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April 2013

MY SAY: TRAVESTY IN A GERMAN JEWISH MUSEUM

Thanks to Bruce Bawer who is one of our worthy “cameras” in Europe, I learned to my astonishment and acute pain that there are now 200.000 Jews living in Germany. They have a magnificent Synagogue in Berlin, and the rebuilt pre-war Synagogues in cities like Erfurt and others ranging from Chabad, Orthodox, Progressive and Uber liberal and probably hippie. At the end of the Holocaust about 30,000 Jews remained or were repatriated to Germany from displace persons’ camps. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the population mushroomed. I am shocked by this column because it took place in a Jewish Museum.

In 1948, the World Jewish Congress issued an appeal to Jews all over the world to “never again settle on the blood-drenched soil of Germany.”

Read this column.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/germany-presents-jew-in-the-box/

You’ve heard of the Cat in the Hat? Welcome to “Jew in the Box.”

It sounds like some kind of sick joke, but it’s not.

There are 200,000 or so Jews living in Germany these days. At the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the powers that be actually decided it was a good idea to get a few of them to sit in a glass display case, one at a time, and answer questions.

It’s part of an exhibit called “The Whole Truth: Everything You Wanted to Know about Jews.” But everybody calls it “The Jew in the Box.” A different Jew is put on display every day, from four to six P.M.

The supposed point? To “help educate postwar generations.” You see,“few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them.” Museum official Tina Luedecke: “A lot of our visitors don’t know any Jews and have questions they want to ask….With this exhibition we offer an opportunity for those people to know more about Jews and Jewish life.”

Of course. How else, after all, could they possibly find out about the subject?

Süddeutsche Zeitung provided an example of the kind of “education” provided by one of the Jews who volunteered to sit in the box. “There are Jews,” he told museumgoers, “who live on welfare. There are Jews who do not go to the synagogue to pray, but who do tai chi and yoga.”

Huh?

The reviewer for Die Welt, while admitting that he is not a fan of “Jew in the Box,” explained that’s it an effort to address the “tension” that German gentiles feel in regard to Jews.

Yeah – so was the Warsaw Ghetto.

Fox News says “Jew in the Box” is “a big hit” with the Germans. No kidding. Let’s just hope this doesn’t give them any ideas. If I were a Jew in Germany right now, I’d be keeping an eye out for people coming after me with large sheets of plexiglass and a tube of glue.

(Then again, come to think of it, whoever happens to be sitting in that box at any given moment may well be the safest Jew in the country. Given the way things are going in Europe these days, homemade plexiglass-box kits may well turn out to be this year’s hot Hanukkah gift.)

Aside from “Jew in the Box,” what else is included in “The Whole Truth”? According to Der Spiegel, “documents, photos, wall texts, installations, including movies, TV shows, comics,” and more. One highlight: a game called “Jew or Not?” that’s right out of the Howard Stern Show. Museumgoers are presented with photos of Charlie Chaplin, Justin Bieber, Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, and other celebrities, and invited to guess whether they’re Jewish or gentile.

Is this how they trained the Gestapo?

At You Tube, you can watch an unbearably cutesy promotional trailer for “The Whole Truth.” Clearly, the goal here is to “educate” through whimsy. As the museum’s website puts it, the exhibit’s approach is “evenhanded and witty.” Program Director Cilly Kugelmann told one reporter: “An exhibition can sometimes be light and playful.” Yep, that’s German museums for you – always going for the light touch.

I was curious to hear what Tuvia Tenenbom, author of I Sleep in Hitler’s Room: An American Jew Visits Germany (currently a top German bestseller) would have to say about “Jew in the Box,” so I sent him a link to the Fox News story. His response was unambiguous: it’s “degrading, childish, stupid, sick,” the work of “people of no spine, no self-respect and no honor,” an “example of ‘apologetic’ Jews” who, “instead of attacking anti-Semitism head on…try to ‘understand’ it, by going the extra mile of ‘Let me show you a Jew.’”

