Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

Hellenic Film Society USA (HFS) is streaming two Jewish-themed Greek films throughout the month of January to mark Holocaust Remembrance. The films are available to global audiences and are streaming on-demand, via the organizations website.

The drama, Cloudy Sunday, and documentary, My Sweet Canary, began streaming worldwide on Sunday, January 3 and will remain available for viewing through Saturday, February 6.

Cloudy Sunday (Ouzeri Tsitsanis is the films Greek title), directed by Manoussos Manousakis, is a drama set in the Nazi-occupied Greek city of Thessaloniki in 1943, when during an alarming escalation of Jewish persecution, a young Christian resistance fighter falls in love with a Jewish woman.

Traditional Sephardic music and the melodies of Vasilis Tsitsanis add to the poignancy of this enthralling drama about love and the horrors of war. The Forward calls it a powerful, melancholy text that has important implications for contemporary struggles.

My Sweet Canary, a Greek/Israeli co-production written and directed by Roy Sher, is a rousing documentary about the life of legendary Greek singer Roza Eskenazy, a Sephardic Jew who is widely credited with popularizing the musical genre of rebetika, considered a form of Greek blues, during a 50-year career that began in the 1920s. Both films will be shown with English subtitles.

The Hellenic Film Society is proud to recognize, during Holocaust Remembrance, Jewish contributions to Greek culture, and to pay tribute to the tens of thousands lost in concentration camps, says Jimmy DeMetro, president of the Hellenic Film Society.

The moving films weve selected capture the joys as well as the horrors of that time and will resonate with todays audiences. Nearly 60,000 Greek Jews died in the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II.

The two films are presented as part of the Hellenic Film Societys Always on Sunday on Demand film series, an outgrowth of the Always on Sunday film series which began at the prestigious Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY in 2018.

The monthly online series follows the successful virtual Greek film festival that HFS presented in July after the pandemic forced movie theaters to close indefinitely, precluding the presentation of the New York Greek Film Expo, the Societys annual spring film festival in theaters around the New York metropolitan area.

Januarys programming is made possible by a generous donation from the Koslosky Family Foundation.

Is The Pappas Post worth $5 a month for all of the content you read? On any given month, we publish dozens of articles that educate, inform, entertain, inspire and enrich thousands who read The Pappas Post. Im asking those who frequent the site to chip in and help keep the quality of our content high and free. Click here and start your monthly or annual support today. If you choose to pay(a) $5/month or moreor(b) $50/year or morethen you will be able to browse our site completely ad-free!

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My Sweet Canary and Cloudy Sunday Streaming Globally in Commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance - The Pappas Post

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

NEW YORK This year, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day of the Greek Jewry will be held virtually via Zoom on January 21, 6 PM EST. The event features The Good Shepherds, an exhibition by the Jewish Museum of Greece in cooperation with The American Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece. The speakers include His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, Ambassador of Greece to the United States Alexandra Papadopoulou, and Dr. Mimis N. Cohen.

Any questions may be submitted via email: info@afjmg.org.

This year, the effort to mitigate the spread of COVID has inadvertently underscored the importance of the commemoration ceremony, which will, for the first time, be held virtually, but on a Pan-American level, under the auspices of the Embassy of Greece in Washington, DC, and with the participation of every Greek Consular Authority in the USA.

The idea for The Good Shepherds exhibition by the Jewish Museum of Greece (JMG) originated with Mr. Samuel (Makis) Matsas, President of the Museum. A child of the Occupation, who survived thanks to the timely escape of his parents and the generosity of friends and strangers, Mr. Matsas asked the museum to research the conditions under which senior members of the Christian clergy and eminent rabbis acted in various ways to assist persecuted Jews during the Nazi Occupation.

The exhibit showcases the positive actions, gestures of sympathy or support, and rescue attempts, no matter how large or small, revealed by JMG research, to honor those involved at the time and inspire us today. It also aims to highlight the importance of individual choice within an extremely complex, suffocating, and often contradictory context. The stories are illustrated by original artefacts belonging to some of the senior clerics featured in the exhibition. The exhibition has been realized within the framework of a three-year-long programmatic cooperation between the Museum and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Athens.

As noted in the invitation sent out by Public Diplomacy Office in New York of the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN and the Consulate General of Greece in New York, this event will, once more, especially under the current circumstances, unequivocally reaffirm our common and relentless commitment to stand against anti-Semitism.

The American Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece (AFJMG) is the only official representative of the Jewish Museum of Greece (JMG) in the United States of America. It is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization registered in the States of New York and Illinois. AFJMG is also a Jewish Community Federation & Endowment Fund approved public charity. AFJMG is the oldest association affiliated with JMG to bring together Sephardic and Romaniot Jews in North America. AFJMG maintains close relations with other Jewish organizations as well as government agencies both in the United States and Greece.

The Jewish Museum of Greece was founded in 1977. In 1998 The Jewish Museum of Greece moved to its own building in the center of Athens and has become the fulcrum of renewal of Jewish community life and a lead agent for Holocaust studies in Europe, visited each year by thousands of visitors in Athens, Greece.

More information is available online: https://afjmg.org/.

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Holocaust Remembrance Day of the Greek Jewry on Jan. 21 via Zoom - The National Herald

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve todays most pressing policy challenges. It has been condensed and edited.

Romesh Ratnesar:The Jan. 6 stormingof the Capitol was an alarming assaulton American democracy. You served in theObama administrationand are nowthe head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is at the forefront of monitoring and fighting hate groups and violentextremism.Did what happened on Wednesdaycome as a surprise to you?

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO, Anti-Defamation League:What I would say is that it wasshocking, but not surprising. Theattack on the Capitol was in many ways abookend of what you saw play out in the summer of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia from Charlottesville to Capitol Hill. In Charlottesville, you had hardcore white supremacists who converged on that college town and marched out in the open, unapologetic and unafraid. And then you had a president who said in the aftermath, There were fine people on both sides. At ADL, we are the oldest anti-hate group in the world. We have been tracking extremists and fighting this battle for generations. We monitor these actors, not just on the public web, but you know, in their private messaging spaces. And when I say they feel emboldened, Im saying that because thats what they were saying. They were saying, verbatim, We feel emboldened.

In the intervening years, you had white-supremacist media being credentialed by the White House.Youhad extremists showing up in meetings in the Oval Office. You had interns flashingthe white supremacist OK sign in photos. You had the presidentadopting not just their rhetoricbut their ideas and enshrining them in policy. You had moments like last fall, when asked to condemn white supremacists, he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by. For years, the president has been undermining so many of our institutions Congress, the Democratic Party, members of his own party who disagree with him, the judiciary, the civil service, a free press. He has been taking a sledgehammer to the very foundations of our system. And then, of course, for the last six months, he has been relentlessly going after our electoral process, which is the invisible firmament that holds those institutions together.

