Ripon College Traitors

Michael Lumish

Update: I appear to have allowed myself to be deceived. According to the Associated Press, as FOX reports, this is story is not true.

The Associated Press tells us:

Conservative news sites and pundits are falsely accusing Ripon College, a private liberal arts school in Wisconsin, of banning posters that are part of a campus 9/11 memorial display organized by a student political group.

--

The idiocy never fails to amaze.

The Washington Examiner tells us:

Administrators at Ripon College in Wisconsin have ruled that a Sept. 11 memorial cannot take place on campus because it may offend Muslim students.

The private school cited bias reports that were filed during last year’s Sept. 11 memorial project, a project that was a part of Young America's Foundation’s iconic patriotism initiative which takes place across the country on campuses every year.

The school's Bias Protocol Board said the project creates an “environment” where “students from a Muslim background would feel singled out and/or harassed.” As a result, Ripon students will not be allowed to hang flyers as part of their vigil to remember the victims of Sept. 11.

The college is banning a memorial vigil to the victims of 9-11 on the grounds that it might offend Muslims? That is absolutely astonishing to my mind. 3,000 innocent Americans died on that day and these college administrators honestly believe that commemoration of the slaughter is offensive?

I am sorry, but that is a disgrace.

According to the conservative student organization organizing the event:

Each year Young America’s Foundation helps students across the country properly remember the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks through our 9/11: Never Forget Project. This program began in 2003 when we discovered that most college campuses were either completely ignoring the anniversary or holding a politically correct event instead.

I don't know that "Never Forget" is the best slogan for this commemoration, but it's understandable.

I think that it might not be a bad idea to call the office of the president of Ripon College -- who happens to be a political scientist -- to discuss our displeasure with their imbecilic decision and, no, you do not need to be polite about it.

The Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman begin with a studio chat with Marcia Griffin, a non-Jewish businesswoman, local councillor and Israel advocate about her support for Israel.

Isi Leibler joins the guys from Jerusalem with his thoughts on what’s been happening with Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress who has now become an ardent critic of both Israel and PM Netanyahu.

They also catch up in the studio with Stan Goodenough, an Israeli based Christian Zionist who visits Australia regularly, and then hear from Dan Mariaschin, head of the B’nai B’rith in the United States about Gaza and the media war against Israel.

Here is this week's episode of Nothing Left ...

2 min Editorial:  Greens Senator Mehren Faruqi

7 min Marcia Griffin, non-Jewish Israel advocate

31  min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem, on Ronald Lauder from WJC

50 min Stan Goodenough, Israeli based Christian Zionist

1 hr 12     Dan Mariaschin, B’nai B’rith USA

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 Nothing Left at:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

The Democratic Party versus the Jewish People

Michael Lumish

-- Correction: this piece originally referred to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a Californian when she is, in fact, a New Yorker. --

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

aKu - Turning Away

I understand that most American Jews do not want to hear this message, but there is no getting away from certain obvious political truths.

The progressive-left and the Democratic Party believe that the Jewish people of the Middle East, in the form of Israel, are not humane to the Palestinian-Arabs. What this means is that if the Democratic Party gains power in the forthcoming US midterm elections they will turn against Israel in a harsh manner, because they are already in the process of doing so. We can see this very clearly from the upcoming candidates that the Democrats are fielding.

In a recent piece for The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, PhD student at the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University, Doron Feldman, tells us:

Israeli decision-makers must recognize what is happening in American society and politics and prepare strategically for the worst possible outcome. If the Democrats manage to overtake the Republican majority in Congress as a result of the midterm elections, Washington could significantly reduce its military and diplomatic involvement in the Middle East, perhaps even to the point that it ceases to function as a superpower in the region and in the world – a situation that would benefit Russia and China. In the longer term, Israel’s decision-makers must consider and prepare for the possibility that the midterms are a harbinger of the presidential election of 2020.

