The ONLY Ones Banning Books are Critical Race Theorists By Daniel Greenfield -and The People Behind Amnesty’s Lies By Ricki Hollander -and Killer Kids: The PA’s Children Soldiers By Itamar Marcus and Daniel Pearl, Brutally Murdered 20 Years Ago, But The Key Lesson Wasn’t Learned By Jeff Dunetz and Parsha Pikudei
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
A shout out to my Mother on today which would have been her 108th birthday. Hello Mom!
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
Killer Kids: The PA's Children Soldiers By Itamar Marcus
photo Credit: PMW
Pal child terrorists brandishing automatic rifles lead Fatah's anniversary parade as seen on the official Fatah Facebook page., according to Palestinian Media Watch,
If you want to know what is really at the heart of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, don't ask the politicians or the diplomats. Go to the real experts: Palestinian children. Unlike the rest of the world, they've been paying close attention to what their leaders and educators have been teaching them – and they're already signing their lessons in blood.
Children interviewed on PA TV for years have been echoing the messages they have been taught by the PA and Fatah: that Israel has no right to exist, and that their goal – for which they are anxious to sacrifice their lives – is Israel's destruction.
Twelve-year-old Abd, who lives in a refugee camp just outside the PA capital of Ramallah, explained his life goals on PA TV: "The Jews stole our land from us and I have been waiting 12 years already… and my grandfather has been waiting 70 years… I hope to return to Lod, my city… I feel that tomorrow I will return and liberate Palestine… Every day, every minute, and every year I imagine that I'm in Lod…" (PA TV, November 3, 2020 and May 23, 2021)
Lod is an Israeli city not far from Tel Aviv. The child lives near Ramallah, but Lod he says is "my city."
Surprising? Not if you've been following the PA education of its children. Palestinian children are indoctrinated to believe that they are victims of Israel's existence from birth ("I have been waiting 12 years already"). The PA Ministry of Education recently included a giant map of "Palestine" that erased all of Israel in an event at a PA school. The words on the poster were explicit: "Palestine – the entire land is ours, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River." (Facebook, PA Ministry of Education, November 16, 2021)
What about Israel's right to exist? It is non-existent in the PA child's world. Palestinian children are taught that Israelis are "foreigners who came from all ends of the earth, foreigners who did not know Palestine and did not live in it – neither them nor their fathers and forefathers." (Fatah's Waed children's magazine, Issue 36)
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that each of the following terms exist in Fatah's children's education to refer to Israel: "Thieving Zionist entity," "thieving occupation," "your enemy," "Zionist criminals," "Zionist gangs," "Zionist thieves," and "Jewish invaders." With this PA/Fatah brainwashing the Palestinian children's hatred of Israel is embedded, justified, and remains a permanent fixture of their consciousness, not because of Israel's borders and not because of what Israel does, but because Israel exists.
Why is the boy so self-confident that he will "liberate Palestine"? Because the Palestinian endgame presented to children is nothing less than the destruction of Israel: "Over thousands of years… [Palestinians had] thousands of victories over whoever was enticed to think of invading… There is no invader who invaded this land and did not leave it defeated in the end, and that is what will happen to the Zionist invaders." (Waed, Issue 27)
What about the Jews who are currently in Israel? They will be gone as well: "After 132 years of colonialism… the number of French settlers in Algeria stood at approximately a million, and they all fled to France… Algeria's experience assures that the Jewish settlers in Palestine will disappear in the end." (Waed, Issue 28)
WITH THE motivation to hate, fight, and the assurance of victory implanted, all that is left to turn the Palestinian child into a soldier is to make it clear that fighting and dying as a martyr is expected of him/her.
Palestinian Media Watch first exposed this PA child abuse in November 2000 and the PA's child soldier promotion has never stopped. Two young girls recently sang on PA TV: "In the name of freedom we'll sacrifice our lives." (Official PA TV, October 22, 2021)
Another young girl recently recited: "A Jew defiled Jerusalem… He gathered the world's dogs (i.e., Jews) inside you… Resistance is a weapon and a rock, Allahu Akbar." (Official PA TV, November 4, 2021)
One of the most sinister of these messages was in a recital by a young girl posted by Fatah on its Facebook page, in which a mother tells her son: "Our weapon is our Islam, and our ammunition is our children. And you, O my son, are meant for Martyrdom." Is their greater child abuse than telling a generation of Palestinian children that they have no value as individuals; their essence is merely to be ammunition for Islam?
