A sculpture in the Beirut of three squares intersecting was removed by the governor of the city - because if viewed from one angle, it looked like a Star of David.
The sculpture had been there for over a year. Apparently someone noticed the optical illusion only recently, complained, and the dysfunctional Beirut government swung into action to remove the suddenly highly offensive object.
Nah, they aren't antisemitic!
I once made a poster that used that same illusion to create a 3-D Israeli flag.
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Daniel Sonabend’s book ‘We Fight Fascists’ charts the rise of the 43 Group, which fought Oswald Mosley and others with fisticuffs, showing Jews would not accept post-WWII bigotry - Hairdresser Vidal Sassoon was known to fight with scissors
Six months after the end of World War II, Britain’s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, attended a Christmas party. He was given a rapturous reception by 1,000 stalwart supporters — complete with raised-arm salutes. Despite the defeat of the Third Reich which he had so admired, Mosley remained convinced that Britain’s fascist moment was still to come.
But the former head of the British Union of Fascists would also face a group of equally committed opponents — mainly Jewish ex-servicemen who fought, spied upon and, ultimately, helped to defeat, Mosley’s much hoped-for return to the political stage.
As Daniel Sonabend brilliantly captures in his new book, “We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-war Britain,” this was a tale of often bloody, and occasionally terrifying “organized chaos.”
In the aftermath of the Allied victory, Mosley initially ordered most of his supporters to keep their heads down. In a bid for respectability, and to help maintain and grow fascist networks, he urged them to form local book clubs and cultural societies. On no account were they to mention the Jews.
Many, though, were unable to contain their enthusiasm for their lost cause. With the lifting of various wartime regulations, a plethora of fascist organizations — deeply antagonistic towards one another but united in their hatred of Jews — began to spring up.
When the exit poll figures were released at exactly 22:00 Jews across the United Kingdom were jumping for joy & relief that the threat posed to them by the prospect of a hard left, antisemitic Prime Minister had been averted.
There is no anti-British, anti-Western cause Corbyn hasn’t adopted. Throughout his career he has expressed support for the IRA, Colonel Gaddafi, Yassir Arafat, Hamas, Hizbollah, the USSR, a plethora of antisemitic individuals ranging from the self hating Paul Eisen to blood libel invoking Raed Salah. There is no podium too extreme for him to stand on, there is no person too odious for him to call his friend.
The rise of Corbyn heralded a rise in Jew hatred in Labour. Jewish members, regardless of their seniority, were hounded out.
That didn’t mean they sat in silence impotent to control their own fate. On the contrary.
From at least three submissions to the European Human Rights Commission on the institutional nature of Labour’s antisemitism to an unprecedented expression of concern by the Chief Rabbi & a demonstration in Parliament Sq the Jewish people fought the injustices perpetrated against them on the streets, in social media, in the corridors of power.
The Jews of Britain fought antisemites wherever they found them.
On the last night of the election campaign Jews went to East London, to the site of the Labour Party’s final campaign event, to make sure their most hardcore activists were confronted by the people who refused to become victims of a Labour government.
On 5th December, BBC Newsround published a page titled ‘Christmas trees from around the world.’ If the BBC take it down, the page is archived. It was published on their Newsround pages and is explicitly targeted at children. The item is intended to raise the Christmas spirit and brings images of impressive Christmas trees across the world. So far, so good.
Until you look at the page. I have a radar for anti-Israel activism and propaganda. To analyse articles and work out which ones are subtly twisted by a journalist who wants to weave their personal dislike of the Jewish state into the words on the page. On many occasions that bias is subtle and can even be expertly hidden. Rarely are these people caught with their trousers so firmly down around their ankles as with this particular BBC page. Outside of the world of a petty anti-Israel activist deliberately writing a piece of Palestinian propaganda fit for a Hamas PR unit – this BBC article makes absolutely no sense.
