Israel is expected to prove its legitimacy over and over again to everyone including itself. That proof has been confirmed with the spilling of Jewish blood.
"Israel's security rests on our treasured strength, on the strength of the IDF, and the security situation has improved because the strength of the IDF has grown..The security of Israel does not depend on...conciliation with the Arabs. The degree of our security is the degree to which we are able and ready to defend what has been achieved with so much blood."
Shimon Peres - 55
Israel was founded by the same mechanism that established the 22 Arab countries surrounding Israel and Israel is the only country that is democratic and provides the same legal rights to everyone: Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bahais, and everyone else. yet Israel is also the only country which is constantly condemned by them and one of the most despised by Muslims in the world. It was the only country which offered aid to Iran during the earthquake there in December of 2003 and the only country where that help was refused. It wasn't refused because Iran doesn't need the help; it was refused for the same reason the Arabs won't make peace with Israel: because of the insane hatred of most Muslims for Jews.
Turkey, which does have good relations with Israel is an exception. Israel also has a a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan. But let there be no mistake about the intentions of most Muslims to destroy the "infidel" Jews and the State of Israel.
Theodore Herzl was a German nationalist before he was a Zionist. His father was a lawyer and he also studied the law and became a lawyer and then a journalist and writer, but in school he was loyal to the Reich until he felt betrayed by his own German idealism. Jews are very idealistic and want to believe the best about people. Jews really want to believe that there are some Palestinians who are sincere about wanting to coexist with them, inside Israel and as neighbors, just as much as German Jews wanted to believe in Germany and in their "fellow" Germans to live with them as neighbors and friends.
"THE ancestral background of Theodore Herzl, like that of many another national hero, is very imperfectly known. According to a family tradition his father was descended from Spaniolo Marannos. Far back in the line two brothers had been compelled by the Inquisition to abjure their Judaism and enter a monastic order, but they clung in secret to the faith of their fathers. Having attained positions of importance in the order, they were sent abroad on a confidential mission and took advantage of this long awaited opportunity to flee. After sundry adventures they reached Turkey, and there renounced the religion which had been forced upon them. From one of these brothers, the legend tells, Herzl's father was descended."
"Theodore Herzl" by Alex C. Bein and Maurice C. Samuel The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941"Theodore (Tivadar) Herzl -- or, to give him his Hebrew names, Benyamin Ze-ev Herzl -- was born on Wednesday, May 2, 1860, in the city of Budapest. More exactly, the place of his birth was Pest, on the left bank of the Danube, for the union of Buda and Pest as the capital of Hungary did not take place until 1872...."
(ibid)
"It was the rule in these student bodies that every member should be given a new name. Was it pure accident that Herzl was given that of Tancred, the hero of the first crusade immortalized by Tasso as the conqueror of Jerusalem? Was it pure accident that his additional mock titles were "Prince of Galilee" and "Duke of Antioch?" Had his vigorous and manly defense of Jewry moved his comrades to this choice, or had he already spoken in those days of Palestine? Was there within him a premonitory flash of the ideas which were later to be incorporated in the Judenstaat? Not much was needed to set loose this inspiration after his reading of Dühring: nothing more, in fact, than the discovery of Pinsker's appeal, Auto-Emancipation, which appeared in 1882. Herzl himself, speaking long after to Stefan Zweig, could not decide whether it would have been for better or for worse if he had recognized his mission in Vienna, in the full strength of his youth -- but without having yet achieved a reputation in the literary field and without the experiences of the Paris years."
(ibid)In "1882 there was founded Der Ferein deutscher Studenten in Wien -- a Pan-Germanic anti-Semitic organization. On March 5, 1883, this body arranged a great memorial demonstration in the Sophien Hall in honor of Richard Wagner, recently deceased. The climax of the program was an address by a member of the Albia, Herrmann Bahr, in which the speaker spoke approvingly of what he called "Wagnerian anti-Semitism," and declared himself a convert to the Pan-Germanic anti-Semitic movement. The address was received with a wild outburst of enthusiasm. Thereupon the police intervened and dissolved the society. Bahr was rebuked by the University Senate -- and idolized by the Albia. Thus the Fraternity had taken a definite turn in a direction which made participation impossible for a self-respecting Jew."
