RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sadly, university students, unions, and those in show business who believe they are lending their energy in support of the Palestinian people might take a moment to understand that they are supporting politicians — both from the Palestinian territories and from terrorist sponsors — who are, in fact, using the Palestinian people as pawns in a game of chess where oil, money and power are the rewards.

Rather than promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), well-meaning idealists might consider how best to assist the Palestinians, whose own leaders siphon off aid money they receive from other countries. Students might consider how to establish industries to improve the Palestinian job market, instead of boycotting Israeli companies that employ thousands of Palestinians. They might make an effort to understand the real situation and work towards promoting a lasting peace, instead of misguidedly worsening the plight of Palestinians.

Peace requires empathy; the BDS movement, with its secret aim of destroying a free and democratic nation, promotes nothing but resentment, division and hate.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is busy promoting anti-Semitism, with universities leading the charge.

Sadly, university students, unions, and those in show business who believe they are lending their energy in support of the Palestinian people might take a moment to understand that they are supporting politicians — both from the Palestinian territories and from terrorist sponsors — who are, in fact, using the Palestinian people as pawns in a game of chess where oil, money and power are the rewards.

Yes, you feel the pain of the Palestinians; yes, you understand their plight. But you also have seen how students can be used by political agencies. During the late 1970s, when the Shah of Iran ruled, like any dictator, he protected his own power at all costs. Freedom of expression and debate was nonexistent, causing intellectuals and university students to revolt, shouting “long live freedom.” University students are young and idealistic; they support the perceived underdogs, wherever they believe them to be.

The regime that replaced the Shah, however, was even more repressive. Every aspect of the life of every Iranian was controlled and decided by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranians were betrayed and used. Many innocent people had lent their voices to a group that had no respect for them, but regardless used their voices to advance their own political agenda.

In Iran, students protested the Shah in the name of freedom and inadvertently helped bring Ayatollah Khomeini to power. When Khomeini imposed the hijab on all women, even Christians, Jews and others had to wear it. He controlled every aspect of every life. It was only later that so many Iranians realized they had been used, and after the fraudulent elections of 2009, gave their lives, either by imprisonment or death, trying to protest the regime they had brought into being.

While Palestinian politicians are trying to win the public relations battle, the Palestinians are the ones continually suffering.

A close friend, David Isaac, is calling for funds to finish his documentary film series on Zionism. He’s started a crowdfunding campaign toward that goal.

I’ve seen the films he’s produced. He’s doing a magnificent job and they are top-notch. He’s made 37 films so far and needs to finish just 10 more to complete the project. The films are designed to be watched online and used in schools. He’s already partnered with an organization that operates an online course in over 25 Jewish Day Schools. They’ve made use of his films for the past two years and have expressed great satisfaction with the results. So the film series is making an impact.

You can reach his campaign page at this link:

http://jewcer.com/project/zionism-101-the-documentary-series

According to the United Nations, the most evil country in the world today is Israel.

On March 24, 2016, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) wrapped up its annual meeting in New York by condemning only one country for violating women’s rights anywhere on the planet – Israel, for violating the rights of Palestinian women.

On the same day, the UN Human Rights Council concluded its month-long session in Geneva by condemning Israel five times more than any other of the 192 UN member states.

There were five Council resolutions on Israel. One each on the likes of hellish Syria, North Korea and Iran. Libya got an offer of “technical assistance.” And countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and China were among the 95% of states that were never mentioned.

No slander is deemed too vile for the UN rights bodies that routinely listen to highly orchestrated Palestinian versions of the ancient blood libel against the Jews.

In Geneva, Palestinian representative Ibrahim Khraishi told the Council on March 24, 2016: “Israeli soldiers and settlers kill Palestinian children. They shoot them dead. They will leave them to bleed to death.” And in New York, Palestinian representative Haifa Al-Agha told CSW on March 16, 2016: “Israel…is directing its military machinery against women and girls. They are killing them, injuring them, and leaving them bleeding to death.”

This is from the New York Times- the paper of dreckord on Israel….rsk

Anti-Semitism is no doubt a problem on many college campuses. And the boycott Israel movement — which has inspired these arguments — is tainted with it. I have long been a vocal B.D.S. opponent at CUNY and helped to found a national organization of academics to fight it, and I’ve experienced the nastiness firsthand. Still, as obnoxious as some of its followers can be, the boycott movement on campus is thriving not because of, but in spite of, the anti-Semitism of some of its adherents.

Indeed, it is filled with young Jews. The pro-boycott group Jewish Voice for Peace is perhaps the fastest-growing Jewish organization on campuses nationwide. And many liberal Zionists share the movement’s complaints about the brutality and self-defeating nature of Israel’s nearly 50-year occupation, even if they believe B.D.S. language and tactics to be counterproductive to the goal of a peaceful, two-state solution — to say nothing of the movement’s contravention of principles of free expression.

This is what happened to CUNY, with that surprise session initiated by Republicans in the State Senate. As was the case with the California regents, a single Jewish organization was behind the anti-CUNY campaign. In California, it was the Amcha Initiative, one of whose founders was quoted in this newspaper over the weekend explaining that “B.D.S. is in virtually all of its aspects anti-Semitic.” With CUNY, it was the far-right Zionist Organization of America making the same argument. These accusations of anti-Semitism were then magnified by conservative columnists and repeated by the Republican state senators.

