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| Yubarak; Yosef and his dog |
(Welcome Richard)
Ovadia Yosef’s Love Letter to His Donkey
By Richard Edmondson
Ovadia Yosef, the racist Israeli rabbi who says goyyim exist only to serve the people of Israel, has finally found a gentile he likes: Hosni Mubarak.
In a letter sent mid-2010 and reported at the time in the Israeli media, Yosef expressed his fond wish that the Egyptian dictator might “continue to lead your countrymen in majesty, courage, and strength, for a lifetime and in peace; may you succeed in all your doings.” Apparently Yosef’s ardor is not unrequited. Mubarak, who on Wednesday dispatched stanchion-armed thugs into Tahrir Square to attack pro-democracy demonstrators, responded to Yosef’s letter with a cordial missive of his own, addressing the rabbi as “dear friend and greatest of teachers.”
The entire article can be found at my web site, http://www.leftwing-christian.net/. Here is a link to the article:
If you would, please forward this to Uprooted Palestinians, since, as I say, I don't know how to get in touch with them.
Thanks, and may Palestine one day be free! (And America too)
Richard Edmondson
Offering the starlight of voice
--
nahida the exiled Palestinian
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Ovadia Yosef's love letter to his donkey
By Richard Edmondson
Ovadia Yosef, the racist Israeli rabbi who says goyyim exist only to serve the people of Israel, has finally found a gentile he likes: Hosni Mubarak.
In a letter sent mid-2010 and reported at the time in the Israeli media, Yosef expressed his fond wish that the Egyptian dictator might “continue to lead your countrymen in majesty, courage, and strength, for a lifetime and in peace; may you succeed in all your doings.” Apparently Yosef’s ardor is not unrequited. Mubarak, who on Wednesday dispatched stanchion-armed thugs into Tahrir Square to attack pro-democracy demonstrators, responded to Yosef’s letter with a cordial missive of his own, addressing the rabbi as “dear friend and greatest of teachers.”
Yosef, as I say, is not terribly fond of gentiles.
In October of last year, this spiritual leader of the far-right Israeli Shas Party expressed his belief that, “Goyyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they would have no place in the world—only to serve the People of Israel.” The Jerusalem Post reported that the comments were made as part of Yosef’s “weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.”
Having thus relegated goyyim to the status of perpetual servitude, Yosef went on to draw a comparison between them and donkeys, that is to say hooved quadrupeds, which, if they happen to belong to a Jew, enjoy the benefits of God’s protection, he asserts. Apparently, in the rabbi’s view, non-Jewish human beings fall into the same category. As reported in the Jerusalem Post:
“In Israel, death has no dominion over them…With gentiles it will be like any person—they need to die, but (God) will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.
This is his servant…That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,” Yosef said.
“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.
“That is why gentiles were created,” he added.
It would appear then that inside Israel, the plow-pulling Mubarak is indeed looked upon by some as a donkey, although this is perhaps not as debasing as it may seem. One thing for which Jews certainly must be lauded—if we are to extrapolate, that is, from the dictator’s case—would be the signally humane treatment of their work animals. Since 1979, Israel’s puppet leaders in America have given the Mubarak regime an average of $2 billion annually. Not a bad life for a lowly beast of burden, although there seems a difference of opinion on the way to proceed forward from here. The puppets in America seem to think it’s time the donkey was put out to pasture. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, clearly believes his Egyptian burro (burro being the Spanish word for “ass”) has a few good years left. Netanyahu may be right—after three decades in power, Mubarak, it would appear, has but made it only up into the low end of the life expectancy range of the average donkey, said range being 30-50 years—although of course the Egyptian people may have something to say about it as well.
The main fear naturally is that should Mubarak be tossed out like yesterday’s offal, the other donkey-leaders, say in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, may get a little spooked and begin to buck. One thing is certain, however. The Egyptian dictator has well earned his fodder and feed, and this has been especially true since 2007 when Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza.
Mubarak has repeatedly impeded humanitarian aid convoys to Gaza, most recently the Road to Hope Convoy in late 2010. “That convoy was forced to take a ship from Libya into Egypt because of the corrupt Mubarak regime, which does not allow land convoys to travel through their land, which would reduce the cost and allow us to bring more aid into Palestine,” Ken O’Keefe, who was part of that convoy, said in a recent video posting. O’Keefe says that in effect there are two blockades of Gaza—an Israeli one and an Egyptian one.
At age 90, Yosef is no spring chicken, and it might be tempting for non-Israelis to dismiss his outlandish comments as a symptom of creeping senility. This, however, is not how the rabbi is viewed in the Zionist state.
