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The creep of anti-Semitism onto college campuses

from The Daily, University of Washington    Full Article Links...HERE

By Nathan Taft The Daily | 0 comments

Earlier this year at UCLA, sophomore Rachel Beyda was initially denied a spot on the student council’s Judicial Board. Why?

Because she was Jewish. 

As an openly proud, Star-of-David-wearing Jew who goes to school on a college campus, this didn’t surprise me as much as I wish it had. 

I’ve attended the UW for four years now, I’ll be graduating at the end of this quarter, and during my time here I’ve faced more anti-Semitism than I’d like to admit. I’ve had TAs whose grading of my work drastically changed for the worse mid-quarter after I spoke out about the need for a Jewish State. I’ve gotten dirty looks around campus for displaying my Star of David prominently around my neck. I’ve had classmates quite literally cease interaction with me after discovering my Jewish heritage, no longer sitting near me during lectures and going out of their way to be in different groups during quiz sections.

I’m not writing this piece for sympathy or pity. This is not a woe is me, feel bad for the Jew story. No, I’m writing this because so few people understand the slow slide back into anti-Semitism that’s occurring, not just here, but around the world, and that’s a problem.

But first, let’s back up a bit.

After the Holocaust, rates of anti-Semitism dropped drastically; losing 6 million of your people can do that. But, as the decades passed, memories faded and anti-Semitism began to thrive once more. 

In France, Jews make up less than 1 percent of the population, but are targeted by 51 percent of all racially motivated attacks. All across Europe, Jews face murder, rape, beatings, and harassment for simply being Jewish. Chants of “Jews to the gas,” “dirty Jew,” and “death to the Jews,” are no longer rare, being heard at riots, marches, and even soccer games in multiple cities throughout Europe. Sometimes, the leaders of these groups claim they’re demonstrating against Israel, not Jews, sometimes they don’t. If you’re being honest, it doesn’t really matter one way or another.

Here in the United States, this resurgence of anti-Semitism is less widespread, being mostly limited to college campuses, and is usually far more subtle. Disdain for and discrimination against Jews is rarely out in the open like in the case of Beyda. Instead, people like to hide behind anti-Israel rhetoric to justify their bigotry.

Now, that’s not to say all anti-Israel statements are anti-Semitic; far from it. I’m among the first to be critical of some of Israel’s policies, for good reason. Israel recently re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu, someone who has said he is outright opposed to a two-state solution with the Palestinians. That’s despicable. Palestinians have just as much of a right to a state as Israelis do, and to ever truly achieve peace, both peoples must have a country to call their own.

But oftentimes, when people on campus see my Star of David or find out that I’m Jewish, I’ve become the target for their frustration and anger with the State of Israel’s actions. Many will never admit it, but simply by being Jewish, I’ve become their enemy. 

That’s not right. Maybe if I was a hardcore religious Zionist — I’m not — who believes the Palestinians should be forcibly and violently removed from Gaza and the West Bank — I don’t — I could understand that reaction. 

But that’s not what’s going on, and that’s not the viewpoint of the vast majority of American Jews. Yet, some people see my Star of David and brand me as someone toxic, someone worthy of their disdain and vitriol.

That’s not being anti-Israel. That’s being anti-Semitic. And anyone who says otherwise simply isn’t being honest.

Click HERE to keep reading

The Anti-Israel Intifada on the American Campus

from SPME April 8,2015 Full Article Links ...HERE

NOTE: Outraged? Go to Connecticut College and register a complaint. Sign petitions. Get angry.

Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, is the latest casualty in the campus-based culture wars. Dr. Pessin is a well-liked and much published professor, self-described as the “only Jewish professor on campus who openly advocates for Israel.” And now, for remarks made during last summer’s Gaza war, he faces an attack from Palestinian supporters seeking to silence pro-Israel stances on campus.

Pessin tells Breitbart News he believes he was set up by “a Muslim student and an Islamic Studies colleague” who worked in concert. They dug up one of Professor Pessin’s Facebook entries, one he posted during the August 2014 war in Gaza, the war in which Israeli soldiers uncovered and destroyed countless underground terror-tunnels which opened into Israel and were to be used in a mass attack against Israeli civilians. Referring to a leadership that purposely exposed its own civilians to death merely for propaganda purposes, and whose holy warriors attacked mainly Israeli civilians, Pessin compared this leadership to a “rabid pit bull.”

One student, Lamiya Khandaker, whose parents are from Bangladesh and who is also the Chair of Diversity and Equity for the campus’s Student Government Association, wrote to Professor Pessin. He immediately clarified that he was referring to the Hamas leadership and ideology, not to Palestinians; and, upon the advice of the administration, he apologized to Khandaker and deleted the post. Too late, too little.

A firestorm ensued. Students wrote letters and the student newspaper, The College Voice, published them (without reaching out to Pessin). An online petition was launched, calling upon the university to disassociate itself from Pessin’s “racism,” and on April 1stthe university canceled classes so all students could attend a “mandatory series of events” for a campus-wide conversation on racism, equity, and inclusion.