With the PA feeding Palestinian children a steady diet of child soldier promotion, when the PA launches its terror waves it has a cadre of children ready to be called to action. For example, during the last extended terror wave from September 2015 to June 2016, in which Palestinians murdered 40 people, Fatah's Waed magazine for children ages 6-15, actively encouraged the children to participate in the terror:
"It is important to note the children's role in the Palestinian activity in the period of armed struggle… the RPG children… the children of the rocks… and to this very day the children constitute a vanguard in the struggle… as is clearly known in the [current] Al-Aqsa uprising."
After instructing the children to be "a vanguard" of the "armed struggle," Fatah then glorified child sacrifice: "Palestine is my entire life… Life and the children are a sacrifice for your sake." (Waed, Issue 27)
The PA's child recruitment was a great success. Many Palestinian teenagers participated, and sixteen 12th graders died in that terror wave. The PA's response to their deaths was horrifying, as the official PA news agency, presented their deaths as a "great victory":
"Sixteen [12th grade students] succeeded [achieving] the Martyrdom of the homeland… for death as a Martyr is the path to excellence and greatness and the path of those who know how to reach the great victory." (WAFA, July 11, 2016)
Finally, after sending its children to die, the PA uses them for political profit. Internally, the deaths are used to create hatred of Israel, as the PA routinely presents child terrorists as innocent victims murdered by Israel.
Internationally, the PA publicizes the numbers of killed teenagers and calls on the world to punish Israel. As the frequency grows of members of parliaments and anti-Israel NGOs condemning Israel for the deaths of Palestinian children, increasing the number of dead Palestinian children has become a fundamental component of the PA propaganda strategy.
Years ago, the first time this writer presented this evidence at a hearing in the US Senate it drew outrage. Then-senator Hillary Clinton attacked the PA for its "horrific child abuse," and former senator Arlen Specter denounced it as "civilization abuse." But the American and other international condemnations have remained empty words because politicians come and go, while the PA's use of child soldiers remains at the forefront of its strategy.
Years of PA indoctrination have been alarmingly effective. Palestinian children know they are expected to be child soldiers, and regularly another one seeks a moment of fulfillment and fame, hoping to kill and be killed. Palestinian children have already mastered what they are being taught. Perhaps it is the rest of us who need to stay after school.
Amnesty International's latest report charging Israel with being an apartheid regime continues to be exposed for what it is—part of a widespread, disingenuous propaganda campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. Although the report's authors remain unnamed by the organization, these are the people who publicly promote the campaign and stand behind it. Long before their current campaign of vilification, they established their bona fides as defamers of the Jewish state willing to fabricate facts to accomplish their goal.
Agnès Callamard
Agnès Callamard, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions at the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London, July 10, 2019. Credit: U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office via Wikimedia Commons. Callamard was appointed Secretary General of Amnesty International in March 2021.
Her obsession with demonizing the Jewish state extends to lying about former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Israel's role in Yasser Arafat's death. She falsely claimed that Peres had admitted the PLO leader was assassinated [by Israel], although he said nothing of the sort. Even when her falsehood was publicly exposed, Callamard refused to retract it from her Twitter account, where it still remains. This did not stop her from being appointed Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the notoriously biased U.N. Human Rights Council, where she served from 2016-2021—just before assuming her latest job at Amnesty International.
She has crowed about boycotting Israel on her Twitter account:
When, in 2018, Hamas encouraged its people to violently tear down the border between Israel and Gaza and "implement the right of return" as a "new phase in the Palestinians' national struggle on the road to liberating all of Palestine, from the river to the sea," Callamard in her capacity as UNHRC special rapporteur defended the violent attempts to eliminate the Jewish state as "a legitimate exercise of the rights of freedom of expression." She condemned Israel's measures to protect its soldiers and border.
