31 Sunday Aug 2014
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Canada, North America, United States of America
Temple is a major university in the USA, home of the brave, land of the free-where Lady Liberty holds her light high inviting all who are in need to her shores. And yet, and yet, a Jewish student, Daniel Vessal, was physically and verbally attacked-for being Jewish, at this place of higher learning.
It isn’t that he was sucker-punched and verbally abused. It was that it was treated… lightly.
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26 Tuesday Aug 2014
Posted in Anti-Semitism
Then this Arab young man opened the car door, stepped onto the street and yelled at me, my wife and four young children: “I hope your children die! Just like you are killing children in Gaza!”
We all stood silently in utter horror and fear.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywood/article/a_hate_incident_against_elon_gold – 8/25/2014.
26 Tuesday Aug 2014
Their example?
….in 2009 a Swedish report came out exposing some Israeli troops of selling organs of Palestinians who died in their custody.
(Around the 1:15 mark of the video.)
The reference is to a completely made up tabloid style article in an obscure Swedish paper, that even the author admitted was not based on any evidence.
http://honestreporting.com/time-magazine-accuses-idf-of-stealing-palestinian-organs/ 8/24/2014.
Time Magazine excised the truth-offending portion of its video, which continues to play at the bottom of the Honest Reporting piece cited.
How did that error in judgment occur in the first place?
It may be too soon to suggest that Prince al-Waleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holdings investment in Time-Warner has gravitational pull down in the news room, but we may be getting to the point where the public will want to know more about how journalists write the news and with what level of balance, introspection, and integrity.
Related: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/08/25/bias-blood-libels-and-the-medias-race-to-the-bottom/ 8-25/2014.
There has been much discussion recently of Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters. Any veteran of the press corps here knows the intimidation is real, and I saw it in action myself as an editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza. (The policy was then, and remains, not to inform readers that the story is censored unless the censorship is Israeli. Earlier this month, the AP’s Jerusalem news editor reported and submitted a story on Hamas intimidation; the story was shunted into deep freeze by his superiors and has not been published.)
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide?all=1 – 8/26/2014.
Matti Friedman’s story for Tablet has been getting around the web this morning. Breathtaking in scope, Friedman’s tell-all turns media policy in the Gaza-based Hamas-driven conflict inside-out. A recent Cif Watch article relayed here played up the highlights.
Journalism ethics professors and historians take note: You are bearing witness, with few exceptions, to some of the most abysmal overseas reporting since Hearst’s New York Journal in 1898 got us into the Spanish-American War and Walter Duranty of the New York Times was ignoring Stalin’s crimes in the 1930s. “We’re not just talking bad journalism,” says Weiss. “We’re talking about journalism that functions as a tool of a terrorist organization, Hamas: breathlessly pushing its narrative, whether cowed by its threats, sympathetic to its cause, or simply ignorant.”
Fareed Zakaria: “Hezbollah’s view on the renovation goes like this. “We respect divine religions, including the Jewish religion. The problem is with Israel’s occupation of Arab lands … not with the Jews.” Food for thought.” (http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2010/08/22/gps.last.look.synagogue.cnn.html – 8/22/2010).
CAMERA: “Zakaria’s indirect main point may have been about the NYC mosque. But his more immediate point — that Hezbollah respects the Jews and is merely opposed to Israel’s “occupation of Arab lands” — dramatically misinformed viewers about the radical and anti-Semitic nature of the Lebanese terror group. Hezbollah has repeatedly made clear not only its opposition to Israel’s very existence, but also its contempt for Jews.” (http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&x_outlet=14&x_article=1912 – 8/26/2010).
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Abu Omar al-Shishani: (6:50) “Christians are welcome to khilafa. They only pay protection money.” (Interview dated: 8/18/2014).
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Hezbollah mouthpiece or ISIS commander, it appears such Jihad Muslims must have always the upper hand, ownership of the universe, and, back on earth, the plundering and subjugation of all others.
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Despite Zakaria’s defense of Hezbollah’s alleged decency as regards freedom of religion, “contempt for Jews” would seem matched elsewhere along the same Islamist seam by contempt for Christians. Of course, the matter of “dhimmitude” is well known in association with “Islamic Jihad” whether Shiite- or Sunni-based. Why a western writer should wish to diminish its import and promote Hezbollah as the soul of a generous humanity begs for answers.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) has an archive of incidents involving Fareed Zakaria’s journalism. The latest involves Zakaria asserting that Israel has interfered with the latest scheduled elections on the “West Bank”, as direct an act of misdirection through language as is possible. The Washington Post filed a straightforward correction on the matter. CAMERA noted that Zakaria could not bring himself to state the same plainly but preferred to send yet another arrow at Israel.
Fast blogging merely marks a note on the day’s passing news.
