Tag Archives: anti-Semitism

A Preview Of Things To Come?

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On December 2nd, The Federalist posted an article about a terrorist attack in Chicago by someone who entered America illegally and was freed by the Border Patrol.

The article reports:

Surprisingly little news coverage followed America’s first terror attack by an illegal border-crossing immigrant on U.S. soil. On Saturday, 22-year-old Mauritanian Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi was found dead of an apparent hanging suicide in his Cook County, Illinois jail cell. America must learn from this to prevent the next attacks on U.S. soil by border-infiltrating jihadists.

Abdallahi illegally jumped the border from Tijuana to San Diego in March 2023 and was freed by U.S. Border Patrol. Under orders from the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol has released millions of illegal entrants into the United States in the last four years.

On October 26, Abdallahi allegedly hunted down and shot in the back an identifiably Orthodox Jewish man walking to synagogue, then tried to up the body count by attacking responding police while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Abdallahi still didn’t quit shooting even after police wounded him. Somehow he, the police, and the victim all survived.

This benchmarking story of America’s first terror attack by a border-crossing jihadist was largely ignored by national news media even though it came just before the brewing political war between pro-illegal immigrant Democrats and an incoming Trump administration promising an illegal immigration crackdown largely on national security grounds.

The article explains Abdallahi’s method:

Abdallahi had mapped out the locations of two Chicago synagogues and a Jewish community, the conservative Chicago Sun-Times reported November 21. The search history also included “Jewish Community Center” and a gun store in suburban Lyons.

Once he shot the man in the back, Abdallahi displayed a relentless desire to increase his body count and seemed tactically aware of how to take out hard human targets like police officers. For example, his gun apparently jammed after shooting the Jewish victim, prosecutors said. He reportedly had the presence of mind to retreat to cover, fix the jam, then return to finish off the victim, but then retreated to cover again as first responders approached.

Abdallahi drove a few blocks around them, then returned on foot from a new direction and opened fire on four police officers and two paramedics tending the wounded man, prosecutors alleged. He then allegedly fired on the ambulance, hitting it twice as a fifth police officer returned fire.

Antisemitism is increasingly becoming a problem in America. Some Jewish students on our college campuses are harassed or attacked just for going to classes. We have no control right now over who is coming across our borders. If we don’t deal with illegal immigration, we are going to become like some European countries where Jews are told not to wear anything that identifies them as Jewish because of the influx of Muslims who believe that Antisemitism is required by their god.

When Making Peace Isn’t Possible

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On March 18th, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the futility of trying to make peace with radical Islamists.

The article reports:

A California synagogue axed its leadership and is struggling to retain members after leasing its facility to a Muslim group that brought in an anti-Israel speaker who compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Hamakom synagogue, a conservative congregation of around 900 families located in an upscale Los Angeles suburb, says it was trying to ease tensions between the Jewish and Muslim communities when it decided to lease its space this month to the Islamic Society of West Valley, a neighboring Muslim faith group that needed space to hold services during the holy month of Ramadan.

Hamakom entered into an agreement with the Islamic Society that allowed it to take over the synagogue’s main campus, pushing Jewish members onto a smaller satellite branch. In anticipation of the lease’s commencement, the synagogue’s leadership covered up pictures of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to photographs reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, sparking anger among Jewish congregants.

Soon after the Islamic Society began using Hamakom’s facility, it hosted anti-Israel activist Hussam Ayloush, who said last year that Israel did not have a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 attack and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. The invite led many Jewish members to threaten to resign from the shul, according to internal emails viewed by the Free Beacon, and prompted Hamakom to sever its rental contract with the Islamic Society within days of inking it.

I am sure that there are moderate Muslims in America who behave themselves better than the group that rented the synagogue. However, there is a major thread of anti-Semitism that runs through the Muslim faith. Until the Muslims themselves cut that thread, I would strongly suggest that no religious group lease space to Muslims.

Not Really Looking For A Solution

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Generally speaking, the words coming out of the Biden administration support Israel. Generally speaking. However, the actions of the State Department under President Biden tell a very different story.

On November 14th, The Daily Caller reported:

The State Department, as part of its efforts to support refugee arrivals, is working with a coalition of nonprofits that includes several anti-Israel groups.

The State Department partnered with Welcome.US, a coalition of nonprofit groups, corporations and former politicians, in September 2021 to help new Afghan refugee arrivals find sponsors, jobs and housing. The coalition includes Islamic Relief USA, Amnesty International and the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Oklahoma branch, all of which have made anti-Israel statements.

