Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

During his testimony before congressional investigators, former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove left little doubt about the intentions of the white nationalist militia group when its members stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Tatenhove explained that Jan. 6 could have been a spark that started a new civil war.

We need to quit mincing words and just talk about truths, Tatenhove said, and what it was going to be was an armed revolution.

During its seventh hearing on July 12, 2022, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol connected the dots between white nationalists and key allies of former President Donald Trump and their concerted efforts to overturn the 2020 election by interrupting the counting of Electoral College votes and inserting fake electors.

The committee hearings focused on the the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and their white nationalist allies within the Republican Party, including Trump.

In my book Homegrown Hate: Why White Nationalists and Militant Islamists Are Waging War against the United States,, I detailed the history, beliefs, groups and manifestos of white nationalists in the United States and around the world, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters and many of the other individuals and groups that attempted a collective coup on Jan. 6, 2021.

As I explore in my book, white nationalists believe that white people and identity are under attack worldwide by immigrants, people of color and, increasingly, progressives and liberals who do not share their racist, religious, anti-government beliefs or conspiracy theories.

I also discuss the goal of white nationalists around the world to reclaim land as a white state governed and inhabited by white people only.

Several U.S. law enforcement agencies have characterized the Proud Boys as white supremacists and extremists.

The Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, cites his Afro-Cuban roots and brown skin color as reasons why he cant be a white nationalist.

Co-founded by Gavin McInnes in 2016, the Proud Boys have participated in events with white nationalists since the groups inception, including the Unite the Right march in 2017 and the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Tarrio was arrested two days before Jan. 6 in Washington on charges stemming from his involvement in vandalizing a Black church and burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a violent Dec. 12, 2021, protest in Washington.

While Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes publicly claims that he has Mexican and Apache heritage, the Oath Keepers have consistently taken stances that are racist and have warned of an impending civil war in the United States.

In December 2018, the Oath Keepers website advertised a call to action for a Border Operation that encouraged paramilitary activity to prevent the invasion of illegals into the country and to provide security for border ranches and families.

This anti-immigration sentiment and warlike imagery were also found in the Trump White House.

The Southern Poverty Law Center details a series of emails sent to the conservative website Breitbart by Stephen Miller, who became a senior policy adviser in the Trump administration.

The emails promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols.

Millers white nationalist ideology was at the heart of some of Trumps most controversial policies, such as setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities.

Shortly after the Buffalo supermarket shooting, where a self-avowed white supremacist allegedly shot and killed 10 black people to prevent, in his words, eliminating the white race, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming blasted her Republican colleagues.

The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism, Cheney wrote in a tweet. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse.

Cheney, who is also co-chair of the Jan. 6 congressional select committee, then went a step further, calling on Republican leaders to renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.

Though Republican leaders like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana have denounced white supremacy, several prominent Republicans still maintain ties to white nationalist groups.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, former Republican congressman Steve King, who represented Iowa in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2021, is scheduled to attend the annual American Renaissance meeting in November 2022. People may remember King for wondering aloud in 2019 when the term white supremacist became offensive.

Started by racist idealogue Jared Taylor in 1994, American Renaissance is a website that promotes racial differences, and its annual meetings are a haven for neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Also scheduled to speak there is GOP congressional candidate Laura Loomer of Florida, a self-described #ProudIslamophobe who stands for pro-white nationalism.

Such appearances at white nationalist gatherings by Republican legislators have drawn criticism from GOP leaders and are a potential political liability as midterm elections are taking place.

In February 2022, for instance, GOP Congressmen Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona spoke at the far-right America First Political Action Conference.

The event was organized by Nicholas Fuentes, a white nationalist activist who gained national prominence after he attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

GOP leaders quickly denounced them for speaking at the gathering.

But Greene said she had no regrets.

Though GOP leaders deny claims of white supremacy and extremism within their party, their actions tell another story.

On July 11, 2022, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have authorized federal agencies to monitor domestic terrorism within the U.S., including incidents involving white supremacy.

Called the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, the bill fell short of the 60 senators needed to move it forward in Congress, as the vote was 47-47 and divided along party lines.

