by Bill Narvey
The majority of international opinion is anti-Israel and all too often, antisemitic.
That anti-Israelism has been voiced and acted on by a majority of nations and national collectives such as the European Union (EU) or the 57 Muslim UN member nations of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
It has long been the status quo at the UN and its many agencies such as UNRWA, UNESCO and the UNHRC that stack their leadership with anti-Israel and antisemitic representatives.
That anti-Israelism is also contributed to by countless organizations, most with a global reach.
These include anti-Israel Non-governmental organizations that are largely funded by anti-Israel governments: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/
There are also countless other unwavering pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel activist organizations, mostly Muslim, but also many Christian and non-religious that revel in anti-Israelism. Most of these support for instance, the notoriously antisemitic BDS movement.
All these nations, international bodies and agencies such as the UN and these countless anti-Israel organizations make up The United Anti-Israel States of the World.
In stark contrast, Jews’ views on Israel are marked by disunity, spanning the full gamut from those who in well informed fashion are fearlessly supportive of Israel to many small, usually marginal left wing groups that sanctimoniously cloak themselves in the nobility of talking human rights and peace while ignobly joining the Israel and Jew haters to unreservedly support Palestinians and falsely demonize Israel.
Between those spectrum ends are Jews who while generally supportive of Israel, openly criticize specific Israeli policies that do not align with their own secular ideological socio-political views. Some of their criticisms at times however, do align with those of anti-Israel factions.
Some involved in interfaith-intercommunity outreach to Christians and Muslims, if they dare to speak out against anti-Israelism voiced by those they are reaching out to or by an interfaith partner, they typically do so in muted tones muffled by political correctness, fear that coming on too strong in defending Israel will undermine their outreach efforts or both.
This varied disunited reaction from leaders and grass roots Jews in the face of pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel and often antisemitic activism, warrants characterizing K’lal Yisrael as The Disunited State of the Jews.
This disunity was recently exemplified in the microcosm of Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada when one John Longhurst wrote an op-ed on October 28th, 2017 in the faith section of the Winnipeg Free Press, Taking a Bold Stand on Israel. That article can be found at the “On Faith Canada” website otherwise titled as: In Palestine, “Everyone Needs a Home” says Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)http://onfaithcanada.blogspot.
The MCC is a global organization with offices in North America including Winnipeg.
Longhurst by his op-ed, gave MCC leaders a soap box to lay out the major points of MCC’s global current pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel Cry for Home Campaign https://mcccanada.ca/learn/
– Illegally occupying Palestinian land of the West Bank and East Jerusalem;
– Engaging in a concerted practice of oppressing Palestinians by confiscating Palestinian land to build illegal Israeli settlements;
– Regularly demolishing Palestinian homes, schools and orchards with impunity;
– Restricting Palestinian movement by checkpoints, walls, and permit systems;
– Inflicting terrible injustices on Palestinians including bullying, silencing and imprisoning them and
– Trampling on the human rights of even Palestinian children by conducting widespread systematic ill treatment and torture of Palestinian children.
Where the MCC is coming from in this regard, is no place good.
These MCC pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel accusations echo the maliciously false accusations spewing forth from the United Anti-Israel States of the World.
Anti-Israel NGO funders are listed at: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/
The MCC A Cry for Home site, has various sections that expand on its anti-Israel accusations, offering a mix of out of context facts, statistics, half truths, a recounting of history spun to accord with Palestinian false narratives, propaganda and accusations against Israel and dubious anti-Israel conclusions.
MCC thus disingenuously frames the Israel-Palestinian conflict as one of Palestinians being the virtuous innocent suffering victims of Israel’s cruel and evil oppression.
For instance, MCC, like its fellow Israel demonizers, repeats like a mantra, the bald faced accusation that Israel is in illegal occupation of the Palestinian land being the West Bank and East Jerusalem and thus Israeli settlements are illegal.
MCC, like all who share anti-Israel views, assiduously ignore so they won’t have to deal with, the many cogent analyses referencing facts, history and international law that dispute that accusation. These analyses instead make a compelling case for the opposite conclusion or at least that these are disputed lands awaiting division between Israel and Palestinians as a part of an overall peace agreement to be reached by direct negotiations.