Despite video and photographs showing rioters throwing rocks, planting explosives at the fence, shooting at Israeli troops on the other side and calling for the killing of Jews, Callamard and her cohorts insisted the violent rioting was "peaceful":
"There is no available evidence to suggest that the lives of heavily armed security forces were threatened. Israel has ignored repeated demands by the international community to credibly investigate and prosecute substantial allegations of wrongful killings by its security forces," she said.
She publicly opposes Israel as the nation state of Jews, stating:
"How can you support a law that makes a distinction between citizenship and nationality on the basis of your race? It's mind-boggling to me."
Phillip Luther
Luther's position at Amnesty International is Research and Advocacy Director and Senior Adviser.
Amnesty International claims—counter to the opinion of most legal authorities—that Palestinians have a legal right to return to Israel. Luther promotes this so-called "right of return"—which is widely recognized as a means of eliminating the Jewish state—to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. He declares: "There can be no lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis until Israel respects Palestinian refugees' right to return."
When asked about the disproportionate scrutiny and condemnation of Israel, compared to that of any other country, Luther reverts to the old, anti-Semitic trope of Jewish power and control, insisting that Israel "managed to shut down scrutiny using the power of its relationships…. you can look at U.N. inaction. Because [Israel] has influence over powerful allies who then manage to stop it, stop the scrutiny."
Saleh Hijazi
Hijazi currently serves as Deputy Regional Director of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) branch of Amnesty International, and heads its Jerusalem office.
Raised in Ramallah, Hijazi is a longtime anti-Israel activist who seeks the elimination of the Jewish state. He previously worked as a PR officer for the Palestinian Authority's Office of the Ministry of Planning in Ramallah, and with the International Solidarity Movement that encouraged Palestinian "legitimate armed struggle" against Israel. He has lauded and featured photos of notorious Palestinian terrorists on his Facebook page.
He is a longtime activist against a two-state solution who calls for ending the Jewish state under the guise of human rights:
"The main problem today is that we cannot reconcile the human rights discourse that the Palestinian movement adopted and the colonial project of the nation-state that is still playing out in our region. Instead of wasting time deliberating which state and how to get it we need to be assertive that any 'state' solution within the boundaries of Mandate Palestine is only a step towards complete colonization. The solution to the conflict must be regional and cross border, with important international implications and go beyond the limitation of national liberation according to colonial drawn lines…."
He publicly campaigns for the BDS movement and has called for "a general boycott of Israeli products":
"When anyone purchases Israeli products, they are funding the occupation of our land…. Israel has a stranglehold over our economy … we must continue to resist and take action….Resist! Boycott! We Are Intifada!"
Orly Noy
Born in Iran, Noy emigrated to Israel with her family during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. She denies anti-Semitism is, or ever was, a factor among Iran's Islamic leaders. Noy strongly opposes the notion of a Jewish state:
"The very idea of Israel as a 'Jewish democracy' is a declaration of demographic war against the Palestinians because the imperative is to maintain a Jewish democracy…."
Noy is a longtime anti-Israel activist in the mold of the anti-Zionist, marginal Israeli Black Panther group of the 1970s. She is an executive board member of B'tselem, the Israeli group that started the current vilification campaign that accuses Israel of being an apartheid state. B'tselem pushed the bar further than previous campaigns, going so far as to use Nazi tropes about Jewish supremacy to demonize Israel.
Noy calls for international intervention against Israel and is signatory to a petition by a fringe group of Israeli Jews who band together with non-Jews to reject Jewish self-determination in the Jewish historic homeland. Reusing the Nazi tropes about supremacy, the petition states:
"As individuals who belong to the side of the oppressor, and that have tried for years to shift public opinion in Israel in order to change the foundations of the current regime, we have long come to the conclusion that it is impossible to change the Jewish supremacist regime without external intervention…."
After spending the last few years banning Dr. Seuss and literally burning copies of Harry Potter novels in bonfires, and denouncing classic children's literature like Little House on the Prairie and Mary Poppins as racist, leftists are now accusing conservatives of "banning books".
