloquently argued by the South African legal team, (2) lay out Israel’s exceptionalist morality, (3) put the entire case in historical perspective, (4) apply Israel’s logic to that case, and (5) conclude with specific recommendations about legal responses to Israel’s policies.

South Africa’s Case

The case of the South African legal team was argued convincingly. It was founded on international law. The argument implied and/or specifically held that:

Illegal occupiers enjoy no right to self-defense.
Neither does any regime practicing apartheid. Apartheid is a war crime.
On the contrary, it is the illegally occupied who have the right of self-defense against their occupiers and any system of apartheid. That right includes taking up arms against the perpetrators in question.
No provocation, no matter how egregious justifies direct attacks on civilians.
In all cases, any response to terroristic attacks must observe the principle of proportionality. That is, Article 51 Section 6 of the UN Charter states that revenge attacks against civilian populations are strictly forbidden.
So are forced relocations of entire populations, deprivation of food and water to civilian populations, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, schools, refugee camps, places of worship, and members of the press.

By ignoring such legal restrictions, the South African lawyers argued, Israel is guilty of genocide defined in law as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The lawyers bolstered their case with statements from Zionists all the way from soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to the country’s prime minister declaring their genocidal intentions.

Israel’s Syllogism of Genocide

In reply to the accusations just cited, Israeli lawyers laid out their case arguing that Israel’s right to self-defense justified all the actions listed by the South African barristers. The Israeli case and exceptionalist “morality” implies the quasi-syllogism immediately below:

Following unprovoked violent attacks on civilians by an enemy, the right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.

a) More specifically, it exempts the offended from all legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

b) In such cases, ethnic cleansing and genocide become morally justifiable.

2. But on October 7^th, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist organization called Hamas violently attacked Israeli civilians near the Gaza border resulting in the deaths of more than 1000 Israelis (including many civilians) with over 2500 wounded.

3. Hence, according to the above-stated moral principle, Israel’s right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all other moral principles and international law. It exempts Israel from any legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

Such moral reasoning apparently makes sense to the political leaders of Israel and to most Israeli citizens. It also has been embraced by the political class of the United States, by its mainstream media (MSM), and by many U.S. citizens. For them, Israel’s right to self-defense reduces any talk of genocide (and of ceasefire) to anti-Semitism.

Arguably, this is because the relevant reasoning processes of those just mentioned begin on October 7^th, 2023. Hamas struck first, they argue. It is therefore responsible for the violence now directed against it. Hamas has only itself to blame.

Historical Perspective

However, following Israeli logic, the situation changes, if the one’s thinking begins not on October 7^th, 2023, but more than 100 years ago. That’s when European Jews supported by Great Britain committed what Pakistan’s UN envoy Munir Akram called the “original sin” in Palestine.

It was in 1917 that Great Britain exercising illegal imperial power issued its infamous Balfour Declaration. Without moral right and absent consultation of the indigenous of Palestine, the decree created a national home for Jewish Europeans from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and other countries where they had a long history subjected to anti-Semitic pogroms and persecutions.

Of course, the indigenous of Palestine experienced the arrival of European settler colonists with the same sort of resentment and sporadic resistance that Native Americans experienced when white conquerors from Europe arrived on the shores of Abya Yala. The latter came with their religious prejudices too, every bit as strong as those of Zionist fundamentalists. Like the latter (as recalled by Enrique Dussel in his Invention of the Americas) the settler colonialists from Europe considered the indigenous “human animals.” As sub-humans, they automatically forfeited their resources to the civilized new arrivals with their “holy Catholic faith.” It granted them rights to the “new world” ratified by the pope himself, the very representative of God on earth.

Palestinian resentment and resistance were compounded in 1948, when following the horrors of Hitler’s Holocaust, European Jews flooded Palestine. The settler colonists destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages, stole the homes of their inhabitants, committed more than 70 massacres, and killed more than 15,000 Palestinians in the process.

It’s no wonder that the Palestinians remember the sequence of events as The Nakba (the Catastrophe). It’s also no wonder that Palestinians aided by key elements of the Arab world fought two wars of resistance in 1967 and 1973 as well as implementing two major campaigns of largely peaceful resistance (Intifadas) against the settler colonists from 1987-1993 and from 2000-2005.

To all this, Israel responded with overwhelming violence taking thousands of Palestinian lives. The most recent non-violent campaign, the Palestinian’s “Great March of Return” in 2018 saw 214 protestors (including 46 children) killed by Israeli sniper fire. More than 36,100 (including almost 9000 children) were also wounded. Virtually none of this received due attention in the U.S. MSM.