Connecticut College now has the same kind of Brownshirt-style bullies whom I first encountered back in 2003. In the name of “anti-racism,” they condemn true intellectual dissent and truth-telling as crimes. Something similar (although different in style) happened at Yale when, in 2011, the university ended Dr. Charles Small’s very successful program: the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism. There, too, a pro-Palestinian student operative, mentored by a prominent Islamist professor, orchestrated a campaign.

Professor Pessin has taken a medical leave of absence due to the “stress” caused by his being publicly defamed and condemned by both faculty and students.

MORE TO READ:


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Jews, Arabs and the game we play

from the Times of Israel April 8, 2015 Full Article Links HERE

I've  never been a huge sports fan.

I’ve never really followed any professional sport. And football? As a Canadian, soccer was never really on anyone’s mind, until of course David Beckham brought it, along with his family, to North America.

What then caused me to watch, scream and shout, jump for joy and cheer on the Wales national team during the 2016 European qualifier in Israel?

Well, it had something to do with the fact that I knew I would be meeting them all the following day in a more important context.

And so, I watched them again, the very next morning, as they got off their bus.

I watched as they slowly strolled, seemingly tired from the previous day’s victory, onto the football pitch in Haifa.

I watched as they crossed the perfectly manicured lawn, exploring the Carmel Mountains on the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.

And, I watched their eyes light up as they approached our Jewish, Arab and Druze children — all sitting perfectly still, clearly eager and anxious as their heroes finally come to greet them.

With all the anticipation, the hour that Gareth Bale and his team mates spent on the field in Haifa, passing the ball to Arab and Jewish Israeli children, was more than your average kick about.   NOTE: Joyful and hopeful... read the rest of this HERE

Read more: Jews, Arabs and the game we play | Rachel Lasry Zahavi | The Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jews-arabs-and-the-game-we-play/#ixzz3Wudp7nl4
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Anti-Semitism on US college campuses, educating pro-Israel Americans and marking the Shoah

in the Jerusalem Post April 5, 2015 by Eric Mandel... Full Article Links HERE

Last week I was privileged to speak to two very different audiences about the Middle East and Israel.

The first talk was at Purchase College in Westchester County, New York. I had been invited as part of my college speaking tour on the Middle East which brought me to many universities in the Northeast, i.e. Harvard, Cornell, Brown, SUNY Oneonta SUNY Binghamton and more. The first scheduled speaking date was postponed because of a snowstorm. Coincidentally, a week before the rescheduled talk, the campus was defaced with anti-Semitic and racist graffiti including swastikas and a noose.

There is a rash of anti-Semitism now sweeping college campuses. I know this because my organization, Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN), is continually being asked to sign letters to college presidents throughout the country responding to the growing number of anti-Semitic incidents, insisting that universities maintain a safe environment for Jewish students.

I was told that even before this anti-Semitic incident, the topic of my speech had created a controversy on campus, especially among a growing anti-Israel movement, and that I should be prepared to receive a hostile reception. The anti-Israel group did ask some provocative questions during my talk, but to their credit they choose not to interrupt the talk or intimidate Jewish students as other anti-Israel groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine have done. Perhaps the police presence had something to do with it.   NOTE: Great Article. Keep reading HERE

"On the college campus, our kids are besieged by a growing plague of anti-Zionism in the name of political correctness and anti-colonialism."

Don’t Blame Obama for Data on Israel’s Nukes

from Barron's On Line April 3, 2015 by Jim McTague Full Article Links HERE

Delete this from the right wing’s list of Obama outrages: The president did not release Israel’s atomic-bomb secret to the public in a fit of pique over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to congressional Republicans.

Obama’s 24/7 vilifiers claimed this to be the case as late as last week. They said he had declassified a 1987 Pentagon report titled, “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” which establishes that Israel has had nukes for decades. They ignored key facts to assure that the story would fit their hypothesis.

The mud-slinging created quite a hullabaloo along Pennsylvania Avenue. As the Washington Examiner reported on March 26, “Three years after a researcher filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a Department of Defense report discussing Israel’s nuclear weapon capabilities, the Obama administration released the document in what has been called an unprecedented acknowledgment of the heretofore secret arsenal protecting the Middle Eastern nation.” The paper added, “The release nearly coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly controversial address to Congress earlier this month, raising questions as to why the Pentagon suddenly complied with a 2012 FOIA request that had become the subject of a lawsuit.”

The Weekly Standard wrote on March 26 that the declassification was a “serious breach of decades’ old understandings” and added that Israel never admitted to having nuclear weapons: “To do so might spark a regional nuclear arms race, and eventual nuclear confrontation.”

In The Hill newspaper on Thursday, Herbert London of the London Center for Policy Research wrote, “With Iran’s nuclear talks soon unfolding into an accord, the declassification will prove to be exceedingly awkward for Israel. It may well be that if the monitoring of Iran’s nuclear capability is called for, why not Israel’s program? Is the Obama team trying to establish equivalency between Tehran and Jerusalem?”

ALAS, ALL OF THE SPECULATION is based on falsehoods. Obama had no hand in the release—and the report wasn’t classified. In January, Federal Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington ordered the Defense Department to release the report by Feb. 12, in response to the FOIA suit by Grant Smith, head of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, a small policy-research and education organization highly critical of U.S. policy toward Israel. The timing of the judge’s decision was purely coincidental.  NOTE: Much more to read, please click HERE to keep reading

Great Source of Passover Information, fun, more

http://www.jr.co.il/videos/passover-videos.htm

Another Oldie but Goodie - Passover Rhapsody

Introducing JINO Magazine!

from Elder of Ziyon Full Article Links: HERE

Bat Moses

Dayenu - The Maccabeats! NEW!

