Showing posts with label Varda Opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Varda Opinion. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 25, 2023


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On or around September 7, President Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. One month later, there was a massacre in Israel, sponsored by Iran. No less than a Hamas spokesman affirmed that Iran lent its assistance to Hamas as its proxy to murder Jews.

Was Biden’s generosity to Iran in September responsible for the war crimes committed by Hamas in October? While White House officials say that none of the $6b went to Hamas, they have yet to relate to accusations that Biden’s munificence served as a green light to Iran to do what it always says it will do: murder Jews.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking from Tel Aviv, pretended that money was not fungible. The money, he said, had been sent from South Korea to a Qatari bank, and Iran hadn’t even had a chance to touch it, yet. “None of the funds that have gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way,” said Blinken to Netanyahu during his diplomatic blitz of the Middle East in the wake of the atrocities.

Yes, dummy. We know that. But when there’s money in your future, you can take money from elsewhere to fund what you like. Iran likes to kill Jews. Tony Blinken knows this, because in reality, Blinken is no dummy. He is, however, a Biden hack.

Look (as Biden likes to say), it’s called “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” While Iran could not give the $6b straight into the hands of Hamas, there’s always a workaround. It’s called creative accounting. You take money away from a hospital or a school, whatever, and send it to Hamas. Wherever Iran took the money from, it used it to fund the massacre, secure in the knowledge that there would be $6b to cover the difference.

This really is not complicated, yet we can expect Blinken will continue to deliver the same unsatisfactory message each time he is called upon to answer for the October 7th war crimes. These were acts of war against Israel, against America and others, with various nationals among the hostages. What is now happening was brought to us by Iran, directly after they received a windfall from Joe.

Yes, we know the $6b is not a gift. We know that the money technically belongs to Iran. This is, however, an irrelevant factoid. Funds have been freed, released to madmen. Whether the money is a gift or just a case of restoring it to its rightful owner “in good faith,” matters not. The end result is the same: money in the pocket to buy weapons and pay savages to kill Jews.

One could write off the $6b as a miscalculation, a mistake by the Biden Administration. But not really. Joe Biden has been around a long time (cough). He has an equally lengthy history of browbeating and bullying Israel’s leaders, in spite of his intimate knowledge of the relevant actors in the region. President Biden knows that Iran and Hamas are evil. And he knows that Israel is not.

Israel is Joe Biden’s sacrificial lamb. Perhaps Biden reasons that everyone would like the Jews to be gone. Whatever his excuse, it is Joe Biden who strengthened the hand that fed us tragedy, in his final coup de grâce to the Jews.  

We may never know all the ways in which Biden tied Israel’s hands to keep the Jewish State from defending itself. We don’t know what went on between Biden and Netanyahu behind the scenes. Rest assured, however, that Joe is using everything at his disposal to stall Israel as long as he can, from launching its inevitable ground incursion into Gaza. In so doing, Biden continues to strengthen the hand of the enemy. Each day that passes without the ground incursion gives the enemies of Israel that much more time to prepare, more time to get ready to slaughter the Jews (they will be sorry they tried).

We can see some of what Biden is doing against Israel, for example, forcing Israel to allow aid to go through to the “innocent people of Gaza,” unimpeded. Joe Biden himself is providing $100m to Gaza for humanitarian aid.

What does it mean to give $100m to “Gaza?” It means to give $100m to Hamas, the rulers of Gaza. The humanitarian aid, as well, is the opposite of that. Sure, the hundred mil is ostensibly to be used only for things like water, food, and electricity, but that will never happen. Thanks to yet more “creative accounting,” the money will not go to civilians. The $100m is right now literally funding Hamas, funding murder and inciting the world to war—whether we can see the actual transactions, or not.

Here too, a Biden hack offers an irrelevant response to criticism of Biden for sending aid and comfort to the enemy. This time it is Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman who pretends that money is not fungible. "Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine," says Miller.

Habibi, you are not fooling us. The hundred mil can only go to Hamas, the government of Gaza. And even if this filthy lucre is channeled through UNRWA, it will still go to Hamas. One way or another, wherever it lands in Gaza, that $100m will be lining the pockets of Hamas’ worst, the dutiful proxies of Iran.



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, October 18, 2023

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. 

We hear a lot about the “innocent” civilian of Gaza, and how the “vast majority” of them are peace-loving and do not support Hamas. But what is the basis for this pronouncement of mass Gazan innocence by world leaders, celebrities, and other talking heads? The facts and statistics say the opposite: there is overwhelming support for Hamas and “armed resistance” in Gaza. Which makes a lot of right-thinking Israelis wonder why our army takes such pains not to kill them.

If there are statistics that prove this population is innocent, why don’t they show them to us? Instead, they offer empty words, devoid of reality. “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza — innocent Palestinian families and the vast majority that have nothing to do with Hamas — they’re being used as human shields. We have to reject hate in every form,” said President Biden.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the same thing in not so many words. Speaking in Egypt about his trip to the region to discuss the war, Blinken said, “What I’ve heard from virtually every partner was a determination, a shared view that we have to do everything possible to make sure this doesn’t spread to other places; a shared view to safeguard innocent lives; a shared view to get assistance to Palestinians in Gaza who need it, and we’re working very much on that.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also rushed to defend the “innocent” civilians of Gaza. This time after an errant Islamic Jihad rocket took out a hospital in Gaza.

