NYT Opinion Piece on Israel by President of World Jewish Congress
New York Times
Israel, This Is Not Who We Are
Orthodoxy should be respected, but we cannot allow the politics of a radical minority to alienate millions of Jews worldwide..
By Ronald S. Lauder
Mr. Lauder is president of the World Jewish Congress.
- Aug. 13, 2018
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CreditRuth Gwily
For many Israelis, Jews and supporters of Israel, the last year has been a challenging one. In the summer of 2017, Israel’s government withdrew from an agreement that would have created an egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall and proposed a strict conversion law that impinges on the rights of non-Orthodox Jews. This summer the Knesset passed a law that denies equal rights to same-sex couples. A day later came the nation-state law, which correctly reaffirms that Israel is a Jewish state, but also damages the sense of equality and belonging of Israel’s Druze, Christian and Muslim citizens.
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Last month, a Conservative rabbi was detained for the alleged crime of performing a non-Orthodox wedding ceremony in Israel. In several municipalities, attempts were made to disrupt secular life by closing convenience stores on the Sabbath.
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These events are creating the impression that the democratic and egalitarian dimensions of the Jewish democratic state are being tested.
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Israel is a miracle. The Jews of the diaspora look up to Israel, admire its astonishing achievements and view it as their second home. However, today some wonder if the nation they cherish is losing its way.
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To read more, click HERE.
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Professor Steven J. Zipperstein Tikkun Olam Award #59
Dear Friends,
We are very grateful for the opportunity to recognize Professor Zipperstein’s remarkable body of outstanding work. Click HERE to see his award certificate and his detailed biographical sketch.
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Also shown below is the excellent NY Times review of his latest book, POGROM: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.
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Professor Zipperstein’s work is of particular interest to us because Harriet’s maternal grandparents fled anti-Semitism in Russia and Bill and his family are survivors of Kristallnacht, after which they fled Germany..
Best regards,.
Harriet and Bill
Before the Holocaust, Jewish Suffering Had One Name: Kishinev
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Funeral held for desecrated Torah scrolls following the Kishinev pogrom.
By Anthony Julius New York Times
- July 24, 2018
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POGROM
Kishinev and the Tilt of History
By Steven J. Zipperstein
Illustrated. 261 pp. Liveright Publishing. $27.95.
Kishinev and the Tilt of History
By Steven J. Zipperstein
Illustrated. 261 pp. Liveright Publishing. $27.95.
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In Kishinev, a provincial city of the Russian Empire (now Chisinau, Moldova), on April 19-20, 1903, 49 Jews were murdered, several among them children; as many (or more) were serially raped; very many more were injured. Synagogues were desecrated, shops were looted, and homes were destroyed or damaged. One woman said afterward: “I was pulverized, crushed like a vessel filled with shame and filth.” The victims knew their assailants, many crying out their names while being beaten or raped. They were not protected by the civil authorities. In response to calls for help, one police officer told the Jews they were getting what they deserved; the police thwarted Jewish self-defense efforts by confiscating weapons. Two-thirds of the city was affected by violence.
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This was the “Kishinev pogrom,” a “dreadful moment” in Jewish Diaspora life, Steven J. Zipperstein writes in his impressive, heart-wrenching new book on the subject, “Pogrom.” The episode is so little known now that its facts are likely to come as a shock to most readers. Yet until the late 1930s it was practically synonymous with anti-Semitism.
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To read more, click HERE.
‘It is like we have regressed 100 years’: Report warns of resurgent global anti-Semitism
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BERLIN — Jewish life around the world is under attack once again by “classic traditional antisemitism,” according to a report by an Israeli university released Wednesday.
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While acts of violent anti-Semitism dropped by 9 percent between 2016 and 2017, other incidents such as abuse and harassment are on the rise and have led to a “certain corrosion of Jewish life.” The study blames the surge on “the constant rise of the extreme right, a heated anti- Zionist discourse in the left, accompanied by harsh antisemitic expressions, and radical Islamism.”
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In its latest annual, global assessment of anti-Semitic incidents, the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University concludes that “Europe’s largest Jewish communities are experiencing a normalization and mainstreaming of antisemitism not seen since the Second World War.”
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To read more, click HERE
Frontline’s “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville” and ADL’s new H.E.A.T. Map to Track Hate
Dear Friends,
On Tuesday, after watching Frontline’s Documenting Hate: Charlottesville 55 minute show on TV, we are especially pleased this morning, to learn of ADL’s new efforts to address these issues and much more. See email below.
At present, focusing on violence and evil and the many threads and levels involved is an imperative.
We want to express our caution to readers who may find the documentary video accurate but too disturbing to watch.
