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Thursday, November 01, 2018

11/01 Links Pt2: The Many Faces of Jew-Hatred; Holocaust survivor faces evil, cheats death for second time; Ben & Jerry's Israel distances itself from political U.S. flavor

From Ian:
Anne Frank, the Beloved Victim of the Nazis Who Never Had the Chance to Write about the Holocaust
Seeking to answer the question of why Anne Frank’s diary is the best known, most widely read, and most popular book about the Holocaust, Dara Horn reaches some unsettling conclusions, most notably that “people love dead Jews” far more than living ones:

This disturbing idea was suggested by an incident this past spring at the Anne Frank House, the blockbuster Amsterdam museum built out of [the] series of tiny hidden rooms where the teenage Jewish diarist lived with her family and four other persecuted Jews for over two years. . . . [W]hen a young employee at the Anne Frank House in 2017 tried to wear his yarmulke to work, his employers told him to hide it under a baseball cap. The museum’s managing director told newspapers that a live Jew in a yarmulke might “interfere” with the museum’s “independent position.” The museum finally relented after deliberating for six months, which seems like a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding. . . .

[This, and other] public-relations mishaps, clumsy though they may have been, were not really mistakes, nor even the fault of the museum alone. On the contrary, the runaway success of Anne Frank’s diary depended on playing down her Jewish identity. . . .

[By contrast], an Anne Frank who lived [through the Holocaust] might have been a bit upset at the Dutch people who, according to the leading theory, turned in her household and received a reward of approximately $1.40 per Jew. An Anne Frank who lived . . . might have told people about what she saw at Westerbork, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, and people might not have liked what she had to say. . . .

The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary—“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”—is often called “inspiring,” by which we mean that it flatters us. It makes us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. That gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift, it is worth noting, at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank’s hiding place, in her writings, in her “legacy.” It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being “truly good at heart” three weeks before she met people who weren’t.
Ruth Wisse [WSJ - click twitter link bellow]: The Many Faces of Jew-Hatred
This Jew-hatred dates from the year Germany surrendered in World War II, when anti-Semitism became the dominant ideology of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. Just as Europeans organized politics against the Jewish “usurper” among them, the Arab League sought to expel the Jewish people—their fellow Semites. And just as European anti-Semitism united left and right, revolutionaries and traditionalists, internationalists and nationalists, populists and elites, so too anti-Zionism unified otherwise adversarial Arab and Muslim countries.

Assailing Israel deflected blame for domestic flaws in Arab societies. It still does. It redirects grievances against the Jews, inspiring national and religious fervor through opposition to a common enemy. The Jews, a small minority whose power is hugely inflated, are a perennial target, though they have no incentive for counteraggression and every reason to seek acceptance in their usual position among much larger surrounding nations. The typical reaction of the Jews of Pittsburgh was not to call for the death penalty but to reveal that Jewish doctors had treated the shooter. The Jews of Israel imprison but do not execute those who slaughter their women and children. Mr. Bowers has rightly been called a coward for attacking the innocent; so are those who attack Israel.

The most discouraging feature of the anti-Israel brand of anti-Semitism is its penetration of Western societies, including the U.S. That a single shooter wants to kill the Jews is less dangerous to this country than Louis Farrakhan’s smiling designation of Jews as “termites,” broadcast to a vast audience, or the vicious movement to boycott Israel—an extension of the Arab boycott launched in 1945. The incursion of fanatical anti-Israel politics into the American campus and the Democratic Party is a threat not to the Jews alone but to what they represent in liberal democracy.

Even as we try to comfort the mourners and suggest better security measures, we must stop the scourge before a full-fledged anti-Semitic politics emerges in America under the unifying banner of “intersectionality.” Anti-Semitism is the only ideology that can unite the far left and far right. Its success would signify America’s failure.


Ben Shapiro: Fighting Anti-Semitism Should Be Bipartisan
Trump’s words on the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting themselves are far stronger than any words we’ve ever heard from a president before: “If you seek the destruction of Jews, we will seek your destruction.” Furthermore, we must distinguish between the alt-right, a relatively new phenomenon, and the persistent white supremacist movement, which has routinely attacked Jews; Trump wasn’t a gleam in the political eye when a white supremacist shot up the West Valley Jewish Community Center in Woodland Hills in 1999.

