Jewish Ghetto In Venice, Italy Celebrates 500th Anniversary

[From article]
Though his sonnet was on Westminster Bridge, London, William Wordsworth might have used the same words to describe Venice, “a sight so touching in its majesty.” Everyone is enchanted by its incomparable beauty, admires the splendor and majesty of Piazza San Marco, and is amazed by the uniqueness of a city built on more than 150 islands, a UNESCO World Historic Site.
A part of the city, less known for its artistic splendor but historically significant is the Jewish Ghetto in the Cannaregio district that is in 2016 being commemorated on the 500th anniversary of its creation. The word Ghetto comes from the Italian geto or metal foundry. The Venetian Ghetto, one of the first to be established in Europe but unique and unforgettable in character, was created on March 29, 1516 by the Doge Leonardo Loredan to segregate Jews from the rest of the population of the city.
Walls enclosed the Ghetto in an area, the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, little more than one acre in size, and the gates were locked at night. Jews, except doctors, leaving the Ghetto were obliged to wear distinctive clothes with a yellow badge, hat, or scarf. It was tantamount to a benevolent prison, but at the same time it showed that Jews were accepted, if isolated, as part of Venetian society at a time when Jews were not allowed in Britain.
In the 17th century about 5,000 Jews lived in the Ghetto, out of a total population of 58,000 people in the city. It was cosmopolitan, as different groups of Jewish immigrants, from Spain, Portugal, the Levant, and Eastern Europe, entered the area, and set up five synagogues. In 1797, French troops under Napoleon entered the city and ended the Ghetto as a confining area. Jews could move out, and the rich members did so.
The number of Jews in the area declined. At the start of World War II in 1939 there were 1,200 in Venice, and 50,000 in the whole of Italy. They suffered during the war, first because of the 1938 Italian race laws and then from the Holocaust. In Venice 246, including the Chief Rabbi, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, of whom only eight survived.
[. . .]
Today, the center of Jewish life is still, religiously and symbolically, the Ghetto, but only a small part of the 400 Jews in Venice live there in debilitated buildings, although they attend religious services in the five synagogues there. The Campo di Ghetto Nuovo also contains a yeshiva, two Holocaust memorials, an old age home, and social activities.
But it is a reminder of the continuing existence of the disease of anti-Semitism in Italy as in the rest of Europe that police in a booth at the end of the Campo are on guard night and day.
[. . .]
Security measures have been necessary at Jewish schools and synagogues since the mid-1980s after the attack on Rome’s Great Synagogue in 1982.
One particularly disturbing incident concerned the memorial to those who died in the Nazi death camps. A swastika was scrawled on the Jewish small memorial plaque in the building on the Via della Lungara, near the Vatican. This is the very place where in the razzia, the mass roundup on October 16, 1943, 1259 Jews, including more than 900 women and children, were taken and held after their arrest by the Nazis. They were deported to Auschwitz and only 16 survived. Controversy still exists over the behavior on that occasion of Pope Pius XII, on whether he helped to save the Roman Jews and on whether he ordered church officials to open the doors of their properties to save Jews.
[. . .]
In the light of these attitudes of Jews and non-Jews, the 500th anniversary of the creation of the Ghetto is a symbolic event, a significant sign of the official Italian determination to honor it, and to envisage it as a meeting place of people and of cultures. The intention is to illustrate the relationship between Jews and the rest of Venetians throughout the ages. The events will feature a performance of Mahler’s First Symphony at the Fenice Opera House, and exhibition on “Venice, the Jews, and Europe,” at the Palazzo Ducale, and performances of The Merchant of Venice in the Ghetto itself. Perhaps most interesting of all is that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will preside over a trial of the unforgettable character Shylock which may result in a verdict different from that given in the play by Portia.
Many are pessimistic or realistic about the forthcoming death of Venice through the effect of the anarchy of water. Venice is sinking up to 0.08 inches a year as well as tilting towards the east. This floating jewel of a city may disappear as the sea level rises. This 500th commemoration of the Ghetto is all the more welcome as an optimistic reminder not only of the place of Jews in Venetian life but also of the emancipation of Jews from confinement there as elsewhere. The Ghetto now can be seen as a center for the revival of Jewish life and culture, not as a confinement or contrivance for possible annihilation of Jews.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/jews_remembered_in_venice.html

