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Post by pieter on Jul 20, 2019 11:40:40 GMT -7
Rashida Harbi Tlaib(/təˈliːb/;[1]; Arabic: رشيدة حربي طليب born July 24, 1976) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. Representative for Michigan's 13th congressional district since 2019. The district includes the western half of Detroit, along with several of its western suburbs and much of the Downriver area. A member of the Democratic Party, Tlaib represented the 6th and 12th districts of the Michigan House of Representatives before her election to Congress. She was the first Muslim woman to serve in the Michigan legislature.
In 2018 Tlaib won the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives seat from Michigan's 13th congressional district. She ran unopposed in the general election and became the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress and, with Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.
Tlaib is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the third and fourth DSA members to serve in Congress and the first female DSA members to serve in Congress. Tlaib is the first DSA member from a Midwestern district elected to the U.S. House. Tlaib has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration and advocated impeachment of the President. On foreign affairs, she has sharply criticized the Israeli government, called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, and expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Tlaib is a member of the informal group known as "The Squad" along with Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
The eldest of 14 children, Rashida Tlaib (née Harbi) was born on July 24, 1976, to working-class Palestinian immigrants in Detroit. Her mother was born in Beit Ur El Foka, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her father was born in Beit Hanina, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. He moved first to Nicaragua, then to Detroit. He worked on an assembly line in a Ford Motor Company plant. As the eldest, Tlaib played a role in raising her siblings while her parents worked, but the family sometimes had to rely on welfare for support.
Rashida Tlaib attended elementary school at Harms, Bennett Elementary, and Phoenix Academy. She graduated from Southwestern High School in Detroit in 1994. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1998 from Wayne State University. She earned a Juris Doctor from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in 2004.
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Post by pieter on Jul 20, 2019 12:58:13 GMT -7
OPINION COMMENTARYCan Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice?I was born in Somalia and grew up amid pervasive Muslim anti-Semitism. Hate is hard to unlearn without coming to terms with how you learned it.By Ayaan Hirsi Ali July 12, 2019 6:24 pm ETAyaan Hirsi Ali (13 November 1969), a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, author, scholar and former politician.I once opened a speech by confessing to a crowd of Jews that I used to hate them. It was 2006 and I was a young native of Somalia who’d been elected to the Dutch Parliament. The American Jewish Committee was giving me its Moral Courage Award. I felt honored and humbled, but a little dishonest if I didn’t own up to my anti-Semitic past. So I told them how I’d learned to blame the Jews for everything.
Fast-forward to 2019. A freshman congresswoman from Minnesota has been infuriating the Jewish community and discomfiting the Democratic leadership with her expressions of anti-Semitism. Like me, Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and exposed at an early age to Muslim anti-Semitism.
Some of the members of my 2006 AJC audience have asked me to explain and respond to Ms. Omar’s comments, including her equivocal apologies. Their main question is whether it is possible for Ms. Omar to unlearn her evident hatred of Jews—and if so, how to help.
In my experience it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to unlearn hate without coming to terms with how you learned to hate. Most Americans are familiar with the classic Western flavors of anti-Semitism: the Christian, European, white-supremacist and Communist types. But little attention has been paid to the special case of Muslim anti-Semitism. That is a pity because today it is anti-Semitism’s most zealous, most potent and most underestimated form.
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (Arabic: إلهان عبد الله عمر; born October 4, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district since 2019. The district includes all of Minneapolis and some of its suburbs.
I never heard the term “anti-Semitism” until I moved to the Netherlands in my 20s. But I had firsthand familiarity with its Muslim variety. As a child in Somalia, I was a passive consumer of anti-Semitism. Things would break, conflicts would arise, shortages would occur—and adults would blame it all on the Jews.
When I was a little girl, my mom often lost her temper with my brother, with the grocer or with a neighbor. She would scream or curse under her breath “Yahud!” followed by a description of the hostility, ignominy or despicable behavior of the subject of her wrath. It wasn’t just my mother; grown-ups around me exclaimed “Yahud!” the way Americans use the F-word. I was made to understand that Jews—Yahud—were all bad. No one took any trouble to build a rational framework around the idea—hardly necessary, since there were no Jews around. But it set the necessary foundation for the next phase of my development.
