Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 2, 2020

Communal leaders have criticised the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK (BLMUK), after it claimed politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism.

The Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl criticised the movement over a tweet on Sunday, saying it was beyond disappointing that asupposedly anti-racist organisation has leaned into the antisemitic trope that British politics is gagged in terms of debating Israel, a claim particularly preposterous because Israel is one of the most-discussed foreign policy issues in this country.

However, the failings of this particular group will not stop us standing alongside black people in their quest for justice, whether inside or outside our community.

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A source at the Board added: The far right and far left are desperate to divide black and Jewish communities. We are not falling for it.

The Jewish Leadership Council tweeted: We unequivocally support the fight against anti-black racism. That people suffer abuse & prejudice because of the colour of their skin is abhorrent & we are actively involved in this fight as a community. But please do not fight racism with racism we must be allies

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said BLM should embrace solidarity from Jews and should aspire to be a movement against racism that unifies people and achieves lasting change, not a movement that spreads hatred and achieves lasting division. You cannot fight prejudice with prejudice.

Taking to Twitter, BLMUK told its near 60,000 followers: As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israels settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades. FREE PALESTINE.

The tweet has so far been retweeted more than 21,000 times.

Following criticism, the movement added a series of subsequent tweets, including one citing Jewish activists who reject thecynical and false accusations of antisemitism that dangerously conflate anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israels policies and system of occupation and apartheid.

Earlier this week, more than 1,000 European politicians signed a letter against annexation, started by senior Israeli figures. Signatories from the UK include included Lord Carlile, DameMargaret Hodge, former Tory leader, Lord Howard and Baroness Neville-Jones.

This follows a clash during a Board of Deputies meeting last Sunday over the BLM movement, afterGary Mond, deputy for JNF, urged the community not to support groups accused of using reactions to George Floyds death for twisted goals. He was criticised after saying that black lives matter, as well as Asian lives, African lives, Jewish lives and all lives.

Other deputies, warned the phrase all lives matter, a slogan commonly associated with critics of the Black Lives Matter movement, risks trivialising the experiences of people of colour.

The Black Lives Matter UK movement has been approached for comment.

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Black Lives Matter UK: 'Politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism' - Jewish News

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Posted By admin on July 2, 2020

We have been saying for days now that the annexation argument has transformed the Israel lobby. Liberal Zionist organizations such as J Street and Americans for Peace Now are emerging as the new leaders of the Israel lobby because they seized on an issue of great moment and took a firm stance and by lobbying the Democratic Congress and appealing to foreign leaders appear to have turned Israel back from its determination to annex portions of the West Bank.

While the leading rightwing organizations kept their mouths shut and wavered and have suffered a political collapse in the eyes of the pro-Israel community, for doing nothing as beloved Zion burned.

Today the leader of one of those rightwing groups the American Jewish Committee lashed out on a webinar against liberal Zionist organizations for trying to bully him and practice intellectual intimidation so that the AJC would take a more macho stand against Israel.

David Harris never mentioned his enemies by name, but it was clear he meant J Street and Americans for Peace Now, which rose to this occasion and repeatedly called on leading Jewish groups to oppose annexation.

Harris was obviously referring to incidents like this one: Last week the AJC came out with a mealymouthed statement against annexation but assured Israel that it would defend Israel no matter what it does. Hadar Susskind, the head of Americans for Peace Now, responded to the piece by writing, Delete your organization.

In his webinar today, David Harris repeatedly slammed the left for having the arrogant notion that we know better. Or to use that famous phrase, To save Israel from itself. Thats where the AJC parts company. No it doesnt mean we have to keep silent but we at AJC have to keep in mind the distribution of risk here. Israelis are at physical risk from attack; and American Jews who criticize it are not.

Harris then said he was against annexation, but nicely.

The very word annexation itself is a toxic word. Because annexation in our vocabulary is very negative. Annexation is a hostile word, which is why some Israelis who support this prefer to use the extension of Israeli sovereign law.

From AJCs perspective again were friends of Israel, we are independent in our thinking, we will offer our perspective but at the end of the day we recognize its not our decision to make. Its Israels decision to make. From our perspective at AJC, we see the costs of the annexation or extension of sovereignty we see the costs as being very high. We dont see the benefits. There may be local benefits, political benefits within the domestic Israeli space. We dont see the benefits. We see instead something that will be used as yet another excuse or pretext by the Palestinians to avoid the peace table

But Harris said, thats not good enough for some in the American Jewish community. Hes faced attempted intellectual intimidation for not going further.

From our perspective at AJC, we are opposed to what were hearing based on our cost benefit analysis. I want to be very clear. On the other hand, there is a separate discussion to be had, and one cannot simply be lumped into a different political category for saying what Im about to say, although in todays world that is exactly how some will try and play it. Because in todays world you have a kind of binary political equation on just about everything, including this Youre either with us or youre against it. The moment youre trying to introduce any other elements or nuance, then youre immediately in the opposite camp. Thats not AJC, and were not going to play into attempted intellectual intimidation. Were going to defend our space which is to say, No to unilateral steps on the West Bank as are being discussed, in our perspective. At the same time it is fair to ask How long will Israel have to wait for a credible serious partner to sit across the table and negotiate

Harris said Israels failure to gain peace was not just Benjamin Netanyahus issue. Governments of the left and center had also failed. The burden was on the Palestinians, to show up, seriously, credibly, perseverantly.

But he went on that these liberal Zionist groups are playing to their donors by taking a muscular and macho stance against Israel. And Harris implied that they dont love Israel enough.

