Winston Churchill famously remarked
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
I’ve often suspected the reason some Jews join with our enemies is that the belief that if they support terrorists who want to destroy Israel and the Jews, they will be spared. Many learn too late that it doesn’t matter if you’re a self-hating Jew who is happy to denounce Israel and your fellow Jews; to a terrorist you are still a Jew.
In the Nazi era, some Jews tried to appease Hitler. Notable examples were the Association of German National Jews, founded by Max Naumann, whose goal was the total assimilation of Jews into the German Volksgemenschaft.
In 1934 the group made the following statement.
“We have always held the well-being of the German people and the fatherland, to which we feel inextricably linked, above our own well-being. Thus we greeted the results of January, 1933, even though it has brought hardship for us personally”.
A similar Jewish group in Germany was the German Vanguard, German-Jewish followers of Hitler also referred to as “Nazi Jews” – Association of German National Jews, who advocated loyalty to the Nazi programme, and allegedly ended their meetings by giving the Nazi salute and shouting,
“Down With Us!”
The Vanguard were extremely patriotic Germans who wanted to be seen as a Jewish political movement within the revival of German nationalism. They looked down on Eastern European Jews, and opposed Zionism, because Zionists wanted to become a separate Jewish nation, while the Vanguard believed that German Jews belonged to the German nation, and were only different with regard to their religion… Vanguard members failed to understand that the Nazis hated Jews because of their race, and considered them to be non-Aryan, or non-German, to the core. They thought that Jews would eventually be allowed to integrate into the Third Reich.
Many Jews have reached out to the enemy, underestimating their visceral hatred of Jews. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists. Debbie Schlussel is one commentator who feels little sympathy for him:
Pearl was an extremely left-wing, nominal Jew whose reporting repeatedly gave exposure to and legitimization of Islamic terrorists.
And Judea Pearl…has sought to legitimize this legitimization and appeasement of terrorists…In the years since his son’s death, he has focused on “promoting cross-cultural understanding.” To that end, he raises money for the Seeds of Peace camp, founded by Yasser Arafat’s favorite biographer. The whole idea of the camp is the moral equivalence of terrorism’s victims and its perpetrators.
Islamic terrorists’ kids tell off Israeli leftists’ kids for several hours, and then they go canoeing or play volleyball together. Significant numbers of graduates of the Maine camp have become Islamic terrorists and homicide bombers, who kill Jews in Israel. The camp’s most famous grad, Adam Shapiro, founded ISM (International Solidarity Movement), a group which sheltered British Al-Qaeda bombers the night before they blew themselves–and many innocent victims–up at a Tel Aviv bar.
A Wall Street Journal reporter was aghast, during a visit to Seeds of Peace, when he watched counselors remain silent as Palestinian Muslim campers told Jewish campers that the Holocaust never happened. The Jewish campers, since their parents are leftists and didn’t teach them anything, didn’t even know for sure if the Muslims were wrong. The counselors told the WSJ reporter that they could not intervene because “all viewpoints are legitimate and there is no right and wrong” at Seeds of Peace. Judea Pearl lamented that:
” The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Al Jazeera television is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.”
Guess who did one of the first, most sympathetic Western media interviews with Qaradawi, declaring this extremist a “moderate” who takes the “middle path”?
Another young naive Leftist Jew, American Nick Berg, had a close friendship with Islamists. He went to Iraq after the US invasion, only to be abducted and beheaded:
On May 11, 2004, the website of the militant group Muntada al-Ansar posted a video, which shows Berg being decapitated… Berg is surrounded by five masked men. Two of them hold Berg down, while one decapitates him with a knife. A scream can be heard as men shout “Allahu Akbar“. After the head is severed, one of the men displays the head to the camera.
During the video, the man reading the statement threatens further deaths:
“We tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins … slaughtered in this way.”
On May 14, 2004, it was revealed that Nick Berg had been investigated during the U.S. government’s investigation ofZacarias Moussaoui. Berg’s email address had been used by Moussaoui prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks. According to Berg’s father, Nick Berg had a chance encounter with an acquaintance of Moussaoui on a bus in Oklahoma.
This person had asked to borrow Berg’s laptop computer to send an email. Berg gave the details of his own email account and password, which were later used by Moussaoui. The FBI found that Berg had no direct terrorism connections or direct link with Moussaoui. Wikipedia
Odd that Berg should lend a rather dubious stranger (given his friendship with a 9/11 terrorist) his laptop and divulge his account details. One blogger who is critical of the Berg family writes:
Despite proof on the video of his son’s beheading by Al-Zarqawi, Michael Berg prefers to blame George W. Bush for his son’s execution.
This schmuck has no anger for the people who beheaded his son and sent the video around the world. Somehow I think the terrorists got the wrong Berg.
