Ben Shapiro: Some Jews Ain’t So Smart

Ben Shapiro: Some Jews Ain’t So Smart

Jews, according to both anti-Semites and philo-Semites, are smart folks. Anti-Semites claim that Jews are highly intelligent — and therefore threaten the world via conspiratorial monetary and political control.

Philo-Semites point out that Jews have provided a vastly disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners, as well as various leading scientists, philosophers, writers and artists. Virtually everyone agrees, then, that Jews are intelligent. And yet for all of our intelligence (I am an Orthodox Jew), large groups of American Jews lack the most basic instinct for self-preservation; they lack the understanding to protect Jews by acting to protect Israel.

The non-religious Jewish community demonstrates particular blindness. Most non-religious Jews, who see no special value in Jewish identity, distract themselves with “social justice” policies — policies like abortion-on-demand and gay marriage — that directly contravene traditional Jewish values. Meanwhile, they ignore existential threats to Jews worldwide — threats they cannot escape with protestations that they aren’t practicing Jews, or that their Judaism only goes as far as the occasional bagel.

For many non-religious Jews, political liberalism trumps both Jewish values and Jewish existence. How else to explain the disastrous series of events last week in New York? The United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York scheduled an anti-Iran rally highlighting the blatant Jew-hatred of visiting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Federation invited both Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK). Palin accepted. So, at first, did Clinton — but when she learned that she would be appearing on the same stage as Palin, she backed out. At that point, the organizers of the rally made a terrible decision: They disinvited Palin.

Politico.com reported that the decision was made after Democrats complained that they did not want the rally turned into a partisan event. This is the height of idiocy.

In the possibility of a nuclear Iran, Jews face the gravest menace since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They must mobilize every ally, unearth every friend, in order to create a groundswell of support for a military strike against Iran by Israel — the only true solution to Iranian nuclear ambition. And yet they turned away Sarah Palin — perhaps the future vice president of the United States, and at the moment, the most popular female politician in the United States — because they feared offending Democrats.

Only a baseline allegiance to the Democratic Party — only a deep-rooted leftist partisanship — can explain such behavior. Any rational group, seeking to draw attention to the Iranian situation, would leap at the opportunity to host Palin, who routinely draws tens of thousands of fans. More than that, any rational group would recognize that if high-ranking Democrats withdraw from anti-Iran rallies simply to avoid being seen in public with high-ranking Republicans, then perhaps Democrats aren’t the friends of Israel they purport to be.

Any rational group would be suspicious that Hillary Clinton is more concerned with Sarah Palin than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Any rational group would use their anti-Iran rally as a forum for candidates, allowing those with the most pro-Israel message to capitalize politically. Instead, the organizers disinvited Palin. In doing so, they demonstrated a political bias unworthy of a pro-Israel organization. More than that: In rejecting Palin, they demonstrated loyalty to Democrats over loyalty to Jewish causes.

That became especially clear when the text of Palin’s un-given speech was released. “We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator’s intentions and to call for action to thwart him,” the speech reads. “He must be stopped. The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a ‘Final Solution’ — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ that is ‘on its way to annihilation.’ … Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!” This is strong stuff. And it is stuff that the rally organizers abandoned when they kowtowed to Democrats rather than recognizing that support for Israel must be a non-partisan issue. It was foolish. It was dangerous. And most of all, it was dishonorable.

This is an article by Ben Shapiro published at Townhall.com

Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House.

As a Jew, it is both embarrassing and inexplicable that American Jews would choose their loyalty to the Democrat Party over their concern for the safety of Jews and the State of Israel. It is especially so to me, when Jews do not recognize that we need political leaders from both parties to stand with us against the Amalekites of this generation. It is so sad that Jews are very poor at recognizing danger to our people until it is too late. This has been demonstrated over and over again in our long history.

 

CARTER: AN ANTI-SEMITIC HYPOCRITE

CARTER: AN ANTI-SEMITIC HYPOCRITE

For decades, Jimmy Carter has continually taken the side of Arab countries and opposed the position of Israel. Most of us suspected an anti-Israel and even an anti-semitic bias in the former President. Now the truth comes out. While he obviously is both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, we now find out that his foundation has, from its inception, been financed by Arabs. Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News reports:

(IsraelNN.com) Former American President Jimmy Carter’s activist foundation received hundreds of millions of dollars from Arab countries, the Washington Times reported. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, founded by Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi, helped the ex-President establish the Carter Center.

Abedi had said he wanted the bank to be “the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.”

But wait, there’s more….

