US Show of Force....

One country saved its Jews. Were they just better people?


Countrymen, Bo Lidegaard’s magnificent book, states its central argument in its title. Danish Jews survived Hitler’s rule in World War II, when other European Jews did not, because Danes regarded their Jewish neighbors as countrymen. There was no “us” and “them;” there was just us.
When, in October 1943, the Gestapo came to round up the 7,500 Jews of Copenhagen, the Danish police did not help them to smash down the doors. The churches read letters of protest to their congregations. Neighbors helped families to flee to villages on the Baltic coast, where local people gave them shelter in churches, basements, and holiday houses and local fishermen loaded up their boats and landed them safely in neutral Sweden. Bo Lidegaard, the editor of the leading Danish newspaper Politiken, has retold this story using astonishingly vivid unpublished material from families who escaped, and the testimony of contemporary eyewitnesses, senior Danish leaders (including the king himself), and even the Germans who ordered the roundups. The result is an intensely human account of one episode in the persecution of European Jews that ended in survival.
The story may have ended well, but it is a complex tale. The central ambiguity is that the Germans warned the Jews and let most of them escape. Lidegaard claims this was because the Danes refused to help the Germans, but the causation might also have worked in the other direction. It was when the Danes realized that the Germans were letting some Jews go that they found the courage to help the rest of their Jewish community escape. Countrymen is a fascinating study in the ambiguity of virtue.
The Danes knew long before the war that their army could not resist a German invasion. Instead of overtly criticizing Hitler, the Social Democratic governments of the 1930s sought to inoculate their populations against the racist ideology next door. It was in those ominous years that the shared identity of all Danes as democratic citizens was drummed into the political culture, just in time to render most Danes deeply resistant to the Nazi claim that there existed a “Jewish problem” in Denmark. Lidegaard’s central insight is that human solidarity in crisis depended on the prior consolidation of a decent politics, on the creation of a shared political imagination. Some Danes did harbor anti-Semitic feelings, but even they understood the Jews to be members of a political community, and so any attack on them was an attack on the Danish nation as such.
The nation in question was imagined in civic terms rather than ethnic terms. What mattered was a shared commitment to democracy and law, not a common race or religion. We can see this in the fact that Danish citizens did not defend several hundred communists who were interned and deported by the Danish government for denouncing the Danish monarchy and supporting the Hitler-Stalin pact. The Danes did nothing to defend their own communists, but they did stand up for the Jews.
The Danish response to the Nazis illuminates a crucial fact about the Holocaust: the Germans did not always force the issue of extermination where they faced determined resistance from occupied populations. In Bulgaria, as Tzvetan Todorov has shown in his aptly titled book The Fragility of Goodness, the Jews were saved because the king of Bulgaria, the Orthodox Church, and a few key Bulgarian politicians refused to assist the German occupiers. Why did a similar civic sense of solidarity not take root in other countries? In Holland, why did 80 percent of Dutch Jews perish? And what about France: why did liberty, equality, and fraternity not apply to the citizens driven from their homes by French police and sent to deportation and death? These questions become harder to answer in the light of the Danish and Bulgarian counterexamples. One possible explanation is that the German occupation’s presence in Denmark was lighter than in either France or Holland. The Danes, like the Bulgarians, kept their king and maintained their own government throughout the occupation. Self-government gave them a capacity to defend Jews that was never possible in the occupied zones of France or Holland.




Denmark - Read the rest

Jews, Get Out of Europe

The Anti-Defamation League created a stir last week by releasing the results of a global survey of antisemitism, the most comprehensive ever.
 
These results are considered shocking by many. Actually, for those who bother to keep up with reality, they contain no surprises.

The Middle East and North Africa come out worst, with 74 percent among population groups qualifying as antisemitic according to the poll’s 11-question index. The most antisemitic political entities in the world? The West Bank and Gaza, coming in at 93 percent. (Yes, those same Palestinians with whom Israel is always under pressure to “make peace.”) 

The next worst region is Eastern Europe, with 34 percent scoring as antisemites. But not too far behind is Western Europe—the home of multiculturalism, advanced environmental awareness, bevies of human rights NGOs, and so on—at 24 percent.

The West European countries scoring highest for antisemitism were Greece with a whopping 69 percent, France at 37 percent, and Spain at 29 percent. Germany did itself proud by coming in above the West European average at 27 percent—a bit over one-quarter antisemitic seven decades after the Holocaust.

Over the weekend the European Jewish Association (EJA), along with other European Jewish organizations, held a briefing on the survey in Brussels for EU ambassadors and officials. 

One of the West European countries scoring lowest for antisemitism was the Netherlands at 5 percent. Yet Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, chief rabbi of the Netherlands, told this gathering: 

Today, there is a strong political polarization, especially in Holland. Radicals from both sides of the political spectrum have become more extreme, and the middle ground is disappearing. I can’t walk a whole day in the street without having at least one person shout the words “dirty Jew” at me, because I am visibly Jewish.

If so, one hates to think what it’s like in the high-scoring countries.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the EJA, “called upon all EU member states to establish central committees, directly accountable to the respective prime ministers, in order to lead the fight against anti-Semitism.”
But would establishing committees really be an adequate response at this stage?
Then things got really ugly.

In Milan, Spain on Sunday night, the Israeli professional basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv won the European championship in a stunning upset by beating Real Madrid. Many Israelis—not least the 9,000 loyal fans who flew to Milan to cheer their team—were ecstatic. The prime minister and the president congratulated the team, and on Monday night Tel Aviv held huge celebrations.
Spanish fans reacted differently. Of course, they weren’t expected to be happy that their team lost. But it wasn’t just a matter of not being happy.

It turns out that Spanish Twitter users reacted to the loss by “post[ing] 17,500 messages of anti-Semitic abuse.” 

 After the game they “created an expletive anti-Semitic hashtag in their messages…, which briefly became one of the most popular keywords on Twitter in Spain.”

Specific reactions included “Jews to the oven” and “Jews to the showers.”

By the way, in Spain today—with its antisemitism ranking of 29 percent—there are about 45,000 Jews out of a total population of 47 million.

The report goes on to say that “Twelve Jewish groups in the northeastern Catalonia region lodged a legal complaint over the messages.” The leader of one of these groups “presented copies of anti-Semitic tweets to state prosecutors.”

Again, getting some of these vicious people in trouble—if that indeed happens—might be worthwhile; but would it really solve the problem?

Instead of committees, lawsuits, and the like, I would suggest a different solution: for Jews, at last, to give up on Europe. For good. To leave it and not go back to it (to live, at least) for a long time, if ever.

If the Holocaust was not enough to convince some Jews that they are not wanted in Europe; if, seven decades later, the situation is one where a rabbi in one of the less antisemitic countries cannot walk the streets without being called “dirty Jew,” is it not time to conclude that one is in the wrong place?

