Tuesday, July 06, 2021

Israel’s Critics are Repulsed by Jewish Sovereignty and Military Power - To see the Jews exercising dominion over Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land is a hard theological pill to swallow...

 


Israel’s Critics are Repulsed by Jewish Sovereignty and Military Power

After events like the recent Israel-Hamas war, people inevitably raise the question of why relatively minor skirmishes involving Israel capture so much of the world’s attention, while much bloodier and more geopolitically significant conflicts barely raise the world’s eyebrows.

I think the answer is obvious, though rarely provided: many people—including many Jewish and Christian Zionists, are captivated by Jews having a sovereign state and exercising military power. Many more people, however, are repulsed by Israel’s sovereignty and strength.

On the repulsion front, consider that traditional Catholic theology posited that Jews were doomed to wander the earth, stateless and homeless, as punishment for rejecting Jesus. To see the Jews exercising dominion over Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land is a hard theological pill to swallow, one that the Catholic Church itself took decades to resolve. While the Church has largely come around, many traditionalist Christians have not.

More liberal Christian theologies, meanwhile, remain wedded to the notion that martyrdom, as suffered by Jesus, is the highest form of virtue. These liberals acknowledge and regret the unjust suffering endured by Jews in the Christian world for centuries. However, they see this suffering as uplifting Jews, with Jews being the martyrs to Christian sin just as Jesus was for the world’s sins.

In the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, Jews’ role was to use their martyrdom to be a prophetic voice for peace, indeed pacifism, and to work for humankind’s redemption. It was emphatically their role not to build a powerful state with a powerful military capable of inflicting military horrors of its own. Jews refusing to be victims is, ironically, seen as a betrayal of Christian ideals. This is why Christian critics of Israel so often accuse Jews of not learning anything from the Holocaust; in their mind, the Holocaust is a story about Christian sin and possible redemption via the actions of the victims; the fate of the Jewish people as a people is at best irrelevant.

Interestingly, many Jewish far-leftists find themselves in a similar ideological boat as the Christian liberals, albeit with a Marxist rather than Christian ideological underpinnings. Ever since Karl Marx himself stated as much, there has been a significant strand of left-wing thought suggesting that Jews aren’t a legitimate ethnic group, but simply forlorn Asiatic/European nomads who came to exist as a group solely to serve the class interests first of feudal rulers and then of capitalists, possessing neither a legitimate religion (because no religion is legitimate) nor a legitimate culture (because Jews) nor any claim to self-determination.

Having no other legitimate reason for existence, the only way for Jews to justify themselves continuing to exist as a collective is if they use the Jewish experience of injustice as a rationale for contributing to various liberation movements—so long as it does not include the Jewish liberation movement of Zionism. Jewish nationalism is nothing but reactionary nationalism based on either foolish sentimentality or, worse, racist notions of Jewish superiority. Exactly why Jewish solidarity is racist, but not solidarity among other groups, is never clearly explained, but if nothing else it means that Israel has no claim to the legitimate use of force to defend itself, because Israel itself cannot be legitimate.

In the Muslim world, the dominant narrative is that Mohammed, after showing his military prowess by massacring local Arabian Jewish tribes, beneficently allowed Jews to live peacefully under Muslim sovereignty. According to accepted myth, Jews and Muslims then lived harmoniously under Muslim rule for the next twelve hundred-plus years, until disrupted by Zionism.

Israel’s independence and military might, by contrast, strike at two related myths. One is that Muslim rule over Jewish dhimmis was benevolent, and therefore Middle Eastern Jews had no reason to seek and maintain independence. The other is that Muslims, as the Divinely favored religious group, would always rule over Jews and not vice versa. To see a Jewish army consistently defeating Muslim opponents, in contrast to Mohammed’s victories over Jews in the Koran, destabilizes many Muslims’ worldview.

Moreover, Mohammed started his empire with limited territory and a small army, only to expand throughout the Middle East and North Africa. There is undoubtedly some latent fear that Israel is a camel’s nose under the tent for Jewish expansionism. This of course misunderstands Zionism and Judaism, but the average Muslim knows little about Judaism. It’s therefore natural for them to assume that Judaism is expansionist and universalist like Islam.