Noam Chomsky summarizes the atrocities just described using the Israeli phrase “mowing the lawn.” That refers to the Israeli practice (at least since 2005) of periodically invading, bombing, and imprisoning (often without charge) thousands of Palestinian civilians. Chomsky enumerates the steps as follows:

A truce accord between Israel and Hamas is established.
Hamas lives up to it.
Israel violates it.
Israel escalates the violation.
This elicits a Hamas response.
The reaction provides a pretext for what Israel calls “mowing the lawn” – i.e. one of its major periodic attacks on Palestinians.
Then comes the western propaganda: “Poor Israel is attacked by rockets. What can it do? They must defend themselves.”

If Hamas Followed Israel’s Moral Logic

Keeping in mind the history just recounted as well as Israel’s “moral” logic about self-defense and dispensation from observing international law and prohibitions against revenge, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and even genocide, Hamas was perfectly within its rights to perpetrate its acts of violence on October 7^th. In fact, those acts compared to Israel’s can be characterized as restrained and moderate.

In any case, following Israel’s logic, here’s how Hamas’ quasi-syllogism might run:

Following violent attacks on civilians by an enemy, the right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.

b) In such cases, ethnic cleansing and genocide become morally justifiable.

2. But for the past 100 years and more, Israel has violently attacked Palestinians resulting in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians with many other thousands wounded and maimed.

a) Hence, according to Israeli “moral principles,” Hamas’ right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.

b) More specifically, it exempts Hamas from any legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.

3. And so, Hamas can claim the moral right to ethnically cleanse Israel of its entire population and to commit acts of genocide against it.

Conclusion

Of course, the point here is not to argue for the genocide of anyone. It is only to underline the absurdity and danger of Israel’s (and the United States’) blatant disregard of international law and common-sense morality.

It is also to make the point that Israel’s logic cuts both ways. If its attacks on Gazans are justified by Palestinian atrocities, Palestinian attacks on Israel are even more justifiable. That is, it might be argued that the Palestinians as victims of Israel’s “original sin” and repeated atrocities over the last 100 years have much more right to revenge than their colonial occupiers.

In any case, if Israel and its U.S. enablers are found guilty of genocide by the ICJ, the country’s leadership, and its weapons suppliers (including the U.S. President and Secretary of State) should be placed under arrest.

So should those identified as responsible for the planning and execution of Israel’s particularly egregious war crimes. All should be tried following the example of the post-World War II trials of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Those convicted should be executed or given lengthy prison sentences as were the German war criminals found guilty during the Tribunal held from 1945-1948.

GOP Attacks on Higher Learning: What’s Education for Anyway? And How about Religion?

Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent:Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11; Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28.

Last week, Americans were treated to a high-level display of hypocrisy, double standards, and pure ignorance regarding higher learning. The spectacle occurred during a House Education Committee hearing about on-campus demonstrations supporting Palestinians in Gaza.

The procedure raised questions not only about alleged anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but also about the very purpose of higher education.

For me in the context of biblical readings for this third Sunday of Advent, the hearing also touched issues of faith and its dictates regarding the conflict in Gaza. As we’ll see, today’s readings suggest that Christians should stand with Palestinians in their conflict with an Apartheid state turned genocidal – and against the United States now unquestionably revealed (in the words of Scott Ritter) as “the world’s bad guy.”

Let me deal with each of those points successively.

The Hearing & Anti-Semitism

During the hearing just referenced, rightwing congress member Elise Stefanik (R NY) grilled Harvard president Claudine Gay, her MIT counterpart Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill about allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations on their campuses.

According to Ms. Stefanik, the demonstrations ran the danger of threatening pro-Zionist students.

Ignoring her own history of alleged anti-Semitic positions as well as her votes funding the Zionist genocide of Gazans, the congresswoman’s questioning deceptively linked the term “intifada” to advocacy of extermination of Jews.

Similarly ignoring Zionist claims to “Greater Israel” extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the congresswoman’s questioning implied that any use of the phrase “from the River to the Sea” uniquely threatened Jewish students. Clearly, Congresswoman Stefanik, along with many Democrats, was anxious to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on Campus.

For their part, the university presidents at last week’s hearing were correspondingly anxious to protect first amendment guarantees on their campuses in today’s context where any talk of Palestinian rights is interpreted as anti-Semitic.

The whole affair had commentators like Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, viewing the presidents’ grilling and its fallout as an attempt by champions of Zionism to distract from actual genocide (of Palestinians in Gaza) while centralizing highly marginal hypothetical speech about repeating Hitler’s horrendous genocide of Jews.

Meanwhile, right-wing commentators on Fox News offered outright condemnation of the three women presidents’ unwillingness to give a simple “yes” or “no” answer to loaded questions about a complex constitutional issue of free speech.

According to Bill Bennett, the former Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, the whole affair illustrated, how American education at all levels has declined into what some have called “cesspools of liberal propaganda.”

