We are creatures of our time and place

Michael L.



I was born in June 1963 just outside of New York City.

Sally and Buddy and Laura and Rob were dancing it up in New Rochelle on The Dick Van Dyke Show that day. Well, Buddy was cracking wise, but the smart ones get me.

{Yay.}

But those of us in the United States, born in the mid-sixties, essentially grew up during the Vietnam War and went to college when Reagan took office.

Almost every Jew that I knew was a liberal, as am I. My father was born in 1920 in the Ukraine but grew up in Brooklyn. {The Dodgers broke his heart.} He went to war in the Central Pacific and handed out Coke to the guys in Eniwetok and Kwajalein.  He had me late in life.  He said that he never met a Jew opposed to Franklin Roosevelt until he became an accountant.

:O)

Makes sense to me.

.

The Jewish people need to be free.

We are the only people on the planet that the Left denies sovereignty.

This is racist.

This is wrong.

The European Union Can Go Straight to Hell

Michael L.

{Also published at Jews Down Under and Love of the Land.}

Raphael Ahren, writing in the Times of Israel, tells us:

Without the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there would be no Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, the European Union’s envoy to Israel said Monday, arguing that the best way to fight BDS is to take steps to advance a two-state solution. 

“The most effective antidote against the BDS movement is to solve the Palestinian issue. If there were no Palestinian issue, there would be no BDS movement,” Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen said at a conference in Jerusalem. 

The EU does not expect Israel to be able to solve the conflict unilaterally, the ambassador stressed. “It takes two to tango. It takes the Palestinians also.” But it is important for Israel not to be seen as undermining a two-state solution, he said. “If more effort is put into showing a will to move forward and to obtain progress in this process, it would greatly weaken the BDS movement.”

More effort?

The Jewish people have not put sufficient effort into opposing ongoing violence against ourselves by not being sufficiently compliant toward our aggressors?

Is that the idea?

We have to put an end to this nonsense.

Who is Lars Faaborg-Andersen to tell the Jewish people how best to live in this world?

As far as I am concerned the EU can go straight to hell.

They are not our allies. They are not our friends. They are not our partners.

They are sometimes our customers, but what they really are is a hypocritical pain in the ass that promotes terrorism against Jews while self-righteously complaining about it at home. Ultimately, the EU funds and supports Jihadi violence toward the Jewish people of the Middle East, through organizations like B'Tselem that defames Israel, and then blames that violence on those Jews, even as they decry it against themselves.

To be fair, however, while it is true that the EU blames Arab-Muslim violence against the Jewish minority in the Middle East on the Jewish people, they do have the consistency to blame Arab-Muslim violence against their own people on their own people. As Europe drowns, their leaders tell their citizenry that the violence against them is a normal response for having failed to be gracious enough to their Arab-Muslim guests.

Jihadi violence in Europe, we are to understand, is because the Europeans have failed to suckle Arab-Muslim immigrants close enough to their breasts and if only they would be more open and gracious then the Jihadi immigrants would become harmless accountants and fishermen and shoemakers.

The truth, of course, is that Arab-Muslim imperial ambitions, grounded in hatred of the infidel - particularly the Jew - is what drives their violence throughout the world upon non-Muslims. It is due to western and American racism that the West blames itself for Muslim violence against its own people. It is because western "liberals" think of non-whites as inferior creatures in need of protection that they refuse to assign agency to their "little brown brothers" who are in need of protection against the allegedly aggressive West.

The current western-left attitude toward non-western people "of color" is reminiscent of, and in part derived from, nineteenth-century notions of "white man's burden." The condescension is so rich that the western-left refuses to even acknowledge that it is not their culture, but the Arab culture that has been the most successful imperialist-colonialist power within recorded human history, since the Romans.

The Europeans, in their ideological blinkertude, pay lip-service to Palestinian-Arab responsibility for the long Arab war against the Jews, but they always pressure and blame the Jews.

At the very least, the boycott movement “would swing into virtually nothing” if there was no Israeli-Palestinian conflict “to tag unto,” he argued.

I have to say, I love these European geniuses. What he is saying - if I can figure the math correctly - is that if there were no Arab-Israel conflict there would be no BDS movement against the Jews of the Middle East to begin with.

Brilliance.

Of course, this does not explain why there was an equivalent boycott movement against the Jews in Nazi Germany that quickly was taken up by the Arabs before the State of Israel even existed. The current BDS movement is an extension of the previous movements to boycott and hurt the Jewish people as derived from 1930s Germany through the Arab efforts to rob Jewish people of sovereignty on Jewish land, throughout the middle part of the twentieth-century, until this moment.

Faaborg-Andersen added BDS is a “rather marginal” phenomenon that currently “has very little effect” on Israel. “That means that we have to, of course, stay vigilant in order to ensure it does not get further boosts and does not get further support. But I think it’s important to keep a sense of proportions here and ensure that we’re not to talking up this phenomenon rather than talking it down, and thereby giving it a platform that it really doesn’t have.”

The hubris is unimaginable.

What this moron is telling us is that the ongoing effort to economically strangle the Jewish people of the Middle East is no big deal and we should not concern ourselves with it.

And this from the EU Ambassador to Israel?

I do not think that the Jewish people, nor the Jewish state, are much in need of Europe.

Europe is killing itself and we have better friends elsewhere.

UC Passes Landmark Policy to Protect Jewish Students

Michael L.

Tammi Benjamin and Nicole Rosen, of the AMCHA Institute deserve considerable credit.

I imagine that they will not mind if I put out some of their material.

Congratulations for good work!

Contact: Nicole Rosen
202-309-5724
communications@AMCHAinitiative.org

AMCHA STATEMENT ON FINAL PASSAGE OF LANDMARK POLICY TO PROTECT JEWISH STUDENTS
FROM RISING ANTI-SEMITISM

Anti-Zionism linked to anti-Semitism by most prestigious and largest public university in the U.S. same week Clinton & Sanders acknowledge anti-Semitism part of BDS

San Francisco, CA, March 24, 2016 – The University of California (UC) full Board of Regents today approved a policy that condemns anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism and says there is no place for those and other forms of discrimination at UC. The policy was approved unanimously by the Regents education committee yesterday. 