May 8, 2016
Jews Remembered in Venice
By Michael Curtis

United Nations Rewrites History Denying Jewish Presence in Jerusalem

Temple Mount, Jerusalem, Israel

[From article]
Friday, the Executive Council of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted a resolution ignoring Jewish ties to the holy religious site of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem’s Old City.
As CAMERA has detailed:
The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. The Temple was built, according to Jewish tradition, on the Even Hashtiya, the foundation stone upon which the world was created. This is considered the epicenter of Judaism, where the Divine Presence (Shechina) rests, where the biblical Isaac was brought for sacrifice, where the Holy of Holies and Ark of the Covenant housing the Ten Commandments once stood, and where the Temple was again rebuilt in 515 BCE before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Temple Mount is also known as Mount Moriah (Har HaMoriah), mentioned frequently in the Bible.
The Western Wall (Kotel HaMa’aravi, known simply as the Wall or Kotel) is the remnant of the outer retaining wall built by Herod to level the ground and expand the area housing the Second Jewish Temple. Its holiness derives from its proximity to the Temple site and specifically its proximity to the Western Wall of the Temple’s Holy of Holies (Kodesh Hakodashim---the inner sanctuary that housed the Ark of the Covenant–the Aron HaBrit–and where the High Priest–Kohen Gadol--alone was permitted to enter on Yom Kippur). According to Midrashic sources, the Divine Presence never departed from the Western wall of the Temple’s Holy of Holies. For the last several hundred years, Jews have prayed at Herod’s Western Wall because it was the closest accessible place to Judaism’s holiest site.
But this is meaningless to UNESCO which refers in the resolution to the Temple Mount only as “al-Aksa Mosque/al-Haram al Sharif.” The plaza area by the Western Wall is called “al-Buraq Plaza” except for two parenthetical references to the Western Wall Plaza.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have long and frequently denied the existence of the First and Second Temples and attempted to expunge any Jewish -- and therefore key Christian -- connections to Jerusalem’s holy sites. This historical revisionism and attempted religious suppression is an affront to Jews and Christians alike as these sites are central to both religions.
UNESCO apparently agrees with this narrative, asserting that Israel had placed “Jewish fake graves” in Muslim cemeteries. UNESCO, charged with protecting culturally significant sites, ignores the fact that, rather than protecting holy sites, Palestinian groups have been desecrating and destroying them, including Rachel’s Tomb, Joseph’s Tomb and the Church of the Nativity.
The UNESCO resolution denounced the “new cycle of violence, since October 2015, in the context of the constant aggressions by the Israeli settlers and other extremist groups against Palestinian residents including schoolchildren, and asks Israel, the Israeli authorities to prevent such aggressions.”
Yes, though Palestinian leadership has been inciting violence against Israelis and Jews, UNESCO lays the blame on Israel and does not even refer to the scores of fatalities and casualties from Palestinian terror attacks.
Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States were the six votes in opposition to the resolution. France, Spain, Sweden, and Russia were among the 33 countries that supported it.

History of West Bank Reveals Palestinians Have No Legitimate Claim, Only Propaganda

[From article]
March saw a return of economic warfare against Israel, masked in discontent with Israel’s “occupation” of “Palestine.”
[. . .]
What these economic and political warriors don’t seem to realize is that Israel is not occupying anything. There was never an Arab state known as Palestine. In fact, the Arabs have rejected multiple offers to establish such a state.
Before Jewish sovereignty was reestablished with the modern state of Israel in 1948, the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire ruled the Holy Land for approximately 400 years up until 1917. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in World War I, the British and French administered it in a period of joint military administration (1917-1920). The San Remo Conference (1920) formally established the British Mandate of Palestine’s borders to encompass modern day Israel, Jordan, the Gaza Strip, and what is today often referred to as the West Bank.
[. . .]
Britain Created “Palestine” for the Jews…
The legal document that created the Mandate recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home” and called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People.” The document also obligated the British to “facilitate Jewish immigration” and “encourage…settlement by Jews on the land…” The British, with the approval of the League of Nations (the predecessor to the United Nations) took on the obligation to help Jewish immigration and settlement of the Mandate, which included the West Bank. Indeed, Jews lived in this area in historic (Hebron, today’s “East” Jerusalem, Nablus/Shechem) and new (Gush Etzion) communities during the Mandate period.
…And Then Gave 75% of it to the Arabs.
In 1922, Britain partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into two separate mandates, Palestine (west of the Jordan River) and the Transjordan (east of the Jordan River). Transjordan eventually became sovereign Arab territory. Despite the partition, the land that is now known as the West Bank still remained within Palestine and was still slated to be included in a new home for the Jewish people.



The Arabs Rejected the West Bank Twice.
Arab leaders did not accept any further partitions. The Arabs rejected two offers (in 1937 from Britain and in 1947 from the United Nations) that would have established Arab independence from Jewish sovereignty west of the Jordan River, including the West Bank. The Jewish community in Palestine, on the other hand, accepted both of these offers. So, before Israel’s War of Independence (1947-1949), there was no Arab ownership of the West Bank, and no sovereign from which to occupy it.
[. . .]
Israel Had the Best Claim to the West Bank Before 1967.
An Arab state west of the Jordan River could not claim the West Bank; the Arabs made sure, in their rejections of 1937 and 1947, that no such state came into existence. The Arab state east of the Jordan River (Jordan) did not have a legitimate claim to the West Bank, and regardless relinquished all claims to it in 1988. So Israel, based on the original Mandate, confirmed by the League of Nations, had the most legitimate claim.
Israel Took the West Bank (Back) in Self-Defense.
While many see Israel’s taking of the West Bank in the Six-Day War (1967) as one of “occupation,” Israel was in fact re-claiming, in an act of self-defense, what was previously granted to the Jewish State under international law. So how could Israel “occupy” territory that was rightfully hers?
The Arabs Refused the West Bank Another Five Times.
Despite the Arabs losing military control over the West Bank in a war that they had initiated, Israel and the world continued to offer the Arabs sovereignty in at least some of it. True to form, the Arabs continued to reject these offers. Opportunities for Arab sovereignty in the West Bank were rebuffed in 1967 (the Khartoum Resolution), 1967-1968 (the Allon Plan), 2000 (Camp David), 2001 (Taba) and 2008 (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s offer to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas). The latter two offers would have granted Arab sovereignty to roughly 95% of the West Bank.
[. . .]
So what does this mean? Israel is not occupying “Palestine” but is the legitimate heir to the British Mandate of Palestine. The West Bank is, at best, a disputed territory.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/israel_and_the_occupation_that_isnt.html