“I am horrified by the images of the explosion in a hospital in Gaza. Innocent civilians were injured and killed. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims.”

Scholz, like the rest of the Israel-hating world, rushed to judgement: the judgment he preferred: Gazans=innocent, Israelis=guilty. Soon scads of evidence would prove him wrong. Including a recorded conversation between Hamas operatives clearly attributing the attack to Islamic Jihad.


The hospital explosion, of course, catalyzed the entire world to damn Israel for “killing hundreds of innocent civilians.” Which of course, was not true. But like Scholz, none of them were waiting for confirmation of what they wanted to believe about Israel to somehow excuse the atrocities, while Jewish bodies are still being processed.

In the Arab world, the state news agency for Kuwait not surprisingly, “strongly condemned and denounced the Israeli occupation forces' barbaric airstrike on the Baptist Al-Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of innocent civilians were killed.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rushed to blame Israel. “Hitting a hospital containing women, children and innocent civilians is the latest example of Israel's attacks devoid of the most basic human values. I invite all humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented brutality in Gaza.”

No less than a major in the IDF reserves, Nir Avishai Cohen, repeatedly called the Gazan people “innocent” in his emotional little leftist self-congratulatory op-ed in the New York Times.

For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. In my book “Love Israel, Support Palestine,” I wrote: “Israeli society has to ask itself very important questions about where and why the blood of its sons and daughters was spilled. A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we are following them as if it were the piper from Hamelin.” When I wrote these words last year, I didn’t realize how deep in the mud we were, and how much more blood could be shed in so little time.

I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.

Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless. The ideologies of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians.

As a major in the reserves, it is important to me to make it clear that in this already unstoppable new war, we cannot allow the massacre of innocent Israelis to result in the massacre of innocent Palestinians. Israel must remember that there are more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip. The vast majority of them are innocent. Israel must do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent people and to focus on destroying the militant army of Hamas.

There is a pattern here, of making a distinction between members of Hamas and the Gazan people. But it is also here critical to note something that people either don't know or don't like to talk about; the people of Gaza, in democratic elections, elected Hamas to rule them. From the Guardian:

Figures from Palestinian officials tonight confirmed Hamas's shock win in the Palestinian parliamentary election over the once-dominant Fatah party.

Polls had predicted a coalition between the two parties as the most likely outcome of the vote, but a surprise surge in support for the Islamists took a party that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel into power.

The preliminary count put Hamas on 76 seats to Fatah's 43 in the 132 seat chamber. The result could complicate hopes of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. George Bush said the United States would not deal with a Hamas-led government unless the party recognised Israel's right to exist.

As the scale of the Fatah defeat became apparent, its officials conceded defeat and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and his cabinet submitted their resignations. "This is the choice of the people. It should be respected," Mr Qureia told reporters . . .

 . . . Mr Bush said a party that advocated the destruction of Israel would never be partner for peace, but also hailed the result as an example of democracy in action.

"If there are people unhappy with the status quo they'll let you know. What was positive is that it is a wakeup call to the leadership," he told a White House press conference.

"People are demanding honest government ... people want services; they want to raise their children in a decent environment."

Everywhere you read about the 2006 Gaza election, you will see the word "democracy" in its various forms and usages. In 2008, Vanity Fair ran a piece about a US plot to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power with the help of Muhammad Dahlan, a Mahmoud Abbas rival:  

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

Senior Policy Fellow for the European Council on Foreign Relations Hugh Lovatt wrote about the democratic nature of the 2006 Gaza elections, in a piece called, Back to democracy: Europe, Hamas, and the Palestinian elections:

Palestinians may soon be heading to the polls for the first time in 15 years. For some, this will be their first taste of electoral politics and democratic participation. Yet it will not be Palestine’s first democratic experiment. Long before the advent of the Arab uprisings, Palestine held free and fair elections to choose a president and a parliament. In hindsight, these elections, held in 2005 and 2006 respectively, marked the high point of Palestinian democracy.

The European Union and the United States were initially strong advocates of Palestinian democracy, and were a driving force behind the last elections, urging the main political rivals – the Islamist Hamas and the secular Fatah – to engage constructively in the process. The EU and the US proved less comfortable when the democratic outcome went against their interests following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative election and the group’s refusal to endorse international demands such as recognising Israel. Subsequent efforts by the EU and the US to boycott and undermine the democratically elected government led by Hamas significantly damaged the Palestinian democratic and state-building project. This stoked Palestinian political tensions and helped provoke a short civil war in June 2007 that left Hamas in control of Gaza and President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah, in control of the West Bank. These events reverberate to this day. 