Finally, it bears noting that the anti-Israel ideas above did not arise spontaneously, but are products in part of state-sponsored antisemitic campaigns run over the decades by the Vatican Czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, the USSR, and various Arab and Muslim states. The USSR’s propaganda rejecting Israel as an illegitimate colonialist state founded by “Zionists” who have no claim to represent the Jewish people has had especially long-lasting impact on world opinion. Young leftists today repeat slogans from Soviet propaganda organs Izvestia and Pravda of fifty years ago without even being aware of their provenance.

The most important conclusion from all this is that criticism of Israel’s use of military force cannot easily be reduced by Israel “behaving” differently. It’s not how Israel uses force that is the primary source of criticism, but ideologically based repulsion at Jews collectively exercising military power via their sovereign state, at all. This is why, in my experience, when critics of Israel claim that Israel is using “disproportionate” force, one can never pin down what level of force these critics would accept. If the IDF’s very existence is repulsive to them, and Israel is deemed inherently illegitimate, no amount of force can be acceptable.


David E. Bernstein is a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he teaches constitutional law and evidence. He is married to an Israeli and travels to Israel regularly. 
 
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israels-critics-are-repulsed-by-jewish-sovereignty-and-military-power/

Coming To A Ghetto Near You? Compulsory jabs: Pressure grows on anti-vaxxers

THESE GUYS THINK "COVID" IS A SEAT ON THE MIZRACH VANT!


Compulsory jabs: Pressure grows on anti-vaxxers


A growing number of countries and territories around the world are forcing people, often in specific sectors, to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Here is a roundup:

Mandatory in Tajikistan, Vatican

Tajikistan and the Vatican are among the rare countries imposing vaccinations on all adults.

In ex-Soviet Tajikistan the official news agency has published a government decree obliging all over 18s to be vaccinated, without giving further details.

In the Vatican, the world's smallest state, vaccinations were made obligatory for residents and workers in February, with those refusing liable to be sacked.

Italy

Several countries or territories have imposed vaccinations on certain sections of the population.

Italian doctors and in the public and private sector must get vaccinated or face being banned from working directly with patients.

A group of 300 Italian health workers have gone to court to try to get the obligation overturned and a hearing is scheduled on July 14.

Britain

On June 16 the British government announced all care home staff in England will need to be fully vaccinated.

If approved by parliament, the new legislation means anyone working in a care home must have two doses of a from October unless they have a medical exemption.

The rules will apply to all workers employed directly by the , as well as to agency workers and volunteers.

Russia

President Vladimir Putin is against mandatory vaccinations nationwide.

The mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin ordered mandatory jabs for residents of the Russian capital working in the service industry on June 16.

Some 60 percent of all workers in Moscow—just over two million people—were ordered to be fully vaccinated by August 15.

Since then other localities have taken similar measures, including badly-hit Saint Petersburg.

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan on July 1 ordered mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for a wide range of workers who come into contact with others. Those who refuse will be restricted from working face-to-face with other people.

United States

The city of San Francisco has announced it will require all municipal employees to be vaccinated or they could face penalties up to and including dismissal.

The new rule will not take effect until the vaccines have received full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, which has so far given the green light for their use on an emergency basis due to the pandemic.

More than 150 employees at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas have already been fired or resigned after failing to comply with orders to get a shot.

France

French Health Minister Olivier Veran has said that mandatory vaccinations are not yet necessary for all. But the government is working on a draft law to force health workers to be jabbed.

Saudi Arabia

In a number of places, while there is no formal requirement for vaccination, restrictions for the non-vaccinated mean there is a de facto obligation.

Riyadh has decided that anyone using or entering a government or private establishment or sports venue must be vaccinated from August 1.

Only vaccinated employees in the public and can enter their workplaces.

Pakistan

The southern Pakistani province of Balochistan on July 1 implemented a ban on unvaccinated people entering government offices, public parks, shopping malls and public transport.

The province of Sindh says it will refuse to pay government employees who have not been vaccinated from July, and neighbouring Punjab has said it will block the mobile phones of people refusing to get jabs. 

 

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-compulsory-jabs-pressure-anti-vaxxers.html