How many impressive Christmas trees are there in the world? The BBC webpage published 10 days ago managed to find seven. Just seven. The page hasn’t been updated since and there are still seven trees. The BBC found impressive trees in Vilnius, New York, Gaza, Prague, California, Ramallah, and Bethlehem.
BBC Christmas treesThree trees in PA/Hamas areas. Three. This is not education – this is blatant propaganda. Even the Arab outlet ‘Gulf News’ wouldn’t publish such a piece. They found other images from Dortmund, Strasbourg and the Vatican – cities with Christmas trees that for whatever reason – the BBC just couldn’t find.
On December 5th the BBC’s ‘Newsround’ website – which is aimed at children aged 6 to 12 – published a photo feature titled “Christmas trees from around the world”: “It’s December so that means it’s almost Christmas! And of course it also means festive firs are being put up all over the world. Here are some of the best ones from 2019 so far.”
The item features seven captioned photographs taken in various locations: Lithuania, New York, Gaza, Prague, Ramallah, California and Bethlehem. In other words, three out of the seven images (42.8%) portray Christmas trees in areas ruled by either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.
Moreover, the caption to the fifth image reads: “Another great display in Palestine! Fireworks lit up the sky as Ramallah switched on the lights for their giant Christmas tree.”
That wording obviously suggests to readers that both Gaza (referring to a previous photo) and Ramallah are located in a country called Palestine.
The Israel in Arabic social media continues to upset Arab media, as it once again has shown a short clip made by an Israeli visiting Kuwait (probably under a different passport) showing his kippah and tefillin bag used for prayer in the hotel and then panning to the iconic Kuwait Towers.
قام احد الاسرائيليين بزيارة الكويت ونشر هذا الفيديو، مصطحبا معه عدد من أدواته الدينية اللازمة للصلاة pic.twitter.com/uRALUIJrmX
Erem News says Kuwaiti security authorities began an investigation, some saying that the Israeli "may have entered the country with a foreign passport."
Israel in Arabic is doing an amazing job in normalizing the idea of Jews and Israelis in Arab countries. Not only does it have a large number of Arab followers, but every time it publishes a video like this is gains huge coverage in mainstream Arab media - and eventually the idea of Jews in Arab countries will not be considered such a big deal because of that very coverage.
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As I have been reporting for many weeks, Palestinian leaders have been using Mahmoud Abbas' promise of new elections at the UN as a pretense to ask the world to pressure Israel to allow Arabs in Jerusalem to participate in the elections.
This past week Palestinian prime minister Shtayyeh met with representatives of the German Green Party and the director of the Middle East and North Africa Department at the British Foreign Office, where he said, "We cannot accept any situation in which elections are prevented in Jerusalem just like any of the Palestinian cities and governorates. Holding elections in Jerusalem is a national and political priority and not holding them means dedicating their separation from the rest of the Palestinian components."
Ma'an's editor wrote an article about the importance of elections in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has formally requested that Israel allow elections in Jerusalem, and has not received a response - and might not until Israel forms a government, he fears.
In the past, Israel banned any campaigning in Jerusalem altogether. For previous elections, Israel allowed ballot boxes to be placed in post offices in some Arab areas of Jerusalem, where they were transported to the PA-administered territories afterwards and counted. This way Israel considered them to be absentee ballots and Palestinians can claim that Jerusalem Arabs were allowed to vote. But this time the push seems to be to allow full campaigning and polling places, something the current Israeli government would not allow - but the PA loves to use the international community, especially Europeans, to pressure Israel on Jerusalem in any way possible.
I am still skeptical that any elections will ever take place, but the pressure on Israel will exist whether they do or not - and, as we have seen, that is a major goal of the elections farce to begin with.
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At the conference, Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh claimed that the Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites.
There is no historic evidence of this claim. But Shtayyeh seems to know this, because at the same time he said that this is a war of "narratives."
"We launched this conference because Israel is waging a systematic war against us. Of all those wars - geography, demography, water and money - the most dangerous is the war of the narratives."
