Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Barry Chamish E-Mail August 12, 2015- Israeli's Government and the Papacy




**My dear readers. My work on the pope is getting around everywhere on the 'net.
Just in time for his American tour. And just in time to purge my wasted life file. A phone call from you would be nice. Barry **

‪#‎JESUIT‬ WORLD ORDER
WHO OWNS JERUSALEM TODAY? --THE VATICAN!
Great work by Barry Chamish!

The connection between Israel President Shimon Peres and the Roman Catholic Church.
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                                                             FRANCISCANS HONOR SHIMON PERES
                                                                              by Barry Chamish
 
     Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Italy for 3 days in early May, 2013. His visit was a predictable betrayal of the Jews, beginning with his new Franciscan "peace" award:"

Peres will also hold a series of diplomatic meetings with the President and Prime Minister of Italy, and take part in a ceremony in the city of Assisi.
The mayor of Assisi, where hundreds of Franciscan monks live, will present its first-ever Medal of Honor for Peace to President Peres for his "unique contribution to dialogue and the cause of peace." At the ceremony he will receive the Medal of Honor for Peace and will be greeted by "hundreds of Franciscan monks" at the central Basilica, according to an official statement.

    
Those who know Peres acknowledge his, honestly, psychopathic need for medals and awards, to the point of bribing the Nobel committee for a prize:

Last week, Yoav Yitzhak, in the wide circulation newspaper Maariv, revealed that Peres gave Terje Larsen, the UN Middle East representative, $100,000 to secure him a Nobel Prize.
This week, David Bedein, writing in Makor Rishon, applied the coup de grace. He interviewed a member of the Nobel Prize Committee, Kaare Kristiansen, who not just confirmed the bribe but described Larsen's pressure on the committee in full detail.

    
But accepting made up accolades from the Franciscans is utterly insulting to anyone with a modicum of understanding of recent Jewish history. From the mid to late '40s, the Franciscans (along with the Dominicans), in what is known as Operation Paperclip, hid in their monasteries over a hundred thousand Nazis, before smuggling them to freedom worldwide. It is estimated that just the US received 30,000, largely Franciscan "refugees."
     So while in Italy, naturally Peres lavished in the praises of the Nazi saviors and then was practically smothered by a pope, not named like many believe after a talking mule, but by the very same church leader that the Franciscans honor, Francis I:  

No sooner had Bergoglio taken office, than Peres invited the new pope to visit Israel, asking him to contribute to peace as a spiritual, rather than a political, leader. He'll be a welcome guest in the Holy Land, as a man of inspiration who can add to the attempt to bring peace in a stormy area," Peres said."All people here, without exception, without difference of religion or nationality, will welcome the newly elected pope."

    
Now why would Peres offer such a deceitful invitation? Could it be because:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&ncid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20030722/wl_nm/mideast_jerusalem_dc
 
Peres Raises 'World Capital' Solution for Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Shimon Peres, the head of Israel's opposition Labor Party, has suggested resolving Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem by putting its holy sites under U.N. stewardship, a spokesman said Tuesday. 

His plan calls for declaring a holy area of sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem's old walled city as a "world capital," with the U.N. Secretary-General serving as mayor.

    
To those who understand the perfidy of the Israeli President, they recall his royal welcome to the previous Nazi pope:

Francis's predecessor Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land and met Peres in 2009.
CARDINAL RATZINGER WAS THE "PREFECT OF THE CONGREGATION", THAT IS, THE CHIEF INQUISITOR.

    
In a remarkable coverup, the fact that nazi youth member Yosef Ratzinger voluntarily joined the Wehrmacht and willingly risked his life for Hitler, somehow escaped the notice of the truly dumbed-down Israeli people, except for an outraged Dr. Daisy Stern:

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2009/03/perfect-crime-vaticans-plot-to-rob-am_31.html

NOBODY HEARS A PEEP about what's  going on: we just find out that BENEDICT XVI is coming for a visit to Israel. ONLY 10 million dollars used to prepare for his visit, among others 6 million NIS, one for every Jew killed in the Holocaust, to RENOVATE CATHOLIC HOLY PLACES. Among others, the CENACLE, which until now had BARE WALLS, because NO PARAPHERNALIA OF IDOL WORSHIP ARE ALLOWED IN A YESHIVA -that is, the Diaspora Yeshiva of Har Tzion. But no worry: RENOVATIONS HAVE ALREADY BEGUN THERE. With other words, the PROPERTIES are being READIED for the pope's arrival, turned into proper Catholic shrines, Jewish or not.

    
Let her provide the background to Peres' Franciscan triumph in Assisi:

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2009/03/secret-machinations-of-vatican-and-its_26.html

So let's see what Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin concocted in 1993, the year of the Oslo Accords, with the help of the Meshumad (apostate) Israeli, Franciscan "Father" David Yaeger, representative of the Vatican and specialist of Canon Law (apparently, the process started in 1992, pretty much at the time of Rabin and Peres's election, and PRECEDED the OSLO agreement).In what is described as a much more important accord than the Oslo Accords themselves, called the FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENT of 1993, these negotiators, who were not even empowered by the Israeli Government under Rabin to do so - the Knesset never ratified the agreement -, signed a document, which was also signed by the Vatican representatives. This document contained three major points:

I.
                   Normalization of relations between the Vatican and Israel- i.e., full diplomatic relations -

2. To be seen in the WIDER CONTEXT OF IMPROVED CATHOLIC -JEWISH RELATIONS (i.e. pogroms, Inquisition, Holocaust, etc. relinquished, replaced instead by a newly found "friendship" worldwide), and -

3.
                  Relationship between the Vatican and Israel as regards legal status of Church properties, taxation, return of properties the Church considers HERS.

    
Having negotiated an eventual handover by Israel of all Vatican "holy" sites, Peres is off and running this year by manipulating the turnover of the Last Supper room to the Franciscans:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12814#.USKyVfL-uSq

An historic agreement has been drafted between Israel and the Vatican. The Israeli authorities have granted the Pope an official seat in the room where the Last Supper is believed to have taken place, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and where David and Solomon, Jewish kings of Judea, are considered by some researchers, to also be buried. It is the culmination of a long campaign by the Catholic Church to regain religious stewardship over the place where Jesus is supposed to have broken bread and drunk wine with his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion.This is an enormous issue pushed through without any public debate. According to our sources, the agreement, which is expected to be ratified next June, gives the Pope a special authority over the second floor of the building, so that Christian pilgrims will be able to celebrate religious functions like Pope John Paul did in 2000...The Catholic Church has long wanted control over part of the area on Mt. Zion so as to turn it into an international religious center for Catholics. The blueprint of the agreement reads as follows: The Vatican hands over this use of the Cenacle to the Custody of the Holy Land which will keep the Cenacle open from 6 AM to 8 AM for the celebration of the Holy Mass..The Custody of the Holy Land, the Franciscan order who, with Vatican approval, is in charge of the holy sites, campaigns with the Arabs against Israel...The Vatican wants the Jews out of the Old City and apparently Israel's government is agreeing with them.

     Now we know why the Franciscans so honored Peres at Assisi.