All of this suggests a certain gross partisanship on the part of people who, without sufficient evidence, blame Trump for the Tree of Life Synagogue murders. That’s particularly true of people who seem fully complacent with the Democratic Party’s open embrace of Keith Ellison, Linda Sarsour and Louis Farrakhan; people who brushed off President Obama labeling an anti-Semitic terror attack in France as “random”; people who shrugged away Obama’s statements about Iranian anti-Semitism (he said that they would only act in anti-Semitic fashion “at the margins”); people who pooh-pooh the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement and Hamas.

Here’s the reality: If we wish to be accurate, we shouldn’t link normal but heated political rhetoric with anti-Semitic violence. If we wish to fight anti-Semitism, we should label all anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Semitism-enabling rhetoric for what it is, regardless of partisan persuasion. And if we wish to have a country, we ought to stop conflating politics we dislike with incitement to violence.



What the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter didn’t understand about Jews
Looking back at Jewish history, it’s easy to focus on the persecution and suffering. But the story of the Jews is not ultimately one of oppression; it’s one of survival. It’s about a proud people who fought, and scrapped, and struggled, and went on. Jews preserved the faith through thousands of years, through the rule of Romans and Babylonians, the Inquisition, pogroms, and the gulags of Soviet Russia.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel chronicled the great lengths that prisoners went through to conduct the daily tefillin prayers in Auschwitz — even if it meant trading away their sustenance and risking death. “A dozen prisoners thereby sacrificed their sleep, and sometimes their rations of bread or coffee, to perform the mitzvah, the commandment to wear the tefillin,” Wiesel wrote. “Yes, we practiced religion even in a death camp. I said my prayers every day. On Saturday I hummed Shabbat songs at work, in part no doubt, to please my father, to show him I was determined to remain a Jew even in the accursed kingdom.”

Just think of it. If anybody had valid reasons to drift away from such observances, to question the ways of God or even God’s very existence, it was prisoners in a Nazi death camp. Yet some of them risked their lives to practice their faith and preserve traditions so that they could endure for future generations.

With the establishment of Israel, Jews took defense into their own hands. Surrounded by enemies and condemned by most of the world, they not only turned the desert green, but made it into a modern, high-tech economy.

The Pittsburgh shooter wrote about the need to end the “kike infestation.” He opened fire shouting, “All Jews must die.”

But, as with others who wanted to eliminate the Jews throughout history, the shooter did not understand us. He didn’t realize that his actions would only deepen our connection to Judaism and remind us of the strong bonds that connect us to each other. And so, the shooter will live out his days in a cell and join the long list of evil men who fantasized about destroying us — and failed.
My friend David
Mr Corbyn, when he speaks of fighting anti-Semitism is being mischievous, at best. It appears that he is deliberately misleading his listeners. He is not interested, as I am, in the identity of the victim. His motivation and those of his supporters (as a friend of mine Rivka has already written) is based on the identity of the perpetrator.

In other words, he is at the outset only interested in the person who pulled the trigger. In his world therefore, and those of his supporters, it appears that a Jew can only be a victim of anti-Semitism if their attacker is white and crucially a neo-Nazi or white supremacist.

If though the attacker is not white and is left wing, the attack cannot possibly be anti-Semitic. So, when those attending prayers at David’s synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem in 2014 were murdered by Arab men shouting “Allah Akbar”, Mr Corbyn would not recognise that as an attack against Jews. The murders of the Jews in the Hyper Cache supermarket in Paris the following year, passed Mr Corbyn by as just another incident where people died.

Here in the UK, the writing is not only on the wall about the risks of a Labour Government, it is in letters of fire. What Mr Corbyn has now made perfectly clear is that he will not protect the Jewish citizens of this country if they are attacked by anyone other than a white neo-Nazi. Since the threats against us are mostly from the left, including from some members of Mr Corbyn’s party, if he becomes Prime Minister we will not be safe.

