Jews dedicating a Torah to the Cave of the Patriarchs to help families of kids with cancer. Arabs want UNESCO to stop it.

Tonight at 8 PM Israel time, there will be a ceremony dedicating a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) to be used at the Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs where tradition says Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives are buried.

It is the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount.

The ceremony will include a concert. The money raised for the event is being used to provide vacations to families of children with cancer in Israel.

In response, Palestinian Arabs are now claiming that the site is the fourth holiest in Islam, and saying that the idea of Jews dedicating a Torah to a synagogue is a desecration of the site.

They are threatening violence.

The Hebron Waqf said in a press release: "Some Hebrew sites published a promotional video stating that the settlers will present at 8 pm on Thursday a Torah scroll to the Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque with a concert.

"This attack is a grave violation of the sanctity of the Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque and a dangerous precedent, and it affects the feelings of Muslims," ​​the statement said.

The Waqf said that "the occupation government has full responsibility for the visits of the settlers and their desecration of the Haram al-Ibrahimi Mosque, the change in its Arab Islamic features, and the imposition of punitive measures against it."

The organization called on all international and human rights institutions, especially UNESCO, to shoulder their responsibilities towards the holy place, and to stop this "grave violation."

In a veiled threat, the Waqf said "the occupation government bears full responsibility for what happens as a result." Meaning that Muslims will riot.

The Palestinian Authority issued a very similar statement denouncing the event.

Ma'an published this video of a large tourist group visiting the holy site, whom they call "settlers," in order to inflame Arabs to stop large numbers of respectful Jews and non-Jews from visiting the holy site.

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Kialo Peddles Antisemitism with Sponsored Tweet (Judean Rose)

Kialo advertises itself as, “The only platform designed specifically for rational debates,” but based on its recent, sponsored tweet, it is anything but. Instead, Kialo is just one more vehicle for far-left Big Brothering ala Facebook. The tweet in question reads:

“Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision!”

Is it ok to physically modify yourself as a symbol of a religious bond? What if your parents do it while you're still an infant? Join the Kialo debate on banning infant male circumcision! https://t.co/67deCOBx5n

— Kialo (@KialoHQ) May 5, 2018

Kialo pretends that it offers a way to have balanced debate “with clear, concise arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that editorial noise.”

But here we have a very leading few sentences in a sponsored tweet. Kialo is telling the Twitterverse what to think about circumcision. They are putting doubt in your minds just by asking the question of whether people have any right to “modify” themselves as a symbol of a religious bond.

And in fact, the question itself is antisemitic. The only people who “modify” themselves as a symbol of a religious bond are the Jews. Muslims circumcise for other reasons.

Notice, as well, that you don’t see anyone complaining about the lip-stretching or scarification practices of some African tribes, or the tooth-sharpening practice of the Mayans and Balinese. How about the neck-accentuation practices of some Thai women in which they wear up to 25 coils, each weighing four and a half pounds, beginning at age 5, to elongate their necks?

No. You don’t hear anyone complaining about any of that. But if you did, it would not be framed as "mutilation" but as diversity. Woe to anyone who dares to cringe or shudder at the nature of these practices, lest he be accused of closed-mindedness and prejudice.

Of course, if you really wanted to address religious mutilation, it would not be circumcision, with its proven health benefits, but female genital mutilation (FGM). Female genital mutilation is known to cause "recurrent infections, difficulty urinating and passing menstrual flow, chronic pain, the development of cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth, and fatal bleeding. There are no known health benefits."

Only when it comes to the Jews, it seems, do people think they are justified in saying we have no right to practice our religion. That our beliefs are wrong, our Torah is wrong, our God wrong. That our age old rite is "mutilation."

But here’s the thing: Jews are obligated to circumcise sons. Banning circumcision effectively bans Judaism. Think how it was in Soviet Russia, how Jews risked death to have their sons circumcised in secret, in the middle of the night. Think how the Romans outlawed Jewish rites like circumcision and how, when Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai criticized them, he and his son were forced into hiding for 13 years in order to evade certain execution. We did not risk death to arrive at the point where our religion and fate can still be debated by outsiders.

And yet, Kialo dares to ask, “What if your parents do it while you’re still an infant?”

With this question, Kialo is making a statement, telling the world to doubt the morality of something that Jews have done for thousands of years. And judging by the responses, Kialo’s implied message has been received, loud and clear.

If a male child is born with a foreskin, then its there for a good reason.
Its a JEWISH thing to cut it out. Pretty sick concept too.

— NecktopPC (@NecktopP) May 5, 2018

How, by the way, is it even a debate if Kialo has prejudiced you from the get go? Take a look at the way the “debate” is framed. The question is: “should circumcision be banned” and it’s offered as a choice, pro or con.

But it’s natural for people to choose arguments in favor of things. People like to be positive. They like to be for, and not against things. This is why, for instance, the pro-abortion crowd frames its position as “pro-choice” while telling the world that anyone who disagrees with them is “anti-choice.” And so, given the choice of being pro or anti a ban on circumcision, people are going to take the bait, and choose pro.

Was there a choice about the wording? Of course. Instead framing the question in terms of a ban, Kialo might have written, for instance: “should circumcision be permitted?” and made that as a pro/con choice. It’s clear that the chosen phrasing employing the word "ban"was meant to prejudice participants against Jewish ritual. And at that point, we have to wonder: why should a basic Jewish practice be the subject of “debate?” Why should it even be discussed by people not Jewish?

Can anyone really tell us that we have no right to observe our religion, as mandated by God since Father Abraham was himself circumcised?

Kialo claims it makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons of an argument by giving you “clear, concise arguments from both sides. That makes it easy to weigh the pros and cons without all that editorial noise.”

