Friday, August 17, 2018
Caroline Glick: Peter Beinart’s latest publicity stunt
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in official Israel over the brief questioning of anti-Israel author Peter Beinart at Ben-Gurion Airport this week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement on the episode calling it “an administrative mistake.”Douglas Murray: What’s the truth about the Manchester bomber’s mosque?
Netanyahu added, “Israel is an open society which welcomes all – critics and supporters alike.”
Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Michael Oren said Beinart’s questioning is grounds “for an immediate examination of all policy towards the entry of political activists.”
Speaking to Israel National News, Oren said, “Detaining American Jewish reporter Peter Beinart is an example of how acting unwisely causes both strategic and PR damage.
“Beinart is a top-rate American media person. Most of his opinions about Israel disgust me, but he does not support BDS, and in fact defines himself as a Zionist.”
Oren’s position is problematic first and foremost because it is factually wrong.
Beinart is a major supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Indeed, he is a central figure in the movement. This mere fact renders Beinart’s protestations of Zionism disingenuous, to put it mildly.
The BBC seems to be getting it from all sides these days. So it should also be praised when it does the sort of journalism which is praise-worthy.Farrakhan the Fraud
Yesterday, the BBC revealed that they had got hold of a tape recording from a mosque in Didsbury. Not any old mosque, but the mosque that the Manchester Arena bomber – Salman Abedi – attended. The recording is from Friday prayers at the Didsbury mosque just six months before the Ariana Grande concert bombing. It is possible, indeed likely, that the bomber who killed 22 people and gave lifelong injuries to many more was sitting in the congregation during this sermon. Abedi apparently bought a ticket for the Manchester Arena concert just 10 days after the sermon was given.
In it the imam prays for the ‘victory’ of ‘our brothers and sisters right now in Aleppo and Syria and Iraq’ and clearly calls on his listeners to stop using just words and commit to action in the name of what two Muslim scholars who have listened to the tapes confirm to be ‘military jihad’. The imam who gave this sermon – Mustafa Graf – denies that he called for armed jihad. Presumably, once again, in the portion in which he said ‘Jihad for the sake of Allah is the source of pride and dignity for this nation’ he was talking about inner spiritual struggling and by ‘nation’ meant the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
It all brings to mind something that happened in the immediate aftermath of the Manchester attack. I wrote about it here at the time.
‘On Question Time when an audience member, who happened to have the triple disadvantages of being white, male and not being young, waved an anti-Western leaflet he said had been handed out at an open day at the Didsbury mosque where Salman Abedi worshipped. This significant revelation mainly attracted awkward shuffling. By contrast, a young woman in a headscarf in the audience immediately dismissed the man’s leaflet as probably not from the mosque and in any case ‘taken out of context’. Along with the programme’s chair, David Dimbleby, she implied it was possible the man had made the leaflet up himself, leaving the poor man spluttering, waving his leaflet and clearly wondering why he wouldn’t be believed.’
To the Editor:
James Kirchick correctly portrays Louis Farrakhan as perhaps the most popular and dangerous anti-Semite in America (“The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism,” June). While neo-Nazis and white supremacists drummed up a few hundred people at their “national” rally in Charlottesville, Farrakhan’s recent rant in Chicago excited an adoring crowd more than three times that size.
Unlike what happens at alt-right rallies, no toughs will ever shut down a Farrakhan event. And unlike other anti-Semites, Farrakhan has open sympathizers in positions of power—especially inside the black community and on the left. What Louis Farrakhan says about Jews will only reach more and more people.
It may seem difficult for Jews to press liberal and black activists to renounce the Nation of Islam leader given the widely held belief that, his offensive views aside, Farrakhan is a legitimate leader of an oppressed people who gives voice to black liberation and black pride.
That is why it is important to understand precisely how this is untrue: Farrakhan has covered up and sought to deny the enslavement of Africans by Arabs and Muslims. He has been and continues to be an obstacle to their liberation.