Look there are times that we have disagreed with Israel. How could we not? What AJC has done and I think its well understood in Israel is when there is criticism we try to find the most constructive way to channel the criticism. That means were not playing to our bleachers. Were not going to a group of donors and saying, Look how muscular and macho we are in what we told the Israelis. Were not hoping that the New York Times or the Washington Post picks up on our opposition to this or that and turns it into a pullquote and a headline. Were operating from a principle that for us would be referred to as ahavat Yisrael, love of Israel.Its not an effort to score points, to get attention, its not an effort to get patted on the back by other groups in the United States that we hunger for their validation..

So the donors are to Harriss left! It seems very clear from these remarks that the center of gravity in the pro-Israel Jewish community has shifted from the AJC to J Street.

Harris attacked J Street and other leftwing ideological organizations and dogmatists though not by name for supporting the Iran deal in 2015 even when Israels leaders said it posed an existential threat to Israel.

Take the Iran issue. The Israeli leadership came together as one and said the Iran deal as proposed poses an existential threat to the state of Israel. To me this was a defining moment in terms of how to lead the American Jewish community The Israeli leadership across the board at the very top said we agree on this, we disagree on everything else.

The ideological organizations werent prepared to follow along. So the leftwing groups here even confronted with that fact took recourse in their support for in this case the Obama administration, the assurance of the Obama administration that the Israeli concerns were misplaced and miguided. Did those groups even read the deal? AJC was one of the organizations that came out very clearly, If its a matter of existential importance to the state of Israel we have an obligation to speak out Thats where I seriously parted company with the dogmatists and the ideologues who couldnt get out from under the uniform that they wear every day.

He said that the AJC got bullied for trying to introduce nuance into the annexation debate.

If were really entering into a binary world, with two opposing orthodoxies and no room for conversation in between. youre either with us or youre against us. For me intellectually thats a very frightening world.

The AJC has always tried to inject nuance into our conversation about the U.S.-Israel relationship . That comes from a love of Israel.

I saw for example last week When we tried to introduce some nuance into one of the topical issues of the day, the anti-nuance crowd jumped on us, tried to mischaracterize our position, tried to in a way bully us. They were not going to succeed. I come from a place of Jewish unity, not disunity

The Israel lobby is breaking up before our eyes into two branches, liberal Zionist and right Zionist. Each has a political party. For once leading Jewish orgs are speaking in two voices on Israel. This fracturing will foster the politicization of Israel for U.S. politicians.

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AJC's David Harris complains that liberal Zionist groups tried to 'bully' and 'intimidate' him to take 'macho' stand against Israel - Mondoweiss

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Posted By admin on July 2, 2020

One of the most terrifying sounds on earth, Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi recalls, is the screeching roar of supersonic warplanes diving to attack.

He experienced that while rushing to retrieve his children from a kindergarten and a nursery school in Beirut during Israels 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which claimed the lives of more than 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, mostly civilians.

It is one of Khalidis many personal encounters with Israeli militarism told in The Hundred Years War on Palestine.

Unlike in his previous scholarly work, here Khalidi weaves his personal and family history into the period he covers. In a way it is lived history, a testament not only to what Palestinians experienced as a collective but also to what this meant in very immediate ways to the author himself.

Khalidi comes from a well-known Palestinian family that can be traced back for multiple generations, including a great-great-great grandfather who was a religious scholar, and two uncles who the British imprisoned during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt.

Khalidi grew up in New York City where his father worked for the United Nations. After graduating from Yale University, he received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and went on to a distinguished teaching and research career, culminating with his present appointment as the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University.

Khalidis 2013 book Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East documents the role that successive US governments have played in the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

It demonstrates persuasively how the US was never an honest broker in negotiations but a behind-the-scenes lawyer for Israel, bound in part by a pledge dating from the Gerald Ford administration to never float a peace proposal without first seeking approval from Israeli negotiators.

This theme of US complicity in Palestinian oppression carries over into The Hundred Years War and is deepened with an account of the US role in Lebanon when American officials promised to ensure the safety of Palestinian refugees following the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Those same officials reneged on the pledge as Israel oversaw the Phalangist massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Khalidi concludes that US administrations have colluded with Israel ever since the 1967 War, which Washington green-lighted. The US continues to provide both the military aid and the diplomatic cover essential to preserving Israel as an apartheid, settler-colonial state.

As Khalidi demonstrates, all of the six wars the Zionist movement and the State of Israel carried out against the Palestinian people were enabled by colonial or imperialist powers.

Khalidi brings new research to the subject with chapters devoted to each of the six wars. His personal stories such as his experiences living in Jerusalem during the first intifada and later serving as an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team at the 1991 Madrid conference make an already tragic history even more poignant.

Ending US collusion with Israel is the chief focus of the concluding chapter. Khalidi sets the stage for a discussion of possible solutions by first probing the failures of the Palestinian leadership.

He faults that leadership for dismissing the importance of influencing American public opinion as a way to counter US government actions. He contends that the Palestinian civil society call to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel has done more to win over the American people than anything the Palestinian political leadership has done.

Khalidi proposes three counternarratives to undermine the dominant belief among most US citizens that Israel is a normal, democratic nation state, like any other that espouses Western values.

The first counternarrative is one that draws comparisons between Israel and other settler-colonial societies, including Australia, Canada, South Africa and, of course, the United States.