But here we have a sponsored tweet, issued just as the right to circumcision for non-medical reasons is being debated in Iceland. And the sponsored tweet suggests that the practice of an ancient Jewish rite abrogates an infant’s human rights. How is that NOT editorial noise?

And of course, people responding to the tweet take the bait and run with it. Read the responses. The word “mutilation” crops up numerous times.

Editorial silence, or bias by selective omission, by the way, also provides a kind of “editorial noise” by filtering what it is readers are allowed to see and hear. if you click the link in the tweet, and read the backgrounder for the debate, one paragraph out of five is given over to a detailed explanation of why Muslims perform circumcision. There is, on the other hand, not one word, let alone a paragraph on the reasons Jews perform circumcision. This, though clearly the Muslim rite is based on the Jewish rite, the Jewish rite of circumcision having begun thousands of years before Mohammed was born, the Jewish people having been the first to practice this ritual.

So effectively, Kialo’s tweet tells you to question the Jewish practice of Brit Milah, the Jewish circumcision rite, but tells you absolutely nothing about why Jews perform this ritual. No one should be surprised. Bias by selective omission is a classic tactic of the left. What they keep you from hearing is just as important as what they whisper into your adorable little subconscious.

Which is why this, is utter garbage:

“With Kialo, you can easily visualize every aspect of a complex debate, so you can be more thoughtful about the issues that matter to you and the world.

“Empowering reason.

“Kialo.”

No wait: 

via GIPHY

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Keith Ellison is Offended (Judean Rose)

Rep. Keith Ellison (D), the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee says it is offensive that anyone would ask him to denounce antisemitism, "I got to tell you it is frustrating to be pulled out and be in... and it’s like it’s your daily moment to denounce anti-Semitism. We denounce it. We absolutely denounce it. We think it is reprehensible, murderous, and genocidal. And it offends me that anyone would insist that I do it one more time."

Oh yeah. Completely offensive. After all, why should the man be repeatedly asked to denounce antisemitism, just because he was in the room with Louis Farrakhan a long time ago er, not so long ago. For instance at the private dinner held by Farrakhan that Ellison attended back in 2013 (along with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani). Not to mention that time Ellison met with Farrakhan in the Nation of Islam leader’s hotel room for a long chat, WAY back in 2016.

Of course, if you ask Ellison, he’ll lie and say he hasn’t met with Farrakhan since 2006, when he first ran for Congress.  

Yes. Ellison has lied and been caught at it, scrambling after the fact and calling his intimate talk with Farrakhan in his hotel room, in 2016, a “chance meeting.”

Just a "chance meeting" with Farrakhan, the guy who said things like, "Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men,” and “Let me tell you something, when you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.”

But what difference does it make what Farrakhan says? Words? They aren't a danger to anyone. Says Ellison:

"In Charlottesville last year they was marching through town yelling, ‘Jews will not replace us.’ Wasn’t no black people in that crowd.

"I gotta just say this to you. Any form of bigotry at all including antisemitism is going beyond the pale. But let’s keep in mind what is gonna kill somebody. Like what happened to Heather Heyer. Like the threats to synagogues."

Because expressions of antisemitism? Nope. That's not the start of anyone actually killing Jews. Right?

But we're not speaking of Hitler. We're speaking of the guy Ellison termed a “role model” in columns he wrote in the 80’s and 90’s, before he ever ran for public office (in 2006, around the time he denounced the Nation of Islam, lather, rinse, repeat). Which tells you something about the sincerity of Ellison’s denunciation of antisemitism. Because he's still hanging with the guy, with Farrakhan. As late as in 2016.

Now what would you think of me if I hung out with Hitler in his hotel room, just by chance? Arafat? Bashar Assad? Stalin? Wouldn’t you question the nature of that meeting, that association? My character??

Of course you would. But if you question the association between Ellison and Farrakhan, it’s a smear. And Ellison? He is frustrated.

"It is frustrating to be pulled out and, it’s like your daily moment to denounce antisemitism.”

The nerve of us. Asking the man to denounce antisemitism, again and again. Well, what does it actually matter that Ellison had an intimate chat with the man in his hotel room, because Farrakhan is irrelevant. Says Ellison.

“Look, I gotta be honest with you and tell you, this thing about Farrakhan being absolutely radioactive and then trying to connect anyone possible to him and then make them radioactive, is. . . Look, Farrakhan’s organization is tiny, they don’t have any influence, nobody listens to them, they don’t have any answers for anyone. Nobody’s paying any attention to them. I’m telling you, they’re not. I mean, give me credit for leading my life.

“Farrakhan is irrelevant. To any politics. Nobody ca- - is he working on health care, is he working on anything? Is anyone thinking oh yeah, I’m gonna be an antisemite like him. No one is saying that. What I’m telling you is, the only way Farrakhan gets in the news is if someone tries to say, oh this black person whose whole life is dedicated to human rights met him or saw him or was in a room with him. It’s a smear, Man. I’m sorry, it is a smear.”

Irrelevant. Just as Hitler was an irrelevant house painter.

Until he wasn't.

Now not only are we smearing Ellison and offending him by drawing attention to his association with Farrakhan, but Farrakhan should moreover, according to Ellison, be given a pass for his antisemitism.

Because slavery.

“Let me tell you, here’s the truth of the matter, if we’re more interested in that: Farrakhan is known best for things like the Million Man March, and fiery rhetoric condemning American racism. He’s also well known for his antisemitic scapegoating of the Jewish community. Because you’re talking about people who spent 250 years in slavery, another 100 hundred years in Jim Crow government sponsored segregation and it’s only been around 16 years since anything else has been going on and we still have disparities in every aspect of American life, the black community is susceptible to a person who is going to stand up and say what’s happening to us is wrong.”

