They tried to burn Jews alive. Again.

My Israel National News column posted on October 1, 2021.

I wouldn’t have imagined that 76 years after the Holocaust ended, I would be writing these words but here we go again. Last week, anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive. And the world looked away.

Joseph's Tomb (Flash 90)

Several hundred Jewish worshippers were on their way to hold peaceful, legal religious services on the holiday of Sukkot, at the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph, located in the city of Shechem. The city, better known by its Roman name, Nablus, had a sizeable Jewish community until Palestinian Arab rioters drove them out in the 1930s. Today’s generation of Palestinian Arab terrorists ambushed last week’s worshippers. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the city, did nothing to intervene.

The attackers hurled “homemade explosives”—that is, Molotov cocktails—at the buses of worshippers, hoping to set them on fire. If not for the heroic actions of Israeli soldiers, the buses would have turned into rolling infernos, and hundreds of Jews would have been burned alive. That was the terrorists’ intention. Yet the world looked away.

You know what the international response would have been if the victims had thrown those firebombs right back at their attackers.

I checked the major newspapers and news websites in the days following the attack. Aside from the Israeli and Jewish media, I could not find a word about it. World leaders were not interested. “Human rights” organizations were busy elsewhere. The major news media outlets shut their eyes. They all looked away.

The moral outrage of an attempted massacre of Jews should have been sufficient to rouse the international community. But let’s put the moral considerations aside for a moment and just consider the legal implications.

The protection of Jewish worshippers is enshrined in the Oslo II agreement. The Palestinian Authority signed it. The PA has an obligation to abide by its terms. Israel fulfilled its side of the Oslo accords, by withdrawing from 40% of Judea-Samaria and allowing the PA to set up a de-facto state in that area. In return, the PA is required to fulfill its side of the deal, including the provisions applying to protection of Jewish worshippers.

You can find the relevant obligation in Annex I, Article V, Section 2, paragraph (b), under “Jewish Holy Sites.” It concerns Jewish religious sites that are located in PA-governed territory. And Appendix IV specifically lists “Joseph's Tomb (Nablus)” as one of those sites.

The agreement states that “the protection of these sites, as well as of persons visiting them, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian Police.” The PA must “ensure free, unimpeded and secure access” to the site, and “ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder and to respond to any incident.”

Since the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world, it would not have had any trouble preventing would-be murderers from attacking Jews at the site. That is, if the PA wanted to prevent them. But it doesn’t. In fact, the PA, through its anti-Jewish incitement in its mosques, media and schools, encourages Palestinian Arabs to aspire to kill Jews. Hence last week’s attempt to burn Jews alive.

You know what the international response would have been if the victims had thrown those firebombs right back at their attackers. The United Nations Security Council would have met in emergency session. The Biden administration would have expressed “grave concern at this escalation” and shouted louder for a “two-state solution.” Newspapers around the world would have reported “settlers attacking Palestinians.”

But there was no way to blame the Jews. So, the world looked away.

“They Looked Away” happens to be the title of a searing 2001 documentary by the historian-filmmaker Stuart Erdheim. Narrated by Mike Wallace, it chronicles how the Allies knew what was happening in Auschwitz yet refused to bomb the railway tracks that led into the camp, or the gas chambers and crematoria.

I am not comparing last week’s assault to the Holocaust. I am merely pointing out how once again, the world is indifferent when Jews are under attack. How long will it be before another filmmaker records how world leaders, in our own generation, looked away as anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive?

 

This column may be viewed on line here.

Stephen M. Flatow, October 01, 2021

 

From Jeff Jacoby - 'Victims' who persecute

Jeff Jacoby's latest column deals with recurring anti-Semitism, or as it may more properly called, Jew-hatred.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY always falls during the week that follows Passover. At first glance, the two would seem to have little in common -- one memorializes the millions of European Jews annihilated by Nazi Germany; the other commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt.


Yet for all their obvious differences, a fundamental similarity links these two crucial chapters in Jewish history. Both were attempts at genocide, and in both cases the perpetrators justified their savageries by claiming that they were the real victims, threatened by the people they intended to wipe out.

Will Jew-hatred ever go away?  I don't think so because the world's weaklings need someone to blame for their weakness.

