Showing posts with label American antisemitism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American antisemitism. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Vivek Will Talk to Known Antisemites but Not to Those Who Point It Out (Judean Rose)


So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Vivek Ramaswamy gave an interview to an antisemite and then got angry when the Washington Free Beacon reported that fact. No, wait. That’s not quite right. Ramaswamy didn’t know that Albert Faleski, aka An0maly, was an antisemite at the time of the interview, so it wasn’t nice that the Washington Free Beacon made it look like he did it on purpose. But actually, even if he HAD known Faleski was an antisemite, Ramaswamy might have still done the interview because of his amazing tolerance for all views and because of this presidential hopeful’s belief in free speech.

But no. That can’t be right either. Because if Ramaswamy really cared about freedom of speech, he wouldn’t have blocked the Washington Free Beacon’s access to his campaign for bringing up Faleski’s very public and virulent antisemitism in the context of the Ramaswamy interview.

Why isn’t the Washington Free Beacon free to talk about this? Why isn’t Ramaswamy tolerant of the media outlet’s sensitivity to and dedication to raising the issue of antisemitism—especially when the topic, by association, concerns a presidential candidate—I mean, first Ramaswamy goes on Russell Brand’s show and now this. In light of these facts, why does Ramaswamy’s campaign describe the Washington Free Beacon as acting in “bad faith?” 

Here’s what happened:

On September 5, the Washington Free Beacon published a report by Alana Goodman on the aforementioned Faleski-Ramaswamy podcast. One day later, on September 6, Goodman reported that the Ramaswamy campaign had cut off free access to the Free Beacon, as a result:

Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign said it would no longer facilitate access between the Washington Free Beacon and the candidate after the Free Beacon reported that Ramaswamy appeared on a podcast hosted by an anti-Semitic YouTuber on Tuesday.

The campaign’s decision comes after the Free Beacon reported on anti-Semitic comments, including the assertion that both the left and right push for "speech censorship on behalf of big Jewish power," made by social media influencer Albert Faleski, also known as "An0maly," who interviewed Ramaswamy this week. 

In other words, despite his declared commitment to the concept of freedom of speech Ramaswamy, did not at all like the Free Beacon mentioning Faleski’s extensive history of Jew-hating comments and tweets in its report of the podcast. The 38-year-old presidential candidate thinks that Goodman added unnecessary context designed to smear his reputation. But isn’t that also free speech? Instead, this is described by the Ramaswamy campaign as acting in “bad faith” (emphasis added):

Ramaswamy spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said on Tuesday that the Free Beacon acted in "bad faith" by highlighting Faleski’s comments in the context of Ramaswamy’s appearance on the show, adding that the campaign plans to cut off the Free Beacon’s access.

Are we all getting this? Because I’m finding it hard to take it in. Vivek goes on an antisemite’s youtube show in the name of free speech and tolerance, then denies all media access to the outlet that writes it up. 

If ever there were an exemplar of free speech for me and not for thee, this is it.

Which begs the question: If doing an interview with a virulent and quite public antisemite is acceptable in the name of free speech, why isn’t a factual report of the event acceptable as free speech?

Now, I’m not a Harvard graduate, or a 38-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears presidential candidate, but if I were, I sure as shooting would have my people research the background of those asking for interviews. If my people were to then find something suspicious, like the fact that the guy’s an antisemite, they would either turn down the interview, or pass that information along to me. This leaves us with a number of possibilities to consider regarding Vivek Ramaswamy’s appearance on the show of a known antisemite:

1.      Vivek Ramaswamy or his staff failed to do basic research before accepting the interview, then lied about it

2.      Ramaswamy didn’t care that Faleski is an antisemite, or agrees with and chose to amplify Faleski’s antisemitic conspiracy theories, and then lied about it

3.      Ramaswamy thought he could get away with appearing on an antisemite’s youtube show and got angry when he got caught

4.      Ramaswamy doesn’t really believe in free speech. He doesn’t even know what it is. When he says he is tolerant of other views, he is LYING. He punishes the media when they publish unpleasant truths about him. 

In piecing together the facts, we must also consider the timeline. First Ramaswamy told antisemite Russell Brand he’d cut aid to Israel, and then he did a show with antisemitic conspiracy theorist. When he is subsequently criticized for communing with Jew-haters, Vivek Ramaswamy lets it be known that he believes in free speech for all. All, that is, except for the Washington Free Beacon.

McLaughlin’s statement goes on to speak of Ramaswamy’s open media policy—his willingness to speak with even hostile media outlets (emphasis added):

Ramaswamy appeared on Faleski’s show because he will talk to any media outlet, even controversial ones, she said, adding that Ramaswamy wasn’t aware of Faleski’s anti-Semitic comments before the interview, but might have appeared on the show even if he was aware because of the campaign’s open media policy.

Once more, I have to ask, especially to those who say I have no proof that Ramaswamy is an antisemite--are you getting all this? This wet-behind-the-ears presidential candidate is saying he didn’t know Faleski was an antisemite, but even if he had, he still might have gone on the show. Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t rule out talking to antisemites, only to those who point it out.

