Obama continues policy of anti-Jewish racism

Michael L.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The United States and United Kingdom on Friday both condemned the Israeli government’s plan to issue new tenders for housing units in the West Bank.

Israel published tenders on Friday for the construction of 450 new housing units in the West Bank, a move that critics denounced as a political gesture ahead of a March general election.

This constant harassment of Jews by the Obama administration concerning just where we should be allowed to live on the traditional homeland of the Jewish people is about as racist as racism gets.

What's truly disconcerting is the degree to which the PLO and the Obama administration see eye-to-eye on just where the Jewish people should be allowed to reside.

"Once again, Palestinian lives, rights and lands are being violated in the service of Israeli election campaigns," said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Jews building housing for themselves in Judea can't just be Jews building housing for themselves in Judea.

No.  It has to be some sort-of nefarious plot.

In any event, State Department spokeswomen, Jen Psaki, agrees with Hana Ashrawi that Jews have no right to live, and thereby building housing for themselves, where Barack Obama and Mahmoud Abbas have denied us rights to property.

"We believe that settlements are illegitimate and counterproductive to achieving a two-state outcome. We have deep concerns about these highly contentious construction announcements," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. 

It is true that these announcements are contentious among the kinds of racists that we find in the PLO and the Obama administration and, therefore, I don't think Israel should bother with announcements or if it must make building announcements, those announcements should include a little assertion to the effect that the Jews will build in Judea and Samaria and if anyone does not like it, they can go pound sand.

By any decent ethical standard Jews have every right to build housing for ourselves in the traditional heartland of the Jewish people and should just go ahead and do so.

Anyone who would deny us this right has malice toward the Jewish people.

From the comments:

Daisy Adler • 21 minutes ago

As Matthew M. Hausman wrote: "Jewish habitation in Judea, Samaria, and Israel proper, including Jerusalem, was a fact from antiquity into modern times -- until Jordan conquered the territories and dispossessed their Jewish inhabitants during Israel's War of Independence. When Jordan (then known as Transjordan) conquered Judea and Samaria in 1948, it expelled the Jews living there, collectively dubbed these territories the "West Bank," and annexed them in violation of international law. Israel's subsequent acquisition of these lands in 1967 in truth effectuated their liberation from foreign occupation; and renewed Jewish habitation thereafter constituted nothing more than repatriation. Israel's liberation and administration of Judea and Samaria were perfectly legitimate under prevailing standards of international law.

Despite international pressure for the creation of a Palestinian state devoid of Jews, Israel must be guided by her own priorities, and must not lose sight of the rights of Jews as indigenous people in their homeland, including those rights recognized at San Remo and reinforced by the Mandate. "

I could not agree more.

If people still tend to think that what the world needs is a terrorist statelet right in the heart of the Jewish homeland then they will need to explain why such a terrorist statelet must also be Judenfrei.

French Muslims Gloat Outside Kosher Market 2 Days After Attack

Michael L.

Ari Yashar at Arutz Sheva reports:

A group of French Muslims posted photos of themselves in front of the supermarket to Facebook just after the attack, making rude gestures with their middle fingers in the pictures, reports the French-language Le Monde Juif which provided screenshots.

In the caption of the photos posted by user "Abdellah du Futur" reads vile messages such as "Charlie's a mother (expletive)." The statement is a reference to the "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) campaign of support after Islamist terrorists murdered 12 at the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo for making cartoons of Mohammed, founder of Islam, two days before the supermarket attack.

Another caption reads in French "Allahu Akbar ratatatata ahhhh," mimicking the shouts of Allah is Greater shouted by Muslim terrorists, the sounds of gunfire and the victims' cries of pain.

Perhaps it is time for the western-left to finally admit that "racism" is not merely a problem of white, western, male thinking and behavior.

I know how difficult this concept can be for some people, but non-white people - you may be shocked to discover - can also be bigoted and not merely bigoted, but genocidally bigoted.

So bigoted, in fact, that they publicly rejoice in the murder of Jews in Paris.

The photo above was originally published at Le Monde Juif.   Note the Hyper Cacher sign in the background and note what a small, neighborhood market it is.

The real question is who do you blame for the hatred within these young Muslim men toward Jews?

Do you blame Israel, the Jewish proxy?  Do you blame their parents and their culture?  Or do you blame European failures to integrate Muslim immigrants?

Whomever you blame for this Nazi-like behavior on the part of French Muslims, French Jews need to either fight back or leave, because as it is they are sitting ducks.

And they certainly cannot depend upon the Euro-French, of all people, to protect them.

{The very notion of it would be humorous, were it not so sad.}

What I propose is that Parisian Jews, who have no intention of emigrating, march into Muslim neighborhoods to show them that you are there.

I am not talking about young Jewish men with clubs.

I am talking about entire families.  Young children and old grannies and every Jew in-between.

Or, if the environment on the ground is too risky, then, as Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the American South, send in college-age students of integrity, nicely dressed and on their best behavior, who are trained to non-violent resistance.

First alert the media and then calmly walk into a Muslim neighborhood and sit down.

No signs.  No slogans.  No yelling.  No fists in the air.

Just sit down on the sidewalk, have cameras at the ready, enjoy a little picnic, and then leave.

As someone who knows a bit about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, believe me, they'll get it.

"Palestinian" Cartoons

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

We have to somehow make it clear that the malice within the Arab-Israel conflict is not equivalent on both sides.

That is, there is no morally equivalent "cycle of violence" between Arabs and Jews.

The far larger Arab nation, which gobbled up the entire Middle East shortly after the death of Muhammad, has kept its imperial boot on the head of the Jewish people - thereby keeping our numbers artificially low - in that region for fourteen centuries, until the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the seemingly phoenix-like establishment of Israel in 1948.

Arab and Soviet propaganda, since at least the 1960s, has slowly convinced well-meaning western liberals that the children of Holocaust survivors are the bad guys and, weirdly enough, use an inversion of a biblical story to do so.

Everyone knows the legend of David and Goliath.

According to the Bible, Goliath was a giant Philistine warrior and David was a kid, but the future king of Israel, and they fought a millennia before the birth of Jesus, and almost two before the birth of Muhammad.

David defeated Goliath with his sling, of course.

Today we are supposed to believe that the great Arab nation, around 400 million strong, represent "David" and that the tiny Jewish population in the Middle East, around 6 million strong, represent "Goliath."

This is what you might call an aspect of the Big Lie.

The Big Lie, of course, is that the Jews are persecuting the Arabs when the exact opposite is obviously the case.  Jewish Israelis want nothing more than for Arabs to stop throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at them so that they can get on with the business of living their lives.

