I’m still waiting for a response from Michigan Radio.
I notice that among its $5,000-level sponsors is the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy, which does advocacy work.
To reiterate: we’re not suggesting that Michigan Radio prohibit these groups from having ads; our point is that if some or all of these advocacy groups are allowed to be Michigan Radio sponsors, why is our organization — which does not even do lobbying — prohibited?
And now there is an additional, secondary point: Michigan Radio’s bizarre failure to respond to my phone calls and emails. This conduct is arrogant, and — particularly now that it is sending misleading emails about me to the public — highly unethical.
Yesterday afternoon I sent the following letter to Michigan Radio’s director, Stephen Schram:
Steve Schram Director of Broadcasting Michigan Radio
Dear Mr. Schram,
I am forwarding a message (below) that I sent to your station yesterday morning.
In addition, I have phoned your station numerous times over the past week, as I expect you’re aware. Yet, no one in your business department has returned my calls.
I find it bizarre — and highly unethical — for your station to send an email about me while refusing to communicate with me. Worse still, the email being sent to the public is highly misleading.
For the past week I have made continued efforts to obtain information and clarification from your company, to no avail.
In my email to Mr. Jonas I indicated that our organization is interested in becoming a sponsor. Yet, again, I have received no reply . I would expect more from a publicly funded institution.
I look forward to your response.
[My earlier letter to Jonas, published yesterday, then followed.]
Weeks ago our organization tried to place an ad with NPR’s affiliate in Ann Arbor, Michigan Radio, about my speaking tour in Michigan. (They officially call this a “sponsorship” — for $1,000 you receive about 10 announcements.)
Michigan Radio is a service of Michigan Public Media, the public broadcasting company at the University of Michigan, and consists of the following stations, licensed to the Regents of the University of Michigan:
WUOM 91.7 Ann Arbor/Detroit
WVGR 104.1 Grand Rapids
WFUM-FM 91.1 Flint
Michigan Radio refused our ad, saying that our organization was “political,” even though:
We are a 501c3 educational organization — our website provides facts on Israel-Palestine and does not advocate for or against any particular parties, candidates, or bills before Congress;
It had run ads from the Jewish Federation of Detroit, which states on its website that it advocates for Israel;
I am told that it has run ads from the Ann Arbor chapter of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, which lobbies for Israel and other issues. (Since Michigan Radio management has not returned my phone calls I have been unable to confirm this with them).
The company did eventually run an ad announcing my talks, but only when it was placed by another organization and as long as it did not give the name or website of our organization.
When I arrived in Michigan last Tuesday I phoned the station to try to clear this matter up, but received no return call to discuss this.
Later in the week I phoned again, but was unable to reach anyone beyond the receptionist. I left voicemails with a variety of individuals in the business department asking them to call me back about this matter.
When no one did, I finally sent out a press release and announcements about what I consider censorship of our organization. The station began to receive a growing number of phone calls and emails complaining about their censorship — including calls to its pledge line by individuals saying they were NOT donating because of this situation.
Michigan Radio’s Director of Development Larry Jonas replied to emails (but did not contact us) with a message claiming that the problem had basically been that the station was uncertain that the local chapter of If Americans Knew was indeed a local chapter of If Americans Knew (it was and is). He did mention something about “other reasons” but did not say what these were.
The fact is, however, that his purported explanation was very different from the one that had been given to our chapter on October 1st by their underwriting representative, and on October 16th by an individual at the station — that management’s refusal to run our ad was based on their determination that our organization was “political.”
I then phoned and emailed Mr. Jonas (see below) to clarify this matter. Since Mr. Jonas implied in his public message that the major problem was simply that they needed confirmation of the local chapter’s affiliation with us (something they had never requested), we can easily supply this. I wrote that we would like to place a new announcement.
It is now over 27 hours since I emailed Mr. Jonas, several days after I left voicemails with a number of people at Michigan Radio, and almost three hours since I left phone messages at Michigan Radio for Mr. Jonas and others asking for a response. I am still waiting.
Press releases with additional details can be seen at
Below is the email that I sent yesterday morning to Michigan Radio:
Dear Mr. Jonas,
Regarding your email (pasted below) about why Michigan Radio refused to run our announcement:
1. The individual who contacted Michigan Radio did indeed represent the Flint, Michigan chapter of If Americans Knew and possesses a letter stating that fact.
2. Your explanation is contradicted by the explanation Michigan Radio gave to our chapter at the time. It is also contracted by an explanation given to If Americans Knew since.
Below is the email correspondence on this matter:
From the If Americans Knew chapter, Thursday, October 01, 2009 5:17 PM:
Thank you for the call earlier today. I communicated the Michigan Radio decision back to our group. We are disappointed that the station declined to approve our announcement.
In order to be completely clear, please send me an e-mail stating the specific reason or reasons for the non-approval of the underwriting. As you stated, if our request did not meet an FCC guideline or rule, or the station rules or policy, please indicate which specific guideline or policy we did not meet.
