Zgram - 8/26/2004 - "Bullies in the school yard"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

>
>
>Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!
>
>August 26, 2004
>
>Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
>
>I was really glad the Internet revealed a veritable shower of 
>so-called "antisemitic incidents" that were revealed as hoaxes. 
>These hoaxes are amazingly, repetitively naughty - they almost 
>always have to do with swastika graffiti and toppling of Jewish 
>gravestones.
>
>Such vandalism acts, committed in the night, are uniquely un-Western 
>- dare I say un-Aryan - acts.  Those aren't things we do.  For the 
>most part, our folks are neat.  They are tradition-minded.  We have 
>a reverence for places set aside to honor and remember our dead - 
>and other people's dead.  Our sense of right and wrong simply 
>revolts at such unsavory, juvenile conduct.  Furthermore, our 
>people have a visceral aversion for things done in the dark of the 
>night, on the sly.  It's better to call people on the carpet.   It's 
>just not our style to smear and to destroy - and, thankfully, ever 
>more people realize that shrieking "Antisemitism!" at every 
>opportunity as a response to ethnically uncharacteristic vandalism 
>is a deliberate, unsavory political act - like letting fly of a 
>spitball!
>What's your reaction to a spitball?  If you're like most folks, most 
>of the time you duck!  You don't punch the aggressive spitball 
>artist in the nose - at least I don't.  Not yet.  Known to strive 
>ever to be ladylike, I hope I won't - not ever!  Some people might, 
>however. Perhaps in days to come, a lot of people will if spitball 
>showers do not stop.  I plead that they will stop! 
>Nowhere, however, is it written that one should act as if it's 
>perfectly okay to overlook a spitball.  At least say something! 
>Express your disgust!   Say, "Wait a minute!  I don't like this - 
>and you won't either if you keep this up!  I don't like slurs like 
>that!" Remember how Ronald Reagan told Nancy when a bullet came 
>flying his way:  "Honey, I forgot to duck!"?  Next time, an 
>undeserved, uncalled-for psycho-terror spitball heads your way to 
>silence you, to make you cringe and hide, say calmly but firmly: 
>"No, buster!  I won't duck!"
>
>The article below is full of RKPS [Requisite Kneefall Paragraph 
>Symptom] phrases and paragraphs.  Let that not bother you.  This 
>writer is getting annoyed at the spitballs - and he is talking back:
>
>[START]
>
>John Roughan: Cemetery wreckers hurt us, not Israel
>
>14.08.2004
>
>Whoever went out to the Makara Cemetery one night to push over as 
>many Jewish gravestones as they could, scrawl swastikas about and 
>set fire to a prayer pavilion, has made a telling impact on two 
>important public debates in this country. I am almost afraid now to 
>argue for the freedom of a Holocaust sceptic to visit here or even 
>to criticise Israel as strongly as it deserves.
>
>I am not alone. The Government, which had withstood the New Zealand 
>Jewish Council's first attempt to blame its handling of the passport 
>incident for a cemetery assault, this time put a resolution to 
>Parliament condemning anti-Semitism as though it was rampant here.
>
>"Let it be hoped the recent vandalism is the work of an isolated 
>crank or cranks," began Acting Prime Minister Michael Cullen, before 
>concluding it was "something evil and irrational though sadly 
>deep-seated in European culture."
>
>Every party agreed. National's Gerry Brownlee deplored "these 
>idiotic acts of hate". Peter Dunne felt "the true horror of events 
>has been that those features we have criticised in other countries 
>are now occurring in our own". Rodney Hide said: "We must all now 
>realise that anti-Semitism is a reality in New Zealand." For Speaker 
>Jonathan Hunt the vandalism was one of the most shocking incidents 
>he had seen in a 37-year career.
>
>The resolution was to be sent to Israel's Parliament and the 
>president of the Jewish Council, David Zwartz, welcomed it as "a 
>statement of diplomatic reconciliation between the Parliament of New 
>Zealand and the State of Israel".