It is not the Jews who are the victimizers here, but the supposed Arab victims, themselves.

Look at the cartoon above.

As Michelle Malka Grossman of the Jerusalem Post writes:

Palestinian media rejoiced Wednesday over the gruesome Tel Aviv stabbing attack with a series of celebratory cartoons.

The first cartoon, drawn by cartoonist Bahaa Yaseen, was posted within the first 90 minutes following the attack. It shows a smiling terrorist holding a bloody knife and praising the attack, which at the time was reported to have wounded 10 people.

The figure stands in front of a sign that reads “Occupied Tel-A-rabia,” a play on the words Tel Aviv, and a bus with the route number of the target bus and a Jewish star. Blood is depicted pouring from the doors and onto the street.

We need to somehow get it through the thick skulls of western liberals that the vicious authoritarian majority has malice toward the tiny liberal minority and that this malice does not go both ways.

Look at this:

Oh, how cute!

A smiley bloody knife, meant to appeal to children, that suggests that killing is just fab for "Palestine," thus the blade looks like the Jordanian - ooops - "Palestinian" flag.

Is it not obvious that organizations like Arafat's PLO and Hamas are screaming for Jewish blood while all Israel wants is to be left the hell alone?

The western-left is promoting this never-ending Arab war against the Jewish people.

And the Jewish-left enables the larger western-left, because they are convinced of Jewish guilt and it will be Jewish kids, here, there, and elsewhere - including in the universities - who pay the price.

{The anti-terrorism march in Paris was a horrendous lie because Europeans do not consider attacks on Jews to even be terrorism.}

How to explain Iran's nuclear negotiations posture in terms Obama can understand

Sar Shalom

When Barack Obama started his effort to bring universal health coverage, he initially tried to get some Republican support for his efforts by offering to adjust his plans to their concerns. He tried to tailor his plans to win the support of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and of Maine Senator Olympia Snowe. In every case, whenever he made a requested change, the response was the he or she still could not accept it. Sometimes this was accompanied by some additional change that would be necessary, sometimes not. Eventually, Obama came to the realization that the Republican idea on negotiating health reform was to keep saying that an agreement was just over the horizon so that Obama would waste his time seeking an agreement thus limiting what else he could do. In the case of health reform, running out the clock would have meant continuing the negotiations until Ted Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer, thus eliminating any chance that Obama could achieve a partisan bill in the absence of any Republicans agreeing to universal coverage.

Such is the case with Iran's nuclear negotiating strategy. Whether or not you agree with my assessment of the Republicans' health care negotiation strategy, it is highly likely that those arguing that we should just give the negotiations with Iran more time to succeed would and a certainty among those in the administration. In the case of Iran, "running out the clock" would mean continuing the negotiations until Iran develops enough fuel to reach breakout capacity. At that point, Iran could build several nuclear weapons in response to any punitive action and have them ready before those measures achieve any impact. The one possible exception would be an Operation Iranian Freedom undertaken without debate, but in which the President declared the clerical regime was negotiating in bad faith and the next day troops would land in Khuzestan and in Sistan and Beluchistan with an advance to Tehran as quick as Operation Iraqi Freedom's advance to Baghdad.

It is time to do in the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear developments what Obama did in his negotiations with the Republicans over health reform.

UC Santa Cruz invites Angela Davis to Defame Israel

Michael L.

And what that means is that Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, of both the University of California, Santa Cruz, and UCSC's AMCHA Initiative, is none too pleased about it.

And she shouldn't be.  It's her home campus, after all.  And, I have to say, a very attractive campus, as well.

I like Tammi. She's got guts.

Below is a letter to UCSC by AMCHA and the other groups.

.

Dear Chancellor Blumenthal,

We represent 20 organizations with hundreds of thousands of members and supporters nationwide.  We are very troubled by UCSC’s selection of Angela Davis as speaker for the 31st Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Convocation, an event sponsored by your office.  Given the title of her talk -- “Racism, Militarism, Poverty: From Ferguson to Palestine” -- it is clear that Davis will use this event, intended to honor Dr. King’s memory, as an opportunity to promote her own political agenda, which includes the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state. Instead of choosing a speaker who could unite diverse communities, as did Martin Luther King himself, UCSC has chosen a speaker whose well-known hatred of Israel and support for efforts to harm it through antisemitic boycotts, are extraordinarily divisive and deeply offensive to many in the Jewish community.

Even more troubling, however, is the lack of sensitivity shown to those members of the Jewish community, including many UCSC Jewish alumni  who have expressed to you their sincere concerns about this major event.  Rather than publicly acknowledging these concerns and seeking to address the serious issues that underlie them, you issued a statement which completely ignores their concerns and simply asserts the University’s right to sponsor any event on the grounds of freedom of speech and academic freedom.  

Although you aver in your statement that the University’s commitment to providing a platform for “the widest range of viewpoints” does not imply "agreement or endorsement” of those views, the reality is that when the University itself sponsors any event — but particularly one as important to the University as the annual MLK Memorial Convocation, involving a rigorous review of possible speakers — there is indeed an implicit endorsement of the views expressed at the event.  For this reason, we do not believe the University would have selected a speaker with a known history of racist or homophobic statements or allowed him or her to speak on a topic which was so obviously offensive to African Americans or members of the LGBT community, freedom of speech and academic freedom notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, the University has a history of selectively ignoring Jewish concerns and giving its official imprimatur to events which have had a deleterious effect on members of the Jewish community, particularly students. This is well-documented in the University of California Jewish Student Campus Climate Report commissioned by former UC President Mark Yudof.  Here are some excerpts from that report, which included substantial testimony from Jewish members of the UCSC campus and general communities:  

"Jewish students are confronting significant and difficult climate issues as a result of activities on campus which focus specifically on Israel, its right to exist and its treatment of Palestinians…[and] which portray Israel and, many times, Jews in ways which project hostility, engender a feeling of isolation, and undermine Jewish students' sense of belonging and engagement with outside communities. The issue of anti-Zionism activities was a focal point of our discussions with all of the students, Jewish organizations, faculty and administration."

"One of the most significant issues expressed by Jewish students, faculty and community members is their difficulty with sponsorship of university departments, campus organizations and others of events which are very clearly designed to promote themes which are biased and unbalanced in their portrayal of Zionism and Israel. The students indicated that University administrative offices, such as the multicultural or cross cultural centers, sponsor student organization events that are dominated by groups adopting anti-Zionist platforms. Others indicated that they were doubtful that academic departments exhibited balance in their sponsorship or hosting of events -- symposiums, speaker series, etc. -- as they related to Israel and Zionism.” 