From the station’s underwriting representative, Thursday, October 01, 2009 9:06 PM:
I’ll be glad to share with you what management discussed with me.In the underwriting packet (the first email attachment that I sent to you), on the page titled “MAKING YOUR CREDIT WORK FOR YOU MICHIGAN RADIO UNDERWRITING COPY GUIDELINES” (bottom paragraph):
“Michigan Radio reserves the right to refuse any request for underwriting that would violate an FCC rule or policy, violate station policies or adversely affect the reputation or financial condition of the station. No announcements will be aired on behalf of political organizations, political candidates or their committees, or that express a view on issues of public importance or interest or religious belief. No more than one (1) event may be listed in any underwriting announcement. No more than 6 underwriting announcements may air in one day (and may be less depending on inventory).”
In other words, the alleged problem was with our organization itself.
This explanation was also given to me directly on October 16th, when a person at Michigan Radio told me that the reason given by station management for refusing to run our announcement was their determination that If Americans Knew was “political.”
It is unfortunate that you did not send your email to us as well as to the public, so that we might have corrected these errors. In fact, if Michigan Radio had contacted us directly, as we had requested in numerous voicemails, we could have cleared up your confusion on this matter quite easily and spared your organization the embarrassment of sending out inaccurate information.
Regarding Michigan Radio’s decision not to air an announcement by our organization:
I find it inconsistent and unethical for Michigan Radio to refuse to run an announcement by our organization when it appears that you have run announcements by pro-Israel organizations that are political and that even publicly lobby for specific legislation. I find such a double standard unconscionable.
I am told that Michigan Radio has aired announcements by the Ann Arbor chapter of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of American, an organization that advocates publicly and actively on legislation, and by the Jewish Federation of Detroit, whose website says that it “advocates for Israel.” Yet you refused an announcement by If Americans Knew, even though we are not a lobbying organization and our website’s mission is to provide facts to the American public. I find such logic perplexing.
However, if Michigan Radio’s current position is that the only problem is uncertainty over the local group’s affiliation with If Americans Knew, as your email suggests, this obstacle, I assume, has now been cleared up.
We would now like to place a new announcement with Michigan Radio.
Michigan radio’s action on this matter has been particularly disturbing, given that a study of NPR by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) showed extremely Israeli-centric reporting by the network. For example, it found a pattern in which NPR reported on Israeli children’s deaths 89 percent of the time while reporting on Palestinian children’s deaths only 20 percent of the time.
The study also found that while NPR reported on the deaths of Israeli civilians in higher proportions than it reported on deaths of Israeli soldiers, the network did the opposite in its reporting on Palestinian deaths, reporting on the deaths of Palestinian combatants at greater rates than it reported on the deaths of Palestinian civilians, giving an extremely skewed view of the conflict.
Similarly, NPR claimed that Hamas had been the first to violate a 2009 ceasefire, despite the fact that it had actually been Israel that had first violated the ceasefire. Even when evidence was provided to NPR for this fact, and even though CNN eventually ran a report correcting its similar error on a 2008 ceasefire breach, NPR refused to run a correction, leaving its listeners significantly misinformed on the situation.
I look forward to working with you on our new announcement.
Sincerely,
Alison Weir
Below is the message Jonas had sent to the public (but not to us):
This issue has been miscast by Ms. Weir, when in fact the issue is about adherence to FCC underwriting regulations.
Michigan Radio was initially contacted by a gentleman in the Flint area who indicated that he was interested in establishing an underwriting schedule of announcements that would include information about Ms. Weir’s talk.
The gentleman initially asked that the sponsorship be attributed to an organization to which he appeared to have no apparent affiliation.Michigan Radio is required by FCC rules to identify the sponsoring entity in an underwriting announcement and not a third party.
For that and other reasons, we were concerned that accepting the sponsorship may put us afoul of FCC regulations.
He subsequently indicated that the Flint Islamic Center, the organization that would be hosting her talk, and of which he is a member, should be identified as the sponsoring organization.Those announcements identifying that organization and Ms. Weir’s talk have aired as ordered.
Please remember to check Israel-Palestine Uncensored, our news blog, for daily (almost) updates on events in the region largely going uncovered by US media…
A few weeks ago, following my article in CounterPunch “Israeli Organ Harvesting: The New ‘Blood Libel’?”(now available in Spanish, French, and Italian), the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs asked me to write a piece on this topic for their publication.
In conducting research for this — largely from Israeli media, Congressional testimony, BBC reports, etc — I found considerably more information.
As a result, I have now produced two new footnoted articles — one that is in the print edition of the November Washington Report (I urge people to subscribe to the magazine in order to get this shorter, more concise article) and a longer one that is on their website:
Following are some excerpts from the website version:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Chancellor’s Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch, and the author of scholarly books and articles on organ trafficking. She is the pundit mainstream media call upon when they need expert commentary on the topic.5
While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers and procurers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, she is unflinchingly honest in speaking about the Israeli connection:
“Israel is at the top,” she states. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.”
