Wednesday, May 23, 2018
The ADL Betrays Jews to Left-Wing Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is the sewer, sausage factory and the boiler room of the leftist soul.ZOA Shocked at ADL sympathy for Hamas terrorists
The ADL has tried to find common ground with the left. But the left is not in the common ground business. Where the left takes institutional power, in a country, a state, a college or a profession, ideological diversity quickly vanishes leaving behind its ruling activists and a silent majority.
As a liberal consensus vanishes, the ADL is becoming an organization with no base. The ADL is too pro-Jewish for the left and not pro-Jewish enough for the right. The left has its own collection of organizations that it wants to impose on the Jewish community. The Soros lobby’s JFREJ, Bend the Arc and If Not Now were hurled into action against the ADL. Eventually they will cannibalize the ADL.
The ADL failed to stand up the left. And like other liberal collaborators, it will be replaced with a leftist Yevsektsiya that will divide its time between condemning Israel and denouncing Jews as bigots who need to be reeducated about their privilege and their complicity in whiteness. And then it will get ugly.
When the ADL was founded, there was a mainstream consensus for it to influence. The consensus has been replaced by political and racial tribalism. The margins are becoming mainstream. And it’s dying.
The ADL may choose to shut down. Or like HIAS, it may jettison its Jewish identity and join the anti-Jewish left. Or it can do what it should have done all along. It tried colluding. It promoted Black Lives Matter and signaled softness on BDS. But its efforts to collude with intersectional anti-Semitism failed.
Now an irrelevant organization in its final years has one last chance to stand up to the left. (h/t steelraptor from Saturn)
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) president Morton A Klein released a statement condemning the Anti-Degfamation League (ADL) for sympathizing with terrorists following the death of Hamas rioters by the Gaza border last MondayNew report: “false promises made by [Arab] leaders and political elites” created Palestinian Nakba
"it is a horrific tragedy that so many people have been killed and wounded at the Gaza border." said ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt.
ZOA President Morton Klein criticized the ADL statement for failing to distinguish between the minority of the fatalities who were innocent victims and the vast majority who were members of terrorist organizations.
"We must ask, how is the death of mostly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists a “horrific tragedy?” In fact, the deaths of these terrorists prevented a real “horrific tragedy” – the murder of thousands of innocent Jews who would have been slain if Hamas’ violent rioters had succeeded," Klein wrote.
He noted that even Hamas admitted that 50 of the 62 people who were killed during the riots were members of the terrorist organization which rules the Gaza Strip and that the goals of Hamas were to break through the border and overrun Israeli towns nearby.
Last week on May 15th was Nakba Day, when Palestinians and their supporters mourn what they call the ‘catastrophe’ of the modern Jewish state’s establishment, mark the displacement of some 750,000 Arabs in 1948, and call for the ‘right’ of return of the Palestinian refugees to their lost homes in present-day Israel.
There are many reasons that hundreds of thousands of Arabs were displaced in 1948—but as we highlighted in a recent post, chief among them was the fear of being harmed by the approaching Zionist forces.
Basically, people fled in terror because they were led to believe, by their own leaders, that the Zionists would slaughter them like they allegedly did in the Arab village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, even though no massacre ever took place there.
These are important facts for anyone interested in Nakba Day and the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem to know, and there’s a new Hebrew-language book by renowned Israeli historian Eliezer Tauber that provides them.
But, as we discussed in our prior post, American scholars and students won’t be able to learn about it. That’s because Tauber can’t manage to land a U.S. academic press contract on account of virulently anti-Israel faculty reviewers of his manuscript who don’t want the truth to come out, lest it upend their own narrative about these historical events, Silencing History: U.S. University Publishers Shun Book ‘Ending the Deir Yassin Myth’.
Tauber’s meticulous research about what really happened at Deir Yassin needs to reach a larger audience, especially because new material keeps coming to light that corroborates his central findings.
