Dreams Into Lightning 2

Morning Report: 2012-11-27

Libya: Muslim group kidnaps, threatens to kill alleged gays. Libya Herald:

Extremists say they will execute a dozen men they allege are homosexuals, whom they abducted last Thursday at a private party in Tripoli’s Ain Zara district.

A body calling itself the ‘Private Deterrent Force’, which is believed to be part of the extremist Nawasi brigade, one of Tripoli’s largest militias, has posted images of the men on their Facebook page. One picture (above) shows them, heads covered, standing with their hands against a wall. ...

Tajikistan: Government blocks Facebook to stifle critics. Reuters: 'Tajikistan has blocked access to Facebook in response to a slew of comments spreading "mud and slander" about veteran President Imomali Rakhmon and officials in the Central Asian republic. The ban on the popular social networking site is the latest crackdown on dissent in Tajikistan a year before an election that could extend Rakhmon's two-decade rule. ...'
Hungary: Far-right leader demands lists of Jews. Also from Reuters: 'A Hungarian far-right politician urged the government to draw up lists of Jews who pose a "national security risk", stirring outrage among Jewish leaders who saw echoes of fascist policies that led to the Holocaust. Marton Gyongyosi, a leader of Hungary's third-strongest political party Jobbik, said the list was necessary because of heightened tensions following the brief conflict in Gaza and should include members of parliament. ...'
Mexico: Ex-mayor found dead. Breitbart: 'Former Mexican Mayor Maria Santos Gorrostieta was found dead on the side of the road. Gorrostieta previously survived two assassination attempts. ...' She was known for her fearless activity against drug cartels in Tiquicheo.
Brazil: São Paulo police chiefs replaced. Miami Herald: 'The chiefs of police in Sao Paulo were replaced on Monday as Brazil's largest city emerged from a bloody weekend and authorities struggled to contain a wave of violence that has doubled the murder rate in recent months. Sao Paulo state security chief Fernando Grella, who took over the job four days ago, replaced the chiefs of the civil and military branches of the police and vowed to work closely with police, put more officers in the streets of Sao Paulo and investigate every murder. ...'

Morning Report: 2012-11-26

USA: New Obamacare challenge. Breitbart:

The Supreme Court has now reinstated a major challenge to Obamacare. Liberty University is challenging both the Individual Mandate and the Employer Mandate of the Affordable Care Act. (Of those two, the latter is even more damaging to the economy and job creation.) A liberal panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had thrown out the case last year, saying that the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) does not permit any federal court to rule on the merits of challenges to the Individual Mandate until that requirement goes into effect in 2014.

In its Jun. 28 opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius, the justices unanimously rejected this AIA argument. So Mat Staver, who is both dean of Liberty's law school and chairman of the law firm representing the university, filed a petition for rehearing.

The Supreme Court granted that petition today. ...

Israel / international: Jewish self-defense, widespread anti-Semitism. Tablet: 'Despite the ability of Israel to cobble together a pretty impressive base of international support for its recent operation in Gaza, there were places where, almost by routine, the Israeli efforts were met by a surge of anti-Semitic reactions. ...' Atlas Shrugs has more.

Nigeria: Muslims blow up church, killing 11. Also from Atlas:

Two suicide attacks on a church in an army barracks in the northern Nigerian town of Jaji on Sunday left eleven people dead and 30 injured, the army said.

"Eleven people, mostly worshippers, were killed while 30 are in the hospitals with various degrees of injuries," national army spokesman Brigadier General Bola Koleosho told AFP.

A military officer who did not want to be named said the Protestant church was hit by two explosions.

"The first blast caused no casualties and curious worshippers gathered around the scene looking at the debris... and that was when the second blast happened," he said. ...

Egypt: Morsi becomes new Pharaoh. Michael Totten:

It makes no difference that he was elected. Democracy isn’t just about getting elected. A democratic election is not a one-time plebiscite on who the next tyrant is going to be. Democracy requires individual and minority rights and the separation of powers. Winners cannot oppress losers, nor do losers get to wage war on the winners.

Some of us are more surprised than others by this development, but the Muslim Brotherhood was never a democratic political movement. It's not even a close call. You don't have to be a cheerleader for Hosni Mubarak to recognize its inherent authoritarianism. ...

Read the rest for the experiences of some genuine liberals, who are isolated and outnumbered in this revolution.

Life Magazine vs. Jewish State, August 1946

Via Elder of Ziyon.

In a World unutterably wearied of seeing people pushed around, there is an understandable, though wishful, tendency to believe in some easy solution for the problem of Europe’s homeless Jews. The notion is being broadcast that the solution is merely to let 100,000 more Jews into Palestine where they can be cared for by their own people. Thus they would be lifted from the world conscience. lt is also suggested that in a true, independent Jewish state, not just a "Home,” the Children of Israel would continue to build out of arid wastes a land of hydroelectric milk and industrial honey so rich and so charming as to attract and provide for all unwanted Jews.

