{"id":42,"date":"2010-04-21T10:31:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T10:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/04\/condemn-his-report-but-welcome-goldstone-by-rabbi-shmuley-boteach.html"},"modified":"2010-04-21T10:31:17","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T10:31:17","slug":"condemn-his-report-but-welcome-goldstone-by-rabbi-shmuley-boteach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/04\/condemn-his-report-but-welcome-goldstone-by-rabbi-shmuley-boteach.htm","title":{"rendered":"Condemn His Report, But Welcome Goldstone By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach"},"content":{"rendered":"


<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

I was horrified to hear that there were South African Jews objecting to Judge Richard Goldstone attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah. Blocking a fellow Jew, let alone a grandfather, from a family’s religious celebration because of his opinions on Israel is disgraceful. I recall once that the Lubavitcher Rebbe said that any Synagogue that bars a fellow Jew from entry ought to be shut down.  We’re not Hamas, Hezbollah, or Fatah. We don’t summarily execute compatriots accused of collaborating with the enemy, as these terrorist organizations do to innocent Palestinians. We don’t character assassinate them either or banish them from our communities. Rather, where fellow Jews, like Goldstone, are harsh critics of Israel, we show them respect and deference and then destroy not them but their arguments in the cold light of fact and reason.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n


<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

The Goldstone Report is a modern-day blood libel
\nagainst the Jewish state and has been torn to shreds by expert international
\njurists, including Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard and Prof. Richard Landes,
\nDirector of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. Among the
\nmany compelling arguments against Goldstone is the fact that his report failed
\nto focus on Hamas initiating the war by firing thousands or terror rockets
\nagainst Israeli cities, intentionally using women and children as human shields
\nin order to draw Israeli attacks and then accuse them of killing civilians, and
\nhow Goldstone granted near-complete credulity to all Hamas claims while
\ncynically deriding those of Israel. As Dershowitz expressed it, the Goldstone
\nReport is ‘to any fair reader, a shoddy piece of work, unworthy of serious
\nconsideration by people of good will committed to the truth.’<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

But that does not make Goldstone an enemy of his
\npeople. Rather, I believe, Goldstone, like so many others, reactively chooses
\nthe side of the Palestinians not because he is a self-hating Jew but because he
\nboorishly assumes that the weaker party in any conflict is necessarily the
\naggrieved party. During Israel’s invasion of Gaza to stop Hamas’ murderous
\nrockets it was easy to look at Israel’s tanks and helicopters and view the
\nPalestinians terrorists as helpless victims. By the same logic, however, the
\nawesome military invasion of a million soldiers on the beaches of Normandy made
\nthe Nazis into peace-loving innocents, and American shock-and awe over Baghdad
\nmade Saddam into a blameless target.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Goldstone is a foolish ignoramus rather than a
\ntraitor to his people. We have to stop believing that anyone who is anti-Israel
\nis necessarily anti-Semitic. That misguided notion is what led Israel to have
\nsuch abysmal PR in the first place, assuming as it did that since these critics
\nhave an innate hatred of Israel there was no reason to rebut their arguments.
\nThe toxic result is that Israel has tragically failed to promote the justice of
\nits cause in a well-organized PR offensive and the Arabs, in the greatest PR
\ncoup in history, have somehow convinced the world that six million vulnerable
\nJews are opporessing five hundred million oil-rich Arabs.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Upon my last visit to South Africa on a book tour
\nI was warmly embraced by the South African media who told me that ‘a Rabbi as
\nopen-minded and universal’ as me ought to be bold enough to criticize Israel’s
\n‘apartheid’ policies toward the Palestinians. Many black South Africans view
\nIsrael like the Boer and British Europenan colonizers who oppressed the
\nindigenous population prior to Mandella’s presidency in 1994. I could have
\neasily dismissed them as anti-Semites. But I knew in my heart they were decent,
\nG-d-fearing people who had never heard a robust defense of Israel and I seized
\nthe opportunity on TV and radio to make Israel’s case.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

The Jews are very similar to black South
\nAfricans, I told them. Long ago we too lived peacefully in our land, in Israel.
\nThe Holy Land, as the New Testament makes clear, had Jews and no Arabs. Then
\nthe Romans, a brutal, European occupier destroyed our Temple and took us as
\nslaves to Europe where we lived under brutal oppression for millennia while
\npraying thrice daily for a return to our ancient homeland. In the Arab
\ncountries where many migrated, Sephardic Jews lived under Arab governments
\nwhere they were further treated like black South Africans, second-class
\ncitizens, denied basic human rights and required to pay jizyah<\/i>, the
\nKoran-obligated poll tax. My father who grew up in Iran, remembers the
\nhumiliation of having Islamic shopkeepers refuse to take money directly from
\nhis impure Jewish hands. Likewise, Ashkenazi Jews, like their black South
\nAfrican counterparts who were stuffed into townships, were placed into ghettos
\nin Europe and forced to live apart. Finally, the flowering of modern
\nnationalist movements enabled the Jews to begin leaving these lands en masse
\nand returning to their indigenous, ancestral homeland.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

But even amid the Jewish dispersion after Rome’s
\nconquest, a minority Jewish population retained an uninterrupted presence is
\nIsrael for more than three thousand years. We did not colonize the land but
\nwere always a part of it. And when the waves of European Jews began returning
\nto the land in modern times, the land was virtually desolate. The Zionist
\npioneers did the laborious work of draining the swamps and making the desert
\nbloom.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Far from being a white, colonial settlement, the
\nestablishment of Israel is analogous to American blacks who had been forcibly
\nremoved from Africa and returned to create the nation of Liberia. The obscene
\ncomparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa also ignores the fact that
\nIsrael is the first country in history to airlift tens of thousands of black
\nmen, women, and children from Ethiopia to become free and full citizens within
\nits borders.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, I told my listeners, black South
\nAfricans who inspired the world with their capacity for peaceful coexistence
\ncould not be more different to the Palestinians who have tragically embraced
\nhatred and terrorism. Nelson Mandela rose to become the foremost statesman in
\nthe world with his message of forgiveness and reconciliation. Yasser Arafat
\nfathered international terrorism and stole millions of dollars from his
\npoverty-stricken people.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

In stupidly shunning people like Judge Goldstone
\nwe in the Jewish community are alienating those who need the light of Jewish
\nvalues most.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is founder of This World:
\nThe Values Network.<\/i> On May 14<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> he
\nwill publish his major work on Jewish values, Renewal: A Guide to the
\nValues-Filled Life.<\/i> <\/span>www.shmuley.com<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/span><\/p>\n

*Follow Shmuley on TWITTER!  <\/span>http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/RabbiShmuley<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

*Shmuley’s on Facebook! <\/span>http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/facebook-shmuley<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

*Buy Rabbi Shmuley’s newest book THE KOSHER SUTRA at  <\/span>http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/koshersutra<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

*Join the national “Turn Friday Night Into Family Night”
\ninitiative.  Go to <\/span>www.FridayisFamily.com<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

*See Shmuley on the web at <\/span>www.Shmuley.com<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was horrified to hear that there were South African Jews objecting to Judge Richard Goldstone attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah. Blocking a fellow Jew, let alone a grandfather, from a family’s religious celebration because of his opinions on Israel is disgraceful. 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His book, Kosher Sex, was an international blockbuster, published in 20 languages, and his recent books on the American family, Parenting With Fire and Ten Conversations You Need to Have With Your Children, were both launched on The Oprah Winfrey Show.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/author\/dbigbee"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/203"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}