For they are a very perverse generation —
Children in whom there is no faithfulness.
-- Deuteronomy 32:20

The Passover Hagaddah says of foreign foes of the Children of Israel "In every generation there are those who rise up against us." There are also those among the Children of Israel who perversely rise up against their own heritage and kinsmen.

These are not the Jews who are merely indifferent, and drift away from the community taking their offspring with them. Nor are they the ones merely indifferent to Israel, with neither interest in it nor concern for it. Nor are they the ones who criticize some particular Israeli actions or policy or characteristic, so long as the criticism is based on facts and fairness.

Rather, they are the ones who calculatedly set themselves among the enemies of their people. For that, they cannot find enough justification in real Israeli shortcomings or mistakes, so they rant grotesque falsehoods.

Some of them openly avow their distaste for loyal Jews and for Israel in particular. Others claim to belong to the Jewish community and even aver their loyalty to it, while undermining its principles, its traditions, its welfare and safety. Among those, some laud themselves for striving to save "a true Judaism" and follow "the prophetic tradition" — a pose that does not require them to know anything about Judaism or the biblical prophetic tradition, much less observe them.

However limited their accomplishments in luring fellow Jews down their twisted paths, they are useful to active enemies of the Jews and of Israel: Whatever lies, slanders, and defamations those enemies emit they can justify by quoting Jews who say the same things — which supposedly makes them kosher.

Excerpts from "The War of the Jews," by Emanuele Ottolenghi, National Review Online, 20 September 2006:

[....] The most vicious anti-Israel articles are penned by Jews. The most extreme agitators against Israel are Jewish. In short, while those who evoke the bogeyman of the Jewish lobby and the Jewish conspiracy accuse Jews of being tribal in their "uncritical" defense of Israel, there is no shortage of Jews taking the most extremely negative views of Israel and of their fellow Jews.

[....] They have much in common: They denounce Israel as evil; they accuse Israel and Zionism of having betrayed Judaism's authentic voice; they embrace a narrative of victimization, where the authors present themselves as victims of a Jewish establishment that tries to silence them; and, in describing Israel and its policies, they frequently use vocabulary, imagery, and stereotypes that are dangerously close to the old repertoire of classical anti-Semitism.

The language of current anti-Semitism is deeply indebted to these Jewish voices and in fact needs them to make its case. Their eagerness to denounce Israel in the most virulent terms and to call for its destruction offers a powerful alibi to the anti-Semites.

Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism for making the same arguments? As for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish Jews, their rhetoric is coated in a self-image of heroism. They present themselves as dissenters. They purport to be "critical Jews" who reclaim the authentic tradition of the Prophets of Israel: Their role as critics of state power and dissenting voices in society makes them not rebels but authentic interpreters of Jewish morality, whistleblowers on a Jewish community that has lost, in its support for Israel, its moral compass.

[....] Despite all the clamor about Jewish lobbies' silencing of critics of Israel, and about the difficulties faced by true Jewish heroes who break ranks to "tell the truth," most Jewish detractors of Israel are well-established figures — from MIT professor Noam Chomsky to New York University historian Tony Judt, from Oxford don Avi Shlaim to New Yorker star reporter Seymour Hersh, from Stanford University Talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin to a plethora of tenured Israeli radicals. These commentators tend to have easy access to publishing houses and to the op-ed sections of prestigious and influential newspapers and magazines. In the literary landscape of op-eds, pamphlets, and academic works, it is the pro-Israel voice that is constantly struggling to be heard.

[....] But two main themes emerge that deserve scrutiny. The first is the claim, made by so many Jewish intellectuals, to be the authentic expression of Judaism's prophetic tradition in their crusade against Israel and Zionism. And the second is the crucial role their rhetoric plays in excusing, condoning, and -- in effect -- abetting anti-Semitism.

[....] Those who invoke the prophets of Israel as a source of inspiration to attack Israel and its policies usually prove only one thing: that they have no idea what's written in the books of the prophets. This should come as no surprise . . . : Anti-Israel Jewish intellectuals are frequently secular and alienated from Jewish tradition. The focus of their wrath is not Israel but a Jewish identity that no longer dwells in their hearts.

Even as their distance from Jewish values demonstrates that they are not legitimate heirs of the Jewish prophets, their role in providing cover for anti-Semitism cannot be dismissed or underestimated. The only Jew anti-Semites can tolerate in their midst is a Jew who has abandoned all the vestiges of Judaism and shows no traces of identification with the Jewish people. [....] Some Jewish intellectuals, therefore, embrace anti-Zionism in order to become accepted in their liberal and progressive circles, where hatred for Israel is most rampant.

