Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 7, 2017

Now comes President Donald Trump's claim Monday at the key US military base overseeing the war on ISIS -- US Central Command in Tampa, Florida -- that the media aren't reporting terrorism for "reasons" the President didn't elaborate upon.

Trump told the CENTCOM audience, "You've seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that."

To "prove" that the media aren't covering terrorism adequately the Trump White House, which is fighting in court to reinstate a refugee ban citing the terrorist threat, on Monday night released a list of 78 "major" terrorist attacks since September 2014, claiming, "Most have not received the media attention they deserved."

This is one of the biggest baloney sandwiches this White House has foisted on the public since ... well ... the "Bowling Green massacre," but it's a much bigger and harder-to swallow helping of baloney because it is the President who is forcing it down our throats rather than one of his aides.

Taking the White House timeline of terrorist attacks, I ran it through the Nexis database, which is an authoritative resource for tracking media hits of all types, including in newspapers, magazines, wire service reports, TV news shows and the like.

The results show that terrorist attacks over the past couple of years are, in fact, some of the most well-reported stories of our times. The total number of media hits for the 78 terrorist attacks that the White House released Monday is 80,878, or about an average of slightly more than 1,000 mentions per incident.

And those numbers clearly understate how much coverage the media have given these incidents because a Nexis search only will display a maximum of 3,000 mentions for any given search.

There are 16 terrorist attacks on the White House list of purportedly under-covered attacks that each elicited more than 3,000 media mentions.

The following are a representative sample:

In Ottawa in October 2014 Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a Canadian soldier.

Two months later in Sydney, Man Haron Monis killed two Australians.

In March 2015, 21 tourists were killed at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia.

Two months later in Garland, Texas, two ISIS-inspired militants attacked a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest. Luckily no one was killed except the terrorists.

In Tunisia, also in 2015, 38 were killed at a beach popular with Westerners.

In October 2015, 224 were killed in Sinai, Egypt, when ISIS brought down a Russian passenger jet with a bomb.

The terror attacks in Paris and Nice, France, that Trump cited in his CENTCOM speech also received more than 3,000 media mentions.

The terrorist attacks that didn't get as much coverage were -- surprise --- the ones where there were no deaths or that took place in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh where there is little independent media reporting.

In three cases, there were no articles listed in the publications included in the Nexis database, and in each of those cases there were no casualties.

The media, including CNN, have exhaustively covered terrorism around the globe since the 9/11 attacks made the issue a central national security concern.

And how did so many Americans learn about the terrorist attacks they were so scared of? Here's a clue: It wasn't through telepathy.

Below is the official White House timeline of terrorist attacks since September 2014 with my annotations in bold about the media coverage they each received. (There are a number of incorrectly spelled words I have left as they were in the original.)

TIMELINE: September, 2014 - December, 2016

NUMBER OF ATTACKS: 78

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

September, 2014

TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack

ATTACKER: Abdul Numan Haider

406 stories

TIZI OUZOU, ALGERIA

September, 2014

TARGET: One French citizen beheaded

ATTACKER: Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria

140 stories

QUEBEC, CANADA

October, 2014

TARGET: One soldier killed and one wounded in vehicle attack

ATTACKER: Martin Couture-Rouleau

1,509 stories

OTTAWA, CANADA

October, 2014

TARGET: One soldier killed at war memorial; two wounded in shootings at Parliament building

ATTACKER: Michael Zehaf-Bibeau

More than 3,000 stories

NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA

October, 2014

TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack

ATTACKER: US person

477 stories

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

November, 2014

TARGET: One Danish citizen wounded in shooting

ATTACKERS: Three Saudi Arabia-based ISIL members

10 stories

ABU DHABI, UAE

DATE: December 2014

TARGET: One American killed in knife attack

ATTACKER: Dalal al-Hashimi

24 stories

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

December, 2014

TARGET: Two Australians killed in hostage taking and shooting

ATTACKER: Man Haron Monis

More than 3,000 stories

TOURS, FRANCE

December, 2014

TARGET: Three police officers wounded in knife attack

ATTACKER: Bertrand Nzohabonayo

91 stories

PARIS, FRANCE

January, 2015

TARGET: One police officer and four hostages killed in shooting at a kosher supermarket

