This was sent to me by Dan F. It was posted on Facebook by someone he describes as an Orthodox Jew from Baltimore. It does a pretty good job of explaining why I feel that I have no choice but to support Donald Trump.
Between the
two candidates we have, it's not even close. We have a blusterer who tells you
exactly what he thinks, and a conniver who will tell you exactly what she needs
to say to get you to vote for her.
One stands
entirely with Israel, the other pressures Israel to compromise its security in
the face of terror.
One
compromised our national security, placed classified information on an
unprotected, private server, and then lied about it, and tries to make an issue
about the other's sarcastic response that maybe the Russians can get hold of
them [the relevant servers are now in a secured FBI facility, so the idea that
he was actually encouraging them to do so is ludicrous.]
One has a
track record of refusing to identify radical Islamic terror, and blaming
terrorism on "occupation," American videos, and any other possible pretense. The
other calls terrorism what it is and promises to back Israel's self defense.
One pressures
and condemns Israel regarding a two-state solution with a current Arab govt. of
despots encouraging and rewarding murder of Jews. The other stands on a platform
rejecting the idea that Jews in their own homeland are "occupiers."
Seems pretty clear, doesn't it? And doesn't even mention Dave....
'Never before seen' video from Hezbullah of the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War
On Wednesday, July 12, 2006, seven IDF soldiers were killed on the Lebanese border - three in an attack by Hezbullah on their 'Hummer' and four when their tank drove over a mine. That attack was the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. (One soldier from the 'Hummer' survived - in the video below he's in the light blue checked shirt with the trimmed beard. His name is Tomer Weinberg). Hezbullah grabbed two of the bodies - those of Ehud Goldwasser (who was driving the 'Hummer' and seated in the front left seat) and Eldad Regev (who was sitting on the right). They may have been dead when they were grabbed. Their mutilated bodies were returned to Israel in 2008 in exchange for child murderer Samir al-Kuntar (later targeted by Israel and killed) and a few lesser lights.
On Saturday night, Hezbullah's Al Mayadeen television showed the first part of a three-part documentary on the 2006 war. The program contained video never before seen from the planning of the attack and the attack itself. Hezbullah has disclosed that the attack was planned by Imad Mughniyah, who thankfully is no longer among the living.
I'm posting the video (could not figure out how to post part of it). The 'never before seen' footage of the attack itself, which runs about 10 minutes, runs from 42:52 to the end. For those who want to see the entire program, there's a link after the video.
The video is in Arabic with some Hebrew from Israeli television (interviews). Sorry, no English.
It's come to this: Israel Television begging 'human rights watch' for comment on 3-year old 'Palestinian' throwing stones at soldiers
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Over the weekend, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner (who runs foreign and social media for the IDF spokesperson's office) posted the following video of a flag waving 'Palestinian' toddler being sent by his father to throw stones at IDF troops.
The so-called 'protectors' of human rights have had NOTHING to say about this video. The Israel Broadcast Authority is now begging 'human rights watch' and Sarah Leah Whitson (who once raised money from the Saudis by bragging about how bad her organization makes Israel look) to comment.
'Palestinians' to sue God over covenant with Abraham
Last week, I reported on the 'Palestinian Authority's plans to sue the United Kingdom for issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
And as many of you know, the Bible says that God promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people.
So what's a 'Palestinian' to do? It's easy. They're going to sue God over His Making that covenant with Abraham.
“The God of Abraham had no right to promise this land to the Jews. Being
all-knowing, He had to have foreseen that some 4,000 years later, we
would suddenly decide that we have a national identity tied to this
land”, said a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority. The
Palestinians claim that God should have known that they would seek to
retroactively deny the rich and well-documented history of Jews in the
land of Israel and therefore should not have promised it to Abraham and
his descendants. “Although we were living in Arabia for thousands of
years after the covenant, God really should have taken us into
consideration when making such promises” said the P.A. spokesperson. We
reached out to God for comment via a note in the Wailing Wall. The
Almighty issued a statement through his spokesperson, the angel Gabriel,
“Are you serious with this sh*t??? I have much more important things
to worry about. There’s a war in Syria killing hundreds of thousands of
people in my name, the ice caps are melting, and I’m trying to figure
out how to stop the bees from dying off so you guys don’t starve to
death. I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
The Palestinians assert that time is a construct invented by God, and he
is simply avoiding having to address the issue. An archangel, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said that God is indeed worried about the
lawsuit since there are no good lawyers in heaven. “All of the most
cutthroat and lawyers are either in the U.S. Government or in Hell, so
God is really at a loss here. He won’t say it publicly, but he’s
scared.”
Report: Assad tried to cut a deal with Netanyahu, used Putin as emissary
A Lebanese and a Kuwaiti report indicate that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asked Russian President Putin to deliver a message to Prime Minister Netanyahu when Assad and Netanyahu visited Moscow a few days apart last month.
Putin and Assad reportedly discussed the crisis in Syria as well as
the possibility of a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel,
including the Golan Heights, Al-Joumhouria reported, however the Kremlin denied the report.
According to Johnny Munir, Al-Joumhouria newspaper reporter , the Assad Putin meeting focused on the US Russia plan which will be revealed in early August. In
addition they reportedly discussed the Bill Clinton Israeli Syrian
peace plan which will reportedly form the basis of the future Israeli
Syrian comprehensive peace plan.
Meanwhile Kuwait Newspaper “Al Jareeda ” reported that Assad sent a
letter to Netanyahu ahead of his meeting with Putin in which he vowed to
keep the Golan heights free of any arms and to continue to honor the
ceasefire between the 2 countries ”
“Help me to succeed in controlling my areas and I will guarantee
security and peace for Israel in Golan on condition you don’t side with
any party that wants to topple my regime ” , the daily quoted Assad as
saying.
I'm sure the Kremlin denied it because Netanyahu told Putin that this just isn't happening. You might recall that the Bill Clinton plan for an Israeli - Syrian peace agreement called for Israel to come down from the Golan Heights to within a few feet of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). That wasn't good enough for Assad who wanted to be on the eastern shores of the Kinneret.
