I also saw a lot of videos of UFOS. I mean WTF is going on with that sh*t? These UFOs keep coming to earth, and it made me think of an idea for a movie. Sounds dumb, but hear me out.In my movie idea, we find out that these aliens are originally from earth — that they’re from an ancient civilization that achieved interstellar travel and left the earth thousands of years ago. Some other planet they go to, and things go terrible for them on the other planet, so they come back to earth, and decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own.It’s a pretty good plot-line, huh? I call it “Space Jews.” *audience laughter* Space Jews.(Man in audience: Free Palestine!)It's going to get worse than that, hang in there. It's going to get way worse than that.[The next Space Jews joke comes ~30 min later]There was a Black man who was in South Carolina during slavery who somehow got granted his freedom by his so-called master. And when he master granted him his freedom, he also gave him a plot of land. Now it turns out this brother was brilliant. He had a good eye, good knack for farming. And he farmed this plot of land very successfully and made a lot of money. And this is where the story gets crazy. When he got all that money... this n**** bought some slaves. Have you ever heard this before? This is a true story.Not only was he a slave owner, he became a slave breeder, and employed tactics that were so cruel, even white slave owners were like, "Yo, my man!" He was a wild dude, but he did it just because that's what successful people did at the time, and he just wanted to be down. What a f*cking tragedy. How can a person that went through slavery perpetuate the same evil on a person that looks just like him? It's mind blowing. And, shockingly, they're making a movie about him. Ironically, it's called "Space Jews."*laughter and cheering*Space Jews.
Sunday, October 17, 2021
- Sunday, October 17, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Saturday, October 16, 2021
A US consulate in Jerusalem will re-divide the city
Significantly, the Jerusalem Embassy Act explained that declaring Jerusalem the united capital of Israel was merely recognizing what was already its authentic status: “Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital. Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel... From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths, as well as Jewish citizens of all states, were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan. In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited... Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites... The United States conducts official meetings and other business in the city of Jerusalem in de facto recognition of its status as the capital of Israel. In 1996, the State of Israel will celebrate the 3,000th anniversary of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem since King David’s entry... Jerusalem should remain an undivided city... Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.” US law is saying that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was not only to acknowledge its de facto status but also to recognize its Jewish history. In addition, the Embassy Act notes that from 1948 to 1967, part of the city was under Jordanian control, and not Palestinian. By reviewing Jerusalem’s history, the American law is recognizing that Jerusalem has a rich Jewish history when it first became Israel’s capital 3000 years ago, never had Palestinian Arab sovereignty, is currently ruled properly by Israel allowing access to people of all faiths, and therefore should remain Israel’s undivided capital.Yisrael Medad: Jewish prayer should be permitted on the Temple Mount
When the American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem the US Consulate, which was superfluous in unified Jerusalem, was closed. The PA wants the US to reopen the Consulate in Jerusalem because for them it means that Jerusalem is being redivided. Certainly, much of the international community would see the opening of a US consulate as the PA sees it, which would have a detrimental impact on Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s united capital.
It is unclear whether the US Biden administration intends to undermine the goal of American law. However, even if the US does not intend to declare that it is redividing Jerusalem through reopening the US consulate, sometimes actions speak louder than intentions.
It should be clear: No Jew enters a Muslim building on the Temple Mount and surely not in a mosque. The compound is rather large and there is more than enough room for it to be shared. After all, in Hebron, Jews do pray daily in a structure considered a mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs). So why is there this form of Islamic cancel culture which can be summarized so: The Temple Mount belongs solely to the Muslims and the Western Wall to the Jews.Murder of British MP David Amess being treated as terror attack
First, the facts. Invading Muslim armies conquered Jerusalem in 638 CE and usurped, physically and theologically, Mount Moriah. Although Jews were permitted to enter at times, from the 13th century until the late 19th century, Jewish entry was prohibited. This also was the situation in Hebron. In 1947, a Jew who accidentally entered the compound was killed. Parallel to this, the majority rabbinic opinion was that, despite the compound being larger than the original sacred area, all entry would be prohibited.