For now, we must realise that Jeremy Corbyn is not a man who will negotiate with us, nor will he see our point of view or try and reach some accommodation. For him, he sees us as a community which is largely white, middle class and by a hefty majority, supporting the idea of the State of Israel and so, we are his enemies. It is a depressing thought that if my Synagogue was attacked by the same people who attacked my friend David’s place of worship in Jerusalem, Jeremy Corbyn would be nowhere to be seen.

I feel the deaths of my brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh keenly, since they were doing just what I did last Saturday morning, going along to the Synagogue, chatting with their friends and taking part in the service. For me it was a Shabbat morning service like any other, for them it was their last. May their memory be a blessing to their families and their community.
Amb. David Friedman to Jews: Stop fighting over Pittsburgh massacre
The Jewish people cannot allow the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh to divide it, US Ambassador David Friedman said Wednesday amid ongoing strife within the Jewish community over the cause of the tragic shooting last Saturday.

“The monster who killed 11 precious souls in Pittsburgh must also be denied a victory,” Friedman said at a solidarity event the Anti-Defamation League hosted Wednesday night at Beit Hatfutsot – The Museum of the Jewish People, in Tel Aviv. “As he sits in his cell, and as he rots in hell in the future, we must never allow him the satisfaction that he so craves of inflicting lasting damage upon the Jewish people.”

Friedman continued: “We can never allow ourselves to be divided over the pointless exercise of assigning blame to anyone but the killer himself. It plays right into his sick and demented mind.”

Friedman said that Israel, where arguments tend to stop for a period of time after terrorist attacks and especially around Remembrance Day, is an example worth studying.

“We must unite around this tragedy – it is the response that the victims deserve and the only response that will assure the killer’s ultimate failure,” he said.

“We all know in our hearts what is right and what we must do. To honor the memory of the victims, let us redouble our resolve to love each other, to respect each other and, most importantly, to unite against the true forces of hatred and evil, and eradicate them forever,” he said.
Holocaust survivor faces evil, cheats death for second time
Sitting in the handicapped lane outside Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Judah Samet watched as a plainclothes officer traded gunfire with a man at the door of the synagogue. He was caught in a crossfire and, yet, instead of ducking down, he craned his neck to get a glimpse of the gunman.

"The guy was very focused," he said, pointing his finger like the barrel of a gun and mimicking the staccato clacking of semiautomatic fire. "I saw the smoke coming out of his [muzzle]."

The 80-year-old Hungarian native had come face to face with evil once before, in a Nazi concentration camp. He had cheated death then, and on that Sabbath morning, he had a feeling that God was not finished with him just yet.

When the shooting stopped, 11 people lay dead inside the bunker-like concrete synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of the city's Jewish community. In the days since, many have expressed shock that a place that seemed so safe for 150 years could become the scene of the worst attack on Jews in the nation's history.

But Samet is surprised that nothing like this had happened sooner.

"I didn't lose faith in humanity," he said. "I know not to depend on humanity."
Sweetest Gesture Ever
Chad Andrew Herring posted this image on his Facebook page. This gentleman was apparently standing on the steps of Sixth Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, across the street from the Tree of Life Synagogue.

I’m relieved by the fact that we can still tell the following joke, thanks to this adorable man:

A European Jew and an American Jew are arguing, and the European says, We in Europe have the best museums, the best social services, the cleanest streets. What do you have in America?

And the American Jew replies: the best goyim.

‘This Man Took a Bullet for the Jewish People,’ Rabbi Says of Officer Injured in Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting
A police officer who was wounded after being one of the first responders to arrive at the scene of Saturday’s shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue has received praise from a local rabbi for his heroic efforts.

“This is a man who took a bullet for the Jewish people,” Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld — the director of Chabad Lubavitch of Pittsburgh — was quoted as saying by Chabad.org about officer Dan Mead, who is currently recuperating at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. “He refuses to call himself a hero. He said, ‘I was just doing my job.’ But it’s clear that he is one. The Jewish community of Pittsburgh and the entire world owe this man a debt of gratitude.”

