The Results of Hatred

This could have been prevented. It will be prevented from happening again.

http://honestreporting.com

http://projectonesoul.com

http://projectonesoul.com/news7.htm

One of the earliest, most riveting - and controversial photos to have emerged from the months of violence in Israel was that of a bloodied and dazed young man with an angry Israeli policeman standing behind him shouting. While the young man was first identified by the Associated Press (the photo's source) as a Palestinian, it soon became clear that he was actually Tuvia Grossman, an American studying in an Israeli yeshiva. The truth was that Tuvia had been a victim of the Palestinians, who had dragged him from a car, beaten and stabbed him. The policeman had been shouting at the Arab assailants to stop the terror attack.

The New York Times, which ran the photo and mistaken caption, published a subsequent correction and follow-up article.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY RUN-IN WITH ARAB HATRED

The "Palestinian" Yeshiva Boy
Reflects on His Near-Death Experience

by Tuvia Grossman for Am Echad

As the violence in the Middle East continues, we all have our opinions about the Arab uprising, the peace process and what might be done to halt the bloodshed.

There are many lessons we might learn from the events of the past weeks but an important one is the one I personally learned in a rather unwelcome way.

Shortly after the violence first broke out, I happened to be traveling in a taxi in Jerusalem with two friends when our car was attacked by a mob of Arabs who stoned it, forcing us to stop. The crazed mob then dragged us out of the vehicle and proceeded to severely beat and stab us. Somehow - miraculously is the only way I can understand it - we were able to break away and escape to an Israeli Army position down the road.

As a Jewish American student studying in a Jerusalem yeshiva, I had little experience with the hatred that so many Arabs seem to have for Jews. Indeed, I had conflicted feelings about the Arab- Israeli conflict. But none of that would have made any difference to those who assaulted me and my friends. They wanted, to put it simply, to kill Jews. What they ended up doing, though, was to put me on the path to a lesson I will never forget.

The first indication of the lesson came as I lay in my hospital bed, recovering from a stab wound in my thigh, multiple gashes to my head, and a broken nose. I started receiving phone calls from Jews all over the world, each offering support and compassion. Total strangers showed up at the hospital to visit me and asked what they could do to help me. What I began to realize then is what it is that characterizes us Jews as a nation. The Hebrew word is "achdut", which translates as "unity": a connection that binds us all. As I learned in yeshiva, the sages of the Talmud teach that "kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh," - all Jews are "intertwined" each with every other.

That concept includes not only all Jews alive today, but all who ever lived, a thought central to the holidays we Jews celebrate. On Passover we are required to imagine ourselves as redeemed from Egypt along with our forefathers; the matzos and bitter herbs we eat connect us - and have connected every Jewish generation - to the Jews who actually labored in and escaped ancient Egypt. On Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah, we rejoice with the same happiness as if we ourselves were standing at Mt. Sinai receiving the Torah today.

When my picture was published in The New York Times and countless other newspapers and magazines with the distorted caption identifying me as a Palestinian being beaten by the soldier who had actually saved my life, a powerful outpouring of complaints from Jews around the world compelled many of those papers, including The Times, to republish the photograph with a corrected caption and accurate story.

I feel that the overwhelming response to the photo that led to that correction was born of the very aspect of "achdut" that I first realized in my hospital bed. Jews around the world felt that the bond holding us together had been somehow violated by the misidentification of one of our people, and simply refused to allow it to go unchallenged. It was as if the misrepresentation of any Jew was the misrepresentation of every Jew.

That is the lesson I learned, the lesson I am still learning, the lesson all we Jews so need to learn. Even if we feel somewhat removed from the situation in Israel, we must all realize that the suffering of any Jew is the suffering of us all. The whole Jewish nation felt assaulted by my assault, and all of us must feel that we, not just our brothers and sisters in Israel, are under siege, threatened and despised. It is not, in other words, "what goes on in Israel"; it is what goes on in all of our hearts.

And as we share in each other's suffering, may we merit to share in common rejoicing as well.

Tuvia Grossman lives in Chicago and is planning to return to his studies in a Jerusalem yeshiva shortly.

Criticism of the Israeli government and its military response to the present situation is not hatred of the Jewish people. Yes there has been anti-semitic remarks and signs at the protests, but we must make this important distinction between anti-semitism and criticism if any dialogue is to survive.

sf guy has a need to show us photos of the 30s. With all of the terrorism that is now going on in many sections of the world including the Mideast, sf needs to get a life.

So Tuvia had a run in with Palestinian hatred. Fortunately, he lived to tell about it and is much more fortunate than the 1,600 Palestinians and the 444 Israelis who have been killed by terorism in the past 18 months.

Being a Jew he was also fortunate that medical aid was available immediately. Had he been a young Palestinians, the soldiers would have shot up any ambulance or medical personel tthat would have attempted to help. Just yesterday the International Red Cross in Geneva condemned the Israelis for their inhumane behavior and their barbaric practices of killing medical personnel, and the denial of aid to wounded human beings.

sf and Tuvia should follow Arafat’s lead and condemn all terrorism. That would be a start.

Those who forget the lessons of history or try to foist their inapplicability upon the world are doomed to repeat them. Tuvia is not the exception, only an example. Witness the way that Anti-Jewish hatred is rearing its ugly head again in "civilized" France. You can't wave this off as an isolated incident when people are chanting death to the Jews in Canada, and synagogues around the world which may be frequented by Jewish pacifists or anti-Zionists are getting firebombed and vandalized.