“The State Department applauds the launch of Welcome.US and looks forward to our ongoing collaboration and discussions with leaders across sectors to mobilize support to meet the needs of these arriving Afghans as they write a new chapter of the American experience,” the State Department said in a statement when the program launched.

Islamic Relief USA is affiliated with Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW). The Trump administration’s State Department cut ties with the group due to the “anti-Semitism exhibited repeatedly by IRW’s leadership,” Ellie Cohanim, then the deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the State Department, told the Washington Free Beacon at the time.

The article notes:

“The Council on American-Islamic Relations and Islamic Relief Worldwide are not innocuous ‘faith-based’ groups,” Asra Nomani, cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, a group fighting radical Islamism, told the DCNF. “They are dangerous organizations that believe in political Islam, or Islamism, and stoke anti-American, anti-Jew intolerance and hate.”

I have written about CAIR recently (article here). They are listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. If you are not familiar with that trial, now is a really good time to learn about it. However, beware–many search engines will lead you to fake news about the trial. The best thing to do is to look up the exhibits provided by the government in the trial and read them. They are very relevant to what we are dealing with today.

They Are Here Already

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As the White House focuses on the ‘problem of Islamophobia,’ they might want to look at some of the Islamic groups that have been quite openly practicing anti-Semitism in America for years.

On November 8, Real Clear Investigations posted an article about the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group connected to the Muslim Brotherhood (see article here for further information) that has been operating in America since 1994. CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, where the Holy Land Foundation was accused of funneling money to terrorists. If you can find the exhibits from that trial, they include “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in America.”  (the group is the Muslim Brotherhood). Look at the list of unindicted co-conspirators, then look at some of the organizations on our colleges. After you compare those two things, the anti-Semitism we are seeing on our college campuses makes sense.

The article at Real Clear Investigations reports:

After Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil.” He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.

What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years – without seeking any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”

Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas – which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people – CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.

On Oct. 7, the day Hamas terrorists butchered 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans – raping many and abducting some 240 others to Gaza from southern Israel – CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered an anti-Israel message in Arabic which seemed to justify what Hamas did. Translated into English, it read: “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, Oct. 8 – and every day – in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime [Israel].”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. I am beginning to wonder if we have anyone in our government who represents the interests of the American people.

A Good News Story

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Life goes on in America. Good things happen. On July 9th, The American Spectator posted an article about a wedding the author of the article had recently attended.

The article provides some biographical information on the rabbi who was officiating at the wedding:

After the war (WWII), Coughlin (Father Coughlin who hosted a popular radio show blaming Jews for much of the evil in the world) was off the air and America opened its gates to thousands of survivors. America also became a powerful champion of the cause for honoring the mandate given by Britain to allow Jews to have a homeland again in the land promised their ancestors by God millennia before. President Harry Truman made sure that within minutes of Israel’s declaration of independence, America offered it recognition.

Among those let in during the post-war years was a young man from Czechoslovakia who had lost most of his family. As a teenager, he had been swept into Auschwitz, which he survived until the camp was closed. Eventually, he was forced to walk on a death march. In an abnormally cold winter, the lightly clad prisoners had to walk hundreds of miles westward into German territory away from the advancing Russian troops. He miraculously survived and was liberated. Without family in Europe, he came first to Canada and then to the U.S.

Here in America, he was taken under the sheltering wings of a great rabbi who took close care of him, taking a deep personal interest in his life. He supervised a program of studies that led the young survivor to the highest achievements in the literary and oral traditions of rabbinic law and theology and he also guided him through a doctoral program at New York University. He went on to become a community leader, a teacher, and a brilliant translator while raising a family in which all the children became community leaders themselves.

It was that one-time inmate in a death camp who was the officiating rabbi at the wedding that I went to last week. The groom was his grandson. The occasion was joyous and happy.

The article notes:

American men and women sacrificed themselves to beat the Nazi evil and paid a steep price in blood and suffering. We agonize over our mistakes, yet we have turned again and again to correct our own wrongs and have given of ourselves to stop rampant evil, time and again.

Just as it took proof to understand that such an evil as the Holocaust could be real, so it takes vision to understand how great a good is possible.

American has been a force for good in the world. Those who criticize America for its involvement in slavery need to understand that slavery was part of the acceptable social structure of the time. I wonder if our descendants will view abortion the same way we view slavery.

Moving Away From Peace

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The Center for Security Policy posted an article today about a recent foreign affairs decision by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Is the Biden Administration holding Egypt aid hostage in exchange for freeing a bloodthirsty Muslim Brotherhood leader?

