Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Anti-Semitism Is a Form of Idolatry
The Hebrew Bible tends to regard idol worship as the sin par excellence. To Scott Shay, there is an underlying connection between hatred of Jews and Judaism’s rejection of the idolatrous worldview, which, he argues, is not limited to ancient paganism:
Idolatry is the process of attributing superior and inexplicable power and authority to . . . people, animals, and natural processes. Since finite beings are limited by nature, . . . idolatry is by definition a falsehood. Yet this falsehood is the basis for much human injustice, just as the Bible explains. From Pharaoh in Egypt to Sennacherib in Assyria, idolaters built temples, ran pageants, and wrote poems and epics to extol their “supernatural” power and authority. These lies justified their selfish oppression of the masses and their greedy conquests of other peoples. Idolatry underpins all genuinely malevolent power. . . .
Anti-Semitism is the projection of idolatry onto Jews. Anti-Semites are not people who criticize or debate specific Jewish viewpoints or communal decisions in a spirit of mutual respect. They are people who themselves harbor projects of domination and exploitation, but who . . . project their own malevolent intentions onto Jews. In Charlottesville, anti-Semitic marchers who genuinely seek white supremacy shouted, “Jews won’t replace us.” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who wished to bring the entire world under Islamist control, regularly accused the Jews of seeking world domination. Hitler railed against a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany, when he wanted to destroy the Jews! . . .
It is not the Jews’ success, nor their actual power that is the source of anti-Semitism. . . . Rather, it is the Jews’ historic connection with monotheism that has made them the central target of this projected idolatry. This has been true even when many Jews have been neither religious nor conversant with the texts [of their faith]. By accusing Jews of malevolent and demonic control over organs of power (media, Congress, banks, etc.), true idolaters (whatever their specific ideology) project their own idolatry onto the Jews and thereby maintain their own delusions.
Melanie Phillips: The shameful abandonment of Asia Bibi
It is hard to think of a more deserving case for asylum than Asia Bibi.Even the Women’s March Apology Erases Jewish Women
A Christian in Pakistan, Asia Bibi has been freed after eight years in solitary confinement on death row for committing blasphemy, a crime of which she has now been acquitted by Pakistan’s supreme court.
The accusation against her was a travesty. As she picked berries with other Punjabi farmworkers in June 2009, a quarrel developed with two Muslim women after she was asked to fetch water and they said they wouldn’t drink from a vessel touched by a Christian. The women later alleged to a village mullah that Asia Bibi had insulted Mohammed, accusations which the supreme court said were “concoction incarnate”.
The acquittal prompted thousands of violent demonstrators to take to the streets calling for Asia Bibi to be hanged and threatening the supreme court judges with death. The leader of the Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan threatened that if she left the country there would be war.
She is now in hiding for her life in Pakistan after the new prime minister, Imran Khan, succumbed to the pressure and allowed a petition against the court decision as part of a deal to halt the protests. Several commentators have said the refusal to allow her to leave Pakistan effectively signed her death warrant.
It is, of course, astounding that the prospect of freedom for one woman, acquitted of a monstrously unjust claim of blasphemy, can have provoked this murderous hysteria. Apart from illustrating once again the sheer derangement of Islamic fanaticism, it illuminates two other things: the Islamists’ fear that Pakistan may be on the verge of becoming more open and loosening up Islamic law, and Imran Khan’s actual spinelessness in the face of an opportunity to do so.
The Women’s March Statement on anti-Semitism is not nearly enough to begin healing the pain its leaders have caused Jewish women. It’s good to finally hear the March publicly disagree with Louis Farrakhan’s hateful comments on women, LGBTQ communities, and Jews. This is a positive first step. That said, disagreeing with hate is not the same as FIGHTING IT.
The Women’s March leadership must take some responsibility for the situation they have created. Three of the four co-directors have long-standing relationships with the leader of an anti-Semitic, anti-trans, anti-gay hate group. Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez have all proudly declared their friendship and partnership with Farrakhan on various occasions. Beyond Farrakhan, Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory have continued to offend and hurt the community by speaking as experts on anti-Semitism despite community opposition, hurling unfounded accusations at the Anti-Defamation League, opining on Jewish history, blaming Israel for President Trump’s Muslim ban and claiming that anti-Semitism isn’t a systemic hatred. They have shown no remorse and no interest in community dialogue.
