Rubicon3

Morons R Nice!

Kisses!  Hugs! Luv to anti-semites!  Becuz if we r nice to them, the anti-semites will luv us.  

The university affiliate of the left-wing lobby J Street has dropped the words "pro-Israel" from its slogan out of fear those words would alienate potential student members, The Jerusalem Post reports.

"We don't want to isolate people because they don't feel quite so comfortable with 'pro-Israel,' so we say 'pro-peace,'" said American University junior Lauren Barr of the "J Street U" slogan, "but behind that is 'pro-Israel.'" 

You know, I hate to say it, but this actually could be construed as a "Jewish conspiracy."  Pretending to be one thing while being another...?

Is it a lie?  Or isn't it?

Is it stupidity?  

Do they hate Israel and their fellow Jews?  

Or is it simply garden variety cowardice?

"Shh!  We are pro-Israel, but we aren't going to say it, or act like it!  Whatever you do, just don't tell the guys who want to kill us!  We are going to pretend to agree with them so they won't hurt us!  Neat trick, eh?  That way, we don't have to fight, and maybe if we give them anything they want, the big bullies will leave us alone!"

Maybe these young morons don't understand that things don't work that way. Perhaps they've forgotten history (or never really learned in the first place) - - the long lines of nice European Jews walking all peaceful-like into the gas showers, giving bullies exactly what they wanted. 

Didn't that work out well for us?  Gosh, let's do it again cause it was so much fun the last time around.  

Here, let me help.  Blow these words up really big on a huge piece of paper and tape it to your back:

KICK ME




Also see: Gag me with a spoon

Regarding "Penny Pinching Jews"

RJC [Republican Jewish Coalition] calls for apology from South Carolina GOP leaders Penny-pinching Jew image was ignorant and insensitive

Washington, D.C. (October 20, 2009) --  RJC Executive Director Matthew Brooks issued the following statement today:   Edwin O. Merwin Jr., chairman of the Bamberg County (SC) Republican Party and James S. Ulmer Jr., chairman of the Orangeburg County (SC) Republican Party wrote an opinion piece published in The Times & Democrat newspaper on Sunday in which they attempted to support Sen. James DeMint of South Carolina, who is a good man and good friend of the Jewish community. Unbelievably, they drew on an old and malignant stereotype of Jews as penny-pinchers in their attempt to praise DeMint's efforts to look out for his constituents.   It is difficult to comprehend how men in positions of leadership in a state Republican Party could demonstrate such ignorance and insensitivity in the year 2009.    From the way the article is written, Merwin and Ulmer apparently believed that the image of the Jew as penny-pincher was a praise of Jewish frugality. In fact it dates back to the centuries of anti-Jewish persecution in Europe, when Jews were forbidden to own land or conduct any business other than money-lending, which was closed to Christians by Church law. It is an image of a kind and of a time with forcing Jews to wear a badge on their clothing or enclosing them in ghettos, cutting them off from religious, social, and economic freedom.   We call on Mr. Merwin and Mr. Ulmer to apologize to the Jewish community and to educate themselves about the history of the image they used in their article.    The Republican Party has long fought hatred and prejudice and has reached out to minority communities, including the Jewish community, with a message of respect, freedom, and opportunity. This week, Mr. Merwin and Mr. Ulmer have done a tremendous disservice to their party. ### This statement can be found on the RJC web site at: http://www.rjchq.org/Newsroom/newsdetail.aspx?id=8a342afd-b72c-45b9-832e-b0cf6e9fb728

Jimmy Carter Endangers Jews

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published an anti-Israel falsehood-ridden op-ed written by former president Carter. Elliot Abrams thankfully refutes it with gusto in today's paper. Unfortunately, it is Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.  Everyone is back at work, fewer people have time to read the paper.  Carter's piece was published on Sunday.  How many read it and were poisoned by it?  How many many will now read Abram's repudiation?  

Abrams writes:

In an op-ed on Sunday ["The Elders' View of the Middle East"], former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on behalf of a self-appointed group of "Elders," described a rapacious Israel facing long-suffering, blameless Palestinians, who are contemplating a "nonviolent civil rights struggle" in which "their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela." 

As with most of Carter's recent statements about Israel and the Palestinians, instead of facts we get vignettes from recent Carter travels. And while he finds "a growing sense of concern and despair" among "increasingly desperate" Palestinians, polls do not sustain this view. The most recent survey by the leading Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki (done in August, the same month Carter visited), shows "considerable improvement in public perception of personal and family security and safety in the West Bank and a noticeable decrease in public perception of the existence of corruption in [Palestinian Authority] institutions." This does not sound like despair. In fact, positive views of personal and family safety and security in the West Bank stood at 25 percent four years ago, 35 percent two years ago and 43 percent a year ago, and they have risen to 58 percent in the past year, Shikaki reports. There are other ways to measure quality of life in the West Bank: The International Monetary Fund recently stated that "macroeconomic conditions in the West Bank have improved" largely because "Israeli restrictions on internal trade and the passage of people have been relaxed significantly."

The IMF predicts that "continuation of the relaxation of restrictions could result in real GDP growth of 7% for 2009 as a whole," a rate of growth that would be far in excess of ours -- or Israel's.

Carter's efforts to portray life among the Palestinians as unbearable and getting worse are belied by data. His efforts to blame Israel for all the problems that do exist are equally unpersuasive...

Read the whole thing.

I only hope no one will take Carter's rantings seriously, but I fear that enemies of Israel and anti-semites everywhere will pounce upon the words of a former US president and use them to support further bombings and terrorism.  This is what makes this anti-semitic political has-been a threat.   

Inglorious Basterds

I have not seen this film and probably won't, but ever since reading the reviews, I have been bothered by it.  I wrote something about my feeling about the movie on a message board and wanted to re-post it here - with a little editing:

I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino. I thought Pulp Fiction was bloody horrible. I don't like to see gratuitous violence in films, and though it may be...I don't know...unfashionable or prudish on my part, I like the movies I see to have a moral point of view, to say something good about life, and to be uplifting.

From what I have read of Inglorious Basterds, I don't care for the premise. I don't like the idea of re-writing history and I don't approve of the way they have re-written it. I don't like the idea of seeing Jews bloodthirsty for revenge and trying to kill people as violently and painfully as possible. I don't like what it says or the message it sends. Historically, Jews were NOT a violent or bloodthirsty people, they have been attacked BY violent and bloodthirsty people.

We decry Holocaust revisionists - this movie plays right into their hands. It makes Jews looks bad as a people and feeds into the media bias against the Israelis.

I understand it's supposed to be fantasy, that Tarantino freely admits that historical accuracy wasn't the point, that it is supposed to be some sort of hommage to WW2 movies, etc.  I still don't like it. However, I know that this is a subject I tend to be very (and perhaps overly) serious  and sensitive about. I am very particular about the way Jews are portrayed in the media and by Hollywood because I think such things could have dangerous repercussions. I know some would think I am silly for feeling this way, but if I am to be honest, it is the way I feel. I hope I am just a stupid nervous nelly, worried over nothing. I hope *I* am the crazy one, and that those who would pooh-pooh how I feel are right.

*******

Here's a point of view on it that makes me feel a little better; that hopefully, I was wrong.

The Hebron Massacre: A Survivor's Tale

80 years on, the scars still show

Aug. 10, 2009
Tovah Lazaroff , THE JERUSALEM POST

On his freckled forehead, one can still see the scar from the knife wound Shlomo Slonim sustained 80 years ago, when an Arab stabbed him as he huddled in his mother's arms in their Hebron home.

"It's not the only wound I have," Slonim told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. He opened up the palm of his hand to show scars on the insides of his fingers.

"There is one that I cannot bend," said the 81-year-old, who was dressed in black slacks and a light blue, short-sleeved, button-down shirt.

He wore glasses and a knitted kippa and spoke calmly as he stood in the Hebron cemetery, at the end of a small ceremony marking the Hebrew anniversary of the 1929 massacre of 67 Jewish residents of that city by an Arab mob.

Slonim recounted the details of that fateful day, when he was only a year old. He has no memory of the events, of course, but he has heard the story so many times that he told it as if he were recalling his own experiences.

It was Shabbat morning when an Arab mob armed with knives filled the streets and burst into Jewish homes, Slonim said.

Dozens of Jews, he said, had gathered in his parents' home for safety. His father, Eliezer Dan Slonim, 29, had been the director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and a representative of the Jewish community in the Hebron Municipality.

Given the good relationship he enjoyed with his Arab neighbors, local Jews believed they would be safe in his home, said Slonim.

They were wrong. As the Arabs came to the home, the people inside tried to bar the door with their bodies, but they couldn't hold back the mob, he said.