As Mead and his partner approached the entrance to the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday morning, they were fired on from a window by white supremacist gunman Robert Bowers and Mead suffered an arm wound.

Chabad.org reported that the actions of the two officers might have saved lives since it is believed Bowers wanted to go to his car and attack other sites. But after Mead and his partner engaged him, Bowers decided to hide inside the synagogue, where he was later arrested by a SWAT team.

A total of six Pittsburgh police officers were shot or injured while exchanging fire with Bowers, who had massacred 11 Jewish worshipers at the synagogue.


Prof. Phyllis Chesler: American Jews have been sleepwalking
And so—Pittsburgh. Why didn’t the synagogue have armed guards and a metal detector unit at their door? Here’s probably why.

Because they did not see themselves as on the front lines of the war against the Jews. That was Israel’s problem and Israeli embassies and consulates, had such security.

But in America? Where Jews were able to successfully run the blockades against them in business and in the academic world?

But in a conservative synagogue—whose members welcomed refugees?

Yes, in America, and in a progressive, humanitarian, Conservative synagogue.

And now, for the first time, some Jewish Americans are scared. One man, who spent his early years in a refugee camp in Germany sounded personally endangered. Another woman, born in Palestine, kept referring to “dark times.”

Many Jews seem to feel that the 1930s have returned with a vengeance. (I thought so and said so early in this century).

But I think it may be worse than that because Jew-hatred is far more global than ever before and Big Lies appear every second and in every language on the internet.

Although Israel is even more on the front lines than we are, at least Israelis know it and have taken every precaution possible. Amazingly, they are not “scared” and report being “happy.”

In America, the Jews are unarmed, both psychologically and in every other way.

A group of cognitive warriors, I among them, (e.g. Elder of Zion, Oriana Fallaci, Richard Landes, Keneth Levin, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Joan Peters, Nidra Poller, Ruth Wisse, Robert Wistrich, Bat Ye-or), sounded the alarm early on. Others have joined us, including Giulio Meotti, Jack Engelhard, Andrew Pessin, Howard Rotberg, Eric Rozenman, Ben-Dror Yemini. (I fear that we mainly read each other and are not widely read by those who are not covering this particular war.)

Collectively, we have all been hard at work for the last 20-50 years trying to combat the lethal propaganda that has been launched against Jews—perhaps more lethal in our opinion, than the unending rockets, stabbing, bombings.


Danny Danon: Learn from Israel's Effective Anti-Terror Methods
The terrible tragedy that struck the Jewish community in Pittsburgh last weekend raises again the evil specter of anti-Semitism. As we mourn for the 11 Jews we lay to rest this week, the inevitable question is being asked: What can be done to prevent future attacks by anti-Semitic madmen? Thankfully, Israel can offer some recommendations.

As most people know, my country is no stranger to violence against Jews. The sharp increase in “lone wolf” stabbing and shooting attacks of the past few years forced us to confront the security challenge of how to identify and prevent attacks that seemingly occur at random. We found an effective tool in social media.

Social media provides a wealth of information, including the potential to identify not only who is anti-Semitic, but who may be inspired to violently act out their bigotry.

Between 2015 and 2017, 60 percent of lone-wolf attackers in Israel signaled their intent beforehand on social media. If these criminals want to broadcast their plans, it would be irresponsible for us to ignore them.

To that end, our security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies began intensely monitoring multiple social media sites for individuals who, based on their public statements and affiliations, raise red flags that they may engage in specifically anti-Semitic violence. After an initial assessment to verify the seriousness of the threat, we then engage with family and friends to determine if preventative action needs to be taken.
Groups push #ShowUpForShabbat campaign after Pittsburgh massacre
The American Jewish Committee is urging Jews — and non-Jews — to come to synagogue this Shabbat in response to the shooting during services Saturday at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 worshipers.

The organization is calling on elected officials, civic leaders and others to join Jews at services as part of the #ShowUpForShabbat campaign.