These leaders of the movement continue to treat calls for accountability and reconciliation from Jewish allies as unfair, personal attacks. In actuality, the criticism they face is the result of their own actions over the course of more than a year, in which they erased, degraded, and marginalized Jewish women and their concerns in the face of the Trump administration and rising anti-Semitism. Jewish women are never even mentioned in their statement. Instead, they remain focused on unfair attacks from the right.
A Masterful Study of Israeli History That Has Endured for Three Decades
The Irish scholar and statesman Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, first published in 1986. not as an expert in the topic but as a highly educated and experienced public figure with a writerly gift. To Allan Arkush, it is “one of those uncommon works of political history in which a man who knows how the world works tells a great story with dazzling literary skill.” Arkush describes how O’Brien came to the topic:Remembering the Libyan riots of 1945
Known to his friends as “The Cruiser,” O’Brien (1917–2008) had a colorful, varied career that defies quick summary; it included a highly controversial stint as a UN special representative in the Congo in 1961 and service as pro-chancellor of the University of Dublin. A prolific author, with important books on subjects ranging from Irish politics to Thomas Jefferson, he was a latecomer to what he called “perhaps the greatest story of modern times.” His own special interest in Jewish history is something that he traces, in part, to his experience as an Irish representative at the United Nations (awkwardly seated, sometimes, between Iraq and Israel). He also says a few things about the somewhat similar history of the Irish and the Jews as underdogs but makes no claim to any special ability to get to the heart of the Jewish experience. . . .
O’Brien had his share of criticisms for Israel’s policymakers, but he seemed to believe that relinquishing the territories acquired in the June 1967 Six-Day War was unfeasible. Arkush notes that his comments on the subject haven’t lost their relevance:
The best that one could hope for, O’Brien concluded, was “quieter talks about how to make the sharing of the territory somewhat less uncomfortable and less dangerous for Israelis and Palestinians alike.” While he wrote this in 1986, the year before the outbreak of the first intifada, it sounds pretty much the same as what a lot of sensible people are saying today.
A total of 130 Jews and one Muslim were killed in riots in and around the Tripoli area in November 1945. Shops and homes were looted and property burnt. The Grand Mufti of Tripoli issued a fatwa against the seizure of Jewish property following the November 1945 riots against the Jews of Libya.The Ticking Time Bomb of Islamic Jew-hatred in the USA - Mida
In what was described by one British source as a 'brutal and savage pogrom', the elderly, women and children were wounded by sticks, clubs, knives cleavers, piping and hand grenades. Bodies were quartered, children had their heads bashed against walls and old men were pushed out of windows.
Nine synagogues were burnt down, 35 Torah scrolls and 2,000 sacred books were destroyed. About 90,000 kg of silver from sacred ornaments were plundered. The damage was put at 268 million Military Administration lira (MAL). One British pound equalled 480 MAL in 1945. The assessment made by the Jewish community was of course much higher. Over 5,000 people were made destitute and had to be housed and fed in displaced persons camps.
Libya was then still under British military rule. The Jews held the British authorities partially responsible for the riots as they did not intervene directly in the pogrom until the third day of violence. Of the 550 Arab rioters only 289 were tried in court. The majority were set free months later. To maintain a semblance of even handedness the British also arrested ten Jews for daring to defend themselves.
Liberals were recently out in force in Pittsburgh, their ignorance on full display, as they blamed President Donald Trump for the millennia old Jew hatred that had found another acolyte in Robert Bowers, who shot and killed 11 praying Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.Pharrell Williams Slammed by Anti-Israel Activists for Singing 'Happy' to Israeli Soldiers at Fundraiser
Jew hatred exists on the right, the left and is the raison d’etre of Islamists, but out of the three, Jewish liberals only protest right wing Jew hatred. They usually have nothing to say about Muslim Jew hatred, even though it is being carefully cultivated and stoked in mosques across the US. Islamic Jew-hatred is a time bomb waiting to go off, but that does not seem to bother liberal American Jews very much.
When in July and December 2017, imams in mosques in North Carolina, New Jersey, Texas and California, respectively, called for the killing of Jews, American organizations were conspicuously quiet. No one was holding protests, calling on President Donald Trump to “devise a plan” to confront Muslim supremacy, as the ADL had done in response to the white supremacists after Charlottesville.
