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Anti-Semitic Horrors Don‘t Exist in Obama’s World: John Podhoretz, New York Post, Feb. 11, 2015 — At Tuesday’s press briefing, White House mouthpiece Josh Earnest said something disgusting — I don’t know how else to describe it — about the massacre at the Hyper Casher kosher supermarket in Paris one month ago.
Sweden Imports Jew-Hatred: Ingrid Carlqvist & Lars Hedegaard, Gatestone Institute, Feb. 11, 2015 — If anyone had thought that the slaughter of four Jews in a Paris supermarket — for the reason that they were Jews — would have caused the Swedish mainstream press and the government to explain who is behind Europe's growing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, he would be sadly mistaken.
Cry For Me, Argentina!: Isi leibler, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 10, 2015 — The assassination of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman reflects the endemic corruption of the Kirchner regime and focuses the spotlight on the devil’s pact consummated by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in 2013 with Iran…
Remembering Babylon: New Exhibit Explores Roots of Jewish Life in Iraq: Anav Silverman, Jewish Press, Feb. 11, 2015— The only museum in the world, dedicated to the history of the Ancient Near East from a biblical perspective, has a new exhibition examining the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people as never seen before.
Calgary’s Pro-Gaza Rioters Push for a Plea Deal (Video): Ezra Levant, Sun News, Feb. 12, 2015
Sephardi Community Remembers Hyper Cacher Victims: Sheri Shefa, Canadian Jewish News, Feb. 11, 2015
Decades of Anti-Israel Hatemongering by Sweden’s Social Democrats: Manfred Gerstenfeld, CIJR, Feb. 6, 2015
European Anti-Semitism Starts from the Top: Evelyn Gordon, Commentary, Feb. 11, 2015
ANTI-SEMITIC HORRORS DON‘T EXIST IN OBAMA’S WORLD
John Podhoretz
New York Post, Feb. 11, 2015
At Tuesday’s press briefing, White House mouthpiece Josh Earnest said something disgusting — I don’t know how else to describe it — about the massacre at the Hyper Casher kosher supermarket in Paris one month ago. “The individuals who were killed in that terrible, tragic incident,” Earnest droned, “were killed not because of who they were but because of where they randomly happened to be.” Take it from someone who keeps kosher: Nobody “randomly” happens to be in a kosher supermarket, not even in Manhattan.
But you didn’t need to take it from someone who keeps kosher, did you? You already know that the clientele of a kosher supermarket is almost entirely made up of Jews. You know this because you’re not an idiot. Yes, if you want to find Jews, a kosher supermarket is the place to be on a Friday morning, as people are preparing for the Sabbath. Since Earnest is the press secretary of the most important person in the world, I assume he isn’t an illiterate dope. Which means he knows this too. So what he did was speak a vile lie, and a deeply dishonorable one. It’s dishonorable because his remarks suggest these murders were meaningless acts of nihilism, when they in fact were terrifyingly meaningful acts of anti-Semitic murder on European soil 70 years after the Holocaust — acts that are causing many if not most of the 600,000 Jews in France to think seriously about emigrating.
Alas, it appears that Earnest’s vile lie can’t be excused away as an expression of his own moral cretinousness. For only a few minutes later, about half a mile away from him in Washington, Earnest’s fellow administration mouthpiece Jen Psaki took to the podium at the State Department’s press briefing and with similar moral cretinousness dismissed the purpose and goal of the Jew-killers at Hyper Casher. “I believe if I remember the victims specifically,” said Psaki, “they were not all victims of one background or one nationality.” Asked point-blank by AP’s Matt Lee whether the Obama administration believes “this was an anti-Jewish or an attack on a Jewish community in Paris,” Psaki responded, “I don’t think we’re going to speak on behalf of French authorities.”
After a firestorm of criticism on Twitter, Earnest and Psaki both tried to pretend they hadn’t said what they said. “Terror attack at Paris Kosher market was motivated by anti-Semitism,” tweeted Earnest. For her part, Psaki said, “We have always been clear that the attack on the kosher grocery store was an anti-Semitic attack that took the lives of innocent people.” Well, no, you weren’t always clear, now, were you? What madness was this? What madness is this? The most comforting explanation is that the administration chose to circle the wagons around President Obama after his flabbergasting remarks on Monday — when he spoke of “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” As we’ve established, it wasn’t “a bunch of folks” but four Jews who were shot — and not, by the way, eating corned beef on rye at Katz’s while Sally faked an orgasm but as they shopped for ingredients for their Sabbath meals.
