You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard how the British Labor Party has been overrun by anti-Semitism, and how that's come to a head in the last week or two.
But Britain is not the only place that's happened. Anti-Semitism, politely described as anti-Zionism, has become synonymous with the Left in every Western country.
Two important weekend pieces look at this phenomenon. The first is Stephen Pollard in the London Telegraph. Pollard concentrates on what's going on in his home country, Britain, and says that he's scared of what he sees. He also sees that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
But on another, more visceral
level, it chills me to the bone. And it’s not the terrorists. They
threaten me, of course, as they threaten us all. Yet to me, the real
chill comes from their fellow travelers – the useful idiots of the
terrorists and Jew-murderers who say they do not have a racist bone in
their body, but when it comes to Jews, a blind spot emerges.
The likes,
to be blunt, of the now suspended Ken Livingstone, who claims never to
have come across a single example of Anti-semitism in the Labour Party.
He clearly has never looked in the mirror. Much has been written – especially by the brilliant Nick Cohen
– on the "Red/Green Alliance"; the phenomenon by which a swathe of the
Left has linked up with radical Islam, leading to the bizarre spectacle
of Leftist feminists supporting Islamists who would cut off the hands of
women who read books.
With "anti-Western-imperialism" as part of the glue binding the
alliance, everything else falls into place. So Hamas and Hezbollah might
have as their defining goal the elimination of an entire people from
the face of the earth, but that unfortunate consequence for Jews is by
the by, because Hamas and Hezbollah are freedom fighters.
And because Israel is part of the
Western imperium, as well as a key target for Islamists, it is also
enemy number one for progressives. So an obsessive preoccupation with
the Jewish state becomes the default position of the Left. China,
Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia – pah! The focus must be on Israel and Israel
alone. From that springs an entire worldview that encompasses "Zionist"
control of the media, of business, of everything. And we can’t be
accused of targeting Jews because we don’t use the word. We say Zionist,
not Jew.
So deep does this warping of what it means to be Left and progressive
now run that it is almost prosaic to assert Zionist control. But now,
to cap it, we have a Labour leader whose entire political career has
been in this milieu – feeding it, growing it and pushing it.
...
Should I admit that I am afraid? Because I am. I don’t go about my
life in fear. I wouldn’t be writing this or doing my job if I did. But
how, quite rationally, can I not be afraid when Jews are being murdered
on the streets of Europe simply for being Jews; when anti-Semitic tropes
and discourse is becoming part of the mainstream of political debate;
and when one of our main political parties is led by a man who does not
merely let this fester, but actually describes representatives of terrorist groups as "friends"?
If this is the level we have reached today, I fear not just for
myself but far more for my children. History shows that when
anti-Semitism takes hold it does not wither; it grows. Yes, Britain is a
wonderful home to Jews, as it is to all minorities. Yes, we have the
full backing of the law and the authorities. But yes, I do look over my
shoulder. Wouldn’t you?
In the United States, the Harvard Law Record went to some lengths
to conceal the identity of a law student who attacked a visiting Israeli
dignitary as — in the classic anti-Semitic formulation — “smelly.” That
student was Husam El-Qoulaq, a Palestinian leftist. The campus Left
has, to no one’s surprise, rallied to his defense. Among those defending
him were a number of Jewish law students, who insisted that El-Qoulaq
couldn’t possibly have known the anti-Semitic history of “smelly Jew”
rhetoric, in spite of his having been reared at the world center of such
nonsense.
Others insisted that the Harvard case and the Labour cases are — this,
too, will be familiar — not at all about anti-Semitism but about
anti-Zionism.
That argument does not stand up to two seconds’ scrutiny, and never
has. One of the fundamental stories of history is that people move
around and bump into each other. It is true that most of the current
Jewish population of Israel descends from people who were not precisely
sons of the soil they now inhabit. But then, neither are the so-called
Palestinians, who are Arabs. Arabs famously come from Arabia, but they
are located all over the world. No one talks about the need to get the
Arabs out of Egypt or Libya — or Palestine, for that matter — any more
than anybody seriously thinks about returning the Americas to the
descendants of the aboriginal population, which, of course, wasn’t
aboriginal, either, but merely the first to emigrate. The Irish are
descended of people not native to Ireland, as indeed ultimately is every
population in the world, including those in the African cradle of
humanity.
And it isn’t because the establishment of Israel is, relatively
speaking, fresh in the historical memory, and therefore an open wound.
