Showing posts with label American Jews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Jews. Show all posts

Friday, April 5, 2013

Two letters from American Jews to the Prime Minister

Fresnozionism.org..
04 April 13..

Recently, a group of American Jews, including Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ);Rabbi David Ellenson, President of the URJ’s Hebrew Union College and Jewish Institute of Religion; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, previous URJ head; and Rabbi David Saperstein of the URJ’s Religious Action Center, signed a letter to Israel’s PM Netanyahu. Joining them were several prominent Jewish philanthropists, academics and liberal politicians.

The letter lauds President Obama’s ‘leadership’ for helping to bring about Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara affair, which I and others believe to be a disastrous mistake.

And — almost incredibly, given the recent history of Israeli withdrawals and concessions answered only by war, terrorism and further demands — the letter has the chutzpah to call for Israel to make “painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace.”

This point of view may have made sense thirty years ago, but the world, as they say, has moved on, with the rise of Hamas and its violent takeover of Gaza, the second Intifada, the 2006 Lebanon war and consequent re-arming of Hizballah, the abrogation of the Oslo accords by the PLO, the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Iranian nuclear program, the civil war in Syria … need I go on?

As always, the letter fallaciously conflates actual peace with the signing of a ‘peace’ agreement between Israel and the PLO and concomitant concessions and withdrawals by Israel.

The endorsement of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denomination in America, placed on this piece of obsequious stupidity is not surprising, considering that Rabbi Jacobs was an activist in the phony ‘pro-Israel’ group J Street as well as the New Israel Fund before being selected to head the URJ. Yet again the liberal Jewish establishment demonstrates that support for President Obama trumps concern for Israel’s survival.

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), a conservative advocacy group which supports US political candidates and policies favorable to Israel, put it remarkably well in its own letter to Netanyahu, which I reproduce here:

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu:

We know you don’t need our advice on how to handle the peace process – but given the decision by a group of self-described American Jewish leaders to call for you to make “painful territorial sacrifices,” we felt it appropriate to convey our own thoughts on the matter.

Be assured that they don’t speak for us or for a majority of Americans. We not only question the wisdom of their advice, we question their standing to issue such an admonition to a democratically-elected prime minister whose job is not to assuage the political longings of 100 American Jews, but to represent – and ensure the security of – the Israeli people.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Beinartism strikes students, rabbis

Fresnozionism.org
05 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/beinartism-strikes-students-rabbis/



The NY Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt discusses the plague of Beinartism among liberal rabbinical students:

Stepping back, it seems that the Peter Beinart Syndrome — the concern, expressed a year ago in The New York Review of Books that young American Jews are choosing liberal values over Zionist ones — has reached our liberal rabbinic seminaries.


That shouldn’t be surprising. Our future liberal denomination rabbis are prime examples of the current generational clash over values, history and emotional attachment to Israel. On the one side are young people, raised as liberals and humanitarians, who have grown up seeing Israel through the prism of intifadas, harsh and inconclusive wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and increasing international isolation. On the other side are their elders who recall the courageous, even miraculous, early successes of the Jewish State and who are not afraid to call themselves nationalists when it comes to Israel.

First noted by Danny Gordis (and by our friends Moty and Udi here), it’s surprising that this issue waited so long for its 15 minutes of fame. As the controversy about the selection of Rabbi Richard Jacobs as URJ head shows, it’s not only the students and rabbis fresh out of school who are affected.

What did you expect? These students didn’t spring fully formed from the head of Zeus into the seminary. They went to American colleges and universities first, where they drank from the firehose of anti-Zionism that exists there.

And that’s not all they drank:

- They learned that the only legitimate ethical position is a universalist one (although strangely enough, ‘third-world’ nationalism and tribalism escape criticism).

- They learned that the US is one of the primary forces for evil in the world, and is irredeemably racist and corrupt (although such characteristics in its enemies get a pass).

- They learned that truth is relative to politics, so if, for example it serves the political ends of a Nadia Abu El-Haj to deny Jewish provenance in the Land of Israel, then she can receive academic tenure for saying that, despite its objective falsehood.

