Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 26, 2015

PressTV publishes satirical "news" that Obama unfriended Bibi on Facebook

Iran's PressTV believed an article published on the satirical site The Israeli Daily:

Unfortunately, PressTV realized the mistake when people started making fun of them on Twitter and took it down.

Obama campaign experts in Israel to defeat Bibi

From IMRA:

Haaretz reporter Roi Arad revealed in an article in the Hebrew edition today that the foreign funded organization, “One Voice”, is bankrolling the V-2015 campaign to defeat Binyamin Netanyahu’s national camp in the March 2015 Knesset Elections.

One indication of the generous financing is that it has now flown in a team of five American campaign experts (including Jeremy Bird, the Obama campaign's national field director) who will run the campaign out of offices taking up the ground floor of a Tel Aviv office building.

V-2015 is careful not to support a specific party - rather “just not Bibi”. As such, the foreign funds pouring into the campaign are not subject to Israel’s campaign finance laws.

You mean, a foreign organization wants to interfere in Israeli politics? Isn't that the terrible kind of thing that all proper Americans are against?

I mean, even J-Street hates the idea of outsiders meddling in Israeli elections. They sent out this email:

Certainly, if Netanyahu making a speech in the US is considered meddling in Israeli elections, certainly a hand-picked team of Obama campaigners dedicated specifically to change Israel's leadership would be considered way beyond the pale.

Interestingly, Ha'aretz, which has published an average of five anti-government articles a day over the past month, didn't bother to translate this article into English.

The OneVoice movement that is behind this "anyone but Bibi" campaign headed by Daniel Lubetzky, describes itself this way:

OneVoice is an international grassroots movement that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected representatives toward the two-state solution. The Movement works to forge consensus for conflict resolution and build a human infrastructure capable of mobilizing the people toward a negotiated, comprehensive, and permanent agreement between Israel and Palestine that ends the occupation, ensures security and peace for both sides, and solves all final-status issues in accordance with international law and previous bilateral agreements. The 1967 borders form the basis for the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state, with permanent borders and any modifications to be agreed upon by both parties. The Movement recognizes that violence by either side will never be a means to end the conflict.

Yet when you look through their website to see exactly how it tries to have Palestinian Arabs influence their leaders towards peace and compromise, you come up blank. No, instead, this award winning "peace" organization teaches both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to pressure only one side: Israel.

Here is one of their major initiatives in the territories, to encourage "non-violent resistance" against Israel and Jews who live in Judea and Samaria:

Do they check whether the land that they are planting trees in belongs legally to any Jews? Of course not.

Do they encourage the Arab youth of the territories to demand that Abbas accept one of the many peace proposals that Israel has offered over the years to end the conflict? Of course not.

Do they have any compunction about interfering in Israeli elections? Of course not.

Do the people who pretend that they care so much about Bibi speaking in Congress have any problem with this explicit and intentional interference in Israel's elections? Of course not!

01/26 Links Pt1: Rouhani Involved in AMIA Bombing Decision; Journalist who reported Nisman's death lands in Israel

From Ian:

Argentine Prosecutor: Rouhani Involved in AMIA Bombing Decision

Nisman, who was found shot in the head in his apartment just hours before he was scheduled to provide testimony against Argentine President Cristina Kirchner last Monday, denied the Free Beacon story in 2013 and suggested that Rouhani played no role in the attack.
“There is no evidence, according to the AMIA case file, of the involvement of Hassan Rouhani in any terrorist attack,” Nisman told the Times of Israel in response to the article.
However, Nisman said privately he had evidence that Rouhani was involved in the decision to authorize the bombing, according to Miami Herald reporter Andres Oppenheimer.
Nisman told Oppenheimer that Rouhani was on the committee that green-lighted the attack. “Nobody is pointing out that Rouhani participated in the decision of the AMIA attack,” wrote Nisman in a July 2013 email.
“In several telephone conversations and email exchanges I had with Nisman over the past three years, the prosecutor told me that Rouhani was among the top Iranian officials who had ‘participated in the decision’ to bomb the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires,” Oppenheimer wrote after Nisman’s death.

Journalist who reported Nisman's death lands in Israel

Damian Pachter, who first reported the story about the mysterious death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman and fled the country out of "fear for his life", has landed in Israel where he hopes to find safe haven.
"I came to Israel because I am an Israeli citizen I lived here the most important years of my life and this is a place where I feel safe," Pachter said Sunday after landing in Israel.
"I left because the Argentinean government persuade me because of my news report regarding the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman who died in unresolved way last week, so I was the first who report on that and now I am kind of suffering the consequences of that," he said.