* * * * * * * *

The Perverse Children are disproportionately drawn from trades whose practitioners naturally assume they are superior in taste and judgment: Artistical and literary types, theatrical performers, academics, journalists. They are often described as "self-hating Jews" but more likely they are much enamored of themselves and only hate those other unenlightened Jews. This may be because:

[1] They seek to protect themselves in an increasingly Judeophobic international climate by demonstrating that they themselves should not be counted among those naughty Zionists. Some are in countries where they may not yet feel personally endangered, but are taking their rhetorical insurance policies for a prospectively less comfortable future, in countries where they nevertheless choose to remain.

[2] They yearn to ingratiate themselves with and be permitted entry into the increasingly Judeophobic "elites" of their host societies. It is not enough for them to cast off a Jewish identity and merge into the mainstream; they must take on the identity of the most Judeophobic elements of that mainstream. They ostentatiously separate themselves from the objects of scorn and cry "Not In My Name!" — meaning "I'm not one of those bad Jews — don't hit me!"

[3] There is some kind of professional advancement or profit to be won thereby.

[4] They give their loyalty to some credo antithetical to their ancestral heritage, whether it be Marxism under its own name or some alias, or the cult of Political Correctness, or Multiculturalism, or some other fervently-held socio-political fad of the hour. Sometimes they have to pay membership dues in the form of denunciations of fellow or formerly-fellow Jews who remain obstinately unenlightened.

[5] They esteem themselves as superior in taste and intellect, and therefore cannot hold the same views as ordinary people who lack nuance.

[6] They esteem themselves as patrons dispersing succor to failures and favored categories of victims, and are frustrated by Israel's obstinate preference for self-defense and accomplishment.

[7] They are hostile to America and American traditions, and extend that hostility to Israel because it shares so many of those traditions.

[8] They are trying to satisfy some entirely personal or psychological need to identify with their own enemies.

Israel's own Perverse Children are denied the enjoyable discomfitures of a minority longing to be admitted into the majority society. They just plain hate their country and society and make common cause with those trying to destroy it. If the hatred drives them beyond mere ranting, they may and sometimes do cross the line into out-and-out treason.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Perverse Children are drawn to one another to form associations. Some are large, with prominent names on their Boards of Directors and lavish funding. Others are small but noisy beyond their numbers.

[1] The Israel Policy Forum and New Israel Fund was founded and endowed by American-Jewish businessmen to promote their politically progressive views on What To Do About Israel and How to Solve The Palestine Problem. They declare their dedication to what is really best for Israel and the Jews, and since they are the ones with money and clout they must be the ones who really know it all.

This enlightenment is passed on to the public, often through the efforts of M.J. Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analyses, who churns out appeals for more and more Israeli concessions and surrenders that would satisfy the Palestinian-Arabs and bring peace for all. No notice of past experience and current evidence intrudes on foolish fantasy.

One of his recent deeds was to call upon then President-Elect Obama to "crack [Israeli] heads" to force them to accede to a Rosenberg Doctrine that would bring no benefit at all to the United States while placing Israel in mortal peril.

The IPF is also infatuated with the Saudi Peace Intiative — a/k/a the Arab Peace Initiative — that is an offer of Assisted Suicide to Israel.

The IPF is vigorous in its campaign to turn its own views into official U.S. government policy, urging that the United States move to stop Jews from fulfilling the prophetic vision of dwelling in throughout the Land of Israel, and even force them to dismantle long-standing communities, even while the Palestine Authority continues its terrorism against Israel and pursues its openly announced intention to destroy it.

The IPF takes polls of American-Jewish opinion that supposedly find support for its positions, and cites them in urging those positions upon the U.S. Government. Studies of IPF polls by the Zionist Organization of America [ZOA] and the usually mild Anti-Defamation League [ADL] review them with such terms as "vague and deceptive language," "reprehensible misuse of . . . polling," "misusing statistical evidence," and "grossly skewed."

A favorite beneficiary of IPF largesse, via its New Israel Fund is Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. It is defined as an advocate of civil and political rights for Arabs in Israel — who actually do have the same rights as all other Israelis. Its real agenda is to slander Israel with charges of "war crimes" and "apartheid" and "racist" and "fascist," while working toward its demise as a sovereign state.