Today, no one in Israel regrets that deal did not happen.
Assad's assurances are worthless, both because he cannot be trusted and because his government is and will remain forever unstable.
Assad offered nothing new. There will be no deal in any of our lifetimes.
By the way, note who is missing from this story: The Americans.
How will Obama's final days in office play out for Israel?
From an al-Monitor piece discussing why Prime Minister Netanyahu is likely to conclude a new defense package with the United States before President Obama leaves office come these disturbing thoughts.
“We are talking about a comprehensive deal,” one senior political
source in Jerusalem told Al-Monitor on the condition of anonymity.
“Netanyahu is trying to clear the table and move toward the demands made
by Obama’s people in the hope that the aid agreement will be finalized.
For the same price, Netanyahu is trying to assuage any desire for
retribution that Obama might still nurture. He is also trying to
increase his own chances of getting through the Obama era in peace,
without any new diplomatic initiative, a formative presidential address or some problematic Security Council resolution.
Right now, the chances of Netanyahu succeeding are reasonable. Within
President Obama’s circles, there is, as of yet, no decision as to what
the final chord of his administration’s Middle East policy will be. Some
are pressuring Obama to reveal the draft of the framework agreement (as
reported in previous articles
in Al-Monitor) that he reached with Netanyahu and his staff, or to
allow the French to bring their own initiative to the Security Council
and then not veto it. Obama will only decide what to do at the very last
minute.
The question now being asked in Israel is which of the two
temperaments will ultimately triumph. Will it be Obama’s desire to get
back at Netanyahu, who taunted him for the last eight years and dragged
him into ugly and unnecessary mud-slinging matches? Or will it be
Obama’s cool, collected temperament, which will keep him from
reshuffling the deck and shaking everything up just moments before he
exits the arena?
People close to Netanyahu say that Obama has no plans to disappear.
Even after he leaves office, he will remain an active and influential
figure in America. It could, therefore, be worth it for him to maintain a
reasonable relationship with the Israeli government.
Clinton emails show visceral hatred for Michael Oren
I've been arguing on social media for the last few days that we ought to be focusing on the contents of both Hillary Clinton's and the Democratic National Committee's emails, and not on how they came to light. At the end of the day, what's in the emails is far more important than Donald Trump trolling the Russians to release them (and he may well be correct that the Russians already have them).
In that light, I'd like to discuss some of what's come to light about Hillary Clinton's relationship with Israel as Secretary of State, and particularly about her relationship with Michael Oren, who was the Israeli ambassador to the United States during her tenure at the State Department.
In his book, Ally, Oren writes that during his first six months in Washington, he could not get a meeting with Clinton. It's perhaps indicative of that relationship that when I tried Googling "Clinton Oren" and "Hillary Clinton Michael Oren" in Google Images, the picture above was the only one I found that had the two of them in it together. There were several pictures of Oren with Barack Obama and of Prime Minister Netanyahu with Clinton, but only one of Oren and Clinton together.
This was not Oren's imagination, as Haaretz reported about a year ago from an earlier release of Clinton emails:
On December 10, 2009, about six months after Oren took up his position in Washington, Brian Greenspun sent an email to the private account of then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking her to check why her staff was not allowing the Israeli ambassador to meet her. It’s isn’t clear whether Oren was the one who asked Greenspun to intervene.
Greenspun is publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and was Bill Clinton’s old college roommate. He even raised money for him in Nevada when Clinton was president. According to various reports, in January 2001, a few weeks before the end of the president’s term, Greenspun also asked Clinton to grant a pardon to the founder of Israel Aerospace Industries, Al Schwimmer, for his role in smuggling U.S. planes to Israel in 1950.
“Hi Hillary,” writes Greenspun in the short message, parts of which were redacted before it was released for publication. Greenspun writes that rumor has it that the Israeli ambassador was unsuccessfully trying to arrange a meeting with the secretary of state.
He says he can’t imagine why her staff would keep Oren away from her and offered his help if there was any problem.
Why did Hillary keep Oren away? Rabbi Shmuely Boteach connects it to Oren's refusal to speak at the first J Street conference in 2009.
Furthermore, a flurry of email communications from July 2012 surrounded
Hannah Rosenthal, who served from 2009 to 2012 as special envoy to
monitor and combat anti-Semitism for the Obama administration. After
three years in this position, news broke that Rosenthal had accepted a
position as president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. However, she
faced harsh criticism from sectors of the Jewish community for her past
views toward Israel. The exchange in these released emails from Hilary’s
server showed that the administration was very concerned about this
opposition and planned on how best to counteract it, with long-time aide
Huma Abedin keeping Clinton apprised.
Rosenthal had previously
served on the board of directors of the anti-Israel J Street. She was
also on the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now – an
organization that advocates for a total BDS-style boycott of Judea and
Samaria and its settlements. Yes, this was the person hand-picked by the
White House with Clinton’s blessing to fight anti-Semitism.
The
protests of Rosenthal’s appointment to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation
post stemmed in part from her associations with these anti-Israel
groups.
We know that Rosenthal has been a major supporter of
Hillary Clinton for the past 20 years and was appointed and served under
the Bill Clinton administration in a top-level position in the
Department of Health and Human Services.
In a speech of July 13,
2010, Hillary Clinton praised Rosenthal’s appointment to combat
anti-Semitism, saying, “I have known Hannah for more than 20 years and
we have worked over those 20 years on issues that are near and dear to
both of us.” She went on to say, “We know we have a big challenge ahead
of us, but I was thrilled when Hannah agreed to take this position...”
Yet
just a few months earlier, Rosenthal’s first denunciation in her new
role was not against anti-Semitism but shockingly against ambassador
Michael Oren.
Oren had recently turned down the offer to be the
keynote speaker at J Street’s inaugural conference in December 2009,
saying that the policies and approaches of J Street toward Israel were
“fooling around with the lives of 7 million people.”
Rosenthal,
no doubt offended at the refusal, broke protocol in an uncharacteristic
attack on Oren, condemning his comments, and calling his approach to J
Street “most unfortunate,” saying that he “would have learned a lot” if
he had attended the conference.