ATTACKER: Amedy Coulibaly

More than 3,000 stories

TRIPOLI, LIBYA

January, 2015

TARGET: Ten killed, including one US citizen, and five wounded in bombing and shooting at a hotel frequented by westerners

ATTACKERS: As many as five ISIL-Libya members

837 stories

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

January, 2015

TARGET: Two US citizens wounded in shooting

ATTACKER: Saudi Arabia-based ISIL supporter

5 stories

NICE, FRANCE

February, 2015

TARGET: Two French soldiers wounded in knife attack outside a Jewish community center

ATTACKER: Moussa Coulibaly

268 stories

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

February, 2015

TARGET: One civilian killed in shooting at a free-speech rally and one security guard killed outside the city's main synagogue

ATTACKER: Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein

535 stories

TUNIS, TUNISIA

March, 2015

TARGET: 21 tourists killed, including 16 westerners, and 55 wounded in shooting at the Bardo Museum

ATTACKERS: Two ISIL-aligned extremists

More than 3,000 stories

KARACHI, PAKISTAN

April, 2015

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Posted By admin on February 7, 2017

When Israel backs an American regime that threatens our liberty as humans and our safety as Jews, the claim that Zionism protects Jews no longer holds.

By Ben Lorber

Protesters near the prime ministers residence, demonstrating against Trumps recent refugee and Muslim ban, Jerusalem, January 29, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

For most American Jews, Donald Trumps regime has ushered in the most profound and destabilizing existential crisis since the Holocaust. We watch in horror as President Trump launches a full-frontal assault on the institutions, and the very principles, of the liberal democracy upon which we have built our lives for generations. We stand aghast as his administration tramples the civil liberties of our Muslim, immigrant and refugee neighbors, and we brace ourselves as a potent anti-Semitism simmers at the edges of the alt-right movement that helped propel him to power.

American Jewish establishment and legacy institutions, which already possessed little relevance for many of us, seem ill-equipped to guide us through this new reality. And the State of Israel, far from standing with us against this fascist menace, appears to be egging it on. As we all weather the short-term shocks Trump inflicts upon the political and civic institutions of American life, the full reverberations of this longer-term shock have yet to be felt by American Jewry. In the future, the era of Trump will be remembered as the end of the Zionist dream.

The internal crisis the mainstream Jewish American community faces is far more profound than we are willing to admit. For almost a century, the tradition of democratic liberalism in America has provided the bulk of white Jews in the U.S. with safety, prosperity, and a stable modern identity. Across the country, we have built a vibrant network of communal institutions, and poured our energies into strengthening the fabric of American civic, cultural and political life. After the Holocaust, the democratic values of religious and political freedom and civic equality were central to our orientation in a changing world. Today, though a growing portion of our community has moved to the right on political and social issues, a sizable and disproportionate majority of American Jews retains liberal and progressive values.

Now, seemingly overnight, Trumps attacks on the press, judicial institutions, human rights groups and other organs of democracy threaten to erode the foundations of the world that has been comfortable for many of us. And our well-established, amply-resourced communal and legacy institutions, like the Jewish Federations, have barely raised a tepid voice of protest against this onslaught. They were unable to anticipate, comprehend, or combat the startling surge of far-right populism and neo-fascism in this country, and the unprecedented resurgence of anti-Semitism brewing in its wake. Though they appear calm, our leaders, like most others in the countrys establishment political and civic landscape, tremble behind their doors.

Hundreds fill New York Citys Washington Square Park to protest President Trumps decision to ban Muslim refugees from entering the U.S., January 26, 2017. (Gili Getz)

And where is Israel to protect the Jews of America? Trumps words and actions on International Holocaust Remembrance Day were a double affront to American Jewry. Not only did his administrations statement fail to name the Jewish identity of the Holocausts primary victims, or the ideology of anti-Semitism that fueled their annihilation on the very same day, he signed into law a Muslim ban chillingly reminiscent of Americas rejection of Jewish refugees that, in the 1930s, helped seal the fate of so many European Jews. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not only fail to speak out against any of this, but the next day, he praised Trumps decision to build a border wall with a bombastic tweet meant to emulate the swagger of Trump himself.

