The American Churches and the Role of Fear in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

 

CHRISTIANS FOR FAIR WITNESS ON THE MIDDLE EAST ARTICLE ON THE ROLE OF FEAR IN PERPETUATING THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Sixty three years after the founding of the State of Israel, forty four years after the beginning of the Israeli occupation, and eighteen years after the start of the hope-filled years of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians and Israelis find themselves still unable to come to a negotiated agreement. Locked in an on-going conflict which regularly spills into violence and bloodshed, we are led to ask, what is it that is keeping the Palestinians and Israelis from finding their way to a peaceful solution?

For sure, each side may have a different notion of what a "solution" should look like and each seems at times locked into their own formula for what the parties must be willing to give up. But this is the case at least initially in all conflicts, including those that ultimately prove to be resolvable. What then explains the failure to embrace what it appears both sides long for – a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live and prosper side by side in peace and their children know war no more?

Perhaps it is, even more than a gap in the practical terms of an agreement on "core issues" such as borders, security arrangements, Jerusalem and refugees, the simple, human problem of fear. The fear that both Israelis and Palestinians face when they look at their own lives and then one another across the negotiating table.

How is this fear preventing a resolution of the conflict? And how can the American Churches act to alleviate this fear?

Please visit the front page of our website for a link to the full article:

www.christianfairwitness.com

Showdown in Egyot

The Egyptian shodown can rnd in an army dictatorship or an Islamist dictatorship. Democracy is pobably not in th cards.It never has been in Egypt. What should "we" do? Nothing. We cannot influence evets now, unless we are Eqyptians. The best we can do is shut up. How will it end? Different "experts" have different opinions. See Revolution in Egypt for one attempt an analysis.

 

Anti-Mubarak protesters massing up in Cairo; defense chief seen at Tahrir Square

Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators gather in Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday in an attempt to drive out President Hosni Mubarak after a week and half of pro-democracy demonstrations. (AP) 1 of 3
By HAMZA HENDAWI | AP
Published: Feb 4, 2011 12:05 Updated: Feb 4, 2011 14:28

CAIRO: Protesters are pouring into Cairo's Tahrir Square with supplies of food and water in an attempt to drive out President Hosni Mubarak with a massive protest after a week and half of pro-democracy demonstrations.

State TV says Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi and senior army officials have visited the square, leading to speculations that a dialogue is under way.

The Obama administration says it is in talks with top Egyptian officials about the possibility of Mubarak immediately resigning and the formation of an interim government that could prepare the country for free and fair elections this year.

Soldiers are checking IDs and performing body searches at entrances to the square. Then human chains of protesters perform secondary searches. The atmosphere is relaxed.
Pro-Mubarak crowds that have attacked demonstrators and foreign journalists do not have a visible presence in or near the square Friday morning.

On Thursday, menacing gangs backing Mubarak attacked journalists and human rights activists as government opponents pushed supporters out of Cairo's main square. The new vice president, widely considered the first successor Mubarak has ever designated, fueled anti-foreign sentiment by going on state television and blaming outsiders for fomenting unrest.

The government has accused media outlets of being sympathetic to protesters who want the president to quit now rather than serve out his term, as he has vowed to do.

EU leaders urge dialogue

In Brussels, Belgium, European Union leaders called for a "national dialogue" between the government and opposition in Egypt amid escalating violent protests.

But they shied away on Friday from supporting the Obama administration's effort to persuade Mubarak to step down.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said it was essential that the government and people "move forward together." Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said it would be "gratuitous and arrogant" to call for Mubarak's resignation.

The European Union has had close relations with Cairo as part of its partnerships with Mediterranean nations. It has been criticized for being too timid in supporting pro-democracy demonstrations and for trailing behind the US in distancing itself from the regime.

Options

The creation of a military-backed caretaker government in Egypt is one of several ideas being discussed as anti-Mubarak protests escalate in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic talks that are continuing.

