Sunday, May 19, 2013

Never too tired to demonize and slander

Once again, Abukhalil shows concern for Jewish minorities in Israel. Here he is expressing his moral outrage that the Chief Rabbi declared publicly that Karaites are not really Jews. He takes his cue from The Economist, a Canadian weekly not too fond of Israel and always on the lookout for an opportunity to portray Israeli society as sectarian and intolerant.
 
The article says:

"Once almost as numerous as Rabbanites, today’s Karaites make up less than 1% of Israel’s 6m Jews. Persecution has whittled their number down."
But concealed among the complaint, there is this piece of information: 

The chief rabbinate, Israel’s state religious authority, reluctantly began legitimising their marriages again after a recent order by Israel’s Supreme Court, but it continues to argue that since Karaite rites are not Jewish, Karaites have lesser Jewish rights, too. “Israel is a Jewish state and Jews have superior rights,” says the chief rabbinate’s spokesman. “But the Karaites are not Jewish.”
So, it is another one of those conflicts between religious authorities and secular society with the secular judiciary effortlessly winning the case. So what's the big news here? Only if you read AA's report you would never know any of it. That's the kind of honest intellectual he is; whatever does not serve his rancid politics does not make it into his mind. Very convenient, and pathologically fanatic. truth has no dominion over his intellect. Hatred does.
 
According to wikipedia:

" Other estimates of the size of the modern Karaite movement put the number at 4,000 Karaites in the United States[citation needed], about 100 families in Istanbul[citation needed], and over 40,000 in Israel[citation needed], the largest communities being in Ramlah, Ashdod and Beer-Sheva. At the 2002 Polish census, only 45 people declared themselves "Karaims", including 43 Polish citizens.[36]"
 I don't know. it doesn't seem  like Karaites are numerous anywhere and they seem to have the greatest numbers in Israel. And what "persecution" has whittled their numbers? The Economist does not say. But the wikipedia article does provide the following information:

In the early 1950s, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate originally objected to the immigration of Karaite Jews to Israel, and unsuccessfully tried to obstruct it. In 2007, however, Rabbi David Ḥayim Chelouche, the chief rabbi of Netayana was quoted in The Jerusalem Post as saying, "A Karaite is a Jew. We accept them as Jews and every one of them who wishes to come back [to mainstream Judaism] we accept back. There was once a question about whether Karaites needed to undergo a token circumcision in order to switch to rabbinic Judaism, but the rabbinate agrees that today that is not necessary."[38]
  Moshe Marzouk, one of the Egyptian Jews executed in 1954 for planting bombs at Cairo in the service of Israeli Military Intelligence (the Lavon Affair) was a Karaite. Marzouk was considered a hero in Israel; however, his Karaite identity was downplayed in newspapers, which usually just described him as an Egyptian Jew. However, in 2001, the Israeli government, through the Israel Postal Authority, issued a special memorial sheet honoring him and many other Karaite Jews that gave their lives for Israel.

In Israel, the Karaite Jewish leadership is directed by a group called Universal Karaite Judaism. Most of the members of its Board of Ḥakhamim are of Egyptian Jewish descent.
 We are familiar with AbuKhalil's tricks but why is the Economist providing such faulty and inflammatory information? Why the demonization, Economist? Schmucks.

1 Comments:

At 9:28 AM EDT, Blogger SnoopyTheGoon said...

Oh... so the site is back. But now your email address rejects incoming mails. Something strange in Canuck land.

 

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