“President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president”

(awaiting title idea)  [ Some suggestions from MIL-ED:

 “President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president” 

OR 

“There is no question that both Omar and Tlaib are antisemites who seek to destroy Israel and endanger Jews worldwide” ]

by Tabitha Korol:  

President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president we’ve ever had, surpassing George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman.  His stand against Iran (vociferous enemy of Israel), finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funds to the PA and closing the PLO office in Washington, his donations to Jewish causes, and developing housing for Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn are just some of the points, but many non-Orthodox American Jews are calling him antisemitic.  It is primarily the Democrat Jews who appear antisemitic when they support their party and members who explicitly express their hatred of Israel and Jews worldwide.  It may be that their desire to distance themselves from their heritage in eastern Europe and Israel has rendered them irrational, and psychological projection has them denying their own impulses as they attribute them to others – to President Trump.        

Most recently, President Trump spoke out against the antisemitism spewed by Muslim Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and was himself accused of bias.   It is time to review the backgrounds of both women who are recognized as Islamic extremists and antisemites by such as Senator Lindsey Graham, Speaker Newt Gingrich, media personalities Mark Thiessen and Rush Limbaugh, as well as Imam Tawhidi, who added Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the lot.    

• October, 2015, Rashida Tlaib joined and praised activists who support terrorist Rasmeah Odeh, guilty of the deadly 1969 bombing in Jerusalem.

• December, 2017, Tlaib shared a Facebook post with Linda Sarsour in support of 17-yr-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi, who assaulted an IDF soldier and promotes stabbings and suicide bombings.
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• February 2018, Tlaib joined Facebook group, Palestinian American Congress, which demonizes Jews and raised funds for her campaign.  She denied both the Holocaust and the Jewish historical claim to Israel.
• August, 2018, in her victory speech, Tlaib wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag and promised to “fight against every racist and oppressive structure that needs to be dismantled,” later telling the UK’s Channel 4 news that she would vote against US military aid to Israel.  Despite her own foreign garb, she accused Jewish Americans of dual loyalty and has since established a record of Jew-hatred and an affinity for radical 
• January 3, 2019, to a MoveOn.org reception, Tlaib warned that the President’s days were numbered, and she’d “impeach the motherfu**er.”  She took her oath on the Koran, which is the antithesis of our Bible and Constitution, and showed a sticker “Palestine” to replace Israel on her wall map.
• 
  
• A guest at Tlaib’s swearing-in ceremony and private dinner was Abbas Hamideh, who equates Zionism with Nazism, and who voiced his support for Hassan Nasrallah, who committed an horrific murder of an Israeli Jew and his 4-year-old daughter.
• During the week of January, 2019, Tlaib condemned her congressional colleagues who did not support BDS against Israel.
• March, 2019, Tlaib posed with a Palestinian activist who had mourned the death of a Hamas murderer who killed a rabbi in Israel.
• 
  
• August, 2019, Tlaib compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, and co-sponsored a resolution to support the BDS movement. She consistently shows herself to be an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people.
• Most recently, Tlaib shunned a bipartisan delegation to Israel in order to schedule her own trip to be led by the anti-Israel nongovernmental organization Miftah, where she could advocate her boycott and use her disinvitation as an accusation against the Jewish state.
• Claiming racism, oppression and injustice, Tlaib used the event of Israel’s entry rejection to enhance her victimhood, and a way of showing Gaza’s inhumane conditions.  However, videos of interviews of her family show a healthy grandmother, free-standing home, and plentiful grounds with outdoor furniture on a lovely summer night.