Read the full column here.

PLO official: Palestine should be free of Jews. So what's the surprise?

YNET is reporting on comments made by the PLO ambassador to the US that Palestine must be free of Jews.  The people need "separation" he says.  And they gripe about apartheid?

I have seen Palestinian Arabs interact with Jews on many levels.  (I'm talking about the average Palestinian in the street, before you think otherwise.)  And the interactions are good.

Elliott Abrams, a former US National Security Council official, said in response that according to such plans, Palestine will be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews.

Before we get worked up, remember, the PLO is headed by, in the words of Yitzhak Rabin, a terrorist, Abu Mazen, who also moonlights as a Holocaust denier.

We should expect nothing less from people trying to have their own state, should we?  Sad, very sad.

Read the full post from YNET.

stephen flatow alisa israel

Lincoln University harboring anti-Semite?

Lincoln University is the “first degree granting historically black university” located in southeastern Pennsylvania. It also harbors a radical anti-Semite on its faculty, Pakistani-born Kaukab Siddique.

Why do I think he’s an anti-Semite? Watch this video.




Siddique and his anti-Israel, Holocaust denying is the subject of an op-ed by Richard L. Cravatts, PhD. in the Jewish Press. He asks, "should academic free speech accommodate Holocaust denial?"

If you scratch a Holocaust denier long enough, you may reveal an anti-Semite, but not always. You will, however, probably find someone like the morally repellant Kaukab Siddique, a Pakistani-born tenured associate professor of English and journalism at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, who seemingly puts great faith in conspiratorial dramas in which a crafty and all-powerful enemy (i.e., Jews) weaves oft-repeated claims about the Holocaust just to elicit the world's sympathy and promote Zionism and the creation of Israel.

Siddique has been embroiled in an intellectual firestorm ever since his paroxysms of hatred toward Israel were exposed in a video taken during his appearance at a Labor Day rally in Washington and posted by The Investigative Project and reported on by the Christian Broadcasting Network. Siddique was filmed crying out to the crowd: "I say to the Muslims, 'Dear brothers and sisters, unite and rise up against this hydra-headed monster which calls itself Zionism...we must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel, if possible [apparently not necessarily] by peaceful means."

It seems that Lincoln University will take no action because the above language was uttered at a non-university event. So what?

Imagine for a moment that a tenured professor at Lincoln was discovered to be a white nationalist, with his postings sprinkled on the pages of a hatesite such as Stormfront.org in which he railed, as visitors to that odious site do, against the dangers of non-whites to white culture, the harm non-whites do to society through criminality, high birthrates, and low morals, and the overall superiority of the white race to other groups.

Ask yourself, would that professor long survive at Lincoln University? I don't think so. But Lincoln University is not going to take action in the case of Siddique.


Therefore, I think it right that we complain to the Lincoln University administration about its refusal to address adquately Siddique's remarks and his continued presence on campus.

Read the full Op-ed.


That's what I think.

Honduras and Jew Hatred

During the age of Spanish exploration of the western hemisphere many Jews from western Europe turned to South America as a haven from persecution. The oldest organized Jewish community in the United States was founded by Jews from Brazil and their synagogue and community programs still function almost 400 years later.

However, all is not well in Central and South America.

Argentina has gone through a wave of Jew hating attacks as it sought to place blame for its economic woes on a particular aspect of its population. The 1990s bombing of the community center was not properly investigated for many years.

Today, a new center of Jew hatred appears to be rising in Venezuela under the government of Hugo Chavez who has bought into the wackiness of Iran's Ahmadinejad regarding the Holocaust. Chavez, never content to just deal within his borders, is busy trying to export his particular brand of government to neighboring countries. Honduras being one of them.

As commented upon in today's Wall Street Journal by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the ouster of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has led to much talk. But she writes,

"The Honduras debate is not really about Honduras. It is about whether it is possible to stop the spread of chavismo and all it implies, including nuclear proliferation and terrorism in Latin America."

