Jews Disrespect Non-Jewish American Citizens
On March 4, 2008, Imam Elahi published a Detroit News Op-Ed column entitled
U.S. should stop Israeli atrocities in Gaza. He based his article on reports from
Haaretz and the Associated Press as well as on the opinions of former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and UN officials Ban Ki-moon and John Holmes. (See below.)
On March 7, 2008, in response to this effort at opening a civil discussion about Israeli behavior and actions, Robert Cohen, who is Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, published a
Rebuttal (see below) accusing Elahi of "using his position as a leading Muslim cleric to disseminate pro-terrorist propaganda." Cohen claimed that the Imam "parroted lies and distortions that we hear so often from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran." Then Cohen made a lot of assertions that most regular readers of
Haaretz should at the very least consider questionable.
When Elahi admonishes that "Israel should be very worried of God's justice," Cohen accuses him of expressing "hate-based words ... especially damaging to community relations." Everyone should worry about God's judgment. Even Voltaire did on his deathbed. A reminder now and them is probably a good thing.
On March 12, 2008 Imam Elahi ignoring Cohen's provocations tried to reply moderately with a short op-ed entitled
Israel's actions belie its claims to want peace. (See below.) Elahi asked two questions that professional Israel advocates like Cohen really should answer.
- Why did Israel expand its occupying settlements right after the [Annapolis] conference?
- Does Cohen believe that American taxpayers should foot Israel's bill to massacre the Palestinians and send cluster bombs to kill the Lebanese?
My wife Karin Friedemann and I have put together two rejoinders to Cohen in the same spirit with which he addressed Imam Elahi.
Israel advocates should be treated with all the contempt and rudeness with which they treat anyone questioning Zionism, the State of Israel, and the obligation of US taxpayers to shell out trillions of dollars to support an exclusive Jewish state in the Middle East.
Please complain to the Detroit News letters@detnews.com about the arrogant chauvinism and rudeness of the Israel apologists that it is publishing.
Please inform Robert Cohen by writing to him at cohen@jfmd.org that he and his extremist ilk merit nothing but contempt and disdain from patriotic US citizens committed to fundamental American principles of human rights, anti-racism, and democracy.
Karin's Rejoinder
Shame on Robert Cohen for using his position as the Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit in Bloomfield Hills to disseminate genocidal racist propaganda. His irresponsible letter, published in the Detroit News on March 7, 2008 parroted the cheap lies and distortions that we hear so often from Israel Advocacy groups, who suck American tax dollars for their nefarious purposes to the detriment of American security and the economy.
Americans want peace, and so does everyone else, which is why we cannot continue to finance Israel, a terrorist state that denies equal rights to its citizens, and even bulldozes homes with the people inside. Palestinians never target civilians, while Israel routinely uses Palestinian children for target practice and actually encourages misguided and demoralized teenagers from the United States to travel to Israel for racist indoctrination and terrorist training! Many innocent people on both sides of the conflict have died, because the immoral, racial Israeli settlements, populated by heavily armed and aggressive dual citizens of other countries, who have come to Israel to experience racial superiority over others, are financed unwittingly by Americans, who themselves cannot pay off their own credit card bills.
Although Israel has a long history of desecration of Christian and Muslim holy sites, including the repeated bombing of the Church of Nativity where Christ is believed to have been born, the Palestinians have for centuries, before the Israeli Occupation, faithfully safeguarded the holy sites of all religions. Imagine how Robert Cohen's believers, especially his own children, must feel deep inside when told -- untruthfully -- that the children of Iran should be incinerated to prevent them from building a plant to generate electricity -- a country which does not threaten the U.S. -- and how can they wake up in the morning thinking that Israel has a right to demand that American taxpayers finance its sordid existence as well as its wars. How could these children have any self respect, believing that they are supposed to support extortion and mass murder? Children naturally have an innate sense of right and wrong and it is abusive to deprive them of morality.
The hate-filled website of the JCRC of Metropolitan Detroit not only advocates ongoing extortion of U.S. taxpayers, but openly calls for an aggressive, pre-emptive attack on Iran which goes against the Christian doctrine of Just War.
Mr. Cohen's heartless, war-mongering sentiments are especially damaging to community relations when uttered by someone who serves as a leader of the Jewish community, many of whom do not agree with his warmongering.
