** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 768 19 April 18 ANTISEMITISM & ISRAEL - AGAIN

ISRAEL'S PRESIDENT AND PM INVOKE RISING ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE BUT REALITY DOES NOT BEAR OUT THEIR NARRATIVE
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First, I do NOT support the destruction of the state of Israel. Why? Simple: because I am a Christian and such abolition would not be in the interest of Christianity.
Second, my God is a Jew. I ask: how could I possibly be antisemitic?
Third, on personal terms I have always got on well with Jews, even Israelis. A contingent matter, surely, but I had to state it.

Having said that, I am disturbed by an article by the President of Israel, Reuven Revlin, in the Daily Telegraph. His country is 70 year old, he writes, and that is ‘a cause for celebration’. Israel ‘continues to inspire the world’, he adds. All right, you can’t expect Israel’s President to bash his nation on such anniversary: unrealistic. Yet, the Israeli Army two weeks ago shot dead 30 unarmed, peaceful Palestinian demonstrators – including a journalist who carried the large word ‘Press’ on his jacket - and wounded another hundred. The only veiled reference to that massacre by Revlin are words like ‘terrorists’, ‘fences’ and ‘be forced to act’. Actually, the demonstrators did not bear arms or carry bombs. They behaved Gandhi-like. They certainly did not ‘force’ the Israelis to kill them. What kind of terrorists could they be? I am sorry but, if Revlin has a conscience, it must be a peculiar one.

In Europe, the spectre of antisemitism is ‘in full sight’, the President asserts. Revlin’s dark warning evokes words spoken three years ago in Paris by his PM, Bibi Netanyahu, after a synagogue was attacked by real terrorists. ‘Do Aliyah! Move to Israel’, he incited French Jews, to escape rising antisemitism and avoid being murdered. It angered newt-like French President Hollande. It also offended, amongst many others, Professor Davide Cesarani, a Jewish academic whom I knew. Netanyahu’s appeal was ‘very provocative’, Cesarani commented. Quite. Bibi let the cat out of the bag. Because virulent, violent antisemitism in the diaspora is what Zionists really relish. The whole point of the Zionist project since its outset has been to get the world’s Jews to migrate to their putative homeland, Israel. Problem is, Jews are doing rather well in the West. It might smack of prejudice to mention very many names, in politics, the media, the economy, academia and so on who are Jews, so I
won’t. The point is that, despite Revlin’s and Netanyahu’s strident, self-interested raising of old spectres, Jews are prospering as never before outside Eretz Israel. They are not going to come over there in Israhell, dear Bibi and Reuven. Forget it.

The Zionist narrative is old. In 1884 Theodore Herzl, the spiritual father of the Jewish state, was a journalist in France, as the notorious Affaire Dreyfus was raging. A Jewish Army officer, Dreyfus was accused and jailed as a German spy. The spectacle of much French anti-Jewish sentiment persuaded Herzl that his people could only be safe in a land of its own: Zionism was born. (Herzl himself was irreligious – even had his own children baptised!) The 1948 Declaration establishing the state of Israel is explicit. Among the reason for ‘restoring’ a Jewish state it mentions ‘the massacres of millions of Jews’ and ‘the Nazi holocaust in Europe’. Again, that is the claim that Jews can only be safe in Israel. Clearly, an untruth. There are over 14 million Jews worldwide, while Israel has about 6.5 million. No sign of the 7 million American Jews flying to Israel. Europe? Where, according to Revlin, the scourge of antisemitism is rising? France has 465.000, Britain 260.000…enough of
boring statistics. European Jews are staying put. That means they are happy and contented among Gentiles, pace Bibi and Reuven’s deliberate alarmism.

The talk of the town – London, I mean – is that Labour harbours Jew-baiters in its midst. True or false? Haven’t a clue but I have no doubt this story, whatever its legitimacy, is cynically aimed at hurting Jeremy Corbyn, possibly the next Labour PM. I am no Labour man but…Corbyn is a definitely friendlier towards the poor Palestinians than hideous Theresa May. So, I wish him well!

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone got pilloried for suggesting Hitler was a Zionist. Literally, that is nonsense. Eminent Jewish intellectual George Steiner implied something similar, though. In a bizarre play, The Portal of San Cristobal of A.H., Steiner paints an outrageous scenario. A team of Israeli Nazi hunters in the Amazonian jungle seize a taciturn and morose old man. He is Hitler! His captors would have him tried in Israel, like Eichmann, but time is short so Adolf is tried there and then. In a creepy diatribe, the Fuhrer defends himself. ‘It is I, not Herzl, who is the real founder of the state of Israel. You should honour me. Thanks to me, Zion’s millenarian dream has come true. Because of my war against your people, you have got your ancient nation back! You are beholden to me, see?’ Crazy argument, crazy guy but…is there anything to it?

Steiner of course was writing imaginative fiction but Lenni Brenner, a Jewish radical author, in his Zionism in the Age of Dictators, offers some astounding evidence of historical collusions between top Zionist leaders and Nazi authorities, to secure the setting up of a Zionist state. Mind boggling.

No paradox could ever excuse or justify anti-Jewish acts or persecutions. Still, what about the Palestinian people? They had nothing to do with fascism, Italian or German. Why have they made to pay for the crimes of another culture? And when they will ever get justice? A state of their own? Peace and security? Not from pitiless men like Netanyahu and Revlin, that’s for sure.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli


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