Two Eminent Rabbis On The Election...

 

It's a foregone conclusion that a majority of the secular, non-religious Jewish vote will go to Mrs. Clinton for reasons I've explored already here. So I found the reactions of two well known and highly regarded Rabbis, both with secular educations as well as religious ones to be of interest.

First here's Rabbi Dov Fischer Esq*., who has served two three-year terms on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America during the past seven years, is a professor of the law of Torts and of Civil Procedure at two major Southern California law schools and is The Rabbi of Young Israel in Orange County, California. Here's what he had to say:

I am an Orthodox rabbi. I am also an attorney and an adjunct professor of law. I clerked 20 years ago for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Boggs, one of the most brilliant minds I ever have known in any of my walks of life, soon thereafter served as chief judge of the Sixth Circuit.

Of course, I am disgusted by the stories that dominate the election campaign. I am disgusted as a law professor, an attorney, a father of daughters, and as a rabbi. Women making accusations that they have been sexually abused — Paula Corbin Jones who received an $850,000 settlement from Bill Clinton; Kathleen Willey who went to Bill Clinton in the White House, desperate for a job after her husband killed himself; Juanita Broaddrick, a Clinton volunteer who insists he raped her; the new list of women whose names I am only now learning who say that Donald Trump groped or kissed them against their will. The abused women whose reputations and lives were destroyed by Hillary Clinton, as she defended her husband’s public profile after each “bimbo eruption.” Hillary referred to victims as “looney tunes” and worse, her team including the likes of James Carville and Sidney Blumenthal characterized them as “trailer trash,” and Hillary most infamously ruined the life of 12-year-old Kathy Shelton, raped by a 41-year-old whom Hillary was required to defend. There was nothing wrong in Hillary defending—every accused criminal deserves a good defense. But Hillary destroyed the girl in the process and proceeded years later laughing about that case and regaling an interviewer with anecdotes of that tragedy.

All of it disgusts me. So I have decided that on November 8 I am not going to vote for Clinton or Trump. Instead, I am going to vote for the federal judiciary. Along the way, I also am going to vote for an authentic economic recovery that will include repatriating trillions of dollars back home, for a stronger American footprint in the world, for a border that will protect Mexico from free-flowing American weapons that feed their drug cartels and that will protect America from the influx of potential terrorists and murderous drugs that now easily can pour through our porous borders. 

I am going to vote for a process that restores civil harmony in the inner cities by restoring respect for law enforcement even as we begin to address legitimate concerns that responsible African Americans have raised about bias. I am going to vote against sanctuary cities. I am going to vote for a stronger military that, after the past eight years, we now unfortunately will need to protect from Iranian terror exports and North Korean adventurism. 

I am going to vote for an end to bullying and ceaselessly blaming and threatening Israel, our strongest and only truly reliable ally in the Middle East, the only country in that region that truly shares America’s deepest values. And I am going to vote to stem the perilous slide away from America’s traditional social core values of hard work, self-help, trust in G-d, respect for religion’s central place in our lives, and the sanctity of life.

If we do not have a robust rebound from the terrible recession of nearly a decade ago, let it not be because I voted based on some filthy talk that a candidate spoke 11 years ago. Let young Americans in our inner cities not continue to die in an endless spiral of gang violence because a tape recorded braggart childishly impressed a gullible young news journalist. And how sad it is to see men—Hillary’s male enablers like John Podesta, Rob Mook, Bill Clinton, and others no less cynical on the other side—preying on women’s legitimate and decent values by trying to sway voting blocs one way or the other based on issues other than the life-and-death concerns on today’s table.

How will we explain to our sons or grandsons who one day would be sent overseas to fight to stop an enriched Iran—nuclear-enriched, hundreds of billions enriched—when America’s continued weakness and failure to stand strong now ultimately will leave us with no choice but to fight later? Shall we tell them: “Well, you see, we did not elect the candidate who would have stood stronger because  11 years earlier he was recorded saying the most disgusting things as he bragged on a bus to an impressionable journalist?”

(more at the link)

Then, here's Rabbi Mendel Kessin, who has a PHD in psychology, practices privately and is widely regarded as one of America's most eminent Torah scholars. His bio is here:




Rav Kessin also approaches this with the insight you'd expect of a Torah Gadolim of his eminence. You vote to keep the singularly corrupt, dishonest and incompetent  leader out of the White House, not  because of a 11 year old illegally recorded and illegally released tape   with locker room talk on it followed by some conveniently timed unproven allegations.

One more thing. If you're female, have daughters, are gay or Jewish, voting for Hillary is suicidal. 

f you really care about women you will vote for Donald Trump instead of a candidate with serious ties to the Muslim Brotherhood who has pledged to bring in thousands of unvettable Muslim 'refugees' from the most misogynist, Jew hating, gay hating countries on earth.

if you want to see how that works out, just take a look at Europe, with its wave of sexual assaults,gay bashing and Jews afraid to walk the streets. Sweden, where rape used to be almost unheard of is now the rape capitol of the world, Amsterdam, once the most gay friendly city in the world now has gay bashing incidents on a regular basis. Jews have been advised by several EU governments NOT to go out wearing kippot, Jewish stars or anything else that clearly identifies them as Jews, and attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions have skyrocketed. In Germany, Do a search on the gang rapes in Cologne and elsewhere since Merkel imported a million 'refugees' into Germany. Or the Muslim sex grooming gangs in the UK who made money raping and 'turning out' young minor British girls as young as twelve for prostitution.

That's the kind of hell Hilary wants to import here, and she's said so openly. To vote for it is indeed suicidal.


*(Full disclosure...I know Rav Fischer slightly in an online sense and he's as razor sharp an individual as you'd care to meet)

Why So Many Jews Support The Left - And WhyThey're So Anti- Israel

 

A good friend of mine forwarded me some questions from someone she knows whom is absolutely baffled.

He's certainly no anti-semite. But in his contacts with Jews, he finds that many of them while quite intelligent engage in behavior he finds both irrational and inexplicable. Here's what he basically had to say:

"What baffles me is everyone of them put Obama in office during his first election, and couldn't understand my disdain for the man. These are intelligent people. Lawyers, investment bankers, stock brokers, etc..They have been voting Democrat for all their lives. {...}

These people are so unfriendly to all things Israel I just don't understand it. It's as if they are trying to destroy the country of their origin, or a death wish, I don't know. They all hated Bush and he loves Israel. I'm confused, because the trouble I see in Israel right now is partly due to them. I feel bad because I so admire Israel and I know if they fall we will be next or at least deep in the fight. Please, enlighten me."


I only get asked this once a week or so...but I thought I'd share my answer to him with you.

Hello ---

Actually, I have a decent perspective on this, as I'm a Jew, a native Californian (gasp!) and someone whom grew up in a home of liberal FDR Jews who always voted Democrat, except for two occasions which I'll get to shortly and which shed a bit of light on the matter at hand.

You're actually asking a lot of different questions here, which I'm going to try and sort out. Here's what I think you're asking, and forgive me if I seem to be putting words in your mouth.

Why are so many Jews lefties when they seem to be so smart? Why do they vote Democrat even if it seems to be against their interests? And why would so many vote for Obama, especially when they've seen how anti-Israel he is?

That about cover it?

