Monday, August 21, 2017
Ben Shapiro: If You Condemn Antifa, Are You Excusing Neo-Nazism?
There are two measures we must examine in terms of any moral comparison between Antifa and neo-Nazis. First, there’s the ideological. Then, there’s behavior.Anti-Israel Leaders Hosted at State Dept. Seeking to Drive Wedge in U.S.-Israel Alliance
Let’s begin with the ideological. Antifa has no clear-cut ideology, but they seem to be a mashup of communists and anarchists. Neo-Nazis are white supremacists who believe in the innate inferiority of non-Caucasians, and therefore believe that they have the right to oppress other groups. It’s fair to say that Nazism is a uniquely evil philosophy, more evil than the communist philosophy, even though the communist philosophy of Antifa was responsible for tens of millions of deaths globally. So if we were to say that communism is as evil as Nazism, we’d be wrong. By the same token, if we were to whitewash communism, we’d be even more wrong.
Then there’s the question of violence. When conservatives condemn Antifa, they’re pointing out that use of violence in response to peaceful protest by evil people is more dangerous than peaceful protest by evil people. Those who initiate violence in a free society are a bigger problem than those who preach evil; the whole point of civilization, as Max Weber stated, was to give the state a monopoly on the legitimate use of force other than in self-defense. Breaking that compact and equating speech with violence is a serious threat to a civilized country. Condemning Antifa for their violent tactics in Boston, for example, should be required of all decent citizens in the same way that condemning Nazi ideology should be.
But this whole argument is a fraud anyway. Very few Americans stand in favor of Nazism, and the Left’s game of broadening out the label “Nazi sympathizer” is merely a political ploy. Antifa is evil. So is Nazism. Two things can be evil at the same time. Anyone who doesn’t believe that should do a little historical research on Stalin and Hitler.
But there are far more Americans condemning Nazism in the last two weeks than Americans who seem willing to condemn the breakdown of law and order. In fact, many mainstream Leftists are now defending Antifa. And that may make Antifa and its attendant violence a serious threat to the social fabric.
A State Department official confirmed the meeting took place, but would not specify who the American Muslim leaders met with and what exactly was discussed.Mohamed Fahmy: Qatar’s Al Jazeera echoes terrorism
"The Department regularly hosts groups representing different constituencies in America to explain USG policy and hear their perspective," the official told the Free Beacon. "The group was interested in U.S. policy on Jerusalem given events on the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif last month, and met a cross-section of working
level officials from different offices in the Department."
Asked if administration officials were aware of the group's anti-Israel views and ties to Hamas, the official said that State Department views Hamas as a terror organization and opposes boycotts of the Jewish state.
Noah Pollak, a political consultant who works with a range of pro-Israel organizations, criticized the State Department for hosting what he described as extremists who reject Israel's right to exist and openly endorse terrorist groups.
"AMP is a front for jihadists, and doesn't try very hard to hide it. Some of its founders were involved with the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas fundraising front that was the biggest terror finance case in U.S. history," Pollak said. "Its founder called for an ‘intifada' here in America. Maybe next time there's a flare-up of Palestinian violence the State Department can cut out the middle man and just meet directly with Hamas."
Other pro-Israel insiders expressed concern over the meeting, but cautioned against putting too much stock in efforts by these Muslim American groups to drive a wedge into the U.S.-Israel relationship.
When I accepted a job as Cairo bureau chief for the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera English television news channel in September 2013 I demanded and was assured that my team would remain independent from the network’s Arabic channels.
Those assurances went out the window as management breached its contract, dubbing our English material into Arabic reports behind our backs and rebroadcasting them on the network’s Arabic Mubasher – a channel that an Egyptian court had shut for its “national security threat and bias to the Muslim Brotherhood,” a group once banned as a terrorist organization.
Unknown to our team at the time, Qatar – the tiny Arab state backed by the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves and oil treasuries – also later breached the secret Riyadh Agreement, which required that Qatar stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
That accord was reached two months after our team started working out of the Al Jazeera English makeshift office at the Cairo Marriott Hotel.
According to the recent CNN exclusive release of the unpublished handwritten accords, Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim Al Thani joined the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – the same nations that since June 5 have spearheaded a boycott of his country – in vowing not to support the Brotherhood terrorist franchise in the region and “antagonistic media.” The latter is a clear reference to Al Jazeera, which was accused during the negotiations on the Riyadh Agreement of becoming a voice for the Brotherhood and radicals such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian preacher convicted of terrorism while residing in Qatar – a man who encouraged suicide bombings and the slaying of Jews and Christians on his weekly show on Al Jazeera, once watched by 60 million people.