The Biden Administration is currently withholding $130 million in security and counterterrorism assistance to the Egyptian government, unless 16 unnamed prisoners, among whom may be included a virulent anti-Semitic jihadist cleric, are released from Egyptian prisons.

That was the reveal in a recent floor speech by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) this week. Cruz has been locked in a rhetorical battle with the Biden Administration for weeks in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, centered around nominee Barbara Leaf, currently proposed for state department assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. Cruz has sought to force answers to questions about the conditioning of Egyptian security aid on the release of the unnamed prisoners.

“Not a single name. None of them. Congress doesn’t get to know who those 16 people are,” Cruz said during the speech, which featured a large poster board blow up of Leaf’s 1000-word response to Cruz’s questionnaire, “The answer from Ms. Leaf to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is, not to put too fine a point on, go jump in a lake.”

Cruz called the Biden Administration’s action “extortion” and wondered aloud about the nature of the prisoner list, noting that the list of names is available to Congress in a classified form, but one that remains hidden from the public.

There seems to be some information about who the prisoners are in a recent Senate report:

One possible clue as to the identity of these prisoners may be language buried within a recent Senate appropriation report, which calls on the secretary of state to consider conditioning aid on the treatment of Egyptian prisoners Ola al-Qaradawi, Hosam Khalaf, Salah Soltan, Abdelrahman Tarek, and Mohamed El-Baqer. Cruz noted that it is currently unknown who was responsible for the insertion of those names into the appropriations report.

Soltan’s is by far the most interesting name, as he is a well-known Muslim Brotherhood cleric and Hamas supporter. Soltan played a key role in leading U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations during his time in United States and has a long record of issuing blood-curdling anti-Semitic calls for violence. He is also known for praising Osama bin Laden, and even being an associate of the late Al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki.

Soltan is currently in an Egyptian prison convicted of incitement to murder. He was formerly a U.S. resident, but his application for naturalization was denied after Soltan appeared at a Hamas rally in Turkey.

This is the kind of thing that happened when Barack Obama was President and spoke in Egypt. He brought members of the Muslim Brotherhood into the country from exile and seated them in the front row. He planted the seeds for the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt, which was later overthrown.

#weremember

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Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Chicago Sun Times posted an article today about the remembrance this year.

The article reports:

Most International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations were being held online this year due to the virus, including the annual ceremony at the site of the former Auschwitz death camp, where Nazi German forces killed 1.1 million people in occupied Poland.

WARSAW, Poland — A Jewish prayer for the souls of people murdered in the Holocaust echoed Wednesday over where the Warsaw ghetto stood during World War II as a world paused by the coronavirus pandemic observed the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Most International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations were being held online this year due to the virus, including the annual ceremony at the site of the former Auschwitz death camp, where Nazi German forces killed 1.1 million people in occupied Poland. The memorial site is closed to visitors because of the pandemic.

In one of the few live events, mourners gathered in Poland’s capital to pay their respects at a memorial in the former Warsaw ghetto, the largest of all the ghettos where European Jews were held in cruel and deadly conditions before being sent to die in mass extermination camps.

…Among those commemorating from home Wednesday will be Polish-born Auschwitz survivor Tova Friedman, who arrived at the camp when she was 5 years old and was 6 when she found herself among thousands of survivors liberated by Soviet troops on Jan. 27, 2020(sic) should be 1945.

Friedman, who is now 82, attended last year’s event at Auschwitz and had hoped to take her her eight grandchildren there this year to help them better understand her experiences. But the pandemic prevented that.

There were three steps leading to the concentration camps according to Jewish historian Edwin Black–those three steps were identify, exclude and confiscate (or deprive of a way to make a living). The media and the government worked hand and hand to make the concentration camps possible. False charges of anti-Semitism are as dangerous as anti-Semitism. We have seen the media promote some of those false charges recently. We need to be very careful about whom we choose to believe.

The Logic In This Is Beyond Me

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Yesterday John HInderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the latest reason given to impeach President Trump.

The article quotes the wisdom of Congressman Al Green:

Rep. Al Green (D-TX) said on Saturday during an interview on MSNBC that President Donald Trump needed to be impeached “to deal with slavery.”

Green, who has previously stated that Trump must be impeached or else “he will get reelected,” said this week that there is “no limit” to the number of times that Democrats can try to impeach the president.

…I do believe, ma’am, that we have to deal with the original sin. We have to deal with slavery. Slavery was the thing that put all of what President Trump has done lately into motion.

…So, I appreciate whatever we will do, but until we deal with the issue of invidious discrimination as a relates to [the] LGBTQ community, the anti-Semitism, the racism, the Islamophobia, the transphobia, and also the misogyny that he has exemplified, I don’t think our work is done.