I would prefer for European Jews to come to Israel—which also has to cope with an antisemitic environment, but where Jews are in a qualitatively different situation because they stand on their own two feet and look out for themselves.
But if not Israel, at least not Europe.
The only remaining dignified response is for Jews to bid Europe adieu. 

Jewish Funders

Ottawa City Hall Hosts ‘Palestinian’ Exhibit Honoring Terrorists

By: Steve Emerson

Published: May 28th, 2014

Ottawa City Hall
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

According to the Toronto Sun, Canada's capital Ottawa's city hall has no plans to take down an exhibit that honors Palestinian terrorists.

Toronto-based artist Rehab Nazzal created the exhibit featuring pictures of "lost artists, activists, writers and leaders." The pictures feature the face of Abu Iyad, a founder of the Black September terrorist organization responsible for the murders of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.

Dalal Mughrabi is also featured in the exhibit. Mughrabi orchestrated the 1978 Coastal Bus attack that killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children.

The mastermind of the Ma'alot school massacre, Khalil Nazzal, is also honored. The terrorist attack, which took place 40 years ago this month, resulted in the deaths of 22 children and 3 adults. The Israeli Embassy in Ottawa says that the exhibit's creator is a relative of Khalil Nazzal.

Numerous other terrorists are also featured. Abu Jihad, the former head of Fatah's military wing, led the 1975 Tel Aviv Savoy Hotel attack, killing eight innocent civilians, and the 1978 Coastal Bus Attack. He was also involved in the Munich Olympics massacre and the murder of American diplomats in the Sudan.

Israeli Ambassador Rafael Barak said that he is not demanding that the exhibit be taken down, but wants the Canadian public to understand that some of the artists and leaders are terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians.

A Warning from Eidelberg

On June 14, 2009, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without Knesset or public debate, endorsed the creation of an independent and sovereign state in Judea and Samaria, this should have been a wake-up call.  The people of Israel should have understand that their honey-tongued leader is psychologically prepared to yield Jerusalem to their cruelest enemies—as Maimonides described the descendants of Ishmael in his “Epistle to Yemen.”

Who above all should have responded to that wake-up call?  Surely no other than God-fearing Jews, those who best know that the fate of Israel—indeed, of world Jewry—is inextricably linked to Jerusalem. I will therefore be asked: “What should God-fearing Jews do besides pray, learn Torah, and do mitzvoth?”

Organize to sanctify God’s Name, which a timid a prime minister is prepared to desecrate.  In every town and village, wherever there is a minyan of God-fearing Jews, organize! Organize a network of cells across the country connected by Internet and warn the people that we are in grave danger—and not merely from Iran but from our own Government.  Indeed, Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe Israel off the map is the physical manifestation of the spiritual holocaust that will follow if the Government yields Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Jewish people, to Islam. 

Striking Contrasts - Paul Eidelberg

Ralph Peters, a former U.S Army officer and adviser of the U.S executive department is a strategic analyst who has traveled extensively in the Islamic world.

In his book Looking for Trouble, Peters describes Islam's degradation of women in Pakistan.  He writes:

For most women in Pakistan, life is circumscribed and miserable.  In the West, our spouses or lovers may also be our best friends, and in the healthiest relationships there is not only passion, but conversations about God and the world and the price of corn flakes.  In Pakistan, a wife may be an ally, but it is hard to imagine any wife as a best friend.  Men and women live in great separation, psychic as much as physical.  The woman is simply not a full-fledged human being in the sense that male is.  While a woman's chastity is respected (and occasionally exaggerated), this has nothing to do with her human rights, but with her status as an object—the property first of the family that spawned her, then of her husband.  She is rarely educated (almost never to serious effect), seldom employed beyond the home, and possesses, at best, the freedom of the pet dog, but without the master's unstinting affection.

This stands in striking contrast with the exalted status of women in Judaism, as exemplified in the Bible and in Jewish law.  It may be one of the reasons why Islam is more hostile to Jews than to people of other faiths.

Here is a stark example.  According to the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Horayot 23a):  "If a man and his father and his [Torah] teacher were in captivity [for ransom], he takes precedence over his teacher and his teacher takes precedence over his father, while his mother takes precedence over them all [perhaps because of her greater vulnerability]."

There is no simplistic or doctrinaire egalitarianism in Judaism.  Thus, in his commentary to Tractate Kiddushin, the illustrious Meiri (Rabbi Menahem b. Solomon Meiri, 1249-1316) points out that "God is a partner in every person equally with the person's father and mother."

"Scripture mentions the father first in regard to honor" (Exod. 20:12); "the mother is mentioned first in regard to fear" (Lev. 19:3).  "This is to equalize the natural tendency to honor the mother and to fear the father."  Judaism is very rational, which may be another reason why Islam is so hostile to Jews.

Academic Weakness

Brilliant Animation Explaining the Dangers of a Nuclear Iran

By: Batya Medad

Published: May 21st, 2014

Inside Iran's Nuclear Weapons Plan
Photo Credit: Jerusalem and Diaspora Ministry, Israel

Nuke - Video

Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett's staff put together a brilliant video clip explaining the dangers of a nuclear Iran and how the U.S. Obama's negotiations won't help.

Please watch and share, thanks.

Why is Greece the Most Anti-Semitic Country in Europe?

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece speaking at a synagogue in Thessaloniki, the first visit by a sitting prime minister to a Greek shul in more than a century,
Photo Credit: Gavin Rabinowitz/JTA

When the Anti-Defamation League published its global anti-Semitism survey last week, Greece, the cradle of democracy, captured the ignominious title of most anti-Semitic country in Europe.

With 69 percent of Greeks espousing anti-Semitic views, according to the survey, Greece was on par with Saudi Arabia, more anti-Semitic than Iran (56 percent) and nearly twice as anti-Semitic as Europe’s second-most anti-Semitic country, France (37 percent).

On its surface, the poll suggests that anti-Semitism is running rampant in Greece. Much of the blame goes to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which has found fertile ground for its extreme-right ideology in the ruins of Greece’s economic crisis. In elections held Sunday for Athens mayor, for example, 16 percent of the vote went to Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, a man notorious for beating a female political opponent during a television interview and for the large swastika tattooed on his shoulder.

But both the ADL and Greece’s small Jewish community caution that the reality is more nuanced than the poll numbers suggest.

“There is a danger of sensationalizing it, a danger of overplaying the psychological impact of the poll,” Michael Salberg, ADL’s director of international affairs, told JTA. “There needs to be real hard internal look at the data and examining what are the forces at play.”

For their part, Greek Jewish leaders took pains to point out that despite widespread bigotry, Greece hasn’t seen the sort of anti-Jewish violence that has cropped up in some other European countries, such as France.

“Despite the poll showing high levels of anti-Semitism, it must be noted that in Greece over the last four years we have not had any anti-Semitic violence against people or Jewish institutions,” said Victor Eliezer, the secretary general of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece.