Which means it wasn’t done “randomly” but purposefully and in a directed fashion. It didn’t matter who they were individually, true. What mattered was this: JEW. JEW. JEW. JEW. That isn’t random, bub. So this is the exculpatory argument: Obama stepped in it on Monday. He said something stupid and ill-advised. (After all, he had previously said the attack was an act of anti-Semitism.) And rather than walk it back, the administration’s blatherskites on Tuesday foolishly chose to step in it even more deeply by twisting themselves into pretzels on the “randomness” issue. This is what Earnest and the White House want us to believe. In a late-afternoon tweet, Earnest said, “Our view has not changed . . . POTUS didn’t intend to suggest otherwise.” But what if this is disingenuous and false? What if the administration is now so committed to its bizarre assertion that the acts of terror in Paris and the horrifying butcheries of ISIS have not been perpetrated in the name of Islam that it chose to dance around the anti-Semitic agency of Islamist Jew-killers — until it was caught out, that is? If this is so, the moral cretin is the man now resident in the Oval Office.
Ingrid Carlqvist & Lars Hedegaard
Gatestone Institute, Feb. 11, 2015
If anyone had thought that the slaughter of four Jews in a Paris supermarket — for the reason that they were Jews — would have caused the Swedish mainstream press and the government to explain who is behind Europe's growing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, he would be sadly mistaken. With the exception of one television program, the connection between anti-Semitism, Islam and Muslim mass immigration remains a mental no-go area in Sweden. Sweden's history when it comes to Jews is not a pretty one. It was not until 1870 that Jews were permitted to settle wherever they wanted in the country. Sweden was behind the proposal to stamp a big "J" in the passports of German Jews, to prevent Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany from entering. And now the Swedish authorities close their eyes to the new Jew-hatred that is imported in the wake Muslim immigration…
By the end of the 1930s, there was a growing stream of Jewish refugees from Germany to other European countries. Few countries wanted them, but how might one determine who were Jews and who were not? In 1938, Sweden and Switzerland approached Germany with the proposal to furnish Jews with special passports, and on October 5 that year the Germans complied. All passports belonging to Jews were declared null and void, and Jews who wanted to travel had to get new ones — stamped with a big red "J" on the first page. In 1943, when is became clear that Hitler would lose the war, Sweden hurried to restore some of its reputation. In Nazi-occupied Denmark, about 8,000 Jews had escaped deportation to Nazi concentration camps because they were under the protection of the Danish government, and were never forced to wear the yellow Star of David. But on August 23, 1943, all cooperation between the Danish government and the occupation authorities broke down. The government resigned and the Germans imposed a state of emergency. After that, Danish Jews had no other protection than the Danish resistance, including remnants of the state administration and a largely sympathetic population. As Denmark's former Chief Rabbi Bent Melchior told Danish television some years ago, not a single Jew knocked on the door of his gentile neighbor without getting help.
The Danish resistance got wind that the Germans planned to round up all 8,000 Danish Jews in the night between October 1 and 2, 1943, to deport them to German camps. In no time, the resistance, with the aid of a great many civilians, managed to thwart the operation. Fishing boats were mobilized to smuggle more than 7,000 Jews across the Øresund Sound to Sweden. Others were able to hide in Denmark. The 1500 German soldiers that took part in the operation only managed to catch 284 Jews on the night of the round-up. Unfortunately, more were apprehended later; altogether 474 Danish Jews ended up in the German concentration camp Theresienstadt, which was not an extermination camp. Most of them returned to Denmark after the liberation, but 53 died in German captivity, most of them old or sick. The Danish Jews and a number of Danish resistance fighters were housed in Swedish boarding houses, youth hostels, hotels and private homes. (Among the resistance fighters was a gentleman, Leif Larsen, who had taken part in a shoot-out in Copenhagen. He found refuge in the home of one of the authors of this piece, the grandmother of Ingrid Carlqvist, and eventually married her aunt Solveig.)
