Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 27, 2020

A group of high-profile Facebook critics on Friday announced the launch of what they are calling the "Real Facebook Oversight Board," an effort that aims to counter an independent board established by Facebook last year to oversee its decisions on content moderation.

Why it matters: The opposing effort represents how political the fight between Facebook and its critics has become in the lead-up to the presidential election.

Driving the news: The group includes leaders from the Stop Hate for Profit boycott, like Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, as well as prominent Facebook critics like Roger McNamee and some journalists and pundits.

Between the lines: The response comes just after the actual Facebook-funded appeals board announced that it would be launching earlier than expected.

A document obtained by Axios that appears to be a pitch deck for the project alleges that the Facebook-funded oversight board is "little more than a corporate whitewashing exercise."

The big picture:Pressure on Facebook to address misinformation and hate speech on its platform has increased ahead of the election.

The bottom line: The tension between Facebook and accountability groups is increasing ahead of the election, and the company's independent oversight board is the latest target.

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Facebook critics take on its Oversight Board - Axios

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2020

President Donald Trumps pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court is Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic and conservative midwestern judge who commentators compare to the late justice Antonin Scalia.

Barrett, nominated Saturday, lives in Indiana and is a judge on the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, but has a spare political record. The 48-year-old, who clerked for Scalia, has only been on the appellate court since 2017.

A number of liberals havefalsely attacked her for extremist views, and Republicans have warned Democrats not to make her religion a test.

I will be mindful of who came before me, Barrett said at the White House announcement. Ginsburgs life of public service serves as an example to us all, she added.

Barretts confirmation hearings in the Senate will be closely watched by Jewish groups who are invested in the tensions between more liberal justices, who have tended to elevate discrimination protections over religious freedoms, and conservative justices, who tend to favor protecting the rights of religious individuals and institutions over discrimination protections.

The National Council of Jewish Women expressed concerns, noting that she has in the past questioned whether Roe V. Wade, the 1973 ruling upholding a womans right to an abortion, is settled precedent. Additionally, Barrett criticized the chief justice, John Roberts, for voting with the liberal minority in 2012 to uphold the Affordable Care Act.

Her lack of respect for precedent is further called into question by her open criticism of Roe v. Wade, and her gross mischaracterization of the landmark ruling, NCJW CEO Sheila Katz said in a statement. Barrett is also on record in opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and even criticized Chief Justice John Roberts for his decision to uphold the law in 2012.

Jewish Women International said it was not enough to replace a woman judge with a woman judge.

Unfortunately, Barrett has proven that she will not defend equality or fairness, JWI CEO Meredith Jacobs said. Her appointment is a direct threat to reproductive freedom, survivors of sexual assault, civil rights, health care access, racial justice, voting rights, gun safety, and legal protections for marginalized groups.

Legacy Jewish civil rights defenders like the Anti-Defamation League and the Reform movement have in amicus briefs favored discrimination protections while Orthodox groups tend to favor expanding protections for the religious.

Democrats are furious with Trump and with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for rushing through a confirmation so close to the election, especially after McConnell refused in 2016 to consider President Barack Obamas proposed replacement for Scalia, Merrick Garland, who is Jewish, saying then it was inappropriate to nominate a justice in an election year. Obama nominated Garland in March of that year.

Republicans have a majority of 53 in the Senate, and only two Republicans have said they will be mindful of McConnells 2016 precedent and not vote to advance a judge until after a president is elected, meaning barring an unseen circumstance, Barrett will be confirmed.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who is the minority leader and who is Jewish, said his caucus would be united in opposing Barrett. He noted that Bader Ginsburg died on Rosh Hashanah. At our Rosh Hashanah dinner, we heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, our daughter turned to her wife and said, will our right to marry be constrained by this court?

The Democratic Majority for Israel, a center-left pro-Israel advocacy group, alluded to a decision the court is due to decide soon on the Affordable Care Act.

With the nomination of Judge Barrett, President Trump and Republicans come ever closer to achieving their long-desired goals for the Supreme Court: eliminating the Affordable Care Act and its protections for those with preexisting conditions; overturning Roe v. Wade and outlawing all abortions; and undermining democracy by deciding Trump is reelected, regardless of how Americans vote, the group wrote in a statement.

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Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ginsburg - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2020

Image by Google Images

Image in Google Search for Jewish baby carriages

Historical images of Jewish women pushing strollers and more recent images of Hasidic Jewish women are interspersed with disturbing photos of large black ovens.

One of the results depicts a smoking oven accompanied by text that reads: Are you Jewish? Have a baby? Look no furtherGet this high-quality German-made stroller.

The image is part of a collection of offensive memes called Jewish Baby Stroller Memes, found on the website Me.me. A different meme website has an image of a portable grill with text that reads Jewish travel trailer. Most of the oven images from the Google search are linked to meme websites.

We understand these are disturbing results, and we share the concern about this content. It does not reflect our opinions, said Jennifer Kutz, a representative from Googles Communications and Public Affairs team. When people search for images on Google, our systems largely rely on matching the words in [the] query to the words that appear next to images on the webpage. For [Jewish baby strollers], the closest matches are web pages that contain offensive and hateful content.

Kutz added that Google has done considerable work to make improvements and will continue to improve their systems.

Googles Public Liaison for Search, Danny Sullivan, responded to the images in a Twitter thread on Friday afternoon. In cases like thiswe dont have a policy that covers removal, one tweet read. Sullivan also noted that These images may also be removed if the sites hosting them remove them. If that happens, content drops out naturally over time. Many on Twitter were unsatisfied with the response.

The images are a major cause for concern considering the dramatic increase in both antisemitism and online harassment in the United States in recent years. This increase has been studied and reported by the Anti-Defamation League and other human rights organizations.