Many will try to convince you that the Gazan people were coerced into voting for Hamas. But they were not. The elections were democratic. They were pleased with their choice and showed it, by celebrating when their party won. Al Jazeera had the story:

Hamas wins huge majority 

Hamas supporters streamed into the streets to celebrate.

In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, supporters shot in the air and handed out candy. Others honked horns and waved Hamas flags from car windows.

The elections were, demonstrably, and by all accounts, free and fair and democratic. So why would anyone call the “civilians” of Gaza “innocent?” All of them supported Hamas. 

They still do. Following Operation Guardian of the Walls, in May of 2021, the people of Gaza were polled.

A new poll released Tuesday finds a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas following last month’s Gaza war, with around three quarters viewing the Islamic militants as victors in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.

The scientific poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research also found plummeting support for President Mahmoud Abbas, who was sidelined by the war but is seen internationally as a partner for reviving the long-defunct peace process.

The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,”

The poll found that 77% of Palestinians believe Hamas emerged as a winner, with nearly as many saying that it fought the war to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites, rather than as part of an internal struggle with Abbas’ Fatah party.

Note that while President Biden, in 2023, asserts that the “innocent people of Gaza” are somehow distinct from the party they elected, he knows they are not. In fact, after Hamas won the 2006 election, Joe Biden led a push to cut off US aid to Hamas for winning, and to the Palestinian Authority for losing:

After Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza, Joe Biden called for the U.S. to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority.

When Hamas, which the U.S. government had designated a terrorist organization, won a resounding victory in Gaza, it sent shockwaves through Washington. Biden called the results “sobering” and declared, “Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a party that calls for its destruction.” Biden said President George W. Bush was “dead right” in his denunciation of the election results. Within days, Biden began suggesting that the U.S. and Europe should sanction Hamas and cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority. “The fact of the matter is, you cannot pour millions and hundreds of millions of dollars into a group that, in fact, calls for the destruction of an ally, or for any country, for that matter,” Biden said. As the Bush administration called on other nations to adopt this stance, Biden said, “Unless they change their stripes, unless they recognize Israel, unless they change their charter, I think we do exactly what the president says.”

In a Senate hearing a month after Hamas’s victory, Biden offered a twisted logic on the importance of elections. “Elections a democracy don’t make,” he said, pointing specifically to Hamas’s success at the ballot. “Democracies cannot come to fruition without elections, but you need the infrastructure for a democracy, and we’ve not done all that well in the elections being held.” By March, Biden had signed onto a bill that called on Bush to “direct the United States Executive Director at each international financial institution to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States to prohibit assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”

Joe Biden understood, though he pretended he did not, with his “twisted logic” that democratic elections are somehow not really democratic, because um, other things. Biden knows that the people of Gaza are not innocent. They voted for terror, death, and destruction. And they got it.

The innocence of the people of Gaza is in reality, a legend propagated and perpetuated by Hamas. Hamas does not distinguish between terrorists and “innocents.” Why should we? Why would the leaders of the world, including Joe Biden? From MEMRI:

The Hamas interior ministry website included the following text along with its instructional video: "The Information Department of the Ministry of the Interior and National Security has instructed activists on social media websites, particularly Facebook, to correct some of the commonly used terms as they cover the aggression taking place in the Gaza Strip. The following Information Department video calls on all activists to use the proper terminology, in order to play their part in strengthening the home front and in properly conveying information worldwide."

Hamas Social Media Rules: Describe Terrorists as Innocent Civilians

The interior ministry’s “Be Aware – Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign” centers around an instructional video and posters published on the ministry’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Gazans are taught, first and foremost, to refer to all terrorists as innocent civilians.

“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank,” the guidelines state. “Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”

Screenshot of Hamas Facebook post, telling Gazans to use the word "innocent" in referring to terrorists.

Bearing final mention here is the Ben Shapiro video on the number of radical Muslims in the world. To be a radical Muslim means, of course, to support and/or engage in terror. The “innocent civilians of Gaza” have proven that they number themselves among the “vast majority” who share their sentiments. 

In spite of knowing all of this, President Biden took a moment to inform us that the “overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas’s [sic] appalling attacks.” Even when he knows damned well that no such thing is true. 

Joe Biden is well aware that the “innocent” people of Gaza are the ones who put the terrorists in charge, and he knows that they like it like that. Are their children innocent? Does it matter? The parents of the children of Gaza sacrificed them before they were born, on the altar of their Jew-hatred. Had these children lived, they would have been reared and educated in UNWRA schools to murder Jews and steal their land. They start them young.

 

There is no doubt that there is much suffering going on right now in Gaza. The people who are suffering, are the same people who rejoiced when their leaders massacred Jews. Now they are suffering, but they are not innocent, and I for one, will not weep. For it is a suffering of their own creation.



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, October 11, 2023

Moloch statue from Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914), National Museum of Cinema (Turin)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. 