Melanie Phillips: Livingstone departure Labour's cynical totem
Ken Livingstone has now resigned from the Labour party. So what? His departure will not lance the boil of Labour party antisemitism.Linda Sarsours Lies are revealed in Gaza Conflict
First, Livingstone has still not resiled from his claim that Hitler supported Zionism, nor has he admitted to antisemitism; even today he has doubled down on his position.
He used the standard excuse that he was resigning simply because he had become a “distraction” to Labour’s opposition to the government. He was “truly sorry” only for the “offence and upset in the Jewish community” which he had caused by the way he made a mere “historical argument”.
“I do not accept the allegation that I have brought the Labour party into disrepute – nor that I am in any way guilty of antisemitism. I abhor antisemitism, I have fought it all my life and will continue to do so”, he declared.
It is likely, however, that he jumped before he was pushed. He probably realised that the calls for him to be removed from the party had become impossible to ignore.
But the fact is that the party did not throw him out for his bigoted, egregious and grotesquely anti-Jewish misreading of history. He has left the party on his own terms, and with the issue of Labour’s tolerance of gross antisemitism in its ranks still unresolved.
The party wanted to make an example of Livingstone. It wanted him gone so it could say it was now dealing properly with its own antisemitism. But it is not.
For the problem was never Ken Livingstone. He was merely its most spectacular example.
Anti-Israel Groups Join Fight Against Facebook
A newly formed coalition pushing for Facebook to be broken up merges liberal economic groups with extreme anti-Israel activist groups, who have long complained that the social media giant censors its content.The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism
The Freedom from Facebook coalition, launched on Monday, links groups such as the Open Markets Institute, Citizens Against Monopoly, and Sum of Us, all focused on challenging the power of large corporations, with two anti-Israel advocacy groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, a "Muslim led social and racial justice organization" founded by Linda Sarsour.
"Facebook has too much power over our lives and democracy," the group's new site says.
Freedom from Facebook's aim is to pressure the Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook. It wants the FTC to split Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, all networks owned by Facebook, into independent businesses, and "require interoperability" between social networks to limit Facebook's "monopoly."
Neither JVP nor MPower Change have promoted their involvement in the new coalition or commented on what role they will play. New Paradigm Strategy, a liberal public affairs agency working with Freedom from Facebook, would not comment on the groups' role and reasons for joining the coalition.
Operating under the equation that “racism equals prejudice plus power,” some on the left choose to ignore, rationalize, or entirely excuse black anti-Semitism as a function of unfair power dynamics in a capitalist society. According to this analysis, because blacks supposedly lack political power, or have less of it than Jews, it is either not possible for them to be anti-Semitic, or their anti-Semitism is not worth worrying about compared with that of traditional, right-wing anti-Semitism. “But of course, he did not say that Jews controlled the weather,” a board member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice wrote in the Forward regarding Trayon White. “He said that the Rothschilds did.” There’s a word for this kind of condescension, which progressives would never display if the person in question were white: racist.MEMRI: MEMRI Mourns The Passing Of Prof. Bernard Lewis, Renowned Professor Of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus At Princeton And Member Of MEMRI Board Of Advisors
Though Farrakhan regularly fills arenas for his harangues and earns audiences with congressmen, liberals have been at pains to minimize his influence. When progressive Jewish female activists asked Tamika Mallory to distance herself from Farrakhan, Jordan Weissmann, a Jewish writer for Slate, rhetorically asked, “Is there a single Jew in America who is actually worried about Louis Farrakhan or the Nation of Islam?” He explained further with a non sequitur: “I’m not worried about anti-Semitism from the black left because I see zero evidence that it is significantly motivated by anti-Semitism (I seem to recall a lot of young black progressives supporting a guy named Sanders).”* Weissmann later retracted his tweet, but only when it was made apparent to him that Farrakhan posed a “very clear threat to LGBTQ people of color.” Jews, presumably, will just have to get used to hearing Louis Farrakhan call Adolf Hitler “a very great man.”