After the Holocaust, Israel came to be seen by many Jews the world over as an insurance policy, sworn to defend us forevermore against the reappearance of fascism on the world stage. But 70 years later, the world is divided anew into ultra-nationalist statesmen and stateless refugees, into powerful tyrants and defiant rebels. While a few American Jews back Trump, most of us strive to stand against this tyrant of our time. But what the U.S. Jewish community still has to confront is the reality that the government of Israel, along with a majority of its Jewish citizens, actively supports the Trump administration, which seems poised to legitimize Israels fever dreams of settlement expansion and annexation and to crush any remaining hope of Palestinian statehood.

A few notable exceptions notwithstanding, most American Jewish Zionists, since the days of liberal leaders like Louis Brandeis and Stephen Wise, would place their Zionism squarely in the same tradition of American liberalism that has structured the rest of their lives. For years, these progressive Zionists have watched nervously as anti-democratic, illiberal forces have consumed the center of Israeli politics.

Regardless of whether this idea of a progressive Zionism actually reflects the reality unfolding in Israel/Palestine I would argue that it never has the point is that in order to remain morally consistent, American Jews must see their Israel as not only a Jewish state, but a democratic state as well. In the mainstream American Jewish imaginary, Zionism is akin to the civil rights movement of the Jewish people. It must offer the world, in the shape of Jewish liberation, a testament to the promise of universal human emancipation as well.

Donald Trump poses for a photo with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York, September 25, 2016. (Kobi Gideon / GPO)

Thats why, as democratic norms have steadily eroded in Israel, American Jews have inwardly wrestled with an impossible contradiction. Over the years, more of us have chosen to speak out against Israels brutal occupation in the West Bank, its relentless bombardment of Palestinians in Gaza, its discriminatory two-tiered legal structure within its borders, and its denial of refugee rights. But the bulk of us have remained silent, because we were taught to trust that somehow, Israels troubling actions were necessary to protect the safety of Jews around the world.

But when Israel backs a regime, here in America, that threatens our liberty as humans and our safety as Jews, the claim that Zionism protects Jews no longer holds. An Israel that cheers on Goliath, as it raises its hand against the Davids of our world, is an Israel that has become startlingly unrecognizable to us. While mainstream American Jewry could choose to ignore the spread of ultra-nationalism and xenophobia in the far-off Jewish homeland, when those same forces wash now upon our own shores, the familial resemblance and active collaboration between Trump and Netanyahu becomes impossible to ignore.

We enter the new fascist era with communal institutions that are unable to speak truth to power, and with a Jewish state that stands among the forces arrayed against us, one whose attacks on political dissent and denial of basic rights to Palestinians serve as a disturbing roadmap to where the U.S. may be headed. Though the bulk of liberal American Jewry has until now remained silent, in the era of Trump, there grows in their gut a dizzying disorientation.

By the time the Trump nightmare finally crashes into flames as all such nightmares eventually do and these liberal American Jews get up, rub their eyes and look around, their gaze will turn in despondence towards Jerusalem. Where once stood their progressive Israel their light unto the nations, symbol of the holy values of democracy and human freedom, spiritual rock of resistance against all tyranny and oppression they will now face a state that, from their vantage point, looks no different than the monster they just helped chase out of their American homeland. The realization that, two generations after the Holocaust, the State of Israel allied itself with the forces of global fascism will be too much for liberal Zionism to bear.

As more and more American Jews face this reality, their sense of betrayal will be immense. As a community, our process of collective mourning and teshuvah (repentance) will be difficult. Our identity as American Jews, supported so long by the foundation-stone of liberal Zionism, will be in crisis. It will take some of our elders a while to admit it, and some never will, but in our hearts we will know that a state which cheered on the tyrant who raised his hand against us can no longer be our Jewish state. With the Zionist dream dead, what Jewish vision will guide us into the future? How will we rebuild?

Over the next few years, the twin barbarisms of the Trump and Netanyahu regimes will continue to dovetail, and the rift between Israel and the bulk of American Jewry will continue to widen. While a few American Jews will cast their lot with Trump, Netanyahu and the rising global forces of fascism, hundreds of thousands more will overcome the inertia of our mainstream institutions and take to the streets to defend our lives and communities against tyranny. Through this experience of struggle, American Jews will reconnect to the social movements from which, for too long, too many of us have been estranged. We will re-learn the muscles of tzedek (justice) and tikkun olam (healing the world) which, for too long, too many of us had failed to put to use.