                               THE VATICAN'S PLOT AGAINST ISRAEL
                                            by Barry Chamish

     In March 1994, the newspaper Chadashot revealed a most remarkable secret of the Middle East "peace" process. A friend of Shimon Peres, the French intellectual Marek Halter, claimed in an interview that in May 1993, he delivered a letter from Peres to the pope. Within, Peres promised to internationalize Jerusalem, granting the UN political control of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Vatican hegemony of the holy sites within. The UN would give the PLO a capital within its new territory and East Jerusalem would become a kind of free trade zone of world diplomacy.

    Halter's claim was backed by the Italian newspaper La Stampa which added that Arafat was apprised of the agreement and it was included in the secret clauses of the Declaration Of Principles signed in Washington in September 1993.
   In March 1995, the Israeli radio station Arutz Sheva was leaked a cable from the Israeli Embassy in Rome to Peres's Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem confirming the handover of Jerusalem to the Vatican. This cable was printed on the front page of the radical leftwing Israeli newspaper, Haaretz two days later. A scandal erupted and numerous rabbis who had invited Peres for Passover services cancelled their invitations in protest of his treachery. Peres reacted by claiming that the cable was real but that someone had whited out the word, "not;" the cable really said that Israel would "not" hand Jerusalem over to the holy pontiff.
    Illustrating the sorry political state of Israel's rabbis, they accepted this cockamamie excuse and re-invited Peres to their tables. However, in the widely distributed minutes of a meeting with Clinton in 1997, Peres reiterated his diplomacy, ending with the words, "as I had previously promised the Holy See."
    Peres's partner in crime, and the real founder of the Oslo Accord, Yossi Beilin, coordinated his PLO policy with the Vatican. Check the timing; at the same moment that he was finagling an accord with the PLO, he was negotiating an agreement for Vatican recognition of Israel. His deal with the pope became another brief scandal when politicians like Agudat Yisrael head Avraham Shapira and Jerusalem Deputy Mayor, Shmuel Meir were leaked hidden details of Beilin's accord which included, "the extra-territoriality of holy sites in Jerusalem to be transferred to Vatican control." Later, Shapira was neutralized by having $250 million is debts accrued by his crooked carpet factory forgiven, while Meir was permanently hushed when his car was crushed by a UN truck driven by a PLO driver. The driver, of course, was released forever after being briefly questioned by Israel Police.
    Now let us jump to the present. The current Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami is shuttling between King Carlos of Spain and the Vatican. That is where the action is for the Israeli government today, and when things get serious, the focus shifts to Paris where Chirac, Albright and Arafat await him.
   There is no question whatsoever that the Vatican wants Israel off the Temple Mount and that our leadership is accommodating  their desire. What I have not been able to pinpoint is why. However, material sent to me appears to answer the question.

   Allow me to preface a few comments before I carry on. The vast majority of my ongoing readers are not really conspiratorial in their outlook. What attracted them to my e-mail list and books is that I solved the Rabin assassination to their satisfaction and that I am offering more likely explanations for Israel's suicide than they are getting from the mainstream media. It took five years for me to finally instill the fact that the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York is Israel's number one enemy, and despite pouring on the evidence time after time, there are still doubters who refuse to believe that any organization can have that much power. Every time I dig deep, I'm accused of going too far, even of fantasizing imaginary foes.

    So what am I going to do with the evidence sent to me accusing the Society Of Jesus, whose members are known as Jesuits, of being the real power behind the CFR and of being Israel and Judaism's most vicious and successful enemy? My doubters are going to have a field day with this revelation but I'm going ahead anyway. The weight of the evidence is beyond merely compelling.

    I had known for some time that a former Jesuit priest, Malachi Martin had exposed his society's treachery at great length. Numerous correspondents insisted I could not understand Israel's dilemma without reading Martin's revelations. Still, one voice wasn't enough for me to risk unnecessary mockery. However, recently other voices have been added to Martin's and I've started paying attention. A composer who I had greatly admired thirty years ago, Tupper Saussy released a book called Rulers Of Evil, which expanded on the thesis of Jesuit control of the American political system and is receiving fine reviews. We have begun a correspondence and I will receive his book shortly.

    In the meantime, allow me to expand on the book I completed reading yesterday. It is called Vatican Assassins and the author is Eric Jon Phelps. One may read excerpts by visiting  www.vaticanassassins.org. This was no ordinary reading experience, the manuscript I received spiral bound is 750 pages in length. The first 600 pages attempt, mostly successfully, to prove that the Jesuits were formed in reaction to the Protestant Reformation and their goal is to return the planet to the good old days when one pope held the monopoly on world religion. Utilizing any evil means available, their plan is to eliminate all the competition be they Jews, Muslims of Christians who don't recognize the Vatican as their capital.

    It is their war on the Jews which will most interest my readers and from here on, we will concentrate on that one aspect of a most complicated history.

    I will start with the book's claim that Jesuit control of Great Britain was the real force behind Zionism and the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in Israel. I have no problem with this thesis since the entire Middle East as it exists today, was created by the British during and after the first World War. If the British created Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon etc., one can be very certain they created modern Israel as well.

     The most disturbing charge is that, to populate the new Israel, the Jesuits stirred up the pogroms and Holocaust of Europe to drive Jews to their safe haven in the Middle East. On page 548 we read:

     "Hitler, now in power, patterned his SS after the Jesuit Order. He used Roman Catholic Bavarian Himmler with his Jesuit uncle to carry out the plan. Hitler declares:

      ' I have learnt most of all from the Jesuit Order. A good part of that organization I have transported direct to my own party. I will tell you a secret, I am founding an Order. In Himmler I see our Ignatius de Loyola.'

     "Walter Shellenberg, Chief of the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD) reveals:

      ' The SS had been organized by Himmler according to the principles of the Jesuit Order. The rules of service and spiritual exercises prescribed by Ignatius de Loyola constituted a model which Hitler strove carefully to copy.'

     " Edmund Paris then asks this most penetrating question concerning Hitler:

      ' Was it not his uncle, the Jesuit father, who had been promoted to a high-ranking officer of the SS? And was not the latter the very eye and arm of Halke von Ledochowski, General of the Order? Who then was sending so many million deportees to death? Was it Heinrich Himmler or his uncle, the Jesuit canon?'"

     The book details the betrayal of Israel's leadership during the Holocaust, recalling that Rudolph Kastner, "then one of Israel's most honored leaders, was a traitor who had cooperated with the Nazi leaders of Germany including Adolph Eichmann to deport Jews from Hungary." I don't dispute this claim and anyone who does should read Ben Hecht's, Perfidy or The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black. It is the conclusion drawn from this treason, on page 584, which is far more troublesome:

     "Ah, dear truth seeker, Zionist Israel is a creation of the Jesuit Order. Its purpose is to secure Jerusalem for the Jesuits "infallible" Pope, that he may receive worldwide worship from Solomon's rebuilt Temple. If the Masonic Zionists betrayed their own Jewish race into Pius XII's concentration camps overseen by the Jesuit Order, would they not betray the nation of Israel by giving Jerusalem to the Pope in preparation for the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple?

    "...Therefore we are living under the preeminence of a Gentile Jesuit conspiracy. It employs notorious Masonic Jews and Gentiles as their agents. This furthers the deception of an international Jewish conspiracy oppressing the nations. Using this lie, the Jesuit General in creating global, anti-Jewish fury again. This fury will culminate in the last mad attempt to invade Israel and destroy the physical descendants of Jacob."