- And they learned that Humpty Dumpty was correct, words can mean whatever you want them to mean, so J Street can be pro-Israel and Rabbi Jacobs a Zionist.

They also seem to have learned that it’s OK to apply the double standard to Israel: you can call Israel a racist apartheid state because of its actions to keep terrorists from killing its population, but they rarely mention the racist propaganda and incitement to murder flowing from all the Arab (Palestinian and other) media, schools, etc. You can criticize Israel for not realizing full civil rights for Arab citizens — although it tries, in very difficult circumstances — while ignoring the fact that Jews aren’t even allowed to live in some Arab countries, even as second-class citizens.

So I’m not surprised that these young people who go to good universities grow up to be anti-Zionist and even antisemitic. What else would you expect?

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Sunday, May 23, 2010

It’s Funny How Barack Obama Can’t Bear To Utter The Word “Jew” Or, For That Matter, “Muslim Extremist.”


Marty Peretz
The New Republic
23 May '10

Maybe you missed it. But, earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act, a piece of legislation that will do nothing for anyone. And certainly not for freedom of the press.

In his tiny talk, Obama said almost nothing. “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” Pabulum.

Actually, the murder of Pearl did not remind me at all of the value of a free press. It reminded me of the precarious places in which Jews find themselves around the world. It also reminded me that the bloodlust for Jews festers among Muslim extremists, but not just among extremists. It festers among Muslims who are not extremists at all.

Apparently, the president doesn’t believe that this killing had anything to do with Pearl being a Jew ... and an American besides. What he also doesn’t seem to believe is that Pearl was a target—like thousands of other targets, named and nameless—of the Islamic jihad.

It is appalling to have to come to grips with the raw facts of Obama’s ignorance. Or with his feigning of ignorance. Disguising the enemy is... well, you finish the sentence.

I am always a bit wary when I cite Mark Steyn. Not because I don’t like his writing, wich, within measure, I do. But because my son gives me the cold shoulder for a few days after I cite him. So, here, Jesse, I court your coolness. I wouldn’t have had to do it if any liberal columnist had noticed this appalling performance by the president of the United States.

Mark Steyn: Lost in Obama’s Inagination
Barack Obama’s remarkable powers of oratory are well known...
Like a lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President Obama gets a little lazy and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl upon signing the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act. Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it. This is what the president of the United States said:


(Read full story)

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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Now It’s Up to Israel — and American Jews


Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
18 May '10
Posted before Chag

Even the New York Times has figured out that Obama has been checkmated by the mullahs’ deal to send an itty bit of its enriched uranium to Iran-friendly Brazil and Turkey:

Iran announced an agreement on Monday to ship some of its nuclear fuel to Turkey in a deal that could offer a short-term solution to its nuclear standoff with the West, or prove to be a tactic aimed at derailing efforts to bring new sanctions against Tehran. …

Obama now faces a vexing choice. If he walks away from this deal, it will look like he is rejecting an agreement similar to one he was willing to sign eight months ago. But if he accepts, many of the urgent issues he wants resolved with Iran in coming months — mostly over suspected weapons work — will be put on hold for a year or more. Many American officials believe the delay is Iran’s most immediate goal.

By opening the door to an enrichment-shuffling deal and pleading for Iran to come back to the bargaining table, Obama set himself up for failure. He now faces the collapse of his anemic sanctions effort and the evaporation of the last chance to stave off Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, short of military action — which no one (not Congress, not Iran, not Israel, not American Jewish “leaders”) believes Obama will undertake.

Bret Stephens observes:

In yesterday’s phony triumph of diplomacy, any real hope for a diplomatic outcome ended. In its most crucial foreign policy test, the administration has lost, or ceded, control of the process. Iran is either going to become a nuclear power, or it will be stopped from doing so by military action. Either a war will be upon us, or a cycle of Mideast nuclear proliferation. The administration fancies it can contain all this—Iran’s ambitions, Arab insecurities, Israel’s existential anxiety—via more smart diplomacy. The record so far does not inspire confidence.

But to be clear: either Israel will take military action or Iran will become a nuclear power.

