The mindset may sound Saudi, but the tongue speaks Hebrew!!

It is always amusing to see how traditional Jewish clergy are as messed up as the worst of the Muslim clergy and fanatics. And with hundreds of thousand of fundamentalist Jews occupying Palestinian occupied territories of the West bank, it is worthwhile exposing who these people are.
The average person in the US truly believes that in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the Israeli side represents the good guy; the side that is more like up, the enlightened one that are working hard to make the decent green, respect others religions and ethenicities, and believe in democracy and equality for women.

But, of course, the average American who knows very little about his or her own political system, is hardly expected to know the intricacies of the orthodox Jewish traditions, especially the tradition of those who occupy the West Bank,harassing and shoot at Palestinians, and have the Israeli army protect their illegal outposts and settlement, funded by our tax dollars. And all is in the name of a God that made a promise to give them the land because they are special.

Their racism, hatred and tribal and ethnocentric dogma may not bother many here in the US, considering that many in the US would find excuses for Israeli settlers in their 'moral' battle against the 'savage' Arabs.

What most in the US would not find palatable is their attitude toward women, reminiscent of and in many case more backward than, traditional Saudi attitudes towards women.

This article I read on the BBC Online is about that, and I thought it is worth sharing it with you.

The chief rabbi of a West Bank settlement has prohibited women from standing in a local community election.

Rabbi Elyakim Levanon of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, said women lacked the authority to stand for the post of local secretary.
The rabbi made his comments in the community's newspaper after an unidentified young woman wrote to him asking if she could run for the position of community secretary, the Israeli news website Ynet News said: "I am a young woman and I think I have desire and energy to do things," Ynet News quoted the woman as writing to Rabbi Levanon.
But in his weekly column, Rabbi Levanon wrote that, according to the teachings of influential rabbis, women were not allowed to apply for the position.
"The first problem is giving women authority, and being a secretary means having authority," Rabbi Levanon wrote in the community's newspaper.
"Within the family certain debates are held and when opinions are united the husband presents the family's opinion. This is the proper way to prevent a situation in which the woman votes one way and her husband votes another," he wrote.
He also said it was not appropriate for women to mix with men in late evening meetings of community leaders.

And for many traditional Saudi clerics -- that Americans think of as having 'caveman mentality' -- that is music to their ears.

Khaled

Links:

West Bank rabbi bans women from local election

Is that cellular phone Kosher?

Orthodox strife grips Jerusalem

And for n never ending list of examples for other things they do, click below:
Fundamentalist Settlers

Our Forgotten allies - Part 2: Christian Arabs struggle for Palestine

In a previous posting I presented my opinion that the Islamization of the Palestinian cause was harmful to Palestinians on one hand, and to all Arabs and Muslims on the other. I strongly believe that it was a short-sighted measure, tactically and strategically.

The major beneficiary of that mistake was Israel and its Arab- and Muslim-hating supporters who found a great comfort in presenting it to the Western world as a fight between progressive, liberal, egalitarian, and democratic ‘tiny’ Jewish state, and a ‘repressive fundamentalist Islamic ideology’ that controls fifty some states and over a billion Muslims who are ready to launch Holy War on Israel and its Western supporters.

To a much lesser extend, Muslim fundamentalists also benefited from using the Palestinian slogan as a convenient rallying call to which they give lip service, then turn around to carry on their other agendas (Remember Osama Bin Laden and AlQaeda, invoking the Palestinian issue in speeches, then going on killing Muslim Afghani and Iraqi civilians?).

Judging from the state of affairs of the world today, it is not difficult to see who actually benefited more from the Islamization paradigm.

Forgotten in the midst of all the screaming was the Christian Palestinian (as well as Christian Arabs). If you were not from Egypt, Palestine or Lebanon, you probably would not remember that Palestine was nearly 30% Christian in 1948 (1400 years after it came under Arab Muslim control), and is no more than 5% Christian now after 60 years only of Israeli control. You would probably not be aware of the significant contributions many Palestinian Christians and other Arab Christians provided for the Palestinian cause in effort, blood and money.

