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May 2016

Famed Writer Howard Jacobson: European Opposition to Zionism Amounts to ‘Chutzpah With Blood In It’ (VIDEO) Lea Speyer

European opposition to the right of Jewish people to live in Israel amounts to “chutzpah with blood in it,” an award-winning British journalist and novelist declared in a recent BBCinterview.

In conversation with correspondent Chris Cook for a “Newsnight” film on anti-Zionism, antisemitism and Israel — which aired April 29 — Jacobson condemned the continued audacity of certain Europeans in telling Jews they have no claims or rights to Israel.

Jacobson said:

When I hear people in European cultures attacking Zionism, I think, ‘What a nerve.’ We [Europe] kick you out, we say, ‘Go to hell and we don’t care where you go.’ And you’re lucky if you’re kicked out. You’re lucky if you get out. And then we [Jews] go somewhere. We go to what for a long time was considered home and what in the Jewish imagination has been home for a few thousands years. And this begs many questions I accept about the indigenous population [in Israel]. I accept all that. But the idea that we [Europe] would then say to the Jews, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ and now we’re going to tell you where you can go? I mean there’s a Jewish word for that. That’s chutzpah. That’s chutzpah with blood in it.

During the interview, Jacobson explained his understanding of Zionism and said that the Left in Britain must reeducate itself on core Zionist ideology. “Zionism was a liberation movement. It wasn’t a movement of oppression. It wasn’t a movement of colonialism,” he said. “It was the beginning of a Europe-wide movement of liberation of the Jews from themselves…and some of the [European] countries.” This movement of liberation among Jews began “long before the Holocaust” and “the Holocaust just then confirmed the need for that,” Jacobson said.

Commenting on the antisemitism scandal currently plaguing Britain’s Labour party — specifically comments made by Labour MP Naz Shah calling for Israel to be relocated to America — Jacobson said he would like to hear more officials renounce antisemitic views and reeducate themselves. Remarks like those of Shah, Jacobson said, remind Jews of the importance of Zionism.

“The reason why Jews get so upset when they hear Zionism denounced is because for a Jew, for most Jews, it still is a liberation movement and not only in the mind,” he stated. Reflecting on 1930s Europe, Jacobson said, “Where were Jews going to go? They were being kicked out everywhere… ‘Go to your own country,’ they were told. Okay. And now they’re in their own country and now get out of that. And now Naz Shah says, ‘Get out of your own country and go to America.’ Not only do we remember Zionism for the liberation movement it was, it’s a liberation movement still.”

While Jacobson readily admitted he wasn’t brought up a Zionist, he said, “I was just brought up to believe whatever you think about Israel, don’t forget you might need it one day. There isn’t a Jew living — no, there are very few Jews living — that won’t feel in some way or another that they might need it one day.”

Watch highlights of Jacobson’s interview below:

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Antisemitism Remains a Scourge By Michael M. Rosen —****

There was a time — a blessedly long one, stretching across the second half of the 20th century — when anti-Semitism was, as Norman Podhoretz put it, “the hate that dare not speak its name,” a rare, suppressed, sub-rosa sentiment unacceptable to serious people in the Western world.

Alarmingly, though, as the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, the hate has returned above ground with a vengeance. Anti-Semites are once again making themselves heard throughout the Western world — on college quads, in parliament halls, in presidential campaigns, online, and offline, from the usual corners of the Middle East to Continental Europe and the U.S.

Consider all that’s happened just in the last few months:

Up to 50 members of Britain’s Labour Party have been suspended for anti-Semitic comments in recent weeks. It’s not just notorious Jew-baiter Ken Livingstone, who claimed last week that Hitler “support[ed] Zionism,” but Member of Parliament Naz Shah, who called in 2014 for Israel to be relocated to the United States and has likened Zionists to al-Qaeda.

Anti-Semitism, of course, is nothing new for Labour. There was Shah Hussain, a councilor in a northern English town, who in 2014 accused an Israeli soccer player of “doing the same thing that hitler [sic] did to ur race in ww2.” There was Nottingham City Councilman Ilyas Aziz, who in 2014 called on Jews to “stop drinking Gaza blood.” And let’s not forget Salim Mulla, a councilor in Blackburn with Darwen, who in 2015 wrote that “Zionist Jews are a disgrace to humanity.”