Supporting J Street, boycotting Judea and Samaria, and condemning
Michael Oren. Was this the basis of Hillary’s support for Rosenthal?
Rosenthal faced criticism from a number of Jewish groups for her words.
Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations, summed up the unusual and inappropriate nature of
Rosenthal’s comments. “As an official of the United States government,
it is inappropriate for the anti-Semitism envoy to be expressing her
personal views on the positions ambassador Oren has taken, as well as on
the subject of who needs to be heard from in the Jewish community.”
The Israeli government released a statement that said in part, “We received Ms. Rosenthal’s statements as reported in Haaretz with astonishment and surprise.”
The Obama administration tried to reassure Israel that these comments did not represent State Department policy.
Unfortunately,
the truth is that based on everything we have seen in these email
dumps, this is precisely what the State Department’s policy was.
Drawing on Clinton's emails, Boteach describes some of the paranoia in the State Department's treatment of Oren.
In one email, [Sidney] Blumenthal sent an article from the notoriously
anti-Israel website Mondoweiss, which has long trolled me on the
Internet, and which duplicitously implied with empty insinuations that
Oren had planted a false story about a joint US-Israel Iran strike in a
plot to manipulate US policy.
On another occasion, Blumenthal sent two articles written by his
anti-Semitic son, the notorious Israel-hater Max Blumenthal, which
implied Oren was conspiring with Benjamin Netanyahu to derail the peace
process.
Sidney Blumenthal derisively emailed Hillary about
Oren’s untrustworthiness writing, “[T]he New Republic is a preferred
outlet for the highest level Likud/neocon propaganda. Michael Oren, a
channel for Israeli intel, was a frequent contributor in the past.”
He
also sent an email describing rumors from his journalist son Paul, who
claimed to have heard that “Oren raced around the West Wing searching
for Barack [Obama], opening doors and looking in rooms.
[Then-US national security adviser Thomas] Donilon heard about
Oren’s frantic snooping and raced after him, catching him, and escorted
him out. Apocryphal? True?” Hillary responds to the email, “Doubt that
it happened, but, these days, who knows???”
In the entire forced dump of her emails, you will be hard-pressed to
find a single note that is sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any
of the people she trusted. The negative, poisonous approach Ms. Clinton
established demonstrates that a huge segment of her close advisers and
confidants were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Netanyahu,
and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria
at all costs.
This was occurring in the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza
withdrawal, which led to the takeover of the Strip by Hamas. There is
almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in
withdrawing, as Ms. Clinton and the Obama Administration did everything
they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.
Read some of the emails cited by Boteach in that article. Appalling.
One doesn't need much imagination to conclude that a Clinton administration's relationship with Israel would be no better than the Obama administration's relationship with Israel over the last eight years, especially so long as Binyamin Netanyahu is Prime Minister.
That's one lesson we should all be learning from the Clinton emails.
Tuesday, the rabbi brought Breaking the Silence to his shul
You will recall that last week, I posted about a rabbi in Raleigh, North Carolina who is running a 'behind the scenes' tour of Israel designed to indoctrinate congregants with the 'Palestinian' narrative.
It has now come out that (a) the same rabbi took a group to meet Breaking the Silence (see more below on this organization) three weeks ago and (b) the rabbi's wife is the 'rabbi' at a local Hillel.
The following came to me by email.
As you know, Eric Solomon is running a rabidly anti-Israel,
pro-terror trip out of Beth Meyer in March that he's actually selling in
his
own shul.
New development: I learned that Eric and Jenny Solomon co-chaired a trip in Israel July 4th for Breaking the Silence with
the goal of bringing the movement to local communities. http://www.truah.org/rabbisday.html
This isn't J Street or Jewish Voice for Peace, Breaking
the Silence is the most virulently racist, anti-Semitic group
operating.
They have just openly accused Israeli Jews of poisoning the drinking
water of Arabs! Israel has identified this group as an enemy and has
taken actions to protect Israeli citizens and Jews abroad from their
harm.
Problem: Jenny Solomon is the new Rabbi at NC
Hillel. I interviewed her today and she told me her role was to
"educate, provide spiritual guidance, and shape the Jewish identity of
university students." Jenny also told me that she 100% supports
Breaking the Silence.
So we have 2 rabbis in multiple Jewish institutions
promoting anti-semetic, pro-terror education to children and adults
young and old. This is not an exaggeration - this is the situation.
Along with others, I am involved in coordinating an
international response including one from Israel. I ask you to please
alert everyone in the community about the situation. And, what can
be done here? Raleigh is now forming a response.
Eric is now trying to pretend he is pro-Israel to let this blow over but it won't go away.
J.
Sloan Rachmuth
For those who are not familiar with Breaking the Silence....
Deja vu all over again? Netanyahu supporting Trump?
Four years ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu got into a little hot water for appearing to support Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. Is it about to happen again? This is from Josh Rogin.
“I’ve talked to the members of the Israeli government at the highest
levels. I know who they want elected here. It’s not Hillary Clinton.
It’s not Obama 3,” Giuliani told me in an interview at the Republican
National Convention in Cleveland.
In March,
Giuliani traveled to Israel and met personally with Netanyahu, who has
publicly remained neutral on the 2016 presidential election. Giuliani
also met with several other senior Israeli government officials on his
trip. According to him, Israeli government leaders fear that if Clinton
were elected, she would pursue policies unwanted by the Netanyahu
government, such as pushing to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process.
“They are politically aware enough to know that if
Hillary gets elected, she is going to go further to her left, to protect
her left flank against Elizabeth Warren,” Giuliani said.
“They know
she’s going to start the two-state solution thing again, cave in to the
Palestinians. They realize Donald Trump can say Islamic terrorism, can
stand up to it. So there’s no question he would be better for the state
of Israel than Hillary.”
One person close to Giuliani told me
that during his March meeting with Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister
said he preferred Republican administrations to Democratic ones and
gave Giuliani a message to personally deliver to Trump with suggestions
about how Trump should talk about Israel-related policy issues. Giuliani
met with Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in New York following
the trip and delivered the message, this person said.
Of course, Netanyahu's office denies it.