More troubling is the allure of the white nationalist platform to elected officials and voters. Many successful local, state and federal elections in 2020 centered on perpetuating the Big Lie, the conspiracy theory embraced by many white nationalists that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Frank Eathorne is the chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party and a member of the Oath Keepers.

As such, Eathorne is one of the more influential Republican officials in the country as he is presiding over arguably the GOPs highest-profile primary battle of the 2022 election: unseating Cheney for her relentless criticism of former Trumps lies about the 2020 election.

In February 2021, Eathorne supported a successful effort by the Wyoming GOP to formally censure Cheney. In November, he presided over another successful vote to no longer recognize Cheney as a member of the Republican Party.

Not surpisingly, Eathorne is supporting attorney Harriet Hageman in her primary challenge against Cheney. As is House Minority Leader McCarthy.

Republican pushback against claims that the party has been infiltrated by white nationalists was made clear during a January 2021 meeting of the Grand Traverse County (Michigan) Board of Commissioners.

Keli MacIntosh, a 72-year-old retired nurse and regular attendee of board meetings, asked the board to denounce the Proud Boys after some of its members were allowed to speak on their opposition to gun control.

As MacIntosh was speaking, Board Vice Chair Ron Clous got up, left the meeting, and returned with a large rifle.

Clous held the rifle to his chest for a moment and then placed it on his desk for the remainder of the meeting.

The January 6th hearings are making clear that American democracy is increasingly threatened by white nationalists in the Republican Party who are determined to perpetuate disinformation about the 2020 presidential election in order to hold onto power through the same system they deem illegitimate.

See the original post:

Former Oath Keeper reveals racist, antisemitic beliefs of white nationalist group and their plans to start a civil war - The Conversation Indonesia

Category: Anti-semitism | Comments Off on Former Oath Keeper reveals racist, antisemitic beliefs of white nationalist group and their plans to start a civil war – The Conversation Indonesia
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

All films relate to their place and time, but some are nearly incomprehensible out of context. Thats the case with Marcel Ophulss great 1969 documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity, even though its story is well known. The two-part, four-hour film, which is streaming on OVID in a new restoration and is also available on Milestone and Kanopy, is about the Second World War in France, focussed on life in the small city of Clermont-Ferrand, in the center of the country. It covers the German invasion and the Occupation of France; the formation of the Vichy regime, just twenty-nine miles from Clermont, under Marshal Philippe Ptain; the rise of the French Resistance; and the Liberation in 1944 and its aftermath. What has made those facts familiar is, in significant measure, the film itself: its a work of history that changed the course of history, and its impact on its moment is exemplified in the opposition that it faced and ultimately overcame.

In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophulsmaking his first feature-length documentarytells a vast and intricate story in a form that now seems classical, even hackneyed. Its composed mainly of interviews with a wide-ranging group of participants and witnesses to the events. Ophuls cuts the material into interview bites and assembles them to develop the storys arc; the interviews are punctuated with illustrative archival footage. As familiar as the format is now, when Ophuls made The Sorrow and the Pity, few documentaries of note were constructed in this way. Extended on-camera interviews depended on portable synch-sound equipment that was developed only in the late nineteen-fifties, resulting in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morins Chronicle of a Summer (the film for which Morin coined the term cinma-vrit), Robert Drews Primary, and such successors as the Maysles brothers Salesman and Frederick Wisemans Hospital.

Unlike those modern masterworks, however, The Sorrow and the Pity is neither immersive nor reflexive. Instead, its originality is found in its very simplicityits deceptive modesty. Though Ophuls and his co-writer, Andr Harris, are heard, sometimes even seen, in discussion with the interview subjects, the movie doesnt emphasize these interactions or their centrality to the onscreen action. Rather, their intervention is at its most emphatic, and most conspicuous, in the editing of the large body of interview footage (between fifty and sixty hours worth, according to Ophuls) into a taut, coherent narrative. Ophuls and Harris rarely challenge the subjects assumptions or assertions; putting their interviewees at ease, they collect a varied and copious array of accounts and perspectives. This very varietyits panoramic scope, its complexity, its conflicting points of viewis the films raison dtre.

