Tag Archives: bigotry

Syria – End This Confusion – Where Hate Has Led – Anti-Semitism and the Abandonment of Humanity

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Syria

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But in all of Janta in Lebanon, and in the Golan, after Damascus Countryside and Ain es Saheb, we all witnessed how Bashar and his ally Nasrallah bowed before Israel’s tyranny and dragged their tails in shame, reserving a fake right to retaliate which won’t happen even if Israeli army soldiers stepped with their soles on their mercenaries’ necks.

Statement by the President of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces Ahmad Jarba, Posted on March 25, 2014

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“The last people I expected to help was the Israelis,” he said during the panel discussion, The Syrian Refugee Crisis. “We got the image that they are our enemies.”

And while Israel and Syria have been foes for decades, a group of Jewish leaders and Israelis are focusing on the humanitarian side of the war — the more than six million people that have been displaced because of the political unrest.

Syrian refugee crisis brings Israelis and Arabs together in Miami Beach – Carli Teprof – 3/10/2014.

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“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am not for others, what am I?”

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“That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.”

Hillel the Elder, circa 35-B.C. to 10-C.E.

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For God is with those
Who restrain themselves,
And those who do good.

Muhammad, Qur’an, 16:128

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Judaism works — should I be sorry to say it? — because Jews have worked on the appearance and puzzles brought to our gregarious species by “awareness, self-awareness, and conscience”, the latter implying awareness of the suffering or potential suffering of others, which  should not be confused with dishonest assertions about suffering and convenient libels constructed to make the speaker look heroic (when the speaker who would do that reveals more his cowardice and mediocrity).

If I pitch, it is for the mild, moderate, and middle of humanity — the caring, inherently good, and empathetic — against the two monsters that share the same sociopath psychology: the piratical dictator and the murderous zealot — may their hell be one another for company through eternity.  Be that as it may, between the kleptocratic troika that has been Putin-Assad-Khamenei and the zombie mindless Wahhabi-derived blood-soaked bands of Islamic zealots, the “mild, middle, and moderate” of Syrians have taken an horrific beating.  For them, there has been no army, no defense, no motivation on the part of the west to intercede militarily (where nuclear Russia has interest), and only mixed — I would call them mixed-up — motivations in the Arab world for ethical and clear-headed military support.

Where the fuzziness begins: The Jews!

The House of Israel — that good place from which aid and medical assistance has been extended to Syrians, as has so far been feasible, on the basis of need alone — appears to remain the arch enemy of Syrians even in an extremis wrought by a modern-day pharaoh, i.e., a monster of a dictator, a political criminal of the lowest form imaginable.

Political anti-Semitism, that sweet sounding poison deadly to the humanity of humanity and what better cultural, political, and religious enterprise it may pursue, has a long and ignoble history founded, perhaps, in a “Jewish rejectionism” posited on belief in an implacable and singular divinity flowing down through the aforementioned “awareness, self-awareness, and conscience.”  (Aside: when Adam and Eve first “cover”, it may not be for shame but rather for discovered mutual regard and the necessity of getting other things done: it’s God himself who sews the first clothes — of animal skins — before sending his children from Eden, where they were animated but most unconscious, and into human life).

One friend, a Jewish atheist and secularist, with whom I chat now and then via Skype, has said of the middle east and across the board, “They refuse to fly under the flag of sanity.”

Syria, where the suffering has been as real as it gets and the sadism on display every bit as horrifying as can be, would seem to be the proof of that.

Moreover, while the “humanity of humanity” starts to get its head around the fact that is global polyphonic cultural reality — contained and expressed by about 7,000 living languages worldwide — and catches on to the idea that the promotion of human decency and dignity might be of overarching and universal value, the base might consider ejecting anti-Semitism and related political cant altogether, recognizing the same as a warning signal about darkness within and on the horizon.

