Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia are plotting a war with Iran. The 2015 Iranian nuclear arms accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Donald Trumpsabotaged, does not look like it will be revived. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is reviewing options to attack if Tehran looks poised to obtain a nuclear weapon and Israel, which opposes U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, carries out military strikes.

During his recent visit to Israel, President Biden assured acting Prime Minister Yair Lapid that the U.S. is "prepared to use all elements of itsnational power," including military force, to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. function as a troika in the Middle East. The Israeli government has built a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks and has been a prolific sponsor of international terrorism, supporting Salafi jihadism, the basis of al-Qaida, and such groups as the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba(LeT) and the al-Nusra Front.

The three countries worked in tandem to back the 2013 military coup in Egypt, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who overthrew its first democratically elected government. He has imprisoned tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, on politically motivated charges. The Sissi regime collaborates with Israel by keeping its common border with Gaza closed to Palestinians, trapping them in Gaza, one of the most densely populated and impoverished places on earth.

Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, has conducted an ongoing campaign of covert attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and nuclear scientists. Four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated, presumably by Israel, between 2010 and 2012. In July 2020, a fire, attributed to an Israeli bomb, damaged Iran's Natanz nuclear site. In November 2020, Israel used remote control machine guns to assassinate Iran's top nuclear scientist. In January 2020, the U.S. assassinated Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, along with nine other people, including a key figure in the anti-ISIS coalition, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. It used an MQ-9 Reaper to fire missiles into his convoy, near the Baghdad airport.

If similar attacks had been carried out by Iranian operatives inside Israel, it would have triggered a war. Only Iran's decision not to retaliate, beyondlobbing about a dozen ballistic missilesat two military bases in Iraq, prevented a conflagration.

On July 7, Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was using IR-6 centrifuges with "modified subheaders." The declared purpose of the enrichment process at its underground facility at Fordow is to create uranium isotope enriched up to 20 percent far below the 90 percent enrichment levels necessary to create weapons-grade uranium. Under the JCPOA agreement, enrichment levels were capped at 3.67 percent.

Israel has allocated $1.5 billion for a potential strike against Iran and, during the first week of June, held large-scale military exercises, including one over the Mediterranean and in the Red Sea, in preparation to attack Iranian nuclear sites, using dozens of fighter aircraft, including Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.

The 2016 Memorandum of Understanding signed by Barack Obama provides a 10-year, $38 billion military packagefor Israel.

Israel and its lobby in the U.S. are working to scuttle negotiations with Iran to monitor its nuclear program. The preparation for war mirrors the Israelipressureon the U.S. to invade Iraq, one of the worst strategic decisions in U.S. history.

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in testimony before the British Iraq war commission, offered this account of his discussions with George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002:

As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.

Saudi Arabia, which seeks to dominate the Arab world, severed ties with Iran in 2016 after its embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters following Riyadh's execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Saudi Arabia, with Chinese help, has built a plant to process uranium ore and acquired ballistic missiles. Saudi Arabia signed a series of letters in 2017 with the U.S. to purchase weapons totaling $110 billion immediately, and $350 billion over the next decade.

War with Iran would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. It would spread swiftly throughout the region. Shiite Muslims across the Middle East would see an attack on Iran as a religious war against Shiism. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern province; the Shiite majority in Iraq; and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey would join the fight against the U.S. and Israel.

War with Iran would be an unimaginable catastrophe, spreading swiftly throughout the region. Shiite Muslims across the Middle East would see it as a direct attack on their religion.

Iran would use its Chinese-supplied anti-ship missiles, rocket and bomb-equipped speedboats and submarines, mines, drones and coastal artillery to shut down the Strait of Hormuz,the corridorfor 20 percent of the world's oil and liquified gas supply. Oil production facilities in the Persian Gulf would be sabotaged. Iranian oil, which makes up 13 percent of the world's energy supply, would be taken off the market. Oil would jump to over $500 a barrel and perhaps, as the conflict drags on, to over $750 a barrel. Our petroleum-based economy, already reeling under rising prices because of the sanctions on Russia, would grind to a halt.

Israel would be hit by Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Hezbollah's store of Iranian-supplied rockets thatallegedlycan reach any part of Israel, including Israel's nuclear plant at Dimona, would also be deployed. Strikes by Iran and its allies on Israel, as well as on American military installations in the region, would leave hundreds, maybe thousands, dead.

