The Hatred for Sarah Tuttle-Singer

Michael Lumish

I like Sarah Tuttle-Singer, social media editor of the Times of Israel.

She is a Jewish California mom and Israeli living with her young kids in Jerusalem and writing and editing for that prominent venue. Her 2018 book is Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered: One Woman’s Year in the Heart of the Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters of Old Jerusalem.

This is a young mother and writer under considerable heat for being too sympathetic to the Palestinian-Arabs in their efforts to snuff-out Jewish self-determination and self-defense on our historical homeland.

She has also been heavily accused of getting popular pro-Jewish / pro-Israel native American Métis writer and activist, Ryan Bellerose, fired from his position as an advocacy coordinator for B’nai Brith Canada. He was apparently too confrontational toward her on social media and too hostile toward the enemies of the Jewish people.

I referenced this tension in a recent piece entitled, The “Palestinian Narrative” and Sarah Tuttle-Singer.

The reason that I, nonetheless, like "STS" -- it is not everyone, by the way, that earns an acronym -- is because she stands at the crossroads between pro-Israel advocacy and pro-Palestinian advocacy and that makes her interesting "grist for the mill." This is particularly true given the fact of the fluid nature of contemporary social media in which everyone has a potential voice.

This does not mean that I agree with her overly-broad sympathies for the Palestinian-Arab enemies of the Jewish people. And it certainly does not mean that I take her side over that of Ryan Bellerose. It simply means that I recognize that she walks a tight line between those who wish to slaughter the Jewish people of Israel and the Israeli Jews who refuse to compromise on the matter.

It takes considerable guts to take that position while smiling for the camera.

The Fundamental Criticisms of Tuttle-Singer

Tuttle-Singer has become sufficiently controversial within the pro-Jewish / pro-Israel community that the malice towards her has spawned a mocking Facebook page called Sour Turtle Stinger.  It describes itself as a "Place for sharing dank memes, stories and roasting of certain rare creature." The notion of "rare creature," in this case, suggests prima donna, but I cannot fairly speak to what was in the writer's head.

The primary reason that they tend to despise Tuttle-Singer is out of a sense that she gives far too much credence to the "Palestinian Narrative" and not nearly so much credence to the Jewish experience in that part of the world under thirteen centuries of Arab-Muslim imperial rule. She also generally gives equal moral justification to Palestinian-Arab hostility toward Jews as to Jewish measures of self-defense. Her writings suggest a moral equivalency between Jewish defenders and Arab aggressors. I would not put her on the same low level of, say, Gideon Levy or Amira Hass of Ha'aretz

However, she does not emphasize that the Jewish people in her part of the world live under siege, despite the fact that she lives in Jerusalem with her own children. She acknowledges it but is more concerned with Jewish wrong-doing than the never-ending Arab assault on the Jewish people.

 I covered a bit of this in my previous piece wherein I suggested to Tuttle-Singer:

History as a field of knowledge resides at the crux of the Humanities and the Social Sciences and is, thus by necessity, interpretive.

This is why there is always a significant element of subjectivity within even the most scrupulously professional historical narratives. Nonetheless, for a narrative to be a historical narrative it must be grounded in something that closely resembles the truth of the past.

We do not simply get to make up our own “narratives” as the Palestinian-Arab leadership has done, and then insist that ahistorical nonsense be taken seriously.

Nonetheless, Tuttle-Singer seems to be among those political writers who believe that the "Palestinian Narrative" of Never-Ending Victimhood needs to be given equal consideration to actual Jewish history in consideration of the conflict.

She also believes that the Jews of the Middle East are "Occupying," with "the Big O," the very land of Jewish heritage and tends to be sympathetic toward Arab-Muslim push-back against Jewish self-determination and self-defense. She thus often harps on what she sees as Jewish opression toward others, while generally giving the Arabs a pass. Much of this was previously discussed in a thoughtful January 7, 2018, piece by Paula Stern entitled, The Truth According to Sarah Tuttle-Singer.

But, again, I like Sarah Tuttle-Singer. I have a great deal of sympathy for any public figure who must face malice and hatred in the cause of dearly held beliefs.

Speaking for myself, I can only aspire to earn such hatred.

A Lebanese Canadian Friend of the Jewish People

Michael Lumish

Fred Maroun argues:

Fred Maroun, a Lebanese friend of
the Jewish people living in Canada

"It is often said that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. Personally, I don't recall ever saying it. There are several reasons for that:

- Israel is so much superior morally to its enemies that the claim is almost pointless.

- Israel shouldn't need to have the most moral army in the world. Implying that such a high standard is placed on Israel is itself immoral.

- Israel faces threats greater than practically any other country. It shouldn't be tied down to a moral standard the no one else, even countries with practically no threats against them, has to uphold.

- The moral standard that we should be talking about is the moral standard of Israel's enemies. It is abysmal. That's the moral standard that requires raising.

- Supporting Israel should never depend on that claim being true, and I don't expect Israel to uphold such an extremely high standard. Because if Israel fails as a result of trying to uphold that standard, the overall moral standard in the Middle East will suffer enormously as a result.

- Using the phrase, “most moral army” is a terrible debating tactic. Once said, it has to be proven, which it can’t. It’s a way to turn a feature into a flaw. (Thanks Dave Levin)

- Expecting Jews to uphold a far higher moral standard than non-Jews, especially compared to those who are trying to kill them, is immoral and antisemitic."

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Doodad

  So long Jews and thanks for all that help with Civil Rights.

RIP Penny Marshall

A Wider Bridge

Michael Lumish

This was sent to me as an email, but it seems worthwhile.

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Dear Friends,

With my background, I imagine I am not the type of person that leaps immediately to mind when thinking of the stereotypical Zionist or A Wider Bridge Board member. 

I am a secular Christian who grew up in a small desert town nestled between the oil fields of West Texas. I am a Gulf War veteran of the United States Navy Submarine Service, and after my 10 years in the Navy, I went to law school and ended up making a living as a corporate bankruptcy lawyer in Miami, Florida.But I am also a gay man. And that identity as a gay man, growing up in environments where my identity could (and often did) lead to my being ostracized or attacked for being gay, gave me a unique insight into the nature of bigotry and hatred and an understanding of how it feels to be on the receiving end of such hatred.