Jeremy Corbyn and the Jews
As it is, Britain’s once-admired police forces, encouraged by a craven, hopelessly politicized Home Office, have been infamously unwilling to enforce certain laws depending on the ethnic identity of perpetrator and victim. Female genital mutilation, forced marriage (i.e., kidnapping and rape), and the overtly racist “sexual grooming” of white and Sikh girls by predominantly Pakistani rape gangs have all been so studiously ignored by police in a number of cities that these crimes have been all but legalized.UK Jewish leader calls Corbyn premiership an ‘existential threat’ to community
London’s Metropolitan Police, the most important and influential in the UK, notoriously holds different ethnic groups to different standards especially when it comes to laws against violent rhetoric and “hate speech.” On a number of occasions over the years, when Islamist demonstrators have called for the beheading of the Jyllands-Poster cartoonists or the killing of Prime Minister Blair, they have been treated with remarkable deference by Met officers while would-be counter-demonstrators have been made to move on or face arrest. It is therefore far from inconceivable that violent assaults on visually identifiable Jews would become similarly invisible to police eyes (as seems to be the case in Sweden) if carried out by Muslims rather than by white far-right extremists
If what is already happening on left-wing college campuses in the UK is any guide, then it is also probable that “anti-racist” laws and laws prohibiting behavior likely to cause a “breach of the peace” could be misused to close down or silence Jewish and pro-Israel groups.
In the meantime, large parts of the British Jewish community are in a state of depressed shock. While there has been nothing like the horrific episodes of deadly anti-Jewish violence seen recently in France and to a lesser extent in countries such as Germany that have imported large migrant communities from notoriously intolerant societies in the Middle East, the sense of complete safety and acceptance once enjoyed by British Jews no longer feels as solid as it did. The sensation may be particularly acute among the many Jews, especially in prosperous, politically progressive areas of North London, who feel a traditional, even tribal, connection to the Labour Party.
As the novelist and columnist Howard Jacobson recently wrote: “The incantatory repetition of the charge that Jews cry anti-Semitism only in order to subvert criticism of Israel or discredit Corbyn is more than fatuous and lazy, and it is more than painful to those many Jews who own an old allegiance to the Labour Party and who are not strangers to criticizing Israel. It is the deepest imaginable insult.…Most Jews know what anti-Semitism is and what it isn’t. Its history is written on the Jewish character in blood. To invent it where it is not would be a sacrilege….For myself I feel I am back in that lightless swamp of medieval ignorance where the Jew who is the author of all humanity’s ills lies, cheats, cringes, and dissembles.”
The head of Britain’s Jewish Leadership Council Jonathan Goldstein charged that Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged participation in a ceremony honoring the terrorists behind the 1972 Munich massacre is a “defining moment, typifying and showing his great hostility towards Israel and, through Israel, to the Jewish people.”The Corbyn Challenge for Progressives
In a stinging attack, Goldstein said the Labour leader’s behavior was “insensitive, crass and antagonistic,” and he labels him “un-British.”
Goldstein accused Corbyn of engaging in “vacillations, meanderings, [and] frankly distortions” over his attendance at a 2014 event in Tunis which took place near the graves of leading figures in the Black September movement. The Palestinian terror group masterminded the attack in which 11 Israeli athletes were brutally murdered.
In response to the media uproar, Corbyn and his supporters say that he was at the cemetery to pay his respects to those who died in the 1985 Israeli bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis.
Speaking to The Times of Israel, Goldstein lambasted Corbyn’s refusal to apologize to the families who were bereaved by the Munich attack.
“When the Munich widows said, ‘You caused us hurt,’ anybody who recognizes what those poor women have gone through, and the other relatives have gone through, any man with half a heart would say, ‘You know what, if I have caused hurt inadvertently I apologize,'” Goldstein said.
What happens when the evidence starts piling up that the leader of a major political party is an antisemite? Do his party’s supporters force him out of office? Or do they rally around him, claiming that his political agenda is too important to be sacrificed for the sake of a marginal issue and constituency, and instead seek to blame the Jews and other people of conscience speaking about it for causing trouble?Brendan O'Neill: The shameful double standards of the Corbyn crew
No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. Whatever his other failings, the arguments put forward by many Jews who oppose his administration that he hates Jews are utterly unpersuasive. That’s especially true when you consider his close family connections and the fact that his policies have positioned him as the best friend Israel has had in the White House in decades.
But the same can’t be said about Jeremy Corbyn, the man who may be Britain’s next prime minister. The head of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, Corbyn has a long record of hostility to Israel and Jewish causes, as well as support for local radicals who hate Jews, in addition to the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups. But in recent weeks, the list of Corbyn’s outrages has grown.
