tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.comments2023-11-14T09:41:39.946+00:00Micah's Paradigm ShiftRobert Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11656729802011708553noreply@blogger.comBlogger141125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-73806702215527993682020-10-17T21:27:52.955+01:002020-10-17T21:27:52.955+01:00Sorry that I can't get on to the full letter, ...Sorry that I can't get on to the full letter, as offered above. But Robert again gives the necessary truth about Israel and Palestine and asks once again that there be a free and rounded understanding of Zionism, past and present.John Wilkinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15080931771424051445noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-29668471168839108432020-07-31T20:21:10.725+01:002020-07-31T20:21:10.725+01:00I wanted to thank Robert Cohen for the marvelous e...I wanted to thank Robert Cohen for the marvelous essay ("history will judge us"). It is inspiring. <br />Farrell Simcha Brody, Columbus, OH, USAFarrell S. Brodyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13308676885621398508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-26767050254242183782019-11-28T15:01:32.995+00:002019-11-28T15:01:32.995+00:00Put bluntly, the Chief Rabbi is a Tory & shoul...Put bluntly, the Chief Rabbi is a Tory & should either be quiet, about these matters, or own up to the fact otherwise he is in danger of courting the very anti-antisemitism that we all despiseMickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12269565466010951699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-79024886350468033812019-11-28T14:59:01.665+00:002019-11-28T14:59:01.665+00:00Put crudely, the chief Rabbi is a Tory & shoul...Put crudely, the chief Rabbi is a Tory & should either keep quiet or own up to the factMickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12269565466010951699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-40239708508707571322018-05-15T03:33:27.680+01:002018-05-15T03:33:27.680+01:00Very courageous, Robert; more importantly, true. ...Very courageous, Robert; more importantly, true. JRKJohn R. Kleinheksel Sr.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17453696815212390397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-60698040334028229562018-05-01T20:24:08.526+01:002018-05-01T20:24:08.526+01:00What is your counterproposal to liberal Zionism? R...What is your counterproposal to liberal Zionism? Return to traditional diaspora? How do we un-do Israel? Or, if you're leaving Israel in place because there's no way to get Israelis to do otherwise, are you proposing ending Jewish identification with Israel, and just treat it as any other country, where we diaspora Jews are the ones with "Jewish values," and the Zionists are some new religion or culture derived from our ancient common theological origin, like the Christians and the Muslims? So we have Jews, Zionists, Muslims, and Christians? I truly can't tell where you'd go with Part Two. So far all you've done is identify Portman as well-meaning but naive. Why should we not feel the same way about you? Thanks.Steve Greenfieldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-8253517004772675332018-04-23T04:18:36.044+01:002018-04-23T04:18:36.044+01:00Robert: Below I have pasted something that I would...Robert: Below I have pasted something that I would like you to read, if you will--and comment on. You may not agree with my views, but I still want your reaction to this if you have time and energy.<br />Thanks,<br />Bob Tripp Reston, Virginia<br /><br />Zionism and me 18 April 2018<br /><br />Bob Tripp, Reston, VA.: berkeleybob50@gmail.com.; 703-742-0929<br /> <br />I am an 86 year old American Jew. I was 15 years old in 1947 when the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states. I was 16 when Israel declared its independence in May 1948.<br /> <br />At the time I did not even think of questioning either of these actions. My adult Jewish relatives were ecstatic. There were no newspaper or radio stories providing any kind of narrative opposing or even questioning these actions. It was as if the Palestinians did not exist. Whatever stories I read and heard or saw in movie house newsreels were all about Israel and how wonderful it all was, a desperately needed refuge for European Jews after the Holocaust. And of course at the time this seemed to make complete sense. The Palestinians? Who were they? <br /> <br />When I was at UC Berkeley in the early 1950s, I even helped establish a chapter of IZFA [The Intercollegiate Zionist Federation of America], which had been set up in the 1930s to lobby among Jewish American youth for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.<br /> <br />From 1947 to the early 1980s no one I knew - Jewish or non-Jewish - ever so much as mentioned Palestinians - even after the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians simply were not on most folks' radar screens.<br /> <br />But beginning in the mid-1980s I started listening to, reading and watching various alternative news sources and meeting people much more knowledgeable than I about the Middle East. I was beginning to learn about the reality of Israel/Palestine. It was very disturbing to me that I had not known about that reality until then. But as I learned, that was no accident.