   

"What came through in our discussions...was a sense from Jewish students and others of a double standard when it comes to the themes and language used by those protesting Israel and its policies. Specifically, Jewish students described the use of language and imagery which they believe would not be tolerated by faculty and administration, or would at least be denounced with more force, if similar themes and language were directed at other groups on campus.”   

“[P]ro-Zionist Jewish students and faculty perceive a difference in how the movement against Israel and Zionism is viewed and addressed by those in faculty and administration responsible for dealing with campus climate."

We are aware that in response to the controversy surrounding the upcoming event you have agreed to offer a joint on-campus program with the Anti-Defamation League. While this may be a step in the right direction, it is in no way sufficient to addressing the long-standing and pervasive problems that Jewish members of the campus community have been facing at UCSC, including the harmful effects of University sponsorship of unambiguously anti-Israel events.

We therefore urge you to issue a public statement in which you commit yourself to the following two recommendations from the UC Jewish Student Campus Climate Report:

1) Review UCSC’s policies on University sponsorship and neutrality and develop model institutional protocols for such activities.

2) Adopt a definition of antisemitism consistent with the working definition developed by the European Union and used by the U.S. State Department in its 2008 report on contemporary global anti-Semitism, and provide a model protocol for campus administrators to identify contemporary incidents of antisemitism, which may be sanctioned by University non-discrimination or anti-harassment policies.

We believe that taking these important steps will help to ensure that UCSC affords all members of its diverse community a safe, equitable and inclusive campus climate.

Sincerely,

Accuracy in Academia

Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity (AEPi)

AMCHA Initiative

American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists

American Freedom Alliance

Americans for Peace and Tolerance

David Horowitz Freedom Center

Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET)

Hasbara Fellowships

Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel 

Iranian American Jewish Federation

Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN)

Proclaiming Justice to the Nations   

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East   

Simon Wiesenthal Center 

StandWithUs

Students and Parents Against Campus Anti-Semitism

The Lawfare Project

Training and Education About the Middle East (T.E.A.M.)

Zionist Organization of America

Cc: UC President Janet Napolitano

      UC Regents

      UCSC Associate Chancellor Ashish Sahni

      UCSC Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Herbert Lee

      UCSC Assistant Campus Diversity Officer Sheree Marlowe

      Jewish Community Leaders

Obama Blows Off Holocaust Memorial

Michael L.

Writing for the New York Times, Rick Lyman tells us:

OSWIECIM, Poland — For what is likely to be the last time, a large number of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz will gather next week under an expansive tent, surrounded by royalty and heads of state, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of those held there at the end of World War II.

“This will be the last decade anniversary with a very visible presence of survivors,” said Andrzej Kacorzyk, deputy director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which encompasses the sites of the original concentration camp, near the center of Oswiecim, and the larger Auschwitz II-Birkenau on the city’s outskirts.

The Obama administration is apparently unimpressed and therefore the US presence will be represented by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

My guess is that Shaun Donovan, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is probably too busy, so they're sending Lew, instead.  Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Jacob Lew's first name is - ya know - Jacob.

A preliminary list of those attending includes President François Hollande of France, President Joachim Gauck of Germany and President Heinz Fischer of Austria, as well as King Philippe of Belgium, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The United States delegation will be led by Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.

There I go picking on poor old president Obama again.

It's not as if a pattern of disinterest in, if not hostility towards, Jewish concerns has clearly emerged over the years... it's just that the man is busy.

Besides, Team Obama is not interested in Jewish concerns, anyway.  Why should they be when the American Jewish community has very clearly shown that no matter what Obama says, or does, in regards Israel or the Jewish people, they have his back?

If the Obama Administration wants to smack around Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the world stage for the terrible crime of accepting an invitation to speak before Congress, who are we to say "no"?  And for those of you who argue that Netanyahu's alleged breaking of protocol was a terrible insult, this is nothing but a negative interpretation after the fact.  First, we do not even know if Netanyahu did break protocol.  However, if he did break protocol, I will try to sleep tonight, anyway.

I am convinced that if Barack Obama went on national television and urinated on the Israeli flag while stark naked and, yes, singing Hatikvah, he would still receive at least a 67 percent approval rating among American Jews.

So, why wouldn't the Obama administration blow off the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz?

Let's just toss this on the ever growing pile of little things that we are supposed to ignore about this administration.

"Fizziks" Called Me a Liar

Michael L.

In the comments at the Elder's joint, under my recent response to Jon Haber, "fizziks" called me a liar.

He writes:

Isn't there enough to take issue with in regard to Obama's treatment of Israel without having to resort to falsehoods about him "supporting" the Muslim Brotherhood?

In what universe does providing rhetorical, financial, and military assistance to an organization somehow not constitute support?

Do I actually need to dig up links from the New York Times to verify?

Or does the word "support" have some transitional meaning that I am simply unaware of?

It is as if "fizziks" lives in some alternative mathematical universe within which "A" does not necessarily equal "A."

Thus when the Obama administration advances cash and F-16 fighter jets and Abrams tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - to be used against whom? - in the world of "fizziks" this does not constitute support.

This seems to be an example of the hyper-sophisticated Obama supporter who understands the extreme flexibility and relativity of truth.

Fizziks writes, viz-a-viz the "Arab Spring":

Obama supported the attempted transition to democracy in Egypt.

Ho.  Ho.  Ho.

This is an excellent example of an intelligent person absolutely refusing to face reality.

There was no attempt to a transition to democracy in Egypt during the so-called "Arab Spring."

It's laughable.

There were western journalists and intellectuals who blithely announced it to be true - and who never admitted their mistake when it turned out to be false - and "fizziks" seems to be among them.

The "Arab Spring" was nothing more than Arab riots (and rapes) and well-meaning western delusions and apologetics.  It was pretty obvious right from the beginning for anyone with a non-ideologically encumbered cognitive pulse.

Nonetheless, months and years go by and, somehow, the truth cannot seep into particular skulls.  The reason for this is not due to lack of intelligence.  The reason, I suspect, is a combination of ideology and pride, among other possible seasonings.   Some Jewish Obama supporters were able to recognize a mistake and some insisted on sticking with Obama no matter what.

Fizziks seems to be in the latter category.

How does one have a political conversation with a physicist who absolutely refuses to acknowledge basic facts?

Face it.

The Obama administration supported the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood called for the conquest of Jerusalem.

So, Where is the Argument?

Michael L.

{Originally posted at the Elder of Ziyon.}

Those of you who follow my writings or Jon Haber's blog, Divestthis!, know that we have been conversing about Israel, the western-left, and the Obama administration for a number of months.

