Netanyahu Urges ‘Mass Immigration’ of Jews From Europe

[Guest callipygian]

Benjamin Netanyahu is a problematic, egotistical, power-hungry, self-serving problem that Israel needs to get rid of as soon as possible if it has any hope of peace and statehood advancement for the Palestinian people. If I were a Jew - I would be doing everything possible to achieve this.

But I digress.....

Netanyahu Urges ‘Mass Immigration’ of Jews From Europe

By ISABEL KERSHNER

FEB. 15, 2015

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Sunday that his government was encouraging a “mass immigration” of Jews from Europe, reopening a contentious debate about Israel’s role at a challenging time for European Jews and a month before Israel’s national elections.

Speaking the morning after a Jewish guard was fatally shot outside a synagogue in Copenhagen in one of two attacks there, the remarks echoed a similar call by the prime minister inviting France’s Jews to move to Israel after last month’s attacks in Paris. Critics said then that the expression of such sentiments so soon after the Paris shootings was insensitive and divisive. Such sentiments also go to the heart of the complexity of Israel’s identity and its relationship with the Jewish communities of the diaspora, whose support has been vital.

“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday in Jerusalem. “Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home,” he added.

But expressing the unease felt by many Jews abroad over such comments, Jair Melchior, Denmark’s chief rabbi, said he was “disappointed” by Mr. Netanyahu’s call.

“People from Denmark move to Israel because they love Israel, because of Zionism, but not because of terrorism,” Mr. Melchior told The Associated Press on Sunday. “If the way we deal with terror is to run somewhere else, we should all run to a deserted island.”

In a move that was planned before the attacks in Copenhagen — which left another man dead when a gunman opened fire as a Swedish cartoonist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad was speaking at a cafe — Mr. Netanyahu announced Sunday a $45 million government plan to encourage the absorption of immigrants from France, Belgium and Ukraine in 2015. Israel says it has seen a significant increase in the number of people interested in emigrating from these countries.

More than 7,000 French Jews migrated to Israel in 2014, double the number from the year before. After the attacks in January in Paris that killed 17 people, including four Jews in a kosher supermarket, Israel was expecting an even larger influx.

For many Israelis, more Jewish immigration is an ideal embodied in the Hebrew word for it, aliya, which means ascent. The state was built by immigrants; its 1948 Declaration of Independence states that Israel “will be open for Jewish immigration and for the ingathering of the exiles.”

But the question of under what conditions goes to the core of Zionism and the essence of the principles on which the state was founded.

While some present Israel as primarily a refuge established on the ashes of the Holocaust, many Israelis prefer to view Zionism as a more proactive realization of the political vision of the Jewish nation.

Shlomo Avineri, an Israeli professor of political science, described Mr. Netanyahu’s call as “an intellectual and moral mistake” and accused him of taking a populist stance for electoral purposes.

“The legitimacy of Israel does not hinge on anti-Semitism,” said Professor Avineri, the author of a recent book, “Herzl’s Vision,” a biography of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. “It hinges on the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the Jewish state.”

While Israel should always be open to immigration, he said, the suggestion that Israel is the only place where Jews can live safely “puts Netanyahu, and in a way Israel, on a collision course with leaders of the democratic countries and also with the leaders of the Jewish communities.”

Apparently piqued by Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks in January, President François Hollande of France pledged during a speech at a Paris Holocaust memorial to protect all of its citizens, and told French Jews: “Your place is here, in your home. France is your country.”

On Sunday, the Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, visited the Copenhagen synagogue where the attack took place and said, “The Jewish community is a large and integrated part of Danish society.”

For some Israeli experts, though, Mr. Netanyahu’s call was a natural expression of the nation’s ethos.

“The raison d’être of Israel is to create a place where Jews can have a better quality of Jewish life,” said Avinoam Bar-Yosef, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a research center in Jerusalem.

“In my view, Netanyahu is encouraging those who in any event intend to leave their countries of origin to move to Israel and not to other places,” Mr. Bar-Yosef said, adding, “Even if it is controversial, this is something that a prime minister of Israel needs to do.”

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Jewish Agency for Israel, which coordinates migration to Israel, agreed, saying, “The general perception is that when Jews come under attack, it is the prime minister’s job to remind them that Israel offers them shelter.”

“The rest,” said Mr. Palmor, a former Israeli diplomat, “is a matter of tone and emphasis.”