Ilhan Omar claimed to love America but shows her disdain for our country at every turn and a decided detestation for Israel and the Jews.  She called herself the President’s “biggest nemesis”; said of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, “some people did something”; and wants our greatest ally, Israel, wiped off the face of the earth.  The following are examples of her words and deeds:

• In November, 2012, Omar called Israel an apartheid regime that “hypnotized the world” in order to conceal its “evil doings.” 
•  
• In 2013, Omar said on PBS that she took a college course in terrorism, saying that the professor spoke with pride (his shoulders raised in intensity) about Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, but not when we say America.
• During 2013-15, when on the Minneapolis City Council, Omar acknowledged her friendship with Al-Shabab, a Somali jihad terror group.
• Omar often characterized Israel as the “Jewish ISIS,’ on Arab-American television, comparing members of Hamas to Holocaust victims.
• 
  
• Following the 2013 terrorist bombing that killed ~70 people in a Kenyan shopping mall, Omar blamed the act on a reaction to American injustices, and how the world contributed to Islamic radicalization.
• After her election to the MN House of Representatives, November 2016, Omar wrote a judge for leniency in the sentencing of nine Somali-born men found guilty of attempting to join ISIS, blaming their desire for violence on alienation.
• In 2016, Omar wanted the University of MN to divest its Israel bonds, and in 2017, she opposed a bill designed to counter economic boycotts against Israel, likening Israel to apartheid South Africa.
• In 2017, Omar was one of two MN House members (out of 129) to vote against a bill that would allow life-insurance companies to deny payments to beneficiaries of suicide terrorists, and one of four to oppose legislation to make it a felony for parents to subject their daughters to female genital mutilation (FGM).
•   
• After only five days of winning her congressional seat in 2018, Omar worked to institute BDS to financially cripple the state of Israel.
• In February, 2019, Omar tweeted that pro-Israel lobby AIPAC was guilty of paying politicians to favor Israel “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.”  
• March, 2019, Omar’s disdain for Israel won praise from Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.
• March, 2019, Omar was keynote speaker for an Hamas-linked CAIR benefit event, along with Hassan Shibley who will not call out Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations.
• 
  
• April 2019, Omar called for the release of a senior Muslim Brotherhood member detained in Egypt.
• July, 2019, Omar, Tlaib and John Lewis co-sponsored House Resolution HR496 for BDS,  comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.

There is no question that both Omar and Tlaib are antisemites who seek to destroy Israel and endanger Jews worldwide, and that the Democrat Jews who support those policies do the same.  Those who speak ill of President Trump and PM Netanyahu and side with the Marxist-Islamic ideology emanating from the Democrat party, who compare the southern-border invaders to the Holocaust’s Jewish refugees,  and who failed to attend and celebrate the dedication of the US embassy in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, cannot be judged otherwise.  Yes, President Trump’s honesty may sting, but it is nevertheless honesty.  

According to Jewish law, the Democrat Jews are still Jews, but the betrayal of their own brethren and heritage confirm that they are not in consonance with the laws and morality of Judaism, and that their hearts are elsewhere.  

Tabitha Korol

With appreciation to frontpagemag.com for their detailed reporting. 

The New York Times Has a Jewish Problem

The New York Times Has a Jewish Problem by Hugh Fitzgerald 

 POSTED By unanimous vote,MIL-ED  editorial advisory board

August 31, 2019

https://drrichswier.com/2019/08/31/the-new-york-times-has-a-jewish-problem-by-hugh-fitzgerald/

An editor at the New York Times has recently apologized for having written several anti-Semitic and racist tweets. Tom Wright-Piersanti is a senior staff editor at the Times. In the years 2008-2010, Wright-Piersanti wrote several offensive tweets, which were uncovered  by the website Breitbart.

On New Years’ Day 2010, Wright-Piersanti tweeted, “I was going to say ‘Crappy Jew Year,’ but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews.”

The previous month, during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Wright-Piersanti shared a picture of a car with a lit menorah on its roof and wrote, “Who called the Jew-police?”

“I have deleted tweets from a decade ago that are offensive,” Wright-Piersanti tweeted  after the Breitbart article was published. “I am deeply sorry.”