Parallels between the fate of Native Americans and the Palestnians indict both Israel and the US. Khalidi concludes, however, that many Americans still cherish their early history in which settlers are portrayed as hardy pioneers in conflict with savages.

The dominant narrative is being increasingly challenged but still holds sway, he maintains. The manifest destiny claim that the pioneers used to justify the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans dovetails with the Christian Zionist myth of Jews at last returning to their ancestral land, an uplifting scenario of post-Holocaust rescue that appeals to many Americans.

The second proposed counternarrative is to highlight the asymmetry of power between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. The problem with this is that Israel still enjoys being perceived as David to the Arab/Muslim Goliath and media tropes claim that Palestinians failed to take best offers at the negotiating table.

The third, and in Khalidis opinion, the most promising and important counternarrative, is to focus on equal rights and the lack thereof in apartheid Israel. Inequality was embedded in the 1947 United Nations partition plan which proposed a majority of the land of Palestine to the Jewish minority and is therefore at the root of the problem, he writes.

Focusing on inequality is crucial, Khalidi asserts, because it is in direct contradiction to the proclaimed egalitarian values of the Western democratic societies that Israel has relied on for support.

This inequality has become even more starkly apparent today and is the central moral question posed by Zionism.

Khalidi concludes: By embracing its illiberal and discriminatory essence, modern Zionism is increasingly in contradiction with the ideals, particularly that of equality, on which Western democracies are based.

It is instructive that at the age of 72, the prominent Palestinian American scholar sees the struggle against Zionist ideology as one of the keys to ending US collusion with Israel.

But it is difficult to see how this can be accomplished without a counternarrative that indicts the US for failing to come to terms with its own settler-colonial history, including its internal colonialism and its external imperialism, both of which persist to this day.

The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017by Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books (2020)

Rod Such is a former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and is active with the Occupation-Free Portland campaign. ELECTRONIC INTIFADA

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The 100 Years War On Palestine, And Still Counting - The Citizen

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Posted By admin on July 2, 2020

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence that some readers may find disturbing.

Take a look at this image of 11-year-old Mahmoud Sawalhi, a Palestinian boy from Gaza. In 2018, an Israeli sniper shot him in the eye. The bullet went through his brain and shot through the top of his head. Yes, you read that correctly: the bullet went through his brain and shot through the top of his head. When his father rescued him off the ground, he said that part of Sawalhis brain was in his hands. Unbelievably, Sawalhi survived.

An Israeli sniper is trained to target victims with absolute precision. So its highly unlikely that Sawalhi was shot by mistake.

Sawalhi was transferred from Gaza to the West Bank for treatment. I met him laying in hospital, without his mother. The Israeli authorities had banned her from travelling with him. Imagine how terrified he must have been, laying in that room, surrounded by strangers.

My meeting with Sawalhi will be forever etched in my memory. But there are thousands of children like him, injured by Israeli forces. At least 25,503 Palestinian boys have been injured by Israel since 2008. And there are more than 1,000 children who didnt survive.

All the while, governments around the world look the other way. Or, even worse, like the UK, they are complicit in these murders.

If youre visiting Palestine, and you tell a Palestinian person that youre from the UK, theyll immediately respond with the words Balfour Declaration. Theyll remind you of Britains historical role in the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

But the UKs role isnt just historical. The UK government, and its mainstream media, continue to be among Israels strongest allies. The government attempts to shut down any criticism of Israel by loudly accusing human rights activists of antisemitism when they dare to criticise Israel or Zionism. At the same time, the UK continues to arm Israel to the teeth. After all, there are big profits to be made.

Keir Starmers sacking of Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey has caused controversy in the UK. Starmer told Long-Bailey to step down after she tweeted an interview with Maxine Peake in which Peake stated:

The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyds neckwas learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.

The interview, published in theIndependent, was later amended and now states:

UPDATE (25.06.20): A previous version of this article reported that a 2016 Amnesty International report had found that hundreds of US law enforcement officials had travelled to Israel for training. Our article also implied that this training could have included neck kneeling tactics. While it is true that US law enforcement officials have travelled to Israel for training, there has been no suggestion that this training involved the tactics referred to in the article. The article has been amended accordingly.

A spokesperson for Starmer called this an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. This is yet another misuse of the term antisemitism, labelling any critical mention of Israel as being antisemitic.

The Israeli police claimed that there is no tactic or protocol that calls to put pressure on the neck or airway. However, there is ample photo evidence showing Israeli forces using this exact technique on Palestinians:

And in 2019, Middle East Eye reported that the US police were being taught brutal Israeli military-style policing tactics.

Fady Khoury, an attorney at Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said:

There is plenty of documentation out there of violent arrests that involve kneeling on detainees heads and necks.

We have seen this not only in the occupied territories when soldiers perform arrests, but inside Israel by police officers as well.

But, in fact, the purge of Long-Bailey shouldnt come as a surprise. Starmer has been labelled a Zionist by The Times Of Israel. The Israeli newspaper quoted Starmer as saying:

I do support Zionism. I absolutely support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland. My only concern is that Zionism can mean slightly different things to different people, and to some extent it has been weaponised. I wouldnt read too much into that. I said it loud and clear and meant it that I support Zionism without qualification.

Starmer also came 14th in a poll made by Israeli PR experts Social Lite Creative of the Top 50 Zionist Influencers of 2020.

Moreover,The Canary has previously reported that Starmer accepted a 50,000 donation from a pro-Israel lobbyist during his leadership bid.

Of course its possible to be a supporter of Palestinian human rights and to also be antisemitic. But being critical of Israel is not, in itself, antisemitic. And arguments like this actually dilute the term and detract from the fact that real antisemitism exists in the UK.