Not that it much matters. At this point, no one serious believes that Vivek Ramaswamy has a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming president. Definitely not this time around, and almost certainly not ever.

Wishing all my readers שָׁנָה טוֹבָה תִּכָּתֵבוּ וְתֵחָתֵמוּ!

*Updated for accuracy

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Wednesday, September 06, 2023

Tucker Carlson and the Jews Who Need Proof (Judean Rose)



Back in April, I asked a question: Is Tucker Carlson a Covert Antisemite? To my mind, there is no question that he is, but people understand things in different ways. Some want proof rather than this author’s interpretation of Carlson’s words and deeds.

In a way, that is the point. There likely will never be proof. This is why I refer to Carlson’s brand of antisemitism as “covert.” It’s slippery and slimy. It’s about pushing the boundaries as far as he can go without going over the line. Carlson goes just far enough in what he says, the words just shy of, “I hate Jews.”

Some Jews are unfortunately too nice. They are not interested in believing the worst of a person. So, short of Carlson shouting into a megaphone, “I hate Jews,” the benefit-of-the doubter Jews will doggedly insist on proof. “Can you prove it?” and since Carlson never leaves much of a trail, you’ve got no way to do so. Not that I make much effort to persuade them. Either they do or don’t believe that Tucker Carlson is an antisemite.

Aside from requiring proof of Tucker’s antisemitism, there’s another factor in play for those who just don’t buy it. Some Jews don’t want to believe that Tucker is an antisemite because they otherwise agree with his Conservative politics. Since they agree with Tucker on so many other things, they pooh-pooh any suggestion that Carlson, at heart, hates Jews.

I noted the same phenomenon when I wrote about RFK Jr.’s antisemitism. Some readers were upset. They said to me, “Can you prove it?” and they aren’t even Democrats.

There is irony in the sudden request for proof of antisemitism in the case of RFK Jr. The same readers challenging me to bring them cold, hard evidence that Tucker is a Jew-hater, are like me, generally hypersensitive to antisemitic undertones and nuances. What made them look the other way from the empirical evidence this time, and hold their nose at the stench, was RFK Jr.’s stance on vaccination, with which they agree.

To all of these naysayers, I will, unlike Tucker Carlson, declare myself out and out: Of course I can’t prove it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know it.

Tucker Carlson will not be coming out of the Jew-hate closet any time soon, at least not on purpose. He’ll never say the words out loud. And some Jews will always insist on his innocence. Even after much proof, such as a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Douglas Macgregor, a retired US colonel, about the war in Ukraine, as captured by the Israel Advocacy Movement.

Macgregor, like Tucker Carlson, understands how to say just enough to escape any overt accusations of antisemitism. His words hint at hatred without actually saying the J word out loud. Like here, where all the people Macgregor references are Jewish:

Tucker Carlson: How would you characterize Zelenskyy?

Douglas Macgregor: He was picked and then blessed by Victoria Nuland and the State Department as their man. Now, when he originally ran for office, he ran on a peace platform. Ukrainians didn't want to go to war with Russia. Of course, once he was in there, he took a different road, and I can't help but think that that road was defined for him by us.

Tucker Carlson: Who is Victoria Nuland?

Douglas Macgregor: Ah, goodness gracious, all these hard questions, Tucker! I do not know Victoria Nuland, personally. I know Fred Kagan, and his brother Bob is married to her and she's a long-term committed neocon. No, I don't think she understands the gravity of the situation. These are the same people. Tony Blinken is in this.

These are people with this agenda and the agenda says until the entire world is garrisoned by US forces and is converted forcibly to some form of democracy that we approve of, uh, the world will not be safe, and we must continue to fight, and I think in in the case of Russia, Russia has special appeal, because I think these people have ancestors who come from that region in the world, and have a permanent ax to grind with the Russians. Now of course, which I don't, and I don't think most Americans do, and nor do I think anybody in the government should shape policy based on whatever unhappiness their ancestors, you know, experienced in a place like Russia.

Tucker then asks Macgregor why both Democrats and Republicans support Ukraine.

Douglas Macgregor: Well, first of all you've got to go through and identify the donors. What's their background; where did they come from; and why do they feel the way they do? I think there're more personal issues there than we realize with many of them.

Macgregor, this whole time, is talking about Jews. And Tucker never once calls him out for airing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Tucker Carlson is quite happy to interview this man and air his views for his listeners. Why? Is it about freedom of speech?

No. It’s about antisemitism. And no I don’t have proof. You either see it and believe it or you don’t.

We shouldn’t mind the people who don’t want to admit Carlson is an antisemite because they like his politics. They’re just fooling themselves. It’s the benefit-of-the-doubter Jews who are worrisome. They are like the Jews who waited too long to leave Europe, because Hitler and his goose-stepping fans were not to be taken seriously. They thought that Hitler and his Nazis were just a flash in the pan. Germany wouldn’t let a Holocaust happen.  

