There is no anti-Semite like a Jewish anti-Semite: Meet Max Blumenthal
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
On Saturday night, Elie Wiesel z"l passed away. Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust as a teenager, spent the rest of his life trying (among other things) to chase down the Nazi scum that systematically murdered six million Jews during the years of the Second World War. Even Haaretz published a sympathetic obituary.
But alas, there are some Jews for whom nothing is holy - not even the memory of the six million Holocaust victims. We know them as Jewish anti-Semites. Meet Max Blumenthal (if you haven't had the 'pleasure' already).
Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a supporter of those who commit them. He did more harm than good and should not be honored.
I'd love to see an intrepid reporter ask Hillary what she thinks of Max's disgusting comments. But I'm not holding my breath - it's highly unlikely to happen.
It's come to this: Socialist Bernie Sanders compares Holocaust to imaginary phobia
I want to remind you all that I live in a country where 'socialism' is (unfortunately) not a dirty word. But even we know the difference between the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that gave rise to it, and the imaginary phobia known as 'Islamophobia.'
But in one of the most emotional moments of the night, George Mason
University senior Remaz Abdelgader stood up and demanded to know how
Sanders would address the rising tide of Islamophobia in the U.S. Her
voice breaking, she spoke of how hurt she feels when she hears anti-Muslim rhetoric from other candidates for president — including GOP frontrunners Ben Carson, who has said he doesn’t want a Muslim as president of the U.S.
“Being an American is such a strong part of my identity, but I want
to create a change in this society,” she said. “I’m so tired of
listening to this rhetoric saying I can’t be president one day, that I
should not be in office. It makes me so angry and upset. This is my
country.”
Sanders insisted she join him on stage and gave her a hug as the crowd of a couple hundred stood and cheered.
Then, in response to her question, Sanders does something he rarely
does: he spoke personally about his Jewish faith and family history,
which includes losing relatives in the Holocaust, and said Americans
need to learn from that past. “If we stand for anything we have to stand
together and end all forms of racism in this country,” he said. “I will
lead that effort as president.”
It gets worse from there.
No people have been subject to greater amounts and more severe discrimination than Jews. Incidents of anti-Semitism throughout the West remain totally disproportionate to the number of Jews present in those countries. Comparing Holocaust level anti-Semitism to 'Islamophobia' is cheap populist grandstanding.
Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary Jibril Rajoub recently lauded
the Palestinian attackers, saying: "These are individual acts of
heroism, of which I am proud." In the interview, which aired on the
official TV channel of the Palestinian Authority on October 17, 2015,
Rajoub further said: "We refuse to pay the bill for the Holocaust. What
is being done to us is exactly the same as what was done to the Jews in
Europe."
Let's go to the videotape.
For those with long memories, maybe now you understand the fury over President Obama's connecting Israel's existence to the Holocaust during his first year in office.
“While I agree with Natalie Portman that hatred exists in every part of
the world, our area included, her understanding of the Holocaust seems
limited,” Colette Avital, the chairwoman of the Center of Organizations
of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“Natalie
should understand that the Holocaust which befell us cannot be
compared to other tragedies – our empathy notwithstanding. It was not
merely hatred, it was a policy whose aim was to systematically wipe out a
whole people from the face of the world,” she explained. “I agree that
the education we give our children should not encourage a continuous
sense of being the eternal victims. The lessons to be drawn from the
Holocaust are that life should be sanctified, and that we should be
more humane. What should be taught is also the incredible resilience of
our people who have risen from the ashes, rebuilt their lives and
built a country of their own.”
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, a professional
Nazi hunter who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office,
agreed, telling the Post that “with all due respect for Ms. Portman’s
great acting and directing talents, her success in the movie world does
not turn her into an expert in history or on genocide. If she wants to
express her sympathy with all victims of such tragedies, this is
definitely not a smart way to do so.”
Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich voiced similar concerns.
“As
human beings and especially as Jews, we need to be sensitive to all
tragedies, to all genocides. As human beings and especially as Jews, we
must ensure that all remember the uniqueness of the Holocaust, in it’s
scope and in it’s scale,” he said to the Post.
...