He also mocked Native Americans, and Afro-Americans, for which no doubt he is also “deeply sorry.”

Amazing how “deeply sorry” people are about so many things the minute they are found out, but not one minute earlier. Perhaps he is “deeply sorry” only because those tweets came to light. They were not just “offensive,” but disgusting. In any event, Wright-Piersanti apparently needn’t worry about his job. As of this writing, he’s still at the New York Times, a paper that has a Jewish, and latterly an Israeli, problem. 

It recently published two antisemitic cartoons in its international edition. The more offensive of the two depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog (a dachshund) wearing a Star of David collar and leading President Donald Trump, who is wearing a black kippah. Anyone of sense would have seen this cartoon as antisemitic, save apparently the editor at the Times who approved the cartoon. 

And the Times, just like Wright-Piersanti, said it was “deeply sorry.” Yes, it was “deeply sorry for the publication of an anti-Semitic political cartoon” that appeared in its international print edition. And the Times has decided to stop publishing cartoons from non-staff members. It has also said that it will also overhaul its bias training to have an emphasis on antisemitism, according to an internal note from the Times’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. What about training on how to bring a modicum of fairness to reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Or would that be asking too much?

The Times has had a “Jewish problem” ever since Hitler came to power in 1933. So let’s go back to the 1930s and 1940s, before there was even an Israel for the Times to be anti-Israel about, to see how, and to ask why, the most influential paper in the world, owned by Jews, paid so little attention to the murderous threat of Hitler and the Nazis as it grew throughout the 1930s. 

It was precisely because the paper was owned by Jews, who were determined not to have their paper be thought of as an organ of special pleading about Jewish suffering, that the New York Times failed so miserably, in its under-reporting of the Holocaust and the antisemitic crimes during the 1930s that led up to its final, murderous efflorescence. In her brilliant Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, Laurel Leff notes that Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who became the publisher in 1936 (though he was effectively the publisher from 1933, because of the illness of the previous publisher, Adolph Ochs) and continued in that post until 1961, at the most critical period for the Jews of Europe, had studiously refrained from having anything to do with Jewish organizations or causes. 

He (Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times) refused to donate to the United Jewish Appeal or the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He wrote in 1934, “I am a non-Zionist because the Jew, in seeking a homeland of his own, seems to me to be giving up something of infinitely greater value of the world. … I look askance at any movement which assists in making the peacemaker among nations merely a national Distribution Committee, favoring instead the National Missions of the Presbyterian Church.” In 1948, he wrote, “I know of no difference in my way of life than in that of any Unitarian.”

Sulzberger was committed to an odd definition of journalistic balance. The Times refused to run letters to the editor that attacked the rise of antisemitism in Germany, so that it would not also have to offer space to those supporting antisemitism.

Instead of speaking of Jewish refugees, Times editorials tended to speak of German refugees. Arthur Hays Sulzberger refused to intervene with American officials to get a visa for a cousin, Fritz Sulzberger, advising him in 1938 to stay in Germany. So indifferent was he to what was going on in Germany, apparently, that he thought as late as 1938 that Jews should remain in Germany and ride out the storm. His misreading of reality was astonishing. By that year, it should have been clear that staying in Germany amounted to a death sentence. 

In 1933, Jews had been discharged from all universities, and then from all civil service jobs. Long before Kristallnacht, there were boycotts of Jewish shops, Jews were attacked, even beaten to death, on the street, Nazi rallies were held where Jews were hysterically denounced; a phrase from a 19th-century antisemite, Heinrich Treitschke, was recycled  for use by the Nazis: “Die Juden sind unser Unglück!“(“The Jews are our misfortune”).

Yet in 1938, the publisher of the New York Times was advising a relative to remain in Germany. A. H. Sulzberger didn’t want to hear about all the atrocities German Jews were enduring. And he didn’t want his paper to make too much of such things either.

