Editorial Article
An "academic conference" in London gives an Israeli quisling a
chance to shine: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Jewish History Lecturer) of
Ben Gurion University
By Lee Kaplan
Imagine if, before America's entrance into
World War II, Hitler's Nazi machine began a program of injecting
German academics into all the German Studies departments at
universities and colleges all over America. Professors from
distinguished universities in the Reich, well-skilled in English,
would be sent on paid sabbaticals to American institutions of higher
learning where "academic freedom" (frequently misinterpreted today),
would allow them to teach bright-eyed college students about the
merits of the Third Reich as a misunderstood human rights and social
justice movement for the German people who were betrayed by Europe's
Jews at Verseilles.
For good measure, some Jewish academics would
be included in the program, highly paid, with excellent travel perks
and profitable guaranteed publishing rights, to present the Reich's
case that Germany really has nothing against Jews as Jews, but is
really fighting Jewish Bolsheviks and subversives who even control
the media and all industry in America, and whose nationalism as Jews
is contrary to human rights and social justice. Later,
American-based professors who were part of such a program would also
be sent to Great Britain, then at war with Nazi Germany, to discuss
in British colleges the folly of opposing German goals of reunifying
Europe under one banner of equality and justice for all. But the
main spokespeople at such symposiums would be Jewish professors to
lend the utmost credibility to the program. For good measure,
those Jewish academics would always identify themselves as different
from other Jews, whose nationalistic and conspiratorial goals were
different from other Jews.
Would the allies have won the Second World War?
A case in point is an "academic symposium"
taking place in Britain this month led by Palestinian irredentists.
And, of course, there are the token Israeli academics in attendance
to lend credibility to the exercise.
After all, if Jewish intellectuals can agree
with the goals of so many Arab and Muslim intellectuals about their
desperate need to dismantle a Jewish state, how can the Arabs be
wrong?
The event, at the University of London, is
titled "
Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel"
to be held November 17th-18th in 2007 and features several
British-based Arab "academics," as well as some other stars from
the Palestinian revolutionary movement at US universities against
Israel like
Joseph Massad of Columbia who supports terrorist attacks
against Israelis.
Here's an example of a description of just one
of the panels at the symposium:
"This panel provides a platform for internal
debate on the desired institutional and constitutional formation of
the state which is commonly dichotomized into the bi-national model
on one side and multicultural democracy on the other."
If you had to read the above description more
than once, to understand it, you're not alone. Let me translate it:
"This panel is designed to develop new ideas of
subversion affecting the multicultural and pluralistic democracy
that is Israel today, to prevent the solution of two states side by
side in peace from ever happening, and trying to propose a single
state of Palestine with an Arab majority and new constitution of
their own running things."
Never mind that the current constitution of the
Palestinian Authority, funded by USAID funds from pluralistic
America and even with the consent of pluralistic Israel, is based on
Sharia Islamic Law , the same as the constitutions of Saudi
Arabia and Iran. And never mind that the other Arab "academics" on
the panel are in fact political activists with an axe to grind like
Joseph Massad, who addresses his Israeli students at Columbia with
comments such as "How many Palestinians did you kill today?"
Ali Abunimah , another symposium guest, is active with
Al Awda (The Return) whose motto is "From the river to the sea."
And true to form, the panel has its academic
Jewish quislings to lend support to its real purposes. One of those
academics is Israeli history professor Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben
Gurion University.
Raz-Krakotzkin objects to Jews (but not
Palestinian Arabs) seeking a national homeland for both religious
and secular reasons, and has used the Arab term "Nakba"
("catastrophe" in Arabic, meaning the founding of Israel).
In discussing secular Israeli Jews, perhaps the
majority of Israelis in the only democracy in the Middle East, he
says, "They are called 'secular' because they reject or abandon the
Halakha, the Jewish law, but the myth that defines the so-called
national-secular is itself based on an interpretation of the
theological myth, according to which the present Jewish existence in
Palestine is the return of the Jews to their homeland (considered to
be empty!) the fulfillment of Jewish history and of the prayers of
the Jews."
The above says a lot from this historian from
Ben Gurion University. He not only declares the Torah as replete
with Jewish "myths" about the land of Israel belonging to the Jews,
a fairy tale among the religious (who, and in contradiction by him,
if they were true to the faith would not want a Jewish state), but
expands his interpretation to debunk secular Jews who also feel a
connection to a Jewish national homeland as a result of world
genocide and persecution as also being founded on the same myth. He
also ignores that the majority of land that made up Israel prior to
1948 was legally purchased by the Jewish Agency (who do you buy land
from in a country that's empty?!).
