Trump’s Ellis Island award was not for work ‘within the black community’

politifact

Some posts on social media are countering the accusations of racism against President Donald Trump after his tweet that a group of Democratic congresswomen should "go back" to the "crime infested places from which they came." (All four are citizens, and only one, Rep. Ilhan Omar, was born outside of the U.S. before arriving when she was 10.)

One post points to Trump’s business history in New York as evidence that he looks out for minorities. 

The post, in full, reads:

"There are only 3 people that won the Ellis Island Award for their work within the black community … 1. Rosa Parks 2. Muhammad Ali 3. Donald Trump … yet ‘squad’ wants you to believe he’s racist."

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

This claim gets one major thing wrong: While Donald Trump did win the award, called the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, it was not for "work within the black community."

Trump was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1986, but he was not honored for being one of a handful of recipients who helped the black community – it was for his contributions in real estate. Since then, the Ellis Island Honor Society has honored around 100 Americans each year.

We rate this post False.

Why American Jews Mostly Shrugged Off the Ultimate Insult

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-17/why-u-s-jews-mostly-shrugged-off-israeli-s-holocaust-insult

When news broke last week that a right-wing member of Israel’s government, Rafi Peretz, had remarked that assimilation of American Jews is a “second Holocaust,” a column in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper braced for the worst reaction, proclaiming, “Israel’s Education Minister Just Said Most American Jews Are Dead to Him.”

The response from American Jews, though, has been mostly muted. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, chastised Peretz in a tweet, saying: “It’s inconceivable to use the term ‘Holocaust’ to describe Jews choosing to marry non-Jews. It trivializes the Shoah.” But as for the impact on relations between American Jews and Israel, Greenblatt was almost gentle, saying Peretz’s comment “does little other than inflame and offend.” The American Jewish Committee also tweeted a slap at Peretz, calling his comment “offensive and unhelpful.” More telling, however, was its acknowledging that “assimilation challenges Jewish continuity and Diaspora identification with Israel and must be grappled with.”

'It's un-American': Conservatives are calling out the racist 'send her back' chants at Trump's rally

https://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-on-racist-send-her-back-chants-at-rally-2019-

"Vile," conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said in a tweet. "Omar is awful. She is a radical anti-Semite with terrible views. She is also an American citizen and chanting for her deportation based on her exercise of the First Amendment is disgusting."

"'Send her back' is an appalling chant," Fox News contributor Guy Benson tweeted.

What new research reveals about sexual predators, and why police fail to catch them

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/an-epidemic-of-disbelief/592807/

But the rape-kit scandal has turned out to be only a visible symptom, a mole on the skin that hints at a pervasive cancer just below the surface. The deeper problem is a criminal-justice system in which police officers continue to reflexively disbelieve women who say they’ve been raped—even in this age of the #MeToo movement, and even when DNA testing can confirm many allegations. From the moment a woman calls 911 (and it is almost always a woman; male victims rarely report sexual assaults), a rape allegation becomes, at every stage, more likely to slide into an investigatory crevice. Police may try to discourage the victim from filing a report. If she insists on pursuing a case, it may not be assigned to a detective. If her case is assigned to a detective, it will likely close with little investigation and no arrest. If an arrest is made, the prosecutor may decline to bring charges: no trial, no conviction, no punishment.

House to vote today on impeachment resolution against Trump

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-vote-impeachment-resolution-against-trump-n1030791

The House will vote Wednesday on a resolution to impeach President Donald Trump, marking the first time the Democrat-controlled chamber has weighed in on the divisive issue.

It's unclear whether the House will vote to send the resolution to committee, to table it — effectively killing the measure — or vote to proceed with it.

In addition, the House will vote Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress for withholding information about the administration's failed bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The House scheduled the vote after Barr and Ross withheld documents that had been subpoenaed by the Oversight and Reform Committee as part of its probe into origins of the now-scuttled citizenship question.

On impeachment, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, forced the vote by reading the articles of impeachment on Tuesday night; he told reporters a vote will happen Wednesday afternoon. A Democratic leadership aide confirmed to NBC News the vote would occur.

The Doctor Who Helped Israeli Spies Catch Eichmann But Refused Recognition For It

NRP

The story of the needle is also the story of Dr. Yonah Elian, an Israeli anesthesiologist recruited for the Eichmann mission to administer the sedative. He hid the needle in a drawer for most of his life and refused to come out of the shadows — even as the other Israelis on the mission were crowned national heroes.

Ehud Barak expected to speak out on visits to Epstein home

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/266103

In a tweet late Tuesday, Barak rejected the Daily Mail's "despicable insinuations" and threatened to sue the paper.

"I indeed was in his house, I never took part in any party/meeting of the kind hinted to," he wrote.

"I suggest the people at the Daily Mail and anyone cooperating with them to prepare their credit cards. The libel suit is on its way."

Later Wednesday Barak was expected to address the report during a conference of his Israel Democratic Party.

In pictures: 9,000 year-old settlement found in Israel

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49002046

Thousands of pieces of tools, jewellery, figurines, seeds and other objects have been found at the site of a huge 9,000-year-old settlement from the Neolithic period uncovered in Israel.

