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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Zionist Dream and the United Nations

Nadene Goldfoot
To Jews, Zion refers to Israel.  It's a word used 152 times in our Tanakh "Bible."  In the 10th Centery BCE it started as a reference to the 2 eastern hills in Jerusalem and then came to mean all of Jerusalem and finally, all of ancient Israel.  When pioneers made their way out of Eastern Europe in the 1800's CE to return to the land, they called themselves Zionists.  They had high hopes of creating a marvelous Utopia.  For 2,000 years Jews have prayed daily for a return to Zion. 

Way back in January 1976, the Jewish Digest came out with an article about the anti-Semitic actions of the United Nations.  They had a vote that equated Zionism with racism.  This charge could not be more absurd.  What liberation movements are equal to Zionism's moral credentials?  The General Assembly had passed Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975. 

Zionism is more than a political movement.  It's an expression of the Jewish religious belief and hope, geared to the more important aspects of Jewish faith.  It is the liberation movement of the Jewish people in modern times.  Its thrust has been and continues to be humanitarian and egalitarian (a belief in human equality; in social, political and economic rights and priviledges.-a social philosophy  advocating the removal of inequalities among men without becoming communistic.)  This all happens to be the very opposite of racism.

In fact, people have tried to make out that our people are a race, and in their hatred against us have been racists, and we have suffered from such racism ourselvles.  Isn't that why Hitler wanted to exterminate all the Jews in the world?  To him, racially, we were inferior.   In fact, Judaism is a religion and not denied to other people who wish to join us.  It may have started with the family of Abraham and Sarah, but they were living together with unrelated people who also took Abraham's new faith and belief, and this in turn became a tribe, then a clan, and so on till the people wound up in Egypt as slaves, joined by many others from all parts of the world.  These people were given the order to live in Canaan, and that's where they do best, their gifts of creativity and thinking are multiplied there. 

No doubt the surrounding 22 Arab nations' leaders were quaking in their boots hearing about such a state in their midst.  It's a wonder that the Arab Spring took 35 years to come about and rebel against their status in life. 

Zionism became an urgent movement with the massacre of European Jewry in the Holocaust where one-third of the Jewish people were slaughtered.  The United Nations, in voting that Zionism is racism, was terribly offensive to Jewish religioius sensibilities.  One must realize that Zionism and the Jewish religious faith is inseparable.  Vilification of Zionism is an attack against the central values of the Jewish religious faith.  The attack is geared against Israel and is inspired by an anti-Jewish animus, an ancient hatred.  "It is a spiritual expression of our Jewish fidelity to the biblical covenant which links a people, their faith and a land in an indissoluble religious unity"

The old anti-Semitism denied Jews their personhood, and this new anti-Semitism denies the Jewish people their nationhood.  Basically, Communists and Arab countries have joined in this attack, either out of ignorance of the Jewish religion or out of political necessity.  Those that have only bring dishonor and shame on themselves.

Resolution 3379 was revoked December 16, 1991, and is the only resolution that has ever been revoked at the UN.  However, religious leaders of Islam, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, continue to revile Zionism for leading to the creation of Israel and has now called a fatah to kill all Jews everywhere.  He has a following of at least 60 million owing to his TV programs on al-Jazeera. 

The Jerusalem Post, a newspaper out of Israel, is holding their annual conference after Passover,  "Fighting for the Zionist Dream" with Meir Dagan, former head of the Mossad, whose topic is For and against bombing the nuclear reactor in Iran, Gabi Ashkenazi, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, whose topic is The Arab world; spring or fall? Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz, lawyer and defender of Israel in many books and speeches, whose topic is Why is the international media afraid of Israel? Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel from 2006-2009,  and Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to USA.  Others attending will be Steve Linde, Caroline B. Glick, David brimm, Yaakov Katz, Herb Keinon, Naomi Ragen and many others.  They will be meeting in New York. 

Resource: Jewish Digest, January 1976, out of Bridgeport, CT  by Synagogue Council of America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_3379
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/herzogsp.html
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oren
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_al-Qaradawi

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