     And who is leading the invasion? We learn that Bill Clinton was the student president of the Jesuit's Georgetown University and, for a time, expressed the desire of becoming a Jesuit priest. In those days, Clinton was sent to England on a Rhodes scholarship, with all that that implies, and at an anti-American demonstration met Jesuit Friar Richard McSorely, who later headed Georgetown's Center For Peace Studies. On page 672, we get a haunting hint at Clinton's later role in Israel's destruction, as well as those of Norway and France:

    "McSorley then went to France and Scandinavia to meet peace people. Stepping off the train right behind him in Oslo, Norway was Bill Clinton."

    And if a Clinton Democrat fails to ignite the flames that will engulf Israel, the Jesuits, "will use the Republican Party to bring a Jesuit-controlled, Jew-hating fascist dictator to power, 'For the greater glory of the god who sits in St. Peter's chair.'"

www.barrychamish.com

                                            SHIMON PERES - THE VATICAN'S PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL
                                                                                  by Barry Chamish       

         In 1979, Yitzhak Rabin published his autobiography, within was a one-line offbeat quote. He said that unlike all Jewish children growing up in Poland, Shimon Peres spent his early education at a Jesuit school. It was an odd fact and I took a mental note of it without understanding it's significance...

         Until I broke my first attention-getting story as a political journalist:

In March 1994, the newspaper Chadashot revealed a most remarkable secret of the Middle East "peace" process. A friend of Shimon Peres, the French intellectual Marek Halter, claimed in an interview that in May 1993, he delivered a letter from Peres to the pope. Within, Peres promised to internationalize Jerusalem, granting the UN political control of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Vatican hegemony of the holy sites within. The UN would give the PLO a capital within its new territory and East Jerusalem would become a kind of free trade zone of world diplomacy. 

Halter's claim was backed by the Italian newspaper La Stampa which added that Arafat was apprised of the agreement and it was included in the secret clauses of the Declaration Of Principles signed in Washington in September 1993.   

In March 1995, the Israeli radio station Arutz Sheva was leaked a cable from the Israeli Embassy in Rome to Peres's Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem confirming the handover of Jerusalem to the Vatican. This cable was printed on the front page of the radical leftwing Israeli newspaper, Haaretz two days later. A scandal erupted and numerous rabbis who had invited Peres for Passover services cancelled their invitations in protest of his treachery. Peres reacted by claiming that the cable was real but that someone had whited out the word, "not;" the cable really said that Israel would "not" hand Jerusalem over to the holy pontiff.   

Illustrating the sorry political state of Israel's rabbis, they accepted this cockamamie excuse and re-invited Peres to their tables. However, in the widely distributed minutes of a meeting with Clinton in 1997, Peres reiterated his diplomacy, ending with the words, "as I had previously promised the Holy See."

      
From then on, my view of diplomacy was skewed toward the truth they weren't letting us in on. A few of you, hopefully even more than a few, will recall my perfectly logical timeline of some long forgotten Washington peace talks:

TIMELINE:

Aug 30 - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak holds "secret" meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah in Amman.
Aug 31 - Four Israelis, one pregnant, slaughtered in terror attack outside Hebron.
Sept. 1 - Barak announces that Israel will divide Jerusalem.
Sept. 1 - Pres. Mubarak and French president Sarkozy meet to coordinate European position in next day's Washington "peace" talks.
Sept. 2 - Israeli President Shimon Peres meets the Pope in the Vatican just as...
Sept. 2 - Netanyahu, Abbas, Mubarak, and Abdullah meet Obama in Washington.

      Logical, only if you are utterly convinced that Israel's President Shimon Peres is a lowlife Vatican spy. Since my appearance in the recent release of the Steve Stavro DVD, Clear And Present Evil, the issue of Peres' real loyalties has arisen once more, in certain circles. I present mainstream articles of varying ages. Who knows if any of the URLs are still up? Now, tell me if you see a pattern:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/04/06/international/i042224D46.DTL
and & Peres Meets With Pope in Vatican Thursday, April 6, 2006 / 8 Nisan 5766
Israel's indefatigable Shimon Peres met with Pope Benedict XVI today, and submitted an invitation to visit Israel from Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. 

The two met for 40 minutes in the Vatican, and the Pope said he hopes to visit Israel sometime in the first half of next year. They said afterwards that they had discussed Middle East matters. "I definitely believe that a visit by the Pope can influence the peace process," Peres told reporters.
Peres is reported, in 1994, to have promised the Vatican official status in Jerusalem.

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=87295

He added: "Relations between the state of Israel and the Holy See were also examined -- in the light of agreements endorsed in 1993 and 1997 -- as well as the relations of Israeli authorities with the country's Christian communities."

After being received by the Bishop of Rome, Peres met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&ncid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20030722/wl_nm/mideast_jerusalem_dc
 
Peres Raises 'World Capital' Solution for Jerusalem 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Shimon Peres, the head of Israel's opposition Labor Party, has suggested resolving Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem by putting its holy sites under U.N. stewardship, a spokesman said Tuesday. 

His plan calls for declaring a holy area of sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem's old walled city as a "world capital," with the U.N. Secretary-General serving as mayor, Peres' spokesman Yoram Dori told Reuters. 

Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital, including the Arab eastern part captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move that is not recognized internationally. Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (
news - web sites) under a U.S.-backed peace plan. 

Peres raised the idea in a meeting with visiting Russian diplomats-in-training when they asked how he envisaged a solution to conflicting Israeli-Palestinian claims to the city, Dori said. 

Israel has previously rejected proposals raised by the Vatican (
news - web sites) to internationalize Jerusalem.

Peres private audience with Pope April 6
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=43077 Israeli leaders to visit Vatican
Mar. 20 (CWNews.com) - Two leading Israeli politicians will visit the Vatican in coming weeks, according to Italian media reports. 

Tsipi Livni, the Israeli minister of foreign affairs, will meet on March 22 with Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican's Secretary for Relations with States. And on April 6, former prime minister Shimon Peres will be received in a private audience by Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news

September 04, 2008 15:49author by Rami Almeghari - IMEMC & Agencies
Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas will be meeting his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres on Thursday evening in Italy.Israeli sources said that both leaders will be discussing outstanding political issues, security and economic concerns. The meeting comes ahead of a special conference in Rome on Friday, over relations between Israel and the Arab World, where Peres is suppose to meet with the vice-President of the United States, Dick Cheney, as well as the representative of the European Union, Manuel Brosu, the sources revealed. 
 
Pope urges Peres to advance peace 
Pope Benedict XVI urges Peres to work towards peace between Israel, Palestinians as president
Ronny Sofer 
Pope Benedict XVI urged Shimon Peres to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians in his new capacity as the President of the Jewish State. 
Peres will be sworn in as president at a special ceremony at the Knesset on Sunday evening.
"On the eve of your appointment as the President of the State of Israel I would like to express my deepest wishes and congratulate you for you appointment to the highest ranking position in your country," the Pope wrote in a letter sent to Peres. 
"Many people around the world, as well as Israel's citizens expect you to push the government and other relevant bodies to do everything to advance peace," the Pope added. 
"Mr. President," the Pope added, "Your reputation and achievements are exceptional, clear and absolute in the field of peace and the pursuit of justice. I am sure you will continue to influence and incite courage in other leaders to deal with the challenges of the future in the clear hope to advance the good a peace." 
"This will be the best way to defeat the deadly terror and violence that are condemned by the whole world. The terrorists are betraying humanity," he said. 
Israel's Ambassador to Italy Oded Ben-Horin said the Pope's letter was personal, warm and unusual.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

Do all roads lead Peres to Rome?