Bingo.

If I Sleep in Hitler’s Room has been so successful in Germany, Tuvia suggested, it’s because it “takes an exact opposite direction; it tells the non-Jewish German straight in his/her face: You are an anti-Semite and there’s no way on earth you could justify it. And the German respects this direct talk.” Tuvia further pointed out that the Nazis “had this idea of putting Jews in a museum as exhibits; strange that these Jews make it a reality.”

Strange indeed. The folks at the Jewish Museum have provided yet another affirmation – as if we needed any – that, whatever the sickness is that’s afflicted so many Europeans for so many centuries when it comes to Jews, it’s still there.

In spades.

And it’s even infected some European Jews – at least those who gave the go-ahead to “Jew in the Box.”

Trying to Give Scholarly Respectability to the ‘Right of Return’ Fantasy Posted By Richard L. Cravatts

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/richard-l-cravatts/trying-to-give-scholarly-respectability-to-the-right-of-return-fantasy-at-boston-university/print/ Seeming to give credence to Orwell’s observation that “some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them,” on April 6th and 7th, Boston University will be hosting a Students for Justice in Palestine-run “Right of Return Conference,” yet another example of how purported scholarship about the Middle East is frequently biased […]

FJORDMANN: IMPORTING ISLAMIC NIGHTMARES WHILE DENYING THEM ****

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/fjordman/importing-islamic-nightmares-while-denying-them/print/

A report prepared by groups in the various Nordic countries has proposed instituting a legal ban on anti-Feminist “hatred,” comparing this to “racism.” Representing the left-wing coalition government in Norway, Ahmad Ghanizadeh from the Socialist Left Party (SV), the State Secretary in the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, was positive towards the proposal, and promised that the government would look into it.

My initial thought upon hearing this is that Leftism is now officially a religion, and that its proponents desire a “blasphemy statute” to ban any serious discussion of left-wing doctrines and their consequences as “hate speech.”

Writer and fellow online dissident Takuan Seiyo commented that not even George Orwell could have come up with anything that tops this scenario. Yes, there is a serious proposal afoot in Norway to ban “anti-Feminist hatred”. Yes, the ministry really has the Orwellian name of Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion. And yes, this State Secretary in Norway really is called Ahmad Ghanizadeh, originally from Iran.

In 2013, Norway’s Minister of Culture is Hadia Tajik, whose Muslim family came from Pakistan. One must assume that Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of the Labour Party appointed her partly to remind the native population that they no longer have a culture, only “Multiculture,” but mainly in order to appeal to the Muslim and other Third World immigrant voters whose support his left-wing coalition depends upon in order to stay in power.

PM Stoltenberg in his prestigious New Year’s Speech for 2013 promised that his government would seek to ban “hateful utterances” on the Internet. The year before, Stoltenberg used his New Year’s Speech, always broadcasted on prime-time national TV and watched by a large proportion of his countrymen, to launch a frontal attack on alleged “totalitarian seducers” who use the Internet to spread unfounded “hatred.”

I was shortly afterwards contacted by the journalist Ragnhild Sleire Øyen from the state broadcaster NRK, the local equivalent of the BBC, who considered it obvious that the Prime Minister was referring to me personally. I’m sure many other citizens got the same message, and that may well have been intentional.

THE STRANGE DEATH OF A PUTIN FOE ON THE GLAZOV GANG

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/putin-and-the-shadow-of-the-kgb-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Borek Volarik, a Czech Defector, Kevin Gonzales, the producer of the upcoming documentary: “Martyred in the USSR,” and Leon Weinstein, a Soviet emigré and author of “Capitalism 101.”

The Gang members gathered to discuss: The Strange Death of a Putin Foe. The dialogue occurred in Part II and dealt with the peculiar recent “suicide” of Boris Berezovsky and its significance in the context of the opposition to Russia’s ruthless thugocracy getting smaller and smaller. The segment also focused on why there were no Nuremberg-trials for Marxist mass murderers, why the KGB still retains power in Russia, the impotence of the West in confronting Putin, and why people should read “Mein Kampf” to gain insight not only into Putin’s propaganda, but also Obama’s.