5 Things You Need to Know About the U.S.-Israel Relationship Under President Obama

from WhiteHouse.Gov March 1, 2015 ** Full Article Links HERE

NOTE: Truth is always difficult. Facts, though, can be reviewed, studied and verified if correct. Much of what we think we know should be questioned. 

Here are the five key facts you need to know about the U.S.-Israel relationship under President Obama: 

1. A strong defender: President Obama has strengthened Israel's defense in concrete and unprecedented ways: 

• Israel remains the leading recipient of U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), receiving over $20.5 billion since 2009. 
• The United States in Fiscal Year 2014 provided Israel with more security assistance funding than ever before. In Fiscal Year 2016, which marks the eighth year of a 10-year, $30 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, we have asked Congress for $3.1 billion in FMF funds for Israel.
• The President has provided $2.9 billion in funding for missile defense programs and systems. Since 2011, the United States has provided Israel with over $1.3 billion for the Iron Dome system alone, including $225 million in short-fuse funding last summer.
• The U.S. and Israel regularly conduct joint exercises to improve our military capabilities and strengthen our bilateral security.

2. An international ally: Under President Obama, the U.S. has led global efforts to defend Israel's legitimacy on the world stage: 

• Last year, the U.S. opposed 18 resolutions in the UN General Assembly that were biased against Israel.
• On five occasions last year, the U.S. cast the only “no” vote against unfair anti-Israel measures in the UN’s Human Rights Council.
• The U.S. worked with Israel and the European Union to organize the first UN General Assembly session on anti-Semitism in UN history, held in January 2015.

3. A proponent of peace: The President has strongly supported Israel in its quest for peace with its neighbors:

• President Obama has repeatedly stood up for a two-state solution that ensures the peace and security of Israelis and Palestinians.
• Under the President’s direction, Secretary Kerry initiated an intensive, collaborative effort to facilitate negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
• The President prioritized Israel’s security by asking one of our foremost military experts to help develop security arrangements that ensure a two-state solution leaves Israelis more secure, not less.

4. An economic partner: Under President Obama, the U.S. has a strong and robust commercial relationship with Israel:

• This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was the first FTA entered into by the United States.
• U.S. goods exports to Israel in 2014 were $15.1 billion, up 9.6% ($1.3 billion) from 2013, and up 64% from 2004.  U.S. exports to Israel are up 587% from 1984 (Pre-FTA).
• U.S. goods imports from Israel were $23.1 billion in 2014, a 1.1% increase ($242 million) from 2013, and up 58% from 2004. U.S. imports from Israel are up 1,203% from 1984.
• The U.S. continues to invest in the BIRD Foundation, a U.S.-Israeli partnership between private sectors to expand private high tech industries. Since its founding in 1977, the $295 million in grants have been awarded to 800 partnerships, generating over $10 billion in product sales.

​5. A support system for refugees and migrants: Under President Obama, the U.S. has invested millions in helping Israeli immigrants:

• In the last 6 years, U.S. humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants travelling to Israel totaled $140 million. This funding is used to help transport eligible migrants to Israel, transitional shelter, intensive Hebrew-language programs that focus on ne
• wly-arriving immigrants, or youth programming in Israel.
Since Israel’s founding, the U.S. has provided Israel with more than $120 billion in bilateral assistance and, under President Obama’s leadership, the U.S. will continue to be Israel’s strongest ally and staunchest supporter in its pursuit of peace and security in the Middle East. 
Share this information with everyone who needs to know. 

Dayenu, Coming Home

ok, a couple of years old, so?

Billionaire Ronald Lauder Talks Hugo Chavez, Bomb Shelters in Israel and Anti-Semitism

from Forbes March 29, 2015 by Chloe Sorvino *** Full Article Links HERE

After roughly a week of campaigning for a tougher U.S. response to rising global anti-Semitism, billionaire Ronald Lauder was preparing for his final public speech in D.C. on Wednesday — a lecture later that night atGeorgetown University centered on how Jews and Christians should come together against radical Islamic groups.

It’s been a busy trip: On Tuesday, Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee on the surge in attacks against Jews in Europe, and his schedule has been dotted with other high-profile meetings with top Senate officials, Russian diplomats and Vice President Joe Biden.

As he sat in a meeting room at the ritzy Willard Intercontinental Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, he seemed energized by a week spent rallying Congressmen to support Israel — and pushing them to attempt shutting down any nuclear deal with Iran that he would find unfavorable for the Jewish communities he lobbies for from about 100 countries.

Lauder has focused on diplomacy for decades and was the U.S. Ambassador to Austriafrom 1986 to 1987. But his estimated $3.9 billion fortune comes largely from a stake in the Estee Lauder cosmetics conglomerate his mother founded. Sensing a market research opportunity, he was quick to ask me if I use a top coat after doing my nails, and what I think of M.A.C., an Estee Lauder brand. I sat down with him in the midst of his D.C. tour to talk about running to bomb shelters in Israel, breaking the ice with then-president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez and the progress of his campaign to return art stolen by the Nazis to the rightful owners’ descendants. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

During your testimony in front of Congress, you asked “Where is the United States?” That’s a big question. What would you want to see the U.S. government actually do?  

