Banana Peel Discovered at Ole Miss

Michael Lumish

The United States, if not the West more generally, has lost its fucking mind.

In an article for a newspaper associated with Ole Miss by Slade Rand and Rachel Ishee we read:

This weekend, leaders from Ole Miss Greek life convened upon Camp Hopewell in Lafayette County for a three-day retreat designed to build leaders and bring campus closer together. The retreat was cut short Saturday night, however, after three black students found a banana peel in a tree in front of one of the camp’s cabins.

The students shared what they found with National Pan-Hellenic Council leaders, sparking a day’s worth of camp-wide conversation surrounding symbolism, intended or not. In the midst of the open and sometimes heated discussion, senior accounting major Ryan Swanson said he put the banana peel in the tree when he could not find a trashcan nearby.

This is what we have come to.

Some student puts a banana peel on a tree somewhere on campus and all hell breaks loose.

It is perfectly fine to put up a tremendous mural of a genocidal Jew murderer - who somehow became an American feminist leader - at a cafe next to a major Oakland transportation hub, but a banana peel in a tree at the University of Mississippi is just too much.

The stupidity seems to go on and on and on with no end in sight.

Alexa Lee Arndt, interim director of Fraternity and Sorority Life, referring to a community discussion of the meaning of the banana peel wrote:

To be clear, many members of our community were hurt, frightened, and upset by what occurred at IMPACT … Because of the underlying reality many students of color endure on a daily basis, the conversation manifested into a larger conversation about race relations today at the University of Mississippi. 

Well, good god, we would not want to slip on that one, now would we?

People are acting as if this is either 1963 and we need marches with Martin Luther King, Jr. or it is 1968 and we need Stokely and Eldridge and the fellahs to put on the black berets and show the cops what's what.

Makala McNeil, president of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, one of the nine historically African-American sororities and fraternities, said she saw the banana peel after leaving a group discussion that addressed race relations.

So, let me get this straight. Ms. McNeil, after leaving a discussion on "race relations" saw a banana peel hanging from a tree?

And this made the local news?

I understand, obviously, about the cultural significance of bananas and monkeys to racist conceptions of black people. What I fail to understand, however, is why something like this should even be an issue in 2017 given how much progress the United States has made in ethnic relations since the bad old days.

In truth, the fact that anyone, anywhere actually gives a shit about the racial significance of a banana peel dangling from a tree at the University of Mississippi should put to bed any notions that Americans are careless on racial inequalities. Actually, Americans are among the most racially neurotic people on the planet.

We are obsessed with "race."

A major part of the reason for the current "race scare" is because following the New Left of the 1960s questions of race, gender, and class were (rightly) interwoven into political analyses throughout the academe. This should be obvious. Indeed, one cannot so easily separate political theories of race, gender, and economic class because each strand pulls on every other.

But, now, largely due to the influence of cultural Marxism and identity politics, the progressive-left seems to actually want the existence of American racism so that they can use it as a political club or as a badge of social purity.

What is worse, however, is that they are racializing young people. That is, they are encouraging college students, if not high school students - if not babies - to see the world through racialized lenses and through the progressive-left hierarchy of victimhood.

I see this as the turning back of fifty years of progress in favor of blood and war.

Given what is going on at this political moment - what with rioting Idiots in Black and the destruction of historical Civil War statuary and the constant cries of racism, Racism, RACISM! - it seems to me that what Dave Rubin calls the "regressive left" actually wants the presence of Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists so that they can have something to fight against.

The American left has had a supply-and-demand problem with racists since the 1970s.

There was plenty of demand for open racists to target but they were in short supply.

Thus they have simply expanded the meaning of "racist" to include pretty much all white people and examples of racism to include a banana peel sitting in a tree.

Well, if the left wants a fight over racism I am certain that they will find enough hell-bent-for-fury right-wing dingbats to give them one.

The Donald Berman Sulam Special Education Centers

Michael Lumish

{I was recently contacted by Baruch at Sulam Israel and asked if a guest post would be welcome. This organization helps disabled children through various educational programs as described below. They are a small non-profit and, I think, very much worthy of our support. - ML}

Empowering Through Education & Therapy

Remember those charity advertisements on TV about how you can adopt a child for only $30 a month? Of course you do. It was a staple of TV commercials throughout the 1990s – 2000s. The message was clear: there were thousands of starving children in the world and by donating a few dollars, you could feed them for an entire month. These organizations even allowed you the opportunity to “adopt” entire families.

