At Israel's 73rd Independence Day: Reclaiming pride in Zionism - with Profs. Gil Troy & Judea Pearl

A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label “Jew”; today, Jews (and their allies) must reclaim pride in “Zionism”

In the wake of both recent U.S. terror attackers, i.e., Noah Green (follower of Louis Farrakhan rammed into US Capitol Policemen) and Ahmad al-Issa (follower of Islamic State/ISIS shot-dead 10 people at Boulder, CO supermarket) being exposed to fundamentalist Islamic anti-Semitism expressed as "anti-Zionism, many pro-Israel diasporan Jews are reluctant to have the "label" of Zionist applied to them. But now, around Yom haAtzmaut / Israeli Independence Day, we are reminded of the nationalist autonomy movement which turned a people into a new country, Zionism.

Israeli Prof Gil Troy (r) with Israeli-born Prof. Judea Pearl
Dr. Pearl's son, Daniel, was slain by 9/11 Islamists he tracked down
who boasted slaying him confessing family's Jewish identity

The Jerusalem Post reprinted author and Canadian-Israeli Professor Gil Troy's 2001, 800-word essay for Israel’s Independence Day to the Montreal Gazette called “I am a Zionist.”  He explained: “A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label ‘Jew’; today, Jews should revive pride in the label ‘Zionist.’”

"Tragically, today, too many Jews avoid the “Z-word,” because so many Jew-haters demonize and delegitimize Jews, Israel and Zionism. Zionists must not allow their enemies to define the movement. We are not just anti-antisemites or anti-anti-Zionists. Jews should reaffirm their faith in Zionism; the world should appreciate this gutsy, visionary movement that rescued a shattered people by reuniting a scattered people. 

Zionism is the Jewish national liberation movement, reviving a once-broken community with bold actions guided by three assumptions – that Jews:

• Are a people not just a community of faith – the Jewish people, Am Yisrael;

• Have ties to a particular homeland – the Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael;

• Have the right to establish a state on that homeland – the State of Israel, Medinat Yisrael.

If Political Zionism’s great twentieth-century success was establishing a functional, democratic Jewish State, today’s great opportunity for Identity Zionism is finding meaning from connecting to that State and to our people, wherever Jews live."

Commemorate Israel's Independence Day with a new refresher Why I Am a Zionist narrated by Prof. Troy.

Zionism: New Goals & Old Struggles - Prof. Gil Troy

 

Prof. Gil Troy and UCLA emeritus Prof. Judea Pearl instructed an audience of Stand with Us "Israel in Focus '19" gathered college students and L.A. community members in the essence and history about Zionism - and the pioneers who restored sanctuary for Jews in Biblical, Jewish Palestine. 

In the The Zionism(s) talk below, Prof. Troy (a McGill University lecturer) is joined by Israeli-born, UCLA Emeritus Prof. Judea Pearl in the second and third segments here.  

Part 1 is McGill Univ Prof. Gil Troy's talk on the diversity of Zionist pioneers' ideas, which he addresses in his book.

In Part 2, Troy answers questions from the audience and Prof. Pearl.

In Part 3, Prof. Judea Pearl explains Judaism's centrality in Israel, and Israel's centrality to the Jewish faith. Anti-Zionism (or Zionophobia) is therefore a racist offense against Jewish belief. "For Jews to oppose Zionism is to commit suicide on a collective level. American Jewry will not survive without Israel. We used to have a glue - religion - and we lost that. Now the only glue that remains is Israel and its inspiration."

(Advance through video-playlist via buttons on lower left)

Christian theology's role in the Holocaust and today's anti-Semitism. For Yom ha Shoah (Holocaust) Remembrance Day

During the Passover observance in 2019, 19-year-old John Earnest allegedly walked into a synagogue in Poway, California and opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others.

It was later revealed that Earnest was an active member of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation and specifically believed that he was doing God's will by killing Jews.

The revelation that the lone suspect in the mass shooting was a devout Christian stirred reactions from many, including author and columnist Michael Brown, a proponent of Messianic Judaism and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “The Line of Fire.”

In his latest book, "Christian Antisemitism: Confronting the Lies in Today’s Church," Brown documents a new resurgence of anti-Semitism within American churches.

Brown wrote about what he saw on social media from self-identified Christians and rhetoric espoused by modern Christian ministries and some theologians.

This includes the rise of replacement theology, the notion that the Church has replaced Israel as the new chosen people, with God no longer having any plans for modern Jews.
(source: 'Dangerous' and 'growing': Michael Brown warns about the rise of Christian anti-Semitism by  Michael Gryboski in The Christian Post, 2/1/21.