By the time these Jews understood that Hitler was not some temporary nuisance but manifestly evil, the gates had already closed and they could not leave. Which is a common theme in Jewish history. Jews don’t want to believe someone can be evil. They won’t believe it until it is absolutely proven—like when they see smoke coming out of an Auschwitz crematorium, or watch people walk into a shower and never come out.

That is far too late. 

For Jews, in particular, it is crucial to recognize that some people really are bad. And the last thing you want from them is proof.  

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 



Monday, September 04, 2023

Hebrew, Yiddish, antisemitism and the New York Times

The New York Times has an op-ed by Ilan Stavans about the resilience of Yiddish, supposedly by an expert in the field. It includes some antisemitic tropes, oversimplifications, self-contradictions, outright falsehoods and ultimately reflects anti-Zionist politics more than it represents the state of Yiddish today.

For a language without a physical address that has come frighteningly close to extinction, Yiddish’s will to live seems inexhaustible. The lesson is simple and straightforward: Survival is an act of stubbornness.

Yiddish has been experiencing something of a revival. Online courses mean that anyone from Buenos Aires to Melbourne might learn to speak it. There are new translations of long-forgotten works and literary classics. A Broadway staging of “Fiddler on the Roof” was performed in Yiddish. And streaming platforms like Netflix have released series, including “Shtisel,” “Unorthodox” and “Rough Diamonds,” fully or partially in Yiddish.

Before World War II, approximately 13 million Jews, both secular and religious, spoke Yiddish. Today it is estimated that there are about a quarter of a million speakers in the United States, about the same number in Israel and roughly another 100,000 in the rest of the world. Nowadays the vast majority of those who speak the language are ultra-Orthodox. They aren’t multilingual, as secular Yiddish speakers always were.
Here is the problem with this article in a nutshell: it is written from the perspective of the relatively tiny number of secular Yiddish speakers today, and it all but ignores the real use of the language among religious Jews, which is the core of how the language is used - and more importantly, how it is evolving.

The Yiddish of the secular Jew today is an adaptation of the Yiddish of the heyday of socialist secular Yiddish newspapers in America in the early 20th century. But the vast majority of Yiddish speakers today use it in their everyday speech and as such the language continues to evolve as needed to accommodate modern life. The religious Jews speaking Yiddish are the ones who are not only keeping it alive but they are the ones who are the ones who change it. As a result, Yiddish speakers who learn the language in university courses in the US have a difficult time understanding the many dialects of Yiddish spoken in Boro Park, Mea Shearim or Bnei Brak, which includes healthy amounts of modern English or Hebrew just as local Yiddish dialects have always assimilated elements of the majority population's language. 

To the secular Jew studying Yiddish, the language is a romantic throwback to the good old days of unionization of sweatshops in the Lower East Side. To the actual speakers of the language today, it is what is used in everyday life. That is where the dynamism of the language comes from - but the current class of secular Yiddishists tend to be anti-religious, and it shows.

Here are two religious Yiddish magazines published today. This is where the "interesant" things are happening to the language, not in academia or with today's secular Yiddish speakers. 


The writer dismisses the "ultra-Orthodox" (itself a demeaning term) as not being multilingual as the secular Yiddish speakers were. Where does he get that from? How many American haredi or chassidic Jews do not speak English? How many Israeli chassidim cannot speak Hebrew? They might not be as fluent in their national languages as they are in Yiddish, but the vast majority can speak and understand more than one language; they couldn't survive in society otherwise. This is just one example of how Stavans subtly disparages the people who are the ones that really keep the language alive - not as a museum piece but as a living language.

It’s worth noting that Yiddish has been maligned by gentiles and Jews alike. Antisemites considered it the parlance of vermin, while the rabbinical elite deemed it unworthy of serious Talmudic discussion. 
Really? The "rabbinical elite" were anti-Yiddish? What planet does he live on?  Yiddish was the lingua franca of all the major European yeshivas, even after they were transplanted to America or Israel after the Holocaust. The roshei Yeshiva (yeshiva heads) from Europe gave their lessons in Yiddish as long as their students understood it, well into the 1960s and 1970s. Today's American "yeshivish" language includes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and plenty of Yiddish along with English. And some of the "yeshivish" Yiddish has become part of modern Israeli Hebrew - such as "shkoyach" meaning "good job, itself a Yiddishization of a Hebrew term. 

But the article really descends into modern antisemitism/anti-Zionism here:
Another enemy of Yiddish was Zionism. In the late 19th century, as the hope for a Jewish state found its ground, it was portrayed as jargon spoken by the diaspora — the language of homelessness, without a true national voice. To combat this deficit, Hebrew needed to be revived. Soon the myth sprung of the Hebrew pioneer, in sharp contrast with the large-nosed, hunchbacked Jew that Zionists themselves vilified.
Hebrew, which officially became the national language of the state of Israel in 1948, is spoken by about nine million people around the world. For some, the language symbolizes far-right Israeli militarism.
So according to Stavans, Zionists are antisemites who regard diaspora Jews the same way that neo-Nazis do, while modern Hebrew is the language of oppression. 

This is a sick slander.