After bursting in, the Arabs killed 24 people with knives and machetes. Among them were Slonim's father, his mother, Hannah, 24, and her parents who were visiting for Shabbat. They also fatally wounded his older brother, who was only four. He succumbed to his wounds several days later in Jerusalem and was buried there.

The lone survivor of his immediate family, Slonim comes as often as he can to the cemetery to visit his parents' graves, which are among the many graves of massacre victims marked by a long row of small headstones.

As is customary in Jewish tradition, he placed a small stone on each grave on Sunday.

The massacre destroyed the Hebron Jewish community, whose roots go back to biblical times, even though there were other periods when Jews were chased out of the city.

Some Jews tried to return to Hebron after the massacre, but the British removed them in 1936.

It was only in 1979 that Jews returned to live in Hebron. While those Jews who came saw themselves as the spiritual descendents of the former community, very few of the survivors or their descendents were among them.

Slonim said that he had thought about returning, but did not want to live among people who had killed his family.

"I would never know if the Arab I passed in the street had a hand in their murder," he said. [link]

Moscow Circus Presents Monkeys as Jews

Ladeees and gentlemen, step right up and see the most ignorant and insulting show on earth:

Micky Saidov, an Israeli businessman living in Russia never would have imagined that a trip with his daughter to one of the most talked about circuses in Moscow would go from an entertaining experience to a full-blown anti-Semitic one.

During one of the Nikulin Circus skits, the performers simulated a "Jewish Wedding", with the leading roles being filled by four monkeys, acting as the bride, groom and their parents.

"It was humiliating, embarrassing and even spine-chilling. My 14-year-old daughter Linoy was shocked, with her mouth wide open. She was so upset she wanted to throw trash into the ring to make it stop," Saidov told Ynet.

Following the incident, he decided to send a letter to the Israeli embassy in Moscow to inform them of the show's content. "I wanted to bring their attention to this very anti-Semitic, offensive, strident and chilling point with regards to Jewish feelings," he said.

Nikulin Circus's 'Jewish Wedding' (Photo: Micky Saidov)

The "Jewish Wedding" is part of the Nikulin Circus production, that puts on many shows each week on Tsvetnoy Boulevard in Moscow.

'Crowd was entertained; we were in shock'

"I had my daughter in town and wanted to take her to the circus that is considered the best one here. Nikulin is very famous and attracts many tourists," Saidov said.

"The circus really was great, and we had a smile on our faces during the whole show, until suddenly, a religious man wrapped in a tzitzit wearing a hat and long side-locks walks in along with a few other guys dressed as Hassidics wearing white skullcaps.

"They were leading in a carriage with a quartet of monkeys – the groom and bride and their parents wearing skullcaps. For five minutes they performed before the crowd, and acted out a scene of a Jewish wedding with a chuppah, wine, and everything that comes with it. As a Jew, it was very unpleasant," Saidov said.[link]

What They Fight and Why

Disturbing, but I am glad I read it. We need to know these stories.

From Esser Agaroth:

When I tell people I was a victim of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem in Giv'ath Tzarfatith (French Hill), people always have to ask me, "Which one?"

There have been so many.

It was seven years ago. On 9 of the Fourth Month (Tammuz)/June 19, at around 7:00 pm, a Yishma'eli (Arab) blew himself up at the trempiada. Seven Jews were murdered as a result. Many Jews were also injured. I was one of them.

For seven years, I have wanted to write about this experience. For seven years I haven't. Shifra Hoffman of Victims OF Arab Terror [VAT] and SHUVA, and Gila of the My Shrapnel Blog have encouraged me to do so.

...He said that he had to check to see if I had been injured, and that if I did not take my pants down, then I would have to go in an ambulance to the hospital. I thought he was crazy, until he showed the gaping hole in back of my pants with blood seeping though.

...The nurse explained that the Electric Company had a special charity which provided clothes to victims of terror attacks. Did I actually think I was the first to get my clothes plastered with blood and guts of murdered Jews?

Read the whole thing.   

Pepsi and the Zionist Plot

You just can't make these things up.  The latest nuttiness from the Middle East? Extremist Muslims believe that Pepsi Cola is a code name for a Zionist plot:

Do you know what the word "Pepsi" means? Pepsi as in P-E-P-S-I. The first P stands for "Pay." E stands for "Every." The third letter stands for "Penny." A penny means any small coin you receive and don't know what to do with. Pay it to "Saving" I - "Israel." In other words, pay every small coin you receive in order to save Israel. They don't want money from you - they want your small change, your pennies. If I'm not mistaken, in American economics, a penny is one-thousandth of the dollar. It's not even worth a piaster. It's only a millime. At least I think it's worth a millime, not even a piaster.

They say: "Donate the small change you don't need, but give it to the right cause. If you collect small change, you can buy this drink." They took the first letter of each word - "Pay Every Penny Saving Israel" - and they formed the word "Pepsi." When you pay [to buy Pepsi], you are saving Israel. I am not talking about Pepsi, but about Coca Cola and all of them. I don't want to specify the products. See for yourselves. You are Muslims. You can tell me. I don't know. My little son knows more about the boycott than me. When we go shopping, he says to me: "Buy this, don't buy that." He knows them by heart. He has become an expert in this.   [Link]

The Holocaust Museum Incident

I don't have much to say except:

It is mind boggling that someone tried to murder Jews in a museum dedicated to the memory of 6 million murdered Jews. If a place could actually say the words, "Never again," this would be it.  I feel powerless in the face of such hatred.  I don't know how deal with the fact of its existence.

A good man lost his life in the act of protecting innocent people.  May his memory be a blessing to his family. 

When I first heard, I immediately thought of the class trips that many take to this museum. Sure enough, I learned later that school kids were in the building when the incident occurred and were frightened out of their minds.  Thank God no children were hurt.

I skirted over the incident and changed the subject as soon as I could when my daughter brought it up. All I could think was that I didn't want her to be scarred by fear or anger.   I don't know whether this was the right thing to do or not. I am very torn.  My children are more free from fear and anger than I am.  I'd like to think that's a good thing.  But at the same time, I want them to be prepared and at the very least, mentally armed - just in case.  Do I warn them? "Don't walk into a trap - watch your back - you never know - think before you enter a building dedicated to things Jewish...even in the United States." 

Within minutes, the tragedy was seized upon by people without conscience to score political points. What I feel about this is beyond my power of expression to adequately describe.  When seeing red, sometimes words fail.

"Them Jews"

You know how they are.

Europe and the Jews

Israeli Ambassador: We Are Fed Up - Kurt Sansone
Israeli Ambassador Gideon Meir says Israelis are fed up with ceding land for peace and getting war in return. "There is a new government that was elected by the Israeli people and it is the people who have made it clear that they are fed up. For 16 years we made concessions, giving up land for peace and peace did not come....Israel gave up land and in return all it got was more war, more terror. We withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and we got Iran on our borders through Hizbullah, which is its proxy. In 2005 we pulled out of Gaza and we got Iran there through its other proxy, Hamas. We Israelis have concluded that we want a different approach."
    "The Palestinians [in Gaza]...bombarded us day in, day out for eight whole years and the international community, the Europeans, were quiet. Unfortunately, when Jews are being killed it does not matter to the world....For eight years 9,200 missiles were fired into Israeli towns and cities. Where was Europe's voice?" (Times of Malta)

Hitler's European Holocaust Helpers(Der Spiegel-Germany)
    The Germans are responsible for the industrial-scale mass murder of 6 million Jews. But the collusion of other European countries in the Holocaust has received surprisingly little attention.
    The trial of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian concentration camp guard, is set to throw a spotlight on Hitler's foreign helpers.
    What led Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu to murder 200,000 Jews? Why did Baltic death squadrons commit murder on German orders in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine? Why did GermanEinsatzgruppenoperated by the SS have such an easy time encouraging the non-Jewish population to wage pogroms between Warsaw and Minsk?
    "The Germans on their own wouldn't have been able to carry out the murder of millions of European Jews," says Hamburg-based historian Michael Wild. 

[Note:  This is a long and fascinating piece.  I read a rumor that it is causing a bit of controversy in Poland as they see Germany trying to spread blame for the Holocaust around a bit more.  The article is right - there is plenty of blame to go around.]

Homegrown Terrorism

3 of the 4 terrorists caught trying to blow up 2 synagogues and a plane in NY yesterday were born and raised in the United States. 

"I hate those motherf-----s, those f---ing Jewish bastards. . . . I would like to get [destroy] a synagogue." 
                                               - the alleged ringleader

*********************************************

And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

Once American brotherhood was an ideal to which we aspired.  

Have things changed?