At a panel organized by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that convened at the New School last December, JVP activist Lina Morales readily conceded: “Louis Farrakhan — I think he’s an anti-Semite — but materially, how has he put Jews in danger? Not really, because he only really affects the black community. But people in Chicago, white Jews, love to talk about him and love to paint him as the ultimate anti-Semite. Why is that?” The history of the 20th century should dispel any notion that anti-Semitic maniacs with followings in the tens of thousands are harmless oddities to be ignored. But even if we were to validate Morales’s assumptions— that Farrakhan “only really affects the black community”— it would consign his followers to a sort of unofficial second-class citizenship, as people who adopt the Nation of Islam’s view of the world are condemning themselves to wallow in ignorance. For all the talk about how the NOI helps poor black communities, one will not make it very far in this world if he believes that crafty Jews are trying to keep the black man down with gay weed. (And lest Morales truly believe that Farrakhan’s praise of Hitler doesn’t affect the physical security of Jews, in April, a Jewish man in Crown Heights was attacked by an African-American assailant screaming, “You fake Jews, who are you saying hello to? You’re fake Jews, and you stole all my money and robbed me, and stole my mortgage and my house. I want to kill you!’)
Asked about the Mallory controversy by Yahoo News, Melissa Harris-Perry went so far as to impugn Jews for even raising the issue of Farrakhan. “The most dangerous anti-Semite in the country currently lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” the former MSNBC host said. “And to have any concern about Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism is weird.”
MEMRI mourns the passing of Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus at Princeton University, renowned and highly influential historian of Islam and the Middle East, and longtime member of the MEMRI Board of Advisors. Prof. Lewis, who authored nearly two dozen books, was considered one of the greatest historians and interpreters of the region and the people of the Near East. His research interests included Islamic history and the contemporary Middle East, as well as the history of the Ottoman Empire and the history of the relations between Europe and Islam from early Ottoman to modern times.Philip Roth, fearless narrator of sex, death and Jewish life, dead at 85
He has been called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East," and had great influence with the George W. Bush administration on Middle Eastern affairs. Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Prof. Lewis "a true scholar and a great man" and added, "I owe a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East to his work." Prof. Lewis was a beacon for MEMRI's work, and, in 2007, stated: "MEMRI is the single most important development in Middle East Studies in the last 25 years."
Philip Roth, the prizewinning novelist and fearless narrator of sex, death, assimilation and fate, from the comic madness of “Portnoy’s Complaint” to the elegiac lyricism of “American Pastoral,” died Tuesday night at age 85.Tablet retrospective: Philip Roth 1933-2018
Roth’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said that the author died in a New York City hospital of congestive heart failure.
Author of more than 25 books, Roth was a fierce satirist and uncompromising realist, confronting readers in a bold, direct style that scorned false sentiment or hopes for heavenly reward. He was an atheist who swore allegiance to earthly imagination, whether devising pornographic functions for raw liver or indulging romantic fantasies about Anne Frank. In “The Plot Against America,” published in 2004, he placed his own family under the anti-Semitic reign of President Charles Lindbergh. In 2010, in “Nemesis,” he subjected his native New Jersey to a polio epidemic.
He was among the greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize. But he received virtually every other literary honor, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle prizes and, in 1998, the Pulitzer for “American Pastoral.” He was in his 20s when he won his first award and awed critics and fellow writers by producing some of his most acclaimed novels in his 60s and 70s, including “The Human Stain” and “Sabbath’s Theater,” a savage narrative of lust and mortality he considered his finest work.
He identified himself as an American writer, not a Jewish one, but for Roth the American experience and the Jewish experience were often the same. While predecessors such as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud wrote of the Jews’ painful adjustment from immigrant life, Roth’s characters represented the next generation. Their first language was English, and they spoke without accents. They observed no rituals and belonged to no synagogues. The American dream, or nightmare, was to become “a Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness.” The reality, more often, was to be regarded as a Jew among gentiles and a gentile among Jews.
Ambassador Friedman: I was more mortified than any Palestinian
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said that he was "more mortified" than "any Palestinian" when an image of the Temple Mount with the Holy Temple digitally imposed over the Dome of the Rock was thrust in front of him during a tour in Bnei Brak.Yisrael Medad: On the Ambassador Friedman Photomontage Affair
"I was more mortified than anyone else, than any Palestinian, when I saw a picture of myself next to that poster. Somebody just shoved it in front of me and took a picture" the ambassador told Hadashot News Wednesday."
