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Ghetto: The Shared History of a Word The Jewish ghetto haunts sociologist Mitchell Duneier’s new history of the American one By Adam Kirsch

Posted By on April 15th, 2016

Today most Americans would be surprised to learn that the original ghettos were inhabited by Jews.
That is the experience Mitchell Duneier relates in his new bookGhetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, when it comes to teaching his own students at Princeton about the history of the ghetto. For the last 70 years, Duneier shows, the word “ghetto” has for Americans become exclusively associated with poor black neighborhoods, especially in big cities like New York and Chicago. Few people know that, for centuries before America even existed, Jews in many European cities were legally confined to walled neighborhoods known as ghettos. (“Ghetto” is the Italian word for “foundry”; the first Jewish enclave in Venice was located on the same island as a foundry, and the word came to refer to the neighborhood by extension.)

When it comes to understanding the black American ghetto, can we learn anything from the history of the European Jewish ghetto? It is a tricky question, which Duneier addresses carefully, since it seems to invite comparisons about who was more victimized and more resilient. Yet as he tells the story of the evolution of American thinking about the black ghetto—primarily through the lens of successive generations of academic sociologists, from Gunnar Myrdal to William Julius Wilson—the Jewish ghetto refuses to disappear. It haunts the subject like a ghost, raising questions that continue to define the way sociologists think about ghettos today.

Matters are complicated by the fact that, during the Holocaust, the word “ghetto” took on a very different freight than the one it had traditionally carried. Ghettos like the ones in Venice or Frankfurt were poor, isolated neighborhoods subject to discrimination and surveillance; but they were places where Jews lived and where their culture and civilization sometimes thrived. These ghettos had almost all disappeared by the 20th century, as European countries abolished official discrimination against Jews. It was the Nazis who brought the word back into common use when they created their own Jewish ghettos in occupied cities like Warsaw and Vilna. But the Nazi ghettos were not places for Jews to live; they were places for Jews to die of starvation and disease, or to await death in the gas chambers. The Warsaw Ghetto, in other words, had little in common with the Venice Ghetto except the name. As Duneier writes, “The Nazi ghetto was something entirely new.”

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Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism. Get Over It. By Liel Leibovitz

Posted By on April 15th, 2016

Recent campus debates teach us an important lesson about bigotry and how to deal with it
Is anti-Zionism any different from anti-Semitism? The question is probably the most accurate seismograph we’ve got to measure where one stands on the ever-tremorous political grounds we all walk when we talk about Israel. Not that there’s necessarily any right or wrong answer; civil, well-meaning people can make arguments on both ends. Yes, because Jews and Jewish life cannot be reduced to the national aspirations of the Jewish state. No, because anyone denying Jews, alone of all the world’s nations, their right of self-determination is by definition a hater. It’s not an altogether useless debate to have, but it’s not the debate we’re having.

The debate we’re having, true to our times, is both dumber and more malicious, and it was on display this month as at least two of our finest institutions of higher learning, Stanford and Oberlin, treated us to the intellectual equivalent of watching a tightrope walker trip and go splat on the asphalt. Out west, a member of the school’s student senate argued that it was not anti-Semitic to argue that Jews control the media, the banks, the government, and all other social institutions. And in the Ohio enclave of righteousness, several Jewish students published a letter in a student newspaper defending a disgraced professor who had posted similar allegations on her Facebook page about the Jews’ malevolent omnipotence.

Both pronouncements are worthy of consideration. Like any good work of modern art, they’re one part parody, peenging poseurship at its most delightful, and one part dirge, announcing the death of good, rational thought. At Stanford, the portentously named Gabriel Knight, a junior on the school’s student governing body, claimed that it was, like, totally cool to talk about how the Jews control the world. “Questioning these potential power dynamics, I think, is not anti-Semitism,” sprach Knight. “I think it’s a very valid discussion.”

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Vermont senators declare war on Israel by Richard Baehr see note please

Posted By on April 15th, 2016

For their anti Israel bias the Senators get good grades from the Arab American Institute: rsk

Patrick Leahy on the Issues Rated +3 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record.Bernie Sanders on the Issues Rated +2 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record.