Education’s Purpose

All this raises questions about the purpose of education in general and of higher education in particular. What is it for?

What do you think?

The relatively new prevailing answer equates the university’s function with pre-professional training. If courses don’t directly prepare students for “the world of work,” they’re a waste of time.

That approach, of course, discards traditional approaches to learning in general as preparation for living meaningful lives that transcend considerations of jobs and income in favor of free discussion and representation of all points of view – even those advocating genocide.

This more traditional approach unabashedly believes that free speech and debate will broaden students’ horizons. And doing so will inevitably challenge students to move from positions of egocentrism and ethnocentrism, from narrow tribalism and patriotism to something like world-centrism and even to cosmic consciousness.

In fact, many educators (like me) would say that’s the whole purpose of education – to help students and professors grow beyond egocentrism and ethnocentrism towards world centrism (where all humans are seen as brothers and sisters) and even to the mystical viewpoint that concludes “there is really only one of us here.”

In fact, reaching that cosmic vision is arguably the whole purpose of life. At least that seemed to be the position of all the world’s great religious traditions including their Judeo-Christian branch. Reaching that point of course would automatically exclude wars of any kind on the grounds that they are all suicidal.

Today’s Readings

And that brings me to the biblical selections for this third Sunday of Advent. Transcending even academic “objectivity,” today’s passages call us to take sides. They call us to side with the Palestinians against their apartheid colonial butchers.

For the readings reveal what scripture scholars call our Great Mother-Father God’s “preferential option for the poor.” They reveal that the Great Spirits themselves take sides. They demand justice for the poor (like the children of Gaza and their mothers) in their struggle against the rich [like the Apartheid Zionists and their genocidal IDF with its (U.S.-supplied) planes, bombs, missiles, and tanks].

Let me show you what I mean by “translating” today’s liturgical selections. Please read the originals here to see if I got them right.

Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11

If you’re possessed by the Holy Spirit, if you have Christ consciousness, you must imitate the Great Mother herself. You must make a “preferential option for the poor.” It prioritizes healing hearts broken by imperial powers. Begin by recognizing the fact that poverty and debt render the poor hostages and prisoners of the rich. However, just like the wealthy, poor husbands and their brides deserve their own sparkling jewels. Put otherwise, wealth redistribution is a simple matter of divine justice which imitates the abundance and generosity of Nature herself.

Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54

Yeshua’s mother recognized all this. Myriam was a poor peasant herself. And yet she, rather than some rich woman, was chosen as the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. So, she militantly praised the Divine One for feeding the hungry while specifically rejecting the rich. She glorified the Great Source for standing with Myriam’s people when they were unjustly occupied by imperial Rome.

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24

Paul of Tarsus experienced Myriam’s consciousness as well. It expressed, he said, the Spirit of Yeshua himself whose prophetic program was identical with Isaiah’s (Luke 4:18). Yes, Paul said, Yeshua’s “preferential option for the poor” represents the criterion separating authentic interpretations of the Lord’s message from those of deceptive charlatans. The latter “solve” problems by war, rather than by peace which respects soul, body, spirit, and the absolute integrity of human community.

Isaiah 61:1

Lest you forget, we repeat: Christ’s Good News is addressed primarily to the poor, not the rich.

John 1: 6-8, 19-28

That’s what John the Baptizer recognized too. He was poor people’s alternative High Priest. His Temple was the Jordan’s wilderness, not Herod’s urban Temple. Yet, neither John, nor Elijah before him, nor any of the great prophets was anywhere near as radical as Yeshua. John merely baptized with water; Yeshua, his disciple, would administer a baptism that conferred the very Spirit of God – the fiery Spirit that preferred the poor to the rich.

Conclusion

Like secular universities, religious people within the Judeo-Christian tradition should never censor free speech. That’s because good-willed people hold all kinds of opinions. Even advocates of genocide deserve places at the table, in congressional hearings, at teach-ins, discussion groups, and bull sessions. Our Constitution’s First Amendment (every bit as important as the Second) demands that.

But today’s readings invite subscribers to the Judeo-Christian tradition to go further still. They summon followers of Isaiah, Myriam, Paul, and Yeshua to stand with the poor and powerless – with victims of empire and colonialism. The readings urge adoption of the divine “preferential option for the poor” by imagining what today is impossible, but as our aspirational North Star. And that means standing with Gazans against their genocidal oppressors.