Another totally forgotten (and frequently intentionally ignored) aspect of the Christian Palestinian struggle, it the on-going Political involvement of Christian Arabs in the Israeli Palestinian issue. I will highlight here two only of the many examples .

The first is really an amazing example from Egypt. Since the early 80’s the Camp David Accords have paved the way to some sort of luke warm peace between Egypt and Israel. The people of Egypt in general still find the Israeli presence awkward, and very few have taken the chance to visit Israel. The issue is more complicated for Egyptian Christians, with their holy sited under Israeli control. And since the peace agreements were signed, the Egyptian Church (Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria) under the leadership of Pope Shnouda III has consistently refused to permit Egyptian Christians to visit the Christian Holy sites in occupied Palestine.

In the first week of this May, the Pope of Alexandria church in a his Cairo weekly sermon re-stated the long-held opinion of the church barring Copts from visiting Israel.

قال البابا: إن في مصر الكثير من الأماكن المقدسة التي يمكن التبرك بها، أما القدس المحتلة فيجب ألا نندفع عاطفيا نحو زيارتها دون النظر إلى البعد الوطني والسياسي، موضحا أن السلام غائب في تلك المناطق وما زال شعبها الفلسطيني يعاني من ويلات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي وقهره وأشار البابا إلى أنه من الصعب التراجع عن قرار الحظر في المرحلة الراهنة ما لم يتم التوصل إلى السلام الشامل والعادل، لأن السماح للأقباط سيدفع بمئات الآلاف منهم إلى زيارة الأراضي المقدسة خاصة في عيد القيامة، ما يروج للاقتصاد الإسرائيلي ويؤدي إلى إساءة للعلاقات بين الأقباط والأشقاء العرب والفلسطينيين

Pope Shnouda III said: “There is many [Christian] Holy places in Egypt that can be visited to be blessed with. As for occupied Jerusalem; we should not in an emotional way rush to visit it without considering the political and patriotic dimension”. He elaborated that “peace is absent from those territories, and its Palestinian people are still suffering from the horror of the Israeli occupation and its oppression”.
The Pope pointed out that "it is very difficult to retract the prohibition [against visiting the holy places in Palestine] at this time unless comprehensive and just peace is achieved. This is because retracting prohibition will lead to hundreds of thousands of Egyptian Christian Copts to visit the holy land, especially for Easter thus supporting Israeli Economy, and leading to harming the relationship between Copts and the Arab and Palestinian brothers."

For the Pope, boycotting the Holy sites while they are still under Israeli control is an act of resistance. He refuses to provide Israel with the economic benefit and the moral recognition of its authority over occupied holy sites that Israel is so eager to get. for him, the pain of keeping his followers away from their beloved Holy sites is a small price to pay in order to help liberate Palestinians from the evils of Israeli occupation.

And closer to the heart of the battle field, Palestine, Palestinian Christians are not silent either. Take for example the recent political document "Moment of Truth" released by Kairos Palestine. The document is modeled along an earlier document from Kairos South Africa that aimed at accelerating the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The parallels here are not so subtle. This is a big16-page documents, but it is worth reading. Here are some excerpts:

A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of the Palestinian suffering
“This document is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine. It is written at this time when we wanted to see the Glory of the grace of God in this land and in the sufferings of its people. In this spirit the document requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades. The suffering continues while the international community silently looks on at the occupying State, Israel.”
As Palestinian Christians we hope that this document will provide the turning point to focus the efforts of all peace-loving peoples in the world, especially our Christian sisters and brothers. We hope also that it will be welcomed positively and will receive strong support, as was the South Africa Kairos document launched in 1985, which, at that time proved to be a tool in the struggle against oppression and occupation.

