Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Book review:The Anti-Israel Agenda

The Anti-Israel Agenda is a terrific summary of how the the world has adopted the irrational hate of the Jewish state as a legitimate political idea.

Edited by Alex Ryvchin, the Director of Public Affairs at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the book has chapters written by the top experts in each field it covers.

NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg writes a brief but excellent history of how NGOs adopted the anti-Israel agenda, concentrating on the infamous Durban conference.

UN Watch's Hillel Neuer contributes a chapter on the UN's anti-Israel bias.

Michael Dickson and Max Samarov, of StandWithUs, discuss the hate of Israel on American campuses.

Seth Frantzman, op-ed editor at the Jerusalem Post, discusses media bias against Israel.

Colonel Richard Kemp discusses the libelous claims of war crimes against Israel, and Arsen Ostrovsky discusses attacks on Israel in social media.

There are also chapters on attacks on Israel in British trade unions, a great summary of the attitudes towards Israel from various Christian denominations with lots of material on Palestinian Christian supercessionism, and Professor Alan Dershowitz writes a conclusion on why the anti-Israel movement is wrong.

That's a formidable line-up, yet the book is less than 200 pages.

This is an essential introduction to the topic and taken as a whole it shows the scope of anti-Israel activities worldwide, from the micro to the macro levels. When seen as a whole, one can only conclude that the anti-Israel agenda is a pathology of hate that has little to do with Israel's own actions or supposed crimes.

While the book does not take the path to describe this is just a modern manifestation of antisemitism, it is difficult to come up with any other conclusion.

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Iranian "moderate" foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke about President Trump's latest moves against Iran and revealed more than he perhaps intended.

For example, he said, "The current policy of Mr. Trump is doomed to fail. With wisdom and resilience, Iran will prevent Trump and the Zionist regime from depicting the country as an international security threat once again.”

Zarif didn't deny that Iran was a security threat to the world. He said that Iran will prevent its enemies from depicting it that way.

But Zarif let out his inner antisemite in this quote:

“Trump withdrew from many agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Paris climate accord, or even more recently, UNESCO, all in support of the Zionist regime,” Zarif asserted.

Israel was behind the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate accord? In fact, Israel wasn't even aware that the US was withdrawing from UNESCO until it was announced!

Zarif is consciously parroting the antisemitic canard that Jews control the US. But too many people still insist that the Iranian regime is merely "anti-Zionist," not antisemitic.

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Who are these people, who dance with their book?

A book created before humanity knew what books are,
A book that is really five books, written out by hand, on one long scroll.
Every single letter must be perfect.
Written exactly the way it was always written.
Otherwise the writing must begin anew.

These people, the Others of the world called them, the “People of the Book”
Because their book defined them, told them how to live,
How to be a people.
And gave life to the modern world.

These people, my people, dance with our book once a year.
We have a special holiday for that – to rejoice in our book.
Dancing in circles, outside, in public,
Embracing the book, like a child carried by his or her parent,
Encouraging our children to join in,
To see this moment as one of sweetness and joy as well
Because they are the ones who will make sure this Book lives on.

Joy is a simple but profound emotion.
Not one usually evoked by a book.
But this is not “a book”, it is “The Book.”
This is the book of life, of civilization, of morality and humanity.

Like life itself, this book is cyclical.
We read it every year
And when we complete it, we rejoice.
And start again, from the beginning.

Every week there is a different chapter to read.
Always in the same order.
Always at the same time of year.
Always the same and yet, different every time.

At different times in life, the same wisdom is understood differently.
We learn and take away different messages, in varying depths of comprehension.
All are good, all are of value.
It is the journey that counts, the struggle to gain in wisdom
And begin the next year, better.

The people who dance with their book are people, dancing with life.
Rejoicing in the cycle of life, growing as individuals, together as a community,
One generation to the next.

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Jews dancing driving Arabs crazy - like it always does

The sight of religious Jews dancing really drives some Arabs crazy.

In 2015, religious Jews danced at the Amman airport, presumably to celebrate an upcoming wedding.

