Category: Antisemitism

I Can’t Even

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A street fair celebrating diversity and food trucks was canceled after a furor over their banning a food truck operated by Israeli immigrants.

That’s kind of like banning a Chinese food truck because of the PRC’s treatment of the Uighurs, or a Turkish one because of the treatment of the Kurds, or an Indian one for the treatment of the Muslims in India, or an Irish one for their status as a tax dodge, etc.

This is inexcusable, it is bigotry, pure and simple, and the BDS crowd in Philadelphia is really, really stupid.

To quote (not) Tallyrand, “This is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.”

 A decision to disinvite a food truck selling Israeli food from a Philadelphia food festival scheduled for Sunday drew public criticism and dismay that resulted in the cancellation of the event.

Moshava Philly, a mobile Israeli food business, was supposed to participate in Taste of Home, billed as an “event celebrating diversity through food, art, entertainment, community,” presented by nonprofits Eat Up the Borders and Sunflower Philly.

On Saturday, Moshava posted on Instagram that the organizers told the food truck not to come because of rumors of a protest because of the Israeli business’ presence and that they opted to “uninvite us for fear that the protesters would get aggressive and threaten their event.”

With ongoing backlash, Sunflower Philly, one of the North Fifth Street event sponsors, announced Sunday on social media that the entire fair was canceled.

“Due to the ongoing situation with one of our events partners @eatuptheborders and @moshava_philly we have decided to cancel the ‘Taste of Home’ event,” said the group Facebook post.

The only people who win here are the proprietors of Moshava Philly, who are going to do a land office business over the next few weeks.

Clearly the Democratic Party is Anti-Semitic

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This what forced Virginia Republicans to hold their nominating convention on Shabbat, with no provision for observant Jews to vote at an alternate time.

This is not a surprise.

Silly Jews, votes are for Goys:

The Virginia Republican Party, already under fire for a process for picking a gubernatorial candidate that critics say excludes some voters, just disenfranchised another constituency: Shabbat-observant Jews.

A majority of the State Central Committee voted Thursday for a religious exemption to voting at the convention taking place on May 8, a Saturday, but did not meet the 75% threshold to pass. Elections Daily, an elections news site, reported that 38 officials voted for an exemption, 28 voted against and three abstained.

An official at the state GOP confirmed the vote and told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to submit a question in writing about the vote.

The Republican Jewish Coalition said on Twitter that it was disappointed in the decision.

………

Republicans in recent years have veered between primaries and conventions. Rank-and-file party members have often complained that conventions are a means for the leadership to make sure the candidates it favors get the vote.

This is not a surprise.

Republicans these days are determined to prevent the “Wrong People” from voting, and it comes as no surprise that Jews are the wrong people for them too.

If they had their way, they would repeal the 15th and 19th amendments as well, and limit the franchise to white Christian property owners.

H/T Stephen Saroff      o o  The Bear who Swims      
                        (_)_____o      
                     ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                         oo    oo

 

Ted Cruz Makes Geraldo Rivera Make Sense

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Rivera has observed that Ted Cruz’ attack on “New York Values” is actually an anti-Semitic code:

Geraldo Rivera appeared on Fox & Friends this morning to defend his statement on The O’Reilly Factor Thursday night that Ted Cruz is an anti-Semite, and that his words to the voters of Iowa proved him to be such.

 Steve Doocy began by asking, plainly, “Geraldo, why do you think Ted Cruz is antisemitic?”
“First of all, Steve, good morning,” Rivera replied. “In terms of this Ted Cruz situation and this ‘New York values’ situation, when you say ‘New York, money, and media,’ what do you need really before you get to the caricature — the dog-whistle — the code-word, of what this man is trying to say?”

 “What do you need? A cartoon of someone with a big nose from another era?” he asked. “This was designed to bring to the heartland the negative impression of greedy New Yorkers trying to take money out of people’s pockets.”

 “The association is indelible, and undeniable, and you can’t explain it [away],” Rivera continued. “There are a million ways to put down socialism and liberalism and excessive government spending and the welfare state — a million ways without suggesting that you’re talking about a particular group of people.”

 When pressed about Cruz’s later appearances in Jewish community centers, River replied that “what you say in the matzah ball factory is different from what you say in Iowa.”

Of course, I noted this 4 months ago, but Geraldo is kind of slow.