Now THAT is interesting. Because Ellison is essentially saying black people get a pass for anti-Jewish bigotry because blacks were enslaved for 250 years followed by 100 years of Jim Crow.

Which is funny.

Because the Jews spent 410 years in slavery, followed by close to 3000 years of persecution which includes the systematic murder of over 6 million of the Jewish people.

And yet in the 1960’s, the Jews were empathetic to the plight of black Americans, helped to form the NAACP, and marched alongside black people in Selma.

No. It’s not slavery or the years of Jim Crow that give black people like Farrakhan a pass for his antisemitism.

Actually, nothing does that.

And frankly, Ellison taking offense at being accused of antisemitism, instead of owning up to it—to the association with the antisemitic Nation of Islam, and its antisemitic leader Farrakhan—is offensive.

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Don’t Send Your Children to Poland, Please (Judean Rose)

This year, when it came time for my son, the youngest of 12 children, to register for the class trip for Poland, I was ready. I sat Asher down for a talk and explained that he wasn’t going, that even if we had the money for such a trip, even if the school were to give him a full scholarship, he wasn’t going. I wasn’t going to allow my son to become a source of income for a country of antisemites.

And that was that.

Asher understood. More than that, he agreed. At 17, he is politically “woke.” He gets it.

This was before the whole business with Poland’s new legislation became big news. I didn’t need Poland to pass a law to understand which end was up. They don’t want us to connect Poland with the Holocaust? So fine, let us not send our children there to see the remnants of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto.

So what if the Holocaust couldn’t have happened without Germany, without the Nazis?

Does that whitewash the long history of Polish Jew hatred, the pogroms?

Does it make Poland pure and innocent compared to Bulgaria and Denmark, that did so much to help the Jews?

So what if Poles were killed, too. This too, does not erase the antisemitism that Poles imbibe with their mothers’ milk.

Moreover, why, of all countries, should the Jewish State be propping up Poland’s economy with these trips that have become a rite of passage for Israeli high school students? We’re talking some 30,000 children, spending at the very least, a few thousand shekels each for this “privilege.”

To my mind, this is one thing we can do: not support people who hate us. Just as we shouldn’t be using Israeli tax money to help the PA pay stipends to terrorists who have spilled Jewish blood.

It is exactly the same thing. No reason to reward such people or even give them a living. The latest expressions of Polish antisemitism (see for instance: Antisemitic Images, Cartoons, Flood Polish Press as Holocaust Law Dispute Festers, Polish Jews Reel from Wave of Antisemitism Following Furur Over Country’s New Holocaust Law, Top Polish Educator Blames Jews for Communist Atrocities in Antisemitic Facebook Rant, Polish PM: There Were Jewish Perpetrators of the Holocaust) only serve to reinforce what I already knew in my marrow.

What of the people who say the experience of visiting Poland is moving, and a good way to teach the Holocaust?

I say hogwash. I never traveled there and I have an acute understanding of the Holocaust and so do my children. In fact, I’d say that boycotting the place is every bit as powerful a teacher as going there.

Which is why I was raised to check labels, to not buy items from Germany or Spain or from companies that are known to be owned by antisemites. I was proud to express my heritage in this manner. Always was. Even from a young age.

We are lucky enough to have survivors still among us. Let us bring them into the schools to give testimony to our Israeli children. Let us teach the children about the horrors through books and museums. It was enough for me, and it is enough for them.

A friend very involved in Holocaust education told me that my attitude only reinforces the antisemitic trope that Jews turn everything into a matter of money. My response? Do I really care if by refusing to spend money in their country, I look “Jewy” to the Poles??

I couldn’t care less.

Let me tell you a little story: some years ago, I studied my family tree. Politics were off-topic for all the genealogy forums so I started a little yahoo group for this purpose, for people who wanted to speak about Lithuanian politics, in particular as they pertain to the Jewish people. We weren’t a huge group but we had some really interesting members, for instance, the late Prof. Dov Levin, who was a partisan in Kaunas (Kovno) during the war, and who wrote hundreds of articles and at least 16 books on the subject of the Holocaust.

At the same time, I remained active in various genealogy groups, including one for those researching my ancestral shtetl of Wasiliski (Vashilishok), Belarus, in what used to be Lithuania. Our Vashilishok group was approached to clean up the centuries’ old cemetery, which was in a deplorable condition. It wouldn’t cost very much, we were told, since the locals could be hired dirt cheap to do the job. It would take a few weeks at most to get it done.

My maternal paternal great grandfather Haiman Kopelman in Egypt in 1914. He was born in Wasiliski Belarus.

One of our group was going out there anyway for a roots trip, so he took a look and reported back to us. It seems the locals had plowed under the Jewish cemetery, claiming they were preparing to build a strip mall there. But years had gone by, and nothing had been built. Instead, the residents were grazing their cattle in this spot.

Our landsman looked, but could not find a single legible fragment of stone, so thorough had been the destruction of our ancestors’ final resting place, now a place for cows to eat and crap.

We were essentially being asked to build a fence around the area, using local labor, to keep the cattle out, and to put up a sign marking the site as a Jewish cemetery.

As we discussed this issue in our forum, I found myself really not wanting to do this thing. I knew that more Lithuanian Jews had been murdered by Lithuanians than Nazis during the war. Why would I want to support their descendants? Not to mention, I’d seen recent photos of what used to be the Jewish matzoh factory and was now a school. Covered with antisemitic graffiti.

Nothing had changed.

I sought counsel from a local rabbi on behalf of our group. The rabbi saw nothing wrong with fencing off the cemetery. Nor did he find it to be something we must do. The ball was back in our court.