Last December, Jewish businessmen in Bahrain danced with their Arab hosts, causing a huge amount of criticism in the Arab world.

In April, Arab media reported on some Jewish youths dancing at Damascus Gate.

Now we have Jews in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron dancing during the Sukkot holiday:

الصهاينة يرقصون في المسجد الإبراهيمي وحكام العرب يتمنون التطبيع مع الكيان الصهيوني. pic.twitter.com/jv13ZNxt3J
— مفتاح (@keymiftah79) October 10, 2017

The tweet that publicized this event in Arabic threw in said "Zionists dance in the Ibrahimi Mosque yet the rulers of the Arabs wish to normalize with the Zionist entity." Because Jews dancing in their second holiest spot is of course terrible, and it certainly wouldn't be allowed if Muslims were in charge.

As they were for a thousand years before 1967.

Comments on the tweet express sorrow at witnessing such a depressing spectacle. And no, they weren't referring to the dancing style of jumping up and down in place (although some commenters compared this to Salafi style dancing.)

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10/14 Links: Trump will not recertify Iran deal; US withdraws from UNESCO, cites ‘anti-Israel bias’

From Ian:

Why There Is No Peace in the Middle East

Peace is not possible in the Middle East because values and goals other than peace are more important to Middle Easterners. Most important to Middle Easterners are loyalty to kin, clan, and cult, and the honour that is won by such loyalty.

There was no group and no loyalty above the tribe or tribal confederation until the rise of Islam. With Islam, a new, higher, more encompassing level of loyalty was defined. All people were divided between Muslims and infidels, and the world was divided between the Dar al-Islam, the land of believers and peace, and Dar al-harb, the land of unbelievers and war. Following the tribal ideology of loyalty, Muslims should unite against infidels, and would receive not only honour, but heavenly rewards.

Honour is gained in victory. Losing is regarded as deeply humiliating. Only the prospects of a future victory and the regaining of honour drives people forward. An example is the Arab-Israel conflict, in the course of which the despised Jews repeatedly defeated the armies of Arab states. This was not so much a material disaster for the Arabs, as it was a cultural one in which honor was lost. The only way to regain honor is to defeat and destroy Israel, the explicit goal of the Palestinians: "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea." This why no agreement over land or boundaries will bring peace: peace does not restore honor.

We in the West, unlike Middle Easterners, love "victims." But what if Middle Easterners are victims of the limitations and shortcomings of their own culture? (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Melanie Phillips: Modernity starts here, if only the world realized it

So it begins once more. In the synagogues this week, it’s Groundhog Day. Jews go back to the opening of the Five Books of Moses and start the narrative all over again.

The secular world looks on with indifference, bemusement or contempt. Among unbelievers, it is an article of faith that reason, science and modernity are in one box and religion, superstition and obscurantism in another.

Ah yes; the rational, factual, grounded secular world. The one that is currently disinviting speakers and violently attacking universities on the grounds of upholding freedom and equality. The one that is spewing unhinged lies and paranoid distortions at Israel and the Jewish people. The one that appears to be spinning off its axis into utter madness.

The reason for this is something the secular world cannot bring itself to grasp.

For in setting out to destroy the biblical basis of western civilization, the secular world is in the process of destroying reason itself. This is is how it works.

IsraellyCool: Hello, Refugees! Book Review

Tuvia’s travels reveal a number of interesting things. For a start, while Germany has perhaps allowed in the most refugees, Germany does not really have a good game plan after they have arrived. The refugees lived in squalid conditions, often with different enemy factions living right near each other. Night-time knife hilarity ensues.

Then there’s the question as to why Germany has let in the most refugees. Invariably, the answer is the same – and it rhymes with Madolf Mitler. Germany is trying to shed its past as the Dr Evil of nations, and is doing so to the extent that they are now the kindest people in the world! Or so Tuvia is told. The people telling him this also invariably add something along the lines of “unlike those inhumane Israelis who mistreat the poor palestinians.”