Interview with Damian Pachter (h/t Yoel)

After accusing the Argentine Government of going after him for breaking a story about the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, journalist Damián Pachter talked to The Bubble from Israel.

Argentinean Jews Boycott Shoah Ceremony Over Iran

The official Argentine Jewish community is planning to boycott the country's official Holocaust commemoration. The state ceremonies will be held on Tuesday, International Holocaust Day – and the Jews of Argentina will hold their own separate memorial ceremony the same day.
The Jews are protesting the suspicious death – and subsequent investigation thereof – of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, as well as ties between Argentina and Iran.
The official memorial ceremony happens to mark two years since Argentina and Iran signed an agreement to establish a “truth commission” into the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center back in 1994 that left 85 dead and hundreds wounded.
It is widely believed that Iran was actually behind the bombing, and that top Argentinean government officials attempted to stymie investigations to this effect – so as not to stymie negotiations for a favorable oil deal with Iran.

The convergence of the idiots

Egypt's El Badil newspaper regularly quotes fringe Western websites for "news." They will write articles based on "reporting" from sites like Global Research on bizarre conspiracy theories.

One of their favorite sources in Veteran's Today. Today El Badil published an article from VT about how Jews control all the major media in the US that came from that site. The article ends with a quote from a "Rabbi Reichhorn" in Prague in 1869, where he supposedly gave a proto-Protocols address at a funeral describing the Jewish strategy to control the world.

I haven't looked at Veteran's Today in a while, and besides its crazed antisemitic articles, it also continues to expand 9/11 "truther" rhetoric:

It is now known beyond any reasonable question that the 9-11-01 nuclear attack on America was an “Inside-job”, a Gladio-style false-Flag attack on America.

What this means is that this attack was no surprise attack at all and was done with the help of some high ranking US Officials in the Administration, JCS, USAF, NORAD, the FAA and the local NYC government officials.

false-flag1 (2)It is also known that the individuals responsible for planning and executing this attack included PNACers, Top NeoCons, the President and the Vice-President and the Secretary of the Department of Defense, Several top JCS, USAF, NORAD and FAA, some Top Directors of AIPAC, and numerous American-Israeli ‘Israeli-first” Dual Citizens and Israeli Intel.

Not only that, but VT reports that the moon landings were fake!

So it is a natural fit for Arab media to quote fringe Western media (something Iran's PressTV has been doing for years.)

One more interesting fact about El Badil: Human Rights Watch quotes them uncritically. Maybe the report that HRW quoted from El Badil was accurate and maybe not, but there is no indication that HRW did any independent fact checking as they quoted a newspaper that consistently reports on antisemitic conspiracy theories.

RyanAir's route map eliminates border between Israel and Jordan

RyanAir is a low-cost Irish airline. While it doesn't serve the Middle East, it shows a route map that includes the countries of the region.

The colors are a little muted so it is hard to see the borders:

But with a little color editing, we see something interesting:

There is no border between Israel, Jordan and the territories, even including Gaza.

Now, it is possible that RyanAir is mimicking the maps of Eretz Yisrael that the Irgun used to circulate before 1948, that included the entire original area of "Palestine" that was envisioned in the Balfour Declaration before the first partition:

Somehow, I doubt it. But it might be fun to start that rumor that the airline supports a very expansive vision of Greater Israel. After all, why should the Zionists be the only ones paranoid about maps on websites?

My guess is that RyanAir just didn't want to worry about upsetting people which would happen no matter what borders they drew, so they just decided to purposefully not draw a border altogether.

They cannot be accused of being anti-Israel; their CEO stated last August that he intends not only to add a Tel Aviv route but to make Israel a regional hub.

(h/t Johnny)

Gaza minister ends boycott of Israeli products that never existed

A bizarre article in Ma'an:

Gaza's Ministry of Economy said Sunday that it would allow the entry of Israeli products into the Gaza Strip for the first time in five years.

Imad al-Baz, assistant deputy of the ministry, said soft drinks, clothes, coffee, and other Israeli goods would be allowed into the Strip.

"The last war led to the destruction of thousands of factories, which affected the production power (in Gaza), and to fill that gap we decided to allow Zionist products in," al-Baz said.