The interviews feature a remarkable range of participants, filmed on location (in their homes or workplaces, or in public, or at a cannily chosen site of significance) and suggesting a cross-section of French society during the war: a sampling of classes, ideologies, and wartime activities that renders the individual speakers and their experiences both singular and exemplary. (Only the dearth of women as onscreen subjects diminishes the films representative authority.) The Sorrow and the Pity includes Resistance fighters from modest circumstanceswhether farmers or working peopleas well as high-ranking politicians and even aristocrats who were motivated by patriotism, indignation, or ideology. The film similarly spotlights collaborators from the cosseted haute bourgeoisie, along with middle-class functionaries and small-business owners who were pressured into coperation with the occupiers. Theres even an unrepentant defender of Vichy (and the son-in-law of one of its officials) who takes grotesque pains to minimize the effects of the Holocaust on Jews in France and of the French governments part in it. Ophuls also puts the daily life of the Occupation and the Resistance into an international political context, by way of interviews with British politicians and officers, German officials (including a translator for Hitler), and the French politician Pierre Mends France, who worked with the Free French government-in-exile of Charles de Gaulle. (Along with his tale of anti-Semitic persecution under Vichy and his escape from France, Mends France offers warnings about the enduring and unquenched temptations of anti-Semitism and xenophobia.)

Ophulss editorial storytelling has a deft brilliance that moves imperceptibly between the personal and the general, the representative and the distinctive. Theres a mighty, quasi-literary power to the interviews: the story of a Clermont shopkeeper named Klein, who took pains to avoid being misidentified as Jewish (a strange anticipation of Joseph Loseys 1976 drama, Monsieur Klein); a woman whod been convicted, based on handwriting samples, of denouncing a resister to the Gestapo; and the story of a gay British spy with a German lover in Paris. We learn of the narrow escape of French politicians to Morocco en route to London and the excruciating decision of British leaders to bomb the French fleet in Mers-el-Kbir, Algeria (then a French territory), to prevent it from falling into German hands. The farmer Louis Grave, who was active in the Resistance, was denounced, arrested, and deported to Buchenwald, but, after the Liberation, he refused to seek revenge against the person who denounced him to the Gestaponor did Grave offer forgiveness. He bore the knowledge of the betrayal as if it were a form of moral revenge, superior to prosecution or violence.

This range of backgrounds, inclinations, and activities marks the frame-shattering power of Ophulss practical aesthetic. He states publicly what, in the twenty-five years that separated the film from the Liberation, had been privately understood, whether in family circles or in the halls of power, but had gone largely unexpressed. He contradicts the foundational myth of Frances postwar Fourth and Fifth Republicsnamely, that France, with the exception of some dastardly politicians and a relatively small number of collaborators, was largely a country of resistance, that the French Resistance far outweighed and outnumbered French collaborationists. For that matter, the film also presents an intellectual X-ray of the ideological morass of anti-Semitism and anti-Communism that underlay Frances defeat by Germany and readiness to collaboratethe demonization of the democratic moderate left, the preference of many for an anti-democratic far right, the racist hatred that fuels such a bent, and the admiration for a bloodthirsty foreign dictator who fosters and abets those authoritarian sympathies. (A word to the wise.)

The Sorrow and the Pity in no way diminishes the commitment or effectiveness of Resistance fighters or their behind-the-scenes abetters and enablers. Far from debunking the Resistance, Ophuls intensifies our vision of the heroism of the resisters, precisely because their actions were exceptionalbecause they took place amid the heads-down passivity of many neighbors and the active hostility of others. Whats more, the documentary also emphasizes that active sympathizers to the Resistance, who didnt bear arms but aided it merely by knowing about itby knowing that their neighbors were engaged in partisan combat and saying nothingwere also heroic. The potential price of resistancearrest, torture, execution, deportation to concentration campsshrieks through the interviews, too, highlighting the courage of resisters while also suggesting empathy with those who merely went about their business. One interviewee, the British politician Anthony Eden, serves as something like Ophulss spokesperson, reserving his judgment upon the people of France under Vichy by asserting that those who havent experienced the horror of an occupation by a foreign power have no right to pronounce upon those who did.