It is deeply offensive to be confronted by shocking images and content when someone turns to the internet for information, said ADL Central Pacific Regional Director, Seth Brysk. Its a further confirmation of the trends of harassment and attempts to use social media platforms and other forms of technology to spread antisemitism and hate.

The ADL responded to the uptick earlier this year by launching an online antisemitism tracking tool called The ADL Tracker, which monitors antisemitic incidents either reported to or detected by the ADL. They also published a report specifically targeting the issue of online harassment in the United States. The report, entitled The American Experience, found that 28 percent of Americans experienced severe online harassment in 2020.

The ADL calls upon technology companies to redouble their efforts, Brysk said. We call on tech companies to invest significant resources in stopping the spread of hate on their platforms.

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Search Jewish baby carriage, Google will return images of ovens - Forward

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2020

(JTA) George Soros may draw some of the most vociferous criticism, but hes hardly the biggest political donor in this cash-heavy election cycle Democrat or Republican.

In fact, Soros is 24th on the largest givers in this cycle, and Jewish donors on both the right and left populate the list above him.

Thats according to Open Secrets, which provides the top 100 individuals or married couples donating to the 2020 campaign. Among the top 25 on the list, 15 are Jewish or of Jewish origin.

They include Tom Steyer, No. 1 on the list, and Donald Sussman, who have joined Soros in the litany of Democratic donors criticized by Republicans. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson are No. 5 their money goes exclusively to Republican candidates. Plus theres a host of Jewish donors who have drawn little public attention despite giving in the multimillions.

The Open Secrets rundown is up to date as of Sept. 8. With the final weeks of the campaign seeing an accelerated fundraising push, the rankings are likely to change.

Heres what you need to know about the big-spending Jewish donors seeking to influence this years high-stakes elections, especially those whose giving has made the most waves.

1. Tom Steyer

Amount given so far: $54 million to Democrats

Steyer tops the list by far. The hedge funder, who was among the candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, has donated over $54 million to Democrats and, intriguingly, $35 to Republicans.

Lest you think Steyer is leading this cycle because of his own campaign, he has resided in the top three since the 2014 congressional cycle, and most of his money has gone to outside groups backing an array of Democratic candidates. (Steyer has endorsed Joe Biden and is fundraising for him.)

Steyer, whose father was Jewish and who identifies as ethnically Jewish, is a practicing Episcopalian, although in his youth he practiced Judaism and included a rabbi in his wedding.

4. Stephen and Christine Schwarzman

Amount given so far: $28.4 million to Republicans and $8,400 to Democrats

Stephen Schwarzman is CEO of Blackstone, an investment management firm, and served on one of Trumps council of business advisers until they all shut down after the deadly neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in 2017. Trump equivocated in condemning the rioters, and businesses came under pressure to cut ties with the administration.

Schwarzman told Reuters he got messages calling him a Nazi.

It was pretty clear that the country itself felt like it was going out of control, he said at the time. We decided there was too much pressure for too many people all running public companies.

His first major donation to Israel was in 2018, when he gave the National Library $10 million.

5. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson

Amount given so far: $28 million to Republicans

Sheldon Adelson, 87, is a Las Vegas-based casino magnate and Miriam, 74, is a physician. They are major givers to an array of Jewish and pro-Israel causes, as well as to medical research. Adelsons endorsement of Trump in May 2016 opened the floodgates to Jewish donors who until then had been skeptical of the candidate.

Their ongoing support for Trump has been in question: Trump reportedly berated Sheldon Adelson last month for not giving enough to the campaign as Bidens fundraising began to outpace the incumbents. But Adelson bellied up this month and has pledged $50 million to elect Republicans and send Trump back to the White House.

Adelson may be hedging his bets: He reportedly has paid $87 million for the residence of the U.S. ambassador in suburban Tel Aviv, possibly as a means of preventing Biden from moving the embassy back to that city (although Biden has said he has no intention of doing so). Trump says his move of the embassy to Jerusalem was one of the highlights of his presidency.

6. Donald Sussman

Amount given so far: $22.3 million, all to Democrats save for $5,600 to Republicans

Sussman, 74, launched his investment career at age 12, in 1958, when he bet that the Cuban revolution would drive up the price of sugar. Hes known for his close ties to the Clintons he was a major backer of Hillarys 2016 presidential campaign. Sussman said he was dumping money into her campaign because of her pledge to take money out of politics, and he acknowledged the irony.

In his charitable giving, he appears to be particularly proud of his relationship with Israels Weizmann Institute, listing his position as deputy chairman of its international board of governors and his honorary doctorate from there on his official bio.

Sussman was married to a Maine congresswoman, Chellie Pingree, from 2011 to 2016 and continues to be heavily involved in the state. He has given $100,000 to groups backing Sara Gideon, who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Despite his stakes in the New England state (he is on friendly terms with his ex, and for a period owned MaineToday, a media company) Republicans there have endeavored to depict Sussman as an interloper, or in the states lingo, from away. In a radio interview, Collins singled out three from away Jews, including Sussman, as backing Gideons campaign.

7. James and Marilyn Simons

Amount given so far: Nearly $21 million to Democrats

James Simons has been called one of the smartest Wall Street financiers of all time, thanks to his contributions to string theory and his application of mathematical breakthroughs to investment banking. Born to a Jewish family in the very Jewish Massachusetts suburb of Brookline, Simons net worth is over $23 billion. He and his wife set up the Simons Foundation, one of the largest charity groups in the U.S., in 1994.

