Jewish Insider's Daily Kickoff: February 23, 2017 – Haaretz
Posted By richards on February 23, 2017
Trump is putting the crunch on liberal Zionism Mondoweiss – Mondoweiss
Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017
Were you as impressed as I was by Roger Cohens column in the New York Times, last weekend: The One State Two State Blues? Cohen virtually thanked Donald Trump for ending the illusion that there will ever be a Palestinian state.
The two-state idea has become a fantasy divorced from the reality of Israels half-century occupation of the West Bank. No basis exists today for believing its achievable. American adherence to that goal has become an exercise in mental laziness allowing leaders to do their worst behind the peace process fig leaf.
So Trumps trashing of two-state doctrinal orthodoxy Im looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like at least had the merit of constituting a break with a sham. (I say this with great reluctance as a longtime two-state advocate.) It places Israel and Netanyahu before the choice they face.
As Netanyahu knows, the only one state that Palestinians are going to like let alone accept is one in which they are full and equal citizens who get to vote. Demographics dictate that this, in turn, will spell the end of the Jewish state unless Israel wants to be an undemocratic pariah state ruling over a vast disenfranchised Palestinian population.
The piece was the more remarkable because a couple of years ago Cohen wrote a book celebrating Israel as the just answer to the Jewish problem in Europe. Today he is just too tired of Israels intransigence to pipe that melody.
Ilene Cohen made a similar progression years ago: having visited the occupation, she acknowledged that Israel had defeated the two-state solution; and we have entered the struggle for equal rights. 1 State, 1 Person, 1 vote.
It seems inevitable that more and more liberal American Zionists will have this realization in weeks and months to come. Slowly but surely they will give up the dream of a Jewish state that they dont want to live in themselves; because their dream did not entail apartheid, which is impossible to deny. And as they abandon their love for Israel, many will come out for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, or BDS, as the best way to pressure Israel to give everyone equal rights.
Liberal Zionism has never been under so much pressure as it is in the Trump era. For two reasons: Trump has rendered the death of the two-state solution a naked reality that is no longer deniable. And liberals who are vocally resisting Trump must affirm values that are inconsistent with Israel as it has turned out.
Under President Obama, liberal Zionists could say that we were about to get a two-state solution, any day or century now, if only Obama would put pressure on Israel; and Mr President, we are going to do our best to protect you against AIPAC; oh sorry, they just cut you off at the knees! Liberal Zionists have now lost the cover for that complicated political dance step. Donald Trump will give Israel anything it wants, and Israel is taking further steps to solidify its colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
When Trump said he could support one-state or two states last week, there was a collective gasp from liberal Zionists. Peace Now said the statement was terrifying, Jane Eisner of the Forward said it was astonishing for those who support a democratic Jewish state. But what can the liberal Zionists do to fight Trump and Netanyahu, when they were unsuccessful in achieving an ethnic partition of the land during far more liberal regimes, for 70 years now? Roger Cohen and Peter Beinart are at least conscious of the lived-reality for Palestinians.
(And as for Palestinians and Arab-Americans not that they count as full citizens in the U.S. discourse many welcomed the Trump statement, as an end to doublespeak, and an exposure of the fecklessness of the peace process, or, per Rashid Khalidi, an opportunity to imagine several possible just outcomes.)
Which brings us to the second factor for the liberal Zionist crisis. Liberal Jews are now among the leaders of the political/cultural resistance to Donald Trump. Every time I turn on the radio or television I see empowered Jews warning about Trumps danger to democracy. Many of them are Zionists notably Leon Botstein, Brian Lehrer, Dahlia Lithwick, Wolf Blitzer, and Jeffrey Rosen, the constitutional scholar who has written that Zionism was the best thing that happened to Palestinians in the early 20th century.
These two positions, resisting Trump while supporting Jewish nationalism in Israel, are today grossly inconsistent. Just consider J Streets righteous opposition to Trumps temporary ban on refugees here
Tens of 1000s of US Jews have declared America must keep our doors open to refugees. Now we must be a powerful voice
even as it supports an ethnocracy over there, which has prevented hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from returning for decades.