This is disturbing, because terrorism is frequently preceded by indoctrination. While freedom of speech, even hate speech, is protected under the US First Amendment, direct calls for violence and murder of any single person or people, are not. Calls in US mosques for the murder of Jews need to be taken seriously. They need to be prosecuted, not tolerated.
It is therefore unsurprising that no one, let alone American Jews, has paid attention to an October sermon by imam Hasan Sabri at the Islamic Center of South Florida in Pompano Beach on October 12. In that sermon, Sabri said, “Palestine Must Be Liberated ‘Even If This Leads To The Martyrdom Of Tens Of Millions Of Muslims‘, according to a recent report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “But what is the position of a believing Muslim about the Palestinian cause? “asked Sabri rhetorically, “That Palestine in its entirety is Islamic land, and there is no difference between what was occupied in 1948 and 1967. There is no difference between this village or that village, this city or that city. All of it is Islamic waqf land that was occupied by force. The responsibility for it lies with the entire Islamic nation, and the [Palestinians] should benefit from this land. If a land is occupied or plundered, it should be liberated from the occupiers and plunderers…”
Pharrell Williams’ appearance at a fundraiser for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has drawn unsparing criticism on social media.Ending University Tolerance of Antisemitism
The Friends of the Israel Defence Forces hosted the show that included fellow musician Ziggy Marley on stage at a November 1 gala in Beverly Hills. It was performed to a crowd that included Israeli soldiers in uniform, the National reports.
The choice of the song “Happy” and the audience both came in for critical attack, coming as it did just days after the Grammy-award winning musician tweeted to demand U.S. President Donald Trump stop using the same song as a sound track to his midterm campaign.
Williams was rounded upon by those keen to claim a juxtaposition of his views.
Palestinian-American hip-hop producer Fredwreck – real name Faird Nassar – was quick to add his voice.
U.S. think-tank, the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding, also denounced the move.
“The one place in America where antisemitism is still considered acceptable is in the university.” I wrote in 2005. Sadly, nothing has changed. One need look no further than this week’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) conference at UCLA, where students will be allowed to foment antisemitism, call for the destruction of the Jewish state, and try to use the university mascot to demonstrate support for terrorist attacks on Israeli Jews.
Today, thousands of professors, some monopolizing departments at elite universities, espouse antisemitic views. Academic departments routinely organize programs where antisemitic views are promulgated without objection. University presses publish antisemitic claptrap that allows propagandists masquerading as scholars to obtain tenure. If anything, the situation is getting worse.
We rightly focus our attention on groups such as SJP, but more scrutiny should be devoted to the far more dangerous and influential faculty. The naïve expectation has been that university officials would refuse to tolerate antisemitism on their campuses and faculty would police themselves. The reality is that we continue to allow academic foxes to guard college henhouses.
Can anything be done to force administrators to treat attacks on Jews as they would any other form of bigotry? Is it possible to make faculty accountable to ensure that courses, lecturers, panels, and publications have scholarly merit?
When it comes to administrators, they are moved primarily by two things — publicity and money. They must pay a price for tolerating antisemitism or they have proven they will do nothing.
The official English translation of the German foundation's statement suspending the award to Linda Sarsour's @womensmarch because of concerns over their antisemitism is here: https://t.co/OJ2US1C9Sw pic.twitter.com/81D5bIqoPt
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 12, 2018
PMW: Belgium’s poor administration or willful blindness?
Belgium has announced that it has "enhanced" the diplomatic status of the PLO representation in Brussels. Formerly only granting diplomatic status to the head of mission, Belgium has now granted this to an additional PLO representative. [The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 8, 2018] In addition, the foreign ministers of the PA and Belgium have announced that they are expanding an existing agreement to include, among other things, "support for Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem." [English edition, Wafa, official PA news agency, Nov. 7, 2018]New York Times Travel Section Writes Jerusalem Out of Israel
However, these gifts to the PA contradict Belgium's policy statements.
Belgium recently condemned the PA and stopped all collaboration with the PA Ministry of Education after Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the Palestinian Authority was determined to continue naming schools after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi.
At best, this is poor administration by Belgium; at worst, it is willful blindness.
Belgium was outraged at the PA last year when PMW documented that the PA had used Belgium's financial support for the PA's education sector to build a school it later named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Following PMW's exposure of the school, Belgium condemned the actions by the PA and "put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools".
However, the PA ignored Belgium's demands and the school continued to be named after the terrorist. When Belgium reiterated its disapproval of the name, the PA renamed the school Belgium had funded but mocked Belgium by simultaneously naming to two other schools Belgium hasn't funded after the same terrorist!