The Moment of Truth document about realities on the ground:

The separation wall erected on Palestinian territory, a large part of which has been confiscated for this purpose, has turned our towns and villages into prisons, separating them from one another, making them dispersed and divided cantons. Gaza, especially after the cruel war Israel launched against it during December 2008 and January 2009, continues to live in inhuman conditions, under permanent blockade and cut off from the other Palestinian territories.

Israeli settlements ravage our land in the name of God and in the name of force, controlling our natural resources, including water and agricultural land, thus depriving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and constituting an obstacle to any political solution.

Reality is the daily humiliation to which we are subjected at the military checkpoints, as we make our way to jobs, schools or hospitals.

It has a message to Muslims and to the Christian world, defending Muslims:

Our message to the Muslims is a message of love and of living together and a call to reject fanaticism and extremism. It is also a message to the world that Muslims are neither to be stereotyped as the enemy nor caricatured as terrorists but rather to be lived with in peace and engaged with in dialogue.

And it concludes with this very strong message to churches and Christians of the world, praising some, and asking others to repent for what they did to Palestinians:

6.1 Our word to the Churches of the world is firstly a word of gratitude for the solidarity you have shown toward us in word, deed and presence among us. It is a word of praise for the many Churches and Christians who support the right of the Palestinian people for self determination. It is a message of solidarity with those Christians and Churches who have suffered because of their advocacy for law and justice.

However, it is also a call to repentance; to revisit fundamentalist theological positions that support certain unjust political options with regard to the Palestinian people. It is a call to stand alongside the oppressed and preserve the word of God as good news for all rather than to turn it into a weapon with which to slay the oppressed. The word of God is a word of love for all His creation. God is not the ally of one against the other, nor the opponent of one in the face of the other. God is the Lord of all and loves all, demanding justice from all and issuing to all of us the same commandments.

We ask our sister Churches not to offer a theological cover-up for the injustice we suffer, for the sin of the occupation imposed upon us. Our question to our brothers and sisters in the Churches today is: Are you able to help us get our freedom back, for this is the only way you can help the two peoples attain justice, peace, security and love?

What I am trying to bring up in this posting is not that there are good Christians, because to question that is ignorant and immoral. I am trying to show how silly it is to present the Israeli Palestinian conflict as an Islamic issue only. Our Christian Arabs are not only as harmed by the on-going conflict as Muslims are but also they are a tremendous and resourceful ally. Their involvement can extend the reach of Palestinian pleas for support and justice to most of the world Christians with a more resounding impact than Muslim could do on their own.

We need to remember that Israel did not grow to be what it is today relying only on its own people and resources. Israel managed to play the religion and anti-Muslim card very well and capitalized on it in the media and in all its public relations campaigns over the years. Without Israel getting the undeserved sympathy of the Western world Christians, the playing field could have been more balanced for all Palestinians; Muslims and Christians.

It is about time to realize that in this fight for justice we need all the allies we can get. Arab Christians have been much of a victim in this conflict as Arab Muslims have been. And they are an asset that Muslims should acknowledge and cherish.

Khaled

Coming next:
The Forgotten Allies - Part 3: Arab Christians produce the best ‘Art of Return’.

Deeply hated, and should be very proud of it

A middle aged Christian black President, and a older Jewish white man of God from California: what do these two men have in common?

Both are hated, and both should be very proud of it. Let me explain.

Mankind is programmed to essentially enjoy being liked. If you think this is not the case, just imagine how much more difficult it would be to build a society or a community of any kind if we all tend to enjoy being disliked by others.

If mankind is defined as a social animal, that automatically means they are programmed to enjoy the positive feedback (in this case, gestures that others like you), and therefore you do things that trigger that response (i.e., nice things that others like).

And, voila: you have a society.

Still there are times when you are the proudest of yourself when someone viscerally hates you.

Your character is frequently defined by the kind of people that choose you as a friend. In other instances, your character is defined by the kind of people that hate you.

The strongest endorsement that you are on the right track is when the people you consider hateful, oppressor and criminally-minded actually put you in their cross-hair.