The epidemic of racism on the British left has proven so virulent that Labour’s sister party in Israel is considering suspending ties. The best response Labour’s far-left leader Jeremy Corbyn has been able to muster is the dubious claim that only a “very small number of people . . . have said things that they should not have.” Corbyn, it bears noting, once called Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends,” and even today refuses to renounce that stance. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that anti-Semitic attacks in England spiked by 60 percent last year.

Florida Synagogue Bomber Plotted to Kill Jews for “Glory of Allah” “And whatever happens, it’s for the glory of Allah.” Daniel Greenfield

The last time I was in Los Angeles, there were guards at every synagogue. In New York, there are police officers in front of every synagogue. But the media won’t talk about Muslim anti-Semitism. Instead it’ll pretend that we face a grave Islamophobia threat. Two days from now this story will be buried beneath a deluge of “Muslims fear backlash” stories. And Jews will have to pray in synagogues under assault.

And so we turn to James Gonzalo Medina aka James Muhammad, who converted to Islam, threatened a church and then plotted to bomb a synagogue for Islam.

Medina has a number of prior arrests, including one in August 2012 when he was accused of sending violent threats via text message to a Coral Springs family.

One text read: “By next week, Ima bomb ya [curse word] … Bring him! I will buy a gun [off] the street and rampage [family member’s] church. Murder she wrote,” according to the 2012 affidavit.

And at some point, Muhammad/Medina prioritized killing Jews.

One of Medina’s associates informed the FBI source that Medina was planning to martyr himself in a firearms attack on the Aventura synagogue, using AK-47 assault rifles — then, the affidavit said, the conversation turned to claiming responsibility for it. Medina said he liked the source’s idea of using the name of a notorious terrorist group — ISIS or al-Qaida-linked Shabaab — to assume responsibility.

Medina, who told the source he had converted to Islam four years ago, said the planned synagogue attack would inspire other Muslims. Medina would later express his “current hatred for the Jewish people,” the affidavit said.

Tale of Two Tribes: ‘Climate Refugees’ vs. EPA Victims The victims that Obama won’t help. Michelle Malkin

The left has concocted a lucrative category of politically correct victims: “climate refugees.” It’s the new Green racket.

U.S. taxpayers will now be forking over untold billions to ease the pain allegedly inflicted on “carbon’s casualties” by industrial activity. By contrast, those who have suffered as a direct result of government incompetence by federal environmental bureaucrats continue to get the shaft.

Consider the plight of two tribes: the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw in Louisiana and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

The New York Times splashed a viral story on its pages this week spotlighting the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $48 million grant to Native-Americans who live in the flood-ravaged coastal community of Isle de Jean Charles. About 60 residents, the majority of whom belong to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, will be resettled to drier land.

That’s a whopping $800,000 per “climate refugee!”

Never mind that the Times’ propagandists themselves admit that erosion on the island began in 1955 as a result of land-use and land-management factors that had nothing to do with climate change.

“Channels cut by loggers and oil companies eroded much of the island,” the paper reported, “and decades of flood control efforts have kept once free-flowing rivers from replenishing the wetlands’ sediments.”

The Campus Hate Crime Hoax Epidemic Fed by leftist mass hysteria, a radical academic vanguard, and an increasingly greedy racial-grievance industry. Matthew Vadum

A hate crime aimed at black students at Maryland’s Salisbury University has been revealed as just the latest high-profile race-related hoax to hit the groves of academe in the race-obsessed Obama era.

Except for acknowledging that the two perpetrators are African-American students at the school that is located on the Delmarva Peninsula in eastern Maryland, the university is engaged in a cover-up. If the perpetrators were white, a cynic might say that the school would find a way to leak out the pertinent details in order to make a political statement.

Of course, there certainly are racist incidents on university campuses, but blacks are rarely the targets or the victims. Blacks are more likely to be the instigators or beneficiaries of racist acts. Racially discriminatory admissions policies are a kind of reverse apartheid and part of what David Horowitz has termed “black privilege.” Such policies help unqualified African-Americans get into some institutions of higher learning, while keeping academically qualified Caucasians and Asians out.

As Americans have seen in the Obama era, the cultish, Democrat-endorsed Black Lives Matter movement, whose members openly urge the murder of cops, is built on the Big Lie that police routinely use black Americans for target practice. This evil movement draws many of its activists from college and university campuses.

This makes sense. The academy is a logical enough home for modern-day racists, especially those with dark skin, a condition that makes them more or less immune to serious scrutiny. In the professorate there is no shortage of supporters of racist cop-killing black radicals like Mumia abu Jamal and Assata Shakur.