When a Minnesota school district removedThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird from its curriculum because it made students "uncomfortable", the NAACP, which has been trying to ban Huck since at least the 50s, cheered. So did the media which celebrated the effort to remove "racist language" that "triggered students of color" from the classroom.
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The removal of Mark Twain's authentically anti-racist masterpiece was carried out by anti-racists in school districts from Burbank, California to Lawrence, Kansas. In 2016, a Virginia school district, now at the center of media fear mongering about book bans after parents succeeded in reclaiming schools from CRT bosses, banned both books because of all the "racial slurs".
Now the censors want to reclaim the mantle of free speech. The media, which described school districts "removing" or "replacing" books on reading lists when leftists were doing it, now calls the removal of books, whether they're racist critical race theory texts or Maus, as "bans".
Much like erstwhile liberals went from celebrating Jefferson and Lincoln to toppling their statues, their educational counterparts who had once vocally championed Huck and Mockingbird, and shouted down any effort to keep them out of the classroom, now just as vocally want them out and replaced with the deranged hateful ravings of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi.
Yet instead of being honest about that (or anything else), they duck into a phone booth, doff their censor togs and dress up as free speech crusaders, and then rush back and throw off their free speech tights to go back to burning books. Even by the standards of a movement that is so pathologically Orwellian that it describes protests against vaccine mandates as "authoritarian", this is a bit much. But the only books they believe should be in school are those whose politics they like, at any given moment, before deciding that they're hate speech and purging them.
Removing books from a school curriculum isn't a ban. If it is, then lefties have been banning books forever. It's not just Huck Finn, there's hardly a single classic book that hasn't been denounced for thoughtcrimes. The Wind in the Willows? Rarcist. Narnia? Islamophobic. The Lord of the Rings? Also racist. Any book written by a white man? Systemically racist.
Recently, a university added a trigger warning to 1984 by George Orwell.
The worst offenders are the proponents of critical race theory, now suddenly crying about censorship, when they had been urging schools, publishers, and readers to stop buying, publishing, and displaying books by white men in the name of racial and gender equity.
A few years ago they were touting a proposal that every racist illiterate stop reading books by white men for a year. You can still find headlines like, "I Read Books by Only Minority Authors for a Year" from the Washington Post, and more explicit posts at book sites like, "Why I'm No Longer Reading Books by White Men", "A Year of No White Men", "The Year I Stopped Reading White People". The 'crybullies' at Goodreads, which is to young adult books what TikTok is to videos of crying teens changing gender on camera, bullied publishers into canceling books and forced writers to unpublish their own books to the wild applause of the media.
Now lefties are subjecting us to their self-righteous pearl clutching about censoring books.
Parents have a right to determine what their children are reading in school. They have an absolute right to reject the real racism of Ta-Nehisi Coates or Ibram X. Kendi, who dehumanize white people as a group, or, for that matter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, if they don't want their children reading racial slurs, or Maus, if they don't want them exposed to curse words. Parents don't need a 'good reason' to keep a book off the reading list. Being the parents of their children is good enough to give them veto power over what their children are taught.
But there is a world of difference between taking a book out of a school and banning it.
When you harass publishers and authors into removing a book from sale, you're banning the book. When you pull classic books from sale and then ban their resale, as the Seuss Foundation did, under pressure, and eBay chose to do on its own, that is an actual book ban.
People who believe that men can become women by wishing hard enough have the right to burn their own copies of Harry Potter, but there's no mistaking the message of hate and intimidation that sends. There's a reason the Nazis loved burning books. It's an act of violence that serves as a temporary substitute for destroying the authors and readers behind them.
Anyone can and should be able to read any book they want. The proponents of critical race theory are the biggest opponents of that idea. They don't just want books they dislike out of schools, but they want them removed entirely from existence. That's why they don't just refuse to read them, or even just burn them, they pressure publishers into eliminating them.
They don't just do this because they hate the books themselves, but as a show of power.