<br /> <br />Starting with the Zionist movement’s founding conference in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, Zionists have very successfully waged a campaign of disinformation and no information to cover the truth. The campaign, waged in Europe and America, has been especially effective in the U.S.<br /> <br />Since 1951 the campaign in this country has been led by AIPAC [the American Israel Political Action Committee]--with help from the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations. Virtually all of the mainstream American media have caved into AIPAC. One example: Palestinians who attack Israel are frequently called ‘terrorists’ attacking ‘innocent’ Israelis – rarely if ever does the mainstream media point out that Palestinian attacks on Israel are the only thing they can do against the overwhelming power of and tight control by Israel.<br /><br /><br /><br />But even if there were any seriousness on Israel's part for a two-state solution, it has become impossible: the 500,000+ Jewish "settlers" now living in communities scattered all over the West Bank make such a solution impossible--unless the settlers were forced to leave and return to Israel. Fat chance! <br /><br />So what do I think is the answer to Palestine/Israel? One state is the only possibility, I think...that's all I have room for.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09060741124691234230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-74257854874258260942018-03-20T09:37:10.042+00:002018-03-20T09:37:10.042+00:00I appreciate your words about Marek Edelman, and h...I appreciate your words about Marek Edelman, and have no problem with your reproduction of his criticism of suicide bombings. But if you are going to quote this, I find it unacceptable that you do not mention that in the same letter he expressed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02654813911448907403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-31774512639201439052018-03-20T09:36:37.151+00:002018-03-20T09:36:37.151+00:00I appreciate your words about Marek Edelman, and h...I appreciate your words about Marek Edelman, and have no problem with your reproduction of his criticism of suicide bombings. But if you are going to quote this, I find it unacceptable that you do not mention that in the same letter he expressed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02654813911448907403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-52573773192225434112017-03-03T22:26:12.766+00:002017-03-03T22:26:12.766+00:00Sacks is a racist supremacist zionist. He will li...Sacks is a racist supremacist zionist. He will lie and lie and lie in pursuit of a total aliyah goal. Don't be fooled by his mock sincerity - it ain't real.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-67309487510915930932016-06-11T22:55:07.928+01:002016-06-11T22:55:07.928+01:00I don't blame Judaism, I blame Zionism and the...I don't blame Judaism, I blame Zionism and the Israeli government.<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13855118527003003640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-62199759823314712272016-03-28T07:53:59.371+01:002016-03-28T07:53:59.371+01:00Many non-Jews reading these will be impressed by t...Many non-Jews reading these will be impressed by the apparent capacity of the Jews for debate, even when under fire. One thing is for certain though, we deserve our day in the sun just like any other "group" of people and we should not ever have to apologise for seeking, nay, demanding it. I grew up in South Africa where I never encountered anti-semitism perhaps because the local bigots had their hands full with other matters. Since moving to the UK I've come to be aware of the resilience and the irrationality of European anti-semitism. That's puzzled me, because from my experience what you get with the Jews is a good, warm conversation and a generous well-stocked fridge, perhaps, I grant you, to some people's taste, a little under-provided with alcohol. What I'm getting at is the more I read about the forces upon European Jewry in the late 19th cent, firstly with the accumulation of centuries of Christian prejudice, adding in the then respectable eugenics of the time, not to mention the waves of pogroms in Russia, it was inevitable that migrations to the Ottoman Levant would occur. The forces of history here are beyond much of our control. Herzl wrote of the anti-s. forces gathering in Europe: "I cannot imagine what appearance and form this will take. Will it be expropriation by some revolutionary force from below? Will it be proscription by some reactionary force from above? Will they banish us? Will they kill us? I expect all these forms and others", and: “It will overtake even Hungarian Jews with brutality, and the longer it takes to come, the worse it will be. The stronger they [the Jews] become, the more bestial will it be. There is no escaping it.” Herzl is correctly predicting mass murder. If from his vantage point, 40 years before the rise of Hitler, he was right in his predictions, I feel that today we are too hard on ourselves. One feels for the desperation of the Palestinians and for opportunities lost. They did not ask for waves of Jews to arrive from left and right but come they did carried by the tides of history. Resolution here is a problem for the world community which made an attempt in 1947 by partitioning Mandate land. One hopes that peace can be achieved. I think we take Israel's existence for granted, but if one tries to take a dispassionate view of Israel, is it not, for all its faults, a remarkable achievement? Established under international law a home for a people half of whose number had been wiped out by an unthinkable industry of mass murder? I feel we perhaps judge ourselves too highly. The other parties involved in the Middle-East conflict have not always distinguished themselves either, and it may just be a "class of civilizations" that will remain so, but one hopes it doesn't.