Hamas is going to rue the day it decided to rain down pogroms on Israel. Israel is going to obliterate every trace of Hamas from the face of God’s earth, and when these two-legged beasts arrive in Hell, they will discover no brown-eyed virgins waiting for them, but only searing heat and fire that will scald and burn their ugly flesh without surcease for an eternity. I am already preparing popcorn to snack on as I watch the sick mothers of these Moloch terrorists weep and wail over the mutilated remains of their twisted terrorist children. The people who democratically elected Hamas to lead them should be begging Egypt to lift its blockade NOW, and let them in, because Israel is so going to carpet bomb Gaza and retake it for its rightful owners, the Jews.

The entrance to the Temple of Moloch in Carthage in Cabiria (1914)

Similarly, the two-legged beasts who rule Iran will die, painfully, at the hands of the Jews. As they well know, God favors the Jews, and will strengthen the hands of His people as we inflict the worst pain imaginable on Khameini, far worse than that of the 40 Jewish babies his Hamas employees murdered and beheaded. Hashem was there to receive and comfort those babies, because they are Jews and God therefore loves them. But beware His wrath, for all those who raise a hand toward His people will die hard deaths, hard! And all of the evil ones will die a thousand deaths by the hands of Israeli heroes, JEWISH heroes, made strong like iron by the God of the Jews whom you erroneously refer to as “Allah.”

Offering to Molech (illustration from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster). The illustration shows a typical depiction of Moloch in 19th century illustrations.

Does a similar fate await Joe Biden, who incentivized the pogroms that stole Jewish lives with his $6b gift to Iran? Despite his administration’s repeated assurances that the money didn’t go to Hamas, everyone knows these billions served as a green light to attack the Jews. America’s handout told Iran that America supports its foolish, evil campaign to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews. Whether or not Joe meant to give Iran incentive to murder Jews matters little, if at all. Iran has repeatedly and publicly stated its intentions in this regard, and as everyone knows and many American officials have stated, money is fungible.

"The idol Moloch with seven chambers or chapels," from Johann Lund's Die Alten Jüdischen Heiligthümer (1711, 1738), showing elements derived from the medieval rabbinical tradition

Before Joe (and perhaps the man sitting behind the curtain in the Oval Office) was Barry O with his pallets of cash in exchange for . . . nothing. Barry likely thinks the Iran crocodile will eat him last. What he doesn’t know, and Joe doesn’t know (because Joe doesn’t know much of anything now, including how to walk) is that the crocodile will eat them NEXT and good riddance to them, too. Those who fund evil, are evil. Those who voted for this man, are also culpable, because the Jews told them this would happen, and they didn’t listen, and Jews themselves, those who vote in American elections, overwhelmingly voted Democrat.

They didn’t listen when we told them. Instead, they praised themselves for giving Israel Iron Dome, which Obama gave Israel not as a kindness, but as a means of preventing the Jews from taking care of the mess in Gaza in the first place. As a result, pogroms were deliberately perpetrated on the Jewish people on a Jewish holiday. Those Americans who are now grumbling about their tax dollars aiding people far away, when they themselves are suffering terrible inflation, have no idea that they funded pogroms, and now their leaders are compelled to pay blood money on their behalf.

This and the following are memes I saw on the evening of October 10, Day 4 of the war. The memes describe taxpayer grumbling at being expected to send aid to Israel. 



Why must Biden now pay blood money to Israel from taxpayer dollars? Because otherwise, it looks really, really bad for this administration. There were pogroms. And things are already looking bad for Biden what with his coke-addicted pervert son; the naked selfies of his brother; his refusal to acknowledge his grandchild; and his creepy predilection for nuzzling and sniffing children. 

Trust God on this, if you helped in this, you will get what is coming to you. Harm one hair on the head of a Jew—even by proxy—and God will make sure you pay, all the more so when atrocities are inflicted on His beloved nation.

Illustration of the interior of the temple of Moloch from Gustav Flaubert's Salammbô by Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (c. 1900)

Europe, too, funded these Iran/Hamas/et al crimes against humanity, against the Jews. We are not impressed with your light displays of Israeli flags on your buildings. We are not impressed when you tell us we have the right to defend ourselves, as if this were somehow in doubt. We see it all—how you allowed a Holocaust to occur, and then, to assuage your guilt, helped fund the creation of the Jewish State, thus reserving the right to a future, more successful attempt at ethnic cleansing, this time with the Jews conveniently concentrated in a single space.

Stelaes from the tophet in Carthage, where Moloch sacrifices or rituals are attested via inscription

Tombs in the Valley of Hinnom, the location of the tophet where Moloch rituals were performed according to 2 Kings 23:10. Deror Avi

Be assured that it is the Jews, who will once again arise victorious to outlive the evildoers. The bad guys are doomed to vanish from the face of God’s earth. Just like the other occupiers of Jewish land. Like those before you, you failed to learn an important lesson: History repeats.

As a result, all will now witness the valor and strength of God’s Chosen People, the Jewish people. None will succeed in their campaign to demoralize us or steal our land. If you try, you will die horrible deaths, and God will not save you. The Nation of Israel lives all Am Yisrael chai in your face!

And it is this [covenant] that has stood for our Forefathers and us. For not just one enemy has stood against us to wipe us out. But in every generation there have been those who have stood against us to wipe us out, and the Holy One Blessed Be He saves us from their hands.

