Shavua Tov! Hope you had a good week.
This week’s Jewish news review is mostly about Minnesota political figures, in honor of election week (I hope you all voted). Check out which Minnesotan legislators are making national news and why. Listen to Matisyahu’s rockin’ song that’s making him famous world over, just in time for the Winter Olympics. And read a little tidbit about the Texas shooter you might not have known…
Have a great week!
“Olympic Crooning by Matisyahu” – Bintel Blog on the Forward. At you thought it was cool when Jewish reggae star Matisyahu performed at First Avenue in Minneapolis? His song “One Day” is the new NBW Winter Olympics anthem. Check it out.
“McCollum lectures ambassador on J Street” – JTA’s Capital J blog. Minnesota Congresswoman (from my part of town – oy) makes national news for lecturing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for not attending thecontroversial J Street conference in Washington, DC last week.
“State Sen. Dick Cohen appointed to White House arts council” – Star Tribune. MOT (Member of the Tribe) and Minnesota State Senator Dick Cohen gets a pretty sweet national appointment. Mazels Sen. Cohen!
“Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) Calls Out Bachmann For Use of Holocaust Imagery at Capitol Hill Tea Party” (Talking Points Memo blog) and “Charming Signs at the Most Recent Tea Party” (Jewlicious blog). Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann gets chewed out by Rep. Steve Israel for organizing the Tea Party protest this week where many signs (see the Jewlicious piece) used Holocaust imagery (not just Nazi signs people, but images of dead bodies). Thanks for giving Minnesota a good name Rep. Bachmann – why haven’t we voted her out yet?
“Israel, Palestinian Authority probing Texas shooter: Nidal Hasan’s family comes from Arab village just outside Jerusalem.” WorldNet Daily. Oh yeah, and the Texas shooter shouted “Allah Akbar” before he kills 13 American soldiers. Awful.
(Photo: jeredb)
Why the continued insistence that J Street is somehow controversial or out of the mainstream? Over a thousand activists, politicians and elected officials and Jewish leaders attended J Street’s very successful first conference. Tzipi Livni, among other Israelis, also criticized Oren for declining the invitation to attend. I think McCollum is right on the mark here.
ML – J Street is odd to me, I have to admit. Why would an admittedly pro-Israel organization decide to drop the “pro-Israel” from the name of their college campus branch? Why would they have raised over $100,000 so far this year from Muslim and Arab donors? I don’t know necessarily that J Street is out of the Jewish mainstream, but controversial it is. I think we’ll have to do a lot of wait-and-seeing to understand this organization, its priorities, and its impact on the American-Israel relationship.
When groups such as this adopt slogan words such as “peace” often the assumption is made that somehow other groups that disagree with their particular stance aren’t for peace. It’s not an issue of “Pro-Israel” or “Pro-Peace” but of what path will ultimately lead to peace. As history has shown, the path to peace isn’t always through compromise and negotiation. We see how well that’s working in Iran. Too many hopelessly idealistic people here in America want Israelis to gamble for peace, and if Israel should lose that gamble, people in Israel will suffer, and not people on J Street or in St. Louis Park. In any negotiations Israel should be very careful and cognisant of history. The Arabs learned a great lesson from the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. You attack Israel, you lose lands, you negotiate with Israel, they throw lands at you. Israel really has no obligation to give back one inch. Arabs turned down a Palestinian State in 1948 and tried to take the entire land. Israel gained those lands fighting against multiple wars of extermination. Let’s just be honest about the situation from a wide angle. The Arabs truly believe that Israel is only a temporary intrusion and that gaining crippling compromises from an Israel today will lead ultimately towards its destruction tomorrow. I’ve never understood this obsession with throwing away the Liberated Lands of 1967. How is Tel Aviv, only built in the early 20th Century so legitimate but not Hebron whose Jewish connection goes back thousands of years? If the Palestinians want to create a homeland (and not a Gaza #2 sitting just a short missile range away from major population centers) then let them create one in Jordan. When we talk about occupations let’s not forget about Jordan which was created by ripping off 80% of Mandate Palestine which was previously promised by the Balfour Declaration to be given to as a Jewish National Home. Let the Hashemites go back to Saudi Arabia and resettle their ancestral homeland and give Jordan to the Palestinians. That’s compromise.
Leora asked, “Why would an admittedly pro-Israel organization decide to drop the “pro-Israel” from the name of their college campus branch?” I don’t know. I’ve seen mixed reports about this. Stripped of context it’s puzzling. It’s a good question though.
“Why would they have raised over $100,000 so far this year from Muslim and Arab donors?” Is there something inherently wrong with being Muslim? Or Arab? Is it possible that some Muslims, Arabs, Jews and Israelis share some common goals? I think J Street supports those goals. AIPAC takes money from people who’s sole motivation to support Israel is related to their end-of-time eschatology. However, I wouldn’t through the baby out with the bath water regarding AIPAC either.
Yehoshua, your long rant hardly answers any of the questions I posed, nor the criticisms I leveled. Your bigotry is fascinating and illustrative nonetheless.
If being a Zionist and having concern for both the Jewish and Arab people is called bigotry, then label me what you like. If Jeremy Ben-Ami wants to become the Herzl of Palestine then let J Street also drop the name pro-peace because you will have neither peace nor Israel in the long run.