(Read full post)

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Sunday, May 2, 2010

So which category of Jew are you?


Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
02 May '10

Mark 2010 as the year it became acceptable for a professor who serves as the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago to deliver a lecture that proposes how to define, and distinguish between, various categories of Jews.

So are you curious to find out if you qualify for the category of "righteous Jew", or whether you will find yourself denounced as one of the Jewish "new Afrikaners"? Or will you perhaps be counted as part of the "great ambivalent middle"?

Anyone interested in understanding the issue in its full academic "depth" (think "bottom of the barrel") might want to consult the original lecture of Professor John Mearsheimer, who introduced these categories when he delivered the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, on 29 April 2010.

First, it is important to note the title of Professor Mearsheimer's lecture: "The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners". When you read or listen to the relatively long lecture, you will see that the part where he explains how he categorizes Jews (or, to be precise, "American Jews who care deeply about Israel") comes only toward the end of the lecture. Up to this point, Mearsheimer presents his reasoning - based on highly selective facts, misrepresentations and cherry-picked polls - for his conclusion that "there is going to be a Greater Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean."

Mearsheimer then sets out to speculate about the question who will live in the "Greater Israel" he predicts and what kind of political system will be adopted in this entity. After devoting a few paragraphs to insinuating that Israel is only too eager to find some pretext to expel "massive numbers of Palestinians from Greater Israel", Mearsheimer argues that in his view, the "most likely outcome in the absence of a two-state solution is that Greater Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state."

It is in this context that he turns to the question of whether American Jews and the "lobby" would continue to support Israel, and he then proceeds to offer his advice on how to categorize "American Jews who care deeply about Israel" - and it is truly revealing that it is this issue that gets highlighted in the lecture's title.

(Read full post)

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Monday, April 19, 2010

A synergy of evil motives


Fresnozionism
18 April '10

A lot has been written about the apparent paradox expressed in the recent American Jewish Committee (AJC) poll of American Jews. The poll was taken on March 23, a week after the blowup during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel.

55% answered that they approve of the Obama Administration’s handling of US-Israel relations, while only 37% disapprove. At the same time 57% approve of PM Netanyahu’s handling of the Israel-US relationship, while only 30% disapprove. And 61% think that Israel should not “be willing to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction,” with only 35% saying that it should.

Huh? Netanyahu and Obama are clearly at odds over the status of Jerusalem. The administration wants to divide the city, and the flap over Ramat Shlomo indicates that it may even favor a return to 1949 lines, which is far more than any Israeli government would be prepared to accept.

On the Iranian nukes, a whopping 68% thought that there was “little chance” or “no chance” that sanctions and diplomacy would prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons (only 5% said there was a “good chance” and 27% picked “some chance”). 53% would support American military action to stop Iran and 62% would support Israel doing it.

But at the same time, 47% said they approved and 42% disapproved of the Obama administration’s ‘handling’ of the issue!

(Read full post)

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Jews must be unified on critical issues


Fresnozionism.org
06 April '10

In my last post, I urged American Jews to take a firm pro-Israel position, because it is in their interest.

It is only very recently and only in Israel and the democratic West that Jews have been able to escape the condition of living by the sufferance of the majority, dependent upon the attitude of the rulers and the populace, upon how the wind is blowing on a given day. The presence of a strong state of Israel is at the same time a source of psychological strength and self-respect for those diaspora Jews, as well as a practical refuge — something which has been demonstrated clearly over and over since 1948, but which for some reason is often derided by ahistorical US Jews, who seem to think that the conditions of post-1945 America will continue in aeternum.

It is fascinating to watch Western anti-Zionists rationalize their opposition to the state, as opposed to the Arabs, who simply want to conquer it, kill the Jews and take their possessions; or the Iranians, who see it as a stumbling block to their hegemony. As they become more and more agitated, this anti-Zionism exposes itself simply as a need to put the Jews back in the ‘rightful’ place as marginal and despised creatures. But that’s another article.

What is becoming more and more clear to me, though, is that American Jews have a significant role to play in determining the future of Israel, and — since Israel really is the front line in the conflict with Islamic imperialism in the Mideast — possibly the West as a whole.