After tolerating open antisemites in his party, Corbyn’s supporters sought to embrace a definition of antisemitism that would still allow them to compare Israel to the Nazis, as well as oppose its right to exist with a clean conscience. When faced with Jewish complaints, his backers arrogantly declared that the Jews were the ones with the problem.
What is now most striking about the Corbyn movement’s brushing aside of every revelation about their leader’s former associations, and their downplaying of the problem of left-wing anti-Semitism more broadly, is the double standards. The in-your-face double standards. So Boris is a borderline fascist merely for making fun of the burqa, yet Corbyn is a man of justice despite hanging out with someone whose group slaughtered four rabbis in cold blood. Even to retweet Steve Bannon is to risk being branded a Nazi sympathiser, but to help lay a wreath for a founder of the group that murdered Israeli athletes in 1972 — for the crime of being Israeli — is okay.Corbyn Unmasked: He Brought Flowers to Terrorists
Or consider the double standards on freedom of speech. Corbynistas don’t give a fig about freedom of speech, on any issue, especially when it comes to things like Islam or transgenderism: criticise either of those ideologies and they will instantly denounce you and have you hounded out of polite society.
But on Israel, on the Jewish State, suddenly freedom of speech becomes important to them. The Corbyn crew is reluctant to adopt in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism because they think it will undermine the freedom to denounce and mock and ridicule Israel. This is literally the only time I have heard Corbynistas defend freedom of speech. The only freedom that excites them is the freedom to say Israel is foul, Israeli leaders are Nazi-esque, and British Jews might be a tad disloyal to Britain.
As I say, double standards. Jews and Jewish issues are always treated differently by Corbynistas. And there’s a word for that: prejudice. If you attack people for making mild gags about burqas but shrug your shoulders over people who mix with men whose associates murdered Jews in a synagogue, if you say freedom of speech is unimportant except when it comes to the freedom to call into question the legitimacy of the Jewish State, then you are sending a quite extraordinary message into the public sphere: ‘Jews are different. They’re fair game. Screw them.’
Corbyn crowned his public anti-Semitic career by claiming after a trip to Gaza that he saw the same kind of destruction that the Nazis had brought to the formerly named Stalingrad and Leningrad in Russia; he has recently made history for having led the British Labour Party to reject the international definition of anti-Semitism (written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), based on 11 examples of contemporary anti-Semitism, propelling Britain’s Jewish newspapers, usually vigorous competitors, to unite in a call for a collective protest against the current Labour leader’s “contempt for the Jews and Israel.” Corbyn and his associates refuse to consider anti-Semitic the comparison of Israel to the Nazis (he is particularly fond of this), and considers good anti-Semitism the definition of Israel as inherently racist, evil and an apartheid state.Jeremy Corbyn stood side by side with banned terrorist group’s chief at Tunisia cemetery
Corbyn is an anti-Semite through and through; both right- and left-wing Jew-haters can take great pride in him. After all, he exalts terrorists, denies the Holocaust; he has not only participated in conferences devoted to the subject, but has also donated money to Paul Eisen, a well-known Holocaust-denier. In 2010, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he hosted a meeting in the House of Commons with the major Dutch Holocaust-denier Hajo Meyer; he has also been frequently involved in demonstrations that expose pure anti-Israeli incitement, and his blatant hatred of the Jewish state has become commonplace among many members of his party. He participated in a Passover seder at the table of a Jewish anti-Zionist group that said “Israel that is a steaming pile of sewage which needs to be destroyed.”
Naturally, his anti-Israel passion extends to the Jews, who for him are simply blind followers of murderers, and therefore, selfish offenders unworthy of being British.
In the wave of Brexit, can the present confusion among British public opinion lead to this man being elected as their next prime minister and then create a situation of anti-Jewish persecution? The answer is a definitive “yes.” And it is necessary to add that none of the new European “populists” suspected of anti-Semitism has gone as far as Jeremy Corbyn—namely, to the graves of the assassins who carried out the Munich massacre.