If you would like to do something to help Israel, here is one way to do so: Help feed Israeli soldiers through Project Giveback, created in order to give back to soldiers and first responders in Israel. 



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 27, 2023

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein. 

After nine months of refusing to extend an invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the White House, Joe Biden—or his handlers—deemed that a sufficiently long enough period of time had elapsed that said invitation could now be extended. Bibi had been punished and put in his place, the anti-Israel elements of the party appeased. Still, nobody said that Joe had to be nice to the Israeli PM. So as Bibi waxed lyrical about their 40-year acquaintance, and while the cameras were rolling, Biden leered at those in attendance and crossed himself. Slowly and with deliberation. 

The press didn’t write about it, with the notable exception of the indefatigable Hunter Biden laptop-reporting New York Post:

President Biden unexpectedly crossed himself Wednesday during a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in Midtown.

The 80-year-old Roman Catholic president made the conspicuous hand gesture — touching his forehead, stomach and left and right breast area with his right hand — as the Jewish leader began speaking.

“We’ve been friends for, I’ve checked it, over 40 years,” Netanyahu said, prompting Biden to make the sign of the cross in a possible joke about his own age.

However, the president did not explain his action and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This was not the first time that Joe Biden made the sign of the cross as an apparent snub or sign of disrespect. He crossed himself while saying Donald Trump’s name as he stumped for Gavin Newsom in 2021. He did it again while ridiculing Marjorie Taylor Greene at an event in Virginia Beach.

How are we supposed to understand Joe Biden’s repeated, cynical use of a religious symbol, an expression of Christian faith? What does it mean in the context of a landmark meeting with the prime minister of the Jewish State? It depends on how you're feeling about Joe these days.

Some think it was insensitive of the president, a stupid move, to cross himself in front of a Jewish leader. Others think that his making the sign of the cross against a Jewish person was just one more manifestation of a riddled brain in a state of advanced decay. Both these things are likely true, but miss the mark by omitting the malign nature of the president’s gesture, meant as a pointed sign of disrespect to someone he really, really does not like.

Was the gesture deliberately antisemitic? That would certainly be a valid conclusion. The sign of the cross has traditionally been used to ward off evil. Biden jokingly uses the symbol to demean public figures he dislikes by equating them with evil. When he therefore makes the sign of the cross in relation to the democratically-elected leader of the one Jewish State, it is not a stretch to understand this as a statement: “Netanyahu the Jew is evil.”

The sign of the cross as a protection against evil is something most of us are familiar with from movies and TV shows, where characters are always waving silver crosses at vampires. But do Christians really believe that the sign of the cross wards off evil? Does Joe Biden? 

While perusing materials relating to Christian dogma is not really my thing, especially during the High Holiday season, I found the following, attributed to St. John Chrysostom, 4th-century Preacher and Patriarch of Constantinople, so . . . probably legit:

Never leave your house without making the sign of the cross. It will be to you a staff, a weapon, an impregnable fortress. Neither man nor demon will dare to attack you, seeing you covered with such powerful armor. Let this sign teach you that you are a soldier, ready to combat against the demons, and ready to fight for the crown of justice. Are you ignorant of what the cross has done? It has vanquished death, destroyed sin, emptied hell, dethroned Satan, and restored the universe. Would you then doubt its power?

As a Jew, I don’t believe any of that, like not even a little bit, not even to the very tip of the tip of my pinky. But when Joe Biden makes the sign of the cross, he does so to smear and ridicule those he dislikes by suggesting, perhaps only half-jokingly, that they are evil. This offends me not only on behalf of my PM, my country, and my people, but also on behalf of those who do see the cross as a symbol of their faith. Because when Joe Biden makes the sign of the cross, in the eyes of his co-religionists, he does so not out of belief, but out of disrespect. From a Catholic perspective, he blasphemes.

Of course no one would accuse Joe Biden of being a good Catholic. Joe’s in bad odor with the Church because of his stance on abortion. Famously, Joe Biden was denied communion at a church in South Carolina. But this use of a religious symbol is vulgar and offensive by any human standard no matter your religion, especially in light of the fact that the one misusing the symbol is the leader of the free world.

No matter the Democrat scandal of the day, it’s always tempting to say that if Trump did it, the media would be all over it like white on rice; meanwhile when Biden does it, crickets. Robert Spencer points this out along with the fact that Biden did not make the sign of the cross when meeting Mahmoud Abbas:

To put into perspective how odd this is, imagine if Trump had made the sign of the cross as he was meeting with Netanyahu. There would have been a new round of “Trump is an antisemite” articles in the establishment media. The ADL would have issued another in their long series of furious denunciations of the Bad Orange Man. The gesture would have been portrayed as a recrudescence of the bad old days of blood libels and false accusations against the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. When Biden does it, on the other hand, no one sees it.

Whatever it was, Biden certainly didn’t make the sign of the cross when he met with his friend Mahmoud Abbas.