"The war damaged the production ability of factories and the nature and quality of the product, because some raw materials are not allowed in" due to the blockade.

"We decided to allow (Israeli) products to enter so that the market is not hindered and so products are available," al-Baz added.

But Israeli consumer products have been seen in Gaza continuously over the past five years.

Since a photo essay that I published in 2011 that showed everything from Israeli snacks by Osem to Chanukah gelt being sold, that same Metro Market in Gaza City has featured many Israeli items on its Facebook page.

Corn Flakes in 2012:

Chicken in 2013:

Ice cream and Krembo in 2014:

Laundry detergent in 2015:

Here is a 2012 video showing how many goods are able to enter Gaza and into this supermarket (including Israeli products):

So unless Gaza officials are loosening their restrictions on specific Israeli product categories that had been not allowed into Gaza (I wonder what Gisha thinks of that,) I don't understand what this announcement is about. There is no reason why coffee and clothing and soft drinks cannot be imported via Europe through Kerem Shalom while keeping Gaza clean of those Zionist products.

Another remarkable coincidence!

Last month, I noted that Gisha, the Israeli NGO that pretends to care about freedom of movement of people and goods to and from Gaza, had never said anything bad about Hamas.

This even though Hamas was routinely stymieing movement to and from Gaza, which is exactly what Gisha supposedly cares about. Specifically, I noted a widely reported story of how Hamas didn't allow some 37 orphans to leave Gaza to go to Israel, which Israel gave approval for.

I noted that Gisha, funded from European dollars, was taking an interesting position by ignoring Hamas violations of freedom of movement while concentrating on Israeli and (to a lesser extent) Egyptian restrictions.

Lo and behold, two days after I wrote my article, Gisha wrote its first extraordinarily mild scolding of Hamas for this same story. Although it couched it as a minor infraction compared to Israeli restrictions, Gisha reluctantly wrote:

According to the most recent data released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 43.2% of Gaza residents are children under the age of 14, which is slightly more than 750,000 children. Around 1,500 of them are newly orphaned since the fighting last summer. Hamas’s decision prevented 37 of them from receiving a rare opportunity to leave the Gaza Strip, since Israel allows Palestinians to exit only if they meet a strict set of criteria. Most Palestinians who receive approval to exit are medical patients and those accompanying them, merchants and a handful of “exceptional humanitarian cases”. Given this, it’s unfortunate that Hamas officials also obstruct travel for political reasons.

"Unfortunate!" Oooh, that must have hurt! But it is important to protect your funding sources, and we cannot have European governments asking uncomfortable questions about why Gisha refuses to ever say anything bad about Hamas. Better to write the barest minimum possible against Hamas so if anyone does ask a question, Gisha can answer, "Look! See? We did it! We're objective! Please keep our funding going!"

Sheer coincidence that the first negative thing Gisha seems to have ever written on its own about Hamas (not quoting other sources) happened right after I pointed this out.

Hamas leader says "No Jew will ever enter Gaza"

Mahmoud Zahar gave a speech on Friday night, during a memorial for Hamas "martyrs" killed last year during Operation Protective Edge. It was widely published in Arabic media.

During the speech, after assuring families of the dead terrorists that Hamas will do everything necessary to "unconditionally liberate the land of Palestine," Zahar said that Gaza "would remain defiant of the Jews, and no Jew would ever enter it, whatever it costs us. "

Zahar forgot the rule to pretend that this has nothing to do with Jews and to always use the word "Zionists" as a substitute, even when referring to how evil "Zionists" have been for 3000 years.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Comic artists invoke Charlie Hebdo to support those who HATE freedom of speech

From JTA:

Dozens of comics artists signed a letter calling for a boycott against any Israeli entity that does not “promote freedom and justice for Palestinians.”

The open letter, cosigned by more than 80 individuals involved in producing comics, was sent out Wednesday to the organizers of an international festival for comics artists scheduled to open next week in France, and which is cosponsored by the Israeli company Sodastream.

In the letter, the authors wrote that they call for the Angoulême International Comics Festival to sever all ties with Sodastream, which has a factory in Ma’aleh Adumim – an Israeli settlement regarded internationally as illegal because it is situated in the West Bank.

Here is their open letter:

Statement of solidarity:

We want to express our grief and outrage at the slaying of five cartoonists, Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, Charb, among many others, at the Charlie Hebdo offices. These horrific acts of violence compel us to act even more urgently for a world where the dignity, freedom, and equality of all people are respected and promoted. We reaffirm that the Palestinian boycott movement is one important step towards that vision, and we hope that you will continue to join us in this movement.