9. Michael Bloomberg

Amount given so far: $19.3 million to Democrats

Bloomberg, who runs an eponymous media empire, was a three-term mayor of New York, elected as a Republican and then as an Independent. He endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and in his speech at the Democratic convention excoriated Trump as a con man, earning the Trump sobriquet Mini Mike. Bloomberg, 78, mounted a campaign for the presidency this year and initially polled well until he was eviscerated in his first debate by a rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who depicted Bloomberg as Trump lite.

During his run, Bloomberg had pledged $1 billion to electing whomever won the nomination. Once he quit the race, however, he seemed to have forgotten his promise (and also a vow to pay the salaries of his staffers through the election, whatever happened).

But hes back: Bloomberg said this month that he will spend $100 million in Florida, a swing state won by Trump in 2016 and critical to his reelection.

He has already donated $16 million for paying the fees of former felons. (Floridians voted overwhelmingly in a 2018 referendum to allow former felons to vote, rolling back a Jim Crow-era law. Jewish groups backed the initiative. The GOP-led legislature effectively scuttled the initiative by passing a law requiring that the ex-felons pay outstanding fines and court fees. Challenges are wending their way through the courts.) Floridas Republican attorney general says Bloombergs donation may be criminal and wants the feds to investigate.

10. Jeffrey and Janine Yass

Amount given so far: More than $13 million, mostly to Republicans

Jeffrey Yass, a trader who co-founded the Susquehanna International Group, is the lone libertarian on the list. In the 2016 cycle he gave $2.8 million to Kentucky Sen. Rand Pauls campaign. Major beneficiaries of his largesse include Save the Children and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

12. Deborah Simon

Amount given so far: $12.5 million to Democrats

Simon is the daughter of Mel Simon, the lata billionaire businessman and movie producer who was involved in Jewish philanthropy. Deborah Simon and her sister, Cynthia Simon-Skjodt, have long given to progressive and Jewish causes such as the Anti-Defamation League.

Based in Indiana, Simon has been a longtime ideological opponent of Mike Pence, the vice president and former governor of the state known in part for his anti-abortion stance. This year, she has said she will do anything to unseat Trump.

Simon also donates to the U.S. Holocaust Museum and talked with the museums magazine this summer.

The Holocaust was a formative part of my Jewish identity, she said. The danger of xenophobia and the rising hatred were seeing around the world and in this country is very troubling to me.

13. Henry and Marsha Laufer

Amount given so far: $11.8 million to Democrats

Henry Laufer worked closely with James Simons at his pioneering Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund, and also became a billionaire. Marsha Laufer, his wife, was the Democratic Party chair in the Long Island, New York, town of Brookhaven for seven years. Outside of the presidential race, the Laufers have given to several individual Democratic politicians, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee.

16. Joshua and Anita Bekenstein

Amount given so far: Nearly $11 million to Democrats

Joshua Bekenstein is a co-chairman of Bain, the global finance company co-founded by Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate and now Utah senator. Along with his wife, Bekenstein has given to an array of candidates and PACs this cycle, as well as to the Democratic Party. Residents of suburban Boston, they also operate a donor-advised fund through the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston.

18. Bernard and Billi Wilma Marcus

Amount given so far: $9.7 million, all to Republicans save for $6,900 to Democrats

Marcus, 91, co-founded Home Depot and has long been a major donor to Jewish causes, looming large in the Atlanta area. This year he took on the Jewish Future Pledge, dedicating at least 50% of his charitable giving to Jewish causes, and his eponymous foundation gave $20 million to the Jewish Education Project to help lower the cost of youth trips to Israel.

Marcus is all in for Trump. His pro-Trump posture he gave Trumps campaign $7 million in 2016 has led to boycotts of Home Depot, although he retired as the hardware chains chairman in 2002. The New York Times, reporting this week that the Republicans were trying to get the Green Party on the presidential ballot to siphon votes from Biden, revealed that Marcus funded an identical campaign in 2016. It may have worked: The votes for the Greens were greater than the margin of Trumps key victories in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Marcus also backs congressional candidate Laura Loomer in South Florida. Mainstream GOP Jews have endeavored to ignore Loomer, who is Jewish and a self-declared Islamophobe. Shes run a campaign that has incurred the wrath of mainstream Jewish groups for likening Democrats to Nazis. Trump has enthusiastically endorsed Loomer he lives in the district.

22. Paul Singer

Amount given so far: $8.8 million to Republicans

Singer, 76, is a hedge funder who eased the Republican Party (somewhat) into accepting rights for LGBTQ people (his son is gay). He has a tenuous relationship with Trump and was the initial funder of the opposition research that led to revelations about Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign. But by last year he was on the Trump train, saying Democrats posed a socialist threat to the United States.

23. Stephen and Susan Mandel

Amount given so far: $8.8 million to Democrats

Stephen Mandel, a hedge fund manager, and his wife both grew up in Jewish families. Their philanthropic giving has centered on education issues. This year, in addition to donating to Democratic candidates across the country, Mandel has donated $2 million to the Lincoln Project, a PAC founded by former Republicans to prevent Trump from winning reelection.

24. George Soros

Amount given so far: $8.2 million to Democrats

Soros, 90, is a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who made his billions as a hedge funder. He launched his philanthropy in the 1970s, advancing democratic movements in South Africa and then as the Soviet empire began to crumble, in Central and Eastern Europe. His emphasis was the introduction of free markets, which first earned him praise from conservatives.

That dissipated once he turned his attention to liberal and Democratic politics, and especially when he spoke out against the Iraq War launched by President George W. Bush in 2003. He spent a record $27 million in 2004 to oust Bush, including millions on MoveOn, the group that along with the Howard Dean campaign set the standard that year for online fundraising.