“I both agree and disagree with Natalie Portman,” said Menachem
Rosensaft, general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, who teaches
about genocide law at Columbia and Cornell universities. “Of course all
genocides, as well as all similar atrocities, are tragic and must be
acknowledged and commemorated as such. And no one should engage in
comparative suffering.
I tell my students that from the point of
view of the victims or their families, it really makes no difference
if they were murdered in a gas chamber or with machetes. And, as World
Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder has emphasized, Jews must
not be silent when Yazidis and Christians are persecuted and murdered
by ISIS [Islamic State].”
“At the same time, the Holocaust is
unique – not worse and certainly not more tragic – because of its
enormous, continent-wide scope, because of the complexity and
systematic methodology of the annihilation and the willing participation
of such an enormously broad-based part of not just German but other
societies,” he said to the Post on Sunday. “In this respect, the
Holocaust must be acknowledged as the epitomic manifestation of
genocide, as the ultimate consequence of bigotry and hatred as official
public policy combined with international indifference and inaction.
This, too, must be taught and emphasized.”
I used to think she was smart. Maybe the fact that her new movie is based on Leftist Amos Oz's autobiography has messed up her head?
There's been a lot of commentary in the media - most of it negative - over Mike Huckabee's accusation that the Iran nuclear sellout has led Israelis to 'the doors of the ovens.' Mike French argues that imagery notwithstanding, Huckabee is spot-on when it comes to substance.
What matters is substance, and on the substance, Huckabee is
exactly right in his assessment of Iranian motives and Israel’s
potential vulnerability.
How many times do Iranian officials and Iranian allies have to express
genocidal intentions before we believe them? While there’s long been
argument as to whether former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
actually said Israel “must be wiped off the map,” there is an enormous
amount of evidence that this sentiment has been repeated (even stated in
English) and amplified by Iranian officials and allies on multiple
occasions. For example, the inscription below (on a missile, no less)
has been translated as saying “Israel must be uprooted and wiped off
[the pages of] history.”
And in the banner below, the Iranians helpfully provided their own translation:
Perhaps Obama wants to wait until Iran nukes Israel for it to be
politically correct to call Iran’s wiping Israel off the map a
“Holocaust.” But, make no mistake, Obama knows full well that Iran
intends to wipe Israel off the map with its Obama-blessed Nukes.
Come
on, does anyone (except the American left-wing cool-aid drinking Jews)
really believe that Iran will abide by their “voluntary” protocols under
the Vienna announcement? Of course not! Are Obama or any of the
European Union leaders so rank stupid and naïve that they think Iran
won’t build a bomb just like North Korea? Does anyone not know that one
of Iran’s first targets will be to annihilate Israel?
Of course Obama knows Iran will seek to annihilate Israel, so that must be what Obama wants.
Obviously, Obama doesn’t care if he enables the murder of another 6
million Jews through a Palestinian State’s chemical Sarin-tipped
Katyusha rockets, or an Iranian Nuke. It’s simple: Obama wants Israel
and its Jews offed. What is so difficult to understand about that?
Every move Obama has made from the very first moment of his presidency
has been to irreparably harm Israel and Saudi Arabia, and irrevocably
empower Iran. It doesn’t matter what Obama’s specific motivation is.
Obama may believe in Farrakhan’s and Rev. Wright’s virulent Chicago
anti-Semitism; Obama may be merely steeped in anti-British
anti-Colonialism; or both. All that matters is Obama is acting in ways
that will allow others to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
If
Obama walks like a Jew-hater, arms Iran like a Jew-hater, and creates a
PA "West Bank" State like a Jew-hater, he’s a Jew-hater.
But,
now here come the American Leftist Jewish “Holocaust” speech-police like
Debbie Wasserman-Schulz who say one isn’t allowed to invoke the
“Holocaust” or “Auschwitz” into a political debate when it is Iran’s
highest leaders who have repeatedly, openly, and notoriously injected
into the political debate that they intend to wipe Israel off the map.
And, in plain sight, Obama is crowning Iran, the greatest openly
Holocaust-threatening, terror-state in the world, the nuclear
hegemon-state of the Middle East because Iran is “stable.” I guess Obama
forgot he helped quash a popular uprising there as his first foreign
policy debacle.