“What could be a more fitting response to the terror in Pittsburgh?” AJC CEO David Harris said in a statement. “We are not afraid. We are not going to think twice about affirming our identity and faith. We are not alone.”

On social media, people shared their commitment to participating in the campaign. The United States Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan group representing mayors of cities with 30,000 or more residents, said on Twitter that it was “proud to be supporting these efforts.”


Commemorating Pittsburgh Victims, UN Secretary-General Guterres Denounces ‘Stupid Crime’ of Antisemitism
The secretary-general of the United Nations on Wednesday denounced antisemitism as the “oldest hatred of humankind” during an address at a memorial service in New York for the victims of last weekend’s shooting massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

“Since I became Secretary-General, I have been raising my voice against what I believe is the rise of anti-Semitism in many of our societies and namely my part in the world in Europe but also unfortunately, here also in North America,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the packed audience at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. “We see xenophobia and racism developing in many parts of the world. But it is true that antisemitism is the oldest and most permanent form of hatred against a people in the history of humankind. Jews are discriminated and persecuted for the simple reason that they are Jews.”

Guterres noted the endurance of anti-Jewish prejudice across several centuries as well as in different parts of the world, including his native Portugal. “I will never forget the history of my country, the discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages and then culminating with the most stupid crime of Portuguese history, the expulsion of the Jews in the beginning of the sixteenth century,” he said. “Criminal because of the suffering endured by the Jewish people, stupid because it had a very negative perspective in the prosperity of my own country.”
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect pleads not guilty
The man charged with opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue and killing 11 worshipers pleaded not guilty on Thursday in federal court to all 44 counts against him, including hate crimes and firearms offenses.

Robert Bowers, 46, an avowed anti-Semite, appeared defiant and determined in court. Dressed in a red jumpsuit and with a bandaged left arm, he walked into the courtroom with a swagger.

He spoke little, other than to say he understood the charges against him, and that some of them could result in the death penalty, followed by entering a plea of "not guilty."

Bowers was injured during a shootout with police during the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood in what is believed to be the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. He had appeared in court on Monday shackled to a wheelchair.

His appearance in court on Thursday came as funerals for three more victims were planned during the day.
California synagogue vandalized with ‘f*** Jews’ graffiti
A synagogue in California was defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, police said on Wednesday, in an attack that took place just days after 11 people were gunned down at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Allen Berezovsky, president of the board at Beth Jacob synagogue in Irvine, south of Los Angeles, said staff discovered the vandalism in early morning.

He told AFP the words “f**k Jews” and “Jews” were spray-painted on the white facade of the building.

Berezovsky said security footage showed an individual wearing a hoodie, sunglasses and a surgical facemask jumping over the fence of the synagogue around 1:18 am and then leaving on a bicycle stolen at the premises.

“The Irvine Police Department and our own security have done a full sweep of the entire facility and nothing was found other than the graffiti,” he said in a statement to his congregation.

“We are continuing to do everything we can to make our campus more secure, and we will continue to promote the message that we are stronger than hate.”
Nearly 30 Percent Of Anti-Semitic Online Attacks Are Bots
Anti-Semitism and hate crimes have surged in the U.S. over the past couple of years, and almost 30 percent of accounts repeatedly tweeting against Jews on Twitter appear to be bots, according to a recently released study from the Anti-Defamation League.

Researchers at the ADL analyzed 7.5 million Twitter messages between Aug. 31 and Sept. 17. Billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, was a leading subject of anti-Semitic tweets, according to the researchers.

The study reports that while human users still account for the majority of derogatory Twitter traffic in the lead-up to the midterm elections, "political bots—which explicitly focus on political communication online—are playing a significant role in artificially amplifying derogatory content over Twitter about Jewish people."

The individuals behind the automated bots remain a mystery. "The facelessness of the people who are targeting the Jewish population is a major problem," said Sam Woolley, an author of the study and director of the Digital Intelligence Lab at the Institute for the Future. "It's something that has to be addressed, because it makes it impossible to either stop or report."
This Ocasio-Cortez Campaign Email Is Chock-Full Of Hate And Insanity
If her latest email to supporters provides any indication, the future socialist congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is ginning up voter enthusiasm by scaring them out of their wits, warning them of the coming white supremacist apocalypse that will surely come if the GOP wins the mid-terms in November.