The old dream of a liberal Zionism will not survive to carry us through the 21st century. But out of the fire of our reborn commitment to our principles, a new diaspora Jewish identity can be formed, founded on prophetic values of social justice, solidarity and love. We will again bear witness to mi-melech malche ha-melachim, to a king who rules over kings, a force of divine righteousness greater than earthly power. Let us cleave to this vision, and this work, without fear, with a clear head and a strong moral compass. It is our only hope.

Ben Lorber is a Campus Coordinator with Jewish Voice for Peace.

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Posted By simmons on February 7, 2017

BBC News

Trump says terror attacks 'under-reported': Is that true? BBC News There are no reports of an attack in the Saudi capital that month. But two US ... What happened: Three soldiers were attacked by a man with a knife outside a Jewish centre in the southern French city. Did we ... What happened: Four American and two ... and more »

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Posted By admin on February 7, 2017

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 6 a.m.

Swastikas spray-painted on fences and signs in Sienna Plantation. Students saluting Adolf Hitler during Cypress-Ranch High School's senior class picture day. Racist and anti-Semitic fliers distributed at universities and in neighborhoods across Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. All of that happened in just one week, leading the Anti-Defamation League's Houston branch to issue a statement Friday about the uptick since the start of the year.

According to ADL's Southwest Regional Director Dayan Gross, the Southwest Region usually sees 30 to 40 hate-related incidents per year. So far, the ADL has counted 25 since the start of the year.

There has been a disturbing uptick in the number of apparent hate incidents since the Presidential election, Gross said in a statement. We are working hard to respond to these incidents, and we hope they are not part of a growing trend."

Gross told the Houston Press via email that the ADL tracks the incidents as they are reported in news media or when they receive tips and investigate the incidents on their own accord. "Generally if hate symbols, signs or language are involved, these incidents are classified as hateful incidents," he said of the ADL's criteria.

While the ADL doesn't speculate about the cause of such a drastic increase, Gross said the perpetrators used Trump signage or identified themselves as Trump supporters.

Last week, the Press talked to the group behind the distribution of white nationalist flyers at Rice University, called American Vanguard, whose Texas leader told us that Trump was helping their cause, no matter how he may try to distance himself from white supremacist groups. The fliers, which the ADL cited in its release, encouraged people to defend the white race, which American Vanguard believes is undergoing a slow and steady genocide (let us clarify for the record: "Genocide" is their word, not ours). The recruitment fliers said things like "We have a right to exist" and "Defending your people is a social duty." Others at Texas universities appeared Trump-inspired:"What Made America Great? Blood and soil. Keep it that way, join the Vanguard."

"Trump is a representation of white America whether he likes it or whether he knows it or not," said the leader of American Vanguard's Texas chapter, who said it's the Vanguard's policy to always be anonymous for safety purposes. "I think what he's doing is... uh... he's kind of defending it. Not explicitly, but he's doing things that are helpful for it."

In a Sienna Plantation neighborhood in Fort Bend County, multiple homeowners found swastikas spray-painted on their fences and garages. One homeowner found a Trump-Pence campaign sign, with a swastika painted over it, tacked onto his fence as well. As KTRK reported, the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident as a hate crime.

That same week, a seemingly large group of students at Cypress-Ranch High School reportedly yelled "Heil Hitler!" and "Heil Trump" during a senior photo, throwing up the Nazi salute. One student emailed photos to KPRC, telling the news station that it appeared that roughly 70 students participated. Cy-Ranch administrators said those students would be disciplined, and addressed the student body and parents in lengthy statements.

"This inappropriate gesture is symbol of a horrible time in the world, in which countless human atrocities occurred," Principal Bob Hull said in a statement, which you can view in full here."This gesture invokes strong emotion and symbolizes hate that crosses all genders, races and cultural lines. ...I am disheartened that this group are members of our senior class."

Gross said that ADL has offered assistance to law enforcement, educators and victims in the areas where these hate-related incidents occurred, offering educational materials or training wherever needed.

"We continue to do what we always have done, which is to educate against the dangers of hatred and promote diversity and respect. Our staff has stepped up efforts to prevent and to respond acts of hate and will continue to do so as needed."

