Wooha, reciprocal press!
Jewschool gets a shoutout from SomethingJewish.
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Happy New Year
L’shana Tova, Happy New Year,
Chag Semayach, Gut Yuntif,
and all that happenin’ jazz
Chag Semayach, Gut Yuntif,
and all that happenin’ jazz
To a blessed, healthy, adventurous, exciting, fulfilling, meaningful, and ultimately sweet year ahead, for you and yours…
May you find success in all your endeavors,
and may Hashem bless you with all to which you aspire.
Much love and many blessings,
Mobius1
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The KGB’s Man
The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an “obstacle” to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.
Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world’s “kings, queens & despots,” with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
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Bias crimes plague Rutgers after Palestine Conference cancelled
Police are investigating a graffiti attack on several buildings on Rutgers University’s main campus in New Brunswick, including a Jewish community center and a fraternity house, as a bias crime.On Saturday morning, swastikas were found spray-painted on Rutgers Hillel. They were also painted on the porch and front door of Alpha Epsilon Pi, an historically Jewish fraternity.
The attacks come just days after Israeli housing minister Natan Sharansky was pied by a member of the NJ Solidarity Movement moments before his on-campus speech, which transpired, incidentally, only two weeks after Rutgers cancelled the National Student Conference of the Palestinian Solidarity Conference which was to be held there.
The school’s president has issued a statement reading,
These insensitive acts are an affront to all of us in the university community. They violate the code of human decency that we must uphold in order to engage each other in an enlightened, intellectual and socially aware environment. As we vigorously defend the right of individuals and groups to express their views and opinions in a civil manner, we can never, for a moment, tolerate those who would commit acts that intimidate or physically harm others.
I dunno, I just think it was a little dumb to cancel that conference and then invite an Israeli leader to come and speak on campus, especially after what went down at Concordia last year. It’s not that the activists behavior should be tolerated or necessarily even forgiven… It’s just ultimately a provocation on the university’s behalf. The school should’ve expected this backlash, and thus, in the spirit of truly being fair, cancelled the Sharansky talk as well.
As for the activists…well, if they’re going to denounce Israel for being racist, they should equally be denouncing the behavior of their fellow activists as demonstrated by these attacks. I’m still waiting to see a statement from NJS on the subject however.
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Double speak in action
Arafat tells Palestinian supporters, “To Jerusalem we are going as martyrs in the millions,” and then frames Israel as “the bad guys” for rejecting a unilateral truce agreement. Who’s he trying to fool?
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My friends tell me I’m a paranoid, imagining things…
Jewish college students recount their experiences with antisemitism in the anti-war movement on campuses around the country in New Voices.
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Sharansky gets pied; israelinsider crosses the line
A notorious American-Jewish anti-Israel activist chucked a pie at Natan Sharansky this week as he was beginning a lecture at Rutgers University.
While the demonstrator’s move was certainly “distasteful,” I ultimately find it more disconcerting that israelinsider, a blatantly pro-Israel news site funded by the Bronfman Philanthropies, somehow finds it responsible journalism to publish the perpetrator’s telephone number and private e-mail address. Perhaps what he did was dickish, but that’s just wrong…It’s bullying. After all, <sarcasm>I’m so sure getting hundreds of phonecalls from pro-Israel fanatics calling him a piece of shit is going to make him feel all that much better about the intentions of Jewish people.</sarcasm>
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Holocaust on your plate?
“Holding up grisly posters that juxtaposed images of Holocaust victims next to animals in slaughterhouses, animal rights activists demonstrated Tuesday in front of the Museum of Tolerance.
“While only 10 protesters attended the demonstration, which was staged by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the group’s latest ‘Holocaust on Your Plate’ campaign comparing genocide to food manufacturing has caused most people to wonder: Have the activists gone too far this time?“
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Maus Trap
Maus cartoonist Art Spiegelman shunned by US media.
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Once again, Antisemtism & The Left
I hate Frontpage magazine and David Horowitz with a furious passion. But, here’s an article rather relevant to issues that arise in my own life as an activist…
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Straight ghetto, son
“The term comes from Venice’s Ghetto in the 14th century. Before this part of the city was reserved for the Jews it was an iron foundry (getto), hence the name ghetto. Other etymologies suggested for the word include the Italian borghetto for “small neighborhood” or the Hebrew word get, literally a “bill of divorce.” From the example of the Venice Ghetto the name was then extended to the other ones. In Castile, they were called Judería and in Majorca, call. It is worth noticing that the gated Jewish quarter in Venice (the Ghetto), was an affluent part of the town inhabited by merchants and moneylenders. Non-Jews were not allowed to live in this ghetto, and the gates were locked at night.” —Ghetto in the Wikipedia
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Bletlekh groz
Tikkun explores Walt Whitman’s influence on Yiddish poets.
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Feel the Burn II
Zeek editor Jay Michelson, founder of Congregation B’nai Hamidbar, discusses the beauty and value of Burning Man.
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Glass Towers & Class Power
I would say that part of Jewishness is to understand that all these traditions are linked. Secular traditions are deeply marked by their profound religious roots, and vice versa. So what you consider very religious ideas are also shaped by historical movements. I would just say that all of this is part of my being — not as some sort of orthodoxy, but yes, the diversity.
Daniel Libeskind, architectural designer of the forthcoming World Trade Center reconstruction project, discusses his red diaper roots with Jewish Currents.
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Rockin’ the oyPod
Damn! Sounds like my last trip to B&H!
This and other great spoofs on Apple’s new iPod campaign at somethingawful.com.
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Birthright budget cut
The JTA reports, “Israel is reducing its allocation to the birthright israel program to a symbolic sum. The cut in the state’s 2004 draft budget would bring the figure down to $500,000 for 2004 from its original commitment of $14 million for five consecutive years. However, Israel will restore its full financial commitment to birthright in 2005, said Israel’s minister of Jerusalem and diaspora affairs, Natan Sharansky, who was involved in 11th-hour negotiations on the matter with Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American philanthropist Michael Steinhardt. Funding for the program, which provides free trips to Israel for Jewish youths aged 18 to 26 who have never before visited Israel on an organized tour, is shared equally by Israel’s government; the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella federation group; and private philanthropists, as well as other Jewish groups.”
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Karl Rove’s Grandpa Didn’t Build Birkenau
Following up on Al Martin’s contention that Karl Rove’s grandfather built concentration camps for the Nazis (which was blogged and subsequently contested here the week before last), we asked a noted holocaust scholar, Robert Jan van Pelt, Ph.D., Professor of Architetcure at the University of Waterloo, Canada, author of The Case for Auschwitz and co-author of Auschwitz with Deborah Dwork, to look into the matter for us. Here’s what we found out:
I have studied for over 14 years the history and construction of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the center of the Holocaust with more than 1 million victims, mostly Jews, but I do not remember having seen any document linking the firm Roverer Süd-Deutsche Ingenieurbüro to the construction of that camp. I could do some research into this matter—sometimes outside engineers provided the equivalent of what we would call today building code consultancy (in WW II they had to sign off that the project used building materials in accordance with the regulations concerning wartime rationing). But if the firm had been contracted to do such work, it would have been a very minor matter. What is absolutely certain is that Roverer neither designed, nor constructed Birkenau. That camp was designed by the architects of the SS Zentralbauleitung in Auschwitz, with the major responsibility going to Karl Bischoff and Fritz Ertl.
In retrospect, I guess I should’ve phrased the post, “Did Karl Rove’s grandfather build Birkenau?” Boy this foot tastes terrific.
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