Yep, Tuvia encounters antisemitism among his Germans, but also among not an insignificant amount of the refugees he meets. Perhaps this is the glue that can make this marriage work!

Another interesting finding: the Right-wing Germans he meets, much reviled by the liberals, are actually not against bringing in refugees. They just want to make sure the refugees are really fleeing persecution, and not the economic refugees just wanting a better life (which often seems to include wanting to marry a beautiful blonde German girl).

Once again, Tuvia Tenenbom has delivered with an entertaining and provocative read that gets beyond mainstream media narratives.

Incidentally, I attended a Q&A with Tuvia Tenenbom earlier this week. You can view it yourself below; in it, Tuvia expands on some of the topics I have addressed in this review, in his inimitable style.

Tuvia Tenenbom: Refugees & Anti-Semitism in the US - Moderated by Melanie Phillips

10/11 Links Pt2: 100 Years Ago, a Jewish Heroine Became a Martyr for Human Rights; 60,000 March in Jerusalem

From Ian:

100 Years Ago, a Jewish Heroine Became an Early Martyr for Human Rights

When I was in the fourth grade, my class went on a field trip to Zichron Ya’akov, to visit the home of a woman named Sarah Aaronsohn. She, we were told, was a great Jewish heroine, although the particulars were left deliberately vague. She was some sort of spy, our teacher told us cryptically, and she died for our country.

That she did, exactly one hundred years ago this week. But her bravery remains singular, and her story, sadly, too rarely told: Aaronsohn was a committed feminist, a proud Zionist, and a witness to genocide who refused to remain silent in the face of atrocity.

She was born in 1890 to Romanian immigrants who, as Zionism’s earliest adherents, helped found Zichron Ya’akov. Growing up, she learned how to farm, how to ride horses, and how to shoot guns. In 1914, she married a wealthy merchant named Haim Avraham and followed him to Turkey, where he did business. But, unsatisfied with merely being someone’s wife, she left him and set out to return home to her parents’ farm. What she saw on the way changed her life.

“In front of her very eyes, she saw the Armenians being tortured by the Turks,” her brother, Aaron, wrote in his diary. “She saw hundreds of dead Armenians, lying on the ground, unburied, devoured by wild dogs.”

These sights shook her to the core. She vowed to fight the Turks by whatever means necessary, and sought to aid the British in their war against the Ottoman Empire. Her timing was perfect: Her brother and his friends had just started an underground movement dedicated to this very idea. Entitled NILY—Hebrew acronyms for Netzach Israel Lo Yeshaker, or The Eternal One of Israel Will Not Lie—the group was a spy ring that collected information on Ottoman military movements in Palestine and delivered them to the Brits. At first the handoff was done by hand, with one of the group’s members swimming to a small yacht off the coast of Atlit, delivering his information, and receiving funds collected by American Jews to help the starving and embattled Jews in the Eretz Yisrael. Soon, however, the Turks began to suspect that something was afoot, and warned Palestine’s Jews not to meddle in the war lest they meet the same fate as the Armenians. Most were cowered by the threat, but not Aaronsohn and her fellow fighters. With the coastline now closely watched, they switched to homing pigeons. The system worked well, until it didn’t: In September of 1917, one of their birds was intercepted. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The Jews Will Have to Wait

On November 8, 1942, a full year-and-a-half before the Allies invaded Normandy, about 110,000 American and British troops invaded North Africa. They had set out in more than 850 ships from U.S. and British ports, sailed for up to 4,500 miles through treacherous Atlantic waters teeming with Nazi U-boats, and, once at their destination, put ashore in three landing zones spread across more than 900 miles of coastline, from south of Casablanca to east of Algiers.

This was Operation Torch, America’s first offensive operation in the European theater of war and, until Operation Overlord’s Normandy landings, the greatest amphibious attack in history. Today, it is all but forgotten. And yet, aside from rivaling Overlord in terms of its enormity, complexity, and peril, Torch was also vastly consequential, for it helped to determine the future course and ultimately successful conclusion of the war. If that weren’t significant enough, Torch also deserves to be remembered for the critical role it played in setting the terms of America’s long-term relationship with the rulers and peoples of the Middle East.

