Equating Judaism with Fascism

 On March 21, 2022, the online Tablet Magazine sent an email with a link to its item entitled “Putin’s fascism.” To me, despite my agreeing with what Putin’s ideology is, the piece sounded like political hackery. I wrote a letter to the editor, which has not been published—and I don't hold my breath it will be. Here it is.

Equating Judaism with Fascism

Dear Editor:

I  received today the Tablet email and could not believe my eyes reading its very first words: “Putin’s Favored Brand of Judaism.” From the standpoint of the article’s authors, Putin, the Kremlin ghoul, is associated with a particular brand of Judaism. And this is because he is a “traditionalist,” and his supposed “brain,” Dugin, an ideologue of  Russian nationalism, allegedly quotes the Vilna Gaon as prophesying that in the end of days the main enemies will be Jews who “underwent modernization”—whatever that may mean, considering that the Gaon lived in the 18th century. Not only do we have to rely on Dugin’s quote and perception of what Judaism is (even though that is what he just “imagines”), but we must also agree that “traditionalism” has one meaning only: it is a synonym for fascism.  That’s the article’s title, “Putin’s fascism.” That is because, you see, Putin, just like those “traditionalist” Orthodox Jews, disapproves of LGBT, and “enjoyed the support of Russia’s  chief rabbi.” Moreover, Dugin’s “comrades” are “right-wing Israel Zionists.” How much wider can a dirty smearing brush be? Similarly, in judging who is a Jew (because that is what we are always focused on), we are supposed to rely on Hitler, cited on the same breath as “the rabbis” and “the State of Israel” that apparently agree with Hitler.

Unsurprisingly, this kind of twisted logic inevitably leads to Trump, another threat to democracy and “modernized Jews”— like Soros. Once we get to that point, the goal of the article becomes clear. It is not to denounce Putin’s fascism and the ongoing slaughter of Ukrainians by the Russian murderous army, nor is it to call for Jewish unity, which the Gaon actually called for. No, it is to associate Orthodox Judaism with fascism—and, most importantly, associate Trump with Putin the fascist.

The method employed in the article is the one that was used by the Soviet Union in its ideological war, called “rotten herring.” An adversary is accused of a dirty disgusting thing, no matter how implausible. Then, irrespective of whether the person is further accused or defended, the name gets associated with the rot, and every time the association mentioned, a little bit of it gets rubbed into the name. That’s what Putin uses accusing Ukrainians of Nazism and developing biological weapons, that’s what was done to Trump with the obscene “Russian dossier.” I am no rabbi, but I am pretty sure that there is no brand of Judaism that encourages this Soviet-kind deceptive anti-religious partisan propaganda. 

"Diversity Forum" and Communism

I have been pleasantly surprised by the University Times' publishing my letter that protests against the race-baiting institutionalized by the university's "Diversity" structures. Those seem to multiply like rot - in the body long crippled by the progressive ideology adopted by the majority. I was surprised not only because the letter was clearly outside of the ideological mainstream, but also because my prior letter had been ignored - both by its original addressees, all the university's top machers, and by the UT editor. Understandably, it had no impact. Here it is.

Dear Editor,

Like all Pitt [University of Pittsburgh] faculty, I have received an email signed by Dr. Kathy Humphrey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement, inviting participation  in “the 2020 Diversity Forum, Advancing Social Justice: A Call to Action.” The upcoming event was introduced as featuring “Dr. Angela Davis, who has dedicated her life and work to the fight for social justice and human rights.” I am sharing my reply, to which I have received response from neither Dr. Humphrey, nor from Chancellor Gallagher and Associate Vice Chancellor Pope, to whom I forwarded it.

“I am gravely concerned that Angela Davis is featured in any forum outside of her ideological circle. Angela Davis was well familiar to everybody in the Soviet Union as a devoted member of CPUSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the KGB that never deviated from its directives. She was the face of the anti-US Soviet propaganda and earned the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government that murdered and imprisoned true fighters for human rights, about whom she could not care less. A celebrity cherished by the Soviet authorities, she refused requests to speak to them for imprisoned Soviet dissidents, but she has embraced convicted terrorist murderers Rasmea Odeh and Marwan Barghouti. For the enslaved Soviet population, she was a despised symbol of foreign support of the Soviet activities directed at the destruction of freedom.

