Yachad -putting Arab rights before Jewish rights
Via Proud Zionist:
In the last week a row has been brewing between Yachad (a leftwing peace group aka the British J-Street) and the Sephardi community in the UK. Notices have gone up in Sephardi synagogues telling members to shun Yachad. At the same time Yachad has been revealed to be 're-tweeting' messages from the anti-Zionist blog +972 and 'tipping off' The Guardian with anti-Israel stories. Yet Yachad have been invited to speak at today's Big Tent conference on Israel's delegitimisation, while several' right-wing' speakers have been excluded.
A Jewish Chronicle blogpost by 'Sephardi Spirit' stated:
You won't find much love for Yachad in any Sephardi community in the UK. You almost certainly will not find much love for them in any Sephardi community in the world.
The reason being is that Sephardim view Yachad as 'hostile' to Israel. Yes, hostile. This was demonstrated by notices put up at mainstream UK Sephardi synagogues urging members to have nothing to do with Yachad. Not that they needed to be told, but some might have found their 'pro Israel' tag misleading.
Jews from Middle Eastern descent, after living for years among Arabs, tend to know slightly more about the people Israel are dealing with. They understand the Arab ideologies which lead to persecution, violence and death of Jews.
'Sephardi Spirit' charges Yachad with ignoring the antisemitism and incitement driving the Arab/Islamist conflict with Israel. Sephardim should know: this is the same antisemitism which drove the Sephardi and Mizrahi communities out of the Middle East and North Africa.Naturally, Yachad was offended and retorted with a blog on its website by one Anthony T, of Iraqi descent, affirming his support for the group. Yachad, he wrote, had lots of supporters from the Middle East.
Yes, says blogger Proud Zionist, "I don't think anyone was in any doubt about the fans Yachad may have from these countries: Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood), Turkey (the lovely Erdogan, who after sending Israel a ship of terrorists, initially let his people die rather than accept aid from Israel when hit by an earthquake), Iran (Ahmadinejad, who wants the whole of Israel "wiped off the map", not just the settlements)."
I would go further than 'Sephardi Spirit' and accuse Yachad, not just of doing nothing to recognise and tackle the antisemitism at the heart of the conflict, but of focusing exclusively on defending Arab rights and ignoring Jewish rights, as exemplified by the Sumarin case.
This week Yachad thanked its supporters for helping to obtain a postponement of the eviction of the Sumarin family from a house in Silwan, east Jerusalem, owned by the JNF.
Yet we have not heard a peep from Yachad regarding the thousands of Jewish homes, shops and properties seized in Arab countries. Another example of how the Left treats Arab rights as more important than Jewish rights.
Arabs have recourse to the Israeli courts, Jews who lost their property in Arab lands cannot expect justice in Arab courts.
As long as this is the case, Yachad will have no credibility in the eyes of Jews from Arab countries because it has a one-sided agenda. If a Jewish organisation cannot defend Jewish rights, who will?
They also have JCall in Europe. That's the UE JStreet. JCall thought they were going to get a lot of members by bringing on board BHL (and lying to him), but there was fierce opposition to JCall from the French especially, including a countyer-petition.
ReplyDeleteWherever there is a Sephardic majority they can't make many strides. Nothing to do with their approach to Israel but people just don't accept Ashkenazis coming to tell them how to think.
I realise now that most Ashkenazis are socialists!! And of course having lived in non-mozlem countries, they have not got a clue what Jews there went through. But still I do not understand this insane loyalty to thugs like Stalin who ordered the murder of Jews. These socialists are just as fanatical as mozlems! My elderly parents are like this, and the older they get the more fanatically communistic they get!! :((
ReplyDeletePS: I have decide to be an honorary Sephardi!
juniper
ReplyDeleteSocialism and communism were perceived by Jews, intellectuals and others to be the path to universal equality and acceptance, the next best thing to conversion.
The problem is not with those who chose that path for themselves, but with the kind of brainwashing to which some of them submitted their children. Examples of those abused as children by that ruthless ideology are people like Amira Hass and that Klein woman (I forgot her first name) and countless others.
Glad to know that there are those with their own minds!
Sylvia, the reasons you offered for why Jews have supported communism are to a large extent true, although another reason was that Marxism supplied an intellectual system that seemed to answer all questions. As you probably know, Stalin was considered infallible.
ReplyDeleteBut it was hardly a matter of Ashkenazim. How do you explain Jean Daniel [Daniel Ben-Said], Simon Malley, Abraham Sarfatti [in Morocco], Sami Mikhael, etc??
Elyahu - Exactly in the same way, as I did in the past here regarding Elmaleh and Serfati. The only way they could become political activists and therefore equals was either to be "Arabs" which was not a given since it was not granted, or to become communists.
ReplyDeleteAlbert Memmi went the "I am an Arab Jew" as long as he was a political activist, though he knew better (he retired his Arabness later in life).
Same for Serfati until Hassan II told him there was no such an animal as "Arab Jew".
Native Jews in Muslim lands could neither write nor participate in national history of those countries.
Posing as universalists/socialists put them on equal footing with other socialists but that's about it. To others, they are nothing but Jews.
I don't know of one single Jew who joined the Algerian revolution who didn't call himself a communist first.
Stalin gives me the creeps!!!
ReplyDeleteLook ati all the Jews who got imprisoned and even killed in Russia. If only for that i cannot uphold Communism.
suzy vidal