In fact, the people who initially embraced Hebrew as a modern language outside the religious context, and who rejected Yiddish, were the exact type of people that have embraced Yiddish today: the anti-religious, supposedly enlightened Jews. 

Before Eliezer Ben Yehuda revived Hebrew as a modern language in Israel, there were lots of Hebrew language secular newspapers in eastern Europe. They were created by the Maskilim, the self-described "enlightened" ones, who considered Yiddish vulgar and common and tried to make Hebrew a secular language. Here's a list from the National Library of Israel of the Hebrew periodicals in their collection that existed before 1885, nearly all of them from Eastern Europe and nearly all of them secular:


And the first cover of one famous Haskalah newspaper from 1860, trying to attract the Yiddish speaking public to Hebrew:


These secular European Jews abandoned Hebrew for Yiddish at the same time that Zionists embraced and modernized Hebrew, around the 1890s. As described by the American Israelite in a requiem for Hebrew secular literature in 1906:


And while the current secular Yiddishists are often anti-Israel, the Israeli government is doing more to preserve Yiddish than they are, having created a National Authority on Yiddish Culture in 1996.

Another point about at least some of the secular Jews in Israel at the turn of the 20th century. Many of them opposed the idea of Hebrew being the official language of a Jewish state, and instead lobbied for the official language to be - German. 
In contrast, Yiddish represents exile — a longing for home. 

This is the problem of the modern, anti-Zionist Yiddishists in a nutshell. Stavans cannot even understand how this sentence is self-contradictory. Exile is by definition being away from home.  To people like Stavans, Yiddish is Jewishness - but it is as transient as symbol of Jewishness as cuisine or dance. Yiddish is something that should be studied and remembered. but it is a tiny slice of the richness of Judaism throughout the millennia and throughout the world. 

In Israel, the choice to standardize Hebrew as the language of the state was partially prompted, and later vindicated, by the Mizrahi Jews in the land who did not know Yiddish and who eventually became the majority. The only thing that Jews throughout the world have in common is Hebrew, not Yiddish. 

The history of Yiddish among secular Jews is much more complex and ambivalent than is described here. This article promotes a myth of secular Jews having always used Yiddish as their preferred language when in fact they used it for political purposes - as they continue to do today. It is the despised religious Jews who keep the language relevant, alive and vibrant today, while the author of this article keeps Yiddish in a romanticized amber of a century ago. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Friday, August 11, 2023

This 1939 description of antisemitism could have been written today

Rev. Charles Owen Rice



This article from JTA, published in September 1939, sounds like it could have been written today in regard to "anti-Zionists."

DISCUSSES ANTI-JEWISH ATTITUDE 
Priest Assails Those Who Say They Are Not. Opposed to "Good Jews." 

PITTSBURGH—Those who mask their anti-Semitism with the assertion that they are not opposed to "good Jews" were assailed by the Rev. Charles Owen Rice in an address he delivered yesterday at St. Joseph House of Hospitality here. 

"One of the features connected with the present wave of anti-Semitism that is being stirred up is that some of the leading purveyors of anti-Semitism hotly deny that they are anti-Semites," he said. "They employ a clever sophistry in their attempts to escape the stigma. They define anti-Semitism in a certain restricted sense and then they claim that their teachings and utterances -do not bring them under the term. "

"For instance, these enemies of the Jew will define anti-Semitism as persecution of the Jew because he is a Jew. They will hold that because, to their anti-Jewish attacks, they affix a rider saying that they exempt good Jews, therefore, they are automatically absolved of anti-Semitism. "

"As a matter of fact the unctuous employment of the 'good Jews' qualifier generally intensifies that anti-Semitism of the statements as whole. Also we can have attacks upon Jews, as Jews, without direct statements. The brutal crude, direct anti-Semitic utterances, are far less harmful than the subtle ones. 

"Off hand I can give a partial list of some of the more commonly used anti-Semitic statements and inferences.

 "It is anti-Semitism to exaggerate the power of Jews, whether it be power in finance, in industry, in newspaper publishing, in radio or anything else. 

"It is anti-Semitism to say or hint there is a mysterious central controlling Jewish, national or international. leadership. 

"It is anti-Semitism to exaggerate the clannishness of Jews. 

"It is anti-Semitism to speak of deliberate controlled Jewish campaigns against Christianity. 

"It is anti-Semitic to exaggerate Jewish participation in Communism and similar movements. 

"It is anti-Semitism to hint at, or charge, a tie-up between 'International Jewry' and International Masonry. The very term 'International Jewry' has definite ant-Semitic implications. 

"You will note that these effective types of anti-Semitism consist of lies. and exaggerations. Their harmfulness consists in their engendering a feeling of mixed fear and anger in the breasts of non-Jews. All of them have been proved false. They are damnably un-American, un -Christian and anti-social." 

Then, like now, antisemites denied being antisemitic.

Then, like now, antisemites attempt to re-define "antisemitism" to exclude themselves.

Then, like now, antisemites defend themselves by saying that there are some "good Jews" who agree with them.

Then, like now, the subtle antisemitism that hides as social justice is often more dangerous than the explicit kind.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Old antisemitic lies don't die. They live forever, no matter how many times they are debunked.