These adoption charities took off, likely capturing a large share of the charity market. Just to put some perspective on it: a total of $389 billion USD was donated to charities in 2016…and that’s just in the US alone. Think about how many children they were able to feed!

While this was certainly a noble cause, what did it do to really combat poverty? Not only did poverty not shrink but it has grown at an alarming rate annually. With $389 billion in donations, you would think it would have had some sort of positive effect on the situation. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

Why?

When analyzing any situation, it’s important to understand that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of factors involved. It’s likely that poverty has grown due to a combination of reasons. However, it’s also likely that the primary reason for this “failure” is due to not addressing the root of the problem: education.

If we want to truly combat poverty, we need to look at ending the cycle of poverty once and for all. We can do this by donating to charities whose focus is on education and integrating the impoverished into society. Financial assistance certainly helps, but for the most part it’s only a short-term solution.

Development Programs

In recent years, there have been a number of charity organizations that have popped up, offering development programs to help integrate the people under their care into society. This includes Sulam Israel, whose focus is not only on integration, but also on child development programs for children with disabilities (ASD, Down Syndrome, etc.).

In fact, Sulam Israel has adopted (no pun intended) the “Adopt a Child” program we were accustomed to seeing years ago. However, they have altered this program by using the donations on child’s therapy instead of food or other basic necessities. As such, Sulam sees a successful integration rate of their children into regular schools at a whopping 30% - much higher than the single digit success rate we used to see years ago.

By focusing on the root of the problem and intervening at the earliest age possible, Sulam has been able to effectively fight the problem.

Through these types of organizations, we have the tools and resources to help give children with disabilities the gift of a future, instead of one mired in ruin.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish


This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman speak with Yoni Yagadovsky from Magen David Adom who is in Australia with Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, and then we hear what is happening in Sweden from Ilya Meyer, a blogger and former deputy chair of the West Sweden branch of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association.

The fellahs have an interview with Canadian Diane Bederman who is a book author and blogger for Times of Israel, the Canada Free Press and the excellent Jews Down Under website.

They then speak with David Bedein who has analysed and documented the horrifying comments about Israel in Palestinian textbooks.

4 min Editorial: alt-Right or alt-Left who are the Real threat to Jews today?

9 min Yoni Yagadovsky, Magen David Adom

29 min Ilya Meyer, Sweden

47 min Diane Bederman, Canadian writer

1 hr 14 David Bedein, on the translated Palestinian textbooks

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

Cornell University Professor of Law Jacobson on Rasmea Odeh

This was my contact with woman who wants me in court

Michael Lumish

Dear Reem,

My name is Michael Lumish and I would like to speak with you.

I am the proprietor of Israel Thrives, a regular contributor to Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, as well as various other pro-Jewish / pro-Israel venues such as The Algemeiner, the Times of Israel, the Elder of Ziyon, and elsewhere.

As a Jewish Oaklander, I am intending to write an article concerning your mural of Rasmea Odeh and what it suggests about ethnic relations in the United States.

What I would like to do, if you are willing, is meet for a snack and a cup of coffee at Reem's for a discussion concerning this.

I know that you are a Palestinian woman standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people, just as I am a Jewish man standing up for the rights of the Jewish people.

Will you meet with me for 10 or 15 to discuss it?

Say, sometime in the morning this week or next?

I very much appreciate your consideration and you have my thanks.

Michael Lumish

I am going to court

I have a court appointment in one week on Monday the 28th and my guess is that I should shut the fuck up for the moment.

But, in truth, I have never been very good at taking my own advice.

Possible Restraining Order (Updated)

Reem Assil has filed a request for a restraining order against me.

The initial request was denied but it's going before a judge in about a week, or so.

Update:

Also, you guys should know that her lawyers and others are monitoring this site.

The form that I received reads CH-109, TRO DENIED - HEARING ON ORDER PENDING.

This hearing will be on 8/28/17.

But the vast majority of the paperwork that I received is comprised of blog posts from here... including your comments.

So, the thing of it is, Assil's lawyers are going thru this material.

Good for them.

The coppers got nothin' on me, man.

This is a video shot by a friendly person but it gives people some sense of what this tiny protest was like.