A lot of it has to do with history. Many lefty Jews today are not only rigorously secular, but disdainful of those Jews whom are religious. That also explains why so many of these overtly secular Jews dislike Evangelicals, Mormons and other religious, pro-Israel Christians. To these Jews, all religion represents not only something they're trying to get away and distance themselves from, but way down deep, a secret source of shame for many. You don't destroy a part of whom you are without sustaining some damage.

Read this and see if it clears up the history a bit. The short version is that many Jews, once they were freed from the ghettos by Napoleon that they'd been literally locked up in for centuries made a determined attempt to assimilate. They really wanted to be good Germans, French, Austrians, Poles, what have you. It failed utterly. The majority of Europeans simply wouldn't allow it.

A number of these Jews made the obvious connection and allied themselves with the Left, especially the Marxists. They stupidly thought that their religion was the only basis for the psychotic hatred they faced, and that religion itself was the reason they were treated the way they were. So they not only gave up all semblance of their own religion, but turned to an ideology that likewise despised all religion while it was essentially creating its own.

To expand that a bit, here in America while there was never legal, government sponsored Jew hatred as there was in Europe and Muslim countries, there was quite a bit of de facto anti-semitism during the period when Jews were heavily migrating to America...say, the 1880's to about the 1920's or so and well into WWII.

 

So just as in Europe, some of these immigrants and quite a few of their offspring born here dropped the Orthodox Judaism they were raised with and much of their religious practices because the emphasis then was on assimilating..being, you know, real Americans like everyone else. That didn't work so well with many of the Republicans of that time or a lot of other people, but the Left was a somewhat different story, especially once FDR came on the scene. Ironic, of course, since he was instrumental in instituting quotas to stop too many Jews entering the Ivy League.

As for the communists, they were more than willing to recruit what Lenin aptly referred to as useful idiots.Conservative author David Horowitz, whom grew up as a 'red diaper baby' in a home where both parents were communists and under what was referred to as Party Discipline gives us an illuminating look at how this worked in his autobiography 'Radical Son.'

What changed things when it comes to the issue you're talking about was the Holocaust and the recreation of Israel. Realizing that much of the world either participated at worst or at best ignored what amounted to a war against defenseless Jews simply because they were Jews was a traumatic event that changed everything for Jews in places like America whom escaped.

It was a unique event in history for reasons I'm happy to explain to you any time if you'd like me to. In many quarters, it made openly expressed Jew hatred socially unacceptable, at least for a while. And it shamed the world into finally keeping the agreements made after WW I in the original League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the subsequent 1923 San Remo Agreement to create a Jewish State in their ancient homeland on the remaining 22% of the Palestine Mandate that was left after Jordan was given to the Arabs as their Palestinian State..

So for even aggressively secular, left leaning Jews like my parents, Israel was the issue that crossed all lines. It did so because they were the generation that was closest to the Shoah and they realized how important Israel's creation was to Jews in the Diaspora and their comfortable lives there. And yes, there was also some residual guilt involved, because many of the Jews surrounding President Roosevelt took an active part in successfully combating Jews who wanted the make the ongoing Shoah a major public issue and push FDR to make attempts to stop or at least slow down the carnage of Jews in Europe.

That Jewish identification with Israel especially became apparent after the miraculous Six Day War when Jews around the world suddenly realized they might have lost Israel and had to experience a second Holocaust while the world again watched and did nothing.

I mentioned that there were two times my devoutly Democrat parents didn't pull the lever for Democrats? One occasion was in 1972 when the Angry Left took over the party and the anti-Israel George McGovern was their candidate for president. The other time was in 1980, when Jimmie Carter ran for re-election.

My parents literally hated Nixon and Reagan and they weren't too pleased with yours truly either when I cast my very first vote ever for Ronaldus Maximus. But they simply weren't going to vote for anti-Israel candidates. So they just voted for a straight Democrat ticket otherwise and passed up voting for president in those elections.

So what changed that closeness to Israel? Well, three things - the birth and maturity of two generations much further removed from the Holocaust, the ascendancy of a center right government in Israel when the Labor party was literally tossed out of office after the Yom Kippur War fiasco and most of all, the continued movement of the Democrat Party to the far left.

As you no doubt know, many times political preferences are inherited. If Mom and Dad and most of the people you know vote Democrat, it's likely you will too when the time comes. As the party moved further and further left, many Jews migrated with it. Israel wasn't such an important issue to them any more. It was even even an embarrassment to them in some circles, especially as Israel's socialist beginnings were largely tossed aside along with the Labor government after the Yom Kippur War. A country with an entrepreneurial, capitalist culture, allied with the US against the Soviets, with a proud military history and religious underpinnings?

Is it any wonder a lot of Jews on the Left react to Israel the way a vampire does to garlic?

Leftist politics is their new religion and their new affiliation, not Israel. Especially now, after President Barack Obama, their new idol, was so successful in making support for Israel a partisan issue. This was a goal of his from the very beginning, which is why he and George Soros collaborated in forming and funding J-Street to attract far left Jews as an umbrella and a cover for themselves against accusations of anti-semitism.

There are quislings and traitors in every group. Intellectual smarts in a narrow field or a degree (especially given what today's universities are mostly turning out) not only doesn't change that, it doesn't necessarily square up with common sense or even self-preservation.

At this point, after the Iran deal and numerous other related doings by this president a few of these Jews are finally getting the message, now when it's too late. But many aren't, for the reasons I mentioned. Nor will they, and there's little reason to make the effort to change their minds or to worry overmuch over the fact. The Useful Idiots still exist, and many of them will remain their own worst enemies, as always. Think of it as sort of a Jewish Stockholm Syndrome.

Once President Obama essentially paved the way for the genocidal Iran regime to obtain nuclear weapons, a very common theme emerged among many of these people. They now called upon the same Jews who opposed the Iran sellout that they'd been demonizing for months to 'make up now and unite.'

There's a quaint Brooklyn expression my father (Z"l) of blessed memory used to use to address folks like these in similar situations. I'll just say that wasting any of my precious time with people like this is far from my mind indeed.

This sort of division is nothing new. As Sun Tzu once said, you're better off with ten men that show up on the battlefield than a hundred whom don't.

I don't know if you've ever been to a Passover Seder, but there's a part in it that goes back centuries and discusses four types of Jews, the Parable of the Four Sons - one Wise, one Wicked, one Simple and One Whom Does Not Know How To Ask.

The Wicked Son is characterized by his sneering arrogance and his distancing himself from his fellow Jews and from anything to do with G-d and from G-d's mitzvot, His commandments. The Haggadah, the Holy Book used in the Seder tells how the Wicked Son is rebuked and told that the rituals surrounding the Seder and G-d's miracles that freed the Jews from bondage were not meant for him, and had he been in Egypt then, he would not have been redeemed.

To plagiarize Solomon in Ecclesiastes just a bit, there's nothing new under the sun..only the player's names change.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, yes, please pray and pray hard, but remember this about Israel. It's very existence is a modern miracle, and the Almighty has it under His Divine Protection. And as usual, He knows what He's doing.

The Jews are finally home, and they're staying.

Warm Regards,
Rob Miller

 

Jews Celebrate Hanukkah Around The World

In America's heartland, St. Louis Missouri



Myanmar's tiny Jewish community kindles the Hanukkah lights in the 118-year-old Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue. Yangon, (formerly known as Rangoon) Myanmar's largest city. The ceremony was led by the patriarch of the community, Moses Samuels.



Jews in Uganda kindle the Hanukkah lights


 


Lighting the Menorah at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.