In its matter-of-factness, the film is nonetheless a work of outrage, less at individuals, even the most contemptible on view, than at France as a wholepostwar France and its self-silencing, self-exonerating political mythology. Theres something strangely, implicitly meta about The Sorrow and the Pity: its main story is that France has been telling itself a story. Yet that myth, of a nation of resisters, isnt explicitly unfolded in the film any more than, say, the myth of Manifest Destiny is unfolded in the greatest Hollywood Westerns; its there as the unchallenged and ambient background to the action, the underlying idea on which the action depends. In TheSorrowand the Pity, that action is the talk that reveals the fabrication of that founding myth. The entirety of the movie is, in effect, a counter-storyi.e., the complex and intractable truth, which had little place in French public life or in the sense of French identity. Its as if all of France were implicated as the documentarys virtual reverse angleits challenging, defiant closeup.

Ophuls, who was born in 1927, was a participant in the Events of May, 1968. He, along with his films producers, Harris and Alain de Sedouy, were working for French television at the time and went on strike, which cost them their jobs and their programs. For all the political demands of students and other activists at the time, the crucial focus of May was a cultural shift: a breaking-down of ossified mores, of the out-of-touch and out-of-synch barrier between Frances public culture and its residents lives.

Yet the film, in attempting to break the silence on the realities of Vichy France, was subjected to a silencing. The Sorrow and the Pity premired in West Germany in 1969, but, although intended for French television (which was then entirely state-run), it was rejected for broadcast by means of a subterfuge that was itself a silencing. The filmmakers held private screenings, but televisions bureaucratic decision-makers simply never attended them, claiming that they had no time to consider such a long filmas if, in trying to avoid the likely controversy of rejecting the film on its merits, they were ignoring it in the hope that it would go away. Instead, the movie received a very limited theatrical release, and wasnt shown on French television until October, 1981five months after Franois Mitterrand, a Socialist, was elected President of France. Once it did air, according to Le Monde, it wasnt the political and sociological event that the channels had anticipated. This ostensible failure was a mark of the films success: in its relatively clandestine way, it had already done its epochal job. The silence was broken; the revelations had become common knowledge.

Go here to see the original:

What to Stream: The Sorrow and the Pity, a Historical Documentary That Transformed Frances National Identity - The New Yorker

Category: Anti-semitism | Comments Off on What to Stream: The Sorrow and the Pity, a Historical Documentary That Transformed Frances National Identity – The New Yorker
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

As US President Joe Biden gets ready to visit occupied Palestine and meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as part of his tour of the region, he becomes the fifth US president to make the trip since the establishment of the PA in 1993 following the PLO's signing of the Oslo Accords.

Bill Clinton visited the region in December 1998, and met with the late Yasser Arafat. Clinton addressed the Palestinian National Council which, at his insistence, removed the article which calls for a struggle against the occupation from the PLO Charter.

In 2008, George W Bush visited Ramallah and Bethlehem, and met with Abbas. They discussed peace efforts and then visited the Church of the Nativity. Barak Obama followed in Bush's exact footsteps in 2013, as did Donald Trump in 2017.

During their visits, the US presidents discussed peace efforts and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Peace is still an illusion and the State of Palestine is nowhere closer to being a reality.

Meanwhile, Israel has continued to seize more Palestinian land for the expansion of its illegal settlements, despite the fact that successive US presidents keep asking Israel to stop expanding them or to dismantle them. They are, says Washington, an "obstacle to peace". Israel ignores such requests. As Air Force One touched down in Tel Aviv, Biden would have been oblivious to the fact that the occupation army was in the process of confiscating yet more Palestinian land to expand illegal settlements. All of Israel's settlements are illegal under international law.

To express their rejection of Biden's visit, the Palestinians and human rights groups, including Israeli groups, organised protests and used advertising hoardings to highlight Israel's crimes against the Palestinians. Leading Israeli rights group B'Tselem, for example, displayed posters in several areas of the occupied West Bank saying "Mr President, this is apartheid". The posters included details of the fragmented occupied Palestinian territories.

Biden: 'You need not be a Jew to be Zionist'

Read more:

Five US presidents have visited Palestine with zero benefits - Middle East Monitor

Category: Palestine | Comments Off on Five US presidents have visited Palestine with zero benefits – Middle East Monitor
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Paris, 11 July 2022 Following their joint complaint filed in April 2022, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the French Ligue des droits de lHomme (LDH), and French-Palestinian human rights defender and lawyer Salah Hammouri received confirmation last week that the Paris Prosecutor has opened a judicial investigation into Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Groups illegal infiltration of MrHammouris phone.