I was going to see Prof. Levin in his Jerusalem home on a different matter. I figured I might as well ask him what he thought. Prof. Levin’s entire family had been murdered in the Holocaust, including his twin sister. He was from the same country as my ancestors, and like me, had made Aliyah. I figured that if anyone could give us an informed opinion, a response touched with the pain of having lived through the Holocaust, it would be Prof. Levin.

I put my question to him. Prof. Levin said (with some vehemence), “Your ancestors would not want you to spend a single shekel on restoring that cemetery! Save your money and spend it in Israel on a suitable project, where it helps the Jewish people. This is what your ancestors would want you to do.”

I felt relieved and comforted to hear Prof. Levin say this. I knew that our collective conscience could now rest easy not doing this thing. We didn’t have to do it. Moreover, we should NOT do it.

We all of us contributed, instead, to a local project that spoke to us.

And that was the last of that subject.

Now you should know that a lot of pressure was brought to bear on us by the local Belarussian Jewish community to do this thing. But we said no.

And that is as it should be.

The trips to Poland by Israeli high school students must stop. Instead, let us invest our money in their education here in Israel. Because our ancestors would not have wanted us to be sending our youth to Poland. They would want us to be building our own country, the Jewish State, with all our might and resources.

One more small story: back in the 1970’s, it was the fad for Jews to bring blue jeans and matzoh to the Jews of Russia. The refuseniks, in dire straits, could sell the jeans on the black market and have money to live on. The matzoh was for them to eat on Pesach, something unobtainable in that black hole of repression. One couple came back from Russia to tell my youth group about their trip, how they knew their hotel room had been bugged, and how dangerous it had been.

I told my late great uncle, Morris A. Paul, all about it. Uncle Morris was president of the Pittsburgh ZOA for years on end, honorary vice president of the national Executive Committee of the ZOA, and on the national budget and finance committee of the ZOA. He also served on the national Executive Board of State of Israel Bonds. Hearing about this couple’s trip to Russia, Uncle Morris commented, “I don’t know why anyone would go to Russia. I was glad to leave.”

Uncle Morris sent all my cousins to Israel for their 16^th summers. He knew where he wanted to put his consumer dollars. Right in the hands of the State of Israel.

Morris A. Paul, or “Map” as he liked to be called, would never have financed a high school student’s trip to Poland, and he sure as shooting would have been downright irritated to hear about Israeli high school students traipsing off to Auschwitz.

This is something our children do not need. And it is something we should not do.

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Flying While Israeli (Judean Rose)

The first inkling I had that fear would inform at least part of my visit to the States came while waiting to board the first leg of my journey, Tel Aviv to Paris. I was on my way to visit my mother in Pittsburgh, who was about to celebrate her 91^st birthday. An Arab sat down beside me and began to read a book entitled L'Or d'Al-Qaida.

As it turns out, the book is a thriller. But I didn’t know that, and the spotty wifi at the airport didn’t allow me the luxury of Google. I knew it was probably nothing to worry about, but I couldn’t take the chance of doing nothing. I decided I’d better tell a representative of the airline, Air France, of my concerns.

The representative waved off my concerns, telling me not to worry, without even bothering to get the details or look at the man reading the book. I was just some Jew worry wart, my report not worth serious attention.

And since I’d now given up my seat to tell someone, anyone about the possible security issue, I was now forced to stand until boarding, no empty seats now in sight.

But once that small concern came to me over a dumb thriller, I was unable to shake the feeling, my entire trip, that it might be dangerous for people to know where I live. I wavered between fear of discovery, and wanting to tell people the truth about Israel, wanting to inform, to fill in where there were gaps of knowledge because the real story is not being covered by the mainstream media.

Or because people are being fed lies.

At times, it wasn’t so much fear of discovery, as it was unpleasant to discover how people feel about Israel and Israelis. There was, for instance, the Air France representative in Paris, who asked to see my passport. I showed her my Israeli passport and she blanched. “This is a problem,” she said, and began asking me about visas and things.

I pulled out my American passport and asked, “Does this help?”

“Much better,” she said.

I was left wondering about the real meaning behind her consternation. Was it visas that concerned her, or the fact that I come from Israel? Did she see me as an oppressor, someone who colonizes Arab land, a Zionazi, a sh*tty little Jew??

Or was I imagining all that?

Understand, please, that I live in a small town over the green line with an all-Jewish population. It is rare for me to see people from other cultures within Efrat, though I see plenty of Arabs at the supermarket and in Jerusalem. For me to be in Charles De Gaulle Airport, however, was to mix with European gentiles, and of course, Muslims of all stripes.

In this space, I was a minority. One that is reviled.

European and Muslim hate of Israel and antisemitism are not foreign to me as concepts, because of my reading and writing. So I believe my paranoia was well founded. Still, I was glad to get to the United States, where, I think, most people have a warm spot for Israel.

And still, I couldn’t quite shake off that fear.

When asked to register for the store’s card at Macy’s or JC Penney’s, I would say, “No thanks. I’m just visiting.”

They’d say, “It’s good everywhere,” and I’d have to reply, “I live abroad.”

Even in America, I found, I was afraid to say the “I” word--to say I live in Israel.

Because Pittsburgh, my hometown, is a friendly place, it got easier. Asked where I lived, I no longer had any choice but to speak the truth, “Israel,” I’d say, and wait, a bit worried, for the reaction.

I shouldn’t have worried. Almost every time I told salespeople and others where I lived, they’d be fascinated and want to know what it’s like, why I live there.

A longer conversation happened with Linda. My mother can no longer drive, or walk unassisted. She has Linda to take her around.

