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Thursday, June 11, 2020

06/11 Links Pt2: How calling people ‘White Jews’ became an insidious slander; If Jews took down symbols of their oppression; European court rules against France in Israel boycott activist case

From Ian:
Seth Frantzman: How calling people ‘White Jews’ became an insidious slander - Comment
The use of the term “white Jews” is used by those who feel uncomfortably with the knowledge that Jews are a historic ethnic and religious minority. The increasing use of the term “white Jews” is also used to deny the complex and diverse history of Jews. It negates the reality of the Jewish experience in Yemen, Iraq, Greece or the Pale of Settlement. It prefers to see Jews solely through an American lens of racializing groups. In this way Jews are twice victims, first of antisemitism and then of being reclassified as “white” so a to castigate them for being part of a “white” power structure.

This use of the term "white Jews" also appears to be a term of abuse that is sometimes linked to the Nation of Islam or other groups that blame Jews for the slave trade in an antisemitic re-writing of history. In this narrative there are "white Jews" who are called "fake Jews" and black Jews are seen as authentic. Sometimes those who use the term "white Jews" innocently do not realize they are playing into this bifurcation that has also created categories such as "Black Muslims" to differentiate a uniquely US experience from the global experience of Jews and Muslims.

US history is full of stories of people forced to navigate the US focus on the black-white divide to racialize themselves in the US context. In
The Senator and the Socialite, a history of an African-American dynasty, the author tells of a black man named Barrington Guy who changed his name to “Sharma” to pretend to be Indian. The author says this was done to “pass as white or Indian.” Jews also changed their names when immigration to America. One article notes that they were told their names were “too long, too foreign and too Jewish.” If Jews were indeed “white” then they wouldn’t have needed to change their “Jewish” names, and they wouldn’t have suffered discrimination at clubs and universities.

It appears that in popular debate in the US when it was considered bad to be non-white, Jews were perceived as non-white, and now that the overwhelming conversation has shifted to oppose white supremacy, Jews have been reclassified as being “white” to make them on the wrong side of the equation again. The term “white Jews” in increasing a term of abuse or a term used to try to set Jews apart from other minorities, such as Muslims or Arabs. With increasing numbers of Jews living in the US who are more recently from the Middle East or who are of mixed ancestry, it appears the term is being pushed more today to try to force Jews into a category at the very time when they are more diverse than in recent history in the US.

Melanie Phillips: 'Taking a knee' to the destroyers of worlds
Channelling Mao, the Taleban and the French revolutionary terror, Mayor Khan can surely leave no-one in any doubt that this committee will reduce diversity by aiming selectively to erase those bits of British history of which it disapproves. In Khan’s words: “…our statues, road names and public spaces reflect a bygone era. It is an uncomfortable truth that our nation and city owes a large part of its wealth to its role in the slave trade…”

So the Mayor of London now stands revealed as someone who hates his nation. For if it was indeed created, as he so misleadingly claims, by a great evil then how can it be anything other than evil itself? Feeling at last the wind in his sails supplied by the rage and contempt of the mob on the streets, he intends to abolish the nation’s birthright to the evidence of its own past and construct its future in the image he will determine.

So will this commission erase memorials to all historic British figures with an obnoxious side to their achievements? Will its destroy the statues of the Labour politicians Keir Hardie or Ernest Bevin, or Karl Marx, who were all antisemites?

Or the playwright George Bernard Shaw who promoted eugenics? Or the parliamentary titan Oliver Cromwell who massacred the Irish? Or Britain’s greatest Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone, whose family, like so many prominent people in previous, very different era was involved in slavery?

That last question already has an answer. Liverpool university has agreed yesterday to rename its Gladstone Hall, which houses student accommodation. Bim Afolami, the Tory MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, tweeted in response: “This is all going completely nuts. When will this stop??”