Shtayyeh continued, "All the excavations under the Aqsa Mosque, the settlers' attacks on the Ibrahimi Mosque [Cave of the Patriarchs], Joseph's Tomb, and the enactment of the Law of Nationalism all relate to the war of the narratives."
In other words, the entire purpose of the conference was to push the fiction that Palestinians are Canaanites, because even the Torah admits that the land was Canaanite before the Israelites conquered it. Identifying as Canaanite allows Palestinians to claim that not only were they there before the Jews, but that the Jews had expelled them thousands of years ago.
Even more absurdly, Shtayyeh claimed that the modern Palestinians still worshiped Baal as their alleged ancestors did: "Baal was the most important god among the Canaanites, and we to this day call on his name when we pray for water for the land which is watered from rain water."
Worshipers of Baal were known for other things he might not wish to be associated with.
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Among shallow, tunnel-visioned Corbyn supporters, the Chief Rabbi’s plea not to vote for Corbyn merely served to identify British Jews with the Conservatives and therefore with right-wing capitalism.
But the northern working-class was having none of that. For them, the antisemitism scandal confirmed their view that the Jews were the potential victims of bad forces within the Muslim world just like them, and were also the victims of those trying to silence such concerns by claims of “Islamophobia”.
In fact, these decent working people would doubtless be baffled to learn that most British Jews are on the other side of that particular issue. Its leaders grotesquely equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, and hardly breathe a word about Muslim antisemitism.
And most British Jews voted Remain. For although the Jewish community has mostly voted Conservative since the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, it also mostly subscribes to liberal universalist principles that seek to erase national borders because it believes that affinity to the nation-state creates nationalism and antisemitism.
Such British Jews thus deny the facts staring them in the face and which have caused them so much fear and grief: that liberal universalists are now the principal incubators of antisemitism.
The seismic shift at this election may herald a realignment of British politics along the lines envisaged by the thinking known as “Blue Labour”.
This embodies the insight that working-class communities have always been innately small-c conservatives deeply attached to traditional values. Consequently, Blue Labour stresses personal responsibility and attachments to family, community and nation. And of course, these are at root Jewish values – the very ones that have been under assault from liberal universalists for decades.
Corbyn has been defeated. That danger has now passed. But the antisemitism remains; and the culture war over the soul of Britain and the west goes on.
Don’t take my word for it; take that of Sanders’s own surrogates. Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of Sanders’s most visible endorsers with whom the senator frequently shares the stage, has apologized for some of what she’s admitted were anti-Semitic remarks. Or, if that’s not good enough, take the Democratic Party’s verdict. Those anti-Jewish slights for which Omar declined to show remorse had been targeted by her fellow caucus members for censure before a revolt of the party’s progressives and Black Caucus Members scuttled the initiative.
Amid the failed Democratic effort to condemn Omar, Sanders’s foreign-policy adviser, Matt Duss, attacked the maneuver as one purely designed to “police criticism of Israel.” It is worth recalling that the remark Duss considers scrutiny of Israel was Omar’s claim that pro-Israel lawmakers exhibit an “allegiance to a foreign country.”
Duss joins Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, as two of the more prominent members of the Sanders team who have been implicated in the propagation of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In 2012, when Duss served as the Center for American Progress’ Middle East director and Shakir edited the organization’s blog, Think Progress, the institution’s writers were accused of drafting statements that groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center regard as indicative of anti-Jewish bias.
Another Sanders endorser and surrogate on the stump, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, is similarly implicated in blurring the lines between opposition to Israel and anti-Semitism. The congresswoman has made absurd and callous claims about the Holocaust, shared anti-Semitic artwork online, approvingly compared the often anti-Semitic (according to the ADL) Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement to the Boston Tea Party, and blamed the massacre of Jews at a Jersey City kosher market on “white supremacy” (the alleged perpetrators killers in fact associated with the hate group Black Hebrew Israelites).