* * *
… In her Forum 13 lecture Scheper-Hughes discussed the two motivations of Israeli traffickers. One was greed, she said. The other was somewhat chilling: “Revenge, restitution—reparation for the Holocaust.”
She described speaking with Israeli brokers who told her “it’s kind of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.’”
* * *
… For many years the Israeli health system subsidized its citizens’ “transplant holidays,” … In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Defense was directly involved.
* * *
… Journalist Khalid Amayreh, recently investigating this topic further, found that “several other Palestinians gave a similar narrative, recounting how they received the bodies of their murdered relatives, mostly men in their early twenties, with vital organs taken away by the Israeli authorities.”
Israel has consistently characterized such accusations as “anti-Semitic,” and numerous other journalists have discounted them as exaggerations.
However, according to the pro-Israel Forward magazine, the truth of these charges was, in fact, confirmed by an Israeli governmental investigation a number of years ago.
* * *
… In 1996, Jewish Week reported that Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, a leader of the Lubavitch sect of Judaism and the dean of a religious Jewish school in a West Bank settlement, stated: “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that.” Ginzburgh elaborated: “Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.” [The Jewish Week, April 26, 1996, pp. 12, 31]
* * *
Still in denial?
Finally, it is interesting that some writers with friendly and family ties to Israel, who are slowly overcoming their denial on Israeli war crimes, still quite often leap to Israel’s defense against evidence of Israeli wrongdoing.
Some of these bloggers attempt to cover up Israeli actions by alleging that facts in some of my articles are incorrect — for example, like other Israel partisans, some claim that Israeli Professor Ariel Toaff, a preeminent Israeli historian who wrote a book initially suggesting that there had apparently been cases of ritual killings of Christians during the Middle Ages (after massive pressure he later recanted) is actually — they allege — not an expert.
It is interesting to note that Professor Toaff, who is also a rabbi, initially said: “I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me.” Following multiple and diverse threats, he recanted.
“I tried to show that the Jewish world at that time was also violent, among other things because it had been hurt by Christian violence,” the Bar-Ilan history professor said. Of course I do not claim that Judaism condones murder. But within Ashkenazi Judaism there were extremist groups that could have committed such an act and justified it,” he said…
“Over many dozens of pages I proved the centrality of blood on Passover,” Toaff said. “Based on many sermons, I concluded that blood was used, especially by Ashkenazi Jews, and that there was a belief in the special curative powers of children’s blood. It turns out that among the remedies of Ashkenazi Jews were powders made of blood.”
Although the use of blood is prohibited by Jewish law, Toaff says he found proof of rabbinic permission to use blood, even human blood. “The rabbis permitted it both because the blood was already dried,” and because in Ashkenazi communities it was an accepted custom that took on the force of law, Toaff said. There is no proof of acts of murder, Toaff said, but there were curses and hatred of Christians, and prayers inciting to cruel vengeance against Christians. “There was always the possibility that some crazy person would do something.”
As I wrote earlier, people who wish to take the time to delve into this further and to determine whether or not Toaff’s evidence supported his initial conclusions can read an unauthorized translation of his book here. (This book, despite an enthusiastic review by Italian Jewish historian Sergio Luzzatto, was withdrawn by Toaff following pressure from the Israeli Knesset, the ADL, death threats, etc.)
Unfortuntely, his new, revised book has not yet been translated into English. In the meantime, parts of it are available. For example, Toaff’s detailed description of the attacks on him and his defense of his work is available here. It is well worth scanning.
Ha’aretz reported that, at least before his book came out, “Faculty members described Toaff as a unique lecturer who is well-liked by students.”
(By the way, it’s probably worthwhile to point out that despite the immense focus from some quarters on Toaff, information on his book and the massive attacks on him were actually a minor part of my CounterPunch article; he is not even mentioned in my recent ones. People who wish to look into this further might wish to view this analysis of Toaff’s research.)
[A petition is here – useful synopsis of issues involved]
[Relevant videos are at the end of the entry]
With all the heat engendered by the recent Swedish article, “Our sons plundered for their organs,” I feel that there is a need for some clarification and logical discussion.
First, I’d like to alert people to additional information that we’ve just discovered:
In June 2001 Dr. Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California-Berkeley and Organs Watch testified before the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights. Scheper-Hughes testified that she had discovered a “multi-million dollar business” that the Israeli Ministry of Health refused “to intervene and crack down on.” She stated:
… hundreds of kidney patients from Israel … travel in privately brokered ‘transplant tourist’ junkets to Turkey, Moldova, Romania … to Russia … and to South Africa …
While in Israel for Organs Watch in the summer of [2000] and, again in March 2001, … I interviewed more than 50 transplants professionals, transplant patients, and organs buyers and sellers involved in commercialized transplants … none were willing to condemn a practice which they saw as ‘saving lives’…
Meanwhile, human rights groups in the West Bank complained to me of tissue and organs stealing of slain Palestinains [sic] by Israeli pathologists at the national Israeli legal medical institute in Tel Aviv. …
A more troubling phenomenon is the support and direct involvement of the Israeli Ministry of Defense in the illicit national ‘program’ of transplant tourism. Some patients who traveled with the outlaw Israeli transplant surgeon to other countries noted that in each of the organized transplant groups were members of the Ministry of Defense or those closely related to them.
