Taking the Mick - Again!

If you are so dissatisfied with the leadership, why don't you and your friends, UK Likud-Herut and the JNF set yourselves up as an alternative? In the free market of ideas and actions, see how far you get. If your brand of muscular Judaism is what the community wants, no doubt you will win the numbers game – and be able to call yourselves the sole legitimate representatives of the British Jewish community. But until then…

Sorry, almost forgot, why don't you tell Gerald Ronson to his face that you think he is craven? I'd pay to watch that.

I challenged Davis to a public debate:

http://thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/new-global-jewish-conversation%E...

No reply......

If Gerald Ronson wants a public debate that's fine by me. Or he can respond here. He doesn't need you to do it for him I'm sure......

Jonathan, that's not the point. The point is that as you are so dissatisfied with the leadership of the community, you and those who support you (I'm guessing UK Likud-Herut and the JNF among others) should set out on your own and establish a "muscular Judaism" alternative. If you were to do that, and gain the support from with the community, you would be in a far better position to challenge Mick Davis and Gerald Ronson to a public debate. Until then, tho…

I'm elected.
You are self-appointed.
End of.

Why are you so scared to forge out with other like-minded people, to try in the free market of ideas and actions to replace the "craven" leadership you so obviously despise?
Win the support of the majority for your views, then challenge the "craven" leaderhip to a debate. You'd be in a much stronger position then.
So what if you are "elected". The Trots call that entryism. Do you subscribe to all the views of the ZF? Do you agree with teaming with NIF and/or others?

And as you are elected, Jonathan, you, too, are part of the "craven" leadership you so despise.

That's precisely my point, thank you: the leadership is not 'elected'.

Who 'elected' Davis or Ronson???

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/mick-davies-cameron-jnf-lands-squatted-ar...

Superb piece on this topic by Michelle Huberman on the Jerusalem Post site.....

Mr Cameron probably based his decision on the fact that the JNF is complicit in ‘cleansing’ of populations or ‘transfer’.
At the beginning of the 20th Century 96% of the population of Palestine was Palestinian Arab. The JNF, founded on 1901, was an organisation 'devoted exclusively to the acquisition of land in Palestine for Jewish settlement'. The land it acquired became inalienably Jewish, never to be sold to or worked by non-Jews.
A few months after Ben Gurion became Prime Minister he said that ‘the Arabs of the land of Israel’ had ‘but one function left – to run away’

Joseph Weitz, JNF Director of land and Forestry for over 40 years was a passionate disciple of population transfer. In 1937 Weitz pointed out that:

‘the transfer of the Arab population from the area of the Jewish state does not serve only one aim – to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second, no less important aim which is to evacuate land presently held and cultivated by the Arabs and thus release it for Jewish inhabitants’.

They are as much elected as you. But the point still remains: why are you scared to break out of the current British Jewish establishment? If you are so certain that your views are those of the majority – or that you can convince a majority to support your views (what are they by the way, apart from calling the leadership craven?) – then you and those who support you will be the community's sole elected legitimate leaders. Just think then those you call "craven" would have to debate with you or step aside.
Money where mouth is time…

Lukas, go away, you are neither helping nor accurate.

The JNF did not go out of business with the creation of the state of Israel.
By October 1950, the government sale of land to the JNF had tripled its holdings, including around 40% of Palestinian 'abandoned' land.
The JNF was assigned three crucial roles in the Israel apartheid infrastructure: it became a significant land owner, it was assigned tasks that were by their nature governmental, and it was given 'shared responsibility with the state for managing Israel lands'.

The body that was crated to oversee the management of around 93% of Israeli land is the ILA. Policy is set by the ILC, whose 22 members are made of 12 representatives of government ministers and the JNF (10)

Thus the JNF, which directly owns 13% of land in Israel, also shapes the policy of the ILA - this an organisation that in its own words:

- is not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.

Perhaps that is why Mr Cameron has distanced himself?

Bit rich of the JNF criticising other organisations for keeping quiet. I don't remember anyone from the JNF commenting on the row at all until Mr Hayak's article last week.

Both these stories end the same way: "The JNF declined to comment".

http://thejc.com/news/uk-news/49789/camerons-jnf-split-it-was-israel
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=16376

Jonathan, it appears that even the Jerusalem Post's Comrade Caroline agrees with me. Shock!
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=224865
La Glick writes that in the face of American Jewry's leadership turning what she calls radical and leftist,

[this] means establishing new umbrella groups that represent the majority and deny membership to marginal groups that represent next to no one.