The threat to Jews was always minimized by the Times. Early in the war, the Times ran a campaign of nine editorials and three front-page stories that urged Congress to allow British families to send their children to safety in America, but made no such campaign on behalf of the Jews. Those British children might have been in danger from V-2 rockets, if they lived in the East End of London, but the Jews in Nazi-occupied countries faced certain death if they were not brought to America. The New York Times – under Arthur Hays Sulzberger – didn’t care enough to call for their admission.

Nor did the Times think helping Jews find refuge from the Nazis outside of America was a cause to promote in its editorials. When the British issued the White Paper of 1939, restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine to 15,000 a year for five years, the Times ran an editorial praising the move as necessary “to save the homeland itself from overpopulation as well as from an increasingly violent resistance on the part of the Arabs.” 

That White Paper effectively kept hundreds of thousands of Jews, who might have escaped from Europe in time, from being admitted to Mandatory Palestine. Churchill thundered against it as unjust and cruel. But not according to the New York Times; its editors thought the White Paper was perfectly correct in permitting no more than 15,000 Jews a year to find refuge in Palestine from the Nazis. Otherwise, the editorial absurdly claimed, Mandatory Palestine would be “overpopulated.” 

On what basis did the Times editors make that claim? Israel now has a population that is six times the population of Mandatory Palestine in 1939, and it is still not overpopulated. And the Times actually thought that it was preferable in 1939 to keep Jews in Europe, where they were almost certain to be killed, in order not to anger the Arabs in Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine’s provisions, that required Great Britain, as the Mandatory authority, to “facilitate” Jewish immigration and “encourage close settlement by Jews on the land,” were to be ignored so as not to upset the local Arabs.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger lived among, and wanted to be accepted by, other people of great wealth, including many non-Jews, and he did not wish to be thought of as caring too much for the fate of Europe’s or Palestine’s — Jews. In that he succeeded, and for that he deserves endless obloquy in the history books. Assimilated and anti-Zionist, he instructed his editors to downplay news about the suffering of Europe’s Jews so that the newspaper would not appear to be too concerned with Jewish matters. He was a horrible man.

There was very little reporting in the Times on the rising antisemitism in Nazi Germany all through the 1930s. Atrocities against Jews in Germany, which began in the streets soon after Hitler took power in 1933, were mentioned intermittently, almost always in a few paragraphs deep inside the paper. 

Even Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938, when Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were demolished by Nazi attackers using sledgehammers, received less treatment in the New York Times than it did in many other newspapers around the world. The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany and Austria and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed; 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Hundreds of Jews were murdered, often beaten to death by mobs. 

This had no visible effect on the editorial and reporting policies set down by Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Why did this underreporting at the Times matter so much? It mattered because it had a direct effect on the sense of urgency among American Jews, and on the attitude in the government about rescuing Jews from the Nazis.

When the Holocaust began in earnest, and news about the roundups of Jews sent to concentration camps – labor and death camps were distinguished, though in the “labor camps” the inmates were often worked to death — managed to filter out, the New York Times continued to give such reports a few paragraphs deep within the paper. It did the same with reports from the Eastern Front, about the gassing of Jews in the mobile gas vans, about the mass shootings right on the edge of open pits into which those killed would topple. 

The paper never connected the dots of the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe, never presented it as part of a comprehensive genocidal plan. Its coverage of the murders of six million Jews was absurdly small, given the world-shattering size of the atrocity; this “Jewish news” from Europe was most often covered in a few paragraphs in the back; more attention was given in the Times to business, movies, golf championships, and racing news than to the Holocaust. 

Sulzberger, the publisher, was not haunted by what was going on in Europe. He gave his own attention to such pleasures as vacationing at Knollwood on Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. Knollwood was an enclave consisting of seven or eight luxurious “rustic cottages” that belonged to leading members of “Our Crowd,” that is, the assimilated and rich German Jews of New York, members of the Harmonie Club, families who had arrived in the 19th century from Germany and looked down on the recent Jewish arrivals from Eastern Europe. They were glad to host a celebrity refugee from Germany – Einstein went twice to Knollwood, and his photograph is still on display in one of the “cottages” – but didn’t want to be unduly bothered with unpleasant news from Europe. And Sulzberger was one of them.