Once upon a time, Linda was a single, black mom, trying to get through college. My mom was typing papers to bring in some extra cash, having been widowed young, and possessing excellent typing skills. Linda saw my mom’s typing ad on Chatham's bulletin board and my mom began typing all her papers.

Some instinct told my mother that Linda needed a bit of mentoring. Her English writing skills were poor. My mother, at a certain point, not only typed, but edited Linda’s papers. Linda struggled to pay her bills and couldn’t always afford to pay my mom. My mom helped her anyway.

Linda told me, “I wouldn’t have gotten through college without your mother.”

I told my mom what she said and my mom said, “That’s true.”

I’d heard about Linda for years, but somehow we’d never met. Now was my opportunity, since Linda was the means by which my mom and I could go places together. While we were driving places, Linda and I were getting to know one another. She had a lot of questions about Israel.

Here are five things that Linda did not know about Israel:

1.       Linda did not know that jailed Arab terrorists receive stipends and their families, financial assistance for killing Jews (pay to slay).

2.       Linda did not know that Israel expelled 11,000 Jews from Gaza and Samaria to give Gaza to the Arabs asking nothing in return. She did not know we destroyed all those lovely Jewish homes, since the Arabs did not want them. She had never heard of Disengagement.

3.       Linda did not know that Israel has a housing crisis because every time there are “peace” negotiations, the Arab side, via the U.S., forces us to freeze the building of homes in our ancestral territories, Judea and Samaria.

4.       Linda did not know that in Israel, phone recordings and food labels are often in at least four languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and Amharic. She didn’t know there’d been a mass immigration of black Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

5.       Linda did not know that Martin Luther King was pro-Israel.

Linda did not know these things because the media is doing a poor job of informing people about Israel. It is clear that people are hungry for information, and fascinated by what I had to tell them. I told Linda, for instance, how my grandson Shmuel had his first haircut at Samuel’s tomb, and I think she grasped what a big deal that was to me as a God-fearing person.

Linda asked me what made me want to live in Israel. I explained that no matter whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew, you know that the Jews are the Children of Israel. That I had always had a yearning to live in Israel. That I believed that it was where every Jew should live. How today it is so easy to get to Israel, to have a real life in Israel, that there is no excuse not to live in Israel.

Once I told Linda about Israel, it became easier to tell the shopkeepers and salespeople, and whoever else wanted to know. People are just curious. They want to know about a life that differs from their own. At least that is the case in Pittsburgh.

I became ill on the second leg of my journey and as a result, required wheelchair assistance during my layovers there and back. While my wheelchair helpers on the way to Pittsburgh were Arabs, on the way back to Tel Aviv, they were not. In Pittsburgh, my wheelchair guy told me how he dreams of coming to Israel because as a Catholic, he wants to “walk in the footsteps of Jesus.”

His wife won’t go with him. Too terrified of terror attacks. But she has given him her blessing for him to go it alone.

I told him I live quite close to Bethlehem. He said, “I know that Jews don’t accept Jesus as their lord and savior, but most Jews think that Jesus was a great prophet.”

I held my tongue. The truth is, no Jew I know thinks Jesus was a great or any other kind of prophet, but rather a naughty little Jewish boy who caused untold trouble and bloodshed for his people. But I wasn’t about to say that to him. Let him believe whatever he likes. No skin off my teeth.

A lovely Ethiopian Christian woman helped me in Atlanta. When she saw my boarding pass, she was delighted to tell me about her dream of visiting the church in Jerusalem.

She told me her entire life story, how every time she prayed for something, it came true: the three beautiful boys she birthed, the new job, a way out of her troubles. We just had this wonderful rapport of one woman, one believer, to another (though our beliefs differed in the details). On parting ways, we agreed we’d see each other in Jerusalem someday. We thought this might really happen.

My travels accomplished their mission which was for me to spend quality time with my mother. I think I also learned that while it’s not safe to trumpet my country of origin to Europeans, it’s really nice to talk to Americans about Israel. They seem to want to know more, and their mainstream media is utterly failing them.

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The Cycle of Antisemitism (Judean Rose)

It’s been said that quashing antisemitic speech isn’t wise, for in forbidding expressions of antisemitism, you only drive the hate underground. Better our enemies should identify themselves by their hate speech, so we know who they are. Better they feel free to say what they really think, so we can gauge the danger to ourselves and our families.

So we can leave before the gates slam shut.

But it’s far more complicated than that. You have only to look at Europe to know this. Europe knows it went much too far with the Holocaust. So now it must look contrite to itself and to the world. It must at least pay lip service to silencing expressions of antisemitism.

How do we know it’s only a show of contrition and not the real thing? We know this because of Europe’s treatment of Israel, the only Jewish State.

Europe’s active anti-Israelism, such as the recent UN vote rejecting U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, is only putting lipstick on a pig, antisemitism in drag. Like Justice Potter Stewart and porn, we know it when we see it: Jew-hate. And Europe’s financial and verbal backing for the enemies of the Jewish State, for terrorism, is just part of the ongoing effort toward the genocide of the Jews.

Now because they don’t speak of the Final Solution or shove us into gas chambers, they think we’re fooled and maybe they’ve even fooled themselves. They think that having created legislation against antisemitism in Germany, they’ve passed the morality test. They don’t speak of hating Jews, so they can claim it’s something other than Jew-hate, though it’s not.

In substituting “Israel” for “Jew” they think they have every right to their hate, that it’s not unreasonable. They think this covert form of antisemitism makes antisemitism okay, polite, Western. They pat themselves on the back, congratulate themselves for this sea change. But antisemitism doesn’t come and go. It’s cyclical, cycling between overt and covert forms of the same thing.