(Adelson has said that Soros outsized 04 spending spurred his own big spending: In the 2008 cycle, the casino magnate spent $30 million on Freedoms Watch, a failed effort to set up a conservative counterpart to MoveOn, and Adelson broke spending records in 2012 in a losing bid to unseat Barack Obama at least $100 million, possibly as much as $150 million.)

Soros within the Jewish world has staked out a confrontational posture, deriding AIPAC in 2007 as overly influential and the next year becoming the main funder of J Street, a liberal rival to the pro-Israel giant. His foundation, Open Society, has also funded civil society groups in Israel that are sharply critical of its government.

As his ranking suggests, Soros has not been as major a player in presidential fundraising this year as he has been in the past. His focus in recent years has been on funding candidates for prosecutor who favor justice system reforms. In July, Open Society pledged to spend $220 million over five years to fund racial justice groups, its response to the protests this summer against police brutality.

Soros newsworthiness this cycle has less to do with what hes given and more to do with how he has become a target. Some on the right, including Trump, have leveled baseless slanders against Soros, accusing him of everything from being behind illegal immigration to rioting in cities, as well as having been a Nazi collaborator. The smears led to a failed bombing attack on Soros in 2018 and helped spur the gunman who slaughtered 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue the same year.

25. Steve and Connie Ballmer

Amount given so far: $7.5 million to Democratic groups

Steve Ballmer is the former Microsoft CEO and current owner of the NBAs Los Angeles Clippers. His mother was Jewish and, through her, he is related to the late Jewish comic Gilda Radner. At Microsoft, he sat on a council of world leaders convened by the Jewish National Fund and made multiple trips to Israel to ramp up Microsoft operations there. He also reportedly prepared as an adult to have a bar mitzvah ceremony.

This year, almost all of Ballmers giving $7 million went to Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, the PAC associated with the gun control advocacy movement. Connie Ballmer gave $500,000 to Unite the Country, a PAC that is supporting Biden.

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Meet the top 15 Jewish political donors in this election cycle - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on September 25, 2020

The Black Lives Matter protests have brought to the fore the issue of slavery upon which many British fortunes were built. This has led to calls for schools to take another look at their approach to the British Empire and its consequences. In many respects, this is a taboo subject, none more so than Britains colonial approach to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel by Gardner Thompson is, therefore a timely publication. As the author points out, Britain was one of the Great Powers which worked secretly with the early Zionists to create a Jewish state on land largely inhabited and owned by Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

At its height in 1922, the British Empire covered a fifth of the worlds population and a quarter of the land. Although its proponents say that the Empire brought economic progress across the world, its critics point to massacres, famines and exploitation. It was the British, remember, who introduced the concept of concentration camps to the world during the Boer War in South Africa.

As a major colonial power with a toe-hold in the Middle East, therefore, it was almost inevitable that Britain would be given the mandate to prepare Palestine for independence by the League of Nations as from 1923. In this, The British record is one of failure, Thompson points out, because the intention was always to create a Zionist state, not an Arab Palestinian state in Palestine. Perhaps some British supporters of Zionism in the period 1917 to 1922 would have regarded as success the emergence by the late 1930s of a national home in Palestine of around 400,000 Jews, writes Thompson. But the costs for example, in money, lives and reputation had been considerable, and there was every prospect that Britains legacy would be an ungovernable country. Although for the time being the British remained in power, the government had lost the consent of the governed.

This book has been shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2020, please click here to read the full review on the Palestine Book Awards site

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Legacy of Empire Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel - Middle East Monitor

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Posted By admin on September 25, 2020

Israel-haters must not be very happy these days. All of a sudden, the big lie that nourished their anti-Zionist venom for so long is slipping away.

For more than 50 years, diplomatic geniuses kept telling the world that the key to peace in the Middle East is to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The convenient corollary was that the solution was all in Israels hands, which kept the Jewish state constantly on the receiving end of global condemnation.

This brilliant maneuver sought to camouflage the plain truth that the deepest ills of the region have absolutely nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinian conflict.

Consider just a few: centuries of conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims; brutal dictatorships that have led to general misery and despair; a predatory Iranian regime seekingdomination of the region; civil wars in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen; the rise of terror groups like ISIS; and a gross absence of civil liberties that results in the routine jailing of dissidents.

When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011 and millions poured out onto the streets to demand those very liberties, many of us thought the big lie would be exposed. After all, what were these desperate protestors demanding if not the same rights, freedoms and opportunities that their Arab and Muslim brethren already enjoyed in Israel?

Turns out it took a little longer, about nine years.

One cant overstate the paradigm shift represented by the decision of the United Arab Emirates to go public with its open relationship with Israel. Here is the dreaded Zionist enemy, the scapegoat exploited by countless dictators over the decades to distract from their own failures, being publicly legitimized and validated by a powerful Arab nation.

No wonder Israel-haters are unhappy. Their lie is crumbling. The Zionist state is suddenly turning into a source for solutions and hope rather than hatred.

For anti-Zionist groups like the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, this is a disaster in the making. How can they continue to undermine Israel if Arab countries announce that its good for the health of their societies to do business with the Zionist state?

You can bet they wont stop trying. They will be helped by ever-eager activists who will continue to parrot the worn-out mantra about the importance of ending Palestinian oppression and resolving the Palestinian conflict.

But if these activists look a little deeper, they will realize that the conditions for resolving the conflict are actually better now, when corrupt Palestinian leaders no longer hold a veto on progress in the region. That veto gave these selfish leaders an incentive to maintain a lucrative status quo, one that nourished their victim status while leaving Israel as a dark force worthy only of boycotts and condemnations. Without that veto, maybe they will focus more on what is good for their people.