She continues,

"Most troubling is the unflinching support for Mr. Zelaya from President Barack Obama and Democratic Sen. John Kerry—despite the Law Library of Congress review that shows that Mr. Zelaya's removal from office was legal, and the clear evidence that he is Mr. Chávez's man in Tegucigalpa. On Thursday, Mr. Kerry took the unprecedented step of trying to block a fact-finding mission to Honduras by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who is resisting Mr. Obama's efforts to restore Mr. Zelaya to power."

Are Jews in physical danger? Not yet, but the canary is going into the mine, it seems.

Read the full article Revolutionary Anti-Semitism.

Stephen M. Flatow

Israel is not 60+ years old

Much is made over the State of Israel being a relatively new country--created by a remorseful world out of guilt for the loss of 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II. Despite this belief, as recently stated by President Obama, it's wrong. While the Holocaust might have been the catalyst that drove the United Nations to at long last give life to British intentions as to the Jews return to the land as expressed in the Balfour Declaration, the underpinnings of modern Israel are far older than that.

US Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey took to the floor of the Senate to speak about Israel on June 16, 2009. His speech followed the attack at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

This tragedy reminds us of the need of sound understanding of one of the darkest episodes in the history of the world. Far too many misrepresent the significance of the Holocaust, especially in regard to the State of Israel and her people. And far too many people deny it happened altogether, out of bigotry, hatred, and spite.

In the face of so much misunderstanding, I am compelled today to speak up about the role of the Holocaust in Israel's history and Israel's challenges in preventing anti-Semitic murder from continuing to happen.

Menendez clearly understands--"While the Shoah has a central role in Israel's identity, it is not the reason behind its founding and it is not the main justification for its existence."

To those who believe that Jews fell out of the sky into the midst of, as one commenter said in response to a recent post, "Indian country," the history outlined in Menendez's remarks may come as a surprise. I do not expect that anti-Semites will accept his comments as true, but there is not too much I or anyone else can do about them. Fair minded people, on the other hand, may come away with a new understanding and a new view.

Here is the speech from the Congressional Record. The index entry is [Congressional Record: June 16, 2009 (Senate)][Page S6613-S6614]From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov][DOCID:cr16jn09-91].

FDR and the Jews - the myths

I can't say that my elders would specifically tell me that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a good friend of the Jews. However, I did not meet a Jewish Republican until I was 14 or 15 years old. It was one of our neighbors who had a successful business, and his admission, I think, shocked everyone who heard it.

I do know that my father worshipped Eleanor Roosevelt but I never had a chance to ask him if it was because of FDR or her human rights record after World War II.

Personal experiences aside, there has been, among Jews, a long time fascination with FDR and his alleged support for Jewish causes.

For several years, FDR's record on the Jews has been under attack. Questions about his regard or disregard of German refugees and his failure to order the bombing of concentration camps or the rail lines leading to them have not been met with great answers.

A new book, "Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald 1933-1945," edited by Richard Breitman, Severin Hochberg, and Barbara McDonald Stewart, published this week by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Indiana University Press "claims to “reveal” FDR’s interest in settling large numbers of Jewish refugees in Africa or Latin America in the 1930s."

Well, the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies looked at the book and in an article on its website, “New Evidence” on FDR’s Response To The Holocaust? Not New, Not Evidence debunks much of what the book claims to show--that FDR was concerned about the plight of Jewish refugees.

I think it's worthwhile to spend a few minutes reading the Wyman report on the book. Here are some abstracts from NOT NEW, NOT EVIDENCE:

What Breitman/Hochberg Claim:

“we have found some fundamentally new information about the president’s views and policies before and during the Holocaust...”

What the Historical Record Shows:

The “resettlement initiatives” cited by Breitman/Hochberg were actually revealed in other books many years ago. They are not “new evidence.” As the analysis below demonstrates, they were discussed in detail in HenryFeingold’s The Politics of Rescue (1970), David Wyman’s Paper Walls (1968), Haim Genizi’s American Apathy (1983), and in Prof. Breitman’s own 1987 book, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry (coauthored by Alan Kraut), as well as other books.

Not only are the Breitman/Hochberg claims not new, they also do not demonstrate FDR’s sincere interest in helping the Jews. Rather, they simply reiterate the well-known fact that Roosevelt harbored grandiose visions about the refugee problem that were not rooted in reality, and which he made no serious effort to implement.