RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/German-Museum-director-sparking-BDS-controversy-resigns-after-condemnations-fly-592564

The director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Peter Schäfer, announced his resignation on Friday “to avoid further damage” a week after The Jerusalem Post first reported that the institution endorsed the BDS campaign on the museum’s Twitter feed.

The pressure for Schäfer’s removal rose over the past week, and experts in the field of antisemitism told the Post that they implored German Culture Minister Monika Grütters, who oversees the board of the museum foundation, to take action against Schäfer and the antisemitism scandals at the museum.

“All those responsible must help ensure that the Jewish Museum Berlin can again concentrate on its important work in terms of content,” Grütters said on Friday. Schäfer’s deputy, Martin Michaelis, will assume responsibility for running the museum until a successor can be hired.

B’nai B’rith International president Charles O. Kaufman, who sent a letter last week to Schäfer about the museum’s anti-Israel direction, told the Post on Friday: “What’s crucial now is for the museum to identify leadership that commits to professionalism and the truth of sharing the long and rich Jewish life of Germany. This museum must earn the name Jewish Museum and, in doing so, earn the trust of the country, Europe and all visitors from around the world. It must not immerse itself in politicizing history, stooping to propaganda and, worse, revisionism.”

British journalist Tom Gross was invited to tour the museum by Schäfer’s office last year and expressed his dismay afterwards at some of the anti-Israel political aspects he saw.

“The important thing now, since the museum is currently replacing its permanent exhibit, due to reopen next year, is to make sure Schäfer’s replacement is someone who is more interested in remembering the enormous contributions of Berlin’s Jews to German and world history, and in accurately explaining the sheer sadistic horrors of the Holocaust, rather than engage in anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, extreme left-wing posturing,” Gross told the Post.

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”
https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach an article from today’s Haaretz exploring the increasing way the neo-Nazi right and the extreme “progressive” (and all too often anti-Semitic) left are mimicking each other’s phrases and slogans.

After that, I attach articles from The Jerusalem Post and The New York Times, about the enforced resignation of Peter Schäfer, the director of Berlin’s Jewish museum, on Friday.

This followed widespread criticism of the increasing politicization of the museum (including my quote to the Jerusalem Post last Monday and the fact that the museum had coddled up to the Islamic regime of Iran and promoted Europeans who support the destruction of Israel).

I attach a new front-page story from yesterday’s Jerusalem Post, which included this follow-up quote by myself:

British journalist Tom Gross, who was invited to tour the museum by Schäfer’s office last year and expressed his dismay afterwards to the director’s office at some of the anti-Israel political aspects he saw, told the Jerusalem Post:

“The important thing now, since the museum is currently replacing its permanent exhibit, due to reopen next year, is to make sure Schäfer’s replacement is someone who is more interested in remembering the enormous contributions of Berlin’s Jews to German and world history, and in accurately explaining the sheer sadistic horrors of the Holocaust, rather than engaging in anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, extreme left-wing posturing.”

“Enough is enough,” said Dr. Josef Schuster, president of the nearly 100,000-member Central Council of Jews in Germany. “[Under Schäfer] the Berlin Jewish Museum seems to be completely out of control. Under these circumstances, one has to think about whether the term ‘Jewish’ is still appropriate.”

Tom Gross adds: Because of the Holocaust, and because it was opened to great international fanfare in 2001 using the designs of award-winning architect Daniel Libeskind, the Berlin Jewish museum is in some ways the most significant Jewish museum in the world.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14381/iran-diplomatic-gesticulations

That leaves the remaining members of the P5+1 with a clear choice: either pronounce the Obama [Iran] “deal” dead and seek a framework for new talks on how to solve the perennial “Iran problem” which, paradoxically, all say they are concerned about, or to unite to neutralize the United States and help Iran carry on as usual.

The present impasse may be breached in two ways.

The first is for actual or wannabe mediators to side with the US and tell the mullahs that they cannot have their cake and eat it. Once the mullahs have understood that putative “mediators” could direct their efforts at finding ways of organizing a retreat that avoids utter humiliation for the Khomeinist regime. That should not be difficult as all the remaining P5+1 nations, including Russia, share Washington’s concerns about Tehran’s “exporting revolution” and developing long-range missiles capable of carrying yet non-existent nuclear warheads.

The second way to breach the impasse is to admit that the Obama “deal” is a dead horse that will not come back to life no matter how one kicks it.

What do politicians do when they cannot do anything but are obliged to pretend that they are doing something?

One answer provided by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, is simple: you organize a meeting.

The meeting that Lavrov is setting up, later this month in Moscow, will bring together junior diplomats from Iran plus Britain, China, France and Germany, that is to say the countries (aside from the US) that formed the notorious P5+1 group created by Barack Obama to give a veneer of legal respectability to the so-called “nuke deal” he concocted with the Iranian mullahs.

For all intents and purposes the “deal’ died when the Trump administration in Washington decided to simply ditch it. Lacking an enforceable legal status, the “deal” always depended on the willingness of the participants to implement it. With Americans walking away from it, there is no way the other nations still apparently in the game could put it on a life-support machine.

Backing down after days of huge street protests, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said on Saturday that she would indefinitely suspend a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China.

It was a remarkable reversal for Mrs. Lam, the leader installed by Beijing in 2017, who had vowed to ensure the bill’s approval and tried to get it passed on an unusually short timetable, even as hundreds of thousands demonstrated against it this week. But she made it clear that the bill was being delayed, not withdrawn outright, as protesters have demanded.