Anti-J Street documentary screened in Philadelphia
I want to show you the trailer for a documentary (which I still have not seen) about the 'Jewish' J Street group, which calls itself 'pro-Israel, pro-peace.' J Street is currently seeking admission to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the fact that this documentary was shown in Philadelphia last night will not help J Street's cause.
The J Street Challenge is an important and timely documentary about a significant issue facing the American Jewish community.
Since
it was founded in 2008, J Street's idealistic message has attracted
many Jews, young and old, who are frustrated by the Middle East conflict
and sincerely want peace between Arabs and Jews. J Street has been a
subject of controversy. Critics claim that J Street has divided the
Jewish community and weakened American Jewish support for Israel. "The J
Street Challenge" lets viewers hear both sides of this important debate
over the elusive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The film
explores the reasons for J Street's appeal, as well as the diverse and
at times contradictory motivations of its leaders and followers. The
film is being released at a critical time for the American Jewish
community given the intense efforts by the United States to resolve the
conflict and influence the community's leadership to support these
efforts. The Kerry peace initiative has further divided the Jewish
community, with J Street working to weaken the influence of AIPAC while
strongly backing the administration.
The film includes distinguished
scholars and writers from a wide political spectrum, including Harvard
professors Alan Dershowitz and Ruth Wisse, Rabbi Daniel Gordis of the
Shalem College in Jerusalem, Caroline Glick, Managing Editor of the
Jerusalem Post, Professor Richard Landes of Boston University, Lenny Ben
David -- former Israeli diplomat and author, and Bret Stephens,
Pulitzer prize winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
At issue is a March 27 event sponsored by the Jewish Federation of
Greater Philadelphia and by the local Hillel, titled “What It Means To
Be Pro-Israel.” The answer to the question, at least in the eyes of the
organizers, is revealed in the event’s content: It will feature a
screening of a full-length anti-J-Street documentary and a panel made up
mainly of critics of the organization.
The upcoming event has sparked an angry debate within
the Philadelphia community, the nation’s fourth largest, and has
brought to the surface accusations against the Jewish federation’s
leadership and its decision-making process. “Political views on the
right are listened to more, because the few people donating large
amounts of dollars are on that political side,” said Jill Zipin, a
community activist who has protested the decision to sponsor the event.
“The Jewish federation shouldn’t be a tent of one Jewish donor.”
Panelists at the event, which will take place on the
University of Pennsylvania campus, include Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz, a staunch defender of Israel and just as staunch a critic of
J Street; Charles Jacobs, who heads the group that produced the
anti-J-Street film, and Sara Greenberg, a Harvard University graduate
student who has been active in fighting attempts to boycott Israel.
Supporters of J Street have taken issue with the
makeup of the panel and, more importantly, with the movie that will be
the evening’s centerpiece. The J Street Challenge,
released earlier this year, is a documentary aimed, according to the
film’s official synopsis, at “examining and debating J Street’s message
and its leaders.” It does so through clips from speeches of the lobby’s
leaders and a series of interviews with experts, almost all of them
known as leading critics of the group. Speakers in the movie
accuse J Street of “dividing the Jewish community,” of being
“imperialistic” and of manifesting “arrogance” in their views on Middle
East peace. The J Street Challenge was produced by Americans for Peace
and Tolerance, a not-for-profit organization devoted to fighting Islamic
extremism.
Labels: Alan Dershowitz, Bret Stephens, Caroline Glick, Daniel Gordis, J Street, pro-Israel pro-peace, Richard Landes, University of Pennsylvania
13 years too late Defense Ministry concludes Mohammed al-Dura's 'death' was a hoax
In 2007, I reported on
Mohammed al-Dura's wedding and made the then-speculative claim that Mohammed al-Dura had not been killed - by the IDF or by anyone else. Now, a secret commission (secret because even our own Leftists would have been outraged by the thought) in the Defense Ministry has concluded that
Mohammed al-Dura did not die. In fact, he wasn't even hurt.
A few days ago, MK Nachman Shai met with Ya’alon to give him a copy
of his new book, Media War Reaching for Hearts and Minds , which deals
with the role of media in cur- rent military conflicts, including the
Dura affair. Ya’alon then surprised Shai by saying that an investigation
carried out by Israel shows that Dura was never hurt.
This theory
has been circulating on the Internet for a few years already, but this
was the first time that an Israeli defense minister was stating so
publicly.
Today, Dura should be about 25-years-old, alive and kicking somewhere (unless he was killed later in a separate incident).
Kuperwasser
confirmed the committee’s conclusion that that Dura had not been hurt
at all and that the video clip, which was filmed by France 2 TV and
aired around the world, had indeed been staged. This means that the
France 2 TV channel report was erroneous, perhaps even knowingly.
Kuperwasser
added that the full results of the investigation would be ready in the
near future, and that most of the work had already been completed.
The
committee was comprised of numerous specialists from the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, as well as other academic
institutions. The committee also collected information from physicist
Nahum Shahaf, who used angles and rate of fire to prove that the scene
had been staged. Kuperwasser met with Shahaf a number of times.
Hopefully the lesson has been learned: The IDF doesn't race to take responsibility so quickly for these incidents.
Labels: France 2, Mohamed al-Dura, Palestinian lies, Pallywood, Phillippe Karsenty, Richard Landes, Yossi Kuperwasser
A boost for the Islamists
The Norwegian terror attacks have turned into an excuse to beat up on conservative, anti-Islamist bloggers. In a disgraceful piece written this morning, the
New York Times all but blames Robert Spencer, Baron Bodissey and Pam Geller for the Oslo attacks.
In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.
His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.
...
In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.
The revelations about Mr. Breivik’s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.
Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site, jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Mr. Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.
The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday “due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.”
Its operator, who describes himself as a Virginia consultant and uses the pseudonym “Baron Bodissey,” wrote on the site Sunday that “at no time has any part of the Counterjihad advocated violence.”
The name of that Web site — a reference to the siege of Vienna in 1683 by Muslim fighters who, the blog says in its headnote, “seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe” — was echoed in the title Mr. Breivik chose for his manifesto: “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” He chose that year, the 400th anniversary of the siege, as the target for the triumph of Christian forces in the European civil war he called for to drive out Islamic influence.
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”
...
Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”
“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.
Mr. Breivik also quoted European blogs and writers with similar themes, notably a Norwegian blogger who writes under the name “Fjordman.” Immigration from Muslim countries to Scandinavia and the rest of Europe has set off a deep political debate across the continent and strengthened a number of right-wing anti-immigrant parties.
I understand that Melanie Phillips, Richard Landes and Phyllis Chesler are also mentioned in Breivik's manifesto. I can't link to the post that confirms that right now because Melanie Phillips' website has been attacked and is down right now.
Breivik did not specifically target Muslims, but the opportunists who would
force their way of life on all of us are attempting to use this case as an instance of 'Islamophobia.'
None of the people cited in this article has ever called for or advocated violence. Unfortunately, others have used their writings as an excuse for it.
The picture at the top is Robert Spencer holding an Israeli flag in Berlin shortly after German authorities had removed one from someone's window.
Labels: Anders Behring Brievik, Baron Bodissey, Islamophobia, Melanie Phillips, multiculturalism, Norway, Oslo bombing, Pamela Geller, Phyllis Chesler, Richard Landes, Robert Spencer, Utoya massacre