Statement from AMCHA Initiative director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin who led this effort from its inception:

“For far too long, Jewish students have become victims in the often profoundly contentious anti-Zionist movement on campus.  Anti-Zionist groups routinely target all Jewish students, regardless of their feelings on Israel, and the rhetoric and actions go well beyond political or scholarly debate.  Sadly, Jewish students are caught in the crossfire. 

“For the first time a university has acknowledged the blatant anti-Semitism within anti-Zionism.  Anti-Zionism has now been linked to anti-Semitism and condemned by the most prestigious and largest public university in the United States.  This is an unprecedented and remarkable step forward, which will benefit Jewish students across the country.

“We applaud all of the Regents for addressing the record-high and growing anti-Jewish hate.  We would like to particularly acknowledge Regent Norm Pattiz, who personally championed this landmark policy on behalf of Jewish students.”

AMCHA began bringing this issue to the attention of Regents through letters and meetings and regularly testifying before the Regents more than a year ago after hearing from concerned parents and students about the rapid rise of anti-Semitism at UC.  Throughout this last year, AMCHA led a coalition of more than 40 Jewish and education advocacy groups that regularly communicated with the Regents on this matter.  

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both this week acknowledged that anti-Semitism is unquestionably a factor in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the largest anti-Zionist movement on campus. 

A study, conducted by AMCHA Initiative, of anti-Semitism at more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities in 2015 ranked 5 UC campuses in the top 10% of schools with the most anti-Semitic activity. In fact, 4 of those UC campuses rose to the top 5 worst schools.  The study also found the presence of anti-Zionist activities, anti-Zionist student groups and faculty who endorse an academic boycott of Israel were strong predictors of anti-Semitism.  

AMCHA Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to combating, monitoring and documenting anti-Semitism at institutions of higher education in America.

Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Jr. and Faith 7 (Mercury Project)

Everybody seemed to like Gordo.

He was one of the original seven and the guy that actually gave Gene Kranz a lift from the base when he first showed up at NASA in Florida... allegedly driving like a maniac.

Cooper did the last of the Mercury shots, Mercury-Atlas 9, on May 15, 1963.

Atlas, of course, was the rocket that lifted Cooper's Mercury capsule, Faith 7, into space.

The purpose of the Mercury program, as mentioned before, was simply to see if we could not put a human being into orbit around the Earth and bring him back alive.  But really the purpose of Mercury was to get to the Gemini program, which had the purpose of getting us to the Apollo program for the purpose of putting Neal Armstrong on the face of the moon.

Of course, when Gordo went up they did not know that it was going to be Armstrong to get the big honor about six years later.

The Mercury shots were single-man shots. The Gemini shots were dual-man shots and, needless to say, the Apollo shots were three-man shots.

When Gordo circled the Earth, John Kennedy had barely six months left to live. In that year the Dodgers swept the Yanks in the World Series and the Beats were in the relatively early process of transmogrifying themselves into hippies.

The Beatles showed up and the New Left was beginning to emerge out of the universities.

Jack Kerouac had gone into decline from the bottle, Hunter S. Thompson was struggling to find his voice, and William F. Buckley was seeking to purge anti-Semites from the conservative movement via the National Review.

And there was a war in Vietnam.

Brussels

Will the University of California Support anti-Semitic anti-Zionism?

Michael L.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin will kick your ass in a New York minute... but that is why I like her.

She has alerted me to the fact, and wants me to alert you to the fact, that University of California officials will vote tomorrow, Wednesday the 23rd of March, to include anti-Zionism as a form of discrimination that is unacceptable on campus.

For us locals, if not for Jews everywhere, this is a pretty big matter.

According to Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times:

The inclusion immediately drew sharply divergent reactions, with pro-Israel groups hailing it as a needed step to protect Jewish students from hostility and those supporting Palestinian rights criticizing it as a naked attempt to suppress criticism of the Jewish state.

The fact of the matter, as Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and her partners at the AMCHA Initiative have well demonstrated, is that anti-Semitic anti-Zionists on university campuses throughout the United States kick around Jewish students.

The reason that they do not like Jewish students is because they do not like the Jewish State of Israel or because they are racist against Jews.

If they despise Israel it is due to an acceptable and discriminatory racist double-standard that impales that country - the country of my people - as a terrible violator of human rights, while giving its far worse human rights violator neighbors a pass entirely. The truth is that California university students and professors generally do not care if ISIS buries Yazidi children alive or sell prepubescent girls into sexual slavery, but they very much care that the Jews of the Middle East dare to defend themselves against never-ending Arab-Muslim aggression.

For centuries Jewish self-defense has been seen, among westerners, as a form of aggression and continues to be seen as so on California university campuses.

The fact, of course, is that the Arab-Muslim world, surrounding little Israel, is rife with racism, homophobia, misogyny, and genocidal anti-Semitism, yet racist anti-Zionist students, with the encouragement of anti-Zionist professors such as Rabab Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University, just love to kick around the Jews within venues like "Israel Apartheid Week."

This is a fun-filled event wherein American Jewish students get spit upon by racists with the approval and acceptance of the university, itself, as a matter - much to my never ending astonishment - of social justice.

However, the University of California is set to to vote on a proposal that condemns both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as forms of discrimination.

According to Rossman-Benjamin:

If adopted, this will be a huge step forward for Jewish students on UC campuses, and its impact will be felt nationally.

I tend to agree.

As someone familiar with California university anti-Semitism, I would very much like to see the UC Regents suggest that the movement to rob Jewish people of self-determination and self-defense stands in direct opposition to its own proposed standards of social justice and universal human rights.

Needless to say, anti-Semitic anti-Zionist students and professors claim that their hatred of Jewish people, via their hatred of the Jewish State, is a matter of free speech. They should be allowed to defame Israel, and thereby defame the great majority of Jewish people, as a matter of liberal democracy, despite the fact that such defamation tends to result in violence against the Jewish people and young Jewish students on campus.

They honestly seem to believe that kicking Jewish students in the teeth on a regular basis is a privilege of liberalism and perhaps they are right. If liberalism means anything it means that you have the right to offend anyone. If that defamation results in violence toward the Jewish people, as we are currently seeing with the Children's Intifada in Israel, so be it.

I tend to think, of course, that kicking around Jewish students on California university campuses is not such a good thing and that university officials should look into means of reducing it, if they honestly care... which I also tend to doubt.

