Tag Archive for: Jewish

The Case Against Kamala Harris: A Definitive Guide For Jewish and Pro-Israel Voters

/in , , , , , , , , /by

One of our readers, BR, sent us this Case Against Kamala Harris: A Definitive Guide For Jewish and Pro-Israel Voters.

We are passing it along to our readers to help them make a decision on November 5th, 2024 on who will best represent the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish and pro-Israel voters nation wide.

Please share this with family, friends and on social media.

The Case Against Kamala Harris: A Definitive Guide For Jewish and Pro-Israel Voters

For the past month, I’ve been posting regularly about Kamala Harris and the danger she poses to Israel and Jewish safety. Many partisan Democrats react forcefully and defensively to this information, denying it or downplaying its significance. I will not be able to convince partisans who have made up their minds. But for those receptive to new information, I present here some of the top reasons why Kamala Harris poses a threat to Jewish safety and Israel.

—> Snubbing Netanyahu’s Speech in Congress: One of her first actions as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was to boycott Netanyahu’s address before a Joint Session of Congress. Israel, engaged in an Iranian-led, multi-front war for its survival, suffered the worst attack in its history on Oct. 7. Rather than standing by America’s closest Middle Eastern ally, Kamala specifically snubbed Israel’s Prime Minister to placate the emerging anti-Israel bloc of the Democratic Party. When Kamala did meet with Netanyahu, she greeted him with a frosty press conference and spread unsubstantiated claims about starvation in Gaza.

—> Maher Bitar as DNI: According to a recent article, there are indications that Kamala would appoint Maher Bitar as DNI should she win the presidency. Maher Bitar was a leader Students for Justice in Palestine at Georgetown University and a proponent of the BDS movement. Students for Justice in Palestine is the group responsible for many of the pro-Hamas riots targeting Jewish students across the country.

—> Phil Gordon as National Security Advisor/Secretary of State: According to the Wall Street Journal, Kamala Harris Intends to replace Antony Blinken with Phil Gordon, an ally of Ben Rhodes and a far-left activist who worked with the pro-Khamenei lobby NIAC. Phil Gordon, now serving as Kamala’s National Security Advisor, has a long history of seeking to advance the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is currently under a congressional investigation due to his ties to the regime. Philip Gordon has also written numerous pro-Islamic Republic op-eds and even a book advocating for a rapprochement with the Ayatollah.

—> Ilan Goldenberg: Kamala Harris recently announced that she selected Ilan Goldenberg as her campaign’s Director of Jewish Outreach. Ilan Goldenberg has a history of working with NIAC and other lobbies who advocate for the interests of the Islamic Republic. Goldenberg currently is responsible for crafting the extensive sanctions that the Biden-Harris Administration is imposing on Jewish Israelis (while simultaneously relieving sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran). Ilan’s close friends on Facebook include radical anti-Israel activists such as Khamenei agent Trita Parsi, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Ben Rhodes, Matt Duss and Shadi Hamid. Ilan has also retweeted noted antisemite Ilhan Omar.

—> Voted against anti-BDS Legislation and Aid to Israel as Senator: In 2019 Kamala joined socialist Bernie Sanders in voting against the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act (S.1). The bill pledged security assistance to Israel and clarified that state and local governments have the right to counter boycotts of Israel.

—> Defended Ilhan Omar’s Antisemitism: When Ilhan Omar tweeted that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” Kamala Harris rushed to her defense. She also implied that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, saying, “Like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk… I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism.”

—> Said Israel Must Not Invade Rafah: When Israel took Rafah, the IDF discovered numerous tunnels through which Hamas imports weapons from Egypt. Despite this critical step in securing Israel’s security, Kamala threatened consequences if Israel decided to invade Rafah. She warned of US consequences if Israel ignores the Biden administration’s “red line” and barrels into the southern Gazan city of Rafah. She said, “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake.” She continued, “I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” she said, referring to Palestinian civilians taking refuge in Rafah. https://nypost.com/2024/03/24/us-news/kamala-delivers-sharp-warning-to-israel-operation-in-rafah-would-be-huge-mistake/…

—> Top rating by NIAC: Kamala (and Tim Walz) received a 100% approval rating by NIAC, the pro-Khamenei lobby that advances the Islamic Republic’s interests in Washington D.C. NIAC was founded by rabid antisemite Trita Parsi.

—> Radical Islamic Terrorism Doesn’t Exist: Speaking before an audience, Kamala insisted that we should have the courage to not use the term radical Islamic terrorism. I wonder how she would characterize the acts of ISIS, Hamas and Al-Qaeda?

—> Praised Pro-Hamas Rioters: As pro-Hamas riots swept the country and protesters harassed Jewish students across the country amid a storm of unprecedented antisemitism, Kamala came out in support of them. Kamala Harris said anti-Israel student protesters ‘Are Showing Exactly What the Human Emotion Should Be’.

—> Daughter Raised Money for Hamas-Linked UNRWA: Ella Emhoff raised over eight million dollars for UNRWA after revelations of its involvement with Hamas were published. At least 19 UNRWA staff members participated in the Oct 7 massacre of Israeli civilians. Thousands of its staff members are linked to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. https://nypost.com/2024/07/27/us-news/vice-president-harris-stepdaughter-joining-in-race-on-instagram/… https://x.com/ShelleyGldschmt/status/1826793641828122919…

—> Daughter Repudiates Jewish Identity: Despite the schmaltzy talk of Doug Emhoff as “first mensch” and his stories about brisket and plastic-covered couches in Brooklyn, Kamala Harris’ daughter, Ella Emhoff, is no fan of being Jewish. She said she is not Jewish and does not want to talk about when reached out to by the media back in 2020.

—> Husband’s Law Firm Represented Qatar, PLO: Jewish Democrats gush over Doug Emhoff, the potential first “first mensch”. But how supportive of the Jewish community and Israel is Doug actually? Doug Emhoff’s law firm, DLA Piper, had controversial clients such as Qatar and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Naturally, these connections draw scrutiny and raise concerns about potential foreign malign influence.

—> Silent On Unprecedented Wave of Campus Antisemitism From Her Position

—> Supports Disastrous JCPOA: The JCPOA was one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in American history. It enriched the Islamic Republic to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, enabling it to fund its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis while also failing to adequately monitor and prevent the regime’s uranium enrichment.

—> Radical, Antisemitic Pastor Who Calls Israel an Apartheid State: Kamala’s pastor, Amos Brown, longtime pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, has a history of radical, anti-American statements and viewpoints, as well as political alliances that are antisemitic, yet he is what Kamala Harris calls “an inspiration to me always.”

—> Met With Pro-Hamas Dearborn Mayor 

—> Election Rhetoric In Support of Israel’s Defense =/= Allowing Israel to Win: What exactly does Kamala mean by saying she supports Israel’s defense? Does she have in mind what happened in April, when the Islamic Republic launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel? Just because Israel was able to avert the missiles, does that mean the threat is over? Will Kamala, like Biden, tell Israel to “take the win” the next time it is attacked? How useful is a bulletproof vest when the shooter is still on the loose?

—> Supports BLM and Progressive Causes That Portray Jews as White Oppressors

—> Raised Money to Bail Out Anti-Israel BLM Rioters: During her 2020 campaign for president, Harris supported the bail fund that helped violent criminals get out of prison. As of Monday night, the website was running and accepting payments.

—> Kamala’s Open Borders Allow Antisemites and Terrorists to Flood Into the Country: The Department of Homeland Security has identified over 400 immigrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who crossed into the U.S. in the past three years as “subjects of concern” because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.

—> Refuses to Hold Accountable Pro-Hamas Rioters: In one of her first speeches as presumptive presidential nominee, Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump for promising to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Hamas protests. She describes harassing Jewish students and defending a proscribed terrorist organization as “free speech.”

©2024. Editorial Board. All rights reserved.

Where Is the Safe Space for Jews?

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

A recent trend on college campuses is to install “safe spaces,” places where students — or certain identity-group subsets of students — can go to feel safe. These safe spaces are exclusionary by design; they protect students by insulating them. In extreme cases, safe spaces have been deemed to cover entire campuses, leading to the exclusion or disinvitation of undesirable visitors.

This “safe space” trend has been rightly ridiculed for its tendency to protect college students’ feelings from exposure to opposing viewpoints. Such exposure serves to sharpen the mind and used to be college’s main virtue. Thus, protecting students from “harm” by sequestering them from intellectual diversity undermines the whole point of college education.

But the silly “safe space” trend adopted the language of harm and safety because those are important considerations. Sticking with the collegiate context, students can’t devote themselves to their studies if they take their life in their hands every time they walk across campus. Fertilizing their mental acreage is orders of magnitude more difficult when outside sounds like a warzone, or a rock concert, or both at the same time.

The safety of college campuses — most of whom have a department devoted to preserving it — is often taken for granted, else loving parents would think twice before sending sweet Suzy off to a dormitory. Basic physical safety should be a guarantee on which all students can rely, regardless of their background. Unfortunately, that guarantee is no longer universal.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

On Sunday, Rabbi Elie Buechler of Columbia University’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) strongly recommended that Jewish students “return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

“The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear the Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme anti-Semitism and anarchy,” wrote Buechler. “It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus. No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.”