At 15 I became an Islamist by joining the Muslim Brotherhood. I began attending religious and civil-society events, where I received an education in the depth and breadth of Jewish villainy. This was done in two ways.
Muslim Brotherhood clerics in Somalia have gathered in Mogadishu for a three-day religious conference hosted by the Ministry of Religious Affairs on April 21, 2019.
The first was theological. We were taught that the Jews betrayed our prophet Muhammad. Through Quranic verses (such as 7:166, 2:65 and 5:60), we learned that Allah had eternally condemned them, that they were not human but descendants of pigs and monkeys, that we should aspire to kill them wherever we found them. We were taught to pray: “Dear God, please destroy the Jews, the Zionists, the state of Israel. Amen.”
We were taught that the Jews occupied the Holy Land of Palestine. We were shown pictures of mutilated bodies, dead children, wailing widows and weeping orphans. Standing over them in military uniform were Israeli soldiers with large guns. We were told their killing of Palestinians was wanton, unprovoked and an expression of their hatred for Muslims.
The theological and the political stories were woven together, as in the Hamas charter: “The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The Stones and trees will say, “O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill me.” ’ . . . There is no solution for the Palestine question except through Jihad.”
That combination of narratives is the essence of Muslim anti-Semitism. Mohammed Morsi, the longtime Muslim Brotherhood leader who died June 17 but was president of Egypt for a year beginning in 2012, urged in 2010: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews”—two categories that tend to merge along with allegations of world domination.
European anti-Semitism is also a mixture. Medieval Christian antipathy toward “Christ killers” blended with radical critiques of capitalism in the 19th century and racial pseudoscience in the 20th. But before the Depression, anti-Semitic parties were not mass parties. Nor have they been since World War II. Muslim anti-Semitism has a broader base, and its propagators have had the time and resources to spread it widely.
To see how, begin at the top. Most men (and the odd woman) in power in Muslim-majority countries are autocrats. Even where there are elections, corrupt rulers play an intricate game to stay in power. Their signature move is the promise to “free” the Holy Land—that is, to eliminate the Jewish state. The rulers of Iran are explicit about this goal. Other Muslim leaders may pay lip service to the peace process and the two-state solution, but government anti-Semitism is frequently on display at the United Nations, where Israel is repeatedly compared to apartheid South Africa, accused of genocide and demonized as racist.
Media also play their part. There is very little freedom of expression in Muslim-majority countries, and state-owned media churn out anti-Semitic and anti- Israel propaganda daily—as do even media groups that style themselves as critical of Muslim autocracies, such as Al Jazeera and Al-Manar.
Then there are the mosques, madrassas and other religious institutions. Schools in general, especially college campuses, have been an Islamist stronghold for generations in Muslim-majority countries. That matters because graduates go on to leadership positions in the professions, media, government and other institutions.
Refugee camps are another zone of indoctrination. They are full of vulnerable people, and Islamists prey on them. They come offering food, tents and first aid, followed by education. They establish madrassas in the camps, then indoctrinate the kids with a message that consists in large part of hatred for Jews and rejection of Israel.
Perhaps—I do not know—this is what happened to Ms. Omar in the four years she spent in a refugee camp in Kenya as a child. Or perhaps she became acquainted with Islamist anti-Semitism in Minnesota, where her family settled when she was 12. In any case, her preoccupation with the Jews and Israel would otherwise be hard to explain.
Recently arrived refugees in the Netherlands on a temporary location before they are resettled in various refugee centers
Spreading anti-Semitism through all these channels is no trivial matter—and this brings us to the question of resources. “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” Ms. Omar tweeted in February, implying that American politicians support Israel only because of Jewish financial contributions. The irony is that the resources available to propagate Islamist ideologies, with their attendant anti-Semitism, vastly exceed what pro-Israel groups spend in the U.S. Since the early 1970s the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has spent vast sums to spread Wahhabi Islam abroad. Much of this funding is opaque, but estimates of the cumulative sum run as high as $100 billion.
Thousands of schools in Pakistan, funded with Saudi money, “teach a version of Islam that leads [to] anti-Western militancy,” according to Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy—and, one might add, to an anti-Semitic militancy.
In recent years the Saudi leadership has tried to turn away from supporting this type of religious radicalism. But increasingly Qatar seems to be taking over the Saudi role. In the U.S. alone, the Qatar Foundation has given $30.6 million over the past eight years to public schools, ostensibly for teaching Arabic and promoting cultural exchange.
