The Left’s Depraved Sideshow: Terry Glavin, National Post, Aug. 10, 2016— It took a cartoon appearing in the World Social Forum program in Montreal this week..
Israel to Expel BDS Activists? Bravo!: Isi Leibler, Candidly Speaking, Aug. 11, 2016— The decision by the Interior and Public Security ministers to form a special task force to expel foreigners engaged in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activities is a long overdue…
New Jewish Apostates: Edward Alexander & Paul Bogdanor, Algemeiner, Aug. 3, 2016— On August 1, Professor Hasia Diner of NYU and Professor Marjorie Feld of Babson College in Massachusetts took to the pages of Ha’aretz to denounce the world’s only Jewish state for being racist, colonialist, reactionary, aggressive, and – this above all – Jewish…
From a Dacha Wall, a Clue to Raoul Wallenberg’s Cold War Fate: Neil Macfarquhar, New York Times, Aug. 6, 2016— The 1945 disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg — a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi gas chambers — ranks among the most enduring mysteries of World War II.
Who Speaks For America’s Jews?: Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post, July 21, 2016
Not Just Anti-Semitism: New Boss Seeks to Broaden ADL’s Reach: Ben Sales, Times of Israel, Aug. 7, 2016
J Street Jews-The New Uncle Tom.: Diane Weber Bederman, Jews Down Under, Aug. 7, 2016
Elie Wiesel: Conscience of Humanity: Irwin Cotler, Times of Israel, Aug. 2, 2016
Terry Glavin
National Post, Aug. 10, 2016
It took a cartoon appearing in the World Social Forum program in Montreal this week that could have come straight from the pages of Julius Streicher’s Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Stürmer to provide a fleeting glimpse into just how deeply the rot has spread. It featured a hook-nosed Jew vomiting a caricature of Uncle Sam, who’s disgorging a long-bearded jihadist.
Put to the crude Khomeinist propaganda purpose of attributing the Wahhabi-inspired terrorism afflicting the Middle East at the moment to the United States and Israel — a lunatic conspiracy theory that enjoys generous toleration among Canada’s self-described “anti-imperialist” activists — it should tell you something that the World Social Forum’s animateurs did not notice anything untoward about the cartoon until it became the subject of a public uproar.
That is how far the “anti-globalization” movement has fallen since the World Social Forum’s first annual gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001. Conceived as an altruistic alternative to the neo-liberalism of the World Economic Forum convened annually in Davos, Switzerland, the World Social Forum is now as pleased to draw unambiguously fascist tendencies to its bosom as it is to facilitate note-swapping among vegans who have quarrels with Monsanto’s genetically modified food experiments.
It wasn’t until the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs raised a commotion and Liberal MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt took the forum’s organizers to task about it that the cartoon was pulled. Then the federal government pulled its maple leaf logo. The event the cartoon was intended to advertise was struck from the forum’s five-day agenda. A chastened spokesperson for the forum, Carminda Mac Lorin, explained it all away: “We are really open to everyone, and we are definitely happy to welcome everyone who is interested in working for a better world.”
I guess that depends on your definition of “a better world.” There are at least a dozen major forum events that remain devoted to the proposition that in this “better world,” the Jewish state of Israel would not be permitted to exist. Activists will be offered workshops in how to participate in the global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel — the eliminationist movement begun by the Arab League in 1945 to target Palestine’s Jewish population, three years before the state of Israel was even born. The forum will also feature sessions smearing Israel as an apartheid state and will host events to mobilize more “Gaza Boat” spectacles — the project pioneered by a collaboration between the Hamas-affiliated Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief, and the Perdana Global Peace Organization. Perdana is a creation of the former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad, whose anti-Semitic greatest hits include “the Jews rule the world by proxy,” and, “even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world.”