Mr. Netanyahu has again weighed in on the subject at a fraught time, when Israel’s relations with the White House are strained over his address to a joint meeting of Congress on Iran’s nuclear program next month, two weeks before Israeli elections on March 17.

In an election video posted Saturday on Mr. Netanyahu’s Facebook page, the prime minister gave a personal account of how important immigration to Israel has been for Europe’s Jews. Talking into the camera, Mr. Netanyahu tells the story of how his grandfather was beaten unconscious by an anti-Semitic mob at a train station “in the heart of Europe” at the end of the 19th century.

“He pledged to himself that if he survived the night he would bring his family to the land of Israel and help build a new future for the Jewish people in its land,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “I am standing here today as the prime minister of Israel because my grandfather kept his promise.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/middleeast/netanyahu-urges-mass-immigration-of-jews-from-europe.html?_r=0

[MsAnn]

Benjamin Netanyahu is a problematic, egotistical, power-hungry, self-serving problem that Israel needs to get rid of as soon as possible if it has any hope of peace and statehood advancement for the Palestinian people. If I were a Jew - I would be doing everything possible to achieve this.

But I digress.....

Netanyahu Urges ‘Mass Immigration’ of Jews From Europe

By ISABEL KERSHNER

FEB. 15, 2015

Yes!!!! The rest of that crap he regurgitated, I didn't bother to read.

[AdamSmith]

There seems to be some faint hope on the Israeli left that Bibi will, in toto, end up helping their cause.

[RA1]

Bibi has been and should be the best friend that the US has in Israel but...................he needs to act more like it.

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

The nationalist crazies may have just accidentaly made the Arab Israeli vote much more problematic for the Knesset.

Unlike the US (which uses single member districts), Israeli elections are conducted on a national basis with parties being awarded seats in proportion to their national vote. Jewish right wing parties pushed through a new law raising the minimum to receive any seats from 2 1/2 % of the total vote to 3 1/2 %. The idea was that the Arab vote, which is split 4 ways between incompatible parties, would be discarded when they failed to make the cut off.

Oddly enough even pecker-headed Arabs can do basic arithmetic. The 3 main Arab parties promptly formed a united front and are running as a single party. Worse yet, the threat of being excluded from the Knesset has energized them into a very active campaign and the effort to cancel Arab voting rights widely pissed off Arab Israelis. Polls point toward a turnout among Arabs of upwards of 60% (from the mid 40's %; Jews usually turn out at about 70%), all concentrated on the unified Arab list.

It is now a real possibility that neither the center/left nor the conservative/religious groupings of Jewish parties will be able to form a majority government w/o the votes of the Arab MK's. It's now possible that Bibi will be faced with either joining a Grand Coalition style government with the lefties (hateful & personally politically dangerous) or see a government formed that is dependant on the support of Arab MK's (anathema to Jewish Israelis).

Best laid plans and all that ... :laugh: .

[MsGuy]

Bibi has been and should be the best friend that the US has in Israel but...................he needs to act more like it.

Best regards,

RA1

Bibi has never been a friend of the US.

And his clumsy efforts to publicly intervene in partisan US politics for short term domestic gains at home is about as irresponsible a thing an Israeli politician can do. Is it really wise to risk converting American support for Israel into a partisan, party dependant political issue like say Obamacare?

[lookin]

And now the Israeli election chief has required a five-minute broadcast delay in Netanyahu's speech to Congress so that anything smacking of campaigning can be be stripped from what the Israelis will hear on-air.

I wonder if he knows how to speak without a clenched fist.

[Guest callipygian]

Bibi has never been a friend of the US.

I could not agree more. I once believed that this man would broker peace into the region. But that was based upon his first election.

Seemingly now, he is borderline, Putin, in his need to be the man.

We need to stop calling this man Bibi, and begin calling him out for what he really is:

The reason that peace will never prevail in Israel because of his blood soaked ego from past generations of those who trusted him to do better.

Benjamin Netanyahu is not looking to negotiate peace for his people - Benjamin Netanyahu simply wants to be a world leader, because of them.

[RA1]

Obamacare or Bibi, I would hate to have to choose. Even though I am not Hebrew or Jewish, I am beginning to understand bigotry. Ugh.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest callipygian]

And as an aside...

I am personally sick and tired of the moral duty of which we must all step in cadence to - to support a horrific time of our past - when that past keeps getting stuffed down our throats to make us supporters of Israel.

Get the fuck over it! WE ALL realize how horrible it was - but it can't keep the world hostage as to how horrible it was from resolving it.