Sanders may be insulated from the charge that he shares these suspicious sentiments because he is Jewish, but this clear pattern raises some disturbing questions. It is incumbent on the press to ask them. To at least a degree, Sanders clearly evinces some of Corbyn’s instincts on policy, but his affiliations suggest a similar tolerance for the radical left’s occasionally anti-Semitic indulgences.
Sanders stands a good chance of winning his party’s presidential nomination, and any major-party nominee can win the White House. If the Democratic Party is on the verge of succumbing to the same sordid temptations that consumed the Labour Party, the public deserves a full understanding of all that would entail. In that event, the abolition of private health insurance might be the least of our worries.
The same day Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was going down to defeat in Great Britain — in part due to his party’s uncomfortably close relationship with anti-Semitism — an American Jewish group became the latest to demand Corbyn’s ally Sen. Bernie Sanders disavow his anti-Semitic surrogates and supporters in the 2020 presidential campaign.
In recent days, two Jewish organizations publicly condemned Sen. Bernie Sanders’ association with two different campaign surrogates accused of anti-Semitism, the latest in a series of controversies involving bigotry by Bernie supporters.
Sanders’ troubles began Thursday with a statement from J’accuse Coalition for Justice, a think tank dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, over Sanders’ decision to campaign with notorious anti-Semitic congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in the key primary state of New Hampshire.
“Given the critical role New Hampshire plays in shaping our presidential elections, Democratic primary voters have an obligation to hold Senator Bernie Sanders accountable for the people he associates with his campaign,” Executive director Zach Schapira told InsideSources. “Now, in the immediate aftermath of the most recent anti-Semitic attack in Jersey City, it feels particularly insensitive for him to choose to appear alongside someone who has had a troubled history with anti-Semitism.”
A day earlier, the American Jewish Congress released a letter urging the Vermont senator to stop using anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate as well. Sarsour, who the group describes as having “a long history of flagrant anti-Semitism and hatred for the State of Israel,” campaigns for Sanders.
One, prompted by the truly offensive New York Times article that said initially that the law would define Jews as a separate nationality, is that somehow regarding Jews as "Jewish Americans" deserving of special protection is a step on the way to taking citizenship away from Jews. This was absurd from the start - are Korean Americans, protected from discrimination under Title VI, considered less than American?
Yet the NYT now reports on the "controversy" over the law based on its own inaccuracy:
In Chicago, Rabbi Hara Person, the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, saw the president’s action and worried. ...
“Not to overdramatize, but it feels dangerous,” she said. “I’ve heard people say this feels like the first step toward us wearing yellow stars.”
Even two days after the NYT report was found to be an example of poor reporting, critics are citing the article as the truth, and not the text of the executive order itself.
The second criticism of the EO is based on its supposed potential to suppress free speech. Supposedly, since it says that schools should consider the IHRA definition of antisemitism when deciding whether someone is being discriminated against, critics claim that the order is an assault on free speech.
But if you read the actual text of the EO, it explicitly says the opposite:
[A]gencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment. As with all other Title VI complaints, the inquiry into whether a particular act constitutes discrimination prohibited by Title VI will require a detailed analysis of the allegations.
Title VI protects students (and others who receive government funds) from discrimination. Only when speech becomes harassment does that become an issue. And this is an issue under the existing Title VI with respect to racist and xenophobic harassment already. Why is putting antisemitism on the same level as racism a problem? Those who are complaining, whether they realize it or not, are arguing that Jews do not deserve the protections that other minorities have on campus.
Isn't that antisemitic?
Law professor David Bernstein discusses the third criticism of the EO, and notes the hypocrisy of those who advance that argument.
There is a separate, more sophisticated argument: that college administrators will proactively suppress constitutionally protected speech for fear of "hostile environment" liability. But as I noted elsewhere, there's nothing in the EO that remotely suggests colleges do this, and if colleges react in that way to hostile environment law, it's not the least bit unique to Jews; they could equally suppress, say, speech about affirmative action for fear of creating a hostile environment for blacks, or about abortion for women, etc.