We commend this prompt reaction from the Paris Prosecutor and hope that this judicial investigation, led by an independent investigative judge, will shed light on the NSO Groups illegitimate use of technologies in violation of human rights laws and French criminal law, said Emmanuel Daoud, Clmence Bectarte, and Patrick Baudouin, who filed the complaint in April 2022 on behalf of FIDH, LDH, and Salah Hammouri.

MrHammouri, who since 7 March is detained in Israel under the administrative detention regime, now has the right to become a civil party in the judicial proceedings opened in France, and to exercise all rights attached to this status under French criminal law.

On behalf of the Justice for Salah coalitions campaign, we commend the decision of the Prosecutor of Paris for taking this important step against the NSO company. It aligns with our calls for accountability to prevent human rights violations, especially those against human rights defenders like our colleague and lawyer Salah Hammouri, said Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haqs general director.

Our organisations call on French authorities to vigorously work to obtain the immediate release of MrHammouri, who holds French and Palestinian citizenship.

Background informationIn October 2021, MrHammouri contacted Front Line Defenders to examine his phone after learning that other Palestinian human rights defenders phones had been infiltrated. Front Line concluded its investigation by November 2021, and The Citizen Lab and Amnesty International confirmed the findings.

The investigation revealed that the phones of MrHammouri and other Palestinian human rights defenders were hacked using Pegasus spyware, which is manufactured by NSO Group. The investigation confirmed that MrHammouris phone was infiltrated in April 2021. In December 2021, MrHammouri approached FIDH to represent him in filing a legal complaint against NSO Group, which had been using this spyware illegally to hack and infiltrate his phone, and through it, his entire professional and personal life, thereby depriving him of certain rights, including his right to privacy.

MrHammouri has been the subject of Israeli persecution since the age of 15, when he sustained a bullet injury in 2000. He was first arrested at the age of 16 and has faced continuous harassment by Israeli authorities for his human rights work ever since. This includes six periods of imprisonment and arbitrary arrests, several travel bans, exorbitant bail and fines, house arrests, separation from his family, and residency revocation. He is facing an imminent threat of deportation and most recently, on 6 June 2022, was subjected to another illegal administrative detention for another three months and subject to indefinite renewals in line with the emergency regulations applied by the Israeli military commander in the West Bank.

On 18 October 2021, Israels minister of interior issued a decision to revoke MrHammouris permanent Jerusalem residence card. The decision is based on MrHammouris alleged breach of allegiance to the State of Israel and on vaguely worded and poorly defined allegations of "terrorist activities" and/or affiliation with "terrorist entities," relating to "secret information." If this measure is implemented, it would mean that MrHammouri, who was born in Jerusalem in 1985 and has lived there his entire life, would be permanently expelled from his country of origin and centre of life without being able to return. It would also set an extremely dangerous legal precedent that could be used systematically by Israeli authorities to revoke the residencies of Palestinian Jerusalemites in their attempt to empty Jerusalem of its Palestinian population.

NSO Group has been facing several lawsuits around the world for its illegitimate use of technologies in violation of human rights laws and principles. Several NGOs, including FIDH, urged the European Union to put NSO Group on its global sanction list and take all appropriate action to prohibit the sale, transfer, export, import, and use of NSO Group technologies until adequate human rights safeguards are in place. It is vital that when businesses abuse human rights, adequate sanctions and measures are adopted, and that victims have a right to remedy for any violations. As FIDH has repeatedly advocated, any regulation in this sense at the European level should apply to all businesses, including companies operating in the technology sector.

Read more:

France-Palestine/Salah Hammouri: Judicial investigation opened targeting NSO group - FIDH

Category: Palestine | Comments Off on France-Palestine/Salah Hammouri: Judicial investigation opened targeting NSO group – FIDH
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

KALAMAZOO, MI For a second year, With Love, from Kalamazoo to Palestine: A Festival of Celebration and Solidarity plans to bring the culture of Palestine to Bronson Park.

