“Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said: On three things does the world endure: justice, truth and peace, as the verse states, ‘Truth and peace judge in your gates’” (Zechariah 8:16).

People should be very careful using the term anti-Semite, because if used too much (and for the wrong reason) the words lose their meaning. Same thing with the words racist, Nazi, Holocaust and apartheid. All are horrible words and each time they’re used they become a little less horrible. As a Jew I feel that one thing that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel meant is that it’s my job to defend a non-Jew when he’s falsely accused of anti-Semitism.

Drifting through Media Matters the other day (it’s important to see what the other side is saying), I spotted a most disgusting headline.

Beck revives anti-Semitic Soros conspiracy theory

Furthering his long history of smearing George Soros, Glenn Beck advanced former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s anti-Semitic claim that Soros was “helped trigger the economic meltdown” of Southeast Asian currencies in 1997, which Mahathir had reportedly suggested was part of a Jewish “agenda.” In fact, Soros and other hedge funds were found not to be primarily responsible for the currency crisis, and Mahathir later retracted the claim…’

Mahathira did make that claim. In an interview with the BBC in October 1997 he said: (more…)

The newest faux outrage comes from the mouth of controversial Jewish Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. In a sermon from Israel, Rabi Yosef as much as called for God to level genocide against the Palestinians. I say “as much as” because he didn’t actually call for genocide, but he came awfully close for comfort. In fact, even as he didn’t say it explicitly it’s hard not to see it being fully implied.

“Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth,” said Rabbi Yosef, head of the Israeli Shas party. “God should strike them and these Palestinians — evil haters of Israel — with a plague,” he added. Naturally, the Palestinians are outraged and Reuters, the Associated Press, and other news outlets played the story for all it was worth.

Rabbi Yosef, of an extremely conservative sect and party, has been known to say wacky things like this before. Not long ago he told Israeli youth to abandon all electronic products like smart phones and computers because they were evidence of “street debauchedness,” what ever that is.

As reported in many places, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement distancing himself and the government from the extreme rhetoric of Rabbi Yosef, as well he should.

The government’s press release says that they “don’t represent the views of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or the Israeli government. Israel entered into negotiations out of a desire to progress with the Palestinians toward an agreement that will end the conflict and ensure peace, security  and good neighborly relations between the two nations.” (more…)

Much has happened since Rabbi Nesenoff emailed me his video interview of Helen Thomas containing her now-famous declaration that Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to their homes in Germany and Poland.  Upon first watching the interview, I saw it a big story and was determined to make it go viral. The objective was not to go after the 89-year-old newswoman per se, as a teaching opportunity, showing that anti-Semitism still permeated through normal American society. That teaching moment didn’t really happen; instead I was the one who did the learning, and the lesson was all about how the media really worked.

The White House Press corps seemed very reluctant to touch the story. On one hand it was understandable as Thomas was a respected colleague.  Most of them had worked with her for a very long time.  On the other hand it was big news, and if the Rabbi’s interview subject were a senior member of the Administration those same reporters would have been all over the story.

When they got around to covering the story, media got the “facts” of the incident wrong.  I am not talking about Rosie O’Donnell’s idiotic statement dismissing the anti-Semitism displayed by Thomas’s call for Israeli Jews to return to the scene of the concentration camps, or her ignorant belief that no Jews lived in the Holy Land before 1948.  The traditional media’s biggest factual mistake was reporting that the controversy surrounded Thomas making an anti-Israel comment. (more…)

Dear Helen Thomas:

With a great deal of disappointment I watched your interview, replayed over and over on television, in which you said that Jews should “go back home to Poland and Germany.” I find it both appalling and unsettling that someone with your level of journalistic accomplishment would lack a basic knowledge of Middle Eastern history.

So please allow me to make the case as to why Israel has a historical, legal and moral right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East.

According to the Arab-Palestinian-Muslim narrative, Israel is an alien colony recently planted in the Arab world by American and European imperialism. This narrative recognizes no history prior to the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880’s, and emphatically denies any ancient historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. This is the central lie, offered to justify uncompromising opposition to Jewish national rights. It’s almost as if they actually expect people to think the word “Israel” was invented in modern times. What is alarming is that their increasingly successful rewrite of history has taken hold in minds supposedly as informed as yours.

The Temple of Solomon

The historical truth is carved in Egyptian stone. According to a well-known hieroglyphic inscription, the tribes of Israel were a significant, established presence in Canaan no later than 1212 BCE. There is a vast body of archaeological evidence that demonstrates the ancient Israelite/Jewish presence in Israel/Judea as far back as 925 BCE. This historical presence is verified in the ancient records of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Moslem Empires. The Arab conquest did not occur until 638 CE (AD). An exercise in elementary arithmetic reveals that the Jewish people were there eighteen and one-half centuries before the arrival of the Muslim Arabs. (more…)

From the New York Times’s Sabrina Tavernise and Ethan Bronner, a worthy follow-up to the thoroughly execrable and now unavailable “10 Reported Killed” story with which the New York Times began its Gaza Flotilla coverage. That one was Isabel Kershner’s handiwork, and the very end of this gem notes that she contributed here as well. Heartwarming teamwork at the Paper of Record:

The attempted takeover turned into an armed assault, with angry Israeli commandos opening fire. Within an hour, the commandos had taken control of the ship, and nine Turks, including one who also had American citizenship, were dead. Dozens of interviews in Israel and Turkey suggest that Israel’s decision to stop the flotilla at all costs collided with the intention of a small group of Islamic activists from Turkey, turning a raid on a ship of protesters in international waters into a bloodbath — and a major international event.

It’s particularly charming how the IHH-backed jihadists are described as a “small group of Islamic activists,” the IHH being the Hamas supporting group of Turkey-acknowledged terrorists which literally sponsored the boat. Merely calling them “activists” is something that any liberal apologist could have done. But that the lynch mob was an unrepresentative “small group” among the larger “ship of protesters” is why the NYT is virtually parody-proof.

The only thing left is to explain how the jihadists “misunderstood Islam” when they broke out into genocidal Islamic war songs celebrating Mohammed’s mass murder and enslavement of Jews. Then, later in the article, there’s this:

(more…)

From the Jerusalem Post:

Post poll: Obama still in single digits

Just 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think US President Barack Obama’s administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.

Forty-eight percent said that the Obama presidency favored the Palestinian side, 30% said his administration was neutral and 13% chose not to express an opinion for the survey, which has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

Why is that?  Given this…

And this…

And this: (more…)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in the U.S. and met with Barack Obama in the White House, but you won’t find any photos of Netanyahu with Obama on the wire services. There aren’t any. Obama wouldn’t allow it. Politico reported:

But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. officials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem an ‘insult’ and an ‘affront,’ made sure to reward Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs released from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.

He bows to the Saudi king, he shakes hands warmly with his “amigo” Chavez, but he won’t be seen with the leader of the only democracy in the Middle East, and our only reliable ally there.

And this comes after he has put unprecedented strain on the U.S./Israel alliance by pressuring Israel for allowing Jews to build homes on Jewish land, and blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians Muslims.

Obama is not a passive, weak or naive player in the Muslim/Jewish conflict. He was wet-nursed on Jew-hatred. He grew up in a Muslim country and studied the Koran. He knows what is prescribed for the Jews in Islam. He knows that the Koran says that the Jews are the Muslims’ worst enemies (5:82) and that “ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found” (3:112). (more…)

The original blueprints for the Auschwitz death camp went on display in late January after being discovered in November 2008. They were found by chance behind a wall in a Berlin apartment during renovation work, yet the exact location of their discovery is being kept secret. No one will say whose apartment it was.

There are numerous bits of evidence, however, that point to a possible location where Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, lived during World War II. And in the course of investigating this, I have found that the Mufti was involved in and may even have created the Final Solution for European Jews – and yet his central participation in the Holocaust has been covered up and forgotten.

The Mufti, whom his nephew Yasser Arafat called “our hero,” is famous for his fanatical Jew-hatred. During World War II, the Mufti lived in Berlin, where he met Hitler and traveled in top Nazi circles (he even stayed in Hitler’s bunker toward the end of the war). Among his close friends was Adolf Eichmann, who is commonly thought to be the architect of the Holocaust. Journalist Maurice Pearlman, author of the 1947 book The Mufti of Jerusalem, said that the Mufti advised Eichmann on the best ways to persecute Jews. (more…)