Before the end of World War II, there was no Pakistan, and to the extent
that there was an “India,” it was a geographical rather than a
political term, much like “Palestine.” There was no independent Ireland
until the 1920s and no Republic of Ireland until 1948. There was no
People’s Republic of China until 1949. There was no Zimbabwe until 1980,
no Czech Republic until 1993, and no modern Democratic Republic of the
Congo until 1997. Israel is an ancient state compared with geopolitical
newcomers such as the 30-odd countries created since 1990.
...
For those who learned at the feet of that old fraud Edward Said,
the Jews are the colonialists, the European modernists inflicting
capitalism and technology upon the noble savages of their imaginations.
The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews
and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left’s
estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel’s future was assumed
to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different
direction, and today Israel has one of the world’s most sophisticated
economies.
For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain,
and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and
those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch
NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk,
son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a
desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with
technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any
other country except the United States and China. The economy under
Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita
that barely exceeds that of Sudan.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is
that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I
stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza
shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for
that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is
impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the
Jewish state has done.
And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state
exterminated.
School Retaliates Against Student For Parent’s Pro-Israel Stance
Received via email earlier today:
1-29-15
A state education department found that a school district and
School Committee Chair retaliated against a student because of her parent’s
complaint about inaccurate and biased materials.
The decision by the Massachusetts
agency found that the Newton Public Schools (NPS) and School
Committee Chair
Matthew Hills
sent confidential information about the student and her family to local media,
which published it. The media entities - a newspaper and a blog - also
published false claims that the parent was associated with anti-Muslim groups.
The student’s family said that both the newspaper and blog
knew that the family had previously been stalked and that publishing the false
allegations put them in danger. They also stated they suffered emotional
distress and other harm due to the district’s actions.
Parents and education groups have accused the school of
distributing inaccurate and anti-Israel material, resulting in the removal of
several widely used resources. One resource, the Arab World Studies Notebook,
has been been subject to intense criticism by education groups and removed from
other school districts. The district also removed a website and whited out a
textbook’s claim that the Catholic church was “reconsidering polygamy as a
Christian option”.
Parents’ complaint are supported by organizations including
the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA),
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East,
StandWithUs, and Zionist Organization of America.
Last September, the education research organization Verity
Educate issued a report on materials used in NPS history classes. The report
found numerous inaccurate and deceptive material, including altered primary source
documents. It also found substantial anti-Israel bias, including material
described as ‘neutral’ which had been prepared by anti-Israel activists.
The district denies that any bias or inaccuracies exist.
Officials also told parents that they would ‘never’ read the report issued by
Verity Educate or any other organization and that parents upset about deceptive
or racist class material “should find another school for their children”.
“The retaliation by school officials against a child because
of a parent’s legitimate complaints about biased and deceptive class materials
is outrageous”, said Evan Jacobi, president of the group Parents for Excellence
in Newton Schools (PENS). “Their goal is to further intimidate parents who object to their children being
told that biased and grossly inaccurate material is true.”
Hills was also found to have violated state Open Meeting law
several times in 2014 in an attempt to cover up a plagarized speech given by
Newton Superintendent David Fleishman, and advised Fleishman and others to
violate state and federal law by withholding documents from responses to public
records requests. No sanctions have been imposed on Hills for these violations.
The only meaningful commonality between Islamist and leftist dogma is
hatred for Jews with power, first and foremost for Israel. And the
singular creation of this alliance is the sides’ joint determination
that it isn’t racist to hate the Jewish state, or Jews who refuse to
condemn it.
In this state of affairs, the only outlet that leftists have for their
moral outrage is Israel. Because while they fear being called racist,
they know that being anti-Semitic will not expose them to charges of
racism.
And they know Jews won’t assault them for attacking Israel and its
supporters. So they project all the crimes perpetrated by Islamic
fanatics on Israel.
For instance, this week Megan Marzec, the president of Ohio University’s Student Senate, posted a video of herself dousing herself in a bucket of “blood.”
Marzec explained, “This bucket of blood symbolizes the thousands of
displaced and murdered Palestinians – atrocities which OU is directly
complacent in [sic] through cultural and economic ties with the Israeli
state.”
In other words, she accused Israel of the crimes Hamas seeks to inflict
on Israel, and of the crimes that Islamist forces, such as al-Qaida,
Islamic State and Boko Haram, are currently carrying out in their areas
of operations.