UN Watch: Andres Roemer, Recipient of 2017 Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award
Dr. Andrés Roemer is a renowned author, humanitarian, and one of Mexico’s most internationally recognized public intellectuals.U.N. Watch: Seeds of terrorism
The Harvard Club of San Francisco recognized Dr. Roemer for “having the courage to stand up for his beliefs.” As the former Ambassador of Mexico to the UNESCO, he took a principled stand—costing him his job—but ultimately succeeding in changing the position of his country.
At a UNESCO Session in Paris, Dr. Roemer refused to cast a vote in favor of a resolution on Jerusalem that denied the Jewish people’s historic connection to the Temple Mount and the ancient city.
The San Francisco Chronicle called him a “rare public figure who deserves to be called a Renaissance man.”
Dr. Roemer previously served as Consul General in San Francisco, where he has played a crucial role in enhancing the partnership in education, culture and innovation between Mexico and the United States.
Despite video, photo and social-media evidence of Palestinian children, some as young as 8, engaging in terrorist acts against Israeli citizens, the United Nations turns a blind eye to the bloodshed, according to a human rights group.Trump supporter wearing Israeli flag told to 'get the f--k out' of Boston by hecklers
The secretary-general's 2017 annual report released earlier this year maintains there's “limited information … about the recruitment or use of children,” The Washington Free Beacon reports.
Yet in the aftermath of attacks in the fall of 2015 that left two Israelis dead and nine injured, the Palestinian U.N. representative declared at the U.N.'s headquarters, “We are so proud that in this popular uprising that has started almost two months ago, that the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine,” according to the group Human Rights Voices.
This month the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced legislation, the Taylor Force Act, which would cut U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority unless it stops its “pay to slay” policy. Reportedly advanced by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the policy distributes millions of dollars in monthly payments to terrorists and their families. The legislation is named after an American killed by a Palestinian terrorist in Israel last year.
Among the eclectic throng of demonstrators in Boston on Saturday, a supporter of President Trump found himself surrounded by protesters who yelled profanities at him.Petition Asking White House To Recognize Antifa As Terrorist Group BLOWS UP online
A man wearing an Israeli flag as a cape can be seen in a video shared by Univision's Jessica Weiss, walking through a crowd of protesters. One person rips off his "Make America Great Again" and throws it away.
Amid the obscenaties directed at him, one protester shouted, "Get the fuck out of our fucking town." Another person can be heard urging the other protesters not to be violent.
Weiss asked why he was in Boston to demonstrate, and the man replied, "I want to show that people shouldn't be afraid to voice their other views and voice their opinions."
"You shouldn't be afraid to go outside and say you're conservative," he added "And it's pretty sad that things like this happen."
Thousands of protesters descended on Boston on Saturday, including a "free speech" rally organized by some right-leaning groups. These groups were reportedly far outnumbered by groups of counter-protesters.
A petition formally asking the White House to classify violent leftist group Antifa as a terrorist organization has blown up online, reaching over 140,000 [197,719 now] signatures since its inception on August 17.And Yet President Trump, in His Classically Inartful Way, Was Absolutely Right
The petition explains that Antifa engages in terrorism — “the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims” — and thus should be declared a terrorist organization.
The left-wing anti-capitalist political movement styles itself a fighting force against "fascism" and "Nazism," justifying action — including violence — against anyone whom they claim fall into such categories; this has been proven to include essentially anyone on the Right, even if they are active participants in combating neo-Nazism on the so-called "alt-right."
Antifa has become increasingly active in the past two years, attempting to or succeeding in shutting down speeches from right-wing or liberal speakers by triggering a heckler's veto. Last weekend, Antifa appeared in Charlottesville to "punch Nazis" at a rally-turned-riot where a man with white supremacist ties murdered 32-year-old Heather Heyer by driving a vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters.
The group also participated in violent acts against police officers and free speech rally participants in Boston on Saturday, attacking cops and tossing bottles filled with urine at groups of law enforcement.
"AntiFa has earned this title due to its violent actions in multiple cities and their influence in the killings of multiple police officers throughout the United States," reads the petition. "It is time for the pentagon to be consistent in its actions — and just as they rightfully declared ISIS a terror group, they must declare AntiFa a terror group — on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety."