On this background, in 1967, the famous status quo was adopted. But if that situation is not static – Muslims have opened three new mosques since then – do they have any right to protest? Are they the only ones who have the right to be “provoked?” The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty’s Article 9 calls for the promotion of “interfaith relations … with the aim of working toward religious understanding … freedom of religious worship and tolerance.” Should that not be honored?
Can't we attempt to achieve peace through religious unity and compromise? Why do we need to tolerate such degrading language in the Arabic media on this issue as when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Jews “defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet.” The Waqf, and its financial patron, Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf Islamic Affairs and Holy Places, have prevented surveillance cameras that could reduce violence and encourage the bullying attitude that presages rock-throwing and worse. They need to be more responsible.
In the spirit of Isaiah 56:7, that “my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” can't we accept that all who seek to respect and worship at their holy sites be allowed to do so reasonably without recourse to threats of violence?
British lawmaker David Amess was stabbed to death in an Essex church on Friday by an assailant who lunged at him as he met voters, in what police said was a terrorist attack.Slain British MP remembered as one of ‘most gentle people in politics’
The alleged killer has been identified as Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British citizen of Somali heritage who is not believed to have been known to UK security, according to Sky News. He was arrested by British police, and a warrant of further detention has been granted. Amess, 69, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, was knifed repeatedly in the attack at about midday in the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, east of London.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett shared his condolences over Twitter on Saturday night, writing that he sent his "heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of British MP Sir David Amess. He was a true friend of the Jewish community and the State of Israel. His tragic loss will be felt by many."
Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also tweeted, "From Israel, we send our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Sir David Amess. He always stood with the Jewish community and was a true friend of Israel. May his memory be for a blessing."
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said he was "deeply shocked" by the "horrific slaying."
"A true friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish People, he was cut down while serving the constituency which he loved so much," Netanyahu tweeted. "We grieve with the people of Britain over the tragic loss of a great parliamentarian and a great friend."
He also waged a long campaign to erect a statue in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps in World War II.
The campaign reached fruition when Queen Elizabeth II unveiled the statue in 1997 outside a synagogue in London.
In January this year, he called the event “one of the proudest moments of my life,” and urged the government to redouble efforts against antisemitism, during a speech to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Amess was the Honorary Secretary of the Conservative Friends of Israel from 1998, and was regarded as a longtime friend of the UK Jewish community.
“Although I myself am not a Jew but a Catholic, there is Jewish blood in each and every one of us. I would certainly have been proud to have been born a Jew, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with our local Jewish community,” he said in the January speech.
Friday, October 15, 2021
Melanie Phillips: What lies beneath the progressives' favourite cause
The latest such useful idiot is the best-selling novelist, Sally Rooney. She has refused to have her new novel published by Modan, the Hebrew-language Israeli publisher of her first two books, because she supports a cultural boycott of Israel.
Rooney happens to be Irish; and the Irish Republic — one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe — is a boiling cesspool of Jew-bashing.
The dogged British antisemitism researcher David Collier has just published a 202-page report in which he chronicles horrific anti-Jewish attitudes in Ireland driven from the top down by Irish politicians and echoed by journalists, academics and other cultural leaders.
There are many plausible explanations for this Israel animus in Ireland and the west. Ireland sees itself as the victim of English colonialism and so identifies with the Palestinians’ false narrative of Jewish colonialism.
Rooney is a self-confessed Marxist. Israel is being demonised through a perfect intellectual storm: a combination of Marxist identification of capitalism with oppression; liberal internationalist hostility to the western concept of the nation-state; and the Palestinian propaganda programme cooked up in the 1960s with the former Soviet Union to turn the Arab war of annihilation against Israel into Israel’s oppression of the newly-minted “Palestinians”.
This propaganda narrative is now the signature cause of “progressive” folk who astoundingly therefore make common cause with deeply regressive Islamists, who endorse throwing gay people off rooftops and stoning women to death.
What actually binds these groups together, however, is a deadly animus against Judaism and the Jewish people.
The Palestinians’ hatred of Israel is based on hatred of the Jews founded upon Islamic theological sources. Medieval and Nazi-style antisemitism pour out of the PA in an unstoppable torrent.