The growing prevalence of anti-Semitism in leftist circles has placed Jewish leftists in a vulnerable position.
Their ideological movement is denying Jews the right to self-defense and
self-determination and siding with Islamists who seek to annihilate
them. For a growing number of leftist Jews, their new status as members
of a hated group has made them feel it necessary to publicly side with
Israel’s enemies against it.
...
Lerman quoted an article published a few weeks before his in The New York Review of Books by Jonathan Freedland titled “Liberal Zionism After Gaza.”
Freedland argued that as the two-state solution becomes more and more
remote, liberal Zionists “will have to decide which of their political
identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a
Zionist.”
But this is of course absurd. The only way a person can uphold
liberal values is by being a Zionist. Israel is the only country in the
region that is a human rights-respecting liberal democracy that is
governed by the rule of law.
What is becoming more and more difficult is being a Zionist while being a
leftist. As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics,
anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist
dogma. And that anti-Semitism will express itself first and foremost as a
virulent rejection of Israel and of Jews who refuse to disavow and
condemn the Jewish state.
...
Leftist Jews must take a lesson from Sotloff, who was reportedly a product of a Jewish-leftist worldview.
They should understand that the decision they are being required to make
is not a choice between liberalism and Zionism, but between liberalism
and a reactionary dogma that sits comfortably with genocidal Jew-haters
and misogynist oppressors.
Are they capable of making the choice? Let's say I have my doubts.
Head of German Green party 'high fives' Iranian ambassador
The head of Germany's Green party, Claudia Roth, is under fire for 'high fiving' the Iranian ambassador to Germany, Ali Reza Sheikh Attar. Akhtar is accused of massacring Kurds when he was governor of their region between 1980 and 1985.
Roth’s pro-Iranian behavior
prompted Germany’s largest daily paper, Bild, to dub her “Loser of the Day,” on
its front page because of her action. This category is reserved for people who
engage in shameless, criminal, or embarrassing conduct.
Henryk M. Broder,
a popular columnist for the daily Die Welt, said Roth belongs “in the hall of
shame of politics” for her high five.
Nasrin Amirsedghi, a prominent
Iranian- German intellecutal who has written about human rights in the Islamic
Republic, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, “It is an open secret that the
Green Party lobbies intensively for the mullahs in Germany.”
She added
that a “high five normally serves as an the expression of satisfaction about
success. And [the Green Party] has contributed greatly to the success of keeping
an inhumane system going in Iran since 1979.”
Actually, the only surprise here is that anyone is upset with her. Germany is Iran's largest trading partner (a position Turkey may soon assume but not because German trade with Iran is declining) and the Red-Green alliance is nothing new, unfortunately.
How the American Left allowed the Islamic revolution to thrive
Asaf Romirowsky reviews a new book called Navigating Iran: From Carter to Obama by Ofira Seliktar. For those of you who, like me, thought that the United States' Iran policy was so ineffective because deep down Jimmy Carter sympathized with the revolution, there's more to it than that.
One of the major phenomena that the author
skillfully dissects is how disciples of the late Palestinian advocate
Edward Said and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) at large
misunderstood and consequently misguided American policy-makers under
the false belief of an "Islamic reformation" or democratization. In
contrast, others, like Bernard Lewis, had serious reservations about
Khomeini especially after finding a printing of the "Welayat el Faqih,"
the theory of the Absolute Guardianship of the Jurist notion, which
included Khomeini's lectures from the 1970s and now forms the basis for
the Iranian constitution.
Lewis alerted the Washington Post of
Khomeini's theocratic aspirations, setting out to change the
conventional wisdom that was coming out of Washington at the time.
Anyone who held views that ran counter to MESA's, including Richard
Perle — then an aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson who supplied
samples of Khomeini's writings to the CIA — and others, was categorized
as "orientalist" (another way of saying conservative or anti-Said).
Moreover, this misreading of Iran was
"ratified" by Columbia University professor Gary Sick, whose "October
Surprise" conspiracy theory alleged that Ronald Reagan made a deal with
the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages to prevent Carter from
winning the 1980 presidential elections. Sick wrote an op-ed — later he
expanded into a book entitled, "October Surprise: America's Hostages in
Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan" — in which he characterized the
1980 election as a "covert political coup." This simplistic reading did
not consider the internal politics of Iran.
