Photo Exhibit of Soldiers now Online
Mobius posted a while about the photo exhibit which supposedly exposes abuses. Now you can find the photos online. If you know how to read hebrew, check out the testimonies.
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Next, On Madonna
Getting “frummer” by the minute, the thing formerly known as Madonna now refuses to preform unless the stage has been blessed by her Rabbi, Philip Berg of the Kabbalah center.
“He goes out there and chants and does his routine. He blessed Madison Square Garden. He blesses them all.”
Guess that means Berg will be going to alot of concerts. I wonder what blessing he actually says - anybody care to speculate?
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More on Bush’s “Nazicrat” Fiasco
Slate reports,
The Bush campaign, outraged by [the MoveOn contributor's] mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it.
And the ADL chimes in, condemning the commercial as well.
[Update] The Forward throws in it’s two cents.
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Israeli Terrorism
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines Terror (in the political context) as “violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands”. There is no doubt that Hamas and even the PA fall into this category. But what about the Israeli Defense Forces?
Reuven Pedatzur, a knowledgeable military expert and hardly a radical lefty, writes in today’s Haaretz about the escalation of the Intifada:
It turns out that during the first few days of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, soldiers in the territories fired 1,300,000 bullets. This astounding statistic embodies the entire story… Then-chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, with the support of his senior aides, did not plan to bring about the end of the conflict at its very onset. Having adopted Gilad’s approach, he had an opportunity to finally “beat” the Palestinians, to “vanquish” them and lead them to negotiations in a weakened and exhausted state. This is the origin of the “burned into their consciousness” thesis, which became a cornerstone of the Israel Defense Forces’ policy in the territories. We’ll hit the Palestinians until the recognition of their weakness vis-a-vis Israel’s might is burned into their consciousness. This is the only way they will understand that they are best off coming to terms with their inferiority and accepting Israel’s demands
This gave rise to the objective defined by Mofaz, his successor Moshe Ya’alon, and their colleagues in the general staff: achieving military victory in what was at first described as a war with the Palestinians. This explains why the IDF began to use such massive firepower when the uprising broke out in the territories. This also explains why over a million bullets were fired in the first few days, even though there was no operational or professional justification. The intent was to score a winning blow against the Palestinians, and especially against their consciousness. This was not a war on terror, but on the Palestinian people. IDF commanders projected their viewpoint regarding Arafat’s intentions onto the entire Palestinian society.
“Burned into their consciousness” thesis, is exactly what it sounds like - violence for the sake of political gains, a.k.a. terror. Sadly, the debate inside the military and political elite is probably not about the thesis itself but simply about the final political outcomes of the opression of the Palestinians.
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Is Israel All That Matters?
The Nation reports,
For a glimpse of how Israel plays out in an American election year, recall the day in September when then-Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean told reporters he would like to see the United States take an “even-handed” approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Thirty-four Congressional Democrats responded by sending Dean a harsh letter questioning whether he shared their “unequivocal support for Israel’s right to exist,” and anonymous e-mails inundated Jewish listservs, accusing him of abandoning Israel. Dean promptly appeared on CNN to defend Israel’s assassinations of Palestinian militants.
See, like I’ve been saying up to this point, by concerning ourselves with Israel over all other domestic issues, we make ourselves an easy target for politicians pandering for our votes (who, under the veil of their outward support, couldn’t give less of a shit about the Jewish state), and we make ourselves look like really bad Americans, throwing our national allegiance into question.
What is more important? The state of Israel (note: not the messianic kingdom of David of biblical lore, but the secular democratic state of Israel), or Jewish peoples’ ability to live freely and without duress in the United States as well as any other country in which we choose to reside?
This single issue thing is going to bite us on the ass. And perhaps it starts with this article here…
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Newsweek Asks: Whose Hitler Images Are More Offensive?
The Dubya campaign recently emailed a “webmercial” (their word, not mine) to six million or so supporters this past week. The video, entitled ‘The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed’ features images of popular left wingers, and everyone’s favorite fascist, Adolph Hitler.
The fuhrer footage is overlaid with the words “sponsored by MoveOn.org” while the ad’s opening screen says “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party.”MoveOn.org, a left-wing political fundraising group, immediately objected. “We never sponsored those [Hitler] ads, we didn’t condone them,” says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn PAC. He says the Hitler clips originally appeared on the group’s Web site in January as part of the “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest as part of two of the 1,100 entries the organization received After learning that the offensive Hitler spots were on the site—and facing criticism for them—MoveOn.org removed the entries. The Hitler submissions were up for 10 days “during which they were seen by a couple hundred people, including apparently, a [Republican National Committee] researcher, who posted them on the RNC site,” says Pariser. The new Bush ad “is worse than the pot calling the kettle black. They’re certainly going to regret it—it looks like a vicious partisan attack.”
The Bush camp argues the Hitler ads are fair game. After all, says Bush-Cheney ‘04 spokesman Scott Stanzel, the video did first appear on the MoveOn site. “It’s indicative of the type of vitriol that we have seen from John Kerry and his surrogates,” he says.
The Newsweek article continues, mentioning a few other recent Nazi references by politicos on both sides. Al Gore is quoted saying the current “administration works closely with a network of rapid responders, a group of digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors and publishers and advertisers, and are quick to accuse them of undermining support for our troops.”
In a related story, FreeRepublic The National Review declares Gore’s Gone Wild [NSFL*]. Tragically funny.
*Link not safe for lefties; “A Conservative News Forum”
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Boy they’re getting creative…
In what may be the weirdest act of antisemitism ever concocted, a Jewish family in Oregon discovered that someone had used weed killer to burn a 15-foot cross into their front lawn. Seriously, where do people come up with this shit?
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IJPPP: Israel’s Actions Bad For World Jewry
Ma’ariv reports,
The policy of the Israeli government has a negative effect on world Jewry – a report recently published by the Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning found. The Chairman of the new institute, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency, is Dennis Ross – the former chief negotiator for the US Middle East Peace team.The report accuses the Israeli government of not sufficiently thinking through the ramifications of its actions, especially to Jews and Jewish institutions abroad.
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Israel’s A Sideshow In Pan-Arab Picture
Though there is no verification of the source, in a recent talk attributed to scholar Haim Harari, Harari states,
Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.
- The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.
- The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.
- The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.
- Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
- Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60’s because of Israel.
- Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.
- The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.
- The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel,
- and I could go on and on and on.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years.
Click here to read more.
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Schwarzenegger Wants Proverbial “J.” Added To Papers
Reuters reports,
Several rabbis weighed in on Wednesday against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s idea for adding a distinguishing mark to driver’s licenses that would be given to illegal immigrants, saying it harks back to Holocaust-era persecution of Jews.
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Open Thread
What’s on your mind people?
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Mi casa es mi casa
UNWRA and OCHA published a report stating that “the Israel Defense Forces have demolished 1,497 homes in various refugee camps and neighborhoods in the Rafah area.” And this is only in the Rafah area.. (The article also states that 3,437 Palestinians and 942 Israelis were killed since Sept. 2000)
Since the beginning of the intifada, “[s]ome 15,000 people have been rendered homeless by the demolitions, and of these roughty 82 percent were refugees.” Damn. While it seems that the IDF is getting better at stopping suicide attacks, it’s statistics show a rise in the number of terrorist attempts. Lets get it straight - demolishing one’s house does not stop terror. Moreover, it is a form of terror. Another Haaretz articles, though, gives us some good news:
Some 400 rabbis from numerous countries, including Israel, who participated this week in Toronto in a meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), are expected to decide that the home demolitions contradict the “vision articulated in the declaration of independence, when it described the state as one that ‘will be based on freedom, justice and peace, as envisioned by the prophets of Israel.’”
Considering the fact that most palestinians cannot even get permits to built on their own land, and that house demolitions of terrorist’s families is a form of collective punishment, I think this is a brave and important declaration.
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OU Wants Water Filters
Fiddish exclusive: The OU will soon announce its official recommendation for the filtration of NYC tap water.
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Recap: The Rabbi, The Reverend & The Renegade
Deborah Caldwell, Bill Talen, Arthur Waskow & Larry Harvey
Went to The Rabbi, The Reverend & The Renegade tonight at Angel Orensanz. Unfortunately, my digital recorder is a much bigger POS than I imagined so I won’t be bringing you the complete audio of the lecture. My bad—I’ll try n’ hook into the soundboard next time.
The event was essentially a metaphor for Burning Man itself—people of varying backgrounds, coming together in “temporary autonomous zone” and doing their best to overcome their differences and to work together for the duration of the experience.
In other words, I’m surprised all hell didn’t break loose.
I hate to start this way, but I’ve got to note that the 14th St. Y’s staff on the door were incredibly inhospitable. They would not let anyone in to purchase tickets or to use the restroom prior to 7:30 (though the area was fully staffed) thus forcing my 75 year-old friend with whom I attended the event to stand outside holding his pee. Considering this is the first major event under the banner of The Y’s Jewish Below 14th initiative that I’m aware of, it was very disconcerting that my first interaction with them should yield the uncaring face of corporate cool. If you are a community center looking to foster community, you want to be warm and inviting, not playing hot-shit with the velvet rope, cuz it taints the energy of the whole experience.
Just needed to get that out of the way.
The talk was sumfin’ else. Yarlmulkes spotted the audience amongst dyed-red dreads and SG-types [NSFF] in low-cut outfits. The tznius elbows of frum girls rested amongst the far-from-tznius elbows of men wearing rainbow tie-dyed spaghetti-strap tanktops. Reverend Billy served up drinks to the panel. Eratically-minded greying hippies interjected clever one-liners and out of turn questions, agitating the speakers and the audience alike. Audience members shouted at panelists. And Deborah Caldwell couldn’t manage one coherent question on her own. The air was tense, and made more so by the lack of air conditioning and the audience’s struggle to hear the panelists over the sucky sound system. All of this against the backdrop of a synagogue interior preserved in a state of decay for its aesthetic effect. Like I said, it was sumfin’ else.
Reverend Billy is a character. The Guido Sarducci of the anti-globalization movement, he is a comedic actor emulating a fiery Pentacostal railing against the corporotocracy. Undoubtedly a gifted orator, Rev Billy is profound in his condemnation of corporate culture, which he astutely defines as the dominant religion of the 21st century. Corporate retail chains and the mentality they perpetuate are pure evil, he asserts—and they must be stopped. Hallelujah! Amen!
Despite my esteem for all of the words which Rev Billy offered this evening—he really was kick-ass—I was left troubled by his indictment of religion and religious narratives which arose in his interactions with Reb Waskow. He flatly branded religion a bankrupt institution incapable of reform, nor worthy of any interest, brushing aside all the Torah wisdom which Arthur brought forth.
Of course, being familiar with the corruption of religious institutions, I can understand how he’d come to feel the way he does—I suppose I even walk the same line myself at times. But I can not accept the assertion that because one group can misappropriate a narrative that the narrative itself is or becomes inherently bankrupt. This is my fundamental problem with the Marxist-inspired attitude towards religion which dominates leftist thinking. It is unapologetically extreme in its opposition to theology and its adherents. This attitude has, at its worst, led to the repeated persecution of religious peoples, leaving millions dead in the wake of its advent. Further, it seems contrary to the notions of tolerance and compassions which I feel are a pillar of progressive Socialist thought.
Non-theologues must understand that the dominators are always going to misappropriate our culture and our narratives to achieve their own aims. For a person so strongly opposed to cooptation and recuperation, it seems hypoctrical for Rev Billy to demand we abandon our folk tradition to the dominators so that they may ram it into the ground. Contrary to Billy’s assertion, I believe that, not only is our narrative salvagable, but nothing needs salvaging! We just need to scrape the plankton off the side of our hull, and we’ll be just fine. If you’re not a yid, I of course don’t expect you to get it. But don’t insist we abandon our culture because you don’t understand our struggle as progressive people working for radical change within our own ‘nation’. There’s no way we’re giving up a narrative that—against all odds—has kept our community together for 5,000 years, just because uninformed or intolerant people don’t get what it’s about, or because others are just as outraged as we are that corrupt individuals abuse it to empower themselves.
Rest assured: I’ll be out on the corner chanting down Starbucks with you. Hell, I be the first one on the block. But you’ll never get a concession from me that the Jewish narrative is a dead horse. Don’t be so sure. It’s an unattractive quality.
I asked Billy, after the talk, if he was at all concerned that his extremism could be a turn-off to parties otherwise interested in what he has to offer. He explained that he is an actor, playing a role, and that role is an extremist. He is an absurd character, and thus it is part and parcel of his act. And I mean, yeah—I get it. But doesn’t that trivalize the message he imparts? Or is his maximum ultraism that which makes his message succeed?
Arthur was delightful. He was entertaining, he was passionate, and he offered beautiful teachings from the Torah that were accessible to all. He honestly seemed conservative in comparison to Billy, perhaps even a bit to Larry Harvey (who was much more “normal”, centered, and even conservative than I had expected). But any Jew who was there knows Arthur’s teachings are considered radical within our community, which is a pity because I believe neither the other panelists, nor the majority of the audience, were aware of his place within the Jewish community and how progressive and forwardthinking he really is. Despite all else, I thought he still got sort of snubbed for being ‘clergy’. Not by everyone, though. I caught Larry chatting with some folks afterwards, remarking how much he really enjoyed what Arthur brought to the table, and heard him counter a flaky red-white-and-pink-dreadlocked 50-something-year-old white woman’s contention that Arthur was, essentially an uppity religious Jew. “Actually, I think he’s pretty loose,” he said. “I really liked him.”
Though very collected, Arthur seemed to be on the defensive most of the time against Billy’s attacks on religious narrative. This is because Arthur’s whole shtick was sharing religious narrative. Thus he was forced into the position of defending the ground he was standing on, which was a place neither of the other panelists really found themselves in. And perhaps it wasn’t most of the time but just that those moments had the most powerful exchange of energy and were thus the most noticeable. Either way, in retrospect, it’s another interesting illustration of the place of the Jew in a gentile society. No respect! Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!
After relating his own experience beating willow branches against the shore of the Hudson, resurrecting an ancient Jewish tradition, and hearing a story from Billy about the profoundity of his experiences performing & protesting, as well as Larry’s story about the founding of Burning Man, Arthur asked—”This shared communal experience, these profound transcendent moments, these encounters with the unknown: Can we call it religious or do you have an aversion to that term?” That’s pretty much where it all started.
Larry was on a very different tip than Arthur and Billy, and he’s not nearly as eloquent a speaker—he stutters a lot and mumbles a bit. But his content was spot on. His focus seemed to lean more towards immediatism than the invention of a new narrative or the reinvigoration of an old one. The impression I got from him was that, essentially, we don’t need to forge new myths, we just need to live them. “If you build it, he will come,” was kind of his summary point: By creating alternate possibilities for existence outside the dominant paradigm and demonstrating success within such constructs, we can prove that another world is possible, and in doing so, others will be drawn to and participate in that new possibility of their own accord. And Burning Man, which saw 35,000 people successfully construct an anarchist city in the desert last year, is a testament to that fact.
Speaking with him afterwards, Larry said that what he’s most excited about is the springing up of small autonomous Burning Man collectives around the country that are organizing ongoing events for the Burning Man community. There are so many at this point, he said, that one could hop from one event to the next and never skip a beat. Werd to your pilgramage!
Overall the event was chaos. There was no real moderation on the moderator’s behalf. The audience was unruly. The panel was fiesty. The conversation was all over the place… but it was profound and enlightening all the same. Thus the evening was a success. I can’t say that I learned anything new that I hadn’t heard before—I’m enmeshed in the culture of all three of the panelists. But I’ll say it was certainly gratifying and entertaining to watch three of my favorite folk heroes hammer it out, and attempt to arrive at some semblance of Truth (note the capital T), for whatever that’s worth.
More on Burning Man and its Jewish participants soon to come… My bad about the font-size earlier. Forgot to close a tag.
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Volunteer Needed
If you’re a PHP coder and you’ve got the time and desire to help improve Jewschool’s functionality a bit, please hit me off.
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Tell The UN To Stop Ignoring Palestinian Attacks On Civillians
Within the next 48 hours, Jews worldwide will be sending email messages to the United Nations, the EU Parliament and the EU Court of Justice with the identical message that is on this email.Please take a quick moment to copy the message below and paste it on to a new email that should be sent to the email addresses listed below:
ecu {at} un(.)org - United Nations
civis {at} europarl.eu(.)int - EU Parliament
info {at} curia.eu(.)int - EU Court of Justice
information {at} eumc.eu(.)int - EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and XenophobiaMessage:
When Israel builds a fence to keep out terrorists, the UN and EU are up in arms because it makes it difficult for terrorists to kill more Jews.
When terrorists shoot (point blank!) an 8-month-pregnant Jewish woman and her 4 little girls, there is absolute silence from your organizations. If you think your indifference goes unnoticed, count the number of messages you will receive world-wide in the next 48 hours on this subject.
Respectfully,
Yeah, I’m a lefty, and I’m no fan of the fence. But I’m less a fan of double standards, so I’m writing in…
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Exploiting Fear of Antisemitism Used As Campaign Tactic in FL Sheriff Race
Ken Eggleston, a candidate for sheriff in Palm Beach County, FL, has been spreading rumors about his opponent, Ric Bradshaw, stating that, if elected, he would coddle antisemites and racists, because, as a current sheriff’s department employee, he has done nothing to combat alleged racist behavior on the part of officers within his department.
Fliers promoting the accusation have been heavily circulated amongst the Palm Beach Jewish community in recent weeks and Jewish leaders are ticked, not at Bradshaw, of course, but at Eggleston, a jackass who thinks he can get away with exploiting our concerns about antisemitism to get ahead in an election.
If only the majority of American Jewish voters would recognize this is the same game Bush is playing…
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