April 10, 2016
Israel and the Occupation that Isn't
By Steve Postal

White House and Palestinians Rewrite History of The Jewish People

[From article]
Obama's speech in Cairo, to which he insisted the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood be invited.
In this speech, Obama conveniently ignored the historic Jewish ties to the land of Israel and invoked the Holocaust as the reason for Israel's existence. Even the left-leaning Ha'aretz newspaper found this sufficiently objectionable to call for Obama to rectify his misleading statements.
This narrative, fashionable throughout the Islamic world and one that denies there were ever Jews in the land of Judea is now orthodoxy among the mindless, atheistic Left, with whom Obama shares ideological kinship.
To Obama, the Jews are intruders. Never mind that many of those who now call themselves Palestinians are descendants from Egyptian, Yemeni, Syrian, and other Arab families that migrated to the British Mandate of Palestine as returning Jews began developing the area in the 1920s.
[. . .]
Edward Said himself, as well as Yasser Arafat, were not Palestinians but Egyptians who falsified their birthplace.
[. . .]
Nurtured in a Muslim home, reared on leftist ideology, sitting at the feet of a minister who is a virulent anti-Semite, bonding with leftist Jews in his Hyde Park neighborhood, Obama comes to any negotiation about the Arab/Israeli conflict with a mindset that is no different from that of any Palestinian.
To Obama, the Jews are interlopers and deserve what the Palestinians give them.
[. . .]
The international community’s generosity has ended up in the personal coffers of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
Obama's administration willfully ignores every form of Palestinian incitement, trying to find moral equivalence between Jewish victims of stab wounds and knife-wielding Palestinians.
[. . .]
As in 2008, Israelis understand who and what Obama is, while American Jews continue to refuse to acknowledge the reality before their eyes. Having voted overwhelmingly for Obama, not once but twice, the psychological dissonance is too great to acknowledge.
Obama's political socialization and ideology preclude him from ever being a friend of Israel.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obama_and_israel_nothing_has_changed_nothing_will_change.html

December 3, 2015
Obama and Israel: Nothing Has Changed, Nothing Will Change
By Abraham H. Miller

Chicago TV Station Uses Nazi Star Of David To Note Yom Kippur

Brief History of Anti Semitism and Growth of Holocaust In Germany

[From article]
There are two kinds of evil-doers: those who kill, rape, beat, and brutalize others, and those who let this happen.
The story of American and British indifference to the fate of Jews during the Second World War still makes for disturbing reading.
[. . .]
The abandonment of the Jews -- the title of David Wyman’s comprehensive study -- is the ultimate rationale for the creation of the state of Israel.
[. . .]
“There are two sorts of countries in the world,” Chaim Weizmann had concluded in the late ‘30s, “those that want to expel the Jews and those that don’t want to admit them.”
[. . .]



America’s response to the Holocaust helps explain the seemingly perverse attachment of American Jews to open borders -- a policy that permits an influx of immigrants who are considerably more antisemitic than European-Americans, apart from other consequences that negatively impact all Americans.
[. . .]
Fully 83% of Republicans sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians; only 48% of Democrats do so.
[. . .]
A lot of things were taken off the table at Geneva: a renunciation of terrorism (responsible for 1,100 American combat deaths in Iraq), an effective means of verifying Tehran’s compliance, even the return of four American hostages -- a token gesture on the mullahs’ part. Never on the table was regime’s determination to annihilate Israel, its chief objective in acquiring a nuclear arsenal. The fact that the administration’s new Middle Eastern ally is bent on genocide was irrelevant. The Obama administration’s abandonment of the Jewish state in 2015 was prefigured by the abandonment of European Jews in the ‘40s.
[. . .]
in January 1933, the Nazis had fired nearly all Jewish government employees and judges, and disbarred many lawyers from practicing. Jewish doctors, dentists, and professors would soon join the ranks of the unemployed. The purging of the professions was accompanied by random arrests, beatings, and murders of Jews and political opponents. There were about 2,000 assassinations during the year.
[. . .]