While I fight against all forms of bigotry and hatred, I recognize that the most ancient and persistent hatred humanity cannot seem to shake is anti-semitism. While anti-semitism has typically been associated with the far right, the sad reality is that theincidences of anti-semitism on the left have been increasing. Whether it's incidents such as the barricading of Israeli LGBTQ activists at the Creating Change conference by pro-Palestinian activists, or the forcible removal of a Zionist Lesbian from the Chicago Dyke March, or even the embrace of Louis Farrakhan by leaders of the Women's March, anti-semitism is not only a problem on the left, but it worsens with each passing year. There are many organizations dedicated to fighting anti-semitism as it reveals itself on the far right, but few know how to address this hatred when it comes from the far left. A Wider Bridge is such an organization and in my opinion unique in its ability to effectively counter anti-semitism in the LGBTQ advocacy and civil rights communities.

As an officer and director of A Wider Bridge, it has been my privilege and honor to support this organization's primary mission to advocate for equality in Israel, and equality for Israel. For example, A Wider Bridge brings North American LGBTQ leaders to Israel to learn what it is like to be Israeli, Palestinian or an LGBTQ person fighting for their rights. Conversely, A Wider Bridge brings LGBTQ leaders from Israel to North America to share their experiences and activism with progressive LGBTQ advocates here. When organizations or governments around the world harm LGBTQ rights, or take anti-Semitic positions or actions, A Wider Bridge is there to mobilize and galvanize opposition. A Wider Bridge regularly exposes and condemns anti-semitism, whether it occurs on the right or the left. 

We can only meet the very real challenges facing our communities with your support. I hope you’ll make an end of year gift to A Wider Bridge by visiting AWiderBridge.org/donate.

Thank you for building bridges with us,

-James Moon

Board Member and Secretary of Wider Bridge

Not Been Around

Michael Lumish

This is just a quick note to my friends and readership.

I have not been around for a while and this is due to a number of reasons.

One is because Barack Obama is no longer in office and his policies toward Israel -- whatever his personal feelings about Jews -- were clearly racist toward us. He honestly believed that he had every right to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live on the very land of our ancestry.

I must have written that line a hundred times, here, there, and elsewhere, trying to drive it into people's heads.

I was not only astonished that he believed this, as a matter of human rights, no less, but that so few of our brothers and sisters objected.

Of course, I was also astonished that the 400,000 Jewish people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area honestly did not mind that Reem's Bakery / Cafe at the Fruitvale BART Station venerates a genocidal Jew murderer in the form of Rasmea Odeh.

But one thing that seems very clear is that the Jews of Israel remain under attack and that we are now seeing a new intifada.

The shooting of that pregnant woman and the killing of her child was profound and needs to be seriously addressed.

It seems obvious that the only way to teach the Palestinian-Arabs to forego the Traditional Jew Killing Policy is through teaching them the fear of God.

Were it up to me I would institute the death penalty in Israel for terrorist attacks and relocate the immediate families of the murderers to Antarctica.

A note from an old friend

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under.}

I have a buddy from high school who was always a bit of an intellectual rebel. He is of Irish descent and I am, of course, of Jewish descent. 

We were not trying to burn anything down or bully other people. We were not Antifa-like "fascist anti-fascists" beating the holy shit out of people wearing red baseball caps in the streets of Berkeley. We were just trying to figure out the social aspects of the world that we lived in at the end of the 1970s and the dawn of the Reagan era.

This was actually a moment in American cultural history wherein youthful radicalism was cooling off because racism and sexism were widely abhorred and because the Vietnam War was over and there was no draft. American college students liked Reagan and thought that Springsteen's Born in the USA was a tribute, rather than a criticism.

He is a creative guy and we discussed Vonnegut and Tolkien and Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson and Brautigan and Salinger and Charles Bukowski. We sat around on living room floors with books of art and wondered at what we were looking at.

We smoked a bit of pot and discussed the world around us. We were not particularly hostile to the government, but we were critical because we were born in the 1960s and raised during the Vietnam War. We grew up during Watergate and the rise of the New Left. And it is definitely fair to say that we had some contempt for mid-late twentieth-century Wonderbread Connecticutian suburban normality.

{I will never forget being absolutely mystified at something called the "color guard" at Trumbull High School.}

A few years out of Trumbull High my buddy and I actually embarked upon a Thompsonesque road trip across the United States on a journey to discover San Francisco. We even had the temerity to drive through Kansas... or perhaps it was Nebraska! It was there that the Grimace menaced my buddy after we had spent the entire night driving through the midwest before pulling into a grand-opening of a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere, practically at dawn. We were exhausted!

In any case, we have not, until recently, been in touch but when we were close friends Israel was not heavy on my mind. We were very young. We talked about art and literature and, in the manner of youthful smartasses, the stupidity of our parents and our teachers.

As we have recently been in contact, and he has taken note of my interest in the Movement for Jewish Freedom, he writes on my Facebook page:

I prefer to think I am practical and a realist, perhaps a jaded one.

The unfortunate reality is that too many people are looking at those in Gaza and the West Bank as Palestinians.

It is likely impossible that all those people can be convinced they are not a legitimate ethnic group.

So, I am saying is you can speak the Truth but while you are presenting your case people are switching you off and paying attention to the PR being advanced in the MSM.

Call these people whatever you want, what progressives are being sold is these are people who need to live somewhere and Israel is oppressing them.

They see them as oppressed maybe even innocent or righteous!

They do not recognize the poison within their culture and the genocide in the hearts of their leaders.

Their opinions are based on ignorance and emotional manipulation.

What I am trying to figure out is how do you change this narrative.

Most of the people in these polls are not studying history, issues, etc. The question then becomes what is driving the anti-Israel sentiment-especially in the last couple of years. I doubt the sentiment is driven intellectually but is being driven more by marketing if you will.

I like this comment very much because it is fair and not coming from a Jewish pro-Israel ideologue.

What I want to address, however, is this line concerning presumably the western-left and their feelings about Arabs who live in Israel:

They see them as oppressed maybe even innocent or righteous! 

Precisely.

The western-left views Arabs as the innocent, indigenous victims of Jewish-Euro-White "settler-colonialism." It is for this reason that the European Union and the Democratic Party, not to mention the United Nations, literally fund the murder of Jews in the homeland of our forefathers and honestly believe that they are doing so from a moral standpoint. Academic anti-Zionists have been making the same false claim from Edward Said to Rabab Abdulhadi and Hatem Bazian.

This is one of the biggest problems that the Jewish people need to overcome. Diaspora Jews are overwhelmingly "progressive" -- whatever that means, exactly -- but the progressive-left is increasingly an enemy to the Jewish people through supporting hostility to the lone, sole Jewish state.

The general trend -- since Trump had the cajones to throw his hat into the political ring -- is to draw an equivalency between "alt-right" antisemitism and progressive-left antisemitic anti-Zionism. As a liberal, I very well understand this inclination to be fair-minded and suggest that the problem lies with the fringes on both sides.

This popular analysis is false.