Second, I’d like to make two points about the Swedish article itself:
1. Everyone should read Bostrom’s article for him or herself – carefully — to see what it contains and what it does not. It is often being misrepresented and/or misunderstood. I worry that people are reading what people say it says instead of simply finding out for themselves.
2. When people read the article, they will see that it does not claim to prove anything. It provides facts, describes incidents, includes photos, and repeats questions that the reporter feels are significant enough to merit a thorough investigation.
Do I agree with the need for an investigation?
Absolutely. Below are some reasons:
When a multitude of people describe similar incidents, all pointing to the same serious human rights abuse, it is important to listen to them and investigate their concerns – particularly when there are additional, outside clues that seem to support their statements.
The world has a history of ignoring Palestinian (and others’) charges – only to find later that they were true.
• In the early part of the 20th century some Palestinians were concerned that Zionists were moving to Palestine with the intention of taking it over for a Jewish state. To some people at the time, both inside and outside Palestine, this seemed far-fetched, perhaps even anti-Jewish. It turned out to be true.
• After Israel’s founding war Palestinian refugees said that they had not left voluntarily but had been violently expelled from their land. This was viewed as extremism and anti-Semitism. Again, it was true.
• Palestinians described horrific massacres during this war, relating grisly tales of brutality; again they were largely dismissed. Later, former Israeli soldiers corroborated their claims.
• For decades Palestinians have described grotesque abuses against them while in prison. Again, these were portrayed as lies and exaggerations, until finally they were documented by outsiders.
• For many years American veterans of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty claimed that this had been an intentional attack. They were called anti-Semitic and disdained. Thirty years later, the senior prosecuting attorney of the one official investigation into the attack stated in a legal document that he and others had been ordered by the White House to cover up the fact that all of the evidence indicated that it had been a deliberate attack.
It is time to listen – and investigate.
As we all know, accusations do not prove guilt, and not all Palestinians are making these particular ones. However, when there are a great many such charges, and when they are accompanied by circumstantial evidence, they should be explored.
The innocent can then be absolved; the guilty discovered. An investigation leads to both.
On a side note, there is no doubt that journalist Bostrom and his editors were aware that they would be viciously attacked and threatened if they published his information and gave voice to the questions it contains. I feel that they should be supported for fulfilling their journalistic responsibility to print the news. When numerous people are making serious charges, these are normally reported. It was appropriate to bring them to the public’s attention.
Incidentally, it appears that the Palestinian Association in Sweden, which represents more than 30,000 Swedish Palestinians, agrees. Reportedly the group has sent a letter to the Aftonbladet newspaper, expressing their appreciation.
People who agee with the need for an investigation may wish to sign this petition.
How likely is it that such an investigation will find wrongdoing?
Below are some thoughts….
1. Internal organs are extremely valuable commodities – a kidney goes for at least $160,000. I can only imagine what a heart gets.
2. Israel has been riddled with organ-trafficking scandals – some involving extremely high Israeli officials and israeli funding.
A. Israel’s very first heart transplant was taken without permission from a victim who had survived a stroke and whose family was told for days that he was ‘doing well.’ (See the Israeli report.) Only after the family brought media attention and sufficient pressure did the hospital finally admit that it had stolen the heart.
If the man had been Palestinian, it is quite likely that the hospital admission would never have been forthcoming. In such a case those decrying the Swedish article would, in all probability, be suggesting that this man’s family members were simply overwrought, that their accusations were another unacceptable ‘blood libel.’ and that individuals listening to them and also calling for an investigation were gullible, irresponsible, and/or anti-Semitic.
B. Israel’s chief pathologist was finally removed from his post – not fired – years after evidence had long been accruing that he was stealing ‘legs, ovaries, and testicles’ – and probably the heart of a Scottish man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He took body parts from Israelis. Do we find it likely that he took no organs from the many Palestinian bodies to which he had extremely easy access?
C. Israelis have for many years been heavily involved in international organ trafficking.
An official investigation in Brazil found that Israel was providing most of the funding for an organ trafficking ring that targeted Brazil’s most impoverished citizens. The same type of trafficking was going on in numerous other places – Turkey, Romania, Moldova.
D. According to the above testimony by an organ trafficking expert before a Congressional subcommittee, the Israeli military was directly involved.
3. Palestinians are a largely captive population.
Numerous human rights groups have documented their situation in detail. There are a multitude of official studies that indicate Israel can kidnap, torture, and kill Palestinians with impunity. They can detain them without charge, hold them as long as they wish, abuse them while in custody, and turn over dead bodies that have been ripped open and ‘autopsied’ without explanation to or permission from the helpless, grieving family.
Given the above points, it begins to appear that the suggestion that no Israelis or Israeli governmental officials have ever stolen Palestinian body parts is the the more far-fetched hypothesis.