(Much more to this excellent interview, continues HERE )

Israelis Haven't Lost Hope in Peace, but Are More Prudent About the Process

from ME Forum March 27, 2015 by Asaf Romirowsky Article Links HERE

NOTE: Cautiously optimistic, but very uneasy about the simmering hatred from the Arab side of the fence and the increasing intransigence of the Jewish right... how do we deal with that?

Prior to the Israeli elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under fire for securing his right-wing base when he stated, "I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel."

Those on the left, he cautioned, are ignoring reality by "burying their heads in the sand." From there he went on to say that he would not support such a Palestinian state.

But would any Israeli government support such a state?

Netanyahu ran on a national security ticket and underscored the growing threat of Islamism and Iran. He did not need to remind Israelis about their last war with Hamas in Gaza, but rather pointed to growing regional instability. All represent real predictors of a radicalized West Bank, especially under a Hamas-Fatah coalition. If one looks at Gaza, the West Bank in its current state could easily be transformed into an ISIS like environment, and a clear and present danger to Israel perhaps worse than those Israelis face along their southern and northern borders.

Moreover, Netanyahu has always argued for a demilitarized Palestinian state. His recent statement was not a policy departure about the kind of neighbor Israel seeks.

Critics have concluded that Netanyahu's pre-election comments abandoned the two-state solution proposed in his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University, but a closer look reveals more about animosity towards Netanyahu.

This was only one of the misreadings surrounding the election. The Israeli media badly misread the pre-election signs and exit polls. These showed that while there were a plethora of domestic problems articulated by Isaac Herzog, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid and company, the majority of Israelis see the real threat to Israel as Islamist. For them, Netanyahu still represents a reassuring voice.

Diplomatically, the two-state solution is still the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as advocated by most of the international community, spearheaded by Washington. Reaching it is the official policy of both the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but it is no secret that Hamas does not support this notion, with or without PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

More importantly, from Yasser Arafat to Abbas, we have witnessed generations of Palestinians support rejectionism rather than statehood. They cling to the notion of being a refugee for life rather than a citizen of any country. Neither Herzog nor Netanyahu can overcome this.

In the heyday of the Oslo peace process, the push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement was done on every possible level, socially, politically and militarily, and even reached a point where being "anti-Oslo" connoted being anti-Israel. But 20 years of bitter experiences later, Oslo has lost its allure and has been replaced by a more skeptical prism of the region.

The alleged centrality of the "settlements" is really an empty issue, which deflects attention from the real issues that obstruct a negotiated settlement. There is little debate over the fact that – should a peace agreement be completed – there will be a redistribution of land. Most of the bargaining is about whether these exchanges will take the shape of a total phased Israeli withdrawal, or exchanging the most populous Israeli towns for lands in the Jordan Valley or Negev desert. But this must be left to the parties to decide and not imposed by outside powers.

The Israeli commitment to a two-state solution predates Netanyahu and represents a consensus that encompasses both the left and the right. As the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated during his UN speech in 2005:

The essence of my Jewish consciousness, and of my belief in the eternal and unimpeachable right of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel. However, I say this here also to emphasize the immensity of the pain I feel deep in my heart at the recognition that we have to make concessions for the sake of peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors. The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land. The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them, and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own. I am among those who believe that it is possible to reach a fair compromise and coexistence in good neighborly relations between Jews and Arabs. However, I must emphasize one fact: There will be no compromise on the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, with defensible borders, in full security and without threats and terrorism.

Sharon's final caution clearly mirrors that of Netanyahu and represents the majority of Israelis.

Israelis have not lost hope in peace, but they are more prudent about the process. Netanyahu still underscores that "just as Israel is prepared to recognize a Palestinian state, the Palestinians must be prepared to recognize a Jewish state."

Both sides need to make concessions, but Israel's security and Jewish identity concerns deserve as much attention as Palestinian territorial claims.

Asaf Romirowsky is a fellow at the Middle East Forum, and co-author of Religion, Politics and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

John Boehner's Double Standard on Bibi — and Obama

from The Forward March 30, 2015 by J.J. Goldberg  Article Links HERE

NOTE: Kudos to J.J. for writing this. Utter (and irrational) hatred of Obama is de rigueur among too many Jews nowadays. 

In case you missed it: The No. 1 best comedy line of the weekend came from one of our best deadpan straight men, House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio.

It came during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” They were talking about the Israeli prime minister’s flip-flop on Palestinian statehood just before and after Israel’s March 17 election — how on March 16, in Bash’s words, “he disavowed the two-state solution, and then right afterward he said ‘never mind’ and took it back. Isn’t this a little brazen?” No, Boehner said, “because he doesn’t have a partner.” He said he believes Netanyahu still believes in Palestinian statehood as “an aspirational goal.” Well, Bash asked, “Can you blame the White House or the president for not believing what he’s saying on where his position is on this?”

Boehner’s reply:

I think the animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible. I think that the pressure that they’ve put on him over the last four or five years has frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.

