Protestants Against Israel Now For BDS

Nadene Goldfoot                                                               

Portland, Oregon's Mt. Hood

Portland, Oregon's City Hall has chosen some volunteer committee to decide on a big issue, and that is whether or not to back BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions ) against Israel.  They have chosen to do so.  The Oregonian newspaper  published an opinion article on Sunday written by Alice Rothchild, who is well known enough back East to have her own page in wikipedia online.  She is one of those Jews who is backing the Palestinians and not her fellow brothers and sisters who live there.  She said, "As a Jewish American, I am proud to stand with my Christian brothers and sisters in the US and Palestine, to support boycott and divestment as peaceful tools to bring occupation to an end." 
                                                                             

Christians of Jerusalem live without fear because Israel protects them.
This is not true in other Middle Eastern countries.  

 Peaceful for her, maybe, but not for the people who live there.  She about gave me a heart attack after reading her article.  I found I made several spelling errors when typing my response.  I was shaking!  I thought she had to be a fellow Oregonian and see now that she lives in Massachusetts.  This is a tool for our volunteer city council group to prove they made the right decision which some of us have been fighting against.
                                                                         

Fatah and Hamas, unified for this picture 

 There is no real state of Palestine yet, but she addresses it as if it exists already.  They do have a committee, but not a country-yet, even though so many groups have recognized them.  The so called Palestinians have yet to recognize Israel and agree to live in peace.

You can read her article with this website.  http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/05/divestment_an_appropriate_respo.html

My response to the Oregonian is below.  It will not be published.  I could not write a short note to answer such an attack.

                                                                          

Taking advantage of negative publicity against Israel like BDS, this is what happens on
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; rock throwing Palestinians hitting Jews who are
now using knives and cars, ramming them into crowds. .  

In response to Alice Rothchild's opinion article from page A21, Divestment is an appropriate response to Israel's treatment of Palestinians, I think this is the worst bit of anti-Semitism  written by a Jew I've read that is not based on any sort of research, only self-hatred feelings and heresay.                                                                                      

King David  of Israel (1010 BCE to 970 BCE) 

                                                                           

Moses, who led us to the Promised
Land b: 1391 BCE-d: 1271 BCE

As 

opinionated as Alice Rothchild  is, I am holding dual citizenship and make research about Israel my life work.  Let's look at some facts.  Israel was a real empire, and the first king was Saul of the 11th Century BCE  in about 1030 BCE.  Our settlement of the land had started in the 13th century BCE.  Israel-Judea (Samaria was the surrounding land of Jerusalem)  was taken by the Romans in 70 CE-so had been an empire and country for 1100 years.  There never ever has been a country of Palestine, so there aren't Palestinian people that need to reclaim land to rebuild  their old state like the Jews are doing.  They are a conglomeration of neighboring people from all the other Middle East states who came there looking for jobs  Most  came after Russian Jews returned in the late 1800's   when the Ottoman Empire (Turks) held the land.  Jews have been homeless for over 2,000 years, and have suffered from a lot of anti-Semitism.  Not the Arabs called Palestinians today;   they were Syrians and also others who came  from every other Middle Eastern country since created after WWI by the allies.

                                                                         

Emir Feisal

Emir Feisal was the Arab leader of the day, and he accepted the return of the Jews, hoping his people would learn something from them.  He was a leader, educated and intelligent who was from Saudi Arabia originally.  He was of royal blood looking for land to rule, and got it from the British who held the WWI mandate.     Another Arab, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the "Sharif of Jerusalem, the Grand Mufti, was against the idea and was able to turn his very excitable and ill -educated followers against the Jewish return.    He was a big fish in a little pond and didn't want to lose his status.  His attitude led to the Khartoum Conference where all the Arab leaders met after 1967's failing attack on Israel and declared their THREE NO's.  They said NO peace, NO negotiations, NO recognition, and then insisted on rights of the Palestinians people in their own country which was a down right lie.   They've been saying NO to every offer since.  They didn't want the return of these people, evidently, and they weren't about to have Jews moving into the Middle East since they were looked upon as Dhimmis (2nd class citizens in their countries.).                                                                                       

Wailing Wall in Herod's day (73 BCE-4 BCE)

                                                                             

Western Wall "Wailing wall" in Jerusalem
 1967 was the first time that Jews could pray there since 1948
It had been under Jordanian rule until Jordan and
other Arabs  lost the war.
 

Israel held off building for over a year with no results except NO.  It didn't help.  The so called West Bank, which we call Judea and Samaria, are the foundations of ancient Israel and include Jerusalem, of course.  Jews have been praying 3 times a day for a return to Jerusalem in every synagogue around the world for the past 2,000 years, and now it's been happening. 

                                                                         

At a time when we could use the love Christians offer to everyone else, we're not getting it from the Protestants; only reprimands.  Israel happens to be a country making their own decisions on how to handle people who keep attacking them, which the Palestinians have been doing.  Our American Senators respect this little country and have done their own research as well, so feel it is beneficial to American interests as well as to Israel's to help them out financially.  They help everyone else.  For the Protestants to feel they can force issues they see or hear about upon Israel  without knowing why Israel takes certain positions is ludicrous.  How would they like it if China  decided not to do certain things that would jeopardize our economy unless we go along with China's wishes?  Hm???  Who knows what is best for the USA?  Others?  The same goes for Israel, who will be 68 years old on May 14th.  Israel has been attacked in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and all because of these Palestinian non-existent rights other than all the rights Israel has given them. 

                                                                     

All of Israel's high school students go into the army upon graduation unless
they are doing studies in the Yeshivote, but that may soon be abolished.  They
will then need to serve every year for a month until age 50.  They live in a
very dangerous neighborhood.  Even now, ISIS is trying to get in.    

Gaza Palestinians  have  been raining missiles, mortars and rockets on their southern  cities for years.  It's like being asked to have Nazis as neighbors of the Jews.  Palestinians speak Arabic.  Israelis speak Hebrew.  Arabs are Muslims, a contrary religion to Judaism.  Jews are Jewish.  There's some similarities, but even education is of different levels between the two.  What we're trying to do is mix oil with vinegar and they're not mixing.

                                                                                                                             

Druse Arab Israeli soldier

Christian Arab Israeli soldier

                     

Israeli soldier from
Ethiopia

Everything Israel, a country of 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs, has been doing is for their own protection and the need to stay alive.  Arabs are doing everything they can to destroy Israel.  Since 1948, people like the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha,  said in Cairo,  

"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and  Crusades."  Every leader of Arabs and Iran have followed suit saying equally nasty things aloud to their people.  Now we even have the Protestants and Alice. 

BDS with their  B for Boycotting, D for Divestment, S for Sanctions is not right at all.  It's trying to do an arm-twisting  of Israel into complying with their own wishes which amounts to destroying Israel.  I have news for these glorious city leaders.  It's not working.   Facts are showing that it's not working.    What they are doing is trying to interfere with Israel's ability to pay back loans to the USA as well.  What I feel is that Alice and her buddies in Portland's City Hall are control freaks  as well as followers of other anti-Semitic groups who have no background as to  the current or past events pertaining to Israel and have no business mixing in in this manner.  

Update: 5/9/16 3:55pm  Clinton: 'The BDS campaign is

counterproductive to the pursuit of peace'

by Jacob Kornbluh, Jewish Insider

Resource:  http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/05/divestment_an_appropriate_respo.html