After all, it wont be easy to push for boycotts of Israel now that some Arab countries are itching to do the very opposite. These countries will reasonably ask: Why not emulate the UAE and take advantage of Israeli innovation in areas such as desalination, cybersecurity, medicine, food security, renewable energy, and, not least, defense against common threats?

This is the nightmare of Israel boycotters everywhere the rise of a Zionist Spring in the Middle East.

As long as the big lie prevailed, the global BDS movement had the field to itself, throwing poison on the Zionist idea. On college campuses across America, it has been so successful that the mere mention of the Z-word has become controversial.

As more college students show pride in their Zionist identity, we can expect the BDS movement to double down on its anti-Zionism. Their foot soldiers will do all they can to suffocate any chance of a Zionist revival. They will continue to use the Palestinian cause to malign Zionism, even though their movement has always been about bashing Israel rather than raising Palestinians.

But now, they will have a major new force going against them Arab states that want to follow the UAE.

These states have the credibility to expose the big lie and reveal a simple truth: Israel is not the enemy of the Arab world and has plenty to offer its Arab neighbors to help improve peoples lives. No one not even the Palestinians can call that a lie.

How ironic if, in the end, it is Arab countries seeking real peace and real hope that will create a Zionist Spring.

David Suissais editor-in-chief and publisher of Tribe Media Corp and Jewish Journal.

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Why this is the ideal time for a Zionist Spring - Heritage Florida Jewish News

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Posted By admin on September 25, 2020

For the sins we have committed...

If the sins I am asking forgiveness for are those of the community, Im not necessarily guilty of having committed any of them myself. That, in turn, allows me to declaim a litany of moral shortcomings with neer a thought as to personal accountability.

But that, of course, would be missing the point. And quite contrary to the emphasis on introspection and soul-searching leading up to this most momentous day, which, in turn, is meant to engender resolve to alter our wayward behavior.

The question is particularly pertinent this year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many of us will be praying alone, apart from our congregations of fellow sinners. Ironically, in our seclusion, I have no doubt that we will be marking the day with a heightened sense of the individual responsibility each and every one of us bears for the well-being of the society we are a part of. And, in the case of Israel, for the country as a whole. More than that, for the success or failure of the Zionist enterprise altogether.

I mean that seriously. With all the recrimination, allegation, reproach and blame being carelessly cast about, tearing our society apart, I fear, as this New Year begins, that we may well be approaching a point of no return, a juncture beyond which it will no longer be possible to forge a society unified in purpose even if not in thought.

For the sins we have committed by forsaking the ideals that brought us hither, and on whose altar we have sacrificed so many, And for the sins we have committed by abandoning the values championed by those who inspired our homecoming, bequeathing our children a society less just and less cohesive than that with which we were entrusted.

For the sin of casting out in their old age those whose strength has failed them, And for the sin of inattention, allowing so many to die before their time.

For the sin of shunting aside survivors of the

vilest cruelty humankind has ever contrived,

And for the sin of adding to their suffering through institutionalized neglect.

For the sin of not feeding and clothing the malnourished and poor,

And for the sin of putting a third of our children to bed hungry at night.

For the sin of insulting the deaf and causing the blind to stumble,

And for the sin of indignity inflicted on those challenged and disabled.

For the sin of closing our gates to those yearning to return, barred due to pedigrees deemed deficient, And for the sin of turning away those who,

of their own free will, would choose to join their fate with the Children of Israel.

For the sin of prohibiting those in love to marry,

And for the sin of discrimination on the

basis of sexual orientation.

For the sin of not eradicating sexism

and gender-based degradation,

And for the sin of not excoriating

the violation of women.

For the sin of domestic violence,

excessive force and abuse of power,

And for the sin of neither lifting up the downtrodden nor comforting the fallen.

For the sin of dismissing the gravity of

bribery and exploitation of trust,

And for the sin of making light of

falsehood and fraud.

For the sin of not remembering that once we were strangers in a strange land, And for the sin of maltreating those seeking refuge

within our borders, deporting children from

the only home they have ever known.

For the sin of hardening our hearts

to the disenfranchised,

And for the sin of causing the marginalized to experience daily the humiliation of feeling unequal.

For the sin of false promises, leaving our brethren to languish in faraway lands, And for the sin of broken promises not to discriminate

on the basis of race.

For the sin of contempt in underpaying our

teachers and social workers,

And for the sin of unfair demands imposed upon those looking after our health.

For the sin of egoism and selfishness in disregard

of the public good,

And for the sin of pandemic indifference to the

welfare of others.

For the sin of callousness toward those

whose lives have been shattered

and livelihoods lost,

And for the sin of not sharing fairly the burden

theyve borne.

For the sin of baseless hatred and the failure to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, And for the sin of harboring hatred even when it emerges not without cause.

For all these, there is none to pardon us, forgive us or atone for us.

For all these, there is only us.

Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh.

Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bzeh.

Two renditions of the verse, one advising us that all of Israel are responsible for one another, the other reminding us that all of Israel are in this together. Both commanding mutual responsibility. Who shall live and who shall die? As individuals and as a collective, we in part shall decide.

May we, and the State of Israel with us, be inscribed for a year of healing, and may we all be sealed in the Book of Life.

The writer serves as deputy chairman ofthe executive of the Jewish Agency.

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The confession of an ardent Zionist - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on September 25, 2020

StandWithUs sent a letter on Thursday toTufts Universitys president and the dean of its dental school expressing concern about a third-year dental student over his history of anti-Semitic tweets.

In its letter to Anthony Monaco and Nadeem Karimbux, StandWithUs wrote that Adam Elayans tweets, which date back as far as 2012 and have since been removed from Twitter, should raise immediate concern, and that these apparent sentiments are egregious for a student aspiring to provide dental-health services to the public, and to Jewish or Israeli patients in particular.