"Of course this is unacceptable to me and that the US respects the status quo on Haram al Sharif [the Temple Mount]. It's just an unfortunate thing and I felt terrible that people might have reacted to that the way they did," he added.
However, Ambassador Friedman criticized the Palestinian Authority's demonization of him following the incident.
Earlier, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' adviser called Ambassador Friedman the "spiritual father of racism."
"The ambassador to the occupation has become the extremist father of extremism and racism," he said. "This is outrageous incitement by a diplomat who is biased and extremist, and issues clear calls to religious terror. This is a dangerous precedent which aims to incite disagreements."
Ambassador Friedman said in response that “the US has given over $5 billion to the Palestinians since the 1990s. There is no country that comes close in financial aid and to trying to help the Palestinians build better lives."
He added that the US does not "deserve this treatment."
What's really wrong with this now-infamous picture and also controversial:In new film, Tel Aviv leftist picks up and moves to a West Bank settlement
Well, for starters, the "Temple" superimposed on the Jerusalem scene is...
...facing the wrong direction*:
As anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the layout of the Temple Mount, the doors of the Temple faced east.
I guess that's what happens when Haredim try to be cute.
In one of the first scenes in Iris Zaki’s new documentary, “Unsettling,” the Tel Aviv film director taps into a unique dissonance being lived out by residents of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa.
Sitting at a small circular table she sets up outside the town’s minimarket, Zaki explains to her new friend Matanya that the reluctance of many locals to engage with her stems from their discomfort with addressing the political reality in which they are living.
However, she immediately follows that observation with the acknowledgment that people in Tekoa are remarkably content with their lives.
“It’s something I’ve never come across before. Where I come from, people are cynical, self-critical, and sarcastic. It’s something I don’t see here. I don’t sense a discomfort [with the political reality],” she posits.
Finding nothing to object to, the Tekoa resident shrugs and says, “Yes.”
Matanya is one of six residents featured in the documentary, for which Zaki picked up and moved to the Etzion Bloc settlement south of Jerusalem for two months in the summer of 2016.
Likud MK urges U.S. to recognize Israeli Golan Heights
The United States should recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Likud MK Yoav Kisch wrote to US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman in a letter obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.Palestinians expand bid for recognition, join world chemical arms watchdog
“In 1981, Israel declared sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” Kisch wrote last week. “The Golan Heights has since developed and became an inseparable part of Israel. Today, facing a reality in which the borders of Syria are redefined, a US declaration supporting the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights is imperative.
“We believe that [US] President Donald J. Trump is aware of the difficulties and challenges in the region,” the Likud MK said.
The MK added: “We believe that an official American recognition of the Golan Heights as a sovereign Israeli territory would be a natural continuation of the current US policy in our region.”
The Golan Heights Law passed in 1981, when Menachem Begin was prime minister, states, “The law, jurisdiction and administration of the State [of Israel] will take effect in the Golan Heights.” It holds the record for the fastest-passed law in the Knesset’s history, having been legislated in one day. The Reagan administration criticized the move, and the UN declared the Golan Heights Law “null and void and without international legal effect.”
In recent years, several ministers and MKs have said the time has come for international recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the Golan “will remain in the hands of Israel forever.”
The Palestinians have joined the global convention to halt the spread of toxic arms, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced on Wednesday.Security forces nab 2 Palestinians suspected of shooting at Israeli car
“The State of Palestine deposited on 17 May 2018 its instrument of accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention,” the OPCW, based in The Hague, said in a statement.
“This means that Palestine will become the 193rd state to join the CWC” when its accession enters into force on June 16, 2018, an OPCW official told AFP.
The chemical arms watchdog said its technical secretariat received a notice from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week to inform it that the Palestinian Authority has “deposited its instrument of accession.”
Palestinians are campaigning for the creation of their own state, and have stepped up a campaign in recent years to win recognition from international organizations.