Books have been banned for a whole lot less than racial slurs or accurately describing the world as it was at the time. Beloved classic children's books like Wind in the Willows had messages read into them. Racial lenses have been placed over classics like Lord of the Rings. And contemporary teen books were forced out of existence for the mere crime of having 'black' or 'slave' in the title even when they were set in fantasy kingdoms and had nothing to do with race.
This Salem Witch Trial of literature isn't even about the context of the text, but the hateful power of the social justice censors who are getting high on the fumes from the burning paper.
After all this, the book burners, statue topplers, and crowdsourced censors suddenly want to act like they're the champions of free speech because parents don't want critical racist texts, underage pornography, and the other garbage that the Left currently champions (before deciding a decade from now that it also needs to be banned) taught to their children.
The old liberals of the ACLU had some personal credibility when attacking censorship, the postmodern identity politics leftists who live and breathe censorship have less than none.
Much of lefty politics is built on wearing liberal skins and echoing liberal ideas in between illiberal bouts of destroying everything they don't approve of and demanding that everyone swear allegiance to their politics. Sometimes it fools the declining population of Boomer liberals.
Just ask Obama.
The very last people who should ever don the mantle of free speech are critical race theorists who believe that everything is racist and should be banned unless it was made by them. They are obsessed with "whiteness" in architecture, art, and literature the way the Nazis were obsessed with finding trace elements of Jewishness in Einstein's theories and Strauss waltzes.
Banning books isn't just something you do: it's central to how you think of the world.
Parents trying to determine what books their children are exposed to aren't trying to control the world, but critical race theory is concerned not with individuals, but all of society. Leftists believe that they should control not just what they read, but what everyone reads and believes.
This is the authoritarian totalitarian impulse that moves them to both ban and compel books.
Reading to them is not an individual choice, but a collective one. The mass production of books and the transformation of reading from a public activity to a private one made individualism possible. Even in totalitarian societies, people smuggled books and read them secretly. In those stolen hours, seeing words by candle light, they won the freedom of the soul.
Today, Big Tech and their Big Publisher allies want people reading on Kindles and on digital platforms where books are not truly owned, but allocated by digital rights management lurking in the cloud which can delete any book at any time, making its words and the ones and zeros behind them disappear. Turning a private act into a public one, controlled by monopolies, and policed by the politically correct is a technosocial ecosystem that destroys individual reading.
Critical race theory proponents are coming for our books, they're coming for our culture, and our souls, and even as they burn and loot our intellectual heritage, they claim to be the victims.
In a perversity that would have stunned even Orwell and Swift, the book burners claim that they're fighting censorship, the censors insist that they're defending themselves against painful words, and the racists declare that they're imposing racism in the name of anti-racism.
And if you doubt that they're the victims, they'll burn you too.
{Reposted from the FrontPageMag site}
Daniel Pearl, Brutally Murdered 20 Years Ago, But The Key Lesson Wasn't Learned
hoto Credit: The Daniel Pearl Foundation via Wikimedia
Daniel Pearl H"yd
The prisoner, an American whose father was born in Israel, was surrounded by cowardly men covering their faces. The prisoner looked into the camera and said, "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish." That's the part the media covered so they could tell a story about Antisemitism. But Pearl added a statement about his Zionist history, "Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great-grandfather Chaim Pearl, who is one of the founders of the town." The media ignored that part because it told a story they didn't want their audience to understand. Anti-Zionism is the same thing as Antisemitism. When Daniel Pearl was done with his statement, terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed brutally hacked his head off in front of the whole world, and a video of his beheading was posted on Facebook.
That incident occurred on February 1st. This year was twenty years after that horrific day. The memory of how Daniel Pearl was murdered still resonates in the hearts of some people in this country, but it's forgotten by most. And the lesson the world should have learned is that the terrorists hated Israel, and because of that, they killed a Jew.
Pearl was lured into his capture because he wanted to give the terrorists an opportunity to tell their side of the story. He was murdered because he was a Jew. Except for Jewish media, most secular media reported his last words but explained that his head was hacked off because he was an American. Based on his final words, it wasn't what Daniel Pearl thought.