That failure by the New York Times to report adequately throughout the 1930s on the growing danger to Germany’s Jews was not without consequences, as shall be discussed tomorrow.

BDS is Primarily an Assault on American Jews Caroline B. Glick

BDS is Primarily an Assault on American Jews

Caroline B. Glick

The goal of BDS is to silence American Jews as a political force, and American Jews refuse to see what is happening to them while it is happening.

BDS demonstration in NY against the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra outside Carnegie Hall. February 2019

President Trump took issue with continued American Jewish support for the Democrats after Tlaib and Omar gave a press conference libeling Israel in furtherance of their anti-Jewish, BDS agenda.

For his actions, Trump is again being falsely defamed as an anti-Semite.

American Jews who wish to deny leftist anti-Semitism, pretend that BDS is primarily directed against Israel. After all, if the likes of Omar, Tlaib, AOC and the rest only hate Israel, then they aren’t anti-Semitic. They just hate Israeli Jews.

(And anyway, those Israeli Jews must have had it coming to them.)

But the truth is that BDS in America is directed primarily against American Jews. Its goal is to silence them as a political force in America. American Jews who support Israel are ostracized in universities, and even in high schools. They are subjected to abuse in every quarter.

Examples abound. Last month, a Jewish patron of the arts, Warren Kanders was forced to resign his position as the vice chairman of the Whitney Museum’s board of trustees. Kanders was subjected to a massive, intense campaign of demonization by Palestinians and leftists for his “crime” of owning a security company that sells tear gas to Israel.

The Whitney, which has featured overtly anti-Semitic exhibits in the past, is now officially off limits to pro-Israel Jews.

Also last month, the Associated Press published a defamatory article about Simon Falic for his pro-Israel philanthropy. The message was obvious. American Jews considering supporting Israel are now on notice, if they dare support Israel, they can expect to see their reputations dragged through the mud.

Let’s now ask a question, how do these defamatory campaigns harm Israel? The answer is that they don’t harm Israel. They harm American Jews.

How do BDS campaigns on college campuses harm Israel? The answer is they don’t. They harm American Jews.

Israel, to be sure is harmed by a diminishment of Democratic support for Israel. And there are many things Israel needs to do to protect itself from this. But these are issues for the medium and long term.

The immediate target in all of these attacks is the American Jewish community. And the immediate victims of all of these assaults are American Jews.

Now to the issue of Tlaib and Omar.

These woman have chosen to dedicate their time in office to advancing BDS — which again, targets American Jews first and foremost. And rather than denounce them for their anti-Semitic actions that harm American Jews specifically, the Democratic Congressional leadership has rallied to their side.

In their press conference this week, the two women’s hostility towards Israel and its supporters was palpable. The fact that they had anti-Semitic Jews standing with them didn’t make their efforts less hostile. Indeed, their use of Jewish fig leaves made their efforts more hostile. They are seeking to co-opt Judaism while demonizing Jews.

President Trump’s statement that Jews are disloyal if they support Democrats was clearly a response to that display and to the party’s adamant refusal to call these woman to order for their open hatred of Jews and the actions they are taking that directly facilitate the anti-Semitic BDS campaign in the United States.

In other words, while the Democratic party is enabling and empowering these overt Jew haters, Trump has been taking them to task for their bigotry. And rather than thank him for his support, 75 percent of American Jews are joining their fellow Democrats in giving a pass to their party while pillorying Trump for daring to be their friend.

Given the context in which Trump made his remarks — that is, the Democratic Party’s open embrace of anti-Semites and anti-Semitic messaging — it is literally impossible for even a semi-literate person to misunderstand what he was saying.