The Washington Times reports:

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.
Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, “poorly managed” and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank’s biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter’s confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.At that time, Mr. Lance’s mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank “which would bribe God,” came to Mr. Lance’s rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: “we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president.” Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance’s $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank.
Mr. Anderson wrote: “Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent… kept quiet about Carter’s irregularities… [and] renegotiated the loan to Carter’s advantage.”

You can read the whole article here.

How anyone can reasonably believe the contents of his recent book in which he equates Israel with the South African apartheid, or how anyone can take this doddering old anti-semitic socialist/communist-loving hypocrite seriously is beyond me.

 

Root causes of Islamic terror against the U.S.

Root causes of Islamic terror against the U.S.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft have developed an intriguing theory: The core of the 13-century-old Islamic terrorism and Middle East violence is the sixty-year old Palestinian issue.

They have introduced a cost-effective tactic in combating terrorism: Rather than flex a muscle against Iran and other rogue regimes, instead of challenging the terrorist acts of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, they expect that one should suspend disbelief, shrink the Jewish State back to the 1949 Lines and establish a Palestinian State on its border. Such a contrived approach would, supposedly, mollify and appease the unprecedented wave of anti-US Islamic terrorism.

Really??

1. 9/11 was planned while Clinton’s USA and Barak’s Israel were appeasing the Palestinians and the Arabs, proposing a total Israeli withdrawal, including the re-partitioning of Jerusalem and the giveaway of the Golan Heights.

2. The October 12, 2000 Islamic terrorist attack on the USS Cole (17 sailors murdered) occurred when Israel was willing to give away the store, while the US pressured Israel to absorb and compensate Palestinian refugees.

3. The August 27, 1998 Islamic terrorist assault of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania took place (257 murdered and over 4,000 injured) while President Clinton was brutally pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu for sweeping concessions to the Palestinians and to Syria.

4. The 1995/6 Riyadh and Khobar Towers, Dhahran Islamic terror attacks (19 murdered) were carried out while Israel implemented unprecedented concessions, in spite of Palestinian hate-education, systematic violation of all commitments made by the PA and unprecedented Palestinian terrorism.

5. The February 1993 Twin Towers bombing (6 murdered and over 1,000 injured) transpired while Israel conducted the pre-Oslo talks with the PLO, snatching the PLO from the jaws of oblivion in terrorist camps in Yemen, Iraq, Sudan and Tunisia and making unprecedented concessions.

6. The December 21, 1988 PanAm-103 (270 murdered) terrorism took place a few months following the groundbreaking initiation of direct talks between the US and the PLO, while the US attempted to initiate a direct Israel-PLO dialogue.

7. The June 1985 TWA 847 hijacking to Beirut (1 US Navy Seabee diver murdered) took place when the US was backing Iraq in Baghdad’s war against Iran, irrespective of the Palestinian issue.

8. The April/October 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and Marines and French military headquarters – by Syria and PLO-supported Islamic terrorists (300 Americans and 58 French murdered) – occurred while the US military confronted Israeli tanks in Lebanon and the US Administration blasted Israel horrifically for its war against the PLO.

Blair’s, Baker’s and Scowcroft’s contention that the Palestinian issue is the core of anti-Western Islamic terrorism and Mideast violence reflects a complete lack of understanding of the Arab mentality. It is totally inaccurate and fails to explain the real reason for anti-US Islamic terrorism.

It diverts attention and resources away from The Core Cause: a 13 century old religion that preaches hate against those who don’t follow its precepts, and whose Holy Book preaches death and advocates terrorism against non-believers. This policy of violence has characterized Muslim interaction with the West for 1300 years, including instances of violence against the United States as far back as the late 18th Century.

Any one who is familiar with world history will be familiar with the history of Islamic violence against non-believers that goes back for centuries, and whose root cause has nothing to do with a 60 year old problem of Palestinian refugees.

If that is the approach of the new advisors to President Bush on the Islamic terror issues in the Middle East, we are in for a very rude awakening. Causing Israel to make concessions against their best interest to appease Palestinian terrorists will not bring peace to the Middle East and will not cause Islamic terrorists to lay down their weapons and grow dates and raise cattle.

(Thanks to Yoram Ettinger)

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND JEWS

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND JEWS

In The American Thinker Ed Lasky published an article today about Jews and the Democratic Party. He begins:

The Democratic Party has been a congenial political home for many American Jews since the era of FDR. The party welcomed them into its ranks (along with many blacks and urban dwellers) and its programs comported well with many values Jews cherish. The Party was also seen as one that had offered help to the doomed Jews of Europe, opposed prejudice, and supported the fledgling state of Israel from enemies that boasted of its plans to destroy the state.