But that’s just for starters. While we were all being taken in by the elaborate publicity stunt staged in the run-up to the gathering — “Hundreds of Activists Denied Visas to Attend World Social Forum in Montreal” — just one thing that escaped notice was the most prominent conference platforms being offered to the world’s most deranged apologists for the “anti-imperialist” regime of Syrian president and mass murderer, Bashar Assad.
It’s a good thing Concordia University is hosting a forum-affiliated seminar titled, Defeating War: Syria Under Siege, featuring Lebanese author and analyst Gilbert Achcar, chair of the Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of London. At least Achcar is a genuine socialist. The forum’s main-event stupidities include a workshop delineating the “imperialist and colonialist actors” at large in Syria, which is not meant to shed any light on the ongoing atrocities being perpetrated by Russia, Iran’s Quds force, Assad’s barrel bombers and Hezbollah mercenaries — the blood-drenched alliance that accounts for the overwhelming majority of the nearly half-million Syrian civilian deaths over the past five years.
That workshop is being run by the absurdly named Syria-Palestine Solidarty group. Its main speaker is the notorious pro-Assad conspiracy theorist Issa Chaer of the just as absurdly named Syria Solidarity Movement. The event is sponsored by an outfit that at least doesn’t pretend to strive for a peaceful two-state solution resolving the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy: the helpfully named One State Assembly, which is devoted to Israel’s elimination and replacement by a single Palestinian state. Chaer’s Syria Solidarity Movement is running at least two other events at the forum. Populated by the usual detritus of Rabble.ca contributors, Canadian Peace Alliance retreads and Press TV dingbats, the Syria Solidarity Movement is unambiguously and unashamedly pro-Assad. When the World Social Forum’s officials say they are “really open to everyone,” they should be taken at their word.
It didn’t have to be like this, but it’s what you get when you try to build such a big anti-capitalist tent that you welcome anyone, no matter the depths of their Jew-hatred, their insane antipathies toward “the West” or their dirty allegiances to Third World despots. It is an intellectual and moral vacuity that has crippled what the World Social Forum’s founders sincerely hoped would produce some sort of democratic alternative to what they saw as the heartless corporate model of globalization…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
ISRAEL TO EXPEL BDS ACTIVISTS? BRAVO!
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, Aug. 11, 2016
The decision by the Interior and Public Security ministers to form a special task force to expel foreigners engaged in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activities is a long overdue but urgent call for remedial action against antisemites and renegade Jews who demonize and delegitimize us. In this context, I applaud the government for, albeit belatedly, taking action to expel or bar entry to foreigners who come into Israel in the guise of tourists in order to promote or assist BDS and provoke West Bank Palestinians against the IDF. There is also is a strong case to prosecute Israelis who engage in such seditious activities. No doubt this will lead to a torrent of hysteria by the delusional left who will claim that this “denial of freedom of expression” is another move by the government towards implementing a “fascist” regime.
This legislation should have been introduced a long while ago and the timing coincides with impending actions by European governments, currently floundering in their efforts to provide security to their citizens under attack from crazed Islamic fundamentalist killers – both imported and homegrown. They will be seeking to impose legislation which will to some extent impose limits to unfettered civil liberties if they compromise security. If they fail to act they will be overwhelmed at the polls by radical right wing parties which have already mushroomed in response to the recent terrorist rampages.
The situation in Israel is infinitely more acute than in any other country. The Jewish state is the only country in the world whose right to exist is constantly challenged by neighboring states motivated by fanatical Islamic antisemitic dictatorships. Israel’s purported peace partner has made it clear that a Palestinian state is merely the first step towards the ultimate goal of eliminating Jewish sovereignty in the region. Ironically, even though much of the world refuses to recognize it, the reality is that today most Israelis are ready to separate from the Palestinians if this could be implemented in conjunction with long term security. It is the Palestinians, brainwashed by Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, who only see an end of conflict with the destruction of Israel.