The AIPAC Case: A Letter of Protest

More than 125 rabbis signed the following letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.  It asks a series of excellent questions, the answers to which would shed light on what really was behind the entrapment of two innocent men and the consequent aspersions cast on the Jewish-American community:

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder
950 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Holder,

On behalf of the undersigned leaders of the Jewish community, we applaud your decision to dismiss the unjustified prosecution of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. The case represents an enormous miscarriage of justice, and should never have been brought in the first place. It caused unimaginable harm to the reputations of two loyal Americans, Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and was used by some to call into question the loyalty of the Jewish community in the United States. Words simply cannot describe the pain that this prosecution has caused. Accordingly, we respectfully request that you appoint a special counsel or a group within your office to investigate the matter and to report to you on (a) how this miscarriage of justice was allowed to occur and (b) recommendations on how to ensure that a similar unjust prosecution can be avoided in the future.

As you know, in the 90+ years since the Espionage Act of 1917 was first adopted not a single prosecution had ever been brought by the government against a non-government employee - until the prosecution of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman. That fact is even more significant when you consider that during those 90+ years, this country went through a series of "red" scares that included the Palmer raids, the McCarthy hearings, the blacklisting of Americans, and the more recent concerns about Chinese espionage.

Moreover, this unprecedented prosecution apparently involved the first use of the statute against any person - including a government employee - for orally transmitting classified information. In every other prosecution to date, the government employee who was charged had transferred tangible information, such as documents or photographs, to a foreign government. In short, the government never demonstrated to the Court nor explained to the public why this case and these facts in particular merited prosecution under a never-before used federal law.

And if all of this was not enough, the prosecutors also decided to charge Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman for re-transferring the classified information that they received to members of the press. This charge, of course, raised serious First Amendment issues and resulted in numerous amicus filings with the District Court. Indeed, it was precisely a concern about this type of prosecution that led President Clinton in November 2000 to veto the "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001," which would have added a new criminal provision permitting prosecution of unauthorized disclosure of classified information. In rejecting the legislation, President Clinton rightly quoted Justice Brandeis's admonition that "those who won our independence believed . . . that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."

Accordingly, while this case was not authorized by you or your team of lawyers, we believe this prosecution raises a series of questions that must be reviewed by you personally. Among those questions are:

Why was a criminal investigation opened up into the conduct of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in the first place? Were appropriate internal guidelines in place and followed regarding this investigation and prosecution, and were they each properly supervised?
Who approved the sting operation that appealed to the highest motives of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, namely that people would die if they did not act? Are the current Justice Department guidelines on undercover operations appropriate and sufficient for these types of cases against non-government officials, or should they be supplemented?

Who approved the decision to prosecute this case under a never before used law?

Should prosecutions of this type, which are very rare and, as here, can cause 
widespread collateral damage beyond those charged, only be brought with the approval of the Attorney General?

Did anti-Semitism and/or anti-Israel sentiments play any role in the handling of this matter? We request the Civil Rights Division be included in this review.

Did any Justice Department employees have any advance knowledge or input, or play any role in the decision by AIPAC to fire these two employees, which also led to a termination of their health insurance? As you know, the Justice Department has been seriously admonished by Federal Judges and Members of Congress for similar conduct in other criminal cases.

Was the recent leak to the press of a classified recording involving Congresswoman Jane Harman influenced in any way by the Department of Justice's decision to dismiss the case against Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and is that leak being investigated?

These issues should be reviewed because the handling of this matter has, in the opinion of many, placed a cloud of suspicion on the loyalties of Jews in the United States and raised questions about their patriotism. One way to dispel that concern is to carefully review what happened at all stages in the handling of this matter.

As Attorney General, you have taken the bold and righteous decision to dismiss this case and to ensure that justice was done. We respectfully request that the Justice Department must take the next step to ensure that this type of misconduct does not happen again.

Sincerely,

Signatories below the fold

A Heartbreaking Example of Staggering Ignorance

What passes for deep intellectual Islamic debate:

Jordanian media last week quoted Egyptian clerics who declared that Jews are the descendants of pigs -- the only point of debate was whether they are direct descendants or not.

According to a report broadcast May 10 on the Al-Moheed Arab News Network and translated by the media watchdog group,Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), "pigs in our time have their origins in Jews who angered Allah... and it is obligatory to kill and slaughter them."
The report quoted Sheikh Ahmed Ali Othman, supervisor of the Da'awa (Islamic Indoctrination) of the Egyptian Waqf (Authority of Islamic Holy Places), and head of its slaughtering division.
Othman based his ruling on a Koranic verse (Koran sura 5, verse 60) that refers to those that Allah (G-d) has cursed and "made into monkeys and pigs, and who have served abominations. Their place is worst of all, and their deviation is the greatest of all..."  He added that this verse referred to the nation of the descendants of the prohet Moses.
An article published May 9 in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Hakika al-Dawliya also quoted the Egyptian cleric: "I personally tend towards the view that the pigs that exist now have their origins with the Jews, and therefore their consumption is forbidden..."
A second view, expressed by sheikh Ali Abu Al-Hassan, head of the Fatwa Committee (which issues rulings) at Al-Azhar [Sunni Islamic] University, does not draw a relationship between today's pigs and Jews.
Al-Hassan explained "when Allah punishes a group of people, He punishes only them. When Allah grew angry with the nation of Moses, He turned them into pigs and monkeys as an extraordinary punishment... but they died without leaving descendants." [LINK]

 

Eurostanian Morality

The French boycott "criminal" Israelis by stealing stuff.

You must see this video.

From comments:

This video is even more grotesque than you think. It was shot in a suburb of Paris called Aulnay-sous-Bois. The next-door town to Aulnay is called Drancy, about 1 mile away. Drancy was used by the Nazis between 1942-1944 as a deportation holding camp for the Jews of Paris prior to the deportation to the extermination camps in eastern Europe. 65,000 Jews passed through Drancy, of whom 63,000 were killed. In other words, the Israeli boycotters have chosen, of all the supermarkets in France, the one closest to France’s most important holocaust memorial site. Look on google maps to see how close they are.

Too Close to Home

US APNewsAlert
32 minutes ago
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) — Conn. police say suspect in Wesleyan U. shooting may be targeting university, Jewish community.

My brother lives in Middletown.

More on the story here.

More on the AIPAC Case

Shocking and nauseating to think of the disdain for Jews and Israel behind all of this:

U.S. Drops Case Against Former AIPAC Lobbyists 

Federal prosecutors Friday abandoned an espionage-law case against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group. In asking a judge to dismiss charges against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, formerly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), officials said recent court rulings had made it unlikely that they would win. The two men were charged in 2005 with conspiring to obtain classified information and pass it to the Israeli government and journalists from the Washington Post and other news organizations - the first civilians not employed by the government charged under the 1917 espionage statute.

Rosen said Friday that the case was politicized and pushed by government officials "who have an obsession with leaks...and an obsession with Israel and the theory that it spies on America."

The WAPO couldn't resist ending with an unsupported gratuitous swipe:

Gary Wasserman, a professor of government at Georgetown University who is writing a book about the case, said he was not surprised that AIPAC was pleased by the proposed dismissal. A trial, he added, "would have provoked a lot of public discussion about how they worked." 

More analysis, from the WSJ:  

Four years, millions in legal fees and a half-dozen conspiracy theories later, the Justice Department dropped its case against the two former AIPAC staffers. Now where do Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman - and everyone else besmirched, including California Democrat Jane Harman - apply to get their reputations back? Attorney General Eric Holder deserves credit for dropping the charges, though we wish he had also announced that the case should never have been brought.

The core of the prosecution's case concerns a memo sent to the men from Defense Department analyst Larry Franklin - now serving a 12-year prison sentence - about internal White House deliberations on Iran policy. The government also used Franklin (whose main offense was taking classified documents home) to plant an apparently bogus story with Weissman claiming that American and Israeli lives were in imminent danger. The planted story, putting the defendants in a moral quandary - share classified information and save lives; keep it secret and let people die - is the worst form of entrapment. This prosecution needs to be understood in the context of the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the swirl of conspiracy theories about "neocon" and Jewish influence over U.S. policy. In this bizarro reading of events, President Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice chose to invade Iraq due to the influence of Jewish officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby and Richard Perle. One sign of those times: In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Franklin's arrest, CBS's Lesley Stahl asked whether "Israel [used] the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?" In other words, the Aipac case resembled a political hit more than a legitimate "espionage" case. 

AIPAC Case Dropped

The whole thing stinks to high heaven. 