Journalists at The Times have identified the man photographed standing side by side with Jeremy Corbyn at the infamous wreath-laying in Tunisia as Maher al-Taher, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organisation which had been banned across the European Union two years before the ceremony.Forgetful Jezza Strikes Again
The PFLP has been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks targeting Jews. For example, one month after the ceremony in which Mr Corbyn and Mr al-Taher stood side by side, it sent terrorists into a Jerusalem synagogue where they murdered four Rabbis and a Druze police officer. Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, 50, Rabbi Moshe Twersky, 59, Rabbi Kalman Levine, 50, and Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, 40, were all hacked to death with axes by two PFLP terrorists whilst they prayed. The defenceless men’s corpses were found hacked and bloodied on the floor of their synagogue, some of them covering their faces with their prayer shawls to avoid watching the slaughter of their friends. All of the men lived on the same street in a tight-knit community and Rabbi Goldberg was a British citizen. The PFLP terrorists also murdered Druze police officer Zidan Saif, 30, who rushed to the scene and put himself in harm’s way to stop the PFLP terrorists’ attack.
Patrick Stewart leaves Labour over CorbynJeremy Corbyn told the BBC today that he was unaware he was sharing a platform with the PFLP terror group at the 2014 Tunisia Conference. But writing about the conference in the Morning Star at the time he said that he “heard opening speeches from Palestinian groups including Fatah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” So he was obviously aware…
Jezza also boldly told the BBC “I don’t share platforms with terrorists.” Here’s Guido’s handy guide to 100 times Corbyn sided (and shared platforms) with terrorists. Jeremy is getting very forgetful in his old age…
Stewart added that while he has supported Labour since 1945, he now finds it "difficult to understand what Labour really stands for or what it represents right now. It doesn’t feel like my party any more.”‘Excruciating’: A Tonge-lashing from an anti-Semite
The Star Trek star had previously expressed support for Corbyn, but that support faded after a meeting between the two where Corbyn became annoyed at the television and movie star.
Corbyn has faced growing criticism for allowing anti-Semitism to thrive in the Labour party and for attending a ceremony in honor of the terrorists responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes during the Munich Massacre.
Stewart mentioned that he was also upset by Corbyn's inability to effectively handle problems such as anti-Semitism.
In 2012, Stewart visited Israel. After his visit, he tweeted: "I will miss Israel–the place, the people, the food."
On Sunday morning, I enjoyed a sleep-in. The one day of the week there’s no school, work, sports, or synagogue to rush off to. Once I had emerged from my soporific state, I switched my phone on and found an unexpected message from a friend.
Imagine my surprise to discover that I had inadvertently irritated, nay SICKENED, a baroness in the UK House of Lords while I was sleeping. Me, a mere untitled Antipodean!
It turns out Baroness Tonge had come across a short video I appeared in for the Israel Institute of New Zealand a year ago, about what Zionism is and what it means to me. The video got a lot of reaction, both positive and negative, the typical polarisation whenever Israel is concerned. According to her Facebook post, the Baroness did not approve of it. So far, so unsurprising. Her toxicity towards Israel is notorious enough that even I, at the bottom of the world, am familiar with it.
But after sounding off about the video, she went on to share her musings on the nature of antisemitism:
“We would all like a safe haven to run to when the going gets tough, but we stay on and ask why it is getting tough. Why have the Jewish people been persecuted over and over again throughout history. Why? I never get an answer. If we discussed this we would be accused of anti Semitism, so better not, and so it goes on!”
Those Jews do the darndest things! When the going gets tough, why do they always want to run off, rather than stay on and figure out what they’ve done to make it so?
Len McCluskey must immediately resign over his latest outrageous attack on the Jewish community
Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite, the largest trade union in the UK, has launched an outrageous attack on the Jewish community, accusing Jewish organisations of seeking a split in the Labour Party and of plotting to ensure that the Labour Party’s antisemitism crisis is “prolonged and intensified”.BBC Two’s Victoria Derbyshire and a non-existent political party
Writing in the Huffington Post, Mr McCluskey, claimed that by continuing to resist antisemitism in the Labour Party, British Jews and non-Jews who stand with us, such as Labour MP Chuka Umunna, “risk polluting our politics to the detriment of all those involved and to our wider national life” and are “subordinating [antisemitism] to other agendas”.
Declaring that there is a “paucity of evidence” that Labour has become institutionally antisemitic, Mr McCluskey accused Jewish community organisations of presenting antisemitism in the Labour Party in a “wildly exaggerated” manner.
Listing a series of supposedly exemplary actions by Jeremy Corbyn to tackle antisemitism, Mr McCluskey then attacked the Jewish community by name, writing: “What is the response from the leading Jewish community organisations to [Mr Corbyn’s] record of reaching out, of understanding, and of action? Intransigent hostility and an utter refusal to engage in dialogue about building on what has been done and resolving outstanding difficulties.” He then accused Jewish newspapers of “a thoroughly irresponsible act of fear-mongering” for calling Labour under Mr Corbyn an “existential threat” to British Jewry, and then he even declared that Jewish figures were “trolling” Mr Corbyn.