(Read full post)
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American Jews, take a stand


Fresnozionism.org
04 April '10

It’s time for Jewish Americans to stand up.

Does the state of Israel have special meaning for them, or is it just another foreign country? They should decide.

This is because the Jewish community in the US, for whatever reasons, has an influence that’s much greater than numbers (about 6.5 million) would indicate. And it’s become urgent to exert this influence in a positive direction and in a coordinated way.

It’s beginning to be clear that the relatively pro-Israel policy that the US has followed since 1967 — I say this even though I know that there have been ups and downs in this period, that some influential institutions (the State Department) have always been less than friendly, etc. — is coming to an end.

This isn’t surprising. Since before 1948, the proponents of a Jewish state have struggled against opposition from the Arabs and from antisemites, and the founding of the state didn’t make it go away — on the contrary. Israel’s history for the past 62 years can be seen as a series of attempts to eliminate it. Its enemies have tried various approaches, but in recent years have realized that a regional military confrontation alone won’t achieve their goal.

Israel’s enemies have come to understand that in order to win they must isolate Israel and remove the international support that has, over the years, allowed this small nation to prevail militarily over the much larger Arab armies. As everyone knows, the goal is to delegitimize Israel, to demonize her, and to split her supporters away from her. Their desired practical results are these:

(Read full post)
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Monday, February 1, 2010

J Street



Some background info about today's cartoon:
1.The "J" in J Street does not stand for "Jewish".

Want to learn more? Click here for full background info.

Of related interest: Im Tirzu: NIF NGOs made up bulk of Goldstone testimonies
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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Some people might have to believe Jimmy Carter, but you don't


Shmuel Rosner
Rosner's Domain
24 December 09

A couple of quick notes on Carter's apology to Jews (on which I also wrote a more lengthy Hebrew piece for this coming weekend):

1. Jewish organizations have to congratulate him and pretend to believe him. Jewish writers don't.

2. Jewish politicians and Israeli politicians have to act as if he means what he says. Jews with no political aspirations don't.

3. For him to deny that it's all about the grandson's race - namely, to deny the obvious reason for his mea-culpa - is just Carter being Carter.

4. And don't start with the maybe-he's-sincere unless you can reasonably explain why now, what happened so suddenly, so out of the blue, that had precipitated this apology. Carter might be annoying, but he isn't stupid, and is often cynically calculated. Think about possible motives. If you can't find one, it might be a sign that Carter is playing the most banal of political games.

4. Just a couple days ago, Carter wrote an article for the British Guardian. The situation in Gaza is intolerable, he explains, "Without ascribing blame to any of the disputing parties".

5. My guess: grandson or no grandson, it will not take long before Carter goes back to his old habits and says something soooo outrageous that no apology will be able to fix.

(Read full post)
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Jimmy Carter: Unforgiven


Ethel C. Fenig
The American Thinker
22 December 09

Is former president Jimmy Carter (D) bi polar or a schizophrenic with multiple personalities?

It seems so. Around the same time that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) published
a letter (allegedly) from Carter apologizing for any actions or words of his stigmatizing Israel and asking for forgiveness

In a letter released exclusively to JTA, the former U.S. president sent a seasonal message wishing for peace between Israel and its neighbors, and concluded: "We must recognize Israel's achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel. As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."

the British Guardian published an op-ed by the very same Jimmy Carter, "Gaza Must Be Rebuilt Now,"stigmatizing Israel and blaming the country for causing suffering in Gaza. And rejecting peace (implied in his "apology" when he stated he would "help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations" but not demanding anything of Arabs/Muslims).

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

How Carter Can Get Forgiveness

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
22 December 09

Carter asks for forgiveness.jpg

Ha'aretz reports that Former President Jimmy Carter has asked American Jews for forgiveness for "stigmatizing Israel":

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter has apologized to the American Jewish community for 'stigmatizing Israel' and asked for forgiveness for his actions, the JTA reported on Monday.

"We must recognize Israel's achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel," Carter wrote in a letter to the JTA.

"As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so," Carter wrote, referring to the prayer said on Yom Kippur in which Jews ask God for forgiveness for any sins.