After war's end, most of the Jews in Sweden returned to Denmark, but Sweden's self-image was forever changed. Finally, Sweden had something to be proud of after its highly dubious behavior at the time when it appeared that Hitler was on a winning streak. Unfortunately, the Swedes drew an erroneous conclusion from their rescue of the Jews. Many Swedes are now firmly convinced that everyone seeking shelter in Sweden is in the same desperate predicament as the Jews were in 1943. One reason Swedes are more welcoming to asylum seekers than the inhabitants of most other European countries, is that they are distancing themselves from their despicable treatment of Jews before World War II, until 1943.
But this is precisely what has paved the way for a new Jew-hatred in Sweden. Swedes know nothing of the Jew-hatred in the Koran and the hadiths, so they just don't understand why Muslims attack Jews. If they even manage to hear about the attacks (the Swedish media seldom write about them), they will believe it has something to do with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Maybe the Arabs have a reason to be angry at Jews? And since the influential Jewish organization SKMA keeps saying that Jew-hatred and "Islamophobia" are birds of a feather, why should ordinary Swedes think anything else? Swedes now tend to view all immigrants as victims of totalitarianism and refuse to acknowledge that not all immigrants think like Swedes. They cannot comprehend that people would flee unless they were hated and threatened.
Swedes have a minimal knowledge of the Jew-hatred that is part and parcel of Islam, and the authorities and politicians refuse to acknowledge that Jews are now fleeing the southern city of Malmö due to its steadily growing Muslim population. Quite simply, most Swedes have never realized that one minority group may expose another minority group to violence and intimidation. There are other reasons Malmö's politicians turn a blind eye to Jew-hatred. Malmö is Sweden's third-largest city and probably has the greatest proportion of Muslims. (It is hard to give exact figures because Swedish law forbids registration based on religion.) It is normally assumed that approximately one-third of Malmö's 300,000 inhabitants have a foreign background and that their number is steadily increasing. Currently, most refugees come from Syria and Somalia, and most are Muslims.
Malmö has nearly always been governed by Social Democrats — a party that has every reason to keep on the good side of Muslims. In municipal elections, the Social Democrats can normally count on 30% of the general vote, and on 70% of the Muslim vote. This circumstance was undoubtedly the most important reason the city's former Social Democratic Mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, refused to do anything about rampant Jew-hatred. He surely must have been aware that the perpetrators of anti-Semitic excesses were his own voters. For many years, Malmö's Jews have reported a growing number of hate crimes against their synagogue and themselves, but nobody has taken their complaints seriously. Eventually, a journalist by the name of Andreas Lovén from the local newspaper Skånska Dagbladet wrote in a series of articles that Jew-hatred was causing more and more Jews to move to other Swedish cities or to Israel.
For the first time, it was openly said who was behind the anti-Semitism — the city's Muslim population. Many Jews told the paper that they dared not let their children grow up in Malmö — the town where, on January 25, 2009, a Muslim mob was allowed to pelt a peaceful Jewish demonstration in support of Israel with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs…Instead of breaking up the anti-Israel demonstration, which took place without a police permission and which seriously threatened the Jews and friends of Israel assembled at Malmö's Great Square (Stortorget), the police chose to revoke the Jews' right to assemble. This decision was harshly criticized by Parliament's judicial ombudsman, who wrote: "To permit counter-demonstrators to more or less systematically prevent their opponents from voicing their opinions at public gatherings is unacceptable in a democracy."…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Isi leibler
Jerusalem Post, Feb. 10, 2015
The assassination of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman reflects the endemic corruption of the Kirchner regime and focuses the spotlight on the devil’s pact consummated by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in 2013 with Iran, whose leaders inflicted the worst-ever act of terrorism in the country’s history on her own citizens. Today there are approximately 250,000 Jews in Argentina. Since the days of Juan Peron the government’s attitude to Jews has been ambivalent. Peron displayed friendship to the Jewish community but enabled Argentina to serve as a haven for the most evil of Nazi war criminals – including Adolf Eichmann.
In March 1992, the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was the target of a terrorist bombing that killed 29 and wounded 242 people. Two years later, in July 1994, a second bombing was directed at the Jewish community center (AMIA), killing 85 and wounding hundreds. There were protracted investigations and eventually two Argentine prosecutors, Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Burgos, formally accused the Iranian government of orchestrating the attacks and utilizing Hezbollah agents to carry out the bombings. In 2007, the Argentine government even issued arrest warrants for six Iranians, including former Iranian defense minister Ahmad Vahidi and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani. They were placed on Interpol’s “Red List” of wanted criminals. None were apprehended and, not surprisingly, Iran adamantly refused to cooperate. Subsequently, prosecutor Nisman exposed a cover- up in which a judge was impeached for bribery.
