Opinion
The Top 10 Anti-Israel Lies
Los Angeles/JTA
I
t's no secret to anyone that rela-
tions between the United States and
Israel reflect a new reality and are
not what they once were. The last few
months have seen a worldwide frenzy
of intimidation and threats directed
against Israel that has backed its sup-
porters into a corner. Very few have
raised their voices in response.
For this reason, the Simon Wiesenthal
Center has produced a new brochure,
2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies, that we
will be distributing to millions of people
worldwide. The brochure also provides
contact information for U.S. and world
leaders and key news bureaus.
Here is a condensed summary of the
10 top lies and the center's responses:
Lie No. 1: Israel was created by
European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust.
Why should Palestinians pay the price?
Three-thousand years before the
Holocaust, before there was a Roman
Empire, Israel's kings and prophets
walked the streets of Jerusalem. The
whole world knows that Isaiah did not
speak his prophesies from Portugal
nor Jeremiah his lamentations from
France. Revered by its people, Jerusalem
is mentioned in the Hebrew
solution.
Scriptures 600 times, but not
The Palestinians them-
once in the Koran. Throughout
selves are the only stumbling
the 2,000-year exile of the
block to achieving a two-state
Jews, there was a continuous
solution. With whom should
Jewish presence in the Holy
Israel negotiate? With P.A.
Land.
President Mamoud Abbas,
Lie No. 2: Had Israel with-
who for four years has been
drawn to its June 1967 bor-
barred by Hamas from visit-
ders, peace would have come
ing 1.5 million constituents
Rabbi Marvin
long ago.
in Gaza? With his Palestinian
Hier
Since 1967, Israel repeatedly
Authority, which continues to
Special
has conceded "land for peace."
glorify terrorists and preach-
Commentary
Following Egyptian President
es hate in its educational
Anwar Sadat's historic 1977
system and the media? With
visit to Jerusalem, Israel withdrew from
llamas, whose Iranian-backed leaders
the vast Sinai Peninsula and has been at deny the Holocaust and use fanati-
peace with Egypt ever since.
cal Jihadist rhetoric to call for Israel's
But the Palestinian Authority (P.A.)
destruction?
has never fulfilled its promise to end
Lie No. 4: Nuclear Israel, not Iran, is
propaganda attacks nor drop the
the greatest threat to peace and stability.
Palestinian National Charter's call for
The United States and Europe can
Israel's destruction. In 2000, Israeli
afford to wait to see what the Iranian
Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered
regime does with its nuclear ambitions,
Palestinian Authority leader Yasser
but Israel cannot. Israel is on the front
Arafat full sovereignty over more than
lines and remembers every day the price
97 percent of the West Bank, a corridor
the Jewish people paid for not taking
to Gaza, and a capital in the Arab sec-
Hitler at his word. Israel is not prepared
tion of Jerusalem. Arafat said no.
to sacrifice another 6 million Jews on
Lie No. 3: Israel is the main stum-
the altar of the world's indifference.
bling block to achieving a two-state
Lie No. 5: Israel is an apartheid state
deserving of international boycott,
divestment and sanctions campaigns.
In fact, Israel is a democratic state. Its
20 percent Arab minority enjoys all the
political, economic and religious rights
and freedoms of citizenship, including
electing members of their choice to the
Knesset (Parliament).
Lie No. 6: Plans to build 1,600 more
homes in east Jerusalem prove Israel is
"Judaizing" the Holy City.
Ramat Shlomo was not about Arab
neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, but
about a long-established, heavily popu-
lated Jewish neighborhood in northern
Jerusalem, where 250,000 Jews live
(about the size of Newark, N.J.) — an
area that will never be relinquished by
Israel.
Lie No. 7: Israeli policies endanger
U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict would benefit everyone, includ-
ing the United States. But an imposed
return to what Israel's Abba Eban called
"1967 Auschwitz borders" would endan-
ger Israel's survival and ultimately be
disastrous for American interests and
credibility in the world.
Lie No. 8: Israeli policies are the
cause of worldwide anti-Semitism.
The Stars Of Memorial Day
Los Angeles/JTA
W
hat stands for those who have
fallen?
As a small boy, I played
with green plastic soldiers. Sometimes
after they died in backyard battle, I would
mark their passing with a little cross made
of twigs.
Even then it seemed off.
This Memorial Day weekend (May
28-31) — before you load the car, board
the plane or hit the mall — contemplate
another trip, one of recognition for those
American Jewish men and women who
died in the service of their country. Since
Jews have served in America's armed
services from the colonial period up to
Afghanistan, there are many possible des-
tinations.
"Thousands of Jews have died in com-
bat for their country," relates the National
Museum of American Jewish Military
History Web site, "and thousands more
have been wounded."
Inspired by the recent U.S. Supreme
32
May 27 • 2010
Court decision that for now
of the Jewish servicemen and
essentially keeps a cross used
servicewomen who have died
to memorialize American sol-
for their country, ifs time to
diers who died in World War I
present a few names and loca-
on public land in California's
tions where new Star of David
Mojave Desert, I am suggest-
memorials could be erected to
ing a mission to reclaim and
honor and all others who died
re-mark the sacrifice of Jewish
in service.
men and women in America's
As you will see, the star
wars.
works as well as the cross, even
If as Justice Anthony
Edmon J.
in the unlikeliest of settings.
Kennedy wrote in the plural-
Rodman
The marker should be about
Special
ity opinion, "A Latin Cross is
seven feet high and made of
Commentary
not merely a reaffirmation
wood or stone, built with a
of Christian beliefs:' perhaps
secure foundation. The Mojave
then a Star of David, which is not purely
Cross was stolen recently and I don't want
a religious symbol either, is not merely an
these new memorials going anywhere,
affirmation of Jewish beliefs.
save for perhaps a brief court appearance.
In lieu of the court's opinion, perhaps
My first nominee for a Star of David
now is the time to redirect communal
memorial is the first Jew to die in the
energies toward building additional war
Revolutionary War, Francis Salvador.
memorials — not with a cross but the
Salvador, a plantation owner and del-
Star of David.
egate to two provincial congresses, died
Since it now seems acceptable to erect
in a British-induced skirmish with the
public war memorials using symbols once
Cherokees a few miles from the Keowee
thought to be purely sectarian, in memory River, about 25 miles from his home in
Greenwood, S.C.
A memorial to Salvador in downtown
Charleston that I saw a few summers ago
reads in part:
Commemorating Francis Salvador
1747-1776
First Jew in South Carolina to hold pub-
lic office And
to Die for American Independence
Perhaps on a bluff overlooking the
Keowee River, the Star of David for
Salvador and all those died in the
Revolutionary War could be erected.
My second nomination for a memorial
star goes to William Sawleson, a World
War I U.S. Army sergeant who posthu-
mously received the Congressional Medal
of Honor.
The citation for his medal reads:
Hearing a wounded man in a shell hole
some distance away calling for water,
Sgt. Sawelson, upon his own initiative,
left shelter and crawled through heavy
machine-gun fire to where the man lay,
giving him what water he had in his can-
teen. He then went back to his own shell