I just did something fascinating. I just watched the President’s entire 14-minute impromptu news conference at Trump Tower on Monday that sparked all the latest barrage of anti-Trump screeds from the left media that will criticize him every day, no matter what he does, augmented by the “Never Trump” Republicans and neo-conservatives who will not rest until they can re-conquer the political party they lost because of three terms of two failed Bush presidencies, followed by the two failed Presidential candidacies of Sen. John McCain and of Gov. Mitt Romney.KKK: “We’re Freedom Fighters, Not Terrorists” (satire)
Not the reportage about the conference, but the entire 14 minutes unedited, uninterrupted. I found myself agreeing with his every word. I did not find his tone or demeanor “unpresidential” in the least. He sharply and explicitly condemned the Nazis and White Supremacists unequivocally. He also condemned the extreme leftists who premeditatedly came armed with weapons to smash up a demonstration that, rightly or wrongly, had been granted a legal permit. (I personally wish that ACLU liberals were not so proactive in advancing the right of Nazis to get permits to rally at public venues, but the demonstration had a permit. Meanwhile, the Antifa Alt-Left thugs came with flame-throwers, bats, and shields, and they came to fight.) All the while, the police did nothing for much too long. Chaos and violence ensued.
The media get exercised when President Trump does not parrot their scripts, but they never minded that Barack Obama would not call out leftist rioters and violent leftist organizations by name. As inner cities would burn, with innocents watching their life savings go aflame as mobs would burn down their inner-city stores in cities from Baltimore to Ferguson, the Obama Administration avoided planting blame or naming hate groups. When a Jihadist murdered Americans serving our nation faithfully at Fort Hood, Obama attributed the murders to “workplace violence.” Obama never could articulate the term “Radical Islamist terrorist,” as though he were Lou Costello fearing what would happen to him if he said “Niagara Falls.” When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot by her own former supporter, a mentally ill clinger who had backed the Democrat, the media blamed the violence on Republicans like Sarah Palin. When Rep. Steve Scalise was shot, and others were wounded, by a Bernie Sanders supporter who had set out to kill Republicans, the media avoided pinning blame on a left ideology and overheated rhetoric of leftist hate. But when the President of the United States rightly excoriated law-breakers and thugs on all sides of a street conflagration, he came in for a torrent of media abuse, forcing even level-headed bystanders to take cover.
Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke has released a plea for empathy to FOX News earlier today. “The KKK are not terrorists. We are freedom fighters lawfully resisting the illegal occupation of our Beloved South, and the genocide of the Indigenous Whites.Michael Lumish: I am going to court
“The real terrorists are the Zionists, Black Lives Matter people, and Antifa, who are destroying our statues and monuments that sustain our cultural and historical heritage. To remind everybody, the Confederacy was unlawfully invaded by colonialist Northerners and has been unlawfully occupied for the past 150 years.”
Mr. Duke also defended Alex Fields, “allegedly” responsible for injuring 19 protesters and killing 1 after ramming his car into a group of counter-protesters at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” protest. “James Fields was a freedom fighter in a legitimate resistance movement, not a terrorist! He should be immediately released by the tyrannical Jew-appeasing regime. We will be paying his salary and compensating his family for the entire period of his illegal imprisonment.”
When asked by reporters if he was a racist, Mr. Duke added, “I’m not a racist. I just have a problem with Negroes, Kikes, Beaners, and A-rabs immigrating, living in our country, and building houses here. As long as they keep building settlements in Occupied Charleston, we can never live in peace!”
David Duke further explained, “White supremacy and national socialism are peaceful ideologies. You can’t judge us by the violent minority. We clearly teach our children peace.”
I have a court appointment in one week on Monday the 28th and my guess is that I should shut the fuck up for the moment.
But, in truth, I have never been very good at taking my own advice.
Previously
Possible Restraining Order (Updated)
Officials From Largest US Islamic Charity Promote Antisemitism on Social Media
Senior officials working for Islamic Relief, the largest Muslim charity in the US, have promoted antisemitism, according to new evidence uncovered by the Middle East Forum (MEF) think tank’s Islamist Watch project.Organizers of Annual Holocaust Commemoration Slam Racial Justice March On Yom Kippur As ‘Monumental Injustice’ Against Jews
Khaled Lamada, chairman of Islamic Relief’s US branch (IR-USA), has posted antisemitic content and publicly expressed support for the Muslim Brotherhood — the parent group of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas — on his social media accounts since 2013.
