A century ago, Zionism
revived pride in the label “Jew”; today, Jews (and their allies) must reclaim pride in “Zionism”
In the wake of both recent U.S. terror attackers, i.e., Noah Green (follower of Louis Farrakhan rammed into US Capitol Policemen) and Ahmad al-Issa (follower of Islamic State/ISIS shot-dead 10 people at Boulder, CO supermarket) being exposed to fundamentalist Islamic anti-Semitism expressed as "anti-Zionism, many pro-Israel diasporan Jews are reluctant to have the "label" of Zionist applied to them. But now, around Yom haAtzmaut / Israeli Independence Day, we are reminded of the nationalist autonomy movement which turned a people into a new country, Zionism.
Israeli Prof Gil Troy (r) with Israeli-born Prof. Judea Pearl Dr. Pearl's son, Daniel, was slain by 9/11 Islamists he tracked down who boasted slaying him confessing family's Jewish identity
The Jerusalem Post reprinted author and Canadian-Israeli Professor Gil Troy's 2001, 800-word essay for Israel’s Independence Day to the Montreal Gazettecalled “I am a Zionist.” He explained: “A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the
label ‘Jew’; today, Jews should revive pride in the label ‘Zionist.’”
"Tragically, today, too many Jews avoid the “Z-word,” because so many Jew-haters demonize and delegitimize Jews, Israel and Zionism.
Zionists must not allow their enemies to define the movement. We are
not just anti-antisemites or anti-anti-Zionists. Jews should reaffirm
their faith in Zionism; the world should appreciate this gutsy,
visionary movement that rescued a shattered people by reuniting a
scattered people.
Zionism is the Jewish national liberation movement, reviving a
once-broken community with bold actions guided by three assumptions –
that Jews:
• Are a people not just a community of faith – the Jewish people, Am Yisrael;
• Have ties to a particular homeland – the Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael;
• Have the right to establish a state on that homeland – the State of Israel, Medinat Yisrael.
If Political
Zionism’s great twentieth-century success was establishing a functional,
democratic Jewish State, today’s great opportunity for Identity Zionism
is findingmeaning from connecting to that State and to our people,
wherever Jews live."
Commemorate Israel's Independence Day with a new refresher Why I Am a Zionist narrated by Prof. Troy.
Zionism: New Goals & Old Struggles - Prof. Gil Troy
Prof. Gil Troy and UCLA emeritus Prof. Judea Pearl instructed an
audience of Stand with Us "Israel in Focus '19" gathered college students and L.A. community members in the essence and
history about
Zionism - and the pioneers who restored sanctuary for Jews in Biblical,
Jewish Palestine.
In the The Zionism(s) talk below,
Prof. Troy (a McGill University lecturer)
is joined by Israeli-born, UCLA
Emeritus Prof. Judea Pearl in the second and third segments here.
Part 1 is McGill Univ Prof. Gil Troy's talk on the diversity of Zionist pioneers' ideas, which he addresses in his book.
In Part 2, Troy answers questions from the audience and Prof. Pearl.
In
Part 3, Prof. Judea Pearl explains Judaism's centrality in Israel, and
Israel's centrality to the Jewish faith. Anti-Zionism (or Zionophobia)
is therefore a racist offense against Jewish belief. "For Jews to oppose
Zionism is to commit suicide on a collective level. American Jewry will
not survive without Israel. We used to have a glue - religion - and we
lost that. Now the only glue that remains is Israel and its
inspiration."
(Advance through video-playlist via buttons on lower left)
During the Passover observance in 2019, 19-year-old John Earnest allegedly walked into a synagogue in Poway, California and opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others.
It was later revealed that Earnest was an active member of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation and specifically believed that he was doing God's will by killing Jews.
The revelation that the lone suspect in the mass shooting was a devout Christian stirred reactions from many, including author and columnist Michael Brown, a proponent of Messianic Judaism and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “The Line of Fire.”
In his latest book, "Christian Antisemitism: Confronting the Lies in Today’s Church," Brown documents a new resurgence of anti-Semitism within American churches.
Brown wrote about what he saw on social media from self-identified Christians and rhetoric espoused by modern Christian ministries and some theologians.
'It's anti-Semitic to
teach that Christians have replaced Jews' said Archbishop John Lupoli
Jr, World Council of Independent Christian Churches in March 2015
Archbishop John Lupoli, Jr., presiding Prelate and Metropolitan Archbishop at the World Council of Independent Christian Churches' College of Bishops said at the National Religious Broadcasters Association that Christian anti-Semitism continues to be taught and held against Jewish people and Israel.
The WCICC is a fellowship of churches, pastors, ministries, Christian schools and
individual members in seventy-nine nations around the world. They provide
a platform to independent churches that are deprived of the collective
support and the privileges of mainline denominations.