For years, Qatar has hosted influential radical clerics such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and provided them with a global microphone, and the country’s school textbooks have been criticized for anti-Semitism. They present Jews as treacherous and crafty but also weak, wretched and cowardly; Islam is described as inherently superior. “The Grade 11 text discusses at length the issue of how non-Muslims should be treated,” the Middle East Media Research Institute reports. “It warns students not to form relationships with unbelievers, and emphasizes the principle of loyalty to Muslims and disavowal of unbelievers.”
The allegation that Jewish or Zionist money controls Congress is nonsensical. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the Israeli government has spent $34 million on lobbying in Washington since 2017. The Saudis and Qataris spent a combined $51 million during the same period. If we include foreign nongovernmental organizations, the pro-Israel lobbying figure rises to $63 million—less than the $68 million spent lobbying for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In 2018 domestic American pro-Israeli lobbying—including but not limited to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac—totaled $5.1 million. No comparable figures are available for domestic pro-Islamist lobbying efforts. But as journalist Armin Rosen observes, Aipac’s 2018 total, at $3.5 million, was less than either the American Association of Airport Executives or the Association of American Railroads spent on lobbying. Aipac’s influence has more to do with the power of its arguments than the size of its wallet.
Now consider the demographics. Jews were a minority in Europe in the 1930s, but a substantial one, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Today Jews are at a much greater disadvantage. For each Jew world-wide, there are 100 Muslims. In many European countries—including France, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K.—the Muslim population far exceeds the Jewish population, and the gap is widening. American Jews still outnumber Muslims but won’t by 2050.
The problem of Muslim anti-Semitism is much bigger than Ilhan Omar. Condemning her, expelling her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, or defeating her in 2020 won’t make the problem go away.
Islamists have understood well how to couple Muslim anti-Semitism with the American left’s vague notion of “social justice.” They have succeeded in couching their agenda in the progressive framework of the oppressed versus the oppressor. Identity politics and victimhood culture also provide Islamists with the vocabulary to deflect their critics with accusations of “Islamophobia,” “white privilege” and “insensitivity.” A perfect illustration was the way Ms. Omar and her allies were able to turn a House resolution condemning her anti-Semitism into a garbled “intersectional” rant in which Muslims emerged as the most vulnerable minority in the league table of victimhood.
The Palestinian American political activist Linda Sarsour has been defending the freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar by claiming that the backlash against past anti-semitic statements by Ilhan Omar show an "Allegiance to Israel"
As for me, I eventually unlearned my hatred of Jews, Zionists and Israel. As an asylum seeker turned student turned politician in Holland, I was exposed to a complex set of circumstances that led me to question my own prejudices. Perhaps I didn’t stay in the Islamist fold long enough for the indoctrination to stick. Perhaps my falling out with my parents and extended family after I left home led me to a wider reappraisal of my youthful beliefs. Perhaps it was my loss of religious faith.
In any event, I am living proof that one can be born a Somali, raised as an anti-Semite, indoctrinated as an anti-Zionist—and still overcome all this to appreciate the unique culture of Judaism and the extraordinary achievement of the state of Israel. If I can make that leap, so perhaps can Ms. Omar. Yet that is not really the issue at stake. For she and I are only two individuals. The real question is what, if anything, can be done to check the advance of the mass movement that is Muslim anti-Semitism. Absent a world-wide Muslim reformation, followed by an Islamic enlightenment, I am not sure I know.
Ms. Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
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Post by Jaga on Jul 20, 2019 22:41:42 GMT -7
Pieter, I am not sure where do you take this pro-israel propaganda from. It is not all about Israel. This first post is some pro-Israel propaganda.
+++In it she implicitly compares Israel with Nazi Germany. +++ I am not sure what the context was, but definitively there is a lot of nationalism in Israel and the killings of innocent civilians can lead to the comparisons. The orthodox Jews are the same discriminating towards the women like muslims. I have heard about the cases that orthodox Jews refused to sit in the airplanes next to women.
She had a right to criticize Israel, whose leaders and majority of population is nationalistic and discriminating towards Palestinians and muslims, but this is a SEPARATE ISSUE.
Trump asked her to "go back to her country" like he asked three other women who were born in the US.