The cycle of antisemitism in its covert form is like a moth inside a cocoon. The moth must at some point, leave the cocoon, for this is part of the life cycle. By the same token, the cycle of overt antisemitism will always out. Just as this current covert form of EU antisemitism necessarily follows the overt antisemitism of the Holocaust.

As individuals, we tend to think of the overt form of antisemitism as being the more dangerous of the two. But the real danger is in failing to see both forms of antisemitism: overt and covert, as part of one continuous cycle, with one following the other with the inevitability of time. The covert antisemitism lulls Jews into thinking they are safe. Since they think they are safe they don’t leave the host country, become trapped, and then suffer and/or die in terrible ways.

Thinking you can stay in a place as long as antisemitism is in its covert phase of the cycle is a crap shoot. You really have no way of knowing if you’ll make it out in time. Your luck isn’t better than the luck of so many who waited too long to get out of Europe, not so long ago. And no matter where you go, you’ll experience the same cycle.

A synagogue in Tehran

These are the thoughts that occurred in relation to the vandalizing of the Chadash synagogue in the Maleh neighborhood of Shiraz, Iran. Reports have been sketchy. What has been reported thus far is that two Torah scrolls were torn to pieces, while the prayer books were found in the bathroom, many of the holy books submerged in toilets.

It’s a horrible story. An overt manifestation of antisemitism that brought to mind an incident of some 17 years ago. A friend I’d made through random chat on AIM was dating a fellow who was originally from Iran. She kept thinking he would propose any minute, but something was holding him back. I volunteered to talk to him, my friend consented.

I made my point: my friend was not getting any younger. She wanted to have children. If he wasn’t going to get serious and pop the question, he should let her move on.

He got the point and they were engaged the next day.

Why had he been dragging his feet?

It was all about his father, back in Iran.

My friend thought her suitor’s parents were divorced. But this was not so. The guy’s father was still married to her mother in-law-to-be, but he was in Iran, while his wife was in LA, for reasons unknown to my friend. My friend’s fiance didn’t want to get married without his father by his side. But it was a difficult and complicated thing to bring him to the States for the wedding.

Somehow, the father did make it over to the States for the occasion and my friend was surprised to see that her in-laws were this fabulous love story. They doted and fawned on each other.

She had assumed they couldn’t get along, which is why dad was in Iran, while mom was in LA.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Here is what really happened: they left Iran for a better life in LA. But dad couldn’t acclimate to the American way of life. He was a fish out of water.

He was miserable.

And so, even though he loved his wife and family, HE WENT BACK TO IRAN.

Unfricking real. To leave the safety of America for THAT. To leave his FAMILY for that. But so it was.

Now here he was, reunited with his family in LA, once more, for the sake of his son’s upcoming marriage.

Would he stay? They had all missed each other so much.

He stayed for two months. Pampered his wife night and day, 24/7. Enjoyed his family. Until he couldn’t. Couldn't take it anymore.

And went back to the covert antisemitism of Iran.

Because it’s what he was used to. It’s what he knew, his whole life.

Ever since then, every time there is a report of overt antisemitism in Iran, such as what happened at the Chadash synagogue, I fear for this man, though I never actually met him.

The man who went back to Iran is the prototype of the Jew who fools himself, thinks there is a lull in the hatred, while it is covert. He is the prototype of the Jew who doesn’t make it out when the cycle goes from covert to overt and the gates slam shut.

via GIPHY

He is like the Jewish community in Germany, complaining every time there is an anti-Semitic incident. What are they even doing there in that horrible country with its awful history?? WHY are they still there?

Because they’re used to it. They’ve been lulled into Jewish somnolence, by the polite, covert cycle of German antisemitism. They don’t see what’s coming next. They don’t even know they’re caught in a never-ending cycle.

They don’t want to know.

Now you might wonder: if it happens all over the world, this cycle of antisemitism, even in Israel, then why try to escape it at all? Why make Aliyah?

The answer: Israel is the only place where your life will have meant something. Where if you die because a terrorist cuts you down, you do so defending your land, so your children might stay Jewish and inherit your inheritance. It’s the only place where just walking four cubits earns you a mitzvah.

You can’t escape the cycle of antisemitism. Not the covert and not the overt. Not anywhere. But throwing your lot in with your brethren in Israel, now that’s where you can make a difference by strengthening the Jewish presence in our indigenous land. It’s where you can do something beautiful for your people, instead of toiling for the society of those awful Europeans (or Iranians, etc.).

Isn’t it time you at least considered the notion of Aliyah?

Who knows? You maybe even stop the cycle, cold in its tracks, and change the world for good.

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Malaysian rally proves that "pro-Palestinian" and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin

From The New York Times:

A protest in Malaysia against President Trump’s decision to designate Jerusalem the capital of Israel brought together political foes on Friday, illustrating how solidarity with Palestinians has united disparate forces in the Muslim world.

Prime Minister Najib Razak headlined a rally of more than 1,000 people in the Putra Mosque compound in Putrajaya, the country’s administrative capital.

Also in attendance were former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old opposition leader, who has led a campaign to oust the scandal-plagued Mr. Najib, his former protégé, and Khalil Abdul Hadi, the head of the youth wing of the country’s main Islamic party. Mr. Mahathir joined a prayer service at the Putra Mosque, along with other politicians.

“Today, regardless of our political beliefs, we gather to show that as Muslims in Malaysia we are united in opposing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Mr. Najib said Friday.

"There are 1.6 billion Muslims,” Mr. Najib said at the Malaysian rally, to vigorous applause. “There are only 13 million Jews. It does not make sense if 1.6 billion lose to the Jews. If we don’t unite, we will be looked down upon.”