She is an unrepentant communist who still laments the Soviet Union and is admired by the communists in today’s Russia—for the kind of “social justice” she stands for. She is a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement. It is no accident that she has floated up these days, when the imperfections of this society, aggravated by extraordinary circumstances, are used as a pretext for attacking its foundations and cutting it at the seams. I doubt she could contribute any perspective of value to Pitt audience. Nobody would ever think about any “conversation” with Nazis, but communists, whose ideology has caused no less death and suffering around the world and still suffocates billions, are still viewed as deserving attention and time.

As a refugee from the Soviet Union, I hope communism is not part of “diversity” that is sought by this society. I respectfully request that Angela Davis be disinvited from participating in the forum.”

I hope there is still time for removing Angela Davis from the program scheduled to start on July 28. Her participation is certain to discredit the forum and negate anything positive that it is planned to accomplish. Communism is not “a more just society” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating.

None of the Pitt leaders I addressed has replied. Angela Davis’s participation in the event is now a fait accompli. The “forum,” which entertained no discussion, let alone a critical one, with expressions of admiration for Davis’s activities from both Drs. Humphrey and Cudd, has been discredited. Communism is not “a more just community” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said about Davis’s cruel refusal to help dissidents in the Gulag, “That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you." I never thought, when I left the now extinct Soviet Union, that I would be made to remember that face 30 years later, plastered on my American university’s computer screens.

I watched, nauseated, the old Communist witch spewing her wisdom into the current racialist swill. The "Diversity Forum" was neither forum nor was there any diversity (see also Maher's Pandemic and Mayakovsky's Throat).

20 years after: Who attacked us?

Who attacked us on 9/11? Right, 19 Muslims, 15 of which were Saudis. Right, Osama bin Laden, may his name be erased. Right, terrorists. The “Islamic” ones.  Supported by Afghan “Islamists.” Is that it?

Suppose it is. Why then the said “Islamists” are again allowed full rein over Afghanistan, after being quickly defeated? Why are people who express the same ideas not pursued to their extinction but spread those ideas freely in Europe and the US? Why does a mention of the “Islamist” (not even “Islamic,” let alone Muslim) ideology call for accusations of “Islamophobia”? Why are those who sling those accusations exclusively progressive— in the US, mostly Democrats?

Many questions, all of which have the same answer. The enlightened Western world prefers to think of Islam as another “Abrahamic” religion. Almost entirely progressive as this world now is, it views all religions as backward. So Islam is on a par with the Judeo-Christian foundation of that world, even though it was the opposition to Islam that has brought about our civilization. Yes, there were crusades that killed eastern Christians and Jews along with Muslims who oppressed them. Yes, there was the Inquisition and other crimes of the Catholic Church (not that the Eastern Orthodox Churches were any better, given power). Those crimes and crusades, however, horrible as they were, were a response to what Islam offered to the world: full submission until the entire world becomes Muslim. And it did not just offer that—Islam has brought its vision on the tips of spears to virtually the entire world, with all Mideast, North Africa, and much of Europe and Asia conquered and subjugated by victorious Islam.

What is conveniently ignored is that it is irrelevant if Islam is a religion, a set of rituals, or a couple of now well-familiar incantations like “Allahu Akbar.” What matters is what Islam as an actively propagated ideology promises humanity. It’s easy if uncomfortable to find out. According to the ruling scripture of Islam—not some marginal interpretations thereof, not some murderous escapades of crazy Muslim potentates, and not the purely Western concoction of "Islamism"—the world is to become Muslim in its entirety, with the intermediate stage of complete subjugation or murder of those who disagree. The full Muslim harmony, when the entire world becomes the abode of Islam, Dar ul Islam, will not obtain until the Jews are completely exterminated. Muhammad, Islam's founder, promised that even stones and trees, with few exceptions, would help the Muslims in that.

This is not a Nazi catechism— this is a command of the “Prophet” and thus of the Muslim deity, equivalent to the Constitution in Islam because this ideology by design cannot be separated from the state. A command given directly, in simple words, this is not subject to ijtihad, interpretation. You can't reinterpret a call for murder. This is the plan—no need to invent any “Protocols” and nothing to debunk. It is all in black and white, for anybody interested to see.  Why don’t they, the rulers, the presidents, the premiers, the thinkers?

