Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

"Extremist right winger" Naftali Bennett's speech in Pittsburgh was more unifying than 95% of the tweets from "progressives"

The "progressives" have been using Pittsburgh as a means to divide Jews, and it is disgusting.

One of the people that they despise, Naftali Bennett, the leader of Israel's Jewish Home party and Israel's Minister of Education and Minister of Diaspora Affairs, gave a speech Sunday at a vigil for the victims, and it was more unifying than any of the articles and social media posts I've seen from the "progressive" crowd.

Of course, Haaretz and The Forward didn't highlight the moving parts of his speech that talked about the commonalities of all Jews. Instead, they claimed that he tries to tie the shootings to Palestinians.

This is false. Bennett said that the antisemitism that prompts the rockets is the same as the one that prompted the murderer. Antisemitism does not have a rationale, and when one gives it a rationale, one is giving the criminals an excuse for their actions. Anyone who thinks that Hamas rockets have any purpose outside of terrorizing Jews is not a serious person.

It is not the "settler leader" Bennett who wants to see Jewish unity disintegrate. It is his opponents.

(h/t Yoel)

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The PLO just officially said it supports terror. No one noticed.

Times of Israel reports:

A top Palestinian body on Monday passed a motion urging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend all agreements with Israel and revoke recognition of the Jewish state until Israel formally recognizes a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines.

“We recognize the right to resist the occupation in all methods that comply with international law,” the Palestinian Central Council, a Palestine Liberation Organization decision-making body, said in its decision.

The body, convening in Ramallah, said Palestinians should end “all forms” of security coordination with Israel and nullify several financial agreements that it said were being “ignored” by Jerusalem.

The vote is not binding, and a final decision rests with Abbas. Previous votes by the council in January 2018 and in 2015 to suspend security coordination with Israel were not implemented.
In recent years, Abbas has threatened multiple times to nix agreements between the Palestinians and Israel, but he has not moved to do away with them.

The PA president said last week, however, that his Ramallah-based government would not be able sidestep the decisions the Central Council makes at its upcoming meeting, calling the PLO body “the highest Palestinian authority.”

Let's look at the bolded text.

A typical Western reporter and diplomat will interpret that as saying that the peace loving PLO, which has promised to eschew violence in 1993, is saying that it will continue to only support
"non-violent resistance."

But Palestinian leaders and their Western apologists actually claim that Palestinian terror is allowed under international law.

The Fatah Platform of 2009 says this explicitly:

Fatah launched armed struggle, and other methods of legitimate resistance to liberate the homeland. Such a right is recognized by international law as long as the occupation of our land remains.

[T]he Palestinian people’s right to practice armed resistance against the military occupation of their land remains a constant right confirmed by international law and international legality.

Right to Resist:Fatah adheres to the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all legitimate means, including the right to use armed struggle. Such a right is guaranteed by international law as long as the occupation, settlement, and the denial of our inalienable rights continue.

Western pundits need to stop interpreting their words according to their own wishful thinking. Interpret them according to the Palestinian leaders' own thinking.

In this case the same people who run Fatah run the PLO.

It is clear that the PLO is now saying, officially, that terrorism is an option that they embrace.

But if you don't believe me, I invite any reporter to ask any Palestinian official whether they believe that armed struggle is their right under international law. Once you get past the hemming and hawing and their reluctant admission (after all, Richard Falk backs them up saying it is their right) ask them if this includes attacking civilians in Israel.

Then ask them if it includes attacking Israeli officials abroad.

Then ask them if if includes attacking Zionists in, say, Pittsburgh.

This is what journalists are supposed to do.

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10/29 Links Pt2: Podhoretz: What I learned as an American Jew after the Pittsburgh synagogue attack; Second Israeli judoka wins gold in Abu Dhabi; Israel to host 2019 Judo Grand Prix event

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: What I learned as an American Jew after the Pittsburgh synagogue attack

On this day of all days it needs to be said: America has been a blessing for the Jewish people unlike any other blessing given any other people in the history of the world.

One crime — or 29 separate crimes, committed at the same time by a monster in human form — cannot be allowed to overshadow this extraordinary fact.

My own gratitude to America is actually greater today than it was yesterday because of the outpouring of grief and rage and common humanity we have witnessed in the response to the horror in Pittsburgh.