In numerous social media posts written in Arabic, Lamada “appears to hate Jews and admire violence against Israel,” Islamist Watch said; he has also praised the “Mujahidin of Egypt” for “causing the Jews many defeats.”
Further, Lamada has peddled various antisemitic conspiracy theories, including videos that claim Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is a Jewish agent working to sow division and promote sexual promiscuity among Egyptian Muslims.
In July, Islamist Watch uncovered antisemitic social media posts by other IR-USA senior officials, including Yousef Abdallah, who posted content glorifying “martyrs” who provided weapons to “kill more than 20 Jews” and “fire rockets at Tel Aviv.”
The organizers of an annual Holocaust commemoration that culminates with a procession at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland have strongly criticized the forthcoming March for Racial Justice for selecting Yom Kippur — the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — as the date for a show of unity along the National Mall in Washington, DC.Israel-Bashers Target Jews on Their Holidays
“By choosing a day in the Jewish calendar that Jewish people cannot participate in, you have effectively turned your March for Justice into a monumental act of injustice against the Jewish people,” declared Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, the president of the March of the Living, an annual intensive program that takes participants to Poland and then to Israel to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
The March for Racial Justice is scheduled to take place on September 30, when many American Jews will be fasting and attending all-day synagogue services in observance of Yom Kippur. The date was chosen in honor of the victims of a white supremacist riot in Elaine, Arkansas, on the same date in 1919. More than 200 black Americans were murdered during the violence, including former servicemen who had just returned from the battlefields of World War One in Europe.
Last week, a statement from march organizers noted that “the March for Racial Justice did not realize that September 30 was Yom Kippur when we were factoring in these and other considerations and applying for permits.”
When it comes to Israel and/or Jews, their opponents frequently do not even honor the idea of respecting their holidays. On the contrary, rather than let them observe in peace, anti-Semites and anti-Israel activists frequently target Jews on those days.IsraellyCool: WATCH: Australian BDS ‘Activists’ Hit New Low With Bullying Of School Children (Updated)
That includes targeting them with physical violence. The parade example is the Yom Kippur War, launched by an Egyptian and Syrian sneak attack deliberately scheduled to take advantage of Israel’s weakened defensive posture during the holiday observance.
Yom Kippur 1973 also fell during Ramadan. Eighteen years later, during the 1991 Gulf War, the Chicago Tribune reported that Egypt pressured the United States to conclude hostilities before Ramadan “citing a need to keep the holy month free of fighting.” The claim would be funny if it were not so tragic.
Israel has also been targeted for terror attacks disrupting holidays. On March 27, 2002, a suicide bomber massacred thirty people and injured another 140 enjoying a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, their celebration turned into mourning.
Not only do opponents of Jews and the Jewish State exploit holidays to launch physical attacks. More recently, they have used such times as occasions for launching political, economic, and propaganda attacks designed to impose mental and emotional stress on Jews as they celebrate.
They seem to be everywhere, and no matter where they are, they reveal their true, ugly side – which has nothing to do with wanting or encouraging peace.BBC R4’s ‘Today’ fails to give full account of Western Wall story
I am, of course, referring to BDS-holes.
In the latest act to hit the Interwebs, a bunch of them in Perth, Western Australia have held a demo – in front of a Jewish day school.
Think about this for a second. They decided of all places to chant “Free, free Palestine” in front a school for Jewish kids (and yes, the kids are there – it is Winter in Australia now, not Summer vacation).
Update: I have been told it took place on a Sunday but nevertheless, this was a Jewish day school. And there were some kids there, per the Rabbis’s account below. So the bullying of schoolchildren did happen.
Although uninformed listeners would not know it, what Bateman describes as a “temporary […] egalitarian prayer space” has in fact existed for seventeen years and – despite the impression given in this report – it continues to be open to anyone wanting to use it.Alternative Facts Under NY Times Editor Matt Seaton
As was explained here last time the BBC reported on this subject, the aspects of the ‘Kotel deal’ of January 2016 which were affected when it “fell apart” as Bateman puts it are plans for a communal entrance to all the various prayer areas at the Western Wall and plans for a joint committee to run the mixed gender prayer area.
This report did not inform audiences that even before the ‘Kotel deal’ fell apart, the issue had been taken to the High Court.
