USA/ISRAEL: No matter which asshole becomes USA [president, Satanic Israel wins.

No Matter Who Becomes President Israel Wins 

POSTED BY PHILIP GIRALDI ON DECEMBER 29, 2015 IN NEWS & ANALYSIS, USA, PALESTINE/ISRAEL | | 2 RESPONSES 

by Philip Giraldi 

(The Unz Review) – The next American president will almost certainly be bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby. Hillary Clinton has already declared that that when she is elected president she intends to take relations with Israel “to the next level” and has also promised to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit on her very first day in office. It is difficult to imagine what the next level might actually be in America’s already servile deference to Israeli interests so she should perhaps be careful regarding what she commits herself to do. Netanyahu just might feel empowered to remain in the Oval Office on his visit, possibly also moving the Knesset to Washington so it will be closer to the U.S. Treasury if Israel’s budget comes up a bit short as well as just across the river from the Pentagon and all those nifty weapons that can be used to kill Palestinian children..

Hillary’s pledge of fealty to Israel took place at a meeting of the Saban Forum, which is an annual dialogue between American and Israeli leaders from across the political and social spectrum, hosted by the Brookings Institute, which also has a Center for Middle East Policy, formerly also named after Saban. The eponymous Saban is Haim Saban an Israeli who has made his billions of dollars in the United States in the television and entertainment industry. His best known brand is the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He is consistently one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, contributing $10 million in 2001-2, whose stated formula for influencing American politics is to donate to politicians and parties, establish think tanks and control the media message. He has worked hard to do all three on behalf of Israel, to include paying for the Democratic National Committee headquarters in DC. 

Saban’s dealings with the Democrats have apparently  not inhibited his cooperation with Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. In 2009 Congressman Jane Harman was contacted by an Israeli intelligence “agent” and reportedly agreed to attempt to influence a reduction in the espionage charges in the then ongoing trial of accused American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. In return, Harman’s contact promised to support her bid to become chairman of the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence. The Israeli, who some suspect was Haim Saban himself, indicated that he would pressure House speaker Nancy Pelosi using threats to withhold political contributions from Saban if Harman were not given the position. Harman was later spoken of as a possible candidate to become Director of Central Intelligence and, without the FBI recordings of her phone conversations, which were made known to Pelosi, she might have obtained either position or possibly both in succession. 

Saban has also long been associated with the Clintons and he and a tight group of like-minded donors may indeed constitute the most financially significant part of Hillary’s political base. When Bill was president Saban was a regular overnight visitor at the White House. He has pledged to spend “whatever it takes to elect Hillary in 2016 because “the relationship with the US and Israel will be significantly reinforced.” Saban has repeatedly claimed that “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Hillary and Bill appear to agree and one might even argue that Bill has a soft spot for money coming from Israeli spies, witness his pardoning of fugitive Marc Rich in 2001. So put it all together if you will and if you think that the wag the dog relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv is bad now, just wait because it will be moving “to the next level” if Hillary is elected. 

So who is standing up for the interests of the American people? Nobody, apparently. Senator Ted Cruz has no less than 69 press releases on his web site pledging support for Israel. Jeb Bush has pledged to ban the pro-Palestinian Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement in the U.S. which most people would consider to be free speech. Every Republican candidate also continues to pander directly and personally to Benjamin Netanyahu, including Donald Trump who planned to drop in on Bibi but had to cancel the trip because of the reaction to his comments about Muslims. Trump had also caused somewhat of an uproar by telling a Jewish Republican audience in New York City that they wouldn’t support him because he didn’t need their money. Imagine the cheek of Trump to link Jews with money with buying influence! In any event, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL),determined  that Trump’s comments were not anti-Semitism because they had been misinterpreted and I for one am relieved that we have a brave and enlightened organization like the ADL to keep us on our toes when it comes to potential hate speech. 

George Washington could not have envisioned the manner in which money has corrupted American politics. Congressmen complain that much of their time is spent fundraising and, in such a system, it is inevitable that the most generous donors are able to position themselves for favors from the political class. Some become Ambassadors even though they are completely unqualified. Others choose to push certain legislative agendas, to include tax breaks and bailouts that enrich them personally. 