And so, after years of this behavior, what we saw on Jan. 6 was the culmination. But whereasin Charlottesville, you had hardcore white supremacists, you had something profoundly different on Wednesday. When they stormed the Capitol, you had the extremists in front, but then you had hundreds of ordinary Americans behind them. If Charlottesville was the introduction of extremism in the political conversation, Wednesday was the normalization of extremism. That is a frightening development. I would describe it as nothing less than maybe the darkest day our democracy has ever seen.

RR: How would you characterize the attack? Was this a mob riot, or something more coordinated or organized?

JG:There is no doubt this was a watershed moment for the white supremacist movement in the United States. This was an achievement that even escaped the Confederacy they never penetrated theCapitol. Wednesdays attack involved a melange of right-wing extremists. There were white supremacists. There were anti-government types. There were armed militia members. There were Boogaloo enthusiasts. There were accelerationists. This was a whos who of right-wing extremism. The act of breaching the Capitol not the protests on the lawn, where there were thousands of ordinary Americans who were swept up in the President's unending and relentless rhetoric but those who actually stormed the Capitol, these were not protesters, they were militants. This was not spontaneous;it was planned. I think weve got to be intentional with our language. We cant let them off the hook, as if this somehow just happened. This was very deliberate. It was domestic terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such by law enforcement authorities.

RR: Leading up to this there was a great deal of evidence on social media about these groups plans. ADL and other organizations have tracked them. If these threats were coming from, say, a jihadist group, you would have expected a huge security presence and much more aggressive efforts by our intelligence and law-enforcement bodies to disrupt the plot. Why wasnt that done?

JG:I think well need a thoroughinvestigation. I think its fair to ask these questions. Why werent they better prepared? At the ADL, we work with law enforcement actively. Were the largest trainer of law enforcement on extremism and hate in the United States. We had been reaching out to law enforcement ahead of this, because we knew this was going to be serious. So I think weve got to ask, why werent they better prepared? And I think we can also ask, why did they respond in a way thats so profoundly different than what theyve done with peaceful protests at the Capitol, from Black Lives Matter protests to immigration? I dont understand that.

Its fair to say the FBI knows what a threat white supremacists are. U.S. attorneys know the threat of right-wing extremism. So do state and local police. If you look at the dataon hate-related murders over the last decade, 76% have been committed by right-wing extremists. You can go back to the explosion in 1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City to today, this trend hasnt changed. Absent the attack on 9/11, the human toll wrought by right-wing extremists blows away any other kind of terror thats happened in the homeland. And I dont think this ends on January 20. This wasnt the beginning of the end so much as the end of the beginning. If these extremists felt emboldened after Charlottesville, you better believe they are exulting after what happened on Wednesday. So its going to take not just a whole of government effort, but a whole of society effort if we want to turn this around.

RR: So one thing thats changed since 1995 is the rise of social media and the extent to which these movements can propagateonline. What further steps should technology companies be taking to remove this content from their platforms?

JG:First things first, I think we need to reckon with the fact that the person most responsible for this situation is President Donald J. Trump. The blame is firmly and squarely at his feet. But yes, I think we have to look at and be clear-eyed about the role that social media companiesplay. I worked in Silicon Valley before I went into government service. ADL opened up a presence in Silicon Valley, theCenter for Technology and Society, in 2017, because I felt that Facebook was really the frontline in fighting extremism. I used to build software products and I know from managing teams of engineers that we need to engage these companies, because the pace of innovation is so great. I dont think we can rely on policymakers to keep pace with quantum computing and all of the extraordinary developments happening aroundinnovative technologies, like AI and machine learning and natural-language processing. You can forget it if you think thatfolks in Washington who are still on their Hotmail accounts will figure this out on their own. We need the companies to beengaged with us.

After the George Floyd murder last summer, when Facebook failed to move as quickly as seemed clearly appropriate to combat white supremacist content, we launched a Stop Hate for Profit campaign. It was the first time in 15 years that Facebook responded to pressure and started to institute reforms. They started taking white supremacy much more seriously. They created a civil-rights executive position on their leadership team. They expressed a willingness to participate in an audit of their hate content. They started classifying Holocaust denialism as hate speech that they would take off.

In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, we demanded that Twitter and Facebook and all the major services ban Trump from their platforms. Freedom of expression is not the freedom to incite violence. That is not protected speech. I was an executive at Starbucks. If someone stands in the middle of a Starbucks and starts screaming obscenities at the staff, you dont say freedom of speech you throw him out. As businesses, whether youre in media, orhospitality, orretail, you make those kinds of choices every day.I think these mainstream services that area huge part of our information economyneed to make choices. Companies like Facebook and Twitter are surely accountable to their shareholders today, but theyre really and truly accountable to history. And they need to get on the right side of this issue, once and for all.

RR: As the head of the ADL, you have conversations all the time with CEOs ofFortune 500 companies. You also have a background as an entrepreneur and an impact investor.Beyond the tech industry, what role can corporate America play in depriving these extremist networks of the oxygen they need to thrive?

JG:I think there are a few things. Brands and businesses have the ability to vote with their purse strings. They have the opportunity to participate in our society with how they hire and how they contribute to the communities in which they operate andwhat they do with their profits. Im proud to have worked for Starbucks, which has been really foot-forward on this since Howard Shultz founded the company. So what I would say is that companies can decide, do we want to patronize businesses that are out of step with basic norms, like decency and equality? That shows up in terms of advertising dollars. Facebooks collecting $70 billion a yearin advertising. Companies can make a decision: Do I want to put my dollars there? Or do I want to put them to work at a different business that might not give me as micro-targeted a demographic, but will allow me to look at my employees in the eye, allow me to look at my shareholders and my customers in the eye and say, were on the right side of history.

RR:Theres also the issue of corporate political contributions.

JG: Right.Companies have PACs, their executives can make contributions and I think they need to think really hard about whether they support individuals who would at a minimum, dismiss an assault on our democracy, let alone participate in that process. They dont have to answer to me. I think they have to answer to their employees, they have to answer to their customers and ultimately they have to answer to their children. I dont think thats really such a hard call. One of the most important things that happened in the last 48 hours was the National Association of Manufacturers stepped up and condemned Trump and those who enabled him. The NAM is not exactly an outpost of the Democratic Party, right? This was an important symbolic move. This is not about politics and social media. This is about principles. This is about the purpose of our country. Theres no right and left on this, theres only right and wrong.