Get it? The animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is “reprehensible.” This from a guy who’s been virtually silent for six years — four of them as the leader of the Republican party — while members of his caucus and his party have directed an unending barrage of slander, character assassination and borderline obscenity at the president of his own country.

Think I’m exaggerating? In January 2011, days after Boehner’s Republicans took over the House and elected him speaker, Brian Williams asked him during an NBC Nightly News interview what he had to say to members of his party who claimed Obama wasn’t born in America, wasn’t a citizen and wasn’t legitimately president. Boehler’s reply:

Brian, when you come to the Congress of the United States, there are 435 of us. We’re nothing more than a slice of America. People come, regardless of party labels, they come with all kinds of beliefs and ideas. It’s the melting pot of America. It’s not up to me to tell them what to think.

Translation: Shucks, I’m only a politician, head of the Republican Party. I can’t advise Americans on how to view the world. What am I, a leader?

Six weeks later, during an interview on Meet the Press, Boehner repeatedly denied he had any responsibility to speak out when Republicans claimed the president was a foreign-born Muslim.

He noted that the state of Hawaii said Obama was born there, and that the president himself said he was a Christian, and “I’ll take him at his word” — strikingly, the same phrase Obama himself used last week to say that he believed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s March 16 disavowal of the two-state solution: “I take him at his word.”

But, Boehner said several times, “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.” (Which, when you think about it, is an odd stance for a political leader to take when discussing truth, falsehood and the affairs of the Republic. “Not my job to tell the American people what to think”? Has he been joking all these years about Obamacare, taxes, freedom?)

Host David Gregory had led off by playing a Fox News clip showing Iowa Republicans in focus groups saying they believed Obama was a Muslim. Here’s what followed:

Gregory: Do you not think it’s your responsibility to stand up to that kind of ignorance?

Boehner: David, it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people. Having said that, the state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That’s good enough for me. The president says he’s a Christian. I accept him at his word.

Gregory: But isn’t that a little bit fast and loose? I mean, you are the leader in Congress and you are not standing up to obvious facts and saying these are facts, and if you don’t believe that it’s nonsense?

Boehner: I just outlined the facts as I understand them. I believe that the president is a citizen. I believe the president is a Christian. I’ll take him at his word.

Gregory: But that kind of ignorance over whether he’s a Muslim doesn’t concern you?

Boehner: Listen, the American people have the right to think what they want to think. I can’t — it’s not my job to tell them.

By way of context, the exchange came after several polls over the preceding months had shown Republicans holding a whole range of bizarre views of Obama, which the national leadership, including Boehner, had made no effort to dispute.

In March 2010, a Harris Interactive poll found that majorities of Republicans believed Obama is a socialist (67%), wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns (61%), is a Muslim (57%) and “wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government” (51%).

Moreover, Harris reported, 47% of Republicans believed Obama “resents America’s heritage”; 45% believed he “was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”; 45% believed he “is the domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of”; 41% believed he “wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers”; and 38% believed he “is doing many of the things that Hitler did.”

Also, 24% of Republicans believed Obama “may be the Anti-Christ” and 22% believed he “wants the terrorists to win.”

Here’s what Boehner had to say about the widespread Republican, um, animosity toward the president of the United States: [nothing].

In the years since then Boehner has been true to his principles, sitting silently while members of his own caucus have come up with a wide range of baroque insults to direct5 at the president. During the 2014 State of the Union address, for example, Texas Rep. Randy Weber tweeted from the House floor that Obama was “Kommandant-in-Chief” and a “Socialistic dictator.”

In January 2015 Weber complained about Obama’s failure to attend the Paris rally following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in a tweet that compared him (unfavorably) to Hitler: “Even Adolph [sic] Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for right reasons.”

Weber apologized the following day — not to Obama but to Holocaust survivors:

It was not my intention to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler. The mention of Hitler was meant to represent the face of evil that still exists in the world today. I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate.

Here’s what Boehner had to say about Weber’s slurs against the president: [nothing].

It should be borne in mind, by the way, that Obama’s rough treatment of Netanyahu follows six years in which Netanyahu has repeatedly humiliated, undermined and sabotaged the president publicly. And while both leaders have tried to keep their very profound disagreements on the substantive plane and avoid descending into personal invective, Netanyahu’s allies and surrogates haven’t been so delicate. Recall the moment in January 2014, at the height of Secretary State John Kerry’s effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, when Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was quoted (accurately) saying that Kerry was “acting out of a misplaced obsession and messianic fervor” and that the “only thing that can save us is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace.” That actually drew a mild scolding from Netanyahu on the Knesset floor, followed by a non-apology apology from Ya’alon (who “didn’t mean to insult” Kerry).

From Obama’s point of view, though, the relationship probably reached a breaking point on Israel’s election day. That was the day Netanyahu mobilized his voters by warning in a video that his incumbency was “endangered” by Arab Israeli citizens “streaming to the polls in droves.” It was just 10 days earlier that America’s first African American president had flown to Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the sacrifices made by blacks and whites a half-century ago in the struggle for minority voting rights.