Even those Palestinian supporters who harbour no ill-will towards Jews as people therefore promote a Palestinian narrative that is based on Jew-hatred. So it’s no surprise that threaded through pro-Palestinian western discourse are unambiguous antisemitic tropes.
The deeper question, though, is why it’s always the Jews who get it in the neck from so many different groups. No other people has ever had this experience.
Socialism Without Antisemitism
In “On the Jewish Question,” published in 1844, Karl Marx famously stood the notion of Jewish emancipation on its head, writing that “Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as Christians have become Jews,” i.e., admirers of Mammon. Far from being ghettoized and excluded, deprived of basic freedoms, and subjected to horrific individual and mass accusations and physical violence for centuries, Marx explained to his followers, the Jews of Europe were in fact historical oppressors bent on conquest. “The everyday Jew devoted himself to endless bartering ... It was still Judaism, practical in its nature, that was victorious,” Marx explained. “Egotism permeated society.”ILF: How We Fought Against:Ep 24...the Soviet Union's Assault on Zionism
Jews were not only all-conquering, Marx continued, but also maleficent. “We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development—to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed—has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.” Case closed.
Quantities of ink worthy of a Talmudic discussion have been spilled explaining away the explicit content of Marx’s essay. But his private writings make it impossible to assert that Marx was not a carrier of a virulent strain of racist Jew-hatred that has infected some of his followers to this day. In a letter to Engels on July 30, 1862, attacking Ferdinand Lasalle, Marx’s Jewish opponent among socialists, for example, Marx wrote that “It is now quite plain to me—as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify—that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger).”
But even Marx at his worst did not approach the venomous opinions of his rival, the father of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon expressed his feelings for Jews in his notebooks in an entry dated Dec. 26, 1847, an entry less anti-capitalist than exterminationist: “Jews. Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people. Demand its expulsion from France with the exception of those individuals married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment. Demand its expulsion. Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It’s not without cause that the Christians called them deicides. The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated.”
"There is absolutely nothing that anti-Zionists say that I, as a Soviet Jew, did not hear or cannot find in Soviet literature." ~ Izabella Tabarovsky.
The Soviet Union created the ideological underpinning of the modern anti-Zionist movement, including the infamous 1975 'Zionism is Racism' resolution at the United Nations, an ideological foundation that groups like BDS are built on today. Join our special guest Izabella Tabarovsky Senior Associate at the Kennan Institute (Wilson Center), as we delve into the history of the Soviet Union and how their anti-Zionist propaganda shapes the antisemites of today.
While this episode was filmed before the Durban Conference at the UN, in which 38 countries withdrew, it underscores the importance of remaining relentless in the fight against antisemitism in all its manifestations, including the assault on Zionism.
Mark Regev: Genocide, apartheid: Problems in extreme Left American Jews - opinion
I was born and grew up in the Diaspora (admittedly not in the United States) and like many of my generation my politics was of the Left – though mine especially so as I was a proud member of the Labor Zionist youth organization Habonim. At the time of Israel’s 1981 election, I eagerly volunteered to a public debate with a Likud supporter at a Melbourne University campus event. I spoke in favor of Shimon Peres’s attempt to unseat Menachem Begin, my loyalty to the Labor cause preventing me from being impressed with Begin who had signed Israel’s first-ever peace treaty with an Arab country and had just destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor.
I immigrated to Israel in 1982 with the goal of personally voting Begin’s Likud out of office. I chose to live on a kibbutz to realize my then socialist ideals, and after acquiring Israeli citizenship, I immediately joined the Labor Party. The Sabras on the kibbutz even voted this then idealistic young Australian immigrant to be their representative at the Labor Party congress (where from the perspective of defeating the Likud, I mistakenly supported Peres over Rabin).
Why is any of this important? Because I know from personal experience that disagreeing with the politics of a given Israeli government, should in no way alienate one from Israel as a country or from the Zionist vision of an independent Jewish homeland. American Jews who hated Trump didn’t stop being loyal Americans, and detesting Netanyahu is no valid reason to disengage from Israel.