The National Jewish Democratic Council immediately called on members of the Republican Party to denounce Huckabee’s comments, saying it is “not
only disgustingly offensive to the President and the White House, but
shows utter, callous disregard for the millions of lives lost in the
Shoah and to the pain still felt by their descendants today.”
“It may be the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory,” the organization added in a statement.
The Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights antisemitism,
said that while they are wary of the deal, Huckabee’s comments are “completely out of line and unacceptable.”
“To hear Mr. Huckabee invoke the Holocaust when
America is Israel’s greatest ally and when Israel is a strong nation
capable of defending itself is disheartening,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement.
The NJDC is an organization of the Democratic party that has come out in favor of the Iranian nuclear sellout. It exists to promote the Democratic party (and Jewish donations to it) and is definitely not Jewish. The ADL is a group of paranoid liberals that is too busy finding anti-Semitism on every street corner to think about what it means to be Jewish. In fact, I am surprised that they did not accuse Huckabee of being an anti-Semite.
I have never heard of any of the other organizations cited, although I do 'know' one of the people cited from his online persona.
And in true Leftist fashion not a single comment supporting Huckabee has been cited.
"Look, we have a very serious disagreement with the administration on
a very serious issue," Ambassador Ron Dermer told Capital Download.
"But what I don't doubt is the sincerity of the president or his team
when they say they believe this deal not only makes America safe but
makes Israel safe. Where we disagree is the judgment of actually what
this deal is going to do."
On Huckabee's comments, he said: "These are not words that I would use or that I think are appropriate."
But what did you expect him to saywhile he's the Ambassador? That Obama is at best indifferent and at worst hostile to Israel's existence as a state? Consider what Dermer's predecessor wrote once he was out of office (from a review by John Podhoretz):
It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in “Ally” that will
startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its
incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama
administration toward the Jewish state.
What makes the details especially credible is that Oren is no
flame-breathing Israeli right-winger but very much (and at times
distressingly) an Establishment creature and one, moreover, who makes it
clear he drank the Obama hope-and-change Kool-Aid in 2008. (Indeed, he
now serves in Israel’s Knesset not as a member of Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud
but of the new centrist Kulanu party.)
On major matters, the administration seemed to hold Israel accountable for problems it had nothing to do with.
Example: The Palestinian Authority made moves toward seeking a
declaration of statehood at the United Nations in 2011, which would’ve
triggered a law shutting down their US mission and suspending all aid to
the PA and to UN agencies that recognized Palestine.
In response, Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides called Oren into his
fancy Foggy Bottom office and screamed at him: “You don’t want the
f - - - ing UN to collapse because of your f - - - - ing conflict with
the Palestinians, and you don’t want the f - - - king Palestinian
Authority to fall apart either.”
To which Oren replied that Israel didn’t want the United Nations to
collapse “but there are plenty of Tea Party types who would, and no
shortage of Congress members who are wondering why they have to keep
paying Palestinians who spit in the president’s eye.” He reports that
Nides “slumped into his Louis XVth chair.”
Oren also writes about bizarrely petty offenses. In 2010, Obama left
Israel off a list of countries he mentioned as having helped in the wake
of the Haiti earthquake when it was the first nation in the world to
dispatch relief teams and get them to the disaster sites — because the
president was angry about something having to do with the peace process.
Even when the administration is acting friendly, Oren senses it is
doing so not out of genuine fellow feeling but to keep Israel close —
hugging it to prevent it from acting, especially when it came to Iran’s
nuclear program.
I'd bet that Dermer is a lot closer to Huckabee and Oren on this than he is to the ADL or the NJDC - he just can't say so.
My own view is that while I'm averse to Holocaust analogies (they make me cringe because I think they're overused), there is something to the notion that 'ovens' reflects Obama's deepest wishes for the people of Israel, if not for (non-liberal) Jews generally. And it certainly reflects what Iran wants to do with its nuclear program.
Huckabee: 'Obama taking Israelis and marching them to the door of the ovens'
Yes, Mike Huckabee said that. In an interview with Breitbart Radio on Saturday, Huckabee said that President Hussein Obama's Iran sellout is marching the Jews to the gas chambers (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
Governor Huckabee didn’t pull any punches when
talking about Obama’s Iran nuclear deal: “This president’s foreign
policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he
would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and
march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this
Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in
Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away
the whole store. It’s got to be stopped.”