[2] J-Street is a recently-minted public relations squad, that names itself after a street in Washington D.C. that does not in fact exist. It is the dependant of — if not, indeed, the property of -- billionaire George Soros, who is unstintingly generous in carrying his plans against the Jews amongst whom he happened to have been born. Along with J-Street's fantasy address come its fantasy policies, promoted under the slogan "Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace." Its aspiration is to counter-act the influence of the Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], on behalf of American Jews who find the latter too pro-Israel for their tastes.

The directors and supporters of J-Street include veterans of Israel's anti-Judaic and pro-PLO Meretz Party, The American Friends of Peace Now, and Arab-American lobbyist James Zogby who urges the right of Hamas to raise funds in the United States.

During the recent Israel military campaign against the Hamas bases that have launched thousands of rockets onto Israeli towns, J-Street's position was that "force cannot be Israel's only or preponderant response — even to Hamas," and that Operation Cast Lead was "disproportionate to the threat and escalatory in nature . . . ." and that Israel by acting too firmly against the terrorists vowed to annihilate it "will deepen animosity between the Palestinian and Israeli people."

The Pro-Israel-Pro-Peaceniks on their make-believe street have failed to persuade even the ultra-conciliatory Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the American-Jewish Reform Movement, who stated:

I am a dove myself, [but] this time J-Street got it very wrong. It could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants, who have launched more than 5,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli civilians in the past three years, and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south.

[3] B'Tselem, defines itself as "The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories." [Comment: There are no "Occupied Territories" — these are Israeli-administered territories within the Land of Israel]. It waves a banner of "Human Rights" tattered by its tactics for making Israel look as bad as possible.

It was founded and is run by Israelis from the farthest left-wing, some of whom even seek the dissolution of Israel as a sovereign state, and is supported by money from the British Foreign Office, the European Union, and several Euro-governments including professionally-neutral Switzerland.

As part of its stock-in-trade, B'tselem publishes counts "Arab civilians" allegedly unjustly killed by Israel, and includes in its tally: (a) terrorists who had attacked or were attempting to attack Israeli civilians; (b) were on their way to commit a terror attack; (c) were executives of terrorist groups working behind the shooting lines; (d) volunteer human shields at sites launching rockets and missiles at Israeli civilians; (e) casualties of intra-Arab hostilities.

B'tselem is now opening offices in Washington and New York to facilitate the dissemination of its dissembling.

[4] Rabbis For Human Rights has an American base and a task force in Israel, supported by donations from the New Israel Fund and the even more flagrantly anti-Israel Shefa Fund of Philadelphia. It is so staunch on "Human Rights" that it participated in the U.N. Human Rights charade in Durban in 2001, after the Israeli and U.S. delegations as well as all the other Jewish organizations withdrew in disgust at the egregious Judeophobia of the proceedings.

Many of the dollars of their benefactors are spent on advertising for itself and its deeds. Its star performer is Rabbi Arik Ascherman, whose special routine is to accuse Jewish residents of Judea-Samaria of crimes against local Arabs that either never took place or were faked by the rabbis themselves. In one performance, there were widely touted charges that Jews had uprooted tens of thousands of innocent Arab olive trees, when the alleged arboreal victims were in fact still standing and healthy. In another, a cast of Rabbis for Human Rights themselves led a mob of radical leftists to raid Jewish fields and pull up thousands of saplings planted by the owners — reportedly before an audience of visiting school children celebrating the Hebrew festival of Tu-Be'shevet when it is traditional to plant trees in the soil of the Land of Israel.

[Comment: After the Israeli police had some reports and observations that Achermann was concocting hoaxes he was asked to take a Lie Detector Test, He refused. There is thus no scientific examination of whether or not his rabbinic education got as far as the Ninth Commandmant.]

[5] Peace Now and American Friends of Peace Now are devoted to the cause of an enemy they have made their protégé. It is supported in part by the European Union, in the name of "peace education" — that is, indoctrination in favor of the disastrous Oslo Accords. The contributions have been delivered by its Meretz errand boy Yossi Beilin, who along with Shimon Peres begot and fostered that disastrous folly.

The members are energetic in monitoring just where Jews presume to dwell and till the soil in the Land of Israel, and agitating for their eviction. One tactic is to publish accusations that Jewish communities in Yesha [Judea-Samaria] are built in whole or in part on land stolen the rightful Palestine-Arab owners. When these charges prove to be false, Peace Now diddles the numbers but continues the tactic.