American nationalists are right to mock the contradiction between the two positions, as white supremacist Richard Spencer did in an encounter with a Texas rabbi. While left-wing Jews are increasingly making the point as Suzanne Schneider does at the Forward, Yoav Litvin does at our site, and Brant Rosen did in this excellent blogpost,that Zionism has worked closely with anti-Semitic nationalists before.
Note well that Schneiders piece appeared in the Forward, offering a paean to Jewish life in exile, which Zionists usually disdain:
Jewish life flourishes in pluralistic societies within which difference is not a problem to be resolved, but a fact to be celebrated. The alliance of right-wing Zionists and the alt-right should not be viewed as an abnormality, but the meeting of quite compatible outlooks that assert each in their own waythat the world will only be secure once we all retreat to our various plots of ancestral land. Nationalist thinking of this sort wrought more than its fair share of damage during the twentieth century
J Street is holding its conference this coming weekend, and a lot of different viewpoints will be gathered under one roof. Roger Cohen will be a speaker; so will rightwing ZionistYair Rosenberg, who has mocked J Street. There are no Jewish anti-Zionists speaking, but the conference will hear from the leader of Israels Joint List in the Knesset, Palestinian leader Ayman Odeh, who I expect will be a rock star fora liberal audience energized by Trump.
Liberal Zionists have had it both ways for too long: supporting a Jewish state that they also claim is a democracy. Trump has marked the end of that farce. Now they must give up a cherished dream; the liberal Zionists who want to shape the future will have to build coalitions with Palestinians and anti-Zionists.
From the Palestinian and anti-Zionist standpoint, what we are seeing is what activist and writer Sarah Schulman told us would happen five years ago: As you go from a vanguard movement to a broad-based movement, you must give up some of your litmus tests, egotism, and ideological purity, in the name of change.
Everyone, be nice.
Continued here:
Trump is putting the crunch on liberal Zionism Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss
Zionism, Wahhabism source of tensions in Mideast: Analyst – Press TV
Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017
This handout photo provided by the official website of the Center for Preserving and Publishing the Works of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 21, 2017 shows delegations attending the sixth international conference in support of Palestinian intifada (uprising), in Tehran. (Photo by AFP)
Representatives from 80 countries have attended the Sixth International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada hosted by Irans capital Tehran in solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of Israeli atrocities. On this occasion, Press TV has asked Catherine Shakdam, director of Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, as well as Maxine Dovere, journalist and political commentator, to share their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Catherine Shakdam believes the very creation of Israel was based on the imperial powers agenda to remake the Middle East and play along ethnic and sectarian lines so that people would live in division and never fight imperialism.
She also noted that the entire war narrative across the Middle East has been founded on the misconception that people from certain religious communities cannot live alongside each another.
We need to remember the reason why religious communities have an issue with one another. It is because certain powers - and I am referring to the US and the Saudis - have worked to create and engineer those tensions by pushing money and promoting certain agendas and ideologies which is Wahhabism or Zionism that created those tensions, she said.
She drew an analogy between Wahhabism and Zionism, saying the two ideologies are very similar in their structure, the way they function and their promotion of exclusionism.
According to Shakdam, it is Israel that is annihilating Palestine and not the other way around, and Palestinians are fighting for the recognition of their survival, identity, traditions, history and national sovereignty.
She further asserted that Zionism is a political construct based on fascism and directed at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, arguing that Palestine has systematically disappeared in order to please the Zionist agenda. Israel seeks to make Palestinians disappear and deny their existence, Shakdam noted.
The analyst also stressed that religious freedom is an inherent human right and that Judaism has a right to exist just as other religions do.
Zionism, Shakdam said, is based on exceptionism, and Israelis consider themselves to be above the law, adding Israeli killings are deemed as righteous but when Palestinians defend themselves and exercise their natural right to resist oppression, it is called murder.
The analyst concluded by saying that Palestinians have no other choice but to resist because the alternative would be complete disappearance and ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, Maxine Dovere, the other panelist on the program, maintained that divisions have long existed in the Middle East, arguing that by developing a regional concept, there could be a more positive future for everyone in the region.
Dovere highlighted the need for a peaceful resolution of the crisis which she said would be possible through a two-state solution.
Vis--vis the Palestinian situation, I am one who believes very adamantly in the two-state solution. I would very much like to see those who have the history and the future of the Palestinian people as their real concern have a land mass, a Palestinian state, just as much as I would like to see the Jewish state continue to grow in the land that is their heritage, she said in conclusion.