SUSPICION: SEVERAL BOYS RAPED 11-YEAR-OLD GIRL AND DOCUMENTED THE ACT

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Suspicion-Several-boys-raped-11-year-old-girl-and-documented-the-act-595823

For nearly four months, an 11-year-old girl has been admitted in a mental health facility after suffering from two suspected group rape cases, one of which was a knife was pressed to her neck as she was made clear that if she complained she would get hurt.

The rapes were documented by the participants, boys aged 13 and 14, who studied with her in the same educational institution, with their mobile phone cameras. Later, the videos were distributed among all the school's students, as well as to the educational staff and the school administration.

Israel Police questioned the youths involved in the affair and released them, claiming that because of their age they cannot be subject to punishment. 

However, the family attorney, Hillel Babayev, is unwilling to let the case go and intends to fight until the participants are sent to a closed criminal institution

Trump makes 13 false claims in Cabinet meeting

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/donald-trump-fact-check-cabinet-meeting/index.html

(CNN)President Donald Trump uttered a rapid series of false claims, at least 13 in all, during his Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He made another claim for which there is no public evidence, and he offered positive words about an ally's accusation for which there is no public evidence.

Leave Jews Out of It

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/pitting-jews-against-people-color-wont-work/594100/

But Trump immediately forfeited whatever claim he might have had to raising valid questions about Omar’s appalling lack of gratitude when he included her three colleagues, all of them natural-born American citizens, thereby suggesting they are not genuine Americans. His attack was of a piece with the conspiracy theory he propagated to launch his most recent foray into politics: that the country’s first black president is not a natural-born American citizen. It was also of a piece with traditional anti-Semitism. Trump’s line of attack—instructing a group of American citizens to “go back” from where “they came”—is one that can easily be, and often is, deployed against Jews.

The claim that Jews are not loyal to the countries in which they reside is one of the hoariest, most pernicious of anti-Semitic slurs. Malleably affixed to a diasporic people, the accusation oozes from the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. Omar recently attributed her colleagues’ support for Israel to campaign donations and implied that American Jews “push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Long before that, the cantankerous Nixonian Pat Buchanan called Congress the “amen corner” of the “Israeli Defense ministry” and accused prominent Jews of advocating for wars that would be fought by “kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown.” Whether emanating from the woke, anti-Zionist left or the reactionary, isolationist right, the charge is basically the same: Jews are an alien presence, always and everywhere unwelcome guests in those lands unfortunate enough to hos them<

Which is why Trump’s attempt to implicate American Jews in his bigoted harangue against the Democratic congresswomen is so pernicious. Some Jews, like Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, have criticized Trump for citing the women’s views on Israel as justification for his tirade. “You really have to leave us out of your racist talking points,” he tweeted. “You are not helping us, you are not helping society, you are not helping Israel.” As the question of whether Jews are white is seriously debated among left-wing identitarians (so that Jews may be ranked on their intersectionality victim pyramid), Trump’s invocation of Israel to attack four ethnic-minority women is breathtakingly cynical, effectively working to pit Jews and people of color against each other.

House Passes Resolution Condemning President Donald Trump’s Racist Comments

Shaked blasts 'hypocritical' outrage over Rafi Peretz

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/266089

Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked defended Education Minister Rafi Peretz (United Right) on Wednesday, calling the backlash against Peretz “hypocritical” and a de facto form of censorship.

Shaked’s spoke out following a public backlash against Peretz over his comments in an interview aired Saturday night in which he expressed support for so-called gay “conversion therapy” to help people with same-sex attraction alter their sexual orientations.

While Shaked emphasized that she personally is adamantly opposed to conversion therapy, the former Justice Minister said the attacks on Rafi Peretz were a hypocritical attempt to silence dissenting views.

On Tuesday, following the public backlash, Minister Peretz renounced his support for conversion therapy, calling such treatment “unacceptable and severe”.

In a letter to Tel Aviv school principals, Peretz wrote: "I know that conversion treatments are unacceptable and severe, and I understand that this is an invasive treatment that is incompatible with the human psyche, causing patients more suffering than relief, even reaching the point of life-threatening suicide that could be prevented.

As the leading targets of hate crimes, Jews are routinely being attacked in the streets of New York City.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/287821/orthodox-jews-attacked-brooklyn-hate-crime

The incidents now pass without much notice, a steady, familiar drumbeat of violence and hate targeting visibly Jewish people in New York City.

Early on the morning of June 15, a Saturday, two men in a white Infiniti drove around Borough Park, a vast, traditional Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in central Brooklyn. Surveillance footageposted on the local website BoroPark24 showed a man jumping out of the car’s passenger side as someone in a shtreimel and long black jacket walked down the sidewalk in their direction. As the car idled, the passenger approached the Jewish stranger, lunged at him in a linebacker-like stutter-step, and then darted to the waiting vehicle, which promptly sped away. Levi Yitzhak Leifer, head of the Borough Park Shmira neighborhood patrol, said there were at least six and as many as nine reported incidents that night involving the same vehicle. Beresch Freilich, a rabbi who serves as a community liaison with the NYPD in Borough Park, said that some of the targeted individuals sensed a violent intent: “The car passed by going back and forth, and they felt it was trying to run them over.”