Last Thursday, anti-Semitic activists took over Columbia University’s central quad, turning it into a tent city overnight. The activists, many of whom are students, have praised Hamas’s military arm Al-Qassam, called for the destruction of Israel, and openly invited the killing of counter-protestors. Despite more than 100 arrests on Thursday, the rabble have only grown bolder.

Now, university administrators appear to have given up any hope of reasserting control of their campus property. The rabbi’s counsel to Jewish students was “the reason why classes went virtual at Columbia today,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, said Monday on “Washington Watch.” By Tuesday, Columbia University announced it was switching to hybrid classes for the remainder of the semester.

“There was one professor, Shai Davidai, who was having none of it,” Menken continued. “He said, ‘I am bringing 10 students and alumni with me Monday morning. We’re going to go on to the campus. We’re going to go right into the middle of that anti-Semitic demonstration, and we insist you keep us safe.’”

Rather than keep him safe, “Columbia deactivated the access card of their professor,” Menken related in disbelief. “Professor Shai Davidai of Columbia University had his access card deactivated by the university to prevent him from interfering with the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas demonstration at that campus.” Columbia University COO Cas Holloway personally appeared at the campus gate to prevent Davidai from entering the.

Davidai is an assistant professor in Columbia Business School’s Management Division, and he also leads Columbia’s anti-Semitism task force. Columbia administrators had to know that barring the head of the anti-Semitism task force from campus would provoke outrage, yet they chose to confront the backlash rather than confront the unruly mob that has taken over their campus. “Columbia was confronted with a clear choice either the anti-Semitic barbarians or the Jews. They expressly chose the anti-Semitic barbarians,” exclaimed Menken. “The entire administration of Columbia is utterly compromised by Jew hatred.”

Where is the safe space for Jews?

Certainly not at Columbia University, nor at Yale. Sahar Tartak, a Jewish student at Yale who is also a conservative reporter, was physically assaulted and blocked by protestors while attempting to film the pro-Hamas demonstration — which included taking down an American flag on a university flagpole — at that university. After demonstrators surrounded and blockaded her, a keffiyeh-garbed man stabbed Tartak in the eye with a Palestinian flag he carried.

At this point, the terrorist groupies aren’t even pretending to be motivated by non-violent, humanitarian concern for Palestinian civilians. “Anti-Semitism is always about finding a façade, a pretense, and then moving on to their end goal, which has always been ethnic cleansing and genocide,” argued Menken. “They were never anti-Israel protests. They were always anti-Semitic protests that glorify terrorism, that glorify atrocities, actual beheading of babies and rapes and holding hostages. These are not decent human beings.”

Where is the safe space for Jews?

You won’t find one at MIT, NYU, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, UC Berkeley, or Boston University. I’m sure that’s only the tip of the iceberg, since the anti-Semitic protests have reached even smaller, lesser known schools like Cal Poly Humbolt or UNC Charlotte.

At this point, it seems like American Jews are safest anywhere that isn’t a college campus. But that’s obviously not a workable solution in the long run. Today’s students are tomorrow’s lawyers, bankers, and politicians — not to mention professors. Are American Jews simply supposed to accept a second-class status, where they don’t get to go to college and are governed by those who hate them? How well did that work in 1930s Germany? If Jews aren’t safe on American college campuses, then ultimately they won’t be safe anywhere else in America.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

Jews could perhaps find a safe haven on other shores. But a cursory glance around the world shows the same violent anti-Semitism on shameful display in American universities. Judging by U.N. voting records, America sits near the top of the list of pro-Jewish countries. If Jews can find few countries friendlier than the U.S., and they are hated here, where can they go?

Where is the safe space for Jews?

The obvious exception is the world’s only Jewish-majority nation-state (although two million Arabs also live there peacefully), the postage stamp-sized parcel of seacoast known as Israel. Established in 1948 in response to the Holocaust, the modern state of Israel has provided a safe haven for persecuted Jews of every nationality.

Yet Israel’s Jews are not safe even within their own paper-snowflake borders. Hamas proved that on October 7, 2023, when they launched an unprovoked invasion on a Jewish holy day, slaughtering more than 1,200 Jews, kidnapping more than 200 prisoners, burning, raping, and pillaging wherever they could. Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group supported by America’s geopolitical adversary Iran, openly calls for Israel’s “annihilation” and has broadcast its intention to repeat its October 7 attack as often as it is capable.

Hamas is not Israel’s only threat. Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terror group, operates out of Israel’s northern neighbor Lebanon, and it has kept up frequent rocket barrages against Israel to divide its attention. “There are, I believe, about 80,000 Israelis who can’t go home every night because the rockets being shot in by Hezbollah out of Lebanon,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) remarked on “Washington Watch.” “Obviously Israel cannot permanently tell 70 or 80,000 of their citizens, ‘you can’t go home at night.’”

Behind these groups lies Iran, a global terror sponsor, which is close to developing a nuclear weapon and is avowedly committed to Israel’s destruction.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

But perhaps the campus mobs openly supporting Hamas are ignorant of Hamas’s goal and merely want American Jews to return to Israel. If that were true, they would also have to be ignorant of the words coming out of their own mouth.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free,” they chanted. That’s a strange twist on their classic, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” By “free,” they mean free of Jews. By “from the river to the sea,” the chant invokes (and confuses) the boundaries of the land God promised to give to Israel in Deuteronomy 11:24, “from the River, the River Euphrates, to the western sea.” The technical term for seeking to drive all people of a given ethnic group out of a given territory is “ethnic cleansing.”

Again, they chanted, “There is only one solution: intifada, revolution.” “One solution” echoes the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish problem”: extermination camps. Intifada and revolution — both terms for riots or armed uprisings — are the means by which this chant proposes to achieve its end: the annihilation of all Jews everywhere.

No, the protestors know very well what unthinkable barbarity these chants call for. They share the end of Hamas.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

The utmost irony is that these disgraceful displays of anti-Semitism were sparked by the attack on Israel. When most sovereign nations suffer an unprovoked attack by an international terrorist outfit, they receive universal acknowledgements of sympathy, solidarity, and solace, even from parties who usually maintain a frosty distance. But when Israel was attacked, that outrage provoked not only sympathy for Israel but also expressions of solidarity with those who attacked her — even before Israel had mounted any military response.

This has led some Jews, even non-Zionists, to the inevitable conclusion that Israel’s demise would only result in further attacks on Jews everywhere. “The idea that Jews can be safe anywhere if they’re not secure in Israel has just been shattered,” said foreign policy expert Caroline Glick. “It’s very clear that the security of all Jews everywhere is contingent on Israel defeating our enemies in Israel.”

Under the Biden administration, Israel’s closest and most powerful friend is working overtime to snatch that rightful victory away from them. If that happens, it will lead right back to the question we’ve been asking all along.

Where is the safe space for Jews?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Remembering the Passover in Troubled Times

RELATED VIDEO: What is a Jew? And Why So Much Hostility Towards Him?

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Israel: The Persian People of Iran Are Not Your Enemy

/in , , , , , , , /by

Persian Jews have lived in Iran for millennia.  In fact, the Jewish community in Iran is among the oldest in the world.  I personally dislike calling them Persian Jews; I prefer to call them just Persian.  They are just as Persian as any other Persians.  Iran belongs to them just as much as it belongs to every Iranian.

Historically, Judaism has been the second-oldest religion still practiced in Iran after Zoroastrianism, the original Iranian religion before the invasion of the Arabs.  The origin of the Jewish diaspora in Persia is connected to the deportation of the Israelites in 727 B.C. from Samaria to Medea and Persia.  The famous “Cyrus the Great declaration” allowed the Jews who were living in exile by the river of Babylon to return to their homeland, Judea, and Jerusalem to rebuild their Second Temple.  But some who had established themselves economically and socially preferred to remain in Persia and Babylon under the protection of Cyrus the Great.

Israel, we, the children of Cyrus the Great, understand your suffering through the passage of time.  Many of us Iranians suffer and share with you this tragic state of affairs that harms you.  We pray for an eternal peace between you and your neighbors.  We also earnestly hope ways can be found for a peaceful resolution of this destructive impasse.

As it has been said, if you don’t know who the enemy is, you can’t repel him.  One die-hard enemy, Islam, has been hard at work for some 1,400 years to finish off the Jews, completing the work Muhammad passed on to his followers.

Allah’s apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Muslim!  There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'” (Sahih Bukhari 4:52:177; see also Sahih Bukhari 4:52:176, Sahih Bukhari 4:56:791).

Many of us, the children of Cyrus the Great, also would like to offer our heartfelt best wishes to the Jews at this critical moment in time.  We know that their towns have been hit for years by (made in Iran) Hamas rockets and missiles.  Although it is hard to see innocent civilians die, we believe that Israel is only defending itself.  That should not be too hard to understand.

I urge the Jews to make a distinction between the regime and the Iranian people.  True Iranians have remained friends of the Jews by belief and deed.  During the shameful Hitlerian campaign to exterminate the Jews, for instance, Iranian missions in Europe, notably the one in France, issued Iranian passports to facilitate the flight of French and other European Jews from the claws of Nazis and their gas chambers – the very gas chambers that the true Muslim, the disgraceful Iranian, former president of the Islamic Republic, Ahmadinejad, denies ever existed.  This historical act of humanity is known as the “Iranian Schindler.”

