Moving to Israel

There’s a wonderful and sobering article out this week in Arutz Sheva that I wanted to share with you. The article is written by Prof. Steven Plaut of the University of Haifa and runs in parallel with the anti-Semitic propaganda play, “My Name is Rachel,” currently playing theaters around the world.

Plaut makes the case that the plays subject, Rachel Corrie, serves as the Horst Wessel of the anti-Israel Left. Wessel was an idealistic young German active in the Bismarck Youth organization, a nationalist youth group in post-WWI Weimar Germany. At 19 years old he joined the Nazi Party and, like Corrie, wrote poems and music, and he played the oboe. In 1930 when he was 23, he got into a dispute with his landlady, whose husband was a communist party leader. Probably in response, on  January 14, 1930, Wessel was shot in the face by Albrecht Höhler, an active member of the local Communist Party. This is where Plaut draws the analogy as the Nazi Party decided that Wessel would make a brilliant martyr figure, and his tragic death could be exploited as political ammunition to promote the agenda of the party.

He goes on to say that Horst Wessel was obviously the Rachel Corrie of the anti-Jewish movement almost 80 years before Rachel Corrie played a similar role and I’ll quote him in his explanation: “In both cases, their “martyrdom” was in fact a pathetic death due in large part to their own stupidity.  In both cases the death of a naive young person involved in extremist politics was exploited by the pro-terrorism groups to which they belonged.  In both cases the “martyrs” were beatified by those seeking the murder and annihilation of Jews.”

I highly recommend reading the whole article as Plaut does a fantastic job of identifying the utter disdain of those behind these farcical martyr shows and properly condemns them to what they truly are: more anti-Semitic rubbish.

Ari

Although I made the move to Israel many years ago, America is my country of birth and I am still a very patriotic American at heart. That’s why it pains me to so often see the very anti-Israel activities that regularly occur on American soil. I was therefore happy to read what took place at an event last week in San Francisco, California marking the first anniversary of Operation Cast Lead.

The rally, led by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), International Solidarity Movement (ISM) of Northern California, Code Pink, Women in Black and a number of other organizations hostile to Jewish statehood that normally succeed in broadcasting their message of “Israeli atrocities and racism” was met with an unexpectedly assertive Zionist counter-protest. San Francisco Voice for Israel, a local pro-Israel group affiliated with the StandWithUs organization, has since 2004 been publically confronting what the group terms “anti-Israel hate speech” in the California Bay Area. Taking no position on Israel’s borders or on the fate of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, SFV4I attempts to present Israel as a Western democracy closely allied to the United States. To that end, the group holds regular counter demonstrations – often featuring American flags alongside Israeli ones – across from more belligerent and sometimes violent anti-Israel forces. They were joined by the Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) of Northern California, a new factor in the Bay Area Jewish scene with a much younger membership than other pro-Israel groups. Rather than talk about Israeli democracy, the Alliance assertively pushed a message of Jewish national rights to all territory between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Caught off balance by the unapologetic and forceful Zionist message, the anti-Israel activists, although employing their familiar tactic of presenting Israeli policies in a negative light, found themselves unable to challenge the assertion of Jewish rights.

While the ZFA and SFV4I do not always see eye to eye on all issues, it was good to see them unite in this instance and stand up to the all too frequent anti-Semitic rantings of these groups. Hopefully this will be another step in educating the American public to let them know that Israel is a valued, trusted friend of the U.S.A. and that it is the crimals and dictators of the world that deserve their attention and condemnation.

Ari