In 2019, The Canarys Nancy Mendoza responded to the smear campaign against Corbyn and the Labour Party. Mendoza said:

Im getting sick of non-Jewish people hijacking and misrepresenting my experience for their own gain. These days, that seems to be mainly for political gain against Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party.

Just to be really clear: The row over antisemitism in the Labour Party is actually fuelling antisemitism, whilst simultaneously weakening the term as its applied to genuine antisemitism. And it seems it was never really meant to be of service to Jewish people, anyway, so nobody gives a damn what impact it has on us. That is a very frightening development, for me.

The Canary has also been accused of antisemitism, even though a number of its staff are Jewish. Canary writer and editor Emily Apple, who is Jewish, expressed her opinion:

Honestly, its getting boring having to say it, but being anti-Zionist is not being antisemitic. Questioning Israels aggressive policies, Palestinian deaths, and illegal land occupations does not make anyone antisemitic. Protesting Israeli interests and supporting the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign does not make someone antisemitic. Being Jewish is not being Israeli, and we need to stop conflating the two.

And for me, this is where the real danger lies. Calling people antisemitic for questioning Israel creates the real problem of dismissing the rise of antisemitism; it replaces actually doing something to stop the real nastiness with a witch-hunt.

These constant accusations of antisemitism are an attempt to shut down all criticism of apartheid Israel. But no matter what you throw at us, supporters of Palestine wont shut up.

To those of you who are defending the Israeli government, youre on the wrong side of history. Future generations will look at you in horror, wondering how you could have defended such vicious apartheid. Its time to wake up.

Featured image via the International Solidarity Movement, with permission.

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Antisemitism smears are being used to silence criticism of Israel. But supporters of Palestine wont shut up. - The Canary

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Posted By admin on July 2, 2020

Responding to a request to evaluate Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblits role in the Harpaz Affair, Justice Ministry oversight czar Judge David Rozen on Wednesday said if an error needs to be fixed, it is that Mandelblits name should be fully cleared.The Harpaz Affair was mainly a fight between then-defense minister Ehud Barak and then-IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi over who would be seen by the country as Mr. Security, with Mandelblit being involuntarily drawn into the mix from various spin-off issues.Rozen issued his ruling the day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched multiple attacks on Mandelblit for seeking to block him from receiving tycoon donations to pay his legal expenses in his public corruption trial.The oversight czar, who sent former prime minister Ehud Olmert to jail and criticized Mandelblit and the prosecution on a number of issues, is not viewed as being in anyones pocket.Recent reports by Channel 13s Ayala Hasson and leaks from supporters of Netanyahu have called into question whether charges against Mandelblit should have been dropped and whether he improperly tampered with the basis for which his case was closed.However, Rozen said the biggest error to be fixed now is that Mandelblits case should be officially closed because those suspicions have been found to be groundless.In 2015, then-attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein dropped the charges against Mandelblit. But he left open whether the case was being closed due to insufficient evidence, which could have blocked Mandelblit from becoming attorney-general, or because the charges were groundless.The High Court of Justice approved Mandelblit to become attorney-general, but the question of the basis for closing the case was never resolved.After becoming attorney-general, Mandelblits lawyer sent then-state attorney Shai Nitzan a letter asking him to close the case on the basis that the charges were groundless.Though Nitzan and the prosecution generally leaned in this direction, they decided they could not take any action for fear of violating conflict-of-interest principles because Mandelblit was their boss.Despite the conflict of interest, Mandelblit had a right for his name to be cleared, and if the prosecution also believed this, they should have acceded to his lawyers request, Rozen said.Furthermore, despite questions raised about Mandelblits withholding information from the deputy attorney-general for 24 hours during the Harpaz Affair, and despite statements he made to Ashkenazi suggesting he would try to help him during the probe, that the police, Weinstein and the state comptroller at the time saw all of the evidence when the case was closed, Rozen said.

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Prosecution oversight czar: State attorney should have cleared Mandelblit - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 1, 2020

Support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned annexation of much of the occupied West Bank appears to have waned in the US this week, with the Trump administration beset by a barrage of political setbacks.

On Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu's self-imposed deadline, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said it was likely there would be no announcement.

Talks between senior Israeli and Trump administration officials in recent days have not resulted in Mr Netanyahu getting a green light to swiftly annex any West Bank settlements and parts of the strategic Jordan Valley areas that Palestinians want for a future state.

US President Donald Trump initially offered these zones to Israel in a plan unveiled in January, but appears to have cooled on any land grab as he fights the coronavirus pandemic, racial tensions and a new tell-all account of incompetence in the Oval Office.

Jonathan Cristol, an expert on Middle Eastern politics at New York's Adelphi University, said Americans were "completely consumed" by rising Covid-19 deaths and protests against heavy-handed policing as they mull whether to re-elect Mr Trump in November.

"Netanyahu may have thought he could move to annex parts of the West Bank while the world was distracted, but I think he underestimated the pushback from people he believed would be on his side," Mr Cristol told The National.

This includes American diplomats from all political persuasions and congressmen who are otherwise friendly to Israel, he said, as well as Gulf states.

Mr Netanyahu said he planned to swiftly extend Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, as envisaged in Mr Trump's so-called Deal of the Century, under which Israel would control about 30 per cent of the West Bank.

Global opposition has mounted, with Palestinian leaders, the UN, European powers and Arab nations all expressing strong opposition to any annexation of land that Israeli forces captured in a 1967 conflict.