To me at least, that further means:

Getting informed about the tragedy unfolding before our eyes.
Recognizing and naming the crime of genocide even when its perpetrators were once victims of genocide themselves.
Denouncing all violations of international law as such including indiscriminate attacks upon and wholesale slaughter of children, women, and the elderly.
Also including policies of collective punishment, carpet bombing, destructions of medical facilities, use of chemical weapons (such as white phosphorous) and assassinations of teachers, doctors, and members of the press.
Identifying “national leaders” like Israel’s Netanyahu and U.S. “Genocide Joe Biden” as international criminals.
Calling for the latter’s arrest and trial by the international court. (If that can be done for Russia’s President Putin for much lesser crimes, why not for Netanyahu and “Genocide Joe?”)
Similarly identifying Apartheid Israel and its enabler the United States of America as criminal nations.
Calling for their expulsion from a restructured United Nations that strips a nation representing 4.2% of the world’s population from overriding the will of the overwhelming majority of the U.N.’s membership.

Israeli-Jewish Terrorists vs. “The Jews of the Jews”

Where have our national “leaders” been all these years? To judge by their statements concerning the current crisis in Israel-Palestine, they haven’t been following the news about Israeli-Jews’ treatment of Palestinians in the territories the former have illegally occupied for decades.

Are mainstream politicians unfamiliar with international law, with President Carter’s concept of apartheid in Israel-Palestine or of Gaza as the world’s largest open-air prison?

Or are they just completely dishonest?

Listen to what they’ve said in response to the recent massive expression of Palestinian resistance to Jewish-Israeli oppression. Listen to the Biden administration and even Volodymyr Zelensky.

Then consider what’s really happening in Israel-Palestine in both legal and moral perspective.

Our Leadership’s Comments

Once again, our “leaders” are talking about an “unprovoked” attack by a long-designated official enemy – in this case not Russia, but the Palestinians and Hamas “terrorists.” Leadership’s reactions are predictably ahistorical, contrary to international law, and (in the case of Zelensky) shockingly self-contradictory.

Here’s what the White House had to say: The U.S. “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. . .. There is never any justification for terrorism. We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks. . ..”

Say what? “Unprovoked?” There’s that loaded, ahistorical word again. Historically speaking, such perception is even more short-sighted and historically ignorant than calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “unprovoked.”

Which brings us to Volodymyr Zelensky. Despite his objections to an outside force (Russia) invading a supposedly innocent Ukraine (which he insists has the right to defend itself) he sides with Israel. Yes, he sides with the invaders and illegal occupiers.

Zelensky says, “We in Ukraine have a special feeling about what has happened. Thousands of rockets in the Israeli sky… People killed just on the streets… Civilian cars shot through… Detainees being humiliated … Our position is crystal clear: anyone who causes terror and death anywhere on the planet must be held accountable. Today’s terrorist attack on Israel was well-planned, and the entire world knows which sponsors of terrorism could have endorsed and enabled its organization.”

Is the TV-comedian-turned-president trying to be funny? Does he not see that according to the logic of his perceptions, Palestine is like his Ukraine – a country invaded and occupied by foreigners in contravention of international law and in possession of the inalienable right to defend itself?

Imagine the West’s response if Ukraine’s repeated attempts to invade Russia and if its frequent drone attacks had the same effect in terms of lives lost and property damaged as the current Palestinian attacks on Jewish settlements. What do you think the response of Zelensky and the West would be? Would it be unqualified sympathy for Russia’s innocent women and children? Or would it be to blame Putin for the whole thing? I think everyone knows the answer to that one.

Legal Considerations

Now consider international law and the current crisis.

For nearly a century, Jews in Israel (with the full support of the United States) have stood in blatant contravention of the U.N. Charter and of the United Nations’ Resolution 242. By refusing to return illegally occupied territories to Palestinians, Israeli-Jews (including) many civilian “settlers” are international criminals — legitimate targets.

More specifically, recall Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. It reads: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

In other words, those living in territories illegally occupied by an invading force have the internationally sanctioned right to take up arms against the invaders. By attacking Israel and its aggressive civilian settlers, Palestinians are claiming their right to self-defense.

Besides all this and according to international law, Palestinian lands have been illegally occupied for decades. That’s what U.N. Resolution 242 says.

And it’s not just illegal occupation. Anyone paying attention knows that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) kill and maim Palestinian children on a daily basis – with most westerners hardly raising an eyebrow.

And to repeat, it’s not just the Jewish-led government of Israel that has perpetrated violence and terrorism against Palestinians. Civilian Jewish settlers have been responsible as well. With the IDF standing by for their protection, they have evicted Palestinians from their homes, burnt their olive orchards to the ground, and have routinely shot and mutilated their children for years on end.

In fact, a proximate provocation of the current Palestinian uprising took the form of an attack just last month by Jewish settlers on the Al Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. For Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, this represents an extreme provocation.

Many Israeli-Jews are as guilty as their government.

Moral Considerations

Besides all this and in moral terms, international law does not indiscriminately condemn “violence.” Rather, it implicitly recognizes that all forms of “violence” are not equal. In fact, some are morally justified.

