CiF Smoke Screen?

Any article on CiF which touches on the subject of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is bound to get the ‘usual suspects’ out in force. Any article dealing specifically with Jews living in Hebron; even more so. It therefore came as no surprise to see that the recent article by Andrew Kadi and Aaron Levitt  produced some relatively extreme comments.
All Jewish Hebron residents were tarred with the same brush, described as anything from extremists and fanatics to terrorists.

jsb1080 8 Dec 2009, 1:02PM
autonicolas: so, if saudi arabia is rife with extremists and fanatics, extremism and fanaticism become eo ipso perfectly cosher?
stop trolling.
oh, and if you are jewish, stop demeaning your own people by choosing saudi fanatics as an appropriate yardstick of moral comparison. personally, i would feel deeply ashamed and humiliated if such comparisons were used as an excuse for my behaviour, or for the behaviour of my people or my fellow countrymen.

kadi & levitt: who on earth are contributing money to that fund? i would expect only repuglican ultras of the deepest shade of red to be attracted by the politics and the morals of the hebron fund. and yet such specimens are rare among the jewish american community.

stell
8 Dec 2009, 1:45PM
Good article,
It is sad how the US has allowed fund raising by terroist organisations, in the past the IRA and the Israeli Settler movement. I call them terroist organisations because that is what they did/do, terroise civilians.
I think that this is such a sad state of affairs. I can never see peace in the region while settlement expansion is permitted to continue. It is illegal and immoral.
How much more evidence do we need before we start boycotting Israeli goods? What the world did to south african to bring about the dimise of the apartide regime should be done to the Israeli governmet.
Ranong
8 Dec 2009, 3:15PM
toryziuonist forgets one tiny, unimportant detail.
The activities of the settlers are not legal; they are thieves and they are violent.
TimothyL
8 Dec 2009, 3:49PM
“If a little old lady in Switzerland gave money to a charity for an Afghan orphanage, and the money was passed to al Qaeda, could she be held as an enemy combatant?” the judge asked.
U.S. Attorney Boyle indicated that might fit within the definition of enemy combatant……
Give a Gaza charity a loaf of bread….. to jail for financing terrorism. Give a Zionist killer a sack of cement to build on a Palestinian farm . . you get a charitable tax break.
The US taxpayers are forced to sponsor Zionist crimes and terror.
marvyn
8 Dec 2009, 4:04PM
Absolutely disgusting. These people are fascists, plain and simple.

As was to be expected, the usual accusations of ethnic cleansing appeared, but this time with a bit of a twist:

Raashid
8 Dec 2009, 1:28PM
Why is it surprising that one nation that was largely built by ethnic cleansing of natives with justifications from religion, values and technological capabilities supporting another nation with similar said justifications?

And of course, we couldn’t have a CiF thread without the Giyus conspiracy theorists, who apparently wish to drum up some free publicity for CiF Watch. Very kind.

NapoleonKaramazov
8 Dec 2009, 2:28PM
TheShermanator
Slandering the messenger as a way of invalidating the message- typical cifwatch/giyus tactic.
How about for a change, actually addressing the issue of the article?

On a more serious note, there were those who ‘understand’ terrorism…

NapoleonKaramazov
8 Dec 2009, 1:42PM
Explosive article.
We are always told by the Zionsit lobby to refer to the Hamas Charter or Hezbollah’s goals or whatever which shows their goals of either destroying all Jews or the state of Israel or whatever. People with these opinions exist, but they are in the minority,
(despite Hamas being the largest elected party in Gaza, the fact is if bombs are falling on your head or your city is a prison/pile of rubble then you are less likely to be tolerant)

And now we know (evidenced by the article) that there are some Israeli Jews who see murdering Arabs/Muslims for no reason except ethnicity and racism (Baruch Goldstein is praised) as equally justified. People with these opinions exist in Israel, but they are in the minority.
What I am trying to say is that both sides have a minority of fringe lunatics. But one side has galas and fundraising event in the heart of New York.
…and those who appear to be fans..
Berchmans
8 Dec 2009, 1:52PM
Beithadassah
.
## Yassir Arafat himself recoginized the legitimacy of Hebron’s Jewish community##
Yeah but wasn’t he a terrorist? 🙂
B
PS Yasser RIP.