I don't want to call it a debate so much as a conversation between people with somewhat differing views, but with mutual concerns.  A list of each of our contributions can be found toward the top of the right side bar at Israel Thrives.

My fundamental argument is that the Obama administration validated political Islam through supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of both Qaeda and Hamas and if not a parent organization of the Islamic State, certainly an ideological partner in praying for the extinction of Jewish sovereignty and self-defense.

While Jon agrees that I am not a political partisan, and we both understand that partisanship is not automatically a reprehensible thing, he also acknowledges that the Obama administration has been far too friendly to the enemies of the Jewish people.

In his recent piece entitled Partisanship, Haber writes:

But there is no disagreement that the current President’s choices: from cutting endless slack to Islamist foes of both Israel and the US to picking needless fights with the Israeli government, make it a perfectly reasonable choice for Jews who support Israel (which describes the majority of us) to refuse to vote for him.

According to Haber, Obama gave "endless slack to Islamist foes."

At this point it becomes difficult to know where we actually disagree.

At the end of the day, that is my fundamental point.  It is my thesis in a nutshell, although we would need to determine just where slack ended and support began?

Jon, however, takes issue with the fact that I have sometimes characterized progressive-left Jews as people with their heads buried in the sand.

I must admit that Jon is correct and that I have resorted to my favorite ostrich image more than once.

I did so particularly in my Failures of the Progressive-Left Zionism series.

In those writings, I criticized the Jewish Left for refusing to seriously denounce political Islam.

I criticized the Jewish Left for demonizing their fellow Jews who live where neither Mahmoud Abbas, nor Barack Obama, want them to live.

I criticized the Jewish Left for constantly playing political defense, which is always an invitation for aggressors and a general sign of insecurity within one's own beliefs.

I criticized the Jewish Left for tending to support their enemies over their friends out of a misguided and self-righteous political altruism.

These are not in-depth pieces, but merely pointers to problems.  That is all.

And, in truth, there are other reasonable criticisms that I am not even bothering with for the moment on the assumption that liberal Jews, such as myself, are rethinking - just as we are all continually rethinking - as political sands shift.

My only real discomfort with Jon's analysis is that he chalks up Jewish American support for Barack Obama, despite Obama's alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, to the fact that American Jews preferred Obama over his opponent on a broad range of issues beyond the Arab-Israel conflict.

While this is clearly true, why be content to leave it at that?

Haber writes:

Jews (like all Americans) were not casting a vote on each and every issue of importance to them, but were rather making a narrow choice between two individuals.  And had the Republican candidate been more appealing in ways having nothing to do with Israel and the Middle East (as was Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984), who knows how the Jewish vote might have gone?

Even if I don’t expect to ever see a total party realignment of the Jewish public, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Jews voted for Obama for the same reasons the majority of Americans did: they liked him better than the other guy. 

We know that the Obama administration supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a variety of ways, including material and financial support.  We also know that the Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda, if not the Islamic State, itself.  The Brotherhood backed the Nazis during World War II and assisted many Nazis and friends of Nazis, such as Haj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini, in escaping the consequences of their behavior upon the conclusion of that war.  In recent years Brotherhood leader, and ex-President of Egypt, Muhammad Morsi, supported calls for the conquest of Jerusalem among throngs of his supporters, both before and after his "election" and still maintained Obama administration support.



I do not know about you, but as someone who voted for Obama the first time around, I was absolutely horrified.

There is no question that Jon is correct when he notes that the majority of American Jews simply liked Obama more than the other guy.  I, too, like Obama - as a guy to have a beer with - more than that other guy.  Furthermore, on many domestic issues I very much prefer the Democratic agenda over that of the Republican agenda.

But however much I support a woman's right to choose an abortion, or however much I like Obama's idea for federal support to community college students, none of that can possibly outweigh my concern for the fact that there are 6 million Jews in the Middle East surrounded by 400 million Arabs who generally do not want them there and are often prepared to use extreme violence to make their case.

This is what I cannot get past.

The chance of any Republican administration in the United States rolling back abortion rights are virtually nil, yet such concerns are supposed to trump our concern for our own families in Israel?

I do not think so.

It seems to me that diaspora Jewry, as a group, tends to be very good about looking out for the well-being of others.  For example, no other group in American history, aside from the Black American community, stood up more for Civil Rights during the 1950s and the 1960s than did Jewish Americans... although, I am not certain that you would learn this from the recent film Selma, which I am very much looking forward to renting.

In the United States, the Jewish people were almost universally behind abolitionism and nineteenth-century American progressivism, with its workers' solidarity and early union activity.  By inordinate percentages Jews favored women's rights to suffrage, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, Women's Rights, GBLT, environmentalism, and the rights of all ethnic minorities to equal treatment under the law.

We are among the most persecuted people within record human history and this is precisely why we tend to support movements for social justice.

But...

There must come a point wherein a violent and ongoing threat to the Jewish community becomes a primary concern.

My question is this:

In what ways do Obama administration support for political Islam, via support for the Muslim Brotherhood, advance the interests of either the American people or the Jewish people?

The Weak Diaspora Jewish Survival Instinct

Michael L.

I sometimes wonder if diaspora Jews actually have an instinct for survival?

Given the fact that the great majority of American Jews supported a president of the United States that favored the Muslim Brotherhood, a genocidally anti-Semitic organization, it is difficult to imagine that they do have a survival instinct.

Let me give you one small example.

Over at the Times of Israel, Richard H. Weisberg, a professor of Constitutional Law for Yeshiva University and a published expert on French anti-Semitism, has a piece entitled Betting on France.  In this article the professor argues that right-wing anti-Semitism is worrisome, but that reports of anti-Semitism in France, according to a cross-section of his French acquaintances, are greatly exaggerated.

Boy, am I relieved!

Weisberg writes:

Indeed, a cross-section of my Parisian friends agreed that American talk of France having become anti-Semitic was grossly exaggerated. So in polite conversations back in the States, my wife (a French teacher in Manhattan) and I had already noted what we felt were overstatements, given our own experiences and observations during frequent visits in various parts of France. We chalked up some of the feverish American talk to the persistent Francophobia that too often marks political commentary about France in the United States. The French, after all, have long been targeted for American criticism.

Although he does make a passing reference to "sporadic" attacks by French Muslims, he gives considerably more weight to Le Pen and France's right-leaning National Front party as a source of veiled anti-Semitism and zero credit to the anti-Zionist French Left for spreading an environment of hatred toward Jews.  In fact, Weisberg is even so bold as to say:

Attitudes toward Jews are changing for the better in France. There will be tragic eruptions to the contrary. But France is not an anti-Semitic country. It remains, as it finally comes to grips with its Vichy past, a bastion of equality and hope for its Jewish population.