Meanwhile, Raz-Krakotzkin ignores what is
principally the pan-Arab nationalism and fascism mixed with good old
fashioned Islamic hatred of Jews that guides the side he is working
with so as to promote the creation of a single state of "Palestine."
He does not mention that the Koran also says the land of Israel
belongs to the Jews, nor does he condemn calls within that same
document that is the basis of the current constitution of the
Palestinian Authority. In other words, his Arab colleagues can have
all the nationalist and religious aspirations they want, including
replacing Israel with one state, "Palestine," and a new constitution
to be supervised by the very clan that already rejects any civil
society by refusing to even condemn terrorism against Jews.
Raz-Krakotzkin continues, "Nationalism is not a
replacement of the theological myth but an interpretation of the
myth. Therefore the very distinction between "secular" and
"religious" identities in Israel is problematic. I do not want to
undermine the differences, or to ignore the real danger of
religious-nationalistic groups. But I argue that the origins of
these radical right-wing groups are not to be found in Jewish
religion, but in the secular interpretation of the myth. Therefore,
without understanding these aspects, one cannot suggest a real
alternative to the ideology of the right-wing settlers. Israel is
not a secular state and not a nation state. It is considered as the
"state of the Jewish people" to include citizens of other countries,
but through the exclusion of its Arab citizens, and their systematic
dispossession."
In short, Raz-Kratkotzin says that Jews have no
claim to Eretz Yisrael either biblically or as a secular ethnic
movement, and the Jewish state excludes its Arab citizens and "disposseses
them." Of course, Israel currently has
a large Arab poplulation with equal civil rights , and even
affirmative action programs for them, and it's his Arab
colleagues who insist that Jews living in communities in Judea and
Samaria built on public lands are ok to dispossess as the
Palestinians make the area Jew-free and run their new country
according to Islamic Law.
The United Nations legally set up Israel as a
nation-state
as well as a separate one next door for the Arabs that the Arabs
themselves rejected. Had the Arabs succeeded in 1948 in driving the
Jews who legally owned property all over the Holy Land into the sea,
can anyone serously believe the Arab world would have given any land
back today? Israeli Arabs today get free health care and are
entitled to equal rights as Israeli citizens by law, so
Raz-Krakotzin would seem less a historical scholar and academic who
knows what he's talking about than a mouthpiece for Arab propaganda.
He confirms this in a statement about the First and Second Intifadas:
"The Intifada started after the killing of
seven people in the Mosque, the day after the provocative visit of
Ariel Sharon [to the Temple Mount]. In the beginning, it was mainly
expressed in mass demonstrations, with shooting against settlers -
but at this stage there were no terror attacks from the kind we knew
later, with the suicide bombers."
He continues, "The sense of depression and
disappointment among the Palestinian people were well known. The
peace process provided minimal autonomy to certain parts of the
Palestinians in the occupied territories."
Some historian. The
First Intifada resulted in the deaths of 160 Israeli Jews who
were killed merely for being Jews by Arabs and was not limited to
just Jews in the "occupied territories" of Judea and Samaria. Over
1,000 Arabs also died,
most of them killed by other Arabs who accused them of collaboration
with the Jews , as well. More than 3,600 Molotov cocktail
attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with guns or
explosives were reported by the Israel Defense Forces. The violence
was directed at soldiers and civilians alike. The Mosque killings
Raz-Krakotzin refers to were the act of one insane individual, not
Israeli government policy whereas the PLO government organized and
paid gangs to attack Jews and other Israelis hundreds of times.
But Raz-Krakotzin also shows us his faulty
scholarship in attributing the Intifada to Ariel Sharon's visit to
the Temple Mount in the year 2000 as being the catalyst,
despite admissions by the leadership of the PLO that the Second
Intifada was planned in advance. There is
audio and video proof of this. Sharon's visit, a stroll by a
Jewish leader who was demonstrating Jews have a right to visit
Judaism's holiest shrine (surrounded by a ton of Israeli armed
Israeli border guards to stave off attacks), was used as an excuse
to start the violence. Sharon did not enter or approach the two
mosques on the sites that comprise only 3% of the Temple Mount.
Despite these important facts, The Palestinian
Arab narrative persists in the media and in the classrooms of our
major universities with the same misinformation Israeli professors
like Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin are more than happy to repeat at this
London symposium.
For an academic historian, symposiums like this
provides world-renowned attention as an "academic authority" and
visits to far off cities like London and New York where one can be
taken as a serious intellectual. All he has to do is repeat Arab
propaganda and false history to promote changing Israel into
"Palestine."
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