 

 
Menorah lighting in Moscow.


 
Kindling the lights in Kingston,Jamaica



Some IDF soldiers chow down on sufganiyot, traditional Hanukkah jelly doughnuts!


 
 Jews In Buenos Aires gather for the Menorah lighting...Feliz Janukkah!



 

Jews gather in London's Trafalgar Square for the Menorah Lighting




Berlin's Brandenburg Gate; Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal lights the Menorah


 

A familiar face lights a Menorah in Jerusalem


 

At Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate...






Celebrating in Mumbai, India

 

In Crown Heights, New York City


In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania



And of course, at the White House, Washington DC

Disgraceful - UK Takes Sides With Hamas Against Israel In Gaza War

 

A number of British Jews continue to wonder at the rise in Jew hatred in the UK. I can't imagine why. After all, there's a great deal of truth in that old saying that a fish rots from the head.

Israel buys a few components to defend itself from the likes of Hamas from the UK..a few parts used in the Hermes drones, a few parts used in radar systems and pilot ejector seats on Israel's planes. . There are about 12 arms export licenses involved, something like $70 million (£42 million) in exports involved since 2010, so it's small..

 

Today, British Business Secretary Vince Cable announced that Great Britain will void all 12 export licenses if hostilities with Hamas resume, whether Hamas is the aggressor or not.Essentially, the UK has picked sides in the war and is protecting Hamas, which the European Union (EU)of which the UK is a member includes on its list of terrorist groups.

  And it's not just the Conservatives. UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party's coalition partners made a statement  last Tuesday supporting the suspension of all arms exports to Israel.

David Cameron traveled to Israel last March in the midst of Hamas bombarding Israel to try to strengthen commercial ties with Israel in an attempt to revitalize Britain's economy, particularly in the high tech sector and was accompanied by a number of business men. While he was there he said this:

“Let me absolutely clear about these attacks from Gaza, we condemn them completely,” Cameron said. “They are a reminder once again of the importance of maintaining and securing Israel’s future and the security threats you face, and you have Britain’s support in facing those security threats.”

He also said that “these attacks are completely indiscriminate, aimed at civilian populations and that is a demonstration of how barbaric they are.

We now see what that 'support' is worth - like Cameron's word, absolutely nothing. And British Jews with eyes to see also now know exactly why the Jew hatred and Israel bashing in Britain is so endemic.

The UK supports the genocidal Hamas. It's that simple.And this pathetic attempt at blackmail of Israel  proves it

The components Britain is attempting to blackmail Israel with are easily obtainable elsewhere. But Britain's honor? Gone beyond redemption.

Drool, Britannia.

 

The New Pogrom - Paris, 2014

 

The French government prohibited 'pro-Palestine' demonstrations after two synagogues were attacked, along with other violent incidents. But that didn't stop French Muslims, who raged through the predominantly Jewish Paris suburb of Sarcelles in what one police official called the “Paris Intifada.”

Sarcelles has been nicknamed little Jerusalem because of its large community of Sephardic Jews.Like most predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, it's a fairly quiet place, with the usual quota of Kosher markets, synagogues and small shops. What happened this weekend was anything but quiet.

 

On Saturday, 3000 people gathered near the Gare Du Nord, the main Paris metro train station and began marching up Barbes Boulevard, burning, looting and assaulting people who 'looked Jewish' as they went. 14 policemen were injured and 38 arrests were made. On Sunday hundreds of mostly Arab and North African youths marched through the streets of Sarcelles, wielding bars and clubs while shouting, “Death to Israel” and "death to the Jews."

The neighborhood’s largest kosher grocery Naouri was burned to a shell and so were a number of other stores including a local Jewish owned pharmacy and a funeral home. The nearby synagogue in Garges was firebombed, but fortunately not much damage was done. Windows were smashed, shops were looted and several passers by were assaulted.

 

Le Figaro reported that riot police attempted to disperse protesters and block access to another synagogue in Sarcelles, lobbing tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd. A number of police were reported injured and some journalists were assaulted as well.

“I live in Garges, near the synagogue, but I’m afraid to go home,” a young woman told the newspaper.

“We are seeing real scenes of urban guerrilla warfare,” Thierry Maze, a local law enforcement officer, told Le Figaro.

Many Jews reported being afraid to leave their homes.

Here's what Sarcelles looked like afterwards:



This pogrom - and it really can't be called anything else- has become a major concern to French Jewish leaders.From the Algemeiner:

In a Facebook post on Monday, France’s former chief rabbi Gilles Berheim called on the French government “not to tolerate this kind of behavior.”

“I watched from Israel with great concern and fear the violence that took place in Paris, in Barbes on Saturday and on Sunday in Sarcelles,” he wrote. “While the pretext for these demonstrations was support of Gaza, they are actually anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic demonstrations. This is unspeakable

Rabbi Levy Djian, a French Jewish activist living in New York told The Algemeiner that the series of riots show “we are entering a new era of real fear for the Jewish community of France.”

“Last week, in Paris, synagogues were attacked in broad daylight,” Djian said. “In Nice demonstrators screamed: ‘We are all Mohamed Merah’s!’ Then there were the riots in Barbes (Paris’s 18th district) yesterday, and there were the violent demonstrations in Sarcelles on Sunday.”

(note: Mohamed Merah was the jihadi who murdered a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulon back in 2012. Some hero..)

“The fact that the Muslims feel free to act against the police and the government is very alarming because who knows what will happen tomorrow? Many are talking about going to Israel but this can not be the solution to this problem. There are still many Jewish communities in France and it is imperative that they should be safe and feel totally secure.”

Rabbi Djian has it correct that France's restive Muslims no longer fear the police. Why would they? Certain arrondissements in Paris and elsewhere are known to les flics as La Zone, no-go areas where they only go in heavily armed bands when absolutely necessary. And for all the condemnations of the violence President Hollande and the Socialists owe their election to an almost bloc Muslim vote. They aren't going to bear down too hard.

France's Jews, no matter what, aren't going to feel 'safe and totally secure' in France and they are going to continue to be targeted. It is French Jews that are being attacked, not Israelis or Israeli institutions.It is French Jews, it has been happening for a long time now, and it is not going to change unless something unforeseen happens.

Despite Rabbi Djian's thought on the matter, going to Israel is indeed a solution that is appealing more and more to many French Jews.

As Roger Cukierman, President of Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF), France's major Jewish organization said in Le Monde Juif,the anti-semitic violence could very well drive France's Jews out of the country.

As the French will no doubt find if that happens, après le Juifs, le déluge, to change slightly an an old and famous quotation.

Undeterred by Rockets, 400 French Jews Made Aliyah To Israel Today

France has the largest Jewish community in Europe, but that may not be true for much longer as record numbers of French Jews emigrate to Israel.



A group of 400 French Jews are arriving in Israel this morning on two special El Al flights organized by The Jewish Agency for Israel and the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption. Even better, the group is largely composed of families with young children, including 195 minors and 18 babies according to the Jewish Agency.

 

Most of them are from the Paris area, which isn't surprising considering the assaults on Jews there. I imagine they would much rather face rockets in Israel with the IDF to defend them than mobs of Arabs attacking them on the streets of Paris with a government that apparently isn't overly efficient in protecting its Jewish citizens:

While aliyah from France has been steadily rising for several years due to economic stagnation and rising anti-Semitism, 2014 has seen a particularly dramatic rise. Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption and The Jewish Agency expect more than 5,000 French Jews to immigrate to Israel by the end of the year - compared to 3,289 in 2013. Those figures are made all the more remarkable by the fact that 2013's figures themselves represented a full 60% increase in aliyah from France to 2012, when 1,917 French Jews moved to Israel.

