Friday, May 28, 2021
AG to indict Litzman for obstruction of justice, breach of trust in Leifer case
Pending charges against Haredi minister tied to allegations he sought to block extradition of accused pedophile Malka Leifer, prevent closure of a deli cited for health violations
Thursday, May 27, 2021
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Sleeper cell’ of Christian missionaries who infiltrated Orthodox communities in Jerusalem unmasked
https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/sleeper-cell-of-fake-jews-unmasked-1.517143
Four members of a “sleeper cell” of alleged undercover Christian missionaries who infiltrated Orthodox communities in Jerusalem have been unmasked in dossiers passed to the Israeli government, the JC can reveal.
They are from a group of 10 fake Jews who followed evangelical ringleader Michael Elk — calling himself Rabbi Michael Elkohen — whose Christian upbringing was exposed earlier this month in a special report by the JC.
Elk had set up a seminary in Jerusalem called Yeshivat Yarim Ha’am, teaching a belief in Jesus. He gave students a ‘Messianic’ smicha, making them rabbis.
A rabbi’s accuser wanted me to tell her story. Here’s why it took 20 years.
In March 2005, I was on the verge of publishing an article that I knew would have a major impact. As the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week, I would be describing — for the first time — the true nature of the sexual misconduct that led one of the most prominent Reform rabbis in America to resign from his role as president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the movement’s seminary.
Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman had resigned from HUC in 2000 and been suspended for two years from the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the movement’s rabbinic organization. The group had said only that Zimmerman had engaged in unspecified ”personal relationships” that violated its ethical code, and many believed that he had a long-ago consensual affair with an adult woman in his congregation.
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
How Anti-Semitism Rises on the Left and Right
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-anti-semitism-rises-on-the-left-and-right
I think I see anti-Judaism anywhere that I see people explaining their circumstances by thinking about the Jews in a way that seems driven by prejudgment rather than reality. In that sense, I wouldn’t draw a distinction between a Muslim in Paris who suffers all kinds of discrimination at the hands of the French state, but who enacts his rage first and foremost against a Jewish target, and a white nationalist or a black nationalist or a left-Labour politician in England. I think all of them—to the degree that they are explaining what needs to be overcome in their world in terms of overcoming the Jews—are participating in a similar kind of thought.
Black conservatism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_conservatism
Some elected black conservatives include Florida representative Allen West, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Oklahoma representative J.C. Watts, and former Connecticut representative Gary Franks. Other notable black conservatives include economist Thomas Sowell, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, perennial political candidate Alan Keyes, and Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. In 2009, Michael Steele became the first black man to chair the Republican National Committee. In 2011, Herman Cain was considered the leading Republican presidential nominee for a period of time. In addition there are a number of up and coming voices in the arena of political talks shows, and guest analysts such as Dr. Carol Swain, professor of political science from Vanderbilt University with multiple appearances on CNN, Fox News, PBS, C-SPAN, and ABC Headline News.
What is fueling Antisemitism?
Far-right extremists who have taken over the GOP rely on fear and division to maintain power. They use antisemitism to fuel that fear and division, putting Jews and our neighbors in danger. The danger is real: Donald Trump’s presidency coincided with an uptick in hate crimes and violence, including the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
It isn’t just Trump. As 61% of American Jews know, antisemitism is a problem in the Republican Party. To fight it, we have to understand how antisemitism — along with racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia — is part of the machinery of division and fear, and learn to recognize when right-wing extremists use that machine for political and material gain.
How the GOP brought antisemitism from the margins to the White House
https://www.972mag.com/gop-antisemitism-white-nationalism/
The timeline, which stretches from May 2016 to the present, reveals what Sophie Ellman-Golan, an independent strategist who created the website with Bend the Arc, calls a “staggering” track record of antisemitism directly or indirectly linked to the Republican Party.