That liberal American Jews would identify with the politics of their liberal Israeli cousins is understood. But there can be no excuses for those ultras who deny Israel’s right to exist and ape the lines of Israel’s sworn enemies. Such erroneous positions can only stem from alienation, ignorance and a psychological desire to fit in with a certain milieu (reminding me of my grandparents’ generation of German Jews who constantly felt the need to prove to their gentile neighbors that they were loyal Germans).
I know that there are many American Jews who are deeply troubled by the anti-Zionism and antisemitism prevalent in contemporary progressive circles. I also know that those who uncritically parrot the rejectionist Palestinian mantra are a marginal phenomenon. But while being an aberration, these young Jews repeating “Israel is committing genocide” are symptomatic of a larger failure. The incoming head of the Jewish Agency, whoever it turns out to be, has some very serious work to do.
- Friday, October 15, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- cartoon of the day, humor
US Rejoins UN Rights Council Days After Council Endorsed Anti-Semitic Hate Fest
The Biden administration on Thursday rejoined the U.N. Human Rights Council, just days after the council overwhelmingly voted to endorse an anti-Israel resolution that several Western nations boycotted due to its anti-Semitic nature.Haley: Decision to rejoin U.N. Human Rights Council is ‘embarrassing’ and ‘dangerous’
The United States was elected to the body just three days after the Human Rights Council by a 32-10 vote endorsed the "Durban Declaration," a resolution that affirms support for the notoriously anti-Israel 2001 Durban Conference and its conclusion that, of all nations, only Israel is guilty of racism.
The Durban Conference, which the United Nations has endorsed repeatedly during the past 20 years, was called the "most potent symbol of organized hate against Israel" by the founder of NGO Monitor, an institute that analyzes non-governmental organizations. U.K. diplomats, in a statement on the council's latest Durban vote, said the United Nations "has downplayed the scourge of anti-Semitism" and that "this must end" immediately.
Whereas the Trump administration withdrew from the council in 2018, citing the body's anti-Israel bias and anti-Semitic agenda, the Biden administration says a seat at the table will help the United States reform the body. Former senior Trump administration officials and Republicans in Congress criticized the Biden administration's move, saying the United States should play no role in an organization that routinely targets Jews and includes among its members some of the globe's foremost human rights abusers, such as China, Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela.
"If President Biden truly cared about human rights, he would keep us far away from the cesspool that is the U.N. Human Rights Council," former Trump administration ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Washington Free Beacon. "America left it under President Trump because we refused to lend our credibility, as the most generous country in the world, to cover for the world's worst tyrants and dictators. [Biden's] actions today aren't just embarrassing; they're dangerous."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a statement thanking member nations for allowing the United States to rejoin the council, said the body "suffers from serious flaws, including disproportionate attention on Israel and the membership of several states with egregious human rights records." The Biden administration will use its voice to "push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded," he said. Blinken did not mention the council's latest endorsement of Durban in his statement.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called the Biden administration’s decision to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday “dangerous” hours after the U.S. was elected to join the body.
“If President Biden truly cared about human rights, he would keep us far away from the cesspool that is the U.N. Human Rights Council,” Haley told Jewish Insider on Thursday afternoon. “America left it under President Trump because we refused to lend our credibility, as the most generous country in the world, to cover for the world’s worst tyrants and dictators. [Biden’s] actions today aren’t just embarrassing; they’re dangerous.”
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the council in 2018, citing hypocrisy among members of the body, whom the administration accused of committing human rights violations and bias against Israel.
“For too long,” Haley said at the time, “the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias.”
Current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. “will oppose the Council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the Council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country.”
“The Council provides a forum where we can have open discussions about ways we and our partners can improve,” Secretary of State Tony Blinken said in a statement on Thursday. “At the same time, it also suffers from serious flaws, including disproportionate attention on Israel and the membership of several states with egregious human rights records. Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded.”
Caroline Glick: Lapid and Bennett's old-new diplomacy
This brings us to Lapid and his weird visit to Washington.The Caroline Glick Show: Ep22: Lapid’s PR Diplomacy and Gadi’s War Against Israeli RINOs
While Iran was ostensibly the focus of Lapid's visit, the Biden administration made clear that it has no intention of reconsidering its commitment to maintaining its nuclear appeasement policy towards Tehran. Then there are the Palestinians. Ahead of Lapid's arrival, the administration used the anniversary of the Abraham Accords, (which it refuses to call by their name), to underline that they are with Merkel in their hatred of the peace deals and their determination to reinstate the Palestinian veto over Arab-Israeli peace.