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I know of no person born without parents plus their legacy in belief, calendar, culture, customs, and language.   But a handful of tribes, however, remain isolated on islands or deep beneath the jungle canopy.  For the most part, so far as we may know, they’re officially protected by the sovereign powers whose lands envelope their enclaves.

The rest of us: shalom!

We’re here.

Together.

Let’s get this Jew-hate (and related processes in Roma-hate, white supremacy, black supremacy, Islamic supremacy, Christian supersession, etc.) off the table.

Ditch it.

Because it is dishonest.

Because it doesn’t work.

Because it is self-sabotaging.

Because it no longer hides what may be shameful but rather reveals it.

Because it has become a guilty pleasure, the kind that turns around to strangle and kill its exemplars as they set out to make a mess everywhere they go.

Failures are legend along this axis that goes against the grain of our evolving humanity.  From Rome to Spain to Germany and parts between, few political syndromes, if any, have summoned as much sorrow as drummed up and drum-beating anti-Semitism, ever the “socialism of fools” and the cover for political criminals.

Additional Reference

Standpoint.  “The Socialism of Fools: Anthony Julius, Nick Cohen, and Daniel Johnson.”  January/February 2013:

And then there’s a fourth position, the one which is most problematical for those of us who are Jews or who make common cause with Jews in the fight against anti-Semitism. It is a kind of impure nihilism, a kind of destructive fury or a perpetuation of the antagonisms of the pre-1989 Left, but without any balancing constructive project, so one continues in one’s war against America as if the Cold War still existed and the Soviet system still existed. But because there is no real alternative, one is led into more and more extreme gestures of anger and hatred and violence.

I think of the four responses I have identified, the fourth is most difficult for Jews: the searching for enemies-the pursuit of the enemy for its own sake. Jews have comprised the major enemy—certainly the major internal enemy—in the imagination of the West for perhaps 1,500 years. Of course, when that then becomes part of a larger political project, anti-Semitism is not terribly far away.

Wistrich, Robert S.  “A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad.  New York: Random House, 2010.

Related on BackChannels: “It’s Hard Helping You When You Are Anti-Semitic, Among Other Things.”  March 19, 2014.

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FTAC – Israel – Response to Remarks Delegitmizing Israel

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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“Arabs were made to pay for the crimes of the Europeans by the creation of Israel.”

I know that is what has been heard and the fiction constructed around it total, but Zionism predates WWII, and thousands of Arabs were drawn before it to the agricultural fields of the nascent Jewish state.

If you believe statehood in the name of religion must go, then Rome must go, as must Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — well, actually all Islamic kingdoms and dictatorships — as the same have become “real headaches for the entire civilized world, completely engulfed in injustice and violence.”

The only “inescapable issue” in the reconstruction that is the modern State of Israel is the 5,000+ year existence of Jews and Jewish culture — beliefs, calendar, customs, language, religion — on the land and continuously. Ancient Israel, the Roman “Palestine”, and modern Israel have never been “Judenrein” (as some might wish).

Jews don’t “deserve a homeland” — Jews have a homeland.

Regarding terrorism, have a look independently into war and low-intensity conflict across 2,000 years.

Regarding genocide, let’s keep these two buddies in mind: http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/…/2-mufti2_jpg… (Hussaini-Hitler handshake).

Also, you may want to look into how Ben Gurion crushed the terrorist Irgun at the earliest opportunity.

Your emphasis tells where you want to go (anti-Semitic / anti- Ziionist, actually, anti-justice) but the deeply poisonous programming and scripting that got you there has to this hour stayed out of the picture.

I beg you for patient new introspection and scholarship, for fresh ears and eyes, for skepticism in regard to a destructive loyalty.

I ask no less of myself and do read, say, Ma’an and look into issues having to do with the refugees of 1948 and their humanity, which one may believe better than that of their leaders who build and disseminate libels for a living.