The philo-Semitic response to this unspeakable act of anti-Semitism reveals how American Jews are anchored in America in a way that Jews who live anywhere else outside of Israel are not anchored to the lands in which they reside or have ever resided.

We are Americans. And we are Jews. And there is no contradiction between the two. When people talk freely and foolishly and noxiously about America as having been built on racism, there is one simple answer to their libel: George Washington’s letter to a synagogue in Newport, written in August 1790.

“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” Washington wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

That final phrase, taken from the prophet Micah, was violated in the most obscene way on Saturday. But the story of America is a story of a country that has indeed served as vine and fig tree for the world’s most beleaguered peoples.

America has allowed us to sit in safety. America has allowed us to flourish due to its “enlarged and liberal policy” that assumes all human beings have inalienable rights.

The Misguided Rabbis of Twitter

Calls to excommunicate pro-Trump Jews are not simply wrong. They’re poison.
As Shabbat ended in Los Angeles, a city where in 1999 there was a terror attack against a Jewish Community Center, I saw this from another reporter whose work I have always esteemed very highly, Julia Ioffe: “And a word to my fellow American Jews: This President makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it.”

The calculation here, I suppose, is that people voted for Trump to get an embassy move and their vote proxy murdered other Jews. How careful should one be, should a distinguished reporter be, when accusing others of such enormities, even indirectly? How do people think this message will fall on the ears of those who fled from Iran, to be told that they are in fact guilty in the death of Pittsburgh’s Jews?

Or — even more shamefully — on the ears of Judah Samet. Mr. Samet, a Holocaust survivor, escaped death by 4 minutes because he was a little late to shul. He is also a strong supporter of Trump. Frank, Julia: Would you stand before this 80-year-old man, not in a tweet or online piece, but face to face, and tell him he is responsible for the death of his friends, the people with whom he prays each Shabbat? Would you bar him from the shul where he almost died, again, at the hands of Jew haters? Really? And that would make us the righteous ones?

There is much that smart journalists and observers like these folks say that I agree must be said: Yes, we must be vigilant and aware and ready to spot and combat the virus of hatred. Yes, we must call out public voices, from the President on down, who speak in ways we believe endangers or radicalizes the population. But my congregants are not the ones who are dangerous, and manipulating responsibility to turn Jews into perpetrators is ethically appalling — and communally toxic. We can only be a Jewish people when we don’t excommunicate each other — for religious reasons or political reasons or cultural reasons. Everyone is welcome to pray in my synagogue, right or left, no matter how much I as Rabbi may object to your views. Because we do not pray as Democrats or Republicans, but as Jews. Now let us tear our clothes and mourn the dead.

Women's March Holds 'Vigil' To Oppose Anti-Semitism — Led By Linda Sarsour

The Women's March, whose leaders have openly embraced anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, tried to lead the "resistance" in opposition to President Donald Trump in the wake of the Pennsylvania synagogue shooting Sunday, holding a "vigil" outside the White House to protest anti-Semitism.

There was just one problem: it was led by noted supporter of anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (and likely anti-Semite, herself), Linda Sarsour.

"Today we are turning our grief to action with @jewishaction," the Women's March tweeted, "to send a clear message that these anti-semitic and xenophobic attacks can never happen again."

Notice the conflagration of terms, associating "anti-Semitism" with "xenophobia" in an effort to connect violence explicitly against the Jewish people with a broader campaign against opponents of unfettered immigration because it'll become important later.

The Women's March followed that tweet up, though, with a photo of Linda Sarsour addressing the crowd — unironically.

Jewish Action is the same organization that today called on President Trump to stay away from any memorial for victims of the Pittsburgh shooting until he denounced white supremacy.

Sarsour and fellow Women's March leaders Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez are, of course, friends with arguably the nation's foremost anti-Semite, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who regularly delivers anti-Jewish messages from the pulpit of his mosque in Chicago, and just last week referred to Jews as "termites" who require extermination.

Two of your leaders associate directly with a virulent anti-Semite. Pretty easy to start there. Doesn’t even require bus fare. https://t.co/5c62EEkEOF
— Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) October 28, 2018

From Tehran Times:

Jamal Wakim, professor of History and International Relations at Lebanese University, has said that the Zionist regime of Israel has the strategic objective of gaining control over the Strait of Hormuz.