In a statement to me, the prime minister’s office categorically
denied that Netanyahu expressed any preference for who should win the
U.S. presidential election or that Netanyahu asked Giuliani to deliver
any message to Trump.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu did not express
any preference for whom the next American President would be, will
continue to scrupulously avoid being dragged into the American elections
and looks forward to working with whomever the American people elect,”
said David Keyes, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office.
And Giuliani had no comment. Still, it's hard not to think that Netanyahu would prefer Trump over Clinton, right?
Here are two more reasons why Netanyahu might be supporting Trump.
NGO Monitor reports that the German government spent millions of dollars between 2012 and 2015 supporting Israeli groups that support boycotting Israel and negating the Jewish state.
The NGO Monitor watchdog group has found that between 2012 and 2015,
Germany funneled at least $4.4 million to some 15 Israeli organizations,
and 42 percent of the donations went to groups supporting an
international boycott against Israel and policies negating Israel’s
existence as a Jewish state.
The report found that the German Economic Cooperation and Development
Ministry operates a Civil Peace Service (Ziviler Friedensdienst)
project in Israel, but in fact, on the ground the project is headed by a
different German group, KURVE Wustrow, which has partnered with two
local organizations—the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace and the
Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.
NGO Monitor argues that the Coalition of Women for Peace actively
supports the BDS movement, including heading a project titled “Who
Profits from the Occupation,” a database of potential boycott “targets.”
The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee promotes violent riots
across Judea and Samaria, and its Twitter account often features posts
encouraging violence, the report said.
The German Embassy in Israel said that Germany “remains committed to
the two-state solution and devising sustainable peace in the Middle
East. The German government opposes any boycott of Israel, including BDS
activities, as such action undermines the peace process. The German
government’s funding policy seeks to support selected projects via
earmarked funds. Germany will continue to invest in projects and
initiatives that can promote and increase awareness to the two-state
solution.”
Still reading Catch the Jew, and this is totally consistent with it. Hitler must be feeling proud.
And then there's the European Union, which despite all its problems still focuses hatred on Israel.
Yes, that's an EU sponsored caravan for 'Palestinians' in Area C (which under the Oslo accords is totally controlled by Israel) and yes, it's illegal. This one is right next to the Jewish town of Carmel in the Mount Hebron region.
Flashback video: Mike Pence (2010): 'Mr. President, Whose side are you on?'
This is Mike Pence (R-In), the Republican candidate for Vice President speaking on the House floor shortly after the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010.
Let's go to the videotape. Comment after the video.
Something tells me you won't find a similar video of Tim Kaine (D-Va), the Democratic candidate for Vice President, challenging President Obama's anti-Israel policies.
Can the decline be stopped? Yes, but that would require a great
unlearning of the political mythologies on which modern Europe was
built.
Among those mythologies: that the European Union is the
result of a postwar moral commitment to peace; that Christianity is of
merely historical importance to European identity; that there’s no such
thing as a military solution; that one’s country isn’t worth fighting
for; that honor is atavistic and tolerance is the supreme value. People
who believe in nothing, including themselves, will ultimately submit to
anything.
The alternative is a recognition that Europe’s long
peace depended on the presence of American military power, and that the
retreat of that power will require Europeans to defend themselves.
Europe will also have to figure out how to apply power not symbolically,
as it now does, but strategically, in pursuit of difficult objectives.
That could start with the destruction of ISIS in Libya.
More
important, Europeans will have to learn that powerlessness can be as
corrupting as power—and much more dangerous. The storm of terror that is
descending on Europe will not end in some new politics of inclusion,
community outreach, more foreign aid or one of Mrs. Merkel’s diplomatic Rube Goldbergs. It will end in rivers of blood. Theirs or yours?
In
all this, the best guide to how Europe can find its way to safety is
the country it has spent the best part of the last 50 years lecturing
and vilifying: Israel. For now, it’s the only country in the West that
refuses to risk the safety of its citizens on someone else’s notion of
human rights or altar of peace.
Europeans will no doubt look to
Israel for tactical tips in the battle against terrorism—crowd
management techniques and so on—but what they really need to learn from
the Jewish state is the moral lesson. Namely, that identity can be a
great preserver of liberty, and that free societies cannot survive
through progressive accommodations to barbarians.
Of course for Europe to learn anything from Israel it will first have to overcome its longstanding and visceral hatred of Jews. Is it capable of doing so? If the past is any guide, we may have a Muslim-controlled Europe in the next 50 years.
The Clarion Project posts a brutal summary of the beating and torture of military personnel by Turkey's Islamist police in the aftermath of the supposed coup attempt last week. It finishes off with this:
Since 1952, Turkey has been a member of NATO, which is supposed to
defend freedom and democracies. However for decades, Turkey has been a
center of torture and other human rights abuses of the worst magnitude.
If the Turkish government authorities, police officers and so many
average citizens are capable of torturing, starving and raping even
their own soldiers and citizens, how can they be worthy of being
recognized as a Western ally and partner?
Moreover, we can only imagine that if
this is what they do to their own soldiers, imagine what they have been
doing to their minority citizens, who they fundamentally see as
“enemies” -- Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Kurds, Alevis and
others.
By the way, is their EU application still live? And what on earth is the President of the United States doing hugging Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
It's no secret that there's only one country in the Middle East where Christians have not become an endangered species, and where their population has grown over the last 100 years. You guessed it - it's Israel and I've written about it time and time again (search Bethlehem in the blog for some examples).
In Catch the Jew, Tuvia Tenenbaum writes about a meeting he had with a Christian in Bethlehem, who acknowledged that the town's Christian population had declined by more than 90% since 2000, as Christians fled. When he asked her why, she blamed it on... you guessed it: The 'Occupation.'
So what is it that these people don't get? Luma Simms, a Christian who grew up in Iraq tries to explain.
This is not just a Muslim problem. This anti-Semitism trickles down to
minority groups living in Islamic dominated lands. Middle Eastern
Christians manifest a hobbled prejudice since they lack the power to
politically act out against Israel. As I have observed my Middle Eastern
community over the years, there seems to be a Stockholm Syndrome
phenomenon. After being so long under Islamic rule and imbibing Islamic
propaganda, the Christians are apt to parrot their “captors” in the
Islamic authoritarian governments. I hold out hope that a free Arab
Christian culture could break this spell within a generation. But hope
is running out—Christianity may not survive in the Middle East.