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Anti-Defamation League Reports Striking Uptick in "Hate-Related Incidents" in Houston - Houston Press

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Posted By simmons on February 7, 2017

WASHINGTON The Anti-Defamation League filed an amicus brief in federal court Monday supporting the state of Washingtons challenge to President Donald Trumps highly controversial immigration order.

When America has closed its doors and allowed its core values to be compromised, the country later looked back in shame, said the groups CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in a statement.

On Friday evening, a federal judge issued a nationwide restraining order against the ban, which suspended US entry for people from seven Muslim-majority nations for 90 days and froze the entire US refugee program for 120 days.

It also blocked Syrians from entering the country indefinitely.

The ruling by US District Judge James Robart was harshly criticized by the president, who referred to him in a tweet as a so-called judge and suggested the blame would fall on his shoulders if a terrorist attack ensued that cost American lives.

Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril, Trump posted on Sunday afternoon. If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!

US President Donald Trump speaks following a visit to the US Central Command and Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base on February 6, 2017 in Tampa, Florida. (AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN)

Trump administration officials have further said they plan to challenge the ruling vigorously, and on Monday evening, the Justice Department urged a federal court to reinstate the ban.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is expected to rule at some point this week on the matter, before it is likely go to the Supreme Court in the months ahead.

The ADLs amicus brief a legal document filed by non-litigants in appellate cases who have a stated interest in the ruling pointed to the history of Jewish refugees being denied entry onto Americas shores, including the denial of passengers of the MS St. Louis, a German ship filled with 937 Jewish refugees, who were denied entry into the United States in 1939.

At other times, when prejudice and fear predominate over reason and compassion, we falter, often with devastating consequences, as set forth below in connection with the St. Louis tragedy, the brief said.

The ADL, a Jewish civil rights organization that monitors and combats anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry around the globe, also cited the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II following the attacks on Pearl Harbor

The document closes by saying the current travel ban risks once again sacrificing the nations core values in favor of prejudice and fear a sacrifice that history has repeatedly proven has profound consequences both to the persons who suffer as a result and to the still-vibrant vision of the shining city on the hill.

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ADL files amicus brief supporting challenge to Trump's immigration order - The Times of Israel

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Posted By simmons on February 6, 2017

The racism implicit in the recent letters and op-eds by pro-Israeli writers really needs to be answered.

One way to define racism is as a philosophy that either makes the case for the superiority of one group, which justifies its right to rule, or the inferiority of another group, which makes its subjugation richly deserved.

Zionism is, very basically, a racist ideology that maintains that Jews are more entitled than Palestinians to rule the land of Palestine. So, its not surprising that the pro-Zionists use racist tropes to justify the Israeli Jews domination of the Palestinians.

For instance, a pro-Zionist writer recently implied that Jews are superior to Palestinians because Jews have many Nobel Prize winners while the Palestinians have none. To him, this demonstrates the superiority of Jewish culture over that of the Palestinians while completely ignoring that this difference is solely an accident of geography. Jews happened to be living in Europe when the great advances in science were made there during the past 500 years. If the Palestinians had also been living there, they would probably have as many Nobel Prize winners as the Jews, as anyone who has knowledge of the role that Palestinians (and Arabs, in general) have played in U.S. academia during the past 50 years can attest. This effort to portray the Palestinians as intellectually and culturally inferior to Jews is blatantly racist.

Palestinians are also portrayed by the pro-Zionists as both unreasonable and psychotically vicious. The pro-Zionists say that the Palestinians have been offered deals by the Israelis for the establishment of a Palestinian state but the Palestinians refused to accept any of them. If you accept that contention at face value, it would make the Palestinians seem unreasonable. Unfortunately, the truth is that it is the Israelis who have never made an offer that any Palestinian politician could accept and it should be obvious, by this point, that the Israelis are not negotiating in good faith but, rather, that the Israelis goal is to immiserate the Palestinians to the point that they will leave voluntarily. The Israelis want all of the land of Palestine for themselves. They will suffer the Palestinians only if they agree to live in completely servile subjugation.

About the Palestinians supposed viciousness and hatred of Jews and the state of Israel, suppose that foreigners came here and occupied California from Monterey to Los Angeles and from the coast to the eastern side of the Salinas Valley (thats about the size of Israel and the occupied West Bank) and immediately dispossessed millions of us, forcing us to live in refugee camps or outside those boundaries. Further, they continued to slowly dispossess those of us still living here and humiliated us daily as we traveled from one little enclave in which we were allowed to live to another. Id be pretty angry about that and Ill bet you would be, too, and no one could blame us for wanting to kill them all.

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So, considering the ongoing dispossession and daily humiliation of the Palestinians and their slaughter in ratios of 100 to 1,000 Palestinians killed for every Israeli they kill, I think the Palestinians have been models of restraint, not vicious beasts. I dont know how many Israelis the Palestinians have killed since Israel was established almost 70 years ago but it is probably only a few hundred as opposed to thousands of Palestinians slaughtered by the Israelis. After all, weve killed thousands of Afghans over the past 15 years and the Afghans never even did anything to us.

Dan Turner is a resident of Monterey and is a past president of local Congregation Beth Israel.

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Posted By simmons on February 6, 2017

The Cleveland region of the Anti-Defamation League will host Oren Segal, director of ADLs center on extremism as its guest speaker, at its annual meeting at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 at The Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood.

Segal will discuss The Current Landscape of Hate and Extremism in the U.S. Based in New York City, he plans to give an overview of the state of hate in the U.S., at a time when he calls ADLs work more relevant than ever before in understanding hate and when to push back on it.

We are coming off of a very bad year in terms of different extremist movements and their activity, frankly a divisive sort of presidential election, public discussion, rise in hate incidents that we saw (and) a lot of extremism online, Segal said. So what Id like to do is talk about that and contextualize it and give people some insight into that.

Segal said that since the Nov. 8 election, the ADL has seen an uptick in reported hate-related incidences. He said although ADL needs to complete its annual audit of incidences across the country before making a full assessment of the reports and what they mean on a larger scale, whats striking is how many refer to the presidential election, citing graffiti like Make America White again.

Its just unheard of, he said, also pointing to an increase in reported hate incidents on college, high school and even middle school campuses.

Anita Gray, ADL regional director, said she expects at least 200 people to attend the event, which costs $20 per person and includes a dessert reception, with dietary laws observed. Those interested in attending are advised to RSVP and purchase a ticket here by Feb. 10.

Gray said that she hopes the event opens up a discussion for the community about recent extremism and fears surrounding it.

We hope to educate our community as to what is happening with hate and extremism here in the United States. We think our community needs and wants to have current facts, she said.

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Posted By admin on February 6, 2017

After Politico reported that the White House quashed a State Department statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that specifically mentioned Jewish victims, the director of the Anti-Defamation League called on President Donald Trump to apologize.

"To not include Jews when talking about the Holocaust is to miss the very essence of this low point in human history. Time for President Trump to apologize and set the record straight," ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt said late Thursday in a statement.

Trump's statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day last week did not explicitly mention Jewish victims, prompting scrutiny from groups like the ADL.

Politico revealed Thursday that the State Department's Office of the Special Envoy on Holocaust Issues had drafted a statement that did mention Jewish victims, but that the White House blocked it from being released.

An anonymous official told Politico that the White House did not see the statement from the State Department until after the Trump administration had sent out its own version. But unnamed officials at the State Department told Politico that the agency had been preparing a statement for the White House to use.

Trump's aides vigorously defended the administration's remarks remembering Holocaust victims in the face of intense criticism. Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus said that the administration did not "mean any ill will to anybody," while White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that "pathetic" critics of the statement were just "nitpicking."

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ADL Director Wants Trump To Apologize, 'Set The Record Straight' On Holocaust - TPM

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Posted By admin on February 6, 2017

My grandmother was Elizabeth McDonald and, in all the years we were growing up, Mammaw was the most Christian person and genuinely Godly woman I have ever known. One summer day in the mid-1990s, she called me out of the blue to say shed been praying for a man named Byron Beckwith and well, that the Lord had put it on her heart to urge me to go see this man and tell him about salvation.

Lordy, Mammaw, you know about him? Byron De La Beckwith is a Mississippi legend. Ive known about him forever and, when I heard he was living on Signal Mountain before the Feds grabbed him, I liked to have died! Everybody knows hes the one that killed Medgar Evers if I was to see the guy I'd only be because I wanted to whip him! Hes a vile human being. He should have been shot a long time ago!