The Zionists are superb organizers; they are also religious idealists, with all the virtues - and_°someof the blind spots—-of zealots through-out history. ...

Read the rest of this gem at the link. And don't neglect this January 1939 classic from the Atlantic, I Married a Jew.

My husband's father and mother are Jews. My parents are both what Mr. Hitler would be pleased to call 'Aryan' Germans. I am an American-born girl, and the first to defend my Americanism in an argument; yet so strong are family ties, and the memory of a happy thirteen-month sojourn in the Vaterland a few years ago, that I frequently find myself trying to see things from the Nazis' point of view ...

Morning Report: 2012-06-08

Russia tests ICBM. Video at Breitbart.

Walter Russell Mead: Good news from California. At Via Meadia, electoral reform in California shakes things up; "We’ll see if this helps."

Gay pride celebrations begin in Tel Aviv. 'The streets of Tel Aviv were filled with rainbow-colored pride flags on Friday as thousands of people were taking part in the annual Gay Pride March. The festivities began at 10 a.m. with a community happening at Meir Park with musical performances, celebrity appearances and speeches by public figures such as Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz and Labor leader Shelly Yechimovich. ...'

French anti-Semitic attacker turns himself in. 'Israel Radio reported late Thursday that the lead suspect in last weekend’s anti-Semitic attacks in Lyon, France has turned himself in to police. The suspect and 10 others attacked three people as they left the Beit Menachem Jewish school on Saturday night. The French Interior ministry said the assailants wielded a hammer and an iron bar. ...'

State Department purges religious freedom from human rights reports. Via Counter Jihad Report:

The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.

The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that cover the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role. ...

Barry Rubin Interviewed

He's interviewed by the Daily Caller. For me, the most exciting part is this announcement near the end:

Any plans to write another book? If so, about what?

My next book is already completed and I think it is going to have a big impact. It is entitled, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Dr. Wolfgang Schwanitz, and based on newly released CIA and never before translated German documents. Basically, it shows how the alliance was stronger and more important than previously understood and also how individuals, ideologies, and groups that collaborated with the Axis have ruled the Arabic-speaking world for the last sixty years and will continue to do so in the current Islamist wave.

I've posted before about Arab Nazis and I've quoted Barry Rubin on the subject of safe antisemitism. As Barry observes, "nobody is going to complain about Naziphobia" because the Nazis are a politically safe target; their ideological descendents are not. So his forthcoming book on the Nazi-Islamist axis is very timely and much needed.

Shurat ha-Din American Chapter Fights Campus Anti-Semitism

Shurat haDin - Israel Law Center, via email press release:

This week Shurat HaDin's newly established American office in New York warned university and college presidents around the United States that their schools may be subject to civil and criminal liability if they do not take necessary measures to ensure the educational rights and safety of Jewish and Israeli students on their campuses. In letters sent to campus administrators, we also cautioned that their schools have a duty to reasonably prevent university funds from being diverted to unlawful activities that are directed against the state of Israel.

The warning to more than 150 college and university presidents around the United States, informs the schools concerning their legal obligations to prevent harassment and anti-Semitism. The letters note that as a result of their receipt of federal funding their institutions have legal responsibilities to prevent a hostile environment from forming on campus. The letter specifically cites Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin in federally assisted programs and activities. ...

Related, at JTA: ZOA encouraged by anti-discrimination progress:

October 6, 2010

(JTA) -- The Zionist Organization of America praised the U.S. Department of Education for its efforts to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination.

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), with Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), introduced legislation last month that would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964, whose Title VI prohibits discrimination based on "race, color, or national origin," to also include religion.

Sherman reported Monday that after speaking with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, he is "more than cautiously optimistic" that the Department of Education will begin enforcing Title VI to protect Jewish students.

In a statement posted on his website, Sherman specifically acknowledged the ZOA's contribution to this result. The ZOA has led efforts to bring about legislative changes to Title VI, including lobbying members of Congress. ...

A "Great Paradox": The Atlantic, 1939

"'Mother,' I said quietly, 'remember the greatest Man who ever lived was a Jew – Jesus.' That held her for a minute. 'Yes,' she murmured, 'it is the great paradox.'"


Marc Tracy at Tablet brings us this little gem from The Atlantic, January 1939: I Married a Jew.

Of course we eventually come to Hitler, Ben and I. In the eyes of Ben, as in the eyes of all his people, Hitler stands for the Jewish equivalent of the Antichrist—a little, strutting monster whose sole purpose and pleasure in life is to flog, imprison, impoverish, humiliate, and plague Israel. Few history books trace the path of persecutions against the Jews as they have occurred throughout the ages. They have occurred in ancient Rome, Poland, Russia, Spain, England, and France, usually whenever Jewry becomes too numerous and too powerful, whenever it becomes, in the eyes of Gentiles, a threat, potential or actual, to Gentile supremacy. I try to tell Ben that Hitler is merely writing another page in a history that will continue so long as the status quo between Jews and Gentiles remains—a status that only the willing shoulders of both protagonists can remove.

But it is hard for Ben to take the long view. ...