A bastion of equality and hope, eh?

Meanwhile, we read in the Jerusalem Post:

A report on anti-Semitism presented on Sunday to the government found that France was the most dangerous country for Jews in the world in 2014. During the past year, levels of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in France reached new records, according to the report prepared by the Ministry of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs in cooperation with the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitsm (CFCA)...

Anti-Semitic incidents in France rose by 100 percent in the last year, with half of the racially related incidents in the country being directed at Jews, despite the fact that Jews make up less than one percent of the French population, the report found. 

It is hard to imagine that someone of professor Weisberg's status could be quite as myopic as his words suggest.  This is a man who wrote a book entitled, "Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France," after all.

We are thereby supposed to believe that France is simultaneously the most dangerous country for Jews in the world while remaining a "bastion of equality and hope for its Jewish population."

And I am to believe that this gentleman does not have his head buried firmly in the sand?

I cannot help but wonder if so many centuries of cringing diaspora Jews getting kicked in the head has not trained many of us to accept the Jewish role of agreeable punching bag?

Weisberg's conclusions concerning the great love of the French for the Jewish people is not grounded in anything resembling analysis or even, given events of the day, basic common sense.  The guy's wife teaches the French language in Manhattan and he is familiar with the country and likes the people and that is that.  His French friends tell him that reports of French anti-Semitsm are greatly exaggerated as they kiss him on both cheeks and pat him on the head.

I have much more faith in the Israelis.

Moulitsas May Run for Congress

Michael L.

The New York Times is reporting that if Barbara Lee vacates her seat as congresswoman for California's district thirteen in the San Francisco Bay Area - which just happens to be my district - Markos Moulitsas, of Daily Kos fame, has told colleagues that he may run:

Representative Barbara Lee of California may not wind up as our woman in Havana — disputing reports that she was seeking the nomination to be ambassador — but when she does leave Congress, there may be a nationally known liberal waiting to run for her seat: Markos Moulitsas.

Mr. Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos and a Berkeley resident, has told associates that he is interested in pursuing a run for elected office.

It is difficult for me to know just what to make of this story.

A number of years ago there was a guy on Maryscott O'Connor's now defunct My Left Wing blog who went under the moniker Stu Piddy.  Stu, who was also a Daily Kos refugee, once claimed that Markos was eventually going to run for President of the United States.

I told Stu that I had taken off my right sneaker and placed it beside my keyboard.  I told him that if Markos Moulitsas ever runs for president that I would braise that sneaker in a homemade marinara and that I would eat it over penne pasta with a nice glass of Pinot Noir for my lunch.

Well, I still feel pretty safe on that bet, but slightly less safe than I was yesterday.

The main problem that Markos might get from someone such as myself is that, whatever else anyone might make of Daily Kos, there is no question that it is also a venue for anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.

This is not to say that Markos is anti-Semitic.

I have never - not once - seen any indication that Markos Moulitsas is any kind of a racist.

Nonetheless, Daily Kos is an on-line political space, more or less representative of the progressive-left, wherein the Jewish State of Israel and, implicitly, Jews in general, come in for constant defamation and ringing endorsements of contempt.

Markos has, personally, always refused to discuss the Arab-Israel conflict in the pages of his blog, because there is simply no upside to it for someone such as himself.  I don't blame him for that, at all.  In fact, I would say that it was a smart move.  He even refuses to allow Arab-Israel "diaries" space on the front page.

For Markos the Arab-Israel conflict is a remarkable pain in the ass.  That guy has probably received more email from members of his blog whining and bitching and moaning and complaining about something that someone said in the comments around the Arab-Israel conflict than anyone else in four counties.

If he runs, I wish him well... but not too well.

I've never eaten a sneaker before, after all.

{A Big Tip 'O the Kippa to JayinPhiladelpha.}

The Elder Chats with Yishai

Michael L.

I do not know how many of you guys are familiar with Yishai Fleisher (pictured left) of Voice of Israel radio, but Yieshai recently spoke with the Elder of Ziyon concerning the Elder's possible role in CNN's release of long-time broadcaster, Jim Clancy.

Check it out.

I am very much a believer that pro-Israel voices must connect throughout the world.  For that reason I was pleased to hear the Elder speak directly to both American listeners and Israeli listeners on the Voice of Israel.

Fleisher, by the way, is one of those evil "settler" people that so many others despise.

In fact, worse yet, he is a religious Jew of American upbringing and education and married his beautiful bride in, or near, Hebron.

I like the guy.

I think that he's got guts and speaks well to an American audience.  He's got a twinkle in the eye, knows his material, and is passionate on the question of Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land.

He did an interview with Rabbi Golub of Shalom TV a few years ago that I found interesting and that you may, as well.

The Nature of the Beast

Michael L.

Writing in Commentary about the recent racist hoopla at the Miss Universe Pageant, Jonathan Tobin tells us:

"The problem is a spirit of intolerance and rejection for the idea of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. That is a hatred so deep that it can’t be bridged by creative diplomacy or gestures of goodwill, such as those that infuse international events like the Miss Universe contest.

It is a cliché for contestants at such competitions to say they wish for world peace when asked for their opinions about the issues of the day. But what happened to Miss Lebanon illustrates that the divisions of the Middle East run so deep and are so primal that no amount of global hooey like a beauty contest is enough to make the Arab and Muslim world forget about their antipathy for Israelis."

So Miss Israel took a "selfie" with Miss Lebanon thereby causing the Lebanese government, if not the Lebanese people, to go into an uproar.

Tobin reminds us, "This sort of thing had happened once before when the 1993 version of Miss Lebanon was pictured next to that year’s Miss Israel. She was subsequently stripped of her title and ostracized as a traitor."

Tobin is correct to see the Miss Universe hoo-ha as a pedagogic opportunity concerning traditional and long-standing Arab-Muslim contempt for the Jewish people and, thus, the true source of the conflict.  Arabs and Muslims, particularly those in the Middle East and Europe, tend to despise Jews not because of Israel.  Quite the contrary.  Arabs and Muslims tend to despise Israel because of Jews.  Were Israel not the Jewish state, but yet another Arab state, then there would be no problem despite any and all human rights violations.

If a non-Jewish Israel was the single most violent and unjust place on the entire planet, few would mind.  Syria is right next door where the Islamic State is running entirely amuck chopping off heads and raping women, yet few in the west really care and certainly the Arab world seems perfectly content to go on Alahu Akbaring itself to death.