Jonathan Tobin writes:

...questions need to be asked about why so much time, energy, and money was expended by the government on a case that never had much of a basis in law, fact, or morality. The real scandal was not the false story about Israeli spies that the government leaked, but about a Justice Department that sought to use its power to destroy the lives of a couple of pro-Israel analysts/lobbyists and to stigmatize the entire pro-Israel community, (not to mention those who were alarmed about the danger from Iran).

Read the rest.

Palpable Hatred

Was pleasantly surprised to see Mort Zuckerman's terrific essay on behalf of Israel posted at the Huffington Post, of all places.

Then I read the comments following and got sick to my stomach.

Antisemites want to see an end to the Jewish state of Israel as badly as hitler wanted the final solution.

The Auschwitz Album

Simply unfathomable.

Link

Delegates Walk Out on Ahmadinejad

Delegates walk out on Ahmadinejad at Geneva
Apr. 20, 2009
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
Just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the podium at the opening of the international anti-racism conference in Geneva on Monday, a man in a multi-colored clown wig stood up from the crowd and yelled at him.
The man was immediately escorted out of the hall by security personnel, as he tried to approach the podium. In his opening remarks, Ahmadinejad called the man "ignorant."
Calls from the balcony were heard throughout the speech.

...

At this point the Iranian president's speech moved to the subject of Israel and the Palestninians.
"As was the case after World War II, armies occupied other territories and people were transferred from territories. In reality, under the pretext of compensating for the evil done in the name of xenophobia, they in fact set up the most violent xenophobes, in Palestine."
"The Security Council made it possible for that illegitimate government to be set up. For 60 years, this government was supported by the world. Many Western countries say they are fighting racism; but in fact support it with occupation, bombings and crimes committed in Gaza. These countries support the criminals," Ahmadinejad said.
At this point, many European delegates rose from their seats and left in protest, deliberately passing in the front line of the hall, close to the podium.

******

British delegates joined a dramatic diplomatic walkout today when President Ahmadinejad of Iran told a major UN conference against racism that the state of Israel had been founded "on the pretext of Jewish suffering" during the Second World War.
Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, Canada and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

******

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unleashed a blistering attack Monday against Israel and the United States, calling the Jewish state "racist" and lashing out at Americans for their support.

Yom Hashoah

Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2009 (Yad Vashem)

On Monday evening, Israel will begin to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day. Six torches will be lit at Yad Vashem in memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. These are the torchlighters - who survived the Holocaust as children and lost their entire families:

• Identical twin sisters Iudit Barnea and Lia Huber from Transylvania suffered the infamous medical experiments of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz.
• Mirjam Schuster from Moldova was imprisoned with her family at Balki, where out of more than 10,000 inmates, only a few hundred survived.
• Esther Debora Reiss-Mossel from Holland was sent to Bergen-Belsen at age six.
• Solomon Feigerson from Latvia survived numerous execution operations and labor camps.
• As the Germans gathered Jews in the ghetto's central square and shot them one by one, Shimon Greenhouse from Belarus and his father, Yekutiel, stood there, their hands clasped. When Yekutiel was shot, he dragged his young son down with him, and Shimon remained beneath his dead father, dazed and covered with blood, for a full day.
• Lea Paz from Poland was pushed by her mother, Gusta, out through a narrow opening in the side of a train car carrying them to the Belzec death camp.

      See also The Untold Stories of the Holocaust - Ethan Bronner
  In the Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Jewish women were forced to swim across a wide river until they drowned. In Telsiai, Lithuania, children were thrown alive into pits filled with their murdered parents. In Liozno, Belarus, Jews were herded into a locked barn where many froze to death. People know of Auschwitz, but little has been known about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, and the work, gathered under the title "The Untold Stories," is now being made public on the Yad Vashem website. (New York Times)
      See also Tattoos from Auschwitz Horror Reunite Lost Inmates - Aron Heller (AP/Washington Post)
      See also The Mascot
  A young Jewish boy who fled into the woods after his family was killed by the Nazis was later captured by Latvian SS soldiers who, not knowing he was Jewish, made him their mascot. (60 Minutes-CBS News/YouTube)  

******

Yom hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is Tuesday

Daily Press - ‎Apr 19, 2009‎It will be Yom hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Jews, and others, will evoke the memories of the millions of souls who perished nearly decades ago as ...

Jews gather to remember Holocaust Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Knoxville Christians and Jews unite for Holocaust remembrance WBIR-TV

Holocaust observance planned for Tuesday Stars and Stripes

Arutz Sheva  - AFP

all 34 news articles »

Yom Hashoah event in Bangor remembers Holocaust victims

Bangor Daily News - ‎11 hours ago‎

Jews in Bangor and all over the world remembered the victims and events of the Holocaust Sunday during the annual Yom Hashoah ceremony. Yom, which means day ...

Survivors, others recite names of victims at Holocaust memorial Detroit Free Press

Remembering those who died in the Holocaust The Detroit News

Rockland ceremony marks Holocaust remembrance Day Lower Hudson Journal news

Vail Daily News

all 5 news articles »

Yom Hashoah: Filling the Empty Spaces

Huffington Post - ‎17 hours ago‎

This week people the world over will observe Yom Hashoah (Days of Remembrance) for the millions of Jews who perished during the Holocaust. ...

People of 1000 Towns, a Photographic Encyclopedia of Jewish Life in Eastern Europe, 1880-1940

Must Read: The Durban Conference

STATEMENT BY ANNE BAYEFSKY AT THE THIRD SUBSTANTIVE PREPARATORY MEETING OF THE DURBAN REVIEW CONFERENCE 

April 17, 2009
United Nations, Palais des Nations, GENEVA, Switzerland 

The eyes of millions of victims of racism, xenophobia and intolerance are upon YOU, the representatives of states and the United Nations. And instead of hope you have given them despair. Instead of truth you have handed them diplomatic double-talk. Instead of combating antisemitism you have handed them a reason for Jews to fear UN-driven hatemongering on a global scale.

The Durban conference – allegedly dedicated to combating racism, antisemitism and other forms of intolerance – will open April 20th on the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler without agreement on even so much as remembering the Holocaust and the war against the Jews. Your draft words on the Holocaust – the very foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – have been narrowed to the barest mention from previous versions. And if the minor reference survives at all – it will be a testament to your interest in Jews that died 60 years ago, while tolerating and encouraging the murder of Jews in the here and now.

Furthermore, the draft before you demonizes the Jewish state of Israel and then has the audacity to pretend to care about antisemitism in a single word buried among 17 pages. Antisemitism means discrimination against the Jewish people. Since it is evident that almost none of you have the courage to say it, the face of modern antisemitism IS the UN – your – discrimination against Israel, the embodiment of the Jewish people's right to self-determination. 

Over and over again we have heard a massive misinformation campaign about the content of these proceedings and the draft before you. We have heard the tale that this draft does not single out Israel, that the hate has been removed, that the fault of the antisemitism at Durban I was that of NGOs while states and the UN were blameless.

Perhaps you think that journalists and victims will not bother to read for themselves the Durban Declaration adopted by some governments. There is only one state mentioned in it – Israel. There is only one state associated with racist practices in it – Israel. And yet the very first thing that this draft before you does is to reaffirm that abomination, abomination for Jews and Arabs living in Israel's free and democratic society, and for all the victims of racism ignored therein. Lawyers call it incorporation by reference when they hope nobody reads the small print. The propaganda stops here. We have read it. We understand the game. And we decry the ugly effort to repeat the Durban agenda to isolate and defeat Israel politically, as every effort to do so militarily for decades has failed.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chair of this Preparatory Committee also told us this week that the Durban Declaration in all its aspects is a consensus text. Perhaps they are unfamiliar with the Canadian reservations made in Durban in 2001 which state categorically that the Middle East language was outside the conference's jurisdiction and not agreed. Perhaps they failed to notice that one of the world's greatest democracies, the United States, voted with its feet and walked out of the Durban I hatefest? The Durban Declaration has never represented a global consensus among free and democratic nations. When the head of the Islamic conference treats Durban as a bible, in their words, it is more accurately a defamation of religions.

This week you decided which states ought to serve in a leadership role at next week's conference. Among them are some of the world's leading practitioners of racism, not those interested in ending it. You have also decided to hand a global megaphone to the President of a state which advocates genocide and denies the Holocaust. 

So in a state of shock and dismay we address ourselves not to the human rights abusers that glorify the Durban Declaration or its next incarnation, but to democracies -- and we ask: Will Germany sit on Hitler's birthday and listen to the speech of an advocate of genocide against the Jewish people and grant legitimacy to the forum which tolerates his presence? What about the United Kingdom, the birthplace of the Magna Carta? Or France that helped to ship last generation's Jews to crematoriums?

You could have fought racism. You chose instead to fight Jews. You could have promoted the universal standards against racism already in existence. You chose instead to diminish their importance in the name of alleged cultural preferences. You could have protected freedom of expression. You chose instead to undermine it by twisted concepts of incitement. You could have brought victims of racism together in a common cause. You chose instead to pit victims against each other in an ugly struggle for meagre recognition. For those democracies that remain under these circumstances you are ultimately responsible for what can only be called an appalling disservice to real victims of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance around the world. 

CONTACT: Anne Bayefsky, +1-917-488-1558 or +41 77 470 5689, anne.bayefsky@touro.edu; Vivian Hakkak, +41 78 740 2422, vh@span.ch

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

Saudi Cleric on Al-Jazeera Teaches Children to Hate Jews (MEMRI)
    On Al-Jazeera TV on January 11, 2009, Saudi cleric Khaled Al-Khlewi said: "The Jew is treacherous, disloyal, deceitful, and belligerent by nature. Nothing works with him but force."
    Al-Khlewi asks: "Do you like the Jews?"
    Omar, age 8: "No."
    Al-Khlewi: "You hate them. Why do you hate them? What did the Jews do?"
    Omar: "They wanted to kill the Prophet Muhammad."
    Al-Khlewi: "Well done. They wanted to kill the Prophet Muhammad. And what are they doing to our Muslim brothers now? They are killing them. When you curse them, what do you say? 'Oh God...'?"
    Omar: "Oh God, destroy the Jews."

The New Spanish Inquisition

Spain to Probe Israeli "Crimes Against Humanity" - Soeren Kern (Spero News)
    Spanish National Court Judge Fernando Andreu says he will redouble his probe of seven top Israeli military and government officials for suspected "crimes against humanity" after determining that Israel did not prosecute anyone for the killing of Salah Shehadeh, the commander of the military wing of Hamas, in Gaza City in 2002.
    Spanish law allows the prosecution of foreigners for such crimes if the suspects will not be tried in their home country.
    The case was brought to the Spanish court by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which is represented in Spain by Gonzalo Boye, a Marxist revolutionary who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for collaborating with the Basque terrorist group ETA.
    Observers note that Spanish judges have never sought to prosecute any Hamas or Fatah terrorists for war crimes. Nor have they prosecuted any of the suspected Nazi war criminals who sought refuge in Spain after the end of World War II.
    The writer is Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Strategic Studies Group.

The Anger of the Jewish Street

Though a nasty and anti-semitic comic by political cartoonist Pat Oliphant has been published in several major American newspapers, you can rest assured; though Jews may complain and feel plenty pissed off, they will not riot, no heads will roll, no suicide bombings will occur, they will not chant "Death to [fill in the blank]" nor will they burn anyone in effigy, nor will they destroy any flags.  They will continue to carry out their usual law-abiding behavior. 

Just wanted it to go on record and be noted somewhere. 

Goodbye and....

...good riddance.

It's All About the Jooos

Jennifer Rubin writes:  

We almost filled a high-level security position with a man who thinks the responsibility for 9-11 goes both ways. We nearly gave classified information to someone who thinks Jews control all debate in America. But the story, according to those papers, isn’t about Freeman. Or Blair. Or the White House. It’s about the Jews.

Gaza Rockets Continue

Rockets continue to be fired from Gaza into Israel.  Those being launched now are improved versions  - -  stronger than ever before.  An Israeli school was hit a couple of days ago.

The whole point of the incursion into Gaza by the Israelis was to stop the rocket fire. Attacks upon schools and the civilian population can't be tolerated and Israel will have little choice but to respond once again.  Israel remained patient for a long time.  They faced daily attacks and did not respond in kind.  This didn't win them ANY world support or credit.  

The situation has remained the same since 1948. Palestinians could have had their own viable country long ago if that were their object.  It is not.  They don't want Jewish sovereignty in Israel.  Period, end of story.  

Money for reconstruction is pouring into Gaza from all over the world.  This seems premature and ill-advised (in other words, stupid):

• Rocket Fired from Gaza Hits Israeli School
  A rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza on Saturday landed in the courtyard of a school in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, sending shrapnel flying into classrooms. Authorities said the school was empty for the weekend. (Reuters)
      See also Experts: Palestinians Fire Improved Rockets - Shmulik Hadad
  Experts say the two Grad rockets that landed in Ashkelon Saturday were new and improved models, capable of greater destruction than those usually fired from Gaza. The rocket that hit a school succeeded in penetrating the fortification used to protect it from projectiles. The rockets were locally manufactured 170 mm rockets with a range of 14 km (8.6 miles) and are capable of massive damage. [Standard Grads are 107 mm or 122 mm.] Two tractors were required to pull the rocket from the ground in which it had become lodged. (Ynet News)
      See also Ten Rockets Hit Israel Saturday - Yanir Yagna (Ha'aretz)
      See also Six Rockets Hit Israel Sunday - Shmulik Hadad (Ynet News)
• Netanyahu: Why Pour Money into Gaza before Rockets Stop? - Herb Keinon
  Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu voiced serious reservations during recent meetings with foreign leaders about money going into Gaza for reconstruction before the rocket fire on Israel has stopped. One Netanyahu aide said that with the Gaza reconstruction conference, it seemed as if the world felt that attacks on Israel were a thing of the past, when they were taking place daily. (Jerusalem Post)

Anti-semitism runs rampant in the Arab press:

...anti-Semitism—the real stuff, not just bad-mouthing particular Israeli policies—is as much part of Arab life today as the hijab or the hookah. Whereas this darkest of creeds is no longer tolerated in polite society in the West, in the Arab world, Jew hatred remains culturally endemic.

For a European, it all feels uncomfortably familiar. Take the cartoons one sees in the government-controlled Arab press. They feature The Jew as a murderous conspirator, a capitalist bloodsucker or Satan himself—the classics. He even looks like his predecessors in Der Stürmer, with his hooked nose, thick lip and sinister beard.

Open Egypt's Al-Gomhuria newspaper, and there is The Jew as a serpent strangling Uncle Sam over a caption that reads "The Jews taking over the world." On Al-Nas TV, Egyptian cleric Ahmad Abd al-Salam tells his viewers, "I want you to imagine the Jews sitting around a table, conspiring how to corrupt the Muslims … The Jews conspire to infect the food of Muslims with cancer [and] to ship it to Muslim countries." Al-Salam's colleague, Zaghloul al-Naggar, has called Jews "devils in human form." And this is a country at peace with Israel. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis' chief propagandist, would be proud.

Meanwhile, Saleh Riqab, Hamas's deputy minister of religious endowment, has picked up smoothly where European anti-Semitism leaves off, declaring on TV that "the protocols of the elders of Zion discuss how the Jews should seize control of the world. In Europe, and especially in the U.S., there was a quick Jewish takeover of the major mass media." One Egyptian cleric has even voiced the widely shared opinion that "Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews." So much for a two-state solution.

No anti-Semitism is ever complete without the idea of sexual subversion. The Nazis accused the Jews of "polluting" the Aryan race. Sure enough, one Egyptian "expert" has opined on Al-Nas TV that "the No. 1 goal [of the West and the Jews] in spreading pornographic films is to destroy the identity of the Islamic nation." A favorite trope is the Nazi-Jew comparison, which has a simple psychological function. Since Nazis are the epitome of evil, so must be the Jews. Thus a Qatari paper has shown the contrails of an Israeli warplane forming a swastika, and a Saudi paper has superimposed it on the Star of David. The official Syrian Tishreen newspaper has depicted an Israeli soldier gesticulating to Adolf Hitler in front of a sea of skulls. The caption reads "The Israeli is explaining to the Nazi: 'We are the same'." Finally, an example that might be amusing if it didn't illustrate the depth of the problem. It comes from Captain Shahada, of Egypt's Unique Moustache Association, who confessed on Egyptian TV: "I respect the moustache of this Hitler because he humiliated the most despicable sect in the world. He subdued the people who subdued the whole world—him with his [style number] '11' moustache." This is the essence of obsession: the compulsive recurrence of images and ideas over which you have no control.

So peacemakers, beware. They'll have to deal with a civil society on one side that is by no means civil.

[Link]

Truth

When it comes to Israel, truth is generally a scarce commodity at leftist British newspaper, The Independent, so the op-ed that follows is a nice surprise.  Unfortunately, a great deal of virulent anti-semitic commentary follows it (you will have to click the link to read it), ruining the pleasure completely:

Let's See the "Criticism" of Israel for the Anti-Semitism It Really Is - Howard Jacobson

The hatred of Israel expressed in our streets, campuses, newspapers, radios and televisions is a discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in - the free exchange of opinions, the clear-headedness of thinkers and teachers, modernity of outlook, tolerance, and truth. You can taste the toxins on your tongue. But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. In the matter of Israel and the Palestinians, England has been heading towards a dictatorship of the one-minded for a long time; we seem now to have attained it.

