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Ruth King

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False Moral Equivalence as a Tool to Demonize Israel by Manfred Gerstenfeld and Jamie Berk

By on April 18th, 2016

False moral equivalence is one of a series of major fallacies. False moral equivalence comparing Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis was used by several prominent social-democratic politicians, including French President François Mitterrand, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou.

Another example of false moral equivalence is calling Israel an Apartheid State. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter made this comparison in his 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid — which incorporates the false moral equivalence in its title.

The false comparison between Zionism and racism has been repeated countless times through United Nations and UN-sponsored declarations and conferences.

Another category of moral equivalence pretends that the intended murder of innocent civilians is equal to the accidental deaths of civilians in targeted assassinations. For instance U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry compared the three civilians murdered in the 2013 Boston Marathon to the nine activists who had planned violence and were killed by Israeli soldiers they attacked on the Mavi Marmara ship in 2013.

Among the many tools mobilized for the demonization of Israel, one frequently used is a mode of argument known as false moral equivalence. The term “moral equivalence,” originates from a 1906 address by American philosopher William James.[1] It is the claim that there is no difference between two actions of greatly varying character. It is frequently used to emphasize similarities between two otherwise dissimilar acts. False moral equivalence undermines norms and values in a society, blurring the lines between good and evil also right and wrong.

False moral equivalence comparing Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis was used by several prominent social-democratic politicians, including French President François Mitterrand,[2] Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme[3] and Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. [4]

When two dissimilar realities are linked such as Israel and Nazism, use of one side of the equivalence will eventually automatically bring to mind the other – however distorted the comparison may be. Subsequent repetition results in an acceptance, where the false moral equivalence is no longer countered or questioned.

False moral equivalence should not be confused with moral relativism. The latter lends itself to the justification of behavior by claiming that they are acceptable in a certain culture’s values or were common practice during certain periods of history.[5]

Moral equivalence embodies comparisons, defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: “The act or process of comparing: as the representing of one thing or person as similar or like another, or the modification of an adjective or adverb to denote different levels of quality, quantity, or relation.”[6] Comparisons innately lend themselves to frequent abuse.
CATEGORIES OF MORAL EQUIVALENCE

False moral equivalence used against Israel may be categorized into nine main groups, shown below. These groups are:

The false moral equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany;
Israel and South African apartheid;
Zionism and racism and its sub-categories Zionism and colonialism/imperialism, as well as Zionism and fascism, the Holocaust and the Nakba (Arabic for “The Catastrophe,” of 1948.)
False moral comparisons of murder and accidental death, comparisons of targeted killings of terrorists with intentional murder of civilians;
Equivalencies drawn between kidnapping of soldiers and imprisoning terrorists;
Presenting moral equivalence between Israel’s actions as a legitimate sovereign state and the illegitimate actions of terrorists.
A ninth category, “others,” includes demonization of Israel in ways which do not fit into the above categories, such as the moral equivalence drawn between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and the perceived parallels between Nazi brutality and the actions of their Allied opponents.

CATEGORY 1: ISRAEL AS A NAZI STATE

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Turkey Builds Mega-Mosque in U.S., Blocks Churches in Turkey by Uzay Bulut

By on April 18th, 2016

As yet another enormous mosque has opened in the U.S. (funded by the Turkish government), Christians in Turkey are waiting for the day when Turkish state authorities will allow them freely to build or use their churches and safely pray inside them.

In Turkey, some churches have been converted to stables or used as storehouses. Others have been completely destroyed. Sales of churches on the internet are a common practice.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan said during the opening ceremony of the Maryland mosque that the center was important at a time of an “unfortunate rise in intolerance towards Muslims in the United States and the world.”

How would Muslims feel if mosques in Mecca were put up for sale on the internet, turned into stables, or razed to the ground? How would they feel if a Muslim child were beaten in the classroom by his teacher for not saying “Jesus is my Lord and Savior?” How would they feel if they continually received violent threats or insults for just attempting peacefully to worship in their mosques?