>
>Pardon? Forgive me, what did any of this have to do with Israel? A 
>despicable injury was done to the families of those whose headstones 
>were desecrated, to all Jewish citizens of New Zealand and to the 
>rest of us. What has it to do with Israel?
>
>Whoever did it owes us an apology for creating an impression around 
>the world that we have an issue here. We simply don't. You grow up 
>in New Zealand neither knowing nor caring whether companions are of 
>Jewish descent. And if they happen to mention their heritage, they 
>probably find others interested but no more so than if they were 
>Dutch or Catholic. My Catholic roots define me in some eyes more 
>than I think they should, and occasionally I sense a prejudice but 
>it is not worth mentioning.
>
>I really wonder about anti-Semitism. All sorts of prejudices were 
>permeating societies such as ours 50 or so years ago and they are 
>not now. Anti-Semitism died the day the victors of World War II 
>opened the Nazi death camps. The Holocaust was not the only genocide 
>of its scale in recent times but for Europeans it was the closest to 
>home and still haunts the Western conscience.
>
>IT was the event that clinched the creation of Israel and to this 
>day descendants of those who died or survived the camps invoke the 
>Holocaust whenever Israel is criticised. They ensure that sceptical 
>views of the Holocaust are perilous and now we know it is the one 
>subject on which a person can be barred from this country simply for 
>what he might say.
>
>Anti-Semitism was a pathology, I think, of Europe before the global 
>migrations of the last century. When Europeans lived in homogenous 
>communities, Jews and Gypsies were probably the only distinct 
>minorities they knew. With the washback from global colonialism 
>those groups would have paled in comparison to new arrivals.
>
>To find anti-Semitism in western societies today you need to go to 
>the demented fringe of xenophobic politics or treat seriously the 
>mindless paraphernalia of yobs and militaria collectors.
>
>Many of the statements that groups such as the Jewish Council 
>nowadays regard as anti-Semitic are in fact anti-Israel - there is a 
>difference - and most of those that cross the line come from Arab or 
>other Middle Eastern sources which, really, can be forgiven.
>
>Jews, to them, are invaders who constantly insult their territorial 
>and cultural integrity. And I am not talking just about the 
>foundation of Israel and its subsequent seizures of the rest of 
>Palestine. Invasion and seizure of their homes and property is still 
>a common experience for Palestinians in the West Bank.
>
>We don't hear much about this; I had long imagined that the Jewish 
>settlements in the occupied territories, reprehensible as they are, 
>had been colonies of largely vacant land between Palestinian towns 
>and villages. Seems not.
>
>Last Monday you might have read an interview in the Herald with a 
>dissenting Jew, Jeff Halper, American-born professor of anthropology 
>at Ben-Gurion University. His organisation, the Israeli Committee 
>Against House Demolitions, does what it can to stop the steady, 
>strategic clearance of Palestinian homes and villages.
>
>Sometimes they stand in the way of Israeli bulldozers, sometimes 
>help Palestinians to rebuild and reclaim their homes, and do what 
>they can to contest land expropriation, the expansion of 
>settlements, construction of by-pass roads, the wholesale uprooting 
>of fruit and olive trees and so on.
>
>Professor Halper's group sees a dark logic behind the walls and the 
>roads Israel is building through the occupied territories. Israel, 
>it reckons, knows it will have to allow a Palestinian state to be 
>established in some form and it is moving now to ensure any such 
>"state" is weak, divided and dependent on Israel.
>
>The way the West Bank is now taking shape, they say, there will be 
>three Palestinian bantustans divided by Israeli settlements and 
>roads. Gaza, which the Sharon Government is ready to transfer, now 
>consists of three separate cantons, between which Palestinians 
>cannot travel. The highways are for Israelis only.
>
>As the nature of the "two-state solution" becomes clear, Israel and 
>its apologists will continue to need the anachronism of 
>anti-Semitism to silence critics and manipulate public opinion.
>
>What, therefore, has our embarrassment at Makara got to do with 
>Israel? Probably everything.
>
>(Source: 
>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3584190&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue)
>
>[END]