In 2002, the U.S. militaryconductedits "most elaborate war game" ever, costing over $250 million. Known as the Millennium Challenge, the exercise was between a Blue Force (the U.S.) and the Red Force (widely considered as a stand-in for Iran). It was meant to validate America's "modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts." It did the opposite. The Red Force, led by retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, conducted a swarm of kamikaze suicide boat attacks and destroyed 16 U.S. warships in under 20 minutes.

When the war game was reset, it was rigged in favor of the Blue Force. The Blue Force was given access to experimental technology including some that doesn't exist, such as airborne laser weapons. Meanwhile, the Red Force was told it wasn't allowed to shoot down the Blue Team's aircraft, had to keep its offensive weapons in the open and could not use chemical weapons. Even then, the Blue Force could not achieve all its objectives as Van Riper unleashed a guerrilla insurgency against the occupying forces.

Why shouldn't Joe Biden be fted by the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia and the apartheid state of Israel? He and the U.S. have as much blood on their hands as they do. Yes, in 2018 the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the assassination and dismemberment of my friend and colleague Jamal Khashoggi. Yes, Israel assassinated Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. But Washington has more than matched the crimes carried out by Israel and the Saudis, including against journalists.

Why shouldn't Joe Biden be fted by the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia and theapartheid state of Israel? He and the U.S. have just as much blood on their hands as they do.

The imprisonment of Julian Assange who released the collateral murder video showing U.S. helicopter pilots laughing as they shot to death two Reuters journalists and a group of civilians in Iraq in 2007 is designed to destroy him psychologically and physically. The corpses of civilians, including children, piled up by Israel and Saudi Arabia, who do much of their killing in Gaza and Yemen with U.S. weapons, don't come close to the hundreds of thousands of dead we have left behind in two decades of warfare in the Middle East.

In 1991, a U.S.-led coalition destroyed much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, resulting in sewage contaminating the country's drinking water. Then followed years of U.S., British and French airstrikes enforcing a "no fly zone" along with crushing sanctions imposed via the UN. From 1991 to 1998, these sanctions alone were estimated to have killed 100,000 to 227,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, although the exact figures have been the subject of much dispute. The U.S. "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign of Iraqi urban centers during its subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003 dropped 3,000 bombs on civilian areas, killing over 7,000 noncombatants in the first two months of the war.

By one estimate, the U.S. has been responsible for directly or indirectly killing nearly 20 million people since the end of the Second World War.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are gangster states. But so is the United States.

"There are few of them," Biden, reacting to Democratic lawmakers who have criticized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians,told Israel's Channel 12 news. "I think they're wrong. I think they're making a mistake. Israel is a democracy. Israel is our ally. Israel is a friend and I make no apologies."

The angst about Biden's not holding the Saudis and the Israelis to account on this visit is risible, as if we have any credibility left that allows us to arbitrate between right and wrong. The idea that Biden and the U.S. are brokers for peace was eviscerated long ago. The U.S. offers shameless support for Israel's right-wing government, including vetoing U.N. resolutions that censure Israel. It refuses to condition aid on a respect for human rights even as Israellaunchesrepeatedmurderousassaults against the civilian population in Gaza, labels Palestinian NGOs as terror groups, expands illegal Jewish-only settlements,carries out aggressive evictionsof Palestinian families and mistreats Palestinian and Arab-American citizens at points of entry and within the occupied Palestinian territories.

The idea that we represent and promote virtue illustrates the self-delusion that accompanies our moral and physical degeneration. The rest of the world, which recoils in repugnance at whom we have become, does not take us seriously. They fear our bombs. But fear is not respect. They no longer envy our hedonistic mass culture, tarnished by mass shootings, social inequality, the decay of our infrastructure, dysfunction and a Grand Guignol-style of politics that has turned civil and political discourse into a tawdry burlesque. America is a grim joke, one about to be made worse when theChristian fascists, bigots and conspiracy theorists take control of the Congress in the fall, and I expect, the presidency two years later.

The U.S., along with Israel, makes war on Muslims who, with an estimated 1.9 billion adherents, comprise nearly 25 percentof the world population. We have turned many in the Muslim world into our enemies. The Muslim worlddoes not hateus for our values.It hatesour hypocrisy. It hates our racism, our refusal to honor their political aspirations, ourlethal attacksand military occupations and crippling sanctions. Muslims expressthe ragefelt by Guatemalans, Cubans, Congolese, Brazilians, Argentines, Indonesians, Panamanians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Filipinos, North and South Koreans, Chileans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans those Frantz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth." They too were slaughtered by our high-tech military machine and subjugated, humiliated, forced to accept U.S. hegemony and killed in our clandestine torture centers or by CIA-backed assassins.