In this interview with JooTube.TV, Lupoli explains, "I know as a whole, for the most part, replacement theology has taken over and replacement theology makes an effort to say the church has replaced Israel in God's promises."
JooTube: Is that a guiding factor in their attitudes towards Israel politically and socially?
Mr. Lupoli: "I think that the majority of people that we have interviewed are anti-Semitic and don't even realize that they are anti-Semitic. They are so wrapped up in what the church is doing that they forget their their original background which is Hebrew. There is really background they can't exist without it, without recognizing their Hebrew roots. Did exactly if you have to look at the scripture and if you take Jesus as the Messiah - there is no such thing as a messiah without the Old Testament. There is no such thing. If you eliminate is really illuminate the Messiah, but in in their efforts to be totally Christian, whatever that may be, their efforts have have gone overboard with regard to the denial of their Israeli roots."
The Christian Post asked author, Michael Brown, how pervasive a problem do you believe replacement theology
is in the American church? Do you see it as more prevalent in some
denominations than others?
Michael Brown:
Yes, it’s very prominent. It is certainly
growing. It is very dangerous. It is more to be found in what would be
called the mainstream denominations — so Presbyterian, Episcopalian,
Methodist, etc. It is less found in Charismatic circles or in some
aspects of evangelism. But the fact is it’s there. It’s certainly there
in Catholic theology.
Those that hold to it don’t like to be put in the category of holding
to replacement theology. They would rather say they believe in
“fulfillment theology” or put another name on it. But the end result is
the same: the promises that God once gave to the Jewish people as a
people no longer apply to them, but rather apply to the Church.
And once you begin to say that, then God is finished with Israel, God
is through with Israel as a nation, as a people. And you can even see
the Jewish people as people forever cursed or rejected by God.
Prof. Emil L. Fackenheim, a professor of philosophy and survivor of Sachsenhausen says that "the same anti‑Semitism that permitted many Christians to accept the
Nazi slaughter of the Jews still finds expression today in Christians’
reading of the Holocaust as a universal evil not particular to the Jews
at all. Fackenheim goes so far as to deem to be an aspect of
anti‑Semitism what he views as Christians’ failure to be even‑handed in
judging the competing claims of Israelis and Arabs:
“Why did the
Christian press remain undisturbed by nineteen years of Jordanian
control of the Christian holy places (and desecration of Jewish
cemeteries and synagogues), but become greatly agitated by Israeli
control? Why does it fill its pages with accounts of the plight of Arab
refugees but rarely even mention the nearly as numerous Jewish refugees
from Arab countries? Why are there moral equations between Israel’s
claim to the right to exist and Arab claims to the right to destroy
her?”
(source:"Jewish-Christian Theology and Relations After the Holocaust" by Gary G. Porton in My Jewish Learning.
Our Passover Haggdah reminds us: "In every generation they arise to destroy us!" Our ancestors in Europe experienced horrific violence annually on this Good Friday/ Easter weekend.
Crusaders armies murdered hundreds of Jews who refused forced baptism in Mainz, Worms, Speyer, and as depicted here, in "The Massacre of the Jews at Metz" 1096, created by Auguste Migette
This (deicide) language about Jews in the medieval Good Friday liturgy often carried over into physical violence toward local Jewish communities.
It was common for Jewish houses to be attacked with stones. Often these attacks were led by the clergy. David Nirenberg, a scholar of medieval Jewish-Christian relations, argues that this violence reenacted the violence of Jesus’ suffering and death.
Another scholar of this history, Lester Little, argues that the attack on the Jewish community was meant to be a revenge for the death of Jesus and a ritual act that reinforced the boundary between Jews and Christians.
Local clergy who encouraged and participated in the violence against Jews were in violation of the rules of their own church. Church law sought to protect Jews and required them to stay inside on Good Friday. Historically, the western church took responsibility
for the safeguarding of Jewish communities because they viewed Jews as
preservers of the Old Testament, and thus of the prophecies concerning
Jesus. Official positions were, however, often ignored locally as many
Christians sought to assert their power over the Jewish community.
Civil authorities protected Jews by setting up armed guards and not
permitting Christians under 16 years to throw stones. But this could not
always prevent bloodshed and violence.
The B.L.M.-led pogrom through Jewish L.A. streets were enabled by the Democrat city and state officials, several of whom have moved up and on to the Biden/Harris Democrat regime. This administration's pro-Palestine and pro-China/Iran steps and appointees indicate a rough four-years for Jewish-Americans and Zionistic-Americans (including Christians).