Yet to think of ISIS and Hamas as being in a state of war may be to
overestimate their hostility and underrate their grasp of political
reality. Hamas doesn’t so much fear ISIS as it does worry about a wild
card group making decisions for them about war with Israel at a moment
when they might prefer to continue the truce with the Jewish state.
Similarly, ISIS has enough on its plate fighting in Syria and Iraq
against forces that would like to see it destroyed without opening up a
new front in Gaza at a moment when its strength there is minuscule
compared to the enormous military that Hamas can deploy against Israel.
But despite animosity and distrust, it is more than obvious that both
Hamas and ISIS share a common enemy in Egypt. The Sisi government in
Cairo is dedicated to the eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood and
regards Hamas, which was founded by Brotherhood supporters and whose
help to the group during the unrest in Egypt was included in the charges
against former President Mohammed Morsi, as a hostile entity. Egypt is
even more determined to isolate Gaza than Israel. In that sense, the
Hamas-ISIS connection is a natural alliance.
That’s why Hamas has a vested interest in creating more chaos in
Sinai than exists along its border with Israel. No matter what their
opinion of each other might be, Hamas understands that the Egyptian
government is a far more dangerous threat to its continued survival than
is Israel. Under the circumstances it doesn’t take much of a leap of
imagination to believe that Israel’s intelligence about
Hamas’s involvement in ISIS activities in Sinai has the ring of truth.
This realization ought to do more than cause concern in both Cairo
and Jerusalem. The Sinai had already been transformed into something of a
Wild West for terror in the years since a bloody Hamas coup allowed the
group to seize control of the independent Palestinian state (in all but
name) that currently exists in Gaza. But with ISIS moving into the void
of security that the Sinai has become, a low level conflict with
terrorists may be about to turn into something far more serious.
More to the point, this tacit alliance between otherwise rival
Islamist terror groups ought to cause some foreign policy experts
who have regarded Western acquiescence toward Hamas’s continued grip on
Gaza as a given to rethink that assumption. If Gaza is no longer merely a
launching pad for rockets and tunnels aimed at terrorizing Israelis but
is also a base for terror aimed at toppling moderate Arab governments,
continued tolerance of its sovereignty in Gaza is not only morally
wrong; it is a suicidal proposition for the West.
Just as the Israelis have refrained from toppling Hamas in Gaza lest
they be stuck governing the dysfunctional strip, so too do Western
nations have a distaste for regime change in the strip. But perhaps it
is time that those who were so quick to criticize Israel for launching a
counter-attack against Gaza-based terrorism last summer realize that
the perpetuation of Hamas rule there is a threat to more than the Jewish
state. So long as an Islamist terror group has a secure base next to
both Egypt and Israel and is getting aid from Iran, it is reasonable to
assume that it will be undermining the security of both of those states
as well as the rest of the region.
While I cannot prove it empirically, there are many scholars who believe that had Adolph Hitler and the Nazis (may their name and memory be obliterated) not been so obsessed with murdering Jews, the outcome of World War II might have been different and we might all be speaking German now. Will the West (particularly Europe and the Democratic party in the US) allow its all-consuming hatred of Israel and/or Jews to overlook the storm that is brewing in Gaza?
Claim: Labeling of 'settlement products' would have little economic impact
Haaretz is claiming that a European requirement to label 'settlement products' would have very little economic impact.
So how much do Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Golan Heights and
East Jerusalem actually sell in Europe? It’s not a number that’s easy
to come by, as the Israeli government publishes no separate figures on
exports from these disputed areas – presumably out of concern it might
be seen as tacit acknowledgement of their questionable status.
But according to figures obtained by Haaretz from a
high-ranking authority on foreign trade matters, exports originating
from the settlements are a mere drop in the bucket, at least in relative
terms.
Figures compiled by this well-placed source – who
asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter –
show that in 2012, the last year for which they exist, industrial
exports from the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem to the
European Union totaled $100 million, accounting for less than 1 percent
of Israel’s total industrial exports to this huge trade bloc (excluding
diamonds). Industrial exports from the West Bank, Golan Heights and East
Jerusalem to the entire world totaled $250 million that year,
accounting for slightly over half a percent of the total.