That trend is continuing in 2014, with approximately 2,600 French Jews arriving in Israel during the first six months of the year alone, compared to 812 during the equivalent period in 2013.

Chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky had a few remarks to make on the matter:

"Despite the rocket onslaught against the people of Israel, not one immigrant from France has canceled his or her arrival."

"More and more people are asking whether Jews have a future in France, but no one doubts that French Jews have a future in Israel," he added, and noted the significance of the fact that if aliyah predictions for 2014 are met 1% of French Jews will have moved to Israel this year.

"Within a single year, and for the first time in history, a Jewish community in the West is sending a full percent of its Jews to build their lives in the State of Israel. We await you in Israel with open arms."

Many of France's Jews have probably not felt welcome in their home country with those open arms for quite some time.

This time, the Jews have a haven, and they are coming home....

Even if you are scattered to the farthest corners of the earth, the Lord your G-d will gather you in and from there he will take you. Your G-d will bring you back into the land your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; And He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. - Deuteronomy 30:5 - 30:6

The Obama Administration Begins Pressuring US Jews On Israel

The Obama White House has begun the push to put pressure on American Jews to support its peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority:

Secretary of State John Kerry and an elite US diplomatic team met with a small group of American Jewish leaders at the White House Thursday night to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that resumed last month.

An optimistic-sounding Kerry asked the Jewish leaders for their help in supporting the newly restarted talks, The Times of Israel learned, saying that he feared for Israel’s future if a peace deal is not reached.

Kerry told the fewer than two-dozen representatives of Jewish organizations that he really believes that both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas realize that there is a strategic imperative to act now. He noted that Israel faces the threat of diplomatic isolation and a demographic clock.

For the record, the Palestinian 'demographic bomb ' is an out and out myth (as if that in itself was any reason to pander to the Palestinian insistence on apartheid), and any diplomatic isolation Israel faces is a direct result of the animosity exhibited towards the Jewish State by President Obama and his administration.

Oh, and let's not forget to take a look at that elite team. Aside from Kerry, it included White House Special Envoy for Mideast Peace Martin Indyk, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, senior adviser Frank Lowenstein and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes.

All of them are noted for their commitment to forcing Israel back to its indefensible pre-67 borders. Rice and Rhodes are noted for their serial lies on Benghazi among other things, and some of you may remember Susan Rice's anti-Israel tantrum when she was forced as UN ambassador to veto a resolution that would have declared all Jewish communities outside the 1948 ceasefire lines including Jerusalem as 'illegal.'

They're elite all right.

But in exchange for pushing the Obama Administration's diktat among American Jews, what do you think the Jews invited to this meeting asked for? Check this out:

A number of the Jewish leaders pressed Kerry on Abbas’s upcoming address to the United Nations General Assembly. They expressed hope that Abbas would change the tone of his rhetoric during his speeches to the world body — a good-faith gesture to demonstrate outward Palestinian willingness to engage in peace talks. One observer noted that Kerry seemed receptive to the idea.

In other words, all they're asking is that unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas moderate the tone of his racist and anti-semitic verbiage at the UN, just to show willing. The fact that he was Arafat's right hand man, is willing to ally with the genocidal Hamas, pays convicted murderers of Jews in prison a salary and is responsible for promoting Jew hated in the mosques, media and schools he controls..oh, well, that's secondary. That can be lived with if he makes a few polite noises at the UN!

And it gets better:

Other Jewish representatives pushed for Kerry to ask Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Kerry told the leaders that one of the lynchpins of the current peace process is the separation of Israel’s security assurances from the general negotiations, assurances he said would be guaranteed in a separate agreement with the US.

The security track is being worked out under the auspices of retired Marine Corps general John Allen, who is currently Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s special adviser for the Middle East Peace.

Let's take a look at what this means. While the Obama Administration is insisting that Israel recognize Abbas' little Jew -free reichlet, Kerry has dodged the idea of actually telling Abbas that if he wants these farcical negotiations to continue, he has to recognize Israel - because he know Abbas won't do anything of the kind.

Instead, he let the the assembled Jews know that Abbas and the Palestinians aren't really going to be asked to commit to anything concrete, but that Israel can rely on separate security guarantees from the United States..crafted by none other than noted anti-Israel hardliner Chuck Hagels' hand picked adviser.

Did any of the attendees bring up how the Obama Administration handled the last security guarantees the U.S. gave Israel?

Or were they just so giddy to be at the White House that it never occurred to them to question that, or the Obama Administration's intentions? Are they really that clueless?

No doubt a number of them considered it an honor to be part of what what is beginning to smell more and more like an American Judenrat.

This meeting was described as a 'soft sell', a lead up to a more organized push by the Obama Administration to market selling out Israel to US Jews that is supposed to kick in closer to Rosh Hashanah and the High Holy Days.

Simply despicable.

Leftist Muslim Politician To Jewish Woman- ''I Am Your Nightmare"

Karen West from the Social Democrats in Denmark put this on her Facebook page:



"Yesterday I received a screenshot in which the "social democratic" Youssef Khalil Idiab, member of city council of Brøndby (Copenhagen suburb), wrote to a Jewish woman:

"I am your nightmare , wait for me, Palestinia is on the way, peace is on the way, and you and yours are on the way to the dump of history, wishing you frightening nightmares."

"Regardless of who you stand with, Regardless of what one thinks about the conflict this is completely unacceptable for a social democratic elected official".

"Imagine if an elected official had written the same thing to a Muslim on Palestine."

***************************************

The reason Ms. West is so upset is because this kind of openly expressed hatred by Muslims is hardly unique in Denmark nowadays, and it has a special resonance there:



Denmark, considered an Aryan country by Hitler could have had a very easy time of it during the Nazi occupation. German troops were ordered to behave with discipline in the country, respect the local laws when they didn't contradict military necessity and avoid the usual outrages. Denmark was a German 'Protectorate', its government still kept local control, King Christian X retained his throne and Denmark's Jews were not rounded up and shipped to concentration camps with the eager cooperation of the locals as they were in most of Europe. When local Danish Nazis tried to burn the main synagogue in Copenhagen, they were arrested by the Danish police and jailed, outraging the Nazis and eventually leading to a German takeover of the Danish government.

When the Germans finally issued a deportation order for Denmark's Jews in 1943, Danish civil servants leaked the news of the upcoming order and virtually the entire country collaborated in transporting their Jewish fellow citizens to safety in Sweden.

Today, Denmark has a population of 6,400 Jews and 270,000 Muslims in a population of about 5.5 million, and things are very different.

Jews today in Denmark are openly advised not to wear any clothing or jewelry that marks them as Jews for their own safety.

The entrance of the Caroline Jewish Skole in Copenhagen’s Østerbro district is surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and policed by private security guards, and the same applies to the other Jewish community buildings, schools and synagogues.

The Humlehave School in Odensesaid, a secular public school said openly that it would refuse Jewish students because Muslim violence would make it too dangerous for them.

Anti-semitic violence and attacks have skyrocketed in direct proportion to the increasing Muslim population.