But now we have something that goes way beyond that in the new breed of mega-rich, colossally wealthy multi-billionaires who are well positioned to use their resources to support a political candidate willing to accept the money and sell out his or her principles to someone advancing the interests of a foreign country. We are now on the verge of having a Manchurian Candidate president. 

Last November an organization called the Israel-America Council (IAC), which ostensibly represents expatriate Israeli citizens residing in the United States, hosted an inaugural bash in Washington. Present were Saban and Sheldon Adelson sharing a stage. Adelson, the principal funder of IAC, was born in the United States and lives in Las Vegas but also has a home in Israel and presumably has Israeli citizenship. His wife is Israeli and he has said that he regrets serving in the US Army in World War Two while also expressing a fervent desire to have a son who would serve as an Israeli military sniper. Both Adelson and Saban are essentially Israelis who live in the United States for economic reasons. Scott McConnellhas described them as having “maximal loyalties to Israel and minimal ones to the United States.” 

Adelson is the Republican version of Saban. He believes that the United States should nuke Iran as a “negotiating tactic,” has an estimated $23.8 billion fortune derived mostly from casinos in Las Vegas and in Asia. He is a Republican funder for those prospective candidates who promote unlimited US support for Israel. He bankrolled Newt Gingrich’s bid for the GOP nomination in 2012 as well as Mitt Romney for a total of $150 million and also contributed $10 million to Republican candidates in the 2014 congressional campaign. Newt Gingrich in return repaid the favor by praising Israel in his foreign policy pronouncements, taking a hard line with Iran and describing the Palestinians as an “invented people.” 

Adelson and Saban’s “spirited public discussion”at IAC included a number of zingers that have been widely reported in the alternative media. Saban commented that in the event of a “bad” deal between Washington and Tehran over the latter’s nuclear program (bad as being defined by Israel) Netanyahu “should bomb the living daylights out of the sons of bitches.” Adelson noted that

“the purpose of the existence of Palestinians is to destroy Israel” before dismissing the possibility of a democratic state including both Arabs and Jews by responding “So Israel won’t be a democratic state, so what?” He added that democracy was not mentioned in the Torah. 

The two also joked about combing their resources to buy the New York Times by offering to pay “more than it’s worth” to make its coverage of Israel even more favorable than it already is. Saban added that he had even used “threats” to obtain favorable media reporting about Israel. The seven hundred “Israeli-Americans” in the audience reportedly responded to the conversation with “wild applause.” 

Adelson and Saban concluded that 

“there’s no right or left when it comes to Israel” and the conference Chairman Shawn Evenhaim joked at its conclusion that “After the election in 2016 one of you will get me a private tour of the White House.” 

The jest was on target. At this point it is almost certain that both Saban and Adelson will become the largest single donors for whoever becomes the GOP and Democratic candidates. That will buy them enormous access, as Hillary Clinton has already demonstrated. Given that reality one has to accept the obvious conclusion that the two Israeli billionaires might well be able to substantially define the relationship between Washington and the Muslim world, to Israel’s benefit. 

That Adelson and Saban might think privately that they have become political kingmakers is one thing, but stating as much in a public forum defies belief. They should be recognized for what they really are: agents of a foreign government and there is no reason why the Justice Department should not require them to register as such under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. Their close and continuing relationships with Israeli government can no doubt be demonstrated, validating the claim and registering as foreign agents would make illegal their funding of American politicians. 

And once one starts recognizing foreign advocacy groups for what they are, other organizations like IAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and AIPAC should also be required to register as agents of the Israeli government. And there are many more such organizations, a virtual alphabet soup. Registration would mandate transparency in their funding and end their phony status as educational tax exempt organizations. 

It does not require any particular genius to realize that someone living in one country while favoring the interests of another is not a desirable citizen but we retain at least some semblance of freedom of speech and anyone should be able to advocate anything. But it would be nice for a change if our two venerable national parties might for once seize the high ground and act respectably. I would suggest that the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee might consider developing some backbone and combine in issuing a joint statement refusing to take any donations from either Adelson or Saban in the current election cycle. It could remove both considerable influence peddling and Israel itself from the electoral process, which would be a blessing all around. Might it actually happen? Almost certainly not. 