Among those options is a proposal for Mubarak to resign immediately and cede power to a transitional government run by Vice President Omar Suleiman.
White House and State Department spokesmen would not discuss details of the discussions US officials are having with the Egyptians.
"The president has said that now is the time to begin a peaceful, orderly and meaningful transition," said White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor on Thursday night. "We have discussed with the Egyptians a variety of different ways to move that process forward."
Mubarak, 82, told ABC television in an interview that he was fed up and wants to resign. But he said he can't for fear the country would sink into chaos. He said he was very unhappy about the two days of clashes in Tahrir Square.
"I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other," he was quoted as saying.
The violence that had been concentrated in Tahrir spread around the city of 18 million, with a new wave of arson and looting.
Soldiers, mainly protecting government buildings and important institutions, remained passive as they have since replacing police on the streets almost a week ago. Few uniformed police have been seen around the city in that time, and protesters allege some of them have stripped off their uniforms and mixed in with the gangs of marauding thugs.
"When there are demonstrations of this size, there will be foreigners who come and take advantage and they have an agenda to raise the energy of the protesters," Suleiman said on state television.
Pro-government mobs beat foreign journalists with sticks and fists Thursday. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 24 reporters were detained in 24 hours, including representatives of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Twenty-one journalists were assaulted, including two with Fox News.
One Greek journalist was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver, and a photographer was punched in the face, his equipment smashed. The Arabic news network Al-Arabiya pleaded for the army to protect its offices and journalists, and Al-Jazeera said four of its correspondents were attacked. The BBC's foreign editor said security forces had seized the network's equipment in a hotel to stop it broadcasting.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced reports of "systematic targeting" of journalists and the State Department described it as a "concerted campaign to intimidate." "I think we need to be clear that the world is watching the actions that are taking place right now in Egypt," Gibbs said.
Human rights activists were also targeted. Military police stormed the offices of an Egyptian rights group as activists were meeting and arrested at least 30, including two from the London-based Amnesty International, Amnesty spokesman Tom Mackey said. New York-based Human Rights Watch said one of its activists was also among those arrested.
Amnesty's secretary-general Salil Shetty demanded their immediate release saying they should be allowed "to monitor the human rights situation in Egypt at this crucial time without fear of harassment or detention." Mubarak's top ally, the United States, has pressed him to quickly transition to a democratic government but has said his earlier gestures, including forming a new government, were insufficient.
The crisis that began on Jan. 25 when protesters launched the biggest challenge ever to Mubarak's 30-year rule has grown perilous. The day after Mubarak went on television late Tuesday and refused to step down, thousands of his supporters attacked anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square, where they had held a peaceful vigil for days.
The Mubarak supporters started fierce battles with firebombs, machetes and chunks of pavement that lasted throughout the night and all day Thursday.
After nightfall, the fighting died down with protesters' hold on the square and nearby streets unbroken. Nearly 10,000 remained, some dancing and singing in victory as others — battered and bandaged — lay down exhausted to sleep or drank tea in the center of the rubble-strewn roundabout. Throughout the day, they gained in numbers and got supplies of food and medicine.
"Thank God, we managed to protect the whole area," said Abdul-Rahman, a taxi driver who was among thousands who stayed in the square through the night, hunkered down against the thousands besieging the entrances. "We prevented the pro-Mubarak people from storming the streets leading to the square." He refused to give his full name.
At least eight people have been killed and about 900 injured in the two days of fighting around Tahrir.
Many of the square's defenders had cotton padding and grubby bandages dangling from their faces, arms and legs.
Others had chunks of rock stuck to their hair and clumps of dust in their beards. Many had the trimmed beards of Muslim conservatives, a sign of the Muslim Brotherhood's role in the fight. The Brotherhood is the country's largest opposition group but secular groups have led the protests.
Under an onslaught of international condemnation for Wednesday's assault on protesters by pro-Mubarak rioters, the government offered more concessions to the protesters, but that did nothing to calm the fury.
The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force the president out by Friday. The Facebook page that started the protest movement said supporters should gather at noon Friday on all Egyptian squares "so that we can put the last nail in the regime's coffin, and declare the victory of the Jan. 25 revolution." Friday is the weekend in Egypt and millions attend prayers at noon in thousands of mosques across the city.
The top US military officer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, told Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central that he has spoken to his military counterparts in Egypt ahead of Friday's rallies and was reassured they have no intention of firing on their own people.