The event scheduled from 3-6 p.m. on Saturday, July 16, is intended to feature the culture of Palestine and bring Middle Eastern food, music and art to the downtown Kalamazoo park. The family-friendly festival is hosted by Kalamazoo Non-violent Opponents of War (KNOW), the WMU Arab Students Association and Friends of Palestine.

Two dance troupes hailing from Dearborn Mawtini Dance Troupe, and the Thowra Dabke Dance Troupe will perform traditional dances and give attendees the chance to join and learn dabke, a folk dance that originated in the Middle East.

Faud Foty from Washington D.C will also be providing Middle Eastern tunes at Saturdays festival.

Younger attendees can participate in activities and get their face painted, while adults browse vendor tables with Middle Eastern art, jewelry and henna artists.

Speakers will share their familial ties to Palestine and the importance of solidarity with Palestine. In the spirit of solidarity, there will be a chance to donate to the Palestine Childrens Relief Fund.

Attendees will have to bring their own lawn chairs as seating will not be provided. In case of inclement weather, the event will move indoors and be held at the Kalamazoo Nonprofit Advocacy Coalition facility at 315 W. Michigan Ave.

More on MLive

Hundreds protest for abortion rights in downtown Kalamazoo

Miller Road eastbound detour starts Monday in Kalamazoo

Kalamazoo spends $453K on contractor to help clean up untenable trash piles

Link:

With Love, from Kalamazoo to Palestine bringing Palestinian culture to Bronson Park - MLive.com

Category: Palestine | Comments Off on With Love, from Kalamazoo to Palestine bringing Palestinian culture to Bronson Park – MLive.com
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Vatican Media

Ramallah (Agenzia Fides) - On the eve of US President Joe Biden's visit to Israel and Palestine, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas took the initiative to contact Pope Francis by telephone to wish the Pope good health and inform him about recent painful and intimidating events - including the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh - related to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. The news was announced by the Palestinian agency Wafa, reporting that on Tuesday July 12, during the telephone conversation, the Palestinian leader also spoke with the Pope about the continuing tensions that have the Holy City as their epicenter, and include continuous threats to the status quo in the Haram al-Sharif (also known as the Temple Mount), the restrictions on access to Christian and Muslim Holy Places and the strategies pursued by groups linked to the settler movement to acquire real estate in occupied East Jerusalem, also through the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and properties. Pope Francis - reports the Palestinian news agency - thanked the President and recalled the urgency to restore peaceful coexistence in Jerusalem and throughout the Land of Jesus. Biden's visit to the Middle East begins today, Wednesday, July 13, with a stop in Israel. On the eve of the presidential trip, Washington confirmed the strategic relations that bind the US to the Jewish state. According to the Israeli press, the goal of Bidens trip to the Middle East is to renew US engagement in the region and to create a front between Arab countries and Israel to counter Irans regional and military strategies. International agencies report that during his visit the US President will also be able to be informed about Israel's advanced missile defense technology. After the stop in Israel, Biden will travel to Ramallah to meet Palestinian President Abbas and then move to Saudi Arabia. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 13/7/2022)

More:

ASIA/HOLY LAND - Palestinian President Abbas calls Pope Francis on the eve of Biden's trip to the Middle East - Agenzia Fides

Category: Palestine | Comments Off on ASIA/HOLY LAND – Palestinian President Abbas calls Pope Francis on the eve of Biden’s trip to the Middle East – Agenzia Fides
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

The Crown Prosecution Service will proceed with charges against two men accused of inciting racial hatred during May 2021s infamous Convoy For Palestine.

Mohammed Iftikhar Hanif, 28, from Pringle Street in Blackburn, and Jawaad Hussain, 25, from Revidge Road in Blackburn, will face charges of using threatening, abusive or insulting words, or behaviour, with intent, likely to stir up racial hatred.

Charges against two further men, Asif Ali, 25 and Adil Mota, 26, also from Blackburn, have been dropped.

Get The Jewish News Daily Edition by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up

The convoy saw antisemitic abuse and rape threats allegedly directed at Jewish women shouted from vehicles travelling through St Johns Wood.

Six cars, emblazoned with Palestinian flags on their bonnets and back windows, were filmed stopping at traffic lights before driving on in the direction of Golders Green and the North Circular.