Two sets of events led me to write about this.
Barack Obama has been at the receiving end of a lot of hate. Criminally-minded and racist Christian and Jewish extremists hate his guts. From slanders during his presidential election campaign, to the racist remarks aimed at him on regular basis by the same idiots in response to his policies.

The most recent of those hate episodes comes from people with strong attachment to a foreign power that tries its best to manipulate American policies to its advantage: our beloved ally, Israel.

Jewish extremist both in the united states and in Israel have announced last week that they will be burning effigies in the shape of Obama during one of their ‘religious’ celebrations.
I cannot imagine any one can describe what happened better than Haaretz writer Bradley Burston:

… a cluster of people here, people who cloak themselves in the garb of the pious, have decided to marry their furious loathing of Barack Obama to the custom of their faith, and to do what some in America have been doing for more than a year now: Hating Barack Obama as a new form of religious observance.

Once, on the holiday of Lag B'Omer, which falls this Saturday night, children cast into bonfires images of Adolf Hitler and others who have preached and in some cases practiced the mass killing of Jews.

This year, ahead of the Saturday night observance, professed followers of Meir Kahane have openly boasted of preparing effigies of the American president for distribution and incineration in bonfires across the country.

And while the Jewish terrorists were doing that in the Occupied Palestinian land, their New Yorker counterparts were exhibiting paranoia, hate, and abominable morality in the streets of New York.

Watch an amazing video here – you will laugh at the stupidity and ignorance of people who think they are righteous yet have no shame acting as if possessed by Satan.

The final frame of the video displays this very profound quote by the late Israeli philosopher and out-spoken critic of Israeli values, Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

“Religious Nationalism to religion is what National Socialism [Nazi Party ideology] is to socialism”

Watch the video. You will not regret it.

As for the white Rabbi, his name is Michael Lerner. He is a long-time activist promoting peace in the Middle East. Being honest to his Jewish faith, he believes that loyalty to justice and truth trumps ethnic and clannish blind loyalty to Israel. He built a fantastic interfaith community, and is very vocal despite serious health problems that could shake a mountain.

The rabbi made the unforgivable mistakes of always looking at Palestinians as fellow human beings, of objecting to the occupation of Palestine, and of showing respect to judge Goldstone, who is deeply hated by pro-Israel fanatics for finding Israel at fault during Gaza war.

A little over a week ago, Rabbi Michael Lerner said Goldstone had been chosen as this year's recipient of the Tikkun Award because "the peace community both in Israel and around the world see Justice Goldstone as upholding the best ethical values of the Jewish community." [Haaretz]

That did sit well with the fake righteous ones possessed by Satan. They could not take it from the good Rabbi any more. His house was vandalized last night, and guess by who? A group of Jewish fanatics and extremists. The title of the press release read: "Rabbi Lerner's Home in the Berkeley Hills Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists"

If these idiot fanatic Jews were your enemy, don’t you think you should be very proud of it? I know I would.

One last comment:
If these fanatics in Occupied Palestine, New York and California feel free to treat the US president and an elder Rabbi like that, can you begin to imagine what life is like for the poor Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, living under their thumbs?

Khaled

P.S. Do not hold your breath waiting to read in detail about all these US events in our 'fantastic and free' media.
Talking out it sounds antisemitic.

Link used in the posting:

• YouTube - Feeling the Hate in New York - Really really worth while watching
• Ritual terrorism: Hating Obama as a new form of religion - Haaretz - Israel News- Excellent article
• Rabbi Lerner's - Home in the Berkeley Hills Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists - The Berkeley Daily Planet - Monday May 3, 2010
• Burning Obama | Tikun Olam
• Jerusalem to New York: Feel The Hate and Know The Love - Arabisto - Excellent article and a great website
  

Related posts:

• 
  

  Amending the Ten Commandments: Thou Shall Not Criticize Israel

• "From Mumbai to Hebron" and "Jewish Jihadis"- by Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam
• 
  

  Which Jew does the Pope support??