Tag Archive for: Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein

Does Obama’s Presidential Directive Mandate Outreach to Islamists?

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Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council State Department 1-1-27-15(1)

Waleed Sharaby, Secretary General of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council Flashes Rabia MB resistance sign. U.S. State Department Jan. 27, 2015 Source: Facebook screenshot.

Our NER colleague Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein has called Obama, “the most radical American President, ever”. That was in an interview we conducted with him in 2010 that went viral on YouTube. One of the reasons for Dr. Rubenstein’s assessment was the extent to which the President had surrounded himself with like minded senior staff and advisers who condoned outreach to the Muslim Ummah. That was evident early in his first Administration given a trip to Ankara in April 2009, followed by his address at Cairo University in June where he declared a new foreign policy accommodating the concept of Islamist Democracy.  Dr. Rubenstein’s major book on Jihad and Genocide elucidated the anti-Democratic underpinning of Qur’anic doctrine.  Especially concerning him were the Muslim Brotherhood and derivatives, Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Shia Mahdist apocalyptic doctrine espoused by the Islamic Regime in Iran.  A revolutionary Islamist regime bent on achieving nuclear hegemony and possible destruction of Israel.  He also ascribed the President’s willingness to accommodate these views because of his early introduction to Islam as the adopted son of an Indonesian oil executive in his late mother’s second marriage. Rubenstein’s prescient analysis depicted President Obama accommodating Islamist movements as a peculiar form of demopathy, using both violent and civilizational jihad.  That is reflected in his Presidential Policy and Study Directives.

Dan Greenfield  delved into the underpinnings of the Obama radical accommodation of Islamism in a Frontpage Magazine article published on June 8, 2015 entitled, “Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan”:

Directive 11 brought together activists and operatives at multiple agencies to come up with a “tailored” approach for regime change in each country. The goal was to “manage” the political transitions. It tossed aside American national security interests by insisting that Islamist regimes would be equally committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel. Its greatest gymnastic feat may have been arguing that the best way to achieve political stability in the region was through regime change.

What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Egypt fell to the Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Iran, before being undone by a counterrevolution. Yemen is currently controlled by Iran’s Houthi terrorists and Al Qaeda.

We have witnessed what the secretive Presidential Directive 11 has achieved in public and private meetings with radical Muslim Brotherhood clerics and leaders, both during and following the Arab Spring revolt in these countries from 2010 to the present. To facilitate the objectives of Directive 11 Obama had brought onto his White House and Department staffs members of MB affiliates in the US. He also reached out to academic centers promoting the views that there were “good Islamists”. Groups like the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy  at Georgetown University, headed by Prof. John Esposito, funded in part by the State Department.  After a New York Federal Appeals court decision in 2009, the Administration lifted a visa ban inviting Oxford University Professor Tariq Ramadan, a grandson of the founder of the MB, Hassan al Banna, to participate in CSID forums and take an endowed Chair at Notre Dame University.

Egypt elected in June 2012 an Islamist government headed by former Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi that sought to impose Sharia law on the Constitution. The Morsi government stealthily backed MB jihad pogroms against the Coptic Christian minority burning churches, destroying businesses, murdering men, raping and forcing conversion on female victims.  Ironically, Morsi’s Defense Minister, Col. Gen. Abdel Fattah Al- Sisi rejected Islamism and led a coup on July 3, 2013 jailing and prosecuting hundreds of Muslim Brother leaders including Morsi.  Many of whom, including Morsi are now awaiting possible death sentences for a massive jail break that freed them in January 2011.  Al Sisi in a dramatic January 2015 speech at Al Azhar University raised the matter of reform of Qur’an doctrine before an audience composed of leading Sunni clerics at Al Azhar University in Cairo.  Despite this Egyptian counter-revolution both the US National  Security Staff and State Department  invited former Muslim Brotherhood  Morsi regime political figures and clerics to assist in developing ‘messaging’ to contend with  Al Qaeda,  its affiliates and the self-declared  Islamic  State. We wrote about those instances in NER articles and Iconoclast blogs. What follows are the latest episodes arising from Obama’s Presidential Directive 11.  One concerns the withdrawal of funding of a US backed program seeking to create an alternative Shia civil polity to Iranian proxy Hezbollah that dominates Lebanon.  The other concerns the kerfuffle surrounding meetings of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in both January 2015 at the State Department and private meetings at the CSID in Washington this June.