Sincerely,
Karin Friedemann
Joachim's Rejoinder
Shame on Robert Cohen for using his position as Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit to disseminate racist anti-Arab anti-Muslim propaganda in support of Zionist terrorism. His rebuttal letter on March 7 ("Muslim cleric pushes distortions on Gaza") parroted lies and distortions that we hear so often from Abraham Foxman of the ADL, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee and all the other professional liars or advocates for the State of Israel.
Hamas, which tried to maintain a unilateral cease fire in the face of targeted assassinations and IDF attacks calculated to cause maximum Palestinian civilian casualties, wants peace (as former President Carter made clear in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid) but cannot negotiate with an unrepentant terrorist state consolidated on the principle that Jews may plunder and kill non-Jews with impunity.
All Palestinian groups do their best to minimize innocent Israeli civilian casualties in conformance with Islamic and international humanitarian principles
By responding to the mass murder of Palestinian civilians by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) with a targeted assault on an occult mystical Zionist terrorism training and indoctrination center (Yeshivat Merkaz Harav) in West Jerusalem, the Palestinian resistance has achieved in actuality the tohar haneshek (Hebrew: purity of arms) that Zionists always claimed as a goal even as they wantonly killed non-Jews.
Ever since 1947 when Zionist militias put into effect plans established ten years earlier for mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the native Palestinian population, the Zionist leadership has equated Palestinians with leaven (hametz) that is subject to burning by fire (biur) in order to create ritual purity in anticipation of the Passover Holiday.
In fact, Biur Hametz (http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/Balad-al-Shaykh/) was the name of the operation for the ethnic cleansing of Haifa during the Holoexaleipsis (the Great Erasing of Palestinians from their homeland -- called Nakba or Catastrophe in Arabic). Obviously, the Zionist leadership had intended the complete obliteration of Haifa-area Palestinians, and to their credit the militia members, who had not been fully indoctrinated in Zionist genocidalism, were unwilling to go all the way.
In the subsequent history of the Jewish violence against non-Jews in the Middle East, not only has such reluctance to commit mass murder of non-Jewish civilians (Kafr Qasem) and protected non-combatants (POWs during the 1956 and 1967 wars) quickly vanished among the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, but it never existed among the settler militias that terrorize non-Jews in the Occupied Territories and whose members have often been trained at Yeshivat Merkaz haRav and associated institutions.
The Israeli Jewish civilian leadership has had no reluctance to issue explicit orders to soldiers to create maximum non-Jewish casualties or suffering
- at Qibya,
- with the recent cluster-bombing of Lebanon,
- during the siege of Gaza, and
- in a practically uncountable number of other military situations.
Israeli bombings of civilian neighborhoods are intended to maximize non-Jewish civilian deaths as part of the dirty Zionist demographic war against native and surrounding non-Jewish populations.
In contrast, many Israeli civilians die because the Israeli government positions legitimate military targets in areas where civilians reside and sends soldiers to collective settlements (kibbutzim) for preparations before dispatching them to combat. The latter practice was common during the recent Lebanon war and resulted in many deaths.
Even though the Israeli regime has a long history both of desecration of Christian and Muslim shrines, graveyards, and houses of worship (meticulously documented at http://www.palestineremembered.com) and also of denying non-Jews access to their holy sites and cemeteries, Arab and Muslim governments throughout the Middle East protect holy sites of all faiths and provide access to the faithful regardless of their religion.
Not only have the Palestine Antiquities authority and numerous scholars frequently complained at the seizure or destruction of important Christian or Jewish archeological sites, but particularly galling has been the blithe assumption by Israeli officials that European Jewish invaders and interlopers have ownership rights to the artifacts of ancient Judeans, Judahites, and Israelites, who are the ancestors of modern Palestinians.
In a way, European Jews are rather pathetic, for they are so ashamed of their own history and ancestry that they steal the history and ancestry of the native Palestinian population. (See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959229.html.)
Clearly, Robert Cohen like many leaders of the organized Jewish community has a problem when Muslim Americans take part as equals in public American discussion of Middle East issues and policies even though participation is our right as citizens.