Beit Hanassi would neither confirm nor deny on Sunday a Maariv report that President Shimon Peres plans to make his first trip abroad as president in September and visit Rome. 

The report said that Peres planned to spend four days in Italy, during which he would hold talks with President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Romano Prodi, as well as with Pope Benedict XVI.
If Peres were to go to Rome, he would likely participate in an international conference that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa are also expected to attend.

YNETnews.com 

Hours after the five-week standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity ended, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres arrived in Rome for talks with Premier Silvio Berlusconi and top Vatican officials. Peres met with Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano and Vatican Foreign Minister Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran. During his visit Peres said Italy would be a good venue for a peace conference.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186557439130&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull[/url]

Despite a heavily crowded calendar, President Shimon Peres will travel to Rome on September 5, Beit Hanassi confirmed on Monday. Peres, who used to travel abroad as often as two or three times in a single week, has not left the country since assuming the presidency. 

Peres will remain in Italy till September 9, during which time he will meet with the Pope, the Italian prime minister, and Italian Jewish leaders.  

In the course of his visit Peres will address a mega-meeting of the Jewish community in the Great Synagogue of Rome. According to Beit Hanassi, the event will be a celebration of Italian Jewry's good wishes on the eve of Rosh Hashana for the State of Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1029650.html

Peres on Sunday told reporters the issue should not be a barrier. 

"The visit to the holy country is nothing to do with anger or disputes," Peres said. "It's holy all the time, it's holy for all of us." 

Benedict has repeatedly defended Pius, saying he worked "secretly and silently" during World War Two to "avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews possible.."

At an Oct. 9 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Pius' death, Benedict said he prayed the process which could lead to Pius' beatification "can proceed happily."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710858577&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

'Peres wants to yield sites to Vatican'  

President Shimon hand over Israeli Peres is willing to sovereignty of key Christian holy sites to the Vatican, a proposition that is reportedly opposed by Interior Minister Eli Yishai and that has ruffled feathers among other senior government officials, Army Radio reported on Monday.
Beit Hanassi could not be reached for comment on Monday, as it does not issue statements to the press while the president is abroad. 

According to the radio report, the president is exerting pressure on the government to give up sovereignty over six sites, including the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Coenaculum on Mount Zion, Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Multiplication on the Kinneret. 

The report quoted Beit Hanassi as saying that talks had been going on long enough, and that the time had come to compromise with the Vatican and come to an agreement. 

On Sunday, according to the report, Beit Hanassi requested that the Interior Ministry sign documents ceding sovereignty. However, Yishai refused. 

"Every concession like this limits the Israeli government's ability to function as a sovereign government in the area," the interior minister was quoted as saying. 

Former Meretz chairman Yossi Beilin, however, was quoted as saying that Israel had not behaved satisfactorily in recent dealings with the Vatican. 

"We need to compromise with them," he said.

(ANSA) - Jerusalem, May 19 - Rome is to host a permanent council for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, the city's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, announced on Tuesday.
Speaking after a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Alemanno said the council would be located at Rome's 2,000-year-old symbol of peace, the Ara Pacis. ''The idea is to set up a permanent office at the Ara Pacis, providing a permanent, complete council tasked with working towards reconciliation,'' said the mayor. Alemanno said he would also discuss the idea with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas later on Tuesday.
The mayor said he hoped to launch the council on April 21, 2010, the birthday of Rome's mythical founding, in an event attended by political and religious leaders.
Saying he was hopeful Pope Benedict XVI would be there, Alemanno explained that Peres had ''underlined the importance of involving leading world figures in such an initiative, which Rome is ideally placed to do''. According to Alemanno, a similar idea was raised over a year ago but was shelved during the change of government in May 2008.

    
I will assume you all the saw the pattern. Now, does your leader commute regularly between your capital and Rome? Is your leader trying to give half of your capital to the Vatican? Is he defending a papal Holocaust denier? Is he giving his successor unlimited sovereignty over your land?

     If the answer is no to all inquiries, then Shimon Peres, Vatican agent, isn't your president.

end
       MR. POPULARITY AT ISRAEL'S GHOST DANCE
                                                                                   by Barry Chamish

       
In a ghastly poll of the Israeli people, Haaretz has determined that the winner by several lengths of the most popular politician race is the ever noble king of the ball, Pres. Shimon Peres.
"Out of 16 senior public figures, Peres was by far the favorite politician in a poll conducted for Ha'aretz by Dialog. Support for Peres came from all groups: religious and non-religious, ultra-Orthodox and immigrants from the former Soviet Union," according to a new Haaretz poll.
<http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-s-eldest-statesmen-peres-is-also-its-most-popular-1.357114>
        Has all my work been for nothing? Have I wasted my life? No, no it can't be that. It's so much simpler. Israelis are self-destructive idiots lacking even a teensy drop of rationality. Yes, that must be the explanation.

        So far, only one other writer shares my wonder, David Isaac. But he is stuck in the Peres brought us Oslo mode and misses the full picture:
          
"There are more out than in." That was the favorite remark of this
writer's high school Latin teacher. What he meant was that there are
more crazies outside the asylum than inside. He was proven correct
once again with the results of a recent Ha'aretz poll that showed
that Israel's President Shimon Peres is the country's most popular
public figure.Shimon Peres is the chief architect of the Oslo Accords, the plan
which ceded large tracts of Israeli territory to Yasser Arafat, "the
father of modern terror." The ensuing chaos, easily predictable to
those who don't belong in a mental institution, resulted in the
murder of thousands of Israelis and the reinvigoration of Israel's
enemies who were inspired once more with hope that Israel could
indeed be destroyed.

         
To fill the gap, I have compiled a short list of Peres' crass criminality to prove Israelis are nuts. Before arriving at mass murderer of his people, we'll start easy; Peres is a paid agent of the Vatican. As we all know, Peres was initially left out of the Oslo negotiations. When he discovered this great new diplomacy, he wanted in. So, as Foreign Minister, he sent the pope a proposal for the Vatican to take over stewardship of East Jerusalem and agreeing to a PLO capital within its entity. This highly proven fact is not understood by any Israeli. The closest to getting it is Jacob Gurewich in his book, The Enemy Within.

          Gurewich spends a good chunk of the book exposing the Vatican's deadly interference in Jewish survival, and in doing so has provided enough evidence to stop the inevitable canonization of pope John Paul II. However, the conclusion on Peres' role in the Vatican's relentless attack on Jews and Israel is weak: "No wonder that a villain such as Shimon Peres...handed over to Pope John Paul II on a silver platter the evil idea to internationalize Jerusalem."

           Bad news Jacob. There is much more. Peres spent his career offering Jerusalem to anyone who would take it.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&ncid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20030722/wl_nm/mideast_jerusalem_dc
 
Peres Raises 'World Capital' Solution for Jerusalem 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Shimon Peres, the head of Israel's opposition Labor Party, has suggested resolving Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem by putting its holy sites under U.N. stewardship, a spokesman said Tuesday. 