U.S. withdrew aid to Lebanese Shia NGO seeking to extricate them from the clutches of Hezbollah. 

Lebanon next door to Israel appears to be dominated by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah that has infiltrated the country’s military.  This is a disheartening failure in the wake of the 2005 Cedars Revolution in Lebanon prompted by the assassination of Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Hariri was assassinated by Syrian intelligence agents of the Assad régime.  With the plummeting Christian population in Lebanon, demise of the former Amal Shia militia, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah filled the vacuum backed with hundreds of millions of dollars of annual support from Iran. An Iran that delivered hundreds of thousands of weapons, coupled with North Korean expertise building tunnels and fortifications in Sothern Lebanon. Nasrallah’s recklessness triggered the Second Lebanon War in 2006 with the abduction and murder of two Israeli IDF reservists.

Despite Hezbollah’s control over Lebanon there had been a limited US program seeking to arouse Shia opposition to Hezbollah through the auspices of the State Department funded International Republican Institute (IRI), chaired by US. Senator John McCain, (R-AZ).  IRI, like the International Democratic Institute counterpart, seeks to advance democracy abroad.  Both Institutes are outgrowths of the successful program in the 1980s that toppled the Polish Communist regime with church and Solidarity Movement support.  Unfortunately, in the wake of the Arab Spring  both Institutes had  been involved in training  candidates for the predominately Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist dominated Egyptian parliament elected  with now  ousted  President  Mohammed Morsi  in June 2012.  They were subsequently purged when the Morsi regime was overthrown a year later in July 2013 in a coup led by now Egyptian President Al-Sisi.

The Lebanese anti-Nasrallah Hayya Bina Shia program, funded by the IRI, lost US funding that it had received since 2007. According to the Wall Street Journal, it received $640,000 between June 2013 and December 2015.  The IRI notified Hayya Bina director Lokman Slim in April 2015 that the Obama Administration was terminating its support for the program.  The letter Slim received from the IRI read, “the State Department requests that all activities intended [to] foster an independent moderate Shia voice be ceased immediately and indefinitely”.  Could it be that as Obama moves closer to Iran and its proxy Hezbollah given the looming P5+1 nuclear agreement, that it will brook no local dissent in Lebanon among the Shia?  That should not be surprising.  Obama’s Middle East policy czar, Robert Malley, during his stint at the Soros-funded International Crisis Group held discussions with Hezbollah. Despite the later being on the State Department list of designated terrorist organizations.

Egypt objects to continuing Muslim Brotherhood Washington visits with U.S. officials

The Egyptian government has been angered by continued meetings of former Muslim Brotherhood leaders with State Department funded groups and, in some instances, with White House National Security staff.   In January 2015, the State Department hosted a visiting delegation of Muslim Brotherhood leaders from the former Morsi government.  Prior to and following his ouster, the White House National Security team and the State Department met with Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood clerics and legislator who was a former terrorist.

On June 8, 2015 the Egyptian foreign ministry requested an audience with US Ambassador to Cairo R. Stephen Beecroft  to express concern and outrage at the visit of another Muslim Brotherhood delegation to Washington.    State Department Jeff Rathke  spokesperson  was peppered  with  questions by  journalists at  Daily Press Briefings on both June 9th and 10th, about the Cairo foreign ministry  meetings with Ambassador Beecroft  and private meetings in Washington  at  the (CSID).  Rathke responded to one such question saying:

Well, again, we’ve met with this group in the past. We haven’t changed our policy. We will continue to meet with groups across the political spectrum. No – but we don’t have any plans to meet with this group at this particular time.

Watch this C-Span video clip of a June 9, 2015 State Department Daily Press Briefing with Press Spokesman Jeff Rathke in an exchange with journalists:

John Rossomando in an Investigative Project on Terrorism article noted the members of the Muslim Brotherhood delegation and the involvement of the CSID:

Egypt sought the recent meeting with Ambassador Stephen Beecroft to show its displeasure with American policy toward the Brotherhood, which it labels a terrorist organization.