The greatest enemy to the Jewish people -- despite Pittsburgh -- is unquestionably the western-left because it is the western-left that supports the European Union and the Democratic Party and both, sadly, tend to support the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Cranky hard-right White Supremacist antisemitism has virtually no political support in the United States. There are no openly White Supremacist Senators or Congresspeople.

There is, unfortunately, a mainstream "progressive" contingent that is openly anti-Israel and antisemitic and we all know it.

On public hangings

Sar Shalom

During the runoff campaign for the special US Senate election in Mississippi, many Americans were shocked when the Republican candidate, Cindy Hyde-Smith, said that if asked to attend a public hanging, she would take a front row seat. What I would like to know is, why is there any less of a reaction to this.

Claims of "non-violence"

Sar Shalom

BDS-holes invariably sell their agenda as being a "non-violent" attempt to persuade Israel to uphold "international law." While it is true that implementing boycotts is not a violent act, that does not mean that doing so is peaceful. There is an act in federal law that makes this point. The current issue of Foreign Affairs, has a group of essays about the role of nuclear weapons, one of which deals with the potential for nuclear conflict with China. One potential flashpoint in Taiwan, for which American policy is governed by the Taiwan Relations Act which states in part:

[The United States will] consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific are and of grave concern to the United States.

This does not provide anything about the validity, or lack thereof, of why "justice" requires boycotting Israel. However, it does firmly place boycotts in the category of "other than peaceful means" and "threat to peace and security."

I despise illegal immigration.

Michael Lumish

My father's side, from the Ukraine, sought legal access into the US during the 1920s, following the pogroms, and were denied.

My grandfather, Beryl, and his wife, Sarah, along with my father, Harry -- who was a baby -- went to Argentina where Beryl died. Shortly thereafter the paperwork came through from the US and Sarah and Harry made their way through Ellis Island.

They had nothing, but they did it legally.

She actually scrubbed floors at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, where my father was housed, for a period of time until they got on their feet.

He spent one year studying accounting at St. John's College before he got drafted and sent off to the central Pacific during World War II.

Kwajalein, the Marshall Islands, and Anaweitok.

He was a 135 pound corporal with a rifle slung over his shoulder who slept in a foxhole and endured sniper fire.

When the war ended he returned to Brooklyn, met my mom, finished his education, became an accountant and raised a family.

How to explain JStreet to a liberal

Sar Shalom

At every opportunity, JStreet describes itself a "pro-Israel, pro-peace," as though saying the words "pro-Israel" was a get out of defaming Israel free card. Unfortunately, many liberals accept JStreet's self-proclaimed description of being "pro-Israel," thus including JStreet's prescriptions within the legitimate realm of discussion of Israel's options. Aside from the standard approach of pointing out that JStreet virtually never defends Israel against clear libels, I would like to suggest a parallel approach directed specifically at liberals.

During the runup to the recent midterm elections, Republicans began to realize the salience of health care to the electorate and responded by describing their health care priorities as preserving protections for those with pre-existing conditions. No matter what is presented about Republican lawsuits to overturn those protections that exist currently under the ACA or description of the costs that their proposals would impose on those with pre-existing conditions, their response is always that they will protect policy-holders with pre-existing conditions. If one accepts the logic that JStreet's description of themselves as pro-Israel removes any doubt as to their being pro-Israel, then one must also accept the Republicans' claims to be acting in defense of protections for pre-existing conditions removes any doubt as to their dedication to those protections. Are liberals prepared to accept that conclusion?

I cannot seem to get enough of this one

Michael Lumish

She is so beautiful and the song just speaks to my heart.

Consider it an open thread.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman chat live with USA blogger Michael Lumish on the west coast of America about the recent mid-term election, and then hear an interview recorded by AJA president David Adler with Senator Pauline Hanson who says all the right things about Israel and Jewish community.

Simon Plosker from Honest Reporting brings us up to date with their attention on the New Zealand media, and Isi Leibler in Jerusalem also gives us his views on the mid-term election.

2 min Editorial:  Bourke St terror attack

11 min Michael Lumish, American blogger on mid-term election

32  min David Adler (AJA) interviewing Sen Pauline Hanson

52 min Simon Plosker, Honest Reporting

1 hr 27     Isi Leibler in Jerusalem

Responding to Einat Wilf

Sar Shalom

A common refrain from Einat Wilf, covered in several outlets, is that peace requires not constructive ambiguity, but constructive clarity. Specifically, Wilf calls for the West to state forthrightly that it will not tolerate calls for the "right of return" and the Israel must realize that the settlements cannot stay forever. This formulation has one good part, one problematic part, and an attendant part that makes an important point but needs development.

First the good part. Wilf recognizes that the so called right of return, which she refers to as "so called," is fundamentally incompatible with a peaceful settlement and calls out the western intelligentsia who coddle the PNM's insistence on it under the delusion that they will eventually back off. The reality is that the effect, even though I'm not aware of Wilf stating it explicitly anywhere, of implementing the "right of return" is that "two-states" would become an Arab state and a binational state, leaving no Jewish state.

The problematic part is how Wilf characterizes the settlements. Wilf draws a moral equivalence between the "right of return"and the settlements by describing the push for "right of return" as angling for Palestinian rights on every square inch and the settlements as angling for Israeli rights on every square inch. However, that comparison does not hold up. While one could find elements within the settler movement who would push to extend Israeli rights to "every square inch," not every settlement in and of itself does so. Even if every existing settlement were retained, including the corridors that connect them to each other and as a whole to west of the Green Line, the result would not be no State of Palestine, but a smaller State of Palestine. It is entirely reasonable that the eventual State of Palestine should be larger as opposed to smaller. However, it is not reasonable to describe the debate about the size of the eventual State of Palestine as one of whether or not there should one day be a State of Palestine.

That is the difference between allowing the settlements, or some subset of them, to remain permanently and implementing the "right of return." Whereas the settlements are a quantitative issue of how much territory any future State of Palestine may control, the "right of return" is a qualitative issue of whether Israel will remain a Jewish state or become a binational state, a euphemism for disappearing by demographic inversion.

Ancillary to the paired issue of "right of return" and the settlements, Wilf responds to the assertion that Arafat's signing of the Oslo Accords shows that the PNM is no longer interesting in Israel's destruction and that it is so obvious that such a belief is a fantasy that they must realize it is a fantasy even if they had such an interest. Wilf forthrightly says that this is not the case and compares it to the Muslim world's playing the long game during the time of the Crusades. However, Wilf, aside from citing the precedent of the Crusades which is important in its own right, doesn't fully develop a reason why one should believe that the PNM is seeking a Saladin moment. Wilf does cite the PNM's denial of the Jews' peoplehood and of the Jewish people's connection to the Land of Israel, both widely disseminated in Palestinian society. She further describes how these myths are critical to arguing that justice would not be offended by eliminating Israel. However, there is more that could show that the recognition of Israel at Oslo was a bald faced lie.