StandWithUs warned that Elayans online posts present an apparent obsession with conveying hatred for Jews, relaying anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and posturing about a desire to harm Jews physically.

In a 2014 tweet, Elayan reportedly posted: I will f***in cremate you Jewish b**ch.

In another tweet that year, he reportedly posted, LEMME F*** THIS YAHOOD [Jewish] B**CHES UP YO.

He also reportedly that year tweeted, YAHOOD [Jews] RIGGED THE GAME.

In 2015, Elayan reportedly posted tweets that included Cant stand the yahood [Jews] here; Talk is cheap, its like all of yall grew up in a Jewish home; Hate how Israel currency is all coins stupid Yahood [Jewish] f***s; and The only difference between Jews and Muslims is that Jews never like to spend money and Muslims never have any money to spend.

StandWithUs also expressed alarm about Elayan expressing hatred of Zionism, which is a core part of Jewish identity, citing tweets including Every certain trait I hate about people stems from the average personality of Zionists; I do not refer to Zionists as human beings. They are of primitive standards, comparable to the Neanderthal; and, They steal your whole country, thats a Zionist.

A duty to promote the patients welfare

StandWithUs warned that since Jews are an identifiable category of patients whom he undoubtedly will encounter during his practice of dentistry, if Elayan graduates from dental school, he will be able to make significant health-care decisions for a population he appears to detest and desires to harm.

The vile, discriminatory and anti-Semitic tweets attributed to Mr. Elayan make it nearly impossible to believe that such an individual could serve as a competent dental professional, stated StandWithUs. Mr. Elayans allegedly repeated behavior highlights an obvious fixation with and contempt for Jews. It also raises serious doubts about whether he possesses the competence and compassion necessary to practice dentistry.

The pro-Israel group called on the Tufts administration to immediately investigate whether Mr. Elayan may have violated, at a minimum, the following applicable rules and provisions and, if he has, to institute immediate repercussions.

It also alleged that Elayan has violated at least four of the American Dental Association Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct, including the dentist has a duty to refrain from harming the patient, the dentist has a duty to promote the patients welfare, the dentist has a duty to treat people fairly and the dentist has a duty to communicate truthfully.

The pro-Israel group also alleged that Elayan may have violated four of the values of the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, including professional excellence and integrity in living, learning and practicing with the highest ethical and clinical standards; commitment to advance dentistry through the integration of education, research and collaboration; respect for each others rights, opinions and beliefs in a diverse, culturally sensitive and supportive environment; and a culture of open communication that fosters a sense of community.

Tufts University spokesperson Patrick Collins told JNS, We have received the letter and are reviewing it. We find the comments, which were posted to a private account unaffiliated with the university several years ago, to be abhorrent and contrary to the inclusive environment that we strive for and are known for at Tufts.

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Pro-Israel group calls on Tufts to investigate dental student over hate-filled anti-Jewish tweets - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on September 25, 2020

Meron Benvenisti died last week on Rosh Hashanah at the age of 86. He was a passionate, brilliant, and charismatic iconoclast, a bold and energetic researcher, and a prolific and powerful writer. His visceral attachment to the whole country, his knowledge of and sense of responsibility for Palestinian suffering, and his comfort with confronting conventional wisdom with inconvenient truths, gave his work a compelling urgency that sometimes obscured its lack of nuance.

He was a political organizer, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem in the 1970s, an archeologist, a scholar of the Crusaders, a land dealer, a public policy researcher, and a journalist. But he will be remembered primarily as a prophet a tormented, hyperbolic, anguished, but, in the end, undeniably accurate prophet. Prophets only need to be right about some things to be remembered for their prophecy.Meron was right about one big thing:that the future of Palestine, the future of the Land of Israel, will grow out of a one-state reality from the river to the sea a reality he identified as such earlier than almost any Jewish Israeli.

Merons life, as he described it, was a long process of disillusionment with the conventional Zionism that he absorbed as a youth. His father, who cared not a whit for the countrys Arab inhabitants, was a distinguished geographer who was obsessed with the Zionist principle of Yediat Haaretz (knowing the land). Meron took that principle to its logical extension, loving not only the land but the Palestinian Arabs inhabiting it. Their natural comfort in the landscape and their tenacious human attachment to the places of their habitation not simply to the map image of a politically designated space was his model for what it meant to be what he claimed to be: a native of the country. Intimately exposed to Palestinian suffering and the injustices imposed upon them, he came to see the Zionist project not as building the land, but the obliteration of the landscapes of my childhood.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Israeli scholars and journalists covering the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank began talking about approaching the point of no return echoing the warnings of their Palestinian counterparts. The savviest observers, such as Danny Rubinstein, Yehuda Litani, and Amos Elon, contended that within a few years, or even months, the Gush Emunim settlement movement, and the right-wing parties and governments that supported it, would make the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible.

Meron was the most articulate, most fervent, best informed, and most effective voice among them. Armed with detailed plans and information about this strategy made available to him by the Land Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency, which worked hand in glove with the settlers and Likud government ministers, Meron was able to stimulate a vivid and, for liberal doves, terrifying sense of closing opportunities for peace. It was, he told journalist Thomas Friedman in 1982, five minutes to midnight.

At first, his warnings were hailed by Israeli politicians such as Abba Eban and Lova Eliav. But as time passed, as settler leaders and government ministers praised his findings as proof of the success of their project, and as the number of settlers passed threshold after threshold, Merons former political allies turned on him. Suddenly, he was vilified for supporting the settlement of the entire Land of Israel, secretly hoping to unite the country under a Jewish government by undermining the will to resist annexation with his thesis of irreversibility.