Because it means that the West faces 1.4 (or 1.9?) billion people, the carriers of that religion-mimicking ideology—not some lethally dangerous but ultimately manageable Germany with its narrow “Aryan” ideological focus. Even if a small proportion of Muslims are murderous followers of the above, it would be a war similar to which the world has not seen. Moreover, someone would have to take responsibility for “starting” it —even though it was started with Mohammad’s taking over Mecca in 630 CE. The 9/11 attack was one piece of it, and not the last one. Nineteen devoted followers of the "Prophet"—and 3,000 infidels are gone. Seeing this threat also means taking the side of the Jews—once and for all, even if reluctantly, admitting that they are the foremost target of that threat, the only Jewish defense against which is Israel.

That’s the fears. There is, however, an option that allows us, as Solzhenitsyn said, to live not compliant with the lie, hiding our collective head in the Muslim sands of deception, but facing the truth. Soviet communism, a mortal threat to the Western civilization, was never recognized as acceptable—but was dealt with accordingly (not counting the unfortunate dhimmitude of the detente). Hardly anybody in the West accepts Chinese communism (yet), despite China's population of ~1.5 billion. You could, apparently, move virtually all world manufacturing there without accepting communism as just another political ideology (even if the myopic pursuit of  cheap labor supports the communist regime). You can still buy oil from the savages—without waxing ”inclusive” about the “Abrahamic” character of Islam, which stole Jewish biblical personages while mutilating the sacred history to fit the primitive wishes of Muhammad, a highway robber, child rapist, and genocidal murderer. You can live in peace—but you must recognize that Islam's product is an empire of evil, one that is much older and much more dangerous than the newfangled Marxian garbage that has failed in similar designs while costing humanity 100 million lives.

Only facing that truth would lead to understanding who attacked us on 9/11 and what is needed to prevent that in the future. Until then, there will be more “endless wars,” “Islamists,” and 9/11s. More Talibans. More PLOs. More murderous Islam.

Institutional racism: Quitting another scientific membership

Published by the Jewish News Syndicate, the story of my parting with Behavior Genetics Association I've been a proud member of for almost 30 years: 

https://www.jns.org/opinion/when-scientists-support-hate-racism-and-anti-semitism/. 

The editor thankfully made only few changes, except for deleting the paragraph below and moving a couple of sentences around. I also do not use the term "anti-Semitism," which implies that there is some "Semitism," or it has anything to do with Semites as a language group, which would then include Arabs. It pertains to the Jews only, and it's no-hyphen "antisemitism," just as I am used to it in Russian. No need to make it sound more "scientific" than what Wilhelm Marr did, introducing "Antisemitismus" to make Jew-hate sound more genteel.

The deleted paragraph:

An organization has never needed to consist entirely of antisemites to be antisemitic. Even in the Nazi party there were people like Schindler who were saving Jews rather than murdering them. Nonetheless, the entirety of Germany was a Nazi country, by virtue of being fully controlled by Nazis, a Jew-hating party. In the Soviet Union, when Stalin was preparing his own “final solution” for Soviet Jews, a token Jew held one of the top governmental positions.  When the leadership and founders of an organization are antisemites, it is safe to call it antisemitic. Denying BLM’s antisemitism is exactly what is now fashionably called “gaslighting.”

 

Intersectionality of hate

The unwieldy word “intersectionality” is relatively new. The dictionary says it was invented in 1989 to describe the confluence of various forms of discrimination. That is possible, even though 1989 does not sound like representing a time period when the likely correlation between various expressions of xenophobia would manifest in a most pressing fashion. In reality, however, the term is much better defined as a confluence of various victimhoods. More precisely, it denotes an assemblage of accusations with assigned guilts—viz., the guilts of not belonging to a class of victims, regardless of  any actual guilt.  Those excluded from among the victim classes are ipso facto oppressors. This, naturally, graywashes real oppressors--they become part of the many, those who committed genocide in Poland or Rwanda, and those who are trying to stop Taliban terror. Thus, a “white” heterosexual male is by default “intersectionally” guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. 

"Whiteness", the main defining concept in the determination of "intersectionality," also covers certain groups regardless of their race, despite what that color word would seem to mean. The Jews, for instance, are viewed as "white" irrespective of their color and non-European (Asian) origin. Hence, they are not victims anymore but, by the Manichaean default, oppressors. Linda Sarsour, a prominent Democrat activist, said that Jews can't be feminists, which is one of the intersectionality component groups. The Jews' oppressor status evidence is also in the firm defense of Congresswoman Omar by her progressive Democrat colleagues. Instead of getting her censured, Omar's antisemitic statements have brought  her an appointment to the Foreign Affairs committee. There she is able to translate her Jew-hate into US policy.