When indeed. As George Orwell wrote in 1984 about a state under totalitarian tyranny: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Or as the future US president Ronald Reagan said even more pertinently in 1975: ‘If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism”.

Well, here it is, on both sides of the pond.

Bad things happen not just because bad people do them but because otherwise decent people lack the courage to stop them; or because they indulge in fantasies that the agenda is basically good but has been “hijacked” by a few thugs; or that they agree with the ends but purse their lips at the violent means; or because of a myriad other excuses that the spineless and the misguided always provide for “taking a knee” to the destroyers of worlds.
Israel Advocacy Movement: If Jews took down symbols of their oppression




JFK and the liberation of Soviet Jewry
Kennedy’s Catholicism was not an issue for most American Jews. As a presidential candidate he reassured Jewish leaders that his religious faith had no bearing on his attitude toward Jews. Jews had a right to be suspicious, considering that Father Charles Coughlin was one of the most outspoken and rabid antisemites in America of the 1930s. Father Coughlin’s radio program – he spewed his anti-Jewish venom every week – attracted a large listening audience. To JFK’s credit, he rejected his father’s bigotry and that of Father Coughlin, becoming a friend of Soviet Jews and the State of Israel.

In an era that presaged the movement to liberate Soviet Jews, Kennedy had the foresight to make this an issue before most American Jews. Dalin and Kolatch state that the president raised the issue of Soviet Jewry with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on a number of occasions, with Kennedy protesting the mistreatment of Jews in the USSR. Only months before he was murdered, Kennedy addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. On September 20, 1963, the president told the international body that the Declaration of Human Rights is “not respected when a [Soviet] synagogue is shut down.”

Two months later, Kennedy met with Lewis H. Weinstein, a confidant and long-time political ally, and promised Weinstein upon his return from his trip to campaign for the 1964 election he would convene a conference in Washington with American Jewish leaders to discuss the plight of Soviet Jewry. Weinstein, who would soon become leader of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, told Kennedy that no president since Theodore Roosevelt had intervened in the persecution of Jews in Russia. Authors Dalin and Kolatch write that Kennedy replied, “Well, here’s one president who’s ready to do something.” The Oswald murder of Kennedy soon after dashed the hopes of convening that conference.

Historian Sachar notes that Kennedy’s interest in the condition of Soviet Jewry and the promotion of their emigration from Russia “were essentially symbolic gestures, but they registered on American Jews. The latter felt Kennedy’s death profoundly.”

Two final notes: first, US presidents, since Martin Van Buren’s protest of the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840, have usually intervened on behalf of Jews being persecuted abroad, even if the protest was solely symbolic. Kennedy follows in that tradition. Second, Kennedy was a pioneer in advocating on behalf of Soviet Jews, as was Max Hayward – the outstanding Russian scholar of his generation in England. It would be impossible to imagine the robust response of American Jews to the plight of Soviet Jewry without the vision of these early defenders.
Remembering the Rogers Plan and Israel’s forgotten war
Edmund Burke, the British parliamentarian and political theorist, once claimed that “you can never plan the future by the past.” But the past does often foreshadow the future. And events that unfolded in the Middle East fifty years ago this summer – while overlooked today – provide a good example.

A little more than half a century ago, Israel became embroiled in a war that seemed to be without end. That low intensity conflict, known as the War of Attrition, marked a sharp departure from previous warfare. Instead of relatively short conventional engagements, the Jewish nation found itself in a slow, grinding war that not only presaged conflicts to come, but resulted in failed diplomatic attempts that were themselves harbingers of future peace plans.
The war, Francine Klagsbrun wrote in her 2018 biography of Israeli premier Golda Meir, “was not heralded by marching bands blaring martial music,” but it “was cruel and bloody and lasted longer than any of Israel’s previous wars.”

Combat began when Egyptian forces attacked Israeli counterparts near the Suez Canal a mere three weeks after Israel’s stunning victory in the June, 1967 Six Day War. It would drag on interminably as Egypt, encouraged by her Soviet patrons, sought to regain the ground and prestige that it had lost in the recent conflict.

