Is an overture for a one state solution looming on the horizon?

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has for several years advocated for a two state solution for Israel and Palestine. Just the other day, I was telling someone, I would not be surprised if at least one if not several overtures were sent to 219th General Assembly calling for a one state solution. By that I mean a state which includes all the Palestinians as well as the people of Israel. This would of course destroy the State of Israel as a Jewish nation forever.

I conjectured that this might happen because lately I have noticed many articles on web sites, which various Presbyterian organizations link to, that advocate for a one state solution.

Now I find that Ali Abunimah co-founder of the Electronic Intifada a Palestine news site recommended in Steadfast Hope, a booklet published by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has a book recommending just that, "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Palestinian-Israeli Impasse."

I also see that Abunimah has been a speaker at a Presbyterian Church just this year, First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, hosted the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, featuring Abunimah.

Abunimah insists that a Jewish state could only be a racist apartheid state. He states “When we get to the point where the mantra ‘Jewish State’ no matter what the cost ... it’s always wrong. He then speaks of what he and others call the ethnic cleansing that happened in 1948, and goes on to repeat that there is no way to have a Jewish State without ethnic cleansing.

I believe those Presbyterians who are pro Israel need to understand that there is a move among activist to see Israel as racist and undemocratic unless she gives up her real meaning. That is, they want Israel to give up her sole purpose, which is a place of safety for the persecuted Jewish people.

I do not believe we understand how close we are to another massive pogrom aimed not just at a village in Eastern Europe but at a whole nation.

Before World War II many nations and leaders talked and wrote about what was called the ‘Jewish problem’ and how to solve it. Some Jewish people tried to assimilate into whatever country was their homeland but that was never to be a safe decision. Many times when nations faced a crisis the Jewish people became the scapegoat.

Of course Hitler and the Nazi’s solution were gas chambers, while the Zionist solution was a homeland for the Jewish people. And, indeed, that appears to be the solution of the sovereign Lord of history.

Perhaps this is an apologetic to soon. I hope so!

But I believe the idea of wiping out Israel as a Jewish State by turning her into a state where the Jewish people are a minority among her enemies is not different then pogroms or gas chambers and will lead to another Holocaust.

A strange tale about the Yemeni Jews as told by the Electronic Intifada

In one of my earlier postings on the Israel/Palestine Mission Network and their publication Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace, I pointed out that the authors had suggested the news outlet Electronic Intifada as an alternative to mainline news. They did this because they believe that the news in the United States is too influenced or controlled by Jewish groups in the United States.

Just recently, August 13, 2009, the Electronic Intifada posted an article “JNF [Jewish National Fund] presence in S. America perpetuates Palestine injustice.” The article is intended to be a protest that purports that JNF has over many years gathered funds to build recreational areas and forests to cover over Palestinian villages that Israel razed. It is also a protest that JNF have, at these sites, built monuments to various South American patriots.

Besides my thought that perhaps JNF is simply creating recreational areas and forests for the welfare of others,[1] there are several other peculiar features in the article that I found objectionable, but this paragraph caught my attention immediately:

“Moshav (the Zionist term for village) Eshtaol, built on the ruins of Ishwa, is a village of immigrants from Yemen, who were transferred by the Zionist movement to Palestine right after the 1948 ethnic cleansing. In the transfer camp in Sana, Yemen's capital, the Zionist Agency looted more then [sic] 50 tons of the Yemeni Jewish community's ancient sacred books and manuscripts and many tons of goldsmithing, a craft in which they specialized. In the transfer camp, children were kidnapped and were delivered to European Jewish families for adoption. Once in Moshav Eshtaol, and in the neighboring Moshav, Yishi, which has an identical story, the community succeeded in restoring a part of life as it was in Yemen.”

To even begin to unravel this paragraph is a major job. Of course the first thought is that the reference to ethnic cleansing is totally false. This is about the 1948 war when many Arab nations attacked the new State of Israel.

Also the camp from which the Yemeni Jews were airlifted was Hashed, and was in a remote area. It was not Sana. Sana is the place the last of the contemporary Yemeni Jews have been moved to since the latest atrocities have been committed against the small community. They are preparing to leave Yemen.

There are some references to a mystery that might entail kidnapped children, but in Israel not in any transfer camp. And the speculation on this has nothing to do with Israel as a nation. The idea that Israelis stole the Yemeni Jewish “community's ancient sacred books and manuscripts and many tons of goldsmithing,” has no reference at all.