FWD: Jewish soccer team attacked,
one member seriously injured

Jewish soccer team attacked, one member seriously injured
Thu Apr 11,12:26 PM ET


BONDY, France - Amid a spate of recent anti-Semitic attacks in France, a Jewish amateur soccer team was attacked during a training session in a Paris
suburb and one of its members seriously hurt, French police said Thursday.


Around 15 hooded attackers wielding sticks and metal bars assaulted the team of teenagers from the Maccabi Bondy association, a Jewish group, late
Wednesday after making anti-Semitic remarks.

One member of the team suffered a cut to the head and received hospital treatment but wasn't thought to be in danger.

French Sports Minister Marie-George Buffet issued a statement condemning the attack as "indescribable."

"I am convinced that the young people of France, of whatever opinion and of all origins, will take action to defend the spirit of tolerance and dialogue," Buffet said.

Synagogues, Jewish schools and cemeteries around the country have been targeted, often with firebombs, in recent weeks as fighting has escalated
between Israelis and Palestinians. In the most serious case, a Marseille synagogue was burned to the ground on March 31.

You think the Isrealis have a monopoly on being hated? Almost four times as many Palestinians as Isrealis have been killed in past 18 months. Here's a look at some results from the invasion of the West Bank, including the massacre in Jenin.

I was thinking about world war two in europe when I read this. These people live in a ghetto and had to silence their children's crying by putting them under mattresses as they hid in basements trying to avoid the bulldozers smashing most of the town:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/international/middleeast/14JENI.html

You know, the first people rounded up and killed in europe during WWII were those who had dared express left wing political opinions, as well as the strongly disabled population - who together constituted a group of several million people killed in the holocaust. So, basically, those pictures shown at the top of this thread are just as likely to be leftists as any of the other victim categories, and if we want to bring this as an analogy to current times, everyone who does reporting for Indymedia would probably be the first shot or gassed under a nazi regime. Stating that in no way deemphasizes the losses suffered by jewish people, or dismisses antisemitism. I have seen a few wingnuts at various demonstrations during the past month who definitely are obsessed with jews and are antisemitic. It just is not the case that most of the people who care about palestine are antisemitic though.
On this spam filled newswire, many of the corporate-media reposts seem to have this focus or obsession with putting down african-americans as fraudulent wanna-be 'victims' who want reparations for slavery, or they are characterized as simple-mindedly blaming all problems on white males with no understanding of the class-based society - and so the final message is that really the category of white males are the real victims. But 12% of black males in their 20s are held in jail in this society - compared to about 1.5% of european-american males, even though rates of drug use etc. are at equal levels for these groups. Yet the right wing can't shut up about how african-americans are just making things up, and are in a 'cult of victimhood'. So why the double standard for the anecdote based case that is argued that antisemitism is on a dramatic rise, making it completely unsafe for jewish students to walk alone at UC Berkeley (as one example I heard). There is so much more evidence that there is systematic victimization and prejudice against african americans.

Jewish students have been made to feel unsafe here at Berkeley and we were not allowed to even mourn the dead of the Holocaust in peace because protesters insisted on appropriating the language, imagery and terminology of the Holocaust to their own cause and rubbing it in our faces.

Four Jews have been beaten here in a few months, the Hillel has been vandalized. We have a right to expect that the so-called progressive movement which preaches peace love and understanding would comport itself accordingly towards Jewish students and not expose us to feeling unsafe walking the streets and expressing ourselves freely.

Surely we are not the only group experiencing prejudice, but the injustice to Jewish students in Berkeley and worse yet to the French Jews who are getting assaulted, firebombed and hounded on the streets and in their places of worship should raise some serious moral concerns to sensitive individuals.

People can have views on the Palestinian-Israeli issue without stereotyping Jews, treating all Jews like pariahs or applying strict litmus tests of what views are acceptable concerning the Middle East.

Was it progressives who attacked the rabbis' son?
No one should have to walk around with the feeling of fear. I perceive the street crime rate going up in the East bay, and there are various anecdotes like the murder of the homeless guy named Dwight along Telegraph a few weeks ago. Here is a web site which shows the crime rates around Berkeley in various districts: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/police/crimestats/annualstatistics.html
I know some people who grew up in high crime areas here during the early 80s and it totally affected their life and psychology.
I've received two different anonymous letters or packages from nazis. One was a tract on antimiscegenation or race mixing- which means that the individual knows me, the race of my BF, and where I live. The other was a eugenics book by Philip Rushton, but several people where I work got the same thing so it wasn't personal. I'm not going to let something like that change my behavior. I go wherever I want to.

Here are some links about Dachau, the first concentration camp in Germany. It was primarily filled with political activists who had dared to speak out.
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Holocaust/0035_DachauInmatesPossessions.htm
http://members.aol.com/zbdachau/history/eng1.htm

First advocacy of violence then advocacy of making pariahs of people -- Jews -- whom you disagree with. I thought in America and especially at the IMC we would all agree in First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and expression, whether we agree or disagree with the said purpose of gatherings. Who would be the arbiter of what Jews were "bad Jews?" Would those who have been shouting "Kill the Jews" in Canada and Europe be empowered to make that judgement-- their behavior towards ALL JEWS has been rather despicable, you would have to admit.

The Jews who have been attacked in Berkeley were engaged in religious observance -- NOT Zionist activity. And several of these cases HAVE BEEN CLASSIFIED AS HATE CRIMES! You should be ashamed of justifying ill treatment of Jews because that creates the absolutely immoral result of persecuting those who in some cases don't support Israel. That is despicable.

It seems like you are only anti-discrimination for some, not for others. How sad.

Suicide bombing victims

More innocent Israeli civilian victims of Palestinian Hatred

Israeli family butchered by Palestinian terrorists