A question I wish they would ask the candidates

Sar Shalom

There are variations on this for other issues, but the question I would ask would be, "If in response to an international crisis, you received memos from an interventionist and from a realist, what criteria would you use to evaluate whose advice to follow?"

To see the impact of such a question, consider the Arab Spring in Egypt and Obama's decision to force Mubarak to step down. If the question of whether or not to support Mubarak was posed as whether or not to support him to the bitter end, then a reasonable case could be made that doing so would carry costs that are not worth paying. At that point, the question becomes one of at what point do we throw in the towel. With that type of formulation, there is no right or wrong answer, so whatever condition is selected to concede Mubarak's loss would be reasonable.

Initially, I thought that Obama's reasoning process followed such a path. However, Robert Gates recent revealed (h/t Ian and EoZ) that such was not the case. Instead, all of the senior defense officials recommended caution in responding to events then unfolding in Egypt while three junior "back-benchers" said that it was Obama's responsibility to be on the "right side of history." As we know, Obama selected the advice from those three back-benchers.

The problem with arguments to being on the right side of history is that doing so also carries the responsibility of thinking through what happens the day after the ancien regime is overthrown. Part of doing so is assessing whether the most likely successor would resemble more Thomas Jefferson or Maximillian Robespierre. Since Obama did not ask those questions, a potential disaster was set in motion as the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, fortunately to be mitigated by the army ousting the Brotherhood in a coup.

The question I pose might have illuminated Obama's thought process in 2008, possibly exposing his susceptibility to arguments like "the right side of history."

The Moral Bankruptcy of the Progressive-Left

Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, The Algemeiner, and Love of the Land.

{Author's note - this is a slightly edited retread from a few years ago. I thought that it was worth revisiting.}

The progressive movement's main claim to political legitimacy is a moral claim. The movement claims to stand for social justice and equality of rights throughout the world. Any legitimacy the left has as a political movement is grounded in the notion of universal human rights. But if the left has quietly abandoned that ideal, which it has, then it loses both moral and political legitimacy. After all, if the left does not stand for universal human rights, then just what in this world does it stand for?

The sad truth is that the left has abandoned its core reason to be. By holding different people, and different countries, to different moral standards it has effectively abandoned its alleged core values. One cannot claim to stand for social justice, after all, if you only care about social justice for some people, but not others. If you constantly speak out against supposed Israeli human rights abuses but remain silent about the truly horrific situations in Darfur or Congo or Syria... circumstances that make the Arab-Israel conflict look like a picnic on a summer Sunday afternoon... then you cannot claim to stand for universal human rights and, therefore, any claims you may have for moral or political leadership, as a member of the left, are entirely unfounded.

This is the situation that we find ourselves in, currently, and it probably represents at least part of the reason why many Jews are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Most diaspora Jewish supporters of Israel are people who at one time, if not currently, considered themselves on the progressive-left. Certainly, I did. As someone who grew up in the political aftermath of the counterculture and the New Left, I was impressed with the ideals of those movements. I was impressed with the counterculture for its apparent spontaneity, its anti-authoritarian values, and its sense of community. I was impressed with the New Left for standing against jingoism, for its anti-war agenda, and for its championing of the human rights of women and Gay people and other minorities.

Today, looking back on the movement that was for decades my political home, what I see are the ruins of what was and the rank hypocrisy of what is. The left has essentially broken itself on Israel's back and they don't even know it, yet. The reason for this is that if, as a movement, the progressive-left intends to constantly fire-off Katyushas of Hatred and Qassams of Malice toward Tel Aviv, while snuggying up to Iran, then they lose all moral legitimacy. This is particularly true given the fact that the left could hardly care less about the 5.5 million dead in the Congo, about Tibetans living under Chinese occupation, about rape as a tactic of war in Darfur, about the hanging of Gay people from cranes in Tehran, or about an Arab and Muslim world rife with anti-Semitism, homophobia, and gender apartheid.

In this way the left, which claims to be both moral and anti-racist proves itself to be, in fact, neither.

On the progressive-left, Israel is the Jew among nations. Just as prior to establishment of the state of Israel Europeans tended to ascribe a host of negative characteristics to the Jewish people, so today they ascribe those same specific characteristics to the Jewish state and they do so... gallingly enough, hypocritically enough... under the banner of social justice. For 2,000 years we lived in diaspora, that is, we lived or died according to the pleasure of non-Jews. For 1,300 years we lived as second and third-class non-citizens under the imperialist boot of Muslim rule, i.e., as dhimmis. And today, directly after the historical moment in which we re-took our freedom, progressives tell us that the institution within which we manifest that freedom, the state of Israel, is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid country which, if it should not be dismantled as the national homeland for the Jewish people, must jump through whatever hoops they lay down. If Israel fails to jump through each and every one of those hoops then clearly they do not want peace and thus deserve whatever they get.

Well, some of us have definitely had enough of this nonsense.

The Palestinians refuse to negotiate a peaceful conclusion of hostilities and the progressive-left blames Israel. The Gazans shot thousands of rockets into southern Israel for years, but the progressives only spoke up when Israel sought to defend its citizenry from those rockets. Did the progressive movement have anything to say about the Fogel family murders? No, it did not. Does the progressive movement have anything to say about Hamas's genocidal charter or the larger Jihadi movement out of which Hamas sprang?

No. It does not.

The left can barely even bring itself to tsk, tsk ISIS.

In fact, as Egypt transitioned from a military dictatorship, under Hosni Mubarak, to an Islamist dictatorship under the Muslim Brotherhood this result was, in part, through the efforts of the current president of the United States. But, then, the left has always had a weakness for the very worst actors in world history. Just as leftists often supported the Soviet Union for decades, despite the tens of millions of innocent dead due to that regime, so it now (usually tacitly, but sometimes directly) supports Political Islam.

For me, personally, the real wake-up call came during the Mavi Marmara incident in May of 2010. There were two groups of people aboard that vessel. There were the violent Jihadis seeking martyrdom... which progressives referred to as "peace activists." And the second group? Well, they definitely weren't Tea Party people. They were, in fact, progressive-left activists from around the world. Progressive-left activists literally, physically, morally, and financially supporting Jihadis in an effort to kill Jews, while telling the world that their mission was humanitarian.