Here are Palestinian Arabs in Ramallah and Jerusalem protesting against Charlie Hebdo's freedom of speech:

Palestinian Arab cartoonists also came out against Charlie Hebdo's freedom of speech. So did the Union of Palestinian Clerics in Gaza. So did the Greek Orthodox archibishop in Jerusalem. So did a group of Gazans who proudly screamed outside the French Cultural Center, "Leave Gaza, you French, or we will slaughter you by cutting your throats."

These are the people who the cartoonists want to show solidarity with.

In fact, you will not find a single rally in support of freedom of speech for Charlie Hebdo in all of the Palestinian Arab territories.

So how exactly do these cartoonists think that solidarity with people who are uniformly against freedom of speech is somehow a tribute to the memory of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who literally died upholding that principle?

Not to mention that the PLO was behind the murder of the most iconic Palestinian cartoonist, for lampooning Arafat's girlfriend!

Logic is not exactly the strong point for these cartoonists. They make it clear that it is Israel - not the "occupation," but Israel - that they are against:

Today, the Sodastream company proudly boasts of its factory’s location in the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, which makes it complicit in the crime of military occupation. However, even if Sodastream, thanks in part to the pressure campaign launched last year, moved its manufacturing to the Negev (where Palestinian Bedouins are facing eviction from their ancestral lands by Israeli government’s Prawer Plan) it, and other Israeli companies and institutions, are part of a system built on the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities and sustained through racism and discrimination. It, and other Israeli companies, contribute to the economy of a state which conducted a brutal military assault against a civilian population in Gaza in the summer of 2014, resulting in over 2,100 deaths, including over 500 children.

Facts are also not exactly one of these cartoonists' strengths, as this paragraph shows. (Sodastream treats their Arab employees exactly like their Jewish employees; the Prawer plan has never been approved, the Gaza war was not against a"civilian population"....)

But bigotry against Jews, and only Jews, having the right to self-determination is clearly a major part of their agenda, all in the name of being against discrimination!

Their hypocrisy doesn't end there. Some of the cartoonists signing this letter would be jailed or lynched if they tried to publish their works in the Palestinian Arab territories. One of them draws what would be considered lesbian pornography (NSFW).

But their thought processes cannot go beyond the simplistic "We are against murdering cartoonists. We are against the only state in the region who wouldn't murder cartoonists. Therefore, the two positions must be consistent, evidence be damned."

(h/t Yenta and Ian)

Hasby Award for Best Watchdog - Arabic Media and NGOs

The Hasby Award nominees for Best Watchdog - Arabic Media and NGOs are:

MEMRI

NGO Monitor

UN Watch

Again, even though there were only three nominees, it was a very hard category.

And the winner of the Hasby is....

01/25 Links: France most dangerous for Jews; Official PA paper: Israel behind terror attacks in France

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Try ‘and’ instead of ‘but’ and you’ll find that America and Israel are not to blame for all the world’s atrocities

And so it has been these past few shameful weeks with the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Little by little, day by day, the “But Brigade” has turned its monosyllabic screw until the cartoonists become complicit in their own demise and their murder appals us a little less. Yes the requisite noises are made – free speech non-negotiable blah blah – but the “butters” are quick to invoke instances where we do negotiate it: anti-Semites removed from their positions, for example, anti-Semites not allowed to speak what’s on their minds. Funny how it’s always the freedom to be an anti-Semite the “But Brigade” protects. And finally, in justification of murder, the issue of provocation is wheeled out, though the concept of “asking for it” would not be entertained for a second if the crime were rape.
Pace the Papa, he who insults my mother might deserve a stern rebuke, but not with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs. Nor does being rude to someone’s ma equate to criticising his beliefs. I thought we had long ago decided we are all fair game when it comes to the gods we choose to revere, whereas our mothers, like the colour of our skin, we are given. If the Pope has a vested interest in protecting religion from scrutiny, so does the “But Brigade” have a vested interest in drawing attention away from any atrocity that isn’t perpetrated by Americans or Israelis. Except that there isn’t any atrocity which isn’t perpetrated by Americans or Israelis, for who else is ever on the end of the chain of repercussion, extenuation and blame that begins with that malignant “but”?