View of the separation wall and Al-Aqsa compound in the background on February 2, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

When I was a young professor at Dartmouth College, I hosted Meron and was in contact with him irregularly over the decades. He found my approach irritating, focusing as it did on the implicit theories undergirding his idea of a point of no return, and on whether the data gathered from Gush Emunim and government planners was reliable. We were, in that sense, intellectual rivals, but I greatly respected him. While other analysts and politicians would regularly forecast the passing of a point of no return as a way to mobilize support from worried doves (only to renounce the existence of such a point after it had passed), Meron was faithful to his analysis.

Without any attractive alternative to a two-state solution available, and therefore without being able to reassure his audience that their fondest dreams would not be dashed, he was, except for one brief period during the First Intifada, consistent in his argument that there never would and never could be an independent Palestinian state. He believed that the peoples living in the land, trapped in an intercommunal conflict, would simply have to find a way to live with one another in the same country and in the same state.

I grieve Merons passing. He was not only one of the most dynamic and interesting people I have ever met, but also, even from a distance, one of my most important intellectual and political interlocutors. In the early 1970s, we were both shocked at the hubris and shortsightedness of Israeli policies toward Palestinians. We each developed interests in British rule in Ireland as a case holding warnings and opportunities for Israel and Palestine. His arguments and data gave urgency and definition to my work in the State Department in the Carter administration, on whether the Camp David Accords could be used to advance a land for peace deal or not. In a series of articles and books, I sharpened my thinking on his arguments, which always provoked and deserved rigorous evaluation.

Although I do not believe Meron was right in the late 1980s that the failure of the two-state solution was inevitable, I have come to the bitter but liberating conclusion that, in the world as it did develop, that option is no longer available. That acceptance of the one-state reality, and of the fact that the future will be determined by its dynamics, not by negotiations, required a long and wrenching process of disillusionment and learning. In that way as well as in others, I feel that, with age, I have come to understand Meron better. For as he emphasized in his later writings, throughout his intellectual, political, and spiritual journey from fervent Zionist to a quasi-Canaanitish democrat, he too learned via processes marked more decisively by disillusion than enlightenment.

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Saying goodbye to the Israeli one-state prophet - +972 Magazine

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Posted By admin on September 25, 2020

It was a beautiful fall day here in Chicago this year on Rosh Hashanah, so I did what I do during most of these pandemic daysI took a walk around the north side of Chicago. On this crisp, cool day, the light turning from summer yellow to fall white, I remembered missing days like these when I lived in Israel. I used to write letters to my mother explaining how much I missed the fall. In a loving gesture, she sent me photos of fall days like this one in a care package along with peanut M&Ms, soap opera updates from the Sunday paper, and a 20 dollar bill.

Walking in Chicago on the Jewish New Year, I began to think about the first time I took a hike. It was 1986 on my first trip to Israel. I was 16, with dozens of other young 16-year-olds on the same high school summer program, walking in northern Israel over a span of several hours. Youre going to hike the width of the country! our enthusiastic leader told our eager group. Donning faded cut-off jean shorts, a pink fanny pack, and my canteenYoull need the water for the hike, we were told before the trip I forged a bond with the ground with each step I took across the tiny country. My teenage feet sunk into the earth, mud sticking into the ridges of my shoes.

Some teens on the hike later removed the mud from their shoes with a stick, but not me. Its embarrassing to admit now, but that day, I fantasized about licking the holy dirt from the bottom of my shoe with my tongue when no one was looking, for we had been taught for weeks (and for years back in the U.S.) that it was holy. At age 16, I was a virgin, but I felt drawn to the Israeli earth like a lover. Later, I fooled around on that earth camping in the Israeli wilderness, a menage-a-trois with a man and the dirt.I had grown up with parents who often said that Jews dont camp. My father used to tell me that the closest wed ever get to camping would be spending a weekend at the Holiday Inn Holidome off Highway 94 in Wisconsin. So the hiking I did in Israel, while obviously a Jewish ritual given where I was and who I was with, felt exotic and different.

When we removed the mud from our shoes with a stick on that hike at age 16, I put some of the earth in an empty wine bottle, corked it, and brought it home to Chicagoa souvenir and holy relic at once.

The walk we did is called a tiyul, which also means a hike or a journey, in Hebrew. Throughout the several-hour tiyul across the nation-state, we walked up and down hills, climbed through forests, paused at the hot springs, pushed each other into the Jordan River. We teenagers flirted, some hooked up, and a couple got married a few years later and made aliyah, returning to the place where they first fell in love.

The ground itself we young Zionists walked through on the tiyul had been altered to appear native, carefully designed precisely to feel primal and spontaneous and organic, the actual indigenous Palestinian land destroyed to make way for this false, fake appearance of indigenousness. Forests and parks we teens hiked through used to be Palestinian villages: Amuqa, Ayn al-Zaytun, Firim, Mughr al-Khayt, Qabaa, are just a few. Pine trees now grow where the villages once stood.

On the tiyul, we walked outside all day with sweat dripping off our bodies, absorbed by the holy dirt. Some took a piss on the side of the path like dogs claiming their territory. One teen had filled his canteen with lemon vodkarelishing that there was no drinking age in Israelbut once he was hot, he dumped the liquor on the ground, which quickly drank that, too. The entire experience was designed to feel like we were discovering it ourselves, but of course, these encounters took place against a manufactured backdropa Zionist playground created entirely on top of Palestinian life and culture.