“This is not a poll about violence, but rather a survey on stereotypes, and yes, there are a lot of stereotypes among the Greek public,” he said.

The poll gauged anti-Semitism based on whether respondents agreed with a majority of 11 statements on Jewish power, loyalty, money and behavior that the ADL says suggest bias. They include such statements as Jews talk too much about what happened to them during the Holocaust; Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the countries they live in; Jews think they are better than other people; Jews have too much power in the business world; and Jews have too much control over global affairs.

Critics have suggested that the survey is deeply flawed because the statements are not fair indicators of real anti-Jewish bias.

Of the 579 Greeks polled, 85 percent said Jews had too much power in the business world, 82 percent said Jews have too much power in the financial markets and 74 percent said Jews have too much influence over global affairs. The margin of error for Greece was plus or minus 4.4 percent.

In Greece, anti-Semitic viewpoints are aired frequently, particularly the notions that Jews control the global economy and politics. In 2012, when the Golden Dawn’s Kasidiaris read in Parliament from the anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the reading drew no condemnation from the other lawmakers present.

Nor was there public condemnation when Golden Dawn slammed the recent visit by the American Jewish Committee’s executive director, David Harris, as a trip to ensure further “Jewish influence over Greek political issues” and safeguard the interests of “international loan sharks.”

Golden Dawn hasn’t been alone in expressing such sentiments.

Earlier this year, the left-wing Syriza party’s candidate for regional governor accused Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of heading a Jewish conspiracy to visit “a new Hanukkah against the Greeks.” Syriza reluctantly dropped the candidate, Theodoros Karypidis.

At the heart of Karypidis’ theory was a move last year by Samaras to shut the allegedly corrupt Hellenic Broadcasting Authority and replace it with New Hellenic Radio and Television, known by its Greek acronym NERIT. According to Karypidis, NERIT is derived from the Hebrew word for candle, “ner,” which he links to Hanukkah.

Even the mainstream political parties have long histories of using anti-Semitic tropes.

“Greeks are fond of conspiracy theories, as they are steeped in conspiracy on a personal level,” Euthymios Tsiliopoulos, a journalist and political commentator, wrote on the popular current affairs website The Times of Change in the wake of the Karypidis scandal.

“As so many things are conducted through under-the-table, backroom deals, most naturally assume that the whole world is run in this manner,” he wrote. “As such, there is willingness to believe that the hardships the country and its inhabitants have undergone throughout the centuries is due to the machinations of foreigners. After all, it’s easier to believe this than to fix the perennial ills plaguing Greek society.”

Still, there are some signs of improvement.

Samaras and his government have moved to condemn anti-Semitic expressions and launched a crackdown on Golden Dawn, jailing many of its leaders. The government also has acted against Holocaust denial and runs school education programs together with the Jewish community.

“From the results of the poll, what is clear is that these stereotypes are very prevalent in Greek society,” Eliezer said. “How do you combat these stereotypes? Only through education.”

The ADL’s Salberg hopes the results of the poll will motivate others to act, too.

“Perhaps,” he said, “these very sobering numbers will raise questions within civil society among religious and civic leaders who don’t hold those views.”

BDS Agitators Fail in ‘Rachel Corrie Country’

Rachel Corrie
Photo Credit: Screenshot

It's been a rough day for Palestinian supporters: Yet another unversity-based divestment attempt failed dismally at the University of Washington at the same time as an Israeli court was set to rule on the latest appeal in the decade-long legal saga of local girl Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old activist who was crushed by an IDF bulldozer in 2003 when she made the mistake of standing in front of it.

Corrie, a member of the radical, terror-supporting International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was killed while serving as a human shield in a closed military area in the Gaza Strip, near the border with Egypt.  She refused to comply with IDF instructions to vacate the area, and was then crushed to death by a military bulldozer in Gaza  because the soldier driving the bulldozer could not see her from where he was seated, high up in the cab.

For the past eleven years, her parents have pursued a lawsuit in Israel’s courts to have her death declared a murder, something Israeli courts have repeatedly refused to do. Today (Wednesday) the Supreme Court will rule on the family's  appeal of a lower court ruling absolving the IDF of culpability for the incident.

IN 2011 a lower court ruled the IDF was not negligent, nor was it responsible for Corrie’s death. Moreover, the court ruled the IDF had fully and credibly investigated the circumstances surrounding the incident. By entering a closed military zone, and attempting to block the work of military bulldozers, Corrie was responsible for her own death, the court ruled.

BDS keeps on kicking, despite rejections

Sources on campus described the UW boycott issue as one of the most heated campus debates in recent memory, with furious comments both for and against the resolution in the university's Slog news website. “Intentional or not, BDS [movement] singles out Jews for treatment that no one else gets, even countries that behave far worse. You don't think it would be practical to aim against Syria (hmm, when was the last time Israel gassed its own citizens?)?” responded one writer.

Ironically, the University of Washington is located not far from Rachel Corrie's hometown of Olympia, Wash.

Following the UW campaign, The Jewish Press has learned that students at the University of South Florida are also pressuring the school’s foundation to divest from companies linked to Israeli companies based in Judea and Samaria. Students this month presented a petition with 10,000 signatures to the school’s foundation urging the school to divest from corporations such as Motorola, HP and Caterpillar.

Boycott supporters have not indicated whether-or-not they will stop using cellphone, computer and internet technologies, all of which were developed in Israel, to protest the "brutal oppression" of the world's only "apartheid" victims with the right to vote, run for office and full access to Israel's Supreme Court.

Latest Pallywood Release a Smash Hit with Left-Wing Media

Photo Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Palestinian supporters around the world are hopeful that the latest Pallywood production will become a become a smash hit on evening news reports around the world.

Left-wing activists claim the a video published by the Defence for Children- Palestine Section organization documents the death of Nadeem Siam Nawara, 17, and Mohammad Mahmoud Odeh Abu Daher, 16, during a Nakba Day riot near the city of Beitunia. The group claims the video was taken by security cameras as events unfolded, and seems to show that neither of the two victims were involved in violent activity at the time they were shot. 

On closer examination, however, the video raises more questions than it answers. For starters, IDF, international media and pro-Palestinian organizations who witnessed the riot and shooting of Daher and Nawara confirm that the incident took place during violent clashes between Palestinian protesters and IDF troops. But apart from one young man (0:25 minutes into the video clip) whirling a slingshot, there is no violence in the video until the first young man appears to be shot.

Which leads to the footage of the boys being shot. The first
“shooting” takes place 0:48 seconds into the video, with no violence in sight, apparently in the man’s back.

