What the New York Times might be telling Jews

Some say The New York Times is one of the best newspapers in the world (Blake Fleetwood, “Why The New York Times Is the Best Newspaper in the World”, Huffington Post, February 5, 2014). Others call it one of the world’s greatest newspapers (“The New York Times, the American newspaper”, britannica. com, no date).

This week, the Times shows us what kind of newspaper it really is. It’s created a ‘Jew Tracker’.

Does that tell you something?

The ‘Jew-Tracker’ is a chart. This chart allows you to see which Jews in Congress do not back the Obama Iran deal (Steven Hayward, “NY Times Launches Its Jew-Tracker”, powerline blog, September 10, 2015).  The inference is, a lot of Jews in Congress oppose the Iran deal. Why else would you need a ‘Jew Tracker’?

Remember that question. We’ll come back to it.

Perhaps you’ve seen reports about this chart. It’s quite simple. It tells you, by name, which Democrats oppose the President. It tells you who among them are Jewish. Presumably, there are a lot of such Jews. Otherwise, why would one need a chart?

To make sure you understand what you’re looking at, the chart includes a yellow ‘highlighter’ component, to focus your attention on ‘Jews’. You know, so that you’ll not forget the purpose of the chart.

For the US Senate, the chart looks something like this:                                                          

Senator Name--Jewish?—State & est. Jewish pop.

C. Schumer --------Yes---------New York, 9.1 per cent Jewish

B. Cardin------------Yes--------Maryland, 4.2 per cent Jewish

R. Menendez------No--------New Jersey, 5.8 per cent Jewish

J. Manchin the 3^rd--No------West Virginia, O.1 per cent Jewish

 

All references to ‘Jewish’ are highlighted in yellow.

You should look up the chart for yourself. My brief representation doesn’t capture the quality of the original. Also, in the original chart, you’ll see the names of Democratic Jewish House Members who don’t back the deal.

Do a google-search for ‘New York Times Jew Tracker’. You’ll find the chart.

One can make two observations about this chart. First, the chart itself reveals a disturbing calculus: under the ‘Jewish?’ column, the chart states that ten per cent of the US Senate is Jewish. That means, with 100 Senators total, there are 10 Jews in the Senate.

Perhaps this is why one needs a ‘Jew Tracker’. Ten Jewish Senators could be hard to track without a chart, right?

But the chart reveals that, in fact, only two Jewish Senators do not back the deal—just two. In addition, the chart also reveals that, of the four Democratic Senators who don’t back the deal, two are not Jewish.

Why create a ‘Jew-Tracker’ for two names? In fact, why do we need to track Jews at all? The Nazis in 1930’s Germany did that. They did it as part of their anti-Jew ideology. Why is the New York Times behaving the same way?

The second observation is that the Times did make a change to the chart--after it had been accused of creating an anti-Semitic device (Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, “Not Cool: The New York Times Goes Anti-Semitic With Congressional ‘Jew Tracker’”, rightwingnews, September 10, 2015).  The Times deleted the ‘Jewish?’ Column.

But the chart still shows plenty of ‘Jewish’ content.

This online ‘Jew Tracker’ is offensive. It strikes me as open bigotry.

The New York Times explained the chart this way: “Though more Jewish members of Congress support the deal than oppose it, the Democrats against the deal are more likely to be Jewish or represent Jewish constituencies [emphasis mine]” (Adam Kredo, “New York Times Launches Congress ‘Jew Tracker’”, Washington Free Beacon, September 10, 2015).

This is an outrageously absurd statement. It’s pure anti-Semitism. Here’s why: first, according to the chart, only two of four Democrats who do not back the deal were Jewish. Two of four doesn’t make anything ‘more likely’, yet that’s the Times’ claim.

To conclude from ‘two-of-four’ that opponents were ‘more likely’ Jewish is patently false. It’s a false accusation against Jews.

That’s pure anti-Semitism. It’s a kind of statement that would have fit right into Nazi-influenced German newspapers of the early 1930’s.

Then there’s the issue of suggesting that an Iran opponent was ‘more likely’ to represent a Jewish constituency (see the Times quote, above). The chart doesn’t entirely support that assertion. First of all, the chart shows that Manchin of West Virginia, a non-Jew who doesn’t back the deal, has a Jewish constituency of 0.1 per cent of his state’s total population. Since when is 0.1 per cent of a population ‘a constituency’?