Morally speaking (and according to moralists like St. Oscar Romero of El Salvador and Dom Helder Camara of Brazil) the term has at least four principal levels. And to repeat, the current Palestinian form (as self-defense) is the only one that enjoys legal and moral justification:

The first form of violence is institutionalized, e.g., Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. Violence here takes the form of border walls, check points, exclusion of Palestinians from access to work and healthcare, as well as police and IDF unpunished killings of women and children. This is the form condemned by the already-referenced U.N. Resolution 242.
The second form of violence resists the first. Again, this violence is approved by the just-cited Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. In fact, it is the only form of violence that has any chance of being justified.
The third expression of violence is the response of those defending illegal institutionalized violence. It is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to when he promised that Israel will “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.” Obviously, such defense of the indefensible share’s the latter’s indefensibility.
The fourth type of violence is terroristic. In Israel-Palestine, it principally involves use of force against innocent civilians in order to dissuade them from resisting violence’s first form. In Israel, Jewish-Israeli government and its IDF are the main perpetrators here. They routinely impose overwhelming state violence. For every one Jewish-Israeli killed by Palestinians, Israel regularly and indiscriminately kills ten Palestinians.

To drive the point home: Palestinians are standing on firmer moral ground than the Jewish Israelis.

Conclusion

By the way, please don’t characterize what I’m writing here as somehow anti-Semitic. Rather, it has been the Israeli Jews who over nearly a century have practiced a hidden but virulent form of anti-Semitism. (Remember, Palestinian Arabs are Semites too.)

No, considerations just reviewed show that it is the Israeli Jews who practice the most virulent contemporary form of anti-Semitism. As the Palestinians themselves put it: They (the Palestinians) are the “Jews’ Jews.”

In other words, Israeli Jews’ apartheid practices are reminiscent of those of German N@zis from 1933 to 1945.

Truth-Telling Is Not Anti-Semitism or Holocaust Denial: A Personal Reflection

This is a follow-up to and revision of my last posting about a Zoom call that recently caused a stir on OpEdNews

Rob Kall, the editor in chief of OpEdNews (OEN) recently published a provocative edition of a weekly Zoom call among editors and contributors to his website. It was provocative because the remarks of one of the participants about fascism and the Great Holocaust caused several Jewish attendees to take offense and vehemently accuse him of holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

Basically, the offending remarks identified Germany’s wealthy Jewish 1% as providing Hitler’s fascism with pretext for his genocide of the other 99%. (I’ve summarized what was actually said here.) The discussion that ensued led Rob to wisely recommend caution in approaching such sensitive topics.

Rob’s recommendation reminded me of a sobering experience I had years ago in Mexico. It put me in the position of the OEN provocateur. It also caused me to reflect on the role of self-criticism that is part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian tradition and of critical thinking in general.

My Report from Israel

The experience I’m referring to came when I was invited to give a “Report from Israel” after a three-week study tour of Israel, Jordan, and Egypt sponsored by Berea College, where I taught in the Philosophy and Religion Department for 40 years. The invitation came from the Unitarian Universalist (U.U.) congregation of San Miguel de Allende.

My report was heavily influenced not only by our time spent in the Palestinian community, but by a separate visit my wife, Peggy, and I made to the Sabeel Ecumenical Center for liberation theology in Jerusalem. Scholars there connected the Palestinians’ situation with colonialism. They pointed out that ever-expanding Jewish settlements stood in blatant contravention of UN Resolution 242. It was a continuation of the European colonial system that had supposedly been abolished following World War II. In Israel-Palestine, Jewish occupation represented the familiar European settler pattern repeated throughout the former colonies. It had (Zionist) settlers from Germany, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and elsewhere arriving unexpectedly in lands belonging for millennia to poor unsuspecting Palestinian peasants, and then confiscating their homes, fields and resources.

With all of that fresh on my mind, the thesis of my U.U. presentation was clear and unambiguous. “The real terrorists in Israel,” I said, “are the Zionists who run the country.” I didn’t consider my basically historical argument particularly original or shocking. The Sabeel Center and Noam Chomsky had been making it for years.

What I didn’t realize was that almost everyone in my audience was Jewish. (I didn’t even know about San Miguel’s large Jewish population – mostly “snowbirds” from New York City.) Nonetheless, my remarks that Sunday stimulated an engrossing extended discussion. Everyone was respectful, and the enthusiastic conversation even spilled over beyond the allotted time.

The trouble started after the head of San Miguel’s Center for Global Justice (CGJ) where Peggy and I were working at the time invited me to publish my talk as an article in San Miguel’s weekly English newspaper, Atención.

