From Ian:
Isi Leibler: This Passover, Israelis Have Reasons to Rejoice
Daily Wire: Politico: Chabad Is Nexus Of Putin-Trump Conspiracy
Isi Leibler: This Passover, Israelis Have Reasons to Rejoice
In the coming days, most Israelis, secular and observant, will celebrate Passover — the festival of freedom in which we recount our life of slavery and exodus from Egypt, and how we became a nation. The Haggadah that we read at the Passover Seder also carries a universal theme of human rights, but its focus is the Jewish people, stressing our shared past and our aspirations for a renewal of Jewish sovereignty during 2,000 years of harrowing exile, endless persecutions, expulsions and attempted genocide.Gil Troy: Cowards fear celebrating Jerusalem’s ‘Jew-bilee’
We read in the Haggadah that “in every generation, they rise against us to destroy us. But the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from them.” We appeal to the Almighty to “pour out Thy wrath” against the wicked and destroy them.
The Haggadah recounts the Egyptians’ pattern of Jew-hatred: They envied the prosperity of their Jewish minority, enslaved them and ultimately engaged in genocide, with Pharaoh’s decree to drown all newborn Jewish males. This pattern has recurred throughout the generations with those who’ve tried to destroy us: the pagans, the church, secular racist Jew-haters, Nazis and communists.
Today, there is a global tsunami of antisemitism, especially in Europe, where Jews are being transformed into pariahs. The current threat emanates from the bizarre combination of Islamists and radical leftists, who are renewing the vicious antisemitic propaganda of the 1930s that was a precursor to the Holocaust. In its current manifestation, this campaign is also directed against the Jewish national homeland — the only nation-state in the world whose right to exist is under threat.
It’s reassuring to smell cowardice in opponents, but depressing to see it in friends: the quivering lips, the darting eyes, the sweaty palms. Alas, many American Jews are emitting the stink of the scaredycat these days. Too many are dodging the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Six Day War, and especially of Jerusalem’s reunification – or burdening what should be festive celebrations with craven equivocations and politically correct genuflections about Palestinian suffering that obscure Israel’s extraordinary June 1967 triumph.
Seeking to avoid war is noble; apologizing for winning is disgraceful. I am proud that Jews sing songs of peace, crave reconciliation and regret killing. However, true peaceniks are realistic optimists, not naïve masochists.
Had Israel lost in 1967 there would be no Israel.
“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel,” Egypt’s dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser vowed that May. Those were the stakes: Jewish women would have been raped then slaughtered; Jewish men would have been tortured then butchered. Jerusalem would sit atop one more layer of ruins – from the 19-year failed Jewish state. Tel Aviv would be a mass tombstone, reduced to rubble like the Jewish towns Palestinian radicals destroyed after the 2005 Gaza Disengagement, but this time with corpses rotting underneath.
In 1967, barely 22 years since the Nazis had finished transforming their rantings into mass murder, every reasonable person had to take the Arabs’ genocidal threats seriously. That is why Israel had young recruits digging mass graves in Tel Aviv. And that is why American Jews finally, belatedly, rallied around their homeland, under the gun, that May.
Daily Wire: Politico: Chabad Is Nexus Of Putin-Trump Conspiracy
Politico has written an indictment of an entire sect of Judaism, getting basic facts wrong and making wild implications about a Jewish conspiracy in Russia tied to the Trump family.Bethany Mandel: Who Needs Alt-Right Conspiracy Theories About Jews When You Have Politico?
On Sunday, Politico published an article casting Chabad (a Jewish organization dedicated to increasing religious observance among global Jewry) as an interlocutor of political power connecting President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Against a backdrop in which 2016's presidential election is suggested to have been compromised by "interference" from the Russian government at the direction of Putin (with possible "collusion" from Trump and his political teams), Politico portrays Chabad as another brick of intrigue in its narrative wall.
“Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through [Chabad],” alleges Politico.
As an example of the “piling up” of “links between Trump and Chabad,” Politico points to Trump’s hosting of a wedding at Mar-a-Lago between the daughter and son of two separate Chabad-connected Jewish Soviet emigres.
Politico alleges the existence of an “affinity” between “Chabad enthusiasts” and Trump, describing Chabad’s Jewish membership as “Trump’s kind of Jews.” No mention is made by Politico of long-term political support across observant Jewish denominations - and religious Jews and Christians, more broadly - for Republican and broader conservative values.
Chabad’s relationship with the Russian government is framed as a function of the organization’s political ambition, rather than a function of political necessity given the nature of Russia’s politics. No consideration is offered by Politico of political realities in Russia that would compel Chabad to develop and maintain relationships with Putin in order to best serve its mission.
Imagine for a moment the outrage that would (rightfully) erupt if a mainstream publication wrote an indictment of an entire sect of Islam, while getting basic facts like the name of the sect wrong, and hit publish the night before Ramadan began. Or the outrage that would (rightfully) erupt if Breitbart or an alt-right site published the same about Jews. The latter did happen over the weekend, only it wasn’t Breitbart writing a diatribe against a secret web of shadowy Jews, but instead, Politico Magazine.
This is, unfortunately, becoming a bit of a tradition at the publication. On the eve of another major Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah, Politico published a piece accusing politically conservative Jews of remaining silent on Donald Trump’s ascension. Because of the rules regarding work and technology on major Jewish holidays, many Jewish writers and publications were unable to respond to the smear in a timely manner, although Tablet Magazine’s Yair Rosenberg took the time to do so, pointing out for both the writer and editor of the publication just how Jew-y the anti-Trump camp of the conservative movement was and is.
Now Politico is accusing Jews of the opposite: working in a secretive, highly-funded conspiracy to put Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in power, and keep them there. Or something. Truthfully, I didn’t really understand the crux of the piece, despite reading it several times.



