Then there’s the question of constituency influence.  For example, the fact that the Jewish Senator Cardin works with a 4.2 per cent Jewish constituency in his state suggests that, if anything, his Jewish constituency could be too small to influence him. The Times doesn’t prove otherwise. Without supporting evidence, that size constituency could be meaningless.

More important, on what basis does the Times assume that Senator Cardin’s Jewish constituency was anti-deal, and had influenced him to oppose it? (That’s the Times’ suggestion). In fact, American Jews have been very ambivalent about this deal. Until very, very recently, most Jews in the US favoured the deal (“Poll: US Jews more likely to back Iran deal than non-Jews”, Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2015); only recently have American Jews started to turn against it. Therefore, without hard numbers, the most likely assumption one could make about Cardin’s Jewish constituency is that it would probably pressure him both ways—to back the deal and to oppose it, reflecting the ambivalence of the general US Jewish population. The Times offers no evidence that Cardin was acting because of pressure from his Jewish constituency.

It offers no proof its anti-Jewish suggestion is correct.

Then, there’s the recent head-count on where all the Jews in Congress stand on this deal (“Final tally: 19 of 28 Jewish lawmakers back the Iran nuclear deal”, Times of Israel, September 10, 2015). In case you’ve forgotten your arithmetic, 19 of 28 is 67.85 per cent (these numbers suggest that the Times may have actually misrepresented where Jewish lawmakers stand).

According to my math, more Jews in Congress, percentage-wise, back the deal than non-Jews. So why do we need a ‘Jew-Tracker’? Why are Jews being singled-out?

I don’t know what your reaction is to this chart. But I see it as shouting, ‘it’s the JEWS, the JEWS, the JEWS who oppose Obama!’

Right now, more Jews, percentage-wise, support Obama than non-Jews. More Jews in Congress, percentage-wise, support this deal than non-Jews. Therefore, we need a ‘Jew Tracker’ because…?

The New York Times has crossed a line. Jews have long felt comfortable in American precisely because this kind of anti-Jew behaviour has been kept out of the newspapers.  

Does the appearance of this chart in the prestigious New York Times tell us something? Is it a sign that America has changed how it thinks about Jews?

What do you think?

 

 

 

Destroy Israel. It saves too many lives

The anti-Israel movement has become the front line for Jew-hate (Simon Plosker, “Anti-Semitism and Terror Flags on Display at London Anti-Israel Demo”, HonestReporting, September 10, 2015). The anti-Israel movement makes Jew-hate politically correct.

That’s why it’s okay to demonize Israel (Rachel Avraham, “Goal of the BDS Movement: Delegitimize Israel”, UnitedwithIsrael, July 10, 2013). It’s okay to call for the destruction of Israel (Ari Yashar, “Iran's 'Death to Israel Day' Coincides with Nuke Deal Deadline”, Arutz Sheva, July 8, 2015). It’s okay to call for the killing of Jews (“Austrian Prosecutor: Call to Kill Jews is Legitimate Form of Protesting Against Israel”, TheTower, February 12, 2015).

According to the anti-Israel industry, anti-Semitism isn’t Jew-hate. It’s simply a way to question Israel’s existence.

Iran wants to annihilate the world’s only Jewish state (Stuart Winer and Marissa Newman, “Iran supreme leader touts 9-point plan to destroy Israel”, Times of Israel, November 10, 2014). Hamas wants to destroy the world’s only Jewish state (“The Covenant of the Hamas—Main points”, fas.org/irp/world/para/docs, no date). The Islamic Mufti of Jerusalem wants to kill Jews (Daniel Siryoti and Shlomo Cesana, “Israel to probe Jerusalem mufti's call to kill Jews”, Israel Hayom, January 22, 2012).

Many NGO’s (non-government organizations) work for the anti-Israel movement. They’re funded by nations, international unions, church groups and human rights organizations. They aim to defame Israel and to destroy the world’s only Jewish state (Denis MacEoin, “The NGO Campaign to Destroy Israel”, gatestone institute, July 17, 2015).

Join them. They’re not anti-Semitic. Jewish Israel is diabolical. It saves lives. What could be more diabolical than that?

Whenever a major disaster hits a nation, Israel doesn’t just send paramedic rescue teams or cash. It sends unique state-of-the art field hospitals, along with innovative therapy, medical devices and technology to help serve the injured in out-of-the way, often hard-to-reach places (Maya Yarowsky, “How Israeli Life-Saving Tech Is Leading Rescue Efforts In Nepal”, nocamels, April 30, 2015). Israel brings to these devastated locations breakthrough medical technologies including, for example, something called, ‘powered plasma’, an Israeli invention that allows for infinite supplies of blood that don’t need to be refrigerated (ibid)—a blessing in places where electricity has been cut.