In contrast to Judaism, being Muslim places one into the "brown," hence "intersectional," category, whatever the actual skin shade. Linda Sarsour is a very lightly-pigmented co-religionist of Omar's. She is a shariah and terrorist supporter, aka Obama's "champion of change" and a leader of the intersectional Women's March. She is not concerned that her Muslim devotion is incompatible with anything feminism stands on, considering that Islam scripturally holds women much below men (e.g., Koran 2:282), and Muslims above all non-Muslims (Koran 3:110). Indeed, the March was disavowed by its Jewish organizer, Vanessa Wruble, upon learning that  she was twice disqualified from it, as "white" and as a Jew. Now, to be fair, when denying the Jews their share of coveted intersectionality, Sarsour was cautious to talk about those Jews who supported Israel. Then, everyone knows that Jews generally do support the Jewish state, and everyone knows what those "anti-Zionist" provisos are worth. Sarsour's activist colleagues from the March, who adore Farrakhan, make no such fine distinctions and hold all Jews responsible as white, slavers, and generally exploiters. 

As in card games or rock-paper-scissors, there is a system of victimhoods, one trumping another. I may not have fully figured it out, with all its contingencies, but being Muslim trumps homosexuality. You may be a homophobic antisemite, but in combination with being “black” and a membership in the Nation of Islam this brings you to sit two seats from a Democrat US president. 

Being “straight” "white" non-Muslim male is trumped by all, let alone by being a "Latina," as asserted by Sonia Sotomayor. Her remark on how her ethnic origin makes her better qualified than any "white" male has landed her in the US Supreme Court as a Justice, ironic as that may sound. Heaven forfend that male has wealth. Then, the only protection from being considered fully inhuman is his generous support of all progressive causes there are, always on the verge of being denounced for any infraction. That support, however, may keep even a wealthy Jew afloat on the sea of otherwise ineluctable guilts—that’s why Soros's water is fine. His hate for Israel is par for the course. Being conservative, on the other hand, is unforgivable and punishable violently.

Hate for conservative opponents, for Israel, and for religion—except, Allah forbid, Islam—comes in one neat intersectional package. That is the modern Democrat ideology, which has evolved from its slaveholder KKK racism and statism of old times to race-, sex-, and other identity-baiting, with overt socialism on top. Long gone are the times when socialism was viewed as a swear-word, to be strenuously denied if accused of, like a shameful secret habit. It is now the mainstream ideology of the party that won popular vote in the last presidential elections. It is as mainstream and flaunted as admitting to drug abuse, also no longer a secret, to be "I-did-not-inhale" coy about. Consider Bernard Sanders. He sounded slightly off calling himself “Democratic Socialist” when running for Democrat nomination in 2016 (beware of the need to use “Democratic,” same as in DPRK or GDR). Despite the comforting adjective and the expectedly overwhelming support by the younger and entirely ignorant generation, by Obama's henchman's admission, the establishment was not ready yet to employ his communist demagoguery in full. There is no such reticence anymore in the Democrat Congress, whose members expound wild agitprop slogans and describe their drug abuse as the most natural experience.

Intersectionally with hate for capitalism, which is in a word hate for economic and political freedom, almost as many Democrats "sympathize more" with Palestinian Arabs as with Israel. An almost the same proportion, 35%, predominantly the young ones, hold an unfavorable (mostly or very) opinion of Israel, more than double that of Republicans. In another poll, a measly 27% of Democrats sympathized with Israel vs. 78% of Republicans. As Tuvia Tenenbom notes in his "The Lies They Tell," choosing "Palestine" over Israel is as certain for a progressive in the US as belief in man-made climate change. It is irrational to demand from the Congress Democrats to act against antisemitism, when their young and cool colleagues, representing the new generation of their electorate, are Jew-haters, the recent Deputy Chair of their party was a member of the Mein-Kampf-strength antisemitic Nation of Islam, and the entire Black Caucus, including Obama himself, happily met with Farrakhan, the preacher of Jew-hate whom Democrat presidential candidates reverentially call "minister." (The kompromat picture was immediately stashed away and remained hidden not just before Obama's presidential nomination but to the end of his second term.)

In their hate, they intersect with Farrakhan’s and his friend Rev. Wright’s morbid racism and antisemitism, and with the Jew-hating Palestinian Arabs—93% of their population, according to the recent poll. The hate-filled Arab population of the land illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt before the Six-Day War, governed by its two grotesquely corrupt and murderous regimes of their own choice, Hamas and the PLO, are the ultimate victims, intersecting victimhoods from colonialism, imperialism, Jews, whites, Crusaders--you name it. Regrettably, they also intersect with Jewish quislings who, like Bernard Sanders, faithfully follow their Bolshevik predecessors in their hate for capitalism, Jews, and freedom. Antisemitism, including its Jewish variety, is inevitable on the way to the totalitarian uniformity of progress.

It is Communism, now comfortably conjoined with another totalitarianism, Islam, that is the final intersection to which "intersectionality" leads. As a century before, parallel totalitarian movements gain strength around the world that does not want to remember. The Communist and National Socialist flags differed only in the small emblem on their bloody background. Today, the entire spectrum can be found in the colors of the vanguard of the immense expanse of humanity rolling in the same general direction: to squash freedom, whatever idiosyncrasies individual groups entertain, Muslim, feminist, progressive, socialist. Paraphrasing a little, "Intersectionalists of all stripes, united!"

CMU Osher: Teaching hate unopposed

It has been almost 30 years since I immigrated in the US as a refugee from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no more, but I am experiencing a déjà vu of my Soviet past. One of the standard responses of the Soviet authorities to any request of the citizens, including that for allowing emigration, was that it was "inadvisable." That meant simply "no" in the Soviet bureaucratese—with no further discussion possible. Attempts to appeal were hopeless. It was particularly so when the decisions had anything to do with Israel or Jews. A standard way to prevent a Jew from enrollment in a college, in order to maintain its Jewish quota, was to grade poorly the composition entry exam, with the comment that the topic was not sufficiently explicated. One could not appeal such a decision—there was no way to prove the opposite. You can imagine my feelings when I received, after my repeated inquiries and long wait, the same kind of response from the leadership of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

To wit, that response was about the non-renewal of the 5-lecture volunteer course that Stuart Pavilack, the executive director of the Zionist Organization of America-Pittsburgh, and I had presented, entitled "Israel's War and Peace: Past, Present, Future." As we described it in the Osher catalog, the objective was to discuss the causes and consequences of hostilities that have accompanied Israel’s existence. Opposing hateful ideology is always important, especially these days, when threats to the Jewish state and individual Jews are at a peak not seen since before WW2. I stated this goal in the interview about the course  for the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle (1/4/2019, p. 2). Osher Institutes offer their fee-paying members, largely retirees (aged reportedly over 70 on average in Osher at CMU), numerous courses (140 at CMU) given pro bono "by members, volunteers, faculty from CMU and other regional colleges and universities, and representatives from community organizations, all eager to share their expertise and engage in dialogue with their peers."

Plenty of the course material had been collected, and I had presented parts of it in Men’s Club of the Tree of Life congregation in years past (by invitation—I was not a member). Nevertheless, it took quite a long time to write it up and create slides for 7.5 hours of talking, updating them until the last moment. The talks were interspersed with lively discussions, largely initiated by the listeners with a certain, let’s call it “anti-Zionist,” ideological bent. That bent was also obvious in the negative opinions about the course.

It is those opinions, from a small minority among the listeners, that were used as the purported reason to dismiss the course from the curriculum. All the detailed arguments in my attempts of email communication with the chair of the curriculum committee and the president of the Osher board have been quite rudely dismissed as well, without as much as a word about their substance, and eventually left with no reply. While stating that the decision to not renew the course was based on attendees’ evaluations, no criteria have been given in response to my requests. Any possibility of appeal has been denied in the manner one does not expect from an academic institution, albeit neither the curriculum committee chair nor the Osher board president is an academic.

Meanwhile, I was not surprised to find in the Summer 2019 CMU Osher curriculum a rerun of another course, by one Tina Whitehead. Its description states that it is presented "from the perspective of the Palestinian people." That could suffice to characterize the course’s content: according to the latest poll, that perspective is 93% antisemitic. I do know, however, that hers is also the perspective of the organization she represents, Sabeel. That is a “liberation theology” group, with the center in Jerusalem. It is antisemitic as well, under the currently common guise of being peacefully anti-Israel/anti-Zionist. A telling quote, from an Easter message of Sabeel's founder and leader, Rev. Ateek:

Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.

This is a resurrection indeed—of the familiar image of the satanic deicidal Jew now murdering children, the foundation of Jewish persecution now cloaked in plausible deniability: well, it’s about Israel not Jews. Ateek’s book, “A Palestinian Theology of Liberation: The Bible, Justice, and the Palestine,” contains traditional antisemitic calumnies, such as Jews’ not considering non-Jews human. In his view, “the creation of the state of Israel has been a settler colonial enterprise by Zionism that sought to dispossess the Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—of their land and replace them with Jews.” The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh cut its partnering with Pittsburgh Theological Seminary after the seminary hosted Ateek.

Sabeel sees Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, which was renamed "Palestine" to erase its Jewish connection and meaning, as evil and affront to Christian theology. Sabeel’s goal is for the millions of descendants of the Arabs who fled from Israel in 1948-9, as well the Arab population of the territories that were illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt until the Six-Day War, to flood Israel and eradicate it as the Jewish state. It does not matter to Sabeel, a Christian group, that Israel is the only Middle East country where Christians flourish instead of disappearing. While paying obligatory lip service to non-violence, Sabeel's doublethink website quotes the call for violence by a terrorist poet and threatens violence to the "Israeli people" (obviously, Jews, although 20% of Israelis are Arab) who dare visit Jerusalem. Demanding self-determination for Arabs, who have been self-determined in 21 states, all intolerant Muslim monarchies and dictatorships, it denies the right to self-determination for the Jewish people in a single democratic state with equal rights for all.

Sabeel approves Hamas terror as “the message of the rockets [that] addresses the core issues and the root causes of the problem.” Indeed it does, as those issues and causes are one: implacable Jew-hate. Unsurprisingly, Sabeel calls for support for an American antisemite, a Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, as it did for the communist antisemite Angela Davis and the academic antisemite Marc Lamont Hill. It also supports the "Great March of Return," Hamas’s ploy to use human shields to penetrate from Gaza into Israel and proceed with mass murder of Israelis in their homes.

The course we presented was the only one in CMU Osher's annual curriculum that, based on the rich factual material, could counter the antisemitic/anti-Israel propaganda by the Sabeel emissary and inform the audience of the complex history, current status, and potential outcomes in one of the most important points of contention in the world. The brief "explanation" of its cancellation, from the curriculum committee chair Circe Curley, contained falsehoods, such as that my "extensive discussion of anti-Semitism in one of [my] classes differed from the original course outline and the published course description." It certainly did not. Moreover, the very idea that a discussion of antisemitism in a course about Israel could be somehow outside of its scope is preposterous and illustrates the mindset of the committee. Most importantly, the committee ignored the clear ideological bias of the negative evaluation statements, despite my repeated pointing that out and the committee chair’s recognition that they "normally do not experience that [negativism] in course evaluations."

Given CMU Osher’s continued support for anti-Israel antisemitic lecturing, the cancellation of my course—after its first presentation and based on no objective or, indeed, known criteria—should have been expected. It also cannot be viewed as other than support for the views that historically have led to pogroms and terror around the world. It is those views, propagated by the likes of Sabeel ideologues, that have led to the resurgence of lethal antisemitism lately. In effect, CMU Osher has become an antisemitic propaganda platform, a tool of hate.

In this light, it is hardly a mere coincidence that the CMU Osher board president, James Reitz, is an active member of the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh, which is partnered with Sabeel and supports the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The ideological predecessors of Sabeel, including the Soviet KGB that contributed so much to "the perspective of the Palestinian people," would be happy to know that their views are now mainstreamed unopposed from American university podiums.

________

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle's take on the story is published at  https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/cmu-osher-course-on-israel-canceled-palestinian-perspective-course-renewed/ (in the print edition: May 17, 2019, vol. 62, No. 20, p. 4 )

Concerning Israel (To Whom It May Concern)

Admit it, Israel is real -

upset as you may be by that.

You hoped she would disappear,

because the Jews are good when dead,

because you like them on the pictures

in Babiy Yar, in Auschwitz, and 

when an exquisite movie features

a Jewish child, killed at the end.

These days, when that - again - does happen - 

a baby shot in father's hands

or butchered in her cradle - you're napping:

those are just everyday events.

Alas, they are too small to make  it

to the front page of what you read.

Too few are dead for that to matter  -

there's no excuse for that, admit. 

It is unsettling, on reflection,

to see the live and fighting Jews:

they have the right to self-protection,

but that's a right they should not use.

If only they laid down weapons

and let the world decide their fate!

That's always worked, and would be helpful

to mollify the world's Jew-hate.

And if it does not - not to worry:

it's not like this is something new.  

Could make a touching bedtime story -

before the killers come for you.

- M. Vanyukov

Antisemitism by other means: Lecturing against the Jewish state*

I went to Michael Sfard's lecture** with a heavy heart. Why would I be hesitant about listening to this young and famous Israeli lawyer? Because of his fame's source: Sfard is what is called a "Human Rights Lawyer". In other words, so that nobody gets confused, his clients are mainly Palestinian Arabs. The human rights of the Jews are not under his purview, unless those Jews, like he has eventually done himself,  refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces or are otherwise anti-Israel. He defends Arabs' rights - but surely not from fellow Arabs. For instance, not from the Palestinian Authority, which sentences to death those who sell land to a Jew, an act of "national treason", and whose courts sentence journalists to jail for "insulting" Mahmoud Abbas by a cartoon on Facebook. As Sfard informed the audience, the PA has merely "the power of a city council", executions notwithstanding. 

Why did I go then? To ask the question that had long preoccupied me: why would somebody choose to defend members of an enemy population - against his own state that protects him and has been under attack from that population for as long as his state existed? The population whose leaders have been financiers, planners and perpetrators of terror, where murder of innocent Jews and Americans is celebrated and schools and stadiums are named after the murderers, where the murderers' families are congratulated and their enormous portraits adorn city walls. I prefaced my question by saying that as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, it was particularly strange for me to hear that in the "oppressive" Jewish state it was usually sufficient for a Palestinian Arab to petition the court with a help of a lawyer in order to get a satisfactory solution to his or her problems.  I also briefly reminded Sfard of the Arab violent animosity towards the Jews that had long preceded the re-creation of Israel, the history that included Amin al Husseini, a major Nazi collaborator and Arafat's and Abbas's hero. 

The response was striking. Sfard said, deliberately and clearly expecting the audience's reaction, "I don't care about history." I too thought there would be a reaction. I thought, this educated audience , albeit visibly sympathetic to the speaker, would now rise in disbelief and indignation. After all, shouldn't they all have been familiar with George Santayana's maxim, "Those who forget history are destined to repeat it"? One does not need to be an historian to understand how dangerous that forgetfulness would be - for the Jews in particular. Some aspects of our rich history are better to stay in history - but we keep being promised their genocidal repetition, by the likes of the Arab League at the creation of Israel, Nasser in 1967, and Ahmadinejad these days. Alas, no objection arose from the future and present lawyers. On the contrary, Sfard was applauded - especially when he said that he did not believe in the Jewish state. That prompted me to interject, "How about 'Judenstaat'?" No, he did not know what it was, the title of the foundation of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl's book "The Jewish State". Of course, Sfard's not believing in the Jewish state leaves him not believing in the state he lives in, created as "a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel", according to the Israeli Declaration of Independence of 1948. It seems when people don't care about history, they don't care about the present reality either.

It is really hard to briefly summarize Sfard's talk, misinformation by both omission and commission. As usual, it started with the terminology. Long gone are the times when the disputed territories were called Judea and Samaria in general parlance. Those historic names have been ethnically cleansed into the meaningless "West Bank", adopted from Jordan that  illegally occupied those lands from 1949 to 1967. It is also forgotten that Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria to its own east bank  - of the Jordan river, which is, interestingly, the Jewish name, appropriated also by the Arab state created by Britain's fiat in Eretz Israel, which was entrusted by the League of Nations to the UK for the "close settlement by Jews on the land". Amazingly, the UK had no trouble recognizing annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan, which captured that territory in a war of aggression. Even "West Bank", however, is too neutral for Sfard, who prefers calling it "Occupation". According to him, Israel began to "colonize" that land in the 1970's. Never mind that Israelis only by then had restored Jewish access to the heartland of  the Land of Israel, including the old city of Jerusalem with its Western Wall and Temple Mount, the most sacred site for the Jews. While no law except Jordanian ever prohibited Jewish settlement on that land, the world had no qualms when Jordanians murdered and expelled Jews from there. This is how east Jerusalem was turned into the "Arab East Jerusalem"  of today's media. Never mind that this part of town until the 20th century was the only Jerusalem, with a Jewish majority there until the Jordanian murderous invasion in 1948. It is also through bloody pogroms that Hebron, the first capital of ancient Israel, and other parts of Eretz Israel became Judenfrei "Arab cities". If, as is often repeated, the territory cannot be obtained in conquest, why should this rule start being implemented with Jews who captured it in a defensive war, and not with Muslims, who took it in aggression from Crusaders, who took it from Muslims, who took it from the Roman Empire that violently took it from the Jews and exiled them from their land? Let alone the many contemporary examples of the land captured in the defensive war and kept, like  the Kuril Islands or Sudetenland. But Sfard does not care about history.