The response to the claim that Arafat's statements when signing the Oslo Accords demonstrate that the PNM has abandoned its ambition to eradicate Israel is that drawing that inference is a logical fallacy. The fallacy is that while the PNM abandoning its ambition to eradicate Israel would lead it to recognize Israel as Arafat did in Oslo, abandoning that ambition is the only possible impetus for doing so. Another impetus that would have a similar result is realizing that they will never have the ability to eradicate Israel without western and fifth-column help and that such forces would never openly support that objective. Therefore, they strategically decided to pay lip service to recognizing Israel and restricted their west-spoken ambitions to "reasonable" demands that the west would support, but which would put them in a position from which they could eradicate Israel on their own.

With no further information, Occam's razor would dictate accepting that the PNM no longer seeks Israel's destruction, possibly even deeming the alternative hypothesis a conspiracy theory. However, there is further information. For starters, on the night after signing the Oslo Accords, Arafat broadcast a message to the Palestinian people that doing so was part of the Phased Plan for Israel's destruction. Furthermore, for Arab and Muslim audiences, Arafat never described the Accords as a needed compromise to balance the legitimate aspirations of two different peoples, but as following in the tradition of the Treaty of Hudaibiya. This further information is part of what we should observe if the alternative hypothesis were true that should be unexpected if the recognition at Oslo was genuine.

As to the PNM's belief in the feasibility of eradicating Israel, the "right of return" would achieve it and Fatah seems to be working towards that end. However, they are stuck in that the west so far will not directly accede to that demand. What the west will do is continue to demand that a Palestinian state come to fruition, with the urgency of such statehood becoming greater the more the Palestinian people "suffer," while Fatah refuses any statehood offer that excludes the "right of return," hence the refusal of Olmert's offer. Fatah thinks that diplomatic pressure from official western channels, augmented with the civil forces of the BDS movement will eventually force Israel to capitulate.

A conclusive demonstration that this strategy will not succeed, such as a declaration that all support for the Palestinians will terminate until the call for the "right of return" is abandoned, may induce Fatah to give up on eradicating Israel or it may have no effect other than to induce Fatah to seek a new strategy to eradicate Israel. However, as long as the west continues to play its part in this strategy, Fatah will believe it is viable and continue to pursue it. The ball is in the west's court.

I will be speaking to the guys at Nothing Left on Melbourne's J-AIR today

I am going on the radio today at around 2:15 Pacific Standard Time to talk with Michael Burd and Alan Freedman of mighty J-AIR out of Melbourne, Australia.

Their show is called Nothing Left and I keep telling them, "Well, guys, I actually come out of the western "progressive" left.

At this point, they do not really believe it and hardly does anyone else!

This is because I constantly criticize the American-Left for its creating a home for antisemitic anti-Zionism and for its remarkably racist hypocrisy.

{This makes cocktail parties in San Francisco nothing but fun, by the way!}

They will ask me about the American mid-term elections and the rise of the antisemitic Left.

I guess that we will talk a bit about my friends Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), Ilan Omar (Minnesota), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from my families old stomping-grounds in the Bronx and Queens.

Hopefully we will also get to the larger issues, beyond these specific individuals, including Linda Sarsour and everyone's favorite racist, out of the Nation of Islam, Louis X (Farrakhan).

I think that these national political individuals should be placed within the context of the rise of "democratic socialism" and Bernie Sanders and, most importantly, intersectionality theory.

https://j-air.com.au/nothing-left/

Pittsburgh

We are all coming off of Pittsburgh. That was the worst massacre of Jewish people in American history and, apparently, it came from a right-wing maniac.

The distinction that I would make between the American Right and the American Left is that today the Left has institutionalized antisemitic anti-Zionism, while the Right, from a historical viewpoint, formally disavowed it in the pages of William Buckley's National Review decades ago.

The hardest problems that Jewish people, both diaspora and Israeli, receive does not come from the western-right. It comes from the western-left which believes Jewish Israelis are not decent and humane to the much larger Arab and Muslim population in their region.

They honestly tend to believe that Jews in the Middle East are oppressive to "Palestinian" Arabs despite the very obvious fact that Israeli Arabs have greater civil rights in Israel than do Arabs anywhere else in the conquered Arab Middle East.

What never fails to amaze me is the ignorance and malice of well-meaning people of European descent who think of themselves as "liberals" when they are not even close to being liberal. Most of them do not have the slightest clue what the word "liberal" even means.

And, yet, they still spit in our face and call us racist and fascist.

Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre Aftermath

Mr. Cohen

Even after the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre, Jews are still not granted Victim Status according to the rules of Political Correctness.

I strongly suspect that Jews will NEVER be granted Victim Status according to the rules of Political Correctness, regardless of how much they suffer.

According to the rules of Political Correctness, Black Lives Matter, but Jewish lives do not matter, and I strongly suspect that they never will matter.

 Muslims and African Americans have both been granted Victim Status by the Leftist Political Correctness people, even though both of those groups include high percentages of people who hate Jews.

 A related problem, which has become so completely normalized that most people do not even consider it to be a problem, is that Muslims and African Americans both get a free pass for their anti-Jewish-hatred, and not just a regular free pass, but an unlimited free pass. Louis Farrakhan and his Nation Of Islam organization have used that unlimited free pass to constantly propagandize against Jews, which has resulted in many millions of people believing that Jews are [or were] responsible for slavery, which is false.

 Since the year 2000, thousands of Jews have fled from Europe, because of rapidly increasing anti-Semitism, including beatings and even killings. Thousands more Jews are seriously considering fleeing Europe, for the same reasons. This might not sound like a large number of people, but when you consider how few Jews live in Europe, it is a significant percentage of Jews.

Even with thousands of Jews fleeing from Europe, because of anti-Jewish violence, the so-called Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) still have not granted Victim Status to Jews.

Even with Europeans Jews under attack from both European right-wing Nationalists and Muslim immigrants, the Social Justice Warriors and Leftists consider Jews to be unworthy of Victim Status.

In the 1990s, a Moroccan Jew told me that fled from France because he could not cope with the anti-Semitism there at that time, which was much-less-severe than the anti-Semitism that exists there now. That Moroccan Jew was one of the biggest and strongest Jews I ever met, and he was also a Black Belt – yet even he was unable to cope with the anti-Semitism in France in the 1990s, which has become much worse since then.