Perhaps worst of all, he attacked the motives of the Jewish community, writing: “I am at a loss to understand the motives of the leadership of the Jewish community”.
However, the BBC presenter could have been easily mistaken for a member of the Labour Party’s press team as she read out a list of Jeremy Corbyn’s statements on antisemitism followed by a list of “actions that he has taken as leader of the Labour Party in order to tackle the antisemitism” as well as a pre-prepared statement from the Labour Party – while concurrently promoting a context free defence of Corbyn’s participation in a ceremony honouring terrorists in Tunisia four years ago obviously taken from a Labour Party statement.Did J Street Get Played?
Derbyshire: “And [Corbyn] absolutely explained why he was there. Absolutely explained why he was there. That they and others were paying their respects to those killed in an Israeli air raid in 1985 including civilians.”
Derbyshire later inaccurately described the conference in Tunisia in which Corbyn had participated together with senior members of terrorist organisations as a “peace conference” and the standard of BBC fact-checking was also on display in another segment:
Derbyshire: “Can we talk about your politics? […] Let’s talk about your politics because there will be some who will accuse you of saying this simply for political motivations because you’re not Labour supporters. You’re members of the UK Zionist party which was relaunched this year.”
Blumenthal: “Hold on, hold on. What is the UK Zionist party? I’m sorry to interrupt you but you’re saying that I’m a member of a UK Zionist party?”
Derbyshire: “Sorry – that was the information I was given. That’s obviously inaccurate.”
Along with Democrat Ilhan Omar, who is running for Keith Ellison’s seat in Minnesota, Tlaib is poised to become one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. Both women have been hailed by supporters as trailblazers and correctives to America’s nativist trajectory under President Trump. Omar, who emigrated to America from Somalia in her teens, has been celebrated and her victory called, “especially gratifying for those in Minnesota and beyond who value opportunity and democratic inclusion.” It is especially noteworthy then that Omar once called Israel an “apartheid regime” that hypnotized the world to ignore its evil doings. And noteworthy again that she appeared to reverse those views last week addressing the Beth El synagogue in Minnesota when she affirmed Israel’s right to exist while disavowing BDS as “not helpful in getting that two-state solution.” In a kind of reversal of Tlaib’s trajectory, Omar would not have qualified for J Street support based on statements she made before her candidacy but has moved closer to a position that would merit endorsement since winning her race.Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib Now Too Radical for J Street
Tlaib’s trouble with J Street, her sudden reversals of positions, Omar’s changing stances on Israel; all of this points to larger shifts that are already producing visible strains. J Street, representing an older Obama era mode of liberalism finds itself now unexpectedly in the dark, awkwardly “seeking clarification” about its candidate’s views.
Before Tlaib and Omar, New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went through a similar public drama, first expressing hostility to Israel before offering qualified support. That is three women of color associated with the Democratic party’s younger, left leaning and progressive camps who have exposed a growing a fault line within the party over Israel. Three makes a trend or, in this case, a bellwether for trends in national politics.
Tlaib had come under fire for associating with J Street from far left anti-Israel activists, who declared victory earlier this week after Tlaib began shifting towards radical policy positions.Jewish Group Accuses Canadian Liberal MP Of ‘Rewarding’ Anti-Semitism
Tlaib also offered a different account of her relationship with J Street than was represented by the group to Haaretz, saying "never asked me once to waver on my stance."
"J Street helped me, but never asked me once to waver on my stance (I absolutely don’t agree with every single position and they don’t of mine), but as they said, they liked that my answers to their questions were from personal experiences and helped humanize what is happening in Palestine," she wrote on social media in response to the criticism.
Tlaib's newly stated policy positions appear to be set in stone.
"It has to be one state," Tlaib said. "Separate but equal does not work. I’m only 42 years old but my teachers were of that generation that marched with Martin Luther King. This whole idea of a two-state solution, it doesn’t work."
Tlaib also has come out in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which aims to destroy Israel through economic warfare and is opposed by even liberal groups such as J Street.