According to this source, the overwhelming majority
of industrial exports from the settlements are not finished goods, but
rather, components – pipes, tubes, spare parts and the likes. In other
words, the type of merchandise that rarely finds its way onto
supermarket or department store shelves, where it could be picked out
easily by discerning consumers who pay attention to labels.
Agricultural exports from the settlements to Europe,
the source estimates, total no more than “a few million dollars.” Most
of these are dates and grapes grown on kibbutzim and moshavim –
different forms of cooperative settlement – in the Jordan Valley.
Of course, that assumes that the impact of 'labeling' can be limited to Judea, Samaria and 'east' Jerusalem products can be limited to products coming from those areas. As you already know, the goal of the BDS'ers is to boycott Israel entirely. And even Haaretz is forced to admit that could well be result.
“From my talks with the Europeans, it would seem to me that they are
looking for any possible way right now to shake up the status quo,” said
Arie Arnon, a professor of economics at Ben Gurion University of the
Negev, who specializes in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“Although the volume we’re talking about is
extremely small,” he continued, ”the fear is that it will develop into
something bigger. Some stores many not want to deal with the hassle of
putting special labels on goods from the settlement, so they may just
stop bringing in goods from Israel entirely. This could also develop
into a secondary boycott, with European companies and consumers cutting
off ties not only with businesses operating in the settlements, but also
with those located inside Israel that are also active in the
territories, like the banks."
According to the high-ranking foreign trade source,
about 600 factories owned by Israelis operate in the West Bank. In
recent years, international pressure has forced several of the big
exporters among them to move their production facilities inside Israel’s
internationally recognized borders. These include the Barkan winemaker,
the Bagel Bagel pretzel maker, the Swedish-owned Mult-T-Lock lock
manufacturer, and most recently -- in wake of a huge international
backlash—the SodaStream seltzer machine maker.
This week, the Ahava skin care products manufacturer
based near the Dead Sea, announced that it is contemplating setting up
another factory near its existing facility but within Israel proper.
In 2006, Gush Shalom, the peace activist group
headed by Uri Avnery, published a list of several hundred products made
in areas beyond the Green Line.
Five years later, the Knesset passed the so-called
“anti-boycott law,” which penalizes persons or organizations that call
for a boycott of Israel or the settlements. Concerned that it might be
sued for heavy damages under the law, Gush Shalom removed the list from
its website. (An appeal by Gush Shalom and other organizations against
the law was basically struck down earlier this year).
...
Yarom Ariav, a former director-general of the Israeli Finance
Ministry and senior executive at Israel Chemicals, one of the country’s
largest exporters, said the new European directive, which has yet to be
approved, is more symbolic than anything else. “In terms of the amount
of damage to the economy, it’s negligible,” he noted, "although when it
comes to individual exporters, it could definitely be significant.”
In Ariav’s view, the main danger of the new labeling
decree is that it could trigger a chain reaction. “It could definitely
cause the boycott movement against Israel to expand, and if there is no
peace agreement on the horizon, I definitely see that happening,” he
says. “There’s a dynamic involved here in which people get used to the
idea of Israel and anything connected to Israel being considered
tainted. The next phase could be an undeclared consumer boycott and then
an all-out boycott.”
The impact of the labeling - if God Forbid it comes to pass - goes far beyond a few hundred thousand dollars in lost exports. Nazi Germany started on its way by boycotting Jewish businesses. If we start with labeling and it has no impact, no one really knows what will come next.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and current MK Michael Oren (Kulanu) criticizes Prime Minister Netanyahu's handling of his relationship with President Hussein Obama, and then rips Obama for abandoning Israel. More after the lengthy excerpt (someone was kind enough to send me the full article by email).
[M]any of Israel’s bungles were not committed
by Mr. Netanyahu personally. In both episodes with Mr. Biden, for example, the
announcements were issued by midlevel officials who also caught the prime
minister off-guard. Nevertheless, he personally apologized to the vice
president.
Mr. Netanyahu’s only premeditated misstep was
his speech to Congress, which I recommended against. Even that decision, though,
came in reaction to a calculated mistake by President Obama. From the moment he
entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian
cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran. Such policies would have put him
at odds with any Israeli leader. But Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental
challenge by abandoning the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with
America.
The first principle was “no daylight.” The U.S.
and Israel always could disagree but never openly. Doing so would encourage
common enemies and render Israel vulnerable. Contrary to many of his detractors,
Mr. Obama was never anti-Israel and, to his credit, he significantly
strengthened security cooperation with the Jewish state. He rushed to help
Israel in 2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire. And yet,
immediately after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel
and America.
“When there is no daylight,” the president told
American Jewish leaders in 2009, “Israel just sits on the sidelines and that
erodes our credibility with the Arabs.” The explanation ignored Israel’s 2005
withdrawal from Gaza and its two previous offers of Palestinian statehood in
Gaza, almost the entire West Bank and half of Jerusalem—both offers rejected by
the Palestinians.
Mr. Obama also voided President George W. Bush’s
commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within
Israel’s borders in any peace agreement. Instead, he insisted on a total freeze
of Israeli construction in those areas—“not a single brick,” I later heard he
ordered Mr. Netanyahu—while making no substantive demands of the
Palestinians. Consequently, Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas boycotted negotiations, reconciled with Hamas and sought statehood in the
U.N.—all in violation of his commitments to the U.S.—but he never paid
a price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for
building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part
of Israel.
The other core principle was “no surprises.”
President Obama discarded it in his first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, in May
2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and Israeli acceptance of the
two-state solution. The following month the president traveled to the Middle
East, pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the Muslim world from Cairo.
Israeli leaders typically received advance
copies of major American policy statements on the Middle East and could submit
their comments. But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented
support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear
power, without consulting Israel.
Similarly, in May 2011, the president altered 40
years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines with land swaps—formerly the
Palestinian position—as the basis for peace-making. If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to
lecture the president the following day, it was because he had been assured by
the White House, through me, that no such change would happen.
Israel was also stunned to learn that Mr. Obama
offered to sponsor a U.N. Security Council investigation of the settlements and
to back Egyptian and Turkish efforts to force Israel to reveal its alleged
nuclear capabilities. Mr. Netanyahu eventually agreed to a 10-month moratorium
on settlement construction—the first such moratorium since 1967—and backed the
creation of a Palestinian state. He was taken aback, however, when he received
little credit for these concessions from Mr. Obama, who more than once publicly
snubbed him.
The abandonment of the “no daylight” and “no
surprises” principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program. Throughout my
years in Washington, I participated in intimate and frank discussions with U.S.
officials on the Iranian program. But parallel to the talks came administration
statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck
Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel from striking
Iran pre-emptively.
Finally, in 2014, Israel discovered that its
primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy.
The talks resulted in an interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis
considered a “bad deal” with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr. Obama, though,
insisted that Iran was a rational and potentially “very successful regional
power.”
The daylight between Israel and the U.S. could
not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president
pledge that he “had their backs” and “was not bluffing” about the military
option, only to watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that “a military solution
cannot fix” the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been
greater.
Oren doesn't go far enough. His claim that Obama was 'never anti-Israel' doesn't square with the facts that we knew long before Obama was elected President. The fact that the one example Oren gives of 'significantly strengthened security cooperation' under Obama relates to a natural disaster and not to a military action is telling.
Oren seems to be placing the burden of restoring the US-Israel relationship to what it was on both the US and Israel. But clearly, one party here (the US in the person of the Obama administration) initiated the hostilities. The actions that Obama took immediately on taking office - the introduction of 'daylight' between the US and Israel, the Cairo speech, the Buchenwald visit in which he adopted the 'Palestinian' narrative of Israel's sole right to our land being based on the Holocaust, and the disavowal of the Bush letter - set the tone for the relationship, and it's up to Obama - more likely to his successor - to reset that tone.
Yesterday, I met with the Washington correspondent of a US-based newspaper. She asked me how Israelis feel about the United States. I told her 'Israelis love the United States and the American people. Israelis hate Obama. For good reason.'