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The response was to a writer in India who ran through the common anti-Semites screen, from declaring the State of Israel a colonial project directly and only corresponding to the destruction of the Jews of Europe in the Holocaust of World War II to suggesting the entire state should have been constructed elsewhere.

What a load of fictional crapola one wakes to if participating the “middle east conflict”, which has weirdly become the signifier for Israel’s conflict with the Arab world while the same Arab world melts down in conflicts within its portion of the Islamic Small Wars (e.g., signaled by political violence in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria).

Nowhere is the “Religion of Peace”, nor the states founded on it, at peace, and not even within themselves, the Muslim Brotherhood gangs ever threatening established state power, the same state power incompletely in control of powerful families willing to back al-Qaeda and its affiliates and likenesses.

Additional Reference

Amin Al Husseini: Nazi Father of Jihad, Al Qaeda, Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the Muslim Brotherhood – Tell The Children The Truth – Homepage

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Link

http://www.steynonline.com/6101/hath-not-a-jew-eyes

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Islamic Small Wars

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Hath Not a Jew Eyes? :: SteynOnline – 2/17/2014.

I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse, a city the size of Jacksonville, Florida, where in recent years one synagogue has been firebombed, another set alight when two burning cars were driven into it, a third burgled and “Dirty Jews” scrawled on the ark housing the Torah, where a kosher butcher’s was strafed with gunfire, and a Jewish sports association attacked with Molotov cocktails, and three Jewish children murdered outside their grade school, I would like Foxman to go to Toulouse and tell any Jew he finds there (they are advised by their rabbis not to wear identifying marks of their faith) that it’s all the work of “anti-government people”.

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FTAC – A Note on Perception and Political Topology

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Psychology

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The inspiration came from a Facebook status line note involving a Pakistani Muslim who found himself on the receiving end of conservative Australian vitriol targeting Muslims, never mind the person’s stance as anti-Wahhabi, pro-Zionist, and in multiple facets western.

One of us!  In other words — or one congenial in my own circles and with apparent attitudes congruent with my outlook, i.e., representing one among hundreds of Facebook relationships developed across the boundaries of culture and nation and based on discovered affinity as verbally signaled.

Here’s the note:

I have found within conservative circles and the “anti-Jihad” more investment in absolute attitudes toward Islam than accurate apperception and flexibility. Perhaps as one moves toward more centered and on to liberal circles, that may change. In may case, which is Englishy and romantic tempered by a few years of experience with empirical methods, I’ve certainly taken note of “shimmer” in the realpolitik — or there would not be Muslim refugees fleeing Muslim fighters — plus the presence of Islamic humanists, progressives, and reformers, plus then the underlying cultures overlaid by the sweep of the introduction of the religion, and so on.

Bigotry, even with a basis as evident as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the hundreds to thousands of Islamist organizations, bands, and fighting units, seems to me always ignorant and vicious. Rescue or secure the good, says I, and take aim at true targets well known, well identified, and definitely not friendly.

Inherent fear or, if writ larger, paranoia in persons provides evil great leverage, and while we see that in play within Islam (or fear and loathing of the Jews would not be so endemic and nurtured), we may fail to see similar emotional mechanics in play in ourselves or more aligned circles.

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Political psychology would seem to me not a field for “black-and-white” thinkers.  Rather drift, spectrum, and trend may better define separable positions around what might be conceptualized as a mountain with central and core features, numerous dimensions radiating off that core, and, of course, no end of fringe and far out intellectual inventory.

As regards the Islamic Small Wars, I would predict the center-right a little more likely to want to look over the separable political and social divisions related to who is fighting, who is fleeing, who is enthused for their side, whatever that may be, and who has hunkered down in prayer to weather the storm with the least involvement possible.  The reasoning behind my guess is that conservatism may be associated also with the “business of business” and engineering, i.e., more aligned with the western zeitgeist as it relates to defense and war.  The reduction of the passion of war in favor of more clinically approaching a large problem then coincides with at least knowing who is NOT the enemy.  Such a manner of observation and empiricism works against large-label prejudice.