The violence culminated in Kristallnacht on the night of November 9, 1938. Jews had already been stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935. Now every synagogue in the Reich, which included Austria, was vandalized, burned, or destroyed. Ninety-one Jews were killed, 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps, and Jewish shops and homes were invaded and looted.
[. . .]
It’s not easy for those born after World War II to realize the extent of Judeophobia between 1920 and 1945. It wasn’t confined to country clubs, resorts, and upscale restaurants. Antisemitism was much more widespread and damaging, particularly as it affected employment opportunities.
[. . .]
The country’s many Mt. Sinai Hospitals were built not out of clannishness, but because Jewish doctors were unable to hospitalize their patients in most cities. With very few exceptions, no Jews were permitted to teach in colleges and universities. The liberal arts were virtually off limits. Until the 1920s, admissions were based mostly on academic achievement. Jews comprised 20% Harvard undergrads in 1919, 20% of Brown’s, nearly 25% of Penn’s, and 40% of Columbia’s.
[. . .]
Counterintuitively, as the situation grew direr for nearly all of Europe’s Jews, antisemitism in the U.S. increased. Jews placed third, behind Japanese and Germans, in a poll in February 1942 that asked “what nationality, religious or racial groups in this country are a menace to Americans?” By June 1944, they were in first place, with 24% of those surveyed believing they posed a threat to the country.
[. . .]
As desperate German Jews swarmed the American consulates, the State Department placed insuperable obstacles before would-be immigrants. Consuls rigorously enforced a requirement that applicants provide a certificate of good character from the police, not easy to come by for German Jews. The provision that repeatedly barred the path was the stipulation that the émigré not become a “public charge.” This was interpreted with incredible strictness.
[. . .]
The real problem was simply that Jews were not wanted.
[. . .]
When his first telegram about the Holocaust arrived at the State Department in August 1942, officials refused to believe it and declined to pass it along to Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, as Riegner had requested. But Wise received the report from the Foreign Office, because the WJC official had telegraphed the news to London as well.
[. . .]
News of the extermination of Jews never made the front pages. The official confirmation of the killing centers in November 1942 (four months after Riegner had informed the State Department) was relegated to page 10 of the N.Y. Times and page 6 of the Washington Post. No wonder Eisenhower was shocked when saw the camps in Germany: “it was almost unbelievable,” he said.
[. . .]
Obama has repeatedly attacked Netanyahu for criticizing the deal.
More déjà vu. The correspondence of both British and American officials in the ‘40s is filled with references to the Jewish penchant for exaggerating their problems and to their excessive self-pity. “A disproportionate amount of the time of the Office is wasted on these wailing Jews,” a Foreign Office official concluded
[. . .]
Anti semitism has morphed once again. Having shifted from religious to racial grounds, it is now incited against nationality. The Jewish state and its supporters are subject to a pathological hatred. On the grounds that it’s a white, colonialist power oppressing native people of color (never mind that half of Israelis are Middle Easterners driven from places they’d called home for 2,500 years, and that tens of thousands of “Palestinians” arrived in 1920s and ‘30s), the Left has joined Islam in calling for Israel’s annihilation.
[. . .]
The indifference to the threat Iran poses is eerily familiar. “The Jews Were Expendable” is the title of one study of government policy in ‘40s. They still are. But the Roosevelt administration at least recognized the threat that Hitler posed to the U.S., though the Führer was not nearly as interested in attacking us as are the ayatollahs. We will all be paying for the pathway to nuclear citizenship guaranteed Teheran by the current administration.
[Sources for this essay are listed below the text.]

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/america_and_the_holocaust_the_past_as_prologue.html

August 16, 2015
America and the Holocaust: The Past as Prologue
By Jeff Lipkes

Ancient City Of Gath Uncovered In Israel, Home Of Goliath

Prof. Aren Maeir, Director, Ackerman Family Bar-Ilan University Expedition to Gath A recent excavation in Israel has uncovered the historic fortifications and monumental gate of a Biblical-era city called Gath.

[From article]It was the Biblical city where the giant Goliath lived and one of the most powerful in the Philistine empire before it was destroyed in the ninth century BC.
Archaeologists have now uncovered the remains of an enormous gate and fortified wall which are giving clues to just how formidable the city of Gath may have been.
The monumental gate is the largest to ever be found in Israel and much like its most famous inhabitant – Goliath - it would have intimidated any who approached it.
The gate of Gath is referred to in the Hebrew Bible in the story of David's escape from King Saul to Achish, the King of Gath.
[. . .]
Professor Maeir and his colleagues say they have found evidence of the widespread destruction that took place in the city after the siege.
The site has been excavated for nearly 20 years now under the Ackerman Family Bar-Ilan University Expedition.
They have also found evidence of an earthquake which damaged the city in the 8th century BC and may be the disaster mentioned in the Book of Amos in the Hebrew Bible.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3185125/Giant-gates-Goliath-s-home-discovered-Monumental-fortification-belonging-Biblical-city-Philistine-Gath-unearthed.html

Giant gates to Goliath's home discovered: Monumental fortification belonging to the Biblical city of Philistine Gath unearthed
Archaeologists say the gates appear to be the largest ever found in Israel
They have also uncovered formidable fortified walls around the gate
The gates to Gath are mentioned in the Bible as David flees from King Saul
Gath is also reputed to have been the home of the Philistine warrior Goliath
By RICHARD GRAY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 11:47 EST, 4 August 2015 | UPDATED: 03:57 EST, 5 August 2015


* * *




The city of Gath was supposed to be the home of Goliath, who was killed by David, as illustrated in the drawing by Gustave Doré below. Archaeologists have uncovered fortifications either side of of the gate, shown above, which they say would have made it a formidable place to attack.


[From article]
A massive gate unearthed in Israel may have marked the entrance to a biblical city that, at its heyday, was the biggest metropolis in the region.
The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. TheOld Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot.
The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation, Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
"We knew that Philistine Gath in the 10th to ninth century [B.C.] was a large city, perhaps the largest in the land at that time," Maeir told Live Science in an email. "These monumental fortifications stress how large and mighty this city was."
[. . .]
The gates were uncovered in Tell es-Safi, which was occupied almost continuously for nearly 5,000 years, until the Arab village at the site was left in 1948, Maeir said. Though archaeologists have been excavating at the site since 1899, it wasn't until the past few decades that they realized how massive the Iron Age remains really were.
Both the impressive settlement size and mentions in biblical accounts suggest to scholars that the site is the historic city of Gath, which was ruled by the Philistines, who lived next to the Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Most scholars think that Gath was besieged and laid to waste by Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, in 830 B.C., Maeir said.
[. . .]
The mighty fortifications would have formed a rather imposing boundary that prevented the Kingdom of Judah from expanding westward, he added.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/goliath-gates-entrance-to-famous-biblical-metropolis-uncovered/ar-BBlocam

Goliath Gates: Entrance to Famous Biblical Metropolis Uncovered
LiveScience
Tia Ghose
August 4, 2015