This article originally appeared at The Unz Review

Relation between USA and Israel

is always intimate and lovely

PALESTINE/ISRAEL/UK: Israel Fabricated Knife Attack Stories and Conservative Party is Influenced By ‘Jewish Money’

British MP: Israel Fabricated Knife Attack Stories, Conservative Party Influenced By ‘Jewish Money’

POSTED BY EDITOR ON DECEMBER 29, 2015 IN NEWS & ANALYSIS, WORLD, UK, PALESTINE/ISRAEL | | LEAVE A RESPONSE

Gerald Kaufman MP on a visit to Israel in 2010 HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of Parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.”

Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has allegedly accused Israel of fabricating some recent stories about knife attacks against Jews in Israel, and claimed the Conservative party is influenced by “Jewish money,” in a speech at a pro-Palestine event at Parliament.

As reported by The Jewish Chronicle, Kaufman, MP for Manchester Gorton and Father of the House, told the audience at a Palestine Return Centre event that the Government has become more pro-Israel in recent years due to donations from Jewish groups.

It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party – as in the general election in May – support from The Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives,” he said.

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of Parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.”

He added: “They’re not interested in the fact that Palestianians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestianians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

Kaufman then went on to claim “more than half” of the stabbings that have recently happened in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel were fabricated, in comments that were recorded by blogger David Collier.

Reading from an email from a friend who lives in East Jerusalem, Kaufman said: “More than half of the stabbing claims were definitely fabricated. The other half, some were true, the others there was no way to tell since they executed Palestianians and no one asked questions.”

“Not only that, they got to the point of executing Arab-looking people and in the past few days they killed two Jewish Israelis and an Eritrean just because they looked Arab.

“They fabricated a stabbing story to justify the killings before they found out they were not Palestinians.”

Kaufman was referring to an incident which took place earlier this month, in which an Eritrean man was killed by an angry crowd who incorrectly  believed he was the accomplice of an Arab attacker.

The Palestine Return Centre, who organised the roundtable event where Kaufman made the comments, is a consultancy which focuses on issues relating to dispersed Palestinians and their return to Israel.

Kaufman has been an MP since June 1970, making him the longest-serving MP currently in the House of Commons. He is Jewish, and has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and the Israeli government.

© Belfast Telegraph 

Source Mint Press News

Long Live Palestine

ISRAEL: Church burnings....

From our colleague Maurice Pinay (http://mauricepinay.blogspot.com):

Blessed Nativity from the Church of the Multiplication burned by Orthodox “Jews" — and prevented from rebuilding by the Israeli government

Mr. Pinay’s corrections to the National Geographic’s weasel-worded damage-control piece are interspersed below [in boldface in brackets]:

[Judaic] Attacks Rattle Christians in the Holy Land

By Andrew Lawler • National Geographic • Dec. 24, 2015

Nazareth, Israel—Father Matthias Karl hoped to begin rebuilding his shattered church complex on the shores of the Sea of Galilee after Christmas. But following an arson attack six months ago that left one Catholic monk hospitalized and caused nearly $1.8 million in damage, the Israeli government, while strongly condemning the incident, has yet to provide promised financial compensation or put the two right-wing Jewish suspects on trial.

The June assault was the latest and most dramatic sign of tension between Christians in Israel and a growing movement of [Orthodox ‘Jews’] who seek to cleanse their nation of [Christian ‘idolators’].

“The attacks have become more brutal and more aggressive,” said Father Nikodemus Schnabel, a Benedictine monk at the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion in Jerusalem that has been subject to several attacks. “And we have not been happy with the political response.” 

Taking a page from the [Talmud, which also informs the Zionist-backed] Islamic group ISIS operating in neighboring Syria, a small group of young [Orthodox] Jews influenced by [rabbis of Orthodox Judaism] target Christian sites as centers of heretical idol worship and unwelcome missionary activity. In the past three years, [many more than] a dozen churches and monasteries have been bombed, burned, or vandalized. [To this day], no one was charged in any of these incidents... 