The truth of the matter is that the main reason the Yemeni Jews left Yemen was because of physical attacks against the Jewish Community in Yemen after Israel became a nation.

Another interesting part of this article is the interconnection between the new Socialist countries in South America, some of who are pushing anti-Semitism and Socialist movements connected to the Palestinian radicals. This appeal to South America on behalf of the Palestinians is, with the emphasis on both the monuments to South American patriots and the focus on a people who might be considered a small tribal group in opposition to the whole of Israel, a farce.

The Electronic Intifada is not a good source of news about the Middle East. It is a propaganda tool, and that is too bad. Perhaps if the article had been about the tribulations the small remaining community in Yemen is experiencing because of militant Islam and how the Yemeni Jews might be helped that would have real meaning.

As a conclusion I am placing one of the video’s I recently placed on my site about the Jewish people exiled from all of the Arab countries after 1948. I am placing the one that just slightly into the film shows the rescue of the Yemeni Jews. It uses old film clips which makes it very interesting. (The first two people speaking are an exiled Iraqi Jew and one from Egypt.)



1. [1] It should be noted that monuments of South American heroes are there because it was South American countries who gave the funds for the forests. For instance see, Latin America
Latin America by Benno Weiser at Welcome to AJC Archives

Anti-Semitism, the Israel Lobby and Israel/Palestine Mission Network

It’s amazing what you can find on the internet. Sometimes, without intending to. Yesterday trying to find something from an old news site, (I think it is old) of the San Francisco Presbyterian Peace Makers, I was looking under both Israel/Palestine and then the name Venezuela caught my attention and since I have written on dictator Hugo Chavez I clicked on it.

One of the two choices after that was Venezuelanalysis.com. The first article I found was “Community Media: The Thriving Voice of the Venezuelan People.” The article was about how awful the private/commercial media was and how the many local media outlets of the people are far better. That was on July 31. Today, August 3, on the regular news and on the Venezuelanalysis.com are articles about how Chavez has taken over all of the private media. This is Marxism at its best.

Today, I once again was reading Steadfast Hope, the new publication put out by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). They also have some things to say about the media, but in this case it is the media in the United States which they believe is controlled by the “Israel Lobby.” You know it’s that old story that Henry Ford told in “The International Jew.” Ford wrote:

“All leading news agencies in America are Jew controlled. Jews in charge of newspapers adopt the policy of “a slurring headline a day.” Jews in charge of the newsboys on the streets (all the street concerns are pre-empted by Jewish ‘padrones’ who permit only their own boys to sell) give orders to emphasize certain news in their street cries—“a new yell against him every day.’ The whole campaign against the critic of Jewry, whoever he may be, is keyed to the threat, ‘Watch us get him.’”

So how is this story in Steadfast Hope any different? :

“Skewed coverage is no accident, writes Walter Rodgers, Jerusalem bureau chief for CNN from 1995 to 2000. ‘At the height of the second Palestinian intifada, Richard Griffiths, the editorial director of CNN, admonished me, ‘You have to remember, Walt, there are two standards of reporting at CNN, one for Israel, and the other for the rest of the world.’ Like many in US news organizations responsible for the Middle East coverage at that time, Griffiths had just taken a terrible beating from Jewish-American pressure groups as well as from his own avowedly pro-Israel management.”

And who do the author’s of Steadfast Hope and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. recommend for truthful news. The Electronic Intifada; they write “is an influential, respected internet source of news and analysis from a Palestinian perspective.”

There is an opinion piece on the Electronic Intifada entitled, “Why Israel won't survive.” In it the author states such things as:

“True, in terms of ability to murder and destroy, Israel is unmatched. But Israel's problem is not, as its propaganda insists, "terrorism" to be defeated by sufficient application of high explosives. Its problem is legitimacy, or rather a profound and irreversible lack of it. Israel simply cannot bomb its way to legitimacy.Israel was founded as a "Jewish state" through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's non-Jewish majority Arab population. It has been maintained in existence only through Western support and constant use of violence to prevent the surviving indigenous population from exercising political rights within the country, or returning from forced exile.”

There is just no other way to put it. Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is involved in rabid anti-Semitism. From insisting that those Jewish people who have returned to their ancient homeland are not really Jewish in their ancestry to insisting that the Israel Lobby and/or Jewish groups in America are controlling the media this organization that bears the name Presbyterian is treading where other anti-semites have trod before. And I, for one do not want to travel with them. I pray that our leadership will listen and do something about the Israel/Palestine Mission Network’s seeming hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.