Regrettably, after Cyrus the Great’s declaration, the people of Israel were unable to settle down for long in their own homeland, to worship their God as they wished, and to live in peace.  They were assaulted once again by the forces of destruction that sent them scurrying for the relative safety of other lands.

Their resilience to follow your destiny is the culmination in thousands of years’ gestation during which the Jewish people, dispersed through much of the world, endured immense degrees and varieties of suffering.  The Nazi murderers and their collaborators capped the crimes committed against the Jewish people by slaughtering six million innocent men, women, and children.

We are grateful that Israel has welcomed Iranian Jews who could no longer tolerate the rule of the oppressive, venomous mullahs.  These mullahs are indeed traitors to the lofty longstanding tradition and values championed by Cyrus the Great and revered by Persians throughout the ages.

We applaud the Jews for affording millions of Israeli Arabs opportunities denied to them in many other lands.

Many Iranians never forget Israel’s fair treatment of the Bahá’ís in Israel.  This is yet another testimony to the Jews’ ability and willingness to live in harmony with any and all people.

Today, the Iranian people carry on the work that the dissidents in the Soviet Union had to do at one time – and are suffering the same kind of oppression, imprisonment, and intimidation.  Many prisoners in Iran are staging a hunger strike and are close to their deaths.  We thank all human rights activists around the globe who frequently mention the Iranian people’s plight.

Oftentimes Americans do not have a deep understanding of the internal dynamics of exile and expatriate politics, and some groups get a bad reputation, often unfairly.  I think that if the Iranian expatriate community is going to lobby for American support for this kind of a move, they must provide emissaries to the American administration who can educate its members on the nature of the exile groups and their goals.  Historically, American politicians have supported dictators and radical Marxists (the MEK).

Fourteen hundred years of suffering under Islam is far too long for any people, although the Jews hold the record for that misfortune.  The Jews have at long last returned to their homeland, even though they are still encircled by the vicious Arab Islamists who would like nothing better than to drown every one of them in the sea, the way Islamists forced Zoroastrian people out of the country and the remaining few to the edges of an inhospitable desert.

Regardless of how loudly and frequently agents of the Islamic Republic bray to eliminate Israel and wish to chase the U.S. to its corner of the world, Iran’s problems will remain, and the Iranian people will continue to suffer.  The Iranian people must stand resolute and not allow these end-of-the-worlder, homicidal, suicidal men of Allah and their gang of frauds to take them on a ride to certain death.

©2024. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Amil Imani: A light in the gathering darkness

WATCH: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump tour Kfar Aza kibbutz ravaged by Hamas during the October 7th massacre

/in , , , , , , , /by

The daughter of former President Donald J. Trump and her husband visited Kfar Aza, where they spoke with residents and members of the security forces.

For nearly two hours, only a kilometer from Gaza City and with the sound of artillery fire in the background, Ivanka and Jared went door to door and spoke with residents of the kibbutz, Maor Morvia, Shahar Shnurman, and Hen Kotler, who shared their story and the tragic stories of their friends who were murdered and abducted by Hamas on October 7th.

At the end of the tour, Kushner and Trump thanked the residents and the security and rescue officials.

Video source – Natan Weil, Knesset Spokesperson

RELATED ARTICLES:

Ivanka Trump, Kushner visit site of massacre in Israel

The revival of an ancient calumny

RELATED VIDEO: IDF soldier finds Arabic copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ in home of Hamas operative

EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column with video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Regime Appoints Holocaust Museum Board Member From Org That Accused Israel of Apartheid

/in , , , , , , /by

A Human Rights Watch board member does not belong on a Holocaust museum board.

I have written about the problems with the Holocaust Museum in D.C. before. It’s a government museum and like most of those pursues predictable political agendas that have nothing to do with the Holocaust or Jews.

The Holocaust Memorial Council acts as the board of trustees, but like a lot of government institution boards, it’s a prestigious line to add to the biographies of major donors or political allies. There have been some whoppingly bad appointments by past administrations  In a final insult to the Jewish community, Obama appointed Ben Rhodes, the lead advocate for the Iran nuke sellout, to the council.

Biden has appointed Kimberly Marteau Emerson. Kimberly, the wife of John Emerson. a Democrat operative and financial bigwig, picked by Obama to be his ambassador to Germany.

Kimberly Marteau Emerson has been on the board of directors for Human Rights Watch since 2012.

HRW has repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of “apartheid”. Its personnel have done little to conceal their desire for the destruction of the Jewish State and the extermination of its population.

Joe Stork, who served for many years as HRW’s Deputy Director of Middle East issues. Before being hired by HRW, Stork openly supported Palestinian terror attacks against Jewish civilians, and opposed any and all peace treaties between Israel and Arab states.

Stork even traveled to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for a conference on “Zionism and Racism.

Analyzing Israel’s victory in the 1967 War, Stork suggested what would be needed for the Arab states to reverse the outcome and destroy Israel:

This was part of a pattern.

In 2009, HRW bizarrely defended its senior military analyst Marc Garlasco following revelations that he was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia and had even authored a book about Nazi-era medals. According to The Guardian, Garlasco once commented that a leather SS jacket made “my blood go cold it is so COOL!”

And nothing much has changed.

HRW founder Robert Bernstein blasted the organization’s pathological anti-Israel animus in a 2009 op-ed published in The New York Times, in which he lamented the turn the organization had taken regarding the Middle East. At HRW, Bernstein wrote, the organization originally drew distinctions between liberal and repressive states, focusing on the latter. However, HRW, “with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.”

Bernstein observed that this change in focus was most apparent in the Middle East, where HRW “has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region,” even though the region “is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records.”

In the spring of 2009, Sarah Leah Whitson, the organization’s top Middle East official, traveled to Saudi Arabia and, as part of her pitch, said that she needed to raise funds to fight “pro-Israel pressure groups.”

To get a sense of HRW’s disturbing anti-Israel bias, consider this: over the past five years, the NGO has authored seven special reports on Israel. In comparison, the organization published none condemning North Korea, one of the worst criminal regimes in the world; and only three reports addressed the human rights violations of the repressive, theocratic regime in Iran.

That’s because HRW wants Israel to be destroyed.

The report’s primary author is Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel/Palestine director, who signed a pledge in 2015 to “honor the BDS call.” The founder and leader of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement has stated openly that his movement aims to see Israel dismantled

Kimberly Marteau Emerson is a completely inappropriate choice. No HRW official or board member should ever have a position in a Holocaust memorial organization.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Sweden: Muslim migrant who murdered 78-year-old woman and beat her husband can now get citizenship

France: Knife-wielding Muslim migrant screaming ‘Death to pederasts’ attacks two homosexuals

Russia’s FM: ‘Islam in Russia is living through a renaissance…We stand united in rejecting Islamophobia’

UK: Former pornographic film star speaks at Oxford University, foes of jihad violence still banned from country

Iran’s intelligence minister: ‘A terrorist group associated with the Zionist regime was arrested’

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Jews, Not Muslims, Are the Primary Victims of Religion-Based Hate Crimes in the U.S.

/in , , , , /by

Yet the media continues to focus on the phantom of “Islamophobia.” My latest in FrontPage:

As the nation observed the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 jihad terror attacks, the establishment media’s focus was largely on how Muslims were victimized in the wake of the attacks. A wave of “Islamophobia” supposedly swept over the United States, and is still very much with us. Reality, however, is (as usual) sharply different from the establishment media narrative. Jews, not Muslims, have both before 9/11 and after been the far most common victim of hate crimes in the United States. Yet the media indefatigably focuses on “Islamophobia,” not anti-Semitism.

George W. Bush got the ball rolling on September 17, 2001. He appeared at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., in the company of several prominent Muslim leaders, including Nihad Awad of the The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Abdurahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who is now in prison for funding al-Qaeda, and put the spotlight squarely on Muslims as victims:

America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect.

In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect. Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value. I’ve been told that some fear to leave; some don’t want to go shopping for their families; some don’t want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they’re afraid they’ll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.

Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.

The only problem with this was that Muslims were not being subjected to wholesale vigilante attacks in the United States, at that time or at any point subsequently. A Sikh, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was mistaken for a Muslim and murdered on September 15, 2001; the following day, a Muslim, Waqar Hasan, was murdered. On October 4, 2001, the man who murdered Hasan, Mark Anthony Stroman, killed a Hindu named Vasudev Patel, mistaking him for a Muslim.

That was all. These three murders were heinous crimes; Balbir Singh Sodhi’s killer, Frank Silva Roque, is serving life in prison, and Mark Stroman was executed in 2011. But to claim that “9/11 released a dangerous wave of white supremacy and Islamophobia that, two decades later, continues to manifest in attacks on members of a variety of belief traditions,” as AP did in noting the anniversary of Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder Thursday, is wildly exaggerated. Muslims have not suffered widespread persecution, discrimination, and harassment in the U.S. since 9/11. FBI hate crime statistics bear this out.