[Disingenuous claims that attacks on Christian churches by ‘Jews’ is a new phenomenon are contemptible misdirection. Notable among many others is the 2002 attack on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem by the IDF (Israeli military), and Saint-Dimitrios church in Nablus, and the February 27, 1994 Israeli Mossad bombing of Our Lady of Deliverance Maronite Catholic Church at Jounieh, Lebanon, during mass which murdered 11].

On the night of June 17, according to court documents, 20-year-old Yinon Reuveni and 19-year-old Yehuda Assraf left Jerusalem in a Subaru they had just bought in the West Bank, where they live in [an illegal] settlement. 

The two men stopped to buy gasoline at a filling station outside Tel Aviv, and arrived at the Church of the Multiplication along the Sea of Galilee that night. 

The white stone church, built on top of a 5th-century sanctuary, commemorates the place where tradition says Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes to feed a large crowd. It features 6th–century mosaics that are among the earliest Christian mosaics in Israel. Six monks and six nuns manage the complex that includes guest accommodations and is overseen by Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials say that the two men waited until three in the morning to pour and light gasoline at the entrance to the monastery and in the reception area for pilgrims. They also spray painted in red [Hebrew graffiti, reading, “the false gods will be eliminated” — a quote from the Aleinu prayer which is mandatory for Orthodox ‘Jews’ to pray 3 times daily]...

An elderly monk, awakened by the noise of fire, began battling the blaze ... Father Matthias recalled that a 79-year-old monk crawled out a second-story window and used a hose to spray the church roof, preventing the fire’s spread to the sanctuary before firefighters arrived. The monk was subsequently hospitalized for two days, along with a volunteer, for smoke inhalation. 

[Due to better than usual international reporting on Israeli savagery in this instance] “There was too much pressure for the Israeli government to dismiss this,” said Father Nikodemus.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [feigning indignation for the international press] quickly designated the fire as a terrorist attack, making the church ineligible to draw on insurance but paving the way for government compensation. Two months later, the Israeli Tax Authority declared that the violent event did not qualify as terrorism, and therefore could not receive government funding. 

When [Orthodox Judaic] Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited the church in early September, just before meeting Pope Francis in Rome, he [likewise feigned concern and] promised to help reverse that decision. “He was shocked by the extent of damage,” said Father Matthias. “Since then there have been a lot of meetings with the government, but no compensation” [which is the to-be-expected yield for Judeo-Christian ‘dialogue’]. 

In the meantime, a group of [image conscious] Israeli rabbis started a crowd-funding campaign that raised [a token] $13,000 [a small fraction of the funding received from the same community by the Orthodox Judaic terrorists who burned the church]. [Crypto-Haredi, Orthodox] Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, director of the [Judeo-supremacist] Jerusalem-based Elijah Interfaith Institute [which seeks to subordinate Christianity and Islam to Judaism as ‘Noahide’ step-children], led the effort that included the [also image-conscious] head of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. 

... the small group of violent [Orthodox ‘Jews’], made up mostly of young West Bank settlers, has been emboldened by the lack of prosecutions [for their violent crimes and their theft of Palestinian land]... 

Assaf Sharon, a philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University who has written about the history of Jewish terrorism, said the youth “are surrounded by institutions that condone, protect, and support them. And there is certainly authority behind them, including rabbis they look up to” [most notably, the codifier of Orthodox Judaism, Moses Maimonides].

A 2009 book written by two [Orthodox] Israeli rabbis [Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur] called The King’s Torah [rules] that Jewish law legitimizes violence against Gentiles [including babies]. Tag Meir director Gvaryahu was part of a legal effort to ban the volume [for P.R. purposes], but the Israeli Supreme Court earlier this month rejected that plea as an infringement on free speech [this ruling comes from the same Israeli government which criminalizes Christian preaching to ‘Jews’].