RR: Whats the bottom line? Based on your own governmentexperience, whatcan the Biden administration do to mobilize a whole of society response to combat the threat of right-wing violent extremism?

JG: President Biden should issue an Executive Order on day one creating an anti-hate capacity at the White House. He should create a White House Task Force on fighting hate and promotingnational healing, a cabinet-level working group, and should appoint Vice President Harris to chair it. She understands these issues, I think, in a pretty visceral way and much of her career has been focused on it. Another thing we need to do is acknowledge right-wing extremism, and white supremacy specifically, as a global terror threat. In terms of the agencies you need to have at the table, you need to have the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, but you also need to have the State Department and USAID. You need to have both the FBI and the CIA. There wereEuropean white supremacists marching in Charlottesville. Im sure when the dust settlesand we sift through the wreckage, well find there were European white supremacists marching this week. Were tracking these people; weknow that these connections are real.

In addition to creating this White House capacity so that the full resources of the executive branch are leveraged, you need to be engaged with Congress. You need both parties here. This cant be seen as some kind of vendetta by the Democrats. This needs to be a bipartisan effort through and through that also can reach down to the state and local level. Theres a lot that can be done in this context you can leverage DHSs officer community partnerships tofight the radicalization of young people. Because the reality is there are a lot of people who are upset for good reason. The middle class has shrunk; the gap between the haves and the have-nots has grown. The structural issues are real, and they need to be addressed, but at the same time, that doesnt preclude us from fighting the threat of radicalization. So I think youve got to fight the white supremacists with a clenched fist and youve got to use an open hand to kind of heal the country.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Romesh Ratnesar writes editorials on education, economic opportunity and work for Bloomberg Opinion. He was deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek and an editor and foreign correspondent for Time. He has served in the State Department, and is author of Tear Down This Wall.

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The Big Question: Can the U.S. Defuse Violent Right-Wing Extremism? - BloombergQuint

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

Carolyn Normandin and Kamilia Landrum Published 9:57 p.m. ET Jan. 7, 2021

Escalating political tensions and the rise of political extremism have been felt acutely in Michigan. In the run-up to Novembers election, our state saw the worst that extremism and the uncontrolled spread of misinformation has to offer. The challenges of the political moment have been enhanced by the most dangerous public health emergency in a century.

During an election like no other in recent memory, the gravity of the moment was felt by voters who made their voices heard despite attacks on our electoral process that continue to stoke the flames of political extremism. These threats are all too real for Michigan residents. Beyond the plot against our governor, Michigan has witnessed high-profile threats against our secretary of state, state representatives and our electors.

Voters made their voices heard despite attacks on our electoral process that continue to stoke the flames of political extremism, the authors write.(Photo: Win McNamee, Getty Images)

It is because these threats persist that the Anti-Defamation League and the Detroit Branch NAACP joined a broad nonpartisan coalition to share resources and expertise to protect voting rights and prevent the spread of extremism in our state. This year, upwards of 30 like-minded institutions representing diverse communities and oriented towardproductive engagement in our democratic processes joined together to ensure Michiganians participate in our Democratic process unencumbered and irrespective of preferred outcome.

Through theTake Your Soles to the Poles campaign, the Detroit Branch NAACP canvassed 20,000 homes, made more than 50,000 calls, organized outreach to various faith-based, civicand labor organizations, created social media campaigns to mobilize voters and conducted voter registration efforts in the Wayne County Jail.Both Detroit Branch NAACP and the ADL supported voter hotline efforts and offered support from lawyers to protect voters from intimidation and harassment.

Alongside the states residents and its municipal leaders, we have worked toward our shared goal to protect the electoral system in our state and the processes, protocolsand personnel it is composed of from the threats of sabotage, misinformationand violence. This year, the ADL, the Detroit Branch NAACPand our partners have brought together leaders on a bipartisan basis to better understand the risks that our systems and voters face.

Prior to the election, the ADL and its partners held meetings with mayors, governors, attorneys general and other leaders nationwide to convey trends in extremism and offer tools to help them mitigate the threat. Across the country, the ADL reached over 20,000 law enforcement officials with these tools and worked closely with state leadership from both parties here in Michigan.

As the election ends and the winner is sworn in, our work will not stop. We must remain vigilant. Between 2019 and 2020 our country saw nearly 10,000 incidents characterized by racism, antisemitism, white supremacism and other forms of hate and extremism. Our state experienced more than 130 incidents, including the alleged plot against our governor, and threats against many other state officials. Confronting these challenges requires the ADL, the Detroit Branch NAACPand many other important organizations to band together and push back against these forces.

We remain firm in our belief that this threat can be countered with civic action, educationand the commitment of our partners in state and local government. We call on policymakers and leaders at all levels in Michigan to consider all avenues that would foster an environment where hate and extremism are pushed to the margins, including legal, educationaland regulatory measures. This must be accompanied by a bipartisan and full-throated rejection of efforts to traffic in conspiracy theories and extremist ideas particularly those in public and political life.

Leaders from across Michigans civil society have proven that by working together we can inform and engage millions of voters and help protect access to the polls. With the help of organizations like the ADL and the Detroit Branch NAACP, state and municipal leadership, organizations like MichiganVoting.organd countless residents and communities, we can continue to exercise our greatest constitutional gifts and preserve our democratic institutions.

Carolyn Normandin is the Michigan regional directorof the Anti-Defamation League. Kamilia Landrum is executive director of the Detroit Branch NAACP.

Read or Share this story: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2021/01/07/opinion-we-have-work-together-protect-democracy-threats/6581471002/

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Opinion: We have to work together to protect democracy from threats - The Detroit News

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

On Friday, Twitter banned Donald Trump from his favorite platform, citing the 45th presidents potential to whip up more violence after the weeks deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. The ban followed Mark Zuckerbergs decision to bar Trump indefinitely from Facebook, limiting the presidents ability to communicate directly to tens of millions of his most diehard supporters. The move kicked off praise from liberal sectors and condemnation from conservatives who believe its an example of Silicon Valley overreach.

For Sacha Baron Cohen, it was the culmination of an extensive campaign, one that has seen the comedian use his celebrity to mount an unusually consequential effort to press big tech to crack down on QAnon and other fringe and far-right groups. Shortly after Twitter enacted its ban, Baron Cohen, one of the most outspoken critics of social medias role in spreading conspiracy theories and hate speech, was ebullient.

We did it, he tweeted. He followed that tweet with another message, This is the most important moment in the history of social media. The worlds largest platforms have banned the worlds biggest purveyor of lies, conspiracies and hate. To every Facebook and Twitter employee, user and advocate who fought for thisthe entire world thanks you!