That is honor./shame in a perfect little nutshell. It shows that the issue isn't Israel or Jerusalem or Palestinians - it is Muslims losing to the Jews.

And the prime minister's political opponents are even more antisemitic:

Lawyer-cum-activist Azhar Harun has suggested that Prime Minister Najib Razak is wrong in the way he is looking at the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem, following comments made at the “rally for Jerusalem” in Putrajaya yesterday.Firstly, the 1.6 billion has never lost to the 13 million. The 1.6 billion have lost to themselves. They are busy trying to kill each other, whether figuratively or even literally.
“Secondly, and more importantly, many among the 1.6 billion are absolute hypocrites. They lack the absolute and sincere willingness to free Palestine and the Palestinians from the clutch of the 13 million,” Azhar said.
He added that there has been no proper plan, if any, from Muslim leaders and nations other than making fiery speeches.
Azhar then asked Najib to accept the fact that social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, through which he has “voiced his disdain against the 13 million”, is owned by the 13 million.
He also made the distinction of how the Jews now hold economic power and indirectly, political power, including among Muslim leaders.
“They, themselves, rely on the Jews and the friends of the Jews, to make money and to pursue their selfish agenda. They lack altruism,” he said.
Azhar explained how the Jews had plotted their way back from the “pogrom and holocaust” to persevere and eventually gain “world dominance”.
“They did that, first by gaining control of the economy through the financial system, international trade, properties and the world’s essential productions.
“Then, with the wealth that they created, and the essential services that they excel in and even monopolise, they made themselves indespensable to everything that moves in this world, including politicians who were too eager to pursue their own agenda, even at the expense of the Palestinian cause.
“With that, they become an absolute necessity. With that they control the politicians and the politics,” he said
Azhad added that there were no fiery speeches or “sad poems” involved in the Jews’ efforts.
“They had a plan. They worked to execute that plan quietly. And that is why, the 1.6 billion ‘lost’ the plot. And they ‘lost’ to the 13 million.”

The further Muslims are from Israel (and therefore the Western media limelight), the more free they are to be public about their antisemitism. But make no mistake - deep down, the self-loathing and shame that came from weak, lowly Jews defeating the Muslims to gain Israel is the driving force behind all the political moves of the Muslim world towards Israel, and Palestinians are merely pawns.

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Arab and Muslim paranoia about Israel continues

Three completely different articles from wildly different Arab and Muslim sources all agree that Israel is behind everything.

From the Daily News Egypt:

All developments in the region are in favour of Israel, and lead it to regional and civil wars, former Egyptian assistant to the foreign minister, Hussein Haridy, said.
He added that the US president’s speech in October, the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariry, and the recent developments in Saudi Arabia, all revealed a plan to eliminate Iran’s influence in the Arab region, as a prelude to a general confrontation, where all conflicting parties would stand to lose, except Israel. If the Israeli plan succeeds, they would end up with a declaration of the Greater Israel.
Why is Israel involved in this confrontation? One of the goals of this war is to stop the expansion of the Iranian belt from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel and Saudi Arabia share that goal, whether by agreement or not.So Israel is the main player in the current scene? Israel is the catalyst of events and its interests coincide with American arms manufacturers’. The Israeli strategy does not only aim at the elimination of Iran but also exhausting the main Arab forces and draining their economic resources, in preparation for establishing Greater Israel.What do you mean by Greater Israel? For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, it will have borders, as it is considered the only United Nations member without internationally recognized borders so far. This is the undeclared goal.Is Sinai part of this scheme? The Israeli scheme had four phases: the first phase was the Balfour Declaration, the second phase was the establishment of the so-called State of Israel, the third phase was the 1967 aggression, and we are witnessing now the final phase. At one time, Sinai was part of the Zionist project since its launch.It is known that Al-Arish was an alternative to the establishment of the Israeli homeland before the Ottoman Empire rejected that. Regardless of this rejection, there was an agreement between the British and the World Zionist Movement to replace Al-Arish with Palestine. When the two state solution was suggested, the Israeli side thought of expanding the Gaza Strip westward to absorb the density of population. This proposal was met with approval under the rule of the [Muslim] Brotherhood in Egypt.So the 30 June revolution aborted this scheme? It destroyed this project, which put the Zionist and Turkish forces and those who were behind this project in an awkward position, and made the Arab world preoccupied with confronting Iran. Unfortunately, the engine and the beneficiary is Israel.

I am trying to figure out the logic behind all this, but I can't. In the end - everything happening in the Arab and Muslim world is Israel's fault and Israel is using all the chaos to expand. Why Israel gave up the Sinai and much of the West Bank and Gaza are questions that only someone as smart as Hussein Haridy can answer, I guess.

From KashmirWatch:

Despite the repeated assurances of Pakistan’s military and civil leadership that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are well-protected and are under tight security arrangements, having well-coordinated command and control system, a deliberate propaganda campaign against the safety of these weapons keeps on going by the US, India and some Western countries who are acting upon the Zionist agenda to ‘denuclearize’ Pakistan.
It is mentionable that being the only nuclear country in the Islamic World, Pakistan was already on the hit-list of the US, India and Israel, including some Western countries. Based in Afghanistan, American CIA, Indian RAW, Israeli Mossad and British MI6 which have well-established their covert networks there and are well-penetrated in the terrorist outfits like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their affiliated Taliban groups are using their terrorists to destabilize Pakistan by arranging the subversive activities such as target killings, suicide attacks, hostage-takings, sectarian and ethnic violence in various cities of the country. Now, these foreign entities have also started backing the Islamic State group (Also known as Daesh, ISIS, ISIL) in order to weaken Pakistan through terrorist acts.