But contrary to what the state senators claimed, CUNY administrators did not ignore the accusations. They hired two former federal prosecutors to examine the complaints of anti-Semitism and “recommend appropriate action.” CUNY has also established a working group to go over its policies relating to the boundaries of acceptable speech. Abraham Foxman, the former director of the Anti-Defamation League and an alumnus of CUNY, has praised the university’s handling of these isolated incidents. And, to borrow a phrase, when it comes to anti-Semitism, if Abe Foxman is not worried, I’m not worried.

When GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s March 11th rally at the University of Chicago Pavilion was shut down last week by hundreds of leftist protestors, comprised of activists from Moveon.org, Black Lives Matter, Muslim groups, and even unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, the morally indignant protestors had one purpose: to disrupt the event, prevent Trump supporters from hearing the candidate’s speech, and, most importantly, suppress Trump’s ideas and beliefs.

Having already decided the Mr. Trump was a veritable racist, Islamophobe, and neo-Nazi, the mob of rioters—inside and outside of the venue—took it upon themselves to decide that Trump, and those who share his vision and ideas, do not even have the right to express their opinions, that their views have been deemed unacceptable by the self-appointed moral arbiters of our day.

The disturbing campaign to suppress speech which is purportedly hurtful, unpleasant, or morally-distasteful—a sample of which campaign was evident at the Chicago rally—is, for anyone following what is happening on campuses, a troubling and recurrent pattern of behavior by some of the same ideologues who shut down Trump: “progressive” leftists and “social justice” advocates from Muslim-led pro-Palestinian groups. Coalescing around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, this unholy alliance has been formed in a libelous and vituperative campaign to demonize Israel, attack pro-Israel individuals, and to promote a relentless campaign against Israel in the form of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

As the ideological assault against Israel and Jews intensified on university campuses, and pro-Israel individuals began answering back to their ideological opponents, the student groups leading the pro-Palestinian charge (including such groups as the radical Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)) decided that their tactic of unrelenting demonization of Israel was insufficient, and the best way to optimize the propaganda effect of their anti-Israel message was also to suppress or obscure opposing views.

The movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel (BDS), which singles out the Jewish State among all nations to delegitimize and isolate, continues to gather steam.

The American Anthropological Association will vote on a BDS resolution in April. The University of South Florida, Northwestern and Vassar voted to boycott Israel, and a divestment campaign is underway at Columbia. This spring, Israel Apartheid Week, a BDS hate fest, is being held at college campuses around the U.S.

Seeing left-wing universities embrace the anti-Semitic movement is disappointing but not entirely surprising. But why does the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a premier philanthropy based in Manhattan, finance non-governmental organizations intent on annihilating the Jewish state?

BDS demands “the end of Israel’s occupation and colonialization” of all Arab lands, dismantling the security wall that protects Israelis from Palestinian terror and the right of return to Israel of several million descendants of original Arab refugees. In the words of Palestinian BDS leader Omar Barghouti, “A return for refugees would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

In 1940, the five sons of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. founded the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as “a private, family foundation helping to advance social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.”

The liberal media and academic elite deride “Creationists”–those who deny the theory of evolution and believe that the world and all its creatures were created in six calendar days. However, they encourage Mideast “creationism”–namely, a belief that the Arab/Israel conflict occurred as the result of six calendar days in 1967 when a land grab by Israel established an unjust occupation of ancient Arab lands.

The combined attacks on Israel of five Arab states in 1948 are dismissed as ancient history. The Ottoman rule of Palestine, the geography of the Middle East, its divisions following World War 1 and the role of David Lloyd George and the Palestine Mandate are as irrelevant to these ignoramuses as the Peloponnesian wars.

Here are facts from the late Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial:

“In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880’s, Palestine was laid waste. Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation… Under the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy of defoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil.”

In a “Report of the Commerce of Jerusalem During the Year 1863,” it says the population of the City of Jerusalem is computed at 15,000, of whom about 4,500 are Moslem, 8,000 Jews, and the rest Christians of various denominations.

And here is Mark Twain’s description of the Galilee in Innocents Abroad.

“… these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms…. We reached Tabor safely….We never saw a human being on the whole route.”

This was the state of the land under the Ottomans until its conquest by the British in World War 1 under the leadership of then Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

Schooled as a devout evangelical, Lloyd George was familiar with Jewish history. Indeed in a speech to the Jewish historical society in 1925 he said:

“I was brought up in a school where I was taught far more history of the Jews than about my own land. I could tell you all the kings of Israel. But I doubt if I could have named half a dozen of the Kings of England, and not more of the Kings of Wales….We were thoroughly imbued with the history of your race in the days of its greatest glory.”

At the turn of the century Lloyd George met Theodore Herzl in Manchester, home to a growing Zionist movement. Initially impressed by the British Colonial Office’s offer of a Jewish colony in Uganda, Lloyd George was persuaded by Chaim Weizmann’s argument that Palestine was the only viable home for a reborn Jewish Nation.