Jews gets a bad name and a bad reputation from those in power who only negotiate from one point of view.

Benjamin Netanyahu is stuck not only in the past - it's what he relies upon from Jews around the world to vote him into another term of - WAR.

[Guest callipygian]

Obamacare or BibiI would hate to have to choose,

Omg - really? that's what you bring to this conversation?

The affordable Care Act of Congress V. Bilii?

[RA1]

Wow.

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

Obamacare or Bibi, I would hate to have to choose.

Don't be glum. With luck, Netanyahu will wrap up early and Congress will also have time to repeal Obamacare.

Something for everyone, except maybe for the ten million folks who thought they were getting health insurance.

And, who knows, perhaps Bibi will invite them to come to Israel.

[MsGuy]

Obamacare or Bibi, I would hate to have to choose. Even though I am not Hebrew or Jewish, I am beginning to understand bigotry. Ugh.

RA1, in our father's generation, antisemitism was both common and respectable in the US. And it's still there, it just ain't so respectable and maybe not quite so prevalent right now.

But times change. For people the age of the kids we chase, the Holocaust is as much dusty history as the WWI Armenian genocide was to our generation. Who knows how long before the Evangelicals decide Israel ain't the harbinger of the Second Coming and revert to form on Jews?

The Jewish lobby has spent the last 60 years building in a scrupulously non-partisan way a political consensus in the US in support of Israel . And here come Bibi to preen and pose before the United States Congress to the utter consternation of a sitting US president and the entire leadership of one of our two governing parties.

And for what? To grandstand for folks back home and gain another 2 or 3% of the vote for shit that will be forgotten in Israel in a year or less. Well it won't be forgotten here, not by the Democrats and not by anybody if we get into a shooting war with Iran. Not to mention that this is just the kind of behavior that gives cover to antisemites.

[MsGuy]

Lookin, the long term danger to Israel is planting the notion in the heads of liberal democrats that supporting Israel means supporting a government that supports the same people that block domestic US legislation they care very much about.

Supporting Israel = Supporting Republicans. Now that's not an equation Israel needs Democrats to make.

And Bibi knows it. He just doesn't care.

All he cares about is winning the next election in Israel (which is forecast to be close). All he cares about is hanging on to power a bit longer.

IMHO.

PS Sorry if I come across as agitated. Mr. Netanyahu has a way of doing that to people.

[lookin]

PS Sorry if I come across as agitated. Mr. Netanyahu has a way of doing that to people.

As you say, you're not alone. He pretty nearly pissed off the Pope.

Apparently, last year he gave the pontiff a book on the Spanish Inquisition. It was by Bibi's father, Ben Zion Netanyahu, and explained that the Jews were burned at the stake not because they weren't serious about converting to Catholicism but because of racial hatred dating back to the Egyptians. In other words, it was secular persecution and not spiritual.

Here he is telling His Holiness there's no hard feelings.

[RA1]

If someone made comments similar to these about gay men there would be such a hue and cry.....................

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

If someone made comments similar to these about gay men there would be such a hue and cry.....................

It took me a while to tumble to your comments in this thread but I finally came to suspect that you're conflating actions with religion, or with sexuality. I don't believe they are very closely related at all and, when you assume they are, you may fall into the very traps that are best avoided. While it may take an extra step to separate Netanyahu's actions from his religion, it's not that difficult and, I believe, well worth the effort.

There are plenty of folks in Israel who consider Netanyahu an unpleasant piece of work and they are every bit as Jewish as he is. Does that make them bigots? Not in my opinion, although he would probably like to paint them as such. Often, those Jews who oppose political Zionism or nationalistic extremism are labeled self-hating Jews and it's a small step from there to be labeled anti-Semitic. Even though they themselves are Semitic.

Similarly, if I were to take umbrage at the actions of another gay person, does that make me anti-gay? I've seen folks on some of the very websites we frequent call others self-hating gays because they dislike something another gay person has said or done. This is, again in my opinion, nothing more than jingoism to cover up an inability or unwillingness to separate individual actions from general affiliations.

Pardon me for droning on about the distinction between the group someone belongs to and his or her actions but I've come to the conclusion that the failure to make this distinction is at the root of many of the world's problems today. And probably yesterday. And, unless we learn our lessons, tomorrow as well.