His plan calls for declaring a holy area of sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem's old walled city as a "world capital," with the U.N. Secretary-General serving as mayor.

            
We'll return to Jacob Gurewich shortly, but first let's chronicle Peres' insanity from my files. Write me if you want any of the full articles, or better, get my books. Let's begin with what Peres will do to gain power, like setting off criminal scandals to get presidents Weizman and Katsav out of the office he so revered. In Peres' world that's all in a day's work. But did you know he bribed the Nobel Committee to get his prize?

Last week, Yoav Yitzhak, in the wide circulation newspaper Maariv, revealed that Peres gave Terje Larsen, the UN Middle East representative, $100,000 to secure him a Nobel Prize.
This week, David Bedein, writing in Makor Rishon, applied the coup de grace. He interviewed a member of the Nobel Prize Committee, Kaare Kristiansen, who not just confirmed the bribe but described Larsen's pressure on the committee in full detail.

            
And how many Israelis know that in 1984 Prime Minister Peres read the info provided by spy Jonathan Pollard with his morning coffee? He turned a one-time American arms for hostages operation into a mafia industry that came within a hair's breadth of bringing down the Republican administration. Forget what he did to Pollard, he cost us American conservative sympathy. The result was Bush number one forcing Rabin into Oslo in 1993. But once Oslo got the PLO moving back to Israel, Peres made sure they were able to kill the maximum number of Jews, ideally settlers:

We jump ahead to Barak's regime and a ridiculously underlooked item which appeared throughout the Israeli media. Barak's Regional Affairs Minister Shimon Peres and the CIA's resident spy, George Tenet had come to a little agreement: Peres assented to the PLO sending 40 "policemen" for an advanced CIA marksmanship course in Virginia.

           
We turn now to the juicy topic of PERES - SERIAL MURDERER. I filtered my files to bring you barely a few of his celebrated political murders. There are many more. 

            In 1995, Shimon Peres oversaw the Rabin assassination with his chosen bodyguard, Yoram Rubin, pulling trigger.

            In 2005, Prime Minister Sharon shared tea with Peres in the Knesset. A half hour later he had a stroke and was accompanied to the hospital by Yoram Rubin.

            In 2001, Rehavam Zeevi threatened to resign unless Sharon fired Shimon Peres as Foreign Minister and provided real IDF protection for Hebron's Jews. Sharon refused and Zeevi quit. He was gunned down just hours before he was to deliver his Knesset speech exposing Peres before resigning from the government.

            Then on Friday, December 18, 2002; Wayne Owens, 65, a Utah Democrat who had represented Salt Lake City in the House of Representatives for eight years and who was a founder of Washington's Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, was found dead on a beach in Tel Aviv. The reason for his trip was to put an end to the corruption of the Peres Peace Center. His last meeting was with Peres' envoy, Avi Gil.

            In 2005, the chief Sephardic rabbi, Shlomo Amar, announced that he would declare the upcoming evacuation of Gaza's Jews as a sin, thereby turning half the country into opponents of the plan. This Shimon would not allow so, enthusiastically and personally, he led the vicious mugging of the Amar family:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3087363,00.html

Mrs. Amar told investigators that she had been in the kitchen of her apartment at the time the alleged events took place. She said she only heard what happened the next day from another daughter, who in turn had been told by Ayala.
Mrs. Amar said she failed to tell her husband what happened because she did not want to get him involved. But it would appear she did know about the incident.
Despite her claim to investigators to have only had passing contact with Meir, her son visited her a second time just two days later together with Labor Party leader Shimon Peres.
According to Ayala, her brother threatened her with a knife, saying he could kill her "with one stab."

           
In 1952, Israel's prime minister Moshe Sharett said of Peres, "I utterly reject Peres and see his ascendance as the most malignant form of political corruption. It will be a cause of national mourning if Peres becomes a minister of government for Israel." It is commonly understood that the statement was made because Sharett viewed Peres' operation against the Sephardim with utter disgust.
            
You have to wonder how many Rabin mourners voted Peres their fabulous favorite as most popular politician. Or how many Sephardic Jews voted for him. Or how he gets away with even his most blatant felonies. And the next section must be MASS MURDERER because in the fifties, Atomic Energy Commission czar Peres brought in American army x-ray machines and blasted every Sephardic child with hundreds of times the legal limit of gamma rays through their brains. If you voted Peres Mr. Popularity, I'd go on You Tube and look up the documentary, The Ringworm Children, for confirmation. But it's too late, your vote will still count. Nonetheless, you'll finally figure out that your winning candidate for popularity was the leader of a horrid experiment which led to 6000 dead in two years. If you count the 4500 mostly Yemenite children kidnapped by the government, Peres murdered over 10,000 "inferior" Jews and crippled another 100,000 for life.
           
And the newly popular Peres wants to get back to his old atomic days but this time to shut down the nuclear nightmare he created. Jacob Gurewich tells us that:

Peres revealed a hidden secret to Clinton. "It's no secret that Ben-Gurion handed me the post to establish the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and to found the Center For Nuclear Research at Dimona. My aim is to control the IAEC again.

            At least and at last, Pres. Peres has found popularity, his fondest dream. His fingers won't sully the atomic trigger ever again.
**We conclude with one more quote that sums it all up. Hoping a few of you will contact me. I'm overwhelmed with flu mixed with depression. Paypal sold off half its stock and I'm not sure I have the same bank anymore. Call if you'd like!! Barry**

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Towards A Zionism Of Inclusion

from an email from Barry Chamish, September 9, 2014

Towards a Zionism of Inclusion
  "This inclusive narrative could be about how Muslims tended and kept the land for centuries, welcoming the returning Jews to share it for the good of all"

Theodor Herzl’s original vision for Zionism included Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in harmony with a shared purpose. The history of Zionism tells us that this moment may not be too far off.

One would be hard-pressed to find an allegation that has not been leveled at the Jewish people’s movement for self-determination in their homeland: Zionism is racism. Zionism is colonialism. Zionism is apartheid. No social evil has been missing from the placards raised at anti-Israel and anti-Zionist demonstrations, all claiming “Zionism = X.”
These allegations have been exposed time and again as libels and smears, but even the greatest defenders of Zionism have failed to notice a much more positive, and indeed remarkable, facet of this century-old ideology: Zionism = Inclusion.

That is to say, Zionism was, is, and will likely continue to be on a steady trajectory of increasing inclusiveness. Contrary to those who say Zionism is an exclusivist ideology, from the moment of its foundation, it was one of the world’s most inclusive national and political movements.
This is not to argue that the Zionist inclusiveness has been one of singing “Kumbaya” with open arms. Zionism became inclusive because it was necessary for its survival. Its inclusiveness was, originally, largely due to pragmatic considerations. Only later did it become inherent in the ideology itself. Without inclusiveness, Zionism would have died in infancy.
In its early years, Zionism was a marginal and radical movement among the Jewish people. In 19th century Europe, Jews mostly responded to the hostility of their host countries by attempting to assimilate into European society or immigrating to the United States. Few considered the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel as a serious alternative. Many even viewed it as a threat to their efforts at assimilation. So from its very beginnings, Zionism could not afford to exclude anyone. If it were to survive, anyone willing to rally to its flag would be welcome.
The realization that inclusiveness was critical to Zionism’s survival dawned on its founder, the writer and dramatist Theodor Herzl, as he sought support for his ideas among the Jews of Europe. Herzl’s initial vision for a renewed Jewish state was a kind of Vienna in the Levant, a Central European utopia on the banks of the River Jordan. The intended audience for his vision was Jews such as himself—cultured, assimilated, and European—who would create a better Europe in the Middle East. A Europe that, unlike the real one, would be a place where Jews could feel safe, hold any position in society, and never need to question their sense of belonging.