It’s worth recalling an incident last October, after Jeffrey Goldberg (no, that’s not me)reported in The Atlantic about an unnamed White House official calling Netanyahu “chickenshit.” The anonymous insult prompted a reply from Israel’s economics minister, Naftali Bennett, leader of the settler-backed Jewish Home party, warning on his Facebook page — in a phrase borrowed from former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney — that Obama was “planning on throwing Israel under the bus.”

Bennett went on to write:

The prime minister is not a private individual, but the leader of the Jewish State and the Jewish world as a whole. Serious curses such as these against the Israeli Prime Minister are harmful to millions of citizens of Israel and Jews worldwide.

Exactly. The thing is, it goes both ways.

Anybody’s Judaism

from eJewishPhilanthropy March 30, 2015 Article Links HERE by Maayan Jaffe

NOTE: As long as we keep talking, sharing, evolving, its all good.... 

For generations it has been clear who sets the Jewish agenda and trends: A group of older men in a boardroom backed by major funders and philanthropists. This packaged Judaism wasn’t unique to the Jewish people. Trends – be they in automobile or clothing industry – were for generations set by major retail establishments that had the funding necessary to access advertising venues and reach the masses. Similarly, the news we read was that which appeared on the front page of the New York Times.

The world has changed.

The model of the all-knowing leader and the passive constituent has come to an end and in its stead is a “me model,” a model of the empowered consumer who demands to be heard by the ranks. And those who don’t have ready access to leadership, do have the tools at their fingertips to share their opinions – on the Web, through blogs, social media or other electronic means. This leads to an information glut, a fusion of data-driven, fact-rooted opinions combined with endless rumors, misinformation, and questionable variations on the truth, which we all have to navigate.

Who decides the Jewish present? Who will decide the Jewish future? When you have “the voice of the individual in dialogue with the voice of mainstream organizations,” as well-known educator and author Dr. Erica Brown puts it, who wins?

She says decisions are made by those who can fund them (or get the funding for them). Well-established philanthropic organizations or funders will likely always determine the Jewish agenda “because of the dollars they put behind particular issues,” she reasons. The issues, however, could shift.

Alan Edelman, a Jewish communal professional and philanthropist for more than three decades, takes this idea a step further. In his role as associate executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, he says he sees an increase in Jewish philanthropic giving. However, those dollars are not being funneled toward traditional Jewish objectives or streams.

“In the past, the only way to give to Israel was through Israel Bonds, Jewish National Fund or the Federation. Now, they are so many NGOs in Israel that relate to people’s interests: religious pluralism, Women of the Wall, those concerned about the condition of democracy in Israel, about settlers in the West Bank. The same way Jews are choosing to express Judaism in new ways that are meaningful to them – and not always the traditional way – it’s the same thing when it comes to philanthropy,” he says.

“Less trustful of institutions and more keen on making a direct impact, this generation of funders tends to tailor its giving to particular areas of interest and expects an active role in molding the projects it funds,” writes philanthropist Jay Ruderman in a blog postpublished earlier this year.

Edelman says legacy organizations, such as the Federation, will have to broaden the programs they provide and support to meet the changing needs of their constituents and funders – “I don’t think our institutions can keep doing the same old programs,” he says.

But how should these organizations and philanthropists determine investments in programs and services presented in this new social marketplace of ideas? As always, says Brown, individuals express their Jewish identity through a variety of means: culture, food, social networks, religious institutions, etc.

“People define Jewish identity and then others gravitate to it,” Brown says, and where the masses are is a place to start. “We can serve people more efficiently when we know what people really want.”

She charges organizations with creating an “open space for a structured Jewish conversation.”

Times of Israel (ToI), believes it has done that.

Blogger as Expert

More than 4,000 people have used ToI as a platform for expressing their Jewish, Jewish-political or religious ideas over the past three years, according to Ops & Blogs Editor Miriam Herschlag.

“That is a critical mass saying how we want to talk with each other and where we want to meet up,” Herschlag says. “Two years ago, we averaged eight blog posts a day. Today, there are around 35 every day and that number is really growing.”

Herschlag describes the blogger acceptance criteria as “extremely open,” something which worries Brown who feels that such a site should have “higher level filters” to help readers differentiate between expert and non-expert voices. Again, a “structured dialogue.”

“If you can print anything on a platform then it lacks credibility,” she says.

Edelman, too, is concerned.

“It has always been two Jews, three opinions. But we are in a world, unfortunately, where people take sides too strongly and have forgotten the grain in the middle. … It has created a negative discourse,” he says. “The Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam [baseless hatred].”

Herschlag acknowledges this tension but says the value outweighs the worry. ToI has successfully allowed the establishment to “make meaningful contact” with its constituents in an “unprecedented,” way. For example, prospective leaders have been able to float to the top much sooner and in a way that has never happened before.

A blog by Bethany Mandel, “Why you won’t see my name on a Freundel-related suit,” published January 20 shortly after Rabbi Barry Freundel was charged with voyeurism, led to Mandel’s being asked to sit on a Rabbinical Council of America panel to review conversion policies.

“She wrote this treatise on how conversions happen and what shouldn’t happen and it was from the popularity of that piece that she was invited to be on the panel,” says Herschlag.

Moreover, organizational leaders can get a zeitgeist on what is important to their broader constituent base – and prospective constituents – by keeping an eye out for blogs with similar themes or by seeing which blogs are shared widest.