Sunday’s New York Times travel section features an article suggesting “Five Places To Go In Jerusalem.” But readers curious about which country Jerusalem is in get no help from the Times: the article, strangely, doesn’t mention the word “Israel.”CAMERA Prompts NBC Correction on Terror Kites, SJP
Refusing to acknowledge the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is a departure from the way the Times treats other countries. The same Times Sunday travel section, for example, also includes an article about Oslo. A Times headline refers to it as “the Norwegian capital,” and the article describes it as “this compact Norwegian city. … Norway’s forward-thinking capital.” Earlier pieces in the Times‘ “Five Places To Go” series included articles about cities that the Times identified as “Düsseldorf, Germany,” and “San José, Costa Rica.”
If you are tempted to give the Times a pass on this on the basis that Jerusalem is so well known as Israel’s capital that it goes without saying, think again. A Times travel section article about Ottawa begins with the two words “Canada’s capital.” A Times travel section article about Paris makes reference, in the opening paragraph, to “the French capital.”
The snub of Israel is only the latest in a series of missteps by the Times travel section. A year ago, the section added an editor’s note to an article about a California bakery with a mural that glorified a Jew-killing Arab terrorist. In 2016, the Times touted the Islamic sultanate of Oman as a “carefree” travel destination. In 2012, the Times turned for a Jerusalem article in its travel section to a writer who proclaimed that “of the world’s roughly 200 nations, there was only one — besides Afghanistan and Iraq (which my wife has deemed too dangerous) — that I had absolutely zero interest in ever visiting: Israel.” That was an article that the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, later wrote left him “shaking my head in disbelief.”
It’s an experience that is all too frequent among Times readers who don’t share the newspaper’s apparent hostility to the Jewish state.
Last June, NBC News correctly reported that “hundreds of incendiary kites and explosive balloons have joined rockets, as well as tunnels transporting terrorists, on a list of fears” for Israeli civilians living near the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Those kites and explosive balloons, NBC’s article elaborated, had been responsible at the time for “450 fires that have burned thousands of acres of farmland and nature reserves.”Why a third of a BBC Radio 4 programme focuses on Israel
NSJP poster with UCLA name
NSJP’s poster depicting UCLA’s name and a bear resembling the school’s mascot. A subsequent version of the poster does not include the school’s name.
But that information was inexplicably missing from a Nov. 7, 2018 NBC News report about an anti-Israel poster depicting a kite resembling those used to attack the Jewish state. The poster, created by the extremist campus group Students of Justice for Palestine (SJP), advertises a conference organized by National Students for Justice in Palestine, scheduled to be held at UCLA later this month.
NBC covered the controversy over the poster after UCLA lawyers sent SJP a cease and desist letter demanding the group stop using the university’s name and bear mascot without permission, particularly in a way that may imply the schools endorsement of violence. The NBC report, though, misled readers by incorrectly suggesting UCLA was opposed the depiction of a “Palestinian flag,” as opposed to the kite. And NBC inexplicably failed to mention the use of such kites to attack Israel, even though UCLA’s letter explicitly referenced those attacks.
While the programme’s examination of America’s record and the topical Khashoggi affair was similarly superficial, listeners heard a six-minute and twelve second long section focusing solely on Russian attacks on former and current Russian nationals in the UK.BBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – October 2018
But by far the most airtime was devoted to what Stourton described as “one very full case study” in his introduction: over a third of this programme related to Israel. The reason for that is because one of Stourton’s interviewees – the Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman – published a book on that topic earlier this year.
Bergman’s book is based on interviews with current and former members of Israeli governments and security forces as well as archive material. In other words, the focus of this Radio 4 programme was made possible because of Israel’s democratic and open society.
The programme’s producers obviously found it much easier to bring in Bergman to talk about Israeli security-related assassinations than to produce any independent investigation into the more topical subject of assassinations – including of dissidents – long known to be carried out by less transparent, authoritarian governments in countries where journalists would have a much harder time interviewing former members of the intelligence services or gaining access to files.
Visitors to the BBC News website saw no coverage of missile attacks on October 17th and October 24th. A barrage of attacks on October 26th/ 27th was similarly ignored at the time and only briefly mentioned in a later report.Police launch hate crime investigation after Jewish teens attacked in north Toronto
The ‘Great Return March’ violent rioting along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip was the topic of one BBC Trending report published on the BBC News website in which audiences were told nothing of grenade and IED attacks which took place.