A few years ago, an Egyptian lawyer and part-time conspiracy theorist sued his former president, Hosni Mubarak, for failing to "reclaim" the bustling Israeli city of Eilat for Egypt.CJN Contributor Ignores Jewish Claims to Judea and Samaria
He is hardly the only Egyptian who wants to divvy up Israel. In a country raised on hatred for Jews and their state, and where a majority believes the mere existence of Israel violates Palestinian rights, it not surprising that many are drawn to the claim that Eilat is rightfully Egyptian. Some Egyptian leaders, more magnanimous in their immoderation, have rebutted these calls: The city is not Egyptian, they say. It is Palestinian.
The Middle East's rejectionists have always had a hard time agreeing on who gets to feast on which parts of Israel's carcass. But those promoting Egypt's ambitions to Eilat can now turn to none other than The New York Times for support. In a recent Op-Ed about Egypt's transfer to Saudi Arabia of two islands in the Gulf of Tiran, writer Ahdaf Soueif attached a peculiar history lesson to her geography lesson when telling readers that "at the top of the gulf is the Israeli port of Eilat, once the Egyptian port of Umm al-Rashrash."
There’s an important line separating legitimate opinion that enhances public discourse, from fatuous rhetoric that interferes with constructive dialogue.Art comparing immigrant crisis to Holocaust draws German Jews' ire
In her latest commentary published on August 17 in the Canadian Jewish News entitled: “Israel is losing its way,” columnist Jean M. Gerber admonishes Israel for “50 years of occupation” of the “West Bank”. See the commentary in full appended below or read it only on the CJN’s website. The piece was headlined: “Palestinians are occupied, and we all suffer”.
Gerber’s claiming that the “West Bank” is “occupied” Palestinian land, fundamentally erases from the historical record a continuous 3,000+ year Jewish presence in what was called until a few decades ago “Judea and Samaria.” Jews have never ceded their rights and importantly, you can’t occupy your own home.
A planned performance art installation titled "Auschwitz on the Beach" has sparked the ire of the German Jewish community for comparing Europe's current immigration crisis to the Holocaust.Michigan man sentenced to probation for threatening to kill children and Jews
The installation will begin on August 24 in the German city of Kassel as part of the Documenta 14 exhibit, an international modern art exhibition considered one of the most important in the world.
The performance installation will be presented by Italian and Brazilian artists and is based in a poem written by the Italian Marxist philosopher Franco "Bifo" Berardi, a known radical leftist.
According to Berardi's explanation of the performance, which will be presented in English on Thursday and Saturday and in Italian on Friday, "Europeans are building concentration camps on their own territory, and are paying their Gauleiter [the ruler of a Nazi province] of Turkey, Libya, and Egypt to do the dirty work on the coast of the Mediterranean where saltwater has replaced Zyklon B."
"Extermination is the word accurately defining the sentiment and behavior of the majority of the European people and the political action of the European governments," Berardi claims.
A Michigan man who used Twitter to threaten to kill children and Jews in mass shooting attacks was sentenced to two years of probation.Teens who made menorah into swastika sentenced to meet survivor
A judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday gave David Lenio, 29, the probation sentence after giving him credit for the four months he served in jail after his February arrest, which ended after his trial in June.
A jury in June acquitted Lenio of two felonies – aggravated stalking and using a computer to commit a crime, and convicted him on the lesser charge of malicious use of telecommunications. He was released from prison on his own recognizance following the June trial.
In addition to probation, Lenio was ordered to stay away from synagogues and schools and to not use computers, Fox17 in West Michigan reported.
Lenio’s father said his son suffers from mental illness, Fox reported.
He was arrested in 2015 in Montana for making similar threats, and released to his parents in Grand Rapids with the condition that he not use social media.
Three teens pleaded guilty to criminal damaging charges for twisting a large decorative menorah in the front yard of an Arizona family’s home into a swastika.Oregon highway overpasses eclipsed by anti-Semitic banners
The teens, who were arrested in March and charged as juveniles for the December incident in a residential neighborhood in Chandler, Arizona, offered the guilty pleas on Thursday in Maricopa County Court.
They were sentenced to serve 30 hours of community service, along with writing an apology letter to the victims and paying restitution. They also must meet with a Holocaust survivor and write an essay on what they learn about the Holocaust and how their desecration of the menorah affected the community, the CBS affiliate in Phoenix reported.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has not yet decided how to charge the fourth vandal in the incident, Clive Jamar Wilson, 19, who posted an apology to the family on Facebook after he was arrested.