The irony and cruel hypocrisy could not be more rich.

So, just why would you expect Jewish people to remain a part of such a political movement? The progressive-left may have been our home for a very long time, but clearly their values have shifted away from anything that could possibly be acceptable to the great majority of western Jews. Most of those Jews don't really get it, yet, but people are awakening. There are reasons why more and more of us are leaving the Democratic party and the progressive movement.

Because the progressive-left accepts, if not encourages, generalized malice toward the Jewish state it thereby shows the rest of us the door.

I say we walk through it.

John H. Glenn, Jr. and Friendship 7 (with correction)*

John Glenn in orbit within Friendship 7

I absolutely love the exploration of space and so long as I am editing this venue it will be a means by which I acknowledge and honor the Sabbath.

If anyone cares to take theological issue with that decision, let them go forth and do so, but I consider it a learning opportunity for myself, my readership, and a terrific inspiration.

John Glenn is the last surviving member of the original seven Mercury astronauts, was the fifth human being to go into space, the third American to do so, and the first American to achieve orbit on February 20, 1962.

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin beat him by almost a year in his shot of April, 1961, which made him the first human being ever to place his body in space and in orbit.

Glenn, who became a Democratic Senator from Ohio, actually returned to space on the Space Shuttle on October 29, 1998, becoming, at the age of 77, the oldest person ever to remove himself from the Earth's atmosphere.

I do not know that I am going to touch upon every single manned-mission in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs going forward on Friday nights, but there are certain achievements that absolutely have to be acknowledged and very high on that list is Glenn's five hour three-orbit flight.

John Glenn lives to this day knowing that he was the first American, and the second human being, to ever orbit the globe.

I can think of few more honorable achievements in this world.

* I originally made the mistake of assuming that Glenn was a Republican in office. He was not.

A note to one of my many anti-Trump friends

Michael L.

I just received an email from a buddy of mine highlighting Donald Trump's alleged racism.

The note pointed to this recent comment by the Donald:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

I am not an advocate for Trump and have no intention of becoming one anytime in the near future... not if I want my marriage to survive! Nor have I ever spoken-up concerning Latino immigration into the United States.

This is my response to my friend:

Trump's foot is permanently wedged in his face.

I am continually amazed at how thoroughly stupid intelligent people can be.

Immigration is a big issue in this country and it needs to be addressed in an intelligent fashion. We have to acknowledge in our conversations around this issue that there are different kinds of immigrants and, frankly, some are friendlier than others.

For example, many immigrants into the US from India or the Far East tend to be students or professionals. We welcome these people with open arms because they are usually good and productive citizens. This is not about "color" or "race" or "ethnicity." Now, I have never been opposed to Latino immigration into the US because they're basically just poor people trying to improve their living standards. Nonetheless, I understand why conservatives in places like southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are very concerned about Latino immigration because while it brings benefits, like inexpensive labor and good food, it also brings crime and gang activity.

In fact, one thing that most Americans have no idea about is that some Latino gangs that are formed in the US actually establish themselves in their countries of origin much to the dismay of the local authorities. But much of the US is Latino land to begin with and, just as importantly, their kids assimilate.

I, myself, am only a second-generation American. My father was born in the Ukraine, but we are both fully assimilated Americans and damn happy to be Americans, I tell ya. My old man actually fought in World War II in the central Pacific against the Japanese in places like Kwajalein, the Marshall Islands, and Enewetak. Although, in truth, it might be a bit more accurate to say that he handed out warm cokes and cigarettes to the guys as a corporal in the supply chain.

{Of course, that does not mean that Japanese snipers in trees weren't trying to shoot him dead in his fox hole at night. As far as I know he never killed anyone in the war, but he does not speak about it.}

What worries me, though, as you know, is the current wave of Arab and North African immigration. The reason that I look with disfavor upon that immigration is because Political Islam is a widespread and growing violently anti-Semitic political movement that I have absolutely no interest in having get near Jews anywhere in the world, particularly my own home. Polling has shown that rates of anti-Jewish racism in the Middle East runs from the upper-70s percentile to the mid-90s percentile among Palestinian-Arabs.

One thing that Trump said, in his typically blunt fashion, is that Muslim entry into the US should cease, or be highly limited, until we figure out just who is coming into the country, or something along those lines, because he wants to keep Jihadis out of the United States. I found that statement difficult because nobody wants to keep some Muslim grandmother from Great Britain from visiting her grand-kids in Michigan. Nor do we want to prevent a Muslim surgeon in Toronto from travelling to Manhattan for the purpose of conducting an operation, nor does Trump. He was simply lacking in nuance.

But I don't want Jihadis here any more than I would like to see additional Klansmen or Nazis. All one has to do is open one's eyes to what is going on in Germany and Sweden - not to mention Paris or San Bernardino - to make a reasonable assessment of what the great wave of Arab-Muslim immigration into that part of the world means to the indigenous population.

The Swedes and the Germans - in their self-flagellating white guilt - often blame themselves for the behavior of their guests.

I think that is a mistake.

Much like Jewish people they tend to think that if only they were nicer then these folk would be nicer to them.

But as anyone who went to an American high school can tell you, it doesn't always work that way.

I want to be nice to the Times of Israel, but they're making it hard

Michael L.

I sometimes don't really know what to make of the Times of Israel.

I prefer it to the Jerusalem Post, despite its lack of Caroline Glick or Martin Sherman - and Ha'aretz, of course, can go straight to hell - but headline editors have the tendency to drive me absolutely bats.

Look at this headline:

Most West Bank Palestinians oppose uprising — poll

That sounds hopeful, does it not?

But then directly beneath the headline, before the actual beginning of the article, we read:

Survey shows wide gaps between residents of West Bank and Gaza, where 8 in 10 want more knife attacks BY SUE SURKES March 14, 2016, 2:56 pm

So, Gazan Arabs want to kill Jews, but the Arabs of Judea and Samaria do not?

Is that the idea?

According to the article:

Sightly more than half of West Bank Palestinians (52 percent) oppose continuing the violent uprising against Israel, while three quarters of their Gazan counterparts (76 percent) are in favor, a survey published Sunday shows.

