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Hank Roth: Existential Zionism

webmaster@pnews.org - http://pnews.org/
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This essay provided as is, typos and all. It is the content that
matters, just as you do. Knowledge is power! Always challenge
prevailing views. The accepted wisdom is often not wise nor the truth.
Also follow links to the portals for more news, views, resources,
references and links....Hank Roth


"Whatever you do, don't make peace with the Jews;
like the crusaders, they too will vanish."
Bennie Morris says,
this is what Assad (Syria) would have told
his son on his deathbed.

Existential Zionism

THE SHOFAR IS LOUD
BUT SILENCE IS LOUDER

Talmud" means "study" or "learning" the daily life of the people, and
consisting largely of discussions arising out of, or connected with,
actual incidents. The Talmud is really about long-dead rabbis and
their arguments, many of which never finished and many which were
never won or resolved. Questions mostly with rhetorical answers. The
Talmud is intellectually challenging. For some it is at the heart of
Judaism.

The Talmud is a veritable storehouse of information connected with the
life, customs, beliefs, and superstitions of both the Jews and non
Jews. It is a source for history, medicine, astronomy, commerce,
agriculture, demonology, botany, zoology, and other sciences, and just
about everything else.

After the temple was destroyed, Judaism became a portable religion and
the ideas which evolved became the brick and mortar which solidified a
people. The Talmud is the fragmentary quality of knowledge, which
spins about in attaching itself to more knowledge and more ideas. It
became a vast knowledge base of information.

There were a mass of restrictions imposed on the Jews by the Church in
the political, social, and economic spheres, and attacks on Jewish
Oral Law by Christian theologians.

And Jews have been persecuted for their books. Jewish education and
knowledge has been considered a threat to other religions and the
Talmud has been burned. Book burning did not begin with the Nazis; it
came to them after being initiated by the Church for centuries. The
Nazi book burning were a logical result of this policy.

There have been many campaigns to limit Jewish learning by non-Jews
and to proscribe Jewish literature. In 553, Emperor Justinian placed
limits on the teaching of Jewish tradition and again in 712 by the
Visigoths in Spain forbide converts to Christianity from reading
Hebrew books. In the 13th century there was a full frontal attack on
rationalization movements of which Judaism was very much part of and
the Talmud was condemned by the Inquisition to be burned. The Nazis
did not invent book burning and especially Jewish books; the Christian
Church did.

In the 13th century the new forces of rationalism had made their
appearance in Western Europe as well as an upsurge of sectarian
movements The Church also directed its attention to Jews as potential
subversive elements. One outcome of the repression of rationalistic
tendencies was the burning of Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed" at
Montpellier, Southern France, in 1233.

THE SECOND MOSES

Maimonides, a rationalist, and known as Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (the
"Rambam"), one of Judaism's greatest philosophers, was the SECOND
Moses and was considered a threat to the Church. He was a Jewish
physician who was well versed in Greek philosophy, who spent much of
his life among Muslims and he greatly influenced Christian Europe
which is why he was banned and his book burned. Ironically, Arabs
considered him an Arab thinker, whereas to the Jews he was their
renowned teacher.

Israeli Historian Shlomo Pines said,

"Maimonides is the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages
and quite possibly of all time."

He is frequently quoted from the Mishneh Torah* (Repetition of the
Law), for his systematization of biblical commandments and the Talmud.

His "The Guide of the Perplexed" was an inspiration to rationalization
then and now as an inspiration to secularized Jews. He is both quoted
by religious and non-religious Jews.

"Maimonides was born on Passover eve in the Spanish city of Cordoba in
1135 and died in Egypt in 1204. He was 13 when the Almohades, a
fanatical Muslim movement, seized control of his hometown. The
Almohades gave Jews the choice of death, conversion or exile. The
Maimon family, choosing to depart, wandered for a decade before
settling in Fez, then the capital of Morocco. Maimonides, educated by
his father and other local rabbis, soon began his first major project,
a commentary on the Mishnah, which is part of the Talmud, the massive
and authoritative compilation of Jewish law." [Time Mag/12-23-85,
Muslims and Jews unite in paying tribute to a medieval sage - Richard
Ostling]

"Maimonides' work contained the 13 Articles of Faith, to this day part
of synagogue ritual. Persecution of the Jews began in 1164 in Morocco,
and two years later the Maimon family moved to Egypt, where they found
a final refuge." [ibid]

"There he devoted ten years to the writing of the Mishneh Torah. Its
preface contained what became Judaism's standard listing of the 613
biblical commandments, which deal with matters ranging from ritual
slaughtering laws to recompense for injuries." [ibid]

Maimonides was a physician
to the Egyptian court of Saladin,
and was also famous for his medical writings.

The Church was anything but modern and Maimonides was a threat to
Christianity because he sought to harmonize traditional religion
(Judaism) with modern ideas of philosophy and science.