Best,
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Harriet and Bill
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—–Original Message—–
From: Oren Segal, Director of ADL Center on Extremism <adl@adlmail.org>
To: haitiholocaust <haitiholocaust@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Aug 9, 2018 7:07 am
Subject: Announcing ADL’s new H.E.A.T. Map to Track Hate
From: Oren Segal, Director of ADL Center on Extremism <adl@adlmail.org>
To: haitiholocaust <haitiholocaust@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Aug 9, 2018 7:07 am
Subject: Announcing ADL’s new H.E.A.T. Map to Track Hate
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How white supremacists split a quiet Rust Belt town
By Gabriel Pogrund July 28, 2018 Washington Post
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ULYSSES, Pa. — The traffic sign that greets visitors on the south side of Ulysses, a tiny town in rural far north-central Pennsylvania, is suitably quaint — a silhouette of a horse-drawn cart reminding drivers that the Amish use the roads, too. But on the north side of town, along the main thoroughfare, is a far different display: a home dedicated to Adolf Hitler, where star-spangled banners and Nazi flags flutter side by side and wooden swastikas stand on poles.
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White supremacy has had a continuous presence in Ulysses and surrounding Potter County since the Ku Klux Klan arrived a century ago, giving the town — with a population today of about 650 — improbable national significance. In the mid-2000s, it hosted the World Aryan Congress, a gathering of neo-Nazis, skinheads and Klan members.
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This year, after a sting operation, federal prosecutors charged six members of an Aryan Strike Force cell with weapons and drug offenses, contending that they had plotted a suicide attack at an anti-racism protest. A terminally ill member was willing to hide a bomb in his oxygen tank and blow himself up, prosecutors said. The group had met and conducted weapons training in Ulysses.
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To read more click HERE
Psychologist John Gartner on Trump’s behavior: “It’s a coup that’s not moving slowly anymore”
Former Johns Hopkins professor argues Trump is getting worse, may be “on the boundary of psychosis and reality”
By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA JUNE 13, 2018 Salon.com
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Based on Donald Trump’s public behavior, some of America and the world’s leading psychologists, psychiatrists and other clinicians have concluded that the president of the United States is mentally unwell. Trump appears, in their opinion, to suffer from malignant narcissism. He is also a compulsive liar who lacks empathy for his fellow human beings and shows no remorse for his bad behavior. Most importantly, Trump’s personality defects amplify his authoritarian values, beliefs and behavior. The results of this could be catastrophic.
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This week, Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the first time an American president and a North Korean leader had ever met in person. This encounter quite literally had the potential to be explosive. Trump has alternated between threatening Kim with nuclear annihilation and praising him and other totalitarian leaders for their “strength.” Moreover, in many ways Kim Jong Un is everything Trump would like to be — a despot with no restraints on his personal and political power. Kim is also free to dispense with his enemies as he sees fit. He is literally the law in his nation and leads a society where he is worshiped as a god: North Korea is the ultimate cult of personality.
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To read more click HERE
Zuckerberg’s comments give Holocaust deniers an opening
CNN By Deborah Lipstadt July 18, 2018
Editor’s Note:Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of the forthcoming “Antisemitism: Here and Now,” from which this essay is drawn in part. The views expressed in this commentary are solely the author’s. View more opinion articles on CNN.
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(CNN)Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, recently described Holocaust denial as people who have simply gotten things “wrong” but not “intentionally” wrong. After all, he insisted, “I [also] get things wrong.” He will not remove their posts from Facebook, “if they get things wrong, even multiple times.” In the same interview, he points out that he himself is Jewish and he will not ban Holocaust deniers, just as he has not banned the conspiracy site InfoWars.
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While Zuckerberg later clarified that he “personally” finds denial “deeply offensive,” regarding deniers, he has gotten things about history’s best documented genocide wrong, very wrong.
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What Zuckerberg fails to understand — even though he claims this was not his aim — is that by saying deniers aren’t “intentionally” getting things wrong, he leaves open the possibility that they could be right. For someone with Zuckerberg’s massive profile and platform, this is breathtakingly irresponsible. Holocaust denial relies on such a robust set of illogical untruthsthat it is only possible to be a denier on purpose, contrary to what Zuckerberg says, intentionally.
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For deniers to be right, who would have to be wrong? Survivors would have to be wrong — as well as bystanders, those non-Jews who lived in the cities and villages in eastern and western Europe and watched their Jewish neighbors being marched away to be shot and killed in freshly dug ditches in the woods. The scores of historians who have studied the Holocaust since 1945 would either have to be part of a massive conspiracy or have been completely duped.
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TO READ MORE CLICK HERE