Talks last week between Mr Trump's top national security aides and Israeli officials were described as "productive" by a White House insider, but did not immediately approve Mr Netanyahu's plan to start claiming the disputed territories as soon as July 1.

On Tuesday, progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic lawmakers signed a letter that called for placing conditions on $3.8 billion (Dh13.95bn) of US military aid to Israel if it moves forward with a land grab in the West Bank.

The strongly worded document outlines plans to "work to ensure non-recognition of annexed territories" and to "pursue legislation" to withhold military funding to Israel, though it is not known whether Ms Ocasio-Cortez can muster enough support on Capitol Hill.

Earlier this month, UAE Ambassador to Washington Yousef Al Otaiba published a widely read op-ed in an Israeli newspaper, warning Mr Netanyahu that annexation would hurt Israel's chances of normalising ties with Arab states.

Recent polling data from Shibley Telhami, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of Maryland, suggest that few Americans are focused on Middle East peace efforts, which have been drowned out by a glut of breaking news stories.

Only 29 per cent of 2,400 respondents were either "very familiar" or "somewhat familiar" with Mr Trump's blueprint for peace. Thirty-one per cent of respondents supported annexation, while 48 per cent were opposed. More Republicans backed annexation than Democrats.

Mr Trump, a Republican, is trailing in the polls behind his expected Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the November 3 vote, with coronavirus infections growing across the US south and west and political unrest over repeated police killings of unarmed black people.

Against this backdrop, Mr Netanyahu on Sunday presented his case for annexation in an online meeting of Christians United for Israel an American group of mostly evangelical Christians who are vital to Mr Trump's re-election strategy.

The Israeli leader told the pro-Trump crowd that he wanted to declare sovereignty over parts of the "historic Jewish homeland" that were also an "integral part of Christian identity, part of your heritage and of our common civilisation".

Sunjeev Bery, the executive director of Freedom Forward, which campaigns for looser US-Israeli ties, said the Trump administration was backtracking on Israel's expansion plans in the face of "deep opposition" among US voters.

"Even within Trump's evangelical base, there is significant ambivalence," Mr Bery told The National.

"Given the Trump administration's failure to address the coronavirus pandemic, along with so many other bruising headlines, it's no surprise that the Trump team might be stepping back from a full embrace of Netanyahu's latest brutal plan."

Updated: July 1, 2020 04:14 PM

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Embattled Trump team cools on Netanyahu's annexation bid - The National

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Posted By admin on July 1, 2020

A thousand years ago, King Louis IX ordered the Talmud burned in Paris.

O (Talmud), that has been consumed by fire, seek the welfare of those who mourn for you

These searing words were written by Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (1215-1293), a brilliant Jewish student whod recently travelled from his home in northern Germany to Paris to study a renown yeshiva there, after he witnessed the mass burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1240 on the orders of King Louis IX. A peripatetic king, Louis IX was one of the few Medieval Christian thinkers to willingly engage in debate with Jews - but his legacy is one of pain and suffering for thousands of Jews in France.

He was a splendid knight whose kindness and engaging manner made him popular, the Encyclopedia Britannica describes King Louis IX. Crowned at the age of twelve in 1226, King Louis IX instituted legal reforms across France and often personally judged cases in his magnificent Great Hall in the Palais de la Cite in Paris, where he handed out judgments and punishments to his subjects. A staunchly religious Catholic, King Louis IX was seemingly preoccupied by Jews. He issued the Ordinance of Melun in 1230, forcing Jewish into honest jobs - in reality manual labor. (Forbidden from virtually all professions by the Lateran Council of 1215, life for Frances Jews became more difficult than ever.) He also had an appetite for debating Jews about religion and Judaisms holiest texts.

In the 1230s, King Louis IX finally got his chance to show off his powers of argument and his piety and debate Jews about the very validity of the Jewish faith.

In 1236, Nicholas Donin, a Parisian Jew who had turned his back on the Jewish community and publicly embraced Catholicism, penned a damning letter to Pope Gregory IX. In it, Donin attacked the Talmud, the written discussions of the Oral Law that was given to Moses on Mount Sinai along with the Written Law that makes up the Five Books of Moses. He enumerated 35 complaints about the Talmud, including that it attacked the Catholic Church. If there were no more Talmud, Donin asserted, then Jews would be more likely to abandon their Jewish faith and convert to Christianity, as he himself had done.

Pope Gregory IX took Donins letter seriously, and he sent a letter to all Catholic institutions in France demanding that they seize copies of the Talmud from Jewish communities in their midst. Similar letters were sent to Catholic leaders in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The Talmud was going to be put on trial, the Pope announced, and all copies had to be confiscated before this began.

King Louis IX

The date for taking the precious Talmud volumes from synagogues, homes and Jewish schools was set for Shabbat, March 3, 1240. On that day, officials burst into synagogues across Europe where Jews were gathered for Shabbat services, loading volumes of the Talmud that had been painstakingly written by hand, as well as other Jewish books, away. Any Jew who tried to prevent his or her holy books could be killed with impunity.

Two months later, the Talmud was put on trial. King Louis IX oversaw the arrangements: the proceedings were to be public, and he personally promised to guarantee the personal safety of the Jews who were to be charged with defending the Talmud. However, there were strict ground rules that any Jew defending the Talmud had to adhere to: they could not criticize Christianity in any way. Nothing derogative about Christians or Christian belief could be uttered. Blasphemy, as defined by the Catholic Church, would not be tolerated. The conclusion of this infamous trial, or disputation, was a foregone conclusion.