It was to these Jews that Herzl turned when he wrote his manifesto, The Jewish State. He appealed to them in Britain, France, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But after repeated attempts, he was dismayed to find they were not interested. Worse still, they rejected his ideas by asserting that they were solely British, French, German, or Austro-Hungarian. As the writer Amos Elon noted, the response to Herzl in Vienna was, “We Jews have waited two thousand years for the Jewish state and it had to happen to me?”

Theodor Herzl on a voyage to Egypt, 1903. Photo: Walter Anton / Wikimedia

Theodor Herzl on a voyage to Egypt, 1903. Photo: Walter Anton / Wikimedia

Like most Jews of Central and Western Europe, who saw themselves as modern and enlightened, Herzl despised the Jews of the East. In his eyes, they were primitives stuck in medieval times, resistant to the Enlightenment and decidedly un-European. He certainly did not think they could carry the mantle of Zionism and build the state he envisioned. The last thing he wanted for a Jewish state was to replicate the shtetl life of Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia. But even as Herzl was being rebuffed by the cultured Jews of the West, he was, as Elon wrote, “surprised by the resonance of his tract in the East; he had expected it to strike hardest in the assimilated West, not in the East, which he regarded as backward, even primitive.” But the Eastern European Jews were the ones who embraced Zionism. They were inspired by his vision. They wanted to be the builders of the new state. And they were willing to do what it took to resurrect Jewish sovereignty in the blistering heat of the Land of Israel.
Touring Europe with his vision, whether among the shtetl immigrants of London or the Jews of Bulgaria, Herzl was overwhelmed by the reception.
News of his passage had preceded him. When the train stopped at the station an enormous crowd of Bulgarian Jews hailed the author of The Jewish State as their long-awaited savior…. People rushed to kiss his hand, and in the synagogue he was placed by the altar. He did not know how to face the crown without turning his back to the holy Torah. But a man called out: “It is all right for you to turn your back to the altar. You are holier than the Torah….” With his magnificent beard, his glowing eyes, his proud frame, and fine, simple gestures, Herzl stood on the stage, looking “as kings wish to look but seldom do.”
He was received by the Jews of the East like the Messiah who would take them back to the land of their ancestors.
Overwhelmed by this reception, Herzl the writer realized that the time had come for rewriting. He recast the Jews of Eastern Europe as the true national Jews. He wrote them into his story as those who had kept their sense of being a nation while the assimilated Jews of the West had not. In Herzl’s rewritten narrative, the Jews of Eastern Europe became better suited to the task of building a Jewish state than anyone else; because they, above all others, knew what it meant to be a nation; and Zionism was first and foremost about the national revival of the Jewish people.

During the first Zionist Congress, Elon writes,
The Russian Jews had left the deepest impact [on Herzl]. Warm hearted, soulful, eminently practical, deeply steeped in folk tradition, which in the East was still very much alive, they had none of the identity problems of the Western Jews, none of his sense of alienation. Herzl had previously thought of them as poor, oppressed candidates for relief, living in a “primitive” East; it took the congress to open his eyes: “How ashamed we felt, we who had thought that we were superior to them. Even more impressive was that they posses an inner integrity that most European Jews have lost. They feel like national Jews but without narrow and intolerant conceit…. I had often been told in the beginning, ‘The only Jews you’ll win will be the Russian Jews.’ Today I say, ‘They would be enough!’”
Indeed, over the next three decades, the Jews of Eastern Europe became the primary adherents of the Zionist vision and the ones who built its foundations against overwhelming odds. By embracing them and rewriting his narrative to reflect their enthusiasm for the cause, Herzl demonstrated that, for Zionism to survive, it would need to include everyone who supported it. He also showed how to achieve this: By rewriting the story to include the previously excluded group; and to do so in a way that not only included the new group, but made it one and the same with the Zionist vision.
Inclusiveness has many forms, and different countries and ideologies have found different ways of accomplishing it. France has a secular republican model under which anyone can become French if they adopt the values of the republic, live in a secular public sphere, keep competing identities such as religion to the private sphere, and embrace French culture and language. America has a post-national model that depends heavily on embracing the principles of the constitution and the “American way of life.” Britain has a post-colonial model under which peoples and religions are united under the scepter of the queen. All models of inclusion in countries that claim to be inclusive are problematic. All of them are partial. All suffer from a gap between the claim to inclusion and the reality. And all are challenged by groups who do not accept the “rules for inclusion.” In that sense, Zionist inclusiveness is no different. But its mechanism is.
The Zionist mechanism is one of retelling and rewriting its story as if Zionism was always designed to include a previously excluded group. This mechanism is not one of simple assimilation, “multiculturalism,” or even the “melting pot.” It is a constant rewriting of the story of Zionism so that a new story emerges to erase the old, thus creating the sense that Zionism has always been able to include the previously excluded group.

This is no different from the way all human beings adapt to changing circumstances. We write and rewrite our histories. We take moments of failure, despair, and rejection, and remake them into stories of growth, transformation, and triumph. We create a unified narrative that makes sense out of everything that has happened to us. We tell ourselves it had to happen so we could become who we are today. Internally, almost all humans—except for the clinically depressed—are like Pangloss, the perennially optimistic philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide.

 Theodor Herzl’s visit to Israel, 1898. Photo: Pikiwikisrael / Wikimedia
 
Theodor Herzl’s visit to Israel, 1898. Photo: Pikiwikisrael / Wikimedia

The Zionist mechanism works in the same manner. It is a constantly retold story, but at any given moment it is also a unified one. It is not a legalistic mechanism of “neutral” citizenship in a “neutral” state, where abiding by the law is the only requirement and all who abide by the law are equally included. The Zionist state believes in equality before the law, but Zionist inclusiveness works in a very different way: Zionist inclusiveness is about the story, not the law.
One of the most remarkable examples of Zionism’s ability to rewrite its story and transform its narrative is its relationship to the Holocaust. This narrative transformation has been achieved so completely that almost everyone now believes the State of Israel was born as a direct result of the Holocaust, and owes its existence to the tragedy and its survivors. To understand the magnitude of this transformation, we need to appreciate how difficult it was for Zionism to deal with the Holocaust.
Zionism was first and foremost an ideology of activism. It was a rebellion against Jewish passivity in exile, a rejection of the Jews’ resigned attitude toward their fate as a persecuted and marginalized minority. As a secular movement, it rebelled against simply waiting for the Messiah. It called for the Jewish people to be their own Messiah, to go by themselves to the Holy Land to restore Jewish sovereignty, rather than waiting for God’s anointed to do it for them.