Substantial Increase of Anti Jewish Hatred In Europe

[From article]
Europe nearly “exterminated” all of its Jews, and chose instead to import tens of millions of Muslims. As country after country caves and cowers to Islamic supremacist demands, violence and hatred, the Jews, the most despised of people under Islam, are fleeing in droves — and those who stay must hide. Europe will reap what she has sown.
This rampant violence and hate is never covered by the mainstream media. Instead we are subjected to the non-stop fiction of of “islamophobia” and the mythical victimhood narrative employed by Islamic supremacists and their media quislings.
[. . .]
EJC [European Jewish Congress] President Dr. Moshe Kantor discussed the results, saying “many streets in our European cities have become hunting grounds for Jews, and some Jews are now forced to avoid community institutions and synagogues as a result.”
“Some are choosing to leave the continent, many are afraid to walk the streets and even more are retreating behind high walls and barbed wire. This has become the new reality of Jewish life in Europe,” said Kantor.
[. . .]
“The fight must be taken to the attackers instead of allowing it to affect the everyday lives of the victims. We need to move from defense to offense,” said Kantor, calling for harsher measures to defend Jewish lives.
[. . .]
In America, Congress just last month launched its own Bipartisan Taskforce for Combating Anti-Semitism to address rising anti-Semitism in the US.

http://pamelageller.com/2015/04/many-streets-in-european-cities-have-become-hunting-grounds-for-jews.html/

“Many streets in European cities have become hunting grounds for Jews”

ByPamela Geller
on April 15, 2015

Only Black Americans Have a History on Earth, No One Else

Moses, leader of Jewish slaves who lived on planet Alpha Centauri for thousands of years, before they traveled to Earth and the Middle East in 1948, to steal land from Palestinians. 

Alison Samuels says, "African-Americans are the only group of once-enslaved people who continued to live in the area where their ancestors were held in shackles. That creates a unique and tense dynamic for this country that is too often dismissed and misunderstood." Only group of "once-enslaved [black] people" in USA are living as free men and women alongside group of "once-enslaved" white people. Few Jews live in Egypt where they were "once-enslaved," having been killed off or chased away. Jews in Germany were slaves and killed in concentration camps. Jewish civilians live in Germany now. Today in USA black Americans get rewards without suffering any harms. White Americans are punished for doing no wrong. Where is that discussed? She also says, "We live in a world where anyone can say whatever they please to anyone they please on the Internet and it isn’t always warm, friendly, or nice." Online is not quite the wild west. Many periodicals no longer allow comments. Others censor words "that may offend some person." The concept of free speech was a tradition for 1200 years in Ancient Athens with no law or constitutional provisions. The idea was to protect speech that some people hated. Not so in USA any more.

[From article]
African-Americans are the only group of once-enslaved people who continued to live in the area where their ancestors were held in shackles.
That creates a unique and tense dynamic for this country that is too often dismissed and misunderstood.
[. . .]
We live in a world where anyone can say whatever they please to anyone they please on the Internet and it isn’t always warm, friendly, or nice.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/31/piers-morgan-vs-toure-how-the-cnn-host-blew-it.html

FIGHTING WORDS

03.31.12
Piers Morgan Vs. Touré: How the CNN Host Blew It
Alison Samuels
Daily Beast

History Of Anti-Semitism At Wellesley College

[From article]
Postings by Students for Justice in Palestine have invited equations of Zionism with “genocide,” “apartheid,” and “murder.” Jewish students feel under assault, without support from indifferent college administrators or inept Hillel staff.
[. . .]
Like its Big Brothers -- Harvard, Yale, and Princeton -- and other Seven Sister colleges, Wellesley designed its admission policy to cultivate and perpetuate a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite. This challenge became all the more imperative after World War I, when hordes of socially undesirable candidates with academically superior credentials -- in a word, Jews -- threatened to inundate the academic citadels of privilege.
[. . .]
More than sixty years later, a Jewish alumna still remembered the oblivious freshman classmate who had complained to her: “Isn’t it awful how Jews turn up everyplace and how they have horns.”
[. . .]
In May 1934, the German battle cruiser Karlsruhe sailed into Boston harbor flying the swastika.[. . .] Wellesley arranged a reception for the German naval cadets on board and welcomed them to the College for a dance.
[. . .]
a resolution was introduced condemning and repudiating “the history and legacy” of anti-Semitism at Wellesley. But what seemed so self-evident and necessary to a handful of Jewish faculty members quickly became bogged down in a swamp of evasion and avoidance. Would the pattern of discrimination be perceived as institutional, or would it be reduced to the isolated acts of individuals who just happened to be college presidents, trustees, deans, and faculty members? Would discrimination targeting Jews be specifically identified and condemned -– or would anti-Semitism vanish amid vapid declarations of universal tolerance?
[. . .]
Respected Wellesley classics scholar Mary Lefkowitz noticed that Martin taught a Wellesley course containing erroneous assertions, popular among Black nationalist scholars, about the imaginary Afrocentric origins of ancient civilization. When she complained, the (Jewish) Dean of the College politely told her: “He has his view of ancient history, and you have yours,” a display of intellectual relativism that stunned the classical scholar.
[. . .]
a rising leader in the Jewish student community (and future rabbi) wrote pointedly in the college newspaper: “I did not come to Wellesley expecting to learn what it felt like to be hated or demonized because I was Jewish,” while college administrators “stand idly by.”
Wellesley embraced a redefinition of “minority” that excluded Jews.
[. . .]
it remained difficult for Jewish students to realize that when Wellesley made them feel uncomfortable, frightened or confused about being Jewish, that meant something was wrong with Wellesley, not with them.
[. . .]
Stunned by the mendacious public postings by Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish students once again feel battered, without support from indifferent College administrators, passive Jewish faculty, or the now deposed Hillel staff members.
[. . .]
At Wellesley, as on campuses worldwide, malevolent Israel-bashers equate repression with academic freedom.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/antisemitism_at_wellesley.html