This is a completely separate issue. I guess, there are always way to screwed up everything to pro- or anti-Israel propaganda.
It works for Trump!
I am tired of everything twisting into; "How it relates to Israel". Can we talk about other problems around the world and in America and Poland?
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Post by pieter on Jul 21, 2019 0:59:34 GMT -7
Jaga,
Everything is polarised today. Right vs left, conservative vs liberal, Republican vs Democrat. The four democratic ladies get criticism from the Republican side, president Trump and from the Democratic side. The moderate, centrist and pragmatic Nancy Pelosi sees them as a threat from the left to the moderate centrist democratic leadership.Trump of course hopes he can attract democrats from the centre and the rightwing (Dixiecrats) if the democratic party moves to far to the left. Some Americans, like many Europeans have difficulties with Islam and Muslims, because 2 of the 4 women are Muslim, and from Somalia and Palestine, by birth and heritage. That the Somali-American Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, looks unAmerican (Somali and Muslim look -She clearly doesn’nt look African American-) and is very leftwing and crtical about Israel and the Israel lobby in the USA, creates resistance, aversion, antipathy and resentment on the rightwing Republican and the centrist Democratic side. People who dislike migrants, Muslims, socialists and anti-Israel opinions take every opportunity to attack her and the other 3 women. Donald Trump used it in his campaign, by saying, “They criticize this country, why don’t they go back to the country theh came from”, his supporters loved it by shouting “Sent them back”. That reminds me of Geert Wilders “fewer Moroccans” remark a few years back. His supoorters shouted back then “fewer, fewer, fewer....”. The resentment against the left, liberals and migrants is huge in the USA.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pieter on Jul 21, 2019 6:36:30 GMT -7
Jaga,
Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Linda Sarsour, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, have the right to criticize Israel, whose leaders and majority of population is nationalistic and discriminating towards Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, christians and muslims. And they do so, and are free to do so in the USA. But there are more US topics like you pointed at. The coming elections in the USA in 2020, the employment, health care, the Wall between the USA and Mexico that Turmp wants to build, the immigration crisis, human rights, a divided American society, the extremes from the left and the right and sleeping Islamist Jihadi terrorist cells from ISIS (Daesh), Al Qaida and probably Hezbollah, which are still there in the USA, Canada, Southern-America (the unsolved AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 18 July 1994), and Europe.
We live in one world and one West. So 911 touched us and the Lebanese Shia Muslim Hizbollah Terrorists linked to Iran that were caught stockpiling tonnes of explosive materials on the outskirts of London in a secret British bomb factory if it would have been succesful in a large scale terrorist attack would have touched all of the West. The troubles and dangers related to Israel, Gaza and the Westbank are limited if you compare it to the human suffering, danger and long term risks that come from the Syrian, Iraqi, Libiyan, Afghan and Pakistan-Indian conflict in Kashmir. Gaza and the Westbank are linked to the larger Middle east, but the power of Hizbollah in Southern Lebanon for non-Shia Lebanese (Chrisitans, Sunni's and Druze) and Israel is larger than the calculated thread of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas ( (Arabic: كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام), and the Palestinian National Security Forces (NSF; Arabic: قوات الأمن الوطني الفلسطيني) , the Fatah dominated the paramilitary security forces of the Palestinian National Authority (and thus the PLO/Fatah) in the Westbank, the Tanzim (Arabic: تنظيم Tanẓīm, "Organization") militant faction of the Palestinian Fatah movement, and other armed groups and movements like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) (Arabic: الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين) and the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (Arabic: حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين, Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn) , the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), the Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades (Arabic: ألوية الناصر صلاح الدين) , and militia like the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (Arabic: كتائب شهداء الأقصى Katā'ib Shuhadā' al-'Aqṣā) a secular coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. Next to them you have the Sabireen Movement (Arabic: حركة الصابرين نصراً لفلسطين - حِصن), the "Movement of the Patient Ones", a Palestinian armed group that is closely aligned with Iran and Hizbollah.