Delegation members include Amr Darrag, whose handling of drafting and ratifying Egypt’s December 2012 constitution led to fears the Brotherhood aimed to impose a theocracy; and Wael Haddara, a Canadian Brotherhood member who served as an adviser to deposed President Mohamed Morsi.

Referencing the earlier January meetings, the IPT article noted:

Emails obtained by Middle East Briefing, a publication of the Dubai-based Orient Advisory Group, show that since 2010, Obama administration policy sought to support the Muslim Brotherhood under Presidential Study Directive 11.

State Department and White House officials met in January with a Muslim Brotherhood delegation whose trip had been partly funded by the Brotherhood-linked group Egyptian Americans for Freedom and Justice (EAFJ). EAFJ leader Mahmoud El Sharkawy is a member of the Brotherhood’s international organization and serves as liaison between his group and Brotherhood members exiled in Turkey, Egypt’s Al-Bawaba newspaper reported in April.

Former State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki downplayed the visit and denied it was a Brotherhood delegation, saying it was a delegation of former Egyptian parliamentarians which included members of the Freedom and Justice Party. Delegation member Waleed Sharaby said in a February interview with Egypt’s Mekameleen TV that the State Department agreed with their position that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi had not brought stability and that his removal would pave the way for a transition to democracy.

Conclusion:

President Obama, Robert Malley, and State Department Assistant Secretary for Near East Policy, former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson, have led this country dangerously astray believing there are ‘good Islamists’ like the Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s proxies. By extension that would include the Islamic Republic of Iran on the verge of becoming a nuclear hegemon. This has jeopardized relations with valued allies in the region, Israel, the Kurds in Iraq, Sunni members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Egyptian Al Sisi government. Is this part of a radical plan by the President to insinuate Islamic theocratic doctrine upending Judeo Christian values at the core of our Constitution?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Pope Francis Commemorates 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide — “The first of the 20th Century”

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Turk_official_teasing_Armenian_starved_children_by_showing_bread,_1915_(Collection_of_St._Lazar_Mkhitarian_Congregation)

Turkish official teasing starved Armenian children by showing bread during the Armenian Genocide, 1915.

Pope Francis chose this Sunday to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by the Young Turks of the waning Ottoman Empire.  He called it the first genocide of the 20th Century”. The AP reported, that Turkish President Erdogan called “hateful “and “unacceptable.”  He immediately ordered the recall of their Ambassador to the Holy See and had the Foreign Minister invite in the Papal Ambassador.  The AP wrote:

Pope Francis on Sunday called the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks “the first genocide of the 20th century” and urged the international community to recognize it as such, sparking a diplomatic rift with Turkey at a delicate time in Christian-Muslim relations.

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian, who was on hand to mark the 100th anniversary of the slaughter at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, praised the pope for calling a spade a spade in an interview with The Associated Press. But Turkey, which has long denied genocide took place, recalled its ambassador to the Holy See in protest.

“The pope’s statement, which is far from historic and legal truths, is unacceptable,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted. “Religious positions are not places where unfounded claims are made and hatred is stirred.”

Francis, who has close ties to the Armenian community from his days in Argentina, defended his pronouncement by saying it was his duty to honor the memory of the innocent men, women and children who were “senselessly” murdered by Ottoman Turks.

“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” he said at the start of a Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite honoring the centenary.

In a subsequent message directed to all Armenians, Francis called on all heads of state and international organizations to recognize the truth of what transpired to prevent such “horrors” from happening again, and to oppose such crimes “without ceding to ambiguity or compromise.”

[…]

Turkey’s embassy to the Holy See canceled a planned news conference for Sunday, presumably after learning that the pope would utter the word “genocide” over its objections. Instead, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara summoned the Vatican’s envoy, and then announced it was recalling its own ambassador to the Vatican for consultations.