As the late Israeli diplomat Chaim Herzog observed, the War of Attrition, although it lasted until an August 1970 ceasefire, “did not attract worldwide attention,” but nonetheless many of its events were “to be complete innovations in the history of warfare… with the battlefield around the Suez Canal” becoming a “major proving ground for the military equipment of the two superpowers,” with the Soviet Union backing Egypt and the US having promised to give Israel military aid.
Accusations That Israel to Blame for US Police Brutality Are Untrue and Antisemitic, Expert Says
As anti-Israel activists increasingly seek to blame the Jewish state for US police brutality, the architect of one of the most successful exchange programs between American and Israeli law enforcement personnel told The Algemeiner on Wednesday that such charges were untrue and antisemitic.

Steven L. Pomerantz — a former assistant FBI director — is the head of the Law Enforcement Exchange Program at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). The initiative brings US police officers to Israel for them to study counter-terrorism methods used by their Israeli counterparts.

Today, such programs are under attack from anti-Israel activists piggybacking on the Black Lives Matter movement. Under the name “Deadly Exchange,” their campaign effectively holds Israel responsible for causing the deaths of people of color at the hands of US police, including the false charge that the knee-to-neck restraint move that led to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month came from Israel.

Pomerantz told The Algemeiner the truth was very different.

“Exchange programs began as a direct result of 9/11 at the specific request of senior law enforcement officers,” he said. “It focused on counter-terrorism responsibilities of law enforcement, both prevention and response, and was aimed at only senior law enforcement officials.”

Contrary to the charges made against such programs, Pomerantz noted that they included “no hands-on training and no tactical training.”
Honest Reporting: #TheTruthMatters
Events in America are deeply troubling for so many reasons, but they are emphatically not about Israel. When activists and journalists link police brutality in one country to another thousand of miles away, they undermine the issues that should be the primary focus.

False comparisons not only cause harm to the Jewish people and Israel but are cynically using the memory of George Floyd.

The media have a responsibility to do better.


Is the Media Helping BDS Exploit George Floyd’s Death?
The last few weeks have been especially fraught for Americans. The horrific, needless death of George Floyd in Minnesota underlines the depth of the casual racism that continues to afflict America.

This is a distinctly American issue. It’s one for Americans to resolve, and one for Americans to take responsibility for.

Nevertheless, some have predictably sought to draw a line connecting the actions of the American armed forces and law enforcement and a state situated halfway around the globe: Israel.

The claim is backed with the flimsiest of ‘evidence.’

In numerous memes and images that have gone viral on social media, a parallel is drawn between the gunning down and oppression of African Americans in the US with the killing and rough treatment of Palestinians in Israel and the disputed territories. One of the most commonly shared images juxtaposes a still taken from the video of Floyd’s killing with a photograph of a Palestinian in a similar pose, pinned to the ground. The similarity is unmistakable.

The similarity is also deceiving. There are no African American terrorist groups responsible for bombing Israeli cities, or African American militias which attack the police or military. There are no African American terrorist groups which seek to indiscriminately stab, shoot and drive over citizens.

The more high-brow version of the linking of Israel to the violence in America points out that police departments across the U.S. have taken part in exchange programs with Israeli security forces, and uses this to claim that Israel plays a role in the militarization of U.S. police forces.
Ice Cube’s Long, Disturbing History of Anti-Semitism
On Wednesday afternoon, amid a global pandemic that’s killed more than 400,000 people, a civil rights movement for black lives hitting all 50 states (and beyond), and a billionaire author’s childhood-shattering campaign of hate, the rapper Ice Cube apparently decided it was the perfect time to unleash a torrent of tinfoil-hat conspiracies—including several anti-Semitic memes suggesting that Jews are fomenting the oppression of black people.