According to the Jewish concept of repentance, words are not enough. A change ...

(Continue post)

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Friday, November 27, 2009

No Jews Allowed


Obama's west bank plan : Dry Bones cartoon.

Obama's plan for Peace on the West Bank is not new.

The Nazis invented two words for it.
"Judenfrei" refers to "freeing" an area of all of its Jewish citizens. "Judenrein" (literally "clean of Jews") was also used. This had the stronger connotation that the area had been cleansed of Jewish blood.-more

Friday, November 20, 2009

25 Long Years


Jonathan Pollard's 25th year in prison : Dry Bones cartoon.

Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally. On November 21, 2009, Pollard will enter the 25th year of his life sentence, with no end in sight, and with not a peep out of our "leadership".

The maximum sentence today for such an offence is 10 years. The median sentence for this offence is 2 to 4 years. Click to see a list ofcomparative sentences.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

American Politics (1980)


(1980) Dry Bones cartoon: Jimmy Carter's empty Promises.
Today's Golden Oldie is from October 1980.

The cartoon was about Jimmy Carter who was on the campaign trail for a bid at a second term as U.S. President. He lost.

With Obama we now face an American President who treats the repression of Iranian demonstrators as an internal Iranian affair while taking a stern and personal interest in the question of where Jews may or may not be allowed to live in the city of Jerusalem!?!! This Presidency does not feel the need to hide its double-standard support of the "Palestinian" cause behind empty pro-Israel promises.

It will be interesting to see if Obama will, like Jimmy Carter, turn out to be a one-term wonder.


Friday, September 25, 2009

Weekly Commentary: Lessons from the stand off on settlement freeze


Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
24 September 09

It wasn't too long ago that President Obama's team and the various radical Israeli Leftists advising them were convinced that they could force Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into an open ended all encompassing settlement freeze.

They were convinced that they had a winning combination: an issue that American Jews didn't relate to, deceptively designed published partial Israeli polling data indicating support and a prime minister viewed by his detractors as having serious orthopedic problems (spineless).

But that's not how it played out.

Once again we see that when Israel makes it clear what its red lines are - and sticks to them - even the President of the United States of America has to back down.

What happens now?

Despite his best efforts, President Shimon Peres' anarchistic proposal to create a sovereign Palestinian state before we reach an agreement appears thankfully to be dead in the water.

And while the Palestinian plan to get their act together over the course of the next two years so that they would appear ready for a state has been cited by some Israeli Leftists as reason enough for cutting whatever deal the Palestinians might accept already today, most elements of the program can be seen as framework for autonomous as much as sovereign state building.

Will there be a crippling stalemate?

On the one hand, Mahmoud Abbas, with his eyes on elections in 2010, may be hard pressed to avoid being seen as engaging in final status talks with Israel in the absence of the encompassing freeze the Obama team originally demanded. But while such negotiations might be counterproductive for Abbas and Fatah at the Palestinian polls, the ongoing improvement in the quality of life in the West Bank - a development that requires continuous Palestinian-Israeli contacts at all levels - could help bring him and his party a victory.

And then what?

Take note of Prime Minister Netanyahu's phrase: "The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel."

State? Perhaps under certain conditions.

A sovereign state?

".all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel."

You can spell that A U T O N O M Y.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

What's Missing from NY Times Article on J Street


Snapshots/CAMERA
14 September 09

James Traub's fawning "news analysis" (read promotional plug) on J Street in the New York Times Magazine notes that the organization is "named after the street missing from Washington's grid and thus evoking a voice missing from Washington's policy discussions." Traub's admiring article is itself guilty of missing critical information about the upstart lobby group.

Repeating without challenge J Street's assertion that polling data (polls, polls, always polls with J Street) indicates that Jewish Americans largely support its agenda, Traub writes:

J Street maintains that most American Jews share its views on the Middle East. . . . The question is how much of an exception they make for Israel. J Street sought to answer this question by commissioning an extensive poll of Jewish opinion on MIddle East issues. The survey, taken in July 2008 and repeated with almost identical findings in March, found that Americans Jews opposed further Israeli settlements (60 percent to 40 percent), that they overwhelmingly supported the proposition that the U.S. should be actively engaged in the peace process even if that entailed "publicly stating its disagreeements with both the Israelis and the Arabs" and that they strongly supported doing so even when the premise was revised to "publicly stating its disagreements with Israel."