In a statement, it said the Turkish people would not recognize the pope’s statement “which is controversial in every aspect, which is based on prejudice, which distorts history and reduces the pains suffered in Anatolia under the conditions of the First World War to members of just one religion.”

ravished armeniaOur NER colleague, Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein wrote a chronicle of the Ottoman pogroms and genocides perpetrated  against the Armenians in the late 19th Century and during World War I,  “The Armenian Genocide as Jihad”  (January 2015). Dr. Rubenstein is the author of seminal works about the Holocaust and more recently, Jihad and Genocide.   Rubenstein’s opening stanza of his article recalls the appalling depredations wreaked by Turkish and Kurdish auxiliaries:

There is a 1919 silent film about the Armenian genocide, “Ravished Armenia,” originally produced in Hollywood using Turkish documentary footage. It was based on a book by a survivor, Aurora Mardiganian, who also starred in the production. The film originally consisted of nine reels, most of which have been lost. Recently, a twenty-minute clip was found that contains brief scenes of many of the incidents that took place during the genocide.1

Although low-definition, there is one terrible scene toward the end of the clip that is especially difficult to watch. Seldom, if ever, have I viewed a film scene that matches this one in sadistic obscenity. It is a crucifixion scene, but unlike Christian images of Christ on the cross that express symbolically the triumph of eternal life over evanescent human pain, this film’s crucifixion scene carried a very different symbolic meaning. There are eight crosses in a row to which are nailed eight naked, young Armenian women. After the film offers a panoramic view of all of the crosses and their victims, it focuses on a single sufferer. Nailed to the cross, she is helplessly alive. One could tell by her eyes and facial movements that her cognitive functions were unimpaired as she awaited the painful doom of her crucifixion.

The terrible scenes of the deportations, confiscations, sadistic brutality, rapine, outright murder of helpless Armenians, and the crucifixion of the Armenian maidens could not have been filmed without the involvement and consent of Turkish authorities.

The perpetrators took the most sacred symbol of Christendom and turned it into a blasphemous obscenity, symbolically proclaiming absolute Muslim dominance. Nevertheless, something else was involved: women are the child bearers. Their wombs carry the next generation. No words were necessary. The message was clear: “We express our utter contempt for you and your religion. We intend to destroy your future. You have no human rights. We can do with you whatever we wish.”

Nevertheless, shortly after the film was released, Turks apparently had second thoughts about what could be made available publically. Since then, for almost a century, Turkish governments have vehemently rejected the charge that Turks committed genocide against the Armenians. The most Turks have been willing to acknowledge is that both the Turks and Armenians inflicted wartime harm on each other, thereby arguing for moral equivalence between Turkish genocidal violence and rare instances of Armenian defensive action. Admitting that there were massacres, Turkish authorities have insisted that the number of Armenians killed has nevertheless been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, in spite of the publication of a host of well-documented eye-witness reports and testimonies, Turkish governments have used their diplomatic influence to prevent governments, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and others, from taking any action that would validate the Armenian claim that a nearly successful attempt to exterminate the Armenians of the Ottoman empire took place during the first World War.

In view of the fact that post-war German governments have acknowledged the role of National Socialist Germany in planning and implementing the extermination of Europe’s Jews, why have successive Turkish governments refuse to tread a similar path with regard to the Armenian victims?

[…]

This suggestion is in accord with the first words in Vahakn N. Dadrian’s magisterial study of the Armenian genocides. Dadrian begins: “As a first step toward a full analysis of the nationality conflicts [in the Ottoman Empire], it is necessary to examine Islam as a major determinant in the genesis and escalation of these conflicts.”

Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Senior

Henry Morgenthau, Senior

The massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in the midst of WWI was largely met with indifference by the Christian world.  The exception was the American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief, now Near East Foundation that created refugee centers for Armenia orphan children. This despite information provided conveyed to the U.S. Statement Department by the American Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Henry Morgenthau, Senior. President’s Wilson Jewish appointee who served in that post during the period from 1913 until his resignation in 1916. He   wrote a personal account in Ambassador’s Story, about his confrontation with Ottoman officials over eye witness reports he received from Consuls in Van and Aleppo of the heinous crimes committed by Turkish and Kurdish forces. those reports to his friend Aldolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times.  His book has graphic photographs of the devastation wreaked upon the country’s Armenian minority.   Morgenthau also noted the indifference of the German Ambassador an ally of the Ottoman Turks during this great slaughter.  In a 1915 telegram to the US State Department, Morgenthau “described the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a “campaign of race extermination.”  In his book. Morgenthau wrote:

The real purpose of the deportation was robbery and destruction; it really represented a new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.  Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story pg. 309.

