Pro-Israel in San Diego - Remembering Gilad Shalit

The San Diego Israel Coalition held a rally for Gilad Shalit, in captivity for four years.
Here's a video of NBC TV News coverage - Gilad Shalit Rally in San Diego




It is quite a coup for a brand new organization to get network news coverage for their event. Watch these folks and learn!

In San Diego Jewish News, Tinanarie Bernard reports about the San Diego Israel Coalition :

As I contemplate the efforts of those within Israeli’s borders to advocate for religious freedom for Jews, I know some readers might question the importance of the topic. Certainly in the wake of the Gaza flotilla incident that left many of us outraged at an apparently botched effort, rightly commissioned, but imperfectly enacted, it seems that addressing Israel’s global PR problem is as pressing an issue.

Should Israel fix her image abroad before dealing with a lack of pluralism? Will pushing back on a rigid rabbinate — by carving space for Reform, Conservative and other non-Orthodox Jewry, even converts — make a difference in the long-term security of Israel? Or does Israel need to engage the Diaspora in better ways, educating Jews abroad to assist her in her right to defend her citizens?

After learning more about a new organization, the answers to all are a hopeful yes. Two newly formed organizations, one in San Diego, the other in Israel, are lending their might to both of these efforts.

Following the now infamous flotilla incident, a new group has formed in San Diego — the San Diego Israel Coalition — to discuss what individuals can do locally to support Israel. Before the Coalition even formed, the group, eager to support Israel amid local pro-Palestinian rallies, managed to do something small, remarkable and upwardly focused: they, along with Morris Casuto of the Anti-Defamation League, organized a peaceful pro-Israel counter rally. The counter rally drew local press and helped empower the local community to take back the dialogue from an increasingly noisy and hostile media.

“We took the other side by surprise and motivated hundreds of San Diegans that there was a place for them to stand up and show their support for Israel,” said Audrey Jacobs, who, along with Michael Lurie, is organizing the group.

Due to the overwhelmingly positive response, Jacobs and Lurie formed the San Diego Israel Coalition, “a grassroots, passionate, inclusive pro-Israel group focused on powerful and peaceful Israel advocacy in San Diego, working in partnership with all local pro-Israel organizations,” Jacobs said.

By the time this article goes to print, they will have had their first community-wide meeting to mobilize future actions.

“The State of Israel…will ensure complete equality of social and political rights of all its inhabitants irrespective of religion…it will guarantee freedom of religion and conscience.”

Noble words that echo the familiar tenets of America’s promise put forth by our own founding fathers; indeed, constitutionalists have argued that religious tolerance, even freedom from religion, is paramount to a thriving democracy. But as the organizers behind Hiddush.com state, there is a gap between what is written on paper and what many Israeli citizens experience on a day-to-day basis.

They further note that a close alliance between religion and politics, even in a Jewish state, has led to the creation of laws that “undermine democracy, human dignity and civil liberties.”

Hiddush.com points to other complicating factors in the failure to build a pluralistic society. Not only are the ultra-religious less likely to enter the workforce and more likely to require lifetime state aid, but “approximately 25 percent of Jewish boys study in state-funded ultra-Orthodox educational institutions which illegally refuse to incorporate core studies into their curriculum. These schools either do not teach or teach very little civics, mathematics and English. Worse, they often transmit the message that democracy is incompatible with Jewish values.”

That is another reason why the work of the San Diego Israel Coalition is so important. Both efforts are historic; they are necessary to create the global paradigm shift of thinking that, if accomplished, will strengthen both Judaism and Israel. They go beyond just religion and they address a broader purpose, one about which we don’t really have a choice: If we want to be safe, we’ve got to be strong and unified.

For more information on the San Diego Israel Coalition, email Audrey Jacobs at sdisraelcoalition(at)gmail.com.

Way to go!

Ami Isseroff

The real Arab agenda

An Arab Israeli Druze discusses the Arab agenda, and focuses on Middle East problems that are never discussed because of the almost exclusive focus on Israel. This is a very different Arab voice from the ones you are used to hearing.

He describes Arab human rights violations, murder, torture, disfiguring attacks with acid, pedophilia, cruelty to gays and to animals among other unpleasant faces of reality.

UPDATE: Video was removed and replaced with a better version!

Link

Conspiracy theory Gem: Iranian opposition leader Mousavi is a Jew

It was inevitable that someone would claim that Mousavi is a Jew. That explains everything. Now we know who is responsible for all the problems in Iran. International Zionism.

Update - Sorry folks. Though Iranian government is blaming the riots on the international something or other and though some people are insisting the CIA is behind this, this particular theory was posted as a hoax and I've been had. See here.