    What do we think we are doing when we call the Israelis Nazis and liken Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto? In the early 1940s some 100,000 Jews and Romanis died of engineered starvation and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto, another quarter of a million were transported to the death camps. Don't mistake me: every Palestinian killed in Gaza is a Palestinian too many, but there is not the remotest similarity, either in intention or in deed, between Gaza and Warsaw. Berating Jews with their own history is the latest species of Holocaust denial.

    Anyone with scant knowledge of the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations would assume that Jews descended on the country as from a clear blue sky; that they had no prior association with the land other than in religious fantasy and through some scarce remembered genealogical affiliation. They make little or nothing of the Jews' unbroken connection with the country going back to the Arab conquest more than a thousand years before, the piety felt for the land, or the waves of idealistic im migration which long predated the post-Holocaust influx. (Independent-UK)

Compare and Contrast: Prejudice Experienced by Muslims and Jews

Daled Amos has made a very interesting observation comparing prejudice against Muslims vs anti-semitism experienced by Jews.  

How Bad is Anti-semitism in Europe?

Bad enough that administrators of certain schools in Denmark are refusing to accept Jewish students because they fear they can't protect them from harm: 

Schools caught up in Palestinian conflict

Barbed-wire fences and security guards are a regular part of many Jewish childrens' school day

A number of school administrators have come forth in recent days to confirm that they recommend Jewish children should not enroll at their schools.

According to school administrators, law enforcement officials and social workers, the on-going conflict in Gaza has led to heightened tensions between Jews and Arabs - particularly Palestinians - here in Denmark.

And although few headmasters of schools have faced the situation, most of those at schools with a high percentage of children of Arab descent say they try to prevent Jewish parents from enrolling their children there.

On Monday, headmaster Olav Nielsen of Humlehave School in Odense publicly admitted he would refuse Jewish parents' wish to place their child at his school.

The comments were made following an incident last week in which two Israeli citizen's were shot and wounded at a city shopping centre. Police believe the incident was a reaction to the Gaza conflict.

More

Bad enough that a high level British diplomat had to be arrested for publicly inciting religious hatred:

A high-ranking diplomat at the Foreign Office has been arrested after allegations that he launched a foul-mouthed anti-Semitic tirade.

Middle East expert Rowan Laxton, 47, was watching TV reports of the Israeli attack on Gaza as he used an exercise bike in a gym.

Stunned staff and gym members allegedly heard him shout: 'F**king Israelis, f**king Jews'. It is alleged he also said Israeli soldiers should be 'wiped off the face of the earth'.

His rant reportedly continued even after he was approached by other gym users.

After a complaint was made to police, Mr Laxton was arrested for inciting religious hatred through threatening words and behaviour and bailed until late next month.

The maximum penalty for inciting religious hatred is a seven-year prison term or a fine or both.

Mr Laxton, who is still working normally, is head of the South Asia Group at the Foreign Office, on a salary of around £70,000.

He is responsible for all the UK's diplomacy in that area and for briefing Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who is Jewish.[unfreakingbelievable!]

Mr Laxton has worked extensively in the Middle East - he married a Muslim woman in 2000 - and has been deputy ambassador to Afghanistan.

More

Arabs Throw Rockets at Peaceful Pro-Israeli Demonstrators

You will not find this in the mainstream media, but it was reported by an eyewitness who was there (read the story in his words along with more details). The rally took place in a square in Malmo, Sweden, which was closed off by police before any violence even occurred.  As the blogger linked above noted, the point of a demonstration is to send a public message  - -  but closing off the square made that impossible - - plus it did nothing to protect the protestors from the angry rocket throwing Arabs. 

Unbelievable:

Israel Matsav notes there was a previous confrontation in Malmo two weeks ago.  

Trouble in Venezuela

In a disturbing incident of antisemitic hatred, a synagogue was vandalized by 15 armed attackers:

Vandals sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls of a Venezuela synagogue and defaced Torah scrolls on Saturday in what Jewish leaders call the worst attack ever on the Jewish community in Venezuela.

About 15 armed attackers, who overcame two security guards, ravaged a Caracas synagogue. The vandals struck late Friday night and continued their assault until around 3 a.m. Saturday, vandalizing the offices of the Venezuelan Jewish community's central organization, tossing Torah scrolls and other holy books on the floor, and leaving graffiti on the synagogue walls that read, "We don't want Jews here" and "Jews get out." The synagogue attack prevented Sabbath services from taking place.
The act of vandalism occurred amid soured relations between Venezuela and Israel. Venezuela recently expelled Israel’s ambassador from the country in protest of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Israel responded by expelling last week Venezuela’s ambassador to Israel.

Appallingly, they can't condemn the attack without mentioning Israel's "criminal government" in the same breath:

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro condemned the attack and assured that it would be investigated. However, he reiterated the government’s opposition to what he called Israel’s “criminal government.” “We respect the Jewish people, but we ask respect for the people of Palestine and their right to life,” Maduro remarked during a ceremony welcoming two Venezuelan diplomats who were expelled from Israel as a reciprocal measure for Venezuela’s expelling of the Israeli ambassador on January 6th.

It is no secret that Chavez and Ahmadinejad are close buddies.  Jews living in Venezuela ought to get the hell ought of there asap.  Things will only get worse:

"The total disrespect of a Jewish house of worship reflects the escalating climate of hostility towards Jews in Venezuela," said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris. "The wanton desecration of holy books is disheartening and inexcusable."
"There are strong indications that what we are witnessing is a state-sponsored campaign of anti-Semitic persecution, spurred by both Venezuela's alliance with the Iranian regime and the surge of anti-Israel rhetoric during the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas," said Harris. "We call on the international community to declare its solidarity with Venezuela's Jewish community and to make clear to President Chavez that further escalation will not be tolerated."
AJC has spoken out with alarm before about the ongoing threats to the Jewish community in Venezuela, and apparent lack of concern by the Chavez government in countering the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents and providing adequate security. In 2004 and again in 2007, Venezuela police raided the Hebraica, the Caracas complex housing the Jewish community center and school.

[Link]

Battling the Avalanche of Hate

"We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us." —former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir

******************

"Let us note that if supposedly all-powerful Israel is dedicated to exterminating the Palestinian people, it is doing a bad job. The Palestinian population has only grown since 1948. There are more Arab citizens living in Israel proper today than there were in all of Palestine the year Israel was founded. Perhaps one reason Israel fails at genocide is that it isn't interested in genocide? That would explain why Israel warned thousands of Gazans by cell phone to leave homes near Hamas rocket stockpiles. It would clarify why, even amid all-out war, it offers aid to enemy civilians. It would even illuminate the otherwise mysterious clamor from Israelis for a viable 'peace partner.' But no. For millions of Israel haters, the more plausible explanation is that the 'defiant' Palestinians have miraculously survived Israel's determination to wipe them out. Meanwhile, calls for the complete extermination of Israel are routine. ... A sick mixture of Holocaust envy and Holocaust denial is the defining spirit of Hamas. ... It's Palestinian Islamists who have ideological and political ties to Nazism stretching back to the days of 'Hitler's Mufti,' Haj Amin al-Husseini, a happy warrior for the Nazi cause. So why the obsession with casting the Israelis as the new Hitlerites? One answer is surely that critics know such charges are painful to a country largely born of the Holocaust and marked by its scars. It also grabs attention, galvanizes radicals, vents legitimate frustrations and anger, and helps demonize the enemy and, hence, justify the murder of 'Zionists everywhere,' as Hamas often declares in its communiques. But I think the desire to cast the Israelis as Nazis is fueled, deep down, by the haters' need to see their own hatreds and ambitions mirrored in their enemy's actions. Hamas has an avowedly Hitlerite agenda. The only way to make such an agenda defensible is to convince yourself and others that the Israelis deserve it. ...[W]ith Hamas, Hitlerism comes to the Middle East wearing the mask of anti-Hitlerism." --National Review editor Jonah Goldberg

***************

What's Behind Western Condemnation of Israel's War Against Hamas? - Efraim Karsh (Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

• With a unanimity that has become all too familiar, politicians, the media, NGOs, and church leaders across the globe took their cue to denounce Israel's legitimate act of self-defense against one of the world's most extreme terror organizations. This chorus of disapproval is in stark contrast to the utter indifference to far bloodier conflicts that have been going on around the world.
• Why do citizens in democracies enthusiastically embrace a radical Islamist group that not only seeks the destruction of a fellow democracy but is overtly committed to the substitution of a world-wide Islamic caliphate for the existing international order?
• Decades of mistreatment of the Palestinians by the Arab states have gone virtually unnoticed. Only when they interact with Israel do the Palestinians win the world's attention.
• The fact that international coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has invariably reflected a degree of intensity and emotional involvement well beyond the normal level to be expected of impartial observers would seem to suggest that it is a manifestation of longstanding prejudice that has been brought out into the open by the conflict.
• The Palestinians are but the latest lightning rod unleashed against the Jews, their supposed victimization reaffirming the millenarian demonization of the Jews in general, and the medieval blood libel - that Jews delight in the blood of others.