Ambassador_Morgenthau's_Story_By_Henry_MorgenthauAs noted by Dr. Rubenstein, this first genocide of the 20th Century was used by Hitler as justification for the Final Solution for the murder in unspeakable ways of six million European Jewish men, women and children.  The depredations committed against Jews during the Shoah were not dissimilar from the outrages perpetrated on Armenian throughout the Ottoman Empire, although with an important difference- the organization of a network of slave labor and death camps using technology.  The reports of the Armenian slaughter look eerily similar to those of the Islamic State against Orthodox and Assyrian Christians in both Syria and Iraq 100 years later.  During WWII it was left to the Ambassador’s son, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. ,President Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary , who with his able staff , brought about  the creation of the War Refugee Board (WRB)  to save an estimated 250,000 Jews who fell into allied hands. The WRB enlisted the aid of Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg and others in the diplomatic community that used funds for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee  to safe house 90,000 Hungarian Jews in Budapest.

100 years after the Armenian Genocide Islamist President Erdogan perpetuates official amnesia conveying it as hateful to Turkish nationalism, when in fact it was a Jihad perpetrated by reformer predecessors of the Young Turks, Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha.

Hitler, who admired Islam and Jihad, used the Turkish destruction of Armenians as the model for the Holocaust against the hated infidel Jews.  He reportedly  told his friend, the German Muslim convert Ached Huber, “The only religion I respect is Islam. The only prophet I admire is the Prophet Muhammad.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The below video is the 1919 film RAVISHED ARMENIA , the original movie was also known as  the Auction of Souls:

The following poster shows graphically what happened then and what is happening now to Christians in the Middle East. History tends to repeat itself…

armenian genocide girls crusified

GOP Candidate for Missouri Governor is a Ex-Navy SEAL, Rhodes Scholar and Jewish

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Eric Greitens threw  his hat in the ring  this week announcing his run for the GOP  nomination in the 2016 Governor race in Missouri reported  the JTA/Forward Jewish Ex Navy Seal Decides to Run For Missouri Governor. This  follows the apparent suicide of a leading candidate, Tom Schweich, State Auditor. Greitens  is as Rhodes Scholar, National Humanitarian award winner and author of the New York Times best-selling book, The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL.

A  Jewish Telegraph Agency profile of Greitens noted his  background and accomplishments:

Greitens, 40, is a former Navy SEAL, the recipient of seven military awards (including a bronze star and a purple heart), a former Rhodes Scholar and the founder of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps veterans integrate themselves back into their communities through volunteer work. He served in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. His fourth book, “Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life,” published earlier this month, is a collection of inspirational letters to a fellow Navy SEAL struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Greitens  is a unusual American Jew. Ex-Navy Seal, Rhodes Scholar, Reform Congregation Member, well published author now running for the GOP nomination for Governor in Missouri. A Missouri torn by sectarian warfare over alleged racism in Ferguson and St. Louis County. Let’s hope that he wins the GOP primary for Governor in Missouri. His announced candidacy follows in the wake of the controversy surrounding the  apparent suicide in Mid-February  of respected  Republican State Auditor, Tom Schweich.  Just before suicide, Missouri politician fretted about rumors he was Jewish, amidst  a  whispering anti-Semitic campaign aimed at knocking him out of contention. Tom Schweich, had Jewish origins- his grandfather. Schweich was an Episcopalian.

The Forward reported:

Tom Schweich committed suicide right before he was supposed to file a complaint against another political figure, John Hancock, for spreading that he was Jewish in attempts to hurt his candidacy.

Just two days before the suicide, ex-navy seal Eric Greitens launched an exploratory committee to raise funds for the governor race. He has already obtained $400,000 for the GOP primary,

Although it is expected that he will run, Greitens has refused to give the public any details about his stance. He has declined requests on why he is running, what issues he wishes to tackle and the issues Missouri residents are concerned about.

These pressing topics include abortion rights, the state’s financial crisis and of course the Black Lives Matter movement that has been taking place in Ferguson, Missouri due to a young black man being shot by a police officer.

“Unfortunately Eric isn’t doing political interviews at this time,” said Greitens’ press officer, Adam Miller, when pressed on this. Miller indicated that the Navy SEAL, who has not yet officially declared his candidacy, was more focused right now on his promoting his book.

In his interview, Greitens was willing to go on the record with a clear statement about his religion. “I’m proud to be Jewish,” he told the Forward.