No one is held accountable. The CIA blocked all investigations into its torture program, including destroying videotape evidence of interrogations involving torture and classifying nearly all of the 6,900-page report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that examined the CIA's post-9/11 program of detention, torture and other abuse of detainees.

Biden goes to Saudi Arabia and Israel as a supplicant, whitewashing the humanitarian disasters caused by those regimes.

Biden goes to Saudi Arabia and Israel as a supplicant. As a presidential candidate, he called Saudi Arabia a "pariah" and vowed to make it "pay the price" for Khashoggi's murder. But with the rising price of oil, Biden is whitewashing the murder, along with the humanitarian disaster the Saudis have caused in Yemen, imploring the Saudis to increase output, a plea Prince Mohammed has rejected. Similarly, Biden is weak on Israel, powerless against the expansion of Jewish settlements and assaults on Palestinians, and unwilling to move the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, effectively endorsing a move by the Trump administration that violates international law. Biden's staff was reduced to pleading with the Israelis not to embarrass him, as they did during his 2010 visit as vice president. That was when Israel announced it was building 1,600 new Jewish-only houses in illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The Obama White House angrily condemned "the substance and timing of the announcement."

How can the U.S. bar Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from a summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and embrace the Saudi regime and the Israeli apartheid state? How can it decry the war crimes of Russia and unleash industrial violence on the Muslim world? How can it plead for the 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, and ignore the Palestinians? How can it justify another "preemptive war," this time against Iran? The duplicity is not lost on most of the world. They know who we are. They know that in our eyes they are unworthy. Our inevitable demise on the world stage is cheered by the majority of the planet. The tragedy is that, as we go down, we are determined to take so many others down with us.

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from Chris Hedges on war, peace and the future

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Final act of empire? U.S., Israel and the Saudis now heading for war with Iran - Salon

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

Of the more than 400 resolutions proposed to the 80th General Convention, only 17 were deferred until 2024 under a process meant to streamline the meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service] The 80th General Convention left some unfinished business when it adjourned last week. That was partly by design.

Part of the presiding officers plan to streamline this meeting of The Episcopal Churchs bicameral governing body in Baltimore, Maryland, was to allow committees the option of deferring some less timely resolutions to 2024, when the 81st General Convention is scheduled to convene in Louisville, Kentucky. Bishops and deputies spent July 8-11 in Baltimore considering critical governance matters, such as elections and the churchwide budget, and other resolutions deemed urgent, so eight days of business could be reduced to four.

That plan succeeded in beating the clock. Both the House of Bishops and House of Deputies adjourned before lunch on July 11, the fourth and last day of General Convention, with no final afternoon legislative sessions. The efficiency of the scaled-down meeting prompted some church leaders to speculate whether the post-pandemic church would need to resume holding triennial General Conventions that last up to two weeks.

The deferred resolutions could factor into those discussions: Will the unfinished business in Baltimore mean a lot more work for bishops and deputies in Louisville?

The short answer is, probably not. The reason is that there wasnt much unfinished business after all. Most of the resolutions proposed to the 80th General Convention, including some that would have generated lively floor debates at past meetings, were not brought to the floor and instead were adopted in single-vote batches using what is known as the consent calendar. And with legislative committees holding meetings and hearings online in advance of General Convention for the first time, few of the committees opted to defer their resolutions.

Out of more than 400 total resolutions proposed, only 17 were deferred until 2024, as listed on the Virtual Binder calendars for the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops.

The Holy Spirit always surprises us, and I think it went extremely well, Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutirrez, chair of the Social Justice and International Policy Committee, told Episcopal News Service. I just have to commend the presiding officers and the convention committees for making it work.

Some of the 17 deferred resolutions overlap with other resolutions that were passed by General Convention in Baltimore, so it is unclear what about those matters will be left for bishops and deputies to discuss in two years. Resolution D096, for example, calls for the creation of a new position of director of LGBTQI and womens ministries. Although the status of that resolution is listed on the Virtual Binder as deferred, General Convention adopted another resolution, A063, to achieve the same goal.

Other deferred resolutions had proposed creating various task forces and conducting studies on a range of topics, such as pacifism, aging and the funding of clergy and lay benefits.