“After Al Saud’s failure to normalize Israeli-Arabic relations, the Zionists have found Oman Sultanate and the country’s Sultan [Qaboos bin Said al Said] suitable options to reach their strategic objectives such as normalizing relations with Arabs and ruling over Strait of Hormuz,” he told ILNA in an interview published on Sunday.

He noted that Israel seeks to use Oman as a tool to threaten Iran’s interests.

Oman indeed controls the Arab part of the Strait. I don't think the Arabs love Israel enough to outsource their security and strategic positions to Israel.

Not yet, anyway. But if Iran keeps doing what it is doing, it might happen pretty soon!

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Outrage, Reason and Art

When a horrific attack like the one that took place in Pittsburgh this weekend occurs, especially when your own community is the target of murderous hate, first instincts turn towards comforting the afflicted coupled with feelings of outrage. Analysis, at such a time, can seem almost in bad taste.

Fortunately, comforting the afflicted comes naturally to our people (and, by “our people” I mean Jews, Americans, and all decent human beings), and one needs no guidance on whether or not to feel outrage when bodies are still being counted. But if we want to understand what happened, with the goal of preventing it from happening again, some attempt to determine what the hell is going on is required before default explanations begin to kick in.

The Tree of Life Synagogue is obviously not the only vulnerable target to suffer homicidal gun violence in recent years with school shootings dominating the news alongside attacks on other targets chosen largely for high concentrations of members of a particular group (students, Jews, blacks, or victims chosen at random) that have neither the means to shoot back, nor the expectation that returning fire was their responsibility.

When the dust settles, arguments will largely turn on traditional causal explanations for these sorts of mass killings with many fingering the wide availability guns while others asking us to focus on the shooter as an incarnation of evil or a victim of mental illness.

Both explanations are reasonable, given that these murders are committed with something (guns, usually powerful ones) by someone (a killer who is only comprehensible as someone whose moral and mental makeup makes him different from the rest of us). But each fails to explain why these sorts of mass killings are happening so frequently now versus some other time in the past.

Starting with firearms, shooters have always outgunned the kinds of the communities subject to attacks, such as public schools and houses of worship, going back to the days of the one-room schoolhouse and blunderbuss. This doesn’t mean that the availability of modern, powerful weapons doesn’t increase the lethality of such attacks, but it does raise the question of why schoolrooms and other vulnerable locations have not been shot up, even with less merciless firearms, for centuries. Unless one wants to claim that increases in firepower cause increases in frequency of shooters targeting the innocent, there must be some other explanation as to why so many of these kinds of mass murders are being committed at this point in history.

Mental illness, including the need to spot and treat the mentally ill (or at least get them off the street) before their affliction can lead to butchery is often brought up as a retort to the “guns are responsible” explanation. Since focusing our attention on the person who committed a crime is just as intuitive as a focus on the tools he used to commit it, there is a logic to trying to get into the head of a killer, even if we are not ready to excuse the anti-Semitic hate that motivated this weekend’s shooter as resulting from a mental disease beyond the trigger-puller’s control.

Once again, however, we need to ask ourselves if some new forms of mental illness have emerged in recent years that have as their symptom the transformation of people into school and synagogue shooters. Mental illness, after all, has been with us far longer than guns which leaves us asking the same questions as before: why this form of violence, and why now?

I had the opportunity to think about this earlier this year when a murder spree slightly less close to home (the Parkland School shooting) took place right around the same time I sat through Steven Sondheim’s most challenging musical Assassins.

The play is built around a fantasy scenario in which presidential assassins (Booth, Oswald, Leon Czolgosz who killed President McKinley, Charles Guiteau who shot Garfield) and wannabes (such as Reagan’s attempted assassin John Hinkely as well as Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore who failed to plug Gerald Ford) are hanging out together in some unexplained netherworld, waiting for the moment to commit their crimes and experience the consequences before returning to ongoing dialog (set to music) with their fellow assassins.

The question permeating the script is why a group from different backgrounds and living in different eras all came to the same conclusion: that shooting the President of the United States was a reasonable course of action.

“I will be remembered!” shouts Charles Guiteau, just before he falls through the gallows after his successful assassination of Garfield, and many other lines of dialog point to these murderous acts as providing a purpose or point to the lives of men and women who would otherwise die forgotten losers. In other words, their murderous acts were motivated by an existential desire to have their lives mean something, anything, regardless of the cost to them, their victim, and the nation.