Jordan's Al Ghad has an op-ed by  Youssef Abdullah Mahmoud that quotes a variant of a Nazi-era libel claiming that "president" Benjamin Franklin gave a speech to the American people warning them about the dangers of Jews.

There is a great danger for the United States of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

If they are not expelled from the United States by the Constitution, they will stream into this country in such numbers that they will rule and destroy us and change our form of Government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our life, property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not excluded within two hundred years, our children will be working in the field to feed Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children’s children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change his spots. The Jews are a danger to this land, and if they are allowed to enter, they will imperil our institutions. They should be excluded by the Constitution.
This lie was first published in 1934 by an American fascist publication and quickly reproduced in Nazi Germany. Here's a Nazi poster with the lie, complete with a picture of someone who is definitely not Franklin.




The supposed speech was debunked fairly quickly - there is no record of any such speech, it uses language that was not used in the 18th century, and Franklin was a philosemite.

But that hasn't stopped this supposed "Franklin prophecy" from being resurrected every couple of years in Arab media. Usually, the articles claim Franklin was the President.

Mahmoud expands on the forgery, claiming that "Zionists" stopped early Americans from implementing Franklin's plan of ethnic cleansing Jews from the United States.

Why recycle old, provable lies? Because most people don't know they are lies, and it is easier to re-use old ones than to make up new ones. 

Interestingly, as I was writing this, I found articles that give a strong indication that a 19th century Mussar work, Sefer Cheshbon ha-Nefesh based its self-improvement program on Benjamin Franklin's own program described in his autobiography. The author, Menachem Mendel Lefin, didn't credit Franklin but he didn't claim to have created the method either, and other writings of his show he was familiar with Franklin's writings. So in a way, Benjamin Franklin has influenced modern Jewish thought. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Wednesday, August 02, 2023

Anti-Jewish hate crimes in NYC continues to dwarf all others

Here is a chart showing the categories of hate crimes in New York City for the first half of the year.


Out of 235 incidents, 108 were anti-Jewish. This is a little less than half but still much, much more than any other kind of bias.

In 2022, 43% of all hate crimes in New York City were against Jews.

I am sure that the NYPD takes antisemitic incidents seriously, but - this is a lot. And it indicates that the usual ways of fighting hate need to be customized for anti-Jewish hate. For example, the NYPD keeps track of the race of the offenders and the districts the crimes occur in  - if there is a clear pattern, that could indicate a more specific plan for combating anti-Jewish hate rather than just using the same methods as for all other hate crimes. After all, Jews are often targeted for the perception of being privileged, unlike most other bias crimes.


Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Friday, July 28, 2023

A Jew was once on US currency (maybe)


I came across this story from JTA in 1930:


This would be the Standing Liberty quarter.

Doris Doscher had played the biblical Eve in a 1918 silent film, "Birth of a Race."


After she died in 1970, there were claims that another actress named Irene MacDowell was the model for the quarter and her role was hidden because her husband disapproved. Doscher's husband, who survived her, insisted that his wife was the real model. 

No one disputes that Doscher was the model for the sculpture at a fountain outside the Plaza Hotel in New York.



So now the antisemites can spin new conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the US money supply. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 


Tuesday, July 25, 2023

San Diego Human Relations Commission member says AT THEIR MEETING that Jews are taught in synagogue to murder all Palestinians




From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

The meeting was supposed to focus on recent controversial remarks on Israel by one member of San Diego County’s Human Relations Commission. Instead, they were overshadowed when another commissioner made new, inflammatory false comments about Jews.

Now, local Jewish leaders are calling for dramatic changes to the commission they believe are needed to ensure it improves human relations, and doesn’t incite hate.

While coming to the defense of a fellow commissioner who had drawn outrage for earlier comments on Israel, Khaliq Raufi made offensive remarks of his own, falsely asserting that Judaism teaches Jews to kill. 
Raufi said he’d read a few verses in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of both the Torah and Christian Old Testament. “It states ‘Go kill Palestinians. Wipe them all out,’” Raufi said Tuesday. “So it’s a teaching that they, on a daily basis, teach their followers in their synagogues.”

Audible surprise came from those in the audience. Among them was Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee of San Diego, who could be heard saying, “Are you serious right now?”

He then went on to supposedly quote Deuteronomy, where he said that God commanded the Israelites to wipe out all of the residents of Canaan. 

You can see the meeting here.

The meeting was discussing an earlier statement by  another commission member, George Khoury, who in May described Israel as a "racist, fascist state." 

The purpose of the human relations commission is "to promote positive human relations, respect, and the integrity of every individual regardless of gender, religion, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or citizenship status." 

But Jews are fair game - even for those whose very job is to promote tolerance.

The official response from the local ADL, AJC and Federation said, "This statement is representative of the historical and false accusation of modern blood libel/antisemitic tropes, which have led to horrific violence, destruction, persecution, and massacres of Jewish people and communities."

There were some Jewish representatives there. I bet that none of them could effectively answer either the "racist, fascist" state slur nor the slander from the Torah. 