Before Muslim political or religious leaders lecture the world about the non-existent threat of “Islamophobia” or “intolerance against Muslims” in the West, they should take moral responsibility and address the real abuses against Christians in their home countries, and the actual Christian genocide taking place across the Muslim world.

On April 2, a gigantic Ottoman style of mosque was opened in Lanham, Maryland by the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The mosque, according to Turkish officials, is “one of the largest Turkish mosques built outside Turkey.”

Funds to build it, as reported by the Turkish pro-government newspaper, Sabah, came from Turkey’s state-run Presidency of Religious Affairs, known as the Diyanet, as well as Turkish-American non-profit organizations.

The mosque is actually part of a larger complex, commonly referred to as “Maryland kulliye.” A kulliye, as such Islamic compounds were called in Ottoman times, is a complex of buildings, centered on a mosque and composed of various facilities including a madrassa (Islamic religious school).

Erdogan recited verses from the Quran inside the mosque after the mosque was opened.

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Multiculti education guru denounces showing up on time, hard work, and clear language as part of white oppression By Thomas Lifson

By on April 18th, 2016

Heather Hackman of the Hackman Consulting Group apparently is a big deal in educational circles concerned with denouncing “white privilege.” School districts all over the country spend big bucks sending teachers and administrators for indoctrination into White Privilege Theory. The St. Paul public schools, for instance, have spent millions of dollars on this mission.

Blake Neff of the Daily Caller News Foundation has been attending the 17th Annual White Privilege Conference in Philadelphia, where Hackman enunciated a set of ideas that sound suspiciously close to white supremacy, and which made explicit the notion that teachers in government schools are now expected to be political indoctrinators more than teachers of any useful knowledge and skills.

A professional education consultant and teacher trainer argued at the White Privilege Conference (WPC) in Philadelphia that great teachers must also be liberal activists, and described in detail her goal for destroying the “white supremacist” nature of modern education. (snip)

On Friday, Hackman was given a platform at WPC to deliver a workshop with the lengthy title “No Freedom Unless We Call Out the Wizard Behind The Curtain: Critically Addressing the Corrosive Effects of Whiteness in Teacher Education and Professional Development.” The long title masked a simple thesis on Hackman’s part: Modern education is hopelessly tainted by white supremacy and the “white imperial gaze,” and the solution is to train prospective teachers in college to be activists as well as pedagogues.

In fact, Hackman argued teachers shouldn’t even bother teaching if they aren’t committed to promoting social justice in school.

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The Perilous Politicization of the Military By Jonathan F. Keiler

By on April 18th, 2016

We are looking at a permanent structural change in the American armed forces that will not only weaken the nation’s ability to defend itself, but endanger constitutional principles. A year ago in an article titled “Obama’s Generals,” I described an American military increasingly politicized under the current administration. The evidence at the time was already abundant: the military’s refusal to identify the Fort Hood shootings as terrorism, the coddling of Bowe Bergdahl, the relief or prosecution of politically unreliable generals, and unrealistically rosy appreciations of the campaign against ISIS being the major points. If anything, things have worsened since, most especially with the purely political decision to remove all restriction on women in combat, and as noted in a recent AT posts the mostly symbolic but still significant decisions by the Navy to issue “gender neutral” uniforms and to ignore regulations regarding naming ships to honor Democrat politicians and leftwing social activists. Add to this, ongoing and increasingly aggressive recruiting policies that mandate “diversity” and the situation becomes scary.

Arguably there has been some good news here and there, but even that must be taken with a large grain of salt. Last year Congress passed legislation allowing for the soldiers wounded at Fort Hood to receive Purple Hearts, and the Army belatedly acknowledged former Major Nidal Hassan’s terrorist ties, though has yet (to my knowledge) formally remove the “workplace violence” moniker it attached to the shooting, despite the fact that Obama late last year reluctantly acknowledged the Fort Hood shooting as a terror attack.

Similarly, in the Bergdahl case, also after incredibly long delays, the Army decided to try the soldier at a General Courts Martial. This is seen by some as the “old Army” reasserting itself in a case that reeks of liberal political influence. Perhaps this is so. However, the decision to try Bergdahl only came after he badly embarrassed the Army by going public with his account of his desertion and capture on NPR, practically forcing the hand of convening officer, General Robert B. Abrams. Moreover, though the decision to try Bergdahl was made last December (four days after the first NPR appearance), the trial will not take place until August, scarcely demonstrating a hard charging prosecution in a relatively simple case. Even assuming Bergdahl is convicted, his attorneys will argue that Bergdahl has successfully served on active duty for over two years since his release by the Taliban in May 2014, and thus deserving of leniency, undermining the contention he is a bad soldier. This might sound ridiculous to some, but the jury will have to consider it, and it is part of the reason why military prosecutions are usually expeditious, though the Army has not demonstrated any sense of urgency in the case.

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Peter Smith The Dismal Science of Perpetual Jealousy

By on April 18th, 2016

Those who harp about “inequality” will talk themselves hoarse over the election season to come, insisting that the gaming of our economic system is the only explanation why some grow very rich and many do not. Just like the poor, class envy will be with us always
According to “Labor’s agenda for tackling inequality,” the Growing Together report, “inequality is at a 75-year high.” Nonsense is immortal in the hands of the left. A fundamental law of capitalism which, heretofore, has received little recognition or exposure is the antidote.

I flirted with calling it Smith’s Law but if it were any good no doubt a somewhat better-know Smith, Adam, would be mis-assigned the credit. Mind you, Smith is such a commonplace name that pseudonymity would probably be suspected. Some years’ ago I got into a heated wrangle on the Liverpool FC website about the worth of the then-coach and was accused by one of my antagonists of hiding behind the obvious pen name of Peter Smith. He clearly regarded my name as akin to Joseph Blow or Donald Duck. So modest sensibly prevails and I will just call it ‘the fundamental or inbuilt law’.

There is a heap of talk these days about rising inequality. It will no doubt be a central issue in the US elections and would be the only issue of note for socialist Bernie Sanders in the highly unlikely event he were to win the Democratic nomination. Jeremy Corbyn is on board the Bernie bandwagon as, without a shadow of doubt, is Labor’s Andrew Leigh (Battlers and Billionaires).

Thomas Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, gave the issue (as specious as it is) a literary boost. My review, “The Questionable Equations of Thomas Piketty” in the June, 2014, issue of Quadrant, did a fair job (British understatement) of exposing the flaws in his arguments.

Recall that the Occupy Wall Street movement began in 2011; inspired, in part, by the focus that Piketty and a colleague, Emmanuel Saez, had earlier given to the wealth and income of the so-called “one per cent”. Piketty and Saez were by no means alone. For example, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (“Of the 1%, by the1%, for the 1%”) is one among a number of prominent ‘socialist economists’ (in itself, by the way, a contradiction in terms) who gave the issue a kick-along.

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‘I Am President. I Am Not King’ The Supreme Court turns to Obama’s lawless immigration order.

By on April 18th, 2016

One reason American politics is so polarized is that President Obama has been so cavalier about his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws he dislikes. On Monday the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to one of his worst abuses, his 2014 order that rewrites U.S. immigration law.

In United States v. Texas, 26 states sued to block Mr. Obama’s executive diktat that awards legal status, work permits and other government benefits to some 4.3 million illegal immigrants, with no consent from Congress. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction stopping this ukase last year, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Those were narrow rulings, but the Justices enlarged the case to reach constitutional questions and will hear an unusual 90 minutes of oral argument.

We support humane and economically rational immigration reform, but Texas isn’t about the policy merits. The case implicates the Constitution’s separation of powers and the basic precepts of self-government. The Anglo-American legal tradition began as the English rebelled in the late 1600s against the Stuart kings who claimed the power to suspend or dispense with laws passed by Parliament. The first two grievances against the Crown in America’s Declaration of Independence concerned such “Abuses and Usurpations.”

The Framers wrote Article II’s Take Care clause to prevent the President from claiming the same lawmaking powers. The executive shall—not “may”—execute Congress’s laws faithfully, in one of the Constitution’s most specific instructions.

Congress has debated a more generous immigration policy during the Obama years, and all the while Mr. Obama insisted he couldn’t act alone. “I am President. I am not king,” he told Univision in 2014. “I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen.”

But reform failed, and two weeks after the 2014 midterm election Mr. Obama decided he could act like a legislature: “I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing.” He has no such authority. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Israel Will Never Return Golan Heights to Syria, Says Netanyahu Israeli leader says ‘time has come for international community to face reality’ over disputed region by Rory Jones

By on April 18th, 2016

TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights for the first time on Sunday, declaring that Israel would never return the territory to Syria.

As another round of peace talks aimed at resolving the five-year Syrian conflict continued in Geneva, Mr. Netanyahu said it was time the international community recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

“The time has come for the international community to recognize reality,” he said at the meeting’s opening. “Whatever is beyond the border, the boundary itself will not change.”

The international community doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and as in the Palestinian territories, considers settlement-building there illegal.

Mr. Netanyahu said he had spoken by phone Saturday with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to offer Israeli support for the United Nations-mediated talks as long as their outcome doesn’t threaten Israel.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv declined to immediately comment on Mr. Netanyahu’s comments.

Western officials recognize the Golan Heights’s elevated position as strategically advantageous to Israel’s security as it overlooks Israeli towns and villages. Israel captured the roughly 500 square-mile territory from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and formally annexed the land in 1981. It also captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the war, ceding control in 2005, and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan.

Mr. Netanyahu, who used the special cabinet meeting to mark the first anniversary of his re-election, said more than 50,000 people now live in the Golan Heights, including thousands of members of the Syrian Druse minority who don’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over the land. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Candidates Ignore Rising Military Dangers Obama is weakening U.S. defenses and credibility, but there’s little debate about the growing risk of war. Mark Helprin

By on April 18th, 2016

Obama is weakening U.S. defenses and credibility, but there’s little debate about the growing risk of war.
In this powerful nation with founding principles and latent capacities second to none, politics have become fit for the fall of Rome, the culture is sick with self-destruction, and the rule of law is routinely perverted. Though politics, culture and law are the arch of the nation, the keystone without which they cannot hold is defense. For war transforms whole peoples and threatens their sovereignty and national existence more decisively than any other force.

You would hardly know this from the current presidential campaign. Most candidates seem unaware that the prospects of catastrophic war in the not-so-distant future are burgeoning because of a fundamental change in the international system, driven by accelerating adjustments in relative military power.

Russia, China and Iran have been racing ahead, stimulated by a disintegrating Europe that neither spends sufficiently on its defense nor defends its borders; and by an America, strategically blind in the Middle East, that failed to replenish and keep current its military under President George W. Bush, and now surrenders, apologizes, bluffs, “leads from behind,” and denigrates its military capacities and morale as President Obama either embraces enemies or opposes them only with exquisite delicacy.

As the U.S. allows its nuclear forces to stagnate and decay into de facto unilateral disarmament, Russia has been modernizing its own. The Kremlin has added systems, such as road-mobile, intercontinental ballistic missiles with independently targetable re-entry warheads, that we neither have nor envision. In the absence of “soft-power” parity with the U.S., Russia dangerously relies on a permissive nuclear doctrine and promiscuously rattles its atomic sabers. Its nuclear adventurism, naval and land force modernization, unopposed reintroduction into the Middle East, invasion and annexation in Ukraine, and the ability to recapture the Baltic states in an afternoon, are yet another impeachment of “the end of history.”