Mysterious disappearance
Last Friday, there were fierce clashes between protesters and police after prayers. The hated police largely disappeared from the streets of Cairo after the clashes for reasons that remain mysterious. Mubarak, his new vice president and prime minister all promised to get to the bottom of their disappearance.
The attorney-general indicated that the former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who was in charge of the police force when they left the streets, is a suspect in the investigation. He ordered an asset freeze and travel ban against el-Adly and the former housing and tourism ministers, who were among the unpopular millionaire businessmen who dominated the government Mubarak dissolved early Saturday.
In the capital on Thursday, a new wave of looting and arson began, after easing since the weekend. A fire raged in a major supermarket outside Sheikh Zayed, a suburb of the capital, and looters ransacked the building. A residential building neighboring a 5-star hotel on the Nile River corniche burned blocks away from Tahrir. Other fires erupted in the Cairo district of Shubra, north of the center, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The military and the security forces appeared to be doing little to stop the looting or the Tahrir clashes. In the interview, Suleiman said without elaborating that the police had "lost some of its capabilities" and that the army was struggling to fill the void.
Protesters accuse the regime and the ruling party of organizing a force of paid thugs and police in civilian clothes to attack them Wednesday afternoon, sparking the violence that raged until Thursday night.
The prime minister apologized for Wednesday's assault and acknowledged it may have been organized, though he said he didn't know by whom. Suleiman promised that Mubarak's son Gamal would not run in presidential elections in September.
Before the protests, Mubarak was widely expected to try to pass his power to his son in a hereditary succession, despite significant public opposition.
Suleiman also offered to hold negotiations on the country's future even with the regime's biggest domestic enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood. But he also accused the Brotherhood of inciting the violence.
Mubarak's regime has long rejected any talks with the Brotherhood, which calls for an Islamic state in Egypt, and has arrested thousands of its members in the past. The Brotherhood is among the many disparate anti-Mubarak groups organizing the protests, though secular activists have so far dominated the movement. All have rejected any dialogue with the government before Mubarak steps down.
During Thursday's fighting, bands of Mubarak supporters moved through side streets around Tahrir, trading volleys of stone-throwing with the protesters and attacking cars to stop supplies from reaching the protest camp. One band stopped a car, ripped open the trunk and found boxes of juice, water and food, which they took before forcing the driver to flee.
An exodus of foreigners, meanwhile, continued for another day Thursday with the UN evacuating much of its staff.
The vice president said 1 million foreign tourists have fled the country, costing $1 billion in lost revenues from one of Egypt's most important industries

Prophetic Copt letter to President Obama

This letter states:

"To put it bluntly, I fear that something very bad is going to happen to this community in the very near future."

A few days after the letter was written, there was a massacre of Copts in Egypt. Please do your best to make certain Americans and others are aware of the plight of Copts.

Egypt get ver generous American military aid.

The letter seems to indicate that the violence against Copts was not a totally uncontrolled and unforeseen phenomenon. It was part os a carefully orchestrated campaign

Ami Isseroff

Friday, December 24, 2010

Letter from a Coptic Christian

Mike, a Coptic Christian who has immigrated to the United States, has asked Restrain the Blade to publish this letter to President Barack Obama. Out of concern for his safety, only the author's first name is made public.

President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D.C.

Dear President Obama,

I am writing to you as Coptic Christian who immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s.

I am an American citizen.

I have grave concerns about what is going in Egypt regarding the Copts.

To put it bluntly, I fear that something very bad is going to happen to this community in the very near future.