Other extremist Salafist al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh) linked groups in Gaza are the Army of Islam (Arabic: جَيش الإسلام Jaysh al-Islām), the Abdullah Azzam Brigades (with local networks in various countries, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Gaza Strip and Lebanon), Jund Ansar Allah (Arabic: جند أنصار الله, Soldiers of the Supporters' of Allah), Jaljalat (Arabic: thunder) (In September 2009, Jaljalat revealed it had attempted to assassinate former US president Jimmy Carter and Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair.), and Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin (Arabic: جحافل التوحيد والجهاد في فلسطين, "The Armies of Monotheism and Jihad in Palestine") a Sunni Islamist Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai peninsula, which is the branch of al-Qaeda in Gaza.
Last but not least I want to ad to this list the heavily armed, far right, extremist, Jewish Nationalist, Zealotic, Messianic, aggressive, violent, vandalist, Religious Zionist ("National Religious") jewish settlers in the Westbank of the Yesha Council (Hebrew: מועצת יש"ע, Mo'etzet Yesha, which is the Hebrew acronym for Yehuda Shomron, Aza, lit. "Judea Samaria and Gaza Council"). The Yesha Council is build on the heritage of Gush Emunim (Hebrew: גּוּשׁ אֱמוּנִים , Bloc of the Faithful). Gush Emunim (Hebrew: גּוּשׁ אֱמוּנִים , Bloc of the Faithful) was an Israeli Orthodox Jewish right-wing activist movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. Next to that and often in collaboration with former Gush Emunim members you have the extremists of the former Kach (Hebrew: כ״ך) party, a radical Orthodox Jewish, ultranationalist political party in Israel, existing from 1971 to 1994. Followers of the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane follow his Jewish-Orthodox-nationalist ideology Kahanism. Kahanism is an extremist Jewish ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach party in Israel. Kahane maintained the view that the majority of Arabs living in Israel are enemies of Jews and Israel itself, and believed that a Jewish theocratic state, where non-Jews have no voting rights, should be created. The Kach party has been banned by the Israeli government and the U.S. State Department has labeled it a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Extremist settlers adher to the Kach split off Kahane Chai (כהנא חי, "Kahane Lives"), and often carry the Jellow flag with the Black David star with the fist. The settlers today are linked to the Israeli far right in the Knesset, like the United Right (Hebrew: איחוד מפלגות הימין, Ihud Miflagot HaYamin; lit., Union of The Right-Wing Parties) an Israeli alliance of right-wing to far-right religious Zionist parties containing The Jewish Home and Tkuma. The ideology of the Israeli far right consists of Settler interests, Religious Zionism, Religious conservatism, National conservatism, Social conservatism and Orthodox interests, Ultranationalism and a One-state solution (the Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל, Modern: Eretz Yisrael, Tiberian: ʼÉreṣ Yiśrāʼēl) an area of indefinite geographical extension in the Southern Levant on the historical Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (Ottoman and British Palestine). Like Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, radical fractions of Fatah, Salafist Sunni Muslim extremists and the Shia Muslim Lebanese Hizbollah, the religous Jewish settlers see it as their task to occupy and settle the land of the Westbank, because it is the historical ground of Judea and Samaria, on of the 2 old Jewish Kingdoms Israel and Judea.
Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers in the West Bank in 2009. (Photo: ISM Palestine/Wikimedia Commons)
Kach split off Kahane Chai flag of Jewish Ultra-Nationalists and far right settlers
Kahanist graffiti in Hebron on a Palestinian home. The words to the top right say "Kahane Chai". The fist inside the Star of David is the party logo. Below is the acronym for "Kahane Chai" which is also the Hebrew word for strength.
Israel’s security agency Shin Bet warned of an increase in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 2 reported.
According to the channel, Shin Bet revealed a significant rise in “terrorist” attacks committed by the extremist Jewish groups in the West Bank.
According to the report, the number of terrorist attacks committed by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank increased from 200 in 2017 to 300 attacks in 2018.
Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has a questionable, ambivalent record of demolishing the old Oslo accords and achievements previous Israeli Labour governments of prime ministers and ministers of foreign affairs Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak made. Why, because the Centre-right to right-wing Likud Party has different interests than the Centre-left Israeli Labour party. Likud has a Revisionist Zionist heritage. Revisionist Zionism was a faction within the Zionist movement whose ideology became the basis for Right-wing politics in Israel. It was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism. Revisionism led to the development of the Likud Party. Revisionism differed from other ideologies within Zionism primarily in its territorial maximalism. Revisionists had a vision of occupying the full territory, and insisted upon the Jewish right to sovereignty over the whole territory of Eretz Yisrael, which they equated to all of Mandatory Palestine. The secular nationalist political party Yisrael Beiteinu of the former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, Avigdor Lieberman, describes itself as "a national movement with the clear vision to follow in the bold path of Zev Jabotinsky", the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Since the rightwing and far rightwing political parties who have roots in Zev Jabotinsky"s Revisionist Zionism dominate Israeli politics, you are right Jaga; "The majority of the Israeli population voted rightwing populist and nationalistic and and discriminates towards Palestinians in the Westbank and Gaza, Israeli Muslims and Israeli Arab christians and Israeli Druze, due to the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, an Israeli Basic Law which specifies the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. And next to that Israeli education, the checkpoints, occupation policies and the unequal treatment of Jewish Israeli citizens on one side and non-Jewish Israeli citizens and Palestinians inside Israel proper and the Westbank creates an atmosphere and reality of oppression, control, occupation and humiliation of Palestinian citizens of the Westbank and Israeli Arabs in the Israel inside the 1967 borders."
You don't want to talk about this issue, but it is an issue in the USA and Europe. The problem won't go away, but will grow larger, because of the unstable situation in Europe and the USA and the rest of the world. European jews increasingly feel unwelcome, threatened and under siege in Europe of Muslims migrants, who are more numerous than they are, and next to that they feel threatened by the Pro-Palestinian European left and the anti-Zionist and antisemitic extreme right in Europe. Therefor every year thousands of European jews leave Europe and move to Israel. In the same time American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South-African, Indian and (Eurasian) Russian jews move to Israel. The Ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox jews in Israel have large families, so the Jewish population is growing in Israel next to the growing Israeli Arab population in Israel and the Palestinian populations in the Westbank, the Gaza strip and the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. Next to that nearly half of the Jordanian population is Palestinian and large diaspora communities of Palestinians exist in Egypt, Saoudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrein, Kuwayt, the European Union and the USA. The Palestinian Americans Linda Sarsour, Rashida Tlaib, Huwaida Arraf, Mubarak Awad, Edward Said and Najla Said were and free to express their ideas, criticize Israel and defend the rights of Palestinians and support the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Because there are Jews and Muslims in both the USA and Europe, the Middle East conflict and Peace process is part of the American and European political agenda. We as Westerners have a problem, because there are various groups on our territory who can't get along. Diaspora jews and Israeli expats on one side and Palestinians, people of Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi background on the other side. Turks and Kurds, Turks and Armenians, Iranians and Arabs, Islamists vs secular (atheist and secular humanist, Marxist, socialist and secular liberal) migrants with roots in Muslim countries, Kosovo Albanians and Serbs, Russians and Ukrainians, Bosnians, Serbs and Croats, and internal conflicts within ethnic communities like Iranians (Pro and anti Shah Iranians), Eritreans (Pro and anti regime Eritreans), and Syrians (Pro- and Anti-Assad Syrians in the West).
The territory of Mandatory Palestine which revisionist Zionists from the Likud, the United Right and Tkuma see as the future Greater Israel. Often Israeli's and foreign revisionists zionists say, the Arabs have 22 states and a large territory. They see Palestinians as Arabs, and refuse to recognise the name and identity of Palestinians and Palestine. They see Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Saoudi Arabia as the home of the Palestinians. Mind you I speak here of the far right wing of the Likud Party and the far right settler parties the United Right and Tkuma. A lot of Israeli's recognise the Palestinians as a people and support a 2 state solution.
Benjamin Netanyahu's older brother, Yonatan, was killed in Uganda during Operation Entebbe in 1976. Benjamin Netanyahu said his own "hard line against all terrorists" came as a result of the death of his brother. All three Netanyahu brothers served in the Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit of the Israel Defense Forces.
Netanyahu's father, Benzion Netanyahu, was a professor of Jewish history at Cornell University, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, and a senior aide to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, stated regarding the Palestinian people; "That they won't be able to face [anymore] the war with us, which will include withholding food from Arab cities, preventing education, terminating electrical power and more. They won't be able to exist, and they will run away from here. But it all depends on the war, and whether we will win the battles with them." This mindset had influence on the young Benjamin when he grew up. His Likud party is based on revisionist Zionism, National liberalism, Economic liberalism, Conservatism, national conservatism and Right-wing populism.
Between 1956 and 1958, and again from 1963 to 1967, Netanyahu's family lived in the United States in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where Benjamin attended and graduated from Cheltenham High School and was active in a debate club. To this day, he speaks fluent English, with a noticeable Philadelphia accent. That fact makes him popular in the USA. He is more popular than many American politicians in certain rightwing Republican, Evangelical, Neo-conservative, Tea Party and Trumpist circles. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are idols for many rightwing Americans. The large group of Christian Zionists is very influential in the USA. These Christian Zionists are even more powerful than the old traditional Jewish Zionist Lobbies in the USA, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Christians United for Israel is the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States, with 7.1 million members. It operates under the leadership of John Hagee as founder and Chairman along with Diana Hagee and Shari Dollinger as Co-Executive Directors.
It is quiet today, but I am sure that the sleeping cells of Al Qaida, the Islamic State and Hezbollah are still present in Europe, North-America and South-America. A new 911 in the near future is not unlikely. If you look in that light accusing the 4 democratic coloured democratic ladies of treason, antisemitism, socialist subversive action and being alien is ridiculous. Yes, 2 of the women are Muslim and all 4 are 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, are member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and embraces the democratic socialist label as part of her political identity. In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, she described democratic socialism as "... part of what I am. It's not all of what I am. And I think that that's a very important distinction."
Rashida Tlaib has said she opposed providing aid to a "Netanyahu Israel" and supported the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution. Tlaib is one of the few members of Congress to openly support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. In January 2019, she criticized anti-BDS legislation proposed by Senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch. Tlaib has criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights violations and the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.
While she was in the Minnesota legislature, Ilhan Omar was critical of the Israeli government and opposed a law intended to restrict the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. She compared the movement to people who "engage[d] in boycotts" of apartheid in South Africa. During her House campaign, she said she did not support the BDS movement, describing it as counterproductive to peace. After the election her position changed, as her campaign office told the Muslim Girl Magazine Muslim Girl that she supports the BDS movement despite "reservations on the effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution." Omar has voiced support for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. She criticized Israel's settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank.
Omar has criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses and the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In October 2018, she tweeted: "The Saudi government might have been strategic at covering up the daily atrocities carried out against minorities, women, activists and even the #YemenGenocide, but the murder of #JamalKhashoggi should be the last evil act they are allowed to commit." She also called for a boycott of Saudi Arabia's regime, tweeting: "#BDSSaudi." The Saudi Arabian government responded by having dozens of anonymous Twitter troll accounts it controlled post tweets critical of Omar.
Omar condemned China's treatment of its Muslim ethnic Uyghur people. In a Washington Post op-ed, Omar wrote, "Our criticisms of oppression and regional instability caused by Iran are not legitimate if we do not hold Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to the same standards. And we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to repression in Saudi Arabia—a country that is consistently ranked among the worst of the worst human rights offenders." She also condemned the Assad regime in Syria.
In May 2018 Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Israel Defense Forces' use of deadly force against Palestinians participating in the 2018 Gaza border protests, calling it a "massacre" in a tweet. In a July 2018 interview with the PBS series Firing Line, Ocasio-Cortez said that she is "a proponent of a two-state solution" and called Israel's presence in the West Bank an "occupation of Palestine".
Ayanna Pressley is the first African American woman elected to represent Massachusetts in Congress. With the November election victory of Jahana Hayes in Connecticut's 5th congressional district, they are the first women of color to be elected to Congress from New England.
Pressley is a member of the informal group known as "The Squad", whose members form a unified front to push for progressive changes such as the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-all. The other members of "The Squad" are Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by Jaga on Jul 21, 2019 11:24:50 GMT -7
Pieter, I did not get any sense that Alexandria Cortez or anybody else is anti-Israel but she may be anti-Israel policy, I did not hear any real quotation or context, so I consider the first post from pro-Jewish propaganda press as BS. Both women together with other Democrats were very critical towards treatment of the immigrants and their children on the boarder. They called it concentration camps and this was considered as anti-semitic, since apparently the term "concentration camps" can be used only for Holocaust, which is wrong since the majority of people in concentration camps during Holocaust were actually Polish. Jews were sent mainly to extermination camps.
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