Jew-hate graffiti on Los Angeles temple was followed by a Leftist pogrom the next month April 7, 2020 (Photo credit: Twitter/ADL The Times of Israel)
When Obama sets-up Israel to pre-empt or lash-back against emboldened Iran's proxies in Syria, Hezbollah, and Gaza, liberal, lapdog press smear Israel. This increases public hostility towards diaspora Jews. The Biden/Harris Democratic regime has already demonstrated support for a nuclear Iran, and expecting Israel to cede 1967 territory (Auschwitz borders) to an Islamist state of Palestine. It's necessary that the Jewish community have watchdogs that are willing and able to take-on Leftist and Democratic Party anti-Israelism/anti-Semitism.
"Left-Wing anti-Semitism Is Insidious, Therefore Dangerous" by Karen Lehrman Bloch in the Jewish Journal (4/16/20):
Ruth Wisse, author of the 1992 classic “If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews,” gave a provocative digital lecture titled “Can Liberals
Confront Anti-Semitism?”
When I first saw the title, I thought that she
meant (illiberal) leftists. But Wisse does mean Liberals. In fact, she
offered a cogent explanation of liberalism’s descent into leftism.
. . . Good people are not easily seduced by the anti-Jewish Right, but they have always been susceptible to the anti-Jewish Left that speaks in the name of a higher morality. One sees liberals not just caving in the face of anti-Jewish aggression but degenerating into socialist and leftist illiberalism. Is that what inevitably happens? I don’t know. But it is certainly happening in America right now. In the mind of a socialist, there is nothing more reactionary than this self-regulating people (Am Yisrael) with its historical roots in divinely ordained religion,” Wisse said.
“Essentially,” she continued, “liberal assumptions about human nature and progress have underestimated the power of evil. There is ‘healthy liberalism’ (America at its best) and ‘illiberal liberalism/leftism’ (Western democracy at its worst), and anti-Zionism is the virus that turns one into the other.”
"... why
much of the communal response to both rising anti-Semitism and rising
assimilation has been ineffective and even counterproductive.
Take the Anti-Defamation League, for instance. With an annual budget of
around $100 million, the ADL is supposed to be the community’s first
line of defense against anti-Semitism.
But with leadership comprised of
dedicated foot soldiers of the progressive revolution, who rather than
fight the TV networks proliferating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and
libels, or the BDS brownshirts on campuses terrorizing Jewish students,
the ADL has devoted its resources to fighting “white supremacy.” To be
sure, as the Pittsburgh and San Diego synagogue shootings made clear,
white supremacists are a threat.
But unlike the progressive Jew-haters,
white supremacists have no foothold in the mass media, in politics, in
academia or in popular culture.
ZOA's Mort Klein has criticized Mark Hetfeld renaming the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to "HIAS" to import foreign Muslims from anti-Semitic cultures into America (photo: Crescent City Jewish News)
In recent years, Mort Klein, who leads the Zionist Org of America, has criticized the leftist steering of the ADL under Jonathan Greenblatt, successor to Rabbi Abe Foxman. Klein also objected to using the
organization to meddle in Democrat political matters unrelated to fighting religious prejudice.
Among examples, the ZOA chief alleges Mr.
Greenblatt's ADL:
Opposed
Judge Kavanaugh immediately after he was nominated, and said ADL would
be giving questions to the Committee to be used to oppose Kavanaugh.
Distributes
educational materials that encourage students to participate in “Black
Lives Matter” demonstrations (which have been anti-Israel hate-fests).
ADL’s divisive materials speak of “white privilege” and at first ignored
and then downplayed adjudications of police innocence – while reciting
the accusations.
Jonathan Greenblatt replaced Rabbi Abe Foxman to lead the ADL
ADL has opposed anti-BDS laws in several states and on the federal level and in articles.
ADL
repeatedly signed joint letters with extreme anti-Israel groups (such
as CAIR), thereby giving them credibility. For instance, ADL signed 29
joint letters opposing an Act for America event, to mayors of 29 cities,
together with virulent Israel-hating organizations, including:
letter-contact MPAC (which called Israelis “the worst terrorists in the
world,” has said Israel should not exist, defends Hezbollah, and says
that Israel should be suspected for perpetrating 9/11); 4 JVP groups;
CAIR; the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, which like CAIR, is
also an unindicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial,
involved in funneling money to Hamas); the National Iranian American
Council (NIAC, an arm of and lobbyist for the genocidal Iranian regime);
Bend the Arc; and BDS promoters American Friends Service Committee and
PC(USA).
ADL
extensively advocates (including by filing numerous Amicus briefs) to
bring immigrants into the U.S. from certain Muslim majority nations
where they cannot be properly vetted.
ADL’s
“Homegrown Threat” report downplays radical Islamist attacks, using
various extensive manipulations, including limiting periods covered,
omitting Islamist attacks with spurious excuses (such as false claims
that they were “hate crimes” or that the plot wasn’t connected to a
specific designated Islamist terrorist organization, and by omitting
other major Islamist plots and attacks without giving any reason for
doing so. ADL’s report then misleadingly claimed that plots by
“individuals motivated by right-wing extremism” exceeded plots motivated
by Islamist extremism.