Signs with anti-Semitic messages were hung on highway overpasses in Oregon, which is welcoming visitors hoping to experience Monday’s rare solar eclipse.Graffiti activists in Berlin turn Nazi symbols into art
The banners were hung on two northbound highways, which were heavily traveled by California tourists heading to the state to get a better view of the celestial event, according to local reports.
The banners read, “UNJEW HUMANITY,” “Eclipse Whitey,” and “Jewish Financing Available,” the Oregon Statesman Journal reported on Saturday. They were taken down later on Saturday.
Beth Dershowitz of Sacramento told the Oregonian in an email that the banners upset her, her husband Michael, and their children during their family road trip on Saturday. She said her husband took photos of the banners to show state transportation officials.
“I cannot believe that we still have to face this vicious anti-Semitism in such a public place in 2017,” she wrote. “We want to expose this hatred so people stop pretending like it isn’t happening in our own backyards.”
Horrified at the sight of swastikas scrawled on walls, children's playgrounds and building sites, a group of graffiti artists in Berlin is transforming the Nazi symbols into colorful artwork such as flowers, cars and animals.Volunteers from 7 countries clear historic Jewish cemetery in Poland
The swastika, which was adopted by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, is banned in Germany, where right-wing sentiment has risen due to an influx of more than a million migrants in the last two years.
Ibo Omari, who runs a graffiti shop and 'The Cultural Heirs' youth club, encourages young people to look out for swastikas in their local area and then creatively paint over them - after getting permission from whoever owns the defaced property.
"It was important to spur young people into action and to encourage them to take responsibility so they don't just ignorantly walk past such symbols of hatred," Omari told Reuters.
"It offends the whole neighborhood if someone in our midst paints swastikas in a children's playground and I take it personally," the 37-year-old said, adding that they also wanted to show graffiti had nothing to do with racism.
Omari and 'The Cultural Heirs' decided the best way to respond was "with humor and love" so they came up with designs such as rabbits, birds and a Rubik's Cube to cover swastikas.
An international group of 18 volunteers from Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic and Turkey with the help of seven volunteer Polish scouts from Poznan are cleaning a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.57 years after Eichmann's famous flight, El Al will fly again to Argentina
The work on the Jewish cemetery at Okopowa Street in Warsaw began on August 16 and will continue through August 24. The organizer of the project, the Cultural Heritage Foundation, has been carrying out cleaning work in this cemetery for three years. This year, together with the One World Association, the foundation invited young people from abroad to participate.
Participants will take part in discussions, lectures and thematic walks connected to Jewish culture in Warsaw, as well as visit the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Warsaw synagogue.
“The cemetery is largely undiscovered, and access to many cemetery quarters is hampered by wild plants. Thanks to the help of over 100 volunteers, we managed to organize almost 3 hectares of the cemetery,” coordinator of the volunteer projects of the Jewish Heritage Foundation, Ola Waszak, told JTA.
Cleaning work consists mainly of cleaning of the oldest part of the cemetery and removing broken tree boughs and plants. Preliminary cleaning of the cemetery is essential to allow qualified conservationists and visitors to gain access to historic gravestones. All work is supervised by the director of the cemetery, the Jewish Community in Warsaw and the Jewish Historical Institute.
The Argentinean and Israeli national air carriers signed an agreement to begin flights between Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv.Jewish funnyman Jerry Lewis, 91, has died, but his signature laugh lingers
Aerolineas Argentinas President Mario Dell’Acqua and an El Al vice president met on Friday at the Argentinean embassy in Tel Aviv to sign the final agreement between the two national airlines.
El Al and Aerolíneas Argentinas flights will begin next month. Currently a visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Argentina in September as part of a visit to Latin American countries is in the planning stages and, if confirmed, Netanyahu will announce the first flight during the visit. The visit, tentatively scheduled for September 12 and 13, would be the first visit of a sitting Israeli prime minister to Argentina and Latin America.
The president of Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella DAIA, Ariel Cohen Sabban, and the group’s vice president, Alberto Indij, participated in the codeshare signing event. “We celebrate the historic event, which means that more Argentineans can travel to visit Israel and also we are happy to see the Argentinean flag in the Israeli sky soon,” Cohen Sabban told JTA from Israel.
