Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 15, 2017

Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump at a joint press conference in the White House

A WAVE of anti-Semitic attacks is sweeping the U.S.

On March 2, vandals attacked the third Jewish cemetery in less than two weeks, in one case knocking down or damaging 539 large headstones. Since the beginning of 2017, there have been at least 128 bomb threats at 87 different Jewish community centers and schools across the country.

Despite the increase in bomb threats and vandalism directed at the Jewish community since his inauguration, Donald Trump waited weeks to publicly condemn the attacks, doing so only after a public outcry and criticism from government officials and some prominent Jewish leaders.

That Trump would hesitate to condemn this wave of anti-Semitism should surprise no one, considering that he has not flinched at including in his administration open anti-Semites such as Steve Bannon. On the campaign trail, Trump shared an image of Hillary Clinton with a pile of cash, a Star of David and the words "Most corrupt candidate ever!"

Then there was the time Trump refused to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. And in various press conferences, Trump has suggested that recent anti-Semitic attacks were staged by Jews or Democrats aiming to make his administration look bad.

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SO IT'S not difficult to figure out where Trump stands. But what's shocking--or at least should be--is the warm regard for Trump, despite his obvious embrace of anti-Semitism, among many pro-Israel political figures.

For example, an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz titled "The Five Top Jewish Leaders More Concerned With Threats to Trump Than to U.S. Jews," notes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who "has always prided himself on condemning anti-Semitism wherever and whenever it happens," has been notably silent, appearing to follow Trump's lead on how to talk--or not talk--about the issue.

When asked directly about the surge of anti-Jewish sentiment in the U.S. and Trump's lack of response, Netanyahu said: "There is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state than Donald Trump. I think we should put that to rest."

Signaling the two leaders' special friendship, Netanyahu even issued his own Trumpian tweet in defense of his pal's plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border: "President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea." Netanyahu followed up with emoticons of the Israeli flag and American flag.

Daniel Shek, the former Israeli consul general in San Francisco, described Netanyahu's unusual silence on anti-Semitism as a politically calculated move by Israel's political establishment to derive maximum advantage under the new Trump administration.

Shek told NPR:

For much less than what has been reported is happening in the U.S., there would have been an uproar [in Israel], and rightly so. [But] there is so much enthusiasm in the current Israeli government about the election of Donald Trump. And [the Israeli government] thinks what [Trump] stands for...about Israeli settlements and the Palestinian issue, they don't want to ruffle his feathers in any way, even at the cost of not speaking up against anti-Semitism.

Glossing over anti-Semitism by those who usually don't in order to support Trump extends beyond Israel's borders.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, is generally prepared to pounce on anything that could be labeled anti-Semitism and even things that can't, such as his condemnation of the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

Klein has likewise been notably silent under the new administration. After his organization received a deluge of angry calls from supporters outraged by the ZOA's open support for Bannon, Klein simply stated, "[Bannon is] not an anti-Semite. He's the opposite of an anti-Semite. He's a philo-Semite."

As Haaretz correspondent Chemi Shalev put it:

Trump is being buoyed by a cadre of enablers and apologists, many of them Jews, who are doing their best to make light of the attacks, to ridicule the growing Jewish apprehension and to absolve Trump of any complicity in the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment.

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THE SPECTER of Zionists leaders lining up to support an administration with at best a cavalier attitude regarding its Jewish citizens' safety may appear to undermine the idea of Israel as protector of world Jewry. But such unholy alliances are part and parcel of the Zionist political tradition.

As Annie Levin wrote in her 2002 article "The Hidden History of Zionism," appeasement of anti-Semitism flows "quite logically from Zionism's basic assumptions about Jews. Zionists accepted the 19th century view that anti-Semitism--in fact, all racial difference--was a permanent feature of human nature."

Early Zionists actually partnered with a rabidly anti-Semitic British ruling class to secure funding for their colonial project in Palestine--which served Britain's dual interest of securing an "outpost of civilization against barbarism" that could help Britain dominate the Middle East, while also working to defeat left-wing "International Jews" (such as Karl Marx, Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman, among others).

Churchill understood that revolutionary socialists, organizing against racist pogroms in their own countries, posed a threat to the ruling class's need to divide and rule its population, and so understood the benefit to supporting a "Jewish movement" that could counter this logic of anti-racism and internationalism.

As Uri Avnery wrote in a recent article titled "Trump and Israel's Anti-Semitic Zionists": "The avowed aim of Zionism is to ingather all the Jews in the world in the Jewish state. The avowed aim of the anti-Semites is to expel the Jews from all their countries. Both sides want the same. No conflict."

Later on during the Second World War, Levin explains, the Jewish Agency in Palestine opted to use its resources to finance land settlements in what was then Palestine instead of rescuing tens of thousands of Jews, and perhaps more, because merely saving Jews was not their goal.

David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, made this clear when he famously said, "It is the job of Zionism not to save the remnant of Israel in Europe, but rather to save the land of Israel for the Jewish people and the Yishuv."

This conception of Zionism as a settler-colonial project--and one which could act to the benefit of Western empires--as opposed to a project aimed at saving Jews is the key to understanding how the U.S. government could at once turn away ships carrying hundreds of Jews fleeing the Holocaust, effectively sending them to their deaths, while at the same time sending money and military support to the early Zionists.