Although I agree with the overall assessment, I do not agree that a US cut in military assistance to Israel is necessarily bad for Israel or for the Jewish people. US Diplomatic involvement must be emphasized, but Israel has the capacity to take care of its own military needs. In fact, it would presumably improve Israel's economy to transfer all Israeli weapons manufacturing from the United States to Israel, itself. The three billion per year that the United States spends on domestic weapons ear-marked for Israel is a tiny proportion of Israel's overall economy. It does not even equal what PepsiCo just spent in its purchase of SodaStream.

Of more significance, however, is Feldman's focus on what he calls the "leftist-socialist-progressive wing" of the Democratic Party. These are the people who, when they do not directly support antisemitic anti-Zionism, generally think that Arab violence against the Jewish minority in the Middle East is, at least, understandable. That is, they tend to view the tiny national homeland of the Jewish people as a European transplant onto "indigenous" Arab land while entirely forgetting that Arabs are from the Arabian peninsula and the Jewish people -- who are tiny by number in comparison -- hail from Judea, which is also known as Israel.

The Democratic Party, sadly, supports antisemitic anti-Zionism to the extent that it considers Israel a "colonial-settler" imposition onto a native people. Their problem is less anti-Jewish ill-will -- from what I can tell, at least -- than it is historical ignorance of thirteen centuries of Arab and Muslim imperial stomping on Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian faces.

But even in the unlikely event that the Democrats turn a cold shoulder to their anti-Zionists, it is increasingly evident that the Party is no friend to the Jewish people.

Feldman writes:

Several individuals from the leftist-socialist-progressive wing of the Democratic Party are considering running for the presidency in 2020. They include Bernie Sanders, who won 43.1% of the vote in the 2016 Democratic primary, and Elizabeth Warren, who dubiously claims to be of Native American descent. Both these candidates have expressed anti-Israel positions. If they are elected, they can be expected to follow through on those positions, not only in terms of US policy but also at the UN.

On a less lofty level, we see Democratic Party friends of the racist Louis Farrakhan coming to prominence within the party. These include, but are not limited to, and in no particular order, Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, and NY Democratic hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, according to Ha'aretz:

In the midst of her primary campaign, Ocasio-Cortez spoke out strongly against the Israeli army’s actions on the Gaza border on May 14, tweeting, “This is a massacre. I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.” 

The obvious political trend on the American-Left and the Democratic Party vis-à-vis the conflict is increasingly friendly toward the hostile Muslim majority in opposition to the well-being of the Jewish minority in the Middle East. As Feldman points out, even if the moderate Hillary / Biden wing of the Party comes to prominence, the emerging hard-left is forcing them into a crusty, pro-Oslo, intransigent stance on Israel along the line of Obama's Middle East policies.

Progressive-left Democrats think of Israel as a racist, colonialist, settler-state and have little sympathy for it if they even believe it should exist at all. The moderate Democrats merely believe that the Jewish people must be leashed. The "moderates" believe that it is the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, our indigenous homeland -- what they insist upon calling "West Bank" and, thereby, erasing Jewish heritage -- that is the fundamental problem.

What we need to do is stand up for ourselves and insist upon the fact of Jewish indigeneity to the Land of Israel.

At the end of the day, it is our first and final home and if the Jewish people will not stand up for ourselves, nobody else will.

An "Apartheid?" poster

Sar Shalom

What the conflict is about

Sar Shalom

An underlying issue in the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what is the fundamental issue at stake. It is underlying because there is an assumption in the western intelligentsia that there is a parcel of land that two sides want and that the conflict is about how to allocate it. Following this logic, Israel maintains some degree of control over all of the land, at a minimum entry in and out, while the Palestinians do not. Therefore, by this reasoning, Israel's actions of relinquishing control or not show Israel's willingness to compromise, whereas the Palestinians, who have no such control to relinquish, are incapable of actions by which to judge them, and thus can only be judged by their words.