As to the controversy surrounding the  allegations of  a rumored anti-Semitic campaign against Schweich, the Forward noted:

Hancock, the chairman of the Missouri State Republican Committee, has admitted that he was one of those who had stated that Schweich was Jewish, but that it wasn’t supposed to be malicious

Though, former Republican U.S. Senator John Danforth, a dean of Missouri state politics, refuted that statement. Richard Fox, a Jewish donor to the Republican party in Missouri, has insisted that Hancock resign for his comments.

But Greitens declined to say whether Hancock should give up his position as chairman of the Missouri GOP. “Before I would make that determination I would want to talk with John Hancock and I would want to know more about what these accusations are,” he said.

As for allegations of anti-Semitism, Hancock said it was as simple as saying “I’m a Presbyterian and somebody else is Catholic,” but that it was intended to hurt anyone.

At least one Republican donor did not interpret it innocuously. In a sworn affidavit, David Humphreys said he understood Hancock to mean “that being Jewish is a negative attribute for Tom Schweich’s gubernatorial race.”

However, a detective involved in the police investigation of the suicide told the Associated Press that “we have not been able to prove that there was a whispering campaign.”

Greitens responded:

“It certainly could be that there are prejudices around,” said Greitens, the honest-to-goodness Jewish GOP gubernatorial candidate. “I can only speak to what I have lived, and I have experienced that people have been incredibly welcoming to me as a Jewish Republican.”

“There is no room for anti-Semitism in the Republican Party,” Greitens insisted, “and the leaders need to show that.”

We know from the deadly April 2014  attack , in adjacent Overland Park, Kansas  that Missouri harbors some anti-Semitic extremists. 

See our Iconoclast post, UPDATED: Blind Hate Cuts Down Three Lives at Kansas City Jewish Complex. The Kansas City metro area is also home to some anti-Semitic Muslims as well. Witness MD ‘rabbi’ Alam , a Bangladeshi Muslim émigré, who served in the U.S. Army to gain his citizenship, an anti- Semitic 9/11 ‘truther ‘who ran for the Secretary of State in Missouri in 2012 saying, “Not a Single Jew killed on 9/11”.

Our colleague Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, noted theologian and widely published author, commented about the difference between Schweich and Greitens:

It’s a pity and a waste that Schweich took his own life, but I would guess that he saw his conversion to Christianity as a way of escape. When the escape failed, he took his own life, I can’t blame Senator Danforth, but I would guess that Danforth had only a limited understanding of the psychological and cultural elements involved in religious identity. If Schweich had simply declared, “Yes, I have Jewish roots. That’s who I am. He might have retained his dignity and self-respect even if he lost the race  but he would have saved his life and his dignity. Win or lose, the former Navy Seal will never lose either his dignity or his self respect.

Greitens has something else in his stead for Missouri voters. He served his country with honor and distinction in combat. That  was grounded in his Jewish faith, the bedrock of American Judeo-Christian values.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Eric Greitens: “What’s beautiful about the military is that it’s probably the most well integrated institution on the planet.” ( Photo: Chloe Crespi)

VIDEO: ‘Obama is the most radical President ever’

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Thursday evening, a retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel approached me and asked if I had interviewed a soft-spoken professor. He had viewed a YouTube video that had been sent to him from a Facebook page. I smiled and told him, that the person he referred to in YouTube video was Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, a contributing editor and esteemed colleague at the New English Review.

I also explained that Dr. Rubenstein is a noted Jewish theologian, an ordained Rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Rubenstein also holds a Master in Theology (S.T.M.) from Harvard Divinity School and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard University in History and Philosophy of Religion. Further, he is a Lawton Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religion at Florida State University where he taught for 25 years and is a President Emeritus and Life Trustee of Bridgeport University in Connecticut.

I further explained to my  friend that  Dr. Rubenstein  is the author of seminal works concerned with the aftermath of the holocaust, After Auschwitz; History, Theology and Contemporary Judaism,  and history of surplus populations, The Cunning of History. Of increasing importance is Dr. Rubenstein’s, Jihad and Genocide that presents a stark warning to co-religionists and all Infidels of their fate under the Qur’anic doctrine and Islamic Shariah law. More about Dr. Rubenstein’s several careers, lengthy publications list and honorary degrees can be found here.  Dr. Rubenstein recently celebrated his 91st birthday in January 2015. He lost his beloved wife and guiding light, Dr.  Betty Rogers Rubenstein, after 47 years of marriage in 2013.