Throughout the email, Ocasio-Cortez makes not a single campaign promise other than the promise to protect voters from the "white supremacist forces" that are apparently terrorizing the United States under President Trump.

"Six days from now, we can defeat the brutal white supremacist forces of anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant nativism, and racism," says the famed socialist. "We can hold accountable the cold-hearted monsters who have repeatedly attacked our health care. We can send a message to the bigots and billionaires that this country belongs to all of us. We can win if we show up on November 6. We must end Republican control of Congress and begin to reclaim our nation."

Even though the recent white supremacist hater who murdered 11 Jews at prayer in their Pittsburgh synagogue last week was not an avid Trump supporter, Ocasio-Cortez touts the left-wing media's claim that the shooting had something to do with the GOP's control of Congress.
PreOccupiedTerritory: Activists Proud They’re Waiting Till After Shiva To Blame Pittsburgh Victims (satire)
Members of anti-Israel groups congratulated themselves on their sensitivity this week for refraining from harassing those who lost loved ones in a mass synagogue shooting this past Saturday, and postponing any “you had it coming because Israel” accusations until the formal weeklong mourning period has concluded.

Representatives of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and several other anti-Israel organizations told reporters they had assumed the moral high ground in choosing restraint over confrontation in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, in which a white-supremacist gunman killed 11 Jews at Sabbath day services. Only after seven days have elapsed since the funerals, they admitted, would they begin shouting that the victims deserved it for being insufficiently opposed to Israel.

“We realize this is a sensitive time,” stated JVP activist Dee Yumeneis. “Our message remains true and important, but now is not the time to put it front and center, not while the grieving is so fresh. In a few days, sure. Then it’s not important anymore to respect the dead or the survivors. Or thousands of years of similar incidents. This just goes to show the moral superiority of our character and positions. You can’t say that about the- well, I guess I’ll finish that thought in a week or so.”

“Everything in its time,” cautioned SJP-Pittsburgh chapter president Itbakh al-Yahud. “If we hold back now, as difficult as that might be, we score points for dignifying and respecting the community’s pain, which frees us up later to be as nasty as we typically are. Besides, it’s just the right thing to do.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s New Golden Girl Thinks White Helmets a Conspiracy and IDF Funds ISIS
This weekend the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is holding a conference against Apartheid organised by a new staff member called Huda Ammori.

Huda’s shared some interesting stuff on her Facebook.
She shared a post referring to “3 Palestinian youth who were killed and executed in cold blood by the Zionists forces today in Jerusalem city.” In fact they were killed while carrying out a stabbing and shooting attack in Jerusalem where they killed one police officer and wounded six others. A knife is clearly visible in one photo and even Palestinian media reported that it was a terror attack.

The Palestine Information Centre reported:
“Three Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers after they carried out a dual anti-occupation attack on Friday evening in Occupied Jerusalem. An Israeli policewoman was killed and six Israelis were injured in the attack.”

Huda argues that Israel is funding ISIS:

Huda even thinks that the Syrian humanitarian group, the White Helmets, are some kind of conspiracy against Assad:

This weekend Huda has organised a PSC Apartheid Conference. The blurb for the event states:

“The institutionalised discrimination that the Palestinian people face did not begin in July 2018. Instead, it has been central to the foundation and maintenance of the State of Israel from the start.”

This is the argument that a bunch of Jews fleeing Europe before the gates to Palestine slammed shut in 1930s together with Holocaust survivors fled from the graveyard that was Europe in the post Holocaust world were actually racist colonists who should have allowed themselves to be slaughtered when local Arabs and the surrounding states attacked them. In the years after the War of Independence the Arab states booted out all their Jews who went to Israel, ironically strengthening the Jewish state. Naturally the crime of racism continually lands on Israel’s doorstep rather than the states who forced their Jews to flee in the first place.
Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief: Job of Fighting Campus Anti-Semitism is “Primarily One of Education”
The fight against campus anti-Semitism is “primarily one of education,” Dovid Efune, editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said in a conference call hosted by The Israel Project on Tuesday, discussing his publication’s role in helping Jewish students grapple with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred.