"The Biden administration has started out with a clear commitment to the two-state solution…. We continue to welcome the economic cooperation between Israel and all countries in the region. We hope that normalization can be leverage to advance progress on the Israel-Palestinian tracks," an anonymous State Department spokesman said.
Lapid papered over Israel's concern over the administration's pro-Iranian stance and its diminution of the historic peace. And this makes sense. Just as Bennett ignores Abdullah's hostility and blames Netanyahu for bad relations with Jordan, so Lapid scapegoats Netanyahu as the cause of Democrat antagonism towards Israel.
In the interest of castigating Netanyahu, Lapid has long ignored both the radicalization of the Democrat Party and the rapid spread of antisemitism through the American Left over the past decade.
Tuesday Lapid met with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Lapid heaped praise on Harris just two weeks after she praised a student who accused Israel of committing genocide. Harris, he said, is "one of Israel's best friends in Washington. A leader who always stands with us in all the important struggles and who we can always count on in difficult moments."
In Lapid's follow-on he didn't simply ignore what Harris had just done. He indirectly justified her behavior. In his write-up of the meeting on his Twitter feed, Lapid said that in addition to discussing Iran's nuclear program, he and Harris spoke about how to "strengthen the bipartisan connection with the next generation of Americans."
Lapid didn't express concern over galloping antisemitism on campuses. He heaped praise on younger Americans. "They aren't just busy with wars and confrontations but also with the climate crisis, the global immigration crisis and with questions of identity," he cooed.
Last year Israel had a reality-based foreign policy. It was predicated on the basic truth that the justice of Israel's existence and power is immutable. That foreign policy ended the Palestinian veto and brought four robust peace agreements with Arab states. Now Israel has a reality- denying foreign policy which is reinstating the Palestinian veto and glorifying Israel's enemies.
In Episode 22 of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline and co-host Gadi Taub talked about Israel’s diplomatic week. In a week marking the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the Lapid-Bennett government worked with Angela Merkel, King Abdullah of Jordan and the Biden administration to push a completely different diplomatic approach. The last part of the show focused on the battle Gadi is leading against right wing media organs in Israel that are legitimizing the government.
- Friday, October 15, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
IsraAID, an Israeli-based non-government organization (NGO), helped to evacuate 125 refugees from Afghanistan earlier in October, according to a statement from the group released Wednesday.The NGO stated that it had helped coordinate the evacuation of prominent Afghan nationals, including "judges, cyclists, journalists, TV presenters, human rights activists, family members of Afghan diplomats, artists, law enforcement officers, scientists, and more."The refugees fled the country with IsraAID and were brought to Albania, located 2,600 miles from Afghanistan along the Balkan Peninsula.There, they joined about 1,000 other Afghan refugees currently in Albania.IsraAID said that the evacuated refugees were "considered particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule," and that "many of the women and girls among them have served as symbols of female empowerment and leadership."This marks the second time in two months that IsraAID has helped at-risk Afghans escape the country. A previous venture on September 6 saw the NGO evacuate 42 women and girls to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).The humanitarian group said that the 167 refugees from both the September and October missions would eventually be re-settled for the long term in a number of different countries, such as France, Canada, and Switzerland.The head of IsraAID, Yotam Polizer, said in the press release that the NGO would do whatever it could to try and help Afghan refugees escape the Taliban."We would like to thank the governments of Albania and the United Arab Emirates for their hospitality and willingness to provide safe passage to these vulnerable people out of Afghanistan," Polizer [said].Journalist Danna Harman, who helped run the operation, said that "if there is a bright spot in the story of Afghanistan's latest crisis, it would be how many regular people, Afghans and those who care about Afghanistan alike, came together to respond to calls for help."Harman was assisted by a number of other philanthropists and supporting groups, including the Chairman of the Euro Asian Jewish Congress, Aaron G. Frenkel and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).A prominent Israeli-Canadian philanthropist, Sylvan Adams, also helped to raise money for the refugees.