If the Political Correctness people and Social Justice Warriors really believed in Social Justice, then they would grant Victim Status to Jews, because Jews are the most-persecuted people in World History. To deny that Jews are worthy of Victim Status indicates that the Political Correctness people and SJWs have a problem with Jews.

Democrats and Jews (Part 2)

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under.}

Candace Owens

In my recent piece, Democrats and Jews, I asked the following question:

Why is it that of all the minority constituencies of the Democratic Party only the Jewish minority is thought to be morally obligated to sacrifice the well-being of their own children in deference to that party and in deference to progressive-left ideology?

Among the email responses that I received one, in particular, caught my attention.

It essentially said:

Lumish, what the hell are you talking about? What about the American Black population? What about the unrequited sacrifices that Black Americans have made for the Democratic Party? Black people got screwed.

It is not particularly difficult for me to speak to the toxic issues between the western-left and its Jewish constituency. I grew up with it. I know it in my bones. I was a Democrat for 25 years. I understand how and why American Jews fought so hard for the Democratic Party throughout the twentieth-century. It could not be more obvious. But this also means that I am aware of the racist Democratic Party flaws that have become poisonous fissures eroding Jewish trust.

It is, however, much more difficult for me to say anything concerning the Black American experience with the Party. Polling shows that Donald Trump -- much to everyone's astonishment -- has increased his favorability rating among Black Americans. If this is true it is a terrible blow to the Hillary Clinton Basket-of-Deplorables wing of the Democratic Party.

It is a blow to those who stand up with great moral indignation against "white" people -- particularly those of the male variety -- and "Zionists."

It seems fairly obvious that part of the reason that Trump beat Hillary was due to her insistence on divisive and poisonous "identity politics." This never-ending screaming against "white" people -- whoever they are supposed to be, exactly -- as exemplified by MTV's racist 2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys -- is corrosive to the Democratic Party.

{I like to highlight this kind of thing because I suspect it drove many young "white guys" directly into the arms of Donald Trump and may very well do so again, shortly.}

This "progressive" inclination inevitably pitted Hillary Clinton against American workers of European descent. Hillary's failure in the previous presidential election to castigate "white" men thus opened a space for Black conservatives such as Kanye West and Candace Owens who oppose "intersectionality" theory and, therefore, favor a Martin Luther King, Jr. approach to American ethnic relations.

Owens is interesting because she is a young, beautiful, balls-to-the-wall, Black American Trump supporter.

You do not come across such people every day.

Wikipedia tells us:

Candace Owens (born April 29, 1989) is an American conservative commentator and political activist. She is known for her pro-Trump stance and her criticism of Black Lives Matter and of the Democratic Party. She is the Director of Communications at the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA.

She is, to my mind, almost as interesting as Ryan Bellerose.

Bellerose, as I am sure many of you know, is a Métis American-football-playing, indigenous rights activist and pro-Jewish activist from northern Manitoba who will teach you the laws of physics in a New York Minute if you cross certain lines... God bless the guy. Owens is a tough, young, smart, Black woman who resents Democratic Party political dominance over her people because she does not see where the Party has done her people any good.

I know how she feels.

So, the question that my interrogator asked was how can I believe that the Jews are the only ethnic minority thought to be morally obligated to sacrifice the well-being of their own children in deference to the ideology or the Party?

Owens is the sort-of young, hip, analyst that equates Democratic Party dominance over Black people to a "plantation."  I would never go so far, but it is not up to me to say.

Owens came up quickly and I think that it is fair to suggest that she is among the Black leadership who are walking away.

I first became aware of her through Dave Rubin.

The Rubin Report provides a venue for the New Center and liberals such as Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris.

So, are the Democrats only stomping on the heads of Jews?

Perhaps not.

The Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman hear from Jonathan Neumann, a journalist and commentator speaking about Israel’s nation-state law and other topics.

Isi Leibler then discusses a conference organised by Jewish Federations of North America where the key item for discussion was criticism of Israel.

Daniel Mandel from the Zionist Organisation of America discusses the relationship between Israel and Jordan as well as bringing us up to date on events in Pittsburgh, and Matthew M Hausman revisits the Jerusalem embassy issue and also branches into some general issues.

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

2 min Editorial:  “We were once refugees”

8 min Jonathan Neumann, journalist and commentator

33  min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem [day prior to Pittsburgh Tragedy]

50 min Daniel Mandel, Zionist Organisation of America Live

1 hr 15 Matthew M Hausman, American attorney and commentator [prior to Pittsburgh Tragedy]

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

Democrats and Jews

Michael Lumish

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

The Democratic Party is sabotaging its Jewish constituency and, thereby, in some measure, punching itself in the face.

It has put American Jews -- who are traditionally among the most loyal Democrats  -- into the position of having to choose between a political party and our own families... our own people.

In 2008, I was part of the 80 percent of the American Jewish population who voted for Barack Obama. In 2012, I was not part of the 70 percent who did so. The main reason that I refused to vote for Obama in his second run for office was because I deeply resented his insistence that he had every right to tell Jews where we may, or may not, be allowed to live on our own ancestral homeland.

Despite the fact that President Trump is more supportive toward Israel than any president since Harry Truman, recent polling data shows that only 6 percent of American Jews are likely to vote for him for the 2020 presidency. This is despite the fact that Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It is despite the fact that he is defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which literally teaches little "Palestinian" Arab kids to violently despise Jews. And it is despite the fact that Trump opposes Obama's "Iran deal" which assures a Persian bomb in what is now the short term.

My intention is not to make a broad argument for Donald Trump, nor is it to erect an argument for either the conservative movement or the Republican Party.

In fact, I am not mounting an argument at all. I am merely asking a question. It is this:

Why is it that of all the minority constituencies of the Democratic Party only the Jewish minority is thought to be morally obligated to sacrifice the well-being of their own children in deference to that party and in deference to progressive-left ideology?

The answer to that question has two interrelated parts.

The first is in the rise of democratic socialism on the coattails of Bernie Sanders. The second is in the rise of "intersectionality theory" within the universities and among the activists.

Democratic socialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Linda Sarsour are increasingly coming into prominence. These young up-and-comers tend to be friendly with the likes of racist Louis Farrakhan, much like some of their seniors in the party, and generally favor the hostile Arab majority against the Jewish minority in the Middle East.

They also tend to favor "intersectionality theory."

The fundamental idea behind "intersectionality" in practice is that the world is comprised of the oppressors and their oppressed. Thus the oppressed must join together in opposition to the oppressors who persecute them through "White Male Privilege" and cold, hard cash. They are presented as oppressed in a common fashion grounded in "white" imperial racism and various forms of gender-hate. It is for this reason that they connect Ferguson, Missouri to "Palestine" because they see their concerns about both as derived from the same malicious source... you.