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TODAY, TRUMP enthusiasts among the far-right anti-Semites are replaying this dynamic, offering full-throated support to Israel while simultaneously despising Jews.

As Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University, said to the Jewish Daily Forward:

Anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism are varieties of ultra nationalism, or to put it more pejoratively (as it deserves to be put), tribalism. They both presume that the embattled righteous ones need to bristle at, wall off, and punish the damned outsiders. They hate and fear cosmopolitan mixtures. They make a fetish of purity. They have the same soul. They rhyme.

Given this history, the reasons for Trump's support within Israel's hard-right establishment aren't so difficult to decipher. They flow from a recognition that the same ethno-nationalist chauvinism Trump promotes has served as the lifeblood of their tightening grip on political power over three decades.

They cheer Trump because Trump's every "success" validates the path that they traveled long ago as they nakedly defended and extended Israeli occupation and apartheid, continually shifting the political spectrum rightward to the point where today, there is open talk of annexation of the West Bank, which would have been unthinkable chatter a few years ago.

So while the Israeli government usually leaps to condemn instances of anti-Semitism, such as the 2015 attacks in Paris--and uses such attacks as "opportunities" to call for Jews of the "diaspora" to return "home" to Israel--if Zionists are put in a position where they must either condemn anti-Semitism or ignore it to support a potential ethno-nationalist partnership that will further their own colonial project, they will choose the latter.

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ISRAEL'S ALLIANCE with a U.S. administration that includes openly anti-Semitic figures and gives confidence to far-right white supremacists is exposing the ideological hollowness of Israel's claim to be the champion of the Jewish people.

As one Haaretz opinion article concluded, "I've got news for Bibi [Netanyahu]. The 6 million Jews of America are under threat. When Israel can't be bothered to support them at a time like this, no one should recognize Israel as a Jewish state."

But if Zionism isn't a force than can defeat anti-Semitism, what is?

Trump's attacks on all of us are themselves creating opportunities for solidarity and joint struggles--such as Muslims supporting Jews when they are attacked and Jews supporting Muslims when it's the reverse.

These initiatives are important because in practice, the fight against anti-Semitism is increasingly being tied to the fight against Islamophobia--since both attacks emanate from the same right-wing bigots who have been emboldened by Trump's election.

But we can't fundamentally challenge Trumpism at home if our movement accommodates the racism of Trump's imperial partners abroad against Palestinians. We can't fight against a wall being built in this country without opposing the racist wall that exists in Palestine.

This means we will have to win people who want to fight anti-Semitism to not only joining forces with other anti-racist movements, but in particular to the need to support Palestinian liberation. This will require differentiating between real acts of anti-Semitism and what the ruling class and Zionists would like us to believe is anti-Semitism, but which are actually efforts toward Palestinian solidarity.

The need to connect the fight against anti-Jewish racism with struggles against other forms of racism was understood by many Jews before the Second World War.

Socialist and radical Jews in Russia and Germany understood the need to fight racism in all its forms. They understood that their real enemy was the capitalist system that relies on sowing racist divisions in order to divide and rule, not "the gentiles," as Zionists tried to argue in an attempt to win Jews to support their imperialist project to colonize Palestine.

In his book Zionism: False Messiah, Nathan Weinstock documents how Jews were disproportionately represented in the socialist parties of Russia and Europe at the height of these movements because socialists put the fight against oppression at the center of their revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

Now is the time to rediscover this history and rededicate ourselves to forging solidarity from below--in place of the toxic brew of Jewish and white ethno-separatism--in order to challenge racism wherever it shows itself as well as the system that needs it and breeds it.

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Zionists and anti-Semites unite? - Socialist Worker Online

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Posted By admin on March 15, 2017

Colonel (Res.) Jonathan Baransky announced Tuesday that he would submit his candidacy for head of the Jewish Home party and contest Naftali Bennett for the leadership position.

Baransky, a resident of Eli in Samaria, is married to Liora and a father of five. He left the army two and a half years ago after 25 years of combat service. Among other roles he served as Deputy Commander of the Gaza IDF division and director of staff at the Interdisciplinary Officer's Training school as well as commanding the Negev brigade and the Netzah Yehuda battalion.

During the previous elections Baransky supported the Yahad party headed by Eli Yishai.

"In the last few months I have been touring around the country and meeting with Jewish Home voters in every field of endeavor as well as seeing the man in the Israeli street. Everywhere I here the same tone: the connection is missing. The leadership of the Jewish Home party is detached from its voters," said Baransky.

"I decided to compete for head of the Jewish Home party and the political leadership of Religious Zionism in order to present a connected leadership, one that is in touch with the voter base, in touch with the values of Religious Zionism, attached to the people of Israel, the land of Israel and the Torah of Israel," he added, alluding to claims that Bennett does not emphasize the religious ideology of the party, to which his voter base remains loyal, because of his plans to be prime minister one day.

"I come with a great sense of mission. I was raised and educated all my life on Religious Zionist values," said Baransky, adding, however, that Naftali Bennett had brought a new spirit to the Religious Zionist community and placed it in its appropriate position in the national leadership.