The video my friend referred to was one of a series of interviews we did at the 2010 NER Symposium with the able assistance of a team from The United West, J. Mark Campbell and Alan Kornman, fellow counter-jihad activists.  Samples of their fine work during the 2010 NER Symposium can be found here. When the YouTube video of Dr. Rubenstein’s interview and provocative comments about President Obama were posted back in 2010, it literally went viral, reaching over a million hits within a few weeks.

My curiosity about my friend’s comments about Dr. Rubenstein’s 2010 interview prompted me to do a Google search.  After finding the Facebook page he referred to I noted the tens of thousands of views it had recently received. Dr. Rubenstein’s comments about President Obama were prescient in retrospect when he first made them in 2010. They are relevant given the myopia on display by the National Security echelons in the Oval Office and the President’s recent press conference remarks.

Criticism has arisen with the President’s referring in a Vox.com interview to “randomized attacks” against unidentified Jewish victims at a kosher supermarket in Paris. Then there is  the public consternation over  the lack of a strategy  that begs the necessity  of defining the nature of the threat  to “degrade and defeat” the Islamic State that lies bestride  war torn Syria and Iraq like a Jihadist colossus. An Islamic State that has attracted tens of thousands of foreign Jihadists flocking to its doctrinal cause of promoting the Salafist exemplar, the Prophet Mohammed of 14 Centuries ago.   That is following the way of Allah, Jihad, seeking ultimate Islamic domination of the globe by slaughtering thousands of religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Buddhists as captives in the Middle East and attacking hapless victims in the West.

Watch Dr. Rubenstein’s prescient NER interview of 2010:

EDITORS NOTE: This column and video originally appeared in the New English Review.

J-Street: Dividing the Jewish community’s support for Israel?

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On Monday night of Presidents’ Weekend, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) premiered a new film, The J Street Challenge, to an audience of 400 at a theater in Miami Beach. It is the latest in a series of provocative films by Avi Goldwasser and Charles Jacobs.

These films include: Columbia Unbecoming, about intimidation of Jewish students by pro-Palestinian faculty at an elite university; Northeastern Unbecoming, a documentary about the hostility to Israel and Jews on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/HK0DRnbUziw[/youtube]

… and the award-winning film The Forgotten Refugees – which explores the history, culture, and forced exodus of over 900,000 Jews from Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities in the second half of the 20th century:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KH8RL2XRr48[/youtube]

Watch the trailer for  The  J Street Challenge here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDEFGH[/youtube]

The J Street Challenge makes effective use of  J Street video, direct interviews with notable critics and archival footage, removing  the mask from the face of J Street leader Jeremy Ben Ami. The film graphically shows the perfidy of J Street’s alleged “pro Israel” messaging versus its actions. The takeaway from watching this film is that J Street is misleading Jewish students on college campuses about its real intention — the isolation of the Jewish state. In her Arutz Sheva Israel National News film review, Phyllis Chesler, commented:

Jeremy Ben-Ami may be a far more dangerous and morally problematic traitor to his people than were any of the Judenrat leaders during the Shoah. I say this because no one is threatening Ben-Ami with imminent death (each kapo and judenrat leader was death threatened while in captivity). Ben Ami lives in the United States and is a free man.

Yet, in classic Orwellian style, he presents his organization as both “pro-peace” and “pro-Israel” when he is neither. He condemns Israel at every turn and he does so in an era when Israel is under existential siege and a Second Holocaust is fully underway in slow motion. Jews are being blamed for and physically attacked outside of Israel because of Israel’s alleged “apartheid” and “occupation” policies. Israeli civilians are also being attacked—blown up, knifed—inside Israel proper.

The war against the Jews and the Jewish state rages on as never before at the United Nations, the European Union, among intellectuals and academics, on campuses, and within international human rights organizations. The Big Lies and filthy propaganda may be found 24/7 on the internet and in well-made documentaries as well as in prize-winning feature films.

The J Street Challenge is short, powerful, and an absolute must-see.