December 7, 2014
Anti-Semitism at Wellesley
By Jerold S. Auerbach

Israeli Historical Interest In Land, Brings Demands From Muslims

[From article]
But just how “holy” is the Temple Mount to Muslims historically?  The answer is that its “third holiest” status is more a matter of political calculation and circumstance than an accurate statement of theology.
[. . .]
Thus, Jerusalem is important to Arabs and Islam only in direct proportion to its importance to Christians and Jews.  Were it not for Jewish interest in what is legitimately their holiest site, Muslims would hardly notice the city, as was the case for centuries before and after the Crusades.  That the mostly Christian West elevates this cynical game of power politics to the level of holy status, co-equal or superior to Jewish (and even Christian) concerns, is but another example of the growing tendency toward subservient dhimmi status regarding Islam in the West.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/how_jerusalem_became_islams_third_holiest_city.html

November 26, 2014
How Jerusalem Became Islam's 'Third Holiest City'
By Jonathan F. Keiler

Tributes To Jews

Winston S. Churchill: "Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world."

John F. Kennedy: Israel was not created in order to disappear- Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

David Ben Gurion: "In Israel , in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: "Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth..."

John Adams: "I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations... They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews."

Leo Tolstoy: "What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggest ed that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity."

Eric Hoffer: "The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel , the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world."

Mark Twain: "...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

US College Students Clueless About World War II, The Holocaust

Shameful examples of how ignorant today's college students are about recent history. 

Published on Sep 27, 2013
94 Maidens author, Rhonda Fink-Whitman interviews Pennsylvania public school graduates currently enrolled at four different PA universities to see what they know about the Holocaust, WWII, and Genocide in general. A real eye opener! Below is the link with the contact info for all PA State Senators. Please call or email your senator NOW! URGENT! Tell them HB1424 won't cut it and to please amend it from "may teach" to "shall teach" and send it back to the House! We need the MANDATE! Thank you!
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/l...
Rhonda's book, 94 Maidens, is available at her website:http://www.94maidens.com/
and Amazon in Paperback or Kindle: http://amzn.to/Zgf76v
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/94Maidens
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/94Maidens
Educate yourself, teach others. With love ~ Rhonda

Thoughtful Sermon: "The Mosque Debate"

The Mosque Debate: Lessons on Tolerance and Civility
Given by Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein on September 18, 2010
Central Synagogue, New York, NY