The Jewish human rights group B’nai Brith is demanding an apology from Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Iqra Khalid for giving a “certificate of appreciation” to a man they say promotes extreme anti-Semitism. Khalid has an “Islamophobia” motion that is now before a Liberal-dominated Parliamentary committee that could recommend legal remedies to address alleged Islamophobia
As the Canadian Press reports, the Toronto-area MP presented the scroll on behalf of the Trudeau government to Amin El-Maoued last week. B’nai Brith says the public relations manager for Palestine House was a notorious cheerleader at a 2017 rally that was “laden with hate-filled and anti-Semitic slogans” that included the outrageous claim that “Israel and Hitler are the same.”
Palestine House, which is supposedly committed to the “educational, social and cultural” needs of Palestinian-Canadians, lost all of its federal funding under the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper because the group demonstrated a “pattern of support for extremism.”
B’nai Brith Canada is circulating a petition that reads: “Anti-Semites, racists and bigots of all sorts do not merit recognition from the Canadian government or its elected officials.”
The petition insists Khalid take back the certificate and apologize for her “insensitive and dangerous actions.”
Prime Minister: when you embrace individuals who are known Jew haters, who equate Jews to Nazis, and you invite them to your private garden parties, you stoke the politics of division. @JustinTrudeau pic.twitter.com/DbtSbgXoFD
— Senator Linda Frum (@LindaFrum) August 16, 2018
Foreign Policy Magazine Does PR for UNRWA
For these reasons, calls for reforming and/or abolishing UNRWA have increased. But Foreign Policy magazine has risen to UNRWA’s defense.The Gray Lady Once Again Sanitizes Radical Islam
As CAMERA highlighted in an Aug. 8, 2018 Algemeiner Op-Ed, Foreign Policy reporters Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer authored an Aug. 3, 2018 article which, in nearly 1600-words, made no mention of UNRWA unions employing terror operatives, or UNRWA employees promoting violent antisemitic imagery.
Lynch, who has covered the United Nations for twenty years, should know better. In 2015 a U.N. investigation found that UNRWA schools were used by Hamas to “hide weapons,” “launch attacks,” and for using children as human shields. UNRWA “premises could have been used for an unknown period of time by members of a Palestinian armed group,” the U.N. concluded. Lynch was covering the U.N. when it completed its investigation, although he doesn’t seem to have deigned it worthy of filing a report, either then or since.
These details are similarly missing in Foreign Policy’s Aug. 9, 2018 dispatch (“For Trump and Co. Few Palestinians Count as Refugees”), which omits UNRWA employees praising Hitler and Hamas, calling to murder Jews, among other examples that raise questions about the organization’s role.
As CAMERA noted in the Algemeiner, a 2014 report by The Center for Near East Policy Research found that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad “control the UNRWA stations in Gaza” and in 2012 “UNRWA in Gaza elected Hamas to all 11 seats in the UNRWA’s teacher union and to 14 out of 16 sets in the employees and service sector union.”
For many years now, The New York Times has sanitized radical Islamic groups, militant Islamic leaders, and even Islamic terrorist attacks. The paper does this by deliberately omitting critical details that would discredit Islamist groups. For example, the Times routinely describes the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as either a civil rights or a Muslim advocacy group. In reality, CAIR was started as a front for Hamas. But over the course of more than two decades, the Times has never reported on any of the many government documents and official transcripts that prove this.Israel is the #1 Victim of “Fake News”
And when reporting on many of the Islamic terrorist attacks that have occurred in Europe in recent years, the Times has often omitted the key fact that the Islamist attacker often yelled out “Allahu Akbar” before committing the terrorist atrocity, despite no such reluctance by European media to report such critical facts.
Last week’s Times reporting on the arrests of US Muslim extremists in a compound with 11 starving children who were being taught to carry out school shootings offers a glaring case in point.
Local authorities searching for a missing three-year-old boy with special needs discovered his body — and 11 starving children — on a remote New Mexico compound loaded with weapons. In a story on the discovery and resulting arrests of the adults involved, the Times omitted a key statement the local New Mexico sheriff made, according to the Associated Press: that the “adults [arrested] at the compound were considered ‘extremist of the Muslim belief’ adding that it was part of the investigation.” The AP reported those comments; why didn’t the Times?