In addition, Zionism contained an element that called for the total negation of Jewish life in exile. This, however, was not true for all Zionist thinkers. Herzl, for example, imagined that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty would also contribute to the life of Jews in exile by relieving them from the status of a stateless people at the mercy of the nations. He described in his novel Altneuland (“Old-New Land”) that with the establishment of the Jewish state, “Jews who wished to assimilate with other peoples now felt free to do so openly, without cowardice or deception. There were also some who wished to adopt the majority religion, and these could now do so without being suspected of snobbery or careerism, for it was no longer to one’s advantage to abandon Judaism.”

Herzl thought that Jews would be able to walk proudly as equals among the nations once they had a state, even if they did not become its citizens. But as the situation in the Diaspora became more severe and ultimately genocidal, the choice made by many Jews to remain in Europe was scorned. For many Zionists, the growing strength of their embryonic state and the growing danger faced by the Jews of Europe delegitimized life in the Diaspora.

The negation of the exile (shlilat ha’galut in Hebrew), as it became known, was not just about negating the legitimacy of Jewish life in the Diaspora, but also negating its very essence. Zionism created an entire series of opposites expressing this: Active vs. passive, strong vs. weak, proud vs. humiliated, self-sufficient vs. dependent, healthy vs. sick. Zionism came to be seen as a cure for the sickness inflicted upon Judaism by the exile.
Zionism adapts by rewriting the story to include the previously excluded group, doing so in a way that not only includes the new group, but makes it one and the same with the Zionist vision.
So when the Holocaust occurred, it was an affront to Zionism’s core ideology. The Jews who perished in the Holocaust represented everything that Zionism wanted to change. The victims were seen as passive, going to their deaths like “lambs to the slaughter.” They were weak, dependent, and suffered the greatest possible humiliation—an industrial genocide. Whenever they rebelled, it was because they were Zionists. The Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighters, for example, became national heroes, in part because they were members of Zionist youth movements preparing to immigrate to Israel. The survivors were even worse in the Zionist perception. They were suspect simply because they had survived. The suspicion was that they must have engaged in deceitful and treacherous actions in order to do so.

The nascent State of Israel took the Holocaust survivors in and recruited them to fight for its independence. This was, again, a pragmatic inclusiveness. Israel needed them to survive. But it did not want to hear their story, and it found no place for them in the Zionist narrative. At best, they served as Exhibit A of why there could be no Jewish life in exile. They were the negative to Zionism’s positive.

Beginning with the public trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, however, the people of Israel not only started to listen to the survivors, but to rewrite the story of Israel and Zionism accordingly. It did not happen quickly, but over the next few decades, the story of the Holocaust and its survivors became so integrated into the story of Zionism that many today believe the Holocaust is the reason for Israel’s existence. This has become such a dominant story that many people around the world—including Jews and Israelis—are barely aware of the history of Zionism and the pre-state Zionist community that preceded the Holocaust.

The survivors of the Holocaust eventually became Israel’s new heroes. Not just the Zionist resistance fighters, but any and all who survived. Just this past Holocaust Remembrance Day, Twitter and Facebook were taken over by photos of soldiers with Holocaust survivors, who were hailed as Israel’s true heroes.

The retelling of Zionist history to incorporate the Holocaust and its survivors is now complete. Zionism genuinely stripped itself of its scornful attitude toward the survivors, and achieved complete inclusiveness by transforming its narrative.

 A new immigrant family moves into a ma’abara, a refugee absorption center, near Tel Aviv. Photo: Zoltan Kluger / flickr
 
A new immigrant family moves into a ma’abara, a refugee absorption center, near Tel Aviv. Photo: Zoltan Kluger / flickr

Another major group is still in the process of undergoing narrative inclusion: The Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries. Prior to the Holocaust, they were a tiny minority of the Jewish world. Only one million out of a world total of 18 million Jews resided in North Africa and the Arab Middle East. With colonialism ending and the impending establishment of the State of Israel, tensions between the Muslim Arab population and the Jews rose. Over the course of only a few years, these Jewish communities—which in most cases predated Islam—were removed. A large number of the Jews fleeing these countries found refuge in the newly created State of Israel.

Much like survivors of the Holocaust, the Jews from Arab countries were recruited into the Zionist state-building effort, but they were not welcomed or included in any real sense. They were viewed as being “not us”—“nicht unsere” to use the Yiddish term. For decades, they suffered overt and covert discrimination. But they slowly found themselves, mostly through their own struggle and effort, becoming part of Israeli society, to the point that they all but became Israeli society. To a great degree, this inclusion was achieved through marriage. When I speak to large groups of Israeli students or soldiers I like to conduct a little exercise. I ask how many among them have four grandparents of the same ethnic origin. Usually, in a room of 200, less than ten hands will be raised.
Many will no doubt claim that, with all due respect to the achievements of Zionism, it has never sought or succeeded in including non-Jews. It is one thing to include all the Jews in the world—an impressive feat in itself—but quite another to include non-Jews.
First, it is important to note that Herzl’s own conception of Judaism was so secular and national that he felt religious Muslims, Christians, and Jews could all be Zionists. He thought the Jewish state should be akin to the French state, allowing people to have different religious faiths or none at all. So, at least as conceived by Herzl, Zionism was not meant for the Jews alone, and non-Jews could partake in it. Throughout Altneuland, Herzl emphasized, “The fundamental principles of humanitarianism are generally accepted among us. As far as religion goes, you will find Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, and Brahmin houses of worship near our own synagogues.” In his vision of a future Jewish state, “Religion had been excluded from public affairs once and for all. The New Society did not care whether a man sought the eternal verities in a temple, a church, or a mosque, in an art museum or at a philharmonic concert.” Herzl’s ideal as stated in Altneuland is “We do not ask to what race or religion a man belongs. If he is a man, that is enough for us.” In the novel, in fact, it is exclusionary Jews who are portrayed as the main enemy.

Many Soviet immigrants to Israel are an example of Herzl’s idea in action. Though they could claim citizenship due to their Jewish ancestry, many were not Jews themselves, and some were practicing Christians. Yet their immigration to Israel was considered highly valuable—even one that “saved” the country. In fact, when their status as non-Jews did became an issue—such as burial of fallen soldiers—it was met with anger from the broader Israeli society; indicating that, for most Israelis, they belonged fully and unquestionably.