Coptic Christians have been the victims of systematic abuse and oppression in Egypt for a long time. On November 17, 2010, the U.S. Department of State recently issued a report on religious freedom in Egypt that details the abuses they suffer on a daily basis. January of this year, six Coptic Christians were murdered outside their church after celebrating Christmas.

Sadly, I fear another attack will happen again sometime in the near future.

The tendency of blaming the State of Israel for every problem in Egypt, and linking it to the Copts, is on the rise, especially in the past a few months. By associating the Copts with the Jewish state, extremists and government officials are inciting hostility toward a beleaguered, defenseless minority.

The anti-Israel polemic is fairly well known. One official accused recent shark and jellyfish for attacks on swimmers at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Mossad. The alleged goal was to kill the tourism season.

What is less well known is that Muslim Imams throughout the Middle East are demonizing Coptic Christians in Egypt. One oft-repeated claim is that Israel is using Coptic churches to store all kinds of weapons to attack Muslims. Such accusations lead to threats of violence.

For example, Sheik Wagdi Ghoneim recently said in a video message from the State of Qatar "I swear by God, you will not have time stay alive until America and the West arrive, this is for your own good, if you understand. Do you think the Muslims inside Egypt will say thank you and may Allah give you health? "No, by God."

And on September 16, 2010 Mr., Muhammad Salim Al-Awa, Secretary-General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars announced on Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar): Copts Amass Weapons in Egyptian Churches and Are "Preparing for War against the Muslims".

Copts are even being blamed for the violence perpetrated against them by Muslim extremists in Egypt. For example, after a mob of 5,000 Egyptians recently attacked a Christian service building, President's Mubarak former assistant, Dr. Mustafa El- Feki from Ain Shams University stated that Israel and the Copts were at fault for the attack and the two deaths that resulted from it. Dr. El Feki stated that Israel was behind the subsequent protests: ""It is almost certain that the Mossad is involved in these events. The State is dealing with dangerous events that could not have succeeded without external intervention with Israel at its head."

Here, it is important to note why the mob attacked the building in the first place. While the Egyptian government does not allow Christians to build churches, it does allow them to build "service buildings" where social services can be provided to the elderly and to young people in the Coptic Christian community. The mob attacked this service building after hearing rumors that the building itself was going to be used as a church and not merely to provide social services to its members.

Mr. President, in light of numerous acts of incitement and previous acts of violence, I fear that Coptic Christians in Egypt are going to have a very tough Christmas season. I implore you to use your good offices to insist that the Egyptian government protect the rights of its Christian citizens.

For reasons of my own safety, I can only sign my first name, but nevertheless, I offer wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I ask that you use your influence to make sure Christians in Egypt can celebrate their holidays in safety.

Michael
Dec. 24, 2010

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East Strongly Criticizes Rabbinical Ruling in Israel

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East Strongly Criticizes

Rabbinical Ruling in Israel

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East strongly criticizes a recent ruling issued by dozens of Israeli Orthodox rabbis against selling or renting property to non-Jews and praises the Israeli government for joining in that criticism.

"In a moment in history when we are all hoping that peace is finally coming to the Israelis and Palestinians, this sort of racist commentary is most unfortunate," according to Msgr. Dennis L. Mikulanis, STD, Vicar for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego and Fair Witness Executive Committee member.

"We were therefore deeply heartened by the immediate and overwhelming outcry from so many sectors of Israeli society," said Rev. Dr. Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, also a member of the Executive Committee of Fair Witness. "Not only the expected Israeli civil rights groups are outraged. PM Benjamin Netanyahu himself blasted the ruling, making it clear that it was inconsistent with democratic values and contrary to Israeli policy. Israeli Minority Affairs Minister Avishay Braverman called on the attorney general to launch an investigation into incitement to racism and the attorney general's office is indeed looking into possible criminal charges. Other rabbis have joined in the protest. The President of Tzohar, an organization of Orthodox rabbis in Israel, made clear that discrimination had no place in the Jewish state. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the top rabbinic authority for many ultra-Orthodox Jews, also weighed in against it."

