YNET reports:
From the outset of Operation Cast Lead, a narrative that is highly disturbing for Israelis and Jews has emerged in the Arab world. "Israel carries out mass extermination," Hamas and Islamic Brotherhood spokesmen scream out on Arab satellite networks, and especially on al-Jazeera.
"Collective punishment, genocide, Holocaust," these same spokesmen cry out, with photos of dismembered bodies in the wake of Air Force attacks posted in the backdrop. These are charged words, yet it is precisely what speakers are trying to achieve: They wish to show the world that Israel has replaced Nazi Germany. Those are not slips of the
tongue, but rather, a deliberate argument that is repeated time and again.
From early on in the war, a dual and often contradictory narrative had been created by various Arab media outlets. Yet despite the contradictions, it appears many Arabs accept it: On the one hand, Israel is portrayed as a Nazi state and a mass exterminator of defenseless civilians, while the world remains silent. Yet on the other hand, "Palestinian resistance fighters" are said to pulverize Israel mercilessly, with the IDF said to conceal its casualties. [...]
We were sitting in the vestibule of the synagogue on Shabbos, a group of mothers and children waiting for the service to end.
ReplyDeleteTwo young pre teenage boys were playing a game, "I'm shooting Arabs","pow,pow, pow" "I'm blowing up Arabs", "I can kill more Arabs than you".
The mothers were horrified and one sends a child to go get her husband who questions the boys.
"Where did you learn this type of thing, this is terrible?" asks the father.
"Oh, the youth director, from NCSY," replies one of the boys. "We play a game on Shabbos called the "Settlers of Catan" and it is about an imaginary place, but we make it to be Israel and the object of the game is to kill as many Arabs as possible to win the game."
After Shabbos, one of the parents googles and learns that the game, developed in Germany, is played in nearly every NCSY youth group in the country.
During the 2006 Second Lebanon War Rabbi Sholom Wolpe, a prominent figure among Israeli Chabad told the local Kiryat Gat weekly "that the war should continue "until the enemy has been totally eradicated."
[Interview with Shalom Dov Wolpo, Kiryat Gat Net (Hebrew), July 13, 2006]
Fortunately, the Orthodox Union issued a statement in response to Rabbi Wolpe's racist and hateful remarks: “We unequivocally condemn Rabbi Wolpe’s statements. They are beyond the pale of legitimate democratic protest and have no basis in Jewish law or hashkafa (philosophy)".
But Chabad leaders have not distanced themselves from Wolpe and other extremist Messianics who call for genocide against Arabs.
Children in a local yeshiva bring home a parsha sheet in which the Ramban is credited with saying "that Arabs have been the evil enemies of the Jews since Avraham and Sarah".
A quick look at the referenced sefer, perek and passuk, shows that the Ramban never wrote such a thing. In fact, those who know history, know that the Ramban was expelled from Christian Europe and granted refuge in the Moslem Levant.
Where did this come from?
There is a great deal of Anti Arab and Muslim hate in our Jewish communities, so much that it is often shocking. This is not part of Judaism or our Torah. It is frightening to note how much Judaism has changed in the past 50 years. Our great grandparents would not recognize it.
> There is a great deal of Anti Arab and Muslim hate in our Jewish communities, so much that it is often shocking. This is not part of Judaism or our Torah.
ReplyDeleteReally? What did it say about Yishmael in Bereshis again?
As to the Arab mentality, does anyone recall the Iraqi minister of information, "Comical Ali" who was describing the destruction of the American army even as its tanks were rolling through the streets behind him?
ReplyDeleteOr the thousands of julibant celebrators who simlutaneously cheering 9/11 as a great Muslim victory as well as a Jewish consipiracy to frame Islam?