Security forces on Wednesday arrested two Palestinians suspected of shooting at an Israeli vehicle outside Ramallah in the West Bank the previous day.
The Shin Bet said in a statement that the suspects, Palestinians from the Ramallah area, “implicated themselves in the incident” during their initial investigation.
They were taken away for further questioning by the security agency.
The army said after the incident that it suspected it was an attempted terror attack.
No injuries were reported.
The attempted attack was carried out near Kafr Ni’ma, west of Ramallah, and close to the Talmon Jewish settlement.
'I can’t find words to describe how miserable the situation is.' Why Gazans are trying to take advantage of a rare opportunity to leave the territory.https://t.co/ZPQsGDilLU
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 23, 2018
Fmr. Grand Mufti of Lebanon Mohammed Qabbani Issues Fatwa: It Is an Islamic Duty to Wage Jihad to Liberate Palestine; " All Peace Agreements with Them Null and Void https://t.co/NBf5Po6JjU
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 23, 2018
Evidence points to Iranian work on long-range missiles at secret base — report
Weapons researchers have identified activity at a remote secret facility in the Iranian desert that points to the covert development of long-range missiles that could potentially be used to attack the United States, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Satellite images appear to show, among other things, activity around a tunnel leading underground and evidence of powerful rocket engine tests that scorched telltale marks in the desert sand near the city of Shahrud, the report said.
Although there are no restrictions in place on the range of Iranian missiles, US President Donald Trump had insisted that limitations be placed on Tehran’s missile program as a prerequisite for Washington remaining in the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He ultimately pulled out of it on May 12.
According to the report, researchers from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey watched a recent Iranian documentary about rocket scientist Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a leading figure in the country’s missile development program, who was killed in a devastating 2011 explosion at Iran’s main research facility near the town of Bidganeh. Based on details in the film, the researchers came to the conclusion that before his death Moghaddam had helped set up another facility, which is still operational.
Another key clue came when one researcher, reviewing material from an Iranian journalist association, saw an undated photo of Moghaddam, who was a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that included in the background a box marked “Shahrud.”
This headline is a blatant lie, Iran never stopped their long-range rocket program.
— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) May 23, 2018
2015
Iran test-fires new generation long-range ballistic missiles https://t.co/4123iVfyAq
2016
Iran has conducted 8 missile launches since signing the nuclear deal https://t.co/le9Vl3kQps https://t.co/Sl8i0j4V5N
Ayatollah Abbas Kaabi of the Iranian Guardian Council: The U.S. Embassy Is Satan's Stronghold, Israel Weaker than a Spider Web pic.twitter.com/DhJ1OnQ6yW
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 23, 2018
Eurovision: ‘Don’t Book Flights Yet’ to 2019 Contest in Jerusalem
The Eurovision Song Contest on Tuesday told fans to hold off booking flights for next year’s competition in Israel amid concerns about politicization following remarks by Israeli ministers.The Chainsmokers return to Rishon this summer
“Are you already looking forward to next year’s #Eurovision? Us too! But don’t go booking your flights just yet, for official updates on where and when it’ll take place, keep an eye out for announcements on our official channels,” the post on the contest’s official Facebook page said.
A senior source in Israel’s public broadcaster Kan told the Haaretz newspaper that the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the song contest, was “very unhappy” with remarks made by Israeli ministers who both demanded their ministries be in charge of overseeing next year’s competition in Jerusalem.
Culture Minister Miri Regev and Communications Minister Ayoub Kara, both from the ruling Likud party, made comments that were unauthorized by the competition organizers. As reported in Breitbart Jerusalem, Kara invited several Arab states to take part in next year’s contest in Jerusalem.
“We will invite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and also Tunisia to take part in the Eurovision contest. Why not? If they just request it,” Kara said.
Eurovision’s rules stipulate that participating countries must be members of the European Broadcasting Union, which are co-sponsors of the event, and most of the countries Kara invited to participate are not.