Among those peoples not least are the Jews, whose role in this story is central in more ways than one.

Yisrael Medad: Remember Article 9! Who Will Protest?

I am referring to Article 9 of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty.

Is that treaty not a commitment, to be honored?

Are Article 9's elements to be discarded?

Let's read the official Jordanian news agency Petra:

300 extremist settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque
Ramallah, Oct.10 (Petra)-- Some 300 extremist settlers early Tuesday stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram Al Sharif, according to a Palestinian source.

The General Director of the Islamic Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Affairs, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, told Petra's reporter in Ramallah that Israeli settlers broke into the holy shrine from the Bab Al-Magharbeh gate under heavy protection of Israeli special forces and police.

Al-Khatib said that the settlers provocatively toured the Al-Aqsa yards.

Okay, that's Jordan's bad behavior.

But is there ever an Israeli protest?

10/11 Links Pt1: Israel exposes Russian spying US; Report shows Iran's nuclear program not stopped

From Ian:

Report: Israel exposes Russian hackers who tried to spy on US

Israeli intelligence officials monitoring Russian government hackers found they were using Kaspersky Lab antivirus software that is also used by 400 million people globally, including U.S. government agencies, media reports said Tuesday.

The Israeli officials who hacked into Kaspersky's network over two years ago had, at the time, warned their U.S. counterparts of the Russian intrusion, The New York Times reported.

That led to a decision in Washington only last month to order Kaspersky software removed from all government computers.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Israeli officials also found in Kaspersky's network hacking tools that could only have come from the U.S. National Security Agency.

Upon this discovery, the consequent NSA investigation found that these tools had been obtained by the Russian government, the report said.

Late last month, the U.S. National Intelligence Council completed a classified report that it shared with NATO allies concluding that Russia's FSB intelligence service had "probable access" to Kaspersky customer databases and source code.

That access, the council concluded, could help enable cyberattacks against U.S. government, commercial and industrial control networks, The Washington Post reported.

The New York Times said the Russian operation, according to multiple people briefed on the matter, is known to have stolen classified documents from an NSA employee who had improperly stored them on his home computer, which had Kaspersky antivirus software installed on it.

It is not yet publicly known what other U.S. secrets the Russian hackers may have discovered by turning the Kaspersky software into a sort of Google search for sensitive information, the report said. (h/t Dave4321)

Palestinian Normalization -- With Hamas, Not Israel

The most widespread conspiracy theory, which has been floating around for decades and can be heard in almost every coffee shop on the streets of Cairo, Amman, Ramallah and Beirut, is that Zionist Jews, together with American capitalists and imperialists, have a secret plan to take control over the Arab and Islamic countries and their resources.

How exactly are the "Zionists and imperialists" trying to "undermine" the Palestinian "national project"? And what, precisely, is this project? Is it the project of Hamas and many other Palestinians that seeks the destruction of Israel?

The corrupt Arab and Palestinian leaders spread such rumors to divert attention from problems at home, such as corruption and dictatorship. These leaders want their people too busy hating Jews and Westerners to demand reform, democracy and transparency from their leaders. Those valuables, of course, are what Arab and Palestinian leaders still refuse to offer their people.

Why do many Palestinians prefer peace with Hamas? Because they identify with Hamas's dream of destroying Israel and killing Jews. It may be an unpleasant a truth, but that is the bottom line.

Gatestone Institute: NOTICE

Gatestone Institute, its President and Board of Directors strongly condemn the defamatory campaign waged by Mudar Zahran (under his own name and through various fictitious accounts and names) against Gatestone Institute's Distinguished Senior Fellow Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute wishes to note that it has warned Mudar Zahran in the past a number of times to stop his obsessive campaign. Although he promised and apologized, he had persisted with his campaign, and continues to make false and defamatory accusations and insinuations against one of our esteemed Fellows.