Moreover, it is telling that the same people insisting that Trump’s statement was anti-Semitic are giving a pass to the Democrats for refusing to take any action to rein in their Jew hating members. It shows the disingenuousness of their sudden professed concern for anti-Jewish bigotry.

American Jews refuse to see what is happening to them while it is happening.

The likes of Tlaib and Omar are rendering them political non-entities. By attacking Trump, the main politician supporting them, while giving a free pass to the Democrats who are facilitating discrimination against them, American Jews are disenfranchising themselves. Democrats see they can abandon the Jews without consequence, and Republicans see that there is no point in sticking up for the Jews who will hate them no matter what they say and do.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions, first and foremost for the American Jewish community but really for America as a whole and for the Jewish people as a whole.

An Open letter to Congresswoman TLAIB who represents the fourth highest crime district in the U.S.

" GRANDMOTHER TLAIB AT HOME”…. An Open letter to  Congresswoman TLAIB  who represents the fourth highest crime district in the U.S.

“Rep. Tlaib, when will you be doing what you were elected to do about the dire situation in your district instead of endlessly demonizing the Jewish state?“

 Dear Congresswoman Tlaib,

Are you not happy that your jida (grandmother in Arabic  جدة) lives where she does rather than in your district in Detroit which has the fourth highest crime rate in the United States? Here are some recent statistics.

Total violent crime‎: ‎1,749.5 Homicide‎: ‎48.2 Total property crime‎: ‎4070.1 Forcible rape‎: ‎78.27

And the weather is so much nicer in Israel. This month it was between 70 and 85F and sunny. In the winter it is between 40 and 50F. In Detroit winters are freezing and they average 38 inches of snow per year. Bad for arthritis in older folks. 

Read this about her Arab settlement of Beit-Ur al-Fauqa:

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/tlaibs-palestinian-village-is-thriving-but-she-is-in-denial/ 

What  is it really like to live in Beit-Ur al-Fauqa, where Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grandmother and other family members live? Are conditions there as bad as she has claimed?

If you look at the Facebook profiles of people who actually live there, you will discover that things are actually not bad at all.

Achiam Tlaib, for example, drives a brand new BMW. On his Facebook account, you can see that his family lives in a very comfortable three-story building.

Raja Tlaib shared on his Facebook account pictures of himself posing next to his new Mercedes, wearing an expensive suit. He also has pictures showing him working out in a gym that has the latest equipment.

Mawaid Tlaib uploaded pictures of his vacations in Italy and other places, and has a very expensive Mercedes.

Samach Tlaib drives a BMW and Niaf Tlaib drives a Corvette convertible and uploaded pictures posing next to his new villa under construction, also with three stories.

Many of them also have pictures showing them visiting places inside the pre-1967 Israel armistice lines when Israel was only nine miles wide: Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Tel Aviv and so on. So perhaps all those checkpoints that stop Palestinian terrorists from murdering Israeli civilians, and which supposedly make Palestinian life so miserable, are just a myth?

In fact, even the World Bank said in 2014 that the Arab community in which Tlaib’s grandmother lives is one of the richest in the region. The poverty rate in the Arab settlement stood at 7.4 % in 2014, compared to the overall rate of 21% in the territory the Palestinian Authority occupies.

According to a 2017 PA report on the quality of life of Palestinians, Beit-Ur al-Fuaka has 230 households.

More than 115 of the households are in apartments that have 5 bedrooms or more, and 65 of the households have four bedrooms.

And of course, all the structures are privately owned. According to the report, almost every home has satellite TV, and most have LCD screens in their living rooms. Almost everyone has access to the internet and a mobile phone. Half of the families own one or more cars.

Is everything perfect? No, and the security situation in Judea and Samaria (the ancient and ancestral Jewish heartland - or what the Arabs call the West Bank) obviously has its drawbacks. The checkpoints placed by the Israel Defense Forces to prevent Arab terrorist attacks mean that the population's potential is not fully tapped – but if only they would stop their murderous terror.