In 2000, the year before the 9/11 attacks, the FBI noted 33 anti-Islamic hate crimes; in 2001, that number skyrocketed to 546. That’s 546 too many, but a bit of perspective is in order: also in 2001, there were 1,117 anti-Jewish hate crimes. These were not, mind you, all violent incidents: the FBI report explained that “A review of the total offenses (11,451) demonstrated that intimidation was the most frequently reported hate crime, accounting for 37.9 percent of the total. Destruction/damage/vandalism made up 26.4 percent; simple assault, 18.8 percent; aggravated assault, 10.8 percent. The remaining offenses accounted for 6.1 percent of the total.” Intimidation can be just saying something rude, or something perceived as rude.

In 2002, the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes fell sharply, to 170; the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes held steady at 1,039. And so it has been every year since then. In 2018, there were 225 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 896 anti-Jewish hate crimes; in 2019, there were 219 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 995 anti-Jewish hate crimes. In 2020, anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased by 42%.

Yet ABC News gave a Muslims-As-Victims spin to all this on September 11 when it stated: “Hate crimes against Muslims rose 1617% from 2000 to 2001, according to the FBI marking some of the highest numbers of Islamophobic hate crimes ever in the U.S. But even as the country moved further from the attacks and the Muslim American population in the country grew, discrimination against this community has not waned, Pew Research Center reports.”

This kind of “journalism” is published as Jew-hatred becomes increasingly legitimized on the Left. Around the time of the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel last spring, Palestinian Muslims and their supporters committed acts of violence against Jews and supporters of Israel all over the United States. In New York City, a Muslim mob screaming “Allahu akbar” attacked a Jewish man in midtown Manhattan. Also in Manhattan, Palestinians threatened violence and screamed anti-Semitic slurs at Jews. One threw a mini-firebomb. Pro-jihad protesters stormed a restaurant and spat on Jewish patrons; one of the thugs threw a bottle. A Muslim, Waseem Awawdeh, was arrested for viciously beating a Jew in Times Square.

In Los Angeles, Palestinian protesters asked people dining at the Sushi Fumi restaurant if they were Jewish, and proceeded to attack them with knives. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, two cars festooned with Palestinian flags chased a Jewish man down a street as he was leaving his synagogue. In Florida, a van also bearing a Palestinian flag and emblazoned with the slogan “Hitler was Right” drove past a pro-Israel demonstration. In Skokie, Illinois, a pro-jihad vandal wearing an Arab headdress smashed a synagogue window and left a Palestine flag and a pro-jihad sign inside. And in Boston, an anti-Semitic Muslim migrant named Khaled Awad approached a rabbi outside a Jewish day school and stabbed him eight times.

There will likely be much more of this, while the media continues to hunt for “Islamophobia” and demonize and stigmatize all those who stand against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. The facts are clear to anyone who searches for them, but most people won’t; and establishment media “journalists” will continue to do all they can to hoodwink Americans into swallowing their tendentious, inaccurate, and divisive narrative.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden: ‘A two-state solution is the best way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish democratic state’

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan claims that ‘white supremacy is now a key ideology of the Republican Party’

Afghan Migrants Get Prayer Rooms in Schools ACLU Attacked Over ‘God’ in Pledge of Allegiance

Far-Left Dems, including AOC, Omar, and Tlaib, force House to cut $1,000,000,000 from Iron Dome funding for Israel

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Heads Up, Liberal Jews––Don’t Be Jews with Trembling Knees

/in , , , /by

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

Those words were spoken by Menachem Begin in June of 1982, directly to the Democrat senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, who had confronted the Israeli Prime Minister during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony by threatening to cut off aid to Israel.

That’s right, only 32 years after the establishment of the tiny Jewish state, which was surrounded by 22 war-mongering, Israel-loathing Arab states, and only 35 years after the Holocaust savagely murdered––tortured and gassed-to-death––six-million Jewish men, women, children and infants, Senator Biden was once again terrorizing the Jews of the world with his menacing ultimatum.

Not a fluke, not a misstatement, not an error in judgement, but vintage Joe Biden, whose longtime antagonism and belligerence toward Israel has been exhaustively documented, most recently by Shmuel Klatzkin (Biden’s Hostility to Israel––read the whole article) and Janet Levy in AmericanThinker.com (Is a Vote for Joe Biden in the Interest of American Jews?).

EXAMPLES ABOUND

Levy reports a number of the Obama-Biden regime’s consistent anti-Israel policies:

  • Interfered with the 2015 Israeli elections with the goal of defeating the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
  • Their State Department granted $350,000 to OneVoice, a radical anti-Israel organization that supports the terrorist group Hamas,
  • They fully supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement to destroy Israel economically. 
  • In 2016, Biden pressured Ukraine, an abstainer, to vote for U.N. Security Council measure 2334, which claimed that ancient and historic Jewish sites were “illegally occupied.”
  • They approved the same U.N. measure, which condemned Israelis building settlements, which emboldened the Palestinian Authority to call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and the Jewish Quarter, reversing decades of U.S. vetoes against such moves.

Today, candidate Biden pledges to reopen the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) mission in Washington, D.C. And he vows, incomprehensibly, to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, in which the arch-terrorist state in the entire world has vowed to exterminate the State of Israel.

In addition, Levy points out that while Biden has given lip service to repudiating anti-Semitism, he has been thunderously silent when his fellow Democrats–– Reps. Ihlan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and simpatico Jew-hating activists Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, et al––spew their undisguised anti-Semitic bile for all the world to hear.

“Biden said he could never be silent on anti-Semitism,” Levy writes, “but raised no objections, as vice-president, to more than 60 White House visits by Al Sharpton, who incited anti-Jewish riots in New York City in the 1990s.” That’s the same Al Sharpton, I might add, who writer John Perazzo documents as being responsible for the horrific Tawana Brawley racial hoax, called the first black mayor of NY City a “Ni—er Whore,” delivered a speech at Kean College saying: “We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was … we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”

You get the picture of one of Joe Biden’s favorite pals.

LESSONS OF HISTORY

I was a very little girl––younger than six––when I first asked my parents why they were running frantically to meeting after meeting every evening, opening their checkbooks, delivering impassioned speeches, wringing their hands and shedding copious tears.

They told me what few American-Jewish parents ever told their children, so numb were they from disbelief and so eager to protect them from the ghastly truth, which was that adults and children just like them, just like us––six million of them––had been savagely murdered by Adolph Hitler and his “willing executioners” in Germany, Poland, all over Eastern Europe and even in “civilized” countries like France, simply because they were Jewish.

Jews who managed to flee Europe and come to America before the Holocaust––like my own and my husband Steve’s grandparents––and those who survived the killing camps and landed on our shores by sheer good fortune, thought they died and went to heaven on earth. For the first time in their lives––in fact, in Jewish history––they were free to breathe, to create, to pursue their dreams, to worship and to raise their children without fear.

Yes, there were quotas in colleges and graduate schools, Holocaust denial, and today an upsurge in Jew hatred, but nothing stopped Jews from succeeding and excelling and contributing disproportionately to American society and to the world, just as the Jews in Israel––only 72 years old––do today.

THE LEGACY OF PERSECUTION

But over 3,500 years of persecution exacts a heavy price. To understand, just think about the long-lasting toll the following events take:

  • A one-minute gunshot,
  • A two-hour bout of chemotherapy,
  • A three-week recovery from open-heart surgery,
  • A four-month lay-off,
  • An eight-month (so far) pandemic lockdown
  • A five-year recession.

All of the above are life-changing, diminishing, often devastating, sometimes annihilating.

Yet Jews continued on, their survival instinct stronger than the most crushing circumstances of their long and besieged history of being haunted, hunted and often destroyed in, among other cataclysmic events:

  • The Crusades.
  • The Inquisition.
  • The expulsion from Spain.
  • The Holocaust.
  • And always, the diaspora.

After the Holocaust, American Jews who followed politics––most did and do today––were forced to ask themselves, and taught their children to ask: Is it good for the Jews? Meaning, will this or that statement or policy or law lead to another Holocaust?

After all, the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and ‘40s enjoyed tremendous success––in business, academia, the arts and sciences, society in general. Unlike the United States today, every college and university did not feature violent anti-Jewish protests or professors who taught anti-Jewish propaganda. Until the rise of Hitler, there were no elected officials––as there are in the U.S. today––spewing Jew hatred, not only with no disapproval from the powers-that-be but with total impunity.

TO ASK THAT QUESTION TODAY

Is Biden’s candidacy good for the Jews? I can say unequivocally and without hesitation that scandal-plagued Joe Biden, his inexperienced and effortlessly alienating VP pick Kalamity Harris, the truly regressive Obama-clone platform he’s running on––including high taxes, a weakened military, the support of terrorist groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, an anti-fracking return-to-energy-dependence, open borders, confiscation of your guns, and a viciously contentious relationship with Israel––would be terrible for America and disastrous for the Jewish state.

If you’re a liberal American Jew determined to pull the lever or mail a write-in ballot for Biden––don’t!

Don’t be a Jew with trembling knees. Your very survival and that of your family is at stake!

©Joan Swirsky. All rights reserved.

Heads-Up Jewish Americans–Democrats Are Your Enemies!

