BDSers are proud of using violence to stifle free speech

From JTA last week:

Pro-Palestinian protesters injured a university employee while demonstrating against a lecture speaker who heads the Brazilian chapter of a pro-Israel advocacy group.

Andre Lajst, the director of StandWithUs Brazil, was speaking about ways that Israeli technologies could help develop the Amazon region at the Federal University of Amazonas in Manaus on Thursday when protesters clashed with security and other university employees outside the lecture auditorium.

According to news reports, the advisor to the university’s rector left the scene with a broken nose after attempting to safeguard her daughter. Several students entering the lecture were also harassed, and police officers escorted Lajst into and out of the venue. One protester was reportedly arrested for pushing a police officer but later released.  

Here's video at the scene:

Andre Lajst completed his lecture and had to be escorted out by police for his safety from the violent mob.

But BDS-aligned media are bragging (and lying) that they managed to shut down his speech with their thuggish mob!

Pro-Palestine Brazilians demonstrated at a university in the Brazilian city of Manaus against the organization of a pro-Israeli-occupation event on campus.

Despite the high-security measures against them, the protesters managed to stop the meeting in support of the Israeli occupation, which is entitled “Cooperation with Israel”.

André Lajst, director of the Brazilian branch of StandWithUs, a pro-Israeli-occupation group in Brazil, spoke at the event about supporting the occupation and normalization with it.

Video clips showed the large number of anti-Israel-occupation demonstrators, known as BDS Mob, who confronted the Brazilian police and attempted to shut down the event by force, forcing Lajst and his companions to leave the place quickly.

These protests are a part of the international BDS activities against all forms of normalization with the Israeli occupation, especially educational normalization.

Among themselves, BDSers don't even pretend to be "non-violent." They are happy and proud to threaten and attack people.

And then they claim in mainstream media  articles that they are doing it in the name of "academic freedom."

 

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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. 

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75 years ago: Eleanor Roosevelt urges the world to allow Jews in Palestine to get arms

From The Palestine Post, February 20, 1948:

From JTA, February 19, 1948:

New York City’s effort on behalf of the $250,000,000 national United Jewish Appeal campaign was launched today by 2,500 community leaders at the annual Women’s Division rally held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Speakers included Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, former Governor Herbert H. Lehman, Max Lerner, and Mrs. Jerome I. Udell, chairman of the Women’s Division in the 1948 campaign.

Mrs. Roosevelt, a member of the American delegation to the United Nations, told the gathering that “we must ask our government to allow the importation of arms into Palestine and to raise its embargo.” The added that “the Arab leaders have done themselves a great harm in saying that they would fight a decision of the United Nations.”

I cannot find the transcript of her speech to the United Jewish Appeal. However, she also spoke there in 1946, where she described the conditions of Jews in the displaced persons camps of Europe, and said:

On the day that I was in the Jewish camp, the main meal was some powdered eggs—scrambled eggs. The people have such a longing to create a sense of home that they would take the powdered eggs from the kitchen and take them back to the one little room that they might have.

You feel a kind of desperation about the dignity of the individual, the right to some privacy. They have done such pathetic things. The remnants of the families try so hard to make a home. I looked at these powdered eggs that were going to be carried back, and I thought, "Oh, Heavens, how horrible—the eggs will be cold when they get them back to their rooms." And yet, they would take them back, simply because—even though you ate and you slept and you sat in the same little place—that little place was home.

There is a building in this camp where children are kept who have wandered in off the road and have no older people with them. One little boy sang for me; he sang a Jewish song. Of course, these children are much smaller than they should be for their age. This little, tiny, curly-haired thing was ten years old, but he didn't look much more than six or seven. The director told me that this little boy had just wandered in with a younger brother one day, and they had been at the camp ever since. He said that this little boy always sang for them. They called him their "singer" in the camp. But he had all the appearance of a worried, old man, because the care of his younger brother and himself weighed on his shoulders.

What those children have gone through is just indescribable.

There was one old woman there whom I don't think I will ever forget, because you looked at her and you felt that this was the end of life, and that life must have been so terrible to bring one at the end to what this poor old thing faced.

It is true they want to go back to Palestine. They want to go back because that represents to them some roots.

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Hundreds of liberal US rabbis embrace a form of BDS

JTA reports:

 More than 330 American rabbis, including some who occupy prominent roles in major cities, are pledging to block members of the Religious Zionist bloc in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government from speaking at their synagogues and will lobby to keep them from speaking in their communities.

An open letter now circulating says they will not invite members of the bloc “to speak at our congregations and organizations. We will speak out against their participation in other fora across our communities. We will encourage the boards of our congregations and organizations to join us in this protest as a demonstration of our commitment to our Jewish and democratic values.”

Its signatories come from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements. There were no Orthodox signatories.

This is prominent US Jewish leaders embracing BDS.

Every synagogue is free to invite whomever they want to speak, and not to invite people they don't want. But when they say that they will protest other synagogues' choice of speakers, and encourage their congregations to protest those other congregations, that is not a commitment to "Jewish and democratic values." 

That is shutting down free speech.

That is identical to BDS.

Imagine these same rabbis' reaction if Orthodox synagogues encouraged their members to picket their choice to allow Arab or Leftist MKs to speak at their synagogues. Yet they are encouraging the same kind of activities from their own members - in the name of democracy!

I have not dug deeply into the new Israeli government, mostly because every article about it is speculation. Likud is still by far the majority of the government, not the far right, and they will be the ones setting the agenda, just as they have for most of the past decade.  