And when the Times described Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the father of one of the adults arrested, it provided a glaringly incomplete and inaccurate picture:
In the frenetic world in which we live, new words and catch phrases are introduced on a fairly regular basis, but the in the Trump era one cannot escape the fact that coverage of this president is consistently referred to as “Fake News.” The White House touts this phrase daily as is evidenced at press briefings and from the president himself through his tweets and public appearances.Cops arrest two in Indiana synagogue vandalism
How can one define “Fake News”? In the case of President Trump it has become abundantly clear that the entire mainstream media and especially certain cable news outlets are on a fervent mission to disseminate mendacious claims about the president; always casting him in a negative light. Tarnishing his reputation and impugning his integrity are top priorities for them, while reporting the truth and the facts have been relegated to the trash bin.
Those of us who have been monitoring news about Israel for the last several decades are no strangers to the consumption of “Fake News”. Israel has always been the mainstream media’s “bogeyman” in the Middle East and the process of imparting bald faced lies and gross distortions about the Jewish state has been the order of the day. The negative image of Israel as a ruthless occupier of Palestinians and as a military aggressor has pervaded the hearts and minds of generations. Thus, such impact on news consumers has given rise to the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement as well as a litany of NGOs whose purpose it is to denigrate and ultimately destroy Israel.
After careful examination, it is clear that there are few mainstream media outlets that are immune from skewed and tendentious coverage of Israel.
Among the chief culprits of disseminating lies are the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Press TV.
Police have arrested two suspects in connection with the painting of a swastika on a synagogue in Indiana.Romanian police nab suspect in anti-Semitic vandalism of Elie Wiesel’s home
Nolan Brewer, 20, and a co-conspirator who is in custody but was not named. are suspected of painting a black swastika surrounded by a red background and the German and Nazi Iron Cross last month on a wall at Shaarey Tefilla, a Conservative synagogue near Indianapolis with 200-member families.
US Attorney Josh Minkler, the FBI and the Police Department of the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel announced the charges Thursday.
Brewer is facing a criminal complaint with conspiracy to violate civil rights, WTHR television reported Thursday. A conviction could carry a 10-year sentence.
“When a criminal act deprives our citizens of a constitutional right, law enforcement must respond,” said Minkler. The report did not say how Brewer and the alleged accomplice pleaded.
Police say the two were caught on surveillance video purchasing red and black spray paint and bandanas from a Wal-Mart the day before the vandalism.
Romanian police have arrested a 37-year-old man whom they suspect wrote anti-Semitic slogans on the childhood home of Elie Wiesel.Germany Investigates Website Selling Zyklon B Peanuts, Führer Wine
The man, whose name police did not release to the public, is believed to have written in florescent pink graffiti on the Memorial House Elie Wiesel in Sighet in eastern Romania the words “public toilet” and “Nazi Jew lying in hell with Hitler” as well as “Anti-Semite pedophile.”
Wiesel was one of the world’s most famous Holocaust survivors before he passed away in 2016 at the age of 87. A Nobel prize laureate for literature, he was honored last year by locals in his hometown. They marched from the museum, which was built where Wiesel was born and grew up, to the train station where in 1944 he boarded with his family a train to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
The suspect was arrested last week for the vandalism, which was discovered on August 4, the news site digi24 reported.
“A person suspected of committing the crime was identified,” police spokesperson Florina Meteş told reporters.
The public prosecutor’s office in Neuruppin, Brandenburg, in the former East Germany, told reporters this week it was investigating a man from Uckermark in northeastern Germany for incitement to hatred and other crimes, Deutsche Welle reported. The offender faces up to five years in prison if convicted, for running the a mail order website reichsversand (Reich Shipments), specializing in Nazi memorabilia as well as “joke” products such as peanuts packaged in a tin of Zyklon B.Fashion Photo Shoot at Holocaust Monument in Canada Condemned as Unacceptable ‘Desecration’ of Site
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Other products include SS linen, busts of Hitler and of other top Nazis, knockoffs of liquor brands renamed “Reichs Jägermeister” (Hermann Göring’s old job), or “Heil Hitler” beer looking suspiciously like Heineken. There’s also children’s furniture decorated with Nazi symbols, and much, much Nazi paraphernalia, the list goes on and on.
A fashion photo shoot that took place last weekend at the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, Canada, has been deemed inappropriate and an insult to the site, the Ottawa Sun reported on Thursday.IsraellyCool: My Israel Trail: Book Review
Local Ottawa Rabbi Reuven Bulka, who spoke at the official opening of the monument in 2017, called Sunday’s photo shoot a “desecration of a sacred site” and said, “Here’s a place that commemorates the murder of six million Jews. Why would you do anything so inconsistent such as making it into a place of levity?”