Several of such analyses are: Breaking Down the ‘Israeli Occupation’ Myth http://www.dailywire.com/news/
Further, MCC ignores that Palestinian leaders today are inspired by their historic bigoted Islamist Jew-Israel hatred. Theirs is the dream for peace of the grave wherein they will ultimately destroy Israel, eradicate Jews from the region and take all that land for themselves.
It is thus no wonder Palestinians have rejected every Israeli peace proposal that necessarily required Palestinians to recognize and accept the Jewish State of Israel.
Further, Palestinian leaders continue to use their historical Islamist Jew-Israel hatred to incite their people to commit terrorism against innocent Israelis, which is another truth MCC and the international anti-Israel cartel ignores.
MCC, presumably with the intent of credibly denying that it is antisemitic, makes a point of saying that the MCC opposes BDS.
Further, with the same apparent objective in mind, MCC Executive Director Rick Cober Baumann while acknowledging MCC’s Campaign will be troubling to some Jews, is quoted, expressing MCC’s care and concern for those Israelis “who are also harmed by the words, walls, and weapons that divide them from Palestinians.”
MCC’s statements ring hollow.
By Cober-Baumann’s statement, it appears that the only Israelis MCC seems to care about are those whose views are aligned with MCC’s anti-Israelism.
MCC’s declared opposition to BDS, also rings hollow for MCC’s Campaign repeats the same vile anti-Israel accusations made by BDS, the Palestinians and their vast array of supportive nations, NGO’s and other organizations.
Furthermore, just last year, the Mennonite Church Canada (MCCanada) passed a resolution declaring its support for BDS. See: Mennonite Church Canada supports BDS resolution https://bdscoalition.ca/2016/
Quoting spokesperson Epp-Tiessen, MCC also wraps itself in its Christian faith and love of Jesus saying: “Our commitment to Jesus compels us to stand with the oppressed, lovingly speak truth to power, and actively seek a just peace in the land where Jesus walked,”.
What MCC calls speaking truth to power, is their using the bully pulpit of The United Anti-Israel States of the World to falsely demonize Israel as aforesaid.
As for Jesus, he was born a Jew, did much of his walking and ministering in and ultimately died as a Jew in the land of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem, which after 1949 Jordan renamed the West Bank to erase any memory of the Jews’ biblical and historical connection to that land.
MCC’s pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel advocacy reveals that it wants that memory to remain erased and to supplant it with the false bald faced talking point memory that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are Palestinian lands.
Would Jesus have falsely denounced his own nation Israel as a pariah as MCC and some Churches do?
Falsely maligning anyone or any nation hardly seems to be the Christian thing to do. Someone should tell MCC.
Longhurst, appears to have conflated MCC’s Christian religious faith with its mendacious biased pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel political views. Perhaps, it is not that, but rather a matter of the MCC having done that conflating all by itself.
Whatever the truth, MCC’s Pro-Arab-Palestinian-Anti-
There are many historical accounts of Mennonite’s and MCC’s views and activism in this regard, one being Dexter Van Zile’s, Key Mennonite Institutions against Israel http://jcpa.org/article/key-
There are also accounts of Mennonite antisemitism and collaboration with the Nazis, such as A window into Antisemitism and Nazism among Mennonite in North America, Part 1 https://themennonite.org/
Further, The Sabeel Foundation, a Palestinian Christian Liberation organization known for its antisemitic based anti-Israelism https://www.ngo-monitor.org/
MCC lists one of its partners among others as KAIROS which organizations’ views, activities and associations judged antisemitic by many, are canvassed at: https://www.ngo-monitor.org/
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) published an informative piece discrediting Kairos’ anti-Israel-antisemitic inspired document that it sought to have adopted by all mainstream Christian churches. A Rebuttal to the Kairos Document http://cija.ca/a-rebuttal-to-
Concurrent with MCC’s A Cry For Home Campaign, the MCC recently advertised and put on a conference in Ontario: Peace Conference in Ontario on November 16th, 2017 https://mcccanada.ca/get-
The MCC Conference featured 3 speakers, the most eye catching being David Mivisair who is described as a “Reconstructionist Rabbi who is active in the leadership of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) in Canada and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in the US.”