In a separate question, 80% of Gazans expressed support for continuing the current round of knife attacks, while 54% of West Bank residents opposed it.

Gazans, in general, who are virtually all Arab-Muslims, have driven both Jews and Christians out of the strip and love the idea of killing Jews whereas only about half of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria do so?

Is that the idea?

{Well, that makes me feel better.}

It's good to know that only half of the Arabs in the land that Jews come from want to see us dead. Perhaps in a few centuries we can get that percentage down to about a third, or so, but I doubt it. The trend seems to be going in the opposite direction.

This should have been the headline:

Almost half of Arabs on Jewish land want to see those Jews dead.

You know, I like David Horovitz of Times of Israel fame. He came out of the Jerusalem Post and created something more contemporary, more stream-lined, and easier on a home computer. But what is this nonsense?

You cannot have it both ways.

The headline implies peaceful Arabs, while the content does not.

Since the start of the current wave of Palestinian terrorism and violence in September, there have been 202 stabbings and attempted stabbings, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, as well as 82 shootings and 41 car rammings, with 34 people killed. Some 180 Palestinians have also been killed, about two thirds while carrying out or attempting to carry out attacks, and the rest in clashes with the IDF, Israel says.

This is just stupid writing... and, believe me, I know a thing or two about stupid writing.

We are to understand that 34 people have been killed since the beginning of the Children's Intifada, along with some 180 "Palestinians"?

I am not exactly thrilled with the Pal-Arabs because the society that they have created is pathological, violent, and entirely hate-filled toward the Jewish people, but I am pretty sure that they are actual human beings.

A lack of confidence in the Palestinian leadership overall was reflected when pollsters asked who was trusted most. Abbas came first with 14.4%, followed by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah (10.8%) and Marwan Barghouti, who secured 9.9%, up from 5.4% a year ago. Barghouti is a senior PLO official found guilty by an Israeli court in 2002 of terrorism and murder for planning bomb attacks on civilians.

What this claims, essentially, is that Pal-Arabs have virtually no faith in their leadership and it is this that should have been highlighted, not the deceptive headline which suggests Arab friendliness toward the Jewish people.

A big 14.4 percent of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria like dictator Abbas.

Well, that's shocking.

What? He's in the eleventh year, or thereabouts, of his four year term and Pal-Arabs do not like it? Of course, Palestinian-Arabs despise their leadership. The reason for this is because Arab and Muslim leadership, in general, is horrendous. From Tehran to Amman to Islamabad, Muslim political leadership tends to suck in the worst possible ways. They could not care less about their own people and they use anti-Jewish racism as a club to keep their own people in line and to curry favor with the western elite... who, we seem to need to relearn, decade upon decade, are not huge fans of the Jewish people, either.

I think that the Times of Israel is a good newspaper slash blog, but I dislike being deceived so early in the morning.

The Children's Intifada... Again

Michael L.

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Love of the Land, and Jews Down Under.}

This is the Children's Intifada.

"Knife Intifada" or "Stabbing Intifada" does not cut it.

This is the Children's Intifada.

It is, perhaps, the most insidious thing that I have known in my lifetime.

Outside of the various fun-filled activities of, say, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s, I can think of no more vile political movement than the Jihad, as expressed within organizations like ISIS or Hamas or Hezbolah, and the never-ending effort to screw around with the Jews of the Middle East and Europe by Jihadi Muslims for religious reasons... and coming, I suspect that you know, to an American theater near you.

I know that it makes me a "racist" to oppose being targeted for death... but I suppose I can live with it, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile, Palestinian-Arab society, via its media, is actually encouraging their children to chase after Jews with knives or scissors or hand-axes in the hope of killing those Jews or dying as beloved "martyrs" with the blessings of Allah. Meanwhile their allies throughout the West honestly want Jewish kids to believe that we are the source of the violence against us.

Throughout western college campuses and the western media, elite progressive intellectuals and activists tell one another just what the Nazis told one another: the Jews are bad. Of course, they're not actually brave enough or honest enough - within living memory of the Holocaust - to blame Jews directly, so instead they use the Jewish state as a stand-in for the Jewish people or they conjure up Zionism as some sort-of essential evil that is responsible for everything from global warming to the misery and violent pathologies of the Arab world. Some Arabs even believe, as EOZ readers are undoubtedly aware, that Israel has created Zionist sharks and terrorist Zionist puffer fish and crazed Zionist squirrel spies, or whatever.

The Elder of Ziyon actually put together a referenced list that includes heinous Zionist eagles, Zionist rock hyraxes, Zionist boars, Zionist storks, Zionist super-rhinos... "super-rhinos"? - Zionist vultures, European Zionist bee-eaters, Zionist puffer fish, Zionist dogs, Zionist jellyfish, Zionist sharks, Zionist cows, Zionist wolves, Zionist lions, rats, sheep and squirrels.

I have to say, if I actually thought that the Jews were so capable of making alliances with so much of the animal kingdom, I might be inclined to think that we must be doing something right!

Worse, yet, young impressionable Jewish teenagers believe the libels and slanders against their own people because they are told that those who are doing the libeling and slandering to be humanitarians who want nothing so much as peace and social justice. They may be sophisticated enough not to believe in Zionist attack jelly fish, but they are definitely gullible enough to believe that Israel is a racist, colonialist, imperialist, militaristic, settler-apartheid, racist country that wants nothing so much as to brutally oppress, for no particular reason, the largely innocent, bunny-like, indigenous Palestinians who merely want to tend their Sacred Olive Groves in peace.

And that is perhaps what is most insidious about this series of efforts against Jewish well-being, including BDS, the Children's Intifada, and the ongoing international effort to delegitimize Israel for the purpose of robbing Jewish people of self-determination and self-defense. The Arab governments and many of the Arab people have convinced well-meaning, but uneducated, westerners in the universities, through the work of people such as Rabab Abdulhadi at SFSU, that the Jews of Israel are a violent and terrible people who deserve whatever beating the Arabs care to dish out.