The universities are filled with pseudo-intellectual black academics like Kwanzaa inventor Maulana Karenga, Marc Lamont Hill, Michael Eric Dyson, and Cornel West, as well as malevolent radicals like Angela Davis, Julianne Malveaux, black liberation theology creator James Cone, and Obama’s late legal mentor and critical race theory originator Derrick Bell. They, along with plenty of pseudo-intellectual radical white academics, consider it their life’s mission to indoctrinate students in order to eventually force unwanted change on American society.

The Great Western Retreat by Giulio Meotti

Of all French soldiers currently engaged in military operations, half of them are deployed inside France. And half of those are assigned to protect 717 Jewish schools.

This massive deployment of armed forces in our own cities is a departure from history. It is a moral disarmament, before a military one.

Why does anyone choose to fight in a war? Civilized nations go to war so that members of today’s generation may sacrifice themselves to protect future generations. But if there are no future generations, there is no reason whatever for today’s young men to die in war. It is “demography, stupid.”

On March 11, 2004, 192 people were killed and 1,400 wounded in a series of terrorist attacks in Madrid. Three days later, Spain’s Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was elected prime minister. Just 24 hours after being sworn in, Zapatero ordered Spanish troops to leave Iraq “as soon as possible.”

The directive was a monumental political victory for extremist Islam. Since then, Europe’s boots on the ground have not been dispatched outside Europe to fight jihadism; instead, they have been deployed inside the European countries to protect monuments and civilians.

“Opération Sentinelle” is the first new large-scale military operation within France. The army is now protecting synagogues, art galleries, schools, newspapers, public offices and underground stations. Of all French soldiers currently engaged in military operations, half of them are deployed inside France. And half of those are assigned to protect 717 Jewish schools. Meanwhile, French paralysis before ISIS is immortalized by the image of police running away from the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during the massacre there.

Anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party by Denis MacEoin

At least this time, the Jews know the signs of danger and have somewhere to run to, somewhere they are welcome. But many members of the Labour Party, including Labour Members of Parliament, would prefer them not to have such a haven, wishing instead for the land to be “returned” in virtually its entirety to the Palestinians.

The “Left” repeatedly calls for boycotts of Israel because it is, they claim, “an apartheid state.” Israel is so totally free of apartheid that anyone who has spent ten minutes there knows the accusation to be an outright lie. So why keep on saying something untrue? That is anti-Semitism.

Two of the Labour Party’s senior members were suspended as a result of their anti-Semitic remarks, and there is talk that 50 secret suspensions have been made.

It is worth adding that existing anti-Semitism within the British establishment, not least the pro-Arab Foreign Office, means that little is done even by conservatives to tackle this Jew hatred on the left.

After the truth about the Holocaust came out in the late 1940s and 50s, being an anti-Semite was the biggest dishonour of all. No mainstream politician, whatever his or her personal views about Jews, would ever declare anything that hinted at anti-Semitism. The “far right” had gone (for a time) into oblivion. Israel was admired.

Germany paid reparations (wiedergutmachung, “making good again”) to Holocaust survivors, as did France, an equally anti-Semitic country[1] out of which came the first ideologue of a “master race,” Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (d.1882), whose books spread the message of Aryan supremacy. Oddly enough, Arthur was not anti-Semitic: Hitler and his acolytes embraced his Aryan supremacism and edited out Arthur’s philo-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism continued, of course, but most people kept it to themselves. The horror of what the Germans had done to the Jews was, for a majority of British people, a token of the rightness of our cause in fighting and defeating Germany. Jews had never been safer than they were then in the UK. That anti-Semitism might return — and viciously — reincarnated inside a mainstream, anti-fascist and supposedly anti-racist political party, was simply inconceivable.

BARACK BOMBS IN BRITAIN: DANIEL HANNAN

Well, the polls are in and – not to put too fine a point on it – President Obama has bombed. Last week, disregarding the convention that heads of government don’t intervene directly in the internal elections of friendly states, the president came to London to tell us to vote to stay in the European Union. He didn’t hint or suggest or imply. He told us bluntly that, if we left the EU, we’d go “to the back of the queue” when it came to signing trade deals with Washington.

How did Britain react? Not for the first time, there was a divergence between what the pundits and politicians thought, and what everyone else thought. The journalists in the handsome Foreign Office salon where Mr. Obama made his remarks instantly concluded that he had won the referendum for the Euro-enthusiasts. David Cameron’s aides began to brief that it was all over bar the applause, that they would storm to victory by 60-40 or more.