In addition, unlike the situation in Europe, Israel is an oasis of relative tranquility in a continent of dictatorships and fanatical Islamic rogue states where the concept of human rights is simply nonexistent. Moreover over the past few years the region has become transformed into the most brutal killing fields in the world where hundreds of thousands have been cruelly massacred and millions displaced from their homes at levels of barbarism reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
It thus particularly galling for Israelis to witness governments and media listing terror attacks throughout the world and yet exclude Israel, the greatest victim. Their sickening justification for these omissions is that terror attacks in Israel differ from those in Europe because they are based on “resistance to occupation.” Never mind the fact that terror in Israel far predates 1967 when Israel repulsed the combined Arab armies which then sought to conquer it. The fact is that Israel has been the canary in the coal mine of terrorism and many Europeans are now likely to try to emulate our techniques and strategies in dealing with their own threats.
The government seems to have only now, belatedly, recognized that a crucial component in the effort of Israel’s enemies to destroy us is the war of ideas — and we are painfully losing this battle. Not to mention the vast sums of money foreign governments surreptitiously pour into NGOs, not for the promotion of human rights but in order to delegitimize the State of Israel. Our government has been nonchalant and intimidated by the delusional left from taking steps to protect itself from internal and external enemies.
There is also a strong case to prosecute Israelis who engage in activities which subvert the state or seek to delegitimize it. When the extreme left-wing media, academics and activists broadcast self-evident lies demonizing their country and besmirching it by falsely accusing the Israel Defense Forces of engaging in war crimes, in the present climate this amounts to subversion. No other country confronting the threats to its existence would tolerate such behavior or enable taxpayers’ funds to be employed towards subsidizing “cultural” activities designed to demonize the nation.
Can one envisage how Churchill would have dealt with such behavior during the Second World War? A British parliamentarian expressing seditious remarks supporting those seeking the destruction of the nation – such as MK Haneen Zoabi has done — would face charges of high treason. Bleeding hearts opposing the exclusion of foreign BDS activists should review US policy during the Cold War which denied entry to any foreigner who had been a member of the communist party. The dangers confronting Israel are infinitely greater than those the US then faced from the Soviet Union. And we should be under no illusions. Since the creation of the state of Israel we have been and continue to live in a state of war. The vast majority of the Israeli public would doubtlessly agree that limited curtailment of civil liberties is highly justified if it inhibits those engaged in demonizing and delegitimizing us or even saves a single Israeli from becoming a terrorist casualty.
Edward Alexander & Paul Bogdanor
Algemeiner, Aug. 3, 2016
On August 1, Professor Hasia Diner of NYU and Professor Marjorie Feld of Babson College in Massachusetts took to the pages of Ha’aretz to denounce the world’s only Jewish state for being racist, colonialist, reactionary, aggressive, and – this above all – Jewish. Vilification of Israel has long been de rigueur in that newspaper. “When it comes to defaming Jews,” says a character in Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock, “the Palestinians are pisherkes [small fry] next to Ha’aretz.” On August 2, the same publication (perhaps as a result of some internal dissent) printed a powerful rebuttal by historian Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis. Jeffrey Goldberg of Atlantic Monthly declared that he was “getting ready to leave Ha’aretz behind.” Later he added: “when neo-Nazis are e-mailing me links to Ha’aretz op-eds declaring Israel to be evil, I’m going to take a break.”
Both Feld and Diner tell what might be called unconversion tales, from Zionism to Israelophobia, raw hatred of Israel, of its people, and, still more, of Diaspora Jews who recognize that securing Israel is the moral duty of this generation. Feld hints that she was awakened from her Zionist “delusions” by the outpourings of Noam Chomsky, a writer who would be rendered virtually speechless on the subject of Israel if he stopped equating the Jewish nation with Nazi Germany. His loathing of American Jewry was expressed as follows in 1988: “The Jewish community here is deeply totalitarian. They do not want democracy, they do not want freedom.” Beautiful and touching words! Are they also music to the ears of disillusioned history professors?