"Thankfully this rabbinic ruling is not the law in Israel, and we would like to believe that its disturbing intolerance is not reflective even of the wider ultra Orthodox community," said Rev. Dr. Peter A. Pettit, Director of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding at Muhlenberg College and Fair Witness member. "We are equally mindful of the fact that a combination of laws in the Palestinian legal system make it unlawful to sell property to Jews, with a possible penalty of death for violations. Particularly at this point in history, both Israeli and Palestinian political leaders must take strong and courageous steps to lessen the level of fear generated by any such expressions of racism or intolerance among their people."

Hanukkah: The pride & the pity

The traditional Hanukkah story is a source of pride for the Jewish people. We are taught that a small army of freedom fighters, the Maccabees, led by the heroic priestly family of Mattathias and his seven sons, successfully resisted the cruel pagan tyranny of the ancient Greco-Syrian Seleucid dynasty. This is not untrue, but it's only part of the story.

We are usually not taught the far more complex reality that the Maccabean war of liberation was also a civil war between rural “fundamentalist” religious adherents of the old order and the more educated and cosmopolitan Hellenized Jews of the city, who voluntarily and eagerly embraced the Greek culture of the Syrian empire. The Maccabees surely killed many of these “liberal” Jews in their struggle.

It is ironic that the Hasmonean family— the Maccabees’ ruling dynasty— within one generation of their victory for Jewish values over Hellenism, was taking Greek names, speaking Greek and transforming Judea into a Jewish Hellenistic kingdom. These rulers alienated the masses of the Jewish people by extreme acts of cruelty and debauchery. Their military prowess ultimately undermined their rule, as conquered peoples were converted to Judaism by the sword; Herod emerged from one such Judaized people to marry his way into the Hasmonean clan and murder them into extinction. Herod’s disastrously bloody reign led to Judea’s disintegration as an independent state and its domination by Rome.

Nevertheless, the Maccabees were brave and valiant warriors who did in fact win great victories over a powerful and authoritarian foreign enemy. But to take this snapshot in time as the whole picture is to accept a one-dimensional myth. For some of the reasons mentioned, Rabbinic Judaism accorded Hanukkah a minor religious status. (For example, although obligated to light the Menorah for eight nights, there is no requirement for religious Jews to refrain from work.)

When considered within its historic context of bloody Jewish civil wars and despotic rule, both embedded within the Hanukkah story and in the eventual downfall of Judea within its wake, Hanukkah provides a cautionary tale. Fifteen years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, we should be warned against the dangers of fratricidal hatred, of demonizing our political foes, and of failing to understand the need at times for compromise and accommodation. Enjoy the holiday, but please make note of this history.

Glenn Beck, Soros & political paranoia

For such a small minority, it is amazing that Jews figure prominently on all sides of great economic and political debates.  We've got Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Misses on the laissez-faire right; we've got Jewish neocons; we've got Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernancke at the Federal Reserve; and Bob Rubin and Larry Summers left over from the Clinton administration--with Robert Reich, also a Clinton alum, on their left flank. Then of course, we've got the old-line Jewish banking families, like Rothschild, Lehman, Goldman, Schiff, Warburg, Loeb and a few others.  Not to mention the Jewish commies like Trotsky, Luxembourg (and Marx, of course, at least at his birth). 

Since these Jews are of all colors (politically speaking), shouldn't this refute Jewish conspiracy theorists? Instead, it likely reinforces antisemitic notions of Jews as all-powerful.  And antisemitic tropes are again seeping into anti-Federal Reserve and anti-Wall Street attitudes.

Glenn Beck's analysis is quite nutty and inadvertently borders on antisemitism (I believe it's inadvertent).  His attacks on the "demonic" influence of George Soros are truly idiotic, and his notion that this boyhood survivor of the Holocaust worked with the Nazis is outrageous.  For one thing, Jewish collaborators were virtually all eventually murdered anyway (it was just a matter of when for the Nazis).  For another, what on earth could a mere boy do for them anyway?