When reason fails to provide explanations to the inexplicable, art can sometimes fill the void. In the case of Sondheim’s Assassins, the answer to “Why now?” might come down to living in a society and age when everyone desperately wants to be noticed, remembered, admired, even for acts of heinous brutality. As we grow to more and more measure our self-worth in hits and Likes, or compare ourselves to the famous and infamous and perceive ourselves as wanting, well “why not shoot a President?” (as a narrator in Assassins asks) or someone else?

These thoughts should in no way be perceived as an attempt to divert attention from gun violence and the fight against its causes, or the need to ensure the deranged and hateful are locked away or put underground (or at least disarmed). But they do point to a factor we should be considering before retreating to our usual corners to debate what to do next, namely, what is it about the world today that makes mass murder seem a reasonable answer to the question “Who am I?”

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10/29 Links Pt1: Amalek Comes to Pittsburgh; Bennett: Today we stand in the shadow of death; The militarisation of anti-Semitism; Poll: Israelis see EU as a foe rather than a friend

From Ian:

WSJ: Amalek Comes to Pittsburgh

Eleven Jews were murdered Saturday in their synagogue. I knew five of them.
There are not so many of us Jews in the world—something like 0.2% of the population—so we pride ourselves on punching above our weight. We introduced some of the foundational ideas of Western civilization: the sanctity of human life, uniform morality, freedom, concern for the downtrodden, the weekend.

Sadly we are also above average in attracting evil people who hate what we stand for. This murderer, like all anti-Semites, resents the ideas that we carry in this world. Concern for the downtrodden? Who’s more downtrodden than a refugee?

The archetype for all anti-Semites is Amalek. His cowardly specialty was picking off the old, weak and infirm stragglers at the back of the Exodus pack. Saturday’s murderer was Amalek brought to life, as he mainly killed old and mentally challenged members of all three of the resident congregations.

For a couple of years, I was the head of a congregation that merged with Tree of Life; for many years I was a late-arriving regular at the Shabbat morning service that was attacked. I knew five of the people who were murdered. They were more than good and lovely people. They were the stalwarts who would show up on time and help out.

Rose Mallinger, 97, would always be there, sitting next to her sister. Saturday she was next to her daughter Andrea who, like the whole family, is possessed of a permanent smile. Andrea was shot. Rose was murdered.

Cecil Rosenthal, 59, knew my wife from childhood. He had special needs and a youthful exuberance. His younger, thinner brother, David, had a more serious mien and spoke less. He too had special needs. Like his older brother, he was murdered.

Irv Younger, 69, was a sweet man with a shock of white hair who would do anything that needed to be done at the shul. Murdered.

Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, was a member of Dor Hadash, a synagogue that rented space in the social hall. A family doctor, he escaped the initial assault and returned to help the survivors. He was murdered.

Jerry Rabinowitz was one of the victims of the #PittsburghSynagogueShooting. He was the doctor of my friend Michael during the 1980s AIDS Crisis. In a time when doctors refused to treat HIV patients like humans, Rabinowitz would hold their hands. May his memory be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/1okNuzMg10
— ariel💕 (@harsh__babe) October 28, 2018

JPost Editorial: Never again

The shooter, Robert Bowers, has an active life on alt-right and antisemitic social media platforms, where he frequently engaged in Jewish conspiracy theories and trolled Jewish groups.

As the tragedy unfolded and Israelis became aware of the news after Shabbat on Saturday night, there was a sense of experiencing a death in the family. Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett announced that he would depart immediately to Pittsburgh, meet the local community and participate in the funerals of those killed in the attack.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video message Saturday evening saying, “The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead. We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh.”

Opposition leaders like Avi Gabbay and Yair Lapid emphasized that although the attack took place in a Conservative synagogue, when Jews are targeted, the attacker is not looking at affiliations.

“If you are murdered for being Jewish, you are Jewish,” said Lapid, in a dig to those in Israel who do not recognize non-Orthodox Jewry as valid.

There is no Right or Left when determining how it’s possible in 21st Century America – built upon the foundations of religious freedom and equality for all, where Jews have enjoyed unprecedented opportunity and enjoy unlimited access to all forms of American society – that there are still people who are intent on completing Hitler’s Final Solution.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s horrendous attack, while the victims’ bodies were still warm and identities unknown, there were those who couldn’t restrain themselves from immediately pointing fingers.