The next day’s newspapers unanimously predicted a further swing to the Remain side, which had already been enjoying a bit of a bounce. Then, one after another, the numbers started to come in. Of the four opinion surveys that have been published at the time of writing, two put the Remain side slightly ahead, and two put Leave slightly ahead; but all four show a swing to Leave. Ordinary people, it seems, don’t like being told what to do by foreign politicians – even popular ones.

Oh yes: President Obama is popular in Britain. I realize that saying so will irk some American conservatives. Believe me, I have been through the same thing in reverse. For years, American friends, including many who were in no sense on the Left, would tell me, “Aw, man, I love that guy Blair.” To many Brits – indeed, to foreigners generally – Obama is still the telegenic mixed-race candidate who opposed the Iraq war. Nothing he has said or done since has really registered.

But, although people admire Obama, they hate being hectored. The president’s choice of vocabulary – when is the last time you heard an American say “back of the queue”? – made Brits wonder whether he was reciting lines drawn up in Downing Street. In other words, they suspected that David Cameron was using foreign leaders to bully and threaten his own country.

PETER HUESSEY: DID PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH WIN THE COLD WAR?

For the past 25 years, arms control has been a key driving force behind how many Americans view our relationship with Russia. In that period the two countries have agreed to the START I, Moscow, and New Start nuclear weapons agreements that has successfully reduced the strategic warhead arsenals on both sides by over 90%.

But relations between Moscow and Washington are not good and since the 2010 New Start agreement, the Russians have flatly rejected discussions of further reductions in nuclear weapons. The Russians have also stopped cooperation under the Nunn-Lugar agreement, named after two US Senators that put together a program to safeguard and eliminate nuclear material and warheads in the former Soviet Union subsequent to the end of the Cold War. Other agreements between the two countries have also been put on ice by Russian President Putin’s government.

At a seminar on Capitol Hill on April 20, 2016, two distinguished experts-Steve Blank of the American Foreign Policy Council and Mark Schneider of the National Institute of Public Policy-spoke about the need to refocus our relationship with Russia away from arms control and more towards managing an increasingly troublesome and dangerous relationship. A key part of that strategy must be the full modernization of our nuclear deterrent, they both emphasized.

Most worrisome said the two experts was Russia’s massive build-up of new nuclear weapons, including three new classes of land based missiles, a new submarine launched ballistic missile, and a new stealthy strategic bomber and accompanying air launched cruise missile including a hypersonic variant. This build-up will be almost completely completed by 2021-2 prior to the United States fielding a single modern element of its own strategic nuclear deterrent which is the oldest ever.

Poisonous Peas in a Pod, by Edward Cline

‘The Washington Examiner on April 24th, in its article, “Obama: Germany’s Merkel is right on refugee welcome,” reported President Barack Obama’s European musings on immigration:

President Obama says German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “on the right side of history” in how she has responded to the influx of thousands of Syrian refugees surging into Europe.

At a press conference Sunday, the president said he is “proud” of Merkel and the German people for their open-door policy of migrants fleeing violence and uncertainty in their home country.

“She is on the right side of history on this,” Obama said as he stood next to Merkel in Hannover, Germany. “And for her to take on some very tough politics in order to express not just a humanitarian concern but also a practical concern, that in this globalized world, it is very difficult for us to simply build walls.”

And now many Europeans are fleeing their home countries for points that do not welcome hordes of destructive and hostile Muslim barbarians who have boasted that Germany and other Western countries are “dead meat.” Doors are opening all over the Continent. However, they are swinging doors that can snap back to strike Merkel harshly on her electoral derriere.

Obama again:

Obama’s praise comes after Merkel faced fallout in a referendum of sorts on her immigration policy. In last month’s state elections, Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, took a beating. An anti-immigration party made significant gains.

Obama has promised to admit 100,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the U.S. this year. He faces pushback from Republicans who fear a possible security threat. GOP presidential candidates, like front-runner Donald Trump, have attacked Obama’s pledge to allow refugees into this country.

But it is not just a security threat in back of those concerns. The literal invasion of the U.S. by hordes of Muslims – especially Syrian, Iraqi, and Somalian Muslims – poses a cultural and political threat, as well. The introduction of so many hostile and assimilation-resistant Muslims is part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood’s overall plan to subvert the country from within, per the General Memorandum of 1991.