'It's anti-Semitic to teach that Christians have replaced Jews' said Archbishop John Lupoli Jr, World Council of Independent Christian Churches in March 2015

Archbishop John Lupoli, Jr., presiding Prelate and Metropolitan Archbishop at the World Council of Independent Christian Churches' College of Bishops said at the National Religious Broadcasters Association that Christian anti-Semitism continues to be taught and held against Jewish people and Israel.

The WCICC is a fellowship of churches, pastors, ministries, Christian schools and individual members in seventy-nine nations around the world. They provide a platform to independent churches that are deprived of the collective support and the privileges of mainline denominations.

 In this interview with JooTube.TV, Lupoli explains, "I know as a whole, for the most part, replacement theology has taken over and replacement theology makes an effort to say the church has replaced Israel in God's promises."

JooTube: Is that a guiding factor in their attitudes towards Israel politically and socially?

Mr. Lupoli: "I think that the majority of people that we have interviewed are anti-Semitic and don't even realize that they are anti-Semitic. They are so wrapped up in what the church is doing that they forget their their original background which is Hebrew. There is really background they can't exist without it, without recognizing their Hebrew roots. Did exactly if you have to look at the scripture and if you take Jesus as the Messiah - there is no such thing as a messiah without the Old Testament. There is no such thing.  If you eliminate is really illuminate the Messiah, but in in their efforts to be totally Christian, whatever that may be, their efforts have have gone overboard with regard to the denial of their Israeli roots."

The Christian Post asked author, Michael Brown, how pervasive a problem do you believe replacement theology is in the American church? Do you see it as more prevalent in some denominations than others?

Michael Brown:

Yes, it’s very prominent. It is certainly growing. It is very dangerous. It is more to be found in what would be called the mainstream denominations — so Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist, etc. It is less found in Charismatic circles or in some aspects of evangelism. But the fact is it’s there. It’s certainly there in Catholic theology.

Those that hold to it don’t like to be put in the category of holding to replacement theology. They would rather say they believe in “fulfillment theology” or put another name on it. But the end result is the same: the promises that God once gave to the Jewish people as a people no longer apply to them, but rather apply to the Church.

And once you begin to say that, then God is finished with Israel, God is through with Israel as a nation, as a people. And you can even see the Jewish people as people forever cursed or rejected by God.

Prof. Emil L. Fackenheim, a professor of philosophy and survivor of Sachsenhausen says that "the same anti‑Semitism that permitted many Christians to accept the Nazi slaughter of the Jews still finds expression today in Christians’ reading of the Holocaust as a universal evil not particular to the Jews at all. Fackenheim goes so far as to deem to be an aspect of anti‑Semitism what he views as Christians’ failure to be even‑handed in judging the competing claims of Israelis and Arabs:

“Why did the Christian press remain undisturbed by nineteen years of Jordanian control of the Christian holy places (and desecration of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues), but become greatly agitated by Israeli control? Why does it fill its pages with accounts of the plight of Arab refugees but rarely even mention the nearly as numerous Jewish refugees from Arab countries? Why are there moral equations between Israel’s claim to the right to exist and Arab claims to the right to destroy her?” 

(source: "Jewish-Christian Theology and Relations After the Holocaust" by Gary G. Porton in My Jewish Learning.

 

How have Jewish org leaders chosen to not protect you from anti-Semitism from the Left?

Our Passover Haggdah reminds us: "In every generation they arise to destroy us!" Our ancestors in Europe experienced horrific violence annually on this Good Friday/ Easter weekend.

Crusaders armies murdered hundreds of Jews who refused forced baptism in Mainz, Worms, Speyer, and as depicted here, in "The Massacre of the Jews at Metz" 1096, created by Auguste Migette

"Why Good Friday was dangerous for the Jews in the Middle Ages"

This (deicide) language about Jews in the medieval Good Friday liturgy often carried over into physical violence toward local Jewish communities.

It was common for Jewish houses to be attacked with stones. Often these attacks were led by the clergy. David Nirenberg, a scholar of medieval Jewish-Christian relations, argues that this violence reenacted the violence of Jesus’ suffering and death.

Another scholar of this history, Lester Little, argues that the attack on the Jewish community was meant to be a revenge for the death of Jesus and a ritual act that reinforced the boundary between Jews and Christians.

Local clergy who encouraged and participated in the violence against Jews were in violation of the rules of their own church. Church law sought to protect Jews and required them to stay inside on Good Friday. Historically, the western church took responsibility for the safeguarding of Jewish communities because they viewed Jews as preservers of the Old Testament, and thus of the prophecies concerning Jesus. Official positions were, however, often ignored locally as many Christians sought to assert their power over the Jewish community.

Civil authorities protected Jews by setting up armed guards and not permitting Christians under 16 years to throw stones. But this could not always prevent bloodshed and violence.

The B.L.M.-led pogrom through Jewish L.A. streets were enabled by the Democrat city and state officials, several of whom have moved up and on to the Biden/Harris Democrat regime. This administration's pro-Palestine and pro-China/Iran steps and appointees indicate a rough four-years for Jewish-Americans and Zionistic-Americans (including Christians).