... on December 17, [Orthodox Rabbi] Bentiz [sic] Gopstein, who leads the Lehava organization, published a column denouncing Christians as “blood-sucking vampires,” and added that “Christmas has no place in the Holy Land.”  (End quote)

They are Satanic 

PALESTINE/ISRAEL: War on Christians and Christianity

Gopstein in chains (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

The Israeli War on Christmas…and Christianity

POSTED BY RICHARD SILVERSTEIN ON DECEMBER 23, 2015 IN NEWS & ANALYSIS, SOCIETY & RELIGION, PALESTINE/ISRAEL | | 1 RESPONSE

Bentzi Gopstein’s call for ethnic cleansing of Christians and Palestinians from Israel mirror those of Trump here in America.  Israel itself is lurching farther and farther toward fascism and outright religious hatred, if not war.  

by RICHARD SILVERSTEIN 

(Tikun Olam) – Fox News and other far-right media sites and politicians have railed for years about the “War on Christmas” supposedly waged by atheists, liberals and other enemies of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  But there is a far more virulent enemy of Christmas and Christianity in our midst.  No, you won’t find him in a Muslim country, the demon du jour of Donald Trump and the far-right. 

Instead, you will find him in the Holy Land, Israel, the birthplace of Christianity.  He is Bentzi Gopstein, leader of a Jewish fascist group, Lehava.  In his past, he’s been accused of murdering an Arab couple a week after the assassination of his mentor, Meir Kahane. No charges were ever brought against him for that crime.

  

Like white supremacists and Kahane himself, Gopstein has adopted fighting Jewish-Arab miscegenation as his political mantra. 

Lehava administers a hostel supported with $120,000 in government funding for “wayward women” who’ve supposedly left relationships with Arab men.  In Knesset hearings, Gopstein and his political supporters have cried rivers of tears about impressionable Jewish women being lured into lives of sexual slavery by Arab men who tempt them.  They offer reams of claims about the severity of the problem, but never any firm statistics.  Nor does anyone ever offer a skeptical view on the matter. 

In the past year, Gopstein has expanded his attack to include Christianity as well.  All of it.  He called for the banning of Christianity and the burning down of churches and…lo and behold, a week later the Church of Loaves and Fishes was nearly burned to the ground.  Though arrests were made, no one has been charged for the crime, a standard outcome in Israeli police investigations unless massive political pressure is mounted to lay charges and prosecution.  Jewish terror even co-opts the security apparatus. 

This week, just in time for Christmas, Gopstein let loose his latest barrage against the Church.  It’s a memorable screed called Defeating the Vampire, combining overwrought rhetoric with a largely-fictional account of Jewish history:

In recent days, I’ve walked through this land [of Israel] feeling a sense of real disquiet.  I’m not talking about the lack of personal security that derives from a government that is impotent against the Arab enemy…but rather a lack of spiritual security, a destruction of the fortress, a disintegration of the Jewish people’s line of defense against our most deadly enemy of the past hundreds of years: the Church.

He proceeds to outline the ways in which Christianity has allegedly attempted to exterminate the Jewish people:

Against this [the Church’s] unimaginable power stood the Jewish people like a poor sheep surrounded by seventy wolves; like easy prey before all those bloodthirsty animals.  The history of the Jews of Europe…is written in the blood of millions–from the cruel Crusades in which entire [Jewish] communities were wiped out, to pogroms throughout the continent [sic], to countless blood libels, mass expulsions from England, France, Spain and Portugal–all of them were only stations along a cruel journey which our people suffered in Christian Europe.  A journey which reached its end in the smokestacks of Auschwitz, a moment over which the Vatican rubbed its hands with glee [sic]. 

Despite all this, the Jewish people survived…The Eternal Jew stood tall.  And when the ashes of Auschwitz piled high and the blood soaked into the fetid soil of Europe–when the the desecration of God’s name [the extermination] had reached its peak…God could no longer stand it and raised up out of the smoking embers the State of Israel–a most resounding slap in the face the Church had ever endured.

What was the secret of the Eternal Jew enabling him to survive all these horrors of the Church [sic]?  Without doubt, it was the burning faith in the justness of our path, the deep loathing of Christianity which every Jewish baby sucks from his mother’s milk…The children of those Jews who were burned like sacrificial sheep, founded the State of Israel, whose very being negated the Church.