During an extensive interview for a recentVariety cover story on his star turns in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and The Trial of the Chicago 7, Baron Cohen made it clear that he was worried that social media platforms posed an existential threat to democracy.

Authoritarian regimes rely on shared lies, democracies rely on a system of shared facts, Baron Cohen said. People have their own opinions about that system of shared facts. Social media is predisposed to spread lies and conspiracy theories, while the truth is quite boring and dull. So people dont want to wait for the truth and they dont want to share the truth.

Baron Cohen first went public with many of those concerns in 2019 at the Anti-Defamation Leagues Never Is Now summit, where he delivered a blistering take-down of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies hands-off approach to policing their content. He then helped form Stop Hate for Profit, a coalition of advocacy groups and civil rights organizations that included the NAACP, Free Press, and the ADL. That organization successfully mounted advertiser boycotts and convinced celebrities to stop posting on Instagram in protest. Its one of the reasons that Facebook banned QAnon and Twitter started offering disclaimers on content that made baseless claims about election rigging. It was not a position, that of digital Cassandra, that Baron Cohen eagerly embraced.

Ive spent my entire career trying to shy away from publicity, he told Variety during the cover interview, adding, While I was aware of the dangers of social media from 2015 onwards, I was trying to find a celebrity who would actually take up the cause. They know who they are, but I approached a number of celebrities over the years, trying to say: Listen, this is the issue right now. This is really dangerous. Will you be the mouthpiece for the cause? All of them refused.

When he spoke to Variety in December, Baron Cohen was eerily prescient in outlining the risks he thought some of these claims of voting fraud posed even after Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden.

The danger of Trump and Trump-ism will remain, Baron Cohen said. We still have 80% of those who voted for Trump believing the election was stolen and thats a very dangerous figure. Im a comedian and an actor. Im not a historian or a sociologist, but having spoken to some of the eminent historians who specialize in how democracies turn into authoritarian regimes, theres a consensus that when you have a large body of the population who believe theyve been wronged, that segment of the population can be used to do horrific things.

The connection between that type of outrage and the violence it can provoke was vividly on display during the insurrection at the Capitol. Baron Cohen also predicted that social media platforms could have a deleterious impact on the ability of public health officials to encourage Americans to take the coronavirus vaccine.

If [social media companies] dont act fast to stop anti-vaxxers from spreading their conspiracy theories on social media, the amount of people who die will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions more, he said.

Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley figures have been reluctant to crack down on conspiracy theorists because they argue it violates free speech. Baron Cohen doesnt buy that argument.

The tend to keep on spouting the phrase freedom of speech without any real understanding of the purpose of freedom of speech and the definition of freedom of speech or that the United States has an exceptional view of freedom of speech that came about because of its exceptional history, Baron Cohen said. There are limits to freedom of speech in Europe that came about because of the effect of Nazism. There is a form of ideological imperialism whereby the views of a handful of billionaires in Silicon Valley is imposed on the entire world.

The Borat star has a novel idea. He argues that Facebook, Twitter and other platforms should deploy an army of digital fact checkers and monitors to curb the spread of conspiracy theories.

These are trillion dollar companies, he said. Theyre run by some of the richest people in the world. There is huge unemployment now due to coronavirus.

Baron Cohen went on to argue that these companies should say, We are going to share some of that wealth. We are going to employ hundreds of thousands of people, potentially millions of people worldwide, and share these profits and use these people to help curb the excesses of our companies.

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Sacha Baron Cohen on Facebook, Twitter and Trump - Variety

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

By Rob Kuznia, Curt Devine, Scott Bronstein and Bob Ortega, CNN

(CNN) -- "Trump or war. Today. That simple."

"If you don't know how to shoot: You need to learn. NOW."

"we will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount."

In the weeks, days and hours ahead of Wednesday's siege on the Capitol by President Donald Trump's zealous supporters, the warning signs were clear: online posts from hate groups and right-wing provocateurs agitating for civil war, the deaths of top lawmakers and attacks on law enforcement.

And now, as the dust settles and the country struggles to make sense of the violence that left five dead -- including an officer with the US Capitol Police -- experts warn that the calls for violence have only intensified ahead of Inauguration Day, when President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as commander in chief.

"We are seeing ... chatter from these white supremacists, from these far-right extremists -- they feel emboldened in this moment," said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and counters hate. "We fully expect that this violence could actually get worse before it gets better."

Wednesday's chaos -- which erupted during a protest to dissuade Congress from certifying the results of Biden's unambiguous win -- showed a loss of control and sudden breaking of the bond that for four years had held Trump, his supporters and the Republican leadership together in lockstep.

After rioters charged through a barricade, assaulted police officers, shattered windows and stormed into the hallowed building that was torched by the invading British military in 1814, Trump made a tepid plea for them to go home -- although he repeated the falsehood that the election had been stolen. Republican leaders that night -- including Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- condemned the rioters in the strongest terms.

But it all appeared to have little effect on the radicalized right.

"Trump WILL be sworn in for a second term on January 20th!!," said a commenter on thedonald.win, a pro-Trump online forum, on Thursday, the day after the siege. "We must not let the communists win. Even if we have to burn DC to the ground. Tomorrow we take back DC and take back our country!!"

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab -- a group at the University of Toronto that monitors cybersecurity -- said he is "terribly concerned" about the inauguration.

"While the broader public was aghast at what happened (Wednesday) at the Capitol, in certain corners of the sort of right wing conversation, what happened ... is viewed as a success," he told CNN.

In the days and weeks before the attack on the Capitol, signs that the protest could spiral into violence were in abundance.

Advance Democracy, Inc., a nonpartisan governance watchdog, highlighted red flags on social media. In the six days leading up to the event, for instance, there were 1,480 posts from QAnon-related accounts that referenced the event and contained terms of violence. On Parler, the report said, multiple posts referenced war, including statements like "the war begins today."

Ali Alexander, a political activist who has organized pro-Trump rallies, including one of the demonstrations that converged on the Capitol lawn Wednesday, accused the left of "trying to push us to war." In late December, Alexander told followers on Periscope that he and three GOP congressman -- Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona and Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama -- were planning something big.

"It was to build momentum and pressure and then on the day change hearts and minds of Congress peoples who weren't yet decided or who saw everyone outside and said, 'I can't be on the other side of that mob,'" Ali said, though he did not call for violence.

CNN reached out to the offices of all three congressman, but only Biggs responded, with a statement from a spokesperson denying that he worked in any way with Alexander or any protestors.

"Congressman Biggs is not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point -- let alone working with him to organize some part of a planned protest," the spokesperson said. "He did not have any contact with protestors or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests. He was focused on his research and arguments to work within the confines of the law and established precedent to restore integrity to our elections, and to ensure that all Americans -- regardless of party affiliation -- can again have complete trust in our elections systems."