Furthermore, intersectionality has created a loose hierarchy of oppression with Arab men, strangely enough, at the top. Arabs and Muslims and "people of color" and Gay people and transgender people and Black people are near the summit of the hierarchy.  White women have actually dropped a few rungs in recent years, presumably due to their unfortunate association with white men.

The oppressors are generally understood to be white people, the wealthy, and "Zionists." Much of the American-left considers the Jewish people to be all three. I like to say that we have hit the politically-incorrect trifecta!

{Good for us.}

But this leaves those American Jews who care about their brothers and sisters in the State of Israel in a serious political dilemma. Those of you who are American Jewish Democrats or "progressives" are essentially being told that you need to choose between the Jewish people and the Democratic Party and the political ideology that drives it. On the campuses, if Jewish students dare to stand up for themselves and their people, they are shouted down as Nazis and shunned by many of their peers.

The irony is that those doing the yelling and screaming like to think of themselves as the ideological children of Martin Luther King, Jr. who's foremost message was that we should judge people as individuals, not as representatives of an ethnicity or gender. Thus what we are witnessing in the rise of progressive-left intersectionality is an ironic insistence that the Jewish people cease to defend themselves in Israel out of moral consideration for minority groups. And, furthermore, we are to do so based on a blatantly hypocritical political ideology that has given up its fundamental liberal core as represented by Martin Luther King, Jr.

So, why not vote Republican?

At least it may teach the Democrats not to take the Jews for granted.

Los Lonely Boys - Heaven

Michael Lumish

I love the tunes on the right side of the screen.

That is why I put them up.

And this song strikes to my heart.

It is because of the longing for something better.

And I honestly do not care what religion it comes out of.

Michael Lumish

I am considering registering as a Republican.

Tell me why I should not.

Mobilization vs. Persuasion

Sar Shalom

One of the debates running in electioneering circles is whether campaigns should focus on mobilization, that is ginning up excitement among loyal supporters to make sure they feel compelled to show up at the polls, or persuasion, or trying to convince swing voters. For promoting support of Israel, there is a similar choice between whipping up passions on the side that of the domestic debate that currently is more favorable to Israel or directing arguments to the side that is less supportive. Bringing these options to mind are two recent articles linking the recent Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to discourse about Israel, one by Melanie Phillips and one by Caroline Glick.

Both of those articles are examples mobilization. Both take as a given that there was no substance to the accusations against Kavanaugh and thereby compare the media's treatment of Israel to the left-wing conspiracy against Kavanaugh. Earth to supporters of Israel, how many people who engage in the necessary motivated reasoning to dismiss the charges against Kavanaugh without a bona fide investigation are there who do not already support Israel? If there are not that many, what is there to gain by canonizing Kavanaugh?

On the flip slide, how many people are there who see the whole process as steamrolling Kavanaugh through who are not solid supporters of Israel? Does declaring Israel as innocent as Kavanaugh help endear Israel to such people? A persuasion approach would take an opposite reading of the Kavanaugh confirmation process. I'll give two examples.

Following a hamstrung investigation that explicitly limited who could be interviewed, the FBI failed to find any corroboration of Dr. Blasey Ford's allegations. Similarly, following a hamstrung inspection that allowed Iran to declare certain sites off limits, the IAEA failed to find any violations of the JCPOA.

During the pre-hearings stage of the confirmation process, Judge Kavanaugh gave Sen. Susan Collins that he accepts Roe v. Wade as settled law. Similarly, there is a widely held narrative that while Hamas and Islamic Jihad reject Israel's right to exist and are committed to terror, Fatah recognizes Israel and have renounced terrorism. This narrative is held solely on the basis of Yasser Arafat having said so in the 1990's and Mahmoud Abbas repeating that assertion.

If you want to convince America's liberals to support Israel, instead of justifying the steamrolling of Kavanaugh's confirmation, ask those who view the FBI investigation that failed to confirm the allegations (as opposed affirmatively finding anything exculpatory) as a sham and who excoriate Collins for her willful blindness to Kavanaugh's ruse, why do they take the IAEA's certification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA and Fatah's recognition of Israel/renunciation of terror at face value?

Jewish Kids Need Krav Maga

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under, the Elder of Ziyon, and The Israel Forever Foundation.}

When I was a tiny, little Zionist growing up in New York and Connecticut in the 1970s and 1980s, Jewish youngsters did not learn Krav Maga.

I doubt any of my friends, Jewish or otherwise, ever even heard of this martial art.

We punched a nose when we had to, just as every other boy did, but it was a regular part of growing up. We were teens and pre-teens and made of rubber.

My neighborhood was middle-class and ethnically mixed. Sometimes the kids were working on their cars in their parents' garage. We would call them "clutch-heads." They tended to be Catholic and they sometimes wore leather jackets. Tough boys, y'know. There were also the "freaks" -- the children of the Counterculture and the New Left -- who wore long hair and denim with patches and listened to the Dead and the Stones and Zep on the cusp of the New Wave and the Reagan Administration.

 And then there were the "jocks" and the "norms" and whatever.

These are the terms that we used at the time.

"Freaks" and "Jocks" and "Norms" and "Clutch Heads"... at least at Trumbull High School, just outside of Bridgeport.

And sometimes fights would break out. Almost nobody ever got seriously hurt and even the parents did not worry too much about this kind of thing, because they grew up with it, themselves. Kids have to work out their own personal relationships just like everyone else, but the parents usually did not get involved. It was always pretty much left up to the kids in the street because it was primarily harmless.

The folks were trying to make a buck and after school, we were pretty much on our own as teens and pre-teens. But it was natural as a young man growing up to learn how to throw a punch. You did not need to be Jean-Claude Van Damme, but it was definitely helpful to know how to defend oneself. You had to be willing to fight because none of us respected a kid who was too cowardly to stand up for himself. You did not even need to be particularly big and strong because, as my old hero Yankees manager Billy Martin said, "It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."

I was recently in conversation with a friend of mine -- an old online sparring partner -- who studies and teaches Krav Maga in the San Francisco Bay Area. I contacted him because it seems obvious to me that diaspora Jewish kids need training in martial arts.

Anyone who looks fairly at the situation in Europe can see that our Jewish brothers and sisters are under the gun. The Labour Party, with Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, is fighting off charges of intense antisemitism even as the country is grappling with Muslim gang rape issues. One of the options in response is Jewish self-defense.

In truth, I would love to see the Hillels introduce Krav training as part of their regular curriculum.

The basic criticisms that would come from the Hillels and other Jewish organizations is that the very last thing that they want is to be seen as antagonistic or militaristic or pugnacious. This is entirely understandable. The Jewish population in the United States is somewhere between one and two percent of the total. But the thing is, anyone who knows anything about martial arts knows that you learn how to fight so that you do not have to.