/in , , , , , /by

It’s quite simple for me, as it should be for all Jews, given the fact that in a world of about eight-billion people, we Jews are a miniscule 15 million, only about six-million in the United States, eight-million in Israel, and another one-million around the world. That is equivalent to the proverbial drop in the ocean.

A PRESSING IMPERATIVE

If we Jews and our supporters don’t aggressively address the pandemic of anti-Semitism that is galloping around the globe and exploding here in America, rampant on college campuses, aided and abetted by a craven media that gives credibility to career hate-mongers like Louis Farrakhan and his ilk, and even contaminating the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress––with more floridly hate-Jews/hate-Israel Democrats than ever before in history––then we know from our tragic history that annihilation could be right around the corner.

Sadly the Democrat Party of old––of JFK, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Senator and VP Walter Mondale, et al––has vanished, replaced by Democrats like “the squad” who spew their poisonous hatred of Jews and Israel from the House of Representatives itself. Then there are those who remain thunderously silent––including elected Democrat Jews like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Adam Schiff, Richard Blumenthal, as well Democrat Representatives from Long Island––with a huge Jewish population––Tom Suozzi and Kathleen Rice.

Don’t be fooled by the boilerplate, politically correct press releases written by their aides. Once these statements are made public, these cowards go back to cowering before the radical leftists who now call the shots in the Democrat Party, most prominently the racists who continue to vent their anti-Semitic bile to this day.

WHERE DID ALL THE ADVOCATES GO?

Shockingly, most of the Jewish organizations that once supported and defended Jews in America abandoned those roles, having caved to their biggest donors’ conversion to a new religion called “Social Justice.” These are the quislings who “reach out” to––in essence, endorse––groups like Black Lives Matter, Antifa and others that wantonly attack synagogues, Jewish businesses and ordinary Jewish citizens walking in their neighborhoods, and brazenly promote the Boycott-Divest-Sanction (BDS) movement to destroy Israel through economic strangulation.

For instance, The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), founded in 1913, aggressively and successfully fulfilled its mission to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people” until 102 years after its founding when, in 2015, Jonathan Greenblatt became the ADL’s national director and CEO. Greenblatt worked for three far-left regimes antagonistic to Israel––the Clinton Administration, the Obama fiasco, and the George Soros-funded Aspen Institute. Now, Mr. Greenblatt sounds deranged when he states that “only a small number” of the Black Lives Matter anarchy group don’t like Jews, when he knows full well––and Americans can see with their own eyes––that it is one of the most rabidly Jew- and Israel-loathing groups in the world!

According to columnist and author Rabbi Aryeh Spero, the ADL under Greenblatt “has betrayed its original mission of fighting anti-Semites by forging a new partnership with one of America’s most notorious anti-Semites, Al Sharpton.”

But the ADL is only one example out of nearly a dozen that I place in the category of turncoats against the Jewish people. [More on this in a future article].

AMERICA TO THE RESCUE

I have always felt safe in America, protected by the powerful principles of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, by the always-reliable police-and-fire departments in every community where I’ve lived, and by local, state and national leaders of both political parties who fought to preserve our extraordinary way of life through our country’s bedrock foundations of God, family, freedom and safety.

But with the advent of the well-organized, heavily financed emergence of the Jew-hating, Christian-hating, America-hating “Cancel Culture,” what can people do? Yes, they can call or write a letter or e-mail to their elected representative, for which they’ll get back a form letter written by an intern.

But a sure-fire cure for this downward plunge into the sewers of our body politic is to vote out every Democrat running for office. Not one of these America-loathing, anarchist-supporting people is worthy of representing either their constituents or America itself.

Just ask them. They will tell you that they “support” the terrorism––which they call “protests”––we’ve been witnessing for the last several weeks, that they want to raise your taxes, cut funding to the police and military that protect you and your children, institute the socialized medicine and education that have failed in every country they’ve ever been instituted, and enact the Big Government programs that “protect” you from cradle to grave.

November 3, 2020, could change your life forever. If you believe in self-preservation, be smart!

©All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Race Relations Plummeted While Joe Biden Was Vice President Under Barack Obama

RELATED VIDEO: Questions Journalists Should Ask Biden – But Won’t.

History revised is history denied

/in , , , , /by

Once upon a time, Jewish progressives embraced their people’s history and were willing to die for its modern political realization. Though they eschewed traditional observance, they typically substituted faith in history for belief in G-d.

Edmund Burke famously stated that “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” and this adage has proven true time and again.

However, what of those who know history but reject its lessons, and instead manufacture alternative traditions based on partisan fantasy or political ideology?  Will they merely repeat the mistakes of the past or ensure a future where truth is subjective and morality relative?  If the latter, they risk creating a world devoid of ethical integrity and intellectual honesty.

Unfortunately, historical revisionism has become part of the American political process, and those who use it to promote radical narratives are the ones most responsible for today’s irrational hostility towards Israel and the Jewish People.

Progressive extremists are particularly shrill in denouncing Israel for supposed acts of aggression and callousness that in truth are neither outrageous nor extreme, but instead consistent with international law and Jewish historical rights and tradition.  They are especially indignant when Jewish history conflicts with the claims of Palestinian-Arabs, whose national narrative is a chimerical study in antisemitic rejectionism with little or no foundation.

This was apparent when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking for President Trump, acknowledged the legality of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.  The Union for Reform Judaism (“URJ”) responded with a statement urging the President to recant, declaring: “Any unilateral move…would place serious and critical obstacles to a viable two-state solution, damaging the prospect of renewing the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and causing a long-term threat to Israel’s status as a Jewish and democratic state.”  But President Trump’s position reflected sentiments that prevailed before the Obama administration and an understanding that Palestinians oppose a “viable two-state solution” because they deny Israel’s legitimacy. That denial is actually the most “serious and critical” obstacle to peace.

American critics are impertinent when they claim to know what is best for Israel.  And the URJ’s statement is emblematic of this conceit in that it (a) seems oblivious to the impact of Palestinian rejectionism and (b) fails to acknowledge that Israeli “settlements” in Judea and Samaria actually conform to international legal norms and standards.  This  was recognized well before the Obama administration’s eight-year effort to delegitimize the “settlements”. It was Obama’s collusion with the United Nations in 2016 to undermine Israeli sovereignty that constituted a change in US policy, not Trump’s restatement of protocol.

Prior administrations did not resolutely deny the legality of the “settlements” (which were built on ancestral lands where Jews had lived for thousands of years), but believed they could be negotiated based on political considerations.  Indeed, Americans commonly recognized Jewish indigeneity throughout the Land of Israel.

Israel’s acquisition of these lands in 1967 was lawful because it was defending itself from an aggressor nation (Jordan).  Neither the Law of Belligerent Occupation nor the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibit Israel from maintaining possession of territories seized from an aggressor nation that acquired them in violation of international law.  Specifically, Jordan annexed Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem illegally in 1948, before which they had been holdings of a defunct empire. These lands were never independent or part of any autonomous nation-state after Rome conquered the Kingdom of Judah in 136 CE, and certainly not a state of “Palestine” that never existed.  Their liberation by Israel if anything reimposed legitimate sovereignty after a two-thousand-year hiatus.

Once upon a time, Jewish progressives embraced their people’s history with religious-like zeal and were willing to die for its modern political realization.  Though they eschewed traditional observance after the Enlightenment, they typically substituted faith in history for belief in G-d; and while many of them claimed to profess atheism, they nonetheless continued to express their innate religious sensibilities as historical determinism.  They knew where their ancestors came from and believed Jewish national destiny was tied to the ancient homeland.

This ancestral link to Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the rest of ancient Israel was the basis for recognizing the right of Jewish self-determination in the Mandate for Palestine of 1922.  While these lands constituted colonial holdings of successive empires after the fall of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, they never comprised independent sovereign territories between the years 136 and 1948.  Furthermore, they were commonly recognized as ancestrally Jewish and for maintaining a Jewish presence for more than 3,000 years – long before the Roman, Arab, and Ottoman conquests.

In recognition of the Jews’ ancient connection to these lands, Israel’s Provisional State Council on September 16, 1948 enacted the “Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance,” which aimed to extend Israeli jurisdiction beyond the 1947 partition lines to areas traditionally acknowledged as part of the Jewish homeland.  This ordinance (aka “Ben-Gurion’s Law”) was intended to apply to lands liberated by the Israeli military and was effective retroactively to the date of Israel’s independence on May 15, 1948. The law’s justification was inherent in its recognition that certain lands were innately Jewish (leaving its nonenforcement in 1967 open to critical question).

Unfortunately, the old Israeli left sometimes sacrificed historical virtue for the sake of partisan politics.  Though Menachem Begin made a policy of never questioning his political opponents’ patriotism, for example, Labor ideologues were often quick to label him and Herut Party members as Nazis and fascists, thus perverting the context and meaning of those terms for partisan purposes.  This was eventually coopted by Israel-haters to misrepresent the past so as to deny Israeli sovereignty and Jewish national claims.