Douglas Murray: I don’t want to live under Islamic blasphemy law. That doesn’t make me racist

But let us take a strain from this strained idea and pretend that Muslims constitute a tiny put-upon sect in France and Western Europe, and that for this reason anything which transgresses Islamic blasphemy laws must be recognised as the big guys (cartoonists) beating up the little guys (tens of millions of Muslims). If it is the minority component that is the issue then let us transfer this to a country where Islam does not constitute a minority. Saudi Arabia, say. Or Iran. Or Pakistan. What if a free-thinker were to publish a cartoon of Mohammed there? Would that be Myriam’s and Mehdi’s kind of satire? I cannot help thinking that they and all the other ‘context of these cartoons’ complainers would feel no happier about a drawing of Mohammed done in Mecca, Tehran or Islamabad than one drawn in Copenhagen or Paris. In the same way I can see them being little happier about free Western non-Muslims ‘insulting’ Mohammed if they also did this alongside making more jokes about the Holocaust.
Incidentally the Holocaust detour is a particularly fascinating one. Disturbing too, because it is surprising how many Muslims in particular have in recent weeks responded to drawings of Mohammed with the cry ‘But you can’t draw cartoons that upset the Jews or joke about the Holocaust.’ In saying this they not only confuse denial, diminishment or praise of the murder of six million Jews within living memory with a stick drawing of someone subsequently called ‘Mohammed’. They also give something away. Because although I am sure that Mehdi, Myriam et al are far too moderate to wish to start taunting Jews about the Holocaust, I cannot forget all those banners at anti-Israel parades in Britain where, for instance, the banners say ‘Stop the Holocaust in Gaza’ and so on. And I cannot help thinking that here too the selection of the Holocaust or Jews as the comparison is a little more revealing, or insinuating, than the speakers intend it to be. ‘Taunt my prophet and I’ll taunt your dead family’ is an interesting argument. But after the last couple of weeks I have come to the conclusion that there are more people than I had previously thought who wish to really get stuck in on the Jews and the Holocaust once they get the chance.
But like most other arguments against Charlie Hebdo in recent weeks what this boils down to is a scramble for a justification for why Islamic blasphemy law must be observed even in Western Europe.

Fatah statement urges ‘resistance’ to IDF, settlers

In a statement published on Fatah’s official website, the movement’s West Bank branch lambasted Israel’s decision to withhold tax revenue from the PA in the wake of the Palestinian UN bid, dubbing it an act of “theft” that “deprives our people of their daily bread.”
Fatah pledged its support for Abbas’s international attempt to isolate Israel, calling for “an escalation of popular resistance against occupation forces and settlers.”
Abbas has publicly criticized the armed intifada, or uprising, against Israeli civilians, but has endorsed “popular resistance” consisting of large-scale rallies, processions, and the boycotting of settlement products.
The new statement appeared to legitimize physical attacks against IDF soldiers and Israelis living in the West Bank, which have dramatically increased in recent months.

Reporter who broke news of Nisman’s death is on his way to Israel

Damian Pachter of the English-language Buenos Aires Herald left the country Saturday, the local journalism group Foro de Periodismo Argentino said.
Pachter told The Times of Israel on Sunday afternoon that he is on his way to Israel. Haaretz reported earlier that he is “planning to take refuge” in the country.
Pachter, who is Jewish and has Israeli citizenship, told a local internet site that “I left because my life was in danger. My phones were being monitored. I intend to return to Argentina when my sources tell me conditions have changed. I don’t think that will happen in the term of this government.”
The Buenos Aires journalism group said Pachter reported on Friday he was followed by unknown people and felt his safety was at risk but did not elaborate. (h/t Yenta Press)

Those of you who follow my writings or Jon Haber's blog, Divest this!, know that we have been conversing about Israel, the western-left, and the Obama administration for a number of months.

I don't want to call it a debate so much as a conversation between people with somewhat differing views, but with mutual concerns. A list of each of our contributions can be found toward the top of the right side bar at Israel Thrives.

My fundamental argument is that the Obama administration validated political Islam through supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of both Qaeda and Hamas and if not a parent organization of the Islamic State, certainly an ideological partner in praying for the extinction of Jewish sovereignty and self-defense.

While Jon agrees that I am not a political partisan, and we both understand that partisanship is not automatically a reprehensible thing, he also acknowledges that the Obama administration has been far too friendly to the enemies of the Jewish people.