Gatestone Institute wishes to clarify that it terminated all ties with Mudar Zahran four years ago. Accordingly, he does not speak on behalf of Gatestone or any of its affiliates, constituents or participants.

The Al Aqsa test to make sure you aren't a sneaky Jew

From iNews (UK), a story of a Muslim woman who married a non-Muslim man (who converted to Islam for her) and how she was treated in the Arab world:

Although my ex-husband formally converted in Al-Azhar, he did not take a Muslim name. That was enough to render his faith as “questionable”. Shortly before midnight, after touring Damascus, we were interrupted in our hostel room by a rude wake up call – literally. An aggressive voice at the door said, “We are the night staff, we need to check your marriage certificate.” Although we had shown the precious certificate to the afternoon staff earlier, the night staffs were not convinced. They wanted to check it one more time – at around midnight. “This is a Muslim country, and you claim to be Muslim,” one of them said. The two hostel staff looked bemused and offended when I responded angrily, “Yes, I am Muslim, and I have the right to choose my husband.”

Even in my native country Egypt, officials, hotel employees and others we met on tour questioned his Islamic credential.

We had, however, a particularly challenging encounter at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. To enter the Dome of the Rock, my ex-husband was asked to perform ablutions (the ritual of washing before prayers), apparently to prove he was not a Jew. According to one of the guards, this was a necessary ritual because “Jews occasionally want to break into the sacred site.”

In England, the challenges and grilling continued. One night was particularly distressing when a well-educated, senior medical colleague of mine (a doctor) volunteered, “to educate me” about how God would punish me if my husband stopped performing his Islamic duties. This colleague then said, with no small degree of condescension: “I know a girl who made your stupid mistake; she was eventually punished by God who cursed her with a rare skin disease.”

(h/t Mike)

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Chag sameach! Again!

This is the final of this season's holidays. I won't be blogging from sundown on the US East Coast until Saturday night.

Israel once issued a series of stamps to celebrate Simchat Torah flags that children use in synagogue. Here they are:

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I love when Arabs pretend to love the Mizrahi Jews they persecuted

Al Jazeera has an op-ed by Susan Abulhawa, who claims that Israel is a racist country because of its treatment of Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries) as second class citizens.

Yes, Al Jazeera has breaking news from 1954.

Obviously Alulhawa doesn't give a damn about Mizrahi Jews, or else she might have spared a word about how they have all been ethnically cleansed from Arab countries, as well as how badly they were treated by Arab Muslims and Christians for centuries.

Absurdity abounds throughout the article, as Abulhawa claims that the entire idea of Mizrahi Jews is a fake construct made up by Israel to take away their individuality:

Thus, the word Mizrahim, from the Hebrew and Arabic words meaning "those of the East," was popularised to lump all of these peoples of different nations into a single miscellaneous category that erased their individual ancient histories and cultures that spanned thousands of years of life and tradition, replete with countless and invaluable achievements in their respective nations.

What about the word "Sephardic"? Was that also an attempt to homogenize Jews who were not Ashkenazi?

And didn't Zionism do the same thing with Jews from Russia, Poland, Germany and Hungary, by lumping them all together as "Ashkenazi Jews"? Didn't they each have their own cultures and traditions that were also subsumed under the Israeli umbrella as Israel struggled to integrate every Jew to become a new nation?

Was that racism too?

Traditional Jews have maintained much of their culture, whether from the West or the East. And Israel has incorporated parts of Mizrahi culture into its society. The idea of Ashkenizi and Sephardi Jews intermarrying is utterly normal, and has been for decades, which is surprising from such a "racist" society (which has had a Mizrahi president too.)

But Abulhawa's real agenda is clear from this hilarious final paragraph:

Israel has moved away slightly from early Zionism's contempt for our part of the world. And while it remains a colonial project, bent on erasing the native Palestinian presence, their social efforts are more focused on "indigenising" themselves to the land. The obstinacy of Arab Jews in clinging to their cultural roots has provided a convenient avenue to lay claim to regional indigenous culture. So now, Arab foods (like falafel, hummus, shakshouka), traditional Arab clothing (like tatreez, galabiyas, keffiyehs), and Arab folkloric dances are all being rebranded as "Israeli," yet another phase of colonial renaming, and they use the rebranded Arab Jews to justify their claim.