…Because we maintain one of the strongest armies in the world the Church has no chance of destroying our bodies…But they place their last hope in the blood-sucking vampire: the missionaries.  If they cannot kill Jews, they can still try to convert them…Stores devoted to selling evangelical literature offer their wares to all on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road.  Entire settlements are crawling with missionaries.  Many businesses are run by them and serve the evangelicals, in many cases camouflaging their intent and without the knowledge of  their [Jewish] employees.

That same disgust Jews felt toward Christianity, which was the only thing which saved us during our dark days in Europe, that same disgust has faded in the midst of the good life of the era of democracy.  The Christian is no longer perceived as a threatening vampire, but rather as a nice tourist, friendly and a partner in the prevailing western culture we both share.

…In a few days, this cursed religion will celebrate Christmas throughout this land.  To our sorrow we can feel this everywhere.  You see fir trees in stores.  On billboards, you can see flyers inviting the wider public to study about Christianity–right in the heart of Jerusalem.

…How could even the Orthodox and Haredi communities not have raised their voices against this?  Could they too have lost the basic Jewish instinct which was the inheritance of our people for hundreds of years?  Have they too become trapped in the net of democracy, free speech and the politically-correct brotherhood of man?

Christmas has no place in this our holy land.  Evangelicals must not gain a footing here.  Expel the vampires from our land before they once again suck our blood.  We’ve already fed them enough.

For those of you who heard echoes of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda in Gopstein’s tropes, you heard well.  The notion of the Eternal Jew is of course directly appropriated from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  But the most striking phrase was the notion that Christians are blood sucker-vampires.  This is precisely the complaint that echoed in the pages of Der Shtumer: the Jews as leeches sucking the vitality from Europe.  In the case of the Nazis, they were more obsessed with money and high finance, claiming Jews controlled world capital.  Gopstein sees Christians sucking the blood from the millions of Jews murdered, supposedly by direct command of the Church. 

Of course, much of his argument is false and fabricated.  I’ve added [sic] after the ones that are the most farcical. 

There will be those who argue that Gopstein is an outlier.  He has nothing to do with the real Israel.  Everyone sees him as a madman, etc., etc.  But that is patently false. 

Not only is Gopstein an accused murderer, his followers burned down a Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem.  Other disciples (either direct or indirect) burned the Church of Loaves and Fishes to the ground only a week after he issued a call to undertake such acts.  These are not the acts of the sort of lone gunmen who’ve perpetrated acts of terror lately in the U.S.  This is a powerful leader with a charismatic message that resonates deeply with tens or hundreds of thousands of Israelis.  It is a message the Israeli political and security echelons have no interest in combatting.  Despite calls from the Pope himself and Israeli human rights NGOs for his arrest, he remains free. 

It’s also ironic that Israel’s increasingly authoritarian government considers legislative proposals that would force NGOs receiving foreign funding from wearing a sort of “Jewish star” like ones forced on us by the Nazis, whenever they entered the Knesset.  The ironic truth is that rightist NGOs like Lehava, Honenu, Im Tirzu, NGO Monitor, and many others, probably receive far more foreign funding than left-wing NGOs. The major difference is that the latter receive donations from governments and large foundations, while the rightists receive mostly individual gifts.  You may be certain that if these bills pass you will not see Ronen Shoval (Im Tirzu) or Gerald Steinberg (NGO Monitor) shuffling through the halls of the Knesset with any scarlet letter on their chests.  That fate will be reserved for B’Tselem, Peace Now, New Israel Fund, and their like. 

It is truly extraordinary that foreign funders embrace the hate spewed by Gopstein.  He’s very cagey about where his funding comes from.  One source we know for sure is the Israeli government itself.  Its social welfare ministry funds projects sponsored by an NGO called Hemla.  One of them is the hostel for “wayward girls” mentioned above.  Gopstein is the public affairs representative for Hemla and earns a salary from it. 

He’s told the media that individual donors are directed to give through the Fund for Saving the Jewish People (FSJP).  One of these is the Falic family based in Hollywood, FL.  This extended family owns Duty Free America, a company which owns duty-free shops around the world. 