DAVID HOROWITZ: THIS IS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (AKA WAHHABI U ON MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS)

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/this-is-columbia-university/print/ This article first appeared at National Review Online. People who ask how it is possible that a convicted killer — a participant in a failed plot to blow up a social dance attended by 18-year-old draftees and their dates; a murderess who abetted the cold-blooded massacre of three law-enforcement officers, including the first African-American […]

ISLAM AND SLAVERY: DANIEL GREENFIELD

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/black-slavery-and-islamic-racism/ When Tuaregs and Islamists swarmed in to seize Northern Mali, one of the old grievances animating their campaign was slavery. The Tuaregs were not former slaves, they were, and in some cases still are, slaveholders. The French invasion of Northern Mali, liberating towns and villages under Islamist rule, was a historical echo of the […]

EDWARD CLINE: DEMOCRACY VS. REPUBLIC?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/democracy-vs-republic?f=puball Decades before Plato wrote The Republic and his Socratic dialogues, (in fact, when he was a babbling infant), Herodotus, the father of history, recorded the first known political debate. It was between three Persian princes about what was the best form of government: democracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Otanes, the wealthiest prince, argued for “democracy.” […]

DARLENE CASELLA: THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN-ALARMING DRAMA

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-islamic-republic-of-iran-alarming-drama-in-the-middle-east?f=puball Shakespeare wrote, “Hell is empty, and all devils are here.” He could have been writing about the Middle East. Ancient Persia extended from the Persian Gulf, to the Caspian Sea to the Euphrates River; with dominion over Egypt and Greece. Cyrus the Great conquered the Babylonian Empire, and was welcomed by the Jews, as […]

Al Qaeda’s Lone Mujahid Pocketbook, Lone Wolves, Homegrown Terrorists and the Threat Among Us by ANNE SPECKHARD, PHD

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/al-qaedas-lone-mujahid-pocketbook-lone-wolves-homegrown-terrorists-and-the-threat-among-us The March issue of Al Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine is now out and is this time featuring The Lone Mujahid Pocketbook-drawing heavily on past issues-and emphasizing home-grown, lone wolf and softer target attacks with instructions to make them accessible to many. While on some levels it’s laughable -it also brings up some troubling issues to […]

THE NEW ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: REGRETS, HE HAS A FEW…BUT WHAT A WELCOME CHANGE IN THE UK

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who reportedly discovered only in adulthood that his paternal grandfather was Jewish, has been described as “a good friend” to Jews.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/28-march/news/uk/welby-regrets-synod%E2%80%99s-eappi-vote

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that he should have voted against a General Synod motion that endorsed the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).

Archbishop Welby abstained on a private member’s motion on Palestine and Israel that was passed by the Synod last year (News, 29 June 2012, Synod, 13 July 2012). The Board of Deputies of British Jews objected to the motion’s calling for the Synod to “affirm its support” for EAPPI. It said that EAPPI’s “ecumenical accompaniers”, who monitor human-rights abuses of Palestinians, had “almost no grasp of the suffering of normal Israelis”.

In an interview with The Jewish News, published on Thursday of last week, Archbishop Welby, who is scheduled to visit Israel in June, said: “On reflection, I’d have voted against. I wasn’t quite up to speed when I went into that vote. I think the situation in the Holy Land is so complicated . . . and I don’t think the motion adequately reflected the complexity.”

He said that he would have added to the motion that Israel had the right to “live in security and peace within internationally agreed bor- ders, and the people of the region have the right to justice, peace, and security, whoever they are”.

Dr John Dinnen, the Synod member for Hereford diocese who proposed the motion, said on Monday that he was “sad” that Archbishop Welby “now feels he should have voted against my private member’s Measure”.