Original post:
Zionism, Wahhabism source of tensions in Mideast: Analyst - Press TV
The Disturbing Alliance Between Zionists And Anti-Semites … – Forward
Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017
Between the congressional hearing for David Friedman, the visit of Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trumps refusal to address the rising tide of anti-Semitism, its been a tense time within the American Jewish community.
For those on the right, Trumps abandonment of the two-state solution, much like Friedmans nomination, comes as an assurance that the new administration will firmly commit itself to an expansionist form of Zionism. And along with the presence of Jared Kushner within the presidents inner circle, keeping Friedman and Bibi in the wings is taken by many as a signal that Trump is not really an anti-Semite, despite surrounding himself with figures of questionable persuasion. According to this logic, the strong commitment by Trump and Steve Bannon to Israel undermines any suggestion that they harbor antipathy toward Jews.
Yet, for many centrists and liberals, the idea of Kushner and Bannon working together causes endless confusion: How could the descendent of Holocaust survivors find common cause with the ideological leader of the alt-right?
The answer may lie in the history of the Zionist movement, a history demonstrating that there is no inherent contradiction between Zionism and anti-Semitism. The two ideologies have in fact often worked in concert to achieve their shared goal: concentrating Jews in one place (so as to better avoid them in others).
Even before the modern Zionist movement arose in the late 19th century, Christian philosophers and statesmen debated what to do with the oriental mass of Jewry in their midst. As the scholar Jonathan Hess of the University of North Carolina has noted, one solution popular among Enlightenment figures who harbored anti-Semitic feelings was to deport Jews to a colonial setting where they could be reformed. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, among the founders of German Idealism, noted in 1793 that the most effective protection Europeans could mount against the Jewish menace was to conquer the holy land for them and send them all there.
Indeed, Zionism crystallized as a political movement among European Jews explicitly to solve the problem of political anti-Semitism. For Zionist pioneers like Leo Pinsker and Theodor Herzl, anti-Semitism was an inevitable phenomenon that would occur at any time and place where Jews were a sizable minority. Normal relations with other nations could be established only by moving Jews to a place where they were a majority. Thus rather than pushing contemporary states and societies to devise new ways of accommodating difference, Zionist thinkers of Herzls generation subscribed to the logic that the Jewish problem could be settled ony by removing Jews from European states.
The idea that Jews belong not in their actual place of residence and origin but in the Holy Land was of course not a position that all Zionists subscribed to, either then or now. Yet it is not hard to see the very problematic logic that links such assertions to the sort of blood-and-soil nationalism that led to the destruction of European Jewish life. Nazism of course grew out of this context and insisted that Jews could never really be German. The Nazis, however, took this conclusion to a radically new place: It was ultimately extermination, rather than resettlement, that drove the Nazi position.
Though the scope of destruction was not yet known in the 1930s and early 1940s, many nevertheless find it astounding that there were attempts by right-wing Zionists during these years to establish ties with Nazi Germany. Numerous scholars have noted the fascist sympathies of certain members of the Revisionist Zionist camp, who bitterly feuded with mainstream Zionists and denounced them as Bolsheviks. The antipathy was apparently mutual, as David Ben-Gurion published in 1933 a work that described Zeev Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist movement, as treading in the footsteps of Hitler. The Zionist rights flirtation with fascism reached its tragic peak in 1941, when Lehi, Avraham Sterns paramilitary splinter group, approached Otto Von Hentig, a German diplomat, to propose cooperation between the nationally rooted Hebraic movement in Palestine and the German state. Nazi Germany declined his generous offer, having stumbled across quite a different solution to the question of Jewish existence.
It has been with this history in mind that I approach contemporary debates about Donald Trumps presidency and the alliance it fosters between members of the white nationalist alt-right on one hand, and a certain segment of American Jews on the other. The argument that the latter should work with the former because they all share a commitment to Greater Israel belies the fact that not all allies, or alliances, are created equal. When Richard Spencer voices his admiration of Zionism (because, in his understanding, the movement stands first and foremost for racial homogeneity), we should realize that this is not incidental to his suggestion that America might be better off with a peaceful ethnic cleansing of those population segments that are not of white, European descent. Do American Jews really believe that they will pass muster within such a state? And are the swastikas and other acts of intimidation that have been so abundant since Trumps victory really just peaceful incentives to realize that our true home is in a land far, far away?
The answer must be a resounding no.
Jewish life flourishes in pluralistic societies within which difference is not a problem to be resolved, but a fact to be celebrated. The alliance of right-wing Zionists and the alt-right should not be viewed as an abnormality, but as the meeting of quite compatible outlooks that assert each in its own way - that the world will be secure only once we all retreat to our various plots of ancestral land. Nationalist thinking of this sort wrought more than its fair share of damage during the 20th century. Lets not enact a repeat performance in the 21st.
_Suzanne Schneider is a historian of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Zionist movement, and a director and core faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research._s
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.
Read the original here:
The Disturbing Alliance Between Zionists And Anti-Semites ... - Forward
Public lectures to discuss theology, zionism – Greater Media Newspapers
Posted By admin on February 22, 2017
Bildner Visiting Scholar Dr. Yakir Englander will deliver two public lectures at Rutgers University.
On Feb.28, his talk Post-Holocaust Ultra-Orthodox Theology: A New Perspective will throw new light on responses to the Holocaust within the ultra-Orthodox community, with a focus on the differences in reaction between men and women and between Hasidic and Lithuanian communities.
On March 8, he will present his second lecture, Religious Zionism, the Media, and the Changing Role of the Rabbi, in which he will address how advances in technology have had an impact on the role of the rabbi.
Both programs will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Douglass Student Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick. Sponsored by the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, the lectures are free and open to the public.
Free parking is available behind the Student Center; use 57 Lipman Drive for navigation systems.
Advance registration is requested by emailing csjlrsvp@rci.rutgers.edu or calling 848-932-2033.
For more information, visitBildnerCenter.Rutgers.edu.
Read more:
Public lectures to discuss theology, zionism - Greater Media Newspapers
McGill student leaders call for ‘punch a zionist’ tweeter to resign – Canadian Jewish News (blog)
Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017
The executive of the Students Society of McGill University (SSMU) has recommended that the director and councillor now infamous for tweeting punch a zionist today resign from both positions, sparking protest from some students that its doing so under duress from the university administration.
The recommendation, made public Feb. 17, runs counter to a decision by the SSMU board of directors four days earlier not to oust Igor Sadikov. A motion to impeach the third-year mathematics and political science student was defeated 5-4 by the board, SSMUs highest governing body.
SSMU represents undergraduates at McGills main downtown campus.
Following a meeting with McGill principal and vice-chancellor Suzanne Fortier, the executive committee, composed of seven elected students, released a statement saying that Sadikovs Feb. 6 posting on his personal Twitter account violated the constitutional Standard of Care that all SSMU representatives must abide by.
More specifically, we believe that Councillor Sadikovs actions were an incitement of violence, and, for that reason alone, we have recommended that he resign from his position as a director and as an arts representative to the legislative council.
READ: SO-CALLED VOICES OF OUR COMMUNITY SILENT ON MUSLIM SOLIDARITY
The executive also apologized and acknowledged that more should have been done to moderate the conversation that took place during a Feb. 9 legislative council meeting, where some pro-Zionist students said they felt hostility. The council, which comprises 30 elected representatives, is scheduled to meet again Feb. 23.
We want to reassure the community of the SSMUs position condemning physical violence and our commitment to maintaining a safe and inclusive environment for all students irrespective of race, religion, cultural or political background.
Concurrently, the board issued a statement that it had censured him for the harm caused as a result of the tweet, describing that as a formal disciplinary action.
Although the SSMU stands in support of freedom of expression and the right of representatives to hold a diversity of political beliefs, this protection does not extend to expressions of a violent or oppressive manner, even on a personal social media account unaffiliated with the SSMU.
In deciding against impeaching him, the board said it took into account that Sadikov shows remorse. He apologized for his lapse in judgment and regretted that many people have felt unsafe on campus as a result, the board noted.
The board said its the purview of the SSMU general assembly and the legislative council, as well as the Arts Undergraduate Society, to decide whether Sadikov should remain in student office.
Sadikov was not on the agenda of the general assembly Feb. 20, but there was a question from the floor about what was happening. SSMU president Ben Ger pointed to the statements. He also said he wants to collaborate with campus groups and the university administration in setting up a forum for productive dialogue on the diverse perspectives on Zionism.
Attached to the boards statement was one from Sadikov in which he apologizes a second time for the tweet, saying he was referencing a popular meme (apparently, punch a Nazi, whichwas circulating on the Internet.)
After taking down the tweet on Feb. 9, after pro-Israel groups condemned it, Sadikov said on his Facebook page that he was sorry, but that he makes a distinction between the political ideology of Zionism and Jewish identity, citing his own Jewish heritage.
In this latest apology, he said that his parents and family friends are Zionists.
Many of my constituents and fellow students, and some of my friends, identify as Zionists. I am Jewish myself, and I understand the importance of the state of Israel to many Jews.
READ: FACEBOOK REMOVES JDL CANADAS PAGE, CALLS GROUP DANGEROUS
He calls the tweet insensitive and inappropriate and, without context, appears to be a genuine call to violence, which he does not condone.
Sadikov says he is committed to expanding my knowledge on Zionism by continuing and facilitating conversations [with fellow students], both within Jewish communities and in dialogue with Palestinian voices, based on a shared commitment to social justice and human rights.
He promises to reach out to members of Zionist groups to apologize and talk, and to participate in training and educational activities in order to better engage with a diversity of perspectives on Zionism.
Sadikov also apologized for this remark at the Feb. 9 legislative council meeting: As to your claim that Jewish people are an ethno-religious group indigenous to the Levant, again as someone with a Jewish heritage and Jewish ancestry, I want to note that that is a deeply contested claim.
He said he now believes Jewish people constitute many ethno-religious communities with different geographies and histories.
Executive members of Israel on Campus at McGill, an SSMU-affiliated club, met with Sadikov after he made his statement, but said they still think he should resign.
They released this statement: We appreciate Mr. Sadikov coming to our meeting and engaging with us. It is an important step towards mending the trust he has broken with his constituents and the broader McGill community.
That being said, Mr. Sadikov did not formally apologize for his anti-Semitic statement [at the Feb. 9 legislative council meeting], but rather reiterated his regret about the harm that the statement has caused. This points to the notion that Mr. Sadikov does not realize the full impact of his actions.
Fortier, who had earlier stated the administration would not intervene in how the independent SSMU handled the matter, denied allegations that she had threatened to withhold funding derived from student fees unless the SSMU lived up to its own constitution and made the above-mentioned public statements.
Both student newspapers the McGill Daily and the McGill Tribune, carried reports that such pressure had been exerted.
Sadikov is quoted in the Daily, where he was an editor, as saying: This level of interference in student government is a new low for the university. The principal made it very clear that what she cares about in this situation is bending to political pressure from donors and alumni, rather than acting in the best interest of the campus community and respecting the decisions of the student groups affected.
In response, Fortier stated that at the Feb. 15 meeting with the SSMU executive she had explained that the SSMU had an obligation to abide by the terms of its own constitution.
She added: While we normally do not recommend a course of action to the SSMU leadership, this situation is exceptional. With any incitement to violence, it is our duty to intervene.
Meanwhile, an online petition urging McGill to immediately expel Sadikov had collected close to 1,600 names by Feb. 21, most signers apparently from outside the McGill community. Posted by Murray Levine, it cites the Student Code of Conduct, which forbids expressions of hate or incitement to violence, under possible penalty ranging from admonishment to expulsion.
Levine describes himself as an activist and fundraiser, who attended McGill.
Continue reading here:
McGill student leaders call for 'punch a zionist' tweeter to resign - Canadian Jewish News (blog)
Anti-Defamation League Receives Bomb Threat at National … – NBC New York
Posted By admin on February 22, 2017
What to Know
The Anti-Defamation League's national headquarters in New York received a bomb threat Wednesday, and the group says it is working with authorities to determine if it is connected to the rash of threats targeting Jewish community centers across the country in recent months.
The bomb threat to the Third Avenue office was anonymous, according to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Greenblatt said while there is nothing to indicate the threat is anything more than that, the group is taking it "very seriously."
The specific nature of the threat wasn't immediately clear. Police say they got a call about it shortly before noon. An investigation found it not credible.
"It's a frightening moment and it reminds us that the haters and the bigots, they hide in the shadows like cowards and they seek to terrorize us because of our faith," Greenblatt said on MSNBC Wednesday. "We will not be deterred and we will not be daunted."
The threat comes two days after 10 Jewish community centers across the country were evacuated in response to bomb threats.In January, another round of bomb threats targeted 53 Jewish community centers across 26 U.S. states and one Canadian province over a period of three days.
The FBI is involved in the investigation, and the ADL has called on U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch a coordinated multi-agency probe.
In the wake of the threat to the ADL, Gov. Cuomo called the pattern a "national crisis" and directed the New York State Police to coordinate with federal and local law enforcement in the investigation.
"We are treating these incidents for what they are -- as crimes -- and we will not allow them to go unpunished," Cuomo said in a statement. "Make no mistake, we will find these perpetrators and hold them fully accountable."
President Donald Trump addressed the series of JCC bomb threats for the first time Tuesday, calling them "horrible and painful." The remarks came amid mounting criticism about his silence.Earlier Tuesday, Hillary Clinton called the series of threats and attacks against Jews and Jewish groups "so troubling" in a tweet that urged Trump to speak out against them.
Trump added that the threats were a"very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil."
Published at 12:27 PM EST on Feb 22, 2017 | Updated 5 hours ago
Go here to see the original:
Anti-Defamation League Receives Bomb Threat at National ... - NBC New York
ADL headquarters in NY hit with bomb threat – Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Posted By simmons on February 22, 2017
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaking at the organizations Never is Now conference in New York City, Nov. 17, 2016. (Courtesy of the ADL)
(JTA) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo directed state police to investigate an anonymousbomb threat called into thenational offices of the Anti-Defamation League.
New York City Patch reported that the threat was called into ADLs Manhattan headquarters at about 11:08 a.m. Wednesday, according to police. Neither the report nor the ADL said whether the building was evacuated.
Three days earlier, 11 Jewish community centers across the country were evacuated after bomb threats were called in the fourth wave of such threats in five weeks. The threats turned out to be hoaxes but forced the evacuation of many buildings.
Two days ago, up to 200 headstones were overturned at a St. Louis-area Jewish cemetery.
We are treating these incidents for what they are as crimes and we will not allow them to go unpunished, Cuomo said in a statement. Today I have directed the New York State Police to coordinate with federal and local law enforcement to launch a full investigation into this latest incident. Make no mistake, we will find these perpetrators and hold them fully accountable for their actions.
A statement from the ADL indicated that the threat, like those leveled at JCCs in recent weeks, was a hoax.
While there is no information at this time to indicate that this is more than a threat, we are taking it very seriously, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. We are working with law enforcement officials to determine if it is connected to similar threats against Jewish institutions across the country.
This is not the first time that ADL has been targeted, and it will not deter us in our efforts to combat anti-Semitism and hate against people of all races and religions.
Read more:
ADL headquarters in NY hit with bomb threat - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jewish cemetery vandalized, Jewish centers threatened; ADL calls for Trump to ‘step forward’ – WatertownDailyTimes.com
Posted By admin on February 22, 2017
'); //-->
The gravesites of more than 170 Jews were vandalized at a cemetery in University City, Mo., sometime over the weekend.
And on Monday, the Anti-Defamation League reported a wave of bomb threats directed against Jewish Community Centers in multiple states, the fourth series of such threats since the beginning of the year, it said, a development that elicited comments from a White House spokesman and Ivanka Trump, neither of which used the phrase anti-Semitism or mentioned Jews.
There were no words at all from President Donald Trump himself as of early morning Tuesday.
That prompted the head of the Anti-Defamation League, to praise Ivanka Trump and call on the president to follow her lead.
Glad to see this, he tweeted of Ivanka Trumps comment. All Jews need to urge the president to step forward & share a plan. His words carry weight. His actions will speak even louder.
The exchanges were particularly noteworthy in part because of President Trumps unusual response at a news conference Wednesday to a question about the rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the country. Rather than condemning them, Trump responded by talking about his electoral college victory, describing the question as unfair.
Trump has been criticized for refusing to describe the threats toward Jews as anti-Semitism. An op-ed at the Forward, the New York-based newspaper written for a Jewish audience, described Trumps silence about anti-Semitism as deeply disturbing.