Yes, in between sharing memes positing Marvin the Martian as some sort of harbinger of anti-black racism (an odd claim, given Warner Bros.’ racist TV mascot), and alleging that Europeans destroyed the noses of sphinxes in ancient Egypt (long established as Russian disinformation), the star of Friday offered up a dog-whistle to his 5.3 million Twitter followers: a Star of David enveloping a black cube. He posted the image above a quadriptych of similar black cubes in four places around the world: California, New York, Denmark, and Australia:
Twitter

The image in question, what those with vivid imaginations have come to call the “Black Cube of Saturn,” has ties to the occult—the entirely unsubstantiated idea being that it’s a sign of chaos. Further, placing it inside a Star of David heavily implies that the Jewish people are stoking the flames. The 50-year-old artist’s decision to spread such a hateful message to millions is especially troubling given his long, dark history of anti-Semitism. (Ice Cube did not respond to requests for comment; on Twitter, responding to charges of anti-Semitism, he wrote: “What if I was just pro-Black? This is the truth brother. I didn’t lie on anyone. I didn’t say I was anti anybody. DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE. I’ve been telling my truth.”)

Just four days prior, Ice Cube posted an even more insidious meme on Twitter:
It’s part of a mural titled “Freedom for Humanity” by the graffiti artist Mear One that was painted in London’s East End and clearly intended to be anti-Semitic. “Some of the older white Jewish folk in the local community had an issue with me portraying their beloved #Rothschild or #Warburg etc as the demons they are,” Mear One wrote of the piece, tipping his cap to the anti-Semitic conspiracy that the Rothschild family in Europe and Warburg family in America are the world’s Jewish puppet-masters. “Freedom for Humanity” caused an uproar when Jeremy Corbyn, the anti-Semitic ex-Labour Party leader, shared it on his Facebook page.

As journalist Michael Segalov wrote in The Guardian: “First, make sure to actually look at the mural. Don’t take a fleeting glance as you prepare to tweet your outrage, but pause for a moment to take it all in. Sitting around a table is a group of rotund men: one has a full beard, and is counting money. That, in and of itself, is an anti-Semitic symbol. It’s not just the big, hooked noses and evil expressions that make this iconography offensive and troubling, these depictions mirror anti-Semitic propaganda used by Hitler and the Nazis to whip up hatred that led to the massacre of millions of Jews. This extends to the table these figures are sat at, resting on human bodies, as the Nazis also depicted.”
Ice Cube Tweets Out Star of David With Apparent Occult Reference
Rapper and actor Ice Cube has tweeted out several memes in recent days that have been criticized as anti-Semitic.

On June 10, Ice Cube (born O’Shea Jackson) tweeted out a Jewish Star of David with what appeared to be a Black Cube of Saturn. The Forward described the symbol as “a reference to occult worship.” The Daily Beast similarly described it as a reference “to a cult of Satan worshippers.”

Also on June 10, the rapper tweeted an image stating, “Hebrew Israelities [were] slaves in Ancient Egypt. Clearly they are a black people.” The Forward noted that the image “may be a reference to the idea, shared among some members of the Hebrew Israelite religion, that black people — not present-day Jews — are the true descendants of biblical Israelites.”

Creative Community for Peace Director Ari Ingel said in a statement to the Journal, “It’s disturbing to see a cultural icon who is a such a powerful voice for social justice in the Black community fail to understand the impact his words and the images he shares have on the Jewish community, especially when anti-Semitism is on a steady rise in America where it has turned increasingly violent. We stand with the Black community in their fight for justice and change in America, but fighting racism with anti-Semitism is unacceptable.”

Others in the Jewish community condemned the memes on Twitter.

“This is not fighting racism — this is inciting it,” British pro-Israel researcher David Collier tweeted to Ice Cube. “You are vile.”