Sadly, Daniel Pearl's murder is relegated into the deep crevices of our collective memories. It is also sad that many among us view the man who hacked off Pearl's head, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is considered a martyr by liberal Americans because he was blindfolded and showered with water–they complained his treatment was torture. They remembered the killer was waterboarded but do not remember his act of brutally murdering this American Jew, leaving his wife a widow, and causing his son (who was born months after his death) to has grown up without his father.
I ask you…which one act was real torture, waterboarding the man who murdered Daniel Pearl or having one's head hacked off with a knife? And by knife I do not mean the swift executioner's blade, but Daniel Pearl's head was literally cut off with back-and-forth movements as one would slice off a piece of steak. I also ask why didn't people speak out that their TV news? downplayed that a reason Daniel Pearl was murdered was his Jewish faith and his connection to Israel.
Daniel Pearl screenshot, shortly before being brutally murdered
At the time of Pearl's murder, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, tweeted a message that seemed to indicate that it was Pearl's fault:
"Daniel Pearl's story is a reminder that individual accountability and reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence."
Powers was forced to take down the tweet but received no punishment.
Four years after Daniel Pearl's murder, his dad, Judah Pearl, wrote an op-ed for the newspaper his son wrote for The Wall Street Journal:
"One of the things that sadden me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity. It was not religious fanaticism alone.
This was first brought to my attention by the Pakistani Consul General who came to offer condolences at our home in California. When we spoke about the anti-Semitic element in Danny's murder she said: "What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children."
"At the time, it was not clear whether she was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny's murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent dehumanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004 when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the videotape of Danny's murder."
Al Dura, readers may recall, is the 12-year-old Palestinian boy who allegedly died from Israeli bullets in Gaza in September of 2001. As we now know, the whole scene is very likely to have been a fraud, choreographed by stringers and cameramen of France 2, the official news channel of France. France 2 aired the tape repeatedly and distributed it all over the world to anyone who needed an excuse to ratchet up anger or violence, among them Danny's killers.
The Pakistani Consul was right. The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel's murder, as well as for the "tsunami of hate" that has swept the world and continues to rise.
Many do not understand that from the day the faith was created, Judaism was a nation of people with the same faith. Because of their faith, the Jewish nation was ordered to live on the land that what is now called Israel,
Jews and Christians each believe that Genesis chapter 12 begins with God telling Abram (Abraham):
And the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you." [That land is now called Israel.] "And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and [you shall] be a blessing."
However, much of the mainstream media, even reporters who observe the Christian or Jewish faiths, separate Anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel from Antisemitism. For those who don't understand Zionism, it is simply the belief that the Jewish nation should have a state in its eternal homeland (Israel).
Judah Pearl mentioned the Al-Dura case. The American media rushed to make that story a lead story in the mainstream media. It was a cause of the second intifada leading to the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. But the hatred went beyond the Middle East. Antisemitism rose across the Western World, leading to attacks and murders of Jews such as Daniel Pearl. The MSM kept showing the pictures of the boy hiding behind his father as they were supposedly shot by the IDF.
The media didn't investigate the Al Durah story as they would do with other stories. Eventually, the whole tape was found. It showed that the entire incident was a set-up, a false slander of the Jewish nation using Israel as their excuse.
the UN recognizes that anti-Zionism is Antisemitism because they use the term interchangeably. The 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban quickly became a disgusting display of Antisemitism and anti-Israel Propaganda. It is there that the "Durban Strategy" was formulated, delegitimizing the Jewish State via branding it as a racist entity. Copies of the anti-Semitic work The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were sold on conference grounds; fliers depicting Hitler with the question, "What if I had won?" were circulated among conference attendees.
"Durban simultaneously hosted a UN conference of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). According to the UN, the NGO conference aimed to publicize the "voices of the victims." In this forum, the Jewish Caucus proposed that Holocaust denial and anti-Jewish violence caused by Jewish support for Israel be labeled forms of antisemitism. The proposal was almost unanimously defeated. Anne Bayefsky, an NGO participant and a representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, commented. "
"The only group that voted for it was the Jews. Of all the 'voices of the victims' put into the resolution, only one voice was deleted – the Jewish voice."
