ADL and Jewish defense

 

The Anti-Defamation League, ADL, is a great organization for talking about anti-Jewish organizations.

It talks, and writes, about groups such as the Insani Yardim Vakfi (Humanitarian Relief Fund in Turkish, or IHH), an Istanbul-based Islamic charity with links to Hamas, one of the key organizers of the "Freedom Flotilla," a convoy of ships en route to Gaza that were intercepted by the Israeli Navy on May 31, 2010.

It puts the IHH into the same category as The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a secessionist group in Sri Lanka that seeks to create an independent Tamil state in the island’s north and east. The LTTE, which pioneered the use of suicide bombings, has conducted deadly terrorist attacks in a conflict that has taken the lives of nearly 70,000 people.

The ADL reports that American Muslim ideologues living abroad are using their online pulpits to reach and influence audiences in the U.S. with ideologies of extreme intolerance and violence. Through English-language propaganda distributed on a variety of online platforms, these ideologues have not only encouraged attacks in the U.S., but also recruited followers to join terrorist groups overseas.

All of the above is linked from http://www.adl.org/main_Terrorism/default.htm.

Unlike the JDL - Jewish Defense League http://www.jdl.org/ - the ADL rarely DOES anything other than talk and publish.

What's interesting is that on the ADL's International Terrorist Symbols Database page (http://www.adl.org/terrorism/symbols/default.asp) visitors find the JDL's symbol listed as a terrorist group . . . right along with Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The JDL symbol is shown on the ADL's page as the symbol for the "Kahane Movement" named for the late American Zionist rabbi Meir Kahane who, unlike many of his peers, felt the best way to deal with terrorists was to give them measure for measure.

Rabbi Kahane understood that the only way to deal with an enemy - any enemy - is to deal with it on the enemy's terms; in ways the enemy understands.

Europeans and Euro-Americans fail to understand this.

It's not just a Moslem "thing." It is a mind set shared by others. The French should have learned the lesson when they were chased out of Vietnam; certainly the American should have learned the lesson from the French, but they, too, had to learn "the hard way."

Apparently fighting the Japanese during World War II was insufficient to teach the lesson that not everyone makes war according to European rules of "civilized" warfare.

It was a lesson Americans apparently forgot; had the revolutionaries fought the British according to the European rules, the Several States still would be a British colony.

That's not to say that all Brits are like-minded; there was a fellow named Ord Wingate. Wingate was a British officer who, unlike most Brits of his time, was pro-Israel and who, again unlike most of his fellow Brits, understood the Arab mentality. There's a little Wikipedia piece on him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate#Palestine_and_the_Special_Night_Squads .

My father-in-law, A"H, was Moroccan. He moved to Israel and lived in a small, albeit very historic, town - Bet Shean - and regularly dealt with the area Arab population. He understood the Arab mentality and both he and the Arabs with whom he dealt had a mutual respect.

Most of his neighbors were from North Africa and shared his mentality, and for the most part Bet Shean, although on the border with Jordan, rarely had to deal with terrorists. Tel Aviv and Haifa, on the other hand, heavily populated with Europeans, seemed often to be terrorist targets.

Years ago, here in the States, we had some "junior terrorists" - middle school boys who apparently learned anti-Jewish acts from their parents - who thought we would be easy targets for their words and deeds. They were not Arabs.

Then, as now, my initial instinct was to contact not the ADL but the JDL, especially after the local sheriff's department did nothing. To its credit, the local police department - with encouragement from my mostly-veterans-of-WW2 neighbors - DID something and the boys - and their parents - got the message to cease and desist.

The ADL has some value as an organization that publicizes anti-Jewish incidents and organizations, but to lump the Jewish Defense League into the same category as Hamas is beyond my understanding.

It's a shame we need the JDL, but we do. It's a shame the JDL has to do what it does, but it must. Turning the other cheek is not a "Jewish thing" and it's time the Europeans and Euro-Americans realized that shaking a political finger and saying "Bad Terrorist, don't do that again" only encourages more outrageous acts against not only Jews and Israel, but all people who are not "one of them."

Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com