It Was Inevitable

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It seems that whenever you have a conspiracy theory nutcase, they will eventually descend into antisemitism and/or Holocaust denial.

Case in point, Oscar winning director Oliver Stone:

Jewish control of the media is preventing an open discussion of the Holocaust, prominent Hollywood director Oliver Stone told the Sunday Times, adding that the U.S. Jewish lobby was controlling Washington’s foreign policy for years.

In the Sunday interview, Stone reportedly said U.S. public opinion was focused on the Holocaust as a result of the “Jewish domination of the media,” adding that an upcoming film of him aims to put Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.”

“There’s a major lobby in the United States,” Stone said, adding that “they are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington.”

The famed Hollywood director of such films as “Platoon” and “JFK,” also said that while “Hitler was a Frankenstein,” there was also a “Dr Frankenstein.”

“German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support,” Stone told the Sunday Times, adding that “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30 [million killed].”

Referring to the alleged influence of the powerful Jewish lobby on U.S. foreign policy, Stone said that Israel had distorted “United States foreign policy for years,” adding he felt U.S. policy toward Iran was “horrible.”

So not a surprise.

F$#@ Me, I Agree with Peter King

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You know Peter King, the Congressman from New York.

This is the guy who raised funds for the terrorist organization the IRA, called for the assassination of Snowden, Greenwals, and Poitras, and pretty much accused every Muslim in America of being a part of a 5th column.

But credit where credit is due, he just told Ted Cruz to go back under the rock he crawled out of:

New York Republican Rep. Peter King has some harsh advice for Ted Cruz: “Go back under a rock.”

“Memo to Ted Cruz: New York Values are the heroes of 9/11; the cops who fight terror; and the people you ask for campaign donations. Go back under a rock,” King said in a statement mailed to POLITICO Thursday regarding Cruz’s comments about “New York values.”

The Texas senator, who had been avoiding going after Donald Trump for much of the campaign cycle, finally hit back after Trump questioned Cruz’s eligibility for the White House. Cruz suggested in an interview with “The Howie Carr Show” Tuesday that Trump “may shift in his new rallies to playing ‘New York, New York,’ because you know Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values.”

I really hate agreeing with him, but he’s right, though incomplete.

When Ted Cruz talks about “New York values”, he’s really accusing Donald Trump of being in the thrall of the secret Jewish cabal that runs the world.

It’s how Cruz is trying to appeal to the Talibaptist wing of the Republican party.

I miss the Republican Party of Richard Milhous Nixon.

Our Man in Ankara

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, when discussing the advantage of a stronger Presidency for Turkey invoked the alleged efficiencies of the government of Adolph Hitler, and now he is trying to walk it back:

The Turkish presidency said on Friday comments by President Tayyip Erdogan about the system of governance in Hitler’s Germany had been misinterpreted and that he had not suggested it was an example of an effective presidential system.

Asked on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday whether an executive presidency was possible in Turkey while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, Erdogan said: “There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Germany.

“There are later examples in various other countries,” he told reporters, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency.

I’m not particularly surprised.

There seems to be an awful lot of admiration of Hitler baked into Islamist politics in the Middle East, and Erdoğan is very much an Islamist.

Unfortunately, our state security apparatus cannot look at anything beyond the fact that he’s good to foreign capital, so we set ourselves up for another foreign policy clusterf%$#.

Poland is Being Poland Again

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Most of the Jews of Poland died in the Holocaust.

Many of the rest fled following antisemitic incidents post WW II.

But Poland is Poland, and they won’t let an absence of Jews get in the way of blaming them for everything:

When some 50,000 people turned out in Warsaw recently to protest a plan by Poland’s ruling party to pack the nation’s constitutional court, the hard right-wing political faction responded quickly with a counter-demonstration of its own. Its counter-protest featured, among other things, a placard that mocked those claiming to defend democracy as “the committee to defend Jewish-Communist wealth.”

At around the same time in Wroclaw, Poland’s fourth largest city, crowds at a parallel demonstration to support the recently elected Law and Justice party shouted, “Wroclaw is being de-Polanized as the Jews are buying up homes in the city.”

At another Wroclaw demonstration, held November 18 to protest a European Union plan that would see Poland admit some 7,000 Syrian refugees, demonstrators denounced the proposed immigrants as Islamists — and to somehow add to this point, they set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a Hasidic Jew holding the E.U. flag.

