Saturday, November 03, 2018

Brazil's new president will move embassy to Jerusalem

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's new president is thankfully friendly to Israel, and he's even willing to move the country's embassy to Jerusalem:
Until a few weeks ago, Jair Bolsonaro, now the president-elect of Brazil, was a little-known legislator. No one thought he would go on to become the leader of the country.

But on Wednesday, a week after he astonished everyone by winning the presidential election in Brazil – the largest democracy in Latin America – Bolsonaro chose Israel Hayom for what appears to be his first interview with the foreign media, and made it clear that his support for Israel and promises about Jerusalem were not just an election gimmick.

In a tweet on Thursday, Bolsonaro reiterated his position that he saw no problem in possibly moving the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a platform he had promoted during his campaign.

"I plan to move the embassy to Jerusalem,"
the unequivocal tweet stated.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the sentiment from "my friend the President-elect of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, for his intention to transfer the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem. This is a historic, correct and thrilling step."
One that he'll hopefully follow through with. Bolsonaro's doing the right thing, and this'll serve to eventually encourage other countries to follow suit more clearly.

Thursday, November 01, 2018

Antisemitism cannot be politicized

Shmuley Boteach addressed the tragedy at the Conservative-leaning synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the left's efforts to exploit it, milking it for all it's worth as a means to attack Donald Trump:
This past Saturday, the Jewish day of rest, a middle-aged man burst into a baby-naming service at a Pittsburgh synagogue. What followed was the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. Eleven men and women, who had come only to celebrate and to pray, were gunned down, their blood pooling around their scattered prayer books.

A heroic team of local police officers charged the shul under heavy fire. Though many sustained severe wounds, the massacre was finally brought to an end. The gunman was captured and should, in my opinion, face the death penalty.

In the days since the attack, President Donald Trump has unequivocally condemned the slaughter as an “antisemitic act of pure evil.” The president declared “the widespread persecution of Jews” to be “one of the ugliest and darkest features of human history,” and one that he vowed to fight. “It will take all of us working together to extract the poison of antisemitism from our world,” the president went on, asking Americans to “unite to conquer hate.”

The shooter, 46-year-old Robert Bowers, announced his arrival at the synagogue by screaming “all Jews must die.” He allegedly later told police officers that Jews were committing “genocide against his people.” Pretty ironic, that. A racist Jew-hater claiming the Jews are guilty of genocide just one week before the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
While the monster could be an Aryan nationalist, it's also possible he's a Muslim convert who sides with the "palestine" propaganda, and his drivel stemmed from the ideologies he embraces. That's something we'll all have to ponder, unless further investigation proves he's not.
On social media, Bowers had frequently attacked not only Jews but Trump for his closeness to Jews, to whom he referred in the most grotesque terms. “Trump is surrounded by k****,” the rancid killer lamented, “there is no #MAGA as long as there is a k*** infestation.”

DESPITE THESE facts, however, many people have come close to blaming Trump for the shooting.

Joe Biden, widely expected to run for the presidency in 2020, seemed to do so when he tweeted, apparently to the president, that “words matter” and “silence is complicity.”

Famed economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman suggested that Trump was to blame, at least in part. Speaking sarcastically, Krugman tweeted a link to the story with the caption, “but none of the white supremacist terrorism has anything to do with Trump, oh no.”

The Washington Post, also, featured an op-ed on its home page titled “How Culpable is Trump for the Shooting.” The author of that piece, GQ’s Julia Ioffe, tweeted “a word to [her] fellow American Jews: This president makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it.”

To politicize the murder of 11 Jews – let alone the worst antisemitic attack on American soil in our nation’s history – is lamentable.
Yet this has practically become the norm for years, perpetrated by freaks whose altruism is questionable at worst. It would be highly preferable the leftists - and even pseudo-rightists - keep their mouths shut if they can't do it without politicizing the whole issue.

While we're on the subject, I thought it was also concerning that the Haredi press in Israel is also politicizing the tragedy in their own way, by trying to avoid calling Tree of Life a synagogue, all because they so dislike the Conservative faith and don't want to accept it as a sect:
Israel’s haredi press covered the Sabbath attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in full Sunday morning, but as has become the norm the online haredi media reported uncomfortable facts and notions without blinking whereas the daily newspapers, which are controlled for content by rabbinical committees, used their traditional euphemisms.

The troubling matter in question: non-Orthodox synagogues and Jews.

Almost all the leading haredi daily newspapers led their Sunday editions with the news, but neglected to use the word synagogue to describe the building where the Conservative congregation which was attacked prays.

The widest circulation haredi daily Yated Neeman of the non-hassidic “Lithuanian” community led its newspaper with the story, with its headline reading “Neo-Nazi terror attack in Jewish center,” but did not mention that the Tree of Life community is progressive or use the word synagogue.
Even if their omission of the word synagogue is not the foremost important matter here, it's still troubling they'd do such a thing because they don't like non-Orthodox congregations. They should consider apologizing and admitting they're letting ideology get in the way of a clear understanding.

Then, Caroline Glick rightly condemns leftist Jews who attack Trump at a time like this, making a point that they're dishonoring the victims as a result:
Breitbart News’s Caroline Glick said left-wing Jews blaming President Donald Trump for inciting Saturday’s mass murder at a Pittsburgh synagogue are “dishonoring the dead” and “dishonoring the cause of fighting anti-Semitism.” She offered her remarks in a Monday interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.

Glick said, “It would’ve been good if the Jewish community in the United States and the national leadership, instead of pronouncing these milquetoast things that we all need to be more civil in our tone, would say, ‘No, we have to be less civil to anti-Semites. We have to be less civil to people who want to annihilate the Jewish people [and] the Jewish state.'”

Glick added, “But what we’re finding, particularly among left-wing Jews is that they’re using it to attack the administration and trying to conflate the Nazi who committed this massacre with President Trump. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth.” [...]

Glick noted how various news media outlets framed a left-wing and partisan Democrat organization as a “Jewish group.”

Glick said, “[They are] pretending that it’s a mainstream Jewish organization and getting a bunch of people who side with their hatred of president Trump to sign a petition telling him that he’s not allowed to come to Pittsburgh to mourn the deaths of the victims of Saturday’s atrocity.”

Glick continued, “This is pure prostitution. This is people who are not honoring the dead. They’re dishonoring the dead and they’re dishonoring the cause of fighting anti-Semitism in the United States and elsewhere when they turn it into a means to try to batter a president who has been extraordinary both to the Jewish state of Israel and the Jewish people more generally in his regard and esteem for them.”

Glick went on, “It’s really horrible and it sets back any attempt to fight anti-Semitism when you hide who the perpetrators are and you instead blame people who are blameless for the atrocity.”

Glick noted the prevalence of anti-Zionism on the left and within the Democrat Party. Marlow said, “[There is] a mainstreaming of anti-Zionism in the Democratic Party.”
So what good does it do to protest anti-semitism when it's clear these disgraceful representatives aren't really worried at all, and only use it as an excuse to bash right-wing politicians? Those leftist community leaders committing exploitation of tragedies owe an apology for watering down the subjects for the sake of their personal politics. It's awful the gunman was able to strike, and it's also awful the leftists are using these tragedies to fuel their agendas lacking altruism.