King Louis IX ordered four prominent rabbis to defend the Talmud: Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, Rabbi Moses of Coucy, Rabbi Judah of Melum and Rabbi Samuel ben Solomon of Chateau-Thierry. They faced off against Nicholas Donin, the Christian convert whod initiated the entire dispute.

The trial raged for days. Rabbi Yechiel led the Jewish team, and even his opponents agreed that he argued brilliantly, given the strict limitations on what he was allowed to say. When Donin accused the Talmud of treating Christian figures less than kindly, Rabbi Yechiel responded that it was possible that two people might have the same name, pointing out that not every Louis born in France is king. His flattery seemed designed to sooth the mercurial monarch, who watched every stage of the debate with great interest.

At one point King Louis IXs temper got the better of him as he followed the intricate arguments. Rabbi Yechiel advanced a particularly effective argument and Louis IX became enraged, shouting that instead of discussing matters of faith with a Jew, a good Christian should plunge his sword into him instead. So much for assurances that the rabbis would be safe. Rabbi Yechiel fled for his life, and the three other rabbis continued the dispute without him. Despite the rabbis best efforts, the trial had been decided before it began. The Talmud was found guilty and condemned to be burned.

King Louis IX oversaw the sentence two years later, in 1242. Officials throughout France had scoured the countryside looking for copies of the Talmud and other Hebrew books, taking them by force from Jews across France. Not a single volume of the Talmud remained in Jewish hands. On the morning of June 17, 1242, 24 wagons piled to the top with thousands of volumes of the Talmud and other Jewish books made their way slowly through Paris to the Place de Greve, near Notre Dame Cathedral. The collection was enormous. At a time when every book was painstakingly written by hand, this represented generations of Jewish learning and work. Its estimated that the wagons held about 10,000 books.

One by one, each of the two dozen wagons disgorged their books, dropping the precious texts onto the ground. By the end of the day, an enormous pile of Jewish writings covered the plaza. A crowd gathered to watch the conflagration as Louis IXs officials set the books on fire.

My tears formed a river that reached to the Sinai desert and to the graves of Moshe and Aharon, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, who was present at the scene, recalled later about that day. Is there another Torah to replace the Torah which you have taken from us? Sages designated a minor fast day in memory of this tragedy: the Friday before the Torah Portion Chukat is read in synagogue. This years fast day in memory of the Talmuds burning is Friday, July 3, 2020.

The Apotheosis of St. Louis, which stands in front of the St. Louis Art Museum, memorializes the city's namesake.

The fast day this year comes amid renewed attention about King Louis IX. After his death, he became a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. The city of St. Louis is named after him and some people are protesting his statue in that city. In addition to putting the Talmud on trial, King Louis IX also signed legislation to expel Jews from France (this was carried out by his successor King Phillip IV) and led the Seventh and Eighth Crusades, which also targeted Jewish communities. His legacy is a complex one.

Yet, as many people around the world debate Louis IXs legacy, some Jews will recall his reign in a much more personal way, fasting and praying and recalling the Trial of the Talmud that he oversaw, and the incalculable loss of Jewish scholarship that resulted.

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When King Louis IX Burned the Talmud - Aish

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Posted By admin on July 1, 2020

This prohibition of separating milk and meat is derived from the verse "Do not cook a kid (gedi) in its mother's milk, which is repeated three times in the Torah. The sages explain that the repetition of the verse teaches us that not only is one forbidden to cook meat and milk together, but one is also forbidden to eat or derive benefit from such a mixture.

Although the verse uses the Hebrew word gedi, which is usually literally translated as kid goat, in this context, the word actually means any young domestic animal. The sages explain that the Torah simply gives an example of a "kid in its mother's milk" because that was common practice in ancient times. In fact, at other times, when the Torah wants to specify a young goat specifically, it uses the term gedi izim,kid of the goats. This implies that at times when the word gedi is used by itself, it does not necessarily refer to just a kid of the goat species.

But what about chicken and other fowl?

As mentioned, "Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk is repeated three times in the Torah. According to one tradition in the Talmud, the reason for the repetition is to include three types of creatures: 1) domesticated animals; 2) non-domesticated animals; and 3) birds.

According to this opinion, cooking or eating birds with dairy is included in the biblical prohibition.

Others, however, are of the opinion that birds are not included. The law follows this tradition but concludes that birds and dairy are nevertheless rabbinically prohibited.

Contrary to popular misconception, the rabbis were not afraid that a piece of chicken has the same appearance as a piece of meat and that people who observe chicken being consumed with milk may think that the people are eating meat.

Rather, their concern was that the kosher dietary laws regarding the preparation of fowl (but not fish) is the same as red meat. Both must be slaughtered and salted properly before they may be eaten.

In light of their similarity in Jewish law, the rabbis were concerned that people may draw wrong conclusions. Here is how Maimonides paints a picture of what these mistakes may look like if chicken and dairy would be permitted:

People may say: Eating the meat of fowl cooked in milk is permitted, because it is not explicitly forbidden by the Torah. Similarly, the meat of a wild animal cooked in milk is permitted, because it is also not explicitly forbidden.

And another may come and say: Even the meat of a domesticated animal cooked in milk is permitted with the exception of a goat.

And another will come and say: Even the meat of a goat is permitted when cooked in the milk of a cow or a sheep. For the verse mentions only its mother, i.e., an animal from the same species.