God, Honor and Fatherland,” the crowd then chanted.

Some things never change.

H/t the inner walls

*Google the Kielce Pogrom.

Marie Le Pen Will Probably Be the next President of France

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We know this because the National Front Party, sick and tired of party founder Jean Le Pen aggressively bigoted antics, have expelled him from the party.

The kicking his ass out was done by his daughter, Marine Le Pen:

Jean-Marie Le Pen, a co-founder of France’s far-right National Front, was expelled from the party on Thursday after he repeatedly angered its current leader, his daughter Marine, by reviving the party’s anti-Semitic past, which she is eager to shed.

The party’s executive board voted to kick him out after hearing three hours of arguments from Mr. Le Pen, 87, a former paratrooper who for years has symbolized the most retrograde strain of French politics, including hatred of immigrants and nostalgia for the days of colonial rule in Algeria.

Under his daughter’s leadership, the National Front has broken into the political mainstream, and Mr. Le Pen has increasingly become an embarrassment to her, especially after repeating his familiar views on the Holocaust. He has repeatedly told interviewers that the gas chambers were a “detail of history” and has said the wartime collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain was not a “traitor.”

The Le Pens have been tussling in public for five months, with Ms. Le Pen saying in April that she was “in profound disagreement” with her father after his latest remarks on the Holocaust. France has been treated since then to a father-daughter political feud of rare virulence, one that at first riveted the French public but more recently has seemed to irritate it.

The National Front is the only credible Euroskeptic party in France, and now that they are consistently getting double digit numbers in elections, the fact that they have made a clean and dramatic break with their racist and anti Semitic origins means that they become a much more credible political player in the French electoral system.

It’s not a big move.  It’s basically their moving from Strom Thurmond to Ronald Reagan:  Still racist as f%$#, but respectably so, but Reagan did win the Presidential election, twice, and Nicolas Sarkosyn used oblique appeals to bigotry in both of his his Presidential bids.

Considering that Holland is currently polling lower than a case of the Clap, and the leader of the center right French Republican Party, the aforementioned Nicolas Sarkosy has still not recovered from his Presidency, and so polls about the level of a visit to a proctologist.

Current polling, taken before Jean Le Pen’s ouster, had Marine Le Pen about 10 points behind both of them, and I figure that removing that albatross from her neck is probably good for at least that.

Not a Surprise, Given the History

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Given the history of the Ukrainian antisemitism, and even by the standards of the worst times of the Czarist regime it was extreme, this should come as no surprise:

There were times when the Jewish population of the Crimean peninsula exceeded 65,000. Now it”s around 10,000 out of 2 million, but it suddenly looks like this number has a chance to increase dramatically.

The tumultuous events around Crimea slipping out of Ukraine’s control divided the Ukrainian Jewish community. From the very first days, Crimean Jews threw their lot with Russia. “In Crimea, some Jews feel safer after Russian intervention,” reported Jewish Telegraphic Agency on March 4, 2014, less then a week after Russian ‘little green men’ put Russian flag in Sevastopol. “While many Ukrainian Jews have strongly condemned the Russian military incursion into Crimea,” JTA continued, “others see the intervention as restoring order in the wake of violent revolution that overthrew the pro-Russian government of President Viktor Yanukovych.”

Since then, Crimean Jews en masse exchanged their Ukrainian passports for Russian ones, and to the chagrin of their co-religionists elsewhere in Ukraine, asked the West and to put an end to the ‘unjust’ sanctions imposed on Russia over Crimea.

International Business Times reported in the beginning of July that Russian president Vladimir Putin was urged to allow as many as 40,000 Jewish people who left Crimea during the reign of the Soviet Union to return to the now Russian-held peninsula and to ease the complex procedures that come with being repatriated to Russia in hopes of revitalizing Crimea. This initiative was led by Leonid Grach, the chairman of the regional public organization “Crimean Forum For the Defense of the Constitutional Rights of the Citizens.”

While there is clearly a propaganda aspect to all of this, it appears that Moscow is doing its best to shout this from the heavens, but the feelings here amongst the Crimean Jewish community are almost certainly genuine.

The history in the Ukraine is really that bad.

To Honor the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, the Ukraine has Commemorated Nazi Collaborators………

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No, this isn’t The Onion, it’s just the Ukraine being the Ukraine.