Rep. Tlaib, when will you be doing what you were elected to do about the dire situation in your district instead of endlessly demonizing the Jewish state? 

Hunter Biden Helped China Get Arms Technology

Hunter Biden Helped China Get Arms Technology 

By Dick Morris on August 21, 2019

http://www.dickmorris.com/hunter-biden-helped-china-get-arms-technology-lunch-alert/

Media Won’t Report That Tlaib And Omar’s Israel Trip Was Planned By A Pro-Terrorist Group

www.ruthfullyyours.com/2019/08/19/media-wont-report-that-tlaib-and-omars-israel-trip-was-planned-by-a-pro-terrorist-group-by-warren-henry/

Media Won’t Report That Tlaib And Omar’s Israel Trip Was Planned By A Pro-Terrorist Group 

Warren Henry - Posted by Ruth S.King - August 20, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/19/media-wont-report-tlaib-omars-israel-trip-planned-pro-terrorist-group/ 

The establishment press must be getting quite a crick in its collective neck from having to look away so often from the antisemitic elements of the left, including within the Democratic Party.

Amid last week’s debate over whether Israel should have issued waivers to Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and allowed them to promote the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement from within Israel, two scandals went largely unreported. The first scandal is that Tlaib and Omar’s trip was planned by the antisemitic, pro-terror Miftah organization. The second scandal was the establishment media’s whitewashing of the first scandal.

It fell to the Elder of Ziyon blog to remind everyone on Twitter that in 2013, Miftah published a blood libel against Jews. The term “blood libel” has been applied in other contexts in recent years, but Miftah claimed Jews have murdered Christian children to use their blood for baking matzos at Passover.

Historically, blood libels resulted in pogroms, including in England, Poland, and Russia; they contributed to the expulsion of Jews from England from 1290 to 1657. Jews were tried. Confessions were extracted by torture. When Miftah published its lie, the final blood-libel trial of a Jew in Western history was only 100 years past. When their essay was publicized, Miftah first tried to attack those who exposed them, then apologized—but only in English, not in Arabic.

Miftah also re-published (and later deleted) a column titled “Who Rules America: The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken.” Vox’s Jane Coaston (one of a few exceptions among the media last week) noted the original source was National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi group founded by members of the National Alliance—once the best financed and organized white nationalist groups in America. The group’s founder, William Pierce, authored “The Turner Diaries,” a book that inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

The essay Miftah reprinted asserted in part: “The Jew-controlled entertainment media have taken the lead in persuading a whole generation that homosexuality is a normal and acceptable way of life; that there is nothing at all wrong with White women dating or marrying Black men, or with White men marrying Asian women; that all races are inherently equal in ability and character — except that the character of the White race is suspect because of a history of oppressing other races; and that any effort by Whites at racial self-preservation is reprehensible.”

Given its antisemitism, it is not surprising Miftah also has supported Palestinian terrorism against Israel. In a 2017 interview, Miftah founder and chairwoman Hanan Ashrawi defended such attacks, stating they “are seen by the people as resistance. And you cannot somehow adopt the language of either the international community or the occupier by describing anybody who resists as terrorist (sic).” Miftah also described one of the first female Palestinian suicide bombers as “the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause.”

In reporting on Israel’s exclusion of Tlaib and Omar, The New York Times described Miftah only as “an organization headed by a longtime Palestinian lawmaker.” The Times editorial board called Miftah a group “that promotes ‘global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.’”

The Times, after publishing an antisemitic cartoon in its international edition a few months ago, editorialized it is a “dangerous mistake“ to dismiss antisemitism as a fringe element in society, but on Miftah, Tlaib, and Omar the paper continues to fall painfully short of “unblinking journalism and the clear editorial expression of its values.” Or its values seem to require a certain amount of blinking.