But these unique, high-tech hospitals aren’t the only Jewish life-saving medical miracles from Israel. Israel’s a major medical innovator. It's got more than 1,000 companies doing Research and Development for healthcare and life science products (Abigale Klein Leichman, “The top 12 most amazing Israeli medical advances”, israel21c, October 15, 2013).

Here’s a short list of some of those medical miracles:

-specialized robotics to help paraplegics stand, walk, climb stairs--and participate in a 26-mile marathon;

-the world’s first ‘pillcam’, a camera the size and shape of a pill, swallowed as part of an endoscopic exam;

-specialized drugs to prevent deadly infections in patients with compromised immune systems (“Once Again, Israeli Discoveries Promise Medical Breakthrough”, unitedwithisrael, January 12, 2015), and to treat Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Type 1 Gaucher's disease and a variety of cancers;

-a breakthrough discovery that would allow early detection, and possibly prevention, of colon and uterine cancers (ibid);

-a system to correct severe curvature of the spine (scoliosis) that minimizes risks, scar size, complications, recovery time and cost (Leichman, above, ibid);

-stem-cell therapy products to treat blood cancers, solid tumors, non-malignant blood diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, autoimmune diseases and genetic metabolic diseases (ibid);

-a technique to remove benign breast lumps in a 10-minute ultrasound-guided procedure that penetrates the tumor and engulfs it with ice (ibid)—a treatment that can be done in a doctor’s office;

-a unique, FDA-approved single-use needle for painless delivery of vaccines into the skin using semiconductor technology (ibid);

-a blood-flow diverter to redirect blood flow from a brain aneurysm (a bulge in a weak artery wall), so that a stable clot can form, thereby reducing the danger that a potentially fatal aneurysm could rupture (ibid);

According to at least one estimate, perhaps as much as half the world’s population has had its lifespan extended in one way or another by a variety of Israeli innovations (Michael Ordman, “If it wasn’t for Israel you might not be alive”, Jerusalem Post, January 5, 2012). These innovations include new cancer treatments, new medical advances, humanitarian aid (that high-tech field hospital, above, for example), agricultural innovations and water technologies (ibid).

It horrifies the anti-Israel movement to consider how many lives Israel saves. They hate the Jewish Israel. They say the world will be far better off with (G-d forbid) no Israel.

Join them. Forget Israel’s sense of humanity. Forget Israel’s life-saving medical miracles.

Throw away you cell phones, computers, video cams, heart medicine, GPS apps, cancer meds, diabetes treatments, etc.

Demand that Israel be erased! Join the call to kill Jews!

You’ll create a New World. After a while, you’ll call it, ‘The New Dark Ages’.

It’ll bring you exactly what you’ve ask for.

Why humanitarians won’t solve the Syrian crisis

Europe sags under the weight of a massive Muslim tide of ‘refugees’ (Tuvia Brodie, “Should Israel accept Syrian refugees?”, Arutz Sheva, September 7, 2015). Some say this crisis will forever change the quality of European life (Minna Rozen, “There's No Stopping a Mass Migration That Will Alter the World”, Haaretz, September 6, 2015). Humanitarians, however, ignore European life. They worry only that this is a humanitarian disaster “of epochal proportions” (Paul Mirengoff, “The Syrian crisis and Obama’s post-American presidency”, powerline, September 7, 2015).

Humanitarians open their arms to this crisis. They call it “the worst humanitarian disaster of our time” (“Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis”, mercycorps, September 2, 2015). They embrace it.

They turn to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which exists “to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide” (UNHCR homepage, ‘what we do’). They publicise the crisis. They pressure European leaders. They create a world-wide fund-raising campaign to fight the crisis.

Humanitarians are overwhelmed. Since perhaps June, 2015, more than 110,000+ refugees a month have been storming into Europe. No one saw this coming. No one knows what to do about it (Rick Lyman, et al, “A Steady Flow Staggers Into Europe, Outpacing Pledges of Shelter”, New York Times, September 7, 2015).

Humanitarian organizations face collapse. The UNHCR (and related agencies) are approaching bankruptcy (Harriet Grant, “UN agencies 'broke and failing' in face of ever-growing refugee crisis”, The Guardian, September 6, 2015). The UN has estimated it’ll need 4.5+ Billion USD to meet its assistance projections (“Syria Regional Refugee Response - Regional Overview”, data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional. Php). But as of August 24, 2015, it’s app 1.4 Billion behind (ibid).