I have yet to hear a response or comment from Netanyahu on Biden making the sign of the cross, during their meeting. That’s as it should be. Perhaps in time, Netanyahu will find a way to make his feelings known, but likely only for those who have the ability read between the lines. This 2015 Jeffrey Goldberg piece from the Atlantic, Netanyahu Dodges the Cross does the trick for me:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is fond of recalling Vice President Joe Biden's suggestion that he nail himself to a very large cross.

It was 2011, and they were in Jerusalem, in Netanyahu's office. Biden was encouraging the prime minister to make a bold leap for peace, and not to waste time on half-measures. "My father always said, 'Don't crucify yourself on a small cross,'" Biden said. Netanyahu laughed. Only Joe Biden, he would tell people later, would travel to Jerusalem to encourage a Jewish prime minister to crucify himself.

What was Netanyahu telling those he regaled with this story? My take is this: Joe Biden told Benjamin Netanyahu to kill himself. And the then vice president traveled all the way to Jerusalem to do so.



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 09, 2023


Actor and Musician Jamie Foxx jumped on “The Jews Killed Jesus” bandwagon on August 4th and on August 6th he apologized. In so doing, he joined a club: that of the legions of celebrities who broadcast rude and blatantly antisemitic statements to their legions of followers after which they apologize. These celebrities have learned that you can say the worst antisemitic thing, as long as you apologize.

In case you missed it, here is what Jamie Foxx chose to post to his 16.2 million followers:

"They killed this dude name Jesus... What do you think they'll do to you???!" followed by the hashtags #fakefriends #fakelove

This post was then duly deleted by Foxx. Then, once he deemed enough time had elapsed to make it still seem sincere, Foxx apologized:

I want to apologize to the Jewish community and everyone who was offended by my post. I now know my choice of words have caused offense and I'm sorry. That was never my intent.

To clarify, I was betrayed by a fake friend and that's what I meant with "they" not anything more. I only have love in my heart for everyone. I love and support the Jewish community. My deepest apologies to anyone who was offended [three heart emojis]

Nothing but love always,

Jamie Foxx [heart, fox, and praying hands emojis]  

Aniston, following in Foxx’s (antisemitic) footsteps, liked the screed about the people who killed Jesus, and then denied she had done so, or been antisemitic. No. Antisemitism makes her sick.  As per the Guardian:

“This really makes me sick,” said Aniston’s statement, which was posted on Instagram Stories. “I did not ‘like’ this post on purpose or by accident. And more importantly, I want to be clear to my and anyone hurt by this showing up in their feeds – I do not support antisemitism. And I truly don’t tolerate HATE of any kind. Period.”

So let me break this down for you, Foxx had a friend named Jesus who was killed by a fake friend who was not a Jew, chas v’shalom. Jamie is filled with nothing but love.

Aniston, meanwhile, seems to be vaguely asserting she was hacked, or perhaps the butler did it, while she, Aniston, was in the shower. In either case, the apology, or even the suggestion of one, even via a canned lawyer’s statement augmented by numerous emojis, is all that counts in the end. The calls of support came flowing in, suggests the Guardian, though that seems to require a generous interpretation of “numerous.” But they managed to dig up a court Jew, so that’s all right (emphasis added):

Foxx’s handling of the episode did earn him numerous supportive comments. Alongside the actor’s apology Saturday, music producer Breyon Prescott wrote, “Anyone that has been around you knows that you have no hate for anyone!!! … [You’re] the best, don’t let anyone make you think differently.”

The actor Porscha Coleman added: “People can’t even speak any more without someone being offended. You were clearly talking about someone you thought was a friend who turned out to be a backstabber … Society is so sensitive these days!”

And podcast host Mark Birnbaum, who is Jewish, wrote on Instagram that he found Foxx to be “the most inclusive non-antisemitic person out there”.

“He’s got nothing but love for everyone, including us Jews,” Birnbaum said. “Let’s move onto the next nonsensical story of the day.”

Other users remarking on Foxx also alluded to his prior displays of solidarity with the Jewish community. In 2017, he performed at a barmitzvah-themed birthday party in honor of the singer Drake as well as at a Jewish fan’s barmitzvah.

Oh, wow. He performed at a Bar Mitzvah. Clearly the guy loves Jews.

Look. We’ve seen this show before. We saw it with Ilhan Omar, how she “unequivocally” apologized after saying it’s all about the Benjamins and AIPAC, but essentially still saying the same thing: AIPAC wields problematic political clout. P.S. It doesn’t. 

 Even self-perpetuating PA president Mahmoud Abbas did the antisemitic blurt out and apology thing while speaking to the Palestinian National Council. After saying crazy things like the Jews took money from Hitler to settle in Palestine, Abbas issued an “official” apology. From Ynet (emphasis added):

"If people were offended by my statement in front of the PNC, especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them. I would like to assure everyone that it was not my intention to do so, and to reiterate my full respect for the Jewish faith, as well as other monotheistic faiths."

“If.” Get that? If people were offended. Especially Jews.

Kyrie Irving did the same thing. Tweeted an antisemitic documentary, and then apologized. But of course as he said, he was “unjustly” labeled an antisemite. And of course, the apology only came after he was suspended.