Efune explained that the education he referred to means “helping not just students but college administrators, and even fair-minded professors” what “they are facing on campuses, and realize the bigoted nature of many of these groups that are leading the charge.” He added that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is in the “forefront” of efforts to demonize Israel on campus, is an “overtly anti-Semitic group,” according to the definitions of the United States State Department and International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Efune began the call by a discussion of the massacre of eleven Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday morning.

“I think it categorized for us or reaffirmed for us that hate, and certainly hatred of Jews, anti-Semitism, literally sits in a category of its own, and needs to be fought, and combatted in every which place it is found,” he said.

The editor also said that he found “the extent of how the wider American community, not just the Jewish community, was so repulsed by this hatred” to be “encouraging.”
Scholars at UPenn Condemn U.S.-Israel Friendship
No one with an opposing view was asked to participate.

Carrying on in the tradition of Edward Said, a comparative literature professor with no expertise in Middle East affairs who became the icon for the anti-Israel pseudo scholars who followed him, Amy Kaplan, the Edward W. Kane Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, has written a book on the U.S.-Israel relationship. To celebrate its launch, Penn’s Middle East Center and Department of English organized a panel of seven academics on October 15 to discuss Our American Israel: The Story of An Entangled Alliance.

A graduate student recorded and took notes at the event, which was held in a small room and attended by a crowd of approximately fifty people, mostly older faculty. The good news was that only about a half dozen students bothered to sit through the lunchtime recitation of anti-Israel tropes.

Leading off the discussion was Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi, a well-known Israel hater and former PLO spokesman, who lavished praise on Kaplan’s book. He was particularly impressed with how she argued the “awful movie Exodus” influenced Americans to support Israel. Most of the panelists found Kaplan’s analysis of the film to be evidence of the author and director’s sophisticated manipulation of the American psyche. Rebecca Stein, an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, saw it is an allegory of the American Revolution, for example, that retells the history of Israel’s founding as a Hollywood-style Western cannily using Paul Newman’s “radiant whiteness and hyper-masculinity” to “forge a popular American identification with Israel that would last decades.”

It is easy to understand Khalidi’s disdain for a film that so vividly captured the Jewish fight for statehood against what were then seemingly overwhelming odds. The film created a positive image of Israel he abhors. Of course the focus on a movie released in 1960 ignores the fact that American sympathy for Israel predated the film and has grown to its highest level in the last decade, more than half a century later. Ultimately, Kaplan’s brilliance, for Khalidi, is in “drawing the mythologies of these two separate colonial societies together.”


Ben & Jerry's Israel distances itself from political U.S. flavor
Ben & Jerry’s Israel released a statement Wednesday distancing itself from a new flavor of ice cream in the United States that has stirred up controversy.

On Tuesday, the global company announced it was launching a new flavor titled “Pecan Resist.” The limited edition ice cream – chocolate with fudge, pecans, walnuts and almonds – “supports groups creating a more just and equitable nation for us all, and who are fighting President Trump’s regressive agenda,” the company said.

The message, of course, was not received well by many ice cream-loving Trump supporters. But others were also not pleased that the ice cream is donating the proceeds to four groups, including the controversial Women’s March. Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour has been associated with Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh while fellow leader Tamika Mallory has voiced support for outspoken antisemite Louis Farrakhan.

On Wednesday, Ben & Jerry’s Israel branch made it clear it has no links to the flavor.
Swedish surgeon accused of bullying Jewish employees
A senior physician from the Swedish university that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine is accused of bullying Jewish employees with impunity.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center made the accusation against the surgeon in a letter its dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, sent Karolinska University Hospital near Stockholm last month, the Aftonbladet daily reported Wednesday.

Management at Karolinska knew about the “obvious and open anti-Semitism” expressed by the physician to at least one Jewish employee since February, but the complaints were “ignored,” Cooper wrote in the letter, obtained by JTA. At least two other Jewish employees quit until only the one mentioned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center remained, Cooper said.