Several organizations that monitor extremism online issued warnings beforehand.

On January 4, the ADL published a lengthy blog post detailing threats of violence pertaining to the upcoming rally.

"In response to a user who wondered what happens if Congress ignores 'evidence' that President Trump won the election, a user wrote, 'Storm the capitol,'" the ADL's blog post says.

The post went on to say while it wasn't aware of any credible threats violence planned for January 6, "if the past is any indication, the combination of an extremist presence at the rallies and the heated nature of the rhetoric suggests that violence is a possibility."

Also on January 4, a risk analysis by the security firm G4S stated that "current rhetoric suggests that there will be attendees who have violent intent, including armed militia groups" between January 6 and Inauguration Day.

The analysis cited numerous posts in recent weeks advocating violence on the right-wing site thedonald.win, including one from late December that said, "We will have to achieve an actual tactical victory like storming and occupying Congress, to have the intended effect."

Another said, "Patriots who STILL, AT THIS POINT IN TIME, are too cowardly to condone violence, are part of the problem."

Security experts said they were puzzled by the flat-footed response of law enforcement.

"The surprising part of it is why it was so much less aggressively policed," said Jonathan Wood, director of global risk analysis for London-based Control Risks. "Many security analysts were surprised by the lack of security, and by the lack of a robust security response."

Federal and local law enforcement officials insist they had no idea the siege would happen.

"There was no intelligence that suggested there would be a breach of the US Capitol," said DC Police Chief Robert Contee at a press conference Thursday.

Steven A. Sund, who is resigning as chief of the US Capitol Police amid criticism over the apparent lack of preparedness to deal with the violent mob, said in a statement that the department had a robust plan to address "anticipated First Amendment activities."

"But make no mistake -- these mass riots were not First Amendment activities; they were criminal riotous behavior," he said Thursday.

As for security on Inauguration Day, the Secret Service issued a statement saying its plans for the event have been long in the making.

"The inauguration of the President of the United States is a foundational element of our democracy," the agency said in a statement. "The safety and security of all those participating in the 59th Presidential Inauguration is of the utmost importance."

Robert Dodge, president of corporate risk services at G4S -- which issued the January 4 warning -- said in the months leading up to January 6, he saw "a lot of concerning and hostile rhetoric, which in our world we call a threat indicator."

He added that the US Capitol building seemed to lack the proper fortification.

"Did people approaching the Capitol see a proper level of physical barriers, of psychological barriers such as signs saying do not cross this line or you will be arrested?" he said. "You saw the glass windows being broken in. Why weren't some of those reinforced? It looks like there were some serious physical security challenges that got left to the Capitol police to mitigate."

It isn't just the fringe elements who have gotten swept up in the current fervor. Mingling with the crowd of militia groups, white nationalists and high-profile conspiracy theorists on the Capitol lawn on Wednesday were other citizens who made the trip to challenge the certification.

One was Texas resident and former mayoral candidate Jenny Cudd, whose campaign slogan was "Jenny for Mayor."

After railing against what she described as voter fraud and a stolen election, she called for the death of those who have committed treason.

"All we need is one public hanging, and then people will start acting right -- kind of like it would be useful if we still had the firing squad for the death penalty," Cudd said. "We shall see if there will be a public hanging in our future because it is still considered a valid form of death for treason."

Cudd posted a video the night before the protests, where she talked about how the next day was going to be a "ruckus."

"I don't know what y'all think about a revolution, but I'm all for it," she said. "Nobody actually wants war, nobody wants bloodshed, but the government works for us and unfortunately it appears that they have forgotten that, quite a lot, so if a revolution is what it takes then so be it."

Right-wing news network OANN posted a photo of Cudd on Twitter Wednesday afternoon showing her inside the Capitol, wearing a Trump flag around her as a cape. And that evening, she posted a video from her hotel, where she drank a beer and choked back tears as she took her followers through what had happened that day.

"When Pence betrayed us is when we decided to storm the Capitol," she said.

On Friday, Cudd told a local TV news outlet that she did nothing illegal.

"I pretty well walked up the steps and then there was an open door to the Capitol," she said. "I personally did not tear down anything, destroy anything."

In response to a CNN request for comment Friday, Cudd texted a link to a video of herself repeating a version of the statement she made to the local outlet, saying, "cancel culture is in full force," and that she has "received several death threats, along with thousands of one-star reviews" for her business.

Joel Finkelstein, director of the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, said conspiracies on the web have mushroomed from smaller, obscure sites like 8kun frequented by adherents of QAnon to more mainstream sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The result, he said, is that many of the people drawn to the protests Wednesday were not extremists but rather ordinary Americans who did not understand that they had been lied to.

"These are our neighbors -- these are these are our neighbors and friends," he said. "They are people we all know. They were doing it on Facebook. They were doing it on Twitter. The threats to our democracy aren't coming just from 8chan. And they're not coming just from QAnon."

Some of the more disturbingly violent chatter on social media reflects what appears to be a growing hostility toward Republican leaders on the part of Trump supporters.

"I'm fairly certain seeing Pelosis and Mitch the Bitch swinging bodies from a rope will get more attention from sheeple who normally don't follow or care about politics," said a commenter Wednesday on thedonald.win.

And as law enforcement has begun to take a heavier hand with right-wing extremist groups -- Proud Boys leader Henry "Enrique" Tarrio was arrested by DC police ahead of the January 6 protest -- experts are noticing a growing antipathy for police in these circles, which have tended to consider themselves allies of men and women in uniform.

"That creates a pretty dangerous situation," said Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst Cassie Miller. "Because not only might there be violent encounters with leftists but it kind of increases the potential that there's going to be a violent confrontation with cops as well."

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Extremists intensify calls for violence ahead of Inauguration Day - WDJT

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

Faith in the integrity of the presidential election has been concerningly low for months in large part because of President Trumps repeated false claims that the election was stolen from him. And on Wednesday, we saw an extreme example of the consequences of that mistrust when pro-Trump extremists briefly but violently occupied the U.S. Capitol.

This was undoubtedly a historic and disturbing moment. But its important to remember that it did not happen in a vacuum, which we can see from polling on topics related to Wednesdays breach faith in the election, support for the president, trust in institutions as well as a comparison with the most analogous event in recent U.S. history: the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Taken together, these suggest that the attack on the Capitol shows how right-wing extremist views have become palatable to more members of an increasingly isolated and angry Trump base, even as they shock the rest of the country.

There were no ordinary people in Charlottesville, it was just the hardcore extremists. But on Wednesday there were [ordinary people], said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. In many ways its a metaphor for Trumpism. He has taken these ideas and mainstreamed them in a way I think no one thought possible. It came to light Wednesday in an extraordinarily ugly and violent way.