It's always about the falafel.

Abulhawa's ridiculous attempts to smear Israeli Jews of European origin prove only one thing: She's the racist, not the Israelis.

The fact is that Jews from Arab countries were always second class citizens, much more persecuted than they ever were in Israel 60 years ago. And Abulhawa is quite OK with that.

(h/t Matan)

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19 Swiss MPs submit motion to remove UNHRC Agenda Item against Israel

A loose translation of a motion submitted to the Swiss parliament:

The Federal Council is instructed to propose to the UN Human Rights Council to delete item 7 of its permanent agenda.
The creation of the UN Human Rights Council in June 2006 must be attributed primarily to an initiative by Switzerland and Micheline Calmy-Rey, then Federal Councilor. Shortly after its work began, the Council established a permanent ten-point agenda, which has since been systematically followed at all sessions.

The agenda reads as follows:

Item 1. Organizational and procedural matters
Item 2. Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General
Item 3. Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development
Item 4. Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention
Item 5. Human rights bodies and mechanisms
Item 6. Universal Periodic Review
Item 7. Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories
Item 8. Follow-up and implementation of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
Item 9. Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, follow-up and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action
Item 10. Technical assistance and capacity-building

It was then decided by a majority of the voters that the human rights situation in the countries of the world would be dealt with under different agenda items. On the other hand, the question of Israel and Palestine is discussed in item 7, created specifically for this purpose. The situation prevailing in all the other countries is examined in points 4 and 10. In practice, point 7 is subject to one to two days of discussions each time, while Council has only granted only a few hours of its time to the situation in the rest of the world. Thus, since June 2006, it adopted 68 resolutions against Israel, and 67 concerning all the rest of the world.

Given the real human rights situation in the world, Switzerland, which had actively worked for the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council, would do well more than ten years later to propose that the Council to delete item 7, which specifically refers to Israel. It should be committed to promoting respect for human rights in general, rather than supporting the systematic piling on a single country.

What is insane is that the Western nations have never prioritized this, thereby telling the Arab world that they can do whatever they want without opposition.

(h/t UN Watch)

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10/10 Links Pt2: Tablet Mag Goes Full Antisemite; AJ planted undercover reporter in US pro-Israel groups

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: Tablet Mag Goes Full Antisemite

With the news of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace clogging the news cycle, it was only a matter of time before we would see antisemitic articles stressing the fact he is Jewish, and somehow connecting it to his despicable behavior.

And none is worse than this article from Neo Nazi site The Daily Stormer.

Excerpt:
At first squint, Harvey Weinstein seems like a very familiar type. Isn’t he the old, same old, another rich, entitled, powerful man with a bad dye job abusing his might to coerce women into sex? Isn’t Harvey just like Roger Ailes, or Bill O’Reilly, or, for that matter, Bill Clinton? But look at the details of the case and you’ll see that the answer is no. Harvey is different. Harvey, sadly, is a deeply Jewish kind of pervert.

As despicable as you may find Ailes, O’Reilly, and the other grabby goyim, you’ll recognize their behavior fits a pattern as old as time itself, as trite as Fox’s complaints about the “war on Christmas”: Men crave sex, and the worst of them will obtain it by whatever means necessary. These despicable gents have power and influence, and they aren’t above promising a lucrative gig—or threatening to take it away—to get laid. In these transactions, women are nothing but objects, and any “consent” is just an illusion. Morally, the men are no better than the pimps who crowd into James Franco’s character’s bar on The Deuce, the new HBO show; psychologically, they are no more complex than the johns. Cash in, cum out. The women are collateral damage.

Only it was not really from The Daily Stormer. It is from Tablet Mag, an American-Jewish publication.