But instead of collapsing in a heap, as most gunshot victims do, the individual in the video throws his arms out in front of himself to break his fall and lies down carefully on the ground where he rolls over like a child “playing dead.” Whereas there is a human reflex to “protect” the thorax with the knees by lying in the feral position when the torso is attacks, the individual in the video winds up flat on his back, with his legs and arms locked straight.

The second victim, too, appears to have been staged. For starters, this man, too,  can be seen easing himself onto the ground after allegedly being shot. But in contrast to the first victim, who appears to have developed rigor mortis in the 5 seconds between “being shot” and lying down on his back, the second individual can be seen rolling on the ground for approximately a second before onlookers rush to his aid).

Furthermore, the second victim can be seen approaching the camera from the opposite direction than the first man, and he appears to have been shot in the chest. That is consistent with all reports from the scene.

But both men can be seen “falling” forward. How could both men fall forward, if one was shot in the chest, and the other in the back?

What? Pre-Motivated Anti-Israel Editing?

A spokesman for Defence of Children- Palestine Section, the organization that posted the video, said Wednesday that the although the video had been edited to include commentary from a local witness to the riot, the footage did not alter the events as they occurred last Thursday.

“The IDF hasn’t denied that the video we released is the actual security camera  footage,” DOC-PS spokesman Ivan Karakashian told The Jewish Press Wednesday. “They have only accused us of editing the film in such a way that misrepresents the events the way they unfolded.”

Responding to that suggesting, Karakashian rejected out of hand that his left-wing organization would do something like that.

“Why did the people fall down the way they did? I don’t know. But there’s a lot here we don’t know. We don’t know what sort of ammunition the IDF used, for example. But all the international press and aid groups that were at the protest have confirmed that the boys in the video are the boys who were shot.”

Repeat of al-Dura farce

The incident brought to mind the infamous case of Mohammed al-Dura, the 10-year-old boy who was supposedly killed by IDF gunfire during an exchange of fire between Israeli and Palestinian troops during the opening days of the Oslo War (al-Aqsa Intifada). Then, France’s Channel 2 filmed horrifying footage of al-Dura’s father trying desperately to shield the child during the exchange of fire, and ultimately left to coddle his dead child’s body.

But French Jews and Israeli officials have debunked the veracity of that video for years. Philippe Karsenty, a French media commentator, showed conclusively that Channel 2 had altered the video in order to portray Palestinian suffering as the conflict spread.

And last year, the Israeli government went one step further, reporting that Mohammed al-Dura is still alive, “Contrary to the report’s claim that the boy was killed, the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive, or at least that he did not die during the October, 2000 clashes.

Then, as now, IDF officials tentatively accepted charges that soldiers had inadvertently killed the child. But in 2001 a military investigation showed conclusively that al-Dura could not have been killed by Israeli fire.

But the damage had been done: the image of al-Dura’s lifeless body slumped over his father became one of the Oslo War’s iconic images. Arab and international media showed the video for weeks. Osama Bin Laden cited the incident as one of the reasons he decided to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Pallywood - See Video 

Confession of a Pollard Advocate Who Lost his Way

By: Ely Rosenzveig

Published: February 24th, 2014

Esther Pollard, wife of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, during a protest rally near the US embassy Tel Aviv calling for Jonathan Pollard's release, February 23, 2014.
Photo Credit: Roni Schutzer/Flash90

I was the first person, save for his family and attorney, to make contact with Jonathan Pollard after his November 21, 1985 arrest for passing classified information to Israel.

At the time of Jonathan's apprehension, I was the Rabbi of Sinai Synagogue in South Bend, Indiana, a traditional, Modern Orthodox congregation. Pollard's family was very active in the synagogue for decades. Jonathan celebrated his Bar Mitzvah there.

Jonathan's parents, Molly (Mildred) and Dr. Morris Pollard, were ardent Zionists, and among the most prominent members of the South Bend Jewish community. Morris was a world-renowned microbiologist, who headed the Lobund Laboratory, and an award-winning professor at Notre Dame University. I was very close to both parents. We shared many a festive Shabbat meal together at our home.

I cannot begin to tell you how shattered and devastated Morris and Molly were over this whole sordid saga. It essentially destroyed their lives. Morris, a decorated WW2 army veteran, winner of a Commendation Medal and three Presidential Citations, who rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, was a fierce patriot, and could not begin to comprehend the charges against Jonathan that questioned Jonathan's upbringing, and his family's loyalties.

From the start, Morris and Molly advocated for leniency for Jonathan. As my career brought me to Springfield, Massachusetts, and Stamford, Connecticut, I invited Morris to address my congregations in an effort to rally support for his son.

I spent more than seven hours with Jonathan outside his prison cell in Marion, Illinois. He was kept in a subterranean vault, in solitary confinement, several floors below ground, in a cell near that of John Anthony Walker, Jr., who committed treason in what is considered the most damaging Russian spy-ring in history. Walker constantly bombarded Jonathan with anti-Semitic drivel, and Jonathan showed the scars of that incessant abuse. Jonathan was brought to me in handcuffs and leg shackles. His pallor did not seem human. I had never seen anyone whose skin was so white and pasty, as though he had never seen the sun. It was a pitiful sight to behold.

When I saw Jonathan in jail, in 1987, he seemed to have aged then well beyond his years. Imagine how he must be doing now, in 2014.

I corresponded with Jonathan and visited his then wife, Anne Henderson Pollard, in a prison in Danbury, Connecticut. I wrote an amicus memorandum to Jonathan's sentencing judge, Aubrey Robinson, pleading for leniency, a message undoubtedly lost on the Court, and also penned articles in the general and Jewish press advocating for Jonathan.

I wrote about my visit with Jonathan. I stressed that our democratic ideals and our unique system of justice are tested most and best by our fair and balanced treatment of those who do the unsavory deed, and are universally condemned and vilified for it. I also described Jonathan as an angry young man, not the easiest to root for. I noted as well that just because Jonathan indisputably erred does not mean, therefore, that we should throw away the key to his cell.

This is a theme to which I still wholeheartedly subscribe. Yet, my words reflected an insensitivity to the emotional toll that Jonathan's ordeal must have taken on him. I focused indelicately on his anger, and was oblivious to his circumstances. My words hurt Morris and Molly deeply, and, after that, they refused all contact with me.

In response, I inexplicably buried my support for Jonathan then and there. I no longer advocated for Jonathan on any level, and, for a long time, I would not follow closely the unfolding story.

Pollard - Read The Rest

‘Jews vs Nazis’ Latest Teen Rage in Florida

By: Jewish Press News Briefs

Published: May 12th, 2014
Latest update: May 14th, 2014

A group of Florida teenagers have devised a local version of the popular college beer pong drinking game. But in contrast to the traditional contest in which two teams gather on opposite sites of a table and try to bounce a ping pong ball into a plastic cup filled with booze, the Florida version has a charming new twist: The groups divide into teams of “Jews” and “Nazis.”