Polls so far and we are still very early in this news cycle have found that a solid majority of Americans opposed the unrest in Washington, D.C. In a YouGov poll, 71 percent of registered voters opposed the storming of the Capitol (63 percent of them strongly), and 62 percent viewed it as a threat to democracy. Similarly, 70 percent of respondents to an Ipsos poll opposed the protesters who broke into the Capitol. And, according to a Morning Consult/Politico survey, 59 percent of registered voters think the perpetrators should be viewed as domestic terrorists.

However, a not-small 19 percent of Ipsos respondents said that they supported the rioters. In the YouGov poll, 21 percent said the same (including 14 percent who strongly supported storming the Capitol), and 32 percent did not believe that the occupation constituted a threat to democracy. Those who backed it were disproportionately Republican: 45 percent of GOP voters supported the siege, while 43 percent opposed it.

Older polls asking how Americans feel about the legitimacy of the November election the grievance that fueled the uprising are also telling. A couple weeks after the election, our colleague Dhrumil Mehta wrote that between two-thirds and three-quarters of Republicans doubted that the election was conducted fairly (it was), according to several polls. And a recent gold-standard national poll, conducted Dec. 16-20 by Suffolk University, found that 37 percent of registered voters including 78 percent of Republicans did not believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected president.

Those polls asked about peoples confidence in the election results not whether they were willing to accept the results, which is much harder to measure. You can imagine, for instance, that some people thought the election was unfair but were resigned to the fact that Biden would eventually take office. But there are some polls that suggest a significant number of Republicans wanted to actually overturn the result of a free and fair election and install Trump for a second term. The exact number depends on the poll and its question wording, but in general it is close to the half of Republicans who have said they supported the siege on the Capitol. To wit:

In trying to put this week into context, we dont have a clear analog. However, one comparison would be the rioting and violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, where a counter-protestor was killed. Trump weakly condemned those events, as he did with the mob at the Capitol on Wednesday, and in both cases the violence was inextricably linked to issues of white identity and grievance issues that motivated many perpetrators of the attack on Washington this week.

Polling conducted after Charlottesville found that Republicans were more likely to express a strong attachment to a white identity than other Americans. For instance, a survey from Reuters/Ipsos and the University of Virginia Center for Politics found that while about one-third of Americans agreed that America must preserve its White European heritage, twice as many Republicans (44 percent) agreed as Democrats (22 percent). And whereas 38 percent of Republicans felt that racial minorities were under attack in the United States, 63 percent said the same of white people. So even though polls generally found that 10 percent or less of all respondents were supportive of concepts like white nationalism or groups like the alt-right when they were called by those names, a substantial number of Republicans felt their white identity was under threat and needed to be protected, aligning themselves with elements of white supremacist ideology once the label was removed.

Republicans also were much more likely to hold favorable views of Trumps response to the violence in which he said there were very fine people on both sides than were most Americans. For instance, Quinnipiac University found that only 32 percent of registered voters approved of Trumps response, but 69 percent of Republicans backed it. And 59 percent of all respondents thought Trumps decisions and behavior had encouraged white supremacist groups, but only 18 percent of Republicans felt that way.

However, it does seem as if more Americans including Republicans might be willing to fault Trump this time around than after Charlottesville. That poll from Morning Consult found, for instance, that 63 percent of registered voters think Trump was responsible for the mob attack in Washington, including 41 percent of Republicans. Similarly, 66 percent of voters told YouGov that Trump was to blame, though in that poll, only 28 percent of Republicans agreed.

What happened following Charlottesville might still provide some clues to where things will go from here. After the Unite the Right rally, there was some splintering among far-right groups, according to Alex Newhouse, the research lead at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury College. The Proud Boys, for example, battled internal turmoil over some members attendance at the rally and some of its leaders made an effort to distance the group from white supremacy, at least on paper, Newhouse said. But other far-right groups were roused by the events in Charlottesville.

Despite the public outrage, despite the death of a woman and the arrests that followed, the white supremacists were emboldened, especially after the president said there were fine people on both sides, said Greenblatt.

For the wider American public, Charlottesville was a wake-up call that revealed how hearty the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements remain in the United States. But while many politicians, including Republicans, condemned the rally, Trumps response only further bolstered existing far-right views, Newhouse said.

These far-right groups were feeling more and more isolated from mainstream media and mainstream politics, and some of them saw Trump as their only defender in that, Newhouse said.

There are many differences between these two events, but one important distinction is the fact that, as Greenblatt mentioned, the Unite the Right rally was attended almost exclusively by white nationalists, while Wednesdays insurrection at the Capitol included many more people who arent part of an organized white supremacist group. This, Greenblatt stressed, is concerning as it indicates that these ideas are seeping out of the fringes and into the mainstream. And that seepage, combined with fears over white identity and Trumps incitement, may have broadened Republican receptiveness to political violence. A January 2020 study of Republican voters by political scientist Larry Bartels found that 51 percent agreed that the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.

And these dramatic events are products of a much larger issue: Faith in our institutions and in democracy itself is eroding in this country. Last year, a report from the Democracy Funds Voter Study Group found that a third of Americans had supported authoritarian ideas at some point in the previous three years, and polling from YouGov Blue that our colleagues reported on last year found that Republicans, in particular, were souring on democracy and the institutions that uphold it. As the events of Wednesday make frighteningly clear, this is not simply a philosophical debate. Its a real and present threat to our very way of life.

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Trump Helped Take Extremist Views From The Fringes Of Society To A Mob Attacking The Capitol - FiveThirtyEight

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2021

As protesters stormed America's home of democracy, the focus quickly turned to who they are - and why they were there.

Among the sea of "Make America Great Again" red caps there were those dressed in elaborate costumes and others wearing what appeared to be full-on assault gear, while some brandished highly offensive flags and clothing.

Sky News looks at some who have been identified:

Ashli Babbitt

The 35-year-old Air Force veteran was shot dead by a plain-clothed police officer after storming the Capitol with other protesters and attempting to enter the House chamber, Washington Police Chief Robert Contee said.

Her husband, Aaron, told KUSI TV she served four tours of duty during her 14 years in the Air Force and was from San Diego.

He said she was a strong supporter of Donald Trump and her Twitter account showed she had recently retweeted several pro-Trump messages, including a video by the president urging supporters to join the Washington march.

A fellow Trump supporter, who witnessed the shooting, said she did not listen to police and secret service telling them to "get back, get down, get out of the way".

"As we kind of raced up to grab people and pull them back they shot her in the neck and she fell back on me," he told WUSA 9.