Vermont was the state that gave President Barack Obama his largest margin of victory in the 2012 election — 36%. While Gallup poll rates it the second most liberal state after Massachusetts, that rating seems erroneous, given that Massachusetts delivered Obama only a 23% margin despite having a significantly more diverse population than Vermont, which usually equates to higher vote support for Democrats (Vermont is 94% white, Massachusetts 76%). Massachusetts even elected a Republican governor in 2014, as it has done frequently in recent decades.

Today, Vermont seems to be the center of a new political development, testing the waters for how far the Left can go in the Democratic Party in advancing an anti-Zionist agenda. The push to separate Democrats from the traditional support for Israel is currently led by Vermont senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy.

Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and a self-proclaimed socialist, is of course one of the two contenders for this year’s Democratic presidential nomination. He has had a string of successes in both caucuses and primaries, and has so far won 15 states and a few territories, and earned over 7 million votes. In 2008, Hillary Clinton lost the nomination to the younger, far more charismatic African-American newcomer, Obama. To lose state after state to a 74-year-old avowed socialist who calls for a revolution in politics is in some ways much more shocking than Clinton’s previous defeat. Assuming Clinton wins the nomination, still very likely due to her huge lead among Democratic super-delegates, and her far greater appeal than Sanders to minority votes, especially African-Americans, Sanders will have demonstrated either Clinton’s weakness as a candidate, particularly among younger voters, or demonstrated the power and appeal of his hard left message.

The New York primary is to be held on April 19. New York is the state with the largest number of Jews and the highest percentage Jewish population. Most Jewish New Yorkers, apart from Orthodox Jews, will cast their votes for Democrats.

One might expect that, like most politicians, Sanders would use the time before the primary to stroke that base of Jewish voters who will be a major component if he can pull off an upset in New York. Given his weakness in prior state contests among African-Americans and Hispanics, the traditionally liberal Jewish vote might seem made to order for Sanders. A fair number of liberal Jews (although probably a declining number each year) are pro-Israel.

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Number of children used as human bombs by Boko Haram increasing: New report by Jim Kouri

Posted By on April 15th, 2016

The number of children involved in ‘suicide’ attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger has risen sharply over the past year, from four in 2014 to forty-four in 2015, according to a disturbing United Nations report released on Monday. More than 75 percent of the children involved in the attacks are kidnapped schoolgirls.

“Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and in neighboring countries.”

UNICEF says that the report — released two years after the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, who were never found — shows alarming trends in four countries affected by Boko Haram over the past two years. The fact being ignored by many in the Obama administration and the media is that the group’s jihad has spread from Nigeria to its African neighbors such as Niger and Cameroon.

According to the Homeland Security News Wire, UNICEF report reveals that:

Between January 2014 and February 2016, Cameroon recorded the highest number of suicide attacks involving children (21), followed by Nigeria (17), and Chad (2).
Over the past two years, nearly 1 in 5 suicide bombers was a child and three quarters of these children were girls. Last year, children were used in 1 out of 2 attacks in Cameroon, 1 out of 8 in Chad, and 1 out of 7 in Nigeria.
Last year, for the first time, “suicide” bombing attacks in general spread beyond Nigeria’s borders. The frequency of all suicide bombings increased from 32 in 2014 to 151 last year. In 2015, 89 of these attacks were carried out in Nigeria, 39 in Cameroon, 16 in Chad, and 7 in Niger.

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ON THE GLAZOV SHOW: THE UNKNOWN: ISLAM’S 25 SCARS ON MY BODY

Posted By on April 15th, 2016

On this new special edition of The Unknown, Anni Cyrus discusses Islam’s 25 Scars On My Body, sharing the nightmare she experienced as a young girl in the Islamic Gulag.

Don’t miss it.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/04/15/the-unknown-islams-25-scars-on-my-body/

And make sure to watch one of the most powerful episodes of The Unknown: To Be Raped Under Islam, in which Anni revealed the horror she endured under the Islamic Republic — and how she prevailed and is fighting back:

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Preview: Civic Affairs – A Detective Novel by Edward Cline

Posted By on April 15th, 2016

Welcome to a preview of Civic Affairs, the 17th Cyrus Skeen detective novel, set in San Francisco in late May, 1929. The novel will be published in late April, and will be available on Kindle and as a print book. Enjoy.