What makes this even more infuriating is I have always found Tablet to be proudly Jewish. We are not speaking about the Jewish Forward or Ha’aretz here, which are constantly providing grist for the antisemites’ mill. In fact, one of its writers, Yair Rosenberg, constantly writes about antisemitism and describes himself on Twitter as a “troller of Nazis.”

This article will no doubt be spread far and wide by the same Jew haters Yair Rosenberg likes to write about and troll. I call on the managing editor of Tablet to remove the article immediately and issue an apology to its readers and Jews everywhere.

Shmuley Boteach: A shameful attack on Elie Wiesel

Quite a few questions arise from Ron Rosenbaum’s twisted and shameful attack in Tablet magazine on Elie Wiesel, the most famous Holocaust survivor.

First, what was the motive of the magazine’s editors in publishing the piece? It would be one thing if the column was of high literary quality and rhetorical merit.

But endless repetition alone demonstrates how this was a thoughtless hit piece, designed to disparage Wiesel in the most degrading way possible. How many times do we have to hear Rosenbaum’s description of Wiesel as “a golem of grief,” a man with “eyes circled in gloomy Dantean darkness, the Man in Black, the Johnny Cash of the death camps,” or read about Wiesel’s endless “cloud of gloom.”

We get it Ron. You believe that one of the most revered personalities of the 20th century and the man whom President Obama – whom you claim to have supported – called the “conscience of the world,” was a charlatan who utilized a melancholic affectation to increase stature. And my, aren’t you clever with all your colorful descriptions.

The second question is why Rosenbaum decided to even write his piece, given how much he insists Wiesel doesn’t matter. Rosenbaum’s column hammers home how much Wiesel “had passed his moment of real relevance,” “fewer paid attention to his stoic mien,” adding, “He was no Simon Wiesenthal.”

Ouch.

A Misleading Picture of Today’s Anti-Semitism

There is an article running in this month's issue of JLife (Orange County Jewish Life) by Lisa Armony, who is the director of the Rose Project, a financial arm of the Jewish Federation and Family Services of Orange County (California). It is entitled, Anti-Semitism in Charlottesville. Beginning with the recent incident in Charlottesville, Armony gives us a recitation of the history of anti-semitism in the 20th century. It is not what is in Armony's article that I take issue with. It is what is not in the article.

I do not dispute the facts of what Armony writes. Furthermore, I have no intention whatsoever of coming to the defense of people like Richard Spencer, David Duke, the KKK or neo-Nazis. They are all despicable and should be rejected by every decent American. However, there is a glaring omission here. Armony fails to write one single word about Islamic anti-semitism and the role it plays in today's anti-semitism. I happen to know Ms. Armony, and I have personally told her what I write below. In fact, we had a conversation last January at the Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach when that synagogue hosted an interfaith event dedicated to fighting racism, anti-semitism and Islamophobia. The event was dedicated almost as much to bashing President Trump, his supporters, and the alt-right. Here is what I wrote about the event at the time.

As laid out in the above link, Ms Armony refused to present my written question to the panel during Q and A. The question asked who was responsible for anti-semitism at UC Irvine, where I formerly taught part-time. The correct answer would have been Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Union and their invited speakers over the past several years. Indeed, it is the pro-Palestinian lobby on college campuses all over the US which has made campus life an unpleasant experience for so many Jewish students. Though not Jewish myself, I have seen it first-hand and have spoken out about it for some ten years. When the above meeting was ended, I made it clear to Ms. Armony that the worst purveyors of anti-semitism today are not neo-Nazis or skin-heads; rather it is Muslims (not all, of course). Armony told me that this was not the time or place to bring that up. Of course not. Present at the event were some prominent Muslim leaders from Orange Country including Imam Muzammil Siddiqi, who, in recent years, has lent out his Islamic Center of Orange County for Muslim students from UC Irvine to assemble their mock "apartheid wall" for display at UCI during the annual anti-Israel week of events every May, a most inconvenient fact, which I brought to his (and everyone else's) attention during a followup event at UCI featuring many of the same people.