I had thought not to focus on the mosque controversy during
these holidays but we have been radicalized by the substance
and tone of the debate.
Underlying and barely masqueraded by the public vitriol ostensibly
focused on the location and legality of Cordoba House is a poisonous
attack on Muslims themselves.
Since we Jews have suffered from venomous hatred and invidious
allegations against us we speak from the truth of our experiences.
We cannot stand on the sidelines.
Government agencies affirmed that the sponsors and supporters of
Cordoba House, called by some "the Park51 project," have the legal
right to build it. That should be the end of the story, but this story
is not simple.
Opponents of the project call it the Ground Zero Mosque though a
mosque would occupy only a small portion of the intended building and
whether it is at Ground Zero is being debated. Supporters of the Cordoba
House Community Center intend to provide space in the building for both
a downtown mosque to be used by a growing number of Muslims working and
living in the area and to build a community center to further "cultivate
understanding among all religions and cultures."
Both the mission as a mosque and the mission as a community center
have merit.
I trust the intentions of the project's visionary Imam Feisal Abdul
Rauf. He is one of the "moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams on the front line
against the most violent forms of Islam." (1)
As the Jewish Week editorialized "we cannot complain about the dearth
of Muslim moderates if we don't support efforts like his to incorporate
democratic values and human rights into the faith." (2)
By every rigorous measure Imam Feisal Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, both
of whom I know, embody the best of inter-religious relations. At great
personal risk and despite credible death threats they courageously and
passionately spoke out against radical Islam and terrorism after 9/11. They
are consistently part of our multi-faith conversations, commemorations
and projects.
In response to objections about the sources for financing the project,
Imam Feisal said he will clearly identify by name all the financial
backers. I trust him to keep his word. And he says he aims to nourish
"a culture of forging personal bonds across religious traditions." He
has already done this.
Good people can and do disagree on the wisdom of the chosen location for
the Cordoba House project on Park Place, two blocks from the World Trade
Center site. We respect the outrage that the memory of 9/11 will always
evoke for all American citizens. Those of us in New York City who lived
under the cloud of ashes from the collapsed World Trade Center buildings
most personally experience the indefinable sacredness of the place. For
those who were in those buildings and survived and for the families and
loved ones of those who were there and died in those buildings the World
Trade Center site will forever remain a killing field and a graveyard.
We want to be sensitive to their pain.
While some thoughtful supporters urge Imam Feisal and his followers to
"Build on Park Place and build now!" other sensible people counsel the Imam
and his followers "Not there!" or "Not now!"
And as a sidebar, which I mention because it is a concern of significant
discussion within the Jewish community, I join with others in asking Imam
Feisal to do more than condemn Hamas among other groups for their terrorist
attacks. I appeal to him to roundly denounce Hamas for its charter and stated
intention to obliterate Israel. I understand that Imam Feisal's moderate views
put him on a tightrope in the Muslim world - one in which he has been severely
condemned. Nevertheless, I implore him to speak out.
Regarding the proposed Cordoba House, Imam Feisal passionately envisions the
"objective of the project ... as a center for unification and healing."
With legal obstacles removed, he and his colleagues alone, whatever their
differences, can decide whether building at this moment and at that location
supports their stated mission - to build bridges between the Muslim and other
communities. We wish Imam Feisal and his community patience and wisdom as they
move ahead in making the pivotal and delicate decisions they now confront.
Enough said about the mosque itself. What radicalizes us is the odious debate
that has occupied this country of ours ostensibly focused on a mosque but about
so much more.
We in the United States have been deeply affected by the firestorm ignited by
the media attention paid to the sordid rampage by a 50 member church and their
blustering pastor to burn the Koran. For Jews, talk of book burnings is never
inconsequential. Deeply seared into our sensibilities is the terror and the
truth of the words of the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine: "Where books are burned,
human beings are destined to be burned too."
A century after Heine wrote those words the Nazis murderously embodied Heine's
ominous prophesy. On May 10, 1933, university students in Berlin incinerated books
perceived as "un-German." Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda,
praised the students that night with these words: "You do well in this midnight
hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past" and in his mind that
"evil spirit of the past" meant the Jews. Two years later the Nuremberg Laws
rendered Jews stateless. Six years later Jews of Poland were imprisoned in ghettos.
Within a decade of the book burnings, thousands of Jews were being murdered every
hour in the death camps of "The Final Solution."
The specter of book burnings is not inconsequential.
When I returned from Sabbatical I received a deeply troubling letter from a
non-member who attends our services. The writer alleged that "Muslims have destroyed
our security and happiness. Read the Koran," he wrote. "It teaches that we are
nothing but 'infidels' to be destroyed. They came to this country as our guests but
they came to kill the innocent and destroy our city..."
I have read and studied the Koran just as I have read and studied the Hebrew
Bible and the New Testament. Each of them has been used to justify both murderous
campaigns and profound reconciliation. By example, our Torah chronicles God's cruel
demand that the ancient Israelites annihilate all people in the lands they occupied.
Sadly, there are still Jews in Israel who uphold that principle. Our Torah also
commands no less than 36 times that we are to love the stranger as ourselves. (3)
The Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths cannot be defined by their scriptures
alone. We are all fashioned by our histories, accumulated traditions and wisdom over
thousands of years. Yet I know that the logic of scriptural debate would not mitigate
the deeply held prejudice typified by the letter writer I quoted.
In the safety and sanctity of this service we each acknowledge that we are
infected by ugly inclinations and biases which education and enlightened thinking
have done little to eradicate. We struggle with our prejudices. We are rationally
aware of how defective they are. Even so, who among us has been able to expunge our
instincts, purge our biases? I confess - not me.
Given the atmosphere of our nation, it is critical that we honestly acknowledge
our preferences for some and aversion to others by virtue of every kind of
difference. For ourselves we accept the truth of personal prejudice and then vow to
powerfully affirm the Jewish teaching of tolerance as our life's work. And as a
nation, the founders of which had experienced the consequences of, and therefore
repudiated religious hatred, we uphold and reclaim tolerance, underwritten by the
constitutional guarantee of the freedom to practice religion and, yes, even
build a mosque.
We may not like all our fellow citizens. We may be prejudiced against them by
virtue of their cultural garb, public rituals, from where they came, how they look
or what they think. But unless their aim is to deprive us of our rights we will
live beside them and support their rights.
Anti-Muslim agitation is appalling. We Jews have been targeted by disparaging
vilifying stereotypes and have been murdered for them. Nicholas Kristof warns
correctly that making accusatory generalizations about a racial, ethnic or religious
group is "a dangerous game."
We Jews know that. That is why we cannot be silent.
This nation and especially this city reject the hateful propaganda of virulent
anti-Islam bloggers, public figures and politicians who have embraced extreme
anti-Islam hysteria and made it mainstream. They argue that "not all Muslims are
terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim" and then they conclude that terrorism is
the Muslim's fulfillment of the Koran's call for the death of infidels. They
enflame hatred and therefore cultivate the equation of Islam with murder, and all
Muslims with terrorists to be feared. That correlation is false and malicious.
The editor of the American Muslim sadly, but correctly, commented that "the
plan for the Cordoba House did not cause this anti-Muslim firestorm, it simply
brought the smoldering embers out into the open, and allowed a few individuals
to fan the flames." (4)
Present conditions in this country are confounding. Martin Peretz and Nicholas
Kristof from opposite sides of this issue concur that "Muslims haven't said
enough about those Muslims who kill their co-religionists..." and we urge our
moderate Muslim neighbors to say and do more.
We abhor extremists who politicize Islam with deep antagonism towards
non-Muslims and hostility towards the West. We desperately worry about and
condemn the repugnant murderous terrorism of those Muslim radicals who would
kill us. All the more so we embrace tolerance for Islam and its peaceable
adherents along with all peoples and their faiths. We earnestly trust with
deep affection the Muslims we know. They are our neighbors. They represent their
communities with dignity and wisdom and love of this country.
We have been radicalized by the vilification of Muslims. We have also been
radicalized by the vitriol of the debate about Cordoba House.
The sage Israel Salanter urged respect for opposition. In his words: "Be vigilant
in protecting the honor of all people, especially those with whom you disagree."
The debate about the mosque spiraled downward into the nadir of calumny, slander
and denigration. Politicians mounted a platform built upon personal attacks and
defamation exploiting powerful emotions of our post-9/11 nation.
Civility in public discourse was and continues to be the victim.
Some people who denounced the Florida pastor's malevolence were apparently
unreflective about their own roles in fanning the flames that led to his idea of
a Koran-burning pyre. Injudiciously, too many of us followed suit on both sides
of the debate.
The absolute madness on one side is typified by the outrageous claim by an
Evangelical Christian leader that "true Islam cannot be practiced here in this
country because you cannot beat your wife. You cannot do honor killing if you
think your daughter has misbehaved."
Really! True Islam cannot be practiced in this country for these reasons?
So by that logic, I presume, true Judaism cannot be practiced in this country
since we can't stone a rebellious son as demanded in the Torah. (5)
The hyperbole on the other side is portrayed by a letter I was asked to sign.
A group that had the most honorable of intentions wanted to change the spirit of
the discussion around the mosque in order to focus on larger more important
issues. The text of their letter read: "for political figures to tell citizens
where, when, or how they should pray is a sin and transgression of the
worst order."
Really? A sin and transgression of the worst order? What about genocide or
attacking mosques across the country or the slashing of a NYC cab driver
because he was Muslim? These are sins of the highest order, not political
polemic, as hateful as it may be.
The diatribes on both sides dishonor us. Democracy requires a thick skin.
Political differences are within the fabric of this country. Civility needs to
adorn both democracy and political differences, especially in the halls
of government.
Within Jewish communal life the venom flows as well. The Jewish Week won't
publish half of the letters and comments it receives from readers because of
their "ugly tenor." The Jewish Week's editor and publisher, Gary Rosenblatt,
wrote "while communal diversity is a point of pride, the sad reality is that
our community is ever more divided...and now is as bitterly polarized as he has
seen...since [he] began editing the Jewish Week" seventeen years ago. (6)
2000 years ago the students of Hillel and the students of Shammai vehemently,
and probably disgustedly, disagreed with each other. The Talmud records more
than 300 of their disputes. In one three-year long hotly debated case the school
of Shammai finally exasperated that the decisions consistently followed the
opinions of the opposing school of Hillel challenged the Bat Kol, the Divine
Voice, and protested "Why are the rulings always according to Beit Hillel?" The
voice from heaven answered "Because the students of Beit Hillel are kind and
humble, and because they study arguments on both sides and even mention your
opinion before their own." (7)
This Yom Kippur day compels us to difficult honest reflection. We take account
of our arrogance, our silence our prejudice, naming our biases for ourselves
even though we can't speak them out loud to others.
We have been witnesses to the decay of decency and civility in our nation
and community.
We have abided horrific attacks on Muslims and vile defamation of their
community and faith.
We have been radicalized by this Mosque debate.
We detest blatant hatred of those who are still treated as strangers in our
midst and condemn venomous stridency in public and private debate.
We loathe corrosive innuendos and lies and denounce odious public statements.
We renounce it all by powerfully reclaiming tolerance as a national vision,
as a Jewish virtue and personally as the effective restraint to the urges of
our personal prejudice.
We will contribute to the reestablishment of civility in this city from our
prophetic calling "to be a light to the nations" by which all the families of
the world will be blessed.
Towards that end we will be educating ourselves about Islam and the Muslim
community, opportunities about which you will hear in the near future.
We recommit to a challenge I set before us a year after the World Trade Center
tragedy - that we will continue to cultivate and purposefully pursue
relationships with moderate, peace-seeking Muslims like many in our own
neighborhood including the wonderful imam and leadership of the mosque on
55th street, half a block away. And when we sit across the table in discussion,
Muslims and Jews need to acknowledge our differences and all the more believe
that with decent intentions we can link arms with good people of all faiths as
we together pursue peace.
Only then will we salvage decency and kindness for ourselves and all people
of our nation. Only then will we restore the sanity of tolerance and be better
for it.
For that may we be strong. May God help us and bless us in this imperative,
essential and oh so compelling venture. Amen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 William Dalrymple "The Muslims in the Middle" NY Times August 16, 2010
2 "A Mosque Near Ground Zero" The Jewish Week, July 27, 2010
3 Baba Mezia 59b
4 Sheila Musaji, "Cordoba House- Yes!: Park51- No Way?" The American Muslim, 9/11/10
5 Deuteronomy 21:18-21
6 Gary Rosenblatt, "When the Dialogue Deteriorates", The Jewish Week August 25, 2010
7 Eruvin 13b