I’m sorry–this seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Also, keep in mind that President Trump has Jewish grandchildren that he evidently has a beautiful relationship with. That might be a problem to a thinking person who wants to accuse him of anti-Semitism. The racist charge runs into a problem when you consider that President Trump as a private citizen literally fought city hall to allow Mar-a-Lago to admit African-Americans and Jews. The misogyny accusation runs into a problem when you consider that President Trump as a private citizen hired to first woman contractor to build a New York City skyscraper.

As you can see, most of the often repeated charges against President Trump contradict actual facts. Joseph Goebbels is often credited with saying,  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Unfortunately we are seeing that principle in action regarding reporting on President Trump.

The Canary In The Coal Mine Is Not Singing

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Jews have been called the “canary in the coal mine.” Miners used to take canaries into the mines with them. When the canary stopped singing (and died), it meant that the gas levels were too high and the gases could explode or kill the miners. Underlying the metaphor is the realization that what happens to the Jews will befall everyone. Historically it seems that when bad things happen to the Jews, bad things happening to other groups of people are not far behind. During the Holocaust roughly eleven million people were killed. It began with antisemitism, moved to killing the Jews, the disabled, the mentally handicapped, homosexuals, and Christians who opposed the policy. The figure usually quoted is that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, but what happened to the Jews also happened to other population groups in Europe.

Yesterday Yahoo News posted an article reporting the following:

Germany’s government commissioner on anti-Semitism has warned Jews about the potential dangers of wearing the traditional kippah cap in the face of rising anti-Jewish attacks.

“I cannot advise Jews to wear the Kippah everywhere all the time in Germany,” Felix Klein said in an interview published Saturday by the Funke regional press group.

In issuing the warning, he said he had “alas, changed my mind (on the subject) compared to previously.”

Klein, whose post was created last year, cited “the lifting of inhibitions and the uncouthness which is on the rise in society” as factors behind a rising incidence of anti-Semitism.

“The internet and social media have largely contributed to this — but so have constant attacks against our culture of remembrance.”

And he suggested police, teachers and lawyers should be better trained to recognise what constitutes “clearly defined” unacceptable behaviour and “what is authorised and what is not”.

His comments came just weeks after Berlin’s top legal expert on anti-semitism said the issue remains entrenched in German society.

I don’t think that the problem is that antisemitism is entrenched in German society or the rise of the political right–I think the problem is that Germany is losing its national identity to Muslim refugees who have brought antisemitism with them as part of their religion. I suspect the ‘far-right’ is rising in response to what they see happening to their country.

In 2015 the following letter was written to the City Council of Munich:

Dear City council of Munich,

I am writing this letter to bring to your attention something that I and many Muslims believe is unfair and requires attention. I would like to inform you that the Oktoberfest is an Intolerant and Anti-Islamic event.

We tried to ignore the event, but there too many Un-Islamic acts done at the Oktoberfest. Such as alcohol consumption, public nudity etc.

We understand that the Oktoberfest is a yearly German tradition, but we, Muslims, can not tolerate this Un-Islamic event, because it offends us and all Muslims on the earth. We are requesting the immediate cancellation of the upcoming Oktoberfest event.

We also believe that the Oktoberfest might also offend all the Muslim refugees coming from Syria, Iraq,

Afghanistan. The cancellation of the Oktoberfest event will help refugees not to forget their Islamic history. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Morad Almuradi

I am not necessarily a fan of Oktoberfest, but if I were a German existing in the German culture, this letter would bother me. Here is an immigrant trying to change my country into the country he just fled. That makes no sense to me.

Why Our Children Need To Learn History

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If our children are not taught history, they will believe any lie they are told about past events. Recently Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib attempted a major rewrite of the history of World War II.

Yesterday The New York Post posted her comments and the truth.

Ms. Tlaib stated:

“There’s always a kind of calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust, that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity . . . in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy . . . And I love that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways.”

That sounds very nice, but history tells a different story. Haj Amin al-Husseini was the mufti of Jerusalem. He met with Hitler and visited German troops.

The article reports:

According to the German transcript of the meeting, the mufti said: “An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries . . . would produce a great number of volunteers eager to fight.”

To the mufti’s delight, Hitler promised that after conquering the Southern Caucasus, “Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.”

Meanwhile, the British gave in to Arab demands, sharply limiting the number of Jews who could enter the Mandate during the Holocaust. Ships were turned around and, like in many Western countries, Jews were sent back to certain death in ­Europe.