With more than 150 entries on the timeline, the list of incidents is too widespread and diverse to summarize. But picking months at random is instructive. A look at August 2019, for example, shows that Minnesota Representative Tom Emmer claimed Jewish billionaires have “bought Congress.” Trump called American Jews disloyal if they voted for Democrats.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s space laser and the age-old problem of blaming the Jews
You can see Byford’s analysis at work in the most popular right-wing conspiracy theory in America today: QAnon.
The closest thing Qanon has to a central thesis — that Democrats are part of a secret global cabal of pedophile Satanists that Donald Trump will soon expose and destroy — is not on its face anti-Semitic. “The vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote in a 2018 report. And yet, the ADL also found that anti-Semitic content had permeated QAnon-friendly spaces on the internet.
Jerusalem Christian missionary training center poses as yeshiva
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306910
A wide-ranging probe by Yad L'Achim revealed that Tzemach David is the tip of the iceberg in the missionaries' efforts to earn the trust of the Israeli public through deceit and manipulations.
Tzemach David is housed in a building called the Bram Center, after Abram (Bram) Poljak, a pioneering missionary in Israel.
3 people confess tampering brakes to keep cable car open – Italian media
The owner of the company operating the cable car, director of the service and an engineer purposefully deactivated the emergency breaks to hide malfunctions.
Congress split into two different hemispheres
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/congress-republicans-democrats-two-hemispheres
So, there are two distinct hemispheres on Capitol Hill now. One where lawmakers appear to make progress and may yet solve some seemingly intractable political and policy issues. Infrastructure. Police reform. Protecting the Capitol. Even probing the riot itself – although House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy,R-Calif., now says he opposes that package.
And then there is the other hemisphere where the wounds of January 6 and the November election never seem to scab over.
Sometimes, lawmakers may even cross over into both hemispheres, depending on the issue or the politics. It’s not uncommon for there to be dichotomies on Capitol Hill. Strange bedfellows. Members working together on one set of issues. Opposing each other – sometimes vehemently – on others.
But rarely has it been so personal. So raw. So exposed.
And that’s why these distinct hemispheres may never merge.
Media torches Marjorie Taylor Greene for Holocaust analogy after normalizing Nazi comparisons for past 4 years
After Greene had doubled down on trivializing the Holocaust, making the analogy that vaccine passports were similar to the yellow star Jews wore during the Holocaust, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as well as other Republican leaders, condemned her "appalling" comparison and other top GOP lawmakers followed suit.
Greene's comments follow years of news organizations normalizing such hyperbolic rhetoric towards former President Trump, his voters, and Republican politicians for the past four years
Even the Holocaust isn't out-of-bounds in Marjorie Taylor Greene's age of outrage
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/25/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-holocaust-outrage/index.html
In many ways, Greene's behavior -- after being stripped by a Democratic-led House of her committee assignments for past anti-Semitic statements and condoning violence against Democratic leaders -- is in the image of Trump.
She
seems to pick the most incendiary possible comment, designed to attract
outrage and attention, and that brings down a media storm -- which she
(and Trump) then turns on its head to suggest she is the one being
persecuted.
"The
media and Democrats and everyone feeding into it is allowing them to
hide the truth, which is the digusting (sic) anti-semitism within the
Democrat Party," Greene said in a tweet thread on Tuesday.
As
is often the case in such controversies, her statement, which was
really a new attack filled with rage, contained an apology that was not
an apology.
"Sorry
some of my words make people uncomfortable, but this is what the
American left is all about," Greene wrote. The Georgia lawmaker's
firebrand reputation has made her a celebrity in conservative media --
and one of her party's most prolific fundraisers since she arrived in
Washington in January.
The
next likely stage of the latest Greene saga could be expected to
feature pro-Trump media propagandists claiming that "mainstream"
journalists are willfully misinterpreting her remarks, powering new
disinformation on biased news networks that helped to convince millions
of Republicans that Trump's lies about a stolen election are true.
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