"For this he should be congratulated. However the party now faces a historic crossroads and must decide whether to lose its unique character and relinquish its values or reconnect to voters and take its place as a strong Religious Zionist party which represents the values of Religious Zionism in education, economics, welfare, law, maintenance of the entire land of Israel and in all other facets of life. We need a connected leadership.I call on all those connected to the path of Religious Zionism to join me."

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Jonathan Baransky to contest Jewish Home leadership - Arutz Sheva

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Posted By admin on March 15, 2017

In Irish writer Charles Maturins 1820 Gothic novel, a young student named John Melmoth discovers his devilish ancestor was a mythological wanderer.

Using the stereotype of the Jewish biblical character who persecuted Jesus on way to his crucifixion, in the Anglican clergymans Melmoth the Wanderer, the ancestor sold his soul to Satan in return for 150 years of life. Now, he regrets his pact and roams the earth in search of someone who will take his place.

In its day, Maturins Wandering Jew character was so influential that it is believed to have been the template for Irish author Bram Stokers Dracula. This fascinating little-known fact and many other tidbits can be gleaned by visitors to the traveling exhibition, Representations of Jews in Irish Literature, which has shown at locations throughout Ireland.

On a day this past February, an Irish 5th Year class from St Angelas School, Ursuline Convent visited the exhibition at the Luke Wadding Library at the Waterford Institute of Technology. The students spent time reading the texts and looking at the images on the panels organized by chronology and theme.

Many, like 16-year-old Orla Charles, were most excited to discover that the biblical Wandering Jew was the inspiration for Stokers Dracula.

The biblical Wandering Jew was the inspiration for Bram Stokers Dracula

I had no idea about any of the writings about Jews that contributed to things like Dracula. I thought that was so interesting, she said.

But the students also learned there were references to Jews in Medieval Miracle Plays, Early Modern epic poetry and Picaresque, and 18th century drama and satire. They saw examples of Jews in 19th century Anglo-Irish Big House, Irish Gothic, and historical fiction, and also in religious and political poetry. They saw that Jews figured in Irish literature consistently again throughout the 20th century.

Students from St Angelas School, Ursuline Convent view Representations of Jews in Irish Literature exhibition at Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland, February 2017 (Jennifer Bolger/WIT)

This St. Patricks Day, as the Irish worldwide celebrate Irelands national pride and storied past, the exhibition is now set to cross the Atlantic for its American debut in New York next month.

Unlike in the US, where the Jewish contribution to arts and letters is well documented, the extensive role Jews have played in Irish literature since the Middle Ages came as a huge surprise even to the academics involved in the research project that gave rise to the exhibition, Representations of Jews in Irish Literature, which has travelled around the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland since its inauguration at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin in June 2016.

Several years ago, Professor Pl Dochartaigh, who has a background in German-Jewish literature and history, came across references to Jews in the Irish literary record. Now at Galways National University of Ireland, Dochartaigh was at the time dean of the faculty of arts at Ulster University. Intrigued by his findings, he employed Dr. Barry Montgomery to help him search for more references.

Originally, Dochartaigh and Montgomery, like most of their countrymen, were familiar only with Leopold Bloom, the Jewish fictional protagonist of James Joyces Ulysses. Little did they know that Bloom was just the tip of a proverbial iceberg that would stretch back as far as the famous Annals of Inisfallen, the manuscript chronicling the medieval history of Ireland dating to the 11th century.

Curator Dr. Marie-Claire Peters at Representation of Jews in Irish Literature exhibition launch at Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, June 2016. (Courtesy)

The material uncovered proved most intriguing from a literary historical point of view, as references to Jews appeared consistently throughout each era from Medieval Gaelic literature through to the present day across all genres, Montgomery said.

The researchers were intrigued by two main questions. They wanted to know what this body of references signified from an Irish literary historical point of view, especially given the consistently small Jewish population of Ireland throughout the centuries (never more than 5,500). And they were intrigued as to why has such a body of literary work and references remained undetected for so long.

Dochartaigh partnered with Dr. Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, a professor in Irish literature in Ulster and secured a 400,000 ($487,000) grant from Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK for a three-year project that would produce a book, exhibition and conference. Kennedy-Andrews unfortunately died not long after the project began, and his role in he project was assumed by Dr. Don MacRaild, a professor of Irish and British History, and Dr. Frank Ferguson a senior lecturer in Irish and Ulster-Scots writing.

The team looked at over 1,000 books for Jewish writers and references about Jews

Dr. Marie-Claire Peters, a research associate in the School of English and History at Ulster University, joined the team when it was time to curate and coordinate the exhibition based on the accumulated research.

The team looked at over 1,000 books for Jewish writers and references about Jews, and I ended up distilling their findings down to 12 exhibition panels, Peters told The Times of Israel.

For Peters, this project afforded her not only a first-time exploration of the topic of Jews and Jewish literature, but also an opportunity to meet Jewish people for the first time.

Not many Irish people know Jews. Ive met Irish Jews for the first time in my life at some of the exhibition launch events weve had in the past year that tells you everything right there, she said.

There were few positive portrayals of Jews in Irish literature prior to the 20th century. Jews were for the most part presented as a negative stereotype, or at the very least as the other. As Jews grew in number and became more integrated into Irish society in the late 19th century and early 20th century, their portrayal became more positive.