Diner, more than Feld, has ideas all her own, some of which may surpass Chomsky’s ravings. For example, she contends that “the death of vast numbers of Jewish communities as a result of Zionist activity has impoverished the Jewish people.” Was it “Zionist activity” and not the Third Reich and its collaborators that annihilated European Jewry? Was it “Zionist activity” and not Arab dictatorships that expelled one Jewish population after another from countries they had inhabited for over a thousand years? And was it “Zionist activity” and not the devastation left by communism that prompted more than a million Jews to leave Russia?
Diner complains that “the singular insistence on Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state” forced her to renounce her Zionist views. “Does Jewish constitute a race or ethnicity?,” she asks. “Does a Jewish state mean a racial state?” This from a teacher of Jewish history? Doesn’t she know that Jewish people are found in all races, and that anyone can become Jewish? Did none of Diner’s colleagues at NYU tell her that the “racial state” of Israel is the only country in history to have sought out and brought to its shores tens of thousands of Africans as free and equal citizens? “The Law of Return,” Diner avers, “can no longer look to me as anything other than racism.” Yet other free countries have their own Laws of Return, occasioning no protest from the principled professor. The Armenian constitution, for instance, permits individuals “of Armenian origin” to acquire citizenship through “a simplified procedure.” The Lithuanian constitution proclaims: “Everyone who is ethnically Lithuanian has the right to settle in Lithuania.” The Polish and Ukrainian constitutions have identical provisions…
Since Israel’s people have been under military as well as ideological siege throughout its existence, our professorial duo could hardly avoid the subject of atrocities. They deal with it, alas, just as one might have expected. Diner writes: “I abhor violence, bombings, stabbings, or whatever hurtful means oppressed individuals resort to out of anger and frustration. And yet, I am not surprised when they do so, after so many decades of occupation, with no evidence of progress.” Can these historians really be unaware that terrorism against Jews in the Jewish homeland began decades before the “occupation”? As Paul Berman observed about apologists of their ilk, “Each new act of murder and suicide testified to how oppressive were the Israelis. Palestinian terror, in this view, was the measure of Israeli guilt. The more grotesque the terror, the deeper the guilt…”
Feld and Diner are nothing if not frank. They do not even bother to hide the logical end-point of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Diner not only boycotts everything Israeli, but also many of her co-religionists in the Diaspora. “I feel a sense of repulsion,” she explains, “when I enter a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, ‘We Stand With Israel.’ I just do not go and avoid many Jewish settings where I know Israel will loom large as an icon of identity.” As genocidal fanatics build nuclear bombs in Iran; as Hezbollah arms itself with over a hundred thousand missiles in Lebanon; as men, women, and children are butchered with knives in Israel; as small children in a Jewish school and shoppers in a kosher deli are massacred in Europe; as synagogues and community institutions are fortified against the never-ending nightmare of Islamist violence throughout the world, the Israel-haters take pride in their own perfidy by shunning their fellow Jews.
“One who separates himself from the [Jewish] community” – by showing indifference when it is in distress – “has no share in the world to come.” So declared Maimonides, the greatest of all Jewish sages, in the twelfth century (Laws of Repentance, iii). But if this verdict seems too remote and old-fashioned for Diner and Feld, let them ponder the following, delivered at the height of the Holocaust: “The history of our times will one day make bitter reading, when it records that some Jews were so morally uncertain that they denied they were obligated to risk their own safety in order to save other Jews who were being done to death abroad” (Ben Halpern, Jewish Frontier, August 1943).
