Bennun quotes philosophy professor Joseph Levine as commenting on the Jews: “If they are a people …” A very strange remark considering the 3500-year history of the Jews.
Anti-Semitism has been rife since the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome during the 300s AD, enforcing the New Testament’s false teaching of the deicide and its 450 anti-Semitic verses.
Over the centuries, this artificially created hatred of Jews took the forms of forced conversion, expulsion, and finally the Nazi Holocaust.
Jews worldwide had no permanent residence or citizenship. They could have lived in a country for more than 1 000 years and all it would require was a fascist or Arab anti-Semitic government to expropriate them, expel them or, worse, murder every man, woman and child.
Even as late as 1938 with the persecution of Jewry well under way in Europe and desperate Jewish men, women and children attempting to flee for their lives, hardly any countries would open their doors to them.
Zionism is defined as “a movement for the re-establishment and the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel” (New Oxford Dictionary, 1998). Jews and righteous governments worldwide recognised that only a Jewish state with a Jewish government and army could ever be relied upon to protect Jewish citizens. Therefore, counteracting Zionism threatens the eventual survival of Jews.
During war it becomes essential to curtail certain civil liberties, especially where the safety of the population is at stake. As a result of Arab hostility, Israel remains a country at war. Israel has often been publicly threatened with annihilation.
As Nelson Mandela said, and as you quote: for Jews, Israel is a hope of “Never again!” – Don Krausz, Johannesburg
Certain Jews are not Zionists. So what? This has always been the case for a myriad reasons, religious and political. Has it occurred to Bennun that the Jews are not a monolithic people and we like it that way and welcome a multitude of opinions? It is an old joke that a Jew will not attack you physically but may debate you to death.
Bennun’s article is a childish attempt, as used so often by Israel’s and the Jewish people’s enemies, to create a “good Jew, bad Jew” scenario while – because t
hey have no real or substantial argument – they revert to questioning Israel’s legitimacy, a debate settled more than 65 years ago with Israel’s establishment by a majority vote in the United Nations.
Bennun’s rant relates to the discussion covered so well in Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society: there has never been an era in history when “intellectuals” have played a larger and more disproportionate role in society. Intellectuals proper are surrounded by a wide penumbra of those who disseminate those ideas. But there is far too much credence given to many pretenders.
Bennun and his fellow traveller Paul Hendler have never had an original idea. They constantly draw on Palestinian propaganda sites and often quote from questionable second-hand sources of anti-Israel pretenders like themselves.
You can be Jewish, Mervynke, and unintellectual. – David Hersch, South African Israel Public Affairs Committee, Cape Town