After the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition mandatory Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, five Arab armies invaded in an attempt to make it all Arab. Sounds like a really safe haven, Rep. Tlaib.

In 1948, the Arabs living in Israel were told to leave their homes to join with the Arab nations surrounding Israel to ‘drive the Jews into the sea.’ They were promised that after the Jews were defeated, they would get their land back. Obviously the Jews were not defeated, and they lost their land. The story that Ms. Tlaib is telling is purely fiction, although it may be what she was taught growing up. Truth is the first casualty of war, and in the Middle East the truth is easily lost or distorted.

This Is How We Change Our Schools

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The following is a March 19th Press Release from Americans for Peace &Tolerance, a Boston-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting peaceful coexistence in an ethnically diverse America by educating the American public about radical ideologies that undermine the academic integrity at American High Schools and Universities:

NEWTON RESIDENTS SUE CITY’S SCHOOL COMMITTEE, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PRINCIPALS AND TEACHERS FOR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST JEWS AND ISRAELIS
 
Ideological/Political Curriculum Teaches Propaganda Instead of Facts

 
NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS. On March 12, 2019, Newton taxpayers filed a lawsuit in Middlesex Superior Court against the Newton School Committee, Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman, the principals of the Newton high schools, and certain high school history teachers. Plaintiffs are asking for a court order that would compel Newton school officials to stop indoctrinating students with anti-Semitism, bigotry against Israel, and Islamist religious dogma as part of the high school history curriculum. This suit was made necessary because the embattled school administration is shielding its teachers from scrutiny and refusing to supervise what is being taught in its classrooms. The taxpayers claim that Newton Public Schools (NPS) has deliberately failed and refused to comply with the Equal Rights Amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution, with the Massachusetts Student Anti-Discrimination Act, and with civil rights regulations that require schools, through their curricula, to encourage respect for the human and civil rights of all individuals regardless of race, identity, religion, color, sex, and national origin.
 
The extensively documented 469 page legal complaint, available here, details the lengthy history of Newton residents’ efforts to have NPS address and correct the factually flawed teaching. Plaintiffs and their attorney were provided with an enormous volume of factual documentation by Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) Executive Director Ilya Feoktistov, whose investigations over the past several months formed the basis of this action. 
 
“In looking for the sources of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bigotry in the Newton curriculum, we discovered a few bad apple teachers who view their teaching positions as giving them license to promote their personal political agendas,” said Mr. Feoktistov. “We are also looking closely at a common pattern with these politicized teachers — most, if not all, have taken professional development courses developed with foreign funding by the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”
 
“Newton history teachers and school administrators must think either that anti-discrimination laws do not apply to them, or that these laws do not protect their Jewish and Israeli students,” said the President of APT, Charles Jacobs. “There is no academic freedom to brainwash students with fake history and pro-Arab or anti-Semitic propaganda that is, these days, alarmingly too common on the left in America.”
 
Evidence described in the complaint shows how Newton teachers teach that Jews and Christians deliberately forged their holy texts to contradict the Muslim Qur’an; that Zionism has “little connection” to Jewish history in “Palestine;” that the Jews took advantage of the Holocaust to gain sympathy for Zionism at the expense of “Arab plight;” and that the Israelis treat the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews. After being taught all this, students are asked to debate whether there should be a one- or two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 
 
Karen Hurvitz, attorney for the taxpayers, stated that her clients are not asking for money damages, even though defendants have certainly caused years of incalculable damage by their insistence on teaching impressionable students materials that slander Israel and Jews. “This is the type of teaching that leads to anti-Semitism — and it has. The taxpayers here are merely asking NPS to perform their duties and obey the law, which requires that their curriculum encourage respect for all people. Education should be based on fact, not on stereotypes and propaganda.”

This is how you handle educational indoctrination.

This Didn’t Happen In A Vacuum

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There is a bit of a dust up right now within the Democrat Party as to how to handle some recent anti-Semitic remarks by Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Unfortunately this is not the first time in this Congress that anti-Semitic remarks have been made. The difference is that some of the new Congressmen are not willing to condemn those remarks. Speaker Pelosi., with her eye on retaining Democrat control of the House of Representatives, is in the difficult position of harnessing the energy of the new Representatives while not alienating Jewish voters who generally support Democrats. But we need to take a look at where we are and how we got here.

Ilhan Oman represents the 5th Distict in Minnesota, which includes Minneapolis.