FROM A DACHA WALL, A CLUE TO RAOUL WALLENBERG’S COLD WAR FATE
Neil Macfarquhar
New York Times, Aug. 6, 2016
The 1945 disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg — a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi gas chambers — ranks among the most enduring mysteries of World War II. Suspicion for the snatching of Wallenberg off the streets near Budapest fell almost immediately on the Soviet Union. To the Soviets occupying Budapest, the ties that Wallenberg had forged with senior Nazis and Americans smelled like espionage, with rescuing Jews an implausible cover story. But his disappearance went unexplained, right through the Gorbachev era of glasnost and the chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This summer, however, the newly published diaries of the original head of the K.G.B. — found secreted inside the wall of a dacha — have shed fresh light on the case by stating outright for the first time that Wallenberg was executed in a Moscow prison. “I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947,” wrote Ivan A. Serov, a Soviet military man who ran the K.G.B. from 1954 to 1958. Tantalizing hints that Wallenberg, the scion of a rich, prominent family of Swedish industrialists, was imprisoned in Moscow emerged immediately, then dripped out at long intervals. Alexandra M. Kollontai, the domineering Soviet ambassador to Sweden, initially told Wallenberg’s mother that the diplomat was in custody, but backtracked after the Kremlin announced that it knew nothing of the case.
In the 1950s, Moscow began releasing war prisoners, and some reported meeting a V.I.P. inmate. Some called him mysterious; some knew his name. Sweden started asking pointed questions, and seeking to improve ties, the Kremlin released a report in 1957. It said a newly discovered, partial medical report indicated that Wallenberg, age 34, died of a heart attack in prison in July 1947 — a stock Soviet cover story.
The next halting step toward resolution came with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin agreed to cooperate with a comprehensive Russian-Swedish effort that included archival research and interviews with retired state security employees. But the final report in 2000 reached no definitive conclusion about Wallenberg’s fate, and found that documents had been destroyed or altered to eliminate all traces of him.
In time, Wallenberg’s rescue work became a lasting symbol of the international human rights movement, but the mystery of his fate seemed likely to endure forever — until the Serov diaries came to light. Memoirs from high-ranking Kremlin officials are exceedingly rare, and this one, while hardly definitive, contains several references to previously unknown documents on Wallenberg. They include a report about Wallenberg’s cremation, and another quoting Viktor Abakumov, who preceded Serov as head of state security but was tried and executed in 1954 in the last Stalin purges. Abakumov apparently revealed during his interrogation that the order to “liquidate” Wallenberg had come from Stalin and Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the foreign minister.
The word “killed” has never appeared in any official documents released from the Soviet side, according to Nikita Petrov, a historian with the Memorial organization in Moscow who specializes in the Stalinist era and Serov himself. “They did not use this word,” Mr. Petrov said. “They said it appears he was killed, but we know nothing about this, we don’t have any documents. In Serov’s diary, you can find this word as a fact.” Memoirs lack the weight of official documents, Mr. Petrov noted, but Serov also described reading a Wallenberg file. Previously, the security service denied that any such files existed, according to diplomats, historians and others who have long worked on the case…The Serov book is called “Notes From a Suitcase: Secret Diaries of the First K.G.B. Chairman, Found Over 25 Years After His Death,” and appeared in Russia in June with its own extraordinary tale…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Who Speaks For America’s Jews?: Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post, July 21, 2016—Last Friday, Peter Beinart and a few dozen Jewish anti-Zionists had a marvelous time in Hebron. They wore funny blue T-shirts and sang about “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) in two languages. They pretended they were civil rights activists.
Not Just Anti-Semitism: New Boss Seeks to Broaden ADL’s Reach: Ben Sales, Times of Israel, Aug. 7, 2016 —For more than a century, the Anti-Defamation League has been known as a group that combats anti-Semitism. But one year after taking the group’s helm, Jonathan Greenblatt wants it to focus on more than just the Jews.
J Street Jews-The New Uncle Tom.: Diane Weber Bederman, Jews Down Under, Aug. 7, 2016—I read that J Street received a great deal of money to promote the Iran deal.
Elie Wiesel: Conscience of Humanity: Irwin Cotler, Times of Israel, Aug. 2, 2016—The passing of Professor Elie Wiesel was – and on his shloshim today remains – a personal and profound loss. It is akin to the passing of one of the legendary “Lamed Vavniks,” the 36 righteous people living in the world. Their just lives, at any given moment, redeem humanity.
