West of Eden: A Pax on Both Their Houses

AFSC workers pass out blankets in Gaza, 1948. Via Rabbi Brant Rosen.

On November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day! When Britons celebrate the defeat exactly 410 years ago of the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy of disaffected English Catholics to blow up the Parliament and destroy England's ancient liberties, hoping to turn that green and pleasant isle over to the tyranny of the Pope, those were the days huh), Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by two fellows of the Middle East Forum, Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky, under the title "The Quakers, No Friends of Israel".

You should have seen the version they ran at their own shop (Middle East Forum: Promoting American Interests, the wingnut-welfare home of fascist Arab-hater Daniel Pipes and his odious crew), where the headline, under the runninghead "MEF Research and Writing", ran, in red,

The Quaker War on Israel

What it's about, of course, is the participation of the Friends in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, give full civil rights to Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and respect (not necessarily implement) the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes.

Or, as Joffe and Romirowsky put it, launching into the propaganda tone right away,