Europe is willing to sacrifice its future and its civilization for the chance to take World Jewry down with it. It is no coincidence that the Holocaust happened on Europe's blood-drenched soil. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Our view has not changed. Terror attack at Paris Kosher market was motivated by anti-Semitism. POTUS didn't intend to suggest otherwise.
— Josh Earnest (@PressSec) February 10, 2015
So now Obama is trying to walk back his foolish statement that the Paris Kosher supermarket terror attack was a 'random' attack.
Does he really mean it?
Or was the outrage over such an obviously anti-Semitic and wrong statement too much for the Obama PR machine to leave it out there?
If you thought Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate...
If you thought Hilary Clinton was a bad candidate, please meet her rival - extreme Leftist Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Jack W).
Yes, that's right. She just agreed with someone comparing Israel's actions to the Holocaust.
The person who was speaking in the video whom you could not see was one Eva Moseley, a long-time anti-Israel 'activist.'
There has been a lot of debate over whether or not Moseley's claims are legitimate. Front Page Magazine called her an "honest fraud" because she describes her holocaust story as her "schtick."
In a shockingly unguarded moment, she wrote the following email
to her comrades at the Peace Commission: “I can do my “I escaped from
Nazi Vienna and am unhappy with what Israel does” schtick, if you think
that would help.”
Moseley has been an activist for years. Most recently, she signed a Change.org petition
called “Unequivocally Condemning Israel's Ongoing Massacre In Gaza,”
which it called “The Latest Chapter In More Than A Century Of Zionist
Colonialism, Dispossession, Ethnic Cleaning, Racism, And Genocide --
Including Israel's Very Establishment Through The Uprooting And
Displacement Of Over 750,000 Palestinians.”
Warren could be President of the United States two and a half years from now. Would Moseley play a role? What could go wrong?
Pope's 'man of peace' says murdering Jews not a crime
At the same event at which Pope Francis I called 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen a 'man of peace,' the peaceful man had some choice comments about murdering Jews. This is from Tom Gross.
(4) There is also concern in Israel that the Pope called Palestinian
Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas a “man of peace” today at an event where
Abbas, in the Pope’s presence, repeated his demand that any Palestinian
who murders an Israeli must not be punished at all.
Gross also has some comments about the infamous picture of the Pope praying at the 'security fence.'
But none of the Western media I have seen have drawn attention to the
exact spot that the Pope chose to pray: in front of large graffiti
comparing Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto.
The photo above is from the main EU-funded Palestinian media outlet,
the Maan news agency.
(There is another version of this photo below.)
A few comments:
(1) Comparing Israel with Nazi Germany forms part of the working definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the EU and others.
...
(2) Bethlehem is a relatively prosperous town where restaurants and
juice bars are packed, and BMWs, Mercedes and Humvees compete for
parking spaces in the center or town. By contrast, 400,000 Jews were
herded into the Warsaw Ghetto and those who weren’t beaten or starved to
death there, were taken to be exterminated at nearby camps.
(Yes, there is of course a political problem between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, and one day, one hopes, the security barrier can
be removed without its removal leading to increased terrorism, but this
has nothing to do with the Warsaw Ghetto. One wonders why the Pope’s
Vatican handlers were eager to choose that spot – or are so insensitive
as to allow the Palestinian Authority to guide the Pontiff to that
spot.)
(3) The Pope represents an organization, the Vatican, which even
today, after seven decades of repeated appeals, is still refusing to
make public its wartime archives detailing the full extent of its
collaboration with the Nazis before, during and after the Holocaust.
New Israel Fund 'activists': 'The Holocaust is a whore who justifies the occupation'
You can't make this stuff up. The New Israel Fund has reached new heights of anti-Semitism with the dissemination of the video below called 'The Holocaust visits Yad Vashem' (Yad Vashem is Israel's national Holocaust memorial).
Let's go to the videotape (language warning). More after the video.
And the connection to the New Israel Fund? That's here (link in Hebrew). Here's a partial translation:
But beyond the academic interest in a Naziphile fantasy like this one, it would be worthwhile on this day to take an interest in the small people who stand in the background. These are the transparent activists, the epitome of the 'other,' without whom this sort of snorting production would be impossible. The first, the honored matron Moran Sharir, the producer and photographer, who showed off her dream regarding the return of all the 'uprooted Palestinians' to a convention of the Zochrot organization last year, and whose cinematic creations are shown off with others atthe 'social television' site (25,000 from the New Israel Fund in 2012.