Gutirrezs committee and a parallel committee of deputies opted to defer three resolutions until 2024, each of them labeling Israel an apartheid state.The use of the word apartheid is a frequent sticking point and dividing line in the churchs perennial debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. General Convention rejected a resolution in 2018 that sought to label Israels unequal policies toward Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis as evidence of an apartheid state, similar to the South African governments former policy of racial separation.

A discussion of those resolutions by General Conventions two houses could have taken up a significant amount of time in Baltimore, Gutirrez said. But he clarified that resolutions werent deferred because the bishops and deputies committees wanted to avoid the issue. Rather, they preferred to wait until General Convention had more time for a full debate.

We wanted to give it the importance that it deserves and needs, Gutirrez said. He is hopeful that will happen in Louisville.

Even so, the 80th General Convention wasnt silent on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bishops and deputies adopted another resolution, C039, to recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist and condemn the continued occupation, segregation and oppression of the Palestinian people; recognizing that for Israel to continue as a democracy it must allow for equality of all its peoples. And they passed Resolution C013, affirming the right of individuals and organizations to participate in boycotts over human rights violations.

At the same time, the 80th General Convention chose to take action on other matters by referring some resolutions to interim bodies.

General Convention adopted five resolutions proposed by the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church to help The Episcopal Church adapt to changes in society and find new ways of supporting the churchs mission and ministry. A sixth resolution, however, that related to the churchs capacity to collect and study data on its adaptive efforts was referred to an interim body, which will study it and bring it back for consideration in 2024.

And when bishops and deputies meet again in two years, they are expected to reconsider this years proposals to add a feast day for the late Bishop Barbara Harris to Lesser Feasts and Fasts, the churchs calendar of saints. The resolutions proposed by 16 dioceses werent deferred outright, though the matter was referred to Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, allowing additional time for research and consideration after Harris death in March 2020.

General Convention traditionally does not add people until they have been dead at least 50 years. In Baltimore, it compromised by updating the church calendar to mark Feb. 11, the date of Harris historic consecration in 1989 as the first female bishop in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

ENS full coverage of the 80th General Convention is here.

David Paulsen is an editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

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Few resolutions deferred two years until 81st General Convention, among them Israel 'apartheid' - Episcopal News Service

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

On July 14, 2022, we, the Heads of Government of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States, convened for the first leaders meeting of the I2U2 Group. This unique grouping of countries aims to harness the vibrancy of our societies and entrepreneurial spirit to tackle some of the greatest challenges confronting our world, with a particular focus on joint investments and new initiatives in water, energy, transportation, space, health, and food security.We intend to mobilize private sector capital and expertise to modernize infrastructure, advance low carbon development pathways for our industries, improve public health and access to vaccines, advance physical connectivity between countries in the Middle East region, jointly create new solutions for waste treatment, explore joint financing opportunities, connect our startups to I2U2 investments, and promote the development of critical emerging and green technologies, all while ensuring near- and long-term food and energy security. We reaffirm our support for the Abraham Accords and other peace and normalization arrangements with Israel. We welcome the economic opportunities that flow from these historic developments, including for the advancement of economic cooperation in the Middle East and South Asia, and in particular for the promotion of sustainable investment amongst the I2U2 partners. We also welcome other new groupings of countries, such as the Negev Forum for regional cooperation, that recognize the unique contributions of each partner country, including Israels ability to serve as an innovation hub connecting new partners and hemispheres to strategically address challenges that are too great for any one country to manage alone.Todays inaugural I2U2 leaders meeting focused on the food security crisis and clean energy. The leaders discussed innovative ways to ensure longer-term, more diversified food production and food delivery systems that can better manage global food shocks.To this end, the I2U2 leaders highlighted the following initiatives:

The leaders expressed their determination to leverage well-established markets to build more innovative, inclusive, and science-based solutions to enhance food security and sustainable food systems. The leaders also welcomed Indias interest in joining the United States, the UAE, and Israel in the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate initiative (AIM for Climate). They affirmed that these are only the first steps in a long-term strategic partnership to promote initiatives and investments that improve the movement of people and goods across hemispheres, and increase sustainability and resilience through collaborative science and technology partnerships.

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Joint Statement of the Leaders of India, Israel, United Arab Emirates, and the United States (I2U2) - The White House

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

MONSEY, N.Y. -- Rockland County investigators are searching for the person or people responsible for assaulting three Hasidic Jews last weekend.

As CBS2's Alecia Reid reported Tuesday, the incidents are being considered potential hate crimes.

Rockland police are searching for a white Ford F150 pickup truck.