Burning "The Guide of the Perplexed" was a dangerous precedent which
led to more burning of books - and the burning of the Talmud.

The Church had a disdain for knowledge
and during that period began to limit access to learning.

POPE GREGORY IX

In 1236 a Jewish _apostate,_ Nicholas Donin, submitted a memorandum to
Pope *Gregory IX listing 35 charges against the Talmud. These included
allegations that contained blasphemies of Jesus and Mary, attacks on
the Church, pronouncements hostile to non-Jews, and foolish and
revolting stories which is often still quoted by anti-Semites as
truth. Even some Jews have made that same mistake.

Book Burning

The apostate version is that the Jews had elevated Oral Law to the
level of divinely inspired Scripture, and this impeded the possibility
of Jewish conversion to Christianity. In 1239 Gregory IX ordered
ecclesiastics in France to confiscate Jewish books (March 3, 1240),
and for them to be burned at the stake.

Similar instructions were conveyed to the kings of France, England,
Spain, and an _inquisitorial committee_ condemned the Talmud two years
later. In June 1242, 24 wagon loads of books totaling thousands of
volumes were handed over to the book executioner for public burning.

Lachrymose View

From the historical writings of refugees - from the expulsion of 1492,
Jews chronicled _a relentless series of persecutions (per Yitzhak Baer
of the Jerusalem school) the history of the Jews in Spain serves as an
allegory for the predestined failure of ALL Jewish attempts at
integration everywhere.

Convivencia View

At the other extreme are the proponents of convivencia, i.e, "living
together", a coexisting of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the
_Iberian_ Peninsula. And there was a "golden age" of Jewish culture in
Spain, but that did not last, no more than it has ever lasted
anywhere. It never does. It never lasts anywhere and proponents of
Zionism understand the need for a Jewish homeland so Jews can have a
refuge from persecution of which the historical record is the proof
and evidence that Zionism is every bit as important today as it ever
was - even where Jews are now experiencing a "Golden Age" which ALWAYS
proves to be an ephemeral condition of Jewish existence.

Medieval Iberia was _unique_ as a haven of tolerance for religious
minorities, and particularly the Jews and relative to the Europe of
Pope Gregory IX, it was a veritable deliverance and indeed a very
"golden age".

Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 along with the development of
the Inquisition in Castile. Isabella (I) the Catholic (1451-1504)
Queen of Castile from 1474, - with her marriage with Ferdinand of
Aragón 1469, the crowns of two of the Christian states in the
Moorish-held Spanish peninsula were united. And she introduced the
Inquisition into Castile, expelled the Jews and the Moors, and she
gave financial encouragement to Columbus.

The Catholics proposed beatification of Isabella in 1992.

There have always been periods of relative calm
and peaceful coexistence, but it never lasts.

The facts are that in spite of this relative tolerance, there were
many instances of persecution and violence against religious
minorities in Iberian controlled lands and Visigothic forced baptisms,
the Granadan massacre of 1066, Almoravid and Almohad persecutions, as
well as the more numerous instances of anti-Jewish violence in
Christian Spain including the most famous being the massacres of
1391.*

[Nirenberg, David, Jews, Visigoths, and Muslims in Medieval Spain:
Cooperation and Conflict - The Journal of the American Oriental
Society, 10-21-1997, pp 753(5)]

Burning Books, NOT Bras

The burning of the Talmud was repeatedly urged by the popes. In
France, Louis IX ordered further confiscations in 1247 and 1248 and
upheld the principle in an ordinance of December 1254. It was
confirmed by Philip 111 in 1284 and Philip IV in 1290 and 1299. A
further burning was ordered in Toulouse in 1319 by the inquisitor and
in Perpignan.

Any copying of and study of the Talmud could not be carried out openly
and proceeded with difficulty.

Renaissance

In the new spirit of liberty engendered by the Renaissance, the
well-known German humanist Johann Reuchlin * defended Jewish learning
and the Talmud, which had again been condemned to destruction the
emperor in 1509 because of charges leveled against it another
apostate, Johann Pfefferkorn.

* [Reuchlin, Johann 1455-1522, German humanist and lawyer, a
scholar of Greek and Hebrew, taught jurisprudence at Tübingen. In
1492 he began the study of Hebrew, and his Rudimenta Hebraica

The polemical battle ensued between supporters of the humanists
against the obscurantists, who were the leading Christian scholars,
and was prelude to the Reformation.

When Johann Pfefferkorn, a Jew who had converted to Christianity,
advocated destroying of all Hebrew books, Emperor Maximilian requested
an opinion from Reuchlin, who suggested that "only those Hebrew books
which calumniated Christianity should be suppressed and that the Jews
should be required to furnish books for the universities, with two
chairs of Hebrew learning to be set up in every university in Germany.
His decision brought forth a storm of opposition from bigots and
obscurantists..." [ibid]

Reuchlin wrote opposing Pfefferkorn and he was supported in his view
by humanists, whereas clerics and the Inquisition supported
Pfefferkorn.

