Cambridge City Hall -- A fake but accurate photo.

• "Some U.S. citizens travel with an unconscious attitude of superiority"
• "Being openly gay or lesbian is outside the cultural norms of Palestinian life..."
• "It is best that you not raise the issue of being gay or lesbian with Palestinians.."
• "It's best not to practice your Hebrew with Palestinians even if someone uses it with you."
• "It is better not to wear a kippah or yarmulke in Palestinian communities. Again, while our hosts are glad to meet Israelis and Jews, there are many eyes and ears watching for collaborators."
• "Israeli settlers and soldiers disguise themselves (as tourists or Palestinians) and also enter Palestinian areas boldly without disguise."
• "If a host gives you a kuffiya (traditional Palestinian headdress for men) or other clothes to wear, it is a good idea to put them on. It will help you blend in with the community, which may be important for local security. It communicates that you belong."

The above "travel tips" were used in orientation sessions¹ for The City of Cambridge Peace Commission as part of their official mission to Bethlehem last winter. Working closely with the Cambridge to Bethlehem People to People committee, The Peace Commission's solidarity mission was given a rousing sendoff by every member of the Cambridge [Massachusetts] City Council last November.

Not every municipality in this country is fortunate enough to have a Peace Commission, but, thanks to the foresight of the ever-Progressive archons of correctness, Cambridge crafted their agency more than 25 years ago to defend its citizens from the ravages of nuclear war. And so, while the rest of us wrong-thinking retrogrades are becoming toast on Massachusetts Avenue after the Big One drops, the enlightened citizens of Cambridge will survive to bond with revolutionaries from Nicaragua to Gaza.

The not-so-wide-ranging Peace Commission routinely hosts Arab and Muslim speakers who have extolled the "golden era" in Iraq under the communist period (1957-1963) and who attribute honor killings of Iraqi women to the U.S. occupation!

The Cambridge Peace Commission has never hosted an event to benefit the victims of genocide in Darfur, whose victims of Arab aggression now number in the hundreds of thousands. The killings and rapes in that region, arguably, the greatest crime against humanity perpetrated in the last decade, it would seem, holds no interest for the high-minded Peace Commissioners. Repeated attempts to contact Ms. Hoffman by the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur went unanswered. Finally, a coalition director was told that his suggestions for an event would be passed on to the new director. Don't hold your breath.

For the past few months, Freedom of Information Act requests for material from said Peace Commission have produced a wealth of embarrassing minutes, memos and emails from the peace folks. For example, in spite of their ad nauseam protestations that the mission to Bethlehem was merely a "people to people" trip with absolutely no political motives, we found the following directive from the Peace Commission:

"It carries great weight to be able to say, "I've seen with my own eyes the suffering that the Israeli occupation causes. Our government's support for it compounds it."²

A bit further on, we find:

"With care and permission, photos of the effects of the occupation are good; a family standing in front of its bulldozed house; people who have been hurt, etc."³

So much for the "apolitical" pilgrimage to the West Bank.

Care to guess how much time the "internationals" spent in beleaguered Sderot suffering under a daily rain of rockets and mortars? Don't blink.

In spite of the distance that Cathy Hoffman, the Peace Commission's Director, attempted to put between the mission and her agency, there was no hiding the fact that she provided city hall facilities and guidance for the trip. Nearly all meetings of the mission were held at City Hall with Ms. Hoffman and a number of agency commissioners present.

Cathy Hoffman

During one such meeting (which, by Massachusetts statute, can be freely attended by any member of the public), commission members demanded that the public be ejected. It would seem that the watchdogs of public access are allergic to sunlight when it involves their own deliberations. A complaint over such violations is currently pending before the Massachusetts District Attorney's office. It was no surprise that one of those demanding that the public be barred was one John Roberts, past director of the Massachusetts ACLU.

Another member of the Cambridge to Bethlehem group, Eva S. Moseley, retired Harvard archivist, routinely excoriates Israel for oppressing Palestinians. Ms. Moseley gets trotted out by the Peace Commission when they need a "Holocaust survivor" to lambaste Israel. When asked what involvement, if any, she had with the Jewish community in Boston, she remained uncharacteristically silent. Ms. (Steiner) Moseley left Vienna in 1939. Thankfully, none of her family perished. In a shockingly unguarded moment, she wrote the following email to her comrades at the Peace Commission:

"I can do my "I escaped from Nazi Vienna and am unhappy with what Israel does" schtick, if you think that would help."⁴

The "help", of course, meant any and all means of demonizing her "fellow" Jews in Israel.

Further research revealed the showcased "Holocaust survivor" to be an avid supporter of Hezbollah flack and crackpot, Norman Finkelstein⁵, and to have celebrated her granddaughter's conversion to Islam⁶ (who, in turn, celebrated her Jewish heritage by working for the notorious Jihadist organization, The Council on American Islamic Relations - CAIR, many members of which have been convicted of terrorist activities).

Next Time: Part II: Little Town of Bethlehem.

Footnotes:

¹ Freedom of Information response: p. 000143

² Ibid, p. 000145

³ Ibid, p. 000147

⁴ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bethlehem2006/message/443

⁵   21 October 2005

Dear Professor Finkelstein:

Having recently (and at long last) read The Holocaust Industry, I wanted to thank you for your research and your insights, and to tell you that there is one more Jew who appreciates that book.

My parents, brother, and I were able to leave Vienna in 1939 because my mother (who had left Russia with her mother and siblings after the 1905 pogroms) had rich relatives in New York. So I'm one of the lucky few who escaped and, because I was only six at the time of the Anschluss, escaped virtually all the trauma as well. A few years ago I agreed, with some mixed feelings, to read something I'd written about that time at the annual Holocaust commemoration in Cambridge. When I saw the program, I protested being billed as a "survivor." To me that term designates someone who was in mortal danger for all or much of the war--in the camps, in the forest, in a gentile attic or cellar, or at least, like two of my uncles, in the Shanghai ghetto. Other Jews assured me that the term includes people like me, but I still think that's wrong and was glad to see that you agree. It is one small instance of exaggerated Jewish self-pity and exceptionalism. Evidently there are some who never suffered for being Jewish but feel they have just because "our people" did.

Like you, I seem to be a misfit in another respect. One friend, who had been self- conscious about his big nose and anxious to "pass" among the gentiles, after the 1967 war said, "Maybe being a Jew is not so bad after all." And even my mother, who could at times be very wise, at that point said something rather inane about Jews' moral superiority. What struck me, as words such as chutzpah and nosh became trendy among non-Jews, was that we had become fashionable when Israel proved that Jews could fly fighter planes and bomb villages just like everyone else. Hardly moral superiority. Just normal human cruelty, once Jews had a piece of real estate to defend and expand. Sincerely,

Eva S. Moseley

⁶   List of donors to "Replanting as an Act of Resistance" campaign:

"In honor of Katelin Mason, my granddaughter, who is both Jewish and Muslim! Jewish by inheritance, Muslim by choice." Eva S. Moseley

Katelin is planning further Islamic study in that garden of progressivism - Iran.