Rep Ilhan Omar (D-MN) made statements displaying her belief that there was no difference between Antisemitism and hate of Israel. For example, before she was elected, she tweeted that Israel had "hypnotized" the world. That's an age-old anti-Semitic claim that Jews had the power of mind control. She used it against Israel.
In 2019 Omar used another anti-Semitic canard that Jews were rich. But she didn't use it about Jews, her words were slander against Zionism the belief that the Jewish nation should have a state in its eternal homeland (Israel). Omar described the Congressional support of Israel by tweeting, "It's all about the Benjamins baby." Some Congressional Jews refused to believe that Omar's statements about Israel were anti-Semitic. For example, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) blamed the GOP, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was silent as he usually is about anti-Semitic acts.
There are too many other examples to list here. But the key lesson which is still ignored is that most people don't understand that haters of Israel are really expressing their Antisemitism.
May God continue to comfort Daniel Pearl's bereaved family, and may his memory always be for a blessing.
And may people remember what God said to Abraham. The Jewish people are a nation, which addressed that the hatred of Israel or Zionism is Antisemitism.
Parshat Pekudei,- 2022 5782 חזק חזק ונתחזק פרשת פקודי
"TASKS UNFINISHED"
At the end of Pekudei we all rise and declare: "Chazak, ChazakVenit'chazeik", be strong, be strong and may we be strengthened, as we do at the end of each of the chamisha chumshei Torah. Rav Soloveitchik suggested the reason for this recitation. When we are occupied with learning or working on a project we are happy and pleased with our accomplishment. But when we have finished our project or learning which we enjoyed, a sense of let-down sets in, and at times, even depression. Also, when we leave a temporary environment where we have spent several weeks, or months, having developed new friendships and relationships, we feel a singe of sadness saying goodbye while there was so much more we aspired to accomplish, but returning to our "more permanent home" we must. So we encourage one another- "to be strong and be strengthened" and look forward to see each other again, hopefully, in Jerusalem.
Tying this in with our parasha, with a thought I heard from my colleague, Rabbi Weiss. Note, that each sefer of the chumshei Torah concludes with endeavors left unfinished-left for the next generation to complete.
Sefer Bereishit- ends with the death of Yosef. But that is not the end of our being in Mitzrayim. As a matter of fact, our problems first begin with being enslaved there and the next generation will see the exodus from slavery and Mitzrayim
Sefer Shemot- ends with the cloud of glory resting upon the newly constructed Mishkan. But the use of the Mishkan has not yet taken place, but it serves as a blueprint for the ultimate Beit HaMikdash built many years later.
Sefer VaYikra and Sefer Bamidbar- end with laws of Ma'aserot and laws of Yerusha, inheritance. These laws are given; they can only be fulfilled and become a reality after possessing the Land of Israel.
Sefer Devarim- concludes with the death of Moshe. Although he was the greatest leader of our people, he never realized his greatest dream, to enter Eretz Yisrael- a mission only achieved by those he left behind.
Sefer Nevi'im- we find Dovid HaMelech whose life long dream was to build a House of G-d, a Beit HaMikdash, never saw his dream fulfilled. It was the next generation- his son Shlomo HaMelech who completed what his father began.
Leaving tasks unfinished, leaving goals and aspirations uncompleted can have a devastating and demoralizing effect that leaves us frustrated and even depressed. Therefore, the message seems to be, that we should not expect to fulfill all of our dreams, hopes and expectations. Rabbi Tarfon said this in Pirkei Avot [2; 21]-"It is not for anyone of us to complete the task". But that does not free us from doing our share, from working on our goals to the best of our ability, with our utmost energy and strength. So we declare Chazak, Chazak- be strong, let us each do our share knowing very well that we will not complete every goal. And then, we call out "Venit'chazek" let us be strengthened by the recognition that Together, our mission can be fulfilled and concluded even if it takes many generations to make it a reality.
We must appreciate the gifts and accomplishments of the generations that preceded us and we pray that our children and grandchildren continue the mission of our people and Torah.
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