Nu, Jonathan…

@Lukas: you neglect to mention - of course - that the policy of 'transfer' was offically recommended by the Peel Commission 1936-7 so it is hardly surprising that Weitz mentioned it.

I haven't time to fact-check your quotes (maybe someone else can) but suffice it to say there is a whole industry focused on demonising Israel through false and distorted quotes:

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_article=766

You also fail to mention that Cameron's action is entirely hypocritical since the policy of establishing a homeland for Jews was endorsed by the British Government in the Balfour Declaration. This policy could not have been implemented without an organisation that bought land for Jewish resettlement in Israel. that organisation is called the JNF.

Background here:

http://cifwatch.com/2011/05/30/resistance-the-jnf-and-harriet-sherwoods-...

Lukas posting trash again of course the JNF works for the Jews it's in its name stupid! It always has done so and that did not stop every British Prime Minister from 1901 onwards whether from the left or the right being a patron. Obviously it's the Jewish bit that concerns the opportunist Cameron - absolutely no backbone. Now Yale Unviersity has just followed suit. Aren't you lot smelling the Arabica coffee yet?

More Jew hatred from the JC's resident Hamas supporter and antisemite, Lukas.

JC, it's a bit much that antisemitism has to be combated on your website.

Lukas why do you have to lie? At the beginning of the twentieth century there were no "Palestinian Arabs" the proof is that until 1967 the entity "the Palestinians" did not even exist and no UN Resolution even mentioned such an entity - they are referred to throughout as Arabs.
Secondly the Jewish National Fund was established by the World Zionist Congress to purchase land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. This land, and that acquired after Israel’s War of Independence, was taken over by the government. Of the total area of Israel, 92 percent belongs to the State and is managed by the Land Management Authority. It is not for sale to anyone, Jew or Arab. The remaining 8 percent of the territory is privately owned. The Arab Waqf (the Muslim charitable endowment), for example, owns land that is for the express use and benefit of Muslim Arabs. Government land can be leased by anyone, regardless of race, religion or sex. All Arab citizens of Israel are eligible to lease government land.

With all due respect, Advis3r, and on a point of info, there was a Palestinian national movement, albeit small, in the mid 19th century, centred on Jaffo and Akko (ports, so they were influenced by Europeans). This pre-dates even the establishment of political Zionism, a late 19th-century European movement with its roots in romanticism and nationalism.
And, on another point of info, there were no Israeli Jews before 1948, so…

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/mick-davis-cameron-jnf-lands-squatted-ara...

Here is the correct link for Michelle Huberman's JP article, see above

No, Jonathan, this is the link you want
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=224865

Well done millis, siding with the Hamas supporter Lukas. No criticiswm of his lies, only comments directed at Adviser.

Why are you such a fool?

Shamber, see my 14:20 of yesterday.

Wow millis, you really showed him.. in between the posts against those who care for Israel.

For shame...

millis, that is the first time I've heard Jew hatred described as "inaccurate"... indeed, your annoyance with Lukas seems to stem from the fact that his bile and hatred weaken your own arguments.

millis, do you still think I'm Jonathan Hoffman?

Of course you are. Not everyone needs to descend to vitriol and bile.

..except you do when attacking Israel and those who care for her. Yet no word against the antisemites.

What does that make you?

millis, you are a liar. Produce a shred of evidence that I am Jonathan Hoffman, or withdraw the remark.

Shamber, I really don't care who you are, other then you are bilious and vitriolic and, from now on, unworthy of any response - much like Simonq and Lukas, your equally evil twins.

millis, good to know that you put those who care about Israel on the same level as those who hate Jews - yet you reserve your nastiness for me, and leave the antisemites alone.

Withdraw your remark, or, in the absence of evidence, admit you're a liar.

Produce evidence millis.

millis, one day you'll learn that these blogs wreren't established to provide you with an ego trip.

"And, on another point of info, there were no Israeli Jews before 1948, so .."
Right because they called themselves Palestinians!!!!Hence the Jewish newspaper called the Palestine Post (now the Jerusalem Post) and the Anglo-Palestine Bank the forerunner of Bank Leumi and the Joint Palestine Appeal etc etc

I would be interested to learn more of this so-called Palestinian national movement,you refer to have you link to where I can find more about it?