Indeed it may not - at least outside of Israel. Simms goes on to explain why Israel is the last hope for Middle East Christians.
Israel is the last hope for Arab Christians; it’s as simple as that.
America is not leading on the refugee issue, especially for Iraqi
Christians. Yet helping them, doing good to the Christians in the Arab
world, would require Israel overcoming her neighbors’ anti-Semitism,
even of those Christians who will not ask for help because of their
prejudices.
Arab Christians in America and abroad feel caught between Muslim
interests on one side and Israeli interests on the other. They are
bitter. They are a weak minority, always overlooked. Arab Christians
have no power to negotiate or threaten, no money to buy arms, and no
land to cultivate and build. Their bitterness makes them miss an
important ally: Israel. As the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians
continues, the only hope of an Arab Christian remnant—a remnant that
would keep and pass on its beliefs, traditions, and customs—is through
help from the state of Israel. It is the humanitarian thing to do.
Israel already exemplifies this humane treatment
of her enemies. They have hospitals and medical units close to their
borders where they discreetly treat the wounded and injured who come to
them for medical help. These people eventually go back to their homes in
Syria. Patients keep the medical care quiet to protect themselves from
reprisal back home for receiving care from Israel. Sometimes the
patients are combatants and other times it is civilians caught in
crossfire; some arrive barely alive not even knowing they are in Israel,
regaining consciousness only to find themselves being cared for by the
very people they have been taught to hate. These doctors and nurses are “sowing seeds of peace.”
Another reason why helping Arab Christians would be good for Israel:
What better way to overcome jihad in the region than for Israel to forge
an alliance with Christians? For their part, Middle Eastern Christians
should see Israel as an ally, support its democratic state, and build an
alliance to combat Islamic terrorists. For too long Islam has used a
divide and conquer tactic on the Christians and Jews. For example, when
Arab Christians living in Nazareth wanted to integrate into Israeli
society and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, they were harassed,
attacked, and threatened by Arab Muslim groups. What’s worse was the
accusation by Muslims and Christians that they were betraying
Palestine. Anyone thinking clearly can see this for what it is: Muslims
fearing the alliance of Arab Christians with Israel.
...
If Israel will not act, what’s to be done? It’s hard to find exact
numbers, but maybe there are between 200,000 and 400,00 Iraqi Christians
left. They will be killed in Iraq, or die trying to escape. Some, God
willing, may be allowed to emigrate. Elliot Abrams, during an AEI panel
on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, made the most courageous statements I have
heard from anyone regarding the situation:
Most of the Christian communities are dying, will never
be restored….nobody has that feeling toward Christian minorities in Iraq
[speaking of the desire to save the communities]…we don’t even take
Christian refugees…I am really struck by the hostility to the notion
that anything should be done for the Christian communities of the Middle
East…is anybody being persecuted more than the Iraqi Christians? Does
anybody have a more well-founded fear [of persecution]? They can’t even
go to U.N refugee camps safely. And we are doing nothing about that.
[Regarding the conundrum of liquidating Christianity from the area] It
would be like saying, in 1940, surely a 1000 years of Jewish history in
Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, we don’t want to kill it by taking
those people as refugees. They died. The Christians will die, or many of
them will die. So I think we don’t have the right to say, ‘Stay there
and maintain your churches,’ when they’re being killed.
Israel, rise up and lead that region of the world. You are the hope
for Iraqi Christians. Let it always be said: In the dark age of ISIS,
when desolation and despair covered the Arab world, Israel was the house
of light. Like the prophet Jonah whom God commanded to go to Nineveh
and offer redemption to the Assyrians, may Israel go and redeem
Assyria—redeem the Nineveh plains once again.
I have many Christian followers on Twitter. There are two in particular that I follow. Every time I tweet a link like this one, I tag them. One retweets me every time. The other never does. Why? I wish I knew.
On Capitol Hill, Senator Kaine, as a member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, has consistently advocated the need for a two-state
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the only way to ensure
that Israel can survive and flourish as a Jewish and democratic state
and that Palestinians can live with independence and dignity. He was
also a leader in the successful effort to defang the Iranian nuclear
program through tough sanctions and effective diplomacy that produced
the JCPOA agreement.
Funny, but didn't I read something remarkably different yesterday? Oh yes, here. And that's why others feel differently about Kaine.
But for the hawkish Republican Jewish Coalition, such background did not
garner their approval or commendation. They swiftly lambasted Kaine as
enabling Tehran in acquiring a nuclear arsenal and, indeed, his
affiliation with J Street itself — an organization they regard as
lobbying positions that do not serve Israel’s interests.
“After leading President Obama’s disastrous
foreign policy in the Middle East, Hillary Clinton’s selection of
Senator Kaine as her running mate further proves she cannot be trusted
to keep our country safe,” RJC’s executive director Matt Brooks said in a
press release.
“Whether it’s his vote for the Iran deal,
which paves the way to a nuclear-armed Iran, or his proud support of the
progressive anti-Israel J Street agenda which earned him their
enthusiastic endorsement, Senator Kaine has shown how out of touch he is
on the dangers facing our country,” he added. “A Clinton-Kaine White
House would continue the same failed policies that have made the US and
our allies around the world less safe.”
Hey Times of Israel - it's not just the 'hawkish Republican Jewish coalition' that regards J Street as lobbying positions that do not serve Israel's interests - it's the Israeli Knesset.
If Trump wins this election, one of the first actions of Israel's supporters should be the defenestration of J Street.
In 2007, Kaine was the Governor of Virginia and, of all people, chose
Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish to the state’s
Immigration Commission. A Muslim organization against Islamism criticized the appointment and reckless lack of vetting.
Federal prosecutors said in a 2008 court filing that MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” A Chicago Tribuneinvestigation
in 2004 confirmed it, as well as MAS’ crafty use of deceptive semantics
to appear moderate. Convicted terrorist and admitted U.S. Muslim
Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamoudi testified in 2012, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”
...