"There's cause for concern," said Harvey Heilbromn of West Nyack.

In three separate incidents early Sunday morning, police say someone inside the suspect vehicle fired a BB gun and threw eggs at people walking on the street.

"Along the avenue of Route 306, which is also part of Main Street, as well as West Maple Avenue," Ramapo Police Det. Lt. Chris Franklin said.

It all happened within a half-mile radius. All three victims were Hasidic, police said.

"The injuries don't seem to be major at all, but the fact that objects, projectiles are being thrown at members of the community, specifically Jewish members, is alarming," said Ari Rosenblum, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Rockland County.

Investigating the incidents as a potential hate crime, police have increased patrols in the area.

"We as a police department take this very seriously and plan on using resources to stop this," Franklin said.

Rosenblum said physical security is of great concern, as this isn't the first time members from his community have felt threatened.

"One of my staff a few weeks ago, walking home from synagogue, an SUV pulled up, yelled obscenities, then moved on," Rosenblum said.

Police have been following up on leads in Sunday's incidents and have information that could lead them to a suspect, but due to recent incidents, not everyone is sticking around.

"I know someone who's moving to Chappaqua just to escape this," Heilbromn said.

While police continue to investigate these incidents, the Jewish Federation of Rockland County will be announcing a major long-term security initiative in coming weeks.

The CBS New York team is a group of experienced journalists who bring you the content on CBSNewYork.com.

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Rockland County police searching for white Ford F-150 truck in connection to recent attacks on Hasidic Jews - CBS New York

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

Mayor Bill de Blasio holds a media availability at City Hall on April 13, 2021. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

By Jacob KornbluhJuly 19, 2022

Hours before former Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly dropped out of a crowded Congressional primary in Brooklyn, he spent the evening fielding questions from a dozen Orthodox voters about Israel, yeshiva education and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Hasidic neighborhoods.

During the house party, over strawberries and ice cream at the Borough Park residence of Alex Rappaport, head of Masbia Soup Kitchen, de Blasio said his handling of a slew of controversies over practices important to the Orthodox community should earn him their trust.

In what one voter called the elephant in the room, the former mayor was questioned about his COVID-19 policies as mayor, particularly his April 2020 tweet singling out Jews for violating restrictions. De Blasio, who had been responding to the huge turnout for a Hasidic funeral in Williamsburg, repeated his apology for the tweet and acknowledged that his emotions took over at the time.

At one point in the exchange, de Blasio asked the group to consider his strong alliance with the Orthodox since he entered public office, but that he knew that isolated incident might hinder his chances with some voters.

Despite nearly universal name recognition, de Blasio had found himself near the bottom of polls among the 15 Democratic candidates vying to represent the newly redrawn and heavily Jewish 10th congressional district, which includes the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park and Park Slope as well as some of Lower Manhattan.

He avoided the game-playing of many politicians who end campaigns citing family reasons or other excuses, instead bluntly admitting the lack of enthusiasm for his campaign.

Its clear to me that when it comes to this congressional district, people are looking for another option, and I respect that, de Blasio said in a cellphone video posted on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. Time for me to leave electoral politics and focus on other ways to serve.

A poll published on Monday had shown 3% of registered voters saying they would support de Blasio in the Aug. 23 primary.

His departure leaves 14 candidates in the open race to represent the new district. The 10th was previously represented by veteran Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, the last remaining Jewish House member from New York City, but the new map puts Nadler in the 12th district, where he faces longtime Rep. Carolyn Maloney as well as two newcomers.

In the Brooklyn district, a poll last weeksuggested the two leading candidates are Councilwoman Carlina Rivera and Yuh-Line Niou, a state representative from Manhattan, who each garnered support from 16% of the sample.

Niou came under fire last week after she expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. She didnt clarify her comments after a similar roundtable with Orthodox voters in Borough Park.

At the Borough Park house party on Monday night, de Blasio gave no hint that his campaign was in trouble and seemed completely engaged in the conversation about secular education requirements in yeshivas and his strong support for Israel.

Digging into a bowl of non-dairy ice cream and biting into mini chocolate-dipped ice cream bars, he defended the Democratic Partys stance on Israel. Echoing President Joe Bidens statement last week, he said that the members of Congress arguing that Israel is guilty of apartheid are merely a small group that doesnt affect the broad support for Israel in Washington and across the country.

De Blasio had generally maintained strong relationships with Orthodox leaders during his mayoralty, sometimes at the cost of his relationship with liberal and secular Jews who make up a sizable portion of the Brooklyn districts Democratic voters. But his crackdown to enforce public health restrictions during the pandemic had led to more skepticism in Hasidic neighborhoods.

The conversation with the group of engaged voters in the neighborhood seemed to indicate that de Blasio could clear the air and break through with voters who would see his stances on Israel and defense of yeshivas as an outstanding asset in the crowded race.

Hours later, de Blasio said hes given up on electoral politics.

Jacob Kornbluh is the Forwards senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email kornbluh@forward.com.

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De Blasio quits crowded race for Congress in heavily Jewish district - Forward

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

A Jewish group is waging a fight in federal court to keep the officials of a beach community on Long Island, New York, from turning their worship and outreach property into a lifeguard center.

The village of Atlantic Beach has other options for building the lifeguard center closer to the beach but chose to take the property in violation of the Jewish groups constitutional rights, the federal lawsuit alleges.

The government must have a very compelling reason to seize a religious organizations property. Taking a religious organizations property to use it as the operations center for lifeguards is not a compelling reason, said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, which is representing the Jewish group. This is not a neutral act by an indifferent city council but seems to be the type of religious hostility that has no place in our country.

Chabad Lubavitch of the Beaches, a Hasidic Jewish movement affiliate, purchased the property in November 2021 to use for worship, outreach and Jewish education.

The property, 2025 Park Street, had been vacant for years and was up for sale or lease for two years before the purchase.

After the deal was completed and the group had held a lighting of a menorah outdoors, village officials moved in February to take the property through eminent domain, which allows the government to take private property for public use with fair compensation.

A spokesperson from the village did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the dispute.

The south shore village has a population of about 1,700 people.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert, a Clinton appointee, issued a temporary restraining order against the village from taking further action against the land and set a hearing on the matter for later this month.

Robert Tuttle, a law and religion professor at George Washington University, said this case appears to be a long shot for the Jewish group, noting that such challenges to eminent domain dont typically succeed.

But Douglas Laycock, a religious liberty law professor at the University of Virginia, said in this particular scenario, a lifeguard stand could potentially go in a lot of places.

It is hard to imagine a good reason for taking this property instead of some alternative, he said.

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Jewish group sues Long Island beach town over turning its worship land into a lifeguard center - Washington Times

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

PARIS, July 17 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron warned against anti-Semitism and historical revisionism on Sunday as he commemorated victims of the Holocaust on the 80th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv roundup of Jewish families.

On July 16-17, 1942, around 13,000 people were taken to the Winter Velodrome, the Vel d'Hiv, in Paris before being sent on to concentration camps across Europe. It was the largest mass detention of Jewish people by French police in collaboration with the Nazi German occupiers.

Macron spoke at the inauguration of a memorial in the central town of Pithiviers, about 100 km (60 miles) south of Paris. Pithiviers was the second largest transit camp and deportation point in France for Jews, after Drancy.

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"We have not finished with anti-Semitism, it is still there - stronger and more rampant," said Macron, citing examples of anti-Semitism in acts of terrorism, in graffiti on walls, on social media and as something that crops up in debates on some TV channels.

French President Emmanuel Macron visits the newly inaugurated Shoah memorial at the former Pithiviers' train station with Shoah survivor Marcel Sztejnberg, as part of a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv roundup, in Pithiviers, France, July 17, 2022. Christophe Petit Tesson/Pool via REUTERS

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Earlier, Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne said that "France lost part of its soul" in the Vel d'Hiv roundup, which "went even further than the Nazi occupiers demanded" and of which "no state official was unaware".

In his speech, Macron warned against a "new type of revisionism" and reiterated the active role of France in targeting Jewish people during the occupation.

The Shoah Memorial in Paris, which collects archives on France's Holocaust victims, has launched an appeal to reach the last witnesses and survivors of the Vel d'Hiv round-up. read more

"We need to recognise everything, in order not to reproduce it," Macron said.

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Reporting by Layli ForoudiEditing by Frances Kerry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Macron decries anti-Semitism on 80th anniversary of Jewish deportations - Reuters.com

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2022

Robin Bernsteins fiber arts series Beauty and Terror emerged from her online research following the creation of a piece about Germany and the Holocaust.

I started wondering if people were talking about this honestly, she said. I went online and Googled it. The top three results were all Holocaust denial websites. I was shocked. It seemed to me that there was a community of Holocaust denial. So, I made another piece, then I made another one. By the fifth or sixth piece, I realized it was going to be a series.

