| Video of Arab-looking men attacking bus of Jews in London Monday nightnoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 01 Dec 05:20 AM On Monday night, a bus full of | | On Monday night, a bus full of Jews on their way to a Chanukah celebration in central London was attacked by a group of what appear to be Arab men who spat, cursed, used obscene gestures and banged their shoes against the bus as it was apparently stopped at a traffic light. Throwing shoes, or showing someone the soles of one's shoes, is considered highly offensive in the Arab world. According to the people posting the video, this happened on Oxford Street in London. The bus was playing Jewish music and may have had Chanukah decorations, possibly children wearing kippot, making it obvious that it was filled with Jews. The incident was reported to Metropolitan police. I have not found any news stories about this yet. (h/t Jonathan) * * * * * *
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From Ian: Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Free as a Jew Harvard Yiddish Prof. Ruth R. Wisse's new memoir that tells of her love affair with Israel and the war against the West, is sharp, examined, and a more urgent read than ever. Review. Like the poet John Masefield, I also suffer from "sea fever" and so down I went to the "seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky." I needed no "tall ship," only a room on the beach with a terrace—and all the time in the world to read Ruth R. Wisse's new book, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation. Reader: I could not put it down. I still chose to read it slowly, to savor it, take it all in. I must have underlined at least a quarter of the book. Wisse commands an aerial view of Jewish history, bringing it to bear on Israeli politics and on the demonization of the only Jewish state. She continues to issue her clarion call about the plague of "political correctness" that threatens to devour the entire Western enterprise. Free as a Jew is an "intellectual memoir," but it is also a family history replete with charming photos; a story of European Jews before, during, and after the Holocaust; and a warm introduction to Yiddish literature, and to many of the major Yiddish writers whom Wisse and her parents knew, hosted, and supported in Montreal, where they lived after fleeing Romania. Wisse introduces us to many of these writers: Sholem Asch, Sholem Aleichem...Read More |
On the Internet, the socialist Left often uses Yiddish to attack Judaism. It's nice to see the language being used in the way that it has always been traditionally used. Plus, here's a music video of a new tune for the same Al HaNissim that inspired the Levin video, by Yanki & Shmilly Rothschild, also with a Yiddish accent. (h/t Yerushalimey) * * * * * *
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Last week, the Church of Sweden held a meeting where it agreed to a motion that it should investigate whether Israel is an apartheid state.No other countries are being scrutinized for any other crimes.
Mathias Bred writes in Göteborgs Posten: Just in time for Advent , we are reminded of the anti-Semitic tendencies in the Church of Sweden. The church meeting last week approved a proposal from the church board member Daniel Tisell (C), Gothenburg diocese, where the church scrutinizes whether Israel is an apartheid state. One may wonder why a religious community should investigate other countries. Will the Church of Sweden then continue to investigate China, Venezuela or any of the Arab dictatorships in the same region as Israel? Of course it will not. As several debaters at the church meeting pointed out, this is a one-sided fixation on Israel. It is about a form of anti-Semitism. Trying to describe Israel as a racist state and demanding that the country be treated differently from other democracies are among the definitions of modern anti-Semitism that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA, has developed, and which Sweden has supported. And here's the kicker: Two days after the decision to investigate apartheid in Israel, the same church council rejected a motion from the Christian Democrats...Read More |
From Ian: Herzog's Hebron visit underlines Jewish connection to Israel On Sunday, President Isaac Herzog lit the first Hanukkah candle in the most ancient Jewish site, Ma'arat Hamachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The Jewish connection to the city reaches back to biblical times. In the Torah portion which we read last week, we are told that "Jacob lives in the city of forefathers," that after a long sojourn in Haran he returned to his homeland and lived in Hebron. It was where the oldest land sale contract in human history was drawn up, when Abraham negotiated with the local residents to purchase the Cave of the Patriarchs as a burial site for his wife Sarah, paying above market price. For Herzog, it's a deeply personal moment. He is carrying on the legacy of his father, the late president Chaim Herzog, who also served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. In 1976, the elder Herzog distributed a copy of the biblical verses outlining the details of the sale of the tomb to members of the UN. As the JTA reported: "For the first time in history, an agreement made almost 4,000 years ago and recorded in the Bible has been issued as a United Nations document today." In a speech at the time, he declared the historic Jewish connection to the holy site, second in importance to the actual Temple Mount in Jewish history and tradition. Chaim Herzog...Read More |
By Daled Amos Of the attitudes of the international community towards Israel, one of the most maddening is criticism of Israeli reaction to the terrorist rocket attacks launched by Hamas -- and the lack of international condemnation of those rocket attacks themselves, deliberately launched against civilian targets. We criticize the West for its lack of sustained outrage against Hamas targeting civilians.
We note that no country would tolerate such attacks without taking strong measures to stop such attacks. But does Israel itself bear any of the responsibility for the failure of the international community to condemn these deliberate terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians? In a 2012 article, Where 8,000 Rocket Launches Are Not a Casus Belli, Evelyn Gordon blames this on the indecisiveness of the IDF in retaliating against Gaza rockets as: the rotten fruit of a government policy that for years dismissed the rockets as a minor nuisance for reasons of petty politics: For the Kadima party, in power from 2005-2009, admitting the rockets were a problem meant admitting that its flagship policy, the Gaza pullout, was a disaster. A 2011 report for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, The Missile Threat from Gaza:From Nuisance to Strategic Threat, by Israeli missile defense expert Uzi Rubin notes how Israeli leaders...Read More |
Jordanian media has been upset over the surfacing of this video from 2013, where Joseph Braude, a scholar of Islam, interviews Jordanian preacher Mustafa Abu Rumman:
Jordanians just found out that Braude is Jewish. Even worse, his grandfather was reportedly a rabbi in Iraq! Now they are questioning the credentials of Abu Rumman and wondering if he allowed Braude to wander around the Waqf building. Abu Rumman had to clarify that he met Braude at a conference in Italy, and that the scholar was able to recite the Quran perfectly by heart, even with correct intonation. He says that Braude is not a Zionist and even prayed with him in a mosque. This episode is now feeding in to an older Arab conspiracy theory - of the Islamic University of Tel Aviv. As Awad Dhaif Allah Al Malahama writes in Khaberni: In 1956 the Israeli Mossad decided to establish the Islamic University of Tel Aviv. It is a closed university. Only outstanding...Read More |
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