According to Omeish’s website, he was also President of the National Muslim Students Association (click there to read our profile about its Muslim Brotherhood origins) and served for two years on the national board of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA),
which the Justice Department also labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood
entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial.
His website says he was Vice President of Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center,
a radical mosque known for its history of terror ties including having
future Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as its imam and being
frequented by two of the 9/11 hijackers and the perpetrator of the Fort
Hood shooting. Omeish’s website says he remains a board member.
It says he was chairman of the board of Islamic American University,
which had Hamas financier and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader
Yousef Al-Qaradawi as chairman of its board until at least 2006. Omeish
was also chairman of the board for the Islamic Center of Passaic County,
a New Jersey mosque with heavy terrorist ties and an imam that the
Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to
Hamas.
Omeish directly expressed extremism before Kaine appointed him. He
claimed the Brotherhood is “moderate” and admitted that he and MAS are
influenced by the Islamist movement. In 2004, Omeish praised the Hamas spiritual leader as “our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.” Videotape from 2000 also surfaced where Omeish pledged to help Palestinians who understand “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land” (he denied this was an endorsement of violence). [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
...
In September 2011, Kaine spoke at a “Candidates Night” dinner organized by the New Dominion PAC that presented a Lifetime Achievement Award for Jamal Barzinji, who the Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch describes as a “founding father of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.”
He first came on to the FBI’s radar in 1987-1988 when an informant inside the Brotherhood identified Barzinji and his associated groups
as being part of a network of Brotherhood fronts to “institute the
Islamic Revolution in the United States.” The source said Barzinji and
his colleagues were “organizing political support which involves
influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the
United States Government” using “political action front groups with no
traceable ties.”
Barzinji had his home searched as part of a terrorism investigation
in 2003. U.S. Customs Service Senior Special Agent David Kane said
in a sworn affidavit that Barzinji and the network of entities he led
were investigated because he “is not only closed associated with PIJ
[Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.” Counter-terrorism
reporter Patrick Poole broke the story that Barzinji was nearly prosecuted but the Obama Justice Department dropped plans for indictment.
Barzinji played a major role in nearly every Brotherhood front in the U.S. and was vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought,
which came under terrorism investigation also. Barzinji’s group was so
close to Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian that IIIT’s
President considered his group and Al-Arian’s to be essentially one entity.
The indictment of Al-Arian and his colleagues says that they “would
and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals, in the
United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights” (emphasis mine).
The quotes about Brotherhood operative Barzinji’s aspirations to use
civil rights advocacy as a means to influence politicians are especially
relevant when you consider that video
from the event honoring Barzinji shows Kaine saying that it was his
fourth time at the annual dinner and thanked his “friends” that
organized it for helping him in his campaign for Lieutenant-Governor and
Governor and asked them to help his Senate campaign.
...
Barzinji’s organization, IIIT, donated $10,000
in 2011 to the New Dominion PAC, the organization that held the event
honoring Barzinji that Kaine spoke at. The Barzinji-tied New Dominion
PAC donated $43,050
to Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign between 2003 and 2005. That figure
doesn’t even include other political recipients that assisted Kaine’s
campaign.
German University course: Israelis harvest 'Palestinian' organs
Those of you who thought that German anti-Semitism died in Hitler's bunker were sadly mistaken.
I am currently reading German reporter Tuvia 'Tobi' Tenenbaum's Catch the Jew, in which Tenenbaum, who grew up as an Israeli Haredi, poses as a German reporter to gain access to 'Palestinians' and self-hating Jews. One of the things that's striking about the book is how much of the 'Palestinians' day-to-day activities are financed by European government NGO's (yes, that's why we just adopted an NGO law), and how many of those NGO's are financed by Germans.
Why?
Because many Germans, including those in power, have never forgotten Hitler's aspirations. Here's more proof.
“Our sons were robbed of their organs,” was the title of a part of the
seminar’s course material, Rebecca Seidler, an academic who blew the
whistle on the anti-Israel material, told the weekly German-Jewish
newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung in a Thursday article.
The paper reported that the University of Applied Sciences and Arts
(HAWK) offers a course on “The Social Situation of Youths in Palestine,”
which contains the allegedly anti-Semitic material.
After reviewing the content of the course, Seidler, who was
slated to conduct the seminar, complained to the university’s
management. The Dean of the faculty of Social Work and Health, Christa
Paulini, dismissed Seidler’s criticism in a telephone conversation as
being overly-sensitive.
Seidler told the JAZ that
material showed “a picture of a genocide on the Palestinians, an ethnic
cleansing as well as a complete disenfranchisement of Palestinians by
Israel.”
The seminar syllabus also covered the “victims of torture in Israeli prisons,” said Seidler. The JAZ wrote the seminar conveyed “anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
Jerusalem Post press queries to the HAWK media
department on Sunday were not immediately returned. The HAWK instructor
Ibtissam Köhler prepared the seminar material, which also contained an
anti-Israel essay from a right-wing extremist magazine titled “Compact.”
The seminar was slated for the semester 2015/2016. It is unclear how long the HAWK has conducted anti-Israel seminars.
The HAWK is located in Hildesheim, a small city in the state of Lower Saxony, Germany, with a population of nearly 100,000.
HAWK’s
president Christiane Dienel told the German wire service DPA on Friday
that an ethics commission examined the seminar and it in “no way
propagates anti-Semitic or anti-Israel content.”
New York has obtained a
confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the
disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the
plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep
into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane
vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which
Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is
the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a
premeditated act of mass murder-suicide.
The document presents the findings of the Malaysian police’s
investigation into Zaharie. It reveals that after the plane disappeared
in March of 2014, Malaysia turned over to the FBI hard drives that
Zaharie used to record sessions on an elaborate home-built flight
simulator. The FBI was able to recover six deleted data points that had
been stored by the Microsoft Flight Simulator X program in the weeks
before MH370 disappeared, according to the document. Each point records
the airplane’s altitude, speed, direction of flight, and other key
parameters at a given moment. The document reads, in part:
Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs
obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot’s house, we found a
flight path, that lead to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous
other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator, that could be of
interest, as contained in Table 2.