Electronic dance duo The Chainsmokers are returning to Israel this summer, performing July 17 at Rishon’s Live Park.Slew of British musicians join BDS movement
The Grammy award-winning DJ and producer pair, Alex Pall and Andrew Taggart, released a series of singles this year, including the most recent “Somebody,” “Sick Boy,” “You Owe Me” and “Everybody Hates Me.”
The pair hit prime time with their 2014 song “#Selfie,” which was a top twenty single in several countries. They’re currently on a world tour and were in Israel last summer, when they sold out their one-night performance.
Portishead, the long-running rock group from Bristol, has released three albums, the most recent in 2008. Wolf Alice is a Grammy-nominated alternative rock band that has released two albums. Shame released its debut album earlier this year to critical acclaim.Court freezes expulsion of top Human Rights Watch official
A number of other British acts also took part in the online demonstration, posting the same text on social media, including Irish singer SOAK, punk duo Slaves, indie rock group Circa Waves and British singer-songwriter Declan McKenna.
Artists in the UK often face pressure from the organized BDS movement, in particular from former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.
Waters posted the same statement on Twitter on Tuesday, writing that after his show in Lisbon on Monday night, “a lot of the local Portuguese load-out crew were wearing Palestine solidarity T-shirts. We maybe at a tipping point, In sorrow and in rage. We shall overcome!”
Many prominent British artists have appeared in Israel over the years, often facing a public war of words with Rogers. Last year, both Radiohead and Nick Cave performed in Tel Aviv, and both vociferously shot down the criticism aimed at them from Waters and his supporters.
The Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday issued an interim injunction ordering the Interior Ministry to allow a senior Human Rights Watch official to remain in Israel until government attempts to deport him have been ruled on.Louisiana won't do business with BDS supporters
Citing his alleged support for a boycott of Israel, the ministry announced on May 8 that it had revoked the entry permit of Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director, who is a US citizen, and ordered him to leave the country within 14 days.
Shakir, who rejects the allegation and claims Israel is seeking to silence dissent, is fighting the decision.
But the Jerusalem District Court initially rejected his case and insisted he leave by May 24.
Human Rights Watch then filed an appeal, which was accepted.
In Wednesday’s judgement, Tamar Bazak Rapoport wrote that the Interior Ministry’s decision to revoke the work permit, based on a negative opinion from the Strategic Affairs Ministry, was given after the Foreign Ministry had recommended giving Shakir the permit, and that nothing had happened in the interim to justify a change of mind.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards who issued on Tuesday an executive order prohibiting Louisiana state government from doing business with companies that boycott Israel, StandWithUs reported.
Louisiana is the twenty-fifth US state to enact legislation or executive orders of this kind, and numerous municipalities have done so as well.
Edwards' executive order specifically mentions BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), a campaign which is intended to isolate, weaken and ultimately destroy the Jewish state.
"The state of Louisiana unequivocally rejects the BDS campaign and stands firmly with Israel," reads Edwards' executive order.
Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, an international Israel education organization, expressed her optimism about the turn of events in Louisiana.
"We are heartened that Louisiana has taken a strong stand opposing discrimination against Israel. Earlier this year, the city of New Orleans rejected an anti-Semitic resolution, and now the state has made clear that tax payer funds should not support businesses which discriminate," she said.
Prof OK With Calling Israelis ‘Mob,’ But Not Palestinians
On Thursday, George Mason University Noura Erakat tweeted out a Washington Post article entitled “Israel’s use of fatal force in Gaza: Excessive force or justified mob control?” reported The Daily Caller News Foundation. This headline triggered Noura, who responded ““Mob”??? Can we plz try to acknowledge Palestinians as human? Not bugs to be exterminated. This is a freedom struggle.”Campus Unmasked: Prof OK With Calling Israelis ‘Mob,’ But Not Palestinians
When I saw this awesome display of intellectual brilliance, I immediately put aside all thoughts like the fact that at least 50 of the 62 individuals killed by Israel Monday were Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists and thought to myself, “wow, what an upstanding citizen Noura must be, policing offensive words out of the English language.” It never even occurred to me that she might be a total hypocrite who shudders when the word “mob” is applied to Palestinians, but has used the exact same word to describe Israelis.