IJV-JVP and its members claim they are only concerned with social justice and international human rights including Palestinian human rights, which they accuse Israel of trampling while focusing most efforts on hurling the same kind of invective against Israel that MCC does, along with countless others as aforesaid.
Longhurst at the conclusion of his article invited Winnipeg Jews to provide him with their reactions to his op-ed Taking a Bold Stand on Israel that laid out MCC’s many accusations against Israel as hereinbefore summarized.
Jewish disunity as regards Israel is hardly a secret. Longhurst had to know that when he called for Jewish reaction to MCC’s anti-Israel Campaign as summarized in his first op-ed.
Of all those Jews who answered his call, Longhurst chose to use the responses of seven Winnipeg Jews, including a Winnipeg Jewish Federation leader, whose names and views are set out in Longhurst’s article of November 10th, 2017 “Opinions Differ Over Campaign” in the Free Press. This op-ed is also published under the title Mennonite Central Committee’s Cry for Home Campaign: Some Jewish Views on the On Faith Canada site: http://onfaithcanada.blogspot.
Three responders were supportive of Israel, but did not directly dispute any of MCC’s anti-Israel accusations, at least not in what Longhurst quoted of their responses.
The strongest pro-Israel statement Longhurst quoted that did generally challenge MCC’s views, was: “MCC misapprehends the true intent of the Palestinian leadership which is to destroy Israel.” by Rabbi Alan Green of Congregation Shaarey Zedek.
For the middle ground, Longhurst quotes Belle Jarniewski, Chair of the Freeman Foundation of Holocaust Education Centre and who is also President of Manitoba Multifaith Council.
Jarniewski stated she opposes the occupation and accuses Israel of having committed some, but not all injustices. Without specificity, however, her words can be taken as more corroborative than disputing of the MCC’s specific demonizing anti-Israel accusations. Jarniewski adds that she finds the MCC campaign “frustrating” because it is “singling out Israel again.”. “Frustrating”? That’s it?
The other 3 Jewish Winnipegers Longhurst identifies and quotes are all cut from the same anti-Israel cloth, agreeing with MCC’s pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel Campaign that falsely accuses Israel as previously noted.
Two of those, a Harold Shuster and a Mark Golden, are both known members of and spokespersons for the Winnipeg chapter of IJV that supports the antisemitic BDS movement and Israel Apartheid Week. In 2014, for instance as members of IJV, they both participated in Israel Apartheid Week at the Universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg: http://www.wcaia.ca/wp-
Rubin Kantorovich, if he is not also a member of IJV, makes clear he is aligned with the anti-Israel views of IJV and MCC.
IJV and its members are entitled to their good opinion of themselves regarding their pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel efforts and their view that they are not antisemitic.
Others of course are equally entitled to conclude otherwise. Consider: Canadian “Independent Jewish Voices” supports antisemitic conspiracy theories, linked to Holocaust denial article. http://elderofziyon.blogspot.
Consider as well the content of the IJV Canada website http://ijvcanada.org/ . Many, if not most reviewing that site will know that IJV is a singularly pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel organization and that by the anti-Israel-antisemitic company it keeps and supports, such as the antisemitic BDS movement, IJV is very likely also antisemitic no matter how much they may deny it.
So why does MCC see fit to partner with IJV, Sabeel, Kairos and many other organizations whose anti-Israelism often easily meetsSharansky’s 3-D test of antisemitism – double standard, demonization and delegitimization?
Does the MCC, like the IJV really need to be reminded of the pithy truism: ‘when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is a duck.’ ?
Given the 3 Jewish anti-Israel views supporting the mendacious MCC anti-Israel Campaign, the 1 feeble waffling Jewish response and the 3 pro-Israel Jewish responses which failed to directly challenge and discredit any of MCC’s anti-Israel accusations, Winnipegers reading both of Longhursts articles, likely will be led to conclude that MCC’s false demonizing accusations against Israel, have at least some credibility and are thus justified in part, if not in whole.
This Longhurst report on how Winnipeg Jews responded to MCC’s heavily biased anti-Israel Campaign thus exemplifies The Disunited State of the Jews and illustrates how that disunity only serves to give credibility to and thus strengthen The United Anti-Israel States of the World.
Sad!
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