I’ll never forget what followed; it was very similar to what occurred during Rob’s OEN Zoom call. All hell broke loose:

A barrage of angry letters flooded the Atención pages for the next two weeks and more.
As a result, Atención threatened to cancel the column space set aside for the CGJ each week.
San Miguel’s Bibliotheca (library) talked about ending the CGJ’s access to meeting rooms there.
My article was removed from Atención’s archives.
Someone from the AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee) phoned my provost at Berea College reporting me for my inflammatory article, asking whether I really taught there and if my credentials were genuine.
The CGJ’s leadership was forced to do some back-pedaling distancing itself from me and my remarks.
They lit candles of reconciliation at a subsequent U.U. meeting begging forgiveness from the community and absolution for that mad man from Berea.
The guiding assumption in all of this was that my argument was patently false.

In other words, an article that should have stimulated critical thinking and discussion (with CGJ activists leading the way as a voice for Palestine’s voiceless) was met instead with denial, dismissal, and apology.

Biblical Perspective

Of course, I know that criticizing Zionists for their treatment of Palestinians is quite different from the holocaust denial that some on the OEN call perceived a few weeks ago.

It is also probably futile for members of the goyim like me to comment on the topic. Frankly, I’m unqualified to do so, because:

My relatives and loved ones weren’t the ones slaughtered in Hitler’s crematoria and gas chambers.
They weren’t among the peasants, laborers, shopkeepers, mothers, fathers, grandparents and children whose lives were cruelly wasted and destroyed by the Third Reich.
Instead, as Elie Wiesel has pointed out again and again, my Christian religious cohorts were the very ones who incinerated Jews during the week, went to confession on Saturday, were given absolution, received Holy Communion on Sunday, and then returned to their gruesome work the following day.

Yet, it must be acknowledged that my religious tradition is also specifically Judeo-Christian. Its central figure is the Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, who was a reformer of Judaism and had no intention of founding a new religion. Jesus was not a Christian; from his birth to his death, he was a proud and faithful Jew.

In a sense, then, especially as a theologian in this tradition, I too am somehow a spiritual Semite. (Whether they realize it or not, all Christians are.) Additionally, what separates Zionists from other contemporary neo-colonizers is their claimed religious identity. So, to ignore the role of religion here overlooks the proverbial elephant in the room.

Recognizing the elephant gives license to say that what really happened in the Zoom conversation and in reaction to my remarks in San Miguel mirrored exactly the traditional dynamic between Jewish prophets like Amos and Jesus and their contemporaries. Both Amos and Jesus (as typical Jewish prophets):

Denounced their nation’s elite in no uncertain terms
Predicted that their crimes would lead to destruction of the entire nation
Were vilified as unpatriotic, self-hating Jews
Were threatened with ostracism, imprisonment and death
And were often (as in the case of Jesus) assassinated for their prophetic words

Put otherwise, the Jewish prophets were social critics – the kind of clear-eyed seers who weren’t afraid to blame the powerful in their own nation for crimes that brought harm, ruin, death and destruction to the entire nation. The prophets did not blame the widows, orphans, foreigners, peasants, unemployed, beggars, prostitutes, or the hobbled and ill. Instead, they unstintingly impugned the equivalents of Germany’s Jewish 1% while recognizing that the crimes of those few inevitably brought ruin, pain, exile and death even to the innocent among their own people. It’s simply the way the world works. The blameworthy crimes of the powerful cause suffering, death and massacre for the innocent majority. Pointing that out is simply telling the truth.

Conclusion

Despite what I said about being unqualified to comment on words that seem cruel and insensitive to victimized Jews, I do know something about being tarred with a broad brush. As a Roman Catholic and former priest, I could easily be accused of being part of a worldwide pedophilic ring represented by the priesthood and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. It would even be true to say that the ring has connections to a still wider movement of pedophiles among the world’s elite whose iceberg tip revealed (e.g. in the Epstein scandal) connections with the CIA, mi5, mi6, Mossad, and Mafias of various types throughout the world.

All of that would be true even though I never personally encountered any hint of pedophilia in all my more than 20 years preparing for and direct involvement in the Roman Catholic priesthood. It remains true despite the innumerable saints, martyrs, and holy men and women I’ve known personally and from the otherwise hallowed history of the Catholic Church.

The point here is that as an American, and much more as a former priest, I’ve been deeply associated with horrendous institutional delinquencies that I’d rather not discuss, because they hit too close to my spiritual and cultural identity. In other words, as both a Roman Catholic and a U.S. citizen, I find in my own community, uncomfortable truths that parallel the “accusations” against the Jewish 1% in Hitler’s Germany and against contemporary Zionists. I feel resentment at the very mention of such truths.

Nonetheless, and despite my hurt feelings, truth remains truth. And in the spirit of Amos and Jesus, I must face the facts and draw appropriate conclusions. Doing so draws me out of parochial consciousness and self-defensive denial. It creates room for the dialog and recognitions that might head off further community disaster.