Taken together, these points show a flight that departs Kuala Lumpur,
heads northwest over the Malacca Strait, then turns left and heads
south over the Indian Ocean, continuing until fuel exhaustion over an
empty stretch of sea.
And the comparison I made with EgyptAir 990 a few days after the disappearance (see first link above) was apt for another reason.
The newly unveiled documents, however,
suggest Malaysian officials have suppressed at least one key piece of
incriminating information. This is not entirely surprising: There is a
history in aircraft investigations of national safety boards refusing to
believe that their pilots could have intentionally crashed an aircraft
full of passengers. After EgyptAir 990 went down near Martha’s Vineyard
in 1999, for example, Egyptian officials angrily rejected the U.S.
National Transport Safety Board finding that the pilot had deliberately
steered the plane into the sea. Indonesian officials likewise rejected
the NTSB finding that the 1997 crash of SilkAir 185 was an act of pilot
suicide.
Left unsaid, there's something every one of those airlines has in common: They're from countries that aren't Amish.
Of course, the better question is why the FBI kept this quiet for so long.
I wonder if you can file a lawsuit in Malaysia....
Coincidence? Hillary VP candidate one of Obama's blocking backs
In case you've been in a cave all weekend, Hillary Clinton has selected Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va) as her Vice Presidential candidate. There are no coincidences. Kaine, while putting on the appearance of being 'pro-Israel' was one of eight Democratic Senators to boycott Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress in March 2015 (it's also significant that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - the other two Senators mentioned as possible running mates for Clinton - also skipped the speech). This is not a coincidence.
Mr. Kaine was absolutely no help on any of the Iran deal, which was
opposed by both Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud and the leader of the left
opposition. He was also one the senators who in 2014 refused to sign a
letter to President Obama warning of legislated legal constraints on
funding the Palestinian Arab authority after it struck its alliance with
Hamas. The letter, led by Senators Susan Collins and Ben Cardin, was
signed by 88 senators from both parties.
Senator Kaine was one of the 12 who refused to sign, a reader
reminded us when the first edition of this editorial was issued. So it
takes some brass for Mrs. Clinton’s new running mate to boast that he is
pro-Israel. As the Clintons might say, it depends on what the meaning
of “is” is. As for the price Mr. Kaine has supposedly paid for his
willingness to boycott Mr. Netanyahu’s speech, he can now count his
selection as his party’s vice presidential nominee. What a cost.
This is the Middle East, where my enemy's enemy is often my friend. But this would have been unthinkable in this region until quite recently. A high-level Saudi delegation visited Israel on Friday, and to make sure the protests from the Arab-Muslim world aren't too loud, they said they were here to promote the Saudi peace initiative.
Former Saudi general Dr. Anwar Eshki and a group of Saudi businessmen
and academics meet Friday in Jerusalem with a delegation led by MKs
Ksenia Svetlova (Zionist Union), Omer Bar-Lev (Zionist Union), Esawi
Frej (Meretz) and Michal Rozin (Meretz).
Eshki met separately
with Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold and the Coordinator of
Government Activities in the Territories Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai in an
effort to advance the Saudi Initiative, a diplomatic plan that calls for
Israel to return to pre-1967 borders in return for recognition from
Arab countries.
Svetlova said the meetings were important, because Eshki is close to Saudi King Salman and his son, Mohammad.
Eshki heads the independent think tank Middle East Institute,
which is working on plans for the bridge between Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The delegation also visited Ramallah and met with Palestinian Authority
chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
That story makes it sound like the MK's the Saudis met were all opposition MK's (Zionist Union and Meretz both being opposition parties), but looking at this picture, I doubt that's true.
Meanwhile, the meeting was condemned by the Hadash party, a far Left mixed Jewish-Arab party. They didn't condemn the Israelis for taking the meeting: They condemned the Saudis.
“The recent visit by Saudi personalities, including former general Anwar Eshki, and their meetings with representatives of the Netanyahu government, on the pretext of advancing a dialogue about the Arab peace initiative, were not designed to challenge Israel’s refusal strategy, but to legitimize it by giving Arab ‘sponsorship’ to voiding the initiative of any content and for eliminating the two-state solution and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," said a statement issued by Hadash, a faction with the Joint List of Arab parties.
"The visit is part of the normalization of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel against Iran, Syria and resistance movements in the region,” the statement continued.
Two weeks ago Hadash also condemned Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry’s visit to Jerusalem as well as his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The condemnation of both visits was issued by the Hadash secretariat without the endorsement of other members of the Arab Joint List.
The thanks for these meetings go to Barack Obama. Obama has so bungled the Iranian nuclear threat as to leave 'moderate' Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to feel that they have no choice but to join forces with Israel.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency.
Speaking to the nation Wednesday night, Erdogan said he met with the
National Security Council and together they decided to recommend a state
of emergency be declared.
“The purpose of state of emergency is to be able to take most efficient
steps to remove threat as soon as possible,” he said. “It will
strengthen and protect democratic values and rule of law.”
He also commended the citizens of Turkey who heeded his call and took to
the streets. “Citizens are occupying the squares on a democracy watch
and their names will go down in golden letters in the history of
democracy.”
Adding that, “Turkey proved its allegiance to democracy and the rule of
law by paying the high price of the lives of its citizens.”
“This nation has the right to determine its own destiny. Everyone should know that.”
He assured the nation that the armed forces will remain under the
command and control of the governors and, “As the president elected, as
the commander in chief, I will attend to it so that all viruses in the
armed forces will be cleansed.”
“My people, do not have any concerns. Turkey has overcome this challenge
and will come out of it stronger by investing more,” he concluded.
The latest estimates are that some 60,000 people have been arrested in Turkey. And they don't get Miranda warnings.
BREAKING: All political prisoners in #Turkey are now denied the right to meet lawyers, family, & make phone calls pic.twitter.com/TTqbxm9WUN
Last week's truck rampage in France and
Monday's axe attack aboard a train in Germany have raised European
concern about self-radicalised assailants who have little or no
communications with militant groups that could be intercepted by spy
agencies.