  Professor Efraim Karsh is Head of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Studies at King's College, University of London.

*************

No one likes seeing civilians suffer and die. No one likes seeing hospitals overrun, supplies running out, doctors near exhaustion. But terrorists who use schools and hospitals as launching pads for attacks should not complain when the bombs hit the targets they have created. No one likes to see children die, but so-called leaders who use their children as pawns and train them to kill should not expect sympathy when the lives they risk so carelessly are then lost.

If I knew the answer, I would tell you. I don't. But I know what isn't the answer. It is not the answer to sit back and let the rockets rain down. It is not the answer to let terrorists attack you and not fight back.

We will not go back to the ovens. Israel was the answer to the ovens, and if Israel is your enemy, so am I.        -- Susan Estrich

************

Hamas in their own words. All of this footage aired prior to the current Gaza conflict.

Anti-semitism in the US

3 synagogues were defaced, a fourth was on the receiving end of a molotov cocktail, and a bomb threat was made to Jewish day schools in Chicago. [link]

Antisemitic Violence Spreads in Europe

Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe's towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.
Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.
Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including "murderers ... You broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm.
In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.
France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence flaring when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, some 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.

More

Jews do not attack non-combatants living outside of war zones based upon race, creed, color, religion or nationality.

Muslims apparently do.

But they still receive the sympathy of CNN and other major news outlets which ignore this abhorrent and uncivilized behavior. 

Recap:  

Muslims are anti-semitic.

Major news outlets are biased and report stories from the Muslim point of view.

Recently swatikas were painted on the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, former home of the most vicious anti-Jewish regime to ever exist.

Violent acts against Jews and Jewish property is increasing in Europe.

1/3 of the entire Jewish population of the world was murdered in the last century.

Jews have been chased out of every country in Europe over the past 2,000 years.

The world is not a friendly place for Jews.

And yet, Jews cure diseases, are among the best educated people in the world, invent new technologies, create prosperity, make the desert bloom, and abhor violence and the hurting of innocents.

Go figure.

Direct From Hitler's Hindquarters

ATTACKERS launched two cars packed with petrol bombs at a synagogue in France's south-western city of Toulouse on Monday night, causing damage but no casualties, officials said.
One car was set on fire and pushed by the other until it hit the door of the synagogue, at a time when about a dozen people were attending a class with a rabbi. The building caught fire but all those inside escaped unharmed.
Police found unexploded petrol bombs inside the second car, which did not catch fire. They said they were investigating the attack and had not made any arrests.
A Jewish group, the National Bureau for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism, condemned the attack.

Excuses for the inexcusable:

In recent years, flare-ups between Israel and the Palestinians have been followed by acts of violence against Jewish people or buildings in France, which has large Jewish and Muslim communities.
Some analysts have attributed the problem to a build-up of resentment among children or grandchildren of immigrants from Arab countries who feel they are poorly integrated into French society and are victims of discrimination in the job market.

What a crock of sh*t.

Related:  Compare and contrast: Hamas and the nazis.

The World's Oldest Hatred

An expression of the world's most ancient hatred in the locale of one of its ugliest moments in history.  It never ends:

Berlin police say vandals have daubed swastikas on some of the slabs that make up the German capital's Holocaust memorial.

A police statement says security guards discovered the swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on 12 slabs Saturday lunchtime. Authorities ordered the graffiti's swift removal.

The memorial to the Holocaust's 6 million Jewish victims consists of a field of 2,700 gray slabs situated close to the capital's Brandenburg Gate.

It opened to the public in 2005 and is freely accessible around the clock. Similar vandalism has occurred on several previous occasions.

What Would YOU Do?

Rocket Statistics:

• Today, over 950,000 Israelis live within range of rocket and mortar attacks.
• There have been approximately 7,200 rockets (Grads, Qassams) and mortars launched at Israel since 2005.
• During 2008, there have been 1755 mortars shells, 1720 Qassams rockets, and 75Grad missiles launched at Israel.
• Since Hamas’ election there has been a steady increase of these rocket attacks against Israel’s citizens:
• Between Israel’s evacuation of Gaza and the election of Hamas (Aug. 15, 2005 – Jan. 25, 2006), there was an average of over 15 rocket and mortar attacks a month.
• Between Hamas’ election and Hamas’ forceful takeover of the Strip (Jan. 25, 2006 – June 14, 2007), there was an average of over 102 attacks per month—an over 650% increase.
• Between Hamas’ takeover and the start of the Tahadiya (State of Calm), (June 14, 2007 – June 16, 2008), there was an average of over 361 attacks per month—an increase of an additional 350%.

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The New York Post Tells it Like it is

The New York Post has a fantastic, no-holds-barred, truthful, kick-butt, tell-it-like-it-is op-ed page.  Maybe it always had it - I don't know.  I never noticed until I started following world events more closely after 9/11.  Here's a perfect example:

THE international media have already morphed the horrific slaughter in Mumbai into the murky realm of euphemism and apologetics.

Al Jazeera and The Guardian label the terrorists "gunmen"; CNN calls them "militants." Some analysts identified the underlying cause as the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Psychological guru Deepak Chopra called it the result of "collateral damage" from the US war on terrorism and the Iraq war.

But how does the especially bloodthirsty attack on Mumbai's Nariman-Chabad House fit into this puzzle palace?

The New York Times theorized that Chabad House may have been an "accidental hostage scene." The BBC initially chose to hide the Jewish character of the target by describing it as just "an office building." Al Jazeera refused to show Chabad House as the site of the carnage. Some Western media outlets unsympathetically labeled victims there as "ultra-Orthodox" or "missionaries."

Contrary to these fantasies, the all-too-obvious truth is now being confirmed:

* The Times of India reported that some of the terrorists, claiming to be Malaysian students, rented nearby space in order to scout out Chabad.

* The Indian doctor who conducted the post-mortems related in a shaken voice that: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th [the first day of the attacks] itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed."

* The only captured terrorist, Ajmal Kamal, confessed under interrogation that his fellow murderers were specifically ordered to target the Jews killed at Chabad.

It's not only close India-Israeli ties that the terrorists wanted to destroy. It's likely that Mumbai's age-old history of hospitality to Jews made the Nariman-Chabad House a strategic target.

Mumbai is notable for two distinctive Jewish communities: Bagdhadi Jews, whose ancestors first arrived as traders about 250 years ago, and the Bene Israel, descendants of Judean Jews shipwrecked off the Indian coast 2,100 years ago. Among traditional Hindus forbidden to press oil from seeds, the Bene Israel found a welcome niche as the "Saturday Oil Presser Caste." Experiencing almost no discrimination, they were accorded high status in Indian society - one served as Gandhi's personal physician.

Now the survivors and loved ones of all the innocent victims of the Mumbai massacres begin the heartbreaking task of picking up the shattered pieces of their lives. But the families of the Chabad House victims have to also live with the double standard that lets the world look the other way when Jews are targets of terror.

At a house of fellowship and prayer, nine religious people were bound, tortured and executed because they were Jews - just as Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had his head cut off in Pakistan because, as he told his kidnappers, "I am Jewish."

Terrorism may not succeed in destroying our civilization - but politically correct euphemisms and apologetics are already crippling our ability to defend it. [link]

Kudos are also due to the writers, of course:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Harold Brackman, a historian, is a consultant for the center.

Kristallnacht

70 years ago today

Die Kristallnacht...in English known as the Night of Broken Glass, was a massive nationwide pogrom in Germany and Austria on the night of November 9 1938, (and into the early hours of the following day). It was directed at Jewish citizens throughout the country and was the beginning of the Holocaust.
More information:
http://www.ashkenazhouse.org

Jewish Cemetary Vandalized in Romania

Vandals rampaged through a sprawling Jewish cemetery in Romania's capital, toppling tombstones and smashing markers for as many as 200 graves, authorities said Friday.

Jewish leaders condemned the vandalism and said the scale of the destruction suggested the activity was organized — rather than random acts by wayward youths. Other graves have been vandalized in Jewish cemeteries in recent years, but those attacks occurred in the provinces, and were more limited in scope.