The J Street Challenge jpeg_ 2-19-14Among the J Street critics included in the film are: Lenny Ben-David, Alan Dershowitz, Carolyn Glick, Daniel Gordis, Charles Jacobs, Richard Landes, Andrea Levin, Bret Stephens, Ruth Wisse, Josh Block, Roz Rothstein and Noah Pollack.

Professor Richard Landes of Boston University commented in the film that many of J Street’s supporters are engaging in feel-good  “moral narcissism:”

[T]heir hyper-criticism of Israel functions as a way of showing their moral superiority. They contrast their own universalist concern for all the world’s people, with “small minded” Zionists who care only about their small tribe. J Street ally, Peter Beinert takes this to its logical extreme. Distorting Jewish prophetic tradition, he claims that Jewish values demand the creation of a Palestinian state at Israel’s pre-War 1967 borders, and the removal of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. J Street only blames Israel for the lack of peace and is notably silent about Palestinian terrorism and threats.

Lenny Ben David, former Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC reveals through his research into through IRS filings who funds J Street. Among those backers and partners are George Soros, and Muslim Brotherhood Front groups in the US, MPAC and the National Iranian American Council.

This film should be adopted by those who care about the future of Israel and the American Jewish community. It must be shown in Jewish high schools, temples and JCCs. It must be used to wake the Jewish community to the deception employed by J Street to exploit the idealism and naviete of many well intentioned young Jews.

There is the moral blindness among American mainstream Jewish organizations and leaders, who have adopted false belief in dialogue as the solution to all human conflicts. Take for example funding support for the Olive Tree Initiative by an affiliate of the Orange county California Federation, sending unwary UC-Irvine students  who “accidentally” meet leaders of Hamas. Is this any different from J Street U sending Jewish student to pay homage at the grave of the late Yassir Arafat in Ramallah? The Palestinian Authority’s corrupt Holocaust-denying leaders are portrayed in The J Street Challenge film as honest men ready to make peace with the Jewish state. The film shows how these Arab leaders espouse peace to naive Jews in English and in Arabic they spout the classic Islamic doctrine of Jew-hatred and murder. Only one Jewish Federation in America, the Sarasota-Manatee Federation, had the courage to sign the a pledge against self destruction of American Jews through similar programs espoused by J Street and anti-Zionist ally, Jewish Voices for Peace in the BDS movement. There are Reform Temples and Federations in Nashville, Tennessee who defend dialog with local Muslim community leaders, among them are those who converted Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who became a homegrown jihadi.  Bledsoe/Muhammad in June 2009, on his way to his fateful murder of Army Pvt. Andy Long at an Army recruiting center in Arkansas, firebombed the home of an orthodox rabbi in Nashville and shot up the home of a rabbi in Little Rock. (See the acclaimed APT production, Losing our Sons).

Chesler noted in her review the powerful J Street rabbinic cabinet. This makes it all the more important that members of the rabbinate who reject the moral perversion of J Street should be involved in promotion of the APT film. We refer to valued friends in this struggle, Rabbis Jonathan Hausman in Massachusetts, Aryeh Spero in New York, Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg in New Jersey and the venerable theologian and noted author Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein. They have been wrongly and unfairly criticized by their rabbinic colleagues for combating J Street, yet these stalwart rabbis are the Zionist truth tellers. Norman Podhoretz called this J Street perversion of Judaism the equivalent of “worshipping at the torah of liberalism.” See our Iconoclast post, “Why are Jews Liberals?.

There is an irony about J Street leader Jeremy Ben Ami’s family background. We have a copy of a Bergson Pageant, “We will Never Die” Program in Philadelphia circa 1943 courtesy of Rabbi Hausman’s late mother. In it is a picture of Jeremy’s father, Yitzhak, one of the six Revisionist Palestinian Jews who came to recruit a Jewish Army to fight the Nazis and to lobby Congress successfully to save the remnant of European Jews. We wonder what Jeremy father would say about how far his son has fallen promoting the isolation of the sovereign Jewish homeland and six million Jews who live there — an Israel providing a bastion for Jews endangered by degenerate anti-Semitic hatred in Europe and elsewhere.

Kol Hakavod to the APT team for producing The J Street Challenge. Now let’s do what we can to ensure that this production is viewed in local Jewish communities across America so that we can expose the perfidy of J Street and Jeremy Ben Ami.

 EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.