In his recent piece entitled Partisanship, Haber writes:

But there is no disagreement that the current President’s choices: from cutting endless slack to Islamist foes of both Israel and the US to picking needless fights with the Israeli government, make it a perfectly reasonable choice for Jews who support Israel (which describes the majority of us) to refuse to vote for him.

According to Haber, Obama gave "endless slack to Islamist foes."

At this point it becomes difficult to know where we actually disagree.

At the end of the day, that is my fundamental point. It is my thesis in a nutshell, although we would need to determine just where slack ended and support began?

Jon, however, takes issue with the fact that I have sometimes characterized progressive-left Jews as people with their heads buried in the sand.

I must admit that Jon is correct and that I have resorted to my favorite ostrich image more than once.

I did so particularly in my Failures of the Progressive-Left Zionism series.

In those writings, I criticized the Jewish Left for refusing to seriously denounce political Islam.

I criticized the Jewish Left for demonizing their fellow Jews who live where neither Mahmoud Abbas, nor Barack Obama, want them to live.

I criticized the Jewish Left for constantly playing political defense, which is always an invitation for aggressors and a general sign of insecurity within one's own beliefs.

I criticized the Jewish Left for tending to support their enemies over their friends out of a misguided and self-righteous political altruism.

These are not in-depth pieces, but merely pointers to problems. That is all.

And, in truth, there are other reasonable criticisms that I am not even bothering with for the moment on the assumption that liberal Jews, such as myself, are rethinking - just as we are all continually rethinking - as political sands shift.

My only real discomfort with Jon's analysis is that he chalks up Jewish American support for Barack Obama, despite Obama's alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, to the fact that American Jews preferred Obama over his opponent on a broad range of issues beyond the Arab-Israel conflict.

While this is clearly true, why be content to leave it at that?

Haber writes:

Jews (like all Americans) were not casting a vote on each and every issue of importance to them, but were rather making a narrow choice between two individuals. And had the Republican candidate been more appealing in ways having nothing to do with Israel and the Middle East (as was Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984), who knows how the Jewish vote might have gone?

Even if I don’t expect to ever see a total party realignment of the Jewish public, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Jews voted for Obama for the same reasons the majority of Americans did: they liked him better than the other guy.

We know that the Obama administration supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a variety of ways, including material and financial support. We also know that the Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda, if not the Islamic State, itself. The Brotherhood backed the Nazis during World War II and assisted many Nazis and friends of Nazis, such as Haj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini, in escaping the consequences of their behavior upon the conclusion of that war. In recent years Brotherhood leader, and ex-President of Egypt, Muhammad Morsi, supported calls for the conquest of Jerusalem among throngs of his supporters, both before and after his "election" and still maintained Obama administration support.

I do not know about you, but as someone who voted for Obama the first time around, I was absolutely horrified.

There is no question that Jon is correct when he notes that the majority of American Jews simply liked Obama more than the other guy. I, too, like Obama - as a guy to have a beer with - more than that other guy. Furthermore, on many domestic issues I very much prefer the Democratic agenda over that of the Republican agenda.

But however much I support a woman's right to choose an abortion, or however much I like Obama's idea for federal support to community college students, none of that can possibly outweigh my concern for the fact that there are 6 million Jews in the Middle East surrounded by 400 million Arabs who generally do not want them there and are often prepared to use extreme violence to make their case.

This is what I cannot get past.

The chance of any Republican administration in the United States rolling back abortion rights are virtually nil, yet such concerns are supposed to trump our concern for our own families in Israel?

I do not think so.

It seems to me that diaspora Jewry, as a group, tends to be very good about looking out for the well-being of others. For example, no other group in American history, aside from the Black American community, stood up more for Civil Rights during the 1950s and the 1960s than did Jewish Americans... although, I am not certain that you would learn this from the recent film Selma, which I am very much looking forward to renting.

In the United States, the Jewish people were almost universally behind abolitionism and nineteenth-century American progressivism, with its workers' solidarity and early union activity. By inordinate percentages Jews favored women's rights to suffrage, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, Women's Rights, GBLT, environmentalism, and the rights of all ethnic minorities to equal treatment under the law.

We are among the most persecuted people within record human history and this is precisely why we tend to support movements for social justice.

But...

There must come a point wherein a violent and ongoing threat to the Jewish community becomes a primary concern.

My question is this:

In what ways do Obama administration support for political Islam, via support for the Muslim Brotherhood, advance the interests of either the American people or the Jewish people?

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.