They were later filmed near Brent Cross.

View original post here:

Two charged and two cleared over infamous 'Convoy For Palestine' - Jewish News

Category: Palestine | Comments Off on Two charged and two cleared over infamous ‘Convoy For Palestine’ – Jewish News
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 12, 2022

COLUMBUS, OhioMembers of the Jewish community are coming together to tell the Ohio Supreme Court that the six-week abortion ban violates their religious freedom.

Although it hasn't been fully drafted, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said their Ohio branch (RAC-OH) is working with other Jewish groups on filing an amicus brief, jumping onto the ACLU and Planned Parenthood's original lawsuit to share their agreement.

There are about 150,000 Jewish people in Ohio, according to census data. Like Marisa Nahem, many Jews are coming together to oppose abortion bans.

"To see Republicans like Mike DeWine, like J.D. Vance, like Republicans at the statewide level and the local level, telling me that other religious beliefs, it feels like, are more valid it just feels so sad and it feels so wrong," Nahem said.

Nahem and her family in Northeast Ohio believe the newly implemented six-week abortion ban infringes on their freedom of religion.

Reform and Conservative Judaism supports access to abortion. Orthodox Judaism has no clear answer, which has been causing divides following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. However, Orthodox does believe abortion should always be allowed to save or prevent pain from the pregnant person, Suffolk University found.

"For me, being Jewish teaches me that, not only do I believe in access to abortion, but I believe the rights that exist and the views that people have, they have a right to have," Nahem added.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against Ohio's six-week abortion ban, but the Ohio Supreme Court rejected their attempt for an emergency stop, which would prevent it being enforced.

This is a huge win for pro-life families, Michael Gonidakis with Ohio Right to Life said.

"The pursuit and protection of life is actually rooted into our both our Ohio Constitution, as well as the United States Constitution," Gonidakis added.

Freedom of religion doesn't cover abortion, he said.

"The issue of abortion truly has nothing to do with the religious faith, but in fact, it's a human rights issue," he said. "We're focused on saving lives of all human beings, both born and unborn."

The Talmud states that a fetus is "mere fluid" before 40 days gestation, however, it is not considered to have a life of its own or independent of the pregnant person's body until "the onset of labor and childbirth," according to the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW).

The Torah also states that the Jewish law doesn't consider a fetus to have the status of personhood, nor can it be murdered, since it is not alive.

"It's not based on based on my personal faith or anyone else's," Gonidakis said. "It's based on the really fundamental nature of sanctity of life, which is in our Constitution."

This was debate was argued in late May, when a total abortion ban had its third hearing.

"One, it places tantamount the mother's life, even over the fetus, but her life takes precedence," Sharon Mars, senior rabbi at Temple Israel Columbus said after the hearing. "Secondly, the child is not considered a child until it actually has left the womb a soul is not a soul, a person is not a person until it leaves the womb. And thirdly, the important thing that I try to emphasize is that not only the physical health of the mother is at stake, but also the mental health, which is critical in this whole conversation."

Jewish law recognizes both a fetus and a pregnant person as having worth and value, but the pregnant person is always more important than the fetus, Mars added. The viability of a fetus is somewhere around 24 weeks in law.

"I'm incredibly proud and grateful of the Jewish community leaders, of the leaders of all faiths, politicians, different people who are speaking out and who are speaking and standing with the majority of Ohioans and with the majority of Americans who have made their views very clear on this," Nahem said. "I am grateful for the leadership of Jewish community leaders and rabbis and just the Jewish community across the state who are saying this is not okay."

The ACLU of Ohio said they are looking forward to the Jewish community joining them in this legal fight. So far, professors from Ohio State and the University of Cincinnati have filed amicus briefs, as well.

Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.

Read more here:

Jewish community to join ACLU in lawsuit against Ohio's six-week abortion ban - News 5 Cleveland WEWS

Category: Judaism | Comments Off on Jewish community to join ACLU in lawsuit against Ohio’s six-week abortion ban – News 5 Cleveland WEWS
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 12, 2022

Ronald Gerson| Columnist

This is my thirdand final column in my series of significant fifty-year anniversariesrelating to religion, occurring in this year 2022. This piece is inspired by a very important fifty-year milestone in Jewish life. (Andcontrary to the first two columns - about the Munich Olympic massacre and Watergate this recalls a very happy event.)