They have officially honored Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis:

The U.S.-backed Ukrainian government came up with a curious way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust being brought to an end. The parliament in Kiev voted to extend official recognition to Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews.

 Though Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media continue to dutifully ignore the key role played by neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s February 2014 coup and in the post-coup regime’s subsequent military offensives against ethnic Russians in the east, Ukrainian politicians can’t stop their arms from snapping into Heil Hitler salutes like the fictional character Dr. Strangelove. They can’t hold back this reflex even as the world stopped this week to recall the Nazi barbarity that claimed the lives of some six million Jews as well as other minorities.

 On April 9, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill making the ultra-nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army eligible for official government recognition, a demand that has been pushed by Ukraine’s current neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist movements, the same forces that spearheaded the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and then the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Russians who resisted the new order.

 Ukraine’s honor-the-Nazi-collaborators vote came amid increased repression of opposition politicians and journalists who dare to criticize the U.S.-backed regime as it moves to repudiate the political settlement envisioned by February’s Minsk-2 agreement and instead prepares for a resumption of the war to crush the resistance in eastern Ukraine once and for all.

………

 During World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, an offshoot of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, collaborated with the Nazis in their orgy of mass murder against Jews, Poles and other minority groups. The UIA also joined with the Nazis in fighting against the Soviet Union’s Red Army, although some UIA elements did ultimately turn against the Germans over their occupation of Ukraine.

 Ukraine was the site of several major Holocaust atrocities including the infamous massacre at Babi Yar in Kiev, where local Ukrainian fascists worked alongside the Nazi SS in funneling tens of thousands of Jews to a ravine where they were slaughtered and buried.

 According to the Jerusalem Post, the Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned Ukraine’s recognition of the UIA as well as a second bill that equated Communist and Nazi crimes.

 “The passage of a ban on Nazism and Communism equates the most genocidal regime in human history with the regime which liberated Auschwitz and helped end the reign of terror of the Third Reich,” said Wiesenthal Center director for Eastern European Affairs Dr. Efraim Zuroff, adding:

“In the same spirit the decision to honor local Nazi collaborators and grant them special benefits turns Hitler’s henchmen into heroes despite their active and zealous participation in the mass murder of innocent Jews. These attempts to rewrite history, which are prevalent throughout post-Communist Eastern Europe, can never erase the crimes committed by Nazi collaborators in these countries, and only proves that they clearly lack the Western values which they claim to have embraced upon their transition to democracy.”

You’ve seen a lot of this in the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine.

This is not surprising, as they are ……… the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine.

Note that the US has been aggressively supporting the people who successfully fought for this, the Svoboda party the Pravy Sektor militia, taking it so far as to vote against a measure condemning those who glorify Naziism in the UN.

I do not know if there are any good guys in this conflict, but they ain’t it.

And Ukraine Returns to Form………

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I am not surprised that a prominent Ukrainian rabbi has called for Jews to flee Kiev.

He is that there have been credible threats against the Jewish community:

Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, called on Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country if possible, fearing that the city’s Jews will be victimized in the chaos, Israeli daily Maariv reported Friday.

“I told my congregation to leave the city center or the city all together and if possible the country too,” Rabbi Azman told Maariv. “I don’t want to tempt fate,” he added, “but there are constant warnings concerning intentions to attack Jewish institutions.”

According to the paper’s report Azman closed the Jewish community’s schools but still holds three daily prayers. He said the Israeli embassy told members of the Jewish community to avoid leaving their homes.

It’s a fact that a significant number of of the protesters had ties to right wing nationalists, most notably the Svoboda party.

What’s more the history of the Ukraine, and Kiev in particular has been extremely antisemitic Even By the Standards of the Russian Empire and the Republics of the Former Soviet Union.

Seriously, the 200,000 or so Jews living in the Ukraine need to make arrangements for a quick exit.

I expect to see synagogues to burn.

Vos? Sarah Palin iz a Yid*

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When juxtaposed with the phrase, “Don’t retreat, reload,” this is an unfortunate turn of phrase

So Sarah Palin is now claiming that criticism of her “target map” and her shooting inspired rhetoric is blood libel:

“Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions,” Palin wrote in an early morning post on her Facebook account on Wednesday. “But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

(emphasis mine)

<Facepalm>

For those of you unfamiliar with Jewish history, the blood libel is the accusation that Jews use Christian baby’s blood to bake their matzohs for Passover.