Finally, there is one additional aspect to include when pondering this topic. A very small but significant minority of Israelis hold disturbing religious views that are essential to understand in considering the situation for Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and that are directly related to the question of involuntary organ extraction.
This tiny but sometimes lethal group (a Jewish religious extremist assassinated an Israeli prime minister, another gunned down 29 people while they were praying, still another threw a grenade into the middle of an Israeli peace march) have a disproportionate effect on Israeli policies – much to the outrage of many Israelis. They also have considerable power over Palestinians.
Yesterday, I received an email from a person who said that he was from Sweden, had read my article, and had seen the footnote in which I cite a piece by Israeli author Israel Shamir about a rabbi who had given his permission for “a Jew to take a liver from a non-Jew even without his consent.”
This email correspondent sent the full transcript of a news article on this subject that he said he had originally received from Israeli author Israel Shahak.
I’ll post it below for anyone who’s interested in looking into this facet and so that it will be available on the public record.
Below that I will post a small discussion of my own article, and below that will be some relevant videos and links to other stories of interest.
The Jewish Week, April 26, 1996, pp. 12, 31
Hero Or Racist?
Are Jewish lives really more valuable than non-Jewish ones?
Radical rabbi just freed from an Israeli prison thinks so.
Lawrence Cohler, Staff Writer
The triumphal cheers of some 500 Lubavitch chasidim shook the hall on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights Sunday night as a tall, white-haired rabbi basked in their toasts to his recent victory over the government of Israel’s effort to silence him.
A sea of men in black hats and women in long dresses hailed Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh from separate sides of the ballroom of the Oholei Menachem Yeshiva. And amid round wood tables stacked high with challah, herring and rounds of vodka, Rabbi Ginsburgh joined them heartily as glasses rose to his long life.
But ask Lubavitch leader Rabbi Shmuel Butman about Rabbi Ginsburgh’s view that the Torah would “probably permit” seizing an innocent non-Jew for a liver transplant to save the life of a Jew, and Rabbi Butman, who helped organize the welcome, politely demurs.
“That is a purely halachic question,” he says, using the Hebrew adjective for matters pertaining to traditional Jewish law. We don’t get into that.”
“In general, he’s a very pious individual,” said Rabbi Butman, director of the Lubavitch Youth Organization. “And we’re sure he carries responsibility for what he says.”
Not everyone is so sanguine.
Rabbi Walter Wurzburger, a professor of philosophy at Yeshiva University and former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, the Orthodox Zionist rabbinic body, noted, “Even the devil can quote Scripture.”
The government of Israel’s attempt to stifle Rabbi Ginsburgh’s teaching and lecturing to his followers – including some in the West Bank, where he is dean of a yeshiva in the Palestinian town of Nablus – crashed in failure late last month. After he was jailed for three weeks without charge or trial, a member of Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government had insufficient evidence to justify holding Rabbi Ginsburgh under Israel’s administrative detention laws.
It marked the first time that administrative detention, which until recently has been applied overwhelmingly to Arabs, had ever been successfully challenged. And among many Lubavitchers, the government’s precedent-setting defeat was greeted as a miraculous, classically Judaic victory of the weak over the strong. It was this feeling, which makes daily news headlines a source of faith for so many of them, that permeated the hall Sunday night.
But Rabbi Ginsburgh, an intense but soft-spoken 52-year-old with a long white beard, looks far from the image of tousle-haired David facing the behemoth Goliath. At the same time, his quiet demeanor clashes sharply with the image of a dangerous, demagogic extremist of the sort that Israeli officials have invoked.
Still, no one doubts that his pronouncements and teachings have been controversial.
Regarded as one of the Lubavitch sect’s leading authorities on Jewish mysticism, the St. Louis-born rabbi, who also has a graduate degree in mathematics, speaks freely of Jews’ genetic-based spiritual superiority over non-Jews. It is a superiority that he asserts invests Jewish life with greater value in the eyes of Torah.
“If you have two people drowning, a Jew and a non-Jew, the Torah says you save the Jewish life first,” Rabbi Ginsburgh told The Jewish Week. ”If every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is a part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA.”
Later, Rabbi Ginsburgh asked rhetorically, “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that.
“Jewish life has infinite value,” explained. “There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.”
Notwithstanding this, Rabbi Ginsburgh hastened to add that nothing in this view undermines the holiness of non-Jewish lives.
“Just the opposite,” he insisted. ”…Ultimately the light they recognize from Jews will make their lives more valuable. Jews are essentially a giver nation. And non-Jews are receivers.”
Rabbi Ginsburgh is also an ardent sympathizer of Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born physician who massacred 29 Palestinians at prayer in a Hebron mosque in February 1994. While stopping short of endorsing Goldstein’s act outright, Rabbi Ginsburgh described him unambivalently as “a Jew who gave up his life for his people.” In a recent book devoted to Goldstein he called the massacre “an act of bravery whose source was divine grace.”