It can’t raise the money. Meanwhile, the refugees keep coming. In 2010, they came at a rate up to 11,000 a day. Now, that number can approach 40,000 a day (“UN agencies broke and failing…”, ibid). The UN can’t supply the water, sanitation, food and medical assistance the refugees need (ibid). Wealthy donors aren’t opening their wallets.

The humanitarian system is broken. It’s helpless. It’s impotent.

Humanitarians don’t know what to do. So they fall back on their established patterns. They demonize Israel.

This week, in the face of a spike in refugees trying to enter Europe, humanitarians demonize Israel because it will—like Greece and Hungary—build a fence to keep out refugees (Sarah Lazare, “At Heart of Humanitarian Crisis, Israel Building Wall to Keep Syrian Refugees Out”, CommonDream, September 7, 2015). Of course, true to form, humanitarians haven’t demonized Greece and Hungary—just Israel.

This is a crisis, all right, in more ways than one. It’s not just a refugee crisis. It’s not just a financial crisis. It’s a crisis that can destroy both the West and its Humanitarianism.

Humanitarians won’t face the obvious questions. For example, this primarily Arab/Muslim problem is being ignored by important Arab/Muslim countries. Why?

The Arab Persian Gulf (PG) states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman and Qatar are super-wealthy. But all ignore their Syrian brothers. Why? 

The Muslim Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) pledges unity, fraternity and solidarity among its Member States. Syria and the PG states all belong to the OIC. Why has that unity and fraternity been withheld from Syrian refugees?

Since 2011, the Syrian conflict has created more than 4 million refugees. The Persian Gulf (PG) states have so far taken in 33 of those 4 million (“Social media users slam PG Arab rulers’ inaction on refugee crisis”, PressTV, September 4, 2015).

That number isn’t a typographical error. It’s a total of 33 refugees.

The wealthiest of Arab Muslim states have not helped Syria’s Muslim refugees. Why?  

Humanitarianism fails because it ignores the obvious: Arab Muslims caused this crisis (think about Syria, the Islamic State and the Arab Spring). Arab Muslims will do nothing to solve this crisis. Why?

There’s an answer to these questions. But humanitarians won’t look at it. Instead, they censure the wrong people (Israel). They ignore the causes (Jihad and the Arab Spring). They focus on the wrong solution (forcing the EU to shoulder the burden of ending the crisis).

But if humanitarians won’t answer these questions, the Islamic State will: this crisis isn’t about helping ‘refugees’. That’s why wealthy Arabs won’t help. This crisis is about flooding Europe with Muslims.

This is why wealthy Arab states keep their wallets closed. This crisis is about using Muslim refugees to set the stage for the conquest of the infidel Christian Europe (Brodie, Arutz Sheva, above). Wealthy Arab Muslims won’t help because they don’t want to help. They want a Caliphate ruling Europe and they see this Muslim tide as the vanguard of that conquest.

Humanitarians won’t face that Islamic truth. That’s why they’ll fail to solve this crisis.

Sandstorm!

When you live in Israel, you know you’re surrounded by news. Sometimes, especially when your enemies want to kill you, you’re right there in the news. You hear air raid sirens. You hear gunfire. You hear low-flying aircraft (where we live, the only low-flying aircraft will be military or police. Actually, that's not true. Where we live, you'll also see low-flying UN planes spying on us, counting houses, to see if we've built anything since their last over-flight. The UN's like that. They're vigilant. They're obsessed. They want to  catch Israelis building houses, add-on bathrooms and schools for children. The UN knows the villains they must deal with: for the UN, there's nothing more dangerous than Jews building stuff. We know that to be true because, when Jews have land, they build on it. When Arabs have land, they burn tires on it. At least, that's what they do here).

Yes, the news is all around us. Sometimes, when you get busy, you get behind the news. You have to catch up, if only to see why your local highway had been shut down that afternoon or your city’s main gate closed earlier in the day. That happens mostly because of terror attacks of one kind or another.

We attend to the news to see what happened, to see if any of our neighbours were affected.

Sometimes, we don't have to wait for the news to find out what's happened. Sometimes, we’re ahead of the news.

Take this morning, for example. Arutz Sheva reported at 8:42 am local time that Israel was being blanketed by a sand-storm. The Jerusalem Post reported it at 9:10 local time. The Times of Israel reported it at 10:44.