Jews need to educate our own leaders so they con confidently and quickly demolish these slanders. 

(h/t Michelle)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Monday, July 17, 2023

Rep. Pramila Jayapal did NOT take back her accusation that "Israel is a racist state"

As reported yesterday, US Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, described Israel as a “racist state” while trying to calm down pro-Palestinian protesters at the annual progressive Netroots Nation conference in Chicago on Saturday.

“As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state," she said.

This caused a backlash from many other Democratic Congressional leaders, who (without mentioning Jayapal) issued a statement that flatly said, "Israel is not a racist state." 

This prompted Jayapal to issue a clarification that has been reported as an apology or a walk-back of her words.

But it is neither.

Jayapal's statement said, “At a conference, I attempted to defuse a tense situation during a panel where fellow members of Congress were being protested. Words do matter and so it is important that I clarify my statement. I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist. I do, however, believe that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies and that there are extreme racists driving that policy within the leadership of the current government.”

Words do matter, and Pramila Jayapal indeed chose her words carefully. 

There is no contradiction between her Saturday statement that "Israel is a racist state" and her Sunday statement that "I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist."

She is saying that it is theoretically possible that a state called Israel can exist that is not racist - but Israel is racist, today, and she has been fighting to make that clear to the world.

She didn't even say that "the idea of a Jewish state" is not racist, and the libel that a Jewish state is inherently racist (while Christian, Italian, Spanish, Arab and Muslim states are not)  is the basic position of the modern antisemites. 

It is an antisemitic lie to say that Israel, which has numerous laws to ensure the equality of all citizens, is a racist state. It is antisemitic lie to claim that Israel is racist for treating non-citizens differently than citizens, which every other nation on the planet does - and indeed is obligated to do as part of its job to defend and support its own citizens. It is antisemitic to blame Israel alone for the lack of peace when every rejection of every peace plan that would lead to an independent Palestinian state while keeping Israel as a Jewish state was done by the Palestinian side. 

Several pro-Israel Democrats have drafted a letter that says, "We are deeply concerned about Representative Pramila Jayapal’s unacceptable comments about our historic, democratic ally Israel, and we appreciate her retraction....We will never allow anti-Zionist voices that embolden antisemitism to hijack the Democratic Party and country.”

But she didn't retract anything. Jayapal did not say a word that disagrees with her shameful, antisemitic statement to the protesters - protesters who, incidentally, hijacked the entire conference for 16 minutes while the organizers pathetically pleaded with them to allow the proceedings to continue.

Pramila Jayapal had a chance to apologize and retract her disgusting statement. She went out of  her way to do neither. And the mainstream Democrats have not done anyone any favors by pretending that everything is all smoothed out now. On the contrary, they have enabled her to double down on Jayapal's bigotry and hate, as well as that of the "progressives" who support her. 

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Thursday, July 13, 2023

A "Democratic Socialists of America" political slate centered on hating Israel


In 1889, a notable French artist named Adolphe Willette ran as an  explicitly antisemitic candidate in the 9th arrondissement of Paris for legislative elections.

The campaign poster included "The Jews are only powerful because we are on our knees! 30 million French people are their trembling slaves. It is not a question of religion, the Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!"

Notice how these antisemites were careful not to appear to be bigoted - their problem, they claimed, was not with Judaism as a religion, but Jews as a race, dedicated to destroying France. 

Of course, the broken "Talmud" tablets on the ground show that they hated Jews as a religion too, but even these avowed antisemites didn't want to appear to be bigoted. They came up with a convoluted distinction between "good Jews" and "bad Jews" and claimed they only hated the Jewish race. 

It seems strange today to see a political poster that is so suffused with hate, and a candidate who fully expects that a campaign centered on antisemitism would attract voters. Certainly that belongs to a time long gone, right?

Nope.

Yesterday, a small group of people who are alarmed at the weakening of the Democratic Socialists of America started a new slate of candidates for the DSA National Political Committee  - to save the DSA by appealing to antisemitism (which they pretend is anti-Zionism.) 


They call themselves the Anti-Zionist Slate of the DSA.

One of the primary issues facing our organization right now is our flagging membership numbers. Our organization's membership numbers have seen a substantial decrease from a high of over 94,000 constitutional members in April 2021 to a little over 78,000 constitutional members today. In reality, the number of members who are currently members in good standing and have paid their dues has decreased to 57,000 members. 

This trend is not one to be dismissed or ignored. Rather, it must be accepted as an ongoing problem that needs to be diagnosed and further addressed before DSA finds itself facing a full-blown membership crisis. 
So how best to shore up an American socialist group than to appeal to their naked hate of Israel?

