From Ian:
Caroline Glick: AIPAC loses the script
Melanie Phillips: The west’s antisemitism crisis
Why Clinton Sat with Farrakhan
Caroline Glick: AIPAC loses the script
In short, the version of the AIPAC-sponsored anti-BDS bill that is set to be voted on before the full House of Representatives does more to legitimize UN and European Union efforts to economically discriminate against Jews in Israel than it does to counter them. AIPAC and AIPAC-supported Republicans like Rep. Royce opted to gut the bill in order to retain the support of Democratic legislators who have been cowed into ending their substantive protection of Israel by the rising forces in their party that are hostile to Israel.
This dire situation – which foretells a future where, in the interest of preserving the fiction of bipartisan support for Israel, all pro-Israel bills are gutted to secure the support of the lowest-common denominator of pro-Israel sentiment among the Democrats – can be reversed.
The Senate version of the bill is the original version of the legislation. It is the version of the bill that should be adopted into law. Republicans in the full House can refuse to approve the Foreign Affairs Committee’s bill and wait instead to pass the Senate version.
Looking ahead, Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate need to stop agreeing to water down their initiatives to secure support from their Democratic colleagues who have been cowed into paralysis by the rising anti-Israel forces in their party. After all, if the Democrats retake control of the House in November, they will not lift a finger to secure Republican votes.
AIPAC may have made perpetuating the myth of strong bipartisan support for Israel its cri de couer. But Republicans, who are truly pro-Israel, have no reason to join them.
Melanie Phillips: The west’s antisemitism crisis
Confronted by reports of rising antisemitism, officials decided that the Jews themselves were to blame because of their “inordinate attention to the possibilities of the ‘black market’ and a lack of pleasant standards of conduct as evacuees.”Melanie Phillips: Corbyn, Farrakhan, Franklin funeral sermon
Only when the enormity of the Holocaust was finally revealed after the war did hatred of Jews become unsayable. It thus went underground — until the left’s adoption of the Palestinian narrative made it sayable again.
Now the Arabs who want to wipe out Israel are regarded falsely and grotesquely as the victims of the Jews. As a result, western antisemites are once again licensed to treat Jews with disgust.
Because Israelis take up arms to defend themselves against extermination and thus kill some of their attackers, they are viewed as aggressors. Jews can only be considered victims if they are passive, helpless and, above all, dead.
Since relatively few Israelis are being killed, they are said to be up to the Jews’ habitual trick of claiming to be victims in order to manipulate the world to their advantage.
Israelis are thus presented obsessively, falsely and malevolently as brutal, willful killers of the innocent. This unique demonization is profoundly antisemitic. But the Israel-bashers really do think it is legitimate criticism—because they believe these deranged and demonstrable falsehoods are actually true.
They resent the claim of antisemitism because they think it’s constantly used to give the Jews in general a free pass for their misdeeds. But these “misdeeds’ are lies. The Israel-bashers believe that they are true because they are antisemites.
This is why Labour’s antisemitism problem cannot be solved. Far beyond the unlovely person of Corbyn himself, it is rooted in bigotry over Israel that has become the default position of mainstream progressive politics. And that, in turn, is part of a broader picture.
Israel is the paradigm nation-state, while Jewish principles lie at the very core of Western civilization. In Britain and America, a culture war is being waged against the west and the nation state. Who can be surprised, therefore, that the Jews are at the very center of that battleground.
The holidays are over! Please join me here in discussion with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired as we pick up developments in our crazy world (which has got even crazier in our absence, if that’s possible). We’re talking about the continuing antisemitism crisis in Britain’s Labour party, the emergence of America’s party of hatred and the remarkable sermon delivered at Aretha Franklin’s funeral.
Why Clinton Sat with Farrakhan
You don’t have to have much of an imagination to ponder what would happen if Duke [KKK Leader] received a similar place of honor at a funeral for a famous singer. Or the storm that would follow if a former GOP president were to share a platform with Duke, or, as Clinton did with Farrakhan, shake his hand. That would have been the only story coming out of such an event, dwarfing the coverage that Franklin’s funeral or even the John McCain funeral received.
But that didn’t happen when Clinton treated Farrakhan as just another friend of Aretha’s who deserved respect last Friday.
The only explanation is that, for many in the media and the liberal political establishment, hate coming from a black or Islamic group or individual is somehow less odious than hate from white supremacists — even if their rhetoric is remarkably similar.
This may stem in part from the bogus theory about prejudice that holds that it’s impossible for blacks or anyone without power to be guilty of racism. But the problem goes deeper than that absurd assertion. Hate from any source that can’t be identified as somehow tied to conservatives or Trump is simply of no interest to the political Left these days. Even worse, such hate is sometime even whitewashed by the Left — recently, in a YouTube video, Vox and Pro Publica sympathetically depicted MS-13 gang members as nice teenage kids who ride bikes and hold part-time after-school jobs.
The claim that Trump has empowered the far Right continues to be repeated by many liberals even though there is no proof that such a thing is remotely true. Trump’s policies and his administration’s personnel are diametrically opposed to the hate that Duke, the KKK, and the neo-Nazis promote.
But whatever they may think of Trump, the mainstream media should not excuse Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and hate for whites, or pretend that it’s a result of a misunderstanding.
The Franklin funeral may be dismissed as a meaningless media event with no impact on society. But the truth is that it was a major triumph for Farrakhan and his efforts to bring his message of Jew-hatred into the mainstream. The willingness of the networks to ignore Farrakhan’s hate and the ability of figures such as Clinton and Stevie Wonder to embrace him with impunity allows the virus of hate to spread. A society in which Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism is normalized, as it was last week, is one in which Jews cannot claim to be entirely safe.
"How hard can that be -- saying that Nazis are bad?"
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) September 7, 2018
-- Barack Obama
"The Jews don't like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man."
- Louis Farrakhan pic.twitter.com/KXz0Wxm4zU