According to an image posted on the Imgur website, “The Nazis start the game off with “blitzkreig”, with each “Aryan” player shooting freely into the “Jewish” cups until one misses. Jews are allowed to designate an “Anne Frank Cup” that can be removed from the table and hidden anywhere in the room. To balance out that unfair advantage, the Nazi team has the right to call “Auschwitz,” meaning one Jewish player is “selected” to sit out.

“Also, throughout the game you are supposed to talk a lot of **** and say as many racist things as possible to make it more enjoyable,” according to the website.

Because US college campuses clearly aren't antisemitic enough as it is.

Pong Video 

Dear John (Kerry)

By: Daniel Greenfield

Published: May 12th, 2014

John Kerry
Photo Credit: Yossi Zamir/Flash 90

Dear John,

Every few years a messiah arrives in Jerusalem, shakes hands, makes demands and promises to make peace in our time. Then when the whole thing blows up in his face, he throws up his hands and flies back blaming the ungrateful Jews for not embracing his vision.

You must have known this would happen. So many false messiahs have come before you, squinting against the bright sunshine, muttering under their breath to aides and assistants, pounding the table at meetings, downing martinis and fantasizing about the Nobel Peace Prize that they were sure was waiting for them at the end.

And they left with nothing except sunburn and simmering rage.

Did you really think you would be any different? Were you so delusional that you imagined you could succeed where career diplomats with a lifetime of experience in the region had failed?

What convinced you that you were the negotiating genius that the conflict had been waiting for?

It's not as if you had a good track record negotiating anything. Do you remember meeting Madame Binh in Paris? What about carrying Daniel Ortega's peace offer after assuring everyone that he wasn't a Communist? Right before he flew to Moscow. And let's not gloss over your visit to Assad. Was that peace in the air or was it just the nerve gas?

I know you don't have time to remember all your diplomatic triumphs. Or like Hillary, any of them.

When did you successfully negotiate anything, up to and including the purchase of your latest yacht?

You went to Paris to aid the Viet Cong. You went to Nicaragua to aid the FSLN terrorists. You went to Israel to aid the PLO. The USSR fell, but your old nostalgia for Communist guerrillas and killers hasn't deserted you. It's why you failed. And it's why you'll fail over and over again.

No matter what the PLO did, you blamed Israel. Just as no matter what the Viet Cong or the Sandinistas did, you blamed America.

The PLO can call for Israel's destruction, champion terrorism and ally with Hamas, but one of your minions will still provide anonymous quotes saying that the PLO can't be expected to negotiate while Israel possibly considers building houses in Jerusalem.

What's a little thing like genocide compared to a house?

Kerry - Read The Rest 

Jewish Men: Watch Out Smashing the Glass Under the Chuppah!

By: Hana Levi Julian

Published: May 12th, 2014

Asaf and Shunamit Wolberg breaking the glass under the chuppah at the ruins of the former town of Homesh in northen Samaria.
Photo Credit: Michal Fattal / Flash 90

There's more to being a Jewish man than one might think. It can be quite dangerous, in fact.

Take the issue involving a Jewish man stamping on a glass (sometimes wrapped in an elegant cloth napkin) at the end of his wedding vows, for instance.

The ritual is intended to remind those attending that even at moments of soaring joy, one must remember the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and pray for its return.

But one chatan (bridegroom) now has a warning for future husbands-to-be: be careful when you stomp your glass.

The unnamed chatan cut his foot when he smashed the glass under the chuppah (wedding canopy) at a banquet hall on Rehov Tzfira in Tel Aviv recently.

Hatzolah Emergency Response medic Yehuda Hildeshaim, who was on the scene, treated the injured bridegroom on site. The medic, who said the foot was gashed quite deeply, added that the groom decided he would not go to the hospital until after the rest of the wedding celebrations had concluded.

“We wish the couple ‘mazal tov’ and good health,’ Hildeshaim said.

Samaria Residents Charge Amos Oz With Incitement

By: JTA

Published: May 12th, 2014

Israeli author Amos Oz
Photo Credit: Tomer Neuberg /Flash 90

A West Bank-based organization filed a police complaint charging Israeli author Amoz Oz with incitement to racism.

The complaint by the Samaria Residents Committee was filed in the West Bank settlement of Ariel two days after Oz called Israelis who carry out “price tag” attacks “Hebrew neo-Nazis,” the Times of Israel reported Sunday.

Oz made the statement Friday at an event in honor of his 75th birthday.

“‘Price tag’ and ‘hilltop youth’ are sweet, sugary nicknames, and the time has come to call this monster by its name,” he said in a speech recorded by Israel’s Channel 2. “We wanted to be like all other nations, we longed for there to be a Hebrew thief and a Hebrew prostitute — and there are Hebrew neo-Nazi groups.”

Oz is considered a candidate for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Defending his words Sunday in an interview with Israel Radio, Oz said he made the statement in order to “shock.”

“The comparison that I made was to neo-Nazis and not to Nazis,” he said. “Nazis build incinerators and gas chambers; neo-Nazis desecrate places of worship, cemeteries, beat innocent people and write racist slogans. That is what they do in Europe, and that is what they do here.”

On Friday, hours before Oz’s speech, price tag attacks were discovered on a Jerusalem church and an Arab home in the Old City of Jerusalem, part of a recent uptick in attacks against such sites.

Price tag refers to the strategy adopted by extremist settlers and their supporters generally to exact retribution for settlement freezes and demolitions or Palestinian attacks on Jews.

Media Popularity - The News That Changes....

Obama’s Appeasement Leads to War

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On March 10, 2014 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 217 Comments

On the shield of the Strategic Air Command a steel mailed fist grips a lightning bolt and an olive branch. The motto of the organization that was the nightmarish obsession of every Cold War leftist was “Peace is our Profession.”
To the moviegoers who sat through Dr. Strangelove, to the earnest leftists who saw the world going up in a puff of atomic smoke because the military industrial complex was obsessed with killing people, to the pseudo-idealists who passed on atomic secrets to Moscow to avoid an American monopoly on the bomb, the SAC’s motto was a demented joke. They knew that the only way to stop war was to disarm.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in the face of relentless pressure from Ronald Reagan, against their fervent opposition, their jeering of SDI defense and their clamor for total appeasement, they did not change their minds. They are even now penning earnest essays in The Nation explaining, as they did of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, that we are the warmongers who are making threatening moves.
In the spring of 2009, Obama delivered a speech in the Czech Republic calling for an end to nuclear weapons. Rather than celebrating the patriotic dedication of Americans throughout the Cold War which had made the freedom of the Czechs possible, he dug up the hoary leftist cliché of how “generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light.”
Obama vowed “to put an end to Cold War thinking”, eliminate nuclear weapons and guarantee the defense of our allies “including the Czech Republic”.
That fall, Obama abandoned missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic to appease Russia.