Beneath the pain and smoke of conflict, it takes investigation along audit lines to ferret out relationships between state-level adversaries and their activities — direct propaganda, influence on general reportage, ownership and sponsorship of academic assets — campuses, institutions, departments and their research funding — and that may be beyond both my pocketbook and purview. Whether it’s noodling around the Internet on “Iran, Zakaria” or outlining the contours of the International Solidarity Movement, as much demands focused time on a system that moves at light speed.
All of which may be my way of complaining, “Ain’t no low hanging fruit no more”.
🙂
Whether with Time Magazine publishing in a video an updated anti-Semitic “blood libel” or Fareed Zakariah praising the love and moderation toward Jews exhibited by Hezbollah (oy vey!), I would like to know what has compelled or influenced that gaslighting happy faced lunacy.
ADL. “Iran’s Press TV: Broadcasting Anti-Semitism To English Speaking World” – 10/17/2013.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-front-of-cnn-hundreds-protest-anti-israel-media-bias/ – 8/8/2014.
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25 Monday Aug 2014
Posted in Anti-Semitism
Tags
Anti-Semitism is a politics of blame that holds Jews responsible for the aggression against them. Jews may be guilty of many things, but I would put it to you that they are never, never, guilty of the crimes with which anti-Semitism charges them because anti-Semitism is a politics of misdirection. It deflects attention away from those who are actually committing the abuses, from those who want to accumulate the power by scapegoating the Jews. (27:40)
I suspect some who may have grown up in anti-Semitic environments have had little insight into the origins of their attitudes toward Jewry. The above showed up on my desktop about 30 minutes ago and seems to deliver an erudite assessment of anti-Semitic drift on global culture.
That Jews take pride in legacy comes as no surprise, but that the same would want others to enjoy their separable journeys seems less publicized.
The reminder for that may come from Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not others, what am I? If not now, when?”
It takes a Hitler to ask — and he did ask — “Who says I am not under the special protection of God?”
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24 Sunday Aug 2014
Tags
And I knew. We are falling, falling, falling into the trap, into the abyss of hatred. And that will be the end of the Jewish people for this is not our way. We came out of the desert 3500 years ago with an ethic that Irish author Thomas Cahill calls “The Gift of the Jews.” It was given in the desert, in the wilderness, publicly and openly, in a place to which no one had any claim. “Everyone who desires to accept let him come and accept.” (Mekhilta, Bahodesh 1) It is the revolutionary ethic that separates the civilized from the barbarian. The ethic that made it possible for some tribal societies to transform themselves over the millennia into democratic nation states that welcome people of all races, colours creeds religions and sexual orientation to live in one country without fear.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/we-must-not-become-the-barbarian/ – 8/24/2014.
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19 Tuesday Aug 2014
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Not one European national parliament has mirrored the U.S. House of Representative’s resolution defending Israel’s measures against Hamas.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/behind-europe-anti-semitic-slurs-article-1.1891349 – 8/4/2014.
Along with resurgent nationalist fascism in Europe has come an equally robust anti-Semitism, and the pundits are weighing in on cause with a dizzying profusion of partially warranted hypotheses. Whether expressing pique over the latest episode of “Israel vs Hamas” or perhaps exculpating Auschwitz guilt, one thing has become clear as regards the eruption of the new barbarism in Europe: someone failed to keep the gates shut.
It would seem no one inclined toward hate cares to listen to the direction of a more refined Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian government when like-minded fellows met on the Internet are also to be met out on the street.
And who and what is to stop them?
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“Yo, Bunky, about beating up the Jew — don’t do it again.”
“Why not? What are you going to do about it?”
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The destructively narcissistic ideation that ends with “Jew Hate” and general war against all probably gets its start with “narcissistic mortification”, i.e., the deep embarrassment and felt humiliation of the spirit who becomes so engaged with the world, and the engagement becomes expressive of a basic “Fuck you” written small in acts of vandalism or large in the merciless and vacuous slaughters of tens upon tens of thousands by autocrat, boss, caliph, dictator, king, or emperor.
The lives put at risk — and less involved noncombatant Gazans fit this model very well — have no more meaning to those who harbor such contempt and hate for others than their specific targets. In essence, Khaled Mashaal, for example, not only hates the Jews and Israel but doesn’t give a shit either about Palestinian lives. For that psychological perversion, life has made Khaled Mashaal a billionaire twice over.
One need not go down the ranks of wealthy dictators and their rates of survival. The main thing, whether with Paul Biya, Robert Mugabe, Bashar al-Assad, or Baghdaddi and the Islamic Hate (what a band!) is that the patterns are the same: life provoked in each the want of a grandiose and messianic self-aggrandizement, and someone then either let them get away with it or failed to stop them in their tracks.