There were also allegations that the Iranian intelligence service had deposited $10 million in a Swiss bank account held by former Argentine president Carlos Menem in return for his hushing up the affair, and in March 2012 he was ordered to stand trial for obstruction of justice. In 2005, President Nestor Kirchner described Argentina’s failure to move forward in this matter as a “national disgrace.” But on January 27, 2013, his widow and successor, President Cristina Kirchner, in a shocking reversal, consummated a pact with the Iranians to create a joint “truth commission” in order to investigate the AMIA terrorist attack by the “judicial authorities of Argentina and Iran … and issue a report with recommendations about how the case should proceed.” Lest there be any doubt as to the outcome, the statement unabashedly stressed that the project would be “based on the laws and regulations of both countries.” In a formal declaration, Kirchner stressed that she would “never allow the AMIA tragedy to be used as a chess piece in a game of faraway geopolitical interests” – clearly conveying Argentina’s opposition to efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear power.
That the current Argentine leaders could collaborate with such cynical whitewashing of the murder of their own fellow citizens and create a “truth commission” with a barbaric, Holocaust-denying regime warranted the condemnation of the Argentine government by the civilized world. This pact with the devil was clearly motivated by Argentina’s economic crisis and its escalating debts to the World Bank and other global institutions. This was preceded by media reports alleging that Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman had offered to freeze the AMIA inquiry in return for an upgrade in economic relations with Iran, exchanging Argentine grain for Iranian oil. Timerman was also said to have proposed that Syrian President Bashar Assad act as an intermediary to facilitate such a deal. A leaked cable from Iran’s then-foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi explicitly stated: “Argentina is no longer interested in solving those two attacks, but in exchange prefers improving its economic relations with Iran.”
Israel’s then-deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon stated that “it was clear to all that the Iranians and their Hezbollah minions were involved in the attack” and that bringing the Iranians into the so-called “truth commission” was equivalent to “inviting the murderer to participate in the murder investigation.” This led to an enraged response by Timmerman, who summoned the Israeli ambassador, Dorit Shavit, and accused her government of providing “ammunition to anti-Semites who accused Jews of dual loyalties.” He added, “Israel has no right to demand explanations. We are a sovereign state and Israel is not entitled to speak on behalf of the Jewish people and does not represent it.”
Timmerman was a former Argentine ambassador to the US who promoted himself as both a human rights activist and a committed Jew. It is noteworthy that his father Jacobo, an Argentine Jew and editor of a leftist weekly news magazine, was arrested in 1977 by the right-wing military junta, held in solitary confinement, and tortured. Through the secret intervention of Israeli authorities, he was released in 1979 and came to Israel, where he documented his persecution in Argentina in a book titled Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. But he turned on his benefactors and in 1983 published a second book, brutally attacking Israel’s policies and accusing prime minister Menachem Begin of destroying the moral integrity of the Jewish people, transforming Israelis into “efficient criminals.” He even compared Israel to the fascist government of Argentina that had incarcerated and tortured him. Shortly after publishing his tirade, he returned to Argentina and died in Buenos Aires in 1999.
His hatred of Israel – the country that saved his life – was bequeathed to his son Hector, who as foreign minister played a central role in the loathsome effort on behalf of the Argentine regime to sanitize the Iranian murderers of his own people. Prosecutor Nisman resisted and dedicated himself to obtaining justice for the victims of the terrorist bombings and bringing the perpetrators to trial. In recent years, he also displayed determination to expose the government’s attempt to cover up the Iranian involvement… [To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
NEW EXHIBIT EXPLORES ROOTS OF JEWISH LIFE IN IRAQ
Anav Silverman
Jewish Press, Feb. 11, 2015
The only museum in the world, dedicated to the history of the Ancient Near East from a biblical perspective, has a new exhibition examining the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people as never seen before. The Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem has amassed a collection of over 100 cuneiform tablets, original documents from the Judean community, which are now on display to the public for the first time. “The exhibition shares the unique artifacts that illustrate the devastation and resilience of the exiled Judeans as they built their lives in Babylonia,” exhibition curator Dr. Filip Vukosavović told Tazpit News Agency. “Until now we had been unable to tell the complete story of the Babylon Exile and to understand what actually happened to all the Jewish refugees once they were forced out of Judah,” said Dr. Vukosavović of the new exhibition, By the Rivers of Babylon.