The star-shaped $4.7 million monument has plaques chronicling the history of the Holocaust as well as massive monochromatic photos of significant Holocaust sites. An Instagram post by Montreal clothing designer Michèle Beaudoin, uploaded on Sunday, showed a woman standing at the monument wearing a revealing grey cut-out dress. Angles of the monument along with the Canadian War Museum, which is located across from the site, are visible in the background. The social media post was deleted after Beaudoin was contacted by the Ottawa Sun, according to the publication, and Beaudoin has since made her Instagram account private.
Ottawa fashion photographer Richard Tardif, who took the photos for the shoot on Sunday, told the Ottawa Sun, “After further consideration, we decided to end the session and discontinue the project. Also, all material has been deleted.”
Book Title: My Israel Trail: Finding Peace in the Promised Land‘Maus’ creator Art Spiegelman is first comic artist to win MacDowell award
Author: Aryeh Green
Year Published: 2018
Aryeh Green, the author of My Israel Trail, is a good friend of mine. We see each other almost once a week, and share a love for Israel, a passion for Israel advocacy, as well as an appreciation for fine whisky.
Since Aryeh hiked the “Shvil Yisrael” (Israel trail) a number of years ago, his proclivity to mention the “Shvil” in almost any conversation of any context has become somewhat of a joke among his friends (a joke Aryeh is very much part of). Kind of like the way the Golden Girl’s Rose Nylund mentions St Olaf at every opportunity.
So it came as no surprise that Aryeh would actually write a book about it. The perhaps surprising part is that this book is very difficult to put down – given it is about a months-long hike across Israel. Not exactly The Bourne Identity.
But the truth is, the book is really about a whole lot more than the 1,100 km or so physical trek. It is essentially a deeply personal account of a middle-aged man trying to come to grips with a painful divorce. It is as much an emotional journey as a physical one.
Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the graph novel “Maus,” is set to become the first cartoonist to win the prestigious MacDowell Medal for culture and the arts.In its search for a taken husband, ‘Memoir of War’ is haunting punch in the gut
The recognition puts Spiegelman, the son of Polish Holocaust survivors, in the company of cultural icons such as painter Georgia O’Keeffe and surrealist filmmaker David Lynch.
“Maus,” his semi-autobiographical graphic novel, tells the story of his father’s experiences during World War II as well as their strained relationship. He won the Pulitzer in 1992. Both “Maus” and its sequel were commercial and critical successes, and gave graphic novels — essentially, book-length comics — the prestige that had long eluded their authors.
A longtime writer and illustrator, Spiegelman first gained prominence as a member of the underground comix scene in the 1970s.
Told he was being honored with the MacDowell Medal, Spiegelman thought to himself, “The last thing I need is another lifetime achievement award,” he told the Washington Post. However, he added, “I have a voraciously puny sense of self — like most cartoonists I know.”
The impact of Nazism on ordinary citizens remains a fascinating and heartbreaking subject, and films on this topic show no sign of easing up. Nor should they.Memoir of War Trailer 1 (2018)
The latest, “Memoir of War,” based on Marguerite Duras’s autobiographical book published in 1985 (but written in part as a journal as events unfolded), is a punch to the gut — but also remarkable for its specificity. The details of Parisian life during its occupation (and the days just after liberation) can only be researched so far; to know it one has to have lived it.
Duras’s writerly radar was up in the 1940s, and her sensitivity was heightened as she struggled with the arrest and disappearance of her husband, Robert Antelme. Emmanuel Finkiel’s film, which approaches the material from a dreamy, artistic point of view, is bookended with visions of Robert’s return.
We don’t know if Marguerite (in an outstanding performance by Melanie Thierry) is dreaming or if trauma has led her to depersonalize. But we then cut back a year, as this headstrong young woman combats bureaucracy while, at first, merely trying to send him a parcel of clothes. (He was taken away in the night.)
As we dive in, what is so striking, but extremely important, is seeing how some members of French society easily adapt to the new regime. Things will get easier, people sigh, once the Germans finally win the war. A crowd shouts “traitor!” at someone in the street, and it is ambiguous if the bloodied young man is a collaborator or a member of the resistance.