And still another will come and say: Even the meat of a goat is permitted when cooked in goat's milk as long the milk is not from the kid's mother, for the verse says: its mother.

For these reasons, Maimonides concludes, the sages forbid all meat cooked in milk, even meat from fowl, in order to safeguard the Torahs laws.

If chicken and dairy is forbidden, is there any practical difference whether the prohibition is of rabbinic or biblical origin?

The differentiation would only come into play when deriving benefit from such a mixture. So for example, if one accidentally cooked meat and milk together, he may not even derive benefit from the mixture (so he would not be allowed to feed it to his dog or sell it to a non-Jew). However, if one accidentally cooked (or bought) poultry mixed with dairy, after the fact, he is permitted to derive benefit from it and can feed it to his pet. As always, one should consult with a rabbi regarding any issues of mixtures between meat or fowl and dairy.

Once something was decreed by the Sanhedrin (the Jewish High Court) and accepted as Jewish law, it attained the binding status of a biblical commandment. For the Torah says concerning rabbinic rulings,You are to act according to the word that they tell you from that place that Gd will have chosen; and you are to be careful to fulfill exactly as they instruct you.

The Zohar explains that the same negative spiritual impact that is caused by mixing meat and dairy is also caused by mixing poultry and dairy. The Zohar then goes on to describe the great merit of being careful with the kosher dietary laws in general, and specifically the laws surrounding mixing meat (or poultry) with dairy. It was in this merit that Daniel was saved when he was thrown in the lion's den and Chanayah, Mishael and Azariah where saved when they were thrown into the fiery furnace, as told in the Book of Daniel.

At a time when we need extra protection, taking care to observe the kosher dietary laws is especially pertinent. In this merit, may we all be protected until the time when peace will reign upon the land with the coming of Moshiach. May it be speedily in our days!

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Why Isn't Poultry and Dairy Kosher? - Kosher - Chabad.org

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Posted By admin on July 1, 2020

Over the past several days, the campaign to rid the city of St. Louis of the statue of its namesake (Louis IX, King of France, 1226-70) has gathered steam. Louis IX was honored with sainthood not only in recognition of his crusades against Muslims, but for ordering the confiscation and public burning of 12,000 copies of the Talmud in 1242. To the Church, the Talmud was the root of Jewish evil, which undermined Christianitys interpretations of passages in the Torah. William of Chartres observed of Louis IX, Jews he hated so much that he could not bear to look on them. By removing his statue, Jews will no longer have to look on him.

But the campaign to topple the statue of St. Louis has overlooked the citys statue to another renowned anti-Semite, Pope Pius XII (1939-58), seated grandly before the Pius XII Memorial Library of St. Louis University, a Jesuit school. The conjunction of statue and library is jarring because it was he, as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, secretary of state to his predecessor Pius XI, who said nothing when Nazis burned Jewish and other non-German books all across Germany, in May 1933. Indeed, it was Pacelli who played the central role in drawing up the 1933 Concordat with the Hitler regime, which, according to his biographer John Cornwell, left the Nazis free to resolve the Jewish question and helped seal the fate of Europe, by guaranteeing the Churchs nonintervention. Nor did Pacelli, now Pius XII, protest in October 1943, when the German SS rounded up Jews in the former ghetto of Rome, loaded them in freight cars, and shipped them from the railway station to Auschwitz where Nazis were burning Jews, not Jewish books. In March 2020, the Vatican finally opened its archives, revealing that, in 1942, the pope was able to confirm, from his own sources, the mass murder and massacres of Europes Jews and, exactly 700 years after the burning of the Talmud under the orders of Louis IX, Pius XII chose not to reveal what he knew.

The statue depicts Pius XII blessing the faithful. Clearly, one should not place a blindfold on the image, because he recognized the evil, but one could attach a gag conveying his refusal to speak about it. Or one could add a backdrop of the infamous sign, Arbeit Macht Frei as he looks the other way.

To be sure, St. Louis University is a private school. But Yale has erased the name of John C. Calhoun, an apologist for slavery, from a residential college, and Princeton is expunging the name of Woodrow Wilson from its public policy school, due to [his] racist thinking. Surely, St. Louis University should do as much.

In 2000, a group of colleagues and I confronted some of these issues when our professional association, the Organization of American Historians (OAH), suddenly decided to move its annual meeting from the Adams Mark Hotel in St. Louis, where it was scheduled to be held, to St. Louis University, even at the risk of a loss of $625,000 for breach of contract and even though the website of the new venue featured only the Pius XII statue and the library memorializing him the heart-and-soul of the school.In choosing to change the site of the meeting, the leadership was responding to a threatened boycott against the hotel, organized by Jeffrey Sammons, an African American historian, who was not a member of the OAH, but was slated to speak on a panel.

The boycotters were acting in support of a lawsuit filed by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) against the Adams Mark Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, charging it with discriminating against black college students. As the result of what the Daytona Beach hotel claimed was students destructive acts at the 1999 Black College Reunion there, it was now allegedly requiring participants to wear identifying wristbands, charging them more, etc. Donald Spivey, another leader of the OAH boycott, explained, Im African American. Do you really think that I should step foot into an Adams Mark Hotel, knowing what I know? Another African American historian added, If you dont break the contract, then youre basically sleeping with racists. Justifying the move, David Montgomery, OAH president, stated: We cannot conduct serious historical work if the setting is not conducive to bringingallhistorians together.