Brendan O'Neill: The militarisation of anti-Semitism

And still people are downplaying the seriousness of anti-Semitism. Even now. Even following the worst attack on Jews in American history. Even after the slaughter of 11 mostly elderly Jews at a bris, the celebration of the birth of a child, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

This time they are diminishing the scale and depth of anti-Semitism by pointing the finger of blame for the Pittsburgh massacre at President Donald Trump. No sooner had Robert Bowers allegedly executed his act of racist mass murder than anti-Trump commentators were describing it as the bloody offspring of Trump’s supposedly white-nationalist worldview and his divisive rhetoric.

This slaughter was the ‘inevitable result’ of ‘Trump’s vile nationalism’, said the Nation. Inevitable. ‘Trump didn’t pull the trigger on Jews in Pittsburgh, but he certainly prepped the shooter’, says a writer for Haaretz. Hateful violence like this is a consequence of Trump’s rhetoric, says British columnist Mehdi Hasan: ‘He preaches hate. He incites violence. He inspires attacks.’

This rush to blame Trump for a massacre of Jews is not only profoundly cynical, where the militarisation of anti-Semitism is pounced upon to the cheap, low end of scoring points against a politician people don’t like.

It also has the effect of whitewashing the true horror of anti-Semitism in the 21st-century West. It is in itself a form of apologism for the new anti-Semitism to the extent that it dehistoricises and depoliticises it by presenting it as little more than a function of the new right-wing populism.

It presents violent anti-Semitism as yet another thing unleashed, or at least intensified, by Trump and by the political turn of the past two years. And this dangerously distracts public attention – purposefully, I suspect – from the fact that anti-Semitism has been growing and becoming increasingly militarised for more than a decade now, among the left as well as the right and within Muslim communities, too.

President @realDonaldTrump: If you seek the destruction of Jews, we will seek your destruction. pic.twitter.com/ZXWVTm46xG
— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) October 29, 2018

Non-Jews telling Jews to be nice to the Nazis for their own good, 1934

This article from 1934 brings on a sense of deja vu:

Just like today, people were lecturing the Jews on how they need to act for their own good. If they act at all like a proud people who stand up to their enemies, then the enemies will get upset and it will be the Jews' fault.

It was all out of "love," though. Professor Cadbury had no doubt that he loved the Jewish people and only wanted the best for them. If only the Jews would listen to his sage advice, the Nazis would realize that they are making some innocent mistakes and will change their ways to good.

And if Israel would only make a few more concessions to the Palestinians, then they would suddenly become peaceful people and not demand anything more.

Even though - for those willing to listen to them in their own languages - both the Nazi and Palestinian leaders say quite explicitly that they don't want compromise; they want total victory over their "oppressors."

I hate to draw analogies with Nazis, but this article sound exactly like so many op-eds and international diplomats today lecturing Israel on how to be more peaceful in the face of genocidal intentions.

The analogy doesn't end there. The liberal Jews of the Reform Movement who hosted Cadbury were very sympathetic to his message.

Just like today, liberal Jews are more willing to listen to the messages of their "friends" who rail against Israeli policies than to most Israelis themselves.

(h/t Bill Poser)

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Arab nations - and Hamas - "condemn" synagogue attack (but only when it doesn't happen in Israel)

Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan, issued formal condemnations of the attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday.

An official source at the Saudi foreign ministry announced the kingdom's "harsh condemnation" of the attack on the synagogue, stressing the Saudi authorities' rejection of such "criminal acts and their extremist ideology."

"The UAE extends its deepest sympathy to the families of loved ones affected by the unwarranted violence in Pittsburgh," said the UAE Embassy in Twitter, "We condemn hate-based violence against anyone because of their religion, race or beliefs."

The Jordanian government condemned the attack, calling it "terrorist", and expressed its condolences to the government and the American people and to the victims' families. Jordan also stressed its "firm position to condemn crimes of hatred and terrorism in all its forms and whatever their motives,",saying that "terrorism is a common enemy which threatens common human values."

Egyptian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed Hafez expressed his full condemnation of the shooting, "based on Egypt's firm stance to reject all forms of terrorism, violence and extremism, including targeting places of worship."