If the Arabs of Israel send their kids out with knives to kill Jews, or if the sweet-hearted humanitarians of Hamas shoot Qassams and Katyushas into southern Israel thereby giving the children of S'derot and Ashkelon Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), it is because those Jews have it coming for supporting the "Occupation"... with the Big O. The Arabs and their western allies do not believe that Israel is conducting an occupation of native land. No. What they believe is that Israel is conducting The Occupation of native land. In other words, Jews building housing for themselves in Judea and Samaria, on land that was bought and paid for - on land that Jews have lived upon for something close to four thousand years - is not a mere occupation, but the Big Occupation. It is the Mother of all Occupations and the very source of human misery not only throughout that part of the world, but throughout much of the world, in general.

If an Arab rapes and murders a Swede, this is because of The Occupation. If a cop shoots a criminal dead in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, this too - we are to believe - is related to the criminal Occupation of Jews on Jewish land. In fact, we are even to believe that racist, fascistic Zionist-Jew cops in Israel are teaching their racist, fascist American counterparts how to be particularly brutal to anyone who is not of the white persuasion.

And it all relates back to the Children's Intifada.

It all relates back to mellennia of Koranically-based Arab-Muslim hatred for Jews due to that Mohammad fellow.

As I have said before, if Israel were exactly as it is now in terms of human rights, but if it were the 23rd Muslim country, it would be considered a light unto the nations.

Instead what our friends and family get is contempt by those who think of themselves as our moral superiors.

Gus Grissom and Liberty Bell 7

Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom was in Liberty Bell 7 on July 21, 1961.

Everybody liked Gus because he was a straight-forward guy who said what he thought even though not everyone understood what he thought.

I am not even certain that he understood what he thought half the time, but what the hell do I know?

I think of him as the Yogi Berra of the US Space project - Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - through the 1960s.

He was the second US astronaut aloft after Alan Shephard in the "popgun shot" of Freedom 7 which was designed simply to put a human being beyond the world's atmosphere and bring him home alive.

Gus died along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee in Apollo 1 on January 27, 1967.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that NASA has never really gotten over it.

This is why the Johnson Space Center, just outside of Houston, Texas, is the safest place on the friggin' planet. The speed limit on that campus is something like 15 miles per hour, or thereabouts.

No one is taking any chances, I can tell you, at least when I was there in the summer of 2000.

Grissom is considered a hero and he damn-well should be considered one.

If the heinous schmucks in Cologne, last New Years, represent the worst of humanity, Gus  - along with the other steely-eyed missile men - represents the best of us.

I believe that in my soul because I was there doing a little research for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project and spoke with astronauts, men and women, and other NASA personnel.

I even got to meet former Flight Director Gene Kranz simply because he was doing a book tour for Failure is Not an Option, that they turned into the movie Apollo 13 with Ed Harris as Kranz along with Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, and Gary Sinise.

I want Grissom to be remembered forever because he, as much as anyone, represents a tremendous turning point in human history... as does Kranz, actually.

This is not just about American History.

This is about a moment in human history that will be remembered long after the US Civil War is forgotten.

I always think that this sounds hokey, but I honestly believe it to be true.

We are the eyes and ears of our planet. We are the means by which Earth is coming to know itself and its relationship with everything around us.

I am sure that all of you have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope.

I bet, however, that a lot of you folk are not familiar with the plans for the James Webb Scope that they are hoping to launch in 2018. Hubble is important, but it resides a mere 300 plus miles from the surface of the Earth. The Web Scope, named after former NASA administrator James Webb, is intended to be launched almost a million miles beyond the surface of our planet.

This instrument, if it functions correctly, will allow humanity to look back to the origins of the universe. Optics is about looking back in time and that is precisely what this thing will do. It will allow us to see the very birth of the universe.

This means it damn-well better work because when we shoot it up there, if it malfunctions like Hubble did, there will be no way to get up there and fix it.

Or so I have read.

.

Gus actually had kind-of a bad day, that day, and Betty never got to meet Jackie.

"The hatch just blew! Why won't anyone believe me!"

Poor guy.

More Stabbings...They Missed Joe Biden

Doodad

There  were a lot of stabbings today, many more than usual. What made them unique was the fact that one happened nearby Joe Biden's visit.

"US Vice President Joe Biden was in the area at the time of the attack - visiting the Peres Center for Peace located approximately a mile away (2 kilometers) from where the first stabbing occurred."

One victim, the only one killed, was also an American tourist. Can you imagine if that  victim had been Biden? Think Palestinian terrorists would get the blame? Probably not. The blame would likely go to Israeli security and within minutes, the lefty nutbars would be saying false flag and other conspiracy bull. You know it's true.

The only good thing to come of these latest events is this: 
  
Stabbing victim pulls knife out of own neck, kills terrorist

Hamas is, of course, celebrating the attacks. One terrorist stabbed 12 people! Twelve!

 Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital said it received six victims, one in critical condition, two in moderate condition and two suffering from lighter wounds. The hospital’s medical director confirmed that one of the victims was a pregnant woman. Another of the victims was an Arab Israeli — Jaffa is a mixed city with a sizable Arab population — and one a Palestinian man who was residing in Israel illegally, Channel 2 reported.

A pregnant woman and two Arabs: some brilliant brave hero Hamas, you idiots and genocidal jerks.

How long can this go on? Well, forever it looks like unless Israel starts doing the really tough stuff it needs to which the "world community," will hate even if it saves Jewish lives. Of course that community has never cared about Jewish lives so far have they?

And so it goes.

Moving forward to change the narrative about racism

Sar Shalom

As others have noted, the Arabs' strategy to eradicate Israel has evolved first from a conventional military campaign, to a terror campaign, and now into a delegitimization campaign in order to enlist the world to eradicate Israel on their behalf. An essential component of this delegitimization campaign is that Israel is a European colonial creation which has developed into an Apartheid state. Those who have followed my writings would know that I have often argued to counter the Apartheid smear with references to how Zionism does for the Jews what Reconstruction tried to do for the freedmen. One objection to this approach is that historians will hesitate to accept the analogy. As this is a realistic obstacle to advancing a narrative of emancipation of Middle Eastern Jewry, I would like to suggest an alternative tack that could open the door to such acceptance, but would avoid openly challenging the precious narrative of Palestinian pristine victimhood, at least to start, and thereby avoid raising defense mechanisms to counter the effort.