Other media outlets fared no better. The Washington Post called Miftah “a nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker and longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.” The Los Angeles Times editorialized that “[t]he only disgrace here is Trump’s behavior” in encouraging Israel to exclude Tlaib and Omar, noting in passing “[t]he trip of the two congresswomen was being arranged by Miftah, a nonprofit organization headed by a Palestinian lawmaker.” CNN’s story avoids mentioning Miftah altogether.

Arguably the worst coverage appeared in Politico’s “Playbook” column. Politico actually highlighted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement characterizing Miftah as “an avid supporter of BDS, and among whose members are those who have expressed support for terrorism against Israel.” But Politico played this as a “gotcha” because Israel allowed a Miftah-sponsored group of congressmen into Israel in 2016. Indeed, Politico’s Brad Sherman tweeted: “Israel allowed a Miftah trip in 2016 when it was a group of 5 Dem male members,” as if there were some sex discrimination at work.

The Politico item leaves out a few things. First, as Jerusalem Post Senior Contributing Editor Lahav Harkov responded, “The law to bar boycott advocates wasn’t on the books in 2016, which you could have found out with a quick google search.” Sherman dismissed the criticism: “Yes, but Netanyahu took issue with Miftah in addition to its support of BDS.”

Given the controversy surrounding Israel’s decision to exclude Tlaib and Omar legally, it is frankly absurd to suggest Netanyahu should have made the 2016 trip an issue when he lacked the legal power to stop it. But the Politico article is even worse than that.

In 2016, Miftah invited more than 70 members of Congress, of whom only five accepted. And while Politico hyperlinks to their itineraries, the column omits mentioning they met with Shawan Jabarin. He is identified in the itineraries in his capacity as director of the Palestinian “human rights” organization Al Haq, which advocates for the anti-Israel boycott.

Jabarin is also an alleged long-time activist for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization in the United States, Canada, and European Union. He was convicted in 1985 of recruiting for the PFLP. When he was detained in 1994, Israel claimed he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.” Jordan cited similar security concerns in barring him from entry in 2003.

Of the four current congressmen on that 2016 Miftah trip, Rep. Marc Pocan was one of the 16 votes (along with Tlaib and Omar) against a July resolution condemning BDS. Another, Rep. Hank Johnson, abstained from that vote; he previously had to apologize for likening Israeli settlers to termites.

A third, Rep. Dan Kildee, has defended Omar’s dual-loyalty smears. In context, the 2016 Miftah trip looks much less like a “gotcha” of Netanyahu than a milestone on the path to Israel passing the law allowing them to exclude BDS advocates, particularly those affiliating with Miftah.

Beyond Miftah, Omar, and Tlaib, the same media whitewash occurs regarding the antisemitic BDS movement. Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the movement, compares Israel to the Nazis, claims Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children “for sport,” denies that Jews are one of the indigenous peoples of the region and have no right to self-determination—sometimes all in the same speech. The basic history of the movement and its leaders will be found nowhere in the BDS explainer published by The New York Times, perhaps because the paper recently published a wildly dishonest op-ed by Barghouti himself.

The establishment press must be getting quite a crick in its collective neck from having to look away so often from the antisemitic elements of the left, including within the Democratic Party. It is a case where biased journalism slouches into bad citizenship.

The Corbynization of Britain’s Labour Party happened in large part because the local media tended to ignore it. The left vehemently disagrees, but when you read the account of Josh Glancy, the New York correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, it is difficult to miss how much denial within the media aided Corbyn until it was too late.

Allowing antisemitism to fester within the Democratic Party and defending obviously antisemitic Democrats is bad for the country. And looking at the current struggles of the Labour Party, it is likely to be toxic for Democrats most of all. Even a biased press corps ought to recognize that much.

Warren Henry is the nom de plume of an attorney practicing in the State of Illinois.