Another victim of Islamic terror, Neta Sorek, was a member of the feminist group Women for Peace. A firm believer in co-existence, she studied Arabic and was a teacher at the Jewish-Arab school ‘Bridge over the Wadi’ in Kafr Kara. Sorek was staying in a small guest house in the Beit Jimal Monastery, and was murdered while was walking in the gardens.
On February 24, 2010, members of a Palestinian terrorist cell illegally infiltrated into Israel fromSurif, a Palestinian Authority controlled area, through gaps in the security barrier. They drove to the Beit Jimal Monastery, where they spotted Sorek walking alone in the monastery gardens and decided to murder her.
Her attackers were finally convicted when Israeli police arrested members of the Palestinian terror cell responsible for the murder of Kristine Luken, an American Christian, and the attempted murder of Kay Wilson, an Israeli tour guide.
Ayad Fasafa and Kifah Ghanimat confessed to attacking these two women. They also confessed to the murder of Neta Sorek from earlier that year… The men declared their goal of murdering Jews.
Note that the men didn’t just want to kill right-wing Jews, but ALL JEWS – yes, even peaceniks like Neta Sorek!
Kifah Ghanimat was also convicted of an earlier rape at knifepoint of a Beit Shemesh resident who had known Kifah for several years before he attacked her in July 2009. So it seems that even being on good terms won’t protect you, because such people are driven by an ideology which overrides personal friendship. Many non-Jews support the Palestinian agenda, justifying it on human rights grounds. But maybe they have a less noble motive – self-protection. Could that be what motivated pro-Palestinian activist, Vittorio Arrigoni? We’ll never know, as he was killed by Islamists in September 2012:
A Hamas-run military court in the Gaza Strip has convicted four Palestinians for their involvement in the abduction and murder of the Italian activist in April 2011…who was found dead hours after he was seized in Gaza City.
… a video showing him beaten and blindfolded was posted on a Salafist website. The kidnappers demanded the release of Salafists being detained in Hamas jails, including their leader.
Salafists call for a return to the practices of the first Muslim… Many of them consider Hamas too moderate…
There was widespread outrage in Gaza at the killing of Arrigoni, who had been a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and had lived in the coastal territory for several years. Here:
Many compassionate Jews are motivated by concern for human rights and initially support the Palestinian cause, seduced by the propaganda and moved by the obvious plight of many Arabs, not realizing that responsibility for their suffering lies within their own society. One person who saw the light is Lital Shemesh, a young, liberal Israeli journalist:
I participated in the Dialogue for Peace Project for young Israelis and Palestinians. The project’s objective was to identify tomorrow’s leaders and bring them closer today, with the aim of bringing peace at some future time.
On the third day of the seminar after we had become acquainted, had removed barriers… we began to touch upon many subjects which were painful for both sides. The Palestinians spoke of roadblocks and the IDF soldiers in the territories, while the Israeli side spoke of constant fear, murderous terrorist attacks, and rockets from Gaza.
The Israeli side, which included representatives from right and left, tried to understand the Palestinians’ vision of the end of the strife… The Israelis delved to understand how we can end the age-old, painful conflict.
What red lines are they willing to be flexible on?
What resolution will satisfy their aspirations?
Where do they envision the future borders of the Palestinian State which they so crave?
We were shocked to discover that not a single one of them spoke of a Palestinian State, or to be more precise, of a two-state solution.
They spoke of one state – their state. They spoke of ruling Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Akko, Haifa, and the pain of the Nakba . There was no future for them. Only the past.
“There is no legitimacy for Jews to live next to us”
– this was their main message.
In the course of a dialogue which escalated to shouts, the Palestinians asked us not to refer to suicide bombers as “terrorists” because they don’t consider them so.
“So how do you call someone who dons a vest and blows himself up in a Tel Aviv shopping mall with the stated purpose of killing innocent civilians?”
I asked one of the participants.
“I have a 4-year-old at home”
answered Samach from Abu Dis.
“If God forbid something should happen to him, I will go and burn an entire Israeli city, if I can.”
All the other Palestinian participants nodded their heads in agreement to his harsh words.
“Three weeks ago, we gave birth to a son”
answered Amichai, a religious, Jew.
“If God forbid something should happen to him, I would find no comfort whatsoever in deaths of more people.”
Israelis from the full gamut of political parties participated in the seminar: Likud, Labor, Kadima, Meretz, and Hadash (combined Jewish/Arab socialist party). All of them reached the understanding that the beautiful scenarios of Israeli-Palestinian peace that they had formulated for themselves simply don’t correspond with reality.
I arrived at the seminar with high hopes, and I return home with difficult feelings and despair. Something about the narrative of the two sides is different from the core.
How can we return to the negotiating table when the Israeli side speaks of two states and the Palestinian side speaks of liberating Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea?
How can peace ever take root in a platform which grants legitimacy to terrorism?
Two things that stand out are:
- Appeasement is not compassion.
- Supporting evil will not save us.
True compassion involves retaining our moral compass, even while those around us are losing theirs, whilst claiming the moral high ground.
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