- Friday, October 15, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- 1929, Abraham Accords, ADL, Holocaust denial, kill jews, knife intifada, memri, Noura Erakat, Palestinian antisemitism, PEZ, PMW, propaganda, The Protocols
In today's edition of living while Palestinian. Journo interested in IHRA critique asks me if Palestinian protest doesn't risk turning into anti Jewish hate. So here we go #Thread #IHRAFirst off, the fact that young Palestinians who have only known Israeli siege and massacre and aerial bombardment & snipers in Gaza distinguish between Zionists and Jews and rally for a decolonial future for all. THAT is a remarkable example of humanity and what should be the story.Second, since the only thing that has been hateful has been Israel’s racialized violence, its siege, its shoot to kill policies, its home demolitions - the story is about Zionist settler hate. It is THE primary teacher and exemplar of hate.Third, as much as we try to distinguish Zionism and Judaism, our adversaries want to collapse the two and obscure the distinction between a people and a state. We are not responsible for this gross reduction and resist it. No state or ideology is beyond critique.Fourth, the greatest source of antisemitism is white supremacy/ists. Go do interviews with them rather than interrogate Palestinians if they really think they deserve freedom and have the right to condemn the racist ideology that has marked them for removal. #IHRA
- Friday, October 15, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, October 14, 2021
The Woke Threat to America— and to American Jews
A century ago, anti-Semites sought to deny entry to Jewish immigrants on the grounds that they lacked the superior character traits of Northern Europeans who had populated this country in the 18th and 19th centuries and brought it to greatness. Now Jews face discrimination because they allegedly are co-conspirators with white supremacists or are simply part of the undifferentiated mass of American whites, the oppressor class.Bari Weiss: We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage
The name-calling and stereotyping are bad enough, but if the equity agenda is broadly enacted, Jews will find few opportunities to land jobs in the civil service, education (especially in higher education), corporate America, and the innovation-based, creative economy emerging today. After all, Jews constitute only 2 percent of the population, but they are overrepresented in these fields. In the cause of pursuing equality of outcomes, quotas are now proposed as the solution to ensure proportional representation by every subgroup in every sector of the economy. Jews have seen this movie before: Their numbers at European universities were limited, as was their representation in the civil service of some countries; during the interwar era and well into the 1950s, American universities placed unofficial but very real quotas on Jewish enrollments on both the college and graduate-school levels. Under the “equity” regime, Jews will face the same obstacles. For a small minority population, this would lead to marginalization and downward mobility, and eventually emigration to countries that value merit.
The high-minded Jewish defenders of the “intersectionality” and “white privilege” (or “white supremacy”) industry are right about one thing: These terms and their implications are not sufficiently understood. In the name of these ideas, Jews are cast as part of the white, oppressor class, and their achievements through hard work, merit, and investment in vital institutions are denigrated. If Jews do not wake up to the threat that progressive ideology poses to their way of life in America, they will find themselves on a steep slope of downward mobility, or worse. For Jews, nothing less than their equality is at stake.
They are not alone. Other American minorities also have much to lose if these ideas gain traction. Hispanic Americans have been redefined by progressives as nonwhites and given a new name that means nothing to them—Latinx. This catch-all effaces the very real cultural, ethnic, and historical distinctions among immigrants of various Latin American origins. Even more damaging stereotyping now is applied to Asian Americans, perhaps the greatest victims of the progressive ideology. Arriving in the United States as poor immigrants from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, and other countries, these newcomers invested themselves in hard work and transmitted a strong work ethic to their children, with the result that their offspring have risen rapidly. Now these same Asian Americans are told that they actually are “white allies,” accomplices of the white oppressor group whose advancement in society should be limited by quotas and their earnings redistributed. As cases making their way through the courts make clear, some of these minorities are fighting back. A still silent majority of white and black Americans also does not accept the assumptions undergirding woke ideas.
Jews, once again, are the canary in the mine, but if they engage in the battle of ideas, they will find large numbers of allies prepared to marginalize the woke ideology threatening our country.
Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.