A Nazi Collaborator’s Fund is Paying Black People to Call Jews, “White Supremacists"
Only a few days after Orthodox Jewish synagogues and schools were targeted by black supremacist rioters and their allies, Shais Rishon, the Content Manager for Bend the Arc, posted a hateful image of an Orthodox Jew in a Klan hood wearing handcuffs and nooses over his Tallit surrounded by text from Jews complaining about Black Lives Matter anti-Semitism and violent riots by the racist hate group.

Rishon accused Jews, who had anti-Semitic slurs shouted at them, seen synagogues defaced, congregants attacked, and stores looted, of “cluck clucking” about the black supremacist riots.

The Bend the Arc content manager had previously defended Farrakhan supporter Tamika Mallory’s slur that Jews uphold white supremacy by claiming that there is “white supremacy aplenty” in synagogues.

Shais Rishon, who goes by Ma Nishtana on social media, is a black nationalist activist who claims to have been secretly ordained as a rabbi: a common claim made by radical leftists who want the status of clergy. And Rishon/Nishtana fits in perfectly at Bend the Arc and its various bigoted arms.

Alexander Soros, on behalf of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a PAC he founded, had endorsed Keith Ellison, a longtime member of the Nation of Islam hate group with an even longer history of antisemitism. Bend the Arc’s CEO is Stosh Cotler is a former sex club dancer and anti-Israel activist.

Like its cousins J Street and If Not Now, Bend the Arc claims to be Jewish while violently hating Jews.






Labour MP deletes tweet praising article on the 'dark forces' behind Corbyn opposition
Labour MP Margaret Greenwood has deleted a social media message in which she praised an article which suggested that a “lynch mob” was behind the “brutally executed political assassination” of Jeremy Corbyn.

The Shadow Education Secretary wrote that the June 5 article by journalists Peter Oborne and David Hearst - which said that “dark forces made their presence felt” in the campaign against the former Labour leader - was an ‘’important read.’’

The writers claimed they had written the piece, published by Middle East Eye, because they “care greatly about accurate, truthful journalism” and as British citizens “cherish the tradition of fair play and decency”.

They suggested Mr Corbyn had fallen victim to “mob politics” which “threatens democracy itself because, without truthful and honest public discourse, dark forces make their presence felt”.

The JC understands that following an intervention from Sir Keir Starmer’s office, the Wirral West MP wrote after deleting the article: “I understand that some people have found this offensive. I want to be clear I had no intention to cause offence and so have removed the tweet. Wishing everyone a safe & peaceful weekend.”

The Board of Deputies were among those to express concern over “the worrying post shared and then deleted” by Ms Greenwood.
Prof. John “time for Jews to reflect” Ashton claims scandal of his antisemitism is a “political” conspiracy against him, while thousands sign CAA petition to take him off BBC, ITV and Sky News
Prof. John Ashton has claimed that the scandal of his antisemitism recently unearthed is a “political” conspiracy, while the number of signatories to Campaign Against Antisemitism’s petition urging broadcasters to stop featuring the public health pundit has grown into the thousands.

Prof. Ashton has a long history of antisemitic and inflammatory comments, including comparing Israel to the Nazis and holding Jews responsible for the actions of the State of Israel, both of which are breaches of the International Definition of Antisemitism, as well as trolling Jewish women MPs.

In remarks to The Canary, a controversial hard-left blog under investigation by the Government’s Independent Advisor on Antisemitism, Prof. Ashton said that “the fact they’ve dug this stuff up – whatever the validity of it – after six years, it’s obviously political isn’t it? That’s where we are.”

Prof. Ashton tried to explain away his record of racism rather than apologising for it, and was more concerned about the timing of the revelations and their impact on him rather than the effect of his words on Jews. The Canary, rather than encouraging Prof. Ashton to make amends for his antisemitism described the exposure of his anti-Jewish sentiments as a “witchhunt”, a common refrain of the far-left.
European court rules against France in Israel boycott activist case
The European Human Rights Court (EHCR) ruled on Thursday that a French criminal conviction against activists involved in a campaign to boycott products imported from Israel had no sufficient grounds and violated their freedom of expression.