Oops, actually, here’s one of her tweets from a little while back: “Fadi Alloun – shot dead by Israeli police while he ran away from an Israeli mob.” And, of course, she neglects to mention that Alloun had allegedly stabbed a Jewish boy right beforehand. In case this didn’t convince you of how superb a mental gymnast Noura is, contorting language to fit her agenda, take a look at this time she tweeted about the murder of a Muslim teen in Virginia. She says “White supremacy breeds in all quarters,especially in the most liberal ones we call home.”
Except, as a commenter pointed out, the teen’s accused murderer, Darwin Martinez Torres, was not white, but Hispanic. Noura, of course, very adeptly dodged this pesky fact by saying “White supremacy is an ideology and what drives Islamophobia. Not race specific. Don’t need to be white to practice it.”
Michael Lumish: This Week on Nothing Left
Here is this week's episode of Nothing Left with Michael Burd and Alan Freedman. It should be noted that Manfred Gerstenfeld is the writer who coined the term "humanitarian racism." Also, I am scheduled for next week to discuss with the fellahs the reaction of major US Jewish organizations to recent events in Israel including, obviously, the Gaza riots and the embassy move. - MLBBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – April 2018
2 min Editorial: media reporting on Gaza violence
8 min Ron Jontof-Hutter, rising anti-Semitism in Germany
25 min Manfred Gerstenfeld, fate of European Jewry
48 min Arnold Roth, on the Gaza violence
1 hr 7 min Danny Lamm, ZFA president on communal issues and US embassy move and asked to justify actions Australian Jewish Communal organizations
1 hr 29 min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem, Isi's view on actions of the Australian Jewish community
In other words, the BBC did not itself report on any of the 118 recorded incidents along the Gaza Strip-Israel border during April and all four generalised references to such attacks seen by audiences throughout the month’s 30 days were attributed to a third party.Is Anti-Semitism No Longer Disqualifying in This Country?
If, notwithstanding the unspecific nature of that coverage, we count those four references as ‘reporting’ we can say that the BBC covered 1.79% of the terror attacks that took place during April 2018 and that since the beginning of the year the BBC has reported 1.6% of the attacks and 100% of the fatalities. Just one of the six separate incidents of rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip that have taken place since the beginning of the year has been mentioned in BBC News website coverage.
In March of this year, Sarsour’s co-chair Tamika Mallory’s close ties with Louis Farrakhan were exposed. All of the Women’s March leaders’ affiliations with anti-Semites came under scrutiny, and widespread condemnation followed. In The Atlantic, John-Paul Pagano wrote, “that the [Women’s March] group refuses to be accountable for a high-level alliance with an open anti-Semite disqualifies it from ranking among today’s movements for social justice.” Refinery 29 featured a headline that asserted, “Women’s March Leaders Have An Anti-Semitism Problem — Maybe It’s Time To Leave Them Behind.” The article that ran under that headline criticized Mallory for her association with Farrakhan and Sarsour for a past collaboration with Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and for her failure to denounce Farrakhan’s antisemitism in the wake of the revelations about Mallory.The wild adventures of René Goscinny, Jewish inventor of Asterix and Obelix
Yet, barely two months after these calls to move on from the March’s leaders, Sarsour was included on CNN’s list of “25 Influential American Muslims.” (Others recognized include Rep. Keith Ellison (D – Minn.), who also has a troubling history with Farrakhan, and Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, a blogger who has been described as having a “history of anti-Semitism.”) CNN, with half a billion visitors on its site, is obviously influential.
Sarsour was called “The Fighter,” and CNN wrote, “often outspoken, Sarsour has faced criticism for aligning with questionable characters and sharply denouncing Zionism. But many Muslims say she is the kind of uncompromising, unapologetic leader their community needs right now.” Like Food and Wine with respect to Assil, CNN was well aware of the criticisms of Sarsour, but decided that they weren’t important.