On March 5th, PJ Media reported the following about Minneapolis:

Which brings us to Little Mogadishu, in the city soon to be formerly known as Minneapolis, where the good people of Minnesota — of Scandinavian, German, and Irish stock —  have been busily importing people from perhaps the most culturally alien region of the world, Muslim East Africa, whose charming natives are unlikely to follow the traditional immigrant path outlined above. In Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby ignores her own brood while busily organizing aid to Africa; today’s Mrs. Jellybys have instead have brought East Africa to them.

…A group of Somali volunteers including Abdirahman Mukhtar, left, and Abdullahi Farah gave out pizza and tea to young people from a stand Friday in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.The men hope by connecting with youth and engaging them in conversation they can combat the shootings that have recently plagued the neighborhood. After the  latest spasm of gang violence, Minneapolis’ Somali residents and business owners on Monday stepped up their calls for help from City Hall and police headquarters to help curb the senseless shootings that they say too often go overlooked. On Friday alone, five men of Somali descent were shot in separate attacks, one fatally.

The Somali immigration is largely the result of United Nations policies.

This is the district Ilham Oman represents. The Somali population has not assimilated. It has brought Somalia with it. She represents the views of the people who live in her district.

Representative Rashida Tlaib, another freshman in the House of Representatives, has come out in support of Representative Oman. Representative Tlaib represents Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. The district includes parts of Detroit and surrounding areas. The district is largely Muslim.

So how did Michigan become a Muslim enclave in America?

Michigan radio posted an article in 2014 that explains the Michigan demographic.

There’s a legend in the local Yemeni community that Henry Ford once met a Yemeni sailor at port, and told him about auto factory jobs that paid five dollars a day. The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other parts of the Middle East.

We don’t know if that chance encounter ever really happened.  But we do know that in the early days, Ford was more willing to hire Arabs than some other immigrants—or African-Americans.

And they did seem to follow Ford. A new Arab community, one that now included many Muslims sprung up around his first factory in Highland Park. In fact, the first purpose-built mosque in the US was located in Highland Park.

But that community only lasted for a few years.

“As Henry Ford then moved, and opened a new factory, the Rouge plant, in Dearborn, the Arab Americans followed him there,” Stiffler says.

Plenty of Arab Americans worked outside the auto industry, though. As Detroit’s population boomed, so did a need for grocery stores. In the 1920s, Arab Americans ran hundreds of them.

Stiffler says that created an enduring—and visible—commercial legacy.

The two main Representatives that have come out in support of Representative Oman are Representative Tlaib and Representative Ocasio-Cortez. Note that all three are freshmen in Congress and may not yet be aware of some of what goes on behind the scenes. I suspect a lot of Democrat campaign money comes from the Jewish community and Speaker Pelosi may be trying to keep that money coming while keeping younger voters in the Democrat party.

While the Democrats squabble about what to say about anti-Semitism in their party, Representative Oman sits of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. That, at least, needs to change.

Watch Out For The Bright, Shiny Object

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Rightwinggranny is a little more than ten years old. I have learned a few things along the way. One of those things is that when the media is screaming headlines in unison, there is probably something going on behind the scenes that I need to be aware of. This article is an example of that.

On January 16th, Breitbart reported that New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be serving on the House Financial Services Committee. The Committee is led by Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez has made some remarks that indicate she may not totally understand exactly how America’s Representative Republic works, but that’s okay–she still got elected. So let’s look at who supported her election. Opensecrets.org is a website that tracks political campaign donations, The link I highlighted leads to information on the funding of Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign for the House of Representatives. There is nothing illegal here, but it is always interesting to see where a candidate gets their funding.

The campaign funding information on Representative Ocasio-Cortez shows that during her primary campaign, two-thirds of the donations came from small donors. She may not fully understand how our government works, but she did a very good job or organizing a campaign. Eighty-eight percent of the large donations to her campaign (over $200) came from outside her district. From the time she won the primary election until the end of June, she received $70,000 from out-of-state donors. How does a newcomer to politics build that kind of a political machine? Who were the people who helped her organize her campaign? I don’t have answers to those questions.

So why is it significant that Representative Ocasio-Cortez has been appointed to the House Financial Services Committee? That is the committee that oversees big banking, lending, and the financial sector. Representative Ocasio-Cortez has already expressed an interest in looking into the student loan crisis (a crisis created when the government took over student loans). It is quite possible that the committee will attempt to undo the deregulation President Trump has done that has led to the economic growth we are experiencing. Hopefully the Senate can protect our booming economy.

The other significant appointment you might not have heard about is the appointment of Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (You can read more about Ilhan Omar at Power Line Blog.) 

Breitbart posted an article about the appointment yesterday.

The article reports:

Omar supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, which has been called antisemitic because it singles out the Jewish state for isolation and ignores the Palestinian side.