This fraud was the cause of the deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Jews over the past 200 years.

Needless to say, the idea that anyone who isn’t Jewish would use the term for something as meaningless as  criticism over their rhetoric is offensive, ahistorical, narcissistic, and just plain wrong, particularly for someone who is not Jewish.

The level of venality for a non-Jew to use this to condemn people for saying mean things about her simply boggles the mind.  I cannot imagine anyone being so self-centered and inconsiderate to do this, so Sarah Palin must be Jewish.†

The response to this has been actually been fairly universal.

Months ago, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, The View‘s resident right winger, called the map despicable months ago.

Additionally, former Bush speech writer turned conservative apostate David Frum, has called her out for unleashing her attack dogs, while National Review nepotism hire Jonah Goldberg, calls the use of the phrase stupid in so many words., and trust me, Jonah Goldberg knows stupid like few others.

Additionally, Jewish Groups, including the ADL, which normally spends it time sucking up to ignorant bigots have condemned the use of the phrase.

Pat Buchanan, though, was true to form, saying that he, “thought it was an excellent statement“.

For what it’s worth, Joan Walsh’s assessment of the statement, that Palin has fatally wounded her Presidential chances, is, I think, completely wrong.

Her analysis misses a basic Republican imperative, to piss off liberals and Democrats any chance they get. Really, when you look at GOP frat boy behavior, it’s clear that much of what they do is driven by this petty need.

By pissing off liberals with the “blood libel” comment, she cements her relationship with the movement conservatives and teabaggers, and pissing off Jews, who constitute a minuscule part of the party, is just gravy, because it shows the Talibaptist wing of the Republican party that she is one of them.

That being said, I would still argue that the simplest hypothesis is the one most likely the correct one, and that would be that she is a person suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

*My best effort at translating “What? Sarah Palin is a Jew?” into transliterated English.
†I’m not asking for evidence of Todd’s circumcision, thankyouverymuch!

If Jon Stewart Goes After You, It’s Because You Are a Jerk

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Let’s Roll Tape

Not because you are some sort of bigot.

That’s what CNN anchor Rick Sanchez claimed on Pete Dominick’s radio show, but he went further and said that Jews run the entertainment industry.

So, he is now a former CNN anchor.

The lesson here is that if Jon Stewart makes fun of you, look inward for the fault, not outward, thought I do find Conan O’Brien’s tweet a hoot:

I Suppose that I Must Comment on This

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Helen Thomas has resigned as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.

In an interview, she said:

Thomas remarked in video posted to RabbiLive.com that Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.”

Thomas has never made a secret of her Lebanese-American background, and I think that anyone with a bit of skin in this game, myself included, can be a bit nuts, but the statement here is wrong on a number of levels:

  • It appears to be a call for ethnic cleansing.
  • About 60% of the Jews in Israel came from the Arab world, Iran, India, Etc.*

Needless to say, while I respect Thomas’ contributions to journalism, I do not appreciate when anyone sounds like Meir Kahane.†

I’ll miss her at press conferences

The tragedy is that Pat Buchanan still has a job.

(on edit)
I think that a refreshing bit of perspective comes from [url=http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/helen-thomas-affair]Kevin Drum[/url]:

Helen Thomas is retiring. Thank God. On a substantive level, this is a good thing. Her remarks about Israel were obviously odious and she’s doing everyone a favor by stepping down. Equally important, though, maybe this means we don’t have to spend the next week listening to every windbag in the country rant on about Thomas’s remarks, using them as an excuse to grind every axe ever invented and suck media attention away from actually important stories. Of which, you might have noticed, we have quite a few these days.

Say what you will about Thomas, she really was never a part of the pundit class.

* They are generally referred to as Sephardic, but this is a misnomer, as Sephardic Jews trace their origins back to the Iberian peninsula. Jews from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, India, etc. are more accurately referred to as “oriental” Jews.
†Let me google that for you.

Remember the Auschwitz Sign Theft

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In December, some Jamokes stole the sign over the gate of Auschwitz, the one that said “Arbeit Macht Frei,” basically saying (it was a lie) that work would set the inmates free.

I remember reading about it, and thinking that I would wait a couple of days until the full story played out.