I am the guy who appears at the 3:02 mark crying out that Reem's antisemitic restaurant is "normalizing Jew hatred."

I am not a victim

Michael Lumish

I'm trying to figure out just what irks me about this whole "Jews are not white" thing with the attendant MENA question in the States.

I think that what it is is the suspicion that we're trying to join the victimhood club.

Black people are victims. Women are victims. Muslims are victims. Gay people are victims.

Fuck that.

I have no desire in the least to join the victimhood club.

They don't want us on their team, to begin with, and I would not want to wear that t-shirt anyway.

Let other people go be victims.

Tell me why I am wrong.

American Racism

Michael Lumish

I don't want to get maudlin, but this is a very sad moment.

When I look at the "legacy press" it is practically all racism all the time, now.

What pisses me off more than anything else, tho, is the fact that between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama the United States did a terrific job of moving beyond the kind of toxic racism that gave us Jim Crow and the Klan.

All that was basically dead.

Everyone knew that there were some hard-core white supremacist types still out there. When I was growing up they seemed to have congregated in the Pacific Northwest.

But we were so beyond all of this.

I gotta tell ya, I was damn proud to vote for Barack Obama in 2008.

It seemed to me, and millions of other Americans, that we were finally, seriously, moving beyond the old crusty racism of the past.

And the thing of it is, we were.

The United States, along with West, more generally, is actually the least racist part of the planet but Americans are so insulated and egotistical that they cannot see it.

The question that is foremost in my mind is the degree to which this racism was just there and to what extent was it politically constructed?

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish



This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman start with an interview with former Obama US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro who is visiting Australia as one of the keynote speakers at the JNF gala dinners in Melbourne and Sydney, and then speak live with Daniel Mandel from the Zionist Organisation of America on General McMaster (albeit truncated because the line dropped out unexpectedly).

The fellahs are also joined in the studio by Yosef Drever from Achdut HaLev, an organisation he started to promote aliya to Israel, and then they hear from Dr Martin Sherman on his "humanitarian"option for resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

3 min Editorial: Islam

9 min Dan Shapiro, former US ambassador to Israel (JNF Gala)

29 min Daniel Mandel,[LIVE]  ZOA on General McMaster

47 min Yosef Drever, from Achdut HaLev on aliya to Israel

1 hr 2 Martin Sherman, "humanitarian" solution to conflict

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

Someone who recognizes what the challenge is

Sar Shalom

Fathom Journal has a new interview up with Israeli Brigadier General (res.) Yossi Kupperwasser. Kupperwasser's major theme is that the chief impediment to the peaceful resolution is the Palestinians' insistence on a narrative in which the Jews are not a people and that the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is a fiction. Of particular note is that Kupperwasser responds to the notion that Naftali Bennett's opposition to a Palestinian state shows that he is opposed to any viable peace agreement by noting,

when these people say ‘we don’t want a Palestinian state’ what they are actually saying is: ‘We don’t believe the Palestinians are going to change their narrative. And as long as the Palestinians don’t change their narrative we don’t want a Palestinian state, because it is going to constitute a threat to Israel.’

If there was a change in the Palestinian narrative, ..., Israelis would see this as a wonderful move and be more forthcoming on the issue of peace.

The one flaw in Kupperwasser's understanding of the situation is he sees the momentum behind the Taylor Force Act, which would bar payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as long as the PA maintains on its books the law that pays salaries to those held in Israeli prisons for terrorist acts, as evidence that the United States, both the Administration and Congress, is starting to recognize that peace depends on a new narrative. This is not a criticism of the Taylor Force Act and ending US support for PA payments to terrorists is definitely to be praised, even if it is side effects of causing the PA to collapse. However, imposing consequences for supporting terror is not insistence on a new narrative. To see why, ask whether the Taylor Force Act would impose any consequence on the PA if it stops all payments to prisoners and then sends a resolution to UNESCO declaring that the ground underneath the Knesset is an Islamic heritage site and calling on Israel to give the "Islamic site" due deference.

In order to force the Palestinians to change their narrative, it will be necessary to demand the Palestinians ... change their narrative, and impose consequences if they fail to do so. As I have written previously, the Palestinians could demonstrate that they have a new narrative by making the following three-fold declaration:

• The Jews are a people
• The Jewish people are deeply connected to the Land of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery

If the Palestinians were to make that declaration, any subsequent bringing of resolutions to UNESCO declaring Jewish holy sites as exclusively Muslim would show that the declaration was insincere and thus justify revoking any privileges that were conditioned on making it. Anything short of making the declaration should be regarded as maintaining the narrative and result in treating the PA as a pariah.