Jordan Peterson and the New Center

Michael Lumish

I find myself increasingly interested in the work of social media people such as Dave Rubin and academics such as Jordan Peterson around what is sometimes referred to as "The New Center."

Jordan Peterson, along with neuroscientist Sam Harris, is among the trend's most significant figures. The point of this emerging sensibility is to outline a rational political balance and to promote freedom of speech, particularly at the universities.

Peterson, out of the University of Toronto, is a clinical and evolutionary psychologist who is influenced by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Campbell became famous in the late 1980s through the PBS documentary, The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers. In the last few years, Peterson came to prominence due to his opposition to Canadian legislation mandating the use of non-gendered pronouns among certain professional types, such as university professors.

Some have even accused him of being "alt-right"...  whatever that is supposed to mean, exactly.

In truth, Peterson draws much from the hippie-counterculture inspiration of the twentieth-century that goes to scholars such as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and Timothy Leary.

If you listen to his discussion below, concerning psychedelics, you could easily mistake his sensibilities with the early careers of 1960s counterculture academicians like Richard Alpert, out of Harvard, who later became Baba Ram Dass.

To confuse someone like Peterson with a hard-line, right-wing political viewpoint is, from any reasonable historical view, simply mistaken.

Jesse Ventura and the Maximum Wage

Michael Lumish

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura

I have a soft spot in my heart for Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler and former governor of the state of Minnesota.

He went from "Jesse the Body" to "Jesse the Brain."

The video below is a few years old and in it he discusses the notion of a "maximum wage."

He uses the Walton family of Walmart fame as an example. He argues that there is something fundamentally wrong with wealth distribution in the United States. Walton family members are billionaires even as US taxpayers are forced to subsidize their employees due to low wages. From my perspective, Ventura is correct to point to the problem. Personally, I could not care less how much anyone earns or how many simoleons a person acquires over the years. It is not my business and it does me no personal harm.

However, the very notion that regular working-class Americans must subsidize the employees of gazillionaires does indicate a significant problem. So, what to do?

I do not have the answer.

The reason that the question interests me, however, is because it seems to go to a fundamental fault-line in western politics between authoritarian socialism and liberal capitalism. I never write on economic theory because I do not believe that I have the necessary education to weigh-in on that field. But I certainly think that Ventura has a point.

Socialism, if it means anything, means that the workers own the means of production. That is the most fundamental definition. But it also means, essentially, that therefore the government owns everything. It suggests an authoritarian framework that flies directly in the face of the Constitution of the United States and of western liberalism, more generally.

What I would suggest is that many of the people who currently refer to themselves as "socialist" on the American political scene are probably not. Actually, they are social democrats. The reason that I say so is that they also see themselves as anti-authoritarian. Certainly the little ideological offspring of Bernie Sanders -- a self-proclaimed socialist -- see themselves as freethinkers and anti-fascists. The problem is that socialism and anti-authoritarianism are mutually exclusive in practice.

One cannot be a socialist and anti-authoritarian simultaneously because socialism is authoritarian in its nature as a political ideology. The only way that "the workers" can gain ownership of the "means of production" is through government intervention through violence or threats of violence. This is the very definition of authoritarianism.

Thus in the United States, the primary political question is not between socialism versus capitalism, but where to draw the necessary lines within regulatory capitalism because, at the end of the day, we are all pretty much regulatory capitalists. The hard American left is mainly comprised not of actual socialists, but of regulatory capitalists who want to see more regulation. The hard American right is mainly comprised not of fascists, but of regulatory capitalists who want to see less regulation in the interest of individual liberty.

I am not putting forth answers to these fundamental questions.

I am merely endeavoring to define the questions for my personal edification and perhaps for yours.

I Was Wrong about Anti-Zionists

Michael Lumish

This is a retread of a thing I wrote for Daily Kos in June of 2009 under the nom de blog "Karmafish" which I entitled, I Was Wrong about Anti-Zionists. 

It has been almost ten years, now, and what I was trying to do then was simply alert the American-Left to the fact of antisemitic anti-Zionism within their ranks.

The piece is sarcastic and ironic because I was frustrated at the failure of their ongoing refusal to recognize what was right before their faces.

In truth, the western-left does not care about racism. It is, in fact, the most highly racist movement outside of political Islam in the West today.

It simply uses racism as a political club.

And the thing of it is, these people are not being disingenuous. They sincerely believe what they say that they believe. What they do not seem to understand is that bigotry is not dependent upon the ethnicity of the target.

--

For a long time, now, I have been suggesting that left anti-Zionism often serves as a shroud for anti-Semitism and that the constant vilification and demonization of Israel is anti-Semitic when the people doing that vilifying ignore Darfur and Congo and Sri Lanka and the Chinese in Tibet.

I must admit that I was wrong and I hereby issue an apology.

I live in San Francisco and I love my town.  Some months ago there was a protest against Israel’s Gaza incursion and here are a few photos demonstrating just how wrong I was.

Let’s get directly to the matter, shall we?

This nice lady carried a sign reading, "Jews are terroist!"  I am not certain what a "terroist" is, but criticism of Israel is not, I repeat, NOT anti-Semitism.  By the way, aren't her daughters as cute as little anti-Zionist buttons?

Now, given the overly extreme sensitivities of
Jews "Zionists" you would think that someone carrying such a sign would be asked to leave or put it away.  Did that happen?  Not exactly.

Smile pretty for the camera!

Some of the pro-Israel, "Zionist" crowd has suggested that the left is often supportive of Hamas despite their Jew Killing agenda as laid out in their charter, which reads, in part:

The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

But this is clearly false.  No one on the left actually supports Hamas:

No one on the left would be caught dead supporting a blood-thirsty, gay-hating, woman-oppressing, Jew-killing, theocratic organization like Hamas.  It’s just that Hamas is misunderstood.  They can’t help themselves.  Besides, it’s all Israel’s fault.

And since it is all Israel’s fault, you really cannot blame people for wanting to kill "Zionists."

Or ZioNazis, anyway.  This fine gentleman of the left has nothing against Jews, just evil ZioNazis who are legitimate military targets.  Kill the ZioNazis!  Of course, since the vast majority of Jewish people happen to favor the existence of the Jewish state (for some dumb reason) this would make them Zionists and, thus, Nazis.  And we all know what to do with Nazis.  Just what this gentleman suggests, eh?  But no reasonable person could possibly consider such a stance, the killing of "Zionists," to be anti-Semitic.  This is merely criticism of Israel and again, criticism of Israel is NOT anti-Semitic and anyone who suggests otherwise is a GIYUS Hasbara troll trying to shut down the discussion.