Annika Tibell, the hospital’s director, told Aftonbladet that the institution has a “zero tolerance for all types of harassment and offensive treatment.” She also said that “relevant investigative measures” are being taken when “misunderstandings arise.” According to Aftonbladet, Karolinska has launched an internal investigation and asked outside counsel to review the complaints.

But Cooper told JTA that he has “near zero confidence” in the hospital’s handling of the complaint. “They first received complaints months ago and nothing happened. They are not transparent about what measures they are taking now.”
Michael Lumish: The Week on Nothing Left
This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman hear from Jonathan Neumann, a journalist and commentator speaking about Israel’s nation-state law and other topics.

Isi Leibler then discusses a conference organised by Jewish Federations of North America where the key item for discussion was criticism of Israel.

Daniel Mandel from the Zionist Organisation of America discusses the relationship between Israel and Jordan as well as bringing us up to date on events in Pittsburgh, and Matthew M Hausman revisits the Jerusalem embassy issue and also branches into some general issues.
Graffiti about ’12 dead’ and Jesus painted on French Jewish center
Graffiti that the mayor of Nice called anti-Semitic was discovered on the door of a Jewish community center in the southern French city.

The culprits, who have not been identified, spray-painted in red on the entrance to a mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath, the words: “INRI, 12 dead and now what?”

INRI is the acronym in Latin for the words “Jesus, King of the Jews” which according to Christian tradition were written on the cross on which the Romans crucified Jesus. The graffiti appeared on the mikveh entrance on Saturday, shortly after a gunman killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Mayor Christian Estrosi, a center-right politician favored by many Nice Jews for his uncompromising policies against anti-Semitism, linked the graffiti to the massacre in a statement on Twitter.

“Horrified by the graffiti, the threat,” Estrosi wrote, “after the grief over the tragedy in Pittsburgh.” Estrosi added that police have increased their presence around synagogues in Nice following that attack. Estrosi also said the graffiti was anti-Semitic, according to Nice Matain’s report Sunday.

Rabbi Aliyahu Mergui, who is responsible for the mikveh, told the newspaper he does not know whether the graffiti is anti-Semitic, and if so what it means.
Big Brother's Lewis Flanagan admits Holocaust and Hitler comments led to his removal from the show
Big Brother's Lewis Flanagan has made a bombshell admission that comments made about the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler were the cause of his removal from the show.

Channel 5 has thus far refused to show the footage leading up to his departure from the house, only announcing afterwards that he'd used "unacceptable language that contravenes the rules" on Friday (October 26).

In a new interview with The Sun, Flanagan claimed he was called to the Diary Room and told he'd be ejected shortly after he'd tried making light of a garbled sentence with a reference to the Nazi leader.

"I was talking to Cameron about getting him some outfits and I said the word 'Auschwitz' instead of outfits by mistake," he said.

"It was a slip of the tongue and then I tried to mock Hitler and did an impression of him saying: 'Kill the Jews.'
Indian flight uses IAI’s TaxiBot to cut fuel costs, pollution
A commercial SpiceJet flight took off from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi using a semi-robotic, pilot-controlled towing tractor developed by Israel Aerospace Industries, known as TaxiBot, for the first time on Monday, the Israeli firm said on Thursday.

Additional Indian airlines including Jet Airways and Indigo Airlines are currently evaluating the TaxiBot for their operations as well, IAI said in a statement.

The TaxiBot, developed by IAI and its French partner TLD Group, is a semi-robotic vehicle that connects to the aircraft and is controlled by the pilots, enabling them to taxi from the airport’s jet bridge — the sleeve — to the runway without using the aircraft’s main jet engines.

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This saves 85 percent of the fuel consumed during standard taxiing of the aircraft, and provides a similar reduction of 85% of the greenhouse gases emitted by the main engines, the statement said.

Taxiing with the TaxiBot also reduces noise levels by 60%, IAI said, and cuts back by 50% on the amount of foreign objects that can be sucked into the aircraft engines, as they are not running.


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