Members have also been observed, reported, and even photographed doing deliberate damage to Arab property in order to blame it on the Israeli communities who endeavor to develop cordial relations with local Arab communities

[6] Physicians for Human Rights-Israel are specialists in maligning Israel. It published a pamphlet not to give advice about health and medicine but to depict vicious Israeli soldiers oppressing and abusing helpless Palestinians and refusing them medical care. It also lent itself to the Jenin Massacre hoax, that convicted Israel of an alleged atrocity that never took place.

The humanitarian concerns of the good doctors do not extend to admitting much less appreciating the fact that Israel regularly provides medical treatment to patients admitted from Hamas-ruled Gaza as well as from PLO-land. This goes on even after: (1) a patient arrives at an Israeli hospital outfitted with bomb-belt to kill staff and patients; (2) ambulances are used to transport terrorists and their instruments of death; (3) Arab patients in Israeli hospitals cheer the arrival of Jewish victims of terrorist attacks.

Minor Children

In Israel

-- issues its own peace terms that includes "Right of Return," a euphemism for swamping tiny Israel with millions of hostile Arabs.

-- threatens to bring criminal charges against Israeli military men in the International Court of Justice. If it has actual evidence to support any such charges it could be brought before an Israeli court, but that would not have the desired propaganda value.

-- produces and distributes lists of products of Jewish farms and companies in Judea-Samaria that it urges shoppers to boycott. [Some shoppers consult those lists to increase their purchases of such goods.]

[B] Yesh Gavul [There is a Limit] and Ometz l'Seruv [Courage to Refuse] urge Israeli young men and women to evade military service, or to desert, or to refuse assignments in areas these groups deem unworthy of defense and protection.

They include in their moral prohibition any crossing of the 1948 ceasefire line (Green Line), even to intercept terrorists on their way to work, or apprehend fleeing terrorists.

They offer to pay legal expenses for anyone who gets into trouble to following their orders. They can apparently afford such offers out of the money supplied to them by the Shefa Fund.

[C] Machson Watch [Checkpoint Watch] is made up of women recruited among those of the leftist persuasion. Their self-assigned mission is to hang around security checkpoints on crossings between Jewish and Arab areas in order to monitor the soldiers whose duty is to detect and stop any terrorists trying to slip through among the legitimate travelers. This the ladies do by way of distracting, harassing, and insulting the very ones who are protecting them and their families.

Mrs. Ehud Olmert, consort of the outgoing prime minister, has been a member of this sisterhood.

[D] Four Mothers who had the excruciating bad taste to equate themselves with the beloved Matriarchs of Israel — Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel — were subsidized by the European Union. Their cause was to raise a clamor for Israel to abandon a small terror-barrier security zone on the border with Hezbollah's Lebanon. They did much to precipitate the ignominious flight that facilitated the rise of Hezbullah, attacks on Israel's population, and a costly and only partially effective battle to defend it.

In the Diaspora

[1] Brit Tzedek v'Shalom [Jewish Alliance for Peace and Justice], pretentiously assuming a Hebrew name, earns its money from Noam Chomsky, the Ford Foundation, and the Shefa Fund. It is not anti-Zionist. It is willing to allow Israel to exist, provided that it casts away the Promised Land, stops being so strict with terrorists who want to annihilate them in the name of "resistance," and opens its gates to an Arab "Right of Return."

[2] Jews for a Free Palestine (JFFP) is based in the San Francisco Bay area. Its program is to bring an end to aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel), an end to protective measures against jihad-terrorism and terrorist bases, an exercise of a Right of Return for descendants or alleged descendants of the Arabs that left Israel in 1948. In short: The end of Israel as a Jewish homeland.

It seeks to advance this program via noisy street demonstrations and unlawful blocking of public places, often in cahoots with other local anti-Israel and pro-Jihadi groups.

[3] Jewish Voices for Peace is a venue for progressives who made a profession of Human Rights Advocacy. Its agenda is to oppose Israel's use of power to protect its citizens, oppose its temerity in living on its own Land, and persuade Americans to "disinvest" from Israel as long as it remains "repressive." It was distressed that Congress voiced support for Israel versus Hamas.

It is not, however, one-sided. It also urges Palestinian terrorists to refrain from murdering Israeli civilians.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Academics

sheltered in their ivy-clad tenure and learned journals, assume they are smarter and more knowledgeable than commoners, because they have all those degrees and their lectures and writings carry so much influence. The most undistinguished among them include Americans Noam Chomsky and and Norman Finkelstein, and Israelis-in-Britain Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlain. Numerous others are to be found on the faculties of Israeli and foreign universities.