When asked again about the rise in anti-Semitic threats, during another news conference on Thursday, the president responded as though he had been personally accused. Trump said that the question was very insulting and that he was the least anti-Semitic person that youve ever seen in your entire life.
The weekends events, coming in the wake of last weeks public exchanges with Trump, served to heat up a long-simmering tension between some leaders of the nations Jewish community and the Trump White House.
The perpetrators of the cemetery vandalism and their motives were not yet established. Police in University City, an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, were just launching an investigation, reviewing video surveillance at the cemetery, operated on a not-for-profit basis by The Chesed Shel Emeth Society and calling on anyone with information to come forward.
Because of the Sabbath, the cemetery does not operate on Saturday, Anita Feigenbaum, director of the Chesed Shel Emeth Society told The Washington Post in a phone interview.
A groundskeeper arrived Monday morning to find gravestones overturned across a wide section of the cemetery, the oldest section as it happens, bearing the remains of Jews who died between the late 1800s and the mid-20th century.
She called it a horrific act of cowardice, beyond anything the cemetery had experienced in the past.
The cemetery was founded in 1888 by the Russian Jewish community in St. Louis to aid all Jews who needed burial whether they had the money or not. They started with the burial society and then extended to hospitals and houses that help the poor and the sick. To this day thats what we do. We are not for profit. We help in this horrible time in a persons life.
Feigenbaum had walked through the cemetery during the day and had not yet completed counting the number of damaged stones, most of them pushed over, off their bases. So far she said she had found than 170. Feigenbaum said she was starting to hear from families of people buried there. We will reach out to the families that are affected, she said.
The cemetery holds the remains of more than 20,000, she estimated.
She said she was getting an outpouring of support from across the United States with people volunteering to help with repairs and was deeply appreciative.
Separately on Monday, the Anti-Defamation League reported a wave of bomb threats directed against Jewish Community Centers in multiple states, the fourth series of such threats since the beginning of the year, it said.
While ADL does not have any information at this time to indicate the presence of any actual bombs at the institutions threatened, the threats themselves are alarming, disruptive and must always be taken seriously.
Bomb threats were called in at Jewish Community Centers in 11 cities across the U.S.: Albuquerque, Amherst, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, St. Paul, Tampa and Whitefish Bay, Wis. Since January, there have been 69 bomb threat calls targeting 54 centers in 27 different states, according to the Jewish Community Center Association.
In Amherst and Buffalo, the community centers were briefly closed after a threat was phoned to the Amherst center. Disruption was the goal, said Richard A. Zakalik, the local New York JCC executive director, to the Buffalo News on Monday. They accomplished what they wanted, Zakalik said to the Buffalo News. The whole point was to scare and disrupt.
No devices or bombs were found in connection with the threats; the Jewish Community Center Association described all of Mondays incidents as hoaxes. The FBI and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department will probe the series of calls for federal violations, according to the Star Tribune.
Paul Goldenberg, the director of Secure Community Network, the security affiliate of Jewish Federations of North America, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the bomb threats appeared to originate from the same serial caller. Noting that not every building which received a call decided to evacuate, he said that the community centers were very well-equipped to handle this. The centers also increased their security measures after the threats, the JCCA noted.
The weekend spate of anti-Semitic threats were not limited to the U.S. In Canada, a 70-year-old Toronto woman named Helen Chaiton said that her mezuza, the case containing Hebrew verse traditionally affixed to a doorpost, had been vandalized twice over the weekend. Chaiton and her neighbors also found that the vandals had left behind sticky notes with swastikas, the CBC reported.
Responding to an inquiry from NBC News about the threats, the White House tweeted back: Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom. The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.
The tweet from Ivanka Trump, a convert to Judaism, appeared to be unsolicited and drew generally favorable reaction, but also questions about why her father, the president, seemed reluctant to speak out.
The ADL issued a statement on Feb. 16, characterizing Trumps news conference reaction as mind-boggling.
On two separate occasions over the past two days, President Trump has refused to say what he is going to do about rising anti-Semitism or to even condemn it, the ADL said in the statement. This is not a partisan issue. Its a potentially lethal problem - and its growing.
And after the new rash of phoned-in threats Monday, the organizations chief executive drew a connection between the incidents and the presidential silence. A lack of attention to this from the president creates an environment in which the bigots feel empowered, the ADLs Jonathan Greenblatt told Haaretz. They feel like their intolerance is being tolerated.
The rest is here:
Jewish cemetery vandalized, Jewish centers threatened; ADL calls for Trump to 'step forward' - WatertownDailyTimes.com
ADL slams Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration – i24news
Posted By admin on February 22, 2017
CEO Jonathan Greenblatt says new order undermines core values of American society
The Anti-Defamation league criticized new tough orders issued by the Trump Administration for a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration on Wednesday. The orders put the country's nearly 11 million undocumented foreigners in its cross-hairs.
In an official statement released by the organization, the ADL referred to the new rules as "ill-advised" and said they undermined the core values of American society.
These new rules are extremely ill-advised and counter to our values as a nation that has always served as a beacon of hope for people around the world, said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. This step is deeply problematic on many levels. It removes critical due process rights for new immigrants and imperils countless numbers of refugees fleeing extreme violence in Central America.
Greenblatt voiced extreme concern over the effort to require law enforcement officers to the new orders.
Perhaps most concerning of all, however, are the efforts to effectively turn local law enforcement officers into de facto immigration agents, Greenblatt said. "That threatens to drive a dangerous wedge between law enforcement and communities they have sworn to serve and protect.
"When a community starts to fear the police," Greenblatt added, "it creates an underclass that is particularly vulnerable to becoming targets of crime, it makes police officers jobs much harder, and it makes all of us less safe.
The orders sent shivers throughout US immigrant communities, where millions of people who have spent years building families and livelihoods in the country, most of them from Mexico and Central America, were seriously threatened with deportation for the first time in decades.
Rights groups labelled the move a "witch hunt", warning that a threatened "mass deportation" would damage families with deep roots in the United States and hurt the economy.
But John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who issued the new orders in two memos, said they were necessary to address a problem that has "overwhelmed" government resources.
"The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States," he said in one of the memos.
The new rules make it easier for border patrol and immigration officers to quickly deport any illegal immigrants they find, with only a few exceptions, principally children.
The priority will remain undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, as well as anyone who has been charged or potentially faces criminal charges.
However, people deemed as low priority for deportation by the previous Barack Obama administration -- generally anyone not tied to a crime -- are no longer protected.
"With extremely limited exceptions, DHS will not exempt classes or categories of removal aliens from potential enforcement," the memos said.
"All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to enforcement proceedings, up to and including removal from the United States."
The memos followed up on President Donald Trump's order, made just after his January 20 inauguration, for authorities to crack down on illegal immigration by tightening enforcement and building a wall along the nearly 2,000 mile (3,145 kilometer) US-Mexico frontier.
In the memos Kelly ordered immediate action to begin planning the wall. He also ordered the hiring of 15,000 more officers for the Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.
The move comes ahead of meetings this week between Kelly and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico, in which illegal immigration and border security will be key topics.
The turn in policy follows years in which the Obama administration, and the George W. Bush administration before it, sought to find a way with Congress to allow most of the long-term illegal immigrants to stay in the country.
But Trump campaigned for the White House on a promise to crack down on what he characterized as a source of widespread crime and a drag on the economy. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump "wanted to take the shackles off" of officials enforcing the laws.
DHS said there are more than 534,000 pending immigration cases in the courts nationwide, and that department agents have apprehended more than 93,000 people trying to sneak into the country in October and November alone.
That work "has significantly strained DHS resources," it said.
While Spicer said Trump "has a big heart" and that policy could evolve in future beyond the DHS memos, there was no indication of what form those changes could take.
Pro-immigrant groups, already nervous after hundreds were arrested in a series of ICE raids on immigrant "sanctuary cities" two weeks ago, expressed shock and outrage.
"Secretary Kelly has unleashed an unprecedented witch hunt on millions of immigrant families," said Angelica Salas, executive director for the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.
"These guidelines represent an unlawful, expedited process, a dragnet, to remove undocumented immigrants living and working in the US. This is a dastardly approach to a very human issue," she said.
Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, predicted strong legal challenges to the new policy.
"These memos confirm that the Trump administration is willing to trample on due process, human decency, the well-being of our communities, and even protections for vulnerable children, in pursuit of a hyper-aggressive mass deportation policy," he said.
Read more from the original source:
ADL slams Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration - i24news