In fact, many more people were killed in Syria within the last few years than have died in the Arab war against the Jews since '48.

Furthermore, Israel has far-and-away the best human rights record in that part of the world - it's not even close - yet this does not shield it, nor the Jewish people, from violent malice in both Europe and the Middle East.

Since the Israeli War for Independence about fifty thousand people have died in the conflict, around one-third Jewish and two-thirds Arab.  In Syria, in just the last few years alone, around two hundred thousand people have lost their lives, the vast majority of whom were Arab-Muslims.  When western anti-Israel activists fetishize Israel as a unique evil in the world, it tells us much more about them then they may realize.  It certainly shows us the unique hypocrisy embedded directly into BDS, if not the progressive-left, more generally.

The foundation of the Arab war against the Jewish people of the Middle East was revealed - for those with eyes to see - in the reaction that Miss Lebanon took concerning this photograph with a Jew.  She, herself, may be largely free of the kind of race-hatred that permeates Arab-Muslim society, but such fraternization with lower-life forms is intolerable in the Arab world, at least within a high-profile public format wherein diplomats are not involved.  Individual Arabs may have friendships with individual Jews, in private, but Arab-Muslim culture generally despises not only the Jewish State of Israel, but the Jewish people as a whole for entirely irrational theocratic reasons.

We are the Allah-cursed children of wild boars and orangutans, after all.

If one wishes to understand the true nature of the conflict one need not look any further than this recent incident.

The basis of the conflict is Koranically-grounded Muslim majoritarian racism toward the Jewish minority in the Middle East and that is precisely why it is so intractable.  Large swathes of the Arab-Muslim world see the Jewish people as a transcendent evil.  It is not merely that we Jews are considered evil, but that evil, in and of itself, is considered Jewish.

If you do not understand that then you do not have even the beginnings of an understanding of the conflict.

However, if you do understand this, but refuse to speak the truth because you know that your social-political circle will not like it, then you are just a coward.

Mass Stabbing on Tel Aviv Bus (Updated)

JayinPhiladelphia

I just arrived home (safely, as always) on a SEPTA bus three hours ago.  At no time during my trip (which also involved a trolley from Center City, and then an MFL subway / El car, back home here to Kensington) did it ever cross my mind that I would possibly be stabbed by terrorists at any point.

Nine people were stabbed on a Tel Aviv bus this morning, by a Palestinian-Arab terrorist, who initially attempted to flee on foot, but was soon, fortunately, shot and is now in custody.

The assailant is a 23-year-old man from the West Bank city of Tulkarm, illegally residing in Israel, police said.  

Tel Aviv police chief Bentzi Sau said the attacker, reportedly a resident of the Tulkarem West Bank who had entered Israel illegally, boarded the bus about 400 meters away from where the incident began. He first attacked the driver, then began stabbing a number of bus passengers.

Some will surely tell us that this is just a confused young man who was so oppressed that he couldn't help but stab as many Jews as possible once the bus picked him up, and "the incident began."  Certain others may even wonder if the driver, who was apparently attacked first, might have done something to provoke this surely peaceful, knife-wielding gentleman, into attacking him and then being involuntarily forced into a wild, Jew-stabbing frenzy?

Meanwhile, people with brains will recognize and acknowledge the fact that Israel is still very much fighting a terror war on all fronts at all times, and that the constant incitement from its alleged "peace-partners," which produces bus riders whose purpose is to stab Jews, rather than to get from home to work or restaurant or shopping or vice versa, is very much more of a problem, than Jews building apartments in places where some would prefer they not live.

Tomorrow, I'm going to once again board numerous subways and buses, and later this weekend even a few SEPTA regional rail trains.  And not once during any of those trips will I worry about being stabbed, even though I just wrote about this right now.

Is it too much to ask for Israelis to eventually be able to one day expect the same?

Editor's Update:

This is a video of people running from the scene, including the terrorist, who stabs an innocent woman as he races past her.

 

This is a video of the same individual having been rendered helpless by the Israeli cops.

His name is Hamza Muhammed Hassan Matrouk, a 22-year-old from Tulkarm, which is somewhere in Judea or Samaria.

He does not seem very happy for some reason. - ML

Obama calls on Congress to authorize force against Islamic State

Michael L.

The Jerusalem Post writes:

Washington - President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on the US Congress to pass a new authorization of force against the Islamic State militant group and to not rush into new sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

Obama said a US led coalition of countries is stopping the advance of the group in Iraq and Syria. "I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIL," Obama said in the annual State of the Union address, using another acronym for the militant group.

There is two years left to this administration.

I do not trust Obama on Iran, but I say that we take the positive signs where we can.

Those are strong words concerning the Islamic State, which represents political Islam and is thus representative of the foremost enemy of all people in the world today... although some more so than others.

I say that we hold Obama to it.

A Year in the Life of French Jew Hatred

Michael L.

Stephanie Butnick, writing in Tablet, gives us the following breakdown of joy for the Jewish community in France for 2014:

Jan. 26, 2014: Video footage captures anti-government protestors shouting “Juif, la France n’est pas a toi”—“Jew, France is not yours”–at a demonstration in Paris. 

March 2, 2014: A Jewish man is beaten on the Paris Metro by assailants who reportedly told him “Jew, we are going to lay into you, you have no country.” 

March 3, 2014: France’s Jews demand the election of new chief rabbi (the post had been filled by two interim chief rabbis since April 2013), in a letter that cites the need of a leader “to express the voice of Judaism during the difficult period we are experiencing.” 

March 10, 2014: An Israeli man is attacked with a stun gun in the Marais district. 

March 20, 2014: A Jewish teacher is attacked leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris. After breaking his nose, the assailants drew a swastika on his chest. 

April 3, 2014: A French court fines a 28-year-old Moroccan man $4,130 for posting photos online of himself giving the quenelle salute in front of Grand Synagogue in Bordeaux. 

May 15, 2014: A Jewish woman was attacked at a bus stop in Paris’ Montmartre district by a man who shook her baby carriage and said, “Dirty Jewess, enough with your children already, you Jews have too many children, screw you.” 

May 19, 2014: A poll of 3,833 French Jews reveals 74 percent have considered emigrating. 

June 9, 2014: Two Jewish teenagers and their grandfather are chased by an ax-wielding man and three accomplices as they walk to their synagogue in the Paris suburb of Romainville on Shavuot. 

June 10, 2014: A Jewish teen wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit is attacked with a Taser by group of teens at Paris’ Place de la République square. In Sarcelles, two Jewish teens wearing yarmulkes are sprayed with tear gas. 