As Paulo Freire puts it in The Politics of Education, all critical thinking begins with self-criticism.

Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Denial, Hurt Feelings: The Bible’s Prophetic Tradition

Rob Kall, the editor in chief of OpEdNews (OEN) recently published a provocative edition of a weekly Zoom call among editors and contributors to his website. It was provocative because the remarks of one of the participants about fascism and the Jewish holocaust caused several other attendees to take offense and vehemently accuse him of holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. The discussion that ensued led Rob to wisely recommend caution in approaching such sensitive topics.

In my capacity as a theologian of the specifically Judeo-Christian Tradition, the conversation made me realize that the type of criticism that offended so many on the OEN call was entirely biblical. It was consonant with the tradition of Jewish prophets like Amos and Jesus of Nazareth who because they denounced the rich and powerful among their countrymen, were roundly accused of being self-hating Jews.

My hope is that summarizing the offending remarks on the one hand along with the outraged responses to them on the other, might highlight the value of the biblical tradition in helping us transcend national and institutional loyalties that prevent frank self-criticism and acceptance of historical fact.

Offending Remarks

Begin by considering the provocative remarks in question. In paraphrase, they ran as follows:

“I never use the word ‘fascist,’” the provocateur said. “I never use the word ‘holocaust’ either. That’s because the simple use of those words implies that one accepts the assumptions of Zionists and right-wing Jews. I refuse to do that, because the words suggest that in the 1930s, the German Jews were entirely innocent, when they weren’t – not by a long shot.

“I mean, no one hates any person or group without reason. For instance, the Shylock character in the “Merchant of Venice” wasn’t simply a product of Shakespeare’s imagination. Shylock had a foundation in reality – in people’s experience. And like Shylock, elite Jews in Germany gave Germans plenty of reason for hating them. In turn, Hitler used that legitimate animosity towards the few to tar all Jews – even the poorest and most exploited – with the same well-justified brush.

“Let me explain.

“The fact is that the period from the end of the 19^th century to WWI was a very prosperous time. Working class expectations for social mobility were on the rise. However, to move up the social ladder – to become an attorney, for instance — one had to belong to certain clubs (like guilds) in order to get clients. Wealthy Jews who were the bankers, attorneys and physicians, controlled the clubs in question; and they wouldn’t let working class people in. That created a lot of bitterness towards Jews in general.

“Before that, under feudalism and until the end of the First World War, the people who owned the land were the nobles, the clergy, the burghers and yes, the Jews. Wealthy Jews were not peasants. They had privileges. For instance, they could carry weapons. They also bought leases to the estates of the nobles (sometimes the size of entire counties). They managed those estates for a profit.

“In other words, wealthy Jews were the interface between the peasants and the nobles.

“At the same time, the nobles mistrusted the Jews I’m describing because (again) they were the bankers, attorneys, and physicians. The nobles resented having to trust the Jews for all those essential services. For their part, the peasants mistrusted the Jews just referenced because they were always in debt to them as their landlords.

“Then following the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany experienced tremendous inflation that drastically devalued the German mark. The Jews were blamed for that too because they controlled banking. The fact is that Jewish bankers engineered the inflation to bring down the actual costs of repaying the debts demanded by the Versailles treaty. That served the interests of the wealthiest Germans who, like the wealthy today, kept their money not in savings accounts but in stocks, bonds, and real estate. Unlike working class savings accounts, the value of stocks, bonds, and real estate float with inflation. So, inflation helped the rich Germans stay rich, but completely wiped out the country’s workers, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

“Finally, there came the Great Crash of 1929 that impoverished everyone. So, by the time Hitler came to power in 1933, the Germans, the Poles, the Hungarians and the Austrians were all ready to explode. And, of course, Hitler lit the match with his identification of all Jews as the root of their problems.”

Defensive Responses

Responses mainly from Jewish participants in Rob’s Zoom call came thick and fast.

They included the following:

I disagree. People do in fact hate individuals and groups for no reason at all. And Jews in Hitler’s Germany represent a case in point. They were completely innocent. To hint otherwise is simply anti-Semitic and leads to holocaust denial.
I don’t think there were very many Jews who managed property for the feudal lords. Yes, there may have been a few Jews who had a lot of power, and there is something to the Rothschilds, and now we have the Zionists that I absolutely hate. However . . .
You’re talking about Jews as if they were somehow monolithic. Most Jews were poor.
Yes, my own ancestors were holocaust victims and I assure you that they had nothing to do with what you’ve just described.
My grandmother was dragged off to Auschwitz with her husband and three children. Their entire village was leveled.
I’ve heard these tired arguments before – you know: the Jews keep to themselves, they wear odd clothes, speak their own language, etc., etc. It’s all part of anti-Semitism. I don’t buy any of it.
You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re nothing but an anti-Semitic holocaust denier. You’re basically saying that “The Jews deserved what they got in the holocaust. That makes you uncivilized; you should get off this call.”
I hope you’re recording all of this, Rob, so we can go back and see who’s misrepresenting what.