But I knew about the storm before 6:00 am. I found out about it the moment I woke up and looked out my window.

Does that mean I was ahead of the news?

Certainly does. I can even tell you this was a bad storm—much worse, in my estimation, than any previous sand storm I’d seen in the five+ years I’ve been here.

For example, in the previous (worst) storm, while vision beyond 300 yards was nothing more than a white cloud, my immediate surroundings, perhaps a circle of fifty-seventy yards, seemed clear enough. Also, the air felt ‘normal’. I could sniff sand or sense it in the air only after a while.

This morning, however, was different. First, while I could see from my front porch the house across the street and the trees in its back yard, the ‘white cloud’ which represented the storm wasn’t 200-250 yards beyond those trees. It began at those trees.

The second difference was the air itself. It wasn’t clear. It was beige.

Third, the air wasn’t ‘clean’. It felt gritty.

My son lives in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is on the Mediterranean coast. It gets an ocean breeze.

But today there were no ocean breezes. My son told me the air had (pardon the reference) an almost-urine-like look to it. The Times of Israel didn’t disagree. It simply used a more polite term. It called the color “a brownish-yellow fog” (“Israel shrouded in dense sandstorm”, September 8, 2015).

So far as the air’s gritty feel goes, the Jerusalem Post put some numbers to it: it measured the level of something called PM 10--particulate matter with a diameter up to 10 microns (Sharon Udasin, “Dust storm moves into Israel bringing high levels of air pollution”, September 8, 2015). In the Jerusalem area (I live in the desert just outside Jerusalem), the normal maximum level of PM 10s is 60 micrograms per cubic meter. This morning, that level was at 1,350 micrograms per cubic meter, with a maximum 30-minute level of 8,452 micrograms per cubic meter (ibid). Since I’m actually in the desert itself, I assume the air quality was worse than that, though I can’t say that’s a correct assumption. It just gives me an opportunity to believe that my ‘grit’ was worse than your ‘grit’, as if that’s some kind of consolation.

Here’s my own scientific observation: when you’re no longer breathing 60 micrograms per cubic meter of something, and you’re now breathing up to 8,452 micrograms of it, you notice it.

Can I count that as a scientific observation?

The air had a tan tinge to it. It reminded me of some old, faded photographs one occasionally sees. It made me feel I was standing inside an old photo, experiencing it from inside the photo, instead of being outside looking down at it.

I was scheduled to be outdoors today, walking to our shops. It’s a 25-minute walk each way.

I didn’t go. I stood outside this morning at 8 am with one of my grandsons, to wait with him for someone to pick him up to take him to his ‘gan’—his pre-school building. We stood outside for perhaps five minutes. I was glad to get back indoors. I could feel the grit getting to me.

The newspapers here have suggested that people with respiratory problems, the elderly, children or pregnant women should stay indoors. Since I like to keep my grandchildren happy—and since I firmly believe that at least one of my younger grandchildren might tell me I belong in one of those categories--I decided to stay indoors.

 I closed the windows. I turned on the a/c.

Later today, will we see this sandstorm linked to some news story? In other words, has the Creator of the Universe brought this storm at precisely this moment to precisely this place for a purpose He will share with us?

Stay tuned. The day isn’t over.

 

 

 

 

Should Israel accept Syrian refugees?

According to some, there are currently 19 million people worldwide who flee their home countries because of war, persecution, and oppression (Amanda Taub, “Europe's refugee crisis, explained”, Vox, September 5, 2015). Every few days, an estimated 42,500 more join them (ibid). It’s a mass migration that could change the world (Minna Rozen, “There's No Stopping a Mass Migration That Will Alter the World”, Haaretz, September 6, 2015).

Masses stream into Europe. In just July-August, 2015, 157,000 refugees entered Greece by sea (Namrata Tripathi, “Refugee crisis: How are European countries responding to the humanitarian challenge?”, dna, September 5, 2015).  In Italy, more than 111,000 have arrived YTD (ibid). Smaller numbers enter Sweden and Austria (Melanie Hall, “Migrant crisis: Refugees welcomed in Germany like war heroes as Berlin expects 10,000 in one day”, The Telegraph, September 6, 2015).

European humanitarians want Europe to make room for these refugees. Germany complies with these calls. For example, it alone expects to accept 800,000 refugees this year (Robert Spencer, “The Hijrah Into Europe”, Frontpagemag, September 4, 2015).