MOUSAVI (of Moses) is a Jew

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Giti from India sends me this conspiracy gem;

It is well known Mousavi (of Moses) is a Jew and the demonstrations in Iran are the work of Mossad agent provocateurs. The ordinary people of Iran are peace loving and would not wish to threaten the Islamic revolution. The agitators are funded by international zionism and the Jew owned international media, in thrall to the zionist oppressors, are running alongside.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Zionism

Zionism is now a "four letter word." This came about because anti-Zionists have used it extensively in slogans like "Zionism is Racism."  Real Zionists became ashamed of the word "Zionism," and decided that it was outmoded, while a few extremists adopted the term to apply only to themselves - advocates of Greater Israel, supporters of Rabbi Kahana and apologists for Yigal Amir (assassin of PM Rabin).

 

This blog entry about Zionism  from Fresno Zionism spells it out. Someone actually told the blogger:

 

...your blog is really interesting…but don't you think calling it Fresno Zionism turns off a lot of possible readers?"  

 

The result of the villification of "Zionism" is evident when you search Google for the keyword "Zionism." A lot of the pages that Google displays are anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic, because real Zionists are often afraid to use the word.

 

As Fresno Zionism writes, calling the blog "Zionism" is meant to make a point:

 

to take ownership of the concept of Zionism from those who use it as a term of abuse.

 

He also notes:

 

What I'm struggling to do is in effect to say "This is a Zionist point of view" (not the Zionist point of view, a Zionist point of view).

 

That is a very important point as well. Those who are presenting Zionism need to do it proudly, but to make it clear that they are usually representing their own view of Zionism, not "Zionism."

Ami Isseroff

One sided Anti-Zionism at UCSC

The anti-Israel lobby is at work again. On March 15, UCSC faculty sponsored a conference on narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where speaker after speaker propounded the usual racist anti-Zionist propaganda, with nobody there to reply:

The first speaker was David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, who spoke on “Racial Palestinianization”. Goldberg claimed that Israel was, from its inception, a racist entity, which used its racist state policies to protect the purity of the Jewish race and exclude and oppress the Palestinians. In his talk and accompanying slide presentation, Goldberg explicitly and implicitly linked Israel’s current state policies and practices to those of the Nazis. Goldberg concluded his talk by asserting that Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians was part of a race war begun by Israel in order to rid the land of a despised racial
group, and that within such a context, suicide bombing was an understandable and
even fair response.

Judith Butler, a professor in the departments of Rhetoric and Comparative iterature at UC Berkeley, was the second speaker. Her talk was entitled “Hidden Histories of Post- Zionism”. Basing herself in part on the writings of Edward Said and in part on those of Jewish thinkers in the first half of the 20th century such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt, Butler claimed that Zionism was a racist and therefore illegitimate ideology, and she argued for the creation of a secular democratic bi-national state, which would replace the Jewish State...

The third speaker was Hilton Obenzinger, Associate Director for Honors and advanced Writing at the Stanford Writing Center. His talk, entitled “Jewish Opposition to the Occupation Since 1967, A Personal and Public Journey“, was... primarily a personal account of how, after growing up in a Zionist Jewish home, benzinger became an anti- Zionist activist who opposed the Jewish State and advocated Palestinian causes. Obenzinger also described and decried the opposition within the Jewish community to his anti-Israel pro-Palestinian efforts.

Terri Ginsberg, an adjunct professor at Purchase College, was the fourth speaker. In her talk, “Holocaust Film and Zionism: Exposing a Collaboration”, Ginsburg drew heavily upon the writings of Norman Finkelstein in claiming that Holocaust films have facilitated and justified the propagation of a racist Zionist ideology, which has resulted in the oppression, ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians. She noted that her ideas were very unpopular both in the academy and in the Jewish community, and she accused those who would discredit her work of being “McCarthyites”.

The fifth and final speaker was Ryvka Bar Zohar, a graduate student at NYU, whose talk was entitled “A History of Zionism and the Politics of Divestment”. Bar Zohar presented her own ideas about the history of Zionism, arguing that the ideology grew out of the attempt of Eastern European Jews to recover from the “shame” of the Diaspora and the Holocaust by finding pride in domination. According to her analysis, Zionism was an essentially racist doctrine, which led to the creation of an apartheid state. Bar Zohar used her analysis to argue that the movement to divest from Israel was a justified and effective strategy for mounting an opposition to Zionism for all anti-Zionist and anti-apartheid activists.

Any attempt to introduce balance in such events is reviled as "McCarthyism," "Muzzling" and the works of the infamous "Israel Lobby."

A complete report is given here.

Israel and Palestine: Who is winning the propaganda war?

Extremist groups that have tried to boycott Israel won some successes, but lately, they seem to be having more and more failures (see here). First, the Presbyterian church reversed its unfair divestment stance. Then ISM campaigns to boycott Israeli exports and stop the Israel-England Euroleague qualifier failed as well.

Perhaps these are special cases. People who try to stop others from sending flowers on Valentine's day (or any other time) have no poetry in their soul. People who won't play fair in sports matches are humorless fanatics. But then, people who advocating blowing up others are not too nice anyhow. More about boycotts here.