Readers of the Ithaca Journal in upstate New York opened their paper this weekend expecting another flowery article marking Mother’s Day. Instead, they got an anti-Israel diatribe that illustrates just how deeply this rhetoric has seeped into the fabric of some communities and local media.In an opinion column, Sandy Wold urges fellow mothers to follow her introspective, ‘enlightened’ path to self-realization and parenting. Wold is particularly concerned with the problem of ‘victimhood’, offering up this example:
Most people get stuck in the victim role, however. On the global scale, for example, Zionist Jews in Israel have occupied Palestinian land in the name of God and victimhood. If anyone criticizes Israel for their terrorist attacks and slaughter of the Palestinians, they are immediately labeled “anti-Semitic” and guilt-inflicted for the Holocaust without any regard for Palestinian suffering. In response, the United States and United Nations fall into a co-dependent behavior of acquiescence and collusion.
This demonization of Israel and offhand treatment of the Holocaust is all the more disturbing given the author’s self-description from her website, Healing The Goddess:
The armor I used to carry in my body has melted away. I am more open, kind, loving, and patient than ever before… only now it is predominantly effortless and abundant.
Yet Wold’s ‘abundant love’ ends very abruptly at Israel, which receives the brunt of her not-so-warm Mother’s Day greeting.
Comments to Ithaca Journal: click here
[UPDATE 5/9: Sandy Wold has sent an apology to HR subscribers – view it here.]
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Wold’s Ithaca Journal article is actually part of a larger trend from the New Age ‘Goddess’ movement ? blaming Israel for Mother Earth’s woes.
One of the most popular gurus of this ostensibly peace-loving theology is a woman who goes by the name ‘Starhawk’. Starhawk (pictured), the author of ten books on ‘earth-based spirituality’, consistently attacks Israel in print as sadistic ‘colonizers’ who impose ‘racist policies’ against Palestinians, including the ‘apartheid wall’. Starhawk has an entire section of her website devoted to her anti-Israel essays, which rationalize Palestinian terror as ‘armed resistance’.
Starhawk is also a spiritual mentor for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) of Rachel Corrie fame, a ‘peace organization’ whose primary activities have included protecting Palestinian terrorists from the IDF. [See responses to a new London play dedicated to Corrie.]
Goddess movement authors such as Starhawk and Sandy Wold currently represent a fringe community, but as mainstream publications are receptive to their articles, HonestReporting encourages subscribers to be aware of this movement and the role Israel-bashing plays in its ideology.
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.
HonestReporting