Biblical Perspective

Of course, it’s probably futile for a member of the goyim like me to comment on the dialog just summarized. Frankly, I’m unqualified to do so. My relatives and loved ones weren’t the ones slaughtered in Hitler’s crematoria and gas chambers. They weren’t among the peasants, laborers, shopkeepers, mothers, fathers, grandparents and children whose lives were cruelly wasted and destroyed by the Third Reich.

Instead, as Elie Wiesel has pointed out again and again, my Christian religious cohorts were the very ones who incinerated Jews during the week, went to confession on Saturday, were given absolution, received Holy Communion on Sunday, and then returned to their gruesome work the following day.

Yet, it must be acknowledged that my religious tradition is also specifically Judeo-Christian. Its central figure is the Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, who was a reformer of Judaism and had no intention of founding the new religion that ended up defaming Jews as God killers – and who finished by supporting Hitler’s genocide. Jesus was not a Christian; from his birth to his death, he was a proud and faithful Jew.

In a sense, then, especially as a theologian in this tradition, I too am somehow a spiritual Semite. Whether they realize it or not, all Christians are. So, in that capacity, please indulge the attempt that follows to shed some biblical light on the dialog centralized here.

What really happened in the Zoom conversation just summarized mirrored exactly the traditional dynamic between on the one hand Jewish prophets like Amos and Jesus, and on the other, their contemporaries, especially among the elite in Amos’ 8^th century BCE and in Jesus’ first century of our era. Both Amos and Jesus (as typical Jewish prophets):

Denounced their nation’s elite in no uncertain terms
Predicted that their crimes would lead to destruction of the entire nation
Were vilified as unpatriotic, self-hating Jews
Were threatened with ostracism, imprisonment and death
And were often (as in the case of Jesus) assassinated for their prophetic words

Put otherwise, the Jewish prophets were social critics – the kind of clear-eyed seers who weren’t afraid to blame the powerful in their own nation for crimes that brought harm, ruin, death and destruction to the entire nation. The prophets did not blame the widows, orphans, foreigners, peasants, unemployed, beggars, prostitutes, or the hobbled and ill. Instead, they unstintingly impugned the equivalents of Germany’s Jewish one percent while recognizing that the crimes of those few inevitably brought ruin, pain, exile and death even to the innocent among their own people. It’s simply the way the world works.

For his part, Amos criticized the wealthy for breaking covenant with Yahweh, their God, the traditional protector of widows, orphans and resident non-Jews. Instead of caring for the poor, the one-percenters, he said, lay on beds of ivory, lounged idly on soft couches, drank the finest wines, anointed themselves with precious perfumes and oils, lived in their luxurious summer houses while underpaying and overcharging the peasant poor. They victimized everyone, even the most innocent. Such crimes brought harm, the prophet warned, to everyone, even the most innocent. Once again, that was simply the law of cause and effect.

Jesus did something similar under the Roman Empire. His prophetic criticism was directed not towards his people’s poor majority; he didn’t blame them. No, he unrelentingly criticized their Jewish exploiters. However, at the same time he knew that the crimes of those powerful would cause untold suffering for everyone. So, he predicted the absolute destruction of Jerusalem where forty years after his death more than one million innocent Jews were slaughtered and nearly 100,000 of his blameless compatriots were captured and enslaved.

To repeat, that’s the way the world works. The blameworthy crimes of the powerful cause suffering, death and massacre for the innocent majority.

Conclusion

Despite what I said about being unqualified to comment on words that seem cruel and insensitive to victimized Jews, I do know something about being tarred with a broad brush. As a Roman Catholic and former priest, I could easily be accused of being part of a worldwide pedophilic ring represented by the priesthood and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. It would even be true to say that the ring has connections to an even wider movement of pedophiles among the world’s elite whose iceberg tip revealed (e.g. in the Epstein scandal) connections with the CIA, mi5, mi6, Mossad, and Mafias of various types throughout the world.

The point here is that as an American, and much more as a former priest, I’ve been deeply associated with horrendous institutional delinquencies that I’d rather not discuss, because they hit too close to my spiritual and cultural identity. In other words, I find in my own community, uncomfortable truths that parallel the “accusations” against the Jewish 1% in Hitler’s Germany. I feel resentment at their very mention.

Nonetheless, and despite my hurt feelings, truth remains truth. And in the spirit of Amos and Jesus, I must face the facts and draw appropriate conclusions. Doing so draws me out of ghettoized consciousness and self-defensive denial. It creates room for self-criticism, dialog and recognitions that might head off further community disaster.