Historical revisionism is now used to empower BDS, justify antisemitism, and delegitimize Israel by falsely depicting it as a colonial creation built on the ruins of a mythical country called Palestine.  But historical and archeological analysis corroborates Israel’s Jewish past while offering no support for Palestinian authenticity. Though the Jewish homeland was the target of multiple conquests before 1948, colonialism was enforced by Greeks, Romans, Muslim Arabs, Christian Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks – not Jews.  And the history of jihad in the region is one of subjugation, the influence of which continues to inflame anti-Jewish passions today.

Despite the historical record, ambivalence regarding Israeli sovereignty long ago infected the political mainstream without protest from Democratic leadership.  In his final television address as Secretary of State, for example, John Kerry inveighed against Israel and pushed the canard that she could not be both Jewish and democratic.  He never expressed concern over the religious and ethnic supremacism that permeates the Arab-Muslim Mideast) and his apparent disregard for Jewish ancestral rights was inexcusable.

Similar bias motivated the Obama administration’s collusion with the UN in 2016 to orchestrate a resolution declaring that Israeli “settlements” violated international law (despite much precedent to the contrary) so that the US could withhold its veto and effectively reverse American policy.  The Simon Wiesenthal Center recognized this as an attack on Israeli sovereignty and proclaimed it the most antisemitic incident of the year. This assault against Israel on the world stage was nonetheless tolerated by Jewish progressives, and even lauded by some. When Jews fail to condemn such conduct, they enable Jew-hatred masquerading as political dialogue; and denying Israeli sovereignty is indeed a form of antisemitism.

Whereas early Jewish progressives regarded their people’s history with reverence, their political descendants lost all sense of its noble origins and lofty mission.  Furthermore, today’s left has altered the past to conform to a worldview that disparages Israel and traditional Judaism.

As Rav Saadia Gaon explained more than a thousand years ago, the Jews are a nation founded on Torah whose national survival requires loyalty to its laws and principles.  Without Torah, he said, the Jewish nation would have disappeared like any other ancient people swallowed by the sands of time. Is Israel’s disappearance the goal of those who now seek to deny Jewish history and suppress Judaism’s eternal values?

RELATED ARTICLE: Guardian Angels Patrolling Jewish Neighborhoods In NYC For First Time Since 1991

EDITORS NOTE: This Israel International News column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

How Bad is the Neo-Antisemitism on American Campuses?

/in , , , , /by

Our review of the Americans for Peace and Tolerance documentary, Hates Spaces:  The Politics of Intolerance on American Campuses raised the question of how extensive is the problem of the New Antisemitism. Moreover with the recent US abstention on UN Security Council  adoption of Resolution  2334 how might  the strident  anti-Zionism  messages exacerbate the problems  of Anti-Israelism, Antisemitism  and  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on American university campuses.

We saw in our review of Hate Spaces that hate mongering of Israel and Jewish students has been fostered by Palestinian and Muslim Brotherhood groups connected to the US designated terrorist organization Hamas, Muslim Students Association  (MSA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). They have been abetted by progressive academic associations and even anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street that alleges it is “pro-peace, pro-Israel.”

Moreover, administrations at many higher education institutions are caught in the dilemma of trying to prevent disruption and threats to Jewish and non-Jewish students  by the abuse of traditional academic freedom and free speech standards. Further, as we shall see adoption of state and even federal standards of what constitutes Anti-Zionism  as Anti-Semitism have failed  to  stop the  atmosphere of intolerance on  American campuses.   That may result in draconian measures possibly violating Supreme Court rulings on so-called ‘protected speech’.  This article will provide   background that  might determine how much worse  the hostile environment  could  become  for  Jewish students on  many  American campuses and  the seeming  difficulty  in the academy to alleviate it.

Spike in Israel Hate and Antisemitism across U.S. College Campuses

AMCHA Initiative, the leading NGO focused on campus Antisemitism, in a recent report identified more than 600 incidents at the top 100 American campuses; an increase of 45 percent over the same period in 2015.  AMCHA was co-founded in 2011 by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin , a Hebrew  Language lecturer at the University of  California Santa Cruz and  UCLA professor emeritus Leila Beckwith “ to investigate, document, educate about, and combat Antisemitism at institutions of higher education in the United States.”  AMCHA, “Hebrew for ‘your people’, sought to adopt protocols for defining as discriminatory anti-Zionism as Antisemitism.  The AMCHA report attributed this increase to:

The suppression of Jewish students’ freedom of speech and assembly doubled, while calls for Israel’s elimination tripled. The calls and acts opposing Israel’s right to exist were found to be highly correlated with behavior that targeted Jewish students for harm.amcha-logo

Underlying this spike in campus Antisemitic intolerance, she said was:

The presence of three factors — anti-Zionist student groups; faculty who support boycotts of Israel; and pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activity — are “each strong predictors of anti-Jewish hostility.”

The target Rossman – Benjamin says is: “Jewish students …whether they actually support Israel or not. Their support is presumed just based on the fact that they are Jewish.”

The 50 Worst Universities for Jewish Students

A Brandeis University report released in October 2016 identified the top 50 American University “hotspots”. Among the top 10 were Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Northwestern University, and the several University of California campuses at Irvine, Los Angeles, Berkeley and Davis. Here are examples of Israel hatred and Antisemitism cited by Jewish students:

Rutgers University in New Jersey

Members of the SJP “stood in front of the dining hall wearing white shirts with red ‘blood’ splattered across them. They had signs saying ‘this is what the Jews did to us.’ I felt extremely harassed; even though it was not personally directed at me, when I stood there I saw complete hatred that they had to all of the Jews walking by. There were even some people, a part of SJP, shouting profanities and giving the middle finger to the Jews that were just standing next to them.”

Northeastern University

A junior said campus life became “unsafe” when “a group on campus put eviction notices on the dorm room doors of Jewish people.” The incident, and others like it, was reported in the press to be the work of SJP members.

Ohio State

A woman student opened her door “to see my next-door neighbor drawing a swastika on my door.”

The special case of the University of California at Irvine

Perhaps the worst case of anti–Israel and Jewish hatred has occurred on the University of California at Irvine over the past decade. Unfortunately, it had been abetted by the former head of the local Orange County Jewish Federation.  An affiliate foundation of the Federation financed a program called the Olive Tree Initiative that brought students in a supposed ‘accidental’ contact with a Hamas Palestinian legislative leader in 2009 in the west bank. Local Orange County Jewish community activists found themselves under attack creating counter marches during MSU Israeli Apartheid Awareness Weeks that featuring notoriously Antisemitic speakers like Malik Ali.

In February 2010, MSU students from both UC Irvine and UC Riverside disrupted a speech being given by former Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren. That brought charges by the Orange County District Attorney against 11 MSU members of heckling under California laws. The trial resulted in convictions of 10 MSU members and a year’s suspension by the university, subsequently reduced to one term.

Over the past six years we have written and interviewed Jewish students at UC Irvine regarding MSU/SJP disruption of campus Israeli Independence Day events. On May 18, 2016, another disruption by the SJP chapter, Jewish Voice for Peace and Black Student groups occurred at UC Irvine. They were objecting to a showing of an Israeli film, “Behind the Helmet” about IDF soldiers, two of whom were present, at an event sponsored by Students Supporting Israel. The SJP –led protesters blockaded the exit, verbally assaulted the audience with anti-Israel and Antisemitic epithets that required campus police to escort attendees from the SSI event.  Chancellor Gilman released a statement condemning the SJP-led disruption:

A group of protesters reportedly disrupted the event, blocking exit paths. Participants feared for their safety, calling on our police force for assistance. While this university will protect freedom of speech, that right is not absolute. As I mentioned in a campus message at the beginning of the academic year (freespeech.uci.edu), threats, harassment, incitement and defamatory speech are not protected. We must shelter everyone’s right to speak freely – without fear or intimidation – and allow events to proceed without disruption and potential danger.

He referred the matter to the office of the Orange County District Attorney for review of  campus police incident reports and statements of eyewitnesses that found no basis for criminal charges.

Notwithstanding in August 2016, the UC Irvine Office of Student Conduct found that the SJP chapter violated university policy. A  Los Angeles Times  August 18, 2016  report noted “university policy prohibits “obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures or other university activities.”  The SJP chapter at UC Irvine will be required to undertake a so-called “power meeting” on conduct of protests.  An UC Irvine spokesperson Cathy Lawson said:

The program is designed to help SJP members “better understand how to host constructive events and protests if they want to protest and add to the conversation, rather than detract from it.” The written warning, she said, puts SJP on notice through March 2017 that its behavior is under increased scrutiny and that another violation could lead to harsher consequences.

Office of Student Conduct head Parham noted in an email:  “We support and defend groups exercising free speech and assembly, yet we must protect everyone’s right to express themselves without disruption. This is a bedrock principle of our university.”

amcha-coalition-at-the-university-of-california-board-of-regents

AMCHA coalition at the University of California Board of Regents, March 23, 2016.

So what’s being done about the problem?

On March 23, 2016, AMCHA co-founder, Tammi  Rossman-Benjamin,  backed by Jewish community leaders ,  was successful  in having the Regents of the California University System adopt hate speech standards, specifically addressing the various forms of  campus  Antisemitism.   Leaders and Representatives included AMCHA Initiative, Bruins for Israel, Iranian American Jewish Federation, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, Students Supporting Israel at UCLA, Zionist Organization of America, UC Students, UC Professors, and concerned UC Alumni testified at the UC Regents Meeting.  Rossman-Benjamin in a statement wrote:

The vote, with the inclusion of the condemnation of Antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism, represents a new direction in administration addressing modern Antisemitism.  We are incredibly proud of this achievement. It was a challenging journey to arrive at this point, one that required the persistence of AMCHA, our extraordinary at-will coalition partners, students, activists, alumni and supporters.