"We cannot be silent," said Ozi Lazar, who heads Bucharest's Jewish community. "We want a full investigation and for the perpetrators to be punished."

Romania's justice ministry promised a thorough investigation into the vandalism, which took place Thursday.

...More than 40,000 Jews are buried in the Jewish Cemetery in south Bucharest, including some victims of the Holocaust. None of the Holocaust victims' graves was vandalized. [link]

My paternal grandfather was born in Romania.  One of the vandalized graves could potentially have been a relative.  I have no way of knowing - once my grandparents left Europe, all of them cut ties completely. A similar complete break from the past is the case of every second generation American Jew that I know personally.  None of us have any ties to the old country whatsoever.  Our grandparents and great grandparents ran away and never looked back.

The Story Of Irena Sendler - Hero of WW2

I received the following in email:

There recently was the death of a 98-year-old lady named Irena Sendler.

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive...

She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German).

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she also carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family.

Most, of course, had been gassed.

Those kids she helped were placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize....

She LOST.

Al Gore won for doing a slide show on Global Warming.

(The story is true, according to Snopes.)

We Stand Before Our God

Read in the Synagogues of Germany, Kol Nidre Eve, 1935

In this hour all Israel stands before God, the Judge and Forgiver.
In His presence let us all examine our ways, our deeds, and what we have failed to do.

Where we transgressed, let us openly confess:
"We have sinned."
We confess our sins; the sins of the individual
and the sins of the community.

We express our contempt for the lies concerning us and the defamation of our religion and its testimonies. We have trust in our faith and our future.

Who made known to the world the mystery of the Eternal, the One God? Who
imparted to the world the comprehension of purity of conduct and purity of
family life?

Who taught the world respect for the human being, created in the image of God? Who spoke of the commandment of righteousness, of social justice?

In all this we see manifest in the spirit of the prophets, the divine
revelation to the Jewish people. It grew out of our faith and it is
still growing.

We stand before our God. On Him we rely. From Him issues the truth and the glory of our history, our fortitude amidst all changes of fortune, our endurance in distress.

Our history is a history of nobility of soul, of human dignity. It
is a history to which we have recourse when attack and grievous wrong
are directed against us, when affliction and calamity befall us.

God has led our ancestors from generation to generation. He will guide us and our children through these days. We stand before our God, strengthened by His commandment that we fulfill.

We bow to Him and stand erect before man. We worship Him and remain
firm in all vicissitudes. Humbly we trust in Him and our path lies clear
before us; we see our future.

All Israel stands before God in this hour. In our prayers, in our hope, in our confession, we are one with all Jews on earth. We look upon each other and know who we are; we look up to our God and know what shall abide.

-By Leo Baeck (adapted), from The New Mahzor (the prayer book for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that my synagogue uses). 

From Wikipedia:

Baeck was born in Lissa (Leszno) (then in the German Province of Posen, now in Poland), the son of Rabbi Samuel Baeck, and began his education near Breslau at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in 1894. He also studied philosophy in Berlin with Wilhelm Dilthey, served as a rabbi in Oppeln, Düsseldorf, and Berlin, and taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies). In 1905 Baeck published The Essence of Judaism, in response to Adolf von Harnack's The Essence of Christianity. This book, which interpreted and valorized Judaism through a prism of Neo-Kantianism tempered with religious existentialism, made him a famous proponent for the Jewish people and their faith. During World War I, Baeck was an army chaplain in the German Imperial Army. In 1933, after the Nazis seized power, Baeck worked to defend the Jewish community as president of the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden, an umbrella organization that United German Jewry from 1933-1938. After the Reichsvertretung was disbanded during the November Pogrom, the Nazis reassembled the council's members under the government controlled Reichsvereinigung. Leo Baeck headed this organization as its president until his deportation in January 1943

On 27 January 1943, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. And after the camp was liberated by the Russians in May 1945, he became the Jewish figure head as the Elder of the Jews.

Leo Baeck did not play a decisive role in the Jewish administration of the ghetto until its last days. Yet he never ceased to be a symbol to and a leader of the Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt. In Berlin, he had been a leader of the German Jews; in Theresienstadt, he became a spiritual leader and symbol, leader to thousands of Jews from all parts of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Up until his deportation, numerous American institutions offered to help him escape the war and immigrate to America. Leo Baeck refused to abandon his community in the camps and declined the offers.

After the war, Baeck relocated to London, taught at Hebrew Union College in America, and eventually became Chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It was during this time he published his second great work, This People Israel, which he partially penned during his imprisonment by the Nazis.

In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was the first international president of this institute. The asteroid 100047 Leobaeck is named in his honour, as is Leo Baeck College, the Reform/Progressive rabbinical college in London.

He died on November 2, 1956, in London, England and has seven living descendants, a granddaughter, a great-grandson, and five great-great-grandchildren (four great-great-grandsons and one great-great-granddaughter.) His daughter and great-grandson are deceased.

Like Night Follows Day

Predictable as a German train schedule:

Hamas blames Jews for global crisis

The "Jewish lobby" in the US is responsible for the world financial crisis, according to Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum.

In a statement released Tuesday, Barhum said that the global crisis was due to "bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby."

While signing a $700 billion bailout law, US President George W. Bush has not commented on "the Jewish lobby that put the US banking and financial sector into place," the Hamas statement continued.

Last week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that the worldwide financial meltdown has triggered an uptick in anonymous anti-Semitic comments blaming Jews for the crisis on mainstream Web site message boards.

"Jews are greedy, rotten slimeballs," wrote one surfer on a Yahoo finance group, according to the ADL statement.

"It's difficult, if not impossible, for one honest investor to neutralize the efforts of thousands of Jewish swindlers," added another. [link]

Another Anti-semitic Attack in France

Muslims Attack Jewish Teens in Paris (AP)
    Three young Parisian Jews were treated for fractures and bruises after what France's interior minister described Sunday as an anti-Semitic attack in northern Paris on Saturday.
    Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie issued a statement saying she "strongly condemned the anti-Semitic violence."

A Missing Jewish Generation in Poland

"We don't have a second generation of Jews in Poland, it just doesn't exist..." "We just have the [elderly] people that decided to raise their grandchildren going to Jewish summer camps. So in the [synagogues] in Poland you don't find any people between the ages of 40 and 50, it is just the [elderly] and the young."

The Synagogue

One of the most, if not THE most, desecrated of buildings throughout history. 

Now this:

Hamas Using Former Synagogues to Train Gunmen

- Ronen Bergman
When Israel pulled out of Gaza in September 2005, the government decided to leave public buildings, kindergartens, libraries, schools and other structures whole for the benefit of the Palestinian population. Terrorist organizations, most notably Hamas, have been using these buildings for training purposes. Several videos produced by various terror organizations present gunmen training at the sites of public buildings once used in Gush Katif. One of the structures identifiable is the Atzmona synagogue, in which terrorists train using live ammunition. The buildings also serve as the backdrop for kidnapping scenarios. (Ynet News)

Jewish Identity and Antisemitism

...two strange and fascinating passages written by Sigmund Freud, the first taken from a letter written to the Viennese B’nai Brith organization, and the second from his introduction to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo. To B’nai Brith, he wrote:

What bound me to Jewry was (I am ashamed to admit) neither faith nor national pride…. But plenty of other things remained over to make the attraction to Jewry and Jews irresistible-many obscure emotional forces [which] were the more powerful the less they could be expressed in words, as well as a clear consciousness of inner identity, the safe privacy of a common mental construction.⁴

In his introduction to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo, he adds:

No reader of [the Hebrew version of] this book will find it easy to put himself in the emotional position of an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers--as well as from every other religion--and who cannot take a share in nationalist ideals, but who has yet never repudiated his people.... If the question were put to him: “Since you have abandoned all these common characteristics of your countrymen, what is there left to you that is Jewish?” he would reply: “A great deal, and probably its very essence.” He could not now express that essence clearly in words; but some day, no doubt, it will become accessible to the scientific mind.⁵

These quotes are from an article that examines antisemitism and comes to the conclusion that there is one cause which is at its root:

A.B. Yehoshua, undertook a demanding task: to decipher the most disturbing riddle of Jewish history, to analyze and describe the quintessence of antisemitism in its various historical and cultural incarnations. Yehoshua’s thesis disputes the general intellectual consensus on antisemitism, which denies that there is any single or unique root to the phenomenon. He asserts that it is the unique structure of Jewish identity which has given birth to the venomous reaction of antisemitism-and he offers a way out of this impasse. Yehoshua’s position has outraged many but also given them much to think about, AZURE is proud to present an English translation of this essay, which embodies Zionist thought in its most daring form.

 

Link