A tale of two NY Times stories

Sar Shalom

The New York Times has two stories today that can be summarized in the following manner: [A] says the [B] is engaged in violating fundamental democratic rights of [C] because of [C]'s exercise of free speech.

One of those articles appears on the home page of the Times' website and you can fill it in with [A] = the alt-right, [B] = Google, [C] = James Damore, the Google engineer who was fired for writing a memo attributing low levels of women in leadership positions to lower capabilities of women. The other story appears in the Opinion section and can be filled in with [A] = Sherif Mansour, the author of the op-ed piece, [B] = Israel, [C] = reporters who write negative things about Israel.

I hardly need to explain to this audience about the malfeasance committed by most of the press corp in Israel and the abuse of freedoms granted that led Israel to draw a line which will lead to consequences if crossed. It is all well and good to point out that case, and eagerly wait to read responses to Mansour along those lines. However, a parallel point is that the malfeasance committed by the media in Israel is to critical coverage of Israel as Damore's memo is to raising legitimate questions about affirmative action policies. In turn, Mansour in covering Israel's response to the most egregious demonization of itself as though it were censorship of criticism of any kind, and the Times in giving a platform to every Tom, Dick, and Harry leveling such charges against Israel, are acting like the alt-right in its defense of the likes of James Damore.

Spinning a Terrorist Into a Victim - Part 1: Who Is Rasmieh Odeh

The video clip beneath this one is where Rasmea Odeh's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) associate, Aisha Odeh, admits to the murder of two innocent college students because they dared to be Jews living on the historical homeland of the Jewish people.

The enemies of Israel (and, thus, the Jewish people) claim that Rasmea Odeh is as innocent as... day.

They claim that her confession was yanked from her through torture and rape.

But here is the video evidence of her guilt. Her associate admitted to the murder.

Notice, of course, how blasé and pleased with themselves they are chatting about the murder of Jews.

Aisha said this:

"...and finally there was no choice but to engage in armed activity. We had discussions about it. I turned to involvement in armed activity. We carried out an operation in Western Jerusalem on February 22, 1969... We placed two bombs. One bomb exploded and bomb was discovered a few moments before it exploded. Two were killed and 10 were wounded."

Yes, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner were blown up by people celebrated at Reem's antisemitic restaurant and cafe at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland.

And almost nobody gives a shit.

What Saudi Arabia can contribute to deescalating tensions

Sar Shalom

Jonathan Tobin has an excellent article this week in Israel Hayom on why the moderate Muslim states are more beholden to the radicals on the street than they have influence over them. However, there is one thing that they could do that would counter the narrative that drives the street radicals. That would be to promote the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya regarding Jerusalem.

This should be natural for Saudi Arabia because Ibn Taymiyya is the unassailable authority for Saudi Arabia on everything else. However, politically, the Saudi government might not be able to promote Ibn Taymiyya's views on Jerusalem at this point. However, if individual Saudi clerics were to do so, the government could plausibly deny any role in calling for yielding on Jerusalem. Would it be worth asking those who conduct discreet talks with the Saudis to ask them to green light imams to write about Ibn Taymiyya's views of Jerusalem, using the same language that Ibn Taymiyya used for today's Muslim visitors to Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock?

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish



This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman speak with Emily Gian from the Zionist Federation of Australia and then hear from English-Israeli journalist political commentator and journalist Barry Shaw on the BDS movement.

After that they are joined in the studio by Hugh Kitson, producer of a new documentary called 'Whose Land?' which has its premiere in Melbourne this Sunday night, and then speak with American journalist Hunter Stuart who found his views on Israel changing after he was assigned there.

Isi Leibler is taking a break from work for a while so the fellahs play a very interesting clip on moderate Muslims from Robert Spencer.

6 min Editorial: Violence on Temple Mount

12 min Emily Gian, Zionist Federation of Australia

26 min Barry Shaw, journalist and commentator on BDS

50 min Hugh Kitson, film producer of Whose Land?

1 hr 8 min Hunter Stuart, Christian journalist whose views on Israel changed

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au