Plant a Bushie in Israel

Does Israel want to commit suicide? If the behavior of some of its strongest "supporters" is any guide, it might as well be swallowing pills by the jar full.

Writing in the N.Y. Sun, Josh Gerstein unintentionally portrays painter Michael Kaufman as a whining victim, unable to take responsibility for his actions. He claims to be "like a black man standing up in the old South and declaring himself a free man." Here's why: A gallery owner in California who has displayed some of his work discussed publishing a catalog of his paintings.  Pictures that have been shown include ones with titles like 'The Battle for Israel"  and "The Flight of Israel's Foes." The owner changed his mind, apparently after Kaufman insisted on having the cover of the booklet describe his work as "Zionist Art." According to Kaufman, the gallery owner said that "we don't want to advocate any kind of platform here."

The Sun, as well as the usual suspects (eg LGF) think that this is outrageous.  How dare the owner make a business decision based on what he thinks his customers will want to buy? Oppression of free speech was one commenter's description. As the owner's attorney pointed out - Kaufman is free to publish his catalog anywhere he wants. The guy is obviously very talented at self-promotion.  Screaming "Victim!" in San Francisco got him a nice write-up in the New York Sun.

Why are Israel's supporters staying in bed with the Bushies - who are approved of by a whopping 24% of Americans?  If these people really did not want Zionism to become a dirty word, they would persuade Israel to end its 40 year illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Instead Israel continues to build new houses for Israeli Jews in the settlements.

memeorandum

Comments

[rick]

To what occupied land do you refer?

[bbbustard]

Were you ever able to go on your extended travels?
The land to which I refer are all the lands that Israel has occupied after the 1967 war and that were not a part of the country in 1966.

[rick]

We did not make the trip. When we travel over there we must get into NWFP and Waziristan or the whole trip is of less value. We believe the Paks are on the verge of an all out shooting war with the Wazirs in particular. So we have delayed things hoping matters will improve somehow. If things do not change soon we will just have to make the trip and drop off where we cannot go. It's actually a little more complicated than that. When we travel there we have Pak army escort. Which is great as long as they are not targets of the fighting. It's a long (interesting though) story.

Do you ever wonder what conditions would be like if not for the wars in 67 and 73? Would anyone be clamoring for the Jordanians to give up the West bank or Egypt to give up Gaza? You are aware that the concept of Arab Palestinianism (as it relates to lands west of the Jordan river but not Transjordan to the east) was manufactured in 1964. A little older than Kwanza, no? I urge you to read Mark Twains "Innocents abroad". No Arab nations had any claim to any territories as it was all Turkey for 400 years prior to the end of WW1. The Brits, with a little help from the French, carved everything up. There had never been a Kuwait, a Saudi Arabia, a Jordan, an Iraq etc. Yet the entire world recognized the sovereignty of what was drawn up. Well they also drew up Palestine. Jews were historically called Palestinians, not Arabs. Palestine was a homeland for the Jewish peoples. It included all of present day Jordan and also all the land west of the Jordan river. Well everyone was a ok with everything else that the Brits did excepting for that which the Jews were going to get. So Arabs raised holy hell and more than 75% of Palestine was ceded to Hashemite Arab control. And they were completely satisfied with that until the ink dried and then they wanted the rest of it which brings us to the present. And they do not simply want Gaza and the West Bank, they want all of historic Judea and they want the Jews dead. Those presently calling themselves Palestinians are principally Syrians and Jordanians or their descendants. Arabs living in Israel in 1948 became Israeli citizens and they are the wealthiest and most free Arabs on the planet (Excepting oil wealth Arabs)

Should we move our southern border several hundred miles north because of Mexican immigration. I don't think so. Should Israel give the West Bank to Arabs because they have created an immigration and refugee problem? I sure wouldn't. But, it's not my call. But the most important fact in all this is the Arabs want the Jews to be dead. PERIOD ! Jews grasp this little concept.

[Alan Kaufman]

STATEMENT ABOUT THE "ZIONIST 5"

Zionism is the Civil Rights Movement of the Jewish People. It is the answered prayer to two thousand years of ceaseless persecution at the hands of unpredictable host nations and of religions that at times abandoned their own highest moral precepts in the pursuit of dubious political objectives at the expense of Jewish life and limb.

For an individual or institution to claim to respect and tolerate Jews and yet deny a Jew, any Jew, the right to proclaim Zionism as a personal spiritual, cutural and political raison d'etre, is like telling a Black person that you regard him as your equal and friend but please, do not mention the March on Birmingham; please, don’t talk about Martin Luther King; please, don’t bring up Rosa Parks to me.

Zionism is the March on Birmingham, the Martin Luther King, the Rosa Parks of our people, the Jewish People. It is our march on the death camp at Auschwitz; it is our fight for an equal place on the bus of human history.

And the State of Israel is our Promised Land of freedom and equality on earth.

How the term Zionism, and all that it so powerfully represents to our people after the Holocaust; how this term Zionism, this vision of redemption, this philosophy of empowerment, this bright candle held up to the night and which lead back home the displaced and tortured remnants, the dreamers and idealists, the Jews who came from all corners of the earth with a vision of self-determination and cultural, spiritual and political renewal; how this miracle of an idea was brought to fruition through the sacrifice and struggle of the brave Israeli people, is one of the great miracles of human history.

And how this same Zionism, distorted and vilified by one of the most sordid disinformation campaigns in history, became the bete noire of the present day, a refugee of a word, a pariah of an idea, is one of the most sordid instances in the long, cruel campaign to marginalize and, ultimately, to destroy the Jewish People.

Let us, then, be perfectly frank about one thing. To vilify, marginalize, suppress or outlaw Zionism politically, socially or culturally, for any reason whatever, is to wish no less then murderous extinction upon every Jewish man, woman and child in the world today. It is to refute our history entire, to deny us the memory of our long march out of bondage into equality and dignity. It is to assert ghettoization and ostracization, exile and massacre as the only fate befitting a Jew.

If ignorance of the law does not exempt one from the law, then equally, ignorance, pretended or real, of the unthinkable consequences to Jews of a world without Israel does not exempt one from the certain knowledge that no less then genocide awaits our people should the campaign against Zionism succeed.

Let us affirm our right --moral, spiritual, cultural and political -- to proclaim our Zionism in any manner that we choose, without hinderence or proscription, and further, let us condemn, forcefully and completely the stance of anti-Zionism for what so blatently it is: a human rights violation and euphemistic mask behind which lurks the age-old nightmare of anti-Semitism.

Signed,
Alan Kaufman of The "Zionist 5"

The Zionist artist you refer to is not named Michael Kaufman but rather Alan Kaufman