Their professional specialty, particularly among those who call themselves historians, is not to find factual evidence and data and analyze them rationally. It is selectively to choose — and when convenient invent — material to support their basic thesis that Israel was conceived in sin, born in sin, and lives in sin.

One of this gaggle whose work is widely known and therefore especially damaging is Israeli Bennie Morris, whose versions of Israel's re-establishment, the 1948 War of Independence, and the origins of the Arab refugee problem are mined for damaging reports, quotations, and citations. Ephraim Karsh and other serious scholars have found in his work a flawed use of sources and downright misrepresentation that create a false impression of Israeli guilt and brutality.

Freelancers

Those who tell the truth say out loud that they hate Jews and Israel. The hypocrites assume a virtue though they have it not and present themselves as dutiful champions of Jewish Values that must be rescued from the corruption of Zionism.

[Comment: Where did Jewish values come from if not from Zion?]

They are particularly conspicuous in Great Britain, where notable specimens include --

Sir Gerald Kaufman, who received a knighthood for Services to Parliament but has no notions of chivalry. He uses his Jewish origins as a shield for his personal Judeophobia, proclaiming "As a person who was born Jewish, I am morally obliged to speak out against what is being done by the Zionist state of Israel to the Palestinian people."

Several years before the current Gaza Hysteria he demanded a British boycott of Israeli products. Currently, he is comparing Israeli soldiers to the Nazi ones who killed his grandmother in Poland, and equating the "militants" of Hamas with the "militants" of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Professor Jacqueline Rose, a writer and academic who specializes in literature and psychoanalysis. She has brought forth a book entitled The Question of Zion in which she presents her diagnosis that Israel is afflicted with "sacred, violent fury, militarism, religious fanaticism at the heart of Israeli society" and that "Zionism is the real enemy of the Jews." Her prescription is that the only cure for Israel is to "abolish itself."

In February 2007, a potpourri of public-figure Britons who call themselves Independent Jewish Voices put their names to an anti-Israel public manifesto. (Some of the signatories were so far cut off from their roots that when acquaintances saw their names on the roster the reaction was "I never knew they were Jews!")

For an encore there followed a farcical vaudeville turn of renouncing their hereditary right to live in Israel, something they would never have wanted to do in any case.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Daniel Machover, a "human rights attorney" once Israeli and now British, is a founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. In 2005 he undertook a case that might have might have raised him to the top of his profession; He got a London magistrate to issue an arrest warrant against Israeli Major-General Doron Almog (Ret.) changing him with War Crimes. The warrant was to be used when General Almog alighted from the El Al plane bearing him to London on behalf of a project to advance the treatment of autism — a cause especially personal to him because his own son suffered from that disorder. If Human Rights Lawyer Machover assembled any facts for his brief, he would have learned that General Almog --

1. was the first to land at Entebbe Airport in the 1976 Israeli rescue mission of hostages hijacked by terrorists, and was the one who secured the control tower there.

2. took a leading part in the 1984-85 airlift of endangered Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

3. had a commanding role 2002-2003 in securing the Gaza border against infiltration by terrorists.

4. has been active in advancing opportunities in education for Israeli Beduin Arabs, enabling them to earn university degrees.

5. founded a facility providing residences, medical treatment and social services for those with disabilities.

6. lost his brother in the battle to save Israel in the Yom Kippur War and lost five members of his family in a terrorist bombing of a restaurant in Israel.

Human Rights Attorney Machover was frustrated in his endeavor to protect humanity from General Doron. When the airplane landed in London, the Israeli Embassy warned General Doron not to disembark, but to stay on board for the return flight to Israel.

Human Rights Attorney Machover thereupon threatened to bring charges against the man who delivered the warning and thereby perpetrated obstruction of justice.
 

  Patricia Berlyn is a writer and editor. A native of New York, N.Y., she now resides in Israel.

This article is archived in Vol. IX:1 (No. 72) of TIME TO SPEAK, February 2009 — Tevet/Shevet 5769

"A Time To Speak" appears once a month, and each issue is on a theme that relates to Israel and the Middle East, past and present. The contents includes history, background, current events, analysis and comment and excerpts from published writings. A complimentary subscription to the e-mail edition is available by request to: speak@actcom.co.il. Texts of past issues can be read on: www.israel.net/timetospeak

_________________________End of Story___________________________

HOME

January-February 2009 Featured Stories

Background Information

News On The Web