What is a Jew?

[From article]
"JEWS were expelled from what is now Israel in roughly the sixth century BC and again in the second century AD.
[. . .]
Both studies also find that Jews have a strong genetic link to modern Palestinians, Druze and Bedouins,

[. . .]
The question is whether the children of intermarried couples who identify themselves as Jewish are actually Jewish. Genetics might say no, but tradition and Jewish law would (in most cases) say yes.

[. . .]

To the religious, Judaism is defined by customs and beliefs. To the secular, Jews are members of an ethnic “tribe,” a tribe that knows from good bagels."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/genetic_testing_raises_people_religion_JfhLi1jF4WntIkfx46Mi6J

Genetic testing raises an age-old question — are the Jews a people, or a religion?

By MAYRAV SAAR

New York Post

Last Updated: 5:15 AM, June 13, 2010

Posted: 12:15 AM, June 13, 2010

New Anti Semitism


http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_jewish_resistance.html

December 25, 2009
The Jewish Resistance
Carol Brown
American Thinker

British Paper Says Ahmadinejad has Jewish Past


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6256173/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-revealed-to-have-Jewish-past.html

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vitriolic attacks on the Jewish world hide an astonishing secret, evidence uncovered by The Daily Telegraph shows.
Telegraph (UK)
By Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat
Published: 7:30AM BST 03 Oct 2009