Finally, some Nazi analogies were thrown in to complete the picture.

corrocamino
8 Dec 2009, 2:01PM
Never again sure didn’t last long.
Conie
8 Dec 2009, 6:56PM
My friend Pauline has just returned from the W Bank – heart-breaking photo of a Palestinian family living on the pavement outside their East Jerusalem house. They were evicted from this house by zionist extremist settlers. The family have their clothes hanging int he trees. In one photo, the settlers’ son, a young man, watches impassively. That’s how the Nazi guards were – impassive, banal, without humanity. The victims of the nazis have become the nazis . The horror of it – the US and Britain are supporting this (i.e. doing nothing practical to stop and the US is supporting extremists it seems. Mind, they supported the Taliban so why be suprised).

Then there was the strange affair of a deleted comment by ‘Beithadassah’ – supposedly on the grounds of being ‘irrelevant’. Judge for yourself –

Beithadassah
8 Dec 2009, 2:10PM
Perhaps all of those defending the Arabs would like to explain why Hebron’s Islamic rulers closed off Judaism’s second holiest site, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, called Ma’arat HaMachpela, to Jews and Christians for 700 years, claiming that it is a mosque and only moslems can pray there. Remember that the building on top of the caves was built by Herod, a Jewish King, two thousand years ago, which is some 600 years before Muhammad was born. Today they clearly say that should they ever again control this site, it will be open only to those of the Islamic faith.
Perhaps you can also explain why the ‘peaceful’ Arabs in Hebron murdered, in cold blood, 67 Jews living in Hebron in August of 1929. Remember, they were not ‘fanatic, extremists’ like those of us living here today.
As for ‘occupied territories’ – the Arabs consider all of the State of Israel to be ‘occupied palestine.’
Why not face the truth and be honest with yourselves!?

Now of course the subject of Hebron is a very emotive one – of which I am sure the Guardian is well aware. My personal view is that whilst I may disagree with the politics, beliefs and tactics of some of the Hebron Jews, they are still Israelis just like me and as long as our democratically elected government supports their living where they do, they deserve the same treatment as any other Israeli regardless of where she or he lives. You see, I always try to think about the day after any potential peace agreement which would lead to Israel relinquishing more territory, because if that ever happens, we need to be able to welcome them to their new homes as brothers, not as enemies.
I am, therefore, very interested in the motives behind Kadi and Levitt’s article, which is guaranteed to get emotions running high, as seen above. Take this statement for instance:

“The fact that the Hebron Fund likely raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for extremist Israeli settlers at a major US venue with little public scrutiny is a troubling sign for those who hope that the US can play a constructive role in achieving a just peace in the Middle East.”

This seemingly banal statement has to be taken in context, and the context comes with an understanding of the organisations which these two writers represent.
Aaron Levitt is a member of ‘Jews Against The Occupation’ – an organisation based in the US which, amongst other things, campaigns against what it describes as the ‘Apartheid Wall’ and categorises itself as ‘A Jewish Voice of Opposition to the War on Palestinians’.
Andrew Kadi is a member of Adalah – an organisation whose agenda focuses on seeking an end to Israel as a Jewish state. One of Adalah’s main foreign funders is the Ford Foundation, which is based, of course, in the US, and has a rather ignoble history of funding the extremist NGOs at the infamous Durban I conference.
So it seems a little strange that Kadi and Levitt should be making such a song and dance about ‘The US cash behind extremist settlers’ when Adalah, which has an agenda which could be considered far more extremist than the restitution of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, gets a large chunk of its budget from US cash too. After all, what is sauce for the Adalah goose must also be sauce for the Hebron gander.
However, I also take into account that over at Adalah HQ, people are probably a little jumpy these days due to the recent Knesset Conference which examined the subject of the funding of NGO activity in Israel by foreign governments. Could it just possibly be that Kadi and Levitt, with the help of CiF, are keen to distract public and even governmental opinion by means of a smoke screen comprising that tried and true element, the ‘extremist settler’?

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