Video -  http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-appeasement-leads-to-war/print/

Will Leftists Admit They Were Wrong about Obama?

Posted By Ronn Torossian On March 10, 2014 @ 12:14 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 51 Comments

Those who voted for Obama should look around at the world and America.  From the economy to quality of life, to Obama’s countless foreign policy mistakes, and the fact that there has never been a time when America has been less respected by the world, how can one not regret voting for President Barack Obama?
After more than five years of serving as President, Barack Obama has been a complete and utter failure.  Will liberals ever admit they were wrong? From the economy, which continues to stagger along, to the continuing raising of taxes and big government, when is enough enough? From the continued expansion of welfare, to the failed stimulus package, arrogant Obama has failed miserably. And let’s not even get started on Obamacare, which has caused more uninsured than ever before and is a colossal failure.
And while domestic policies are surely more important than foreign policy, in a dangerous world a secure America matters.
It is laughable to look back to the 2008 Democratic debate at University of Texas in Austin, when Barack Obama said,

The Bush administration has done so much damage to American foreign relations … If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time. It’s important for us in undoing the damage that has been done over the last seven years, for the president to be willing to take that extra step.

There is not one single country on planet Earth that America has better relations with today than under the previous Administration. From destabilizing allies in the Middle East to being emasculated by President Putin, Obama is a spineless and ineffectual leader. Whatever one thinks of him, under Bush, people at least feared and respected America.
Remember, President Obama spoke at the General Assembly of the United Nations and, addressing Iran and Russia, urged them to wake up, as “we are no longer in a Cold War.” He gave an interview on a national TV outlet and said, “And so you know, this is not the Cold War. This is not a contest between the United States and Russia.” Are you so sure, Mr. President? Not a cold war?
This Administration asked the Russians to “reset” relations (although what was handed to Russia actually said “overcharge” on it) – and relations have indeed been “reset.” The pendulum of power has swung towards Russia. Obama mocked Romney for claiming that Russians are our “no. 1 geopolitical foe” and retorted: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”
Obama also took an “American Apology Tour.” As Mitt Romney wrote in No Apology,

[N]ever before in American history has its president gone before so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined. It is his ways of signaling that foreign dislike for America is something he understands and that is, at least in part, understandable. There are anti-American fires burning all across the globe; Obama’s words are kindling to them. In his first nine months in office, Obama … issued apologies and criticism of America in speeches in France, England, Turkey, and Cairo.

When one apologizes, one must realize there are consequences. America is in decline, and American leadership isn’t felt in America, or overseas.
Obama said, “You’ve got to be clear, both to our allies and our enemies, about where you stand and what you mean.” Unfortunately, they are very clear.  Our allies don’t trust us, and our enemies know we are full of hot air.  Welcome to Obama’s America. America voted for Obama, as he promised change. From the economy to foreign policy, healthcare to social security, can anyone possibly claim that this Administration has succeeded? 
Regardless of where one stands on the political map, it is time to say that choosing Obama was terrible for the American people. 

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/will-leftists-admit-they-were-wrong-about-obama/print/

MAJOR RALLY : New York City, April 29th 100 SHOFARS - A HEARTENING SUCCESS.

 100 SHOFARS Mort Klein, Richard Allen, Helen Freedman

100 SHOFARS  Laurie Ragen, Dr Paul Brody, Rob Muchnick

Maxine Dovere (JNS) and Russian TV were photographing and interviewing protestors. 100 + stalwarts stood proud, shofrot sounding. We were energized as we repeatedly chanted NO BDS IN OUR PARADE.

MORT KLEIN pointed out that New Israel Fund gives millions to B'Tselem and the palestinian supporting group Adalah. "Say NO to Mr Ruskay, UJA/FEDERATION, Mr Miller, head of JCRC which is supported by UJA/FEDERATION.  If you support or condone BDS, you can't march in our parade.  Support of BDS against is a part of the long, dark history of anti-Semitism.  Ruskay, by giving these groups money, wants them to grow."  Gesturing to the entrance of UJA/FEDERATION headquarters,  RICHARD ALLEN, who has nurtured our protests with long hours of work cried, "SHAME, SHAME, SHAME.  We want to make sure our Jewish Charitable dollars are not misused."   RABBI ALGAZE opened his remarks with a shofar blast.   

"There is no room for those who boycott Israel. Organize your own parade. And the crowd chanted:

NO ROOM

NO ROOM

NO ROOM

You want to be democratic?  Why don't you ask the Jews who support you.  We question Kerry.  You are wrong.  You should apologize.

STEP DOWN KERRY

STEP DOWN KERRY

STEP DOWN KERRY

...

THE PARADE IS FOR FRIENDS OF ISRAEL

HELEN FREEDMAN - spoke with passion. "For those who have questions, there is no room.  We supported UJA and JCRC years ago and they have terribly disappointed us.  How could  Kerry under the influence of Barack Obama, have said that Israel is an Apartheid State.  He's in effect giving a green light to our enemies as they join with Fetah and Hamas.  IF THERE WAS AN APPLICATION OF SOVEREIGNTY IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA we would be able to assert our rights.  RIGHT NOW, ON HAR HARBEIT WE ARE NOT SOVERIGN.  ON YOM HAATZMAUT  G-D WILLING, WE  (THE AFSI CHIZUK MISSION) ARE GOING TO BE IN ISRAEL TO CELEBRATE ISRAEL'S 66^th (MODERN) BIRTHDAY.  THIS ISRAEL IS OURS.  WE ARE NOT GIVING IT AWAY TO THESE PHONEY ORGANIZATIONS."

RICHARD ALLEN again took the mic.  Referencing John Ruskay, Allen noted that the short lived CONAME, one of a number of Liberal-Anti-Zionist organizations that sprung up in the aftermath of the Vietnam War where Ruskay worked with Noam Chomsky (1974.)   With the help of John Ruskay and Rabbi Arnold Wolf it morphed into Breira.  (For a thorough overview of the various organizations: Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America   By Michael E. Staub).  "John Ruskay and his group in UJA uses Jewish money to push their agenda.  We hope our shofars today will open their hearts so we get a resolution." 

LAURI REGAN, Endowment for Middle East Peace, spoke of the parable of the Little Kosher Pigs whose first houses were made of straw, houses that were quickly blown away.  Regan continued, the Jews of UJA and JCRC build a big tent, but the JEWS OF ISRAEL BUILD A HOUSES OF BRICK.  The future of the organized Jewish community in the United States is at stake.  All the Jewish leaders who have come out in support of J Street accepting J Street's support of John Kerry and a two state solution including Hamas. "What does it mean to be pro Israel.  DISBAND THE BIG TENT.   Surely, if we don't learn from the lessons of history we are bound to repeat them."