Can it be that even Left leaning Danes like Ms. West are beginning to realize that Islam doesn't play well with others, and that for Islam tolerance is a one way street?

And could it possibly be that as the Jews leave, they're realizing that the Jews were just the first victims and they're next?

A Free Haggadah For Pessah To Download

 

The Elder of Ziyon has a free English/Hebrew Passover Haggadah available for downloading here for those who need one.

It's not the one above, which dates from the 14th century, but it's a good one nevertheless.

Todah Rabah Elder...

Chag Pessah Sameach!

Fascinating Video: Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid OnThe Haredim

This is probably mostly of interest to the Tribe, but is extremely valuable for anyone else who wants to understand Israel.

The big surprise in the Israeli elections was the success of TV Newscaster Yair Lapid's new party, Yesh Atid ('There is a Future'), which won 19 mandates and is almost certain to be part of PM Benyamin Netanyahu's new governing coalition.

Lapid already did one thing that impressed me when Israel's parties on the Left wanted him to agree to  block Netanyahu even if he wasn't going to join them to form a government.He refused outright, and publicly, saying that those tactics wouldn't be good for Israel. OK, a bit self-serving since he was probably planning to go into the government anyway, but the fact that he said it publicly meant something, as did the fact that he did it quickly and didn't milk it for a few days.

Yesh Atid is primarily a  secular, centrist party whose big issues were economic relief for Israel's middle class, along with universal conscription and a curtailment of draft exemptions for the Haredim.

The above 2012 lecture by Lapid was given at the Haredi branch of the college at Kiryat Ono, one of several institutions created to allow the Haredi to pursue academic degrees while observing their religious requirements.I agree with a large part of what he had to say here, but more importantly, it gives a real insight into what Lapid's views are and how he thinks.

This is looking more and more like a good match for  Netanyahu and and the makings of a strong and positive Center Right coalition, especially if Netanyahu  brings Naftali Bennett and Bayit Yehudi into it, and perhaps even United Torah Judaism and their 7 mandates, provided the inevitable horsetrading aspect works out.

(h/t and todah, Carl)

Hanukkah..The Festival Of Lights And Freedom

This Saturday night ight marks the first night of Hannukah, the Festival of Lights .

While many of you may be familiar with the story of the Miracle of the Oil, what is frequently overlooked is that Hannukah celebrates another miracle - the miracle of a group of farmers and tradesman utterly defeating the professional armies of the Seleucid Empire, a victory for freedom that belongs to all of us, Jew and Gentile.

Hanukkah celebrates one of the important miracles in Jewish history and reminds us of the triumph of faith. It takes place every year in mid to late December. While its date varies if you go by the western calendar, in the Hebrew calendar Hanukkah always falls on the 25th day of Kislev.

Hanukkah celebrates the victory Jewish war for independence in the second century B.C. E. The story is told in the First Book of Maccabees, and retold in the Second Book of Maccabees. A contemporary military history of the war can be found in Battles of the Bible, coauthored by Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon.

After his death, Alexander the Great's empire broke into several parts, and Israel was under the control of the Seleucid empire, based in Syria. Israel had lived peacefully under the Persian Empire and under the Ptolemaic empire (of Egypt), both which tolerated Judaism; but the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes was an arrogant, bigoted Hellenizer, who attempted to force the Jews to abandon their religion and to adopt Greek customs and worship.

There were those Jews who considered themselves `modern' and `assimilated' who were willing to go along with this, even to the extent of having surgical operations to reverse circumcision.

Others did not, and they were prosecuted vigorously and brutalized by the Greeks.

The start of the Maccabean Revolt sprang from a single spontaneous act of resistance. In the foothills village of Modi'in in 167BCE, a Greek army unit set up an altar, and ordered the local Jewish rabbi, Mattathias, to sacrifice a pig and eat it. He refused, as did his five sons. When a Jewish collaborator came forward to offer the sacrifice, a furious Mattathias "ran and killed him on the spot, killed the king's officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and tore down the altar" (1 Mac. 2:15-25).

Mattathias, his sons and their followers then headed for the Judean hills, to launch a guerrilla war. They were farmers who had no military training,fighting a professional army. There had not been a Jewish army since Babylon had destroyed the Judean kingdom four centuries before. Their only weapons were farming tools and whatever simple weapons they could construct, such as maces or slings. During this first year, Mattathias died, and his middle son Judah took over command as his successor.

Nicknamed "the hammer" ("Maccabee," in Hebrew), Judah constructed a guerrilla army that staged daring nighttime raids on the Greek outposts, then melted back into the countryside. His successes attracted more supporters, and the revolt spread.

The war went on for 25 years, one of the most singular wars for independence in history. The miracle, perhaps is that it was fought at all, let alone won.

The Seleucids and Antiochus sent huge, well equipped armies into Israel to subdue the Jews. They were all defeated, at odds that seem miraculous even today. Judah Maccabee turned out to be a tactical genius, using unheard of tactics, leading the Greek phalanxes into the hills where they could not maneuver and destroying them.

To give you an idea of how essential the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria was and is to Israel's survival then and now, the map below shows where the major battles of the war took place.(hat tip, Carl) Click on it to enlarge it:



One thing that is seldom mentioned about the war is the fact that a significant part of it took place against the Hellenized, `modern',`assimilated' Jewish traitors I mentioned earlier, who were more than willing to abandon the Jewish way of life and supported their Seleucid masters against their fellow Jews.

As Ecclesiastes famously said in the Megillot, there's nothing new under the sun.

In 164 BCE, the Jews defeated a force commanded by the Viceroy Lysias that outnumbered them two to one. That battle took place six miles north of Hebron, near the Jewish fortress of Beth-zur. The victory allowed Judah and his army to retake Jerusalem.

When they entered Jerusalem, Judah and his followers entered the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount. The Temple had been wrecked and horribly desecrated, with profanities scrawled on the walls and the Ark by the Seleucids.

The Maccabees built a new altar. When the time came to light the N'er Tamid, the Eternal Light of the Temple, the Jews could find only one sanctified jar of oil marked with the seal of the High Priest. It was only enough to last one evening. On the 25th of Kislev, in the year 164 BCE,the lamp was lit with this small jar of oil and, miraculously, stayed lit for eight days, until more oil suitable for the temple was made. The eight days of Hanukkah celebrate that miracle, as well as the divine intervention that had led the Jews to amazing victories over well-equipped professional armies far superior in numbers. "Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wants and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to Him who had given success to the purifying of His own holy place" (2 Mac. 10:7).

The war itself continued. In 160 BCE, near modern-day Ramallah, Judah was killed, but Judah's brother Jonathan, and then his brother Simon took command of the Jewish army, finally winning complete independence in 142 BCE. At last, "All the people sat under their own vines and fig trees, and there was none to make them afraid" (1 Mac. 14:12).

The War of the Maccabees was the first war ever fought for religious freedom. Somehow, a group of farmers with no military training who refused to bow to their oppressors defeated a mighty empire and its immense standing armies. There seems to be no plausible explanation for the victory of the Jews except that it was a miracle.

Towards the end of the war, Antiochus and the Seleucids became so obsessed with defeating the Jews that they sacked their own cities and sold their own citizens into slavery to get money to pursue the war against the Jews.

Hanukkah reminds us that with G-d's help, victory over evil is assured and no miracle is impossible. Modern Israel and the survival of the Jewish people against all odds are proof of that.


Symbols in Hanukkah

Aside from the Hanukkiah (candlesticks), the other great symbol of Hanukkah are those small spinning tops known as dreidels.













The four letters which appear on the four corners of a dreidel allude to the miracle of Hanukkah. They spell out: Nes (N-miracle), Gadol (G-great), Haya (H-happened) and Sham (S-there, meaning in Israel). Or, `a great miracle happened there.'

Indeed it did.

Chag Sameach! Happy Hanukkah!

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A Message To The Tribe, From David Mamet...And Me

An excellent piece, by noted Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony- and Oscar-nominated playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film directo David Mamet. Surprisingly, this was printed in the very Left tilted Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

I'm reproducing it here in its entirety because its an excellent read that's very uncharacteristic of the paper (I still can't believe it got in), because they give links to a number of 'answer' screeds about the piece that defy description and because I don't feel like giving them traffic. Emphasis mine:

To those Jews planning to vote for Obama:

Are you prepared to explain to your children not the principles upon which your vote is cast, but its probable effects upon them?

Irrespective of your endorsement of liberal sentiments, of fairness and “more equal distribution,” will you explain to your children that top-down economic policies will increasingly limit their ability to find challenging and well-paid work, and that the diminution in employment and income will decrease their opportunity to marry and raise children?

Will you explain (as you have observed) that a large part of their incomes will be used to fund programs that they may find immoral, wasteful and/or indeed absurd? And that the bulk of their taxes go to no programs at all, but merely service the debt you entailed on them?

Will you tell your children that a liberal government will increasingly marginalize, dismiss and weaken the support for and the safety of the Jewish state?

Will you tell them that, in a state-run economy, hard work may still be applauded, but that it will no longer be rewarded?

Will you explain that whatever their personal beliefs, tax-funded institutions will require them to imbibe and repeat the slogans of the left, and that, should they differ, they cannot have a career in education, medicine or television unless they keep their mouths shut?

Will you explain to them that it is impossible to make a budget, and that the basic arithmetic we all use at the kitchen table is not practiced at the federal and state level, and to suggest that it should be is “selfishness?”

Most importantly, will you teach them never to question the pronouncements of those in power, for to do so is to risk ostracism?

Are you prepared to sit your children down and talk them through your vote on the future you are choosing for them?

Please remember that we have the secret ballot and, should you, on reflection, vote in secret for a candidate you would not endorse in public, you will not be alone.

Inwardly, in their heart of hearts, many Jews who would never dare voice it publicly understand that Barack Obama is no friend of Israel or Jews...he has far too many intimate associations with rabid Israel bashers and anti-semites, and his actions speak a lot louder than his words.

There is a deep seated core of Israel hatred alive and well in the Democrat party. All that's necessary to see that is to take a good look at the differences between the 2008 Democrat platform and the original 2012 one. written with the full knowledge and collaboration of this president and his campaign. That was something even a pro-Israel democrat like Chuck Schumer couldn't quite swallow.

And remember what happened at the Democrat convention when President Obama saw that the platform didn't poll well and belatedly tried to defuse the issue by ramming through some changes?


Nor is this hypocrisy limited to Barack Obama when he's not running for election.



I know there are Jews who for their own reasons simply can't vote for a Republican no matter how philosemitic or pro-Israel that candidate is.

My own parents, rabid FDR Democrats, faced that dilemma in 1972 and 1980. They weren't going to vote for Nixon or Reagan, but as passionate lovers of Israel they weren't going to vote for McGovern and especially not for Jimmy Carter.

So they simply voted for the down ticket candidates and didn't cast a vote for president that year.

If you simply can't vote for Mitt Romney no matter what, fine. Just don't vote to put someone like Barack Obama back in the White House.

You owe Israel and the Jewish people that much. And after you come out of the voting booth, you can always tell your friends anything you like.

The Arab Spring Islamist Governments Work To Destroy The Last Remnants Of Any Jewish Presence

When the Arab Spring first began, the usual suspects hailed it as the birth of new 'Arab Democracy'. And even when Islamist governments took over, the same suspects, notably in the Obama Administration assured everyone that these particular Islamists were pragmatists, and committed to democratic government, in spite of all the evidence that Islam and what we would think of as democracy don't really mix in the least.

Further evidence of what the Arab Spring and the accompanying Islamist governments are really about surfaced in how Tunisia and Egypt are treating the remnants of their Jewish communities.

Tunisia has an ancient community of Jews that once numbered 110,000 at its peak. Today, there are about 2,000 left. Under the old Ben Ali government, Tunisia's Jews enjoyed freedom of worship and relative tolerance. But with the new Islamist Ennahda government, that's changing rapidly.

Tunisia's new Islamist parliament is working to pass a law that will prohibit the import of religious books, kosher food, and even visitors from Israel, thus isolating the community:

In an interview with Makor Rishon, Rav Haim Biton, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in Tunisia said, “Today, the government lets us bring in food, medicine, religious and educational books from Israel. If this law passes, our condition will completely change.”

He continued on to say that they are trying to explain to the government that if the law passes, in a few months from now, their relatives from Israel won’t be able to visit, they will not have much needed kosher food items, and, of course, they won’t be able to bring in religious and educational materials.

Other community members were less optimistic as they believe this is the government trying to cut off Jews from their culture. “Behind this law to prohibit the import of kosher products and visiting relatives is their desire to cut off our connection to Israel,” they said.

In November, Tunisia passed a separate law limiting NGOs to importing medicine only from foreign sources in with diplomatic ties with Tunisia, which, obviously, excluded Israel.

Despite the fact that the new proposed law hasn’t yet been passed, Israeli citizens who have requested permission to visit Tunisia recently have been repeatedly turned down, while eight months ago, they could visit.

Reportedly Tunisian-born Israeli vice prime minister Silvan Shalom had previously appealed back in December to what's left of Tunisian Jewry to immigrate to Israel, but met some resistance even though there were signs that endemic Islamist Jew hatred was becoming more common. If this new law passes, it may be a matter of them getting out while they can.

In Egypt, the situation is different. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt actually had formal relations with Israel.

Egypt has already ethnically cleansed almost all of its Jews, with less than one hundred remaining in the country, most of them elderly. The two main communities, or rather what's left of them are in Cairo and Alexandria. The last Jewish wedding in Egypt took place in 1984, at the old Jewish synagogue is Chaar Hashamaim, in downtown Cairo.

In Alexandria there is a small community of 18 women and 4 men, all of them aged between 70 and 90. This year will be different for them because for the first time, the Islamist government of Egypt is not going to allow a Rabbi or Cantor from Israel or enough Jewish men from Israel to enter the country for Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur services at Alexandria's last remaining synagogue, Eliahou Hanavi.

Jewish religious worship requires a minyan, ten Jewish men in order to properly conduct services. Critical parts of the service cannot be done without it. This will be the first time in 2,000 years that there will be no minyan in Alexandria.

The remaining elderly Jews will attempt to hold services themselves, as best they can.

The Egyptian government justified this on the grounds of 'security'. What that actually means is, just as with the Israeli embassy in Cairo, they're unwilling to protect Jews coming in to Egypt to visit, or to allow a few elderly Jews a feeling of community as they have every year since the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty.

There's a frequent saying bandied about by people who call themselves liberals that a society can be judged by the freedom accorded the least of its members.

Considering that many of these same people are still agog over the Arab Spring, I'm curious about how they'd rate the so-called democratic societies of Tunisia and Egypt.

Haredi IDF Unit Records Highest Enlistment In Its History

Again, another sign that the controversy over Israel's Tal Law will work itself out with a little time and patience:

More than 100 ultra-Orthodox men enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces' Nahal Haredi unit on Thursday, the largest single-day enlistment in the history of the unit, media strategists Lerner Com reported.

Thursday's enlistment was the first draft since the Aug. 1 expiration of the Tal Law, under which ultra-Orthodox men had been essentially exempt from mandatory military service.

All in all, 200 ultra-Orthodox men have enlisted to the special unit in August. The unit provides religious soldiers with the required facilities to observe the laws of Judaism.

Since 1999, when the Nahal Haredi, a battalion in the Kfir Brigade of the IDF, was established, some 4,000 ultra-Orthodox men have served in it.

"The unit represents an unprecedented success in recruiting members of the ultra-Orthodox community to the military and integrating them into the process of contributing to the state," the director of the Nahal Haredi support organization said in a statement issued Thursday.

A certain percentage of haredi have always served, and those numbers are going to grow.They merely need a platform that accommodates their beliefs.

Mitt Romney Stops Off In NJ When Jewish Wedding Party Requests A Photo-Op With Him!!

As Mitt Romney and his staff were speeding towards a fundraiser in Lake Terrace, NJ, they ran into an interesting obstacle...an Orthodox Jewish wedding party posing for pictures outside a synagogue. The wedding party promptly grabbed their cameras and ran after the governor's motorcade, according to a pool report filed by Yahoo’s Holly Bailey:

Immediately, the family abandoned the bride and groom and began chasing Romney's car in the parking lot, waving cameras. The candidate's SUV drove around a corner to a back entrance, followed by at least 10 members of the wedding party who tried to run up to Romney's car by were halted first, by a wood fence, which one man tried to scale, and then by Secret Service agents, who did not look pleased. "Oh you're Secret Service," one woman said, as she was asked by an agent to move back. "We just want to see Romney."

Your pool is now holding in a room ahead of Romney's remarks at the private fundraiser, set to begin in about one hour. Per spokesman Rick Gorka, Romney is going to pose for photos with the wedding party, but the campaign will not allow the pool to witness this event.



( both photos by by Charles Dharapak / AP)

It looks like they like him...and it was typically menschy of the governor to be willing to stop and take a few photos.

Obama: 'Some Of My Best Friends Are Jews'

It's the oldest dodge in the book..

President Barack Obama had a bunch of 20 carefully selected Jewish community leaders up to the White House yesterday. They appear to have stemmed mainly from the Conservative community, which refers to their denomination, not their politics.

In the meeting, the president bragged that he knows more "about Judaism" than all past presidents, (from his reading) and that back in Chicago he was accused of being a puppet of the Israel lobby because 'all his friends were Jewish'.

Let's forget about the fact that some of the Founding Fathers actually spoke and read Hebrew (William Bradford, for instance, wrote the first draft of the Mayflower Compact in the language and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton studied the language among others) and were quite familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures,or that George Washington personally wrote to the Truro Synagogue welcoming Jews top be part of the new nation while quoting the prophet Micah.

No, let us marvel  at how much knowledge and respect  President Obama has fo rJews and Judaism.

 Because President Obama certainly does know about Judaism. He knows so much that he threw a Passover seder in the White House featuring non-Kosher food, and made a point of insisting that Israel has no right to Jewish religious sites, which essentially means they'll be desecrated and off limits to Jews if he gets his way.  He's so immersed in respect for Judaism that he rounded up a horde of sympathetic left wing rabbis for a conference call and insisted that they insert selected talking points supporting ObamaCare into their high Holiday sermons, an almost unbelievable act of sacrilege on the holiest days of the Jewish religion, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

He has so much respect for Jews and Judaism that he proudly attended Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam sponsored Million Man March, one of the worst public displays of outright and overt Jew hatred in American history.

Oh, and his friends? Let's look at President Obama's best friends - people like Reverend Jeremiah Wright ( another buddy of Louis Farrakhan's from way back) , Rashid Khalidi, Van Jones, Jesse Jackson, Khalid al-Mansour, Bill Ayers, Al Sharpton, Edward Said and a host of others who could not be said to be friendly to Jews by any stretch of the imagination.

Now I don't know about you, but it doesn't strike me as usual for someone who claims to have such great regard for Jews to hang out with so many people who despise them.

According to Ha'aretz, "[He] wondered how come no one asks Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner or Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel [sic] about their support to Israel."

Similarly, he said to the group, "I [am] not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it?"

*chuckle*

I wonder why that could be? Maybe because he threatened to cut off all aid to Israel at one point? Or because he made blatantly anti-Israel appointments to his cabinet and to his advisers? Perhaps because this president and his secretary of state blatantly lied about agreements Israel made with the Bush Administration as a part of Israel's acceptance of the Road Map? Or maybe it was the president's funding of the openly genocidal Hamas, or his issuing a statement that the Palestinians need not recognize Israel as a Jewish State or his continued funding of the Palestinian Authority in spite of their continued support and incitement for terrorism against Israeli civilians? His support and enabling of the Muslim Brotherhood? Or maybe, just maybe, it's his continued insistence that Israel create half a million Jewish refugees, give up half of Jerusalem and retreat to indefensible borders.

The reason people are still talking about it is because this president's support for Israel, when it's occurred, has been grudging  at best, and for the most part arguably the most hostile in U.S. history.

People don't have those kind of worries about John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, because their track record with Jews and Israel is, well different.

However, I'll give President Obama credit for one piece of Jewish knowledge. He definitely knows what the word chutzpah means.

* Chuckle* DNC Head Wasssrman-Schultz Steps In It Again

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Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the gal from J-Street and President Obama's hire to run the Democratic National Committee just committed another large blunder.

Wasserman-Schultz had been booked into Miami's Temple Israel to try and sell the Jewish congregation there on how good President Obama is for Israel. Also scheduled to speak was Stanley Tate, one of its past presidents and most respected memberswho actually helped found Temple Israel's congregation.

Since Tate is a former founder of the Republican Jewish Coaltion ( RJC) and a Romney supporter, it was pretty predictable that his speech would contain a few facts that would make Wassermann-Schultz's pro-Obama spin look silly. So she had Tate banned from speaking:

I have been told by the Temple Israel Board of Trustees, that in no uncertain terms, I am not welcome, nor am I desired to speak on the bema (dais), nor does the Temple want me in any way to address the attendees on the evening of May 25th, after the Shabbat Services, even though the other invited speaker will be giving her politically motivated remarks on the topic of “Maintaining a Strong U.S. – Israel Relationship.” – Stanley Tate

Tate also stated that the Board of Trustees held a “special” meeting on May 14th where the majority of the board decided not to let him address the congregation.During a phone interview with Mr. Tate, the former founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) said that Wasserman Schultz told board members, “Stanley cannot be allowed to speak”, and that “no other speaker can speak in opposition before or after her.”

Tate and his resigned from the congregation in protest.And he went public to the members of the Congregation about it.

Unfortunately for the Left leaning board of Temple Israel, Tate and his family are particularly well thought of, especially after having a relationship with Temple Israel that went back over 70 years. A number of members resigned in sympathy and demonstrations at the Temple were planned for the night of Wasserman-Schult's speech...resulting in Temple Israel 'disinviting' Obama's J-Street diva and canceling her speech for 'security reasons'. At least that was the story The temple's president, Ben Kuehne, a Miami attorney, gave to the media.

Jewish Synagogues do not pass a collection plate at every service or have an offertory. Instead they charge annual dues for memberships, take donations from congregants and sell tickets to Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur services ( known as High Holidays, when even most unaffiliated Jews attend services) to non-members.

Losing a significant number of paying members and the resulting bad publicity apparently had an effect on Temple Israel's bottom line. And that's why Wasserman-Achultz got th eboot, not 'security'.

Congratulations Mr. Tate and congratulations to the congregants of Temple Israel..kol hakavod.

more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/24/2816241/temple-cancels-wasserman-schultz.html#storylink=cpy

Obama's Idea Of A Good Jew - A Nazi Supporter And Collaborator

May is offcially Jewish Heritage month, and as is standard on these sort of occasions, the White House has issued a proclamation.

This month's proclamation lauded and honored none other than artist Gertrude Stein, with the official release including the following statement, “Their history of unbroken perseverance and their belief in tomorrow’s promise offers a lesson not only to Jewish Americans, but to all Americans. From Aaron Copland to Albert Einstein, Gertrude Stein to Justice Louis Brandeis.”

Allan Dershowitz, noted author, defense attorney and Harvard Law professor jumped quickly on this:

“Gertrude Stein was herself a major collaborator with the Vichy regime and a supporter of its pro-Nazi leadership.”

“Stein’s closest friend, and a man who greatly influenced her turn toward fascism was Bernard Fay, who the Vichy government put in charge of hunting down Masons, Jews and other perceived enemies of the State. Fay was more than a mere collaborator as suggested by the Met exhibit. He was a full blown Nazi operative, responsible for the deaths of many people. After the war, when the horrendous results were known to all, Gertrude wrote in support of Fay when he was placed on trial for his Nazi war crimes.”

Dershowitz has it exactly right. Like another good friend of the Obama Administration, George Soros, she was a Jew totally estranged from her ethnicity who was an unapologetic collaborator with the Nazis.

When the Germans defeated France in 1940, Frances' new leader Marshall Petain and his fascist deputy Pierre Laval were quick to make a deal with Hitler, with the northern part of France under active Nazi occupation and the southern two thirds and France's colonial empire ruled by the French under the puppet Vichy regime.

Vichy France quickly became one of the major manufacturing centers for Nazi war materials, and the French quickly instituted the Nazis policies towards the Jews. France was filled with Jewish refugees from the rest of Europe at that time, and the French government eagerly rounded them up for the Nazis and turned them over to them. Later, this was extended to many Jews whom had French citizenship.

Gertrude Stein, who was an atheist but an ethnic Jew lived in Paris during the war with her 'companion' Alice B. Toklas. As a non-French citizen of Jewish background, she normally would have been among the first deported to places like Auschwitz and Treblinka, as the majority of Jews in France were. However, she and Toklas not only survived the war but were not molested in any way...because Stein not only had useful friends like Fay, but because she had been an outspoken and unabashed admirer of Hitler since the 1930s, even proposing him for a Nobel Peace Prize in spite of what she saw going on right in front of her eyes.

She also had an ongoing relationship with Marshall Petain, even to the point of volunteering to write an introduction to his speeches during the Vichy Regime when thousands of Jews were being rounded up and sent to the camps.

As an exemplar of 'Jewish heritage', she's a curius choice since aside from being a Nazi sympathizer she was totally divorced from that heritage by choice during her entire life.

Thw White House eventually went into gear, with Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman claiming that the inclusion of Gertrude Stein in the proclamation was 'a mistake'. Apparently all the other prominent Jews listed were also a 'mistake' since the new White House proclamation that was issued was changed to read "Their history of unbroken perseverance and their belief in tomorrow’s promise offers a lesson not only to Jewish Americans, but to all Americans. Generations of Jewish Americans have brought to bear some of our country’s greatest achievements and forever enriched our national life."

However, the last time I looked, the original mentioning Getrude Stein was still up at the White House site, whitehouse.gov.

Just another piece of an increasingly clear picture that's been evident ever since Barack Obama's relationship with people like Edward Said, Jeremiah Wright, Khalid al-Mansour, Al Sharpton, Louis Farakhan, Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi was revealed back when he was candidate Obama..to those who were willing to open their eyes and look at it.

( a hat tip to My Number One Fan)

It's Purim Wednesday Night

And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword....And the Lord said unto Moses, "Write this for a memorial in the book and tell it unto the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven..the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation."- Exodus 17:14

That's the way the Big Boys talked in the old days...when conversations with the Lord were commonplace and Amalek and his pals were freely labeled as the rabid dogs they were for picking off stragglers and attacking and killing Jews out of hand just for the pure sport and profit of it as the Jews moved through the desert after leaving Pharaoh's Egypt. No illusions there...you have to defeat evil, not negotiate with it. G-d said so,and He most likely knew what He was talking about.In any event He'd been right enough times so that Moses, Aaron and Joshua weren't about to argue the point.They defeated Amalek and then proceeded on their way in peace.

Nowadays, the UN would be thumping for a state for Amalek and shrugging off the murder of Jewish women and children as 'resistance'. For that matter,the current occupant of the White House and his secretary of state would be leading the charge for an Amalek-stan, and giving them millions in foreign aid while warning the Jews against a 'disproportionate response' and screaming like wounded peahens over their building homes for themselves.

Some things never change, just the names of the players. Appeasing evil never ends well.

Note another thing about the above passage...it says there will be war with Amalek from generation to generation,and gives the Jews the responsibility of fighting in that war to defeat evil wherever it rears its ugly head.

The Jews commemorate one of those victories over a latter day manifestation of Amalek Wednesday night when they celebrate Purim, the victory of Queen Esther and Mordecai over the evil Haman, who successfully manipulated the King of Persia into signing on to the murder, enslavement and plunder of every Jew in Persia.

Yes, crazed, genocidal Persian maniacs are not a new situation for the Jews.

The Megillah known as the Book of Esther which is read in every synagogue in the world at Purim relates how Queen Esther,wife of the Persian king initially reacted like a great many people do even today, by simply pretending that what was going on didn't concern her,and rationalizing it. However, she came to her senses and realized that a threat to her people was a threat to her, even in her place as high up and removed as the King's palace. Esther realized it wasn't enough to save herself. She knew she needed to save her people as well, or perish with them. She took the commandment to battle Amalek to heart and risked her life and position to defeat Haman and his evil allies and, along with her brother Mordecai, lead her people to victory.

Purim is preceded by a fast in honor of Esther, and then, it's party time.Many Jews observe the custom of sending a special basket of goodies to friends and family, the Megillah reading is a noisy and joyous affair especially loved by children, celebrations, noisemakers and costumes abound, and even a bit of liquid libation is quite common..along with some traditional special pastries known as humantashen, shaped like the three cornered hat Haman traditionally wore.



Think of it a sort of like the Jewish equivalent of carnival.Without the steel pan music and bare midriffs.

As far as I'm concerned, Purim may have special meaning for the Jews, but it ought to belong to the whole world. It's a joyous occasion celebrating the triumph over evil, as well as a lesson we need to take to heart, given what all of us face today from Amalek's modern descendants.

One more thing... I'll let my pal Yakov at Dry Bones let you in on a little something, the hidden joke of the whole holiday, something he catches perfectly with his usual wit:


Purim Sameach!