ViacomCBS cut ties with Nick Cannon after the latter said stupid stuff about Jews on a podcast. So Cannon apologized.

Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden issued an apology after footage was leaked of him saying horribly antisemitic things. From the Jerusalem Post (emphasis added):

In footage from a 2021 interview of Harden by the Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine (OFIP) that recently surfaced and gained prominence, Harden stated that he has "asked many questions of Jewish neighbors here about how much longer we should put up with this, because if I were to name... the single greatest threat – the single greatest origin of violence in the Middle East – is unquestionably the State of Israel and the way in which they feel absolutely no shame in defying international law doing whatever they want."  

Harden also condemned antisemitism and said that manifestations of Jew-hatred in pro-Palestinian camps were unhelpful to the cause, but conditioned that "I can also understand from the pro-Palestinian standpoint how the barbarity and the scale of viciousness can lead someone to strike out with intemperate hateful language [!!] because of that real hurt where people are at."

But the guy apologized.

Should we believe him? Only if you really, really want to, or perhaps share common cause with him in some completely different area as with RFK Jr. and Farrakhan.

The fact is there is no way to prove the sincerity of an apology. Lie detectors are easily fooled and the interpretation of body language is not an exact science. Some Jews would say that’s precisely why we should give these antisemites the benefit of the doubt. Others, like this writer, reject the apologies as a matter of course. It’s not just that the apologies are too well-timed, canned, or inadequate—it’s that it’s a matter of self-preservation.

Some say that the Jews never see the danger until the gates are closing and it’s too late. It’s the nature of nice, normal people to make the choice to always see things in a positive light. Jews may even tell you that benefit of the doubt is a Jewish value. But Judaism doesn’t tell us to be stupid. For a Jew, survival often means taking off the blinders that make us see benign intent where none is meant.

Wednesday, July 26, 2023


RFK Jr. got into hot water on July 15, when the New York Post aired footage of a press event during which he said (emphasis added):

“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy hedged . . .

When called on the carpet for these antisemitic, racist, conspiracy theorist comments, RFK Jr. doubled down, tweeting:

“The U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races. The furin cleave docking site is most compatible with blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews. In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons.”

Except that none of this is true. Jews had a higher mortality rate from COVID-19 compared to other ethnic groups in, for example, the UK. From the JPost (emphasis added):

Despite Kennedy’s claims that Ashkenazi Jews had a higher immunity to COVID-19, in June of 2020, the Office for National Statistics released data revealing Jews had a higher mortality rate from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom compared to other ethnic groups. At the peak of the pandemic, in April 2020, Jewish mortality from COVID-19 was twice that of non-Jews.

But perhaps we can’t altogether blame RFK Jr.’s hateful views about Jews, since it’s kind of a family
legacy going all the way back to Grandpa Joseph P. Kennedy, a known antisemite. From Joseph Kennedy and the Jews (emphasis added):

Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism.

"I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them - with whom she shared, if nothing else, a profound hatred for the Jewish race. Joe Kennedy, in turn, had always detested Jews generally, although he claimed several as friends individually. Indeed, Kennedy seems to have tolerated the occasional Jew in the same way Astor tolerated the occasional Catholic.

The above article, by the way, is prefaced with a note:

“Note: Due to a number of anti-Semitic comments that have been posted, comments have been disabled for this article.”

Here is more from the same source in which Hitler is viewed as a solution to the Jewish question, and Communism, too (emphasis added):

As fiercely anti-Communist as they were anti-Semitic, Kennedy and Astor looked upon Adolf Hitler as a welcome solution to both of these "world problems" (Nancy's phrase). No member of the so-called "Cliveden Set" (the informal cabal of appeasers who met frequently at Nancy Astor's palatial home) seemed much concerned with the dilemma faced by Jews under the Reich. Astor wrote Kennedy that Hitler would have to do more than just "give a rough time" to "the killers of Christ" before she'd be in favor of launching  "Armageddon to save them. The wheel of history swings round as the Lord would have it. Who are we to stand in the way of the future?" Kennedy replied that he expected the "Jew media" in the United States to become a problem, that "Jewish pundits in New York and Los Angeles" were already making noises contrived to "set a match to the fuse of the world."

During May of 1938, Kennedy engaged in extensive discussions with the new German Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Herbert von Dirksen. In the midst of these conversations (held without approval from the U.S. State Department), Kennedy advised von Dirksen that President Roosevelt was the victim of "Jewish influence" and was poorly informed as to the philosophy, ambitions and ideals of Hitler's regime. (The Nazi ambassador subsequently told his bosses that Kennedy was "Germany's best friend" in London.)

Columnists back in the states condemned Kennedy's fraternizing. Kennedy later claimed that 75% of the attacks made on him during his Ambassadorship emanated from "a number of Jewish publishers and writers. ... Some of them in their zeal did not hesitate to resort to slander and falsehood to achieve their aims." He told his eldest son, Joe Jr., that he disliked having to put up with "Jewish columnists" who criticized him with no good reason.