A frequent subject of Israeli hasbara is to emphasize Israel's adherence to the Law of War standards. However, if the Palestinian grievance is only their lack of a state and Israel could obviate the use of force, whether adhering to the Law of War in doing so or not, by just fulfilling that reasonable grievance, we will never gain international sympathy. In order to help Israel's international standing, we must attack the "just want a state" narrative. We need to convince people that the real issue underlying the conflict is that the Zionists abrogated the Pact of Umar (Pact) and that the Palestinian national movement (PNM) will accept nothing less than the removal of all Jews who refuse to abide by the Pact. Note, I am not saying that we need to just say that the issue is Palestinian rejectionism, we need to convince others that that is so, a larger task.

A start in doing so would be to pose the question of what would the PNM do if all they wanted was a state of their own and what would they do if they wanted an end to Jewish self-determination? Proponents of the just want a state doctrine would say that PNM declarations in western languages that they recognize Israel is all that is needed to show that they do not seek an end to Jewish self-determination. However, all that is needed to induce those declarations is a strategic decision to court support from those for whom ending Jewish self-determination is unacceptable. As such, declarations in western languages are compatible with both hypotheses and thus evidence for neither.

On the other hand, as Einat Wilf frequently states, peoples who just want a state, when presented with an opportunity, will say "yes." They will do so no matter how short the offer is of what they want, with the example of the Yishuv accepting the Peel Commission recommendation. As such, the PNM's refusal of the offers made so far contradicts the notion that they "just want a state." However, if the goal of ending Jewish self-determination, then they will not do anything that would undermine western support for eradicating self-determining Jews, without giving them the ability to do so without western support. The presence of any Palestinian state recognized by Israel, unless augmented by a right of return, would create exactly that situation. Lo and behold, they are conforming to that.

On a separate line of evidence, I have written before that our condition for making a deal should be a consistently reinforced declaration that:

• The Jews are a people
• The Jewish people are deeply connected to the land of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular
• There is no place for the Pact of Umar in today's world

The issue is, how would the "just want a state" and "eradicate Jewish self-determination" hypotheses affect the PNM's willingness to do so? If the PNM just wants a state, then anything that would not detract from that would not be an objection. As such, a hypothetical State of Palestine that recognizes that the Jews are a people who are deeply connected to Israel and Jerusalem would be no less a State of Palestine than one that does not. The same goes for renouncing the Pact of Umar. On the other hand, if the goal is eradication of Jewish self-determination, then one concern would be aligning that objective with "justice." In that vein, denying a people of self-determination is an injustice as is denying that people its homeland. As Einat Wilf has noted, this is not a problem if the Jews are only a religion and not a people because then ending Jewish self-determination would deny any people of self-determination. Similarly, insisting that the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is a fiction to justify stealing Jerusalem from the Palestinians is a lie to justify inverting the injustice of denying Jews their homeland into a justice of "restoring" Jerusalem to her "rightful" Palestinian owners. In that light, "just want a state" would not explain the PNM's refusal to make the three-fold declaration, but "eradicate Jewish self-determination" does.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman begin with some comments regarding the disgraceful treatment meted out to Andrew Bolt by some of our communal organisations, and then catch up with Daniel Mandel of the Zionist Organisation of America for the inside information on events over there.

The guys speak with Juliet Moses, a leader of the Jewish community in New Zealand on events that have been happening there recently, and then hear from Toby Greene, a British-Israeli analyst who has co-authored an essay on the difficult relationship between the EU and Israel.

And of course, Isi Leibler joins the fellahs from Jerusalem with his take on the week’s events.

Here is this week's episode of Nothing Left ...

2 min Editorial: Andrew Bolt’s treatment by communal orgs

14 min Daniel Mandel, Zionist Organisation of America

51 min Juliet Moses, in New Zealand

1 hr 9       Toby Greene, BICOM analyst on EU-Israel relations

1 hr 31     Isi Leibler in Jerusalem, on Nation-State bill


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 Nothing Left at:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

On the need for American Jewish parity between Democrats and Republicans

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under, the Elder of Ziyon and The Jewish Press.}

One of the vital questions facing US diaspora Jewry is how to respond to the rise of American-Left antisemitic anti-Zionism.

The prominent faces of that movement include anyone who looks toward Louis Farrakhan as a positive figure in American cultural and political life. These include low hanging fruit like Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and potential California State Assemblyperson, Maria Estrada... not to mention Keith Ellison, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters.