“Demonstrators burnt tyres and threw stones at Israeli forces, who responded with tear gas and live fire. Gaza’s health ministry said 32 Palestinians were wounded.”
Another article that was first published on October 28th (and discussed here) presented an IED attack as an Israeli claim.
In short, visitors to the BBC News website during October saw belated coverage of one fatal terror attack and one out of three separate incidents of rocket attacks as well as qualified reporting of one IED attack: i.e. 4.5% of the 330 terror incidents which took place.
Since the beginning of 2018 the BBC has reported 17.6% of the terror attacks that have actually taken place and 90.9% of the resulting fatalities.
Toronto police have launched a robbery and hate crime investigation after a group of 17-year-old Jewish boys wearing religious garments were attacked in north Toronto Sunday evening.Wisconsin School District Launches Investigation After Students Appear to Make Nazi Salute in Prom Photo
Police say the four boys were walking in the area of Fairholme Ave. and Bathurst St., one block south of Lawrence Ave. W., when they were passed by another group of nine teenagers.
The second group made derogatory comments about the Jewish boys’ religion and their clothing then assaulted two of the 17-year-old boys, “punching and kicking them,” police said.
A pair of sunglasses was then stolen from one of the victims.
The 17-year-old boys did not know the other group, police said.
After the alleged attack took place, the suspects split up and fled the area, police said. (h/t MtTB)
A school district in Wisconsin is launching an investigation after dozens of high school students were photographed making what appears to be a one-armed Nazi salute in a photograph taken last spring.Four Sisters, Four Survivors
The image — which shows boys from the 2019 Baraboo High School class before their junior prom — was first shared in an album on the website of WheelMemories, a photography business run by Peter Gust. It was uploaded to Twitter on Sunday by the self-described “parody account” @GoBaraboo, with the caption, “We even got the black kid to throw it up #BarabooProud.”
WheelMemories has since removed the photos, explaining in a statement that this was “due malevolent behavior on the part of some in society.”
Lori Mueller, superintendent of the Baraboo School District, contacted parents on Monday morning after the photograph went viral and attracted significant criticism on social media.
Mueller confirmed that the image includes students from her school district “who appear to be making extremely inappropriate gestures,” yet said that it “was not taken on school property or at a school-sponsored event.”
A new documentary from ‘Shoah’ director Claude LanzmannHouse to Vote on Awarding Medal to Late Rabbi Who Saved Slovakian Jews During Shoah
“There is not a single corpse in Shoah!” I heard filmmaker Claude Lanzmann say emphatically to the packed auditorium at Columbia University’s Maison Francaise on March 20th, 2012. [Lanzmann, who died in June 2018, was eulogized by Tablet’s Paul Berman] Yes, there are no corpses to see within that nearly 10-hour monumental, gut-wrenching Holocaust documentary, but there are the souls of millions of murdered Jews—men, women, and children preserved within those reels. The same can be said of his last film, there is not a single corpse to be seen in Lanzmann’s Shoah: Four Sisters, but the voices of those who are no longer here are unmistakable. Opening Nov. 14 in Manhattan at the Quad Cinema, Four Sisters is made up of a quartet of interviews, each comprising its own separate film and given its own name under the film’s overall title. It is composed of footage from the 1970s that Lanzmann did with four remarkable, and at times mind-bogglingly composed Holocaust survivors, that didn’t make the cut into the original work.
In 1985, I saw Shoah with my mother Masha Leon, who was a columnist and Holocaust survivor from Poland. It was playing at Cinema Studio on 66th and Broadway and we sat through every moment of that haunting and harrowing epic full of Holocaust survivor interviews, places in Poland where it happened, as well as conversations with perpetrators and bystanders—Nazis, Poles, and others. There were a number of survivors scattered around the dark theater and two women sitting behind us would hiss, ‘He’s an Austrian’ during Lanzmann’s repeated questions with a high-ranking Nazi concentration camp officer. My mother wrote in her review: “And while you are listening and watching, your mind is operating on a concurrent reel of its own, filling in with memories, photos, recollections and most horrifying—imagination. One finally dares to imagine the unimaginable.” Of the director’s skillful and disarming probing, she observed, “Interviewees are prompted and pushed and questioned, and the past pours out on film until we wonder how come the world did not go mad while this was going on.”