France’s highest appeals’ court in 2015 upheld rulings that convicted campaigners on the basis of inciting racism and anti-Semitism.

Twelve people, who were part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, were sentenced over the distribution of leaflets in supermarkets in eastern France and wearing T-shirts in 2009 and 2010 calling for the boycott of Israeli goods.

Their legal team argued that the call for a boycott was a fundamental principle of freedom of expression.

The EHCR said there was little scope in European conventions for restrictions on political speech and that its very nature was to be controversial and virulent as long as it did not cross the line and call for violence, hatred or intolerance.
Former Canadian Supreme Court justice attacks anti-Israel group in report
Thomas Cromwell, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice who was on the bench from 2008 to 2016, harshly criticized the anti-Israel student group "Students Against Israel Apartheid" (SAIA) and its conduct after a violent clash in November 2019 at York University in Toronto, Canada, during a "Herut Canada" event, which featured reservists from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) giving their perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Following the event, both SAIA and Herut were temporarily suspended, meaning they were unable to reserve rooms or put up fliers or tables on campus. Later in January 2020, both student clubs were reinstated, and York University commissioned a review of the events by Cromwell.

In the report that has now gone public, Cromwell was extremely critical of SAIA for protesting without proper safety mechanisms, as well as for its use of intimidation tactics on a peaceful and properly organized event.

Cromwell additionally presented 41 recommendations for York University designed to improve its policies and procedures in future controversial events, which the University president Rhonda Lenton said she will accept.

At the event in November, Jewish and non-Jewish students were both attacked violently by those opposed to the group's meeting and presence on York University campus.

Reports allege that shouts of “Intifada, Intifada, go back to the ovens” could be heard among protesters.

“In the five years that we have been doing this, this was the biggest protests we’ve seen on a college campus,” Amit Deri, founder and CEO of Reservists on Duty, told The Jerusalem Post in November. “It’s also the first time that we’ve seen a BDS and Antifa collaboration”
CAA reveals Edge Hill University SU president-elect believes his Holocaust mockery scandal was a conspiracy to damage him as hundreds sign petition calling for his ouster
The President-Elect of Edge Hill University’s Students’ Union ‘liked’ a statement on Instagram that claimed that a scandal for which he apologised was in fact a conspiracy to damage him.

Following contact from an alumnus of the university, Campaign Against Antisemitism can reveal that Sam Farrell ‘liked’ a statement saying: “there is evidence suggesting the whole Sam Farrell exposed thing was planned as a back-up in case he won”.

The statement apparently referred to the scandal arising from images posted on social media and revealed by Campaign Against Antisemitism earlier this year following a tip from a disgusted student in which Mr Farrell, then a candidate for the presidency of the Students’ Union, is seen apparently dressed in striped pyjamas with a number appended, and wearing a cap, reminiscent of an inmate at Nazi concentration camps. Captions accompanying the images referred to “needing a shower” and “feeling gassed”.

Mr Farrell subsequently won the election and apologised for his behaviour. However, Mr Farrell ‘liked’ the Instagram statement several days after he apologised, indicating that he is not repentant or does not actually understand the offence he caused.

The alumnus commented: “I have read in the news about the disgusting behaviour of the Students’ Union President-Elect Sam Farrel and I am outraged that the university has not forced him to step down yet. He issued an apology but I feel that if he had truly changed his views he would have voluntarily stepped down from his role as his past behaviour makes him unfit to represent all students at the university.” With regard to the Instagram post, the former student said: “This post was made after he had made a public apology about the issue. The fact that he ‘liked’ this post clearly shows that he is only sorry because he was called out on his behaviour.”