In other words, if that's the problem, the problem is not with the EO, which doesn't address hostile environment law at all, but with the long shadow on speech cast by hostile environment law, and it's hostile environment law, not the EO, that needs to be addressed.
There are also those who want hostile environment law to suppress speech, but only speech leftists abhor, which doesn't include genocidal speech about Israel. Such individuals of course oppose the EO, but their claim that it's because they care about free speech is disingenous.
Rather, they see the possibility that hostile environment law will apply to some anti-Israel speech as a barrier to their goal, which is to use that law to suppress other speech.
Indeed. The people who are the most vocal about the EO are those who support those who routinely shut down pro-Israel speech and events on campus. If anyone is chilling free speech, it is anti-Zionists, not an executive order that notes that anti-Zionism is often a form of antisemitism.
One must wonder protecting Jews - or even "Zionists" - from discrimination is a bad thing. And the only reason that makes sense is that some people want to take away the rights of Jews and Zionists on campus and elsewhere.
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The royal host of the American Jewish establishment hissed that in speaking thus, Trump reinforced the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews love money.
Such twaddle.
As he said, Trump was addressing his fellow real estate developers in the crowd. He was talking to them as his competitors, not as his enemies. When he said, "You’re brutal killers" he was paying them a compliment. They understood, which is why they laughed.
Trump’s claim that they would vote for him even if they didn’t like him because they feared the Democrats’ confiscatory tax policies is his standard line on Democratic tax policy. He says it to everyone, not just to Jews. The audience knew this too – which is why they laughed and applauded.
The Jewish establishment types joined the bandwagon and agreed Trump’s playful, friendly statement was anti-Semitic because they want to believe Trump is an anti-Semite. If Trump is an anti-Semite then it’s reasonable for them to remain loyal to the Democratic party which, led by "the squad" is leaping towards the anti-Semitic cliff that Britain’s Labour Party jumped off when it elected Jeremy Corbyn its leader.
In other words, they slander Trump as an anti-Semite because they prefer their partisan interests to the interests of the Jewish community in America and the Jewish people throughout the world.
Luckily, as Trump’s consistent record of support for Israel and the Jews in America and worldwide and as his warmth for Jewish people makes clear, the President doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. And he won’t become an anti-Semite no matter how poorly the American Jewish establishment treats him.
Trump’s Jewish critics said he was trafficking in anti-Semitic "tropes" when he told the IAC, that in the U.S. "you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people – they don’t love Israel enough." But he was doing no such thing. He was telling the truth. Those Jewish people love neither Israel nor the children of Israel, the Jewish nation enough.
Thankfully, President Trump loves the Jews and Israel so much that he makes up for them.
This is an important start – but it’s not nearly enough, given how successful BDS has been in its efforts to spread antisemitism. Hatred of Jews is on the rise around the world, with more than 20% of Europeans claiming that Jews have too much influence in business, finance, media and politics, according to a recent CNN poll. France and Germany both reported marked increases in antisemitic attacks over the past year, and incidents closer to home – in San Diego this year, Pittsburgh last year and likely Jersey City this week – make clear that America has not been spared.
This rising tide of antisemitism is especially dangerous given the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors who have for decades acted as a bulwark against those who seek to propagate hatred of Jews. Without the evidence of our history – of the horrors that arise when antisemitism goes unchecked – we are liable to lose the knowledge and understanding of it as well. Once that is gone, it may not be recovered. Without it, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.
That’s why it is more important now than ever before to preserve Jewish heritage. As the chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, I’ve been tasked by President Trump with protecting historic sites of great significance to US citizens and particularly to members of the Jewish community and their ancestors.
Thankfully, the president has been a tireless advocate of the commission’s work. American heritage is inextricably linked to the tapestry of identities that make up the American experience, and with President Trump’s support we have been more active in preserving that heritage than ever before.
What has the situation for Jews in the United States come to if the president needs to issue an executive order to combat antisemitism?
Forget for a moment about all the backlash surrounding the executive order – and there has been an enormous amount, ranging from thoughtful, qualitative considerations of free speech and criticism of Israel, and babbling debate about whether Jews are a nation, race or religion, to absurd claims that its enactment marks the beginning of an ominous era aimed at seperating Jewish people out of the collective.
Instead, let’s focus on the facts. In 2019, nearly 75 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust – years in which American Jews experienced unprecedented freedom and opportunity and rose to become a hugely proactive force across all facets of American life – there is a remarkably frightening rise in violent antisemitism.
What is US President Donald Trump’s executive order? It directs the Justice Department and the Education Department to address discrimination cases against Jews under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which stipulates that discrimination on the basis of “race, color or national origin” is prohibited. It also adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which states that efforts to demonize, delegitimize or apply double standards to Israel are antisemitic.
President Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act - the law that bars federally funded programs from discriminating on the basis of "race, color, or national origin" - to combat anti-Semitism.
His interpretation of Title VI as applying to anti-Semitism is neither new nor troubling. The characterization of anti-Semitism as a form of racial or national-origin discrimination has a secure place in American law.
In 1982, after Shaare Tefila synagogue in Silver Spring, Md., was spray-painted with swastikas, Ku Klux Klan symbols and other anti-Semitic messages, the synagogue and several members responded by suing those who had vandalized their house of worship. The plaintiffs cited the Civil Rights Act, arguing that even though Jews are not a racially distinct group, the vandals viewed Jews as a distinct race and were motivated by racial animus. The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which voted unanimously in the synagogue's favor. Jewish groups cheered the ruling.
The Shaare Tefila case teaches that placing a group within a racial category for purposes of civil rights protection does not require us to endorse the idea that the group is racially distinct. Anti-Semitism can be racism for legal purposes even though Jewishness cannot be reduced to racial terms.
Jews do not fit neatly into categories of "race," "religion" and "national origin" that took their present shape millenniums after the Jewish people came into existence. The nuances of Jewish identity do not, however, shield Jews from attackers who see Jews as a nation apart. Jews can suffer national-origin discrimination regardless of whether Jewishness is a nationality.
The Education Department under President George W. Bush recognized that anti-Semitism could constitute racial or national-origin discrimination within Title VI's ambit. The Justice Department under President Obama reaffirmed that view. President Trump's executive order is consistent with those interpretations.
Joel Embiid had a phone call to make. The Sixers were shipping up to Boston, headed for a showdown with the second-place Celtics, but first the big man needed to clear his mind.
The night before, former NBA greats Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley had made headlines with their blistering critiques of Embiid’s performance during TNT’s broadcast of the Sixers win over the Nuggets. He wasn’t living up to his potential, they said. He was playing as if he was satisfied with being good, instead of yearning to be great. It was the sort of criticism that can dampen a soul: not doubt, or diminishment, but disappointment.
Then a funny thing happened. Embiid listened to their words and found himself agreeing. So instead of cursing or brooding, he picked up the phone. He dialed O’Neal’s number. He assured the Hall of Famer that he was not mad. And then he asked for advice.
“I just wanted to talk to him,” Embiid said. “I’ve been kind of frustrated. ... He was just telling me, ‘Be aggressive. You’re the guy. So just go out there and dominate.’ ”
Twenty-four hours later, that’s exactly what he did. In a 115-109 win over the Celtics on a frigid New England night, the player Embiid’s critics have been clamoring to see returned with a vengeance.
This 25 year old seven footer from Cameroon has more maturity than the entire British Left, it seems.
Embiid heard criticism, looked inside himself and found it to be valid, and worked on himself to fix the issue. That is called maturity.