When you’re told that valued traits such as industriousness and punctuality are the legacy of white supremacy, don’t hesitate to reject it. When you’re told that statues of people such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are an offense to Americans of color, don’t politely nod along. When you’re told that “nothing has changed” for African Americans, don’t dishonor the memory of civil-rights heroes by agreeing. And when you’re told that America was founded to perpetuate slavery, don’t take part in rewriting the country’s history.
America is imperfect. I always knew it, as we all do—and the past few years have rocked my faith like no others in my lifetime. But America and we Americans are far from irredeemable.
The motto of Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery paper, the North Star—“The Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren”—must remain all of ours.
We can still feel the pull of that electric cord Lincoln talked about 163 years ago—the one “in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
Every day I hear from people who are living in fear in the freest society humankind has ever known. Dissidents in a democracy, practicing doublespeak. That is what is happening right now. What happens five, 10, 20 years from now if we don’t speak up and defend the ideas that have made all of our lives possible?
Liberty. Equality. Freedom. Dignity. These are ideas worth fighting for.
Elisha Wiesel [WaPo]: Elie Wiesel's Legacy Includes Unapologetic Zionism
What would my father have thought of being carved into a church?
Today a likeness of my father — author, activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel — is being unveiled in the stonework of the Washington National Cathedral. My family and I are deeply grateful to Dean Randy Hollerith and all the leadership at the cathedral for this profound measure of respect. It is good to see that five years after his passing, my father is still being recognized for his global work for human rights and his singular message of hope amid darkness.
But I wrestled with this honor, and I think he would have done the same.
My father - author, activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel - didn't advocate just for the people of Kosovo, Darfur and Cambodia. He also supported Israel and defended her right to exist in peace and security. My father understood what it meant to live in a world without a Jewish state, and he saw the anti-Zionist movement as an extension of millennia-old anti-Semitism, which unfortunately is becoming more common and acceptable today.
Accusers throw the word "apartheid" at Israel, ignoring that thousands of Arabs serve voluntarily in the Israel Defense Forces and take their oath on a Koran or New Testament. Some celebrities charge Israel with ethnic cleansing, disregarding that as of 2017, the population of Palestinian citizens in Israel is more than nine times as high as it was in 1948. Meanwhile, almost all states in the Arab Middle East are Judenrein - "cleansed" of Jews.
- Thursday, October 14, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- Thursday, October 14, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- humor, Preoccupied
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
Check out their Facebook page.
Rejecting My Jewish Heritage In The Face Of Antisemitism Will Work *This* Time
by Simone Sheodlo-Higanu
New York, October 14 - An aphorism attributed (wrongly) to Albert Einstein characterizes insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. With all due respect to the professor, I believe my current course will defy that pattern: unlike all the efforts of my ancestors who sought to relieve themselves of anti-Jewish persecution and discrimination by assimilating into the wider culture, only to find that the wider culture still considered them Jewish and therefore ripe for discrimination, in my case the effort to jettison everything of substance in my Judaism will engender only acceptance and approval from those whom I seek to join. I just know it.
I certainly will fare better than the hundreds of thousands of Jews who decided to convert to Catholicism rather than leave Spain in 1492, only to discover over the next several hundred years that their loving, tolerant neighbors and the Office of the Inquisition continued to suspect them of heresy and clinging to Jewish beliefs and practice, no matter how loudly or publicly the protestations of adherence to good Christian doctrine.
Nor will I face the fate of my predecessors in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Germany, where acculturation of Jews into every echelon of society proceeded with more thoroughness than anywhere else in history, but whose ancestry became subject to examination when Nazi racial purity laws went into effect in the 1930's.
Similarly, my path will prove other than that of the Yevsektsia, those proudly Communist Jews of the early Soviet Union who made it their mission to discredit, harass, and destroy all vestiges of Jewish life and culture so as to spare themselves the wrath of Lenin, Stalin, et al., and to prove themselves proper, loyal Soviet citizens. Then they were purged and executed when Stalin decided he no longer needed them.