The day before Wednesday's protest, she tweeted: "Nothing will stop us....they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!"

Her death is being investigated by Washington Police.

The Q Shaman/QAnon Shaman

One of the most distinctive protesters was a bare-chested man with the US flag painted on his face, wearing a furry hat with horns and holding an American flag on a spear.

His name is Jake Angeli and he has been a regular at right-wing political rallies in Arizona, where he is from, since 2019.

He was seen during the Capitol protests confronting a Capitol Hill Police officer and posing on the speaker's chair in the US Senate for a photo.

The horned protester is a known promoter of QAnon, a right-wing conspiracy theory based on the cryptic posts of an individual or group named "Q" who is supposed to be a high-level government agent with Q-level security clearance.

They claim to possess inside knowledge of the Trump administration's secret fight against an evil global cabal, including alleged secret investigations in Washington such as politicians running a child sex trafficking ring.

Angeli has spent much of his time since 2019 outside the Arizona Capitol shouting about various conspiracy theories, mainly related to QAnon.

He told The Arizona Republic he wears the fur hat, paints his face and wears no shirt with ragged trousers to attract attention.

Another QAnon promoter, whose name is unknown, led the charge into the Senate Chamber.

Man with a Confederate flag

The man has not been identified, but the image has certainly shocked many Americans as it is the first time the Confederate flag has ever been flown inside the Capitol.

He walked through the Rotunda by himself with the large flag - something that never happened during the American Civil War in the 1860s.

Baked Alaska

Tim Gionet, known as "Baked Alaska", is a white nationalist activist who was part of the group that entered offices in the Capitol.

A well-known online personality from Alaska, he livestreamed himself from inside an office and talked to others about what they were doing in the Capitol.

During the livestream, watched by 16,000 people on blockchain service DLive, he said he might sleep inside the office and use the landline to call Donald Trump.

He is known for holding neo-Nazi and white supremacist views, supporting Mr Trump and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories online.

His YouTube channel was banned in October 2020 after he filmed himself committing crimes and harassing people.

Baked Alaska filmed himself being taken out of the Capitol by police, who he swore at.

Derrick Evans

A Republican Delegate for West Virginia, Derrick Evans, filmed himself and fellow Trump supporters banging the Capitol's door.

Wearing a helmet, he can be seen getting into the building and shouting: "We're in" Keep it moving, baby!"

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He then panned the camera around the Capitol Rotunda, the ornate hallway between the Senate and the House which has paintings of America's founders.

"No vandalising," he shouted at protesters.

Mr Evans removed the video from his Facebook page and was told by the West Virginia State House of Delegates speaker he would need to "answer to his constituents and colleagues".

He later said he was heading back to West Virginia and "was simply there as an independent member of the media to film history".

Camp Auschwitz and neo-Nazis

A man standing by the Capitol steps wearing a hoodie branded with "Camp Auschwitz: Work brings freedom" on the front, and "staff" on the back was trending on Twitter the following day as people condemned him.

He was then seen inside the Capitol building.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Centre on Extremism, said he saw members of several white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups among the pro-Trump crowds in Washington.

The New Jersey European Heritage Association and Nationalist Social Club members were among them, he said.

Adam Johnson

Pictured walking through the Capitol with a stolen lectern as he waved at photographers, Adam Johnson is a psychology graduate from Florida.

Photos on his social media showed him posing next to a sign that said "closed to all tours" inside the Capitol.

He deleted his social media profiles soon after the protest.

People on social media mistakenly thought his name was "Via Getty" because a photo being shared was taken by the Getty picture agency.

The Proud Boys

There were reports of protesters wearing 6MWE shirts, meaning six million wasn't enough, in reference to the six million Jewish people murdered during the Holocaust.

The Proud Boys, a far-right, neo-fascist, and male-only organisation that promotes and engages in political violence, are known for using the 6MWE slogan.

Members of the Proud Boys were spotted at the Capitol, including Nick Ochs from Hawaii, who livestreamed from inside the Capitol and tweeted a selfie of him smoking, saying: "Hello from the Capital lol [sic]."

Richard 'Bigo' Barnett

A 60-year-old man who describes himself as a white nationalist online, Richard "Bigo" Barnett was pictured with his feet on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk.

Outside the Capitol, he showed a New York Times reporter a letter he had taken from her desk, but claimed he had not stolen it because he left a quarter on her desk.

He said he left a note on her desk that said: "Nancy, Bigo was here, you b****."

A Facebook post from the mayor of Gravette, the city he is from in Arkansas, said citizens have been receiving threats after seeing Bigo's picture.

"The vast majority of the citizens who live in Gravette AR are salt of the earth people, who would help their neighbours at a moment's notice," he said.

The FBI is seeking information about anybody who stormed the Capitol and is asking anybody who witnessed unlawful violent actions to send them any information, photos or videos to them here

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US Capitol: Q-Anon, Confederate flag man, and Baked Alaska - here are the people who stormed the building - Sky News

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Posted By admin on January 8, 2021

Award-winning playwright Jeff Cohen is heralding the importance of listening to Holocaust survivors while they're still living.

Actor Ed Asner stars in "The Soap Myth."(Photo: Burke-Cohen Entertainment)

Well-known stage and screen actors Ed Asner and Tovah Feldshuh star in a PBS concert reading of his play, "The Soap Myth," hosted by theHolocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus. It was filmed last January in New York and is viewable online now.

This Sunday, watch a Zoom conversation between playwright Jeff Cohen and Detroit News film critic Adam Graham.

"The Soap Myth" is set 50 years after the end of World War II and tells the story of an elderly Holocaust survivor,Milton Saltzman, who believes the Nazis turned the fat of murdered Jewish people into soap.

He teams up with a young investigative journalist in hopes that historians and museums recognize his eyewitness account. The play also delves into the evils of antisemitism and Holocaust denial in present day.

"The Soap Myth" reading at B'nai Jeshurun, New York in January 2019, starring Ed Asner and Tovah Feldshuh.(Photo: Burke-Cohen Entertainment)

"In the power of live theater lives a certain immortality," said Cohen in a press release about the virtual performance. "Five years from now, 50 years from now, 150 years from now when an actor portrays Milton Saltzman, Milton is alive. For those 90 minutes, Milton lives in all his rage and all his sorrow and all his stubborn refusal to be silenced. And when Milton lives, rest assured, he will not let the audience forget the Holocaust."

The play's reading is viewable to watch online now atbit.ly/TheSoapMyth-play-on-PBS.