The cabinet members have not even been finalized.  

With every political party, including in the US, there is a huge gap between what they say when campaigning and what they actually do when governing. Often, their party platforms include things to make the extremists of their parties happy while the leaders have no desire to actually implement them.

Moreover, the hysterical headlines coming out of Haaretz, US media other outlets are rarely correct. For example, reporting about the proposed change to the Law of Return is riddled with major errors.  

In short, the reporting so far about Israel's future government has been high on hysteria and nearly nonexistent on what the government will actually do.

Israeli's policies can and should be criticized when appropriate. But the criticism should be based on actions, on real legislation, not rumors or even falsehoods written by partisan reporters and columnists. 

The thought of of Reform Jews coming out to protest and disrupt a member of Israel's cabinet speaking at an Orthodox synagogue in the US is far worse than anything that Ben Gvir has done - and is likely to do. That is not "Jewish and democratic values." That is hate. 

And it shows that, ideologically, these rabbis are more on the side of BDS - spreading false rumors, looking for publicity rather than waiting for the truth to come out, trying to shut down free speech  - than on Israel's side.

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Which logo resembles a Nazi symbol more?

From JTA:

An elementary school in suburban Atlanta made national headlines this week after it unveiled a new logo, which bears a striking resemblance to the Nazi Eagle.

The Cobb County School District — Georgia’s second-largest district — said it would halt distribution of the new logo while “reviewing needed changes.” Local Jewish leaders who spoke with district officials said the logo was being entirely scrapped.

East Side Elementary in Marietta, located across the street from a synagogue, unveiled its redesigned logo on Monday. It features an eagle, with wings outstretched, gazing to the right, holding an insignia with the initials “ES” for the school. The Nazi Eagle, too, shows an eagle with wings outstretched gazing to the right, at graphically similar proportions, only the Nazi version holds a swastika in its talons.

“The new logo & badges were chosen to represent the Eagle soaring into excellence and to honor the history of our great school!” the district said in its initial announcement advertising the logo. “We hope that you love our new designs as much as we do!”

Reaction was less than positive.

“People are just angry, like, how could you make that mistake?” Marty Gilbert, executive director of Congregation Etz Chaim in Marietta, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Here's the school logo:

Here's the Nazi Eagle:

OK, now here is the Coat of Arms for Nazi Germany:

And here is the Coat of Arms for Palestine:

Just saying.

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Even in 1951, it was obvious that the UN was useless for solving any Middle East problems

This is a fun article from JTA in 1951 describing how useless the UN had been in the Middle East - -and how the Arab enemies of Israel were hijacking it for their purposes even then.

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Arkansas anti-BDS law is upheld - demanding equal treatment for Israel does not violate free speech

From JTA:

A US federal appeals court upheld an Arkansas state law requiring all public contractors to promise they won’t boycott Israel in a Wednesday ruling, overturning an earlier decision that had said the contract violates the First Amendment.

The ruling by the St. Louis-based US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit was a major victory for pro-Israel activists who have pushed around 30 states to adopt so-called “anti-BDS” laws — intended to strike back against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement targeting Israel — in recent years. The plaintiffs say they plan to appeal to the US Supreme Court, a process that could result in a nationwide showdown over the constitutionality of all anti-boycott laws.

It was the first time a federal appeals court ruled in favor of laws forbidding public contractors from being involved in any Israel boycott movements.

Such laws have been heavily opposed by civil liberties groups and press freedom advocates, who say they violate free speech. Federal courts have previously ruled that similar anti-boycott state laws in Georgia, Arizona, Kansas and Texas are unconstitutional.

But the Eighth Circuit, minus one dissenting judge, found that an anti-boycott contract provision does not infringe on the signer’s free speech rights because it “does not require them to publicly endorse or disseminate a message.” Instead, the court said, the clause requests “compliance” with a financial regulation — which the court says is a form of “noncommunicative” speech not protected by the First Amendment. 

The case that was brought up is a perfect example of why anti-boycott laws have nothing to do with free speech. 

A state-funded school, the Pulaski Technical College of the University of Arizona, stopped advertising in the alt-weekly Arkansas Times unless the paper signed the anti-BDS pledge. The newspaper sued, saying that this impeded its rights to free speech. (It seems to me that suing to force the school to spend money on advertising in the paper is a bit more of a violation of free speech than refusing to advertise is, but I'm no lawyer....)

As the court decision states, 

[T]he certification requirement here is markedly different from other compelled speech cases. Although it requires contractors to agree to a contract provision they would otherwise not include, it does not require them to publicly endorse or disseminate a message. ....We are not aware of any cases where a court has held that a certification requirement concerning unprotected, nondiscriminatory conduct is unconstitutionally compelled speech. A factual disclosure of this kind, aimed at verifying compliance with unexpressive conduct-based regulations, is not the kind of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment.

The newspaper was not being asked to adopt a pro-Israel editorial position - which would be an obvious violation of free speech. They could have a banner headline telling readers to boycott Israel. 

The irony is that the law is meant to uphold equal treatment for Israel. The only people who want to discriminate are those who want to single out Israel for boycott. Such a law would be unnecessary without people singling out Israeli Jews (and only Jews) as objects of attack. 

Boycotting Israeli businesses as a policy is as immoral and reprehensible as boycotting businesses that are owned by people of color or women. Individuals can choose who they will or will not do business with, but a state has every right not to do business with those who pro-actively discriminate against companies owned by those with a specific national origin.

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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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