I wasn’t sure if this was a stupid prank, something involving organized antisemitism, or something falling into the middle ground, where the history Polish anti-Semitism could be inferred from the incident, but there was no some grounds for doubt.

Well, 2 months later, and the story has played out, and Mithras has nailed what happened in just 28 words (+ title):

Turns Out, It Was Anti-Semites
The guy who commissioned the theft of the Auschwitz sign is a Swedish neo-Nazi. The Poles who stole the sign for him say They Were Just Following Orders.

(emphasis mine)

Why I Refer to Republican Jews as Kapos*

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Two Republican county chairmen in South Carolina penned an editorial praising Senator Mike DeMint.

Of course, they chose the most sensitive terms to rebut the accusation that Senator DeMint had not brought home enough in earmarks:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

(emphasis mine)

A note to my Republican Jewish friends. They aren’t wearing stylish hoodies, they are Klan robes.

*Refers to the concentration camp prisoners who were made trustees, and put in charge of other prisoners. Their brutality frequently shocked the SS guards.

I Do Not Know If This Shows Anti-Semitism, but It Does Show Stupidity

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This is Not a Swastika (Pic from Proud Zionist)

The latest controversy involving Human Rights Watch is the fact that their senior military analyst, Mark Garlasco, is also an avid, and fairly prominent, collector of Nazi military memorabilia, and he has now been suspended from his position.

I think that a lot, though not all, of the issue here is stupidity, whether or not Mr. Garlasco harbors anti-Semitic thoughts or not.

When you are a military analyst who collects such stuff, and you are assigned to look at Israeli military operations, you need to know that it is best to not accept the assignment, and if your boss knows your hobby, he needs to know that he should never give you such an assignment.

They both had to know that it would harm his reputation and that of HRW.

Still, it’s clear that some of the commentary out there is clearly hysterical, such as hyping the picture of him with a German Cross on his hoodie, and NGO Monitor assertion his name on various boards, “Flak88,” is a secret Nazi symbol thing (8=H, so 88=HH=Heil Hitler). His specialty is German anti-aircraft memorabilia, his grandfather was a conscript serving in an anti-aircraft unit, and the Krupp 88mm gun was the best known AA (and anti-tank) gun of the war.

In any case, Mr. Garlasco published a response on Huffpo.

My assessment is that there is no evidence that he is an anti-Semite, nor that sympathizes with the Nazis.

That being said, there is another issue, which is whether Marc Garlasco, and Human Rights Watch are biased against Israel for other reasons, most notably nostalgie de la boue, literally “love of the mud”, which can either refer to the “elites” affecting “peasant” style and the like, or, and this is the definition that I’m using, the idea that those non-western “less advanced” societies are somehow more inherently good because they are less polluted by civilization.

I think that there reasons to be concerned that both Garlasco and HRW watch are guilty of this, and objectively anti-Israel as a result.

Omri Ceren observes that while no one is perfect, that the errors that have been found have always cut against Israel, and so, much like the “errors” in Florida in the 2000 presidential vote recount, show bias, though Mr. Ceren makes it very clear that he lacks any sort of smoking gun.

I do think that there is a smoking gun on the part of Human Rights Watch and Mr Garlasco as to a double standard.

Specifically, Daled Amos digs into the interviews with him, and uncovers two telling quotes.

The first is from 60 minutes:

“I don’t think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they’re not killing civilians,” Garlasco points out.

“If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?” Pelley asks.

“Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn’t have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people’s homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”

This is not something you see in reports from Human Rights watch in any report about Israeli military actions until at least page 6, and then only in the most circumspect terms.

And the news broadcast further states:

Garlasco says, before the invasion of Iraq, he recommended 50 air strikes aimed at high-value targets — Iraqi officials.

But he says none of the targets on the list were actually killed. Instead, he says, “a couple of hundred civilians at least” were killed.

Note that “targeted killings” that he advised on is something that Garlasco has specifically said is a war crime when Israel does this.

My thesis is that much of the overwrought nature of the coverage of Israel comes from the fact that the existence of Israel is an indictment of the western industrialized world.

The origins of modern Israel are that Jews in western Europe, particularly as a result of the Dreyfus affair in France, felt a need to have a homeland to flee to, and the events of the following century reinforced this need.

Israel exists because of the moral failure of the west over the past 120 years, and acknowledging that failure does not sit well with a lot of people.