The type have no “off button” — but they have an “on switch” with a recognizable start-up program, and it’s completely visible today from Asia to Europe to the Middle East.
The beating last Tuesday of 53-year-old rabbi Daniel Alter in front of his young daughter, allegedly by a group of Arab youths, has been roundly condemned.
The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, urged Muslim groups to “finally deal decisively with anti-Semitism in their own ranks”.
http://www.news24.com/World/News/Muslims-deny-inaction-over-anti-Semitism-20120903 – 9/2/2012.
“I am deeply disappointed that we have come to this, that society tolerates tough talk again and tough talk spreads,” said Gyula Foldes, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/21/us-hungary-antisemitism-idUSKBN0E10E420140521 – 5/21/2014.
Kantor spoke after meeting with senior Belgian politicians including Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo in the aftermath of the terror shooting at the Jewish Museum in central Brussels, which left three people dead and one seriously injured and in critical condition.
“What better example is there of the lack of security, the absence of tolerance and the climate of fear in our European cities than this attack on Jews in the capital of Europe?” Kantor said.
Some of the trapped Jews fought their way out as the riot police dispersed the crowd. Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister, condemned the attack in “the strongest possible terms”, while Joel Mergei, a community leader, said he was “profoundly shocked and revolted”. The words had no effect. Two weeks later, 400 protesters attacked a synagogue and Jewish-owned businesses in Sarcelles, in the north of Paris, shouting “Death to the Jews”. Posters had even advertised the raid in advance, like the pogroms of Tsarist Russia.
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/08/exodus-why-europes-jews-are-fleeing-once-again-261854.html – 7/29/2014.
In July, the number of Dutch-language anti-Semitic Facebook pages ran into the hundreds, according to MDI, which cannot keep up with the amount of hate-fueled posts, ranging from statements such as “Jews must die” to those praising Adolf Hitler. On Twitter, the hashtag “Hitler was right” appeared more than 10,000 times in July in connection with Gaza and became a trending topic, says MDI.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/anti-semitic-hate-speech-internet_n_5682031.html – 8/16/2014.
“One of the attackers signaled me to ‘Shut up or we’ll kill you,’” Anna Sjögren, in her 40s, said of the ordeal, which transpired on Thursday.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/18/swedish-woman-viciously-beaten-for-wearing-jewish-star-necklace/ – 8/18/2014
I have heard and seen much the same thing on the BBC and Channel 4 News; reports of horrible attacks upon synagogues and Jewish businesses in Europe. A huge spike in anti-Semitic attacks in this country, too — more than 200 in the last month; more in the last four weeks than the previous six months put together. But no mention, not even a hint, as to who might be responsible. A complete mystery, isn’t it?
Almost two thirds (64 %) of those who experienced physical violence or threats of violence did not report the most serious incident to the police or to any other organisation. Three quarters (76 %) of the respondents who experienced antisemitic harassment in the past five years did not report the most serious incident. More than four in five (82 %) of those who said that they felt discriminated against in the 12 months before the survey because they are Jewish did not report the most serious incident.
http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2013-factsheet-jewish-people-experiences-discrimination-and-hate-crime-eu_en.pdf – European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights – 2013; Related primary report:
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Anti-Semitism-alarms-ADL-371452 – 8/19/2014.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/182400/ctrl-f-genocide – 8/15/2014.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/behind-europe-anti-semitic-slurs-article-1.1891349 – 8/4/2014.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-anti-Semitism-sweeping-Europe-370058 – 8/4/2014.
http://time.com/63960/hate-crimes-anti-semitism/ – 4/15/2014.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/162559/jews-control-the-internet-says-pro-palestinian-website – 2/10/2014.
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17 Sunday Aug 2014
Tags
anti-Semitism, Hamas, Israel, political, politics, propaganda, The Lancet
As ethical, apolitical, and professional members of the academic community, we find the open letter for the people in Gaza1 an outrageous diatribe lacking context and deliberate vilification of the sovereign state of Israel and, by extension, every Israeli. In publishing such invective, The Lancet has allowed itself to become a platform for distorted political activism, as has been previously noted by others.2,3 Because we are scientists and physicians who are accustomed to incorporating all data into the formation of educated opinions (even public commentary), we are obliged to redress the imbalance.
http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673614613143.pdf – 8/15/2014.
An updated reference to the same may be found here under the title, “True about The Lancet – And Shame on It for the Anti-Semitic Knuckleheads It Chose to Support With Its Platform” (July 28, 2014, updated August 17, 2014).
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10 Sunday Aug 2014
(7/24/2014)
(7/24/2014)
(8/5/2014)
” . . . a separate militant group to Hamas! They are also responsible for rocket fire into Israel . . .” (1:21)
(8/10/2014)
(6/18/2014)
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