One thing to understand about the Apartheid smear is that it relies on Zionists being portrayed of European colonists. That is what separates the claimed Apartheid in Israel from the genuine Apartheid in much of the rest of the Middle East. That is, while other Middle Eastern countries have separate castes based on religion, gender, or "Palestinian" status all of those are imposed by natives and it is thus tolerated if not supported. However, in Israel the differences are imposed by those whom the West has dubbed "European colonists," and that is what must be opposed. However, in order for the designation of European colonialist, and subsequently that those colonialists are practicing Apartheid, to be accepted, it has to be accepted that the Israeli Jews are, well, European. Fortunately for those continuing the war against Israel by diplomatic means, and unfortunately for the truth, this is an easy sell for much of the West. Most Americans and Europeans do not know any non-European Jews, nearly everything presented about Jewish history and culture is European-Jewish history and culture, and most of the public figures from Israel are White Ashkenazi Sabras with Protexia.

To counter the misperception that Jewry is European-Jewry we need to promote cultural interest stories about Mizrahi Jewry on a regular basis. I have in mind Simon Schama's miniseries from a few years ago The Story of the Jews. Such a production would start by asking what you think of when you think of Jews and show images associated with Ashkenazi Jews. It would then proceed to show another side of Jewry coming from the Middle East. Initial stages should focus on Middle East Jewry on its own terms without calling attention to the abuse perpetrated by surrounding populations on them. Such attention will alert the defense mechanisms of pristine victimhood meme and hinder knowledge from seeping in to the general consciousness that could engender receptiveness to the notion that Middle Eastern Jews deserve protection. The next stage would highlight the connection between European Jewry and the Jews of Palestine, both in terms of movement from Europe to Palestine and of European support for the Jewish community in Palestine. Once it is no longer assumed that the Jews had abandoned and forgotten their homeland, either after the Babylonian exile or after the Bar Kochba revolt, the privations of the Pact of Umar would be introduced. The defense mechanisms for the pristine victimhood meme would go up at that point, but by then common knowledge of Middle Eastern Jewish history could parry those mechanisms much as knowledge of the Holocaust used to parry questions about Israel. Finally, education about Middle Eastern Jewish history would cover the reintegration of European Jewry into the Middle East in the various aliyah waves.

Such an effort may or may not persuade a wider audience about the reality of the Arabs' motives. However, it would not create any reason to support their efforts and thus would have little risk. Further, it would educate us about a much neglected part of our people.

Cinnamon Stillwell calls out San Francisco State University Racism

Michael L.

{Also published at the Elder of Zyion and Jews Down Under.}

Cinnamon Stillwell - the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a graduate of San Francisco State University, and a contributor for numerous outlets, including The San Francisco Chronicle, and those as diverse from one another as Front Page Magazine is from National Public Radio (NPR) - in a recent piece entitled SFSU's Defeaning Silence on Partnership with Palestinian University, reminds us that San Francisco State University is among the most racist universities on the planet.

She writes:

Late last year, during the ongoing frenzy of violence directed at Israelis known as the “stabbing intifada,” 20-year-old Maram Hassoneh was killed in her second attempted knife attack on IDF soldiers manning a checkpoint. Hassoneh, a devout Muslim, was a top English student at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus. Described by Hamas as “greenhouse for martyrs,” An-Najah may very well be San Francisco State University (SFSU)’s first academic partner in the Arab and Muslim world.

Under the leadership of Rabab Abdulhadi, director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, SFSU reportedly established a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with An-Najah in 2014. Though there is no official corroboration of the relationship other than a recommendation in the All-University Committee on International Programs annual report (which Abdulhadi touted on Facebook), An-Najah claimed in a statement at its website last year that the MOU was signed on September 10, 2014, while a 2015 Xpress Magazine interview with Abdulhadi presented it as a fait accompli.

I wrote about this in a piece from April of last year entitled, San Francisco State Partners with Violently Anti-Jewish Arab University. An-Najah is perhaps the most viciously racist college campus in the world and this is who SFSU chooses to partner with?

It is a disgrace and an insult to every Jew on that campus and any Jewish person, or friend of Jewish people, who ever gave a dime in donations to that school.

Here is a little tid-bit that Stillwell was kind enough to SFSU to leave out of her piece. The grotesque shrine "celebrating" the Sbarro massacre at An-Najah University.



This 2001 video is only about a minute and a half long, but if you watch it you will see where people entering the exhibit wiped their feet on the Israeli and American flags. There is also an image of Ariel Sharon with blood dripping from his mouth. Whatever else this video might demonstrate it is certainly not a memorial for the innocent dead.

It is the glorification of the spilling of Jewish blood and the destruction of Jewish lives.

One question to ask yourself is, how is it that of the colleges throughout the Arab-Muslim world this is the one that SFSU chooses to partner with? It might be that professors like Rabab Abdulhadi - "the director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel" - believe that SFSU could be a moderating influence upon an institution that verges on the violently psychopathic. It might be that SFSU is simply trying to do good in a highly naive Obama sort-of way.

Or, maybe not.

It could also be that the SFSU administration concurs with An-Najah University's anti-Zionism.

SFSU put up a mural of the famous anti-Semitic anti-Zionist Edward Said just around the corner from Malcolm X Plaza on that campus. Given this glorification of the deceased anti-Zionist professor out of Columbia University the only conclusion that one can come to is that the SFSU administration looks in favor upon Said's work and is, therefore, highly sympathetic with the movement to strip Jewish people of the means for self-determination and self-defense... as a matter of "social justice," of course.

In either case, SFSU is very definitely not friendly territory for Jewish people, however much the Jewish Studies Department might strenuously suggest otherwise.

From a personal perspective, as an alumnus with a Master's Degree in American History from that university, it seems to me that SFSU is trying to have things both ways. They want to remain true to their radical roots, but at the same time they want inclusivity and multiculturalism to define their academic culture. The problem is that the radical Left today, and there are few more radically-left universities in the United States than SFSU, is exceedingly hostile toward Israel and, thus, necessarily, hostile toward Jews, in general.

This does not create inclusivity. On the contrary, it socially constructs hatred.

They will insist otherwise, but the slop-over is inevitable, toxic, and violent toward the Jewish people as it undermines the well-being of both the Jewish people and the Jewish state, as well as, via BDS, the economic well-being of Israeli-Arabs, particularly in Judea and Samaria.