That was a dumb thing to say the Biblical onslaught predictable -- but, my goodness, the whole world knew the man was a murderer and, whats more, far worse. My grandmother told me Jesus was about forgiveness and I told her I loved her and Jesus deeply but for both to forgive me for not getting involved. I was of the mind the Savior did want me to have anything to do with anybody filled with such hate, Eternal Life notwithstanding.

Later that same morning I saw my uncle, Lee Anderson, in the hall and he asked me when I was leaving for Mississippi. Mammaw had even called him, trying to get our familys premier Sunday School teacher to urge me to go. He, of course, laughed until he cried but I still stayed out of my grandmothers way a month or so. Whew, talk about a pact with the devil!

All of this came flooding back this weekend when History.com reminded me in my morning reading that this weekend marked the 34th anniversary of the day De La Beckwith was finally sentenced to a life in prison. Before then it had been the biggest travesty of justice in the history of the state, if not the nation.

Two earlier trials not long after the cold-blooded murder in the mid-60s -- were hung, which was what should have happened to Beckwith with a study oak tree branch in the beginning. Both trials were ludicrous, each panel made up of all white males, and during the second trial the fix was blatant; Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett himself get this! -- interrupted courtroom testimony by Mrs. Evers to actually shake Beckwiths hand in full view of the entire court! The judges reaction? His Honor wanted a handshake, too. The entire nation was absolutely outraged! Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney General at the time, almost fainted.

Beckwith murdered Medgar Evers in the driveway of his home on June 12, 1963, with a snipers rifle. Byron was a World War II machine gunner with the Marines and something of a hero; he fought valiantly at Guadalcanal and was shot in the waist at Tarawa. But he was also so horribly twisted he fell in with the KKK and legend has it was truly a sadistic and brutal psychopath. The Evers murder was bland compared to other things he and his ilk actually did to horribly tarnish the states reputation to this day.

One year before Medgar was murdered, the charismatic black leader stood on the steps of the Lyceum at Ole Miss to accompany James Meredith as he became the first black to enroll there. Contrary to what you may see in the movies, the vast majority of students were happy to integrate the school, this even long before movies like The Ghosts of Mississippi and In the Heat of the Night being shown at the Oxford picture show.

After Medgar Evers was killed, it seemed integration intensified for a year or two but soon the students at Ole Miss were back to beer and girls, not necessarily in that order. In the spring of 1968 I was a noted student and my crowd wasnt bothered by the rumors in the least. That is, until my birthday April 4 when the paralyzing news came Dr. Martin Luther King had been fatally shot in Memphis, some 65 miles away.

That was the first national tragedy that really affected me personally, realizing I was so close to real evil. Within an hour that day a car with loudspeakers mounted on the roof drove slowly through the Ole Miss campus, announcing: Spring vacation starts immediately! Leave the campus now. No meals will be served on campus tonight. Please leave the university and go home now.

As a typical college kid, I later went back and studied for myself the genuine horrors of how one people with white skin could act towards another people with black skin. Not to this very day can I get my arms around that. Anyone who goes through history and seriously studies Medgar Evers unfailing quest for what was right, or what Martin Luther King was really like as a human being, cant help but be enormously moved.

My favorite example of all-time came about a month after Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery. That was in December of 1955 and, in January, Dr. King was helping organize a peaceful black boycott of the city buses. A thunderous explosion ripped through the house where he and his family were guests. Dr. King rushed home to check on his wife and daughter who were not hurt -- and found a number of white journalists trapped in the house by a seething and vicious black mob who completely surrounded the house and understandably wanted revenge.

Now because the news media was inside there is a faultless account of what then took place. With the acrid stench of dynamite still in the air, Dr. King walked out on the front porch, held one hand high, and said these words:

* * *

Dont get panicky. Dont do anything panicky. Dont get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what Jesus said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love.

I did not start this boycott. I was asked by you to serve as your spokesman. I want it to be known the length and breadth of this land that if I am stopped, this movement will not stop. If I am stopped, our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just. And God is with us.

* * *

With that, Martin Luther King went inside and got two large baskets that had been used to deliver flowers: As he then escorted the news media through the crowd, he smiled and thanked everybody for their love. Please put any weapons in these baskets You will not have any need for them.