Citing explicit instructions he says he received from the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Ginsburgh has also strongly defended Jewish revenge attacks on Arabs, at least after-the-fact. Whether he would tell a Jew to engage in such a random attack beforehand “is a different story,” Rabbi Ginsburgh said. But after such an attack took place in response to an Arab provocation, “You can’t even hint it was a bad thing.”
Among other things, he explained, the jurisdiction of an Israeli court in such a case is illegitimate because “Legally, if a Jew does kill a non-Jew, he’s not called a murderer. He didn’t transgress the Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not murder. This applies only to Jews killing Jews. Therefore [in a Jewish state], his punishment is given over to heaven” rather than to a secular court.
In 1989, Rabbi Ginsburgh was personally involved in the events that led to such a killing when he led a large group of his yeshiva students on an armed West Bank “walking tour” that slipped around Israeli Army restrictions and assertively through a Palestinian village. The tour ended in a melee that saw the rabbi stoned by angry villagers, the yeshiva boys rampaging through the village setting fires and vandalizing, and a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who was sitting in her house shot by one of the yeshiva tourists.
At the trial of the yeshiva boy charged with the killing, Rabbi Ginsburgh said bluntly, “The people of Israel must rise and declare in public that a Jew and goy are not, God forbid, the same. Any trial that assumes that Jews and goyim are equal is a travesty of justice.”
In an interview at The Jewish Week, Rabbi Ginsburgh delivered his comments in a soft, unassuming voice with no sign of bitterness or hate.
In fact, he said, one reason the court ultimately felt compelled to free him was because his most controversial statements came not as personal opinions but always as citations from scripture, Kabbalah or recognized rabbinic authority.
Rabbi Ginsburgh also defended many of his statements as more musings and reflections in a struggle towards conclusions, rather than conclusions themselves.
“Torah is a complex matter,” he said he told the judge, “especially Kabbalah. You must consider many factors.” But in the course of working through this, he said, there is “a thinking-aloud process.”
“Even when you understand there is a justification for doing certain things,” said Rabbi Ginsburgh, ”studying Kabbalah sweetens the mentality.” The process usually calms, rather than inflames, his students, Rabbi Ginsburgh said.
“In class I’m teaching them not to act on these things, not because they are wrong, but because our way to influence the situation is completely different. If they think the thing to do is to get up and act violently, I teach them that that’s wrong.”
But to Israeli authorities, Rabbi Ginsburgh’s citations and outloud thinking were the stuff of incitement. They viewed many of his talks as incendiary and tried – unsuccessfully – to stifle his lectures to his students in the Nablus yeshiva in particular.
Finally, just hours after the devastating suicide bombing in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Circle last March, amid a wrathful national mood, Rabbi Ginsburgh gave a Purim lecture on a long letter by the Lubavitcher Rebbe about “the mitzvahs of war for the sake of revenge and war for the sake of conquering the Land of Israel,” said Rabbi Ginsburgh.
“The rebbe explained that war for the sake of revenge was a much higher mitzvah,” said Rabbi Ginsburgh, recalling his talk to the crowd.
It was soon after this that Prime Minister Shimon Peres signed a 60-day administrative detention order against him “to prevent Rabbi Ginsburgh from continuing his incendiary preaching of revenge.”
The public outcry that followed came mostly from the right. But some civil libertarians also protested his jailings as beyond the pale, even for Israel’s administrative detention law. That law empowers the authorities to jail without charge individuals who threaten public security. But unlike most other detainees, they noted, Rabbi Ginsburgh was jailed explicitly for his speech rather than his acts.
Still, when the court finally ordered him released, citing insufficient evidence that his statements had incited or would incite anyone, many Lubavitchers had no doubt it was their effort that turned the tide.
Rabbi Ginsburgh himself told the Crown Heights audience Sunday night, “The most important thing I want to convey is that the claim against me is a claim against the Torah, a claim against chassidus, a claim against the Lubavitcher rebbe.”
But not everyone agrees with how Rabbi Ginsburgh uses these sources, of course.
“It’s the greatest tragedy to take isolated texts and use them without tradition,” Rabbi Wurzburger said. ”[Rabbi Meir] Kahane did this, too. You can always take statements out of context.”
Even within Lubavitch, there are critics: Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the former administrator of the rebbe’s secretariat and current head of the sect’s international operations, termed Rabbi Ginsburgh’s views, as related to him in a phone interview, ”totally outrageous.”
But Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, a professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, called for radically revising Jewish thinking about some Jewish texts on the grounds that scholars such as Rabbi Ginsburgh are far from aberrant in their use of them.
Rabbi Greenberg, who has written extensively about Jewish scriptural views on racism and ethnic chauvinism, said, “The sad thing is, these statements are in our books.”
“There’ll be a statement in Talmud… made in circumstances where it’s purely theoretical, because Jews then never had the power to do it,” he explained. And now, he said, “It’s carried over into circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered. [These statements] are brought forward by people who themselves have no social responsibility and have not been elected to represent the Jewish people. But they’re called Torah scholars. And not having responsibility, they can say such things. Their self-confidence and self-righteousness is part of their total divorcement from consequences.”