Lanzmann’s statement at Columbia about his world-renowned film was part of his response to the question “What’s the point of Shoah?” asked by interviewer Charlie Rose during their conversation that March evening. The audience, including my mother, was dismayed by the question. “It contains no archival film,” answered the 87-year-old documentarian and WWII French Resistance fighter. He uttered those words with a stunned annoyance as he quantified his reply, “It was a film about extermination on the territory of Poland, not Germany. Vicious people want to prove that it never took place.”
The US House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on whether to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal—one of the nation’s highest civilian honors—to a rabbi who tried to save Slovakian Jews during the Holocaust.50 million ‘Friends of Zion’ celebrate Pastor John Hagee
Michael Dov Weissmandl, born in Hungary in 1903, was an Orthodox rabbi and a leader of the Bratislava Working Group, an underground organization that attempted to save Slovak and other European Jews during the years of World War II by bribing Nazi and Slovakian officials to delay deportations to concentration and death camps. He used his contacts from Great Britain to obtain visas, becoming one of the first to actively protect European Jewry.
The working group was also one of the first to highlight in writing the accounts of Auschwitz escapees in a document known as the “Auschwitz Protocols.”
Along with his family, Weissmandl was rounded up and deported to Auschwitz in 1944, though he escaped and jumped from the cattle car by sawing open the lock of the carriage with a wire he concealed in a loaf of bread.
Having lost is wife and five children in the Shoah, the rabbi arrived in the United States after the war. He remarried and had five children, though always grieved his great losses.
He soon established the first yeshivah campus in the United States: the Yeshiva of Nitra in Mount Kisco, NY.
Weissmandl died in 1957 at the age of 54.
The Friends of Zion Museum celebrated the visit on Tuesday of Pastor John Hagee, the founder and national chairman of the Christian pro-Israel organization Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the founder and senior pastor at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.Jewish Comic Book Legend Stan Lee Has Died at 95
Hagee arrived in Israel with a group of over one a hundred Christian Zionists and was honored after he and his group toured the Friends of Zion Museum. Founder of the Friends of Zion Museum Dr. Mike Evans presented Hagee with an award for his steadfast support of Israel and the Jewish people.
CUFI has not been silent on the subject of Christian support for Israel, their millions of members across the United States have been critical to keeping American support for Israel strong, as well as the recent strengthening of US-Israel relations in President Donald Trump’s presidency. Hagee founded Christians United for Israel in 2006 and is on more than 75 college campuses around the US.
Hagee is also the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church, which is a congregation of more than 17,000 members. Hagee is also the president and CEO of John Hagee Ministries and CEO of Global Evangelicalism Television (GETV). He has a national radio and television ministry and commonly appears on Christian television networks all around the world, including Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).
Since 2015, Hagee has been working with the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem on a $100 million project that reveals the heroic stories of the courageous Christians and non-Jews who have assisted the Jewish people throughout the Zionist movement, as well as in critical times such as the Holocaust.
Stan Lee, who was almost certainly the most famous man in comics, has died at 95, according to reports from the Associated Press. Over the course of his life, Lee worked as a writer, editor, and publisher of Marvel Comics and became the face of the company. He created or had a hand in creating titles like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Incredible Hulk among countless others.
Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York City in 1922, a first generation son of Romanian Jewish parents. In 1940 he entered the comics business by going to work at Timely Publishing. There, he met and worked alongside the artist Jack Kirby, another son of New York City and Jewish immigrant parents whose name would become legendary among followers of comic books and American popular culture.
After serving in the Signal Corps during WWII, Lee returned to Timely, which was renamed Marvel Comics in 1961 after one of the titles put out by the publisher. At Marvel, Lee was rejoined by Kirby and together the two of them created some of the most iconic superhero teams in the industry.
Lee’s signature style blended a humanizing element that brought superheroes down to earth, as in Spider-Man’s anxious and nerdy alter-ego, Peter Parker. The pages in Lee’s comics blended wisecracking attitude, campy dialogue, out-of-this-world adventure, and human fragility, and became hallmarks of the new 1960s comics style.
Farewell, my friend. You’re not only responsible for the boy I was, but also the man I am today. I will miss you all my days. Read it all here: https://t.co/3ni6SLKhWW pic.twitter.com/6naCfXP7HO
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) November 12, 2018