Europe sags under the weight of these refugees. Their presence creates for Europe a humanitarian crisis not seen since the end of World War Two (“Europe’s migrant acceptance rates”, The Economist, September 1, 2015).

Europe thought it had put World War Two behind. It hasn’t.

Germany opens its doors to this human tide. It wants other EU countries to follow its ‘moral leadership’ (Vox, ibid) by opening their own doors.

Some won’t do that. Hungary builds a fence to keep refugees out (“Hungarian PM: We don't want more Muslims”, Al Jazeera, September 4, 2015). So does Greece (Harriet Sherwood, et al, “Europe faces 'colossal humanitarian catastrophe' of refugees dying at sea”, The Guardian, June 2, 2014). Britain hesitates. Slovakia, Poland and Bulgaria say they don’t want these mostly Muslim refugees in their countries (Cassie Weber, “These European countries are willing to accept some migrants—but only if they’re Christian”, qz. com, August 30, 2015).

While some EU leaders seek greater EU support for the refugees, the Hungarian Prime Minister wants to see less support (Ian Traynor, “Migration crisis: Hungary PM says Europe in grip of madness”, The Guardian, September 3, 2015). He’s condemned for his remarks. His behaviour is seen as politically incorrect.

He says these Muslims will threaten Europe’s Christianity (ibid). He says accepting so many Muslim refugees will have “explosive consequences for the whole of Europe” (ibid). He suggests that this flood of Muslims into Europe could erase Europe’s Christian heritage and culture. He calls it madness to welcome them.

Humanitarians don’t like such talk. They turn against anyone who won’t open his arms to the human flood they all see swarming towards them (“David Cameron has misjudged Europe’s refugee crisis”, ftview, September 2, 2015).

But while humanitarians condemn the Hungarian PM, the Islamic State (IS) suggests that he might be correct. IS claims it has a plan to flood Europe with jihadists who embed among the refugees (Aaron brown, “'Just wait…' Islamic State reveals it has smuggled THOUSANDS of extremists into Europe”, The Express, September 7, 2015). IS has been talking about this plan for at least 7 months (Leo Hohmann, “ISIS smuggler: 'We will use refugee crisis to infiltrate West'”, wnd, September 5, 2015). IS sees this refugee crisis in Europe as a means for Islamic conquest—emigration in the cause of allah (Spencer, frontpagemag, ibid).

In fact, it appears that IS has underestimated its own potential. Back in February, 2015, it had published that its goal was to flood Europe with 500,000 Muslim refugees (Spencer, ibid). Well, so far this year, Germany alone estimates it will accept 800,000 refugees, the overwhelming majority of whom are Muslim.

The Islamic State aims to conquer Europe. An additional 2-4 million Muslims entering Europe as refugees during 2014-2016 won’t harm that goal.

Some notice that too many of these ‘refugees’ carry fake passports (Daniel Greenfield, “The Syrian Refugee Crisis is Not Our Problem”, frontpagemag, September 4, 2015). Some see these Muslims as ‘hostile invaders’ (Paul joseph Watson, “Video: Muslim “Refugee” Arriving in Europe Makes ‘Cut Throat’ Gesture to TV Camera”, infowars, com, September 7, 2015).

Are they correct? The EU doesn’t have a clue. It’s too politically correct to ask the question.

Now, Israel’s Leftist opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, wants to push Israel into this Muslim refugee issue. He ignores the horrific, un-humanitarian fact that wealthy Arab Muslim countries absolutely refuse to accept any of their Muslim brothers as refugees (Donna Rachel Edmunds, “Muslim Countries Refuse to Take A Single Syrian Refugee, Cite Risk of Exposure to Terrorism”, breitbart, September 5, 2015). He ignores the calls of IS to use these refugees for Islamic conquest-by-refugee colonization. He ignores the IS claim of embedding anti-West jihadists into the refugee stream. He even ignores the existing existential threat Israel already faces from Muslims.

He wants more Muslims in Israel. He won’t demand that wealthy Arab nations take responsibility for their Muslim brothers in need. He thinks Jews should shoulder that responsibility (“Herzog: Israel Should Take in Syrian Refugees”, Arutz Sheva, September 5, 2015).

He's wrong. Israel is the Jewish state. As a leading Jewish politician, he should be worrying about his fellow Jews, both in Israel and in exile.

If he wants to prove how charitable he is, he can do that by helping Jews. G-d knows how busy he'd be.