Odd sort, this Ben. Read the whole article - it's worth the time. And as I've mentioned before, it's easy - now - to condemn the Nazis, and it's a great way to distract ourselves from the antisemitism and totalitarianism raging in the world today.

Easy Targets

Nobody is going to complain about Naziphobia. - Barry Rubin

There's no downside to being against Nazis. Anyone can declare that the Holocaust was a great evil, anyone can say "never again". As I wrote in an earlier post,

That the Nazis did horrific things to humanity in general and the Jews in particular is well known; "Nazi = evil" is not a controversial statement. But Nazis are a "safe target". They were white, nominally Christian Europeans acting on a professed ideology of white supremacism; so it's easy to conflate them with the likes of the KKK. Best of all, they lost the war!

Commenting on the reconstituted anti-semitism program at Yale, Barry Rubin picks up this line of thought here:

But now Yale has sidestepped criticism about ending the program by changing its name slightly and choosing a new head who is an expert on Jews in France and especially the Holocaust and French literature there. No doubt we will be fed a steady diet of things like the Dreyfus affair, antisemitism in nineteenth-century French literature, and the situation in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. As if masses of studies haven't been done on such things. But obviously nothing on antisemitism from certain groups, ideologies, and individuals in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. So you see academia really cares about antisemitism, as long as the Jews involved (and in most cases their persecutors) are already long dead. Nobody is going to complain about Naziphobia.

I hope he's wrong about the Yale program, and I'm willing to give the new department head a fair chance. But the main point is this: there's little value in studying the antisemitism of the past if we ignore its most dangerous present manifestations, and by this of course I mean the ideologies of radical Islam.

Arab Nazis

From the BBC's Sarah Ehrlich:
Farhud memories: Baghdad's 1941 slaughter of the Jews

On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.

Heskel Haddad, an 11-year-old boy was finishing a festive meal and preparing to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot, oblivious to the angry mob that was about to take over the city.

Thousands of armed Iraqi Muslims were on the rampage, with swords, knives and guns.

The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon. Only 180 bodies were identified, but the Israeli-based Babylonian Heritage Museum says about another 600 unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave.

Go to the original for the full, horrific details - but also for the stories of brave Arab individuals who did what they could to protect the innocent from the mob.

The BBC piece does not address the long history of anti-Jewish violence in the Arab world prior to the Nazi era. Nevertheless, this article is an important first step. It demolishes the notion that Israel is to blame for Arab Jew-hatred. Also, the article helps to put the Arabic word "Farhud" into circulation. The word needs to be part of the vocabulary of international discourse.

It is important to expose the link between Nazism and Arab anti-Semitism, as this article does. That the Nazis did horrific things to humanity in general and the Jews in particular is well known; "Nazi = evil" is not a controversial statement.

But Nazis are a "safe target". They were white, nominally Christian Europeans acting on a professed ideology of white supremacism; so it's easy to conflate them with the likes of the KKK. Best of all, they lost the war! There is no significant presence of Nazi sympathizers in today's academic or cultural establishments. ('Twasn't always so; but that's another story.) Unlike the Communists, for example - or the Islamists.

Exposing the Nazi-Islamist ties may be the most important thing we can do to disrupt the narrative that paints Israel as the heir to the Nazi mantle.

Nazism is not yet dead in the Middle East.

JPost: Newspaper reports Nazi party forming in Egypt.

A group of Egyptian political activists have announced plans to set up a local version “of the Nazi party,” an Egyptian newspaper reported on Thursday.

Citing a leftist Egyptian news portal, the Al-Masry Al-Youm daily said that “the party’s founding deputy is a former military official,” and that the party would be aimed at bringing “together prominent figures from the Egyptian society.”

The report cited founding member Emad Abdel Sattar as saying that the unestablished party “believes in vesting all powers in the president after selecting him or her carefully,” and that “preparations are under way to choose the most competent person to represent the party.”

Go to the article for full details. But pay special attention to what Mordechai Kedar, of Bar-Ilan University, says about Nazi-inspired groups in the Arab world:

Historically, he said, the German Nazi party saw three attempts to copy it in the Arab world in the 1930s in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. The Egyptian party of that time was led by former president Anwar Sadat, who went on to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

“They were copying the extreme nationalism of Germany, before the Second World War, and before the word ‘Nazi’ became a coarse word,” Kedar said.[My emphasis - aa.]

Strategy Page has more.

This is ironic on many levels. While Arabs love to call Israelis "Nazis", it is the Arab world that is the true heir to the Adolph Hitler's vision of how the world should be. A major weapon in the Arab arsenal is anti-Semitism. For a long time, even before World War II, the racial hatred tactic was particularly popular in the Arab world. This was partly the result of Islamic radicalism, which pushed hatred of all non-Moslems, not just Jews. But as more Jews began moving into Jerusalem and surrounding areas in the late 19th century, more of the Moslem racial animosity was directed at Jews.

Jews "Most Contemptible Nation"

According to former Hamas Minister of Culture 'Atallah Abu al-Subh.