But Rabbi Ginsburgh’s own thoughts were far from that this week. Preparing to go on to Los Angeles as part of the fund-raising tour his supporters had planned, he exulted that his bout with repression had gained him “thousands” of more listeners.
“Even my prosecutors got a lesson in chasidic thinking,” he said, smiling, ”because they had to study my thinking for their prosecution.”
*
Contributing editor Jon Kalish contributed to this article.
My short section near the end of my article on Ariel Toaff’s suppressed book on blood libel was a very small part of the fairly long article, but, as expected, it has drawn considerable wrath from some quarters. Others have raised the question of whether it was relevant to include in the article, a reasonable question and one I pondered ahead of time, knowing the anger it would engender among those who wish such things to remain hidden. (Much more information on Toaff is here. A video of Toaff is below.)
Obviously, I decided in the affirmative. Given that virtually all Bostrom’s critics were using the epithet ‘blood libel’ in their attempts to block any real consideration of the article’s content, I felt that the successful silencing of an Israeli scholar who had raised significant questions about this very subject was quite relevant and useful for people to know about — especially since the Toaff controversy had been covered so extensively in the Israeli press at the time. I don’t like the idea that some people are permitted to know something, but that others are not supposed to learn about it.
If people read Toaff’s book for themselves, and I provided the link so that they could, they can see the content for themselves and determine whether they feel that his evidence supports the conclusions he had drawn or not. If they do feel that some small groups did do what he believes they did, this conclusion in many ways simply indicates that the Jewish population is basically similar to anyone else, since history shows that there have been sects in numerous religious groups, that have committed “religious” violence.
The problem is that some people believe that the Jewish population is better than all the rest of humanity; others allege it’s worse. My view is that individuals within this population run the whole gamut, just as in other populations.
The continual portrayal of an entire population that has never done anything wrong (as Alfred Lilienthal once discussed), and that is eternally the victim of allegedly bigoted, always baseless accusations is part of what buttresses the Israeli myth, replete with its astonishing claim of ‘purity of arms.’ (The fact that so many people can believe that the soldiers of one army — unlike all others — have never committed a single abuse is an example of the pervasiveness of this myth of extreme exceptionalism.)
I feel that the continual attempt to censor all negative facts and allegations – to suppress books and block investigations — is a dangerous, two-edged sword. Many people believe the myth, at least for awhile, which enables continued and expanded misconduct. Others, however, do not, and they, recognizing the suppression, sometimes then imagine a reality that is considerably worse than the actual facts — and such suspicions smolder and grow.
I believe it’s always better for the truth to come out.
Clarification on Israel Shahak
Finally, the original version of my article contained a sentence in a parentheses near the end of the piece that may have seemed to say that Israeli professor and author Israel Shahak also believed there was a basis to the blood libel accusations. In reality, the findings that were similar to Toaff’s were Shahak’s information on Talmudic texts emphasizing vengeance, the profound anti-Christian statements to be found in numerous religious texts, and the extreme religious violence within some medieval Jewish communities, sometimes ordered by Rabbis, eg cutting out tongues, chopping off noses, etc – and not that there had been ritual killings of Christians.
I urge people to read his book along with Toaff’s to discover for themselves the similarities and differences. Shahak’s book is also posted here. An excellent analysis of Toaff is here.
It is a shame that Professor Shahak is no longer alive. It would have been valuable to learn his views on Toaff’s original book, and on Bostrom’s article.
We were only allowed to spend 24 hours in Gaza prison – an intense experience filled with images of destroyed buildings and devastated lives… A giant ghetto filled with invisible starvation… I haven’t had much time to do any personal writing, but immediately began some short speaking tours and have been posting to our daily news blog as much as possible. There’s so much to write about so many things… I hope to get to it one of these days. In the meantime, I hope people will read Israel-Palestine Uncensored to see the news not being covered by US media.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has finally given permission for the American Viva Palestinian convoy to enter Gaza. The convoy plans to depart their location in Cairo at 5 am Egyptian times and travel up to the border with Rafah at Al Arish, where the group plans to take dozens of wheel chairs and walkers, two ambulances, $250,000 of medical supplies, and other humanitarian goods to Gaza. The goal is to break the Israeli directed siege of Gaza, which has produced desperate conditions for the 1.4 million men, women, and children.
When the first contingent attempted to cross the Mubarak Peace Bridge to the Sinai peninsula Saturday evening, they were denied entry. That group spent 12 hours at the checkpoint and entered into a stand-off with authorities as they negotiated the length of their stay in successive increments. Members of the delegation demonstrated at the bridge, obstructing access to the vehicles, and also held keys and occupied driver’s seats in order that the 4 buses could not be moved.
Although Egyptian officials first stated that the convoy could not pass due to unrest in the region and potential danger to the delegates, ultimately Viva Palestina was informed that each of its members required a Gaza affidavit signed and notarized by an official at the U.S. Embassy in order to pass.
That contingent decided to return to Cairo to obtain the affidavits and regroup with other delegates, thereby strengthening their numbers for the next crossing.