Dr. Charles Jacobs
Dr. Charles Jacobs, a pioneer in combating modern-day
slavery and fighting anti-Semitism (co-founded The David Project,
Boston's CAMERA, and now with Americans for Peace and Tolerance) expressed his
experience with liberal, Jewish community mismanagement failing to
represent the Jewish interest against anti-Semitic denigration among
Muslims, Blacks, and the Left (mainstreamed through Biden/Harris
regime's critical race theory and the Ethnic Studies Curriculum).
FrontPage Magazine initially published video remarks of Charles Jacobs describing his call to replace Jonathan Greenblatt leading the Anti-Defamation League ("ADL"). Dr. Jacobs describes, as one example of the weak leadership, an example of where the New England branch he summoned to assist in rectifying what he construed as anti-Semitism in Boston-area school curriculum - he feels unreasonably copped-out for liberal political reasons. The ADL later "slayed the messenger" of the Boston "Jewish Advocate" weekly newspaper because of the newspaper's objective coverage of the matter by discontinuing their longtime advertising, which contributed to the newspaper's insolvency.
Dr. Jacobs questions whether liberal Jews in positions of community management have let their tribalist loyalty to the Democratic Party (accompanied by enmity towards "Trump'ers" and conservatism) to paralyze them from defending Clal Yisrael against leftist anti-Semitism? This is especially dismaying in view of the fact that nowadays, in addition to religious and ethnic rivals scapegoating Jews, the leftist-dominated, neo-Democratic administration has mainstreamed marginalizing Jews through critical-race theory.
Pres. Bill Clinton greets Rev. Louis Farrakhan who incited Muslims to stone "Satan" Greenblatt
"They (liberal Jews in protection agencies) think they're being kind (because they should be kind - they should stand for human rights - and they do stand for human rights) and there are black groups today who will go around and teach the black community what the Jews did for the blacks during the civil rights movement. Important black groups. And they should and they do.
But they also thought there would be some reciprocity. Today the Jewish establishment still believes that there will be reciprocity and there isn't much. I mean if you can't get the Democratic Party to say that we're not going to hang out with Louis Farrakhan and if you can't get Bill Clinton not to sit next to Louis Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin's funeral . . .
We're on the left we have led the left with our brains, we've supported the left with our dollars and with our spirit, and now the left is spitting at us! And the Jewish establishment is trapped. Cornered. Doesn't know what to do. Flummoxed. We need new leaders!"
The ZOA criticized Mr. Greenblatt's publishing an article in Foreign Policy echoing the Obama administration's sharp criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu for a labeled "ethnic cleansing" video.
Journalist, Jonathan Tobin wrote: “Greenblatt's decision to side with the Obama administration against the government of Israel is telling. For Greenblatt to re-position ADL from its former centrist position as a mainstream address for pro-Israel activism to one that is now in open opposition to the democratically-elected government of Israel is a sea change of enormous importance. From now on, ADL must be viewed as an ally of J Street and others on the left who make no secret of their partisanship in the context of both Israeli politics and the tense relations between Israel and the United States. This is a betrayal of ADL's long and honorable legacy as a group that sought to speak for the interests of the Jewish community as a whole and respected the right of Israel's people and their leaders to make their own decisions about security.”
Columnist, Isi Liebler wrote: “It would seem that in the post-Abe Foxman era, the ADL board has knowingly empowered an individual whose outlook is not only liberal but effectively represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics. In fact, despite Greenblatt's protestations of love for Israel and reiteration that the US Israel nexus is strong, especially after finalization of the defense agreement, the ADL's approach to Israel is similar to that of J Street, having no hesitation in telling Israelis that it knows better than they do - what is good for them.”
Charles Jacobs, president of Americans for Peace
and Tolerance in Boston objects to Jewish protection agencies avoiding challenging leftist black and Islamic Jew-haters, such as the Nation of Islam, whose member, Noah Green, 25, rammed a car into two, US Capitol Policemen only days ago, killing one and wounding the other.
Dr. Jacobs questions whether
Jewish community leaders' tribalist loyalty to the liberal (anti-Zionist) bias of some of their
members - and part of the Democratic Party - has paralyzed agency "leaders" who are entrusted with protecting Jews from
anti-Semitism from challenging anti-Semitism from the Left. He proposes new strategies and approaches.
Christians join Jews outside of L.A. Federal Building Sunday, 7 Mar'21, to protest identity-politics, Ethnic Studies curriculum California state officials sought to mandate (photo: End Jew Hatred)
"Teach Love Not Hate,” a Los Angeles protest contesting the proposed Ethnic Studies
Model Curriculum (ESMC) was held at the West Los Angeles
Federal Buildingon Sunday March 7th. The protest, featuring speakers Jewish and Christian, white and black, was sponsored by organizations End Jew Hatred, Yad Yamin, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and The Lawfare Project.
The event drew approximately 100 attendees. JooTube caught-up with a few of the speakers for up-close explanations of their views. Joshua Washington, a Zionistic Christian with the Institute of Black Solidarity with Israel, and Maytal, a Persian-Jewish mother of school-age kids, express the alarm of California's Jewish Community
Maytal goes a step further and, coming
from an Iranian-Jewish immigrant family, comments on the Biden
Administration appointing pro-Iran and anti-Israel officials to manage
nuclear arms limitations negotiations.
Jewish
Journal Editor-In-Chief David Suissa also spoke during the protest,
argued that his main issue with the ESMC was that it inculcates students
with the notion that their core identity is based on their ethnicity
rather than their individuality.
At the Los Angeles rally, black civil-rights activist, Ted Hayes of "Love is Real" (LIRM.com) and gentile advocate for Israel and Jews, Laurie Cardoza-Moore of "Proclaiming Justice to the Nations" (PJTN.org) discuss their objections to ESMC.
In his speech, Mr. Washington pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr (a day before his
assassination) had said that there was increasing radicalization among
some in the Black community that “There are some who are color-consumed
and see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is
condemned.” Dr. King, he added, explicitly REJECTED that line of
thinking. Mr. Washington stated, “What we are saying now with this
Critical Ethnic Studies curriculum is an academic reiteration of the
'color consumption' that King described. This is part of why many like
Dr. King are excised from the curriculum - and Dr. King himself is
lambasted and belittled as weak and docile.”
Joshua Washington addresses anti-Semitism among the Left and African-American mainstream:
Mr. Washington added that several civil rights leaders are ignored and disparaged in the curriculum while it glorifies “militant violence.” He also said that the history of Jews and the Black-Jewish alliance is underrepresented in the curriculum, while Arab studies are overrepresented and fail to mention “the centuries long slave trade of Africans that still continues today.” Washington warned that more than 20 school districts in California have adopted the first ESMC draft that many Jewish groups viewed as problematic.
“If your school district is one of those districts, it is up to you to apply serious pressure on your child’s school to get rid of this,” Washington said. “Apart from espousing poisonous doctrine, the curriculum is filled with lies and half-truths and complete distortions. It isn’t a celebration of different culture; it’s a celebration of a single destructive ideology.”
He added that “no revision can redeem this Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. What can redeem it is a return to the drawing board with a new group of authors with more diversity of thought - and not a group of people with the clear and obvious anti-Jewish, anti-Black and anti-peace agenda!”
... The curriculum passed with a number of Jewish concerns addressed; it
now includes two lessons on Jewish Americans, absent from the first
version, in the section “Interethnic Bridge-building,” it discusses
antisemitism at multiple points, and it does not mention the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel nor the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The model curriculum approved today by the State Board of Education
is a vast improvement over prior drafts and a win for everyone who
fought to remove bigoted and discriminatory content about Jews and
Israel,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel of Woodland Hills and state
Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, chair and vice chair of the
California Legislative Jewish Caucus, respectively, in a joint
statement.
“The just-approved model curriculum, while not perfect, addresses the
major concerns our community identified nearly two years ago,” said Tye
Gregory, executive director of JCRC, the agency that works on behalf of
the Bay Area Jewish community on critical issues affecting Jews.
Other groups, including StandWithUs, the AMCHA Initiative, the
Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies and the American Jewish
Committee, still opposed the curriculum as written.
The national AJC office said in a statement Thursday that revisions
were “a salve” but were “ultimately not curative of the fundamental
flaws at the heart of the original curriculum, much of which represented
a rigid ideological (but sharply contested) world view.”
Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, an L.A.-based nonprofit
focused on supporting Israel and combating global antisemitism, said
the organization was “disappointed that this model curriculum was
approved as is,” adding, “we are proud that so many spoke out at today’s
meeting and for nearly two years leading up to this vote … without
their voices, the curriculum would have been dramatically worse.”
The textbook-length model curriculum sparked more than 82,000 public
comments over three review periods since the summer of 2019. More than
38,000 of them were summarized by the CDE as “Comments about Jewish
Americans and/or antisemitism,” by far the most of any category.
The curriculum next will be edited by CDE staff to reflect minor
changes and to include a definition of “critical race theory,” which
State Board of Education members suggested was necessary to resolve
confusion.
Anti-Semitic
content was removed from a proposed California public-school
curriculum. But the real danger is a radical and divisive ideological
agenda at the heart of this effort.
(JNS)
Some Jews are declaring victory. Their long battle to alter the draft
of the proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) for California
public schools ended with an outcome that left the Simon Wiesenthal
Center “encouraged.” The effort to remove overtly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content from the document was approved
by the California State Board of Education succeeded. Yet the center
remains “concerned” about the program. The American Jewish Committee agreed. It referred to the ESMC as “fundamentally flawed.” StandWithUS concurred, calling it “problematic.”
At stake was a new school course requirement for schools from
K-12 that would make the study of the histories, struggles and
contributions of Asian, African-American, Latino and Native American
communities an integral part of public education in the nation’s most
populous state. The fourth and revised draft of the curriculum now
includes material about, among others, Jews, Armenians and Sikhs.
The first draft, which provoked a strong protest from Jews, included
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel language. It effectively endorsed the
boycott of Israel by listing it alongside the Black Lives Matter
movement and #MeToo protests against sexual harassment as praiseworthy
activities. It referred to the establishment of modern-day Israel by the
term nakba, the Palestinian word for “catastrophe.” It spoke
of Jews gaining “race privilege” because of their skin color, which
makes them part of the oppressive majority grinding down minorities. And
it even included a song lyric that spoke of Jews manipulating and
controlling the press.
That’s all gone from the final draft that’s been approved and
included in it now are lesson plans on American Jews, including one on
the Mizrachi Jewish experience that discusses anti-Semitism. Both
contain the widely accepted definition of Jew-hatred, according to the
International Holocaust Remembrance Association, as well as material on
anti-Semitism from the Anti-Defamation League.
That’s enough to satisfy some in the
Jewish community. The California Legislative Caucus and the San
Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council have withdrawn their
objections entirely. Tyler Gregory, executive director of that JCRC,
said in a press release that “we need ethnic studies now. Ethnic studies
gives marginalized communities the agency to define and share their own
stories, cultures and histories. As Jewish Americans, we relate to this
urgent need.”
So why do many Jews remain worried about the implementation of this curriculum?
Today’s
Persians running Iran’s Islamic revolutionary regime consistently
declare their intention to annihilate Israel and are building the
capacity for nuclear weapons to achieve that infernal aim. And then,
there’s the Western media and academia …
This week’s festival of Purim provided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an irresistible analogy.
Purim celebrates the deliverance of the Jews of ancient Persia by
Mordechai and Esther—two Jews who thwarted the genocidal intentions of
the Persian prime minister Haman through their courage, daring and
strategic genius.
"Esther and Mordecai" by Arent de Gelder, 1675
Today’s Persians running Iran’s Islamic revolutionary regime
consistently declare their intention to annihilate Israel and are
steadily building the capacity for nuclear weapons to achieve that
infernal aim.
Netanyahu warned this week that, just as “another Persian
villain” tried and failed to destroy the Jewish people, so too would
Iran’s “delusional regime” be prevented from attaining nuclear weapons.
But there’s another unsettling analogy to be made here. For the story
of Purim tells us about the extreme perilousness of the Jews of the
Diaspora who are inescapably vulnerable to never-ending attack.
Currently, the Western world is convulsing in a pandemic of brazen
anti-Semitism, which draws upon imagery and tropes from early Christian
theology, Nazi and Communist ideology and the modern variant of
Jew-hatred, liberal universalist dogma that portrays Israel as a devil
state.
Dov Hikind leads protest against NBC antisem at 30 Rock NY during NBC's "SNL" broadcast Participants: Yad Yamin NY, End Jew Hatred, Americans against Antisemitism, Liberate Art
In America, comedian Michael Che promoted the Israel vaccine libel by quipping
on the NBC show “Saturday Night Live”: “Israel is reporting that they
vaccinated half of their population. I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish
half.”
In Britain, a Bristol university lecturer and pro-Palestinian
Jewish-conspiracy theorist, David Miller, issued a diatribe last weekend
in which he called for the “end” of Zionism as a “functioning ideology
of the world.”
He launched a direct attack on Jewish students, claiming that they
were “being used as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime
engaged in ethnic cleansing,” and that Arab students on campus were
unsafe as a result.
Outraged calls to sack both Miller and Che have predictably prompted
their supporters to criticize as hypocrites those who condemn “cancel
culture” while calling for these individuals to be canceled.
Anti-Semitism, though, is unique. It doesn’t just provoke contempt,
fear or hatred. It presents Jews as uniquely evil and powerful, a global
conspiracy to promote their own interests at the expense of everyone
else. And the correct response to evil is to eradicate it.
Anti-Semitism is therefore innately deranged, dangerous and even
murderous, unlike prejudice against any other group, people or cause.
After the Holocaust, it went underground in horror and shame, but in
recent decades that social control has disappeared. This is largely
because of the Marxist takeover of the left and its agenda of cultural
revolution.
Anti-Semitism has thus been seeded throughout the West by
Palestinianism, Islamism, black power and the left-wing
“intersectionality” agenda, all making common cause with far-right
anti-Semites who in numeric terms have been overwhelmingly eclipsed.
Moreover, it infuses Western culture itself. Among countless numbers
of people, their only knowledge of Jews is drawn from such hateful and
stereotypical figures as Fagin or Shylock. Many of the West’s greatest
literary, philosophical and artistic figures were profound anti-Semites.
Clearly, though, these cannot and should not be banned. A difficult and careful line must be drawn.
The chilling, little-known story of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles,
and the Jewish leaders and spies they recruited who stopped it.
No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home
to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis
plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military
installations: plans
existed for murdering twenty prominent Hollywood
figures such as James Cagney, Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, and Samuel Goldwyn; for
driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as
possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions
from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.
anti-Nazis Leon Lewis (middle) and Charlie Chaplin (right) were targeted by Hitler and the Nazis. (photo: NY Post)
U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close
attention—preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis —and only attorney
Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933
until the end of World War II, Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call
“the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy operation comprised
of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and
fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, they
uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and
destruction.
Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents,
and colorful supporting players, the Los Angeles Times bestselling
Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the
story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved
from the margins to the mainstream.
Prof. Steven J. Ross, author and U.S.C. professor
Steven J. Ross is Dean's Professor of History and the Marion and Mayron Casden Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.
Steve's most recent book, "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America" (Bloomsbury Press), was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for 2018, and received the Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theater Library Association for 2018. It was on the Los Angeles Times Best Seller list for 23 weeks. Ross is currently working on a follow up volume signed by Bloomsburg Press, The War Against Hate: American Resistance to Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy After 1945.
At Temple of the Arts' Kristallnacht Memorial Service, in November 2019, Prof. Steven Ross introduces the presentation he's about to deliver on L.A.'s civilian spies against Hitler.
Introduced by Rabbi David Baron, Univ. of Southern California Prof. Steven Ross delivers at (Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts) his "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood & America" presentation
Why did German-Americans embrace and assist Adolph Hitler in his quest?
How did German Nazi-collaborators attempt to intimidate Americans into
subjugation to Nazism and Axis-powers' fascism? What, if anything, was
particular about Nazi-activists in Hollywood / Los Angeles, California?
How did Jewish movie studio managers oppose Nazism before Washington
entered the war? How did Washington's Movie Code restrict them from
producing movies to raise public awareness about the Imperial conquest
of Europe and Asia? What were the Nazi-American's plots to conquer
America? How did the FBI treat these threats? How did Jews and Gentile
American patriots get involved to thwart these plans? To what effect?
1933 US Nazis plot against Hollywood & America: How civilian Jews & Gentiles foiled them- Steve Ross
Interview with author, Prof. Steven Ross.
Deaths in the JooTube family (not pictured) have curtailed our publishing on this website over the past 12 months. We have concentrated on Facebook and YouTube, where we have been subjected to censorship,so we will be resuming publishing on the website and other social-media networks (which we will indicate here). Thank you for your patience in the delay of publishing some 2019 and 2020 anticipated stories this year.
"Grateful" Edward Orshan, 87, who earned degrees from Princeton and Harvard, edited film and television in New York, Israel ("Michael SheLi"/ "My Michael"), and Hollywood, was a beloved member of The Happy (Carlebach) Minyan of Los Angeles.
Happy Minyanaires, Stuart Wax with Ed Orshan
Friends and family gathered on Tuesday, January 26th to celebrate his life with eulogies and prayer. Ed's son Gabriel attended, others participated via Zoom - which will be linked here soon. Ed passed away peacefully in his sleep on the same Shabbos (10th Shevat) as Larry King. That calendar day is also the yahrzeit of the Friediker Rebbe (Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson), and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The funeral was facilitated by Mordechai Freeman, who led the team assisting Ed's healthcare over the past few years.
Mordechai (Marc) Freeman
Rabbi Yonah Bookstein officiated. Chazan Yehuda ("Moshav Band") Solomon led El Male Rachamim and other prayers and chantings.
Eulogists included Geborah Goldberger, Jonathan Boyer, David Sacks, Jeff Rohatiner, Zalman Solomon, and bereaved son Gabriel. Ed is also survived by his former-wife, Nan, and sons Nathaniel and Itai (in Israel) who watched the funeral via Zoom.
Ed Orshan (photo: Geborah Goldberger)
Ed Orshan worked with John Avildsen (1977 Oscar for Best Director "Rocky") and also appeared as an actor (with Norman Wexler) in Jack O'Connell's 1961 independent feature,"THE GREENWICH VILLAGE STORY."
This brief scene was filmed in the Figaro Cafe on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets.
Authorities are investigating whether Grafton Thomas, the man charged in Saturday night’s machete attack on Hanukkah celebrants in Monsey, is tied to a recent stabbing near a village synagogue, a law enforcement official told The New York Post on Sunday.
The victim, a father of four, was so badly brutalized that cops were
initially told he’d apparently been hit by a car, officials said. Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel told reporters that the man was
“approached from behind by one or more individuals” and stabbed with an
unidentified weapon that wasn’t immediately recovered. Shortly after the November 20 incident, Ramapo police said they do not believe that the stabbing was a hate crime.
Details of the incident under investigation were unclear, but a 30-year man was beaten and repeatedly knifed while walking to the Mosdos Meharam Brisk Tashnad religious center in Monsey around 5:30 a.m. on November 20, the Journal News reported at the time.
The victim, a father of four, was so badly brutalized that cops were initially told he’d apparently been hit by a car, officials said.
Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel told reporters that the man was “approached from behind by one or more individuals” and stabbed with an unidentified weapon that wasn’t immediately recovered.
Shortly after the November 20 incident, Ramapo police said they do not believe that the stabbing was a hate crime.
A highly credible law-enforcement source tells Yeshiva World News that the Monsey stabbing attack suspect,Thomas E. Grafton, 37, is a recent Muslim convert.
In his OpEd in the Jerusalem Post "Inconvenient antisemitism: The daily attacks on Jews in New York" (29 December 2019) Seth J. Frantzman writes:
The attack on a Rabbi in Monsey, north of New York City on Saturday evening has left the Jewish community shaken. It follows at least eight other attacks in New York since the shooting attack on a kosher supermarket in early December. There have been near daily attacks in New York City this year, a kind of slow-moving pogrom against Jews, particularly targeting ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The murder of three people at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City was
mostly ignored in the United States. No rallies or marches against the
antisemitism that led to it. No major political upheavals or even much
recognition. The usual anger over gun violence after mass shootings was
nowhere to be found. The victims and the perpetrators are inconvenient.
America as a whole can’t mourn Orthodox Jews and it can’t confront
perpetrators when the perpetrators come from a minority community. This
is inconvenient antisemitism and it is a kind of antisemitism privilege.
Despite widespread anti-racism programs in the US, there are still
those in America for whom being antisemitic is a birthright and not
something to be ashamed of. The number of people raised with violent
antisemitic beliefs is growing.
The
Jersey City murders are the culmination of years of incitement against
Jews. But the perpetrators in that case were themselves minorities from
the African American community. The perpetrators have been identified as
coming from an extremist religious group called Black Hebrew
Israelites, making them a minority of a minority. The perpetrators are
seen as a “militant” fringe within that minority.The
authorities are now looking at the case as domestic terrorism fueled by
antisemitism. However major media have endeavored to dismiss the
murders as unimportant and unique. The New York Times described
the Black Hebrew Israelites as being “known for their inflammatory
sidewalk ministers who employ provocation as a form of gospel.” It’s a
bit more than that. In fact, the group and the milieu around it tend to
view religion through a racial lens, such that Jews are described as
“white” and “fake” and the “real Jews” are portrayed as black, along
with all the prophets and religious figures. The ADL pointed out that
this group views itself as the real “chosen people” and that it sees
people of color as the real descendants of the 12 tribes. The group was
in the media earlier in the year in Washington DC when they shouted
insults at Catholic high school students.
Mainstream
society wants to view this as “provocation,” because if they viewed it
as a burgeoning racist violent movement targeting Jews then they would
have to confront it and ask tough questions of why it is tolerated in a
community. Expert J.J. McNab told the Associated Press that in fact this
group takes pride in “confronting Jewish people everywhere and
explaining that they are evil.”
In
American society there is generally only place for one kind of racism.
There are far-right white supremacists and everyone else. This Manichean
worldview of antisemitism and racism means we are only comfortable with
one type of perpetrator. An angry white man. Those are the racists.
Dylann Roof, the racist who murdered black people in a church in 2015 is
the most normal kind of America racist. The El Paso shooter or the Tree
of Life Synagogue attacker are also the kind of killers that fit into
an easy narrative. But when the perpetrators stray from that we have a
problem dealing with it. In New York City,
according to a post by journalist Laura Adkins, data shows that of 69
anti-Jewish crimes in 2018, forty of the perpetrators were labelled
“white” and 25 were labelled “black,” the others were categorized as
Hispanic or Asian.
To end anti-Semitic hostility, Jews must apply Hanukah's lesson of deterrence - Part 1 of 2
Rabbi Moshe Parry interprets today's expansion of anti-Semitic hostility
as persisting until Jewish people apply their rabbinical mandate to
defend (and avenge) our honor to physically deter aggression.
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