One wonders if the New York Times Magazine writer bothered to actually look at the poll in question before he breathlessly recounted J Street's wishful thinking that the results indicate that the American Jewish public is behind them. Shmuel Rosner, a veteran reporter on American-Israeli affairs, wrote about that very same March poll:

1. J Street's press release reads the following: "Instead of holding the hawkish, hard-line positions often expressed by many established Jewish organizations and leaders, American Jews actually overwhelmingly support assertive peace efforts and an active U.S. role in helping Israelis and Arabs to resolve their conflict? American elected officials and politicians have for years fundamentally misread the American Jewish community," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street's executive director in the press release.

But here's what the poll says: More people agree that "established" and "traditional" Jewish organizations represent their views than the number of people who say such organizations do not represent them. Even when AIPAC - supposedly the great Satan - is mentioned by name, more people (34 percent) believe it accurately represents their views than those (23 percent) who don't. The 40 percent who do not have an opinion also represent a group that can hardly be considered "fundamentally misread."

2. J Street opposes military action against Iran, "a terrible option for the U.S., regional stability, and for Israel." But American Jews will be more likely than not to vote for a Congressional candidate who believes that "America must do everything it can to protect Israel's security. This means militarily attacking Iran if they pursue a nuclear weapons program, supporting an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iran, cutting off aid to the Palestinians if their schools allow textbooks that don't recognize Israel, and letting the Palestinians know where we stand on Jerusalem by moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem." . . .

3. My friends at the Orthodox Union (I have friends all around town) were quick to note, that J Street's PR for their poll conveniently omits mention of its findings on an issue we feel is of the utmost importance - the indivisibility of Jerusalem. Even among their respondents - who support 'assertive peace efforts and an active U.S. role' (i.e. pressure) and withdrawal from the West Bank - a majority do NOT believe Jerusalem should be re-divided with its eastern neighborhoods becoming part of a Palestinian state."

And here are our own observations about the gaps between J Street's poll results and the organization's positions:

-- J Street called for lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip, while 75 percent of its poll respondents "support Israel's blockade of Gaza if the Palestinians block the agreement from being reached."

-- During Cast Lead, J Street maintained that "there is nothing 'right' in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them," but its poll found that 69 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement "With hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths and a humanitarian crisis resulting from a month of no electricity and clean water throughout Gaza, Israel's response to Hamas' attacks was disproportionate." Hardly a ringing endorsement of J Street's views.

Thus, for all the mighty efforts of the pollster who carried out this poll, Jim Gerstein, a former J Street VP (can you say conflict of interest?), J Street was still able not to get the results it had wanted. But the lobby group was able to convince the New York Times otherwise.

Related: Protecting the QB in the White House

Friday, August 21, 2009

Thursday, August 6, 2009

American Blacks (1979)


American Blacks turn against Israel(1979) Dry Bones cartoon - .
Today's Golden Oldie is from August 23, 1979.

I drew this cartoon exactly thirty years ago this month! I grew up in an America in which Jews and Blacks were allies. The fight for equal rights for American Blacks had been watered with Jewish blood and fought for with Jewish idealism. It was a painful experience to witness the revisionist history and antisemitic libels of the Black Muslims creep into the rhetoric of Black "activists" and Christian preachers.
It was an angry cartoon.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Squeeze Play


Using American Jews to pressure Israel : Dry Bones cartoon.

We are witnessing a startling attempt by the Obama administration to establish a peanut gallery of Jewish backers of his anti-Israel designs.
* * *
The original "Peanut Gallery" was a packed audience of little kids who were used to applauded the antics of a clown named "Clarabell" (on an early American TV show called "the Howdy Doody Show").
Peanut Gallery
The Kiddies Watched.

Clarabell the Clown
The Clown Shpritzed.