DR PAUL BRODY: Vice President of the Great Neck-based Jewish Political Education Foundation (JPEF) discussed Talmudic law;, proclaimed that during this time of Sfira, when 24,000 Jewish scholars died because they did not treat each other with proper respect, we are protesting out loud against a major Jewish organization. This is because although according to Jewish law it is forbidden to talk ill of another person, if the situation involves a potential union of two individuals (a "Shidduch"), and a third party knows of a defect in one of the parties that would harm the second party, it is permissible to notify the party of that defect. "We are hereby notifying the UJA-Federation that a union of the Celebrate Israel Parade and the 3 BDS groups it proposes to allow to march, is a DANGEROUS and DESTRUCTIVE union for the State of Israel. We are, therefore, permitted to proclaim that this union MUST BE DISSOLVED  immediately and that no BDS groups shall be allowed to march with Israel supporters!"  He concluded in leading us in singing Hatikvah.  It was a powerful moment.

ROBIN TICKER, blogger and Israel activist, acknowledged the tremendous work and support of Mattot Arim for the anti-BDS movement and this rally, in particular. Mattot Arim is an Israeli grassroots organization working to educate the public on topics of national interest for the Jewish people. Susie Dym is the spokesperson for Mattot Arim. Their semi-annual report grades MK's on Knesset activity pertaining to National interests.  The report, breaks down the legislative, lobbying, and media activity of the MKs - from bills preventing the boycott of products made in the settlements, to media interviews and then puts it in a report card form.  

ROB MUCHNICK, staunch supporter of a whole Israel and early supporter of Moishe Feiglin, was the final speaker.  He led the crowd of ANTI-BDS WARRIORS IN CHANTING-

2-4-6-8  ISRAEL IS A JEWISH STATE

1-3-5-9 THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS PALESTINE

2-4-6-8  ISRAEL IS A JEWISH STATE

1-3-5-9 THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS PALESTINE

2-4-6-8  ISRAEL IS A JEWISH STATE

1-3-5-9 THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS PALESTINE

...

The excited band of Zionists had one more amazing revelation to digest.  Richard Allen quoted the president of the New Israel Fund as saying, "Why should I worry when the heads of UJA/FEDERATION and JCRC support us."   After which he roared: "This is not the end, this is only the beginning,"  He means it.  Stay tuned for our next rally. 

 From-

ISRAEL LIVES MAY 4, 2014 4 IYYAR, 5774 19th DAY OF THE OMER - 100 SHOFARS, J STREET, PAPAL VISIT, SHARIA, IR

Rabbi Kahane on Jews and Judaism

But It Is MY Ox!  

January 19, 1990   -  22 Teveth 5750

           

Once upon a time, there was a man who owned several beautiful oxen.  They were strong and well-mannered and just a delight.  He had a neighbor, however, who was a bad man and very jealous of the beautiful oxen, because the bad man’s oxen were ugly and ill-tempered.  And the jealousy of the bad man gave him no rest, so that one day he deliberately let his ill-tempered oxen into the field where the beautiful oxen were grazing and they gored one of them, killing it.  The owner of the dead ox was angry at this terrible and deliberate outrage that, in the middle of the night, he entered the field where the ill-tempered oxen were and killed one of them.

The neighboring villagers and cattle people were very moral and ethical people and they were aghast at the man who had taken revenge on the ill-tempered ox and its bad owner.  Their leader, Mr. Morality, was especially indignant.  “What you did was very immoral,” he told the poor man.  “You cannot sink to his level.  And you cannot enter someone else’s field even if there is a dangerous ox there.  You cannot take the law into your own hands.”

In vain did the poor fellow protest that someone had to teach the bad fellow a lesson and that unless that were done, he would do it again.  Nothing helped.  Mr. Morality was adamantly ethical: “You do not take the law into your own hands; you do not enter other people’s property; you do not sink to his level.”  And with that, Mr. Morality and his merry band of ethical cattlemen walked off, heads high and breasts filled with a sweet sense of righteousness.

The poor man was so beaten that he could not bear the thought of continuing as before.  He was so depressed that he decided to sell the rest of his beautiful oxen to anyone who would buy them. To be sure, there was no lack of buyers and, in the end, it was Mr. Morality himself who offered the highest price.  Beaming, he took possession of the beautiful, quiet, well-mannered and delightful oxen.      

But the change in ownership had not changed the way the bad man felt.  Every time he would see the beautiful oxen, he was blinded by jealousy and envy.  And so, one night, when he could no longer contain his jealousy, he sent his ugly and ill-tempered oxen into the field of Mr. Morality and they again killed one of the beautiful oxen.

When Mr. Morality heard of what had happened, his anger knew no bounds.  And without a second thought, he took a number of his merry ethical friends, entered the field of the bad man and killed not one, but two of his oxen.

           

When the original owner of the oxen heard of this, he hurried over to Mr. Morality.  “I do not understand.  What did you do?  When I did the same thing, you told me that one does not take the law into one’s own hands; one does not enter other people’s fields and one does not sink to their level.  What happened now?”

           

Mr. Morality looked with pity on the poor, uncomprehending man.  “I see that you really don’t understand, poor fellow.  Let me explain.  There is a difference between you going into his field and my going into his field.  In your case, you really should not have done such a thing.  In this case, it was my ox…”

           

I wallow in glee over events in Panama and Romania.  O, Panama!  O, Romania! I watch as the United States troops go into someone else’s field, invade a foreign country with 25,000 troops, shoot up its capital city, kill some 70 Panamanians, and install their own government.

           

And then I remember Israel’s invasion of Lebanon after years of attacks on Jewish towns from that country; after scores of Jews were murdered by attacks launched from that land; after life was made a living hell for the Jews of Kiryat Shmona, one third of whom fled the city.  And I remember Israeli troops reaching Beirut and installing their Lebanese as President in order to put an end to murder and attacks upon Jews.

           

And I remember Messrs. Morality!  ALL of them!  President Reagan, Vice-President Bush, the State Department, the Defense Department and all the merry, ethical Americans (and British and French and, and, and, ad infinitum.  Ad nauseum). How they condemned and how they railed and how they moralized and how they ethicalized!  Merrily.  “You do not sink to the level of the PLO.  You do not enter someone else’s field (land).  You do not take the law into your own hands.”  Messrs. Morality, Post Office Box One Million, Washington, DC.           