Anti-Zionism as an organizing principle

Fighting Alongside Liberation Struggles to Dismantle Zionism & Imperialism: Recognizing that the US is a linchpin of imperialism and racial capitalism globally, we as a slate prioritize solidarity with liberation struggles, including those of indigenous peoples from Turtle Island to Palestine, and strive for an organization that takes material action against imperialism....We must develop relationships of accountability with grassroots formations as the BDS Working Group has done with Palestinian grassroots formations in diaspora and in Palestine. To best do so, we support the proliferation of grassroots BDS campaigns, such as the BDS Working Group’s No Appetite for Apartheid campaign...
The focus on hating Israel as a unifying theme for an American political group reflects the exact same kind of single-minded hate that the antisemitic political parties in Europe tried to take advantage of from the late 1800s through World War II.  Just as Jews were regarded as the source of all the people's problems then, the Jewish state is regarded the same way today. They prioritize hating Zionism over workers' rights, or racism, or fighting capitalism - and they are convinced that this is a winning strategy to attract socialists to their platform.

Another DSA group recently released a statement saying that they believe that Israeli Jewish civilians - including children - should be treated as military targets under international law. Essentially they called for an open season on murdering Israeli Jews. 


So it appears that there is some support in the DSA for a platform that is based on hating Jews. 

Just as with Willette, the "anti-Zionist" candidates would insist that they have no problem with Jews per se. And their justification for their focus on hating Jews living in the Jewish homeland is just as absurd and transparent as Willette's.

History may not always repeat, but it sure plagiarizes a lot. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Monday, June 26, 2023

The best response to the Goyim Defense League: Baseball bats

Haaretz reports:

A Reform synagogue in the southern U.S. state of Georgia hasn't experienced an antisemitic incident in its nearly 165-year history – until this weekend, when it was one of two congregations targeted by a neo-Nazi hate group.

“This is a congregation has been around since 1859,” said Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar, the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia, in a phone conversation with Haaretz. ...

On Friday morning, she said, members of the congregation living in the nearby city of Warner Robins found antisemitic flyers outside their homes. They had been distributed by an organization called the Goyim Defense League, a white supremacist hate group active mainly on social media. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the GDL's main objective is “to cast aspersions on Jews and spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories.”

Later in the day, 15 members of the hate group held a demonstration outside the synagogue, where they had hung a life-sized doll in effigy from a street sign, wrapped in a rainbow flag, with a kippa on its head. According to Bahar, at least one of the demonstrators was wearing a t-shirt with a Nazi insignia on it and another had an Israeli flag tied around his foot.

Police arrived at the scene not long thereafter and arrested GDL leader Jon Minadeo II on charges of disorderly conduct and public disturbance after he continued shouting obscenities through a bullhorn despite being ordered to stop. He was released the following day.

On Saturday, a group of about 150 residents of Macon gathered outside the Reform synagogue, and in a show of solidarity and support, they held hands and surrounded Temple Beth Israel. “It was an impromptu gathering,” recounted Bahar, who said she was deeply moved. “We did not organize it.”

The GDL group showed up once again and tried to hold its own demonstration, which was soon broken up by police. From there, the group headed to the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, where it held another demonstration, brandishing Nazi flags, outside the local Chabad synagogue.
One reason it is important to define antisemitism accurately is because to combat it, one must understand the motivations of the antisemites and respond only in ways that dissuade them

In this case, nothing happened that would stop the Goyim Defense League. On the contrary, the community holding hands outside the synagogue, the police releasing their leader after less than a day, the outrage from the community, the media coverage, and the police breaking up the second demonstration on Saturday morning might have made the Jewish community feel somewhat better but it didn't do a damned thing to make the antisemites think twice about driving to a Chabad and resuming their public hate. 

If anything, the GDL is enthusiastic over the media coverage - they only have a handful of followers yet they have made international news, again. More antisemites would want to join the GDL after the events of this weekend. 

The responses are well meaning but ultimately they are counterproductive.

The GDL delights in using laws that protect free speech to spread their hate. They dance close to the line of legality and mock those who try to use those same laws to silence them. They know that, at worst, they might spend a night in jail - and as a result they will recruit many new members who are itching to publicly scream obscenities at Jews. 

In 1938, Nazis in America were way ahead of where the GDL is today. Also using freedom of speech, they held huge public marches and rallies, spouting off against Jews. 


A judge named Nathan David Perlman realized that the law was not an impediment to this incitement. So he decided to go outside the law.

Perlman called Meyer Lansky, New York’s famous Jewish gangster. 

“You got some boys who might want to punch a Nazi?” he asked.  

“I do, Judge,” Lansky replied. “Respectfully, you understand we can do better than punch? I know just the crew — in Brownsville. The boys in the press call them Murder, Inc.”

“I want you to do anything but kill them,” Perlman said. 

And that's what the mobsters did. Baseball bats, pool cues, throwing them out of windows - whatever was needed short of killing them. And the Jewish mobsters spread their campaign throughout the US, wherever the Nazis gathered.

The American Nazis cowered in fear and the attendance at their rallies evaporated (for the most part - they managed to have thousands of New York police protect them in their 1939 Madison Square Garden rally.)

Right now, the GDL is laughing at any legal efforts to stop them and residents holding hands in solidarity with Jews. They know that they are winning. 

But if they are beaten up, they won't be laughing. And more importantly, they won't attract more members.