Compare to how the British Left is acting today.
In the wake of the UK Labour Party drubbing at the polls, Jeremy Corbyn's fans are doing everything they can to blame everyone else but the party leader for his abysmal performance.
And it isn't only British fans of Corbyn:
Wow. French politician Melenchon blames the loss of Labour on “stupid accusations of antisemitism” brought up by chief rabbi and on “Likud Networks” - extreme party of Netanyahu. https://t.co/kG9MIezn7X
This is a side effect of how the Left views the world. To them, victimhood equals righteousness. Corbyn's loss isn't his fault - it is his critics who are the bad guys. He's an innocent victim.
The bigger the victim, the more they are considered to be right. It is absurd and illogical and it has brought many problems into the world, as too many people decide that being professional victims is the best way to go through life. (cough, cough, palestinians, cough.)
This explains Leftist antisemitism. Jews are generally successful and always want to improve. The exact opposite of the victims that the Left canonizes.
They have no self reflection. No sober accounting of one's faults. Being a victim is the best thing to be, and doing something to improve yourself takes you out of that wonderful, warm place where people can tell you how the people who beat you are terrible and you did nothing wrong.
They can learn a great deal from Joel Embiid.
Taking responsibility is something every child should be taught from birth. The Left in Britain, and seemingly the US as well, have forgotten that basic life lesson and blame everything on "the other" - Trump, Israel, "neocons," whatever.
And when people are dishonest about themselves, they are dishonest with everyone.
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The Left, increasingly, does not care about anti-Semitism.
That’s been true for a while— just look at the British Labour Party’s embrace of anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn (today, the UK Guardian openly editorialized, “The pain and hurt within the Jewish community, and the damage to Labour, are undeniable and shaming. Yet Labour remains indispensable to progressive politics.”), or the Democratic Party’s defense of Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. But the Left has been able to cover for its own anti-Semitism problem by focusing in on the rise of white supremacist violence, connecting that violence with President Trump.
Here’s a quick rule of thumb: If you only want to have a conversation about anti-Semitism when you can blame anti-Semitism on your political opponents, you don’t care about anti-Semitism.
And that’s precisely what we’ve seen over the past 24 hours.
On Tuesday, two shooters targeted a kosher supermarket in Jersey City; six people died, including the shooters, three civilians, and a police officer. The shooters were apparently affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe black supremacist group claiming that Jews aren’t actually the true Jews — that the actual Jews are black Americans. Members of this group have been involved in violent incidents in the past, of course.
The identity of the shooters meant that the media Left was eager to ignore the case. And indeed, within 24 hours, it was no longer trending on Twitter. No broad discussions of left-wing tolerance for anti-Semitism, particularly in minority communities, ensued. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio had the temerity to tweet, “This tragically confirms that a growing pattern of violent anti-Semitism has now turned into a crisis for our nation. And now this threat has reached the doorstep of New York City.” Now, broadly speaking, violence against Jews in New York City has been spiking in the past few years — none of that violence attributable to white supremacists. But we already know why De Blasio has been able to ignore that violence – The New York Times told us as much back in November 2018:
If anti-Semitism bypasses consideration as a serious problem in New York, it is to some extent because it refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy. In fact, it is the varied backgrounds of people who commit hate crimes in the city that make combating and talking about anti-Semitism in New York much harder. … [B]ias stemming from longstanding ethnic tensions in the city presents complexities that many liberals have chosen simply to ignore. …
The two killers who stormed a kosher market in Jersey City were apparently acting alone and were “fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Thursday.
Grewal said the attackers expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe group whose members have been known to rail against white people and Jews. He told a news conference that authorities are investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.
While there have been fears since the shooting Tuesday that a hatred of Jews was behind the attack, Grewal and some others had been cautious in describing the motive, noting it was still under investigation.