A Falic-affiliated fund donated $60,000 to FSJP.  They donated more than half the funds that Bibi Netanyahu raised for his campaign in the last Likud primaries.  They also donate millions to a raft of mostly GOP pro-Israel candidates. 

As you can see, the Falics are not outliers.  They find the doors of power open in Tel Aviv and Washington DC.  They’ve also endowed Bentzi Gopstein with a seal of approval through their giving to his cause.  Instead of six moves of separation from Gopstein to Netanyahu, there is now only one.  He is close to the beating heart of Israeli political power.

The Falics offered this deceptive defense of their giving to journalist, Uri Blau:

I am committed to giving tzedakah to causes which I care about deeply, such as the well-being and continuity of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. I believe that it is important for Jews to be connected to our roots, our history and our homeland, and to take care of one another.

I believe in diversity, co-existence and integration, as opposed to “anti-assimilation,” but I recognize that this can occur only when each person holds strongly to his or her own ideals, ideologies, religion and convictions. As Tevye succinctly put it in Fiddler on the Roof, “As the Good Book says, ‘Each shall seek his own kind.’ In other words, a bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?” In summary, staying true to one’s beliefs can not only give meaning to one’s own life, but can influence the conscience of others to make more sound choices and better judgments, including living together in peace and harmony.

Though it’s touching to see Mr. Falic quote the words of Fiddler on the Roof, I note he’s compared Israeli Jews to birds of prey and Palestinians to fish, their prey.  That does seem just about right, though I’m certain the speaker didn’t catch the irony.  And how Palestinians are supposed to understand from this rhetoric or from Gopstein’s Nazi-like speeches that their “consciences should make better judgements…and live together [with Jews] in peace and harmony” is beyond me.

Donald Trump, Islamophobia, and Ethnic Cleansing

I recently posted about Donald Trump’s increasingly xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric and the tropes it shares with fascist themes.  The call for closing our doors to Muslims, even those who are citizens, is extraordinary. Even more extraordinary is that such rampant racism gains him supporters, rather than destroying his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. 

Though it appears in the latest polls that even Bernie Sanders could beat Trump in a one-on-one matchup, and many Democrats relish the prospect of running against him–we should recognize Trump as a watershed candidate.  Before him, those whose campaigns were largely based on themes of hate and racism were thoroughly rejected even in their party nomination contest, let alone the general election.  George Wallace, while popular, was largely a fringe candidate.  Barry Goldwater was trounced by Lyndon Johnson.

Trump is a different animal.  He exudes hate, yet his supporters feed off it.  It only makes him stronger.  The rest of the country waits for a day of reckoning which never comes.  His comeuppance never comes.  Instead he glides through the campaign season with the cocky air of Rocky, a heavyweight boxing champ.  Nothing can touch him. 

Bentzi Gopstein’s call for ethnic cleansing of Christians and Palestinians from Israel mirror those of Trump here in America.  Israel itself is lurching farther and farther toward fascism and outright religious hatred, if not war.  Israeli extremists like him thrive on this confrontation.  They know the more Jews and Arabs die the closer they are to that final battle between the forces of Light and Dark, between demons (Muslims) and angels (Jews).  They know in their hearts that the Jews will win.  That they will vanquish their enemies and trample them underfoot.  That is the day devoutly and fervently awaited. 

Gopstein and Trump represent two poles which attract.  They offer the same solutions (though Trump offers them with considerably more salesmanship and panache).  The outcomes of their winning their contests will be similar for America and Israel: a disaster of monumental proportions.

I have enough faith in America that it will not make this choice.  About Israel, I have far less faith and hope.  It is embracing Gopstein’s vision with a frightful passion.  Whatever ideas of his are not yet mainstream, they will be in a month or a year.  This is the same path followed by his rebbe, Meir Kahane.  In the 1970s they thought him a ranting maniac.  Now the maniac’s ideas trip lightly off the tongues of Israeli cabinet ministers and generals. Fascism no longer lurks in Israel’s  shadows.  It preens and prances through the halls of power.

Originally appeared at Tikun Olam