Jew-hate graffiti on Los Angeles temple was followed by a Leftist pogrom the next month
April 7, 2020 (Photo credit: Twitter/ADL The Times of Israel)

When Obama sets-up Israel to pre-empt or lash-back against emboldened Iran's proxies in Syria, Hezbollah, and Gaza, liberal, lapdog press smear Israel. This increases public   hostility towards diaspora Jews. The Biden/Harris Democratic regime has already demonstrated support for a nuclear Iran, and expecting Israel to cede 1967 territory (Auschwitz borders) to an Islamist state of Palestine. It's necessary that the Jewish community have watchdogs that are willing and able to take-on Leftist and Democratic Party anti-Israelism/anti-Semitism.

"Left-Wing anti-Semitism Is Insidious, Therefore Dangerous"
by Karen Lehrman Bloch in the Jewish Journal (4/16/20):

Ruth Wisse, author of the 1992 classic “If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews,” gave a provocative digital lecture titled “Can Liberals Confront Anti-Semitism?”

When I first saw the title, I thought that she meant (illiberal) leftists. But Wisse does mean Liberals. In fact, she offered a cogent explanation of liberalism’s descent into leftism.

. . .  Good people are not easily seduced by the anti-Jewish Right, but they have always been susceptible to the anti-Jewish Left that speaks in the name of a higher morality. One sees liberals not just caving in the face of anti-Jewish aggression but degenerating into socialist and leftist illiberalism. Is that what inevitably happens? I don’t know. But it is certainly happening in America right now. In the mind of a socialist, there is nothing more reactionary than this self-regulating people (Am Yisrael) with its historical roots in divinely ordained religion,” Wisse said.

“Essentially,” she continued, “liberal assumptions about human nature and progress have underestimated the power of evil. There is ‘healthy liberalism’ (America at its best) and ‘illiberal liberalism/leftism’ (Western democracy at its worst), and anti-Zionism is the virus that turns one into the other.”

In Caroline Glick's "The Threats American Jewry Refuses to Face," she addresses:

 "... why much of the communal response to both rising anti-Semitism and rising assimilation has been ineffective and even counterproductive. 

Take the Anti-Defamation League, for instance. With an annual budget of around $100 million, the ADL is supposed to be the community’s first line of defense against anti-Semitism.

But with leadership comprised of dedicated foot soldiers of the progressive revolution, who rather than fight the TV networks proliferating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and libels, or the BDS brownshirts on campuses terrorizing Jewish students, the ADL has devoted its resources to fighting “white supremacy.” To be sure, as the Pittsburgh and San Diego synagogue shootings made clear, white supremacists are a threat.

But unlike the progressive Jew-haters, white supremacists have no foothold in the mass media, in politics, in academia or in popular culture.

ZOA's Mort Klein has criticized Mark Hetfeld renaming
the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to "HIAS" to import
foreign Muslims from anti-Semitic cultures into America
(photo: Crescent City Jewish News)

In recent years, Mort Klein, who leads the Zionist Org of America, has criticized the leftist steering of the ADL under Jonathan Greenblatt, successor to Rabbi Abe Foxman.  Klein also objected to using the organization to meddle in Democrat political matters unrelated to fighting religious prejudice.

Among examples, the ZOA chief alleges Mr. Greenblatt's ADL:

• Opposed Judge Kavanaugh immediately after he was nominated, and said ADL would be giving questions to the Committee to be used to oppose Kavanaugh.
  
  
• Distributes educational materials that encourage students to participate in “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations (which have been anti-Israel hate-fests). ADL’s divisive materials speak of “white privilege” and at first ignored and then downplayed adjudications of police innocence – while reciting the accusations.
  
  

  

  Jonathan Greenblatt replaced Rabbi
  Abe Foxman to lead the ADL
  

• ADL has opposed anti-BDS laws in several states and on the federal level and in articles.
  
  
• ADL repeatedly signed joint letters with extreme anti-Israel groups (such as CAIR), thereby giving them credibility. For instance, ADL signed 29 joint letters opposing an Act for America event, to mayors of 29 cities, together with virulent Israel-hating organizations, including: letter-contact MPAC (which called Israelis “the worst terrorists in the world,” has said Israel should not exist, defends Hezbollah, and says that Israel should be suspected for perpetrating 9/11); 4 JVP groups; CAIR; the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, which like CAIR, is also an unindicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, involved in funneling money to Hamas); the National Iranian American Council (NIAC, an arm of and lobbyist for the genocidal Iranian regime); Bend the Arc; and BDS promoters American Friends Service Committee and PC(USA).
  
  
• ADL extensively advocates (including by filing numerous Amicus briefs) to bring immigrants into the U.S. from certain Muslim majority nations where they cannot be properly vetted.
  
  
• ADL’s “Homegrown Threat” report downplays radical Islamist attacks, using various extensive manipulations, including limiting periods covered, omitting Islamist attacks with spurious excuses (such as false claims that they were “hate crimes” or that the plot wasn’t connected to a specific designated Islamist terrorist organization, and by omitting other major Islamist plots and attacks without giving any reason for doing so. ADL’s report then misleadingly claimed that plots by “individuals motivated by right-wing extremism” exceeded plots motivated by Islamist extremism.

Dr. Charles Jacobs

Dr. Charles Jacobs, a pioneer in combating modern-day slavery and fighting anti-Semitism (co-founded The David Project, Boston's CAMERA, and now with Americans for Peace and Tolerance) expressed his experience with liberal, Jewish community mismanagement failing to represent the Jewish interest against anti-Semitic denigration among Muslims, Blacks, and the Left (mainstreamed through Biden/Harris regime's critical race theory and the Ethnic Studies Curriculum).

FrontPage Magazine initially published video remarks of Charles Jacobs describing his call to replace Jonathan Greenblatt leading the Anti-Defamation League ("ADL"). Dr. Jacobs describes, as one example of the weak leadership, an example of where the New England branch he summoned to assist in rectifying what he construed as anti-Semitism in Boston-area school curriculum - he feels unreasonably copped-out for liberal political reasons. The ADL later "slayed the messenger" of the Boston "Jewish Advocate" weekly newspaper because of the newspaper's objective coverage of the matter by discontinuing their longtime advertising, which contributed to the newspaper's insolvency.

Dr. Jacobs questions whether liberal Jews in positions of community management have let their tribalist loyalty to the Democratic Party (accompanied by enmity towards "Trump'ers" and conservatism) to paralyze them from defending Clal Yisrael against leftist anti-Semitism? This is especially dismaying in view of the fact that nowadays, in addition to religious and ethnic rivals scapegoating Jews, the leftist-dominated, neo-Democratic administration has mainstreamed marginalizing Jews through critical-race theory.

Pres. Bill Clinton greets Rev. Louis Farrakhan who
incited Muslims to stone "Satan" Greenblatt

"They (liberal Jews in protection agencies) think they're being kind (because they should be kind - they should stand for human rights - and they do stand for human rights) and there are black groups today who will go around and teach the black community what the Jews did for the blacks during the civil rights movement. Important black groups. And they should and they do.

But they also thought there would be some reciprocity. Today the Jewish establishment still believes that there will be reciprocity and there isn't much. I mean if you can't get the Democratic Party to say that we're not going to hang out with Louis Farrakhan and if you can't get Bill Clinton not to sit next to Louis Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin's funeral . . .

We're on the left we have led the left with our brains, we've supported the left with our dollars and with our spirit, and now the left is spitting at us! And the Jewish establishment is trapped. Cornered. Doesn't know what to do. Flummoxed. We need new leaders!"

The ZOA criticized Mr. Greenblatt's publishing an article in Foreign Policy echoing the Obama administration's sharp criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu for a labeled "ethnic cleansing" video.

Journalist, Jonathan Tobin wrote: “Greenblatt's decision to side with the Obama administration against the government of Israel is telling.  For Greenblatt to re-position ADL from its former centrist position as a mainstream address for pro-Israel activism to one that is now in open opposition to the democratically-elected government of Israel is a sea change of enormous importance. From now on, ADL must be viewed as an ally of J Street and others on the left who make no secret of their partisanship in the context of both Israeli politics and the tense relations between Israel and the United States. This is a betrayal of ADL's long and honorable legacy as a group that sought to speak for the interests of the Jewish community as a whole and respected the right of Israel's people and their leaders to make their own decisions about security.”  

Columnist, Isi Liebler wrote:  “It would seem that in the post-Abe Foxman era, the ADL board has knowingly empowered an individual whose outlook is not only liberal but effectively represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics. In fact, despite Greenblatt's protestations of love for Israel and reiteration that the US Israel nexus is strong, especially after finalization of the defense agreement, the ADL's approach to Israel is similar to that of J Street, having no hesitation in telling Israelis that it knows better than they do - what is good for them.”

Charles Jacobs, president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance in Boston objects to Jewish protection agencies avoiding challenging leftist black and Islamic Jew-haters, such as the Nation of Islam, whose member, Noah Green, 25, rammed a car into two, US Capitol Policemen only days ago, killing one and wounding the other.

Dr. Jacobs questions whether Jewish community leaders' tribalist loyalty to the liberal (anti-Zionist) bias of some of their members - and part of the Democratic Party - has paralyzed agency "leaders" who are entrusted with protecting Jews from anti-Semitism from challenging anti-Semitism from the Left. He proposes new strategies and approaches.