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal on the Jersey City attack on a kosher market: The evidence now points to acts of hate, I can confirm that we are now investigating this as acts of domestic terrorism fueled by antisemitism and a hatred towards police. pic.twitter.com/NIqIt2wKeH
Surveillance video released Thursday that was apparently shot from a security camera above the store entrance showed the two assailants entering the supermarket, as well as a man who was inside the shop when they entered fleeing down the street.
Sorry to share this other video of the shooting but it shows something that the other CCTV video didn’t. You can see the shooters target the man trying to run away from the store. They targeted Jews 💔pic.twitter.com/21bQWT19JU
The FBI on Wednesday searched the Harlem headquarters of the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, which is the formal name of the Black Hebrew group, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The evidence points toward acts of hate,” Grewal told reporters. “I can confirm that we’re investigating this matter as potential acts of domestic terrorism fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs.”
Two Black Hebrew Israelites deliberately attacked a kosher grocery in Jersey City this past Tuesday.
We can leave it to the media to report who the Black Hebrew Israelites are.
There will be articles about just how Jewish they are, about their history and about their community in Israel.
But while they are not considered Jewish by the Israeli government, Black Hebrew Israelites are Jewish enough for Palestinian terrorists.
Under a cool, clear sky and with a large crowd of mourners on hand, 32-year-old Aharon Ben-Yisrael Elis was buried Sunday in a new section of this town's cemetery.
He was the first of the Black Hebrews--a small group of African-Americans, most of whom came to Israel from Chicago more than three decades ago--to be born in Israel. He also was the first of the group to die from the terrorism that has haunted the Jews of Israel for years.
Aharon Ben-Yisrael Elis. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Because the group had their own religion, combining Judaism with other beliefs, the Black Hebrews were not fully accepted into Israeli society and were not granted citizenship.
But those differences were set aside in the face of the terrorist attack:
Yet Elis' passing at the hands of a terrorist provoked an outpouring of Israeli mourners, including Dimona's mayor, a member of the Knesset and the two top rabbis from this town in the northern tip of the Negev desert. Elis was killed Thursday, one of six people slain by a Palestinian gunman who had stormed a banquet hall in a northern town where a bat mitzvah, or a coming-of-age ceremony, for a 12-year-old Israeli girl was under way.
...Dimona officials talked about how the Black Hebrews had found a home in their community and were welcomed. Av Shalom Vilan, a member of the Knesset from the left-of-center Meretz Party, said he hoped that the death of a Black Hebrew as a result of Arab violence would open the hearts and doors of Israel's society for citizenship for the group, which the Black Hebrews have long sought.
Rabbi Shalom Dayan, the chief Sephardic rabbi of Dimona, summed up in a few words what the others said Elis' death meant for the Black Hebrews' long-term quest to win full acceptance into Israeli society.
"You have just sealed one of the most difficult pacts with our Israeli society," Dayan said.
More than that, the Israeli government took action too.
Israel destroyed the Palestinian broadcasting center and Israeli tanks came up to Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Israeli troops entered Tulkarem, where they searched houses, detained a number of Palestinian Arabs and put the city under curfew.
But that was then.
And it makes this week's tragedy even more bitter.
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On Sunday, I noted (on a tip by WC) that a director and Oscar nominee Elia Suleiman said he wished to "drown Israel" but since he couldn't, his films are meant to accomplish the same "resistance" in a different way.
Tomer Ilan noticed that the Israeli Education Ministry lists his films as "recommended" in the official high school curriculum for Cinema.
This seems to have gotten the attention of B'Tslamo, a pro-Israel NGO. Makor Rishon reports today that B'Tsalmo's Shai Glick appealed to the Minister of Education Rafi Peretz to remove any films by Suleiman from the curriculum, and he did.
As far as I know, EoZ was the first to publicize this - I couldn't find any articles in Hebrew media about Suleiman's hate.
This is the third time this week that EoZ has helped with "tikkun olam," so to speak, where my posts led to actions.
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Sunday, December 15, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