In June of 1972, the Reform Movement of Judaism (of which our Athens Temple is a part),ordained the first American woman rabbi, Rabbi Sally Priesand, at the historic Plum Street Synagogue in Cincinnati (where I was ordained two years following). Actually, there had been one woman rabbi previously in Germany in 1935, Regina Jonas.But, she was killed in the Auschwitzconcentration camp in 1944.

More from Rabbi Ronald Gerson: The divine imperative of freedom

Rabbi Priesand's ordination was a long time coming.Until the early nineteenth century, Orthodox Judaism was the only Jewish denomination.While women were venerated as wives and mothers, they were prohibited from leading Jewish rituals in the synagogue or even being on the pulpit for that matter. (They were relegated to a separate worship area).

Reform Judaism began in Germany in 1810 and made woman rabbis theoretically possible.But sentiments were still against the idea.But, with Sally Priesand's determination - she simply wanted to be a rabbi and serve - she accomplished her goal in June 1972. And since then, there are now hundreds of Reform Jewish women rabbis, as well as many in the Conservative and ReconstructionistJewish movements as well.

In recent times, women have advanced in the Christian clergy, as well.In 2006, KatharineJefferts Schoriwas appointed to the highest ministerial position in the Episcopal Church which she served for nine years.For nearly seventy years now, women have been in the ministry of the Methodist Church.Other Christian denominations have followed suit as well, including some changes in the more conservative Catholic Church.

More from Rabbi Ronald Gerson: The power of the law

All this is wonderful, as it points to a larger good, which is not always recognized.For it really fulfills the larger thrust of democracy that is present in the Old Testament which we all share.

In the wilderness days of the Bible, as reflected in the book of Numbers, there was a rugged desert democracy.The tribal leaders - representing the people - always reported to the overall leader,Moses. Even in the brief later period of Hebrew kingship, the king was under the Torah, the law, and was reprimanded by the prophets.Modern religious organizations - synagogues,churchesand mosques - should always try to emulate this Biblical democratic spirit, which I believe they generally do.

So, all this is the larger meaning of the ordination of our first American woman Rabbi fifty years ago this past June.It was not only aglorious moment for Judaism - butin a sense - for all of organized religion as well.

View post:

The ordination of the first American woman rabbi a win for democracy - Online Athens

Category: Judaism | Comments Off on The ordination of the first American woman rabbi a win for democracy – Online Athens
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 12, 2022

Israeli forces remove a demonstrator during a demonstration by Palestinians and international activists on July 1, 2022, in the Al-Jawaya in Masafer Yatta. Photo by Mosab Shawer/AFP via Getty Images

By Jacob KornbluhJuly 11, 2022

Prominent liberal Jewish groups sent a letter to President Joe Biden ahead of his visit to Israel this week, urging him to intervene to stop Israels eviction of some 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in Masafer Yatta, an area of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank.

It includes 12 villages in southern Hebron Hills that Israels High Court approved for a large-scale transfer and demolition after a 22-year legal battle to repurpose the land for an army firing range. The demolition of some homes in the area has already begun.

We ask you to raise this issue and make clear the United States firm opposition to such displacement in your upcoming trip to Israel, the letter reads.

It is signed by the Union for Reform Judaism, New Israel Fund, Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Ameinu, Truah, Americans for Peace Now, Habonim Dror North America, Hashomer Hatzair USA, Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish Labor Committee, J Street, the National Council of Jewish Women, Partners for Progressive Israel and New York Jewish Agenda.

The letter echoesone sent to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken by 83 members of Congress in May. Dozens of senators and representatives then wrote to Blinken: This relocation of Palestinian families from homes they have lived on for generations could spark violence, is in direct violation of international humanitarian law, and could further undermine efforts to reach a two-state solution.

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

See more here:

Jewish liberal groups urge Biden to stop eviction of Palestinians from their homes in villages near Hebron - Forward

Category: Judaism | Comments Off on Jewish liberal groups urge Biden to stop eviction of Palestinians from their homes in villages near Hebron – Forward
Tags: