by Kung Fu Jew · Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
EV outdoes himself again. And Commentary magazine has had it up to here! Check the comic for yourself, but Commentary’s commentary cites it as exploiting the anti-Christian fears of American Jewry.
First of all, I grew up among the Xtians all my life. There are more Jews who blog on Jewschool than I ever knew until the age of 22. Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, small town California, Oregon and Washington State. I’m not afraid of Christians.
But I do have to be honest, they have some funny ideas about us Hebrews. One asked my family, “Oh, you’re Jewish? So where do you do your sacrifices?” And not because he was an anti-Semite, but because a good read of the Old Testament would lead you to believe that.
And many folks like him happen to believe, in a pretty benign way, that the Jews have been replaced. By them. It’s as easy as saying, “Hey-didn’t-God-tell-the-Israelites-to-kill-the-Canaanites-even-though-they-never-did-anything-wrong?” Yes, indeedy, that easy to believe. Ever met a Canaanite? They’re not around so much, but any Palestinian will do. You see, the ideas of “replacing” a people are quite common here at home among us Jews. They’re not so different, they’re really good people, trust me.
But that doesn’t mean I want them making foreign policy decisions about Israel. Their love of Israel is as uneducated as you can get — and not a tap we want to open without the ability to shut it. American policy vis a vis Israel under greater influence of the Evangelicals is going to become the Jews’ Proposition 8: all the Christians will out-fund and out-influence the Jews on our own issue. Don’t believe me? Look up the 990 tax forms of the biggest churches. Above and beyond any Federation.
I love Eli’s comics because of their double-punch. Not only do we get to lampoon the Evangelicals’ blood thirst for the End of Days, but we harpoon our own people for our unfortunate Crusades-related baggage. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell who’s the main target of the cartoon: us or them.
Commentary asks how this cartoon got past the “liberal, tolerant” editors at The Forward. I’ll explain why: Eli proves time and again that the best comedy material — stupidity, fanaticism, embarassment — is in the mirror.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
Last week, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald took on the continuing Nareshkeit about how Obama has a Jewish problem, how our grannies aren’t voting for Obama, and so on ad nauseum. Greenwald gives as examples a tediously long list of media and blatherers who have claimed this, such as,
then-Weekly-Standard blogger and now McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb, who claimed earlier this year:
Obama has a Jewish problem, whether or not it’s merely guilt by association is irrelevant. Politics is about perception, and the perception is that Obama’s one step removed from the Nation of Islam.
he includes such theoretically reliable (I don’t think so, but then I think all the corporate media are basically shills anyway) such as U.S. News & World Report (”the uneasy evolution of Obama’s relationship with a wide swath of the nation’s Jewish voters,” ) The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.
Well, guess what? Sarah Silverman, don’t go around thinking that Bubbe and Zayde are dumb or bigoted just because they’re old, ‘kay? Turns out they’re just fine, thanks, along with the rest of us.
On the 23rd, Gallup finally brought out its support for those who have been actually paying attention to facts, rather than MSU (Making Sh** Up) - debunkers including The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, back in March, ABC News’ Jan Crawford Greenberg in May, and Salon’s own Mike Madden, also in May.
Here’s what Gallup had to say:
Jewish voters nationwide have grown increasingly comfortable with voting for Barack Obama for president since the Illinois senator secured the Democratic nomination in June. They now favor Obama over John McCain by more than 3 to 1, 74% to 22%. . .
…support for Obama among Jewish voters has expanded …from the low 60% range in June and July to 66% in August, 69% in September, and 74% today.
The current proportion of U.S. Jews backing Obama is identical to the level of support the Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards received in the 2004 presidential election (74%) . . .
In a slightly later released Quinnipiac poll, Obama is shown leading in Florida 77 - 20 percent among Jews.
So, now can we quit hearing from the right how only the ones who want to convert us really love us and will protect our interests? Cause, you know, guys, we just aren’t falling for that crap again. Bubbe is smarter than you.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
Just in case you missed this last week, a high school in St/ Louis has suspended at least four students for hitting Jewish classmates on the newly coined “Hit a Jew Day.” Kidding, right? Nope.
It began with an unofficial “Spirit Week” among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a “Hug a Friend Day.” Then there was “High Five Day.”
Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was “Hit a Tall Person Day” and, finally, “Hit a Jew Day.”
…”There is a mix of sadness and outrage,” [District spokesperson Paul] Tandy said. “The concern is a lot of kids knew about it and they didn’t take action or say anything.”
My question … why wasn’t anyone outraged at students hitting inventing an excuse to hit people until it got to ethnic ugliness? Your tax dollars at work….WTF?
by Kung Fu Jew · Monday, July 7th, 2008
From The Independent, also in JTA and Reuters, Britain’s first Muslim minister Shahid Malik has said that many Muslims feel like “the Jews of Europe”:
“I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe,” he said. “I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost – and still is in some parts – to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.
“Somehow there’s a message out there that it’s OK to target people as long as it’s Muslims. And you don’t have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye.”
MP Malik speaks to a big truth – a plus ca change truth. Let’s play with this for a sec:
No, Muslims are not having their rights to property or occupation taken away (even if their rights to wear hijabs are under constant threat), even if people do eye them suspiciously. The animosity towards the Islamic bloc countries is rooted also in a fear of East vs. West geopolitical conflict — something the Jews never could claim to have. Further, terrorist acts on a grand scale are also missing from the early 1900s history of Jews and Europe. One might more accurately say that Muslims might be the new Russians. Or the new Communists.
All that being said, does it matter if Islam actually can declare war on the West — or if we just think it has? Jews were accused of running the world, manipulating finances, and so on, which were exaggerations and lies. The “Islam against the West” line is also a bit hazy in the facts area, yes? Islamophobia is a tiny hop, skip and jump away from anti-Semitism, in its pervasive nature, it’s reliance on cultural myths, and appropriation of populist fears. It is a disease of the logic, backed up by credibility and “research.” The target people is different and the trappings are green-tinted not blue, but the portrayal and useage of it is the same.
This statement is more than interesting to Jewschool because it happens to have “Jews” in the article. And this issue is more important than an exercise in backing up or debunking the similarities between Jews and Muslims in Europe. MP Malik’s statement is a hot poker in the butt of the Jewish people asking us if we (and our societies) have not fallen into the same mental traps as our predecessors’ oppressors. And what, other than decrying or debunking the comparison, we’re going to do to prevent the accusation from going any further.
(By the way, the UK’s online resources for members of Parliament are phenomenal — on his overall Parliamentary participation; on terrorism his speeches and votes.)
by Kung Fu Jew · Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Profiled in all his ugliness in The New Yorker this week: Billionaire Sheldon Adelson is the third richest man in America, a huge funder of birthright israel, Bush’s election campaigns, the ZOA, the Republican Jewish Caucus (check out the new RJC Watch blog, by the way), One Jerusalem, AIPAC…the list goes on. You’re looking at the sugardaddy-Godfather of American (Jewish) right-wingery here.
More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
Haaretz and the NYT report on a local controversy regarding resistance to Westhampton beach Orthodox Jews wanting to put up an eruv.
You would think that wanting to tie some string to a few telephone poles would pretty much be ignored by the rest of the world, but it turns out that putting up an eruv has become a rather problematic venture over the past few years. A number of towns have begun to organize resistance to putting up an eruv.
The strangest part is that the resistance comes from both non-Jews living in the area… and non-Orthodox Jews, including, sometimes, Conservative Jews. It’s not as simple as anti-semiitism. Partly this stems from regions in New York where a few towns have gone from having few to having many Orthodox Jews, and in the process of becoming popular, sometimes the Orthodox community has made itself unpleasant by forcing some non-Jewish businesses out of business. Some of it is ignorance of what an eruv is by the non-Jews. But… you can’t say none of it is anti-semitism. For every five towns area where the Orthodox community has come in and refused to patronize non-shomer Shabbat businesses, are plenty of perfectly nice, normal Orthodox people who are just going about their business.
Ultimately the issue has become that people are protesting having a substantial Orthodox community in their area. The weirdest part for me is having liberal Jews mixed up in this. Okay, I can understand Reform Jews protesting eruvs in their neighborhood: some Reform Jews will stand on principal against any halacha if they are touched by it. (I’ve certainly had to occasionally work in situations where a Reform and Conservative shul will put on a joint program which, for logistical reasons, has to be in a Reform shul. And they will, as a matter of principal, refuse to provide kosher food. (BTW claiming that this is the majority of Reform shuls is as silly as claiming that all Orthodox communities are going to go around closing businesses that aren’t Orthodox owned) It isn’t the usual thing, but at least it isn’t peculiar.) In the case of any Conservative Jews involved in this, it’s downright peculiar, since Conservative Jews need eruvs as much as the Orthodox do: the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat has not been lifted, my Conservative chevre.
But the real story here is that the Orthodox are not always crazy when they start yelling about being picked on. In this case, it’s perfectly true, and in fact, the refusal of townships to put up eruvs because they don’t want the Orthodox to move in is not simple anti-semitism, but is also a form of internalized anti-semitism (I generally detest the use of that term, but it is, very occasionally, warranted). Friends, we need to start getting along better within the Jewish community. Granted, this is not all on one side. The Orthodox need to start working harder to not antagonize liberal Jews over their practices… and ought to be speaking up about Israeli refusal to separate synagogue and state. They could also work to make themselves better neighbors in a more public way. But in most places Orthodox Jews make fine neighbors, and finding ways to keep them out is just wrong, and bad for Am Yisrael, even if the Orthodox can’t meet the non-Orthodox halfway.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, May 31st, 2008
Week Six, day Six
Yesod of Yesod
Week Six, day Seven
Malchut of Yesod
Reported all over the place, but the WaPo doesn’t have that annoying registration thingy. As pretty much everyone knows, Obama has had a lot of political problems with his church. First there was the out of context Wright quote, which was taken to mean that Wright hated every white person, but especially Jews. Apparently the latest hitch has been (Roman Catholic) Rev. Michael Pfleger slamming Clinton in a sermon and implying that she’s a white supremacist.
I have to admit, I have some mixed feelings about this. Now, y’all know that I’m pretty annoyed about the misogyny behind a significant amount of the anti-Clinton activity, from speechifying, to musing about her personal life and sartorial choices, and don’t even get me into the various objects intended to deride (nutcrackers and the like). Let me just say, I don’t think that Obama himself is a misogynist.
But let’s get away fro this most recent thing, which I think Obama shouldn’t have to answer for, either, and get back to Wright. I think that Wright may well be saying something that we ought to be listening to. If you’re an African American, your experience of racism is quite different than any other group of color’s in this country. Unlike (Ashkenazi) Jews and Italians whose move up the economic ladder has allowed us to assimilate and blend in, and the Japanese and Chinese whose model minority status is moving them in that direction as well (along with extremely high exogamy rates), if you’re African American, your class has to get pretty outstandingly high before you - as an individual- are exempted from some of the worst of the bigotry. Even then, go someplace where your name isn’t recognized, and you can wear silk and rubies and it’s not going to help you much.
SO, while I don’t necessarily love Wright, I think we need to listen to him a little more carefully, because he can tell us a lot about what we don’t normally hear. and so, I respected Obama for sticking to his church and not resigning. Especially since it is often true that when you cut yourself off from someone who is angry, you’ve lost your chance to talk to them and help them see a different way out. Obama was a trusted friend, insofar as a clergyperson can unbend among congregants, and Obama might have led him to a more nuanced way of speaking. Who will do that now?
by shamirpower · Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Wednesday night May 14 at the JCC in Manhattan: 334 Amsterdam at 7 pm there will be a panel discussion on the topic: Israel, Jews and the Media: Exploding the Myths.
A distinguished panel will discuss the various notions about how the media treats Israel and Jewish related issues.
The evening has been organized by Jerome Chanes and will include:
Clyde Haberman of The Times, Sam Freedman of Columbia School of Journalism, and Gary Rosenblatt of The Jewish Week.
If you want to register you can do so at 646-505-5748 or at www.jccmanhattan.org.
Jewschoolers - if you get a chance to attend, share your thoughts here.
by chillul Who? · Thursday, April 10th, 2008
Jews On First has the details. You may remember Indian River as the area of Delaware from which the Dobriches, a Jewish family, fled to escape the non-stop harassment, antisemitic abuse, and Christian bigotry which began when they complained about the district-sanctioned proselytizing by teachers and school officials.
The story has been proceeding through varying levels of ugliness for a few years. Just a few months ago there was that elementary school teacher who told her class that Barack Obama was a Muslim, and therefore “different” and “scary”. Or the mob of 800 that turned out to jeer & silence advocates of pluralism at an IRSD board meeting in 2006.
Hopefully, this lawsuit settlement - which includes not only monetary damages paid to the victims of the harassment but new, constitutional, policies on what religious expression is and is not allowed in a public school - will eventually protect the religious minorities of southeastern Delaware from more violations of their and their childrens’ constitutional rights. (see Jews On First for the text of the new policies, it’s a fascinating read) But before the happy dances can begin in Indian River, there needs to be a sea change in the local culture. And there needs to be eagle-eyed vigilance to make sure these new policies are followed.
I was astonished when this story first broke a few years ago, that these kind of First Amendment and civil rights violations could happen in the beach towns of what I considered the diverse and enlightened Mid-Atlantic, but a friend from Wilmington, DE insisted that she wasn’t surprised. The reaches below the C & D Canal (containing most of Delaware’s area and a tiny fraction of its population) are known to the Wilmingtonians to their north as “The Slower Lower”, a region less defined by its historical stature as the First State or by its consumer-pleasing lack of sales tax, and more by its residents’ apparent difficulty with remembering which side of the Civil War they were on. (That would be the winning side).
So is it possible to introduce a culture of respect for diversity by fiat? What is needed to make it stick?
by shamirpower · Friday, March 28th, 2008
A few blocks from where I live in Park Slope, a young Chabad Rabbi was surprised to have his kippah swiped:
A New York teenager is being charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime after allegedly stealing a Wellesley rabbi’s yarmulke in a Brooklyn subway station last week. Rabbi Uria Ohana, 25, a rabbinical assistant at the Wellesley-Weston Chabad Center, had just entered a Park Slope subway station at 4th Avenue and 9th street at 6:20 p.m. on March 18 when he felt someone grab his yarmulke.
Turning around, he said, he saw an Arab teenager running down the stairs, and decided to chase him to get his yarmulke back. Running through the station, they passed a group of the boy’s friends who began chasing Ohana and screaming, “Allahu Akhbar!â€
Ohana chased the boy, identified as Ali Hussein, 18, of Queens, outside, where he ran into the street and was hit by a car. Hussein’s friends caught up with Ohana and began shouting, “you see what you do?†punching him in the head, and screaming “Allahu Akhbar. There were numerous witnesses outside the crowded subway station, he said, and many of them pulled out cell phones to call 911. Before police arrived, a black SUV pulled up, and two of Ohana’s attackers jumped in the car and drove away, leaving Hussein at the scene…
More from the Daily News.
by feygele · Friday, March 7th, 2008
English translation will follow shortly (in the comments). I felt it important to write in French after being back in Quebec for a week…
Et les Montréalais ne vois rien de mal à leur perspective «orthodoxe est le seul judaïsme nous [ne] pratiquons [pas]»? Ceux qui me connaissent ont déjà entendu mon discours contre la communauté juive de Montréal. Les options sont orthodoxes, orthodoxes, ou conservadoxes. Oui, il y a une synagogue réforme classique à Westmount. Et, oui, il y a une synagogue reconstructioniste à Côte-St-Luc. Mais pour un homme shomer Shabbos vivant sur le côté est, ces deux options ne sont pas viables. Selon les statistiques, je les appris par coeur dans un cours universitaire, Montréal est la seule ville en Amérique du Nord ayant plus orthodoxe que conservateurs et réformateurs juifs (c’est-à-dire, il y a très peu de Juifs qui s’identifient réformateurs ou conservateurs, même ceux qui mangent leurs hamburgers avec fromage). Il s’agit d’une ville où le discours d’ouverture sur les premières pages de l’annuaire des entreprises juives a commencé par une blague contre les réformateurs - et personne n’a jugé inapproprié.
Donc, il je ne suis pas étonné quand je vois que les effets de la fermeture et l’insularité de la communauté orthodoxe ont fait des ravages sur la société québécoise.
Un sondage national mené à la suite de la commission sur les «accommodements raisonnables» révèle une disparité frappante entre les attitudes Québécois à l’égard des Juifs et celles des autres Canadiens. Le sondage commandé par l’Association d’études canadiennes (AEC) et effectué par Léger Marketing entre le 31 Janvier et 4 février a demandé à 1500 Canadiens s’ils étaient en accord avec, en désaccord avec, ou ne savaient pas/n’ont pas d’opinion sur une série de déclarations concernant les juifs et l’antisémitisme. Selon les résultats du sondage, 41% des Québécois étaient en accord, tandis qu’un autre 41% étaient en désaccord avec l’idée que «les Juifs veulent imposer leurs coutumes et leurs traditions aux autres». Par contre, face à cette même idée, le reste du Canada étaient en accord à 11%, et en désaccord à 74%. La moyenne nationale était de 19% d’accord et 64% en désaccord.
Quant à une autre déclaration - «les Juifs veulent participer pleinement à la société» – 41% des Québécois étaient en désaccord, et 31% étaient en accord, à comparer au reste du Canada qui a répondu en désaccord à 8% et en accord à 72%. La moyenne nationale était de 16% en désaccord et 63% en accord.
À l’idée «les juifs ont apporté une importante contribution à la société», 35% des Québécois étaient en désaccord et 41% étaient en accord, tandis qu’au reste du Canada 10% étaient en désaccord et 74% étaient en accord. La moyenne canadienne était de 16% en désaccord et 65% en accord. [citation.]
Ne vous méprenez pas: je suis attristé que, en l’an 2008, à la société civilisée du monde occidental, les gens peuvent toujours penser si à l’envers. Dans le cas du Québec, je pense que la responsabilité est double et de grands changements sont nécessaires.
More »
by BZ · Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Hey kids, are you looking for a way to get out of studying for that English test? Take a page from some British Jewish students who boycotted the Shakespeare section of the national English test, and claim antisemitism!
The 14-year-old girls, whose actions were supported by their parents, The Independent said were protesting anti-Semitism in Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The exam questions they refused to answer were actually about The Tempest, a different work of Shakespeare’s.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I was a physics major in college, and I busted my ass learning quantum mechanics when I could have skipped the test instead, on the grounds that Heisenberg was employed by Hitler.
(Note: The extent to which Heisenberg willingly cooperated with the Nazis is a subject of much historical controversy, inspiring a Broadway play. But so is The Merchant of Venice, which I assume has also played on Broadway.)
And now that I’m a high school teacher, I refuse to grade Regents exams, because we use an assembly-line method, which is totally antisemitic.
Finally, I’m boycotting the Torah, because whoever (or Whoever) wrote it is clearly an antisemite (or a self-hating Jew). I mean, they go out of their way to portray Jews in an unfavorable light, reviving all the tired stereotypes. Look at the evidence: Jacob tricks Esau into selling his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. The Israelites run off with the Egyptians’ gold and silver. And don’t get me started on “an eye for an eye”.
by Y-Love · Thursday, January 24th, 2008
What, in the hell, is this?
The Mr. President hotel in Belgrade is receiving increasing flak from Jewish communities worldwide for its $200 a night Hitler suite, one of numerous room dedicated to various world leaders. In the hotel, Serbia’s B92 radio reports, one can “have tea with Margret [sic] Thatcher, surf the Internet with George Washington and soak in the Jacuzzi in the company of Josip Broz Tito”.
The ADL announced their outrage in the Jerusalem post on Tuesday, with Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, saying, “using this tyrannical dictator to promote a hotel is a gross marketing ploy and demonstrates a profound failure to understand the horror of the Holocaust.”
Gross, macabre, and effective — Foxman said he was “deeply” disturbed by the “high demand for the hotel suite”. The room is the hotel’s “most popular”, attracting mostly German, Croat, and Slovenian guests. Zabunovic considers his choice to have a certain nobility, saying he is memorializing the Holocaust with the suite:
[Hotel manager Dusan] Zabunovic has not specifically commented on the ADL’s complaint, but on Wednesday, the hotel manager told Cybercast News Service, “It’s not just marketing. We placed the (Hitler) picture there because we don’t want to forget the bad things that Hitler has done.”
The manager said he’s not sure if the Hitler portrait will be removed, but he added that the hotel does not want to attract negative publicity.
The manager also said Hitler isn’t the only controversial leader. He mentioned one Serbian man who didn’t want to sleep in the Bill Clinton suite….Zabunovic told ABC News that Hitler’s victims would “turn in their graves” if there was no memorial to “what a monstrous criminal he was.”
I can’t say that I’m inclined to buy the whole “we’re the Yad Vashem Inn” defense he’s saying in the media; his “negative publicity” is keeping the room booked. Whether he is really acting under noble intentions or putting the lock on the anti-Semite niche market only time will tell.
Is the memory of the Holocaust and its catastrophic genocide becoming cheapened? The 2006 Indian faux pas of the Hitler’s Cross cafe still haunts search engines, and Italian winemaker Vini Lunardelli got caught up in 2007 for making its Der Führer line of wines, made “on special request” from German and Austrian vinophiles. 2002 saw the heyday of the Hitler Techno Bar in South Korea’s 2nd largest city Pusan, and Dubai-based Conqueror Realty “stood by” its 2007 decision to use Hitler in its UAE advertising campaign, with its owner saying: “He’s a famous person — bad or good, I don’t care — and I want to attract the attention of readers. And yesterday we had a lot of response.”
We should be outraged, but I feel, more than that, when Hitler triggers positive enough responses in people’s minds that they make consumer decisions based on seeing his face…perhaps it’s a sign we should be watching our collective backs.
by LastTrumpet · Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
Opponents of Germany’s new smoking ban have appalled Jewish leaders by selling more than 1,000 “smokers’ T-shirts” that display a yellow Star of David and suggest that discrimination against nicotine addicts is like Nazi anti-Semitism during the Third Reich.
The controversial T-shirts went on sale on an internet site in the run-up to a smoking ban which came in to force in 10 of Germany’s 16 federal states on New Year’s Day. Its promoters insisted that Germany needed to be woken up to what it described as “disgraceful discrimination against smokers” in bars and restaurants and claimed that its shirts were “the most aggressive smokers’ resistance shirt available”
Photographs of the T-shirts show them displaying a yellow Star of David identical to the Judenstern, or “Jewish star”, that the Nazis forced all Jews to wear in Germany after they were elected to power in 1933. The word “Jude”, or “Jew”, which was inscribed in the centre of the Nazi stars, is replaced by the word raucher, or smoker..
Almost as bad as all the “Bush & Olmert are Creating a New Holocaust” signs I saw last week.
Full story.
by aaronf · Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
A delegation of Columbia University professors is planning a trip to Tehran to apologize to Ahmadinejad. The Israel Lobby authors say we need “candid but civil” dialogue about the ME. This could be a fine example of that.
by Rav Shmuel · Monday, December 31st, 2007
Babe Ruth was a quintessential American. Somewhat larger than life, the Babe represented the kind of freedom that drives those who believe in despotic regimes mad. During World War II, when Japanese soldiers charged American troops, they would sometimes scream, “To hell with Babe Ruth.” Not “to hell with FDR” or “to hell with Douglas MacArthur,” but “to hell with Babe Ruth.”
And now he needs our help.
OK, OK, so why write about that on Jewschool?
Because we owe him one.
Dr. Rafael Medoff wrote in the Jewish Ledger a few weeks ago that during the last week of December 1942 Babe Ruth helped to keep public attention focused on Hitler’s atrocities. Although the U.S. and Britain had finally publicly acknowledged and condemned the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, there was no talk of any steps being taken to rescue the Jews and the issue was fading from the public eye.
So, Babe Ruth and other prominent Americans of German descent, stepped up to the plate and signed the “Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry†which appeared as a full-page ad in the New York Times and nine other major daily newspapers.
It read in part:
“[W]e Americans of German descent raise our voices in denunciation of the Hitler policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews of Europe and against the barbarities committed by the Nazis against all other innocent peoples under their sway. These horrors … are, in particular, a challenge to those who, like ourselves are descendants of the Germany that once stood in the foremost ranks of civilization.â€
The ad went on to “utterly repudiate every thought and deed of Hitler and his Nazis,†and urged the people of Germany “to overthrow a regime which is in in the infamy of German history.â€
Dr. Medoff’s article drew the attention of the Babe’s granddaughter, Linda Ruth Tosetti, who wrote a comment on the article expressing delight in reading about how her grandfather took a public stand against Hitler. She also asked for help in getting Babe’s number retired from all of baseball by signing the petition that can be found here.
So sign the petition folks - it’s the least we can do!
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, December 24th, 2007
Update: according to CNN: “It is an awful and disgusting lie,” Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. “It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet,” read the statement.
What I want to know, now, is what he actually did say. I suppose we’ll never know.
OK, so everyone in the world must now know that actor Will Smith was in the Scottish press, who quoted him saying, “Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming. I wake up every day full of hope, positive that every day is going to be better than yesterday. And I’m looking to infect people with my positivity. I think I can start an epidemic.”
I’ve gotten a dozen emails about this, and I’ve seen it reported in an assortment of blogs, and what I want to say is: STOP! More »