Let the Jews attacking them be arrested. Let there be arguments in court as to whether someone screaming "Sieg Heil" into a microphone is tantamount to assault and reacting with violence is self-defense. There is even scientific evidence that hatemongering is more harmful than actual assault in the victim's brain - let them battle that out. 

Whether they win or lose is immaterial. The results are the important thing. And like their American Nazi forebears, these GDL thugs are cowards at heart. 

Find out where the GDL is planning to spread their antisemitic flyers and get ready for them beforehand, beating them up and chasing them out of the neighborhoods they are polluting. Let them call the police.

Beating up the neo-Nazis gives them a direct message that they will pay a real price for intimidating Jews. And doing it now ensures that we will not see them strengthen enough to hold mass marches down the streets of major cities in five years. 

Some things are worth literally fighting for. 

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Friday, June 23, 2023

Book review: "Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership"

I generally abhor divisions in the Jewish community. There are too few of us to be able to afford partisanship and needless hate for our own.

For those reasons I have been reluctant to criticize fellow Jews outside of the fringe who are anti-Zionist or anti-Judaism. And I have been equally reluctant to criticize the leaders of American Jewish organizations, trying and wanting to assume that they do the best they can with the resources they have.

That position is no longer tenable after reading Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, a new book of damning essays edited by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser.  

Betrayal is a strong indictment of those American Jewish leaders, on both the national and local levels. 

The single biggest issue that should unify American Jews is the fight against antisemitism. But as Betrayal shows, the mostly self-appointed American Jewish leaders have been more interested in maintaining their positions of power than in going toe to toe with today's antisemites.

Worse, in example after example in this book, when grassroots Jewish groups organize to fight a specific threat to American Jews, these pseudo leaders generally try to dissuade and discourage them. They claim that their connections with other powerful people, and their quiet diplomacy, will carry the day. Their message to ordinary Jews who want to defend themselves from specific threats is "sha, shtill" - shut up and be quiet.

We cannot read minds, but the overwhelming impression given is that these so-called leaders enjoy their perks of being considered as such. They love to attend their interfaith breakfasts and to attend meetings and parties with local and national secular leaders. They don't want to make waves, to risk their positions and their perceived prestige, their speaking engagements at Temples, their parades for progressive causes.

Problems which should and could have been attacked early on - mosques with terror links, undermining K-12 and university education with the concepts of "wokeness" that slot Jews as oppressors and supremacists, BDS and campus "apartheid weeks" as well as the other constant attacks on Israel that these leaders prefer to sympathize with instead of battle against - have metastasized into major sources of today's American antisemitism. 

An essay by Jonathan Tobin sets the tone with his analysis of how the Anti Defamation League has turned its back on fighting antisemitism and instead steered the ship to be more progressive and partisan rather than defending Jews.  The organization's hiring of a rabidly anti-Zionist Tema Smith as "director of Jewish Outreach" was particularly risible. 

Richard Landes describes how American Jewish leadership has exhibited cowardice in the face of the jihadist threat, preferring to partner with their Muslim friends rather than to ever confront them. Of course, this peculiarly Jewish tendency to compromise on principles in order to seek approval from others is not mirrored by the openly pro-Hamas Muslim American leadership, who - if anything - feel empowered to more extremism because the Jews are on their side.

Josh Block describes the failure of American Jewish leaders to push back against Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements, and this led directly to her emerging from the controversy as more influential than ever. 

Caroline Glick observes that the "two state solution" has become a religion of sorts for American Jewish leaders, and instead of defending Israel they are defending cutting Israel in half and abandoning nearly all Jewish holy sites. 

Naya Lekht notes how liberal Jewish groups have replaced Judaism with "social justice," a philosophy that comes from Stalin's Soviet Union and that is ultimately used against Jews.

The ADL, the AJC, the local JCRCs and Federations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs - all of them are stridently criticized as becoming part of the problem rather than the solution for the one theme that Jews should unite around, fighting antisemitism. Specific examples from grassroots groups who were stymied by their local Jewish "leaders" abound. 

The only national organization that has held on to its principles of unwavering support for Jews and Israel is the Zionist Organization of America, and its president Morton Klein writes an essay as well demonstrating how the eagerness by other Jewish leaders to make nice with the anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic progressive philosophy hurts the Jewish community and makes everyone lose respect for their leaders.

One of the most interesting essays is by M. Zuhdi Jasser, of the Muslim Reform Movement, who has tried to partner with American Jewish leaders - only to be spurned because they prefer their partnerships with Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations that are actively antisemitic. His frustration of being abandoned by those who should be his natural allies is palpable.

Jacobs and Goldwasser's own essay doesn't only describe the problems, but offers a ten point program towards solutions - the exact thing that the supposed American Jewish leaders avoid. These pro-active ideas are what real leaders should come up with and implement. 

Betrayal describes outrageous examples of failed and counterproductive leadership. It will make you angry, and it should.

American Jews pour millions into these organizations that have little or nothing to show for themselves. It is time to replace those fossils with real leadership, real ideas, and real passion. The authors of these 22 essays are all fine candidates to be true leaders of the North American Jewish community. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

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