(ibid)"Herzl had not been present at the memorial demonstration. Two days later, on March 7, 1883, he wrote a letter to the governing body of the Albia. He had learned from newspaper reports, he wrote, that the Wagner memorial meeting, in which his Fraternity had taken a part, had been transformed into an anti-Semitic demonstration. He had not, since then, seen in the public prints any declaration from the Fraternity dissociating itself from the incident. He could not hope, he went on, that such a declaration of dissociation would result from his letter. His Fraternity had, therefore, identified itself with a movement which he, as a believer in liberty, was bound to condemn, even if he had not been a Jew. "It is pretty clear that, handicapped as I am by my Semitism (the word was not yet known at the time of my entry), I would today refrain from seeking a membership which would, indeed, probably be refused me; it must also be clear to every decent person that under these circumstances I cannot wish to retain my membership." In this honorable fashion Herzl withdrew from the organization."
(ibid)
And the philosopher Duehring in "The Jewish Problem as a Problem of Race, Morals, and Cultures" attempted to prove that the "perniciousness of the Jews" was a function of "race" rather than religion.
Herzl wrote about Duehring:
"When so well-schooled and penetrating a mind, enriched by scholarly and truly encyclopedic knowledge such as Duehring undeniably possesses can write this sort of stuff, what, then, can one expect from the illiterate mob?"
"The story of emancipationist German Judaism begins in France, with the revolution of 1789. Before this time, the Jews of continental Europe had been considered to be a minority people, much like the other national minorities that existed in every land. The Jews for their part had understood themselves in terms that had remained esentially unchanged since the destruction of the classical Jewish state many centuries before. They referred to themselves as "Am Yisrael" ("the people of Israel"), a nation living in "Galut" ("exile"), and whose only real homeland was "Eretz Yisrael" ("the land of Israel"). A thousand times a year, for over a thousand years, this people had repeated the same canonical petititon to God to restore the Jewish people, under jewish rulership, to independence in its homeland: "Sound a great horn --- blast for our freedom, raise the banner to ingather our exiles....from the four corners of the earth...May you speedily establish here the throne of David...May our eyes behold your merciful return to Zion."
"Shemoneh Esrei," the traditional daily prayer service
"Since the destruction of the second Jewish State there was no Jewish history in the real sense of that word. There were, it is true, great Jewish achievements in every walk of life; it is also true that in the centuries of their dispersion the Jews suffered untold persecution, and that they demonstrated their endurance as a people by evincing a faith in a future without which they would have been broken. But it was only with and through Herzl that the Jewish people entered again as an active factor into world history. From that moment on it was no longer content with the role of the passive endurer. Led by a minority which looked upon itself not as a party but as the vanguard, it began to shape its own life, and took its future into its own hands."
Theodore Herzl - Alex C. Bein, Maurice C. Samuel"Only by means of this approach can it be fully understood why, at the very outset, Herzl posited the necessity of a specific Jewish policy. To him it expressed the rebirth of the Jewish people as a people, it was for him the condition precedent for the solution of the Jewish problem. Accepting this evaluation of the Jewish problem and its solution, he put himself in diametric opposition to his Jewish contemporaries and to the interpretation of history springing from the epoch of emancipation and assimilation. As one of those authentic historic figures through whom, in Hegel's phrase, the concealed spirit of history beats at the Present and seeks to break through, he initiated a new chapter in the history of the Jewish people, a chapter to which the immediate present still belongs."
(ibid)
The Jews have always existed as a separate people and the bonds which held them together has been more than religion (and often not that). They were separated by others never permitted to forget their difference. Christians blamed them for "killing Christ" and Muslims hated them because of Muhammad's animosity towards those Jews who would not convert. They lived elsewhere by special indulgence of their neighbors, even when they lived there longer than their neighbors. And in spite of legal equality there is still this aversion which emerges on occasion and must be subdued. This is the brutality which led to Herzl's urgency to raise the flag of Zionism and found the movement to save the Jews.