           

And so now there is Panama.  And should any simple-minded type ask President Morality, High-minded Bush of morality, why he did everything he told Israel it should not do – he would give a sympathetic nod to the poor simpleton who really does not understand, and the answer would be: But it is my ox…

           

I remember Israeli troops entering the field of Lebanon to capture a Moslem Sheikh who was leader of a group of Moslem Shiite thugs holding Israelis as hostages; and President Morality and his merry ethical State Department cattlemen with their shouts of condemnation!  And now I see the same moralists invading the field of Panama to try and catch a thug named Noriega because he deals in drugs that harm Americans and because he tweaks America’s nose.  And I finally understand the difference and can even hear President Morality say it: But it is my ox…

And I remember the outcry by all the Democrats and anti-Racist equality types demanding that William Nakash be extradited from Israel to France and rising up in righteous indignation over the thought that just because someone is a Jew, he should not be extradited.  After all, all human beings are equal and being Jewish is no reason to refuse to hand him over to strangers.  And what would the world say to any such tribalism!  And then I read that under Panamanian, law, a Panamanian cannot be extradited to a foreign county and I understand the difference: But it is my ox…

I watch as, in Romania, the dictator is captured and he and his wife are shot in secret trial, with summary justice dealt out within less than two days and no appeal allowed.  And I know that Israel did not give the death penalty to any murdering terrorists and goes through elaborate procedures of “justice” in order that terrorists sit and eat and drink at our expense until they are exchanged for hostages.  And I know what the outcry from Romania and other ethical nations would be if Israel would do to murdering terrorists what Romania did to its former President.  But I have already learned the difference; THIS IS MY OX…

And having said all that, I do not – as so many professors and intellectual doers on the right – merely weep, complain and wring my soul. I have no intention of wasting a precious few moments of my finite life in the House of Eternal Kvetching, in which so many of the right-wing spend their lives.  The lesson for me in this morality lesson of Whose Ox is gored? Is not that there are hypocrites in this world. Boker Tov! Good morning!  There are hypocrites in the world!  Surprise…

For me, the only lesson here is that there is, indeed, a difference.  Not the one that the moralists of hypocrisy give, but the objective and eternally true one of divine Torah Law.  There is a difference, the one that cannot be grasped unless one has knowledge and sense.  In the words of the rabbis, “Im ein da’at havdala minayin?”  “If one has no knowledge, how can he differentiate?” 

The lesson is that there is objective good and objective evil, objective truth and objective falsehood, and the same action taken against the one is good while the same act done against the other is wrong and evil.  Yes, it is good and right and a mitzvah to go into Panama to eliminate the slime named Noriega and yes, how much more so was it right and a mitzvah to enter Lebanon and eliminate the PLO and other Moslem terrorist swine.  And yes, it was wrong and evil for the Russians to do exactly the same in Afghanistan and for the Chinese to invade Tibet.  Yes, the German bombing of Coventry and London is not the same as the Allied bombing of German cities and yes, the hanging of evil criminals is good and that of decent people, bad, and anyone who does not understand this havdala, differentiation, needs a good grounding in knowledge.  Divine knowledge.  Torah knowledge.

Until then, at the very least, let the Jew learn the simple message of normal gentiles who – when their basic interests are threatened – do not hesitate to enter strange fields and to kill evil oxen.  It is time the Jew learned there is nothing for which to apologize or retreat when his people are killed and his interest threatened.  It is time that he learned to tell President Morality and any other merry ethical type:  “But it is my ox and no one touches it; understand?”

Nazi Epithet Removes Amos Oz From Israeli Discourse

Published: May 11th, 2014
Latest update: May 12th, 2014

Israeli author Amos Oz

The true shame about Amos Oz’s epithet “neo-Nazi” to describe Israeli price-tag thugs is that the essence of his comments are important food for thought. But by choosing outrageous populist rhetoric over nuanced criticism, Oz essentially relegated his concerns to the wastebasket of history.

Before rejecting Oz’s comments, it is important to note that he could be an important social voice for Israelis of every stripe. His books, from My Michael to In the Land of Israel to A Tale of Love and Darkness reveal a passion for Israeli society, and for the Land of Israel, that few contemporary writers have managed to capture. Oz’s 1950s-era Jerusalem is a quiet border town where observant and secular Jews lived together as neighbors. His writing betrays a deep, emotional connection to the city, and to the Jerusalemites with whom he shared his adolescent years.

Oz’s relationship with Jewish tradition is less obvious, but a close reading of his work in Hebrew brings to mind another of Israel’s leading writers: Nobel laureate Shai Agnon. In contrast to Agnon, Oz’s work does not obviously draw on traditional sources or Jewish history. But he is clearly influenced by Agnon, and perhaps therefore by Agnon’s close relationship with Jewish sources. In short, it is simply impossible to dismiss Amos Oz as a “self-hating” Jew or Israeli.

All of which is what makes Oz’s absurd comparison of price tag vandals to European neo-Nazis so upsetting. Self-criticism is a sign of strength, not weakness, and many of Oz’s observations about the religious-Zionist world are deserving of consideration. Yes, many religious Zionist communities have failed to excise the price taggers from their midsts (public condemnations from religious Zionist leaders notwithstanding, does anyone doubt that price taggers would be awarded aliyot [Torah honors] at most synagogues in Judea and Samaria?). It is true that the price taggers enjoy a certain measure of backing, stated or implied, from rabbinic figures in Judea and Samaria and farther afield. Religious Zionist would do well to consider those facts.

Amos OZ - Read More

Visa’s to Israeli’s rejected by USA....

Visa’s to Israeli’s have been rejected in greater and greater numbers. So much so that even Senator Chuck Shumer said something about it on his web site. http://www.schumer.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=350492 apparently the information he was given is that they would overstay their visas by working while here. Nearly every young Israeli who requested a visa was denied  (per Shumer’s website)

Now, it seems that this visa crisis is because Israelis are involved in espionage

I find it amusing that Israel is the only country which takes advantage of the security cooperation with the US to spy in it.....Wonder how we got that info.....maybe by listening in on phone conversations?  (kinda  like the saying that there is no way that in the Ukraine a spontaneous protest occurred but that is exactly what happened in Benghazi)  

So glad Israel has no truer friend...... Otherwise they could easily become an apartheid state 

--

SCHUMER PUSHES FEDS TO END ARBITRARY PRACTICE OF PREEMPTIVELY DENYING TOURIST VISAS FOR YOUNG ISRAELIS – SENATOR URGES FEDS TO FOCUS INSTEAD ON ENFORCEMENT AND REMOVAL OF ACTUAL VISA VIOLATORS

Scores of Young Israelis Have Been Denied Tourist Visas Due To Overblown Concerns They Will Violate Visa Terms by Working in Areas Like Selling Dead Sea Products In Shopping Malls


It Is Common Practice For Israelis To Travel Abroad Between Compulsory Military Service And School; Many Israelis No Longer Applying to Visit U.S. Due to Unfounded, Across- The-Board Visa Denials Cutting Off U.S. Economy From Valuable Tourist Travel Dollars


Schumer: It Is Time To Stop Denying Visas To Citizens of One of Our Closest Allies Just Because of The Actions of A Select Few
"I don't speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don't have the power to remain silent" - Rabbi A.Y. Kook

"In every generation, there are always a few who understand; Always understand... even if you remain among the few." - Meir Kahane


Avigdor Gidon Rudofsky