Hundreds have now signed a petition aimed at any “student, parent or staff member” at Edge Hill calling for Mr Farrell to be removed from office and for a new election.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Spies In Canaan Aim To Inspire US Jews To Call Israel ‘Nice Place To Visit’ (satire)
Ten men dispatched from this wilderness location to the Promised Land to bring back details regarding its population, fecundity, strategic preparedness, and other important information for military conquest and eventual settlement expressed their hope that thousands of years from now, their descendants living in a faraway country amid prolonged exile will gain encouragement from the group of ten to downplay the Promised Land’s centrality because they do not want to disrupt their lives of comfort for something as insignificant as fulfillment of the divine vision for all of human history.

Representatives of the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naftali, Gad, Asher, Menashe, and Benjamin told reporters Wednesday that they intend to set an example for those future generations who, when push comes to shove, will prioritize their economic prospects and familiar social surroundings over the eternal values and epic story to which they pay regular lip service in ritual, liturgy, and education, but ill insist the Promised Land remains an excellent vacation destination.

“We have a responsibility here that stretches down through many generations,” explained Shammua, son of Zakkur, of Reuben. “It’s not only our own social position and fear of change we’re considering here. Our attitude going into this mission must reflect our awareness that it carries implications for all time. With the proper care and attention, we can entrench in our people the notion that the lofty ideals of homeland, belonging, and a human society that lives in the real world but embodies the divine, remain relegated to the theoretical or the merely aspirational, and never, God forbid, make real demands that require compromising on the luxuries or positions of influence to which we have become attached. Nothing wrong with visiting the country, though.”
Synagogue slams Walla Walla police department for officer’s Nazi-style tattoo
A synagogue in Walla Walla, Washington, has called on the town’s police department to apologize for defending an officer who sports a tattoo resembling the insignia of the SS, the feared Nazi paramilitary force.

“The WWPD’s response has been reactionary and defensive, eroding the trust of our community,” said the letter posted Wednesday by Congregation Beth Israel. “We would like a public apology from the WWPD, Chief Bieber, and Officer Small, acknowledging our concerns about the symbol’s history and their dismissal of its connection to genocide.”

Nathan Small is the officer who sports the tattoo, a relic of his service in the US Marines. His sniper unit in Afghanistan adopted the insignia until the military brass shut it down in 2012. The unit said it thought the symbol represented as two lightning bolts stood for “sniper scouts” and was not aware of its Nazi origins.

Photos of the tattoo appeared last week on social media. The police department posted a defense of Small’s tattoo on its Facebook page, noting his service. Following expressions of outrage, the department said it understood the connotations of the symbol and said that Small wears long-sleeved shirts to cover it.

This week, Chief Scott Bieber shut down the department’s social media accounts, saying “we had trolls and zealots trying to scream as loudly as they can for their own cause,” the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin said in a report Tuesday. He said he would reach out to minorities, including the Jewish community, for face-to-face conversations.
Activist’s Petition Demanding Restoration of Historic Jewish Cemetery in Lithuania Gathering Pace
A petition opposing plans to build a state-of-the-art convention center on top of a 500-year-old Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius has garnered over 50,000 signatures.

Launched by Vilnius-born Ruta Bloshtein — an Orthodox Jewish woman who continues to live in the city — the missive urges the restoration of the Old Šnipiškės Jewish Cemetery — where thousands of Jewish graves are buried — to the Jewish community.

Those interred at the cemetery include successive generations of Jewish scholars whose efforts gave Vilnius — formerly Vilna — the reputation of the “Jerusalem of the North.”

“It is sacred ground and should be restored as a cemetery and memorial park to which pilfered gravestones (which turn up all over the city) can be returned,” the petition states. “Instead, some greedy business interests, cooperating politicians, antisemitic nationalists and ‘pliant Jewish figures’ have joined forces for a new National Convention Center to rise on the site, where thousands would revel, cheer, sing, drink at bars and use toilets surrounded by Jewish graves.”