“Those who understand who to communicate [with] in this noisy environment can really be effective. How does this – or should it – impact how decisions might be made for the Jewish future? They used to be top down. Is there more of a bottom up, grassroots way of doing things now? The answer has to be yes,” Herschlag says.

William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of the Washington Office of the Jewish Federations of North America sits somewhere in the middle. A self-proclaimed “social media evangelist,” Daroff sees social media platforms as “the great democratizers.”

“It is a way that Jewish leaders can be less like the Sanhedrin – unapproachable by mere mortals – but rather 140 characters away. Social media opens doors for regular folks who aren’t blessed to live on the upper east side of Manhattan … to interact and engage with Jewish leadership in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade ago,” says Daroff, noting that is the responsibility of the establishment to use social media as it is intended – as a place to listen and respond.

Daroff acknowledges there could be “some guy in his underwear in his parents’ basement who has designed a website that is more colorful, helpful and user-friendly” than the Federation’s website and who makes his message easier to relate to than the important one being conveyed by an organization with a more than 100-year history. But he doesn’t see that as a bad thing.

“It encourages the traditional organization without the splashy web presence to up their game,” he says. He has faith that the masses can discern the difference between something Abe Foxman with 60 years of experience and the backing of hundreds of constituents might say and the message of “a person who speaks for no one. … And certainly there are times that Jewish leaders get things wrong and a random person in his basement gets things right and hopefully the marketplace of ideas will settle that.”

“Just as corporations hold an annual meeting with their stockholders who vote on the direction of the company, mega-donors should treat the larger Jewish community as stakeholders in their communal giving enterprise and factor in their aspirations and priorities,” writes Ruderman, noting donors need to stay in sync with the people they are serving and he implies that social discourse is one positive way to do that.

Matt Rissien, whose original Purim rap music video has more than 32,000 views on YouTube, has been leveraging YouTube video as a means to express his Judaism for the last half-decade. He started the endeavor as a way to “adapt my Judaism to the generation I’m living in.” Overtime, he has seen the power of the platform.

“Everyone who makes a Jewish YouTube video is really helping spread the word to kids and families that Judaism is fun and that it’s still cool to be Jewish,” he says.

Says Daroff: “If we are going to survive and thrive as a Jewish community, as Jewish organizations, we need to meet people where they are and among those places are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any others.”

Passover Cleaning

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

from the Times of Israel March 29, 2015 

THE HEROIC AND VISIONARY WOMEN OF PASSOVER

by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rabbi Lauren Holtlzblatt  Article Links HERE

NOTE: Also known as the notorious RBG! 

On Passover, Jews are commanded to tell the story of the Exodus and to see ourselves as having lived through that story, so that we may better learn how to live our lives today. The stories we tell our children shape what they believe to be possible—which is why at Passover, we must tell the stories of the women who played a crucial role in the Exodus narrative.

The Book of Exodus, much like the Book of Genesis, opens in pervasive darkness. Genesis describes the earth as “unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep.”1 In Exodus, darkness attends the accession of a new Pharaoh who feared the Israelites and so enslaved them. God alone lights the way out of the darkness in Genesis. But in Exodus, God has many partners, first among them, five brave women.

There is Yocheved, Moses’ mother, and Shifra and Puah, the famous midwives. Each defies Pharaoh’s decree to kill the Israelite baby boys. And there is Miriam, Moses’ sister, about whom the following midrash is taught:

[When Miriam’s only brother was Aaron] she prophesied… “my mother is destined to bear a son who will save Israel.” When [Moses] was born the whole house… filled with light[.] [Miriam’s] father arose and kissed her on the head, saying, “My daughter, your prophecy has been fulfilled.” But when they threw [Moses] into the river her father tapped her on the head saying, “Daughter, where is your prophecy?” So it is written, “And [Miriam] stood afar off to know what would be[come of] the latter part of her prophecy.”

 Finally, there is Pharaoh’s daughter Batya, who defies her own father and plucks baby Moses out of the Nile. The Midrash reminds us that Batya knew exactly what she doing:

When Pharaoh’s daughter’s handmaidens saw that she intended to rescue Moses, they attempted to dissuade her, and persuade her to heed her father. They said to her: “Our mistress, it is the way of the world that when a king issues a decree, it is not heeded by the entire world, but his children and the members of his household do observe it, and you wish to transgress your father’s decree?”

 But transgress she did.

These women had a vision leading out of the darkness shrouding their world. They were women of action, prepared to defy authority to make their vision a reality bathed in the light of the day.

Retelling the heroic stories of Yocheved, Shifra, Puah, Miriam and Batya reminds our daughters that with vision and the courage to act, they can carry forward the tradition those intrepid women launched.

While there is much light in today’s world, there remains in our universe disheartening darkness, inhumanity spawned by ignorance and hate. We see horrific examples in the Middle East, parts of Africa, and Ukraine. The Passover story recalls to all of us—women and men—that with vision and action we can join hands with others of like mind, kindling lights along paths leading out of the terrifying darkness.

 Genesis 1:2 2 Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 14a 3 Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 12b

Jews From Muslim Lands: The Forgotten Refugees

NOTE: This article is a couple of years old. Borrowed from FrontPage Magazine CLICK HERE for link to original article. Always good to re-read. 