Yosef’s letter to Mubarak, according to Haaretz, was hand-delivered by none other than Netanyahu himself, and apparently was followed up with a second letter sent at the urging of President Shimon Peres. The second letter was described by Haaretz as a “conciliatory message” following remarks made in August in which the rabbi reportedly called upon God to strike the Palestinians with a plague—here again, however, though he surely would be in much of the rest of the world, in Jerusalem this “greatest of teachers” is regarded as anything but deranged.
Peres holds “the honorable rabbi” to be a “center of peace seeking,” according to Ynet, while his letter to Mubarak is said to have been described by the president of Israel as “very important.” We are also told of some complimentary things the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Peres had to say about the stouthearted leader of Egypt, calling him a man who “stands firm in preventing wars and acting for peace.”
The suspect taken into custody, though not yet named, has been identified as a member of the Israeli Sayeret Matkal, or General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, which if true would be a major development. Sayeret Matkal is described by Wikipedia as “an elite special forces unit” whose main roles are “counter-terrorism, deep reconnaissance, and intelligence gathering.” What other Israeli involvement in the government crackdown may be at play would be difficult to say, but the Wednesday attack by Mubarak’s thugs resulted in at least six deaths, and now comes news of pro-government snipers being deployed on building tops in downtown Cairo.
The Haaretz report on the rabbi’s love letter to Mubarak mentions that the two are personal acquaintances, Yosef having “filled various positions in the Cairo rabbinate and religious courts between 1947 and 1950.” It does sound as if a true and longstanding bond of affection has arisen here, and one wonders if, in their private moments, Yosef may have embraced his donkey—maybe slipped him an apple core, or perhaps even a few sugar cubes.
In either event, Mubarak’s stall definitely needs to be shoveled out, though this is no simple matter. In their present uprising, the people of Egypt are struggling to throw off not only their own government, but the Israeli bridle, reins, and saddle that have been attached to it for more than three decades (a task Americans need to tend to as well). Perhaps it was a female Egyptian protester who said it best, during a live feed broadcast over Aljazeera yesterday: “We just want them (all people of Egypt) to live in dignity. We are fighting for them to live with dignity. Because we are not animals. What separates us from animals is that we have dignity.”
Moreover, it would appear that Peres and Netanyahu are rushing to the defense of their firm-standing donkey. Within the past week Israeli planes are reported to have landed at an Egyptian airport, offloading some delicious, high-grade alfalfa in the form of crowd-dispersal weapons, while this morning came news of the arrest of an alleged Israeli spy inside Egypt.
The Haaretz report on the rabbi’s love letter to Mubarak mentions that the two are personal acquaintances, Yosef having “filled various positions in the Cairo rabbinate and religious courts between 1947 and 1950.” It does sound as if a true and longstanding bond of affection has arisen here, and one wonders if, in their private moments, Yosef may have embraced his donkey—maybe slipped him an apple core, or perhaps even a few sugar cubes.
In either event, Mubarak’s stall definitely needs to be shoveled out, though this is no simple matter. In their present uprising, the people of Egypt are struggling to throw off not only their own government, but the Israeli bridle, reins, and saddle that have been attached to it for more than three decades (a task Americans need to tend to as well). Perhaps it was a female Egyptian protester who said it best, during a live feed broadcast over Aljazeera yesterday: “We just want them (all people of Egypt) to live in dignity. We are fighting for them to live with dignity. Because we are not animals. What separates us from animals is that we have dignity.”
Moreover, it would appear that Peres and Netanyahu are rushing to the defense of their firm-standing donkey. Within the past week Israeli planes are reported to have landed at an Egyptian airport, offloading some delicious, high-grade alfalfa in the form of crowd-dispersal weapons, while this morning came news of the arrest of an alleged Israeli spy inside Egypt.
I am a journalist, poet, peace activist, and, out of belief that the mustard seed cannot be watered with blood, also a vegetarian. Email me:
re@leftwing-christian.net"Camp David made us slaves" to Israel ...
"Protesters tell 'The Jerusalem Post' they don't feel Egypt is completely free of Israeli occupation, "Camp David made us a slave.".....
Salama’s friend Hazan Ahmed, 29, said the years of peace with Israel were tinged with the sting of humiliation, and that Egyptians still feel their country is not completely free of the Israeli occupation of Sinai that ended under Camp David.“The Egyptian army can’t enter Sinai, we feel that it is still Israel. There are Israeli people there all the time, but when we go, we have to stop at checkpoints and we get turned back. We don’t feel that Sinai is Egyptian ...yes, we have peace, but we have no dignity.”
Posted by G, Z, or B at 10:12 AM
Uprooted Palestinian
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