Rather like Chaim Weizman and Eastern European Jewish Zionist leaders in the aftermath of WWI, Robert Cohen and other Jewish leaders have chosen to reject direct civil discussion of issues with the targets of their ongoing or planned abuse (Simha Flapan, 'Zionism and the Palestinians', 1979, ISBN 0-85664-499-4, p.70 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_and_Palestinian_Arab_attitudes_before_1948#_note-65).
The choice made 90 years ago plagues the world to this day, for it left only uncivil discussion, which eventually became completely justified forceful resistance to dispossession from the land.
How should American Muslims react when far too many American Jews make a concerted effort to dispossess them of their rights as US citizens via mendacity, scare-mongering, and Islamophobic incitement?
Eventually, the American public will realize how much Israel advocates are lying and how much the alliance with the State of Israel costs each and every taxpayer. No one likes to be conned. At that point in time American Zionists will have to worry about the reaction of their fellow citizens in addition to God's justice.
Sincerely,
Joachim Martillo
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi:
U.S. should stop Israeli atrocities in Gaza
Some Jews have said, "We don't forget or forgive the Holocaust." Then last week, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened Gaza with a "bigger shoah" or holocaust.
Much of the same mainstream media that attacked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over a mistranslation about Israel supposedly being wiped off the map ignored Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit's statement, reported by the Associated Press, that "We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map." Sheetrit is justifying mass murder.
Based on BBC reports, basic human dignity is denied in Gaza. John Holmes, the United Nations' top official, said he was shocked by a "grim and miserable" situation in Gaza.
The Palestinian militants' rockets have left 13 dead in the last seven years, while Israel has killed 120 people and wounded more than 350 since attacks began Wednesday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called this barbaric bombardment of civilians and killing of children "a disproportionate and excessive use of force."
As we honor Jewish peace activists who call for the end of the siege and for peace and coexistence, we remind the friends of Israel that to imprison the 1.5 million people of Gaza in a walled ghetto without allowing in food, water, electricity or even fuel for the ambulances to carry the dead bodies is genocide.
If the reason for all these atrocities is to stop the militants' rocket attacks, why did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeatedly reject the Hamas ceasefire offers, saying no negotiation? He wants the Palestinians to accept total submission to Israeli occupation.
The Annapolis conference was called a "window of opportunity," and the Arab rulers did all they were told, but more Palestinians have been killed since then. Israel even ignored President Bush's demand for "a halt to all Jewish settlement expansion" and is threatening the integrity of the Old City and the Aqsa Mosque.
Israel does whatever it desires regardless of condemnations. If killing Palestinian children were the solution, Israel should be the safest country in the world after 60 years of slaughter.
We know from our Scriptures that Pharaoh killed thousands of the children of Israel to prevent the emergence of Moses, not knowing that he was raising Moses in his own palace. Moses didn't need a nuclear weapon to free his people; all it took was his staff.
Israel is beginning to lose some sympathy. An editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz argues: "We have become accustomed to treating the Palestinians as inferior people." It even discussed Israel's Abu Ghraib-like prisons.
Israel should be very worried of God's justice.
Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu already have warned Israel of its apartheid policies. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is the best Arab friend Israel ever sponsored, yet he has accused Israel of committing international terrorism. It's time for the world community to force Israel to wake up and start respecting human life and integrity.
Will we as Americans ever regain our moral direction and stand for the universal principles of truth and justice prescribed by the Bible, the Quran and the Declaration of Independence?
Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi heads the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights. Fax comments to (313) 222-6417 or e-mail to letters@detnews.com.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Rebuttal
Muslim cleric pushes distortions on Gaza
Shame on Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi for using his position as a leading Muslim cleric to disseminate pro-terrorist propaganda. His "Faith and Policy" column on March 4 ("U.S. should stop Israeli atrocities in Gaza") parroted lies and distortions that we hear so often from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Israel wants peace, but cannot negotiate with terrorists who deny Israel's right to exist. Israel does her best to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, while Hamas rocket attacks are intended to maximize Israeli civilian deaths. Many Palestinian civilians die because Hamas terrorists hide amongst them and fire their Israel-bound rockets from within civilian neighborhoods.