June 23, 2014: Rabbi Haim Korsia is elected Chief Rabbi of France. 

June 24, 2014: A French court drops its lawsuit against Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, ruling the French comedian’s video mocking the Holocaust doesn’t constitute hate speech. (Europe’snotoriously strict hate speech laws regulate Holocaust denial as well as “racially or religiously discriminatory expression”.) 

July 10, 2014: A 17-year-old Jewish girl is pepper-sprayed at Paris’ Place du Colonel-Fabien square. 

July 14, 2014: Bastille Day celebrations in Paris turn violent. Anti-Israel rioters attack the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue on Rue de la Roquette, and its congregants fight back. 

July 16, 2014: More than 400 French Jewish emigreés arrive in Israel, most of them young families from Paris and its suburbs. 

July 23, 2014: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls denounces anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. “Anti-semitism, this old European disease,” he said in a speech, has taken “a new form. It spreads on the Internet, in our popular neighborhoods, with a youth that has lost its points of reference, has no conscience of history, and who hides itself behind a fake anti-Zionism.” 

Aug. 14, 2014: The Simon Wiesenthal center requests that a small hamlet south of Paris known as La-Mort-aux Juifs—‘Death to the Jews’—since the 11th century change its name. 

Sept. 2, 2014: Two French teenage girls are arrested for plotting to blow up a synagogue in Lyon. A Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence source said the teens were “part of a network of young Islamists who were being monitored by security services.” 

Sept. 12, 2014: French anti-Semitic watchdog group SPCJ reports 527 anti-Semitic incidents from Jan. 1 to July 31, 2014. There were 423 incidents reported in all of 2013. 

Oct. 23, 2014: French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman is indicted for referring to Dieudonné as a “professional anti-Semite” during a television appearance. 

Nov. 5, 2014: Arsonist responsible for setting fire to a kosher supermarket during July 20 riot in Sarcelles is sentenced to four years in prison. 

Nov. 12, 2014: In a new spree of anti-Semitic incidents in Paris, a kosher restaurant is firebombed, and a Jewish student wearing a yarmulke is assaulted outside his private high school. 

Nov. 21, 2014: French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve expresses his support for the Jewish community. “Every time you feel the violence exercised against you, when you are afraid for your children, when you are worried about this rising violence, remind yourselves that the republic protects you and an interior minister who loves you and who is your friend,” Cazeneuve says at an event sponsored by Station J, a Jewish radio channel. 

Dec. 2, 2014: France votes to recognize Palestine as a state, which the Israeli embassy in Paris says sends “the wrong message to leaders and people in the region.” 

Dec. 31, 2014: France states the country from which the largest number of Jews immigrated to Israel in 2014. Nearly 7,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel, double the 2013 figure of 3,400.

In considering such data, we need also to recognize that Jews represent a tiny portion of the French population.  Jews are roughly a tenth of the Muslim population of France, while Muslims represent about a tenth of the population of Euros.  French Jewry is around 500,000 to 600,000 thousand people and is the largest concentration of Jews in Europe, just as French Muslims represent the largest concentration of Muslims in Europe with upwards of perhaps six to eight million people.

As it happens, about ten years ago I was friendly with a well-respected and talented American professor of European history who assured me that anti-Semitism was, if not done, then in serious decline in France.

He was mistaken because at that point most scholars were still blind to the degree and nature of Muslim anti-Semitism and its developing influence on Europe.  In fact, I feel reasonably confident in saying that most scholars are still blind to this ugly development and the ones who are not largely blame it on the victims, by blaming it on Israel and, thereby, blaming Arab-Muslim behavior on Jews.

In any case, any French Jew would do well to ponder the list above.

In fact, French Jews should simply get out, if they can.

Hamas on Campus: What Your College Kids Face

Michael L.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Michael L.

{Originally published at the Elder of Ziyon.}

One of the blogs that I used to follow was known as Fresno Zionism, but the Fresno Zionist made aliyah and is now writing some place within Israel under the blog title Abu Yehuda.

In reference to France's recent snub of Jewish leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, he writes:

This is another chapter in the long and not-so-happy relationship between France and its Jews. When Napoleon offered the Jews emancipation at the beginning of the 19th century, he made demands as well. He decreed that they could live outside of ghettos, removed other restrictions and even made Judaism one of the official religions of France (the others were Catholicism and several forms of Protestantism). In return, he expected that Jews living in France would no longer consider themselves a distinct people. They would be French in every way, Frenchmen and women who practiced Judaism.

But France didn’t live up to Napoleon’s bargain. Anti-Jewish attitudes remained, and when Alfred Dreyfus — an army officer, a French patriot who happened to be Jewish — was falsely accused of treason in 1894, most of the establishment went along with the coverup of the evidence against the real traitor, Ferdinand Esterhazy, and the trumped-up charges and draconian punishment of Dreyfus. The French ‘street’ seethed with anti-Jewish agitation as well. Indeed, the Dreyfus affair was a major motivation for Theodor Herzl’s position that Europe’s Jewish problem would not be solved within its borders.

Every once in awhile I like to point to a fellow blogger that I do not think is getting sufficient attention and Abu Yehuda is definitely among them.

One thing that we both agree upon is the fact that European Jews, particularly French Jews, need to make aliyah if they can.  This may sound hypocritical coming from an American Jew in California who has no intention of making aliyah any time soon.  The fact is, however, at least for the moment, American Jews and Canadian Jews and, for the most part, Australian Jews are fine.  It is European Jewry that we worry about.

I actually worry more about European Jewry than I do about Israeli Jewry, because the latter has steel in its spine.

Middle Eastern Jewry, outside of Israel, is virtually non-existent.  There was a time when Middle Eastern Jewry thrived.  There was a time when Cairo and Damascus and Baghdad bustled with vibrant Jewish communities, but those days are long gone.

The Arabs chased the Jews from their homes in the Middle East during and after World War II and are now doing precisely the same thing in Europe.

There was, in fact, a terrible pogrom in Baghdad in 1941 which saw Arabs murder 180 Jews after the collapse of the pro-Nazi Iraqi government that year.  Prolific author Edwin Black has written a very interesting book on the subject entitled, The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.

Black is one scholar among others pursuing the connection between Nazi ideology and contemporary Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism.  Scholars conducting similar research include Paul Berman (Terror and Liberalism, 2003 and The Flight of the Intellectuals, 2010), Matthias Küntzel (Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, 2007), and Jeffrey Herf (Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 2009).