Here is this man’s criticism of Israel:

Smash the Jewish state?  That’s a good question.  Should Israel, or should Israel not, be destroyed?  There is something like 13 million Jews in the world, a whopping .2% of the world population, and nearly 40% of them live in Israel.  But the question of whether or not to wipe them out is not anti-Jewish.  It is a merely a question that people of good will can disagree upon.  

Now, the European Union has declared that equating Israel with Nazi Germany is anti-Semitic, but given Europe’s famous love for the Jewish people, it is not surprising that they would suggest this.  The problem is that there is just too much good will toward Jews in Europe and they are far, far too overprotective of their Jewish citizenry.  Just because Jewish schools and synagogues have to be guarded by the police from possible attack means nothing.

And just because anti-Jewish violence is rising there is no cause for concern.  National Socialism, of course, is generally considered the worst, the most vicious, political movement in world history and they had to be destroyed.  But comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is not anti-Semitic.  It is, again, merely criticism of Israel.  There is nothing wrong with criticizing Israel, just as there is nothing wrong with criticizing any other country.  And just because Israel is like Nazi Germany, and Nazi Germany had to be destroyed, Jewish people should not get so head-up about this mild criticism.

And just because Zionism, the movement for Jewish self-determination and self-defense, is just like Nazism is also no reason for Jews to object to such a characterization.

Of course, some people consider Jews to actually be worse than Nazis.  The picture below shows a Star of David, the symbol of the Jewish people, with a "greater than" symbol pointing to a Nazi Swastika.  I understand that a tiny percentage of blood-thirsty Jewish neo-cons would object to such a characterization, but the neo-cons gave us the Iraq war and thus should not be listened to.  The suggestion that Jewish people are actually worse than Nazis is nothing but criticism of Israel.  It is not meant to offend Jews and it certainly should not be taken to mean that Jews are evil and must be gotten rid of.

Never again?  It's a question, really.  Probably never again.  Perhaps.

Nonetheless, as I am sure you will all agree, the Intifada needs to be globablized.

All this person is suggesting is that people of good will around the globe must take to the streets in violent confrontation with "Zionists" wherever they might be found.  Just because the vast majority of Jews support the Jewish state and are, thus, "Zionists" doesn’t mean that they should object to a global Intifada.  

In fact, Jewish people, as a matter of social justice, should join with their anti-Zionist brothers and sisters calling for violent reprisals against... "Zionists"!

Some of you, btw, may have heard of a recent police shooting of an unarmed man in Oakland in the Oakland City BART station.  One liberal anti-Zionist protester, reasonably enough, blames this on the Jews.

The suggestion, of course, is that Israel’s recent criminal Zionist genocidal massacre in Gaza is directly connected to that shooting.  But it cannot be said enough that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.

And there was Cindy.

What a shame.

And, again, I apologize.

The Labour Betrayal

Michael Lumish

Delegates wave Palestinian flags, chant ‘Free Palestine’
during Labour conference held amid widespread
anti-Semitism accusations

The Times of Israel and AP staff tell us:

Britain’s main opposition Labour Party on Tuesday passed a motion strongly criticizing Israel and pledging to halt all UK weapon sales to the Jewish state if it rises to power, as a senior lawmaker warned the party must root out anti-Semitism amid persistent scandals dogging the party.

Delegates at the party’s conference in Liverpool voted to criticize Israel’s use of force against violent protests and riots on the Gaza border, urge more UK funding for the UN agency for Palestinians, and back a freeze on British arms sales to Israel.

The British, in general, have rarely been friends to the Jewish people and it is hard to know just what they want from our lives even as it is becoming less and less clear why we would should even care. Labour is threatening to halt UK weapons sales to Israel because our brothers and sisters dare to defend themselves against those who want us dead.

Not only does Hamas and the other Islamist organizations surrounding Israel -- not to mention the Palestinian Authority -- want us gone but they want us gone from the homeland our fathers.

It is a remarkable stand for Labour to take within living memory of the Holocaust.

Many of these people, to this day, probably still believe that the recent attacks on the Gaza border represent "peaceful protest." They must feel that the burning of Jewish crops and the killing of innocent creatures on animal preserves with those incendiary balloons -- that continues to this day -- are fully justified.

It is astonishing. There is all sorts of footage of violence and chaos and mayhem and blood coming from Arabs who live on Jewish land directed toward Jews, yet the progressive-left and the Labour Party honestly believe that we deserve whatever beating that we get.

I believe that this needs to be understood within the context of the long-standing European and Arab abhorrence to Jewish self-defense. For millennia the very notion of a Jew punching back was anathema within Europe and throughout the lands conquered via Arab and Muslim imperialism.

What is ironic and sad is Labour honestly does not recognize Judea as Jewish land.

They seem to believe that Israel is somehow part of the Arabian Peninsula and that, therefore, Jews need to be confronted for our usurpation of the land of others and the persecution of the innocent, bunny-like "indigenous Arab" population.

They do not recognize the indigeneity of the Jewish people to Israel even as they claim to stand for the rights of other indigenous peoples.

In 1190 there was the massacre of the Jews at York which took 150 of us, some taking their own lives during the bloody chaos and others burned in the tower.

In the year 1290 King Edward the First issued the Edict of Expulsion to the Jewish people living within England. The edict remained in force until Oliver Cromwell dropped by the British political scene in 1657.

There is even a delightful 2011 story from the BBC of all places that notes:

The remains of 17 bodies found at the bottom of a medieval well in England could have been victims of persecution, new evidence has suggested.

The most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide, according to scientists who used a combination of DNA analysis, carbon dating and bone chemical studies in their investigation.

Is there an actual difference between being murdered versus forced to commit suicide?

But these little acts of anti-Jewish malice are insignificant compared to British behavior during the Holocaust in which they refused Jewish escape from Germany and Poland even as the ovens were firing. The Brits issued the "White Paper" of 1939 that kept us away from our family in Israel even as the Nazis were rifling us down or gassing our grandparents.

And now the Labour Party is standing with Hamas and the PLO and thus want to halt weapons sales to Israel.

That is A-OK with me.

Why does Israel need to purchase weaponry? Would it not help the Israeli economy to replace British manufacturing with Israeli manufacturing? My guess is that Israel has all the expertise and resources necessary to fill the gap. The more independent Israel is, the better for everyone. The Jews of the Middle East, in my opinion, do not even need the 3 billion dollars in annual aid that the United States gives to American weapons manufacturers. This hardware comes with strings.

I do not want to say that we are in this fight alone, but we may need to think of "the conflict" in precisely those terms.