Freedom 7 - Alan Shephard, Jr. (Mercury Program)

Alan Shephard, Jr., one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, was the first American in space in May of 1961, just three weeks after Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union although, unlike Gagarin, Shephard did not orbit the earth.

That honor, as an American, would go to John Glenn on February 20, 1962.

The original 7 included Shephard, Scott Carpenter, Gordo Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, and Deke Slayton.

Future historians will note this period as a turning point in human history.

Project Mercury had 3 primary objectives:

To orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth

To investigate man's ability to function in space

To recover both man and spacecraft safely

Reconstruction, Apartheid, and Israel

Sar Shalom

One component of our enemies' war against Israel is to assert that Israel is practicing Apartheid. The reason they do so is, as Einat Wilf explains, not because Israel matches Apartheid-era South Africa, but because Apartheid is a universally recognized evil and the thinking among people of good conscience is, "What do we do with evil? We eradicate it." However, countering the "Israel=Apartheid" canard will require acknowledging the superficial similarity between the two, that both featured one group that was privileged relative to another. As I have stated in the past, my preferred way to do this would be to reference another episode in history that featured one group privileged over another but which would be viewed in the opposite manner of Apartheid, Reconstruction. In order to make the case that Israel should be viewed as Reconstruction rather than as Apartheid, I have started a table list lists differences between Reconstruction and Apartheid and then describes how Israels fits in each axis.

Reconstruction	Apartheid	Israel
Prior to Reconstruction, Negroes were disfavored and whites favored.	Prior to Apartheid, there were no whites in southern Africa and blacks had the subcontinent to themselves.	Prior to Zionism, Jews in Palestine were disfavored and Muslims were favored.
Opponents relied primarily on terror, particularly lynchings.	Some opponents relied on terror. Others relied on passive resistance.	Opponents rely primarily on terror. Specific methods vary in response to countermeasures.
After Reconstruction ended, the whites imposed Jim Crow on the black population.	After Apartheid ended, the new ANC headed government of South Africa reached out to reconcile with the Afrikaners.	Zionism is still in effect, but domestic communications of the PNM indicate an intention roll back Jewish rights as much as practicable.

The Donald

Michael L.

I actually get a kick out of Trump.

He is so outrageous and he'll say damn near anything.

I thought that Cruz's tongue-in-cheek response to Trump in the Iowa debate - that Trump skipped - was on point:

"Let me say, I'm a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly. And, Ben, you're a terrible surgeon."

That may have been the best line of this political season.

In any case, this piece is largely a response to the conversation initiated by Joseph, beneath the linked-to post, and furthered by Kate, Jeff, the Panther, and myself, concerning the likelihood of a Trump nomination for the Republican Party.

Things are shaping up to look like a Hillary / Donald race for the US presidency. In truth, despite the potential horrendous consequences, I find the prospect of a Hillary versus Trump race to be fascinating. Hillary represents the Democratic Old Guard, so to speak - as well as potentially the first female president of the United States - while Trump represents Trump.

Kate said:

Trump is not really a Republican, nor is he an actual conservative. He has, effectively, hijacked the Republican party for his own ambitions.

My tendency is to agree with Kate's sense on this issue... although it is not an objective fact because none of us can read minds, as far as I know. Nonetheless, it may very well be the case that in his heart-of-hearts Trump honestly believes that a strong America is beneficial not only to those of us who happen to live here, but to the well-being of people throughout the world.

Perhaps.

I agree with Kate in that I suspect that Trump primarily stands for Trump. He is a populist and a demagogue, much like Pappy "Pass the Bisquits" O'Daniel who beat LBJ in his first run for the Senate in 1941 Texas and was the only human being in history, aside from JFK in 1960, to defeat Lyndon Johnson in a political campaign for high office.

Unlike Obama, however, Trump is not an ideologue, but a pragmatist. Or, at least, I am pretty sure that is the way he sees himself. Trump wrote The Art of the Deal and, therefore, obviously sees himself as a negotiator par excellence.

He is also someone, like Bernie Sanders, who is looking to the past for inspiration. The difference is that Uncle Bernie is looking toward the good old days of the late 1960s, what with the riots and assassinations and blood in the streets, while Trump aspires to recreate 1957, or thereabouts.

Sanders, of course, is likely to soon become irrelevant, whereas Trump will probably go forward to become the Republican nominee... although there are current whisperings of the possibility of the first brokered Republican convention since 1948. There are also many people who claim that Trump is a racist, but I am not seeing it. Of course, there are many people in the Age of Obama who fling around charges of racism like it's confetti.

The Left has learned to use racism as a club, because it is effective.

{It should probably be noted that there are some people who would shoot this accusation at me, but I almost never accuse individuals of racism or anti-Semitism. I may sometimes point out the anti-Semitism of the Obama administration or the EU or the UN, but beyond Obama himself, I virtually never accuse specific individuals of racism.}

The only thing, in regards this particular question, that can be pinned on Trump is that he suggested a discontinuation of Muslim immigration into the United States until the government can figure out which of these people are simple migrants, avoiding war and poverty, and which are Jihadis desiring to kill Americans, infidels, and Jews.

Given the fact that I happen to be an American, an infidel, and a Jew, I have no particular problem with this proposition.

None of this, however, should be taken to represent advocacy for the Trump campaign.

Until fairly recently, I was a "life-long" Democrat, with a brief stint as a Green shortly before 9/11.

Today I am a pro-Israel, pro-democracy, pro-liberal moderate independent who believes that the American Democratic Party has thrown its central values in the toilet, with the encouragement of Barack Obama.

The Democratic Party and the progressive-left like to claim that they stand for social justice and universal human rights.

If this was ever actually the case, it no longer is.

When the Democratic Party turned its back on the Jewish people, by turning its back to the Jewish State of Israel, I knew that not only was it time to remove myself from their association, but also to conclude that in supporting Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Fatah - and failing to oppose ISIS - that it was no longer supporting democracy, liberalism, women's rights, Gay rights, or anti-racism within the Middle East.

I may not support Donald Trump, but I will definitely oppose the racism and Judeophobia embedded within the Democratic Party and the Left.

When the Left made a home of itself for the BDS movement it pointed Jews who care about the well-being of other Jews toward the door.

I sometimes wonder what happened to the feminist Left that once had the gonads to stand up to the Taliban.