Even Hamas condemned the shooting, saying it was a "cowardly terrorist act - and then he
"We, as Palestinians, as victims of Israeli terrorism, know the meaning of terrorism and its destructive effects."

You can say that. Because when five Jews were murdered in a synagogue in Jerusalem in 2014, Palestinians celebrated.

And while Jordan officially condemned that attack, the Jordanian prime minister sent letters of condolence - to the families of the attackers!

No other Arab country, as far as I can tell, even pretended to be against that massacre in Jerusalem. Even though the victims were civilians. Even though it occurred on the west side of the Green Line.

Jordan's pretense to "condemn crimes of hatred and terrorism in all its forms and whatever their motives" rings especially hollow when that country continues to protect Ahlam Tamimi, the terrorist proudly responsible for the Sbarro pizza shop bombing, and the kingdom refuses to extradite her to the US for the Americans murdered by her.

The Pittsburgh massacre is an excuse for Arab countries to pretend that they aren't antisemitic and that they are against terror. But since we see that they have nothing bad to say about the murder of Jews who are worshiping in synagogue in Israel, it is clear that these condemnations are for public relations purposes, and they really don't care.

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Watch students scream "Death to Israel!" at guest philosophy professor at American University in Beirut

It is worthwhile to see how BDS has zero interest in academic freedom for yourself.

The American University of Beirut was proud to be hosting a major figure in moral philosophy, Jeff McMahan. But bigoted students disrupted the lecture because McMahan had lectured in Israel and is an (unpaid) adviser to Hebrew University.

McMahan, mild-mannered, said that he would be happy to address the students' concerns after his lecture, even saying that his position against the academic boycott of Israel makes sense in the context of his lecture on the ethics of war.

Students insisted on making their statements first, and the host (Arab) said that the way it works is that the guest lecturer gets to talk first, they can get to talk later, and "everyone gets the right to talk." (around 5:00.) Immediately the students said "No!" at such an idea of everyone having the right to speak.

Some of the attendees objected to the interruption.

Soon the scene devolved into pointless statements and meaningless chants (including "Death to Israel" in Arabic.)

"خلّوه يحكي مع الكراسي الفاضية"..
طلاب الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت يقاطعون محاضرة لدكتور أمريكي مطبع مع إسرائيل pic.twitter.com/WbukvFCJEH
— AJ+ عربي (@ajplusarabi) October 24, 2018

At one point when the students were filing out McMahan said that it was very disappointing to him to see students act like a mob, which was responded to with more loud chants drowning him out.

BDSers consider this a great victory for their cause.

It is unclear whether McMahan was able to continue the lecture after the 15 minute interruption and walkout, but it appears he did.

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Arabs freak out over Hatikva in Abu Dhabi

Palestine Today has a roundup of tweets of prominent Arab journalists and politicians, all bitterly complaining about Israel's national anthem being played in Abu Dhabi in the judo championships.

Some comments:

It is "a betrayal of Allah and his messenger."

It is "beyond normalization, which deserves condemnation."

"[Israelis] have protected their borders 70 years, may Allah take them out of their civilization...clear all the 'Zionists' and cleanse us of this abomination."

"Normalization: to recognize the thief who stole your brother's house and expelled him and his family to the street, and you then open your house to him so he can steal from you and you and your family later."

"Teach your children that even if a sheikh of religion came and justified the normalization with the Zionists, it is still a betrayal. Teach them thateven if their ruler offers normalization, they betrayed their knowledge that the Zionist entity is illegal and rapes a sacred land."

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The Democratic Party is sabotaging its Jewish constituency and, thereby, in some measure, punching itself in the face.

It has put American Jews -- who are traditionally among the most loyal Democrats -- into the position of having to choose between a political party and our own families... our own people.

In 2008, I was part of the 80 percent of the American Jewish population who voted for Barack Obama. In 2012, I was not part of the 70 percent who did so. The main reason that I refused to vote for Obama in his second run for office was because I deeply resented his insistence that he had every right to tell Jews where we may, or may not, be allowed to live on our own ancestral homeland.

Despite the fact that President Trump is more supportive toward Israel than any president since Harry Truman, recent polling data shows that only 6 percent of American Jews are likely to vote for him for the 2020 presidency. This is despite the fact that Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It is despite the fact that he is defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which literally teaches little "Palestinian" Arab kids to violently despise Jews. And it is despite the fact that Trump opposes Obama's "Iran deal" which assures a Persian bomb in what is now the short term.

My intention is not to make a broad argument for Donald Trump, nor is it to erect an argument for either the conservative movement or the Republican Party.

In fact, I am not mounting an argument at all. I am merely asking a question. It is this:

Why is it that of all the constituencies of the Democratic Party only the Jewish minority is thought to be morally obligated to sacrifice the well-being of their own children in deference to that party and in deference to progressive-left ideology?

The answer to that question has two interrelated parts.

The first is in the rise of democratic socialism on the coattails of Bernie Sanders. The second is in the rise of "intersectionality theory" within the universities and among the activists.

Democratic socialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Linda Sarsour are increasingly coming into prominence. These young up-and-comers tend to be friendly with the likes of racist Louis Farrakhan, much like some of their seniors in the party, and generally favor the hostile Arab majority against the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

They also tend to favor "intersectionality theory."

The fundamental idea behind "intersectionality" in practice is that the world is comprised of the oppressors and their oppressed. Thus the oppressed must join together in opposition to the oppressors who persecute them through "White Male Privilege" and cold, hard cash. They are presented as oppressed in a common fashion grounded in "white" imperial racism and various forms of gender-hate. It is for this reason that they connect Ferguson, Missouri to "Palestine" because they see their concerns about both as derived from the same malicious source... you.

Furthermore, intersectionality has created a loose hierarchy of oppression with Arab men, strangely enough, at the top. Arabs and Muslims and "people of color" and Gay people and transgender people and Black people are near the summit of the hierarchy. White women have actually dropped a few rungs in recent years, presumably due to their unfortunate association with white men.

The oppressors are generally understood to be white people, the wealthy, and "Zionists." Much of the American-left considers the Jewish people to be all three. I like to say that we have hit the politically-correct trifecta!

{Good for us.}

But this leaves those American Jews who care about their brothers and sisters in the State of Israel in a serious political dilemma. Those of you who are American Jewish Democrats or "progressives" are essentially being told that you need to choose between the Jewish people and the Democratic Party and the political ideology that drives it. On the campuses, if Jewish students dare to stand up for themselves and their people, they are shouted down as Nazis and shunned by many of their peers.

The irony is that those doing the yelling and screaming like to think of themselves as the ideological children of Martin Luther King, Jr. who's foremost message was that we should judge people as individuals, not as representatives of an ethnicity or gender. Thus what we are witnessing in the rise of progressive-left intersectionality is an ironic insistence that the Jewish people cease to defend themselves in Israel out of moral consideration for minority groups. And, furthermore, we are to do so based on a blatantly hypocritical political ideology that has given up its fundamental liberal core as represented by Martin Luther King, Jr.

So, why not vote Republican?

At least it may teach the Democrats not to take the Jews for granted.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/28 Links: Podhoretz: The Slaughter in Pittsburgh; Shapiro: Why We Cling To The Tree Of Life; In first, ‘Hatikva’ anthem played at UAE contest as Israeli judoka wins gold

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: The Slaughter in Pittsburgh

The shooter is to blame.

The synagogue in Pittsburgh is called the Tree of Life. The name is a translation into English of the Hebrew phrase etz chaim. We sing those words as the Torah is put away on every Shabbat. They are words from the Book of Proverbs: “She is a tree of life for those that cling to her and all who do are happy.” The “she” in that sentence is “wisdom,” and the verse that precedes it is especially poignant in light of what has happened: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” Today the paths of peace were befouled by a monstrous anti-Semite who stormed the Tree of Life shouting something about Jews needing to die as he murdered and injured and then shot at some cops for good measure.

In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. In a classic act of anti-Semitic violence, which is what this is, Jews hear the echoes of every violent anti-Semitic act that has preceded it in history. And we hear those echoes because they are there. That which motivates Jew-hatred today is what has motivated it from time immemorial—the poisonously attractive idea that Jews need to be extirpated because our existence is an offense or a threat to an existing larger order. The blessing of Jewish life in America is that this notion has largely been consigned to the dregs from which today’s human malignancy rose. Despite the fact that most hate crimes in America are aimed at Jews, the actual number is vanishingly small—especially compared to France, from which Jews are now fleeing, and England, whose Labour Party is in the hands of an actual Jew-hater.