June 20 was World Refugee Day, dedicated to nearly 60 million people worldwide who were forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution. One group of refugees rarely acknowledged is the Jews who were indigenous to Muslim lands but compelled to flee around the time that the State of Israel was established.

A Google search for “1948 refugees” produces about 6 million results. All but a few (at least through page six) are about the Palestinian Arab refugees, as if they were the only refugees of 1948. But it is estimated that from the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War through the early 1970s, up to 1,000,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their ancestral homes in Muslim countries. 260,000 of those refugees reached Israel between 1948 and 1951 and comprised 56% of all immigration to the fledgling state. By 1972, their numbers had reached 600,000.

In 1948, Middle East and North African countries had considerable Jewish populations: Morocco (250,000), Algeria (140,000), Iraq (140,000), Iran (120,000), Egypt (75,000), Tunisia (50,000), Yemen (50,000), Libya (35,000), and Syria (20,000). Today, the indigenous Jews of those countries are virtually extinct (although Morocco and Iran each still has under 10,000 Jews). In most cases, the Jewish population had lived there for millennia.

Few know this history because the Jewish refugees of 1948 were granted citizenship by the countries to which they fled, including Israel. By contrast, many Muslim countries refused to integrate the Palestinian refugees, preferring to leave them as second-class citizens in order to maintain a domestic demographic balance and/or a political problem for Israel.

Media bias also explains why so few people know about the 1948 Jewish refugees from Muslim lands. A search for “1948 refugees” on the BBC news site generates 41 articles (going back to 1999); 40 discuss the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948. Only three of those 40 (dated 9/22/11, 9/2/10, and 4/15/04) even mention the Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, and two do so only in a single, superficial sentence that presents the issue as a claim rather than a historical fact.

A search for “1948 refugees Jews from Arab lands” on the New York Times site produces 497 results (replacing “Arab” with “Muslim” halves the results), while “1948 Palestinian refugees” yields 1,050 results. Consider a comparison using Sri Lanka, another war-torn, multi-ethnic country that gained its independence from Britain in 1948. The nearly 26-year ethnic conflict there began in 1983 and claimed 80,000–100,000 lives, many multiples of the total casualties from the nearly 100-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sri Lanka’s conflict also produced hundreds of thousands of refugees, including at least 200,000 Tamil refugees in Western Europe alone. Yet a search for “Tamil refugees” generates only 531 articles – less than 5% of the 11,300 results for “Palestinian Arab refugees.”

Institutionalized favoritism at the UN has also enabled the Palestinians to monopolize the refugee issue, which undoubtedly reinforces the media’s bias. All non-Palestinian refugees around the world (nearly 55 million) are cared for by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which works under the guidelines of the Convention on Refugees of 1951. But Palestinian refugees (whose original population was under one million) have a UN agency dedicated exclusively to them (UNRWA).

UNRWA’s unique definition of “refugee” includes anyone “whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.” So, in addition to families who lived in the area for generations, UNRWA’s definition includes any migrants who arrived as recently as 1946 but were then displaced. And because the definition includes “descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition,” UNRWA’s refugee population has grown from 750,000 in 1950 to 5,300,000 today (making resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue even harder). Despite these problems, the United States continues to support UNRWA (with over 4.1 billion dollars since 1950).

The rest of the world’s refugees are assisted by the High Commission, which is mandated to help refugees rapidly rebuild their lives, usually outside the countries that they fled. Jewish refugees from Muslim lands did just that: they rebuilt their lives in Israel and elsewhere. But the fact that they quietly adapted and Israel granted them full citizenship doesn’t lessen the wrongs committed by their countries of origin. These Jewish refugees from Muslim lands suffered legal and often violent persecution that resulted in immeasurable emotional and physical loss. They lost billions in property and endured huge socioeconomic disadvantages when forced to rebuild their lives from scratch. Israel was unfairly burdened with the colossal social and economic cost of suddenly absorbing so many refugees. So any suggestion that Jewish refugees from Muslim lands don’t deserve compensation is resoundingly wrong.

On the recent World Refugee Day, the Israeli Knesset member Shimon Ohayon, whose family fled Morocco in 1956, called on the Arab League to “accept their great responsibility for driving out almost a million Jews from lands [in] which they had lived for millennia.” He explained that “In 1947, the Political Committee of the Arab League drafted a law that…called for the freezing of bank accounts of Jews, their internment and [the confiscation of their assets]. Various other discriminatory measures were taken by Arab nations and subsequent meetings reportedly called for the expulsion of Jews from member states of the Arab League.” Ohayon challenged the League to accept responsibility for “the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population from most of the Middle East and North Africa…[and] to provide redress to the Jewish refugees.”

A just and comprehensive Mideast peace is possible only when Muslim states recognize their role in two historic wrongs: 1) displacing one million indigenous people only because they were Jews, and 2) perpetuating the plight of Palestinian refugees by denying them citizenship. The first wrong requires financial compensation to the families of Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, which reparation can be administered by the states that absorbed them. The second wrong should be remedied by granting full citizenship to Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) who have resettled in Muslim lands. Both wrongs have festered for too many decades.

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