 The Herev (sword) Battalion, composed completely of Druze citizens who choose to enlist in the unit, conducts a training exercise. Photo: Matanya / Wikimedia

 The Herev (sword) Battalion, composed completely of Druze citizens who choose to enlist in the unit, conducts a training exercise. Photo: Matanya / Wikimedia

Over recent decades, Israel has also sought to include its Druze and Bedouin communities. The initial reason was, again, pragmatic. In this case, the need for soldiers. As early as Israel’s War of Independence, many Bedouin and the entire Druze community joined the Jews in fighting off the invading Arab armies. From that moment, the Druze and many Bedouin were included in the Israel Defense Forces. Since then, Druze and Bedouin military heroes have been hailed by Israeli society and media. Indeed, during the latest conflict with Hamas, a Druze senior commander became a media hero after he demanded to be sent back into the field despite severe injuries. Many Druze self-identify as not merely Israelis, but also Zionists. This is not to say that there are no problems with discrimination or other issues, but it does show that Zionism is willing to embrace those who align themselves with it, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. Indeed, it seems that Zionism only finds it difficult to include non-Jews when they embrace competing Arab or Palestinian national identities. Zionism in itself can include non-Jews in its story, so long as they do not align themselves with a hostile narrative.
The current frontier of inclusion is that of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli Christians.
In the past, Israeli Christians by and large adopted Arab and Palestinian identities. Christians were among the most important thinkers and shapers of modern Arab and Palestinian nationalism, and often its most zealous adherents. This is due, in part, to their status as a minority among Arab Muslims. In recent years, however, as the Arab Spring revolutions have placed the lives of Middle Eastern Christians in jeopardy, Israeli Christians have begun to explore the possibility of an Israeli rather than Arab Christian identity. As Arab identity is increasingly perceived as exclusively Muslim and even openly hostile to Christians, Israeli identity has emerged as a new possibility for identification. Like the Druze and Bedouin, this is being explored through service in the IDF, as more and more voices in the Christian community look to military service as a means of engaging with “their state.” In response, the IDF is taking steps to make military service more accessible. This process has only just begun and is politically controversial, but it demonstrates again that Zionism is willing and capable of integrating non-Jews who do not embrace a competing identity hostile to Zionism.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, for their part, have had an ambivalent relationship with Zionism from the beginning. Zionism was a thoroughly modern movement that believed human beings should shape their own fate, rather than passively accept the will of God. In addition, it was composed of mostly secular and even atheist Jews who rebelled against the religious way of life. As a result, many ultra-Orthodox thinkers saw Zionism as heresy. Some extreme ultra-Orthodox sects even claimed that Zionism was an affront to God and an obstacle to the realization of God’s plans for the Jewish people, so only by destroying the State of Israel can the arc of history be put right again.


Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth, an Arab-Israeli Greek Orthodox priest, has issued a call to Arab Christians to serve in the IDF and integrate into Israeli society. Photo: ShalomYerushalayim1 / YouTube

 Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth, an Arab-Israeli Greek Orthodox priest, has issued a call to Arab Christians to serve in the IDF and integrate into Israeli society. Photo: ShalomYerushalayim1 / YouTube

Yet the Holocaust left the surviving ultra-Orthodox Jews in need of refuge, and many found it in the State of Israel. Nonetheless, even ultra-Orthodox Israelis have found it difficult to come to terms with the existence of a secular Jewish state, and especially with its success. Moreover, unlike Zionists who believed that sovereignty was essential to Jewish survival and prosperity, the ultra-Orthodox felt that the exile posed no threat to the future of the Jewish people, and might even be preferable.

For most of Israel’s existence, the Zionist majority was willing to let the ultra-Orthodox maintain their way of life and remain on the margins of Israeli society. But in recent years, as the ultra-Orthodox community has become much larger, more and more Israelis feel that the status quo cannot be sustained. In particular, they believe ultra-Orthodox Jews’ heavy dependence on the welfare state, low participation in the labor force, and almost non-existent military service places an unfair burden on other Israelis.

So began the battle to include ultra-Orthodoxy in the Zionist narrative. Initially, it took the form of a demand for military service and greater participation in the labor force. In other words, the motivation was once again pragmatic. Zionism wants the ultra-Orthodox to be taxpayers and soldiers. But over time, it is likely that the mechanism of narrative transformation will begin to operate. The Zionist story will be rewritten so as to make ultra-Orthodoxy into another, equally genuine form of Zionism. The 2,000-year-long continuing existence of ultra-Orthodox communities in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias, for example, may be portrayed as having paved the way for modern Zionism and secured the path for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland.
The last frontier of inclusion is unquestionably that of Israel’s Muslims, who currently describe themselves as Arab Palestinian Muslims holding Israeli citizenship, and it is the most difficult. At the moment, it seems almost ludicrous to think about their future inclusion in the Zionist narrative. Israeli Muslims themselves are likely to see the idea as an affront to them and their sense of Arab-Palestinian national identity. But I would like to present the possibility that, sometime in the future, such inclusion could take place.
Currently, the Palestinian national movement and Zionism appear so at odds that it is nearly impossible to conceive of a situation in which the Zionist narrative could be sufficiently rewritten to include Israeli Muslims. The furthest that most Israeli Muslims are willing to go in this direction is to demand a “neutral” Israeli state, stripped of any signs or symbols of being Jewish or Zionist. The argument put forth by them and especially their leadership is that as long as the state of Israel continues to be Jewish or Zionist, Muslims can have legal rights, but will never truly be a part of Israeli society.

As a result, for many Israeli Muslims, the only path to full inclusion and belonging is an end to Zionism. In the current situation, this is somewhat understandable. If Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are in direct conflict, the embrace of one naturally implies the rejection of the other. But it is also, of course, impossible for Zionism to accept, since it demands not the rewriting of the Zionist story, but the burning of the book itself.

As a result, the inclusion of Israeli Muslims in the Zionist narrative is likely to happen under one of two extreme conditions: Full peace between Israel and the Arab world, or an Arab world so engulfed in chaos and brutality that Israeli Muslims distance themselves from an Arab Palestinian national identity in search of an alternative. Under one of these extreme but not impossible scenarios, Israeli Muslims would no longer be Arab Palestinian nationalists, but Israelis and Zionists.
The next frontier of Zionist inclusion is adapting the story to fit Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews, and possibly Muslims.
Should either of these scenarios materialize, the obstacles to inclusion would be lifted, at least in principle. One could begin to imagine the Zionist narrative being retold so that Israeli Muslims are fully included in the story. This inclusive narrative could be about how Muslims tended and kept the land for centuries, welcoming the returning Jews to share it for the good of all. It could be the story of how local traditions of generous hospitality led the local Muslims to provide refuge to the Jews coming to their shores. It could be a story with new heroes—Jews and Muslims who exemplified cooperation long before it was the norm; Muslims who protected Jews from harm; Muslims who sold land to the Jews and shared valuable agricultural knowledge with them; and Muslim teachers who taught about Zionism without neglecting their own side of the story.

It could be a narrative that resurrects the buried history of Muslim support for Zionism in Palestine. This history was recently uncovered in Hillel Cohen’s book Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, which covers the many dissident elements in the Palestine Arab Muslim community that viewed Zionism positively—as Herzl had hoped—and even assisted it through land sales, intelligence, and military assistance against the British. It could be a story that reminds us of heroes like Haifa mayor Hassan Bey Shukri, who wrote to the British government in 1921,
We strongly protest against the attitude of the said delegation concerning the Zionist question. We do not consider the Jewish people as an enemy whose wish is to crush us. On the contrary, we consider the Jews as a brotherly people sharing our joys and troubles and helping us in the construction of our common country.
It could perhaps become the story of how the Muslims, together with Jews, made the land of Israel whole again, bringing together all the religions that originated and flourished within its borders. It could be a story of return and reunification. A story of how the Muslims had to come to terms with being a minority and the Jews with being a majority before both could truly live as one, introducing the key element in any drama of return and reunification: The overcoming of obstacles.


It must be left to far better storytellers than myself to imagine what this narrative might look like. Right now, it requires the most fanciful imagination. But if Zionism has taught us anything, it is that reality begins with a dream.
NatanFlayer / Wikimedia


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