Because we are obliged by the sickness of our political culture to analyze every despicable event in a manner designed to confirm our priors, we have already, mere hours after the barbarity, sunk into a nauseating discussion about how much blame to assign to the president for this unspeakable act. The obvious answer is: None. Donald Trump should be assigned no such blame, even if the shooter were the president of the Donald Trump Fan Club, because he pulled no trigger and committed no crime. Period. To do that, to assign blame, is to whitewash the crime itself and the criminal’s responsibility for it. He becomes a cultural robot, seized by an evil collective unconscious that drove him to his crimes.

Based on the early evidence, the shooter was not only consumed with a hatred of Jews but possessed a kind of sneering contempt for Trump on the grounds that Trump was basically a Jewish agent or a Jew-lover himself. Trump can only be blamed for the murderous Jew-killing actions of someone who thought of him that way by people who are so consumed by hatred of him that there is nothing they won’t blame him for.

Ben Shapiro: Why We Cling To The Tree Of Life

In that Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday morning, the Jew-hating murderer rushed into a room in which a brit milah was taking place: a circumcision ceremony, a ceremony as old as the Jewish people, a ceremony welcoming an eight-day-old child into the community of the Jews. In other parts of the synagogue, different minyanim were reading the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac on a mountain.

Why would Jews continue to inaugurate children into the most targeted community in human history? Jewish destiny may be inescapable, but why embrace that destiny? The members of the Tree of Life Synagogue were shot to death in a synagogue. So why continue to cluster in synagogues, fulfilling age-old commandments, the elderly passing down their traditions to infants?

Because, as the Tree of Life Synagogue’s name attests, the Torah – the Jewish destiny – is a “tree of life for all those who cling to it.” (Proverbs 3:18) And we are enjoined to choose life. That, after all, is the story of Abraham and Isaac: a story not of God asking Abraham to kill his son, but a story of God asking if Abraham is willing to place his son in mortal danger in service to God – and God’s grace in saving Isaac thanks to Abraham’s commitment. That is the story of the Jewish people. That is the story members of the Tree of Life Synagogue were reading as they died al kiddush Hashem, in the sanctification of God’s name.

And that is the story of our civilization. An attack on the Tree of Life is an attack on all of us – those of us who wish to imbue our own children with a sense of Godliness in a dark world, a sense of eternal value in a society eating away at itself. Inside the sanctuary, all was peaceful on the Sabbath -- until the gunshots rang out.

The only proper response is the same response Jews have given throughout time: to fight back. To stubbornly cling to that which stamps us with the image of God. To fight darkness with light, untruth with truth, and death with life.

Victor Rosenthal: Thoughts after a mass murder of Jews

I lived in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood for a few months when I was in grad school. It was a nice, safe, relatively friendly neighborhood.

Now it will be known as the site of the worst mass murder of Jews in US history.

Eleven are dead and numerous others wounded, including four responding police officers. The terrorist, Robert Bowers, as shown by this archive of social media posts, is apparently an obsessed Jew-hater, a Holocaust denier and a Nazi admirer. He appears to have become inflamed by the idea that liberal Jews were supporting uncontrolled immigration into the US (he mentions both Hispanics and Muslims), in particular the “migrant caravan” that is presently making its way through Mexico. Interestingly, Bowers criticized Donald Trump for being “a globalist, not a nationalist,” said that Trump was surrounded by Jews, and that he did not vote for him.

His decision to act seems to have been triggered by an event held in Pittsburgh by the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), an organization that once brought Jewish refugees out of Europe, but now works to resettle refugees from Syria, Central America, and even Africans in Tel Aviv.

There have been various, mostly predictable, popular responses to this atrocious act. Many, if not most, miss the point. So here is what I think:

This is nothing new. Synagogues and other Jewish institutions around the world and in the US are attacked all the time. Attacks in the US have been carried out by both neo-Nazi and Islamic extremists, and their number has been increasing along with polarization and anger in the country.

Bowers was “ideologically insane.” One common theme among extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists is that Jews, especially George Soros, are trying to destroy the “white race” in America by introducing non-white immigrants. They will then take over (although they are already in charge by means of controlling politicians, even Trump), or they will somehow make a lot of money out of the collapse of the nation. Bowers seems to have believed some version of this. Social media seems to feed this kind of insanity, which often erupts into violence.