The Board of Regents adopted an anti-discrimination protocol that included “anti-Zionism” such as BDS, as long as the matter was deemed “Antisemitic”.

The reality following this remarkable achievement in California was that the MSA and SJP were allowed to carry out their annual Israel Apartheid Awareness and anti-BDS campaigns on university system campuses, including the May 18, 2016 disruption at UC Irvine.

Swastika vandalism breaks out on campuses after Presidential Election

Following the electoral victory of Donald Trump there was a spike of Antisemitic Swastika vandalism on college campuses across America reported by The Algemeiner:

At Northwestern University in Illinois, two anti-Trump freshmen — one of them Jewish — spray-painted a swastika, images portraying genitals and anti-gay and racist slurs, alongside the president-elect’s name, on the wall of a non-denominational campus chapel.

At the University of Mississippi, a swastika was found in a residence hall elevator. According to a report in the student newspaper The Daily Mississippian, it was the “fourth instance [on campus] since Election Day.”

At the American University in Washington, DC, a swastika next to the phrase “Go Trump” was discovered on a classroom wall. According to the student newspaper The Eagle, students later modified it to look like an octagon, and changed the words to “Go Drumpf,” adding the words “peace” and “love” to the graffiti. The incident came on the heels of an anti-Trump protest on campus, during which students burned American flags.

At Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, a Star of David with a swastika drawn in its center was found in a classroom.

In Indiana, a swastika was discovered drawn on a dry erase board hanging outside of a dorm room door at Earlham College. “This act was completely reprehensible and totally unacceptable,” the school’s president said in a statement.

In Oregon, Reed College students found Antisemitic, racist and homophobic graffiti — such as a swastika surrounded by a circle alongside the phrase “White is right” — on the wall of a bathroom at the school’s library.

That prompted Aviva Slomish, International Campus Director for Boston-based Middle East Media watchdog CAMERA to call on university officials to “denounce these episodes and thoroughly investigate and punish the offenders.”

In early December 2016, a Rutgers Jewish student, Avi Kulich was interviewed by The Tab about the continuing threats on the New Jersey campus in the wake of this swastika vandalism.  His comments underline the increasingly hostile campus environment towards Israel and Jews graphically portrayed in Hate Spaces:

Students for Justice for Palestine are pretty big on campus. And at virtually every left-wing protest Israel manages to get mentioned somehow.

I think they see Jews as both benefiting from white privilege and as complicit in so-called Palestinian ‘suffering.’ Most of this is based on misinformation and lies and they have no issue supporting groups like Hamas that expressly call for extermination of Jews.

People like to pretend they’re just ‘anti-Zionist’ and not ‘Antisemitic,’ but Israel is a Jewish state and Zionism is the effort to have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland.

[…]

It’s blatant Antisemitic blood libel. Most anti-Israel rhetoric is tinged with Antisemitism.

Abusing Free Speech – the Dilemma Facing American Universities

On December 1, 2016, the US Senate unanimously passed the “Antisemitism Awareness Act”.  Final passage of the companion House version awaits the start of the 115th Congress on January 3, 2017. The legislation “expands the Department of Education’s definition of Antisemitism to include problematic criticism that ‘demonizes’ and ‘delegitimizes’ Israel or applies a ‘double standard’ against the Jewish state.”   The effort to rein in Antisemitic speech by Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups on American campuses runs into existing Supreme Court rulings allowing protected speech under the 1969 ruling in the Brandenburg v State of Ohio matter involving a KKK leader. The dilemma that many university administrators face is barring campus  protests that violate academic freedom and  ‘protected speech’ standards. Barring disruption of free speech events and threatening physical harm are matters about which  university administrations have established policies.  However  preserving  free speech  on campus  some critics believe, as expressed in a recent Wall Street Journal exchange of letters, “shields campus free-speech intimidators.”

The trigger for the WSJ letters was a December 16, 2016, op-ed by UC Irvine Law School dean Erwin Chemeresky and Chancellor Robert Gilman, “A Bill to Police Campus Speech.”  Their  argument is that  the changes in the definition of what constitutes Antisemitic campus speech runs  afoul of First

Amendment ‘protected speech’.  They concluded:

To put the point simply: Congress should not pass legislation that requires a government agency to monitor and respond to political speech—even if that speech ‘demonizes’ Israel or any other country.

We agree that the problem of anti-Semitism on campus and in society generally, is real and ought to be addressed. There are many steps colleges can take. They should ensure that Jewish and pro-Zionist students are included and that the proud expression of Jewish identity on campus is welcomed. Universities should make clear that attempts to disrupt events organized by Jewish or pro-Israel students will not be tolerated. Campus leaders should speak out against hateful speech, and they can react swiftly to any actual threats, harassment or destruction of property.

But the solution most despised by the Constitution is for Congress to pass a law that threatens universities and speakers merely because of the views being expressed. The Antisemitism Awareness Act is troubling because it seems to do precisely that.

One critical letter writer to the editor of the WSJ, pointed out that Dean Chemeresky had violated his own principal in the matter of a fee imposed on the campus Young Republican for bringing in anti-PC gadfly Milo Yiannopoulous alt-right speaker.  That , the letter writer suggested violated the 1992 Supreme Court ruling in the Forsyth County  case banning so-called “pay to speak”  The argument being that “UC Irvine penalizes those who engage in speech.” Noting that Dean Chemeresky had defended the convicted MSU 10 students who “criminally disrupted” the speech  of former  Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on campus at UC Irvine in 2010.

Conclusion:

Perhaps the answer lies in adopting federal standards regarding Antisemitic hate speech protocols modeled on that adopted by the Board of Regents of the University of California system.  A more drastic step may be the adoption of legislation designating the Muslim Brotherhood  affiliates in the U.S. as terrorist organizations.  That in the opinion of some Trump advisers might stop the anti-Israel and Antisemitic activities of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates on college campuses.

The matter of addressing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel was taken up in model state legislation  developed by  Professor Eugene Kontorovich of  Northwestern University’s  Pritzker School of Law and promoted by the Washington, DC –based Israel Allies Foundation. To date 14 states have passed the anti-BDS legislation, the latest being signed into law by Ohio Governor John Kasich.  We will see if any of these initiatives come to fruition in 2017.  In the meantime, the SJP is seeking to establish chapters at high schools across the country.

Parents of college students  concerned about the potential spike in New Antisemitic  incidents on American campuses  might keep a watching brief by periodically checking with the AMCHA Initiative Antisemitism Tracker.  Another  useful  source is the Algemeiner report on the 2016 40 worst American universities hostile to Jewish Students.

Florida: Holocaust Liberator Honored at Al Katz Center

/in , , /by
holocaust liberator

U.S. Army Lieutenant Frank W. Towers. Photo by AL KATZ Center.

On April 13, 1945, when U.S. Army Lieutenant Frank W. Towers liberated 2500 starving and dying Jews from a Bergen-Belsen death train bound for Dachau concentration camp, never could he envision that more than 70 years later he would be reunited with many of his Survivors in Bradenton, Florida, and receive a personal presentation from the White House for his noble acts of service to his country. During the reunion of Towers and many of his Survivors from across the United States and Canada, convened at The AL KATZ Center, Towers was surrounded by persons who owe their very lives to him.

Towers, now 99, was surprised with a visit from the White House Senior Director of Arms Control and Non Proliferation, who praised Towers for his leading role in saving thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust and presented him with a personal letter from the President and a Presidential photograph.

Amongst the Holocaust Survivors in attendance were various authors, a physics professor, and Dr. Thomas O. Hecht, a Canadian Jewish community leader and the founder and CEO of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel, which has advised all of the Israeli administrations for the past 21 years.

The reunion of Holocaust Survivors and liberators was held at the new headquarters of The AL KATZ Center in Bradenton, Florida.

Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (Security Service) and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia. Place uncertain, 1942. — National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

EDITORS NOTE: The next major event at the AL KATZ Center is a multi-media presentation by local Holocaust Survivor Kurt Marburg, who grew up nearby the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference, where top Nazi officials, including Chief of the SD Reinhard Heydrich, met to seal the fate of Jews in the Final Solution, which led to the loss of 50 million lives across the globe during World War II.

“Wannsee: Where Men Went Deadly Wrong” will be held on Monday, January 18 at 11:00 AM, open to the public, $12 per adult, $3 per student, with a grand opening reception to follow from 1:30 until 5:30 PM. For reservations, contact Dr. Beverly Newman at (941) 313-9239.

The new headquarters of The AL KATZ Center, located four miles from the Gulf of Mexico and which seats 100 people, offers greatly-expanded space to the Center for its weekly programs and daily community services.

In addition to its 75 events per year, The AL KATZ Center, a Florida non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, provides advocacy services free-of-charge to elders in guardianship crises nationwide and assists Holocaust Survivors in meeting their daily and critical needs.