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15725415035467172203noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-28865092420934162122016-01-13T16:15:53.258+00:002016-01-13T16:15:53.258+00:00I agree with all the positive comments above abou...I agree with all the positive comments above about your letter, Robert. I have been a Palestinian Solidarity Campaigner in London for several years now , arguing and discussing the issue with the public through a PSC market stall as well as with bloggers online. Your letter crystallises excellently so many of my thoughts and feelings on the issue. Thanks. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-2090679011384991282016-01-03T21:36:34.665+00:002016-01-03T21:36:34.665+00:00Nice fictional presentation.
Now let's get to...Nice fictional presentation.<br /><br />Now let's get to reality. The Christian says something absolutely and provably false in the midst of their 10 paragraphs. The Jew decides to focus on that one false statement and demands retractions... The Christian is trying to have an argument about politics while the Jew is having an argument about family. They are two totally different emotional plains. The Jew values his relationship with Israel far more than the ecumenical affiliation. The Christian in your example is not willing to have a total breach where the Jewish group simply shifts their ecumenicalism to evangelical sects (not sure why Anglican liberals would care but in your hypothetical they do). The most likely impact of trying to get your bowling buddy to realize his wife is a dreadful person is to end your bowling relationship. There is not going to be some deeper relationship at the ecumenical level that includes a rejection of Israel. <br /><br />For Jews the conflict is local, it is about their literal cousins. For Christians it isn't local, it is about one obnoxious tribe driving off / killing off another obnoxious tribe. <br /><br />A much more honest conversation is going to have to start with liberal Christians coming to realize why liberal Jews might have very mixed feelings about full blown military repression and suppression of rights in a foreign country. That means listening not lecturing on Israel / Palestine. The way you see it is not the way most liberal Jews do and you are giving bad advice in trying to pretend that the dialogue will go as smoothly as the above. <br />CD-Hosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00304535091189153224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-42296981306827828222015-11-09T11:11:27.181+00:002015-11-09T11:11:27.181+00:00Brilliant! Such an accurate record of the conversa...Brilliant! Such an accurate record of the conversations our group has had.<br />Thank you for taking the time to write it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-28207768394427315592015-11-01T11:30:00.814+00:002015-11-01T11:30:00.814+00:00I hope you will share more articles soon.I hope you will share more articles soon.Jonathan Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14825396013441587846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-37231212906143954682015-08-14T00:03:16.867+01:002015-08-14T00:03:16.867+01:00Robert - Zionism was equally beyond redemption bef...Robert - Zionism was equally beyond redemption before these latest murders and every day will demonstrate this. I hope the Jewish people and even those who live in Israel are not but....).<br /><br />One atrocity more or less by either 'side' in this or any other conflict does not prove or disprove the fundamental case or alter historical justice. Killing 500 children in Gaza, including babies, and complete destruction of some neighbourhoods (unquestionably war crimes) didn't get a word of condemnation from Jewish leaders in UK. Nor will you hear anything about the Arab worker beaten up with steel bars and hospitalised by settler youth this week, or the 5 (at least) Palestinians killed by the Israeli state since the arson attack, or the 1300+ attacks on Gaza fishermen since the war ended or the almost daily attacks on al-aqsa.... What would redemption of Zionism look like? What would redemption of racism look like?<br /><br />You either believe in equality and universal values or you believe that your tribe/family/country whatever is somehow superior and therefore entitled to trample on the rights of others. <br /><br />Have a good trip. We can compare notes on your return - our April trip included sleeping in a village house in Duma, right by the site of the recent killings.Paul Seligmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18370438884642104930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-1290993703867644042015-06-07T15:53:19.534+01:002015-06-07T15:53:19.534+01:00Thanks for this comment. I'm familiar with the...Thanks for this comment. I'm familiar with the idea that some of our most ethical ideas are only meant to apply to other Jews. It does not really make sense to me though. The constant refrain in the Hebrew bible reminding us that we were 'strangers in the land of Egypt' and therefore should treat 'strangers' in our 'own land' with respect, care dignity etc must refer to 'others' not just Jews. And if I have got this wrong then I am in very good Jewish company. I also think a religion that cannot look beyond ethical concern for its own tribe has not progressed beyond the stone-age and is not worth bothering with!