In response, I drew up and sent the OAH leadership a Statement of Concerns, signed by several colleagues, which characterized the new site as an unfortunate, exclusionary choice. In deciding to relocate, the leadership argued that All OAH members must be able to participate fully and freely in its conventions.Yet they had elected to move, in effect, from the Adams Mark to the Pius XIIth.We conveyed our discomfort that in order to participate in the meeting, we would now have to speak beneath the crucifixfeatured in every roomwhich, for 2,000 years has been inextricably tied to the Churchs deicide libel against the Jews. We added that we cannot imagine the OAH holding sessions in rooms adorned with [the Confederate] flag. Indeed, while some scholars refused to attend any meeting held anywhere in South Carolina, whose capitol flew the Confederate flag, Sammons and Spivey would not take planes that so much as stop in the state.

Another African American boycotter of the OAH convention at the Adams Mark remarked, Meeting sites are inherently political. And Sammons observed, It would be absolutely hypocritical to take an intellectual position [in ones scholarship] and to go against it in practice. Agreed and that is why, my colleagues and I explained, we opposed moving the meeting to a university whose core institution is dedicated to the memory of Pius XII. We pointed out that as recently as five months ago, the Church was still aggressively promoting [his] canonization and the whitewashing of his record during the Holocaust. Only two years before, the Vatican had issued We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, which, the eminent Israeli historian Robert Wistrich was shocked to find, characterized Pius XII only as an active opponent of Nazi antisemitism, and depicted the Catholic hierarchy, from the Holy See on down, answer[ing] the Nazi war against the Jews with principled and consistent opposition.

Although our statement elicited considerable correspondence between the leadership and us, they would not take any steps toward addressing our needs. Their position was only that they feel extremely grateful to the university; that it share[s] our commitment to racial justice is decisive. That was all that mattered. The executive director, evading our argument, simply noted, We [the leadership] didnt see religious imagery as an obstacle to holding the annual meeting at St. Louis University. And taking a position, startling for a historian, David Montgomery, the president, wrote to me that he see[s] no profit in cataloguing the historic sins of those churches. Sammons, who led the boycott to move the meeting out of the Adams Mark, merely wrote a letter to Montgomery congratulating him he and his group were proud of the manner in which the OAH has responded. By contrast, we were not so proud. It appeared to us that a double-standard was alive-and-well, and indifference to anti-Semitism persisted. Hopefully, by challenging the statue celebrating Pius XII, we can show this is no longer the case.

Dr. Eunice G. Pollack is the author of 'Racializing Antisemitism: Black Militants, Jews, and Israel, 1950 to the Present' and coeditor (with Stephen H. Norwood) of the two-volume 'Encyclopedia of American Jewish History.'

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St. Louis's statue of Pius XII: A double-standard - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on July 1, 2020

Why do certain people find satisfaction in Judaism while others are bored stiff? Why is faith exciting for some and irrelevant for others, a joy for one guy and an absolute burden for the next? One fellow cannot imagine going to work without first putting on histefillinand the other hasn't seen histefillinsince hisbar mitzvah40 years ago. This woman can't wait to get toshuland the other can't wait to get out. Why?

This week we read about the ultimatemitzvahof faith, the Red Heifer. It is a statutory commandment whose reason still remains a mystery. I must admit, to take the ashes of a red heifer and sprinkle them on a person so he may attain spiritual purification is, indeed, rather mind-boggling.

According to theMidrash, the Almighty promisedMosesthat to him He would reveal the secret meaning of this mitzvah, but only after Moses would initially accept it as a Divine decree. If he would first take it on faith, thereafter rational understanding would follow.

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The truth is that there are answers to virtually every question people may have about Judaism. Intelligent skeptics I meet are often amazed that what they had long written off as empty ritual is actually philosophically profound, with rich symbolic meaning. But the skeptic has to be ready to listen. You can hear the most eloquent, intellectual explanation but if you are not mentally prepared to accept that listening may in fact be a worthwhile exercise, chances are you won't be impressed. Once we stop resisting and accept that there is inherent validity, suddenly Judaism makes all the sense in the world.

It is a psychological fact that we can grasp that which we sincerely desire to understand. But if there is a subject in which we have no interest, we will walk into mental blockades regularly. Thesixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, RabbiYosefYitzchakSchneerson, says this explains why some very astute businessman may sit at aTalmudclass and find himself struggling to grasp basic principles of rabbinic reasoning. Why is it that the same person who can concoct brilliant schemes in the boardroom fails to follow straightforward logic in the Talmud class? The answer, says theRebbe, is that this businessman is really not that interested in the subject. But if it was half as important to him as making money, he might well become arosh yeshiva!

So, in the same way thatGdtold Moses that he could come to comprehend the meaning of the Red Heifer but only after he accepted it, similarly today, those who genuinely wish to understand Judaism will succeed, but only if they buy into the product on some level first.

When I was studying inyeshiva, I would always try to attend the annual "Encounter withChabad" weekends for university students. These were organized to expose Jewish students to Judaism over aShabbatand there were lectures by leading Rabbis and religious academics. Once a young man shouted back at the lecturer, "How can you expect me to put ontefillinif I don't believe in Gd?!" The speaker calmly replied, "First put ontefillin, and I promise you will see that you really do believe in Gd."

We all have a Gdly faith inside us. It just needs to be revealed. As illogical as it may sound, if we start by observing a mitzvah, we find that our faith will follow through and begin to blossom. It has been shown to be true again and again. If we are not interested, no answer will be good enough. If we are genuinely searching for truth and we are objective, there are ample and meaningful answers.

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Where There's a Will There's a Why - TAPinto.net

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