Haaretz columnist Carlo Strenger has just posted a new piece on the Huffington Post that addresses right-wing populist conspiratorial thinking.  While focusing upon Beck's obsession with Soros, Strenger also touches upon other international manifestations, including Avigdor Lieberman in Israel.

The "Rogue Israel" debate that should never have taken place

This is sort of cross-posted or rather excerpted and adapted from Israel News.  I know others wrote about Gabriel Latner and the "Israel is a rogue state" debate, but I think they missed the main point, didn't they? The fact that the question was put to a debate at all, and came close to being accepted, is prett frightning  

 

 

The rogue debate about Israel

The bad news about 19 year old Gabriel Latner is that he is not a gentleman. It seems he didn't play fair in a debate about the proposition "Israel is a rogue state" held by the Cambridge University Cambridge Union in the UK. The proposition itself is ungentlemanly of course. It rather like holding a debate on "How often do you beat your wife?"

Gabriel Latner argued against the proposition, even though he had enlisted as a supporter. Supposedly that is not what got him barred from the Cambridge Union. He is reported to have told his opponent Lauren Booth, "I am going to nail you to the fucking wall up there." After the debate, he refused to apologize to her. If he really did all that, then he is no gentleman, of course.  Booth is Tony Blair's sister-in-law, a convert to Islam, a journalist and avid supporter of Hamas. We should always treat bigots and advocates of genocide with courtesy.

Part of the good news is that the proposition was defeated, a rarity in UK academia. YNET reported the event. The win was probably due to the skill of the pro-Israel team and not to Latner's efforts. In the UK, a proposition that Israel is a rogue state is a close call that requires the best British brains to examine whether Israel is better or worse than Iran under Ahmadinejad for example, or Sudan or Libya. The proposition was only defeated narrowly, 53 to 47%, by reports.

Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss reflexively attacked Latner as a "neoconservative," par for the course, and tried to blame the win on Latner's tactics. His headline read, "Cambridge debate on Israel is undermined by wily neocon (is that redundant?)." It never occurred to Philip Weiss that the proposition "Israel is a rogue state" ought to be defeated in any debate not held in a closed ward. In a reasonable world, respectable academics would not even raise the question, and people like Booth would not be invited to debate it. Perhaps Latner's tactics helped, or maybe they hurt.

Israel bashers are not known for telling the truth, Latner did not necessarily win the debate for the pro-Israel side, and he is not a neo-conservative.

Another bit of  good news is that Phillip Weiss fell into his own trap. So sure was he that Latner must fit the Weiss stereotype of the religious fanatic conservative warmonger Zionist, that he invited him to an email debate and, after mauling them as best he could by removing paragraphing and probably by selective quotes, Weiss  actually published the answers and the text of Latner's remarks at the debate. Next step for Weiss is to get Latner drunk in a bar and then film his answers to touchy questions about Israel. Not very gentlemanly, but that is the sort of thing Mondoweiss does.

Despite Weiss's probable mauling of Latner's words and obvious cheap journalistic tricks, Latner came through rather well.

Latner is a 19 year old Canadian agnostic with a life long attachment to Israel and Zionism. He is precisely the sort of young Jewish academic Zionist that Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss and the Israel basher lobby claim does not exist. Zionists, by the received Gospel according to Mondoweiss and company, are all superannuated religious fanatic and conservatives.

Here is Latner in his own words, as reported by Mondoweiss:

"I am not a neocon. I have absolutely no patience for any ideology that promotes the use of military force in any situation where the preservation of human life does not demand it."

Weiss's comment on this is worthy of the prosecution in a Nazi trial of a Jew:

Latner's defense is like someone who volunteered for Heidi Fleiss saying that they believe in abstinence.

A Zionist must be guilty by definition, no matter what he says. Heidi Fleiss is a well-known madam. What does that make Weiss?