With little resistance, China incrementally annexes the South China Sea while embarked on a naval buildup inversely proportional to the smallest U.S. fleet since 1916, and further aggravated by China’s ability, once its naval technology matures, to surge production in its 106 major shipyards as opposed to America’s six. More importantly, China is expanding its nuclear forces to what extent we do not know, because the Chinese program’s infrastructure is hidden within 3,000 miles of tunnels largely opaque to U.S. intelligence. As if China were not a major rival, the Obama administration, ever infatuated with accords, has made no effort to include Beijing in a nuclear arms-control regime. Why not? CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Hollywood Hit-Job on Justice Clarence Thomas By Stuart Taylor Jr.

By on April 18th, 2016

I covered the confirmation hearings in 1991. HBO’s movie heavily edits history to favor Anita Hill.

The current battle over President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland is child’s play compared with the lurid brawl over George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Clarence Thomas 25 years ago. On Saturday, HBO marked the quarter-century anniversary with “Confirmation,” a retelling of how Judge Thomas, a conservative, up-from-poverty black jurist from Pinpoint, Ga., saw his nomination nearly derailed by allegations of sexual harassment made by Anita Hill, a black attorney who had worked for him 10 years earlier.

Ms. Hill’s calm, graphic testimony during the three-day hearing on her charges sparked a national debate about the then relatively little-discussed issue of workplace sexual harassment. Ultimately, the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed Mr. Thomas for the Supreme Court, 52-48.
As a reporter who covered the at times stomach-churning hearings, I wondered how “Confirmation” would handle a story that ultimately boiled down, as the saying goes, to one of he said-she said—he denied all and stunned the senators by accusing them of staging a “high-tech lynching.” She said he pestered her for dates and subjected her to disgusting, sexually charged conversation.

Despite a surface appearance of fairness, “Confirmation” makes clear how it wants the hearings to be remembered: Ms. Hill told the whole truth and Mr. Thomas was thus a desperate, if compelling, liar. Her supporters were noble; his Republican backers were scheming character assassins.

This is consistent with how the media conveyed the story at the time and, especially, in the years hence. Yet immediately after millions of people witnessed the hours of televised testimony, polls showed that Americans by a margin of more than 2 to 1 found Judge Thomas more believable than Ms. Hill. Viewers of “Confirmation” were deprived of several aspects of the story that might have made them, too, skeptical of Ms. Hill. The most-salient of many examples: CONTINUE AT SITE

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Christians in Muslim lands : Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on April 18th, 2016

Bethlehem’s Christian Arab leaders lobbied Israel against transferring the city to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, in 1993, on the eve of signing the Oslo Accord, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, urged Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin to annex Bethlehem into Greater Jerusalem – as it was under the Ottoman, British and Jordanian rule of the area – predicting that “transferring Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority would relegate it to a town of many churches, but devoid of Christians.” Before Oslo, the Christian mayor of Beit Jala – Bethlehem’s twin town – Farah al-Araj, told the NY Times syndicated columnist, William Safire: “The PLO will force a wave of Christian emigration, making Belize in Central America a home for more Beit Jala Christians then left in Beit Jala.” In 1967, shortly following the Six Day War, then Christian Mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Bandak, warned Israel’s Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan: “An Israeli failure to annex Bethlehem into Greater Jerusalem would doom the city’s Christian character.”

Since the 1993 establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the Christian majorities of Ramallah – Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters – Bethlehem and Beit Jala have been transformed into insignificant minorities, due to physical, social, economic, legal and political intimidation. More Christian emigrants from these towns reside in Latin America than Christians remaining there.

The violent discrimination of Christians has been a systematic feature of the Muslim/Arab societies. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, Christians were murdered, expelled or converted until the tenth century. Currently, non-Muslims cannot become Saudi citizens and Christians working in – or visiting – Saudi Arabia are not allowed to worship, or display Christian items (Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, etc.), openly. While the Egyptian President, General Sisi, has attempted to minimize the traditional intimidation of Egypt’s Coptic Christian (10%) minority – which possesses ancient Pharaonic roots – the abduction of Coptic females has been routine and Copts face deep-seated discrimination in all walks of life. Moreover, conversion to Christianity is prohibited under Islam. While physical assaults on Coptic communities were a daily occurrence during the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, it has become a monthly event under General Sisi.

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