Given how much the Jewish community worked for the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s -- up to and including sacrificing some of their children -- it is a terrible shame that so many of our political enemies come from the very communities that we embraced and sought to empower throughout the twentieth-century

Nonetheless, according to 2018 Pew polling, a mere 27 percent of Democrats sympathize with Israel while 79 percent of Republicans favor the Jewish minority in the Middle East over their Arab aggressors.

This is Alan Dershowitz's worst nightmare.

The guy devoted his life to supporting civil liberties, Israel, and the Democratic Party -- not necessarily in that order -- but now he's fast becoming a relic in the minds of very many Democrats, particularly among the younger snowflakey regressive set who very much dislike his ongoing support for his own people.

American Jews, and our friends, mainly respond in two ways to the rising disdain towards us within the Democratic Party. The prominent inclination is to work within. My response was to bow out. From Jimmy Carter to the first term of Barack Obama, I was a devoted man of the Left and a Democrat. But when I saw, ten years ago, now, that the Democratic Party was making a home of itself for antisemitic anti-Zionism I began to speak up. And, not surprisingly, when I spoke up I was also slapped down.

I have lost real-life friends over the fact that I refuse to stand with a political party or a political movement that supports the racist effort to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the lone, sole Jewish State.

Fred Maroun, who I have discussed before in these pages, is an interesting guy and a good friend to Israel. Like many critics of Arab political tendencies, he is of Lebanese Christian descent. Fred disagrees with me entirely. He argues, not unreasonably, that left-leaning American Jews who care about Israel need to stay and fight within the Democratic Party.

Dershowitz always argued that we should maintain a bi-partisan consensus in support of Israel and who among us would disagree with that? Of course, we want the support of all of our neighbors and friends throughout the country. But the polling data clearly shows, and from a million bits of anecdotal information, we can see that the Democratic Party is abandoning our fellow Jews in the Middle East.

27 percent are in sympathy with them.

27 percent.

That is a very difficult number for me to swallow.

I find it unreasonable and counterproductive for Jewish Americans to support the Democratic Party in figures above the 70th percentile while the Democratic Party supports Jewish well-being in numbers below the 30th percentile. Thus my argument is that we should not allow ourselves to be taken for granted and should make a get-away. Through supporting the cause of Palestinian-Arab nationalism they are throwing the Jewish people to the wolves, so who needs them?

If we can get Jewish participation in the Democratic Party down to something close to parity with the Republican Party than they can no longer take us for granted.

In the meantime, I salute our friends -- Jewish and otherwise -- who are working within the Democratic Party to push against the rising antisemitic anti-Zionist tide flowing over them. I am not opposed to pro-Jewish Jews working for our interests among Democrats.

I simply do not want us taken for granted by people who obviously do not care about what happens to our brothers and sisters in Israel.

Slapping around American workers of European descent is electoral stupidity

Michael Lumish

Candace Owens
Source: Essence Magazine, 4-25-18

I keep trying to explain to my friends on the Left that the more they smack around American workers of European descent the less likely those folks are to vote for their candidates.

And, needless to say, the more they slap around non-Euro-Americans who self-identify as conservative, such as Candace Owens, the less likely those folks are to vote for their candidates.

I like Candace Owens. I think that she is brilliant and beautiful and gutsy as hell. And I do not need to agree with her on every particular aspect of her political philosophy to recognize a Black woman strong enough to stand up against progressive-left racism.

If you want to know how Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, just take a gander into her little "Basket of Deplorables."

Within it you will find the missing votes, including many non-Euro votes.

Now, you might argue that we don't want "the Deplorables," anyway. And what that really means is that you believe yourself morally superior to those heinous pig-farmers who live in "Red States" and "fly-over country."

Many coastal Democrats think of themselves as more sophisticated and compassionate than those horrible people over there, on the wrong side of the tracks, with too many white children, many of whom voted for Donald Trump.

Well, I did not vote for Donald Trump, but the more screechingly high-pitched the American-Left becomes -- as they fling around charges of racism like it's confetti -- the more likely that they will further divide the United States and bring about Trump Term Two.