Addendum

I let my correspondents know that something they have said has inspired a note here, so in the note that followed this post, I went on a bit:

fyi — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/01/15/ftac-a-note-on-perception-and-political-topology/ Hi, X. — with conservative, so I presume, also Christian, I presume, Aussies — you face several dimensions involving prejudice.

At this point . . . I think I am just another “child of God” and like Q.A.: I like everyone who can be liked on the basis of a common and thoughtful good ethics.

I’ve got to mention this and hope you don’t mind.

In the Torah, as Adam and Eve become possessed of knowledge (having eaten the forbidden fruit), they cover their genitals (fig leaves). Christianity teaches that they do so for shame, but I would note — and I don’t know what Judaism teaches although I consider my reading close and alert — that they do so not for shame but to spare one the other too continuous an access and tease. Later, same chapter, God Himself sews skins for the two to wear as he prepares them to leave the Garden of Eden and walk out into human life.

Those who from Islam invoke the term “crusader west” have as their dearest wish the development of a truly crusading west.

Most, if not all, leading politicians to this point have refused that gambit.

There is no “crusading west”, really, and there hasn’t been one for centuries, and westerners don’t want one, most being out in the world and feeling free in their polyglot cultural and religious possibilities.

However, and it’s unavoidable that along the spines of the anti-Jihad, the Muslims vs. Christian axis cannot be quelled for sheer numbers subscribed to each religion.  Add to that Muhammad’s prescription against too bonded and sincere a friendship with Christians, which admonishment, of course, festers in the Christian world while it in fact — this is how it works — assures the self-destruction of Muslims who a) believe it and b) press it.  It — Surat 5:51, Al-Mā’idah — will be one that reformers will have to consider as they wrestle with the message, which has proven arguable to the extent that Muslim-on-Muslim violence has been the primary social conflict produced in relation to civil and other internecine conflicts within Muslim-majority states.

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FTAC – A Note on Bigotry and Language

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Psychology

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I think what’s going on is early infancy to childhood social rule formulation tied to language uptake. Anti-Semitic remarks within the family or close cultural quarters (church) may be met a) without filters because b) curiosity to create the rules for filtering data and generating speech have to be formed first. That learning may be congruent with what has been heard (by the very young human) or formulated for entertainment (we’re a really bright species and boredom is an existential problem addressed partially by art and artifice).

Feedback to the child’s rule-making and subsequent adventure in language may take place in a welcoming environment suffused with bigotry or otherwise just continue stubbornly on its anti-social course until the adult’s behavior finds its reflection in a larger cultural environment. That is our contemporary politics, of which this thread is a part. My suggestion that some portion of anti-Semitism — and other bigotry — is acquired as part of language learning and rule-based may help account for the difficulty encountered in argument with bigots who cannot access the origins of their earliest formed attitudes and beliefs.

I know I often hit the same keys — with this note, i.e., anti-Semitism and other prejudice may have anchors in language uptake and the discovery by deduction or invention of essential cultural language-shaping rules.

The source for inspiration was an article about Hollywood’s latest collection of celebrities who have taken anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist positions in the political facet of their careers: » Hollywood’s War On Israel – 12/28/2013.

From Walt Disney to Mel Gibson, attitudes toward the Jews inevitably surface in “The Business”.  Whether it’s good to harp and harass along this axis — there’s a lot of finger pointing and mud slinging involving a behavior I believe inseparable from persons from an early age — I don’t know, but as I suggest that the behavior is rule-based and acquired with language uptake, public opprobrium cannot get to it — nor, as I have been seasoned in this elsewhere, does adult argument or persuasion.

What airing in the media may do, however, is influence a part of a generation of mothers, fathers, and teachers to adopt and promote a greater tolerance of others and through the timbre of the environments known to infancy change the instructions imparted accordingly — and exactly that would seem implicit in the American and other open democracy stories.

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Aside

09 Monday Dec 2013

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Others have suggested that the violence is the result of economic inequalities felt especially acutely by young African Americans and Caribbean Americans in our city, but as a leader of this community, let me clear: It is no more acceptable for a young black man to assault a person because of the clothes they wear or the group they belong to than it would be for white people to physically assault black people in Brooklyn or anywhere else because of the color of their skin

Al Sharpton: Everyone Should Speak Out Against Knockout Attacks on Jews – Tablet Magazine – 12/9/2013.

After al-Quds University Students Raise the Black Flag and Do the Hitler Salute

24 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, North America, Politics, Psychology, Regions, United States of America

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Demonstrators at the Palestinian school paraded in paramilitary gear, with massed black flags, mock assault weapons, and arms extended in Nazi-style salutes. There were banners lionizing suicide bombers, and hand-drawn Israeli flags on which students trod. Islamic Jihad — long identified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union — posted photos of the rally on its website. In one, students representing dead Israelis sprawl on the ground as black-clad jihadists brandishing weapons stride past.

Rally shows pervasive Palestinian anti-Semitism – Opinion – The Boston Globe – 11/24/2013.

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“Even universities like Al Quds university are established especially in Jerusalem, in order to show that Arabs and Muslims are the masters of this place and not the Jews, because in their view, if Judaism will control Jerusalem it will mean that Judaism came back to life after Islam came to replace it.

“This is why the basis of the struggle over Jerusalem and over the whole land of Israel is a religious struggle – not between Israel and the Arabs but between Judaism and Islam. This is the essence of th struggle, and everything stems from this archimedic point of the struggle.”

The speaker is the well-known scholar Mordechai Kedar and the source this one: Footage: More Nazi-Style Rallies at Al-Quds U. – Middle East – News – Israel National News – 11/28/2013.

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During his press conference in Jerusalem today on the “peace process,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized Israel again, but did not place any emphasis at all on the fact that the Palestinian Authority tolerates (and in many cases actively encourages) incitement to kill Jews.

Mideast Dispatch Archive: Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” Palestinian university – 11/6/2013

Related: Mideast Dispatch Archive: Update: Al-Quds photos receive attention from Netanyahu through to Al Jazeera (Tom Gross Media) – 11/11/2013; Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News: 11/07 Links Pt1: Fascist Rally at Al Quds Uni, Iranian Nobel Laureate – Rouhani is no Moderate – 11/7/2013; The Jewish Chronicle – Palestinian university partnership with Brandeis under fire after fascist style rally – 11/14/2013; Al Quds University « Commentary Magazine – 11/20/2013; Brandeis University suspends its partnership with Al-Quds University effective immediately | BrandeisNOW – 11/18/2013; Brandeis University Criticized for Nazi-Style Rally | Washington Free Beacon – 11/11/2013; Al-Quds president says Brandeis counterpart ‘gone overboard’ in row over rally | The Times of Israel – 11/22/2013.

In the final reference of the above block, Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University may have through the subtext of his response made it clear how difficult it was — and remains — to stand up to and condemn the anti-Semitic bigotry and hate paraded by Islamic Jihad on campus.  While defending his actions on the matter, which I believe he did well, he appears (in words) not to have gone so far as to lead his campus in recognizing and condemning with certainty its own deeply fascist elements and tendencies.

The Jewish press at once defensive and active –in this instance David Horovitz writing for the Times of Israel — hammers home the telling nail: “In his statement issued to al-Quds students Sunday, Nusseibeh had said that “Jewish extremists” were using the demonstration to “capitalize on events in ways that misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies.”

No extremists, Jewish or otherwise, would seem needed to recognize the deeper structure in argument having to do with choosing between a loyalty that pacifies, placates, and patronizes its children when they are wrong, and an integrity in matters that risks upsetting their malign narcissistic souls.