<br /><br />On your final point, I'd say that 'other gods' were meant to refer to local deities that must have been in competition with the idea of monotheism. I think once we are more bothered about 'land' than 'God' then we have crossed the line and swapped something eternal and worthwhile for 'the Golden calf'. All the best. Robert Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11656729802011708553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-26048992726929544462015-06-07T15:15:51.104+01:002015-06-07T15:15:51.104+01:00I think some versions of Judaism restrict all the ...I think some versions of Judaism restrict all the positive helpful aspects of Judaism (care for orphans and strangers, that sort of thing) to other Jews, not to humankind as a whole. In any case, some Israeli rabbis are quoted as saying things that (it seems to me) amount to this view. Israel Shahak said something of this sort.<br /><br />In any case, if there are any Jews who take such a view, then they are not going to agree with you. But ethical universalists will (or should) agree with you.<br /><br />So keep the kippa on, maybe wear a kaffiyeh as well, why not?, and preach the good word.<br /><br />One question: what did the ancients mean by such concepts as 'other gods" and a "Golden Calf" and "monotheism"? When does an overly possessive regard for Israel -- or a particular territorial realization of the idea of Israel -- become a Golden Calf or another god?pabelmonthttp://123pab.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-87971503218340583322015-06-04T09:37:04.657+01:002015-06-04T09:37:04.657+01:00I think that " advocating for Palestinian ri...I think that " advocating for Palestinian rights " suffers greatly from a lack of focus. I mean generally, not you specifically. We get drawn into arguments about history and trade competing narratives. People, of course, don't live in history or narratives they live in situations. The situation is perfectly simple, and we must not buy into the " its complicated" game.<br /><br />There is a de facto one state between the Jordan and the sea, and that isn't going to change. The simple ( not easy ) task is to democratise it. This can be be easily understood by the mass of people that are not particularly engaged, people whose sympathies have to be won.. This would, of course, entail dumping the word " occupation".<br /><br />Too many " advocates for Palestine", including some high profile names in the " game", seem to think it is a war of anecdotes.<br /><br />As a corollary there is a welcome move on the part of some UK Jews to disassociate Jewish culture from Israel. One group in particular is becoming very effective in this respect and can use as much encouragement as they can get.<br /><br />StephenBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-75193380358639723872015-06-01T20:19:10.215+01:002015-06-01T20:19:10.215+01:00I'm with you. Advocating for Palestinian righ...I'm with you. Advocating for Palestinian rights is an intrinsic part of my Judaism. Judith Normannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-87217673671480710342015-05-31T11:14:50.479+01:002015-05-31T11:14:50.479+01:00Inspired and true as always, Robert, keep going, G...Inspired and true as always, Robert, keep going, God is definitely with you.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12694803435051868240noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-86720559502089587892015-05-31T09:16:36.756+01:002015-05-31T09:16:36.756+01:00Don't worry about the spiteful criticisms, Rob...Don't worry about the spiteful criticisms, Robert! You are spot on as usual, and robustly defending your faith and the true identity of Jewishness - they know it and it rattles them for the truth of it! To quote wise words “There is no prophet who is despised except in his city and among his kindred and in his house”. You are probably not a prophet ;) - but your words are wise so keep going – the world would be poorer without them!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14579497431250409700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-35768329990665933952015-05-31T08:08:28.469+01:002015-05-31T08:08:28.469+01:00I'm open to constructive comments...but can yo...I'm open to constructive comments...but can you say a little more? Email the blog if you prefer.Robert Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11656729802011708553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997821105166599918.post-10659191083712779092015-05-31T00:28:37.873+01:002015-05-31T00:28:37.873+01:00You can do better than this...and you should.You can do better than this...and you should.Watchful Irishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03527962831125046024noreply@blogger.com