Conversely, the Republican Party was perceived to be a WASP enclave, isolationist in its outlook, and weak on support for Israel (though George C. Marshall under the Truman Administration advocated abandoning Israel to the tender mercies of its Arab neighbors).

However, these views are now anachronistic and need to be revisited.

Developments in the Democratic Party bode ill for the Jewish people and for the state of Israel – home of up to 40% of the world’s remaining Jewish population. The rank and file of the Party has become increasingly anti-Semitic and support for Israel has noticeably fallen. Democratic Congressmen have reflected this trend in very visible ways: their votes and actions in Congress reveal that support for Israel has eroded in alarming ways. Furthermore, more than a few Democratic Congressman have openly made statements that are either clearly anti-Semitic or can be fairly construed to be at least, “anti-Semitic in effect, if not intent”.

He then shows how in both grassroots and in elected Democratic politicians there is a pervasive anti-Israel, anti-Jewish mood.

Excerpt:

The internet, because of its low costs, has allowed the power of small donations, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of donors, to rise within the Democratic Party. Moreover, and more importantly, such extreme partisans can be relied-upon to be the unpaid foot soldiers involved in the crucial get-out-the-vote efforts that are often the deciding factors in campaigns. Perhaps it is not surprising that Democratic leaders and presidential aspirants Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mark Warner, John Kerry have all tried to curry favor with the netizens, a group that seem to be increasingly corrupted by anti-Semitism.

and..

There are those who rejoice at the turn in the Democratic Party. The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs is easily the most anti-Israel publication in America. Based in Washington, D.C., its pages are filled with screeds against Israel and it lobbies for the end of US support for Israel. Anti-Semitism has also appeared in the pages of the magazine. In the current issue, the magazine has published its annual “Hall of Fame” that honors Congressmen it considers to be anti-Israel. At the top of the list among Senators, is Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat), aformer Ku Klux Klan Kleagle, Democratic baron, and the holder of one of the most anti-Israel records in Congress. In terms of the House, 29 members hold this dubious distinction – all of them Democrats (including Abercrombie, Conyers, David Obey, Jesse Jackson Jr., McDermott).

He provides quotes from Democratic congressman and other Democratic leaders like Jimmy Carter, that are clearly anti-semitic.

He concludes:

The loyalty American Jews have shown to the Democratic Party is increasingly not appreciated or reciprocated. As the Jewish population faces demographic decline, the Democratic Party is increasingly beholden to groups for which Israel is of no importance whatsoever (unions, for example). Several groups that form the core of the Democratic Party have anti-Semitism rates that are higher than the American population as a whole. As the party skews to the left, it has increasingly adopted the anti-Israel philosophy and attitudes that animate so many on the left.

Conversely, the Republican Party has never been more welcoming to Jews nor as supportive of Israel. The party has welcomed an increasing number of Jews to its ranks, and its candidates garner an increasing number of votes from Jewish voters. While Democrats demagogue the rise of evangelicals in America (and in the Republican Party) and demonize them as a threat to the Jews, such mythmaking does not reflect the fact that evangelicals cherish the Jewish people, for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with end-of-days scenarios. Indeed, Jews have assumed leadership posts in the Republican Party. While Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean joyously dances with a keffiyah draped over his shoulders, Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman waxes nostalgically and publicly about his Bar Mitzvah.

Jews have faced many challenges throughout their history. Iran is one of the most dangerous enemies Israel has ever had: an oil-rich nation with an active nuclear program that has made clear its intention to wipe Israel off the map. A Democratic Party that is increasingly dominated by anti-Israel members, as shown by surveys and Congressional votes, will not be a dependable ally. The fact that more than a few have also expressed , or enabled others to publicly express, anti-Semitism should distress all Americans. However, those contemplating these prospects should do more. Much more.

In an era when over half the world’s Jews face the prospect of annihilation, it is time to reconsider old habits and political alignments. The ability of Jews to survive over the ages has depended on the ability to recognize that situations change and people have to adapt. At times, such changes have compelled Jews to move on to “greener pastures” – to more welcoming and supportive places. This is now such a time- a time for the Jews to wander to the other side of the aisle.

This is an important article for everyone to read, but especially if you are Jewish and a Democrat.

 

Denial is not a river in Egypt

Denial is not a river in Egypt

Melanie Phillips, in the U.K., heard on the BBC the acclaimed French thinker Bernard-Henri Levy declare that it was a great mistake to assume that the French riots are about Islam. They are merely an outbreak of nihilism, apparently.

Now I happen to like much of what Bernard-Henri Levy has written, particularly about anti-semitism in Europe. I have to agree with Melanie, in this case, however.

Continue reading “Denial is not a river in Egypt”