Register in advance for the 2 p.m. Sunday Zoom webinar with Cohen and Graham atbit.ly/TheSoapMyth-HMC-event.Those with questions for Cohen or Graham can submit them by noon Tuesday atholocaustcenter.org/questions.

mbaetens@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @melodybaetens

'The Soap Myth'

Online discussion with playwright Jeff Cohen and Detroit News film critic Adam Graham

2 p.m. Sunday

Register in advance:bit.ly/TheSoapMyth-HMC-event

Concert reading of the play online now:bit.ly/TheSoapMyth-play-on-PBS

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Holocaust Memorial Center hosts 'Soap Myth' online reading and discussion - The Detroit News

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Posted By admin on January 6, 2021

JTA Tuesdays two runoff elections in Georgia wont just decide control of the US Senate. Theyll also be significant symbolic wins for one or both of the polarized sides of the American Jewish community.

Thanks to several dramatic developments, including an infamous campaign ad, a year-old letter about a trip to Israel and a controversial photo taken with a white supremacist, the races have become a microcosm of big national Jewish political narratives.

The Republicans in the races have cast the Democrats as part of the anti-Israel and socialist left. The Democrats have cast the Republicans as part of the white supremacist and anti-Semitic far right.

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Heres a recap of the Jewish drama in both races, which are going down to the wire.

Senator David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, speaks at a rally in Augusta, Georgia, December 10, 2020. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

In July, the campaign of the Republican incumbent, Senator David Perdue, ran a Facebook ad for five days before observers noticed that it featured an image of Jon Ossoff, his Jewish opponent, with his nose digitally enhanced to appear longer than it is.

The ad also featured Jewish Senator Chuck Schumer and the phrase Democrats are trying to buy Georgia! Jewish political donors such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg have figured prominently in Republican attack ads that critics argue echo anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money.

Ossoff quickly pounced on the opportunity to call his opponent anti-Semitic. He has made the ad a centerpiece of his campaigns attack against Perdue. In October, Ossoff brought the incident up at a debate with Perdue, accusing him of lengthening my nose in attack ads to remind everybody that Im Jewish.

Instead of leading and inspiring, he stoops to mocking the heritage of his political opponents, Ossoff added. A clip of his impassioned jab went viral, and Perdue dropped out of their final debate.

Perdue has since appeared in multiple online meetings with the Republican Jewish Coalition but has not mentioned the ad.

The Reverend Raphael Warnocks record on Israel came under scrutiny after Jewish Insider published an article about a visit the Democratic candidate made to the country with other Black clergy members in 2019. A pastor who helms the same Atlanta church that Martin Luther King, Jr. led for years, Warnock signed a letter that included among several conclusions, including a renewed commitment to a two-state solution a description of the heavy militarization of the West Bank, saying it was reminiscent of the way apartheid South Africa governed Namibia, its colony.

Jewish Insider also reported on a sermon Warnock gave in 2018, in which he criticized Israel: We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey, he said, referring to clashes at protests orchestrated by the Hamas terror group at the Gaza border. It is wrong to shoot down Gods children like they dont matter at all. And its no more anti-Semitic for me to say that than it is anti-white for me to say that Black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.

Democratic US Senate candidate Reverend Raphael Warnock waves to supporters during a drive-in rally in Savannah, Georgia, January 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)

The Republican incumbent, Senator Kelly Loeffler, amplified the narrative, tweeting that Warnock has a long history of anti-Israel extremism.

She also claimed that Warnock defended Jeremiah Wrights anti-Semitic comments, referring to the controversial Chicago pastor who counted Barack Obama as a congregant. But Warnock has only cited Wrights call for greater racial justice, not the pastors slight against them Jews who he claimed in 2009 were responsible for keeping him away from Obama.

Warnock has since publicly clarified his stances on Israel-related issues. He has come out against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement targeting Israel and stated his support for defense aid to Israel and a two-state solution.

Warnock, who is Black, also lauded the historical Black-Jewish alliance in a campaign ad with Ossoff. Ossoff has called him a beloved ally of the states Jewish community. The Democratic Majority for Israels political action committee, which reflects centrist pro-Israel views, gave him a noteworthy endorsement. And multiple local Jewish organizers came to Warnocks defense.

He has been a friend to Atlantas Jewish community throughout his tenure at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and a regular speaker and visitor to Atlantas synagogues, Valerie Habif and Joanie Shubin, who founded Jewish Democratic Womens Salon, Atlanta, an activist group that helps elect Democrats in Georgia, said in a statement. His support for Israel is unequivocal.

Warnock hasnt convinced everyone of his Israel support, including two prominent Orthodox rabbis in Georgia and Rabbi Avi Weiss, an Orthodox rabbi in New York who has been an outspoken pro-Israel activist for decades. But a group of over 200 rabbis and other faith leaders signed a statement in late November defending Warnocks Israel comments.

Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republican, and then Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene speak during a news conference in Dallas, Georgia, October 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Loeffler, a former business executive, raised eyebrows on the campaign trail by supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican candidate for the House who boosted the QAnon conspiracy theory and signed a post that accuses Jews such as George Soros of being involved in it. Greene is now a member of Congress.

Loeffler courted more controversy when she appeared smiling in a photo with Chester Doles, a white supremacist convicted of beating a Black man whom he saw accompanying a white woman. Bend the Arc, a liberal Jewish activist group, helped the image spread on Twitter.

Loefflers campaign quickly disavowed the photo and condemned Doles, saying she had no idea who that was.

Soon after, Bend the Arc surfaced another photo of Loeffler, this time posing with another member of Doles Georgia-based group, American Patriots USA (APUSA). The Southern Poverty Law Center calls APUSA a white nationalist group.

And Huff Post reported last month that Loeffler has also posed with members of the anti-government militia group Georgia III% Martyrs and gave an interview to Jack Posobiec, an OANN host who has past ties to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

In a December debate, Loeffler brought up her criticisms of Warnocks Israel comments and Warnock hit back on her photo ops.

She says she is against racism and that racism has no place, but she welcomed the support of a QAnon conspiracy theorist and she sat down with a white supremacist for an interview, Warnock said. I dont think she can explain that.

Last month, the Atlanta Jewish Times asked all four candidates to submit statements making their cases to the states Jewish community. Ossoff, Perdue and Warnock published theirs in the Jewish newspaper but Loeffler decided to publish her essay on her campaign website instead.

Ossoff mentioned his familys Holocaust history. Perdue praised US President Donald Trumps Israel policy. Warnock mentioned the historic ties between his church and the Atlanta Jewish community. Loeffler said Warnock would add yet another voice to the anti-Israel cadre in Congress, mentioning Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who unlike Warnock support the BDS movement.

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Georgias Senate runoffs: All the Jewish drama from a charged campaign - The Times of Israel

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