Sorry, but that account absolves a bunch of people who ought not to be absolved. Although Said, who lived until 2003, was a Christian, he was so virulently anti-Israel that he likely promoted the Iranian revolution because it was a threat to Israel's continued existence. As to MESA, it may have been similarly motivated. This is from a 2005 piece by Martin Kramer:
For MESAns, the Palestinians are the chosen people, and more so now
than ever. More papers are devoted to Palestine than to any other
country. There are ten times as many Egyptians as there are
Palestinians, but they get less attention; there are ten times as many
Iranians, but Iran gets less than half the attention. Even Iraq,
America’s project in the Middle East, still inspires only half the
papers that Palestine does. Papers dealing with Israel are only half as
numerous as those on Palestine, and only three of these are about Israel
per se, apart from the Arab-Israeli conflict. More than half of the
Israel-related papers actually overlap the Palestine category. MESA’s
Palestine obsession has reached new heights, suggesting this: academe is
gearing up for its next intifada.
To appreciate that, you have to go beyond the numbers, to the content
of this “scholarship.” There you discover that many of the
presentations, if not most of them, are blatant attempts to academize
anti-Israel agitprop.
When you add to that the fact that Carter's instinctive sympathies were with the revolutionaries, there is little doubt that the failure of US policy in Iran was orchestrated by those in power.
Interview with Prof. Wistrich on "prevalent shades of anti-Semitism" by Hansjörg Müller
In September, Prof. Robert Wistrich was interviewed about the most prevalent shades of anti-Semitism by Hansjörg Müller, the editor of the Baseler Zeitung, a popular German newspaper in Basel, Switzerland. The piece appeared in the September 12 edition of the paper. With Mr. Müller's permission, Prof. Wistrich translated the piece into English. It appears below.
Q: In your encyclopedic work, A Lethal
Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House,
2010), you present Islamist antisemitism as an existential danger to modern
civilization. Could you explain?
A: In my view, Islamic antisemitism is by far
the most dynamic and threatening form of antisemitism existing at present in
the contemporary world. It combines the scourge of Islamist terrorism, the
spread of jihad, hatred of the West, Holocaust denial, and the genocidal
“anti-Zionism” which is state-sanctioned in Iran. The dramatic triumph of the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the alarming growth of militant Salafist
movements across the Arab Middle East have greatly increased the level of
threat worldwide.
Q: Is there a historic connection between
European fascism and Islamism?
A: The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in
1928 by Hassan al-Banna, had a radical totalitarian vision of societal
transformation, a leadership cult, and visceral hatred of Jews not so different
from that of fascism and National Socialism. Moreover, the charismatic founder of the Palestinian Arab national
movement, Haj Amin el-Husseini, was a fanatical genocidal anti-Semite who
actively collaborated with Adolf Hitler during World War II. This
“annihilationist” tradition of Jew-hatred has continued in the Palestinian
Hamas movement (an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) to this very day. Its
Sacred Covenant is one of the most nakedly anti-Jewish texts of the entire
post-Holocaust era.
Q: You have
described the impact of the Nazi legacy on radical Islam, but what about
classical right-wing antisemitism in present-day Europe?
A: Populist
right-wing tendencies are especially strong in Hungary, Austria, the
Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Scandinavia, and the Baltic States, in Eastern
Europe, and even here in like Switzerland. Nor are France, Germany, or Italy
immune. Against the background of an alarming world economic crisis, the
possible collapse of the Euro-zone, the specter of globalization, and a massive
migration from the poorer southern countries to Europe, these negative trends
will probably grow. Antisemitism is part of this wider syndrome.
Q: In your
newest book, From
Ambivalence to Betrayal. The Left, the Jews, and Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), you are
often severely critical of Western leftist attitudes to Israel and the so-called
“Jewish Question.” How do you explain left-wing hostility?
A: The Left
is suffering from acute amnesia. It has forgotten, for example, that Egyptian
president Nasser and his Arab allies openly threatened to throw the Jews into
the sea in 1967. To this day, Hamas, the Hezbollah and their Iranian backers,
not to mention other Arab states, constantly broadcast their intention to
eradicate the Zionist “cancer” from the Middle East map. So I ask people on the
Left — is that a “progressive” position? Hardly. The Left has also forgotten
that there was an uninterrupted Jewish presence in the Holy Land long before
the birth of Islam — and despite endless harassment, along with Roman,
Byzantine, Crusader, and Muslim persecutions and massacres, this Jewish settlement
continued until the emergence of the modern Zionist movement.
Q: Why do
you think so many leftists are pro-Islamist today?
A: The
Western Left and the Islamists both share the myth that Israel is a “white,”
Western, and colonial intrusion in the Middle East. They both have embraced a
radically distorted view of Palestinians as defenseless “Jews,” downtrodden,
and ruthlessly abused by fascist Israelis. Behind this demonic imagery there is
an antisemitic view of Israel and America as twin embodiments of
capitalist-imperialist evil. Needless to say, this mythology is totally
disconnected from empirical reality.
Q: In light
of your current trends, do you see any future for European Jewry? If you were
living here, would you stay or go?
A: I
personally believe that the long-term future of European Jewry is bleak. I
would not wish to decide for European Jews what future they should choose, but
I am convinced that the land of Israel is the only possible spiritual and
political homeland for the Jewish people.
Let us also remember that it was in the city of Basel that Theodor Herzl
first proclaimed to the wider Jewish and Gentile world in 1897 the birth of
modern Zionism. In his diary he prophesied that within fifty years a Jewish
State would inevitably arise. Many people at the time dismissed him as a
charlatan or a dreamer. But his prophecy came true and for that we should be
thankful.
Mohammad Malik is the head of Occupy Miami. He also was, until recently, the head of the local chapter of Hamas USA (CAIR) and lead a 'Nuke Israel' rally. Why am I not surprised?
In September 2010, Malik was appointed as the director of CAIR's South Florida chapter, covering the region of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
In March 2010, Malik organized a CAIR dinner in Miami. The keynote speaker was Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj has also defended the convicted WTC bomb plotters and has urged the Islamic takeover of America.
Malik departed CAIR several months ago. He previously worked for ACLU Florida, coordinating its Racial Justice and Voting Rights Projects.
He did not return email and phone requests for comment.
Nezar Hamze, the current director of CAIR-South Florida, told WND yesterday that Malik departed his Islamic group under friendly terms.
"He left several months ago, maybe almost a year ago," said Hamze. "He got a better position, I think, at the ACLU," he said.
Malik has served as coordinator of several other Islamic groups, such as the South Florida Palestine Solidarity Network, through which he has organized hate-filled protests; the American Muslims for Emergency Relief; and Students for Justice in Palestine.
Malik himself was the principal organizer of numerous anti-Israel rallies.
A rally in March was titled "Miami's Third Intifada Rally for Palestine."
During the demonstration, protesters reportedly chanted a slogan often used by Hamas and other Palestinian radicals calling for the destruction of Israel: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
A Malik-led rally in December 2008 reportedly drew 200 to 300 rowdy supporters, with some screaming for Jews to "go back to the ovens."
The Florida Sun-Sentinel featured a picture with the caption "Malik incites the crowd."
...
One protester reportedly shouted, "Your mother is a wh*re," then broke into, "Nuke, nuke Israel. Nuke, nuke Israel," followed by, "Go to hell; go to hell; go to hell!"
Another woman, wearing a headscarf, shouted: "Go steal other lands. Go! Murderers! Go back to the oven! You need a big oven."
Malik himself was quoted calling Israel's actions ''collective punishment," accusing the Jewish state of "fuel[ing] terrorism."
Bill Whittle: Is 'Occupy Wall Street' anti-Semitic?
Here's a great video by Bill Whittle (one minor mistake mixing up Hamas and Hezbullah at the 2:25 mark) on the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement and why they are anti-Semites.
In November, the ADL issued a “special report” on the Tea Party and “anti-government conspiracies.” The ADL noted that “extremists were a tiny minority of Tea Party protesters,” but claimed Tea Party members were filled with “rage” and held ideas that “fall outside the mainstream.”
As of this writing, the ADL has said nothing about the “rage” and bigotry on display at several “Occupy” rallies. Instead, it is minimizing the antisemitism on display, effectively helping “Occupy” do damage control.
“We have seen instances of individuals promoting these [antisemitic] views. We do not think that it is or has been institutionalized in the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movements,” she said. “But I think the bigger issue is sort of that when there is a heightened focus economic strife and the financial industry it is not surprising to see these messages. Yet, we will continue to be diligent, looking for them and combating the promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories should they arise.”
Todd Gutnick, ADL’s media relations director, confirmed this morning: “Aside from the story in the Daily Caller in which we were quoted, ADL has made no statements on the Occupy movement.”
That is alarming, given the explicit anti-Jewish hatred on display at Occupy rallies across the country.
So why isn't the ADL speaking out? After all, Foxman often finds anti-Semites where the rest of us can't find them. Could it be that the ADL has joined the Red-Green alliance?
What happens to Jews and support for Israel when multiculturalism runs rampant? Benny Weinthal interviews Bruce Bawer (author of While Europe Slept) regarding a case in point: Norway.
What is contemporary Norwegian anti- Semitism? What is propagating post-Holocaust hatred of Israel and Jews in Norway?
It’s a phenomenon of a sort that I never encountered in all my years in the US, and that I once thought had been banished to the dustbin of history. It’s most virulent among the cultural elite – the academics, intellectuals, writers, journalists, politicians, and technocrats.
They’re overwhelmingly on the left, and intensely hostile to the West, to capitalism, to the US and to Israel. Before the fall of the USSR, an extraordinary percentage of them were Communists. They have replaced their affinity to the Soviet Union with sympathy for the great totalitarian ideology of our time: Islamism. Thus they romanticize Palestinians and despise Israel.
Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway’s cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multiculturalist elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity.
Norwegian history also plays a role in all this. Anti-Semitism has a long, deeply-rooted history here. This was never a cosmopolitan country – no nation in Europe was less ethnically or religiously diverse. On the contrary, Norway was a remote, rural, mountainous land of pious Lutheran farmers whose early 19th-century constitution banned Jews from its territory.
With a few notable exceptions, Norwegians did not exactly cover themselves in glory during the Nazi occupation. Unlike their counterparts in Denmark, Norwegian gentiles made no major effort to protect their Jewish neighbors. To be sure, in the decades after the war, Norway was a staunch ally of the US and Israel; but the entrenched leftwing elite did its work through the schools, universities and media – producing a generation of Norwegians for whom being virtuous and intellectually sophisticated means, among other things, embracing the Muslim “victim,” and despising the Israeli “bully.”
On Oslo’s version of Fleet Street there is a bar, a journalists’ hangout, called Stopp Pressen (Stop the Presses). For years, there hung in its window a photograph of a smiling, beatific Yasser Arafat. From the way he was portrayed, you’d have thought he was Albert Schweizer. I walked by that picture almost every day for years. It was a good reminder of the sickness at the top ranks of this society.
Delegation from Judea and Samaria in Europe puts a damper on the outcomes of Netanyahu’s visit to Germany
I received this by email from David haIvri's Shomron Liaison Office:
In light of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit tomorrow (3 Nisan–7/4/2011) to Germany, during which he hopes to placate German Chancellor Merkel via promotion of his political program, a delegation of Land of Israel faithful left at the beginning of the week for Europe, including Prof. Hillel Weiss, Rabbi Shalom Wolpe and David HaIvri, who warned that the joint operations conducted by Netanyahu and the European Union will inevitably bring about a second Holocaust on the Jewish people, destroy Western culture and lead to an Islamic conquest of the European continent.
The delegation was invited by freedom parties in Europe who are fighting against Islam in Europe, through Mr. Patrik Brinkmann.
In the delegation’s view, promoting the well-known program of two states for two peoples means continuing to negate the national rights of the Jewish people in their Land according to their Torah, and contrary to international law, along with expulsion and exile of Jews from their homeland and existential danger to the State of Israel.
The delegation spoke in Berlin, Cologne, the Parliament of Brussels and Antwerp before members of Parliament, party heads and public representatives, and warned the countries belonging to the European Union that the division of the Land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem will lead to the rise of a Muslim Caliphate and to the victory of the world-wide jihad, currently headed by President Obama.
The delegation emphasized that many European countries cooperate with Iran in its nuclear program and with massive support for its economy while scoring facts on the ground, despite a phony embargo and for the purpose of promoting Iran’s criminal goals, which will influence the outcome of the inevitable war caused by these goals.
The delegation detailed the mass of international laws being overrun by agents for a Palestinian state, as they were formulated and recognized by the former U.S.S.R. after the First World War and which established the political rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, and therefore all the claims of lawbreaking by the State of Israel and by the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are false claims stemming from ignorance together with malice.
The delegation came out with a joint statement, with the full knowledge of their German hosts, in solicitation of support for itself (which it has received from most European countries), that was read aloud for the first time in the city of Gelsenkirchen opposite a stormy demonstration against the delegation and their hosts in which the city’s mayor participated.
Text of the pronouncement in German:
April 6, 2011
Declaration of the Freedom Parties and the European Right on the dangers emanating from Islam to Europe and Israel
On the occasion of the visit of the delegation of Land of Israel faithful in Europe
We, the leaders of the Freedom Parties all over Europe, fear for the fate, the character and the ancient culture of the continent because of the Muslim waves of conquest enveloping it
And first and foremost, because of the moral corruption that has overtaken the weak leaders of Europe and the European Union, who speak in the name of the continent at the same time they support the interests of aggressive Islam.
We warn against political, economic and military cooperation, both hidden and open, of European governments of the European Union and of financial bodies with terror states and terror organizations, instead of fulfilling their obligation to ban them and fight against them.
This conduct is connected to the demands and the heavy pressure by the European Union on the State of Israel while abandoning its security, in order to recognize a sovereign Palestinian state and while allocating inexhaustible resources to the Palestinian state and its leadership.
The formation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state and the division of Jerusalem will lead to a second Holocaust on the Jewish People and will constitute the greatest victory for fundamentalist Islam, and this is what will give it the momentum to conquer the rest of the world.
We declare and recognize the national and exclusive right of the Jewish People to establish a national home in the Land of Israel, as is written in the Bible and as recognized in the 1922 San Remo Accords, which obligate the international legal community to abide by its decisions, and which are still in effect.
We stand behind the position of our friends, residents of Judea and Samaria, as guardians of the Jewish People to defend their forefathers’ inheritance against any foe or attacker, and await together with them our joint victory over the evil and darkness spreading throughout the world.
The delegation came out with a statement of its own, in which they proclaimed, among other things: “We call on the countries of Europe, on organizations promoting law and justice, and especially on the European Union to awaken, to formulate a joint committee with the Land (of Israel) Faithful, representatives of the Jewish authority of Judea and Samaria and representatives of the State of Israel, to study the subject and only afterwards, to come out with their programs.
Until then, the delegation demands the Union’s suspension of its political and economic support for a Palestinian state; as long as this support continues, it (the delegation) sees this as blatant and malicious interference in the affairs of the Jewish people and their national rights, and as (responsible for) the bitter consequences emanating from it."
This is the antithesis of the 'Red-Green Alliance' between radical Islam and the radical political Left. Will the diaspora Jews be able to tear themselves away from the Left?
I first wrote about the Red-Green alliance - the alliance between the Left and radical Islam - here. Now, Lisa Graas publishes an exhaustively researched piece that profiles the five groups that are the biggest promoters of the alliance. This one surprised me:
The ACLU letter, signed by the ALA, rejects the idea that there is reason to suspect an Islamic element in terror attacks.
[T]he Committee should rely on facts and scientifically rigorous analysis, not biased opinions or unsupported theories positing a discernable “radicalization” process that are belied by available evidence.
Though the claim is that “rigorous analysis” is important in determining if a terror threat exists, the ALA vigorously stands in the way of any attempt to conduct such analysis through America’s libraries.
Following ALA policy, more than 225 libraries across the United States have chosen to defy the mandates of Section 215 [of the Patriot Act]. For instance, the Santa Cruz, California library has chosen to shred all records of its patrons’ book use on a daily basis. Anne M. Turner, Director of that city’s library system, explained, “The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical information as possible.”
ALA receives dues from libraries, librarians, students and others nationwide, and funding from a long list of leftist organizations. Notably, ALA spent $1.7 million on a legal battle to ensure that libraries have a First Amendment right to allow children to view pornography. If you are providing support for your local library, you may want to check to see if they are supporting ALA. Your money could be used by this organization to undermine America’s efforts to prevent terrorism.
This hit home because my late mother was an ALA member, and saw which way the organization was heading. When I googled my mother's name with the ALA, I found two local publications of the Boston chapter, one announcing her initial employment by the Boston Public Library, and the second announcing her transfer to a different branch.
My mother was a big supporter of local libraries and was forever advocating for our local suburb to build a good public library - which they did long after my brother and I could have benefited from it. But for the last 25 years or so of her career, she was employed at a local community college, where she was constantly spending money from her own pocket to buy books that gave a more balanced view on Israel to counteract her radical Leftist boss who was constantly buying pro-'Palestinian' books using the library's budget.
I've mentioned before on this blog that both my parents were (and my father still is) knee0jerk Democratic voters. But the ALA is obviously much more radical since my parents were Democrats but were (and my father still is) strongly pro-Israel. I guess Mom's boss was much more in line with the librarians' thinking.
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