There was never an arrest made in the bombing but Im told Kings reaction I am moved every time I read it -- will never be forgotten in Montgomery. I am also told that right after De La Beckwith gained notoriety in the early 60s, there were some who believed he was in Montgomery four years before when that house bomb exploded. They think they saw him.

Shortly after he was arrested in 1963 and before the first trial began, one of the greatest Southern writers ever known, Eudora Welty, wrote a sensational article that was published in The New Yorker magazine. Welty was already known for her vibrant short stories about Southern characters, but this was before her 1972 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Optimists Daughter. Trust me, Eudora was a female Faulkner.

Eudora lived in Jackson for almost her entire life and was well connected in the city and the state. Her New Yorker story fiction, mind you was written as though it was through the eyes of the man who assassinated Medgar Evers. It was so accurate it was uncanny, this based on testimony that was yet to be heard, and her instinct or inside skinny made the article the talk of the nation and, more particularly, a must read through the South.

Weltys article was entitled, Where Is The Voice Coming From? and, as she later revealed in a page-one interview: Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place. That is, I ought to have learned by now, from here, what such a man, intent on such a deed, had going on in his mind. I wrote his storymy fictionin the first person: about that character's point of view".

Oh my goodness! It was the perfect fodder to keep the murder by De La Beckwith hot for the next 30 years. But Beckwith was far from done. In 1973 the FBI got a tip that De La Beckwith planned to murder A.I. Botnick, a leader of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League in New Orleans. Botnick had said some pointed things about white Southerners and their racial hatred and there was a hit ordered.

The cops waited until they could catch De La Beckwith on the long Lake Pontchartrain Bridge you cant hide. They cornered him front and back and, he couldnt run only swim. They confiscated several loaded firearms, a map with highlighted directions to Botnick's house, and a dynamite time bomb. Soon De La Beckwith did three years in Angola Prison and survived several attempts on his life in such a cauldron.

Just before he went to do his time, Byron was said to have been ordained as a minister in the Temple Memorial Baptist Church of Knoxville, which I always figured is how he ended up on Signal Mountain. He was paroled in the early 80s but Evers wife was tenacious and soon the Clarion-Ledger did some investigative reporting.

In 1993 De La Beckwith was arrested by the FBI and the Hamilton County Sheriffs Department and extradited to Jackson for the third murder trial. This time there were four whites and eight blacks on the jury. Byron De La Beckwith was finally brought to justice, some 30 years after he often bragged about it.

I was pretty relieved to find out he was an ordained preacher. I always figured that after Mammaw called, maybe Bryon De La Beckwith had enough time to work out his own salvation. I hope he did before he died behind bars in 2001. But, I gotta tell you this, stuff like this has happened to me all my life and sometimes when I wake up in the quiet of the night, it is why I can giggle myself back to sleep.

royexum@aol.com

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Roy Exum: 'Go Pray With Byron' - The Chattanoogan

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Posted By admin on February 6, 2017

PR dla Zagranicy

Pawe Kononczuk 05.02.2017 14:38

Polands ambassador to the US has accepted an apology by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) over claims regarding Polands stance on the Holocaust.

Ambassador Piotr Wilczek said on Saturday he was satisfied with a letter of apology sent to him by the Leagues CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, who had reportedly alleged that Poland refuses to publicly acknowledge Adolf Hitler's attempt to exterminate Jews.

American broadcaster CNN last week published comments attributed to Greenblatt, citing him as saying that many countries Iran, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, for example specifically refuse to acknowledge Hitlers attempt to exterminate Jews.

CNN quoted Greenblatt as saying that those countries opted instead to talk about generic suffering rather than recognising this catastrophic incident for what it was: the intended genocide of the Jewish people.

In the letter to the Polish ambassador, Greenblatt admitted that he had made a mistake by including Poland among such countries.

He said he regretted his remarks and stressed he had not intended to offend the Polish government or society.

He also said that the ADL had given support to the Polish governments campaign to rectify inaccurate expressions such as "Polish death camps", recurring in Western media outlets.

Both Wilczek and Greenblatt expressed hope for continuing dialogue between Warsaw and the Jewish rights organisation.

(mo/pk)

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