Although Arab regimes in the Holy Land have a long history of desecration of Jewish and Christian holy sites, Israel protects holy sites of all faiths and provides access to the faithful regardless of their religion. Imagine how Imam Elahi's congregants, especially children, must feel when told -- untruthfully -- that Israel is threatening the Aqsa Mosque and Israel "should be very worried of God's justice."
Such hate-based words are especially damaging to community relations when uttered by someone who serves as a leader of his faith community.
Robert Cohen
Executive Director
Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit
Bloomfield Hills
| Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Israel's actions belie its claims to want peace I was not surprised to be insulted again by Robert Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, in his March 7 letter ("Muslim cleric pushes distortions on Gaza"). Conscientious readers may decide who is parroting "lies and distortions." He claims, "Israel wants peace." If so, why won't Israel end its illegal occupation and abide by U.N. resolutions 242 and 338? Palestinians are not occupying Israel, so why do Israelis call them terrorists and threaten to wipe them out with a "shoah" or "holocaust"? If Israel wants peace, why did it pressure our ambassador to the United Nations to withdraw a resolution declaring that the peace process had been revitalized at Annapolis? Why did Israel expand its occupying settlements right after the conference? Does Cohen believe that American taxpayers should foot Israel's bill to massacre the Palestinians and send cluster bombs to kill the Lebanese? I sincerely invite Cohen and interfaith groups to a civil dialogue for peace and justice. Mohammad Ali Elahi Imam Islamic House of Wisdom Dearborn Heights |
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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
2 comments:
Maybe Imam Elahi can create unity between Sunni and Shia Muslims this way.
Could you comment, whether my details are correct in a dissident essay in
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm ?
Tel Aviv (literally: Dumb-Hill of Spring) was plain desert at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, in the advent of its 100th year celebrations in 2009, it is the Silicon Wadi (Valley) of not only Mediterranean but of the whole globe since 1990's. The world has never seen such a rocket area of original Hi Tech innovations, I would say.
It is United States that profits from Israel, rather than the opposite. Israel gets nearly 2 billion euros from USA almost every year, that is true. But US demands Israel not to stop brain drain from Eretz israel to the US. Astonishing number of 25% of the Israeli researchers have moved from Israel to the United States - and this figure does not yet even include the people with double citizenship! The next largest brain drain of researchers to US are 12.2% from Canada, 4.3% from Netherlands, and 4.2% from Italy. Before the Second Intifada, there were 200 Israeli companies listed in the US High Tech Nasdaq, after the Intifada the count had dropped to 70. (At the moment the number is back in 100, however, which is still greater than from all the European countries combined).
Dollars are green since the Americans pull them down from the tree raw and fresh. E.g. Mirabilis by AOL with $0.4 billion, Indigo and Mercury by HP with 0.7$ and 1.5 billion, respectively, M-systems by ScanDisk Corp (SNDK) with $1.5 billion were big investments, Berkshire Hathaway’s first investment out of the US of ISCAR Metalworking for 4$ billion, though. Israel has not been able to let any of its companies to be scaled up in their homeland but most are imported straight from the garage. The scaling up of industrial production would mean jobs to both Jews, Arabs and other ethnic groups. Israel is ordered to stay as some kind of innovation laboratory only, as the 51. state.