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“We are very disappointed and saddened to have learned of these recent events at Al-Quds University,” said Kevin Quinn, Syracuse’s senior vice president for public affairs, in an email to The Jerusalem Post.

He said Syracuse’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism would end its ties with Al-Quds. The decision by Syracuse came three days after Brandeis University severed its relationship.

Syracuse follows Brandeis in halting ties with Al-Quds | JPost | Israel News – 11/22/2013.

When something stinks, people who don’t stink back away from it.

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DEARBORN — Dozens of Arab Americans across southeast Michigan converged on Dearborn Friday to mark National Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, condemning Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands.

The protest was held at Dearborn City Hall, the designated “free speech zone” in the city.

Muslims Mark Al-Quds Day in Support of Palestinians – Around Town – Dearborn, MI Patch – 8/4/2013.

Should you click on the Dearborn Patch link, you will see a photo of a young lady holding a post with blocked and black letters on a white field: “Israel: No Right To Exist.”

Scroll down some and learn that “Abir Safa of Dearborn read a poem during the rally, and said that the event serves as a wake up call for all Muslims to take a stand against global Zionism and global hegemony and aggression regardless of race, religion or creed.”

Good idea — start with the saluting black shirts of al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Israel.

But wait — that would be off the point, which might fit a little more with observations similar to this one by Andrew Kirell writing for Mediaite:

It’s a match made in hate-filled heaven: former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Louisiana legislator David Duke endorsed, via video, Charles Barron, the controversial anti-Israel Democrat from Brooklyn, New York, who currently seeks the party’s nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Former Black Panther Barron has a long history of controversial remarks, some of which have been interpreted as anti-Semitic. He once called Israel the “biggest terrorist in the world,” and likened the Gaza Strip to “a virtual death camp, the same kind of conditions the Nazis imposed on the Jews.” At one point, he praised the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi as a “freedom fighter.”

United In Hate? Fmr. KKK Leader David Duke Endorses Black Anti-Zionist For Congress | Mediaite – 6/22/2012.

Readers of this blog should by now well recognize the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” involved in the concoction, unconsciously or by way of deliberate and venal conceit, of “against global Zionaism . . . hegemony . . . aggression” especially when it links directly back to jack-booted, black shirt wearing, rigidly parading and Nazi-emulating thugs associating themselves with other Palestinians, among them some or many — who knows absent of free speech and unblemished elections?  — who may finally wish to think twice — independently and off their own research and reflection — about who it is, or what it is, that has been purporting to represent them.

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A little bit of “Never Forget!” by way of the 1930s, Facebook, and Harry’s Place (reference provided).

boycotJGS

Harry’s Place » Old Hatred In New Words? – 9/2/2008.

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While before a person had to be personally exposed, through people or perhaps a book, to vile characterizations of Jews, today anti-Semitism is prominently available everywhere anytime — to those seeking it out or to the innocent person just looking for information. Typing “Jew” into Google or Bing returns a top site (sometimes No. 2) called JewWatch, which is a vast emporium of anti-Semitic accusations and hatred claiming 1.5 billion pages in support of its mission to defame and eliminate Jews and their supposed power. This is but one of tens of thousands of anti-Semitic hate sites, which include a growing alternative to Wikipedia, called Metapedia, which seeks to create (currently in 18 languages) an anti-Semitic informational universe.

Opinion: How the Web spreads anti-Semitism – CNN.com – 10/18/2013.

With the democratic open society concept, a lot of people write and publish — and a lot more read and respond through the manner in which they conduct their lives — but to create a pervasive information atmosphere, one infused with anti-Semitic vitriol, takes some pile of sleazy cash: one wonders about who has been putting up the Big Bucks to inflame and incite yet another generation to wanton murder.

Additional Reference

Brandeis president will reach out to Al-Quds University | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California – 11/27/2013.

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