RFK Jr. isn’t the only descendant of Joe Kennedy to become an ardent antisemite. Joe Jr. was apparently a chip off the old block. He thought Hitler was just the bee's knees (emphasis added): 

Like his father, Joe Jr. admired Adolf Hitler. Young Joe had come away impressed by Nazi rhetoric after traveling in Germany as a student in 1934. Writing at the time, Joe applauded Hitler's insight in realizing the German people's "need of a common enemy, someone of whom to make the goat. Someone, by whose riddance the Germans would feel they had cast out the cause of their predicament. It was excellent psychology, and it was too bad that it had to be done to the Jews. The dislike of the Jews, however, was well-founded. They were at the heads of all big business, in law etc. It is all to their credit for them to get so far, but their methods had been quite unscrupulous ... the lawyers and prominent judges were Jews, and if you had a case against a Jew, you were nearly always sure to lose it. ... As far as the brutality is concerned, it must have been necessary to use some ...."

. . . Like his friend Charles Coughlin (an anti-Semitic broadcaster and Roman Catholic priest), Kennedy always remained convinced of what he believed to be the Jews' corrupt, malignant, and profound influence in American culture and politics. "The Democratic [party] policy of the United States is a Jewish production," Kennedy told a British reporter near the end of 1939, adding confidently that Roosevelt would "fall" in 1940.

On July 17, 1949, the JTA released a report that states in part (emphasis added):

Anti-Semitic views claimed to have been expressed by Joseph P. Kennedy — during the time when he was U.S. Ambassador in London — in his conversations with the German Ambassador there in 1938, were revealed here today in captured German diplomatic documents made public by the State Department.

The documents, which claim that Kennedy approved of the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany, were discovered in the top secret archives of the German Foreign Ministry. One of them is a letter from the then German Ambassador to Great Britain, Dr. Herbert von Dirksen, to Baron Ernst von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry who was recently convicted on war crimes charges. In this report, von Dirksen wrote of Kennedy as follows:

“The Ambassador then touched upon the Jewish question and stated that it was naturally of great importance to German-American relations. In this connection it was not so much the fact that we wanted to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied the purpose. He himself understood our Jewish policy completely; he was from Boston and there, in one golf club, and in other clubs, no Jews had been admitted in the past 50 years. In the United States, therefore, such pronounced attitudes were quite common, but people avoided making so much outward fuss about it.


In Joe Kennedy’s Answer to the ‘Jewish Question’: Ship Them to Africa, Clive Irving writes about Joe Kennedy's personal solution to "the Jewish problem." Send them to Africa (emphasis added):

In 1938 Joseph Kennedy had a solution to “the Jewish problem.” The New York Times reported that he had worked out with prime minister Chamberlain a plan to ship all German Jews to Africa and other places in the Western Hemisphere under the joint administration of Britain and the United States. That was news to the State Department, which Kennedy had not consulted, and to President Roosevelt for whom Kennedy had become an embarrassing loose cannon.

You might be tempted to say—considering the legacy of antisemitism that RFK Jr. inherited from Grandpa Joe—that all the Kennedys suffer from the same malady. Except that there is reason to believe that this is not so. For one thing, JFK's daughter Caroline, married a Jew. And in Bobby Kennedy’s Admiration for Israel, we learn that while RFK Jr.’s father Bobby at first tried not to choose sides in his coverage for the Boston Post of events leading up to Israel’s declaration of statehood. Then he changed his mind, and realized that Israel was in the right (emphasis added):

[In] “British Hatred by Both Sides,” RFK labored mightily to present the arguments of both Arabs and Jews. “There are such well-founded arguments on either side,” Kennedy wrote, “that each side grows more and more bitter toward the other. Confidence in their right increases in proportion to the hatred and mistrust for the other side not acknowledging it.”

Bobby Kennedy, father of RFK Jr., really seemed to get it. How brave the Jewish people were in fighting to create a Jewish state in Palestine, after thousands of years in exile. From the same source (emphasis added):

In the subsequent three articles, however, RFK and his Boston Post editors no longer attempted to convey an objective view of the competing claims of Jews and Arabs. As the headline on his June 4th article indicates, RFK chose a side: “Jews Have a Fine Fighting Force—Make Up for Lack of Arms With Undying Spirit, Unparalleled Courage—Impress the World.” The article gets directly to the point: “The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect.” Many similar articles appeared in the American press of the day. The surprising thing about these Boston Post articles was not their pro-Zionist sentiments, but the fact that they had been written by Joseph P. Kennedy’s son.

After RFK Jr.'s latest remarks, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave him a talking to from the podium. It was a pretty good speech. But it's hard to take her seriously, considering she's on the wrong side of many issues that pose a danger to Israeli Jews.

 

RFK Jr.’s response to Wasserman Schultz carried more than a grain of truth, for which we must give him credit:

Joseph P. Kennedy's grandson RFK Jr., looks to be a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. As such, it is important to talk about his problem with Jews and Asians and to keep talking about it long and loud. Everyone should be well aware of the character of the candidate they choose for president. And that includes our current Democratic president.



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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