"How do you capture some signs of someone who has no contact
with any organisation, is just inspired and started expressing some kind
of allegiance? I don't know. It's a challenge," EU Counter-Terrorism
Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told Reuters on the sidelines of a
intelligence conference in Tel Aviv.
Internet companies asked to monitor their own platforms'
content for material that might flag militants had begged off, De
Kerchove said.
He said they had argued that the information was too massive
to sift through and contextualise, unlike paedophile pornography, for
which there were automatic detectors.
"So maybe a human's intervention is needed. So you cannot just
let the machine do it," De Kerchove said. But he said he hoped "we will
soon find ways to be much more automated" in sifting through social
networks.
"That is why I am here," he said of his visit to Israel. "We know Israel has developed a lot of capability in cyber."
Here's hoping that everyone who does this is located in Judea and Samaria - probably too much to wish for. But it seems to be the only alternative. Everyone else is waiting for the United States to take the lead, and that seems unlikely to happen.
While Israel's emergency laws give security
services more leeway, its intelligence minister, Yisrael Katz, called
for cooperation with Internet providers rather than state crackdowns. He
cited, for example, the encryption provided by messaging platform
WhatsApp which, he said, could be a new way for militants to communicate
and evade detection.
"We will not block these services," Katz told the conference.
"What is needed is an international organisation, preferably headed by
the United States, where shared (security) concerns need to be defined,
characterised."
If the Obama administration ever started an organization like that, it would probably include Turkey (and Iran) and exclude Israel. Remember this? Maybe someone could ask Hillary Clinton about it.
Good
morning. We are a young Jewish family
here in the Triangle and recently learned of Rabbi Solomon's Behind the
Scenes Tour of Israel. The rabbi says his goal with the trip is to
raise the awareness American Jews to the realities on the ground in
Israel so they can form their “own positions that
are based on fuller, more complex information.” However, according to
the online trip guide, most of the sources of information during Rabbi
Solomon’s trip, will come from the most radical proponents of
BDS, and even pro-Islamic terror sources.
I
hope that Rabbi Solomon is
being honest about his intentions with this tour and it’s objectives.
As you will see below, it will appear to most that the Rabbi intends to
stir hatred for Israeli Jews and fro the IDF, who is sole guarantor of
the Jewish State.
To begin, the most troubling
aspect of MEDJI Tours is that they partner with the Holy Land Fund, a designated terror group who
has provided funding and support to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood according
to the U.S. Justice Department. That a Rabbi from Raleigh is partnering with a Hamas terror
financier is alarming and it must be investigated by the community and others.
Parents’ Circle Families Forum -An active and vocalsupporter
of the International
Solidarity Movement, a pro-terror group that recruits American students to
pose as peace activists while they abet terrorists in the
West Bank and Gaza, the center routinely launches rhetorical attacks on
Israel and denigrates the American presence in Iraq. Many
bereaved families in Israel have spoken out against PCFF for its
demands of an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative of exclusive
Israeli guilt, a corresponding rejection of the legitimacy of Israeli
narratives, and the political messages that are transmitted,
explicitly and implicitly, through PCFF activities. http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/parents_circle_families_forum/
All that’s Left -They
report to be a collective unequivocally opposed to the occupation and committed to building the diaspora angle of resistance. taking to the streets with visual and educational strategies to reshape how visitors
think about Israel, which includes total, one-sided demonization of the IDF.http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.528285
Tent of Nations - notorious
for lying about the IDF supposedly ruthlessly confiscating the property
of innocent Palestinians, never mind these lies disproven in court. The
libelous narratives of Tent of Nations has fueled the Presbyterian Church USA’s boycott of Israel.This
organization raises money by claiming “Israeli Military Destroys Orchards at Tent of Nations – Please Act Now!" https://rabbibrant.com/2014/05/21/israeli-military-destroys-orchards-at-tent-of-nations-please-act-now/
Mahmoud Darwish Museum
- who partners with BDS group IACHD to sponsor anti-Israel propaganda tours to gin up hatred of Israeli Jews.http://www.summerinpalestine.org/2015/blog.htmlIn
fact, Mahmoud Darwish was a poet who not only called for all living
Jews to leave "Palestine" , but to take with them also their dead
ones!!!
Yassar Arafat's Tomb - the father of modern
terrorism deserves respect with a visit to his gravesite? Arafat
is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Israeli
citizens,
the deaths of untold numbers of Arabs and the killing of more than 100
U.S. citizens and the Rabbi pays his respects thereby validating his
muderous acts??
Combatants for Peace – partner of pro-BDS movement, anti-IDF
activists who
utilizes highly demonizing language, accusing Israel of “ethnic
cleansing,” “genocide,” “collective punishment,”
and “apartheid”; promotes BDS campaigns against Israel; and explicitly
advocates for the end of the state of Israel as the nation state of the
Jewish people.
Even the Bait al Karama Culinary School and the Birzeit
Brewery company travelers will visit for pleasure are known anti-Israel BDS activists whose companies were created for this purpose
Rabbi Solomon’s ittenerary also includes a stop where travelers will “Learn the story of Open
House Ramle where the non-fiction story Lemon Tree took place.” According to Stand With us, “Lemmon Tree” is pure fiction and it’s a propaganda piece that presents
the extremist Palestinian case against Israel and says we should be
“deeply concerned” that some secondary schools are using the book. https://www.standwithus.com/news/article.asp?id=256
These
are but a sampling of the details of this trip, which promotes hatred
towards Israeli Jews from beginning to
end. This tour should be led by either the Palestinian Authority,
Hamas, or the Muslim Brotherhood; not by the Rabbi of a Conservative
synagogue in Raleigh, North Carolina.
I am
asking today that you look into this trip further and to ensure that
all consumers understand clearly the pro-BDS
and anti-IDF education this trip will offer. And above all, consumers
should be well informed of the Islamic terror-supporting partners of
this trip. Many
are now researching whether it's legal to financially partner with
foreign terror sponsors and with companies who organizes boycotts
against Israeli Jewish citizens.
Thank you for your consideration in this troubling matter.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