"Anti-Semitism brought with it the utter disillusionment of the "emancipated." They had cut themselves loose from their own past and future; now they were being thrust violently and unintelligibly out of the new connections to which they had fastened all their hopes and beliefs. The reaction to these attacks was of various kinds. There were some who believed that it was necessary to carry their assimilation further, to emphasize and re-emphasize their patriotism, and to dissolve in the baptismal font their last link with their origins. Others founded defense organizations, protested, remonstrated, argued, proved -- without ever penetrating with their arguments to anyone except those who had no need of them. And the majority hoped that the attacks were a transient phenomenon, and that anti-Semitism would soon disappear."
(ibid)
"The white Dove Hath Her Nest, The Fox His Cave, Mankind Their Country --- Israel But the Grave!"
Lord Byron
In 1879 Wilhelm Marr began his political career in the social protest movement and founded, the "League of Antisemites". He created the phrase: "antisemite". In 1881, the "League of German Students" was formed for the purpose of propagating antisemitism and German nationalism in German universities. An international "Antisemitic Congress" met in 1884, in Paris, 11 years before the Dreyfus Case.
Otto Boeckel, who wrote about the Jew as the cause of economic misery and insisted that German's salvation demanded a "Jew-Free" Germany was elected the the Reichstag in 1887.
In 1891, the "Universal German League" was founded which later in 1893 changed its name to the "Pan-German League" calling for racial and cultural kindship among Germans and prohibition of immigration.
In 1924, the "National Socialist Party" which had become the chief organ for politcal antisemitism in Germany managed to win 6.7% of the vote and send 32 delegates to the Reichstag. As the economy improved their representation decreased but after the world wide crisis in 1929 their popularity increased once again and in 1930 they won 18.3% of the vote and sent 107 delegates to the Reichstag.
The composer, Wagner had considerable influence over Hitler's ideas. Hitler said,
"At every stage in my life, I come back to Richard Wagner," who wrote: "I consider the Jewish race the sworn enemy of man and all that is noble in him. That we Germans in particular will be ruined by them is beyond dispute."
Karl Lueger (1844-1910), who was called the greatest mayor of all time by Hitler said of the Jews,
"It makes no differnce whether one hangs them or decapitates them."
No doubt, many Jews were going through a severe identity crisis during this period and sought acceptance by their Christian countrymen by rejecting their Jewish heritage. Karl Marx's father gave up his Judaism to become a Christian in order to be accepted in the law profession and he had his entire family baptised.
The "Reform Jewish Movement" was established and had its greatest successes during this time also. Many chose to reform their customs while still others chose to renounce their Jewishness altogether much as their forefathers had done during the time of the Seleucid Empire. Hermann Cohen aptly described the Jewish attitude:
"We love our Germanness Deutschtum, not only because we love our homeland as a bird loves its nest, but because...we have drawn our intellectual culture.. from the treasures and mines of the German spirit, ...the spirit of classical humanity and of true cosmopolitanism. What other people has a Kant? ...And, what people has this spiritual unity of poetic heroes such as have enlivened our spiritual history through Lessing and Herder, through Schiller and Goethe? What people had ever had this unity of classical poetry and philosophy? The German intellectual are all of them prophets of humanity. It is really natural that we German Jews feel ourselves integrated as Jews and as Germans...I read Faust not only as a beautiful poem, but my love goes out to it as to German epiphany. I feel the same way about Luther..Mozart and Beethoven and Freiherr von Stein and Bismarck."
How Ironic and sad that so many Jews could feel more German than Jewish and it would do nothing to save them. Israel saved as many as they could. The rest of the world did too little too late.
Hank Roth
If you are currently stuck on Facebook or Myspace and if you have noticed your computer isn't working quite right lately it might be because of of garbage code that does that to unsuspected users on only social networks. You might consider a better way to interact with your peers by posting your views here. There are two different comment forms. Pick one that suits you. --Hank Roth
OR, use this link for Haloscan comment forms:
|All quoting per the Fair Use Doctrine
for educational and discussion purposes
pursuant to
Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, Copyright Law.
Permalink: http://inyourface.info/ArT/Zeta/LEg.shtml
Today is Thursday March 11, 2010