However I suggest you read this which totally refutes any such notion.

http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov.htm

It is in four parts and quotes extensively both from pro and anti Zionist historians.

One of the telling passages is:

"... about the period covering the late 19th and early 20th centuries, historian Nathan Weinstock stated that “a good case can be made... that, even then, there existed a specific Palestinian [Arab] identity.” And yet historian Nathan Weinstock did not have the courage to present this case. Perhaps it is now obvious why. Where is the “Palestinian [Arab] identity”? I cannot find it. What I see is a population of Muslims, some Arab, some not, who immigrated into this territory in the last century at the same time that many Jews also immigrated. The Jewish and Arab immigrants completely altered this place because it had been basically empty in 1841, before Zionism and the opposing Turkish policy of resettling Muslims in Palestine began in tandem. In ‘Palestine,’ essentially, everybody is an immigrant. So from the point of view of where people come from, this country belongs to the immigrants -- Muslim (Arab or not) and Jewish -- who began overwhelming the natives starting in 1878, when the Turkish Sultan began his policy of resettling non-Palestinian Muslims in 'Palestine', shortly in advance of the Zionist migrations, which began in 1880

Another is:

The original PLO Charter, elaborated in 1964, states in article 24 that:

Notice: when it was formed in 1964, the PLO went out of its way to state that the West Bank and Gaza (1) were not ‘Palestinian’ lands, (2) rightfully belonged to Jordan and Egypt, respectively (this was false: Jordan and Egypt were illegal squatters), and (3) were of no interest to the PLO. Isn’t it curious that the ‘international community’ has forced down Israel’s throat a ‘Palestinian state’ precisely in those territories, the West Bank and Gaza, that the founding constitution of the Palestine Liberation Organization explicitly declared, in a special article, were not ‘Palestinian’?

I suggest Lukas reads it too and then we'll see if he is up to lying any further.

Joe, you're wrong to compare the proto-nationalist stirrings of the mid-19th century with full-blown Palestinian nationalism, a phenomenon that didn't really emerge until the 20th century.

Even if political Zionism didn't come about until the late 19th century, the idea of Jewish national identity is much older, as seen by the Bund, limited Jewish self-rule in eg pre-Enlightenment Poland, and ultimately Jewish religio-nationalism right back to the Second Temple period - not to mention the 19th century racial theories of Galton etc.

Palestinian nationalism, understood as capturing those people who self-define now as Palestinian, is a much newer phenomenon than this. The rumbling proto-nationalisms of the 19th Century might have understood that the residents of Jaffa and Acre were similar in some way but different to eg Egyptians or Meccans, but it's nonsense to say that this represented a more developed nationalism to that of mid-19th century pre-Zionism.

While I take your point about the proto-nationalism of the mid 19th century, Inigo, the Bund were never nationalist, Inigo. They were part of the Socialist International. Also, going back to religio-nationalism from the 2nd Temple era suggests, perhaps, that modern Zionism is more than a little atavistic.
However, I don't think I suggested that the Palestinians' proto-nationalism was more developed than modern Zionism. I apologise if I gave that impression.

millis, you are a liar. Provide evidence, or withdraw the remark.

Note Millis totally ignores my post. But there again he raises a fallacious argument and promptly withdraws it when he is found out ...

No, Advis3r, I don't have to respond to every cough and fart. But the point Inigo correctly raised was that the Palestinians' stirring in the mid-19th century was proto-nationalism. As I pointed out to him, I wasn't in any case comparing it to the full-blown European-sourced, romanticism-based nationalism of the Jews (Zionism). I apologised for perhaps giving the impression that I do. Inigo was polite. I was polite back.
Do you think that Zionism is more than a little atavistic?

millis, withdraw your remark or provide evidence.

Liar.

Joe, while the Bund weren't seeking a Jewish state, they certainly strongly believed in a Jewish nation. They believed in nations being autonomous units whose collaboration would lead to local and regional assembly structures. Their sense of Jewishness was intensely nationalist.

Indeed, they believed in a Jewish nation, but they didn't accept that the Jewish nation had to have an autonomy in the Middle East. I suspect Birobidjan would have sufficed.

Obviously Millis you have difficulty in discerning between the truth and a cough and flatulance. For heavens don't accept a knighthood who knows what might happen when you bow down before the queen. In any event I do not see that anything in my post was so impolite that it would elicite your crude response.