She and the additional photographer Guy Boktavia (also from the 'social television' of course) are the bread and butter without which the New Israel Fund's prostitution of the Holocaust would not reach our screens.
Second, but not secondary, is Mr. Itamar Shapiro, who lightly skips between activism in the anti-IDF group 'Breaking the Silence' (about 100,000 dollars from the New Israel Fund in 2012) and the establishment of the anti-IDF group 'Fighters for Peace.' In between, Shapiro found time to try to be a guide at Yad Vashem, where he was surprisingly fired after comparing the Holocaust to the occupation. A lot of investment for a cheap provocation.
And of course it would be impossible without the Professor of Honor, the Great Teacher, the Great Oracle of the psychotic Left, Gidon 'I am a Holocaust survivor so I'm allowed' Spiro, who took the trouble to be interviewed in the video, and to inform those few who made it to 7:05 in the video that "the Holocaust victims in Israel are the manufacturers of the next Holocaust."
After it massively and actively supports the boycott of Israel, prevents the IDF from protecting the State's citizens, destroys Israel's economy in the name of utopias of equality (of blessed memory), the time has come to tell the New Israel Fund and the organizations it has spawned: Have the Jewish people not suffered enough?
With the exception of the Shapiro link (a story I covered on this blog at the time), all the rest of the links are in Hebrew.
But keep this video in mind when you see the New Israel Fund-supported groups marching in the Celebrate Israel Parade on June 1. Disgusting, isn't it?
Shimon Peres describes how his grandfather was murdered by the Nazis
At Yad Vashem on Sunday night, Shimon Peres related how his grandfather HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) was murdered by the Nazis - may their names be obliterated.
The President of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, spoke at
the official commemoration ceremony for the Holocaust Martyrs' and
Heroes' Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem.
President Peres spoke about the
horrors of the massacre of Hungarian Jewry which took place 70 years ago
today and of the destruction of the community in his home town of
Vishneva. President Peres also took the opportunity to address the
dangers of the rise of extremism and the need to be vigilant against
anti-Semitism across the world.
The following is a translated version of his speech:
“My brothers and sisters, at this very moment I see before my eyes a
heartbreaking image. Tens of thousands of people; young and old, male
and female, all concentrated on the banks of the Danube River. They are
all under orders to face the river, each one tied to the next. Behind
them stand Nazi storm troopers, Germans and locals, who cut them down
with bullets in the back. To save bullets they tied weights and stones
to them so that the dead will drag the living down with them. Children
were tied to their mothers, the young to the elderly.
"The bodies of the victims are pushed into the chilling, foaming
waters of the Danube. Their cries rise to the heavens and are left
without an echo. The perpetrators stand with smiles on their faces, as
if they carried out an act of heroism and won a brave battle. The blue
Danube is painted red, in a single moment it became a floating grave,
innocent victims, innocent people. Itamar Yaoz-Kest, a Jewish poet born
in Hungary and sent to Bergen-Belsen, screams in one of his poems, 'What
is there to drink? They tell me people. Water with blood?'
It happened in Hungary.
“But then another image comes to my mind. A photo of the town where I
was born and spent the first decade of my life. Vishneva. In Vishneva
the Nazis used a different technique. They didn't shoot the Jews. They
burnt them alive. The Nazis, Germans and locals, gathered up all the
Jews left in Vishneva, (half had already emigrated to Israel) and forced
them to march to the synagogue which was made of wood.
"My grandfather, wrapped in a Jewish prayer shawl, stood at the head
of the march, Rabbi Zvi Meltzer may peace be upon his soul. The same
prayer shawl that I huddled under every Yom Kippur to listen to him
recite the Kol Nidre prayer in his beautiful voice. They locked the
doors of the synagogue and set it on fire with all the Jews still
inside. No-one survived. Nothing was left of the synagogue. I can still
hear the Kol Nidre prayer, which my grandfather would recite, in my
heart.
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