The petition also highlights the use of European Union funds in the construction of the convention center — the latest use of the cemetery’s site following a long history of abuse and disrepair during the period of Soviet rule in Lithuania.

“To make matters worse, the developers and the politicians have boasted that many millions in European Union ‘structural funds’ would be put toward the project (and European Commission leaders have thus far failed to take a clear moral stand on that),” Bloshtein’s petition notes. “This fate would never befall a major Christian cemetery here in the 21st century.”
Soccer Legend Del Piero Teams Up With Israel’s Stads to Revolutionize Sports Advertising
Yoav Shalmor founded a company that works with some of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, but even he could have never imagined that one day one of the greatest Italian players of all time would be his partner. The owner and CEO of STADS Technologies, which has created an online platform to promote sponsorships and advertisements in sport, met Alessandro Del Piero, the former Juventus forward, when he visited Israel with fellow Italian great Andrea Pirlo in March 2019 as part of a promotional tour for a beer brand.

“Pirlo’s agent, who I know through my work with Italian clubs, called me and invited me to join them for dinner, which I couldn’t refuse,” said Shalmor. “When I arrived I found out that we had a joint friend and that broke the ice. We went out for drinks afterward and when I got back home at around midnight, Del Piero sends me a message asking if I would like to go out for more drinks as he is jetlagged. We ended up sitting together until 5 am. We talked about everything: soccer, business, Stads. I was raised on Italian soccer in the 1990s and to sit and chat with him was an experience I can’t even put into words. After that night we met one more time and before he left he told me that he would like to be involved in Stads. Today he is a strategic partner and provides the product with great credibility and contacts, and of course, has opened the door to many advertisers.”

Shalmor’s relationship with the business side of sports began as a child when his father, famed advertiser Rami Shalmor, was the Israeli ad representative for Amstel and Heineken, the beer sponsors of European soccer’s premier club competition, UEFA’s Champions League.

Stads, which is a combination of the words stadium and advertising, was founded in 2018. It focuses on sports advertising and created a platform that allows advertisers and clubs to maximize advertising boards that are spread around the field. “We have developed a platform that enables the buying and selling of advertising spaces in stadiums,” explained Shalmor. “The advertisers can buy advertising space at the stadium and through our platform, they receive advanced analytics regarding each match.”
Israel's griffon vultures get new lease on life
The griffon vulture is not only ungainly, smelly and endangered: it is also often denied its biblical fame by being mixed up with the eagle.

But for a network of Israeli conservationists, the bird still has pride of place in the land whose ancient prophets saw in its soaring flight a metaphor for religious exaltation.

Hit by accidental poisoning and urbanization, Israel's griffon vulture population has fallen to around 180 in the wild, says Yigal Miller, manager of programs for endangered raptors at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

So as part of the 'Under our Wing' project run by his organization and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the next generation is being reared in captivity before being let loose in the desert with tracking tags.

"We raise the vulture chicks... and after several years we release them to nature," Miller said.

Named "nesher" in Hebrew, the bird has often been mislabeled in scriptures, notably in the King James version of the English Bible, which in Exodus describes God as bearing the Israelites on eagles' rather than vultures' wings.

According to the Biblical Museum of Natural History, many people still feel as uncomfortable as those 17th-century translators did in identifying as a vulture a bird described in noble terms by scripture.

"The vulture is [nowadays] commonly regarded as a loathsome creature," its website explains.

"But in the Middle East, it is the griffon vulture that is the king of birds."
New Israeli Initiative Uses Public Refrigerators to Feed Poor and Prevent Waste
A new Israeli initiative to distribute food to the poor and prevent waste has taken hold in Jerusalem.

The official Twitter page of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Digital Diplomacy Team publicized the initiative with the words, “We’re not crying, you’re crying.”

Spearheaded by young residents of Jerusalem, the project — called The Fridge — involves public refrigerators stocked by local vendors who donate unsold produce.


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