Counter-Revolution

It was during the Counter-Reformation in Italy in middle of the 16th
century that the attacks on the Talmud had the most far-reaching
consequences. And in this reactionary climate, a quarrel broke out
between rival Christian printers of Hebrew books in Venice. One of
them, with the connivance of certain apostates, denounced the works
produced by his competitor as containing matters offensive to the Holy
Catholic Church. It developed into a wholesale attack on Hebrew
literature and after a council of cardinals had examined the matter,
the pope issued a decree (August 1553) designating the Talmud and
related works as blasphemous and condemning them all to be burned.

In Sept. 1553 in Rome, Hebrew books that had been seized from Jewish
homes burned. The _Inquisition_ ordered all rulers, bishops, and
inquisitors throughout Italy took similar action.

Subsequently this anti-Jewish wave of oppression and anti-learning,
spread to other branches of Jewish learning, and the study of Kabbalah
in particular spread rapidly in Italy after the Talmud had been
condemned.

The last auto-da-fe of the Talmud took place in Poland,
"Kamenets-Podolski" in 1757, and 1,000 copies of the Talmud were
thrown into a pit at "Kamenets" and burned until this practice was
revived once again by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Excerpt from Luther's Pamphlet

"First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire, and
whatever does not bum up should be covered or spread over with dirt so
that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it....
Secondly. Their homes should likewise be broken down and
destroyed...."
___________________________________

PEACE for Arafat is the
Destruction of Israel
and NOTHING ELSE!

The mere existence of Israel has been considered a NAKBA; a
"calamity", a "holocaust" [Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, "The
Caldron:The Middle East Behind the Headlines" (1988)]

"Israel was Jewish, democratic, largely western, socialistic and
independent............Israel gradually became the major, if not the
only, unifying factor in Arab politics."

Major General Mustafa Hassan in "Israel and the Nuclear Bomb" (Beirut,
1961):

"The leaders of Zionism thought in the past that in the aftermath of
the establishment of Israel the Arabs would acquiesce to the
prevailing reality and, with the passage of time, would acknowledge
its [Israel's] existence in their midst. However, events proved the
error in their thinking. The Arabs consider the establishment of the
State of Israel as the worst/most horrific holocaust that afflicted
their nation. This holocaust touched the quintessence of their
national honor and greatness, and had since been one of the primary
impetus to their revival, their liberation from imperialism, their
revolting against the prevailing conditions in their states, and their
getting rid of these rulers they considered responsible for this
holocaust."

This NAQBAH is a continuing reality for as long as Israel continues to
exist. "Realpolitik" is not an agreement which will some how magically
result in peace. Real politics is living with the intense hatred and
knowing that the only solution for peace is to provide security. Arabs
and Jews are not going to love each other anytime soon.

Populist anti-Semitism is being advanced for socio-political reasons
and objectives. There were suicide bombings in Morocco last week. Jews
were also targeted. In a mid 60s article in Les Temps Modernes by a
Morroccan named Sa'id Ghallab the issue of anti-Jewish hatred was
addressed:

"The worst insult that a Moroccan can make to another is to call him a
JEW. My childhood friends have remained anti-Jewish. They vent their
virulent anti-Semitism by asserting that the state of Israel was the
creation of Western imperialism. My Communist comrades themselves have
fallen into this trap. Not one issue of a Communist newspaper has
denounced the anti-Semitism of the Moroccans. And a whole myth of
Hitler is cultivated among the lower classes. They exalt (and delight
in) the massacre of the Jews carried out by Hitler. They even believe
that Hitler is not dead. And they expect his arrival to deliver the
Arabs from Israel." [Jean-Pierre Peroncel-Hugoz, "The Raft of
Muhammad" - Paragon, 1988]

Israel's Fragility Is NOT Illusory

Anita Shapira, Dean of Tel Aviv University in "The Past Is Not a
Foreign Country" writes:

"It was not until 1964 that an Israeli prime minister was officially
welcomed at the White House, when Lyndon Johnson received Levi Eshkol.
In their joint statement at the conclusion of the visit, Johnson
proclaimed the need to maintain the territorial integrity of all the
states in the region......If even a government as friendly to Israel
as the government of the United States was not prepared during that
perilous time to guarantee the 1949 borders (what today is called the
"Green Line"), then Israel's situation was in truth fraught with great
danger, and Ben-Gurion's obsession with Israel's fragility was not
illusory." [ibid]

".... Meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League resolved to divert the
waters of the Jordan River, which are vital for Israel's existence. At
that same conference, there was a public declaration of the intention
to destroy Israel, and the PLO was founded.... [ibid]