The cuneiform clay tablets are known as the Al-Yahudu Tablets because most were written in the Babylonian city of Al-Yahudu (the city of Judah), located near a river. The tablets are small in size and with text in Akkadian, the extinct Semitic language of Mesopotamia, along with occasional text in Aramaic and Paleo-Hebrew. They contain dozens of personal names of Jewish exiles, whose biblical Hebrew names are still in use today. “This outstanding exhibition focuses on one of the most significant periods for the Jewish people; a brief chapter in time that changed the culture, cohesion, and practice of Judaism and the Jewish people,” notes Bible Lands Museum director, Amanda Weiss.
Many important elements of Judaism today originated in ancient Babylon including the Hebrew calendar and Babylonian Talmud. “The exhibition was inspired by the loan of the Al-Yahudu Archive from David and Cindy Sofer, who entrusted the museum with the once in a lifetime opportunity to research study, publish and exhibit this important historical evidence,” she told Tazpit. By the Rivers of Babylon, which also features innovative multi-media, original animations and local archeology from the First Temple, traces the family tree of fourth-generation Judean exile, Hagai Ben Ahiqam, all the way back to his great-grandfather, Samak Yama, who was born in Judah. One tablet describes the division of inheritance among Haggai and his brothers in Bablyon – the kind of information that Dr. Vukosavović says that one could find in a lawyer’s file cabinet today. Hagai’s family lived in the Babylonian city known as Al-Yahudu, an important city, among many cities, which were settled by Judean exiles over 2,500 years ago, following Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 BCE.
The earliest document on display from the Al-Yahudu archive, written barely 15 years after the destruction of Jerusalem offers a glimpse into the lives of the Judeans in exile and their relationship with the Babylonian rulers and society. The administrative and legal texts document many facets of life including business transactions, tax payments, and rentals in Babylonia, which show that the status of Judeans was one of state dependents and not of slaves. “In Babylonia, Jews were considered quite unusual; their belief in one invisible God stood in stark contrast to the Babylonians’ belief in multiple gods that could be seen and touched,” said Dr. Irving Finkel, an archaeologist of the British Museum during a recent lecture at the Bible Lands Museum. “Some of the best cuneiform tablets I have ever seen are in this collection,” added Dr. Finkel.
While many Jews returned to Jerusalem once the Persian King Cyrus the Great allowed them to do so in 539 BCE, many like Hagai and his family remained in Babylonia. As one of the longest surviving Jewish communities in the world, 2,500 years of Jewish history in Iraq came to an abrupt end when 130,000 Jews were evacuated to Israel during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah from 1949 to 1951. Today, there are five Jews left in Iraq. “For Jews of Iraqi heritage, this exhibit is especially meaningful,” added Weiss. By the Rivers of Babylon exhibit will be on display at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem throughout the next year.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends and Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Calgary’s Pro-Gaza Rioters Push for a Plea Deal (Video): Ezra Levant, Sun News, Feb. 12, 2015— Violent Pro-Gaza rioters who attacked a Jewish family in Calgary last spring attempt to work out a plea deal – will justice prevail?
Sephardi Community Remembers Hyper Cacher Victims: Sheri Shefa, Canadian Jewish News, Feb. 11, 2015— In a religious ceremony to mark the shloshim – the 30th day of mourning – in honour of the four Jewish victims of the Paris terror attack at the kosher supermarket, about 100 people gathered at Sephardic Kehila Centre in Thornhill on Feb. 10 to pay their respects.
Decades of Anti-Israel Hatemongering by Sweden’s Social Democrats: Manfred Gerstenfeld, CIJR, Feb. 6, 2015—Last month the Swedish foreign minister Margot Wahlstrom postponed her visit to Israel after foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and other Israeli top officials refused to meet her
European Anti-Semitism Starts from the Top: Evelyn Gordon, Commentary, Feb. 11, 2015—The Obama administration’s inexplicable denial that last month’s attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris could possibly be anti-Semitic overshadowed yesterday’s other interesting tidbit from the anti-Semitism front: German Jewish organizations are furious because a blue-ribbon panel set up by the German government to advise it on fighting anti-Semitism doesn’t include a single Jew.
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