…House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) issued a statement in which he reminded Pelosi that she said Congress “must” oppose BDS, and that Schumer had called BDS “anti-Semitism.”

“I would love to know what changed, because Democratic leaders just promoted a pro-BDS Democrat to a key committee that deals with the State of Israel.”

McCarthy continued: “Anti-Semitism has no place in Congress and certainly not on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) blasted Pelosi for appointing Omar to the committee, saying she had a “documented history of making anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks.”

He added: “House Democrats have now just endorsed that ideology.”

This appointment may simply be a reflection of the ongoing battle between Nancy Pelosi and President Trump as to who is going to lead the country. However, both of these appointments represent a very severe left turn on the part of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. It remains to be seen if Americans will support this extreme left turn.

When The Image And The Truth Totally Disagree

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This story is based on a story from November 2015, but it is particularly relevant now. As I have said before, I am not a strong supporter of Donald Trump, but I am dismayed at the charges routinely leveled against him that have no basis in fact. One day I am going to read in the news that Donald Trump conferred with aliens on Mars before deciding to run for President (and what is worse–there will be people who believe that).

On November 13, 2015, The American Spectator posted as article about some activities of Donald Trump during the 1990’s. These activities totally negate the most recent charge that Donald Trump is a racist.

This is the story:

…The culture clash began to approach a climax last fall, when Mr. Trump’s lawyer sent members of the town council a copy of the film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a film that deals with upper-class racism. Mr. Trump then approached the town council about lifting the restrictions that had been placed on the club. He also asked some council members not to vote on the request because their membership in other clubs created a conflict of interest.

Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages.

… Mr. Foxman seems pleased that Mr. Trump has elevated the issue of discriminatory policies at social clubs. “He put the light on Palm Beach,” Mr. Foxman says. “Not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. It has an impact.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Foxman says, the league has received calls from Jewish residents telling of how Palm Beach clubs are changing. Locals concur that in the past year, organizations such as the Bath and Tennis Club have begun to admit Jewish patrons. The Palm Beach Civic Association, which for many years was believed to engage in discriminatory behavior, this month named a Jewish resident as its chief officer.

In other words? In other words, long before he was running for president, there was Donald Trump battling racism and anti-Semitism in Palm Beach society. Using every tool at his disposal.

This was almost twenty years before Donald Trump announced his run for the Presidency. These are not the actions of a racist.

Going Over And Above What Is Required

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Anti-Semitism is becoming a worldwide problem. It is evident in America by the way our college students have tried to discourage investment in Israel and have overlooked the aggression against Israel while criticizing Israel’s response to that aggression. Somehow the scientific and humanitarian contributions of Israel are often overlooked.

The Times of Israel posted a story on Thursday illustrating how far Israel will go in its humanitarian efforts. Some of the details of the story are classified for obvious reasons, but here is the story:

…But one five-year-old girl from the war-torn land  (Syria)has led doctors, as well as Israel’s security services, to take unprecedented steps to try to save her life.

The girl arrived at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa in recent weeks with very serious wounds that she received after finding herself caught in a firefight between rival militias, according to an exclusive report Wednesday night on Channel 10.

Some two weeks after she arrived at the hospital, after her wounds had nearly healed, Rambam doctors discovered the young girl had cancer.

They refused to release her, insisting that they could not let her cancer go untreated. The girl had grown used to the hospital, and had friends among the other children being treated there, they said.

Security officials agreed.

The article goes on to explain that the little girl needed a bone marrow transplant, and the doctors were looking for a donor.

The story continues:

And so a search began for a bone marrow donor, a search that led to a relative living in a Middle Eastern country designated an “enemy state” under Israeli law, a designation that prevented the relative from entering Israel.

It was at this point that Israel’s security services stepped in, mounting a secret operation in the enemy country that helped smuggle the relative out of that country and into Israel.

The relative arrived in Israel on Monday, Channel 10 reported. Both child and donor are now quarantined at the hospital, where the girl is expected to undergo a first round of treatment this month.

That is called compassion.

Wisdom From One Of My Favorite Liberals

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As a conservative, there are some liberals whom I truly respect and listen to when they speak. In the past that list included Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Zell Miller, and Bob Casey, Sr. Presently that list includes former Senator Joe Lieberman and Alan Dershowitz. All of these men had principles that they upheld regardless of the political shenanigans going on around them.