Jewish writers also began to contribute to literary life in Ireland, not surprisingly by writing about their Irish-Jewish hyphenate identity. Dochartaigh and the other researchers were aware of more contemporary Irish-Jewish writers such as David Marcus and Ronit Lentin, but they were preceded by others dating back to the 19th century.

Irish-Jewish poet Simon Lewis (Courtesy)

Rosa Solomons, mother of Estella Solomons (a well known artist and member of Cumann na mBan, an Irish republican womens paramilitary organization) was a poet. The novelist, Julia Frankau, was mentored by George Moore, a prominent figure in the Irish Literary Revival. The Dublin-based Lithuanian immigrant, Hannah Berman, also participated in the Literary Revival, and published a number of her short stories in Irish literary magazines, Montgomery said.

Joseph Edelstein published his 1908 notorious novel, The Moneylender about an unscrupulous Jewish moneylender practicing in Dublin, causing much upset to the local Jewish community. E. R. Lipsett (writing under the pseudonym, HaLitvack) composed articles examining Irish-Jewish identity, as did A. J. (Con) Leventhal, friend to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. The poet, Leslie Daiken, also engaged in matters of Irish Jewish identity, he said.

Its in my heritage. I cant run away from it and I wouldnt want to

With only between 500 and 2,000 (depending on whos doing the counting) Jews remaining in Ireland today, there are not many Jewish writers left. However, two works were published in the last year by young Irish-Jewish writers. One was Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan, a novel about Jewish immigrants to Ireland by Ruth Gilligan. The other was a 2015 Hennessy Prize-winning book of poetry by Simon Lewis, also about the immigrant experience.

Lewis, 38, read from his poetry collection, titled, Jewtown, at the Waterford launch event for the Representations of Jews in Irish Literature exhibition in early February. Lewis, who grew up in Dublin but now lives in Carlow, told The Times of Israel that he doesnt personally know any other Jewish writers in Ireland. He isnt very involved in the Jewish community and didnt start out planning to write poetry about Jewish immigrants in Cork over a century ago.

The poems began as a prompt from my writing group mentor. Im fifth generation Irish. My great-great-grandparents came to Cork from Lithuania in 1883. Its in my heritage. I cant run away from it and I wouldnt want to, Lewis said.

Invitation to wedding of Jacob Lappin and Fanny Diamond in Waterford, Ireland on November 14, 1894 (Courtesy)

Local Irish-Jewish heritage has been highlighted at each of the exhibitions host venues so far. In Waterford, Kieran Cronin, developmental librarian at the Luke Wadding Library, delved into the story of Jacob Lappin and Fanny Diamond, the first Jewish couple to wed in Waterford to create a special exhibition displayed alongside the panels produced by Peters.

Cronin pieced together Jacob and Fannys history with the help of Valerie Lapin Ganley, the couples great-granddaughter living in California and the producer of Shalom Ireland, a film about how Irish Jews participated in the creation of both the Irish Republic and the State of Israel.

Cronin collected documents ranging from Jacob and Fannys November 14, 1894 wedding invitation to ships manifests to WWI army service awards and medals rolls tracing their lives from their births in Russia through their immigrations to Ireland, the US and the UK.

The students from St. Angelas School welcomed the opportunity to learn about the historic Waterford Jewish community, which peaked nearly a century before they were born at 62 members in 1911.

I never knew that there were a lot of Jews once in Waterford. Sixty-two thats such a huge number because you really never hear about it nowadays, said 17-year-old Ruth Cullinane.

Representations of Jews in Irish Literature opens at Columbia University in New York City on April 4.

Students from St Angelas School, Ursuline Convent view 'Representations of Jews in Irish Literature' exhibition at Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland, February 2017 (Jennifer Bolger/WIT)

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Dracula the 'Wandering Jew,' and other unknown facets of Irish lit in NY-bound exhibition - The Times of Israel

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Posted By simmons on March 15, 2017

Vandals wrote Jews did 9/11 in the dirt of the softball field at Marblehead High School last week. Courtesy Photo

By Gayla Cawley

MARBLEHEAD Town officials and police have condemned another act of anti-Semitic vandalism, this one involving a conspiracy theory about the countrys deadliest terrorist attack.

Last Thursday, Aug. 18, at about 6:40 a.m., police were called about a rock thrown through the window of Marblehead High School Principal Daniel Bauers office, according to Marblehead Police Chief Robert Picariello. He said the vandalism occurred sometime between 5 p.m. the prior day and the morning police responded. While there, the custodian alerted police to something in the back of the school, he added.

When police made their way to the softball field, they found Jews did 9/11 spelled out on the dirt, Picariello said. That incident could have occurred anytime after the rain that occurred on Aug. 16 to the morning the broken window was reported, he said.

I think its horrible, Picariello said. I dont think it reflects the sentiment of the town at all and I think its disgusting.

The announcement of the incident at Wednesdays Board of Selectmen meeting comes in the wake of a reception held by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) honoring its North Shore supporters at an Atlantic Avenue home on Monday. The event was attended by Gov. Charlie Baker, one of the evenings speakers, and featured dialogue about prior anti-Semitic incidents in Marblehead and other North Shore communities.