Over half of the export from Israel are High tech products (32 $ billion in 2007), compared to the 25% which is the average in the OECD countries. Israel's GDP is about $200 billion, nearly six times its original, relative per-capita level. Skyscrapers crowd Tel Aviv, multilane thruways, tunnels, fast trains and spaghetti junctions crisscross the country, and some 80 shopping malls, the first of which only opened in 1986. She harbours more museums per capita than any other country. She exhibits second highest output of new book per citizen. More patents per person than any other nation. More than 85% of solid waste in the country is treated in an environmentally sound manner. The shekel is one of the strongest currencies in the world, inflation is 2.5%, year 2007 growth of 5% was the developed world's highest for the fifth consecutive year, while unemployment slid to a 15-year low of 6.5%. In 2007, Israel had the 44th-highest gross domestic product and 22nd-highest gross domestic product per capita (at purchasing power parity) at US$233 billion and US$33,3, respectively. The country’s GDP by sectors is similar to that of developed countries with a leading services sector at around 67%, the industrial sector follows with 31% and agriculture is responsible for the remaining 3%. Israel’s major industrial sectors include a leading high tech industry, electronic and bio medical equipment, chemicals, metal products. The country is a member of the World Trade Organization and a trial member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In short, even the immigrant PhD's have to be humble enough to make their living by cleaning toilets before they get the hold of making living. Although the export of the agriculture has remained constant past the last 30 years, its relative amount has dropped from 70% to 3%. Out of the 3000 companies in Israel 80% are less than ten years old, and the average failure rate of these start ups is very low, less than 50%. More Israeli patents are registered in the US than from Russia, India, and China combined, despite the enormous population disadvantage (about 7 million in Israel vs. 2.5 billion combined in the other 3). One of the secrets of innovative success in Israel is the fact that cheating is minimized in the public funding: Money is not delivered according to research plans but steady income ("kassavirta") and thus the market analysis is emphasized. The support is designed so that the first 2-10 years a start-up company does not have to pay taxes. But very little, if any, direct funding without compensation is offered. Today, Israel draws Venture Capital (VC) more than the Europe. A novel phenomenon is the strategy by which Israel has been able to claim victory over China and other Far-East countries regarding the modern High Tech factories: As an example, the supranational Intel transferred the mass production of Centricon-processors to Israel, where ~20% of citizens possess university decrees (ranking 3rd in the world) but where the environment respects patents and are not plagiating every item they produce to others like the rocketting China.
Intel was also offered an overall tax rate of 10%, which is about three times lower than that of US. Also, the biggest generic drug factory in the world was recently established in Israel. Generating US$7 billion in annual revenues, Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) is the world's largest generic pharmaceutical company. TEVA makes generic versions of brand-name antibiotics, heart drugs, heartburn medications, and more - in all close to 200 global generic products, 700 compounds, and more than 2800 dosage forms and formulations. TEVA's pharmaceuticals are used in some 20% of U.S. generic drug prescriptions. Examples of TEVA's generics include lower-cost equivalents of such blockbusters as anti-depressant Prozac and cholesterol drug Mevacor. Nevertheless, in biotechnology and original drug development, about 400 experimental drugs have been approved or accepted in clinical phases. Other major companies include cutting tools leader ISCAR, software and information security leader Checkpoint, and defense industry’s IAI. The greatest portion of funding of research per capita is found in Israel. Israel also has the greatest ratio of researchers per square meter or population in the face of the world, far exceeding I.e. Japan which was also raised by plagiation and copying of other peoples ideas after the WWII. A modern Western plague is the way nobody talks to each other. But the Israeli start-ups, in an ideal gas, are the opposite. They are urged to communicate together within the start-ups, leading to joint discoveries and inventions and shared IPR. Nobel prizes, by definition, are awarded to the people who have made the greatest services to the world. Although Sabin and Salk never got it with their free Polio vaccines, 21% of the Nobels have gone to this population of less that 17 million, taking both Eretz Israel and galut (diaspora) into account: http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Indicator.html; http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Nobel.htm.
The Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-1995. The population of the Palestinian Arabs has increased tenfold (10x) in 57 years, which might be the world record after the WWII. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-1990 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child deat rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-1988 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-1986 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 BKT from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen).
Israel has been forced to damage the very infrastructure she has constructed and administrated while hunting the weapons from the milittant police forces. Between 1967-1993 roads, system of siewers (gutters, ditches), electricity supply, water supply, schools, health care system, and social welfare system to the West Bank and Gaza.
The Second Intifada could be called The Oslo War.
Aviv is Hebrew for "spring", symbolizing renewal, and tel is an archaeological site that reveals layers of civilization built one over the other. The Jewish population has been such a layer of native culture not only in the Palestine, yet the expulsion of the native Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews from Pakistan to Morocco since 1948 is totally ignored in the European media: http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm. Don't You think for a blitch second that the industrial countries have desired peace in the Middle East. A collaboration between the Jews with their technology and science and Arabs with their oil, loyality and commitment has been the greatest nightmare of the Europe at least. The intimate friendship between the cousin nations, as officially declared by Chaim Weizmann and Emir Feisal in Versailles peace conference was deliberately mutilated. Expulsion of the native and national Jews from Muslim countries since 1948 has been al Nakba to nations from Pakistan to Morocco.
Pauli Ojala, evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out (MSci-Master of Sciing)
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