...These Zionist-controlled foreign elements have, again, started terror attacks in Pakistan to show that nuclear weapons of the country are insecure.
Overtly, American high officials remark that they seek stability in Pakistan, but covertly, they continue to destabilize it to obtain the illegitimate interests of Israel.

This gibberish was originally written in the "Veterans Today" antisemitic conspiracy site.

From Iran's Abna24:

Iranian Parliament’s General Director for International Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian underlined the role of the United States and the Zionist regime in crisis in Middle East and said “the Zionists are after controlling the region.”
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a televised interview with Negah-e Yek on Saturday.
Referring to the resignation of Lebanon’s PM, Amir-Abdollahian said “during the last 6 years, simultaneous with the Islamic awakening, an unholy alliance was forged between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia through which they resorted to various means, such as ISIS, in order to suit their fundamental purpose.”
“Defeating ISIS, with all the support it had received from terrorists and super-powers, was a major step that was taken in about three years. ISIS had set the destabilization of the region as its primary objective and wanted to effect demographic change through tribal conflicts,” added Amir-Abdollahian.
“When they realized ISIS had failed in the region, they forced the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan. But Masoud Barzani was only used as a means to an end,” he went on.
“Americans gave Barzani the green light. Barzani had asked Israel to maintain peace, but he stood alone, so Israel finally had to take measures. Iran provided the greatest support for Kurds in this situation,” said Iranian Parliament’s General Director for International Affairs.
“The Zionists are after controlling the region, but their plots have failed. Their next plan is to disturb peace in the region. They will accept peace and security in the region only when Israel is in peace and other countries, even Saudi Arabia, are destroyed and separated,” he went on. 

The old ways of thinking that Israel and Jews must be behind everything have never left the Arab and Muslim world.

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Antisemite David Icke to speak at city-owned theatre in Vancouver for ten hours

From CBC News:

A British conspiracy theorist known for his outlandish ideas about lizard people and "Zionists" controlling the world is set to perform in a Vancouver civic theatre this weekend, provoking outrage from Jewish groups.

David Icke, a former sports broadcaster, is scheduled to give a full-day presentation at the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday. The theatre is operated by the city, and officials have denied requests to cancel the show from groups like B'nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Aiden Fishman of B'nai Brith Canada described Icke's views as "classic anti-Semitic ideas" and said the booking should never have been allowed.

"It's totally, totally incompatible with the City of Vancouver's role as an open and tolerant multicultural municipality to allow Mr. Icke to speak at a city-owned facility, after we've brought all these concerns to their attention," Fishman told CBC News.

Deep concern from Jewish groups

In an interview Thursday, Icke was furious about the campaign against his show, describing the claims made by Jewish groups as "libellous."

His presentation, according to his website, will cover everything from "reptilians" — shape-shifting alien-human hybrids — to the truth about the moon, which he believes is a hologram projected from Saturn.

"If what they say is true, why will I spend 10 hours talking on Saturday and not even mention Jewish people once? They need to explain that," Icke asked.

But in videos of his lectures posted online, he frequently uses another phrase, "Rothschild Zionists." These are the people he suggests are responsible for causing the 2008 financial crisis, staging the 9/11 attacks and generally controlling the world's banking and political systems.

That phrase, according to Fishman, is pretty obvious code for Jewish people.

Icke claims that he is not against Jews at all, but only "Rothschild Zionists".

In this 2010 essay on his site, he says

Ask most people about Zionism and they will say ‘that’s the Jews’, but while this is the impression the Rothschild networks in politics and the media have sought very successfully to ‘sell’ as ‘common knowledge’, it is not true. It represents only a minority of them and many others who are not Jewish.

Yet when he goes through a list of who he considers "Rothschild Zionists" in positions of power, surprise, they all happen to be Jews (with many of them unknown to be Zionists at all.)

So Icke says with a straight face:

[T]he Rothschild Zionists control the mainstream media; Hollywood and the movie industry; governments, not least in the United States; and crucially in the light of current events, they control global finance and commerce....

Nah, nothing to do with Jews.

Hilariously, Icke quoted a 2008 humor column by Joel Stein, about how proud he was that Jews control Hollywood, to prove that "Rothschild Zionists" control Hollywood - but then he lamely says it has nothing to do with Jews:

The Los Angeles Times columnist, Joel Stein (Rothschild Zionist), wrote an article proclaiming that Americans who don’t think Jews (Rothschild Zionists) control Hollywood are just plain ‘dumb’:

‘I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. But lo and behold, even one of that six, AMC President Charles Collier, turned out to be a Jew! … As a proud Jew, I want America to know of our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood.’

I emphasise again that we are not talking here about ‘the Jews’ owning the media, Hollywood, politics, banking and big business, but a tiny clique answering ultimately to the secret society that I call Rothschild Zionism.

The City of Vancouver is saying that as long as Icke only talks about "Zionists" controlling the world and being responsible for 9/11, then there is no violation of Canadian laws:

 In an email, a spokesperson for the City of Vancouver wrote that it cannot infringe on Icke's freedom of speech without evidence that his presentation will include illegal hate speech.
"The City has explicit requirements in its theater rental agreements that govern the conduct of renters and has confirmed with Mr. Icke and his team their obligation to comply with all Canadian laws relating to the content of their presentation," the email reads.

A simple replacement of the word of "Jews" with "Zionists" in any Nazi text would ensure that they can be read in public in Vancouver without violating hate laws.

Come to think of it, this is exactly how the "pro-Palestinian" crowd thinks, too.

And remember that Alice Walker, the prize-winning novelist of the "anti-Israel" crowd, believes in Icke's theories as well.

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