What is your Religion?

/in , , , , /by

On 26 Nov 2008 at a tourist hotel in Mumbai India, a group of Islamic terrorists murdered 266 innocent people and injured over 250 more.  Their common question to the tourist’s at the hotel was “What is Your Religion”?  Christians and Jews were murdered because of their religion.  Muslim for the most part were allowed to live. Islamic terrorist’s Murder Jews and Christians

On 1 Oct 2015, Chris Harper-Mercer entered a community college in Oregon and murdered 9 people and injured many more.  He asked students, “What is Your Religion”?  Article by Pamela Geller Oregon Shooter Islamic Ties

Have you heard any discussion on the major news outlets about Chris Harper-Mercer’s religion or his ties to Jihad support?  Have you heard any Oregon law enforcement discussing Harper-Mercer’s ties to Islam?  Anything from the FBI or our pseudo President Obama?  No and you will hear little of anything about Harper-Mercer’s ties to Islam and his support of jihad (murder) against non Muslims at the Oregon community college.  You will only get such information from great people like Pamela Geller.

America will continue to have Islamic supporters murder our children in their schools for many years to come.  I have written several articles since 2003 about Islamic terrorists who have openly stated they will target our children in America.

What can be done.  In reality very little can be done to prevent these type murders because our senior law enforcement and politicians led by America’s number one Islamic supporter (Obama) will not allow common sense security measures to be implemented.

It is common sense that if one military force has an enormous supply of weapons and the other side has virtually none, the more heavily armed will conquer their foe.  This is why we give billions of dollars to Iraq and Syrian rebels.  We want them to be on the same playing field and have an equal chance of defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

The same common sense concept needs to be applied in America.  Instead of limiting the number of people and guns that American citizens can own and legally carry/store in their homes and to be allowed to carry openly and concealed in public must increase.  Obama and the media (to include FOX News) will never advocate or encourage every lawful American over the age of 18 to carry a firearm with them at all times.  This means at schools, work, sporting events, and yes even our military on U.S. bases and recruiting centers.  Seems strange we should even have to discuss U.S. military personnel being allowed to be armed in America.  Seems common sense to me.

The vast majority of Americans are law abiding and the number of mass murderers are minimal.  If every lawful student in the Oregon college had a firearm do you think the murderer would have been able to kill nine and injure even more?  If criminals knew every American homeowner had firearms, every student in higher education schools had a firearm, every person in a bank had a firearm, every person at a sporting event had firearms, and every teacher and administrators in our elementary and high schools had firearms, do you think they would second guess themselves before planning a criminal act using a firearm.  Of course they would.

Islamic based terrorists and their supporters at all levels will continue to attack and murder innocent Christians and Jews around the world, and yes there will be more school type attacks in America.  Unfortunately there will continue to be Islamic terrorist supporters at the top level of our political chain who will continue to provide more rights for Muslims than they will for Christians and Jews.

America needs a leader who is strong such as Russia’s President Putin.  We need someone such as Donald Trump, otherwise America will fall just as Rome fell many years ago.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why gun laws miss the mark – The Orange County Register

Oregon aftermath: America needs God

What’s Left

/in , , , /by

The Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman said that she would not use her platform of fame or share her strong leftist opinions inappropriately; therefore, she granted an interview to Steven Galloway, The Hollywood Reporter. Thus begins a peek into a leftist’s psychology. (No sunspecs required.) 

Portman identified herself as being “quite leftist,” meaning that she is yet another person of Jewish heritage who has withdrawn from her birthright, and follows a distinct set of assumptions held by others – also described as “groupthink.”  When asked if she feels uncomfortable about her Jewishness while in France, she offered a brief “Yes,” before deflecting to comment about “the danger of being a Muslim in many places.”   The identity of whom the Muslims fear was conveniently not broached – it is their own rage and violence, products of their perception of Muslim supremacism.

France is considered the most dangerous country for Jews today and the Muslims the “main instigators of global anti-Semitism.”  France’s Jews, 0.75 percent of the population, live in constant peril.  Anti-Semitism has increased by 400 percent since the summer of 2014; 40 percent of violent crimes are committed by Muslims against Jews.  Although French officials have deployed about 20,000 soldiers to guard the Jewish businesses and schools, crimes persist, such as:

  •  the boy who, returning home for Sabbath dinner, was accosted and pummeled by four men with iron pipes – his eye socket damaged, shoes stolen, cell phone intentionally trampled so he could not call for help.
  •  the 17 year-old girl who was  pepper-sprayed and told, “Dirty Jewess, inshallah (Allah willing)  you will die”;
  •  the Jewish mother who, while seated on a park bench, was attacked and beaten by three men;
  •  the young couple who was robbed in their apartment, the woman raped, her boyfriend restrained;
  •  the firebombs thrown at a Jewish community center in Toulouse, another at a synagogue;
  •  the three solders standing guard outside Nice’s Jewish center who were attacked and injured by a man wielding a knife;
  •  the anti-Semitic riots in Sarcelles (Paris suburb, “Little Jerusalem”), with slogans of death and slaughter.

These and others were carried out against Jews by Muslims, but Portman’s leftism precludes her identifying the criminals and their behavior.

As noted in The Religion of Peace online, close to 26,000 terrorist attacks were committed in the name of Islam since 9/11, and a recent article by Giulio Meotti cites 100,000 Christians per year.  All other religions combined do not equal the terrorwrought by Islam and no other religion requires the suffix “phobia” to bully others into silence lest they be accused of harboring “irrational fear” when the fear is perfectly rational.

No other religion demands respect while committing the most abhorrent crimes – and this is because Islam is a political, militaristic ideology couched in religion. Their mandate is to conquer and govern all others: immigrate (to a non-Muslim country), populate (increase and demand accommodation), and eliminate (city becomes Muslim), according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan of 1982.  About 62 percent of the Quran curses unbelievers or calls for violence, yet, when once sharia is established as law, their own are also controlled harshly.  In fact, Iran has been systematically purging (genocide) its own Arab population.

Surely, Portman should have noticed the preponderance of armed French soldiers on Paris streets, where once there were accordionists, flower sellers and romance.  France’s oldest and second-largest city, Marseille, founded in 600 BC by Greek sailors, was once considered the European Capital of Culture, but is now ranked as Europe’s most dangerous city, having a 30 to 40 percent Muslim population. Portman and the Left will deny the cause of the violence and the climate of fear that turned the once-charming, coastal city into a no-go zone, where French law is irrelevant. In fact, the Left denies the existence of no-go zones.

Since the Left adheres to a mantra of multiculturalism and equality of people and religions, Portman calls “endangered Muslims” those who amass weapons, invade, and destroy.  While one faction continues to attack Israelis and Jews at every opportunity, another faction is slaughtering Christians, beheading, burning, kidnapping, raping, and selling women and children into slavery.  Islam is the only group that continues the slave trade.  While Hitler and Nazism were responsible for about 60 million deaths, and Stalin and Communism about 80 million, Islam’s legacy over 1400 years approaches 400 million.  The Left and mainstream media remain silent, and Portman proves that she is indeed on the Left by denying Islam’s gory history.

The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call all Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule, some quite graphic.  Aloof from historical context, they proudly regard themselves as part of the eternal and unchanging word of Allah.

Portman has generously, but presumptuously, forgiven Dior fashion designer John Galliano for his several public anti-Semitic rants, yet denounces Prime Minister Netanyahu as racist for noting the growing Arab vote – that could credibly destroy the Jewish people’s only homeland.  Blindly loyal to her destructive liberal doctrine, she prefers Palestinians have a home that was never theirs at the peril of Jews in the home that had been theirs for centuries. The Left prefers that Israel again cede land to those who already have a land mass one thousand times Israel’s size, and may be mobilized to slaughter Jews at the mere sound of a bugle.  The Left is silent when Israelis are attacked from air, earth, and beneath the earth, but speak out for the rights of those who have Natalie Portman in their sight.

The pretty and talented Natalie Portman knows little about her own heritage and displays a shocking amount of ignorance of the facts, and her arrogance for defending the leftist fiction is indefensible. The irony is that her personal life is unacceptable to those she defends.  Under Palestinian rule, Sharia, she would be stoned or beheaded for being of Jewish descent, a woman, outspoken, supporting same-sex marriage, believing in educating females, wearing “immodest” clothing, and having a child out of wedlock.  She and her family are at risk now in France, in Israel, and in the United States, and the source is Islam.  Sadly, our Leftist academia are no longer teaching their students to think and reason, and Natalie Portman is of that generation.

If we add together the Islamists in our midst, the remorseless willfully blind, and the ignorant by indoctrination, I fear for what’s left.

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

/in , , , , /by

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)

VIDEOS: Rosh Hashanah 2014 — L’ Shana Tova!

/in , , , /by

Our good friend Patti sent us two of her favorite videos as we approach Rosh Hashanah (רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה‎) 2014. We share them with with you. Enjoy this blessed Jewish New Year.

From the entire DrRichSwier.com team –   שָׁנָה טוֹבָה (L’ Shana Tova)!

Dip Your Apple – Fountainheads Rosh Hashanah

What Makes Rosh Hashanah Beautiful