One of the pieces from her series, I Do Not Say You Are Lying, I Say I Do Not Believe You, was chosen to be shown as part of The Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburghs Fiberart International 2022. Pieces selected for the organizations 24th exhibition can be viewed through Aug. 20 at both Contemporary Craft and The Brew House Association.

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Created in red, orange, yellow, purple and green string and wax, Bernsteins piece was inspired by a 1943 meeting between Jan Karski, a Polish diplomat smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and the Izbica Transit Camp, and Felix Frankfurter, a Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

In July of 1943, Karski recounted the mass starvation, dead and dying children, beating and transport of Jews he witnessed to Frankfurter, who listened politely to the diplomat and couriers story before saying that he did not believe him. The justice did nothing to help the Jewish civilians murdered in the Holocaust.

The faces of Karski and Frankfurter, as well as the date of the fateful conversation, are included as part of Bernsteins work.

Each of the pieces in Bernsteins series includes a paragraph explaining the stories that inspired them.

Despite the ugliness of the subject matter, Bernstein said she tried to create the most beautiful works of art she could, spending up to six months on each piece.

Its thousands of tiny pieces of cut string that are pressed into wax, she said. The wax is holding the string; there is no glue.

Artist Kirsten Ervin, a board member of the Fiberarts Guild, said only 45 pieces were chosen to be part of the exhibit from the more than 1,500 submitted. The works include artists from 17 states and 13 countries.

Its highly competitive, Ervin said. Only 3% of the applicants got in.

The pieces were selected by a committee, according to Staci Offutt, the director of the exhibit.

Its the most historically, geographically represented international [exhibit], Offutt said. The work is from more places than ever before. Space-wise, were in two galleries. Its been growing every year. Its a beautifully laid out and installed show.

Given the nature of Bernsteins work, Offutt thought it made sense to partner with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. As a result of the collaboration, Bernstein, who lives in California, will be in Pittsburgh on Thursday, July 28, to demonstrate the technique she used to create her works and to discuss all 18 pieces in the Beauty and Terror series. The event, at the Brew House Association, is co-sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild and the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. The artist will be introduced by Marcel Lamont Walker, creator of the Holocaust Centers CHUTZ-POW! Superheroes of the Holocaust comic book series.

We saw immediate crossover with our CHUTZ-POW! Series in the use of powerful visuals to talk about these lesser-known stories of the Holocaust, Holocaust Center Director Lauren Apter Bairnsfather said.

She noted that while fiber arts is new to the Holocaust Center, the use of art is not.

The Butterfly Project, which honors the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust, includes custom quilts created by Louise Silk, and the Holocaust Center has held community talks with Ted Comet, whose late wife wove tapestries to process her experiences of the Holocaust.

The horror and loss inflicted by the Holocaust is difficult, if not impossible, to encompass in narrative form, Bairnsfather said. Art provides a more visceral outlet to express all the emotions that come with engaging with this difficult history.

For Bernstein, who is Jewish but doesnt know of any family members murdered in the Holocaust, the Beauty and Terror series serves multiple functions both for her and the wider Jewish community.

The pieces are educational, but theyre also standalone aesthetic visual experiences, she said. Theyre memorials. Theyre honorific. They serve a lot. They are healing for me because Im learning about these horrible events Im studying, reading books. Im immersed in the content, and its so difficult to make the pieces but very satisfying. I want to communicate what happened so that people will know. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Posted By admin on July 18, 2022

1. France must do more to fight Jew hate, says Shoah survivor 80 years after Vel d'Hiv roundup  The Jewish Chronicle
2. Holocaust survivors mark 80 years since mass Paris roundup  WNYT NewsChannel 13
3. French Holocaust survivors mark 80 years since mass Vel dHiv roundup of Jews  The Times of Israel
4. France's Macron decries rising hate, ignorance in Holocaust speech  POLITICO
5. Macron decries anti-Semitism on 80th anniversary of Jewish deportations  Reuters.com
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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France must do more to fight Jew hate, says Shoah survivor 80 years after Vel d'Hiv roundup - The Jewish Chronicle

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Posted By admin on July 18, 2022

In the last few years, the term bothsidesism has gained considerable steam. It describes the phenomenon of treating every opinion as equally valid, including falsehoods masquerading as objective fact. This ridiculous idea is poisoning America. People of the opinion that the Earth is flat, or that 5G spreads coronavirus, or that menstruation can be regulated with jade quartz eggs are demanding (and getting) our money and our time. Theyre also crippling our schools. Even Holocaust denialthe assertion that the Holocaust was exaggerated or fakedhas worked its way into the classroom.