As always, it is the hypocrisy that kills.

"Progressives" like to think of themselves as anti-racist, but this is false.

The American-Left is up to its neck in three types of racism or bigotry. These are:

1) anti-white racism

2) antisemitic anti-Zionism

and

3) the pitying of "people of color" to such an extent that they feel some sort-of nineteenth-century imperial sense of "white man's burden"... Lloyd.

They have not the slightest idea that they embody racism even as they claim to oppose it.

They have not the slightest idea that they embody racism even as they dump Martin Luther King, Jr.'s admonishment not to judge people according to skin color or other immutable attributes, but according to intelligence and compassion and character.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

Here is this week's episode of Nothing Left ...

3 min  Editorial: the ECAJ and AIJAC attack on AJA

4 min  Lauren Southern clip, in Lakemba

20 min Gideon Rozner, Inst of Public Affairs

51 min Dr Tanveer Ahmed, Muslim psychiatrist

1 hr 9  Raphael Ahren, Times of Israel

1 hr 30 Isi Leibler in Jerusalem, on Nation-State bill


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 Nothing Left at:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

The Great Halvah Epiphany

Michael Lumish

This is Halvah

When I was a little boy growing up in Kingston, New York, and Trumbull, Connecticut, halvah was a mystery.

I did not understand the stuff. I did not like it. It made no sense to me. And I could not even begin to fathom my father's joy in this weird sticky semi-sweet sesame concoction whatever-it-is.

But he grew up in Brooklyn, back when there were still actual Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn beyond Crown Heights.

My mom, Rita, was from the Bronx.

They both grew up with halvah.

I was raised in the shadow of New York City in the 1970s and my father not only worked in the Empire State Building -- crunching numbers in the textile industry -- but actually came through Ellis Island in the arms of my grandmother, Sarah, in the 1920s. This was before they dragged him to Kwajalein and Anawetok and the Marshall Islands as a skinny corporal with a rifle over his shoulder. And every time that my father brought halvah home, and actually enjoyed it, I was mystified. But now I may understand why.

I was eating halvah wrong and, perhaps, if you hate the stuff, you are, too. It is an acquired taste because sesame candy is unusual to the Western palate, but what many of us fail to understand is that you should not eat halvah like its a Hershey bar. See, that is the thing. This is not like American candy. Good halvah is crystalline. It is not like a friggin' Mars bar or a Snickers.

It is very sweet and very rich and very delicious. But it requires nibbles, not chomps.

A Facebook friend of mine, Rachel Adler, gave me her husband David Hamby's recipe and it is delicious.

The only thing that I would change is the addition of pistachios and a little stirred honey.

 David's Halvah

One 12 ounce jar tahini.

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup water

lemon zest

Scraped contents of one vanilla bean or some pure vanilla extract.

Put sugar and water into a saucepan. Stir until it reaches 250. If you don't have a thermometer then let boil and wait 2 full minutes.

It must get hot enough or it won't work.

In the meantime have ready another bowl with tahini and vanilla and lemon. Mix it with mixer. When syrup in saucepan is ready, drizzle syrup from saucepan directly into bowl with mixer on low to medium.

This is key: do it little by little, but within 30 seconds or it will start to set. Use a spatula to put into 9 by 9 or rectangular glass baking pan that is very lightly buttered (just a very light film and you can use pam but wipe some off ).

Let set for 3 to 4 hours. You can put in fridge to make faster.

There was a time that I cooked for a living. I wore the toque and the checked pants and reduced veal stock to demi-glace in preparation for the sauté station in the evenings at the old Black Goose Grill in Darien, Connecticut.

But halvah definitely never came onto the menu.

It is a shame because it is really just crystalline sesame and honey.

I also added chopped pistachios because the flavor profiles work and I like a bit of crunch and it is traditional.

For me, personally, it is a nibble from the past and it reminds me of my dad.

What Comes After Trump

Doodad

Israel hating, Sharia loving Socialists.....and all that entails.

Be very afraid.