That means my ongoing efforts to gain approbation from prominent progressive figures by disparaging the nine-out-of-ten Jews who profess support for Israel, and the rich tradition they preserve of longing for Zion through millennia of exile and outsider status, will end differently. I cannot explain why or how, exactly, that difference will manifest, but I can just feel it, just as I feel genocide happening in Palestine. Your efforts to explain to me that Jews who respect their Jewish heritage command respect, while those who do not, achieve the opposite result, will amount to nothing. I have already redefined my "Jewish heritage" to mean divorcing myself from anything authentically Jewish except where I can cherry-pick it to support my politics.
There's no way this goes sideways.
A New Jerusalem Consulate Will Again Proclaim: Jerusalem Is Not in Israel
Many consider the Biden administration's oft-expressed intent to open a U.S. consulate-general in Jerusalem a minor administrative change. In fact, it is a dangerous resurrection of a fiction that dominated American attitudes and policy toward Israel for decades.
It is nothing less than a devious scheme to reverse U.S. recognition that Jerusalem is in Israel by pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to abandon Israel's claim to sovereignty over its own capital city. If Bennett acquiesces to U.S. pressure, he will go down in history as the Israeli leader who gave away Jerusalem.
In May 1948, President Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognize the modern State of Israel, only 11 minutes after its creation. But for the following 70 years, successive U.S. presidential administrations steadfastly refused to formally recognize the City of Jerusalem as being in the State of Israel. It took us 18 years of pro bono litigation, with two appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court and working with the prior administration, to overturn the State Department's long-running position. That position had effectively treated as stateless thousands of American citizens born in Jerusalem.
We began representing Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky soon after he was born in Jerusalem. His American-born parents sought for him what most people take for granted—the right to list his country of birth on his American identity papers. That right was denied to him for almost two decades. His government-issued American birth certificate left blank the space for his country of birth. Although U.S. passports routinely designate the country of a foreign-born passport-holder's birth, Menachem's listed "Jerusalem" instead of "Israel"—as if the City of Jerusalem was not actually in any country.
Congress had overwhelmingly endorsed Israel's assertion of sovereign jurisdiction over Jerusalem in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. Nonetheless, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama—yielding to the State Department's Arabist contingent—overrode Congress' decision with various baseless "findings." They continued to deny that any portion of the city (neither "West" nor "East" Jerusalem) was actually in Israel. This led to confusion and embarrassment.
US Will Move Forward With Reopening its Palestinian Mission in Jerusalem: Blinken
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday the Biden administration intends to press ahead with its plan to reopen the Jerusalem consulate that traditionally engaged with Palestinians, despite Israeli opposition to such a move.
Blinken reiterated a pledge he originally made months ago on re-establishing the consulate, which had long been a base for diplomatic outreach to the Palestinians before it was closed by President Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, in 2018.
But Blinken, speaking at a Washington news conference with visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and United Arab Emirates Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, stopped short of setting a date for reopening the consulate, which would strain relations with Israel’s new ideologically diverse government.
“We’ll be moving forward with the process of opening a consulate as part of deepening of those ties with the Palestinians,” Blinken said at the State Department.
The Biden administration has sought to repair relations with the Palestinians that were badly damaged under Trump.
The consulate was subsumed into the US Embassy that was moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018 by Trump — a reversal of longtime US policy hailed by Israel and condemned by Palestinians.
The Biden administration says it will reopen the consulate while leaving the embassy in place.
Important words from Israel’s Justice Minister. Israel cannot and will not agree to divide Jerusalem by permitting a US-Palestinian Consulate to open. It would violate Israeli and US law and betray the commitment of both countries to Israel’s eternal and undivided capital. https://t.co/Co55LP2ECL
— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) October 14, 2021
The right wing from the Israeli government will block US East Jerusalem consulate, says Michael Oren
- Thursday, October 14, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Michael Williams, editor of Commonweal, Catholic weekly, warned against the spread of Nazism and anti-Semitism in the United States. He suggested that the 1939 New York World’s Fair establish a building devoted to “human and divine liberty.”Mayor LaGuardia, seconding the suggestion, said: “I will add an annex to Dr. Williams’ suggestion. I would have a chamber of horrors added to this temple. In it I would place that brown-shirt fanatic. I’d give them an example they could look at and learn.”
LaGuardia doubled down:
- Thursday, October 14, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon