Proof Positive of Jewish Indigeneity
The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation and End Jew Hatred Canada offer some important facts and images to combat Jew hatred. Here is proof of Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel. Share it, use it. Watch for more.
From Prejudice to Pride
Jewish students are increasingly feeling the prejudice against Israel on campuses across North America, with reports weekly of increasing number of incidents. This week, Harvard University is reported to win the prize on the most antisemitic attacks on campus.
So, what does this mean? What does it bode for university options for Jews, for the intellectual life of American Jews overall?
On October 8th, 2022 Hussein Aboubaker Mansour wrote this article for The Times of Israel.
“The prejudice against Israel in higher education institutions has been so widespread and pervasive that hardly a week goes by without news reports about anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents on campuses. What is less known, however, is that the anti-Zionist stance is not constricted to student activism but has become a supposition of most social sciences scholarship treating the modern Middle East or modern Muslim societies. This, in significant part, is an uncritical acceptance of the Palestinian and Arab nationalist narrative as the historical account of the beginning of Middle Eastern political modernity, which is often annexed into a post-colonial anti-Western ideological perspective, resting on a historical condemnation of capitalism as the ideological source of all evils of Western imperialism, that is so deeply entrenched in the social sciences today.”
He goes on to explain, and this is urgently important for all who wish to understand how higher education has been hijacked:
That there is “…..scholarly consensus of the most prestigious social sciences scholarship that is ideologically rooted in critical theory and postmodern ideology. Such analytical structures are erected upon a foundation that incorporates Marxian and anti-Western convictions. In other words, the hostility towards Israel is not an outcome of an analytical process but a presupposition of a scholarly construct with coercive contents that delegitimatize alternative views."
Hussein Aboubaker, blogs at The Times of Israel, and works for EMET, an American NGO that advocates vociferously for Israel. He is as an Egyptian, former jihad supporter, and is today an outstanding spokesperson for Zionism, for Israel’s legal rights, for the safety and security of the Jewish people. Author of a Minority of One, The Unchaining of an Arab Mind, he suffered severely for even having an academic interest in Israel and the Jewish people.
The message about Jewish Pride was enhanced and brought home brilliantly by Scottish Jewish author and educator, Ben Freeman in his first book and now he has produced a second that “introduces the contemporary conversation on internalized Jew-hate, Reclaiming Our Story. Ben recently spoke at Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto, under the auspices of Hasbara Fellowships and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center , moderated by the articulate and outspoken law student, Tiphaera Ziner-Cohen. Ben makes a clear case for challenging our own inner feelings, biases and ignorance about being Jewish. The blurb on Amazon states: "In this ground-breaking work, Freeman takes his readers - both Jewish and non-Jewish - on a powerful journey that explores the impact of Jew-hate on Jews and the long history of internalised anti-Jewishness. Most importantly, Freeman will educate, inspire and empower his Jewish readers to look inside themselves - with empathy and without shame - to identify their own experiences with internalised anti-Jewishness so they can reclaim their Jewish identity and pride."
Andria Spindel and Ben Freeman
CAEF was Proud to Co-sign Letter with 180 NGOs to Twitter Owner
CAEF signed a letter initiated by a global network of lawyers and activists combating antisemitism in the legal arena. Together with 180 civil rights groups from around the world, we called on Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk to adopt the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and urgently act the explosive Jew-hatred rampant on the social media platform.
Anita Bromberg, President of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation and Co-Chair of End Jew Hatred Canada, noted that Jews worldwide are protesting the level of antisemitism on social media platforms, “with no curbing of Jew hatred on line, there is increasing danger for the safety of individual Jews, Jewish communities and community property such as synagogues, as lies invoke hatred which invokes assault. Twitter must become accountable and end Jew hatred on its platform.”
Jews Must Care About Jews
Jews are standing up for the rights of others, leading social justice movements, protesting injustice against minorities, women and far off causes like Iranian terror and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Amy Rosenthal, in an article in the JNS on October 26, 2022 points out that every American can name the murdered African Americans whose lives lost led to the Black Lives Matter movement which became an international force for racial justice and a catalyst for huge amounts of fundraising.
Now the name Shireen Abu Akleh, is being used to raise funds, generate lies about Israel and promote a false narrative about her death. The result is a campaign within the Democratic party of North Carolina, that is promoting its own brand of antisemitism. Rosenthal reports on how this journalist’s death is being used to denigrate and demonize Israel—no surprise there, but where is the Jewish protest? And where are the Jews in remembering the names of Jewish victims of terrorism?
Do you know about Doris Yahbas, Moshe Kravitsky, Lora Yitzhak and Menachem Yehezkel, who were run over and stabbed to death by a Bedouin Israeli in March, the third knife attack that week?
CAEF held a memorial for two Jewish victims of terror last summer, one in the US and one in Israel, but we too must continue to monitor and mourn the Jewish deaths by horrendous acts of terror. Is your synagogue saying their names when members say kaddish? Will our prayers help end the violence? Will our voices help end the lies?
Read the article asking for Jews to fight for their own people.
Jewish Pride and the Law fight Jew Hatred
Alyza Lewin, Director of the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, argues most articulately, passionately and rationally that Jews must fight back with all tools, including the law. She recently was keynote speaker at the Installation Dinner of the Brandeis Association, a Jewish bar association in Great Neck, New York, and her presentation was published in JNS. Reinforcing our major theme in this Bulletin, the article repeats Lewin’s oft stated sentiment that Zionism is a major feature of Jewish ethnic identity. This is an essential understanding that Jews need, and is reflected even more strongly by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch in a recent article in Sapir Magazine: “There is no Judaism without Zionism”.
A Reader Writes Calling for Jewish Self Respect
Read open letter from Robert I. Kabakoff, NY, submitted to CAEF.
“As long as we opt for sympathy instead of respect we will get neither. It's an inside job. It's us. It's us we have to change.
Maybe we need a little more like the young man, Hershel Grynszpan, who shot the Nazi triggering the massacre and orgy of destruction than those who denied, or hid, or were helpless in the face of the murderous savages. By the time Grynszpan committed his passionate act of self-sacrifice, it was already too late. The time to start standing up and pushing back, face-to-face, meaningfully was yesterday.
I am still waiting to see someone who is well positioned get in Omar's (sic) face with an indignant *How dare you? How dare you come to America, having been rescued, and then attack Jewish Americans who have been here helping to build this country (America) the greatest on Earth, since 1654, more than a hundred years before there even was a USA on this continent, with insults, lies and slander? Where do you get the CHUTZPAH?”
Make it ugly, visceral and memorable. That’s' worth 1,000 op-eds or tweets. Come on, man. In the meantime, EndJewHatred is worth supporting.
Adidas Jumps from the Kettle to the Pot
This letter to the CEO of Adidas from subscriber, Dr. Pablo Nankin, of California, explains the not so brilliant change of celebrity spokesperson that the Adidas company made.
"To the CEO of Adidas;
You did an honorable task by removing Kanye West from your company and we thank you. However, I prefer to think it is a matter of your lack of information that right afterwards you hired a much viler antisemite like Bella Hadid.
You can look at her social media posts and you will see how racist and dangerous a woman she is. If it were up to her, she would have Israel disappear from the map in a flash. Furthermore, her entire family lies about their “Palestinian” origin. The father Mohammed was born in Nazareth in 1948, months after Nazareth had become a part of the new State of Israel. This and many other lies have since been exposed."
Pablo Nankin, MD was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico. His private practice was begun in Vascular Surgery in 1972 and in March 2004 he retired from his Los Angeles based practice
What is a Democracy, a Republic, and the Difference?
There is so much political debate, argument and slurs about how democracy works or is undermined, or whether or not the election of a party that one doesn’t support is democratic. Read this elucidating article by Matthew M. Hausman, that elaborates on various forms of government, and the differences between “democracies” across the world. To understand that Israel has both a Jewish and democratic system, read this excerpt published in Arutz Sheva on November 17, 2022.
…..”political progressives have conflated the term “democracy” with its antithesis – an agenda promoting censorship, thought control, viewpoint discrimination, woke intolerance, and hatred of Israel and the west.”
Now they are applying this skewed worldview to the latest Israeli election to delegitimize a result they don’t like
Progressive criticism of Israeli politics is not motivated by genuine concern over democratic values – Israeli or otherwise. It arises from the desire to delegitimize the Jewish State.
To the extent the US sets the standard used to measure other political systems, however, it would be fair to question exactly what constitutes American democracy and whether today’s political reality reflects the intent of its founding fathers.
And there’s the rub – the US system at its core is not a pure democracy at all, but a constitutional republic.
Advocacy and Action
Read letters from CAEF addressing a variety of antisemitic issues
Two letters to Mayor Ken Sim and Vancouver City Council re: adopting IHRA. Here and here CAEF thanks Mayor and Council for their stalwart support in adopting IHRA.
Press release and letter to Elon Musk re Antisemitism on Twitter
Letter to Jeff Bezos and Mr. Andy Jassy, Amazon.
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