To trigger the agreement, in March Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra and Israeli Ambassador to Argentina Ilán Sztulman signed in Buenos Aires a framework agreement. The Argentinean Foreign Ministry wrote then on its web page that the agreement “was made possible by the excellent relations that exist between aeronautical authorities, in addition to the historical bonds between both countries. It will be supplemented by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which will enable the immediate operation of scheduled flights by the designated airlines.”
Jewish-American actor, comedian, director, inventor, philanthropist and one of the last links to vaudeville Jerry Lewis has died at the age of 91. The world just got a little less funny.Was Jerry Lewis a Genius?
Lewis, born Joseph Levitch in Newark, New Jersey, grew up in a show business family. His father, Daniel Levitch, was a vaudeville entertainer and his mother, Rae, was a pianist who worked for the (still existent) WOR Radio. At the age of five, so the legend goes, he made his stage debut singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and accidentally kicked out one of the footlights. His surprised reaction got the audience to laugh, and this set him on his path toward comedy.
By age 15 he had dropped out of high school and was honing his stage act. His best known routine was a bit in which he’d put a phonograph on and give an exaggerated lip synch. Sounds simple, but if you’ve seen the way Jerry Lewis could contort his face, you can understand why this would become popular. He worked the Jewish “Borscht Belt” in the Catskills Mountains (Brown’s Hotel in Lake Sheldrake was a big break) and, in 1945, at the age of 19, he hooked up with Dean Martin.
The handsome Italian-American singer (born Dino Crocetti) was the perfect straight man to Lewis’ zany, anarchic man-child persona. Their stage show was built on improvisation in which Lewis would bring mayhem to an otherwise smooth Martin vocal performance. Martin and Lewis quickly became successful as a nightclub act, on radio, the early days of television and eventually in Hollywood in feature films. Their first movie appearances were as part of an ensemble (1949’s “My Friend Irma”) but very quickly they were the stars.
Jerry Lewis is considered a comic genius in France. It’s a punchline I remember hearing over and over again growing up, a statement both of pride and deprecation: the French? Those chain-smoking existentialist intellectual beret wearers who think they’re so fancy? Look who they think is funny! Jerry freaking Lewis, shouting “Hey laaaadeeee”! So maybe Americans aren’t so stupid after all!IsraellyCool: When Jerry Lewis Visited Israel
But was Jerry Lewis, who died Sunday morning at his home in Las Vegas at the age of 91, actually a genius? He was certainly, if nothing else, something of a comedy of prodigy, dropping out of Union High School in Irvington, New Jersey at the age of 16 to pursue a professional comedy career. By the time he was 19, he was a married father (of his oldest son, Gary Lewis, who would later be the front man of the band Gary Lewis and the Playboys, of “This Diamond Ring (Doesn’t Shine For Me Anymore)” fame), and he was already tooling around on nightclub stages with the up-and-coming crooner Dean Martin, honing what would become the act that propelled them both to Hollywood stardom in an astonishing 13 films together. Their combination of “sex and slapstick,” Lewis’s term for their relationship, was, for those looking at it with the right kind of critical eye (or oeuil, as the case may be), a fascinating juxtaposition of the two prevailing images of comic-tinged American manhood in the post-war period: Martin (who Lewis idolized) the smooth, world-weary ladies’ man, always ready with a rueful quip and another glass of whiskey, and Lewis, a drooling (sometimes literally) idiot man-child, crashing around and creating chaos while somehow charming all those around him with the sheer absurdity of his inexplicable incompetence. (Should you doubt the influence of these comic personae, consider the fact that the two of them combined into a single character basically forms the basis of every hero of an American comedy of the past twenty years, in which an immature male with no conceivable prospects manages to nab a hot professional woman and bring her down to his level.)
When his partnership with Martin—who, chafing at Lewis’s increasing bid of artistic control behind the camera, not to mention his difficult personality, decamped for the more forgiving environs of the Rat Pack—ended in 1956, Lewis began his career as an auteur, an endeavor he called “Total Filmmaking,” writing, directing and starring in films, arguably comedy classics, like The Bellboy, The Ladies’ Man, and perhaps most famously, The Nutty Professor.
“I’ve been trying to get here [Israel] since I was born 55 years ago. As a matter of fact, I was booked on a flight out of London the night before the Six Day War.”
– the late and great Jerry Lewis, who just passed away, after stepping off the plane in Israel in 1981. He was here for a telethon to raise money for handicapped children.
May his memory be a blessing.
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