 

AFP, the war against Israel—and anger

The French news service, AFP, has a history of reporting its news with an anti-Israel bias (Tamar Sternthal, “AFP Lies, Dam Lies and Floods”, CAMERA, February 23, 2015). Sometimes, that bias is ridiculous. Sometimes, it’s an exercise in how AFP manipulates facts to demonize Israel or to whitewash Arab terror. Always, it’s unprofessional. Always, it’s racist.

If you’re a day-labourer, being biased against Israel will hardly ever get you into trouble.  You’re a private citizen. Your ability to influence tens of thousands of people is probably limited.

But if you’re a national news service, you do influence tens of thousands. Your words and pictures influence how people feel about Jews and about Israel. Your words and pictures can bring peace—or war.

If you want to be a big-league news provider, you should be professional, not a war-monger: you should check facts. You should make sure your reports are accurate. You should give both sides of a story a chance to be heard.

When it comes to Israel, however, AFP does none of that.

Two 2015 AFP reports illustrate this point. One report, subsequently pulled, occurred in February, 2015. The other report occurred September 3, 2015. It hasn’t been pulled or amended--at least not yet.

The first report, dated February, 2015, showed a picture of what looked like a flooded Arab street. The title of this story/video was, “Gaza village floods after Israel opens dam gates". The story suggested that Israel was brutalizing Gazan citizens by purposely opening up dam flood gates in near-by southern Israel, allowing waters to flood defenceless Gazans.

The story published quoted Gazan authorities and local Gazan residents stating that Israel “had opened the sluice gates of a dam”, causing the floods (“AFP Sets Record Straight on Gaza Flooding”, CAMERA, March 1, 2015). No Israelis were quoted.

All one read were the accusations. All one saw were the floodwaters in an Arab village.

There was just one problem with this story. It was completely false. It was false for a simple reason: there are no dams in southern Israel that have moveable, controllable flood-gates. Israel couldn’t have deliberately caused the flooded streets.

While AFP has not always corrected such errors, the outcry this story created prompted AFP to act. First, a week after the original report, AFP published a commentary about that report. It acknowledged that “no such dam exists in Israel that could control the flow of water into Gaza” (ibid).

The second action AFP took was, it removed the video from (most of) the internet.

The second AFP report reveals how it manipulates its news presentation to whitewash Arab terror. This report was about an Arab attack against Jews (“Palestinians attack US tourists mistaken as settlers”, AFP, September 3, 2015).

The facts of the incident include this information: five Jewish American students visiting Israel drove into Hevron seeking to pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is a major Jewish destination point in Israel for many religious Jews. The boys used a GPS system to find their way (Gil Ronen, “IDF Rescues US Jews from Arab Lynch Mob in Hevron”, Arutz Sheva, September 3, 2015).

The GPS system took them into an Arab section of Hevron. There, they were immediately recognized as Jews. Arabs attacked the boys’ car with stones. Arabs hurled firebombs at the car. The car was set alight.

Arabs surrounded the car. They shouted, “Jew! Jew! Jew!” (Gil Ronen, “'They Screamed Jew, Jew, Jew!'”, Arutz Sheva, September 3, 2015).

The AFP story gave this incident its pro-Arab slant by not reporting the Jew-hate content of the attack. The AFP story didn’t report the shouts of ‘Jew! Jew! Jew!’ That might have suggested that Arabs might not attack Jews because of their passionate desire for their ‘freedom’ from Israeli oppression’; they might attack Jews because of an intensely passionate Jew-hate, something AFP apparently doesn’t you want to see.

The only thing the AFP story reported was that the Arab attackers had ‘mistakenly’ thought the American students were ‘settlers’ (“Palestinians attack US tourists mistaken as settlers”, ibid).

But there was no mistake. The attackers knew exactly who these five boys were: they were Jews.

That’s probably why the attackers screamed, ‘Jew! Jew! Jew!’ That’s probably why they had attacked the car in the first place.

The AFP story doesn’t mention that. Instead, it sanitizes an Arab terror attack by changing a deliberate attack in to a ‘mistaken’ attack.

There are a growing number of anti-Jewish terror attacks in Israel. Because of those attacks, there’s an anger growing in Jewish Israel (Gil Ronen, “'There Will Be Blood in the Streets'”, Arutz Sheva, September 4, 2015). It’s an anger aimed at those who would demonize us. It’s an anger aimed at those who would terrorize us. It’s an anger aimed at those who would sanitize the daily terror attacks we see.

That anger begins, albeit slowly, to unite us. We need that unity. Our Redemption depends upon it.

Stay tuned. This Israel story isn’t over.

 

Do Americans in Israel destroy Man’s plans?

In Tanach (the Jewish Bible), HaShem, the G-d of Israel, declares repeatedly to the world that the land of Israel is the land of the Jewish people (see Rashi on B’reisheet, 1:1). He also declares that the East-West borders of that Jewish land stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea (Bamidbar, 34:7-23).

Those borders have a modern application. After all, when the modern State of Israel was ‘born’, its Jewish leaders didn’t ignore their Tanach. Those leaders weren’t particularly religious. But they didn’t choose some far away geography for their new State.

They placed their new nation inside those Biblical borders. Yes, they chose borders much smaller than G-d’s. But those borders weren’t their choice. The United Nations (like its predecessor, the League of Nations), had shrunk the Tanach borders.

Our leaders accepted that shrinkage. They established the reconstituted Israel on less land than HaShem had chosen for us. Man saw to that. Man demanded that.

Fortunately for us, our Arab neighbours didn’t accept those shrunken borders. They didn’t want Jews to have any borders. They wanted the Jews gone.

They attacked—repeatedly. But then, despite their overwhelming numerical superiority, miracles happened: they lost.

Every time they attacked, they lost land.

Their wars didn’t push Jews out. Their war losses meant Israel’s borders grew.

As a consequence, Israel’s UN-shrunk, Man-made borders began to move outward. Arab hate played a role in moving Israel’s borders closer to HaShem’s Biblical design.

East Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) are included in that design. The UN took them from us. The Arabs saw to it that they came back to us.  

Man hates that. So far as Man is concerned, HaShem, the G-d of Israel, is wrong.

Man says, who does G-d think He is? HaShem doesn’t determine what happens on this earth. Man does.

Man uses his United Nations to make sure you understand that point. Man declares from the UN that G-d breaks the law.

In March, 1979, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 446. In paragraph 1, this Resolution states that, “the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity.”

G-d may have told the Jews to populate Israel. But UN Resolution 446 says that’s illegal.

For the UN, G-d must have lied when He said Judea-Samaria (which includes East Jerusalem) belongs to Israel. The UN says that land belongs to Arabs who call themselves ‘Palestinians’. Jews are foreign ‘occupiers’ on that land, not its owners. If Jews build there, it’s illegal.

If G-d is not a liar, he’s a criminal: he breaks the law when he tells Israel about Jerusalem (East or West) and Judea-Samaria. Jews who listen to Him violate Human Rights Law.

Man says that HaShem, the G-d of Israel, doesn’t lead Jews to Redemption. He leads them to a spiritual pathology, an illness of occupation, racism and extremism (for an insight to this point of view, see Haviv Rettig Gur, “The blood of summer and our collective sins of omission”, Times of Israel, August 27, 2015). G-d, it would seem, leads the Jews astray.


Does He?

Now, a new book is about to come out (Sarah Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: Jewish-American Settlers in the Occupied Territories Since 1967, Harvard, 2016). From what I deduce from others’ online comments, its tilt is Leftist. But it makes a point that might tell us something about G-d, Man and those 'occupied territories'.   

The author of this Leftist study claims that 15 per cent, or 60,000 residents, within the ‘occupied territories’ (which include East Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria) are Americans who have made aliyah (emigrated) to Israel. Americans make up less than 3 per cent of Israel’s population. Their numbers in ‘occupied territories’ reveal that an inordinate representation of Americans live ‘illegally’ in land that doesn’t belong to Jews. For some, this revelation suggests that the US may be playing a duplicitous role in its dealings with Israel (Philip Weiss, “U.S. is even more implicated in Israeli settlement project than we thought”, mondoweiss, August 30, 2015).

John Kerry and Hussein Obama of the US say these ‘occupied territories’ are illegitimate. The EU and the UN says they’re illegal. Jews in America appear to join this Israel-bashing (“Many US Jews no longer back Israel, Veteran’s Today, June 9, 2014).

If you read mainstream media, you might beleive that ‘everyone’ except the ‘extremist’ right-wing Netanyahu government rejects Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. But American Jews still come to Israel. American Jews defy the hate. They populate these ‘illegal territories’ at a rate five times greater than their normal representation in Israel’s population.

Does HaShem, the G-d of Israel, hide within the personal motivation of individual Americans to undercut Man’s attack against Him? Perhaps, for their own personal (unconscious) reasons, these 60,000 Americans send a message: we choose G-d over Man.

Stay tuned. This Israel story isn’t over.