His main problem is the security barrier. He misnames it "separation wall" - despite the fact that the wall is less than three percent of this largely chain link fence. Never did he mention that the only reason for the construction of the fence that began in 2002 was the terror war that Israel's "peace partners" headed by Arafat started in 2000, after he rejected another Israeli proposal that would create an Arab state. Only in 2002, before construction started, terrorists from the territories murdered 457 Israelis. Already in 2006, before the construction of the fence was finished, the number dropped to 10, and to no fatalities in 2012. Sfard does not care about security -  he derisively calls it a "Jewish obsession". His only focus is his clients' inconvenience, as he shares their conviction that Israel's goal for the barrier is land grab. He lamented that while discussing changes in the "separation wall"  route, the main concern of the Israeli officials was security. Needless to say, the "oppressor" did change the route as per Sfard's petition, and he tells the truly horrific story how an Israeli officer thanked him for letting know about the inconvenience to Arab farmers, since remedied. In fact, Sfard intimated, the evil authorities satisfy his clients' grievances even without any court rulings, "in a shadow of the court". Why? Because, to his satisfaction, they are "willing to barter land for legitimacy. Legitimacy is in very short supply." Just how much legitimacy of the Unites States depends on the route of its security barrier built on its Mexican border - with no terrorist threat?

There is no doubt in Sfard's mind that Israel is oppressor in regard to the Arab population of Judea and Samaria. Never mind that this oppression has resulted in the immense growth in the Arabs' longevity, education, and living standard that is higher than in the surrounding Arab countries. Never mind that no military would be needed in Judea and Samaria, or in entire Israel for that matter, if there were no constant and thousands of times realized threat of death from the Arab population. The threat that is maintained by the incessant antisemitic and anti-Israel brain-washing that Arabs undergo from the beginning of their lives. 

As to the question I asked Sfard, I still do not know the answer. The phenomenon of a Jew crossing to the enemy side, while rare, is not new, however. It used to require apostasy, and the apostate could become an inquisitor burning Jews at stake, or a blood libeler, inciting lethal pogroms. Nothing as dramatic as apostasy is needed nowadays, when religion has largely become for many merely a slightly embarrassing tradition - at least, among the progressive intelligentsia. Today's secular apostates merely defend those who attack the Jewish state's security measures that not only protect Israelis - Jews and Arabs alike - but also obviate the need for military action and casualties that would inevitably result from it, if terror acts were not prevented. Sfard did not see it that way, all the lynchings of random Jewish victims who fell into Arab hands, terrorist suicidal massacres and other murders notwithstanding. A possible motivation used to be the apostate's conflict with the community, or the desire to break from the persecuted minority. These days, all it takes is to become a "Human Rights" lawyer like Sfard. In Israel, this ecological niche is unique enough to avoid competition with other lawyers, kept out of it by their conscience. In that rarefied niche, even a mediocrity can earn his bread and butter - perhaps, with caviar and international travel on top.

I do not know why this annual lecture cycle has been renamed from The Martin Luther King Lecture to Lawyering For Social Change, but I think Dr. King would be happy that his name is no longer associated with it. The "social change" it stands for is not consistent with his vision of Israel, so dramatically different from Sfard's: "Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.” Peace through security is exactly the human right that Sfard the "Human Rights Lawyer" denies his compatriots and, ultimately, his Arab clients as well. As for the Pitt law students, they were denied truth, and for their $25 education credits for this “lawyering” lecture received not education, but anti-Israel ideological indoctrination. 

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*The published version of this entry is in  The Jewish Chronicle, titled "Michael Sfard: 'I Don't Care About History'". There is also a prior entry in this blog, related to Sfard, "Champion Of Displacement".
** “Can the Occupier Provide Justice? The Dilemmas of Human Rights Litigation in Israeