Facebook Embed Plug Script

Learning Rabbi Meir Kahane's lesson about Chanukah lesson for Jewish safety in perilous times

Josef Gluck in Monsey, NY and accused slasher, Grafton Thomas
Monsey, NY stabbing suspect may be linked to earlier attack by Elad Benari, Israel National News Dec 29, 2019 
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.
zxcfv

Israel Film Festival online expands 4 films to nation-wide access, 5 more within all California


Regarding the Israel Film Festival in Southern California, the absence of in-person exposure to filmmakers and actors is made-up for by the convenience of watching the films with Zoom discussions of filmmakers at your leisure.

Viewer access that was originally limited to Los Angeles County has been expanded for some movies (as indicated below) to all of California, and nation-wide for others. Additionally, access has been extended through Sunday 27 Dec for 9 movies, with 4 of them reachable throughout the U.S.

I did enjoy the "Ophir Award"-winning, "Here we Are" which is followed by a discussion with Nir Bergman, director; Shai Avivi, lead actor, moderated by L.A. Times film critic, Kenneth Turan. (It's the non-Ophir winners, though, that are being extended access to).

Viewer access that was originally limited to Los Angeles County has been expanded for some movies (as indicated below) to all of California, and nation-wide for others.