Last year, students in a Marblehead High School class configured pennies in the shape of a swastika, an emblem of the Nazi party, took a photo and posted it on Snapchat. Swastikas were also scrolled on some basketball courts in multiple town parks within the past year, Picariello said.

In nearby Swampscott last April, the symbols were chalked on a Pleasant Street sidewalk, and another swastika was scrawled in the parking lot of the middle school.

There are no suspects in last weeks vandalism and no arrests have been made. There is no way of knowing the age group of the vandals, as it is a heavily traveled area, Picariello said. The words were raked out and easily removed after they were found, he added.

I think its a community effort to combat hate, he said. We are no place for hate community and we take that very seriously.

Marblehead School Superintendent Maryann Perry said there is nothing indicating that the act was committed by a Marblehead student, as the field is fully accessible to the public.

Marblehead Public Schools, like the town of Marblehead, condemns this type of conduct in the strongest possible terms and vigorously enforces school rules against hate speech at all times, Perry said in an email. We regret that someone apparently has chosen to use Marblehead High School property to perpetrate this offensive act and hope they realize the harmful impact of his or her conduct and come forward to admit it.

John McGinn, Marblehead town administrator, said the community condemns the incident and it saddens everyone that something this this could happen. He said the town has had a long-term commitment to trying to eradicate similar incidents, including establishing the Marblehead Task Force Against Discrimination 27 years ago.

We like to think of Marblehead as a no place for hate and were not going to tolerate this type of thing, McGinn said.

The Anti-Defamation League has also condemned the incident. Robert Trestan, ADL regional director, said the inscriptions are a step above hateful graffiti.

This shameful act of hate goes beyond simply being offensive, Trestan said in a statement. The perpetrators were promoting the pernicious conspiracy theory claiming that Jews were responsible for 9/11. This type of attack warrants condemnation by the entire community.

More than a decade after 9/11, conspiracy theories claiming that Jews were responsible for the attacks continue to circulate on the Internet and amongst those who harbor anti-Semitic views. The league works to dispel those rumors, according to an ADL statement.

In light of anti-Semitic incidents in town, the ADL has partnered with Marblehead High School to implement an Anti-Bias Education program this year.

We remain extremely concerned by the surge in anti-Semitic incidents this year, especially in schools and we will continue to partner with local communities, school districts and law enforcement, Trestan said in a statement. We applaud the Marblehead Police Department for addressing this incident with the seriousness and speed we have come to expect from them, and hope that the perpetrators of this incident will be brought to justice.

Gayla Cawley can be reached at gcawley@itemlive.com. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley.

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Anti-Defamation League | Itemlive

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Posted By simmons on March 15, 2017

The Los Angeles Anti-Defamation Leagues annual law enforcement awards for combating hate crimes on Tuesday shone a light on how some of those honored themselves once faced fear and persecution.

Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Anh Truong accepted a prize on behalf of prosecutors, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for driving a white supremacist gang out of several San Fernando Valley homes. But his acceptance speech quickly turned to his refugee past.

Truong explained that he fled Vietnam on a tiny boat 39 years ago, long before he helped prosecute the Peckerwoods gang, known for trafficking guns and drugs from homes adorned with swastikas and photos of Adolf Hitler, and for violent anti-immigrant rhetoric.

As a young boy, his parents awakened him in the middle of the night to flee retribution from the Vietnamese government. He lost his sandals in the flight, he said.

He hid beneath a fishing net as he and his family were smuggled out of the country in a boat. Once at sea, the boat engine failed, and they drifted for days until a U.S. vessel picked them up, he said.

The America he loves accepted his family with open arms. When we talk about protecting the vulnerable its not a decision or a choice, its a duty. In this America we protect everyone, Truong told hundreds of Southern California law enforcement leaders who gathered at the Skirball Cultural Center for the Sherwood Prize for Combating Hate. His emotional speech triggered a standing ovation.

Truong comments come as the Trump administration is seeking to enforce tougher illegal immigration policies, restricting immigrants from six Muslim countries and curtailing refugees from many war-torn territories.

The ADL awards are named for Helene and Joseph Sherwood. Joseph Sherwood, age 100, was on hand for the ceremonies. The awards also honored FBI agents, federal prosecutors and Orange County law enforcement officials who investigated, detained and prosecuted two Anaheim men who were on the verge of traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State terrorist organization. The two men are each serving 30 years in prison.

El Cajon police Officer Louie Michael was among three individuals honored for their efforts to combat hate. The trilingual Michael was born in Iraq and grew up in a refugee camp in Turkey before immigrating to U.S.

Michael is a lifeline to the Middle Eastern population of San Diego County, said David Miyashiro, Cajon Valley superintendent of schools. When you know your neighbors, there is only room for love. No place for hate, Miyashiro said,

Also honored were Asst. U.S. Atty. Cindy Ciprianis and Yadira Perez, a Riverside County sheriffs deputy who spotted the 2015 firebombing of the Islamic Society of Coachella Valley.

Perez was off-duty in her car nine days after the San Bernardino terror attack when she saw the Coachella mosque burst into flames. She reported the fire to colleagues and began trailing the suspect. Carl James Dial was apprehended and convicted of arson with a special allegation of a hate crime and is serving six years in prison.