Weiss also obsessed about the fact that Latner was a volunteer with Sar-El, an organization which supports the IDF. The IDF has to be bad, right?? It defends Israel. Weiss has no problem, presumably, with Booth's support of the genocidal Hamas terrorists. We can be sure they are not Zionist, and Booth is not a Zionist, right? Nobody went into the minutiae of Weiss's past and his various public positions, in the way that he questioned Latner, but I bet that would make interesting reading. It would probably be irrelevant.  That sort of argument is called ad hominem.  It is dirty pool. Not gentlemanly.

Here is why Latner supports Israel, in his own words:

As for my attachment to Zionism, that's harder to answer. I'm not sure how 'attached' a person can be to an ideology (I'm not being sophistic here, I'm just not very good at philosophy). I did go to a non-sectarian Jewish school for three years. I was dubbed an 'apikoros' by the staff. [free-thinker] I was raised by fairly secular Jewish parents in Reconstructionist Judaism. I'd consider myself 'Jewish' as a matter of culture and heritage…

My personal beliefs on 'Zionism' are fairly simple: I believe Israel has a right to exist, and to secure itself. I believe the Palestinians, Tibetans, Taiwanese, Kurds, and every other stateless population has the right to a homeland. I think that the last 150 years of conflict in the Middle East (let alone the last four or five millennia) is far too complicated for anyone but a scholar to understand. I think there is enough blame to go around. Israel is wrong when it permits settlements to be built. I think it made a mistake when it kept the Gaza Strip after '67. I was happy when Israel pulled out of the occupied territories. Then again, I am constantly afraid for my friends in family living there. Israel does face a serious threat. But I think every time Israel overreacts, new extremists are born. So yes, I could be considered a 'Zionist', but I think that term has been hijacked to a degree. I'm pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and pro-Peace.

Latner let down the side here  (maybe he did not, what did Weiss hide in the ellipses??). But he can't duck the accusation: He is a Zionist. Guilty as charged.

Weiss also reported , or claims to have reported, Latner's debate remarks. He admits that he mauled the remarks by removing paragraphs, using this lame excuse:

I lose paragraphs when I transfer copy from one program to another and don't have the time to stick them in

Would you believe this? With all the resources of "The Nation" magazine at his command, Weiss can't find software that will not maul someone's text. Funny thing, but all us mendicant bloggers never lose any paragraphing unless we want to do so. Weiss would not allow this to be done to his own text, of course. He is telling us, "The computer ate my homework." Some other things might have been "lost" in this way...

[ Read The rogue debate about Israel at Israel News for Latner's debate remarks.]

Latner used reasonable arguments, though he could possibly have found more in the Israel Advocacy Handbook.

That is hardly the point. Can anyone believe this proposition was ever debated??? It is certainly hard to believe that the proposition, "Israel is a rogue state," almost won. At any rate, the incident proves that there really are young liberal Zionists, though Weiss and company would have us believe they do not exist, and though the word "Zionism" has been hi-jacked as Latner notes.

Here is the really bad news: The campaign for delegitimization of Israel has been a resounding success if the proposition  "Israel is a rogue state" can be debated seriously in a western university. The proposition that Iran is a rogue state would not even come up for debate.

The brainwashing propaganda of Mondoweiss and "The Nation" magazine and the other Hamas groupies  has scored a great success if someone like Latner thinks he has to use subterfuges to defend Israel, and has to apologize for being a Zionist. Weiss and his Hamas groupie friends have made Zionism into a dirty word, haven't they? Weiss and Lauren Booth don't think they have to apologize for supporting the Hamas. Isn't that strange?? Genocide and racism are respectable, but Zionism is not.

Hat tips: Elder of Ziyon wrote about this as Why Israel is a Rogue State (Gabriel Latner). The Balfour Street blog just called it "Why Israel is a Rogue State" and Ray Cook called it "Gabriel – arch, but no angel. How a Cambridge student defended Israel."

Ami Isseroff