Cultural and Social Dimension
of Arab-Jewish Relations

"The cultural and social dimension of Arab-Jewish relations has been
thorny and "Arab hostility against the Jews commenced, when the Meccan
army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quaraiza." [Joan Peters - "From
Time Immemorial" 2001 edition]

"Omar, the caliph who succeeded Muhammad, delineated in his Charter of
Omar the twelve laws under which a DHIMMI, or non-Muslim, was allowed
to exist as a `non-believer' among `believers'. The Charter codified
the conditions of life for Jews under Islam--a life which was
forfeited if the dhimmi broke the law. Among the restrictions fo the
Charter: Jews were forbidden to touch the Koran; forced to wear a
distinctive (sometimes dark blue or black) habit with sash; compelled
to wear a yellow piece of cloth as a bade (blue for Christians); not
allowed to perform their religious practices in public; not allowed to
own a horse, because horses were deemed noble; not permitted to drink
wine in public and required to bury their dead without letting their
grief be heard by the Muslims." [Peters]

"As a grateful payment for being allowed to live and be `protected,' a
dhimmi paid a special head tax and a special property tax, the edict
for which came directly from the Koran: `Fight against those [Jews and
Christians] who believe not in Allah...until they pay the tribute
readily, being brought low.'" [ibid]

"In addition, Jews faced the danger of incurring the wrath of a
Muslim, in which case the Muslim could charge, however falsely, that
the Jew had cursed Islam, an accusation against which the Jew could
not defend himself." [Peters]

And, "....by the 1960s and 1970s, the Arab governments had a vested
interest in furthering the grassroots anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism as
the primary source of external threat. It was quite a challenge for
among the public at large Jews had been perceived as powerless and
dependent Dhimmis completely beholden to the whims of the Muslim
government and the public at large. However, in the aftermath of the
NAQBAH (the creation of the state of Israel), the Arab governments had
to reconcile the reasons for the historic defeat and anomaly -- the
enduring existence of an independent Jewish state in an area coveted
and claimed by Islam, with the popular image of Jews as inferior.
Hence, the adoption of the classic anti-Semitic themes of a Jewish
international conspiracy perpetrated mainly in the West. This
rationalization explained why although Arabs had not been directly
exposed to this conspiracy against the whole world they were not at
the forefront of a global struggle. The consequent blurring of the
distinction between Jews and Zionists expedited the widespread
populist acceptance of this logic. Now, there was a `strong enemy' to
hate and fear, and to justify all the extreme measures -- from
militancy to military build-up and the adoption of dictatorial
measures at home -- undertaken by the regimes as required to meet the
Jewish conspiracies and threats. Anti-Semitism thus became a major, if
not the primary, instrument in the agitation incitement arsenal of
Arab regimes against Israel." [Yosef Bodansky, "Islamic Anti-Semitism
as a Political Instrument" - 1999 - Center for Policy Research]

And for those of you who think this was from the past and no longer of
any consequences, think again. These attitudes are pervasive and
taught by the clerics. And Arab leaders continue the process of
fueling anti-Semitism to suit their political needs and to divert the
masses away from their real problems. There is an urgent existential
need for Jews to support Israel. Zionism is every bit as important
today as it ever was.

Hank Roth
___________________________________

From: imra@netvision.net.il

Arafat: "Kill as many settlers as you can"

By Ma'ariv Correspondent Ben Caspit
Ma'ariv 11 July 2001
Translated by IMRA

Headline: "Kill as many settlers as you can " said Yasser Arafat
and instructed his men "kill a settler every day", "don't pay
attention to everything I say in the media"
Yasser Arafat instructed his men to "kill a settler every day" and
asked them to "shoot at settlers everywhere."

According to a report put on the tables of the decision makers in
Jerusalem, Arafat recently instructed his people to increase the
attacks on the settlers. "Woe to you if you let them reach their
homes safely or travel safely on the roads," said Arafat. Along
with this, Arafat instructed them not to open fire from Area A that
is under his exclusive control and not to initiate attacks within
the territory of Israel [IMRA: within the Green Line]. "I want you
to kill as many settlers as possible." He said.

According to the same information, that is considered of the
highest reliability, Arafat instructed Mohammed Dahlan not to dare
to detain members of the rejection movements or attackers. Senior
security sources report that Dahlan recently asked to detain
Abdallah Shami, who is on Israel's wanted list, but his men were
caught in a fight with the local population in the area where Shami
lives. When Arafat learned of Dahlan's attempt, the chairman
rebuked him and instructed him and the others heads of security
organizations not to arrest anyone. Arafat said at a meeting he
held with the heads of Fatah and members of the security apparatus
"do not pay attention to what I say to the media, the television or
public appearances. Pay attention only to the written instructions
that you receive from me."

IMRA - Independent Media Review and ****ysis
http://www.imra.org.il/
___________________________________

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