What are American Jews to take away from these two mainstream outlets lauding individuals who have made no effort to hide their support for the likes of Odeh and Farrakhan? Such associations, it would seem, are no longer disqualifying. Under criticism, Food and Wine doubled down on its decision. And CNN’s designation of Sarsour was met with little or no pushback from the mainstream media. Two major media organizations have decided that the Jewish community’s complaints of antisemitism just don’t matter.
The willingness of the media to overlook blatant anti-Semitism mirrors growing tolerance of anti-Semitism in the public sphere. Regarding the recent sidelining of the ADL by Starbucks at the urging of Sarsour’s co-leader Mallory, David Gemunder wrote, “it is crystal clear that Americans need to recognize that antisemitism is just as vile as racism, sexism, homophobia, and other religious or ethnic persecution. It cannot be tolerated from the right or the left. Those should be obvious statements. That they somehow are not self-evident in our time should anger and concern everyone.”
The same holds true for the accolades being bestowed on Reem Assil and on Linda Sarsour. With these awards, both of these publications are participating in the mainstreaming of antisemitism. That should anger and concern everyone.
Anna moved to New York with her two sons in 1945 and René began to scrape by as a cartoonist. On display in the show is a pleading letter to the New Yorker magazine, wondering if the editor had received five cartoons he had submitted. There was no official response.Israel minister, diplomats to take part in NY celebration despite security fears
Goscinny chose to do his national service with the post-war French army rather than the American military. Back in New York in 1947, he began a miserable period of unemployment before finally landing a job in an advertising agency. There he met other illustrators and cartoonists and began the collaborative efforts that marked his whole career.
In New York, Goscinny met celebrated cartoonists and writers such as Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, who founded MAD magazine, and in 1951 he met Albert Uderzo, the man with whom he ultimately created Asterix.
The pair worked together at the newly opened Paris office of World Press, a Belgian company. Each believed that they had found in the other their kindred spirit, and spent much of their time riffing ideas off each other, trying to make the other laugh. In one cartoon strip on display in the London show, Uderzo and Goscinny are laughing so hard at ideas they are floating for a proposed story that they are thrown out of the cafe where they are brainstorming and taken off in a police van.
Goscinny eventually got fired from World Press for trying to start a union, and eventually, with Uderzo, launched a new magazine, Pilote, first published in 1959. Asterix featured in the first issue of Pilote and was an instant hit.
Goscinny — though still a cartoonist at heart — focused on devising the storylines of Asterix’s adventures, leaving the drawing to Uderzo. Uderzo, now 91, went on drawing Asterix after Goscinny’s early death in 1977 at the age of just 51. The cartoon strip is still published, but since Uderzo’s retirement in 2013 is written and produced by two other collaborators.
The year he died, Goscinny visited Jerusalem. He had achieved great success with other creations such as “Lucky Luke,” his “Wild West” series, and a “Tintin” screenplay for the celebrated Belgian cartoonist, Herge.
Israel’s Consul General in New York Dani Dayan vowed Monday that he and Culture Minister Miri Regev would take part in a Times Square event in two weeks’ time, part of Israel’s 70th birthday celebrations, following a report that Israeli diplomats had been barred from attending their own celebration due to security fears.History - Israel's 1st Prime Minister Ben Gurion
“Relax,” tweeted Dayan. “On 6/3 Minister Miri Regev and I, and all the diplomats from @IsraelinNewYork will march in the morning for Israel down Fifth Avenue and in the evening we will watch the closing presentation in Times Square. Everything is OK.”
His tweet came following a report by Hadashot news that diplomats and staffers at Israel’s New York consulate were warned against attending the event in Times Square over fears they could be attacked while celebrating in the outdoor Manhattan landmark.
The warning came after clashes at the Gaza border that left over 60 Palestinians dead last week led to increased anger against Israelis around the world. Hamas said 50 of the dead were its members.
“We forbid any participation or presence of any emissaries or employees at this event,” a message from the head of security at the New York consulate read, according to the Hadashot report. “This is a highly sensitive event without our ability to provide sufficient security. It should be noted that the New York police, including the highest echelons, stress that it is a very high-risk event, particularly at this time.”