It was my job to serve and protect, and that is exactly what I did, Perez told the audience Tuesday.

Iman Reymundo Nour said without her quick action, the mosque could have been destroyed and the people inside seriously injured. After a year, the building has been completely restored, he said.

I want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts, he told Perez.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimes

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'It's a duty' to protect the vulnerable: Anti-Defamation League's Sherwood Awards honor law enforcement for ... - Los Angeles Times

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Posted By simmons on March 15, 2017

With reports of hate crimes on the rise across the country, the Anti-Defamation League is planning to launch a facility in the heart of Silicon Valley to track and monitor harassment and hate speech online.

The organisations CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, announced at SXSW on Sunday that the ADL received a six figure donation from the Omidyar Network investment firm to build the command center just south of San Francisco. In a statement, the company said it will work to curb hate speech against the Jewish community and other minority groups in the country.

Now more than ever as anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other hatreds have exploded online, its critical that we are bringing best-in-class technology and resources to this fight. Thats why we will build this center in Silicon Valley, and why we are so grateful to Omidyar Network for providing seed funding for this effort, he said in a statement.

This is a natural extension of the cyber hate work ADL has been doing for decades and builds on the new presence we established last year in the Valley to collaborate even closer on the threat with the tech industry.

In recent months, Jewish Community Centers across the country have received approximately 48 bomb threats. Meanwhile, a single centerin Canada has received more than 60 bomb threats in January alone.

While speaking to CNN, he stressed the importance of tech companies like Twitter andFacebook in the fight against hate speech. "We've got to work hand-in-hand with these companies," he said, before placing some of the responsibility on the President Trump to set an example.

"When faced with a spike of anti-Semitism like we've never seen before, we haven't seen a firm, fierce and repeated response," he told the network. "It is a very unusual moment in time, and unusual moments in time demand leadership."

"Swastika graffiti was happening long before Donald Trump, what is different is the pace and the pattern, he continued. What is different is the tempo and the velocity that we've seen in the last several months."

Brittan Heller, a former Justice Department official who leads the organisations anti-cyberhate campaigns, will lead the new centeras its founding director when it opens shop in three to six months.

So proud to be a part of this effort and leading this Center, she wrote on Twitter on Sunday. Thanks for investing to end cyberhate.

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Anti-Defamation League to launch Silicon Valley center to combat cyberhate - The Independent

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2017

Black Lives Movement protest by the group ATLisRising. (Photo: Steve Eberhardt)

There is no space for Zionism in any movement which seeks to alleviate even an iota of oppression from marginalized people. There is no space, no room should be made, no platform to be held, for Zionism, which is diametrically opposed to intersectional feminism, both in theory and praxis.

Zionism has oft been used as a tool by the white supremacist bourgeoisie to stifle and critique liberation movements, but over the past three years, weve seen a rise in this tactic, coinciding with the rise of the Movement for Black Lives. The tactic is divisive and impactful because the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a contemporary political event that is rarely taught, and when it is it tends to come from biased, falsified sources.

On July 8, 2016, of last year, an article by Rabbi Dan Dortch, As a Rabbi, I Cant Support Black Lives Matter When They Call to Boycott Apartheid Israelwas published, blasting the Movement for Black Lives. Specifically, the article was pointed at ATLisReady, a collective of Atlanta organizers who fight for local racial justice, for including solidarity to the Palestinian struggle in their demands. In the ATLisReady demands, it states:

The people demand a complete overhaul of Atlanta Police Departments (APD) training institutions, and instead utilize models based on de-escalation rather than militarized tactics that aid or perpetuate mass incarceration. We demand a termination to APDs involvement in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, that trains our officers in Apartheid Israel.

This portion of the demands is in reference to the specific occurrence of Atlanta police officers being trained by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). However, it fits into a larger context of demands by the national Movement for Black Lives Matter calling attention to Israeli Apartheid. This shows a rebirth in the trend of Black and Palestinian solidarity, which is rooted in a historical solidarity over many decades.

At the crux of Rabbi Dortchs article he states, Black Lives Matter demonstrated an incredible ignorance of history and present circumstance that dictates that these conflicts should not be linked whatsoever. Not only is this statement rooted in notions of anti-Blackness which assume Black organizers lack historical substance and context on the subject of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it also minimizes the struggles of Black people internationallyincluding those living in Israel.

Recognizing the patterns of racial discrimination, land occupation, and displacement throughout the Black diaspora in history, we as a collective of Black organizers also understand how the current placement of Israel and its actions stand as a historical continuum of apartheid epistemology. This apartheid epistemologyor apartheid thought structure and perception perpetuates a hierarchy/superiority based on systemic segregation and discrimination based on race and/or ethnicity. This epistemological framework is violent, and allows for the justification of violence against the Palestinian people, as similar epistemologies allowed for the justification of Jim Crow laws.

As Black activists and organizers, we lend solidarity and support to the Indigenous communities of this country, to those who face gendered violence in the Congo, to the humans disappeared by the Mexican government, and to all oppressed abroad. It is in this same vein of international solidarity that we give our support to the Palestinian people, and recognize Zionism as antithetical to our own liberation.

What I experienced there I have never experienced before, said Nelini Stamp, one of the many Black activists who have gone on delegations to Palestine. On the streets of Hebron, there were small metal canisters everywhere. I picked up one and immediately recognized the familiar CSI logo [Combined Systems, Inc.]. This name was very familiar to me because[of] my time in the streets of Ferguson after the large clashes with police there, the same canisters with the same CSI logo attached were everywhere. I was immediately thrown back into remembering Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York, and all of the places in my country where mass amounts of Black people have been hit with pepper spray, tear gassed, and thrown into jail all for simply demanding our rights.

You see, these experiences are all too common for us and cannot be ignored. Black activists have been extending solidarity towards Palestine for decades, as James Baldwin famously stated that Israel was created for the salvation of the Western interests. When we were protesting throughout Ferguson, it was Palestinians who innovatively used social media to give us tips for combatting the militarized police state. When Nelson Mandela spoke of collective struggles, he spoke of the Palestinian struggle, stating we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. Angela Davis states in her latest book Freedom Is A Constant Struggle, Just as we say never again to the fascism that produced the Holocaust, we should also say never again with respect to apartheid in South Africa, and in the Southern U.S. That means, first and foremost, that we will have to expand and deepen our solidarity with the people of Palestine.

In Rabbi Dortchs original article, he attempts to weaponize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a device to attempt to silence Black perspectives on Palestine, stating: Unfortunately, the Black Lives Matter Movements misguided steps have proven that their way is not the way of Dr. King, however, we understand the lack of historical clarity in which Rabbi Dortch speaks. Conveniently ignoring Dr. Kings strong stance against militarism, both domestically and abroad, Dortch again assumes Black organizers lack knowledge of one of our own civil rights heroes by attempting to implore him as a respectability tactic.

Not only does this attempt to weaponize Dr. King expose the anti-Blackness inherent to Zionism, it exposes Dortchs own lack of perception of Dr. King. In 1967 Dr. King stated, When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Surely, one can see Israels racial profiling of Arabs as inherently racist, and their contempt for Palestinian lives based on the violently militarized occupation zones as extreme materialism and militarism intertwined.

Several people within the Jewish community have claimed to support Black lives, yet hold solidarity over our heads as a wavering privilege. That we as Black people cannot speak on or act against injustices in the world without being threatened by the removal of allyship; that whenever Black people rally against inherently racist systems we have one of greatest liberators, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., poorly weaponized against us, is anti-Blackness masquerading around as conditional solidarity.

Recently, the use of Zionism to tactically stifle liberation movements was implored when the New York Times published an article titled, Does Feminism Have Room For Zionism? The piece, written by journalist Emily Shire, boasts about being a proud feminist who should not have to sacrifice my Zionism for the sake of my feminism an interestingly oxymoronic statement which ignores the reality that Zionism is directly antithetical to feminism. If we are to have an international feminist movement, one that is inclusive of intersectional politics that fully reject white supremacy, how can one call for the inclusion of a political position which advocates for and enacts violence against Palestinian women?

Shires article comes just one day before International Womens Day and the International Womens Strike aimed at targeting the ways in which white supremacist capitalism exploit women was set to take place. The placement of this article in the New York Times, one of the largest platforms in the world, as well as a day before the International Womens Strike is tactically decisive. As the article continues, Shire lays the groundwork for a feminist politic rooted in white feminism, one that is conditional in its solidarity and centered on securing her own privileges of liberation of all women.

She states: This insistence can alienate feminists, like myself, who dont support all of the causes others believe should be part of feminism. For example, some who identify as feminists may not agree with the organizers of the International Womens Strike when they call for a $15 minimum wage. Nor do all feminists necessarily join the strike organizers in supporting the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.

This passage is important in order to recognize a weaponizing tactic Shire employs throughout the entire article: she equates feminism solely to an identity, rather than a political theory and mode of being rooted in the liberation of women. The title feminist is not a mere identity or title to be worn for societal appreciation, rather a framework of theoretical praxis concerned with achieving the social, political and economic equality of the sexes, according to feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Any self-proclaimed feminists who do not align in solidarity with womens call for a $15 minimum wage increase and an end to the settler-colonial violence occurring at Standing Rock are strung on an intoxicatingly white strand of feminism, one that ignores the material realities of Black, Latino, and Indigenous women who make the lowest wages in this country and are actively having their land stolen.

Similar to the positioning of Dr. King that Dortch attempted to use against the Movement for Black Lives, Shires attempt to conflate Zionism to an identity similar to Blackness, or immigrant status, or any other oppressed-identity descriptor is not accidental. In ignoring the reality that her Zionist politic is by choice, perpetuating the notion that it is inherent to her being, she draws upon the sympathy of those who rest on identity politics as a cardinal framework for resistance. This, again, is tactical.

An interesting passage of Shires article is the criminalization of Rasmea Odeh, in which Shire falls into Islamophobic tropes, using buzzwords like terrorist, concern, and criminalall within the same paragraph. Unsurprisingly, Shire uses the U.S. State Department as a metric of terrorist-validity, stating that Rasmea Odeh is a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which they list as a terrorist organization. However, using the U.S. as a metric of validity and morality falls flat when you consider that the people like Black Panther Party, Nelson Mandela, and feminist icon herself Angela Davis have all been placed on the State Departments terrorist lists. One exposes their own limits in relation to the history of anti-racism movements to assume pleading with the same morality as the U.S. is a point worth making.