Chapter 1: The Bum’s Rush

“My wife and I have come to request an unusual action to be taken by you, which, frankly, we hope you regard is in the realm of civic duty, Mr. Skeen.” The man paused, waiting to hear some response from Skeen. “We hope you are amenable to the idea, and respond with the utmost civility, courtesy and responsibility.”

Jubal Pickett sat in an armchair in front of Cyrus Skeen’s desk. Next to him sat his wife, Lucinda Pickett. The Pickets had arrived in his office a few minutes ago, without having called for an appointment. He did not know who they were and did not know what they wanted.

Skeen asked, his brow darkening in an ominous frown, “Who are you again? And what is it you want?”

Jubal Pickett was about half a foot shorter than Skeen. His oiled black hair was parted precisely in the middle. He was thin, as was his face, with a smidgen of a moustache crowning thin lips. Skeen observed that the man, whom he estimated to be in his forties, had that constant, pinched look around his eyes and nostrils as though everything he ever encountered was sour, displeased him, and probably caused him upset stomachs. Skeen had the wild thought that Mr. Jubal Pickett took castor oil with his coffee, regularly. His voice registered perhaps a tad above countertenor. He wore a plain gray suit, a vest, and a black bowtie. A gray derby was hooked over one knee.

His wife, Lucinda, was a prim, shriveled, almost emaciated woman with a prune face that reminded him of Olga Quarre, a creature he had met in April on a case. He guessed she was in her forties, as well, but it was hard to determine her age. She wore a Quakerish bonnet and a lacy, high neck collar that that did not quite encase her scrawny neck. She wore a bland brown jacket, an ankle-length brown skirt, and brown, old fashioned women’s shoes that were shin-high and which had to be laced up through a dozen eyelets. One claw-like hand was wrapped around the handle of an umbrella; the other held a shapeless cloth bag that was probably her purse. It had not rained in the city for days, and was not raining now. Some people carried umbrellas regardless of the weather.

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The Failure of Muslim Integration in the UK A harbinger of what to expect in the United States? Joseph Klein

Posted By on April 14th, 2016

Europe’s open door policy to Muslim immigrants has utterly failed. Its tolerance of the intolerant tenets of Islamic law and practices under the banner of multiculturalism has also failed. Great Britain is a case in point. Muslims have created their own segregated communities by choice. Even pro-immigration leaders are admitting they were wrong in their optimism that Muslims would willingly integrate into British society over time.

As the saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” A former head of Great Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, came to that realization after doing a 180 degree turn on the issue of Muslim immigrant integration.

As a member of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, he endorsed a report in 1997 that helped popularize the term “Islamophobia.” The report blamed widespread “anti-Muslim prejudice” among Great Britain’s majority population for Muslim immigrants’ “exclusion.” It placed the responsibility for resolving issues holding back “social inclusion” of Muslim immigrants on the British government. As the summary of the report states:

“The need for legal changes is clearly identified in the report. This, it is argued, will consolidate the changes in public opinion and popular understanding which are required and which are outlined throughout the pages of this report.”

Nearly two decades later, Mr. Phillips admitted that he “got almost everything wrong” on Muslim immigration.

“Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else, but with more modest dress sense and more luxuriant facial hair; any differences would fade with time and contact,” Trevor Philips, who commissioned the poll for use in a TV documentary, wrote in a column entitled “An Inconvenient Truth.” His revealing column appeared in the Sunday Times on April 10th. “But thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we now know that just isn’t how it is,” he added.

The poll results dramatically evidence that a significant minority of Muslims living in Great Britain have core beliefs that are in direct opposition to the fundamental precepts of Western secular beliefs, including a pluralistic democracy and fundamental human rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion and equality of all people.

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Campus Lunacy, Part II The student “renaming” craze.Walter Williams

Posted By on April 14th, 2016

Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled “The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze.” Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex.

Stanford students have demanded the renaming of buildings, malls and streets bearing the name of the recently canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest who was often unkind to American Indians. Harvard Law School is getting rid of its seal because it bears the coat of arms of the Royalls, a slave-owning family. This renaming craze is widespread and includes dozens of colleges and universities, including Amherst, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. The students have decided that some politically incorrect people from centuries ago are bad. Other politically incorrect people are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal; their names can stay.

San Diego State University students are not demanding that the school eliminate its nickname, “Aztecs,” even though the Aztecs enslaved and slaughtered tens of thousands of people from tribes they conquered — often ripping out the hearts of living victims. Should UC Berkeley students and faculty demand the renaming of Warren Hall, named after California Attorney General Earl Warren, who instigated the wartime internment of tens of thousands of innocent Japanese-American citizens? UC Berkeley students and faculty might consider renaming their Cesar E. Chavez Student Center. Chavez sent his thug lieutenants down to California’s southern border to use violence to prevent job-seeking Mexican immigrants from entering the United States. President Woodrow Wilson was a racist who, among other racist acts, segregated civil service jobs. Should Princeton University rename its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs plus rename its Woodrow Wilson fellowship program?

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Obama’s Nuclear Contrition Drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Caroline Glick

Posted By on April 14th, 2016

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima. While there meeting with this G-7 counterparts, Kerry strongly hinted that his visit was a precursor to a visit to the site of the first nuclear bombing by President Barack Obama next month.

The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama is responsible for drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Indeed, Obama’s own actions lend easily to the conclusion that he wishes to do penance for America’s decision to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, (and so end World War II with far fewer dead than a land invasion of Japan would have required), by enabling America’s enemies to target the US and its allies with nuclear weapons.

Obama views his nuclear deal with Iran – the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as his greatest foreign policy achievement.

Unfortunately for his legacy building and for global security, for the past several weeks news stories have made clear that critics of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran – who claimed that far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the deal would enable Iran to develop them in broad daylight, and encourage Iran to step up its support for terror and regional aggression – were entirely correct.

All of the warnings sounded by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other leaders have been borne out. All of the warnings sounded by the leaders of the Persian Gulf kingdoms were correct.

Every major commitment Obama made to Congress and to US allies in the wake of the deal have been shown in retrospect to have been false.

Obama told Congress that while the deal did require the US to drop its nuclear sanctions against Iran, the non-nuclear sanctions would remain in place. In recent weeks, media reports have made clear that the administration’s commitment to maintain non-nuclear sanctions on Iran has collapsed.

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Let’s Create a Real Palestinian State It’s not a nightmare if you can make it come true. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 14th, 2016

A Palestinian state has never existed during any period in human history. Let’s change that.

The United States has spent billions of dollars trying to create a Palestinian state. It’s time that we finally got our money’s worth. We’ve been putting money in the broken Palestinian slot machine in the metaphorical Palestinian casino (the real one was shot up when terrorists turned it into a base) for decades. It’s time to finally get our Palestinian jackpot. But to make it happen, we need to be realistic.

Forget the peace process. Forget negotiations. They’ve never worked before. They’re not going to now.

And there’s nothing to negotiate anyway.

There are almost a million Jews living on territory claimed by the PLO. Removing them would be the single greatest act of ethnic cleansing against an indigenous population today. It would also be impossible. But the same people who insist that the United States, a country of 318 million, can’t deport 11 million illegal aliens, think that Israel will somehow deport 1/8th of its own population if they just chant loudly enough about “occupation” outside Jewish businesses in London or San Francisco.

Ethnically cleansing 8,000 Jews from Gaza/Gush Katif led to nationwide civil disobedience, riots and, eventually, the fall of a political party and three straight terms for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now imagine trying to deport 800,000 people from their homes simply because they’re Jewish.

And it wouldn’t just be the Jews alone being rounded up into trucks, buses and maybe boxcars.

52 percent of Arabs in East Jerusalem would rather be Israeli citizens than live under the PLO. Are we supposed to deport 100,000 Arabs from Jerusalem to make way for this imaginary “Palestinian” state?

How much ethnic cleansing do we have to do to make the Islamic colonial fantasy of Palestine real?