My own hard-won views are that the vast majority of people the world over are pretty decent folks and don't want to cause trouble for others. But there are definitely some troublemakers, in every religion, in every nationality, in every sexual orientation, in every political party, and in just about any other group you care to mention. In my opinion, Netanyahu is one of those troublemakers and I hope the good folks in Israel will find a way to sideline him next month.

And, besides a general feeling that Israel would be better off with a Herzog-Livni ticket, it just somehow tickles me to think of a Prime Minister named Tzipi.

[MsGuy]

My own hard-won views are that the vast majority of people the world over are pretty decent folks and don't want to cause trouble for others.

My own perhaps not so hard won view is that the average homo sapiens is comfortable enough with inflicting horrendous trouble on anyone he can define as "not one of us". Kind of hard to make sense of all the stuff we get up to if that's not the case.

Witness the case of the Viking recorded in the historical annals as 'Olvir Barnakall (Oliver Child Lover)'. Apparently he was reluctant to bash in the skulls of French children which trait was thought odd enough by his buddies to warrant a nickname commemorating it.

[lookin]

My own perhaps not so hard won view is that the average homo sapiens is comfortable enough with inflicting horrendous trouble on anyone he can define as "not one of us". Kind of hard to make sense of all the stuff we get up to if that's not the case.

Witness the case of the Viking recorded in the historical annals as 'Olvir Barnakall (Oliver Child Lover)'. Apparently he was reluctant to bash in the skulls of French children which trait was thought odd enough by his buddies to warrant a nickname commemorating it.

No doubt you are correct. Even today, we have those who snicker at their colleagues who are skittish about setting someone on fire. I'd like to think, though, that they are in the minority.

And while your nasty nautical Norsemen got most of the press, my hunch is there wasn't room in the boats for the large majority who stayed at home and led their lives in a somewhat more familiar and convivial manner.

Harald, dinner! Go get Bent.

Not walrus again!

They were out of herring.

Here, have some mead.

Where's Lars? Outside, tuning his fiddle.

Not a duet with Garth, I hope.

I never heard such an awful lyre!

Did you guys see the way Harald is walking?

A little light in the leggings, huh?

Pul-leeze! He's gay as a lingonberry!

[RA1]

I agree that most folks around the world are decent folks simply hoping to find meaningful work or at least pay the bills. But, is not your body what you eat? Is not your soul what your religion or lack thereof one of the main causes of your actions? Aren't many, if not most of the Arabs/Muslims also Semitic? Troublemakers as you call them seem to constitute a pretty large percentage of those who get things done. Some of the results are good and some not so good but at least there are results. Patrick Henry, TJ, GW and many more were regarded as troublemakers. I am not trying to put Bibi into that group but I would much rather have him as the leader of an ally country than many others the US has supported over the years.

Probably I can think of a few more apples to mix in among the oranges.

Thanks for your input and post.

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

The former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, speaks out on the damage Bibi is doing to Israel:

"An Israeli prime minister who enters into a confrontation with the US administration needs to consider the risks. When it comes to the settlements, there is no difference between the two parties. Nonetheless, we are protected by the American veto power. If we are at odds with the White House, we could lose that protection and, within a short space of time, find ourselves facing international sanctions.

"The risks involved in such a confrontation are intolerable. We are already paying prices today. Some I know about but cannot elaborate on."

Dagan doesn't limit his criticism of Netanyahu to his de facto alliance with Republicans. Apparently even conservatives in the Israeli foreign policy establishment fear that his crude conduct of Israel's affairs are damaging their future.

[AdamSmith]

Israel election: Labor challenger catches up with Netanyahu as vote nears

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/01/israel-election-labor-challenger-catches-up-netanyahu

[MsGuy]

And now 180 retired generals have come forward to publicly denounce Bibi's behavior as a danger to the security of Israel.

LOL, how many retired generals can a country like Israel have? 180 has got to be a hell of a lot of them.

[AdamSmith]

And now 180 retired generals have come forward to publicly denounce Bibi's behavior as a danger to the security of Israel.

Also in that article:

On Sunday, Netanyahu called his trip to Washington “a fateful, even historic mission” that he is undertaking as “the emissary of all Israelis, even those who disagree with me, of the entire Jewish people.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) knocked Netanyahu for suggesting that he represents all Jewish people on the topic of Iran.

“He doesn’t speak for me on this,” Feinstein said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think it’s a rather arrogant statement. I think the Jewish community is like any other community. There are different points of view. I think that arrogance does not befit Israel, candidly.”