Joseph Massad loves the word "colonialism"

Joseph Massad, the anti-gay and virtually anti-semitic Columbia University professor whose hatred of Israel is legendary, has written another screed for Al Ahram that exposes his faulty methods of reasoning.

I wrote a critique of one of his previous articles in 2007 where he argued that Israel was inherently racist. Yet an analysis of that article showed that he never really defined what racism was - effectively, his argument was an argument by repetition. In that article, he used the word "racist" or "racism" over thirty times. It was nothing more than proof by assertion, with many straw-man arguments to buttress his nonexistent proof.

Now, he has a new article in Al Ahram, where he talks about Israel's "colonialism." In this case he must have shattered a record of overuse of a word, employing it over sixty times in the course of the article. Even more absurdly, he bases the article on this phrase: Colonialism is peace; anti-colonialism is war, as being Israel's policy - using variants of that phrase some seven times.
Again, it is a gigantic straw-man argument, because he again assumes that Israel is by definition colonialist and he never bothers to define exactly how. Just as he did with the racism charge, he states it as a fact first and his "proof" is just by repeating it ad nauseum.
Israel is not a colonialist state using any reasonable definition of colonialism. As I have written previously, Israel is by definition anti-colonialist:
Arabs feel that Zionism has the same effect as colonialism, therefore they conclude that the two are functionally identical.
However, Zionism is more like anti-colonialism: it is a national liberation movement, with the nation being the Jewish nation. Zionism's 's intent is not to rule over others nor to subjugate others. The vast majority of early Zionists wanted to re-build the Jewish national home in the same place that the original home was, the biblical Land of Israel. Judaism had maintained a strong emotional tie with ancient Israel; daily prayers long for a return to Zion;Jews annually mourn for the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem; and not only Jews had maintained a continuous presence in their original homeland, but Jews had returned there in much smaller numbers throughout the ages.
Definitionally, they two aren't even close. The Zionists didn't want to offer allegiance to the British Empire, they wanted to be independent of it. The colonialist requirement for a "metropole", or mother country, doesn't exist in Zionism.
The Arab motivation to apply the colonialist label to Zionism purposefully ignores the definitions or goals of the Jewish national liberation movement and instead tries to fuzz the definition so that the metropole is the entire Western world. Israel indeed has the hallmarks of a modern, Western nation and more closely identifies with the West and the ideals of democracy and liberalism than with the Arab world. And in more recent decades, when the word "colonialism" has turned into a dirty word, the Arabs have been keen on using it as a weapon against Israel among the nations that have the most colonial guilt.
Massad and those like him know all of this, of course - but they love misusing the words "colonialism" and "racism" to score points with the West. It is a libel that gains currency by dint of repetition, not by the merits of the argument.
And no one knows more about repetition than Joseph Massad.

by Elder of Ziyon via docstalk.blogspot.com
image via Arab American Museum

East Jerusalem Residents Prefer being part of Israel then in Palestine

In what seems like a weekly event, yet another poll has come out of Jerusalem in which east Jerusalem Palestinians are polled about their residency status if a Palestinian state was created and east Jerusalem was part of it. The highest percentage of those surveyed indicated that they would not want to be in east Jerusalem if the Palestinians are given control over it:

"A recent survey conducted by Pechter Middle East Polls, in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations, ahead of the possible Palestinian bid for statehood in September, revealed that given a choice, the majority of east Jerusalem residents would prefer to remain Israelis.


The survey sampled 1,039 Palestinians living in all 19 neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, and was supervised by Dr. David Pollock.


Perhaps the most striking finding regarded the residents' citizenship preference, after a two-state solution is reached: When asked if they preferred to become citizens of Palestine or remain citizens of Israel, only 30% chose Palestinian citizenship.


Thirty five percent chose Israeli citizenship and 35% declined to answer or said they didn’t know.


When asked if they would move to a different home inside Israel if their neighborhood became part of Palestine,40% said they were "likely to move to Israel" and 27% said they were "likely to move to Palestine" if their neighborhood became part of Israel...Also, 44% of east Jerusalem's residents seem content with their standard of living, while 31% said they were not content with it. "

Interesting findings, once again it seems like Israel isn't exactly the apartheid state the haters pretend it is.

via calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas delivers a speech in the Egyptian capital Cairo on May 4, 2011. The rival factions, Fatah and Hamas, signed a reconciliation accord in Cairo after reaching common ground against Israeli occupation and peace efforts. Mashaal said they had a 'common goal; a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital'. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the reconciliation between the factions as a 'blow to peace', but the US declined to make any comment. UPI\ Mohammed Hosam 

JERUSALEM, May 5 (UPI) -- A survey found more East Jerusalem residents said they would prefer to keep their Israeli citizenship and live in Israel when Palestinian statehood is declared.
The survey was conducted earlier this year by the Pechter Middle East Polls together with the Council on Foreign Relations.
When asked after a two-state solution is reached would they prefer to become citizens of Palestine with all the rights and privileges of other Palestinian citizens or maintain their Israel citizenship with the same rights as other Israelis, 35 percent of East Jerusalem residents said they would keep Israeli citizenship and 30 percent said they would take Palestinian citizenship, the survey found.
When asked if they would move to a different home inside Israel if their neighborhood became part of Palestine, 40 percent said they would likely move to Israel and 27 percent said they would move to Palestine if their neighborhood remains part of Israel.
When asked the likelihood of a new intifada erupting in East Jerusalem if peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapse, 27 percent said it was "very likely," 37 percent said somewhat likely, 20 percent said such a scenario was "not very likely" and 14 percent said "very unlikely."
Asked if resistance groups would continue the armed struggle even if a peace agreement is signed between Israel and the Palestinians to end the conflict and Jerusalem is divided, 41 percent said yes, 31 percent said no and 28 percent said they did not know what would happen.
The survey took place in 19 East Jerusalem neighborhoods and 1,039 Palestinians participated. The error of margin was 3 percentage points.

via upi.com

If only Europe could experience life in an Arab state

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Kabbalah Center under tax probe

I have been warning people for a long time about Kabbalah. I looked into it myself around 2001 and found it full of Astrology. Western Astrology is from the Greeks. It is Helenism. It is not a science, it is not a philosophy, it has nothing to do with the Torah.
From the LA Times:
The Kabbalah Centre, the Los Angeles-based spiritual organization that mingles ancient Jewish mysticism with the glamour of its celebrity devotees, is the focus of a federal tax evasion investigation probing, among other things, the finances of two charities connected to Madonna, the center's most famous adherent.

Sources familiar with the investigation said the criminal division of the IRS is looking into whether nonprofit funds were used for the personal enrichment of the Berg family, which has controlled the Kabbalah Centre for more than four decades, a period in which it expanded from one school of a little-known strain of Judaism to a global brand with A-list followers like Ashton Kutcher and Gwyneth Paltrow and assets that may top $260 million.

Among the items that investigators have reviewed, according to one source, is an August 2010 email in which a former chief financial officer of the center complained that he had been fired for pointing out financial improprieties and warned that the center was in danger of "committing suicide."

"I recently uncovered instances of income tax fraud at the Kabbalah Centre — instances which could bankrupt several of the directors involved … this is very serious business," the former CFO, Nicholas Vakkur, wrote in an email that circulated among high-level officials at the center. "I have little choice but to cooperate with the IRS and bring down the entire Kabbalah Centre," Vakkur wrote, adding a plea that "someone in authority" try to "reason" with center Chief Executive Karen Berg.
The EoZ archives has a 2005 article from the BBC about the Kabbalah Center that was even more damning.

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com