In a recent press conference, Jimmy Carter was asked about what he would like to see happen before he dies. This is what he said:

In international affairs I would say peace for Israel and its neighbors. That has been a top priority for my foreign policy projects for the last 30 years. Right now I think the prospects of are more dismal than anytime I remember in the last 50 years. Practically, whole process is practically dormant. The government of Israel has no desire for two-state solution, which is policy of all the other nations in the world. And the United States has practically no influence compared to past years in either Israel or Palestine. So I feel very discouraged about it but that would be my number one foreign policy hope.

With all due respect, President Carter, Israel is not the problem.

Alan Deshowitz recently made some comments about former President Jimmy Carter to NewsMax Magazine that I think are important.

These are excerpts for the article that included those comments:

“[Carter] recommended to Yasser Arafat that Yasser Arafat turn down the deal that … would have resulted in the Palestinian state,” Dershowitz said. “He has blood of thousands of Jews and Palestinians on his hands. He should just stop talking about the Middle East.

“The idea that the International Criminal Court should create moral equivalence between a democracy — which has the most moral army in the world and has fewer civilian casualties than any other army in history — facing comparable threats to a terrorist regime that includes Hamas, that commits multiple war crimes every time it sends a rocket, is so obnoxious and so hypocritical and so typical of Jimmy Carter that the world understands that he has made himself irrelevant and tossed himself into the trash pan of history.”

…”Jimmy Carter has always had a problem with Jews and it borders on anti-Semitism,” he said. “In the midst of this tragedy, in the midst of this serious debate, to again blame it on Israel. He said that the terrorism and the reason the Jews and this anti-Semitism problem (exist) is because of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

…Continuing to create a moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel, as Carter suggests, only encourages Hamas acts of terror, Dershowitz added, feeding right into their hands.

…”Jimmy Carter goes back to the time he was running for governor. He has a long, long history of theological anti-Semitism coupled with virulent anti-Israelism. He never met a terrorist he didn’t like. He loved Yasser Arafat and he hated every Israeli leader he ever met.”

President Carter has made many statements about Israel that show either a total lack of understanding of the Middle East or a rather wide streak of anti-Semitism. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is not the country lobbing rockets into civilian populations, and Israel is not the one tunneling under the border in order to attack and kill kindergarten children. President Carter’s statement that Israel is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East is simply wrong.

Candid Camera In Egypt

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Hot Air posted a video yesterday of a candid-camera-type show in Egypt. The video has been taken down supposedly due to copyright infringements. The ‘joke’ of the program was that the people who were being interviewed were told halfway through the interview that they were being interviewed by an Israeli television station. In the three instances shown, the interviewees then  physically attacked either the person interviewing them or a member of the stage crew. The interviewees only calmed down after being assured that no one of the set was Jewish. What does this tell you about the chances for peace in the Middle East?

The article at Hot Air quotes an article by Jonathan Tobin via MEMRI TV:

Viewing the invective about Jews and Israel being spewed on the show by three apparently prominent members of the Egyptian arts community is damning by itself. It says a lot that the show’s producers thought one of the most outrageous things they could do to Egyptians was to trick them into sitting down with Jews. Nor is it surprising that the response generated hate speech about the character of the Jewish people and the authenticity of the Holocaust.

But the punch lines of each segment in which the subjects are informed they are on a candid camera show, which was required in two cases to avert more violence if not bloodshed, is also illustrative. There were no reproaches from the hosts for the violent behavior that followed when the guests were told they were on Israeli TV. It was only when they were pretending to be Israelis that they tried to push back against the slanders. Once they were back in their own identities, all was forgiven. The host only had praise for her dupes — even the one who slugged her — for demonstrating what she described as “patriotism” by their anger about being set up to talk with Jews.

Racism and bigotry are not the path to peace.

The French Shooting Suspect Is Identified

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The person who shot four people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, on Monday morning has been surrounded by French police and is expected to surrender shortly. Who is this man?

The Jerusalem Post reports:

French school shooting suspect Mohamed Merah was jailed for bombings in Afghanistan in 2007, but escaped months later in a mass prison break organized by Taliban insurgents, a top Afghan prison official said on Wednesday.

Mr. Merah is a French citizen of Algerian origin. He escaped from Sarposa Prison in June 2008 when the Taliban attacked the prison and freed 1,000 prisoners, including 400 Taliban insurgents.

At what point do we begin to honestly examine the institutionalized anti-Semitism that is inherent in Islam? Is Islam being used as an excuse to kill Jews and people from western countries, or is that idea an important part of Islam? I think we need to answer both of those questions. Somehow the idea that it’s ok to murder innocent people just because they practice a different religion has to be declared invalid by the civilized world. That should be the job of the United Nations, but I am not holding my breath.

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