As I walked through the forest on the tiyul, I remembered the allowance money I put in the Jewish National Fund (JNF) blue box at a young age. We made the desert bloom, my mother said when I was ten years old. How did we do this, I asked from our home, from the other side of the world? My mother pointed to the blue JNF box full of loose changea pretty sky blue, I remember, and in the foreground of the box a tall, good looking man held an ax and stared towards the sunwhile I sat on our 1970s green kitchen counter. Thats how, she said. And then I felt a selflessness in me, learning to give to others who required help, like Israel, who I believedbecause my mother believedneeded money to help make the empty forest grow. Only five cities are listed on the blue box, the only cities that matter to young Zionists: Haifa, Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, and Eilat. The hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 dont enter a Zionists consciousness.

The tiyul became a forced consummation of years of foreplay spent dreaming of walking across the land. Later, I read about this colonial tactic masked as a light-hearted walk in Orit Ben-Davids essay, Tiyul (Hike) as an Act of Consecration of Space, in Eyal Ben-Ari and Yorum Bilus 1998 book, Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience. There, l learned that the tiyul is a declaration of territorial claim, and a means for the legitimization of personal and national identity. The hikes are just another territorial method to get young Zionists to fall in love with the land, a way to claim national possession:

Hikes and tours were basic constituents of the Zionist ethos, and were popular from the 1920s. The aim of these excursions was to develop a close familiarity with the landscape and to encourage a concrete bond to the features of the homelandThe Zionist hike was therefore constructed as a return; a search for the familiar names and places from the Jewish past.

This tiyul is a fabricated experience that felt real to me, designed to reconnect me to a Jewish past.

It worked, for unbeknownst to me, the epiphanies I had about Israel had already been anticipated by political leaders, conditions already created to sexualize and fall in love with the land, purposefully manufactured, deliberately outlined by other, older Zionists sitting somewhere in large offices with millions of dollars to ensure young Zionists fall in love with the country. I believed, as I was taught, that it was a legitimate countryfought for and defended, needing my help.

On Rosh Hashanah the other day in Chicago, I walked through the campus of Loyola University and sat on a bench near Lake Michigan. I received my Masters in Education there in 2000. Its a beautiful campus along the lake. Black Lives Matter, Vote Trump Out, and Justice for the Indigenous, messages dotted the cement path in pink and yellow chalk. The lake that day was a still, brilliant blue. I needed to return home soon, to plan my remote classes that now consist of students logging onto Zoom from their homes. Some of my students are homeless, and they try to connect to our class on their phones. They keep their video off. Others sit in their backyards or on the roofs of their homes. Some are in bed. Most evenings after dinner, I walk along Broadway Avenue in my neighborhood. Since April, the amount of homeless people on the street has steadily increased.

On the tiyul up north in Israel in 1986, I rested at one point during the long day. We teenagers were tired. I needed to refill my canteen with more water. The teen whose canteen had been filled with vodka was drunk. I ate lunch on a wood bench in a park that looked like it had always been there. A structure with limestone on the bottom and glass on the top stood out. What a beautiful fusion of old and modern, I said to the enthusiastic leader. It was a bathroom for the hikers who ate their lunches on the wood benches in the park that was designed to appear native. I asked what the building used to be before it was a bathroomclearly it was something before it was a place to pee in. The leader of our tiyul told me, Ancient ruins, with a faraway look in his eye, with a modern update!

Leaving any political system behind is also deeply personal. For years, my mother and I suffered an ideological alienation from each other. The values I was taught as a child were, when taken to their logical conclusion, precisely what caused me to abandon the Zionist ideology. Even now, I feel a twinge when I return to my mother, who is agingI am aging, toobecause things have never quite been the same between us since I separated Israels myth from its reality. Weve been confused by each other, my mother and me, for it was she who taught me to be selfless and to help others when I put my allowance in that pretty blue box.

I still feel nauseous when I remember when I sat, in lovefor it felt as authentic as a real love could feelon a wood bench in a park that used to be a Palestinian village, where Zionists on a tiyul took a piss and snuck alcohol and fooled around near the building of glass fused to limestone that used to be a Palestinian home.

But these are just memories and musingsstirring, I suppose, during these Days of Awe when we are asked to reflect. Here on a fall day in Chicago, the leaves have not yet turned brown or fallen. Zionists in synagogues all over the U.S. are askingover Zoomfor donations to Israel. Little Zionists fill their JNF blue boxes to help the forests grow in Israel, looking up to and learning from their mothers.

On my walk through Loyola, I saw some boats out on Lake Michigan, clustered in a group. The water was calm and peaceful, the blue not unlike the color of the JNF blue box. I thought of the beginning of one of my mothers favorite books, Zora Neale Hurstons 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God:

Ships at a distance have every mans wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they dont want to remember, and remember everything they dont want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

I remember seeing this book around our house when I was young. My mother, also a teacher, was using it in her classes. She had discovered Hurston, who grew up in Eatonville, Florida, in the 1970s, when we lived in Gainesville. For decades, she recommended that I read the book. I promise youll love it, she said to me many times. I scoffed with a youthful bravado, not wanting to be told what to read, tired of seeing it all over the house. I finally did, in college, in one of my literature courses. You were right, I wrote her in a letter after I finished.

On Rosh Hashanah, as she and my father participated in their temples services on Zoom, she sent me a text wishing me Shana Tova. She also sent a photo of her computer screen of the Rabbi and Cantor up on the bimah without the congregation. They were separated by plexiglass. Lonely clergy, she wrote in her text, but at least its one of those nice fall days you used to miss when you lived in Israel.

I got up from the bench, but wasnt ready to go home. I decided to walk a bit longer along the path.

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This Rosh Hashanah I remember hiking in Israel when I still believed the myths - Mondoweiss

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