The Gaza affidavits are essentially indemnity agreements asserting that the individual has signed away the inalienable right to the protection of the U.S. government. There are reports that at least some previous delegations of U.S. citizens to Gaza have not been required to sign these, and these were not requested prior to reaching the Mubarak Bridge checkpoint, despite Viva Palestina’s well-publicized plan.
Yesterday, Egyptian officials asked for a detailed inventory of all aid items, which has now been compiled and will be submitted to border officials at the Rafah crossing.
Late this afternoon, the Head of the Palestine Desk of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who has been tasked by the Foreign Minister with logistical planning, informed convoy leadership that only the 2 ambulances, of the 47 total vehicles which were purchased earlier in the day at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, would be allowed to enter Gaza. The people of Gaza, with whom MP Galloway has been in frequent contact, have indicated that new vehicles are sorely needed in Gaza for various public services.
At If American Knew we’ve created a new blog featuring a diverse compendium of reports on Israel-palestine, focusing largely on news that is unreported or under-reported by US media.
By scanning through this compilation each day, clicking the ‘full story’ link on items of particular interest, readers will obtain an overall view of this issue that we feel will be valuable in understanding current events — and that is largely unavailable to those using only mainstream sources for their information.
We hope people will tell others of this resource and that it will provide a useful archive for writers and analysts.
I’ve discovered that the Anti-Defamation League, whose devotion to Israel-right-or-wrong many people feel is extremely destructive, has listed me first in those it has decided are “anti-Israel.”
In looking through their entry about me, I’ve noticed a number of distortions and inaccuracies; however, I generally don’t think it’s worthwhile to take time away from productive projects to respond to the many mistruths that abound about me on websites and blogs by various fanatic Israel devotees. Instead, I expect that people will read my writings for themselves and visit the If Americans Knew website to learn about me.
However, one section of the ADL entry is so blatantly defamatory that I’ve decided to demand that they correct it. The problem is that I can’t find any contact information on their site for emailing a letter; the only option seems to be a fill-in-the-blank system that restricts comments to 1,000 characters. Therefore, I’m using that option to direct them to read my letter here:
To the ADL:
I am aware that the ADL frequently considers reporting negative facts about Israel to be “anti-Semitic,” therefore, I am not surprised that your organization is displeased with my work to provide information about Israel-Palestine to the American public.
However, I would expect your writers to discuss what I write and say, not misrepresentations of these. In scanning your entry about me, I noticed that there seem to be a number of distortions and inaccuracies. While I will not bother to address most of these, I must demand that you correct the following particularly defamatory misrepresentations:
This entry claims, incorrectly, that my “…. criticism of Israel has, at times, crossed the line into anti-Semitism.” As alleged evidence of this, the writer misrepresents what I had written in a piece in the Greenwich Citizen entitled, “What Our Taxes to Israel are Funding,” an op-ed written in response to points raised by a previous column in the newspaper.
Your writer states that I had allegedly: “…hand-picked quotations from Jewish religious texts and used them erroneously to define and defame Judaism, which she described as “such a ruthless and supremacist faith.”
This is quite false:
1. I did not hand-pick quotations. I quoted from books by two renowned scholars of Judaism whose point, as I wrote in my article, was the significance to a portion of Israelis, particularly Israeli soldiers, of some little-known (in the US) religious texts. As I wrote in my article:
” ‘What makes such texts particularly significant,’ Shahak explains, is that ‘[i]n Israel these ideas are widely disseminated among the public at large, in the schools and in the army.’ In a booklet published by the Israeli Army for its soldiers, Shahak reports, the Chief Chaplain wrote:
” ‘When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah they may and even should be killed … In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.’
“One can only imagine what this kind of teaching means for Palestinians in Israel itself, and, still worse, for those in the West Bank who live next to settlements populated by heavily armed adherents of such a ruthless and supremacist faith…”
2. As can easily be seen, I am describing the extreme beliefs above as “ruthless and supremacist,” not Judaism, as the ADL entry claims.
3. I went on to specifically note that these extreme beliefs specifically do not, as your entry claims, “define Judaism”:
“While the above citations do not in anyway represent the whole of Judaism…”
4. I then went on to emphasize that these views are not representative of Jewish Americans:
“I have no doubt that the vast majority of Jewish Americans have long since repudiated these…”
5. I also specifically stated:
“…most Israelis also do not hold the beliefs touched upon above…”
6. Finally, I emphasized similarities among Jewish and non-Jewish Americans and urged moving forward together:
“… just as Christian and Muslim leaders have publicly condemned and disowned spurious dogmas and practices, I suspect it would be valuable for Rabbi Hurvitz and other Jewish leaders to do the same. Such shared honesty and humility by all our religious leaders, I believe, helps us move forward as a stronger, more moral, and more unified society.”
I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how your writer could so seriously misconstrue my article, and cannot but feel that the intent was malicious. Please correct your defamatory and inaccurate statements and intimations immediately.
Sincerely,
Alison Weir Executive Director If Americans Knew office: (202) 631-4060