In October 2021, educators in Southlake, Texas, were told if they had a book on the Holocaust in their classroom library, they would also have to have one that with an opposing perspective. In January this year, Republican State Sen. Scott Baldwin of Indiana said that educators need to be impartial while teaching students about Nazism.

In June, at the American Library Associations annual conference, author Nancy Pearl suggested that Holocaust denial books had a place in school libraries. She later doubled down in a tweet that said personally I am offended by Holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers but maybe we need to hear what theyre saying in order to dispute them.

And now, some of Ohios Republican state lawmakers are pushing a bill that will enable the Holocaust to be taught from the perspective of a German soldier.

Holocaust denial is obviously offensive. But the argument for keeping this denialism out of schools must be more robust than we dont need to hear from both sides. Otherwise, were relying on the same logic thats used to ban books for dubious moral reasons. For example, in January, a Tennessee school board banned Art Spiegelmans Maus for containing curse words and images of naked mice. According to the New York Times, Spiegelman read the boards minutes and got the sense that members were asking why cant they teach a nicer Holocaust?" (In the same interview, he also said of his book and the Holocaust, respectively, This is disturbing imagery. But you know what? Its disturbing history.)

In a similar incident in June, a Wisconsin school board banned Julie Otsukas When the Emperor Was Divine for being all about oppression. Its ludicrous reasoning was that the U.S. governments internment of Japanese Americans shouldnt be discussed unless educators also cover how horrible the Japanese were during World War II.

There are two ways for educators to address bothsidesism, in which Holocaust denial among other dangerously bogus claims have been swept up. The first is to reject outright the absurd idea that every opinion deserves to be heard. Justification for this rejection is found in The Ethics of Belief, an 1877 essay by the mathematician and philosopher William Clifford. It was the first of its kindan ambitious sweep of the rights and wrongs attached to our ability to form and shape beliefs, ideas, and opinions in the modern era. Clifford called this uniquely human skill a sacred faculty, and wrote that it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.

As Clifford describes it: Our thoughts dont exist independently of our actions. What we think governs everything that we say and do. Second, to accept an idea without evidence requires us to suppress our doubts and to avoid doing proper research. Lastand perhaps most important for us, as educatorswe invariably pass our beliefs, ideas, and opinions, along with our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, on to our students.

Logically, then, whether we find Holocaust denial offensive doesnt matter. Its simply unethical to teach itand even to hold it as our own opinionbecause theres overwhelming evidence to show that the Holocaust happened as mainstream academics and historians describe.

Ultimately, this is about more than just Holocaust denial. Its unethical to teach kids anything on insufficient evidencewhether its that COVID-19 vaccines are actually gene therapy, or that the 2020 election was stolen, or any other farcical claim from our golden age of conspiracies.

Instead of drifting into bothsidesism, educators must anchor lessons about the Holocaust and other world events in inquiry-based learning. Students must be encouraged to work as professional historians, amassing and analyzing documents, evidence, and testimony, and assembling what they gather into coherent narratives. They must be pushed to think critically, for example, about what the Holocaust was, and about how and why it happened in the way that it did. (Excellent resources for doing just that are freely available online at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website.)

The struggle against bothsidesism isnt just intellectual nitpicking. If the 20th century shows us anything, its that democracy is imperiled when society discards the ethics of belief.

In his 1925 book, My Struggle, Adolf Hitler is openly contemptuous of book-knowledge, and of people who take positions on the ground of facts (note his sarcastic quote marks). He describes belief as a means to an end, and that its success must be judged on whether the goal is reached, not on whether well-read people accept it (note the sarcastic quotes again). Hence, politicians are to be judged on whether they can get themselves into power, not on how truthful they are. Thats why, for him, political advertising is only a weapon, although a fearsome one in the hands of a connoisseur.

Sound familiar? It should. Democracy in the United States and across the western hemisphere is at risk of collapsing under the weight of far-right populist movements with no regard for facts, just like German democracy nearly a century ago. Eight years after Hitler wrote My Struggle, the Nazis formed a dictatorship. Another eight years after that, they were waging a world war and building gas chambers in occupied Poland.

The idea that Holocaust denial should have a place in schools for the sake of balance is no more defensible than teaching kids that two plus two might equal five, depending on your opinion of math. The Holocaust isnt a matter of opinion. Its a matter of fact.

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