The point, however, is that the places where Jews are allowed to live as Jews continues to narrow and France is not among them.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was a very nice slogan, but it has failed because the French refused to instill European values into their immigrant communities out of respect for the multicultural ideal.

The multicultural ideal, needless to say, is a European value that, due its inherent nature, must conflict with other European values, such as the values of social justice and social harmony.

It is for this reason, or so I suspect, that the French, today, would not know liberty, equality, or fraternity if the three of them urinated on its leg simultaneously while singing "Hatikvah."

Abu Yehuda writes:

The recent anti-Jewish violence — the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, the mob attacks on synagogues, the rape of a woman in her home who was told it was because she was Jewish, the murders at the Jewish school in Toulouse, yesterday’s killing of four Jews at a kosher market, and perhaps most of all, the daily degradation of Jews who are afraid to wear kippot or walk to synagogues, who are cursed, struck and spat on in the streets — has convinced French Jews that the Republic can not or will not protect them.

Hollande apparently is insulted by the fact that they don’t trust the state and him personally, so much so that they appeal to the leader of the Jewish state (Netanyahu was met with cheers (video) when he entered the synagogue) for help and perhaps to provide them with a place of refuge. In addition, he is probably worried about France losing its Jews and the intellectual and financial capital that they represent.

We have just witnessed one of the most ridiculous farces in contemporary European history.

After a series of brutal and related Jihadi murders at a satirical publishing house and a kosher grocery store in Paris, French President Hollande decides to hold a march in opposition to terrorism.  Good for him.  So, what does he do?  He invites one of the world's premier terrorists to attend after requesting that the Jewish representative, Prime Minister Netanyahu, not attend.

{Pure genius.}

I do not know why Netanyahu refused Hollande's request to stay away.  It might be because of political rivalries - as Bennett and Lieberman announced their intentions to show - or it might be that it dawned on him that as the Prime Minister of Israel he also represents world Jewry.  And, apparently, after Netanyahu announced his intention to come, Hollande - as a matter of balance! - felt the political need to invite a Holocaust denier who raised funds for the Munich Olympic Massacre of 1972 and who is currently in the tenth year of his elected four year term.

Are we to understand that Hollande considers Netanyahu to be on the same moral plain as Mahmoud Abbas?  I think that we are.  Are we, therefore, not also expected to believe that Hollande thinks that Israel is, herself, on the same moral plain as her Jihadi enemies, such as the head-choppers in the Islamic State?  I think that we are, as well.  (More or less.)

Islamic terrorism, however, is largely focused on Jews and represents the spear-point of political Islam.

They may love the West, in general, but they have a particular fondness for us.

Does Hollande not understand this?

Does Europe not understand this?

You cannot hold an anti-terrorism rally wherein you invite terrorists to join you in condemning terrorism.

Furthermore, opposing terrorism is only meaningful if one means the rising movement for political Islam (or radical Islam or Islamfascism) or whatever terminology one prefers.  You cannot fight some amorphous thing known as "terrorism," but what you can do is oppose a political movement.

Just as Democrats oppose Republicans in the United States, so western liberals must oppose political Islam... except, perhaps, in somewhat more strenuous terms.

The march in Paris was a hypocritical farce because the west is tied up in moral knots about Islam.

What we must make clear is that the enemy is not Muslims.  In fact, the primary victims of political Islam are Muslims.  The enemy is a prominent political movement throughout the Middle East, derived from the Muslim Brotherhood in 1920s Cairo and from earlier trends within the faith.  The Brotherhood, however, is the father organization of any number of groups operating throughout the world, including both Hamas and Qaeda, if not the Islamic State, itself.

We may not want to take the fight to the enemy, but there is no question that the enemy is taking the fight to us.

How does it feel to be targeted for genocide?

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

I think that this is not an unreasonable question.

The Jews are targeted for genocide by millions of Muslims the world over and our western allies often think that we have it coming.

None of this, of course, is socially acceptable to say, but it also happens to be the truth.

One thing that is interesting to me, however, is the Jewish reaction which, much like in the early part of the twentieth-century in Europe, is practically non-existent.  The Jews - if I may stereotype my own people - can be the most reactionary people on the planet when it comes to threats to others and the most passive when it comes to threats to themselves.

In terms of the recent slaughter by Muslims against non-Muslims, liberal free speech practitioners, and Jews, the typical reaction among westerners has been to question the limits of free speech.  The "Jewish" part of the attack is often white-washed and the question of the rise of political Islam is generally ignored in favor of an almost neurotic western political self-reflection - which they probably learned from the Jews - to be frank.

{Oh, my!  What can we do to be better people so that they won't kill us?  Are we failing to be quite as supine as we need to be?  Perhaps if all the Jews in Israel stood together in a line and hopped up and down on one foot while facing Mecca and playing the kazoo, that would placate Islamic wrath.}

What we should be doing is strategizing over ways to defeat political Islam.  Instead we are picking lint out of our collective navel and wondering how we can be better people so as not to upset Jihadis.

It's actually kind of pathetic and it makes me wonder how it is that we are the children and grandchildren of the "Greatest Generation."

When I take a gander at a place like Daily Kos, which simply represents typical left-leaning blog space, it indicates a disinclination to actually focus on the murderers in favor of focusing on the crimes of the murdered.  They cannot very well blame the Jews at the kosher grocery for being Jewish, so they generally ignore that aspect, or twist it into something to do with Israel in order to place blame on the victims.  Generally, however, they simply leave the Jews out of it and place the blame for Jihadi aggression on western "racism" of the type allegedly published in Charlie Hebdo.

It is for this reason that while almost the entirety of Paris was claiming "Je suis Charlie" many Kossacks were insisting "I am not Charlie."  Rather than condemning the source of the Parisian attacks, which is political Islam, the western left generally prefers to blame other westerners who they consider politically incorrect or not sufficiently progressive to avoid the wrath of justifiably angry Jihadis.

In any case, how does it feel to be targeted for genocide?

Not only do many of our supposed allies actually think that the Jewish people deserve whatever beating we get, but they even refuse to acknowledge the reality and vitality of the political movement doing the genocidal threatening and beating.

It is truly a remarkable thing to see the leadership of many tens or hundreds of millions of people literally screech for the blood of the Jews and then see our western "friends" either blame Israel or simply turn their backs.



The fine fellow above, in Berlin no less, cried out that "Zionist Jews" need to be killed to the last man, woman, and child in the name of Allah.

Let me ask you, do any Jewish leaders ever speak in equivalent terms?

I do not think so.

Yet, the Euros still believe that the hatred toward us from a far larger hostile majority population is our own fault and we deserve whatever punishment that they hand out to us in their genocidal rage.