Regarding the question of if there is space within different liberation movements for Zionism, we must take into account what Zionism brings with it. We must take into account that if we are to build a Movement for Black Lives which is anti-imperialist, anti-settler colonialist, anti-racist, and pro-feminist, we have to eliminate the very concept of Zionism from our spaces. And if we are to really understand feminism as an interwoven political theory of anti-oppression, one that synthesizes the struggles of women from the Congo to Compton, from Iraq to Ramallah, then we can then understand Zionism as antithetical to feminism. Zionism, which encompasses the white supremacist, Islamophobic, and Queerphobic ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people, is diametrically opposed to any movement rooted in feminism or liberation for Black lives.

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No space for Zionism - Mondoweiss

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Posted By simmons on March 13, 2017

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, author Emily Shire asked, in relation to the International Womens Day Strike that included a call for the decolonization of Palestine, if the feminist movement has room for Zionists like herself. She went on to explain: I identify as a Zionist because I support Israels right to exist as a Jewish state.

What is Shire actually saying? Some history is required to answer that question. An understanding of Zionism cannot be separated from an understanding of the Nakba (the catastrophe in Arabic), which refers to the expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes during the establishment of Israel in 1948. The history of the Nakba has been thoroughly documented, including by Palestinian, Israeli, and other historians.

I know about Zionism from my own relationship with it. I had some serious unlearning to do. When I was younger, I, too, identified as a Zionist (a socialist feminist Zionist) until I realized that my image of Zionism as the Jewish national liberation movement was seriously misguided. Instead, I learned that what had been done and was still being done to Palestinians in the name of Zionism was theft of land and denial of a peoples right to freedom and national liberation. It was about the privileging of those who were Jewish over Palestinians. This was not just about Israels military occupation of Palestinian lands that began in 1967, but was fundamentally about what happened before and during the creation of the State, and what continues to happen today.

In Israel, as well as in the U.S., the Nakba is often disregarded or denied altogether. Instead, the focus is on the creation of Israel as a haven for Jews, completely ignoring the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people.

But the Nakba is not only about the past; it is ongoing. Palestinian women, men, and children continue to be pushed off their lands and their homes and denied their basic freedom and rights. Israeli apartheid is woven into the fabric of society, and it is taking brutal forms. Home demolitions, ongoing construction of settlements, land confiscation, arrests, torture of prisoners, and military assaults are just some of what Palestinian families endure on a daily basis, not to mention lack of access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment, and the right to live with dignity.

What Shires feminism seems to ignore is that Palestinian women are forced to give birth at checkpoints; their homes are bulldozed because permission to build is denied from racist Israeli authorities; Palestinians face systemic discrimination wherever they are living; and mothers and fathers live in fear that Israeli soldiers or settlers will injure, imprison, or kill their children.

Zionism and Israel have always afforded preferential treatment to Jewish womenand menover Palestinian women and men, in all aspects of life. This is the Zionism and the Jewish state Shire says is consistent with her feminism.

Instead of asking whether Zionists have a place in the feminist movement, perhaps the question that Shire should be asking is: How can someone who considers herself a supporter of feminism, which is a movement for justice and liberation that challenges patriarchal power and all forms of oppression, also consider herself a supporter of Zionism, a movement that denies the basic values of equality and fairness.

The womens day strike was intentionally and critically rooted in an anti-colonial feminism that is liberatory and multidimensional and that has as its foundation a deep commitment to social transformation and to resisting the decades long economic inequality, racial and sexual violence, and imperial wars abroad. If Shire has an interest in being part of such an inspiring movement, rather than supporting Zionism, she might want to stand with the Palestinian-led grassroots movement for justice and with the growing number of women around the globe who are committed to equal rights for all peoples living in Palestine and Israel. What could be more feminist than that?

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Zionism, the Nakba, and Feminism - Huffington Post

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Posted By simmons on March 13, 2017

Monday March 13, 2017 Israel Hayom As for women in the military, religious Zionist girls have been enlisting in ever-growing numbers in recent years, and not only the ones from the more liberal factions of the sector. In fact, the phenomenon is even more prevalent among the more ... and more »

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Monday March 13, 2017 - Israel Hayom

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Posted By simmons on March 13, 2017

TechCrunch

Omidyar Network and the Anti-Defamation League are launching a center to combat cyberhate TechCrunch With hate crimes reportedly on the rise across the country and online, the Anti-Defamation League is setting up a new outpost in Silicon Valley, backed by the Omidyar Network, to look at ways to use technology to fight back. Racially and religiously ... Anti-Defamation League to launch Silicon Valley center to combat cyberhateThe Independent ADL To Combat Online Hate From Heart Of Silicon ValleyForward ADL takes fight against online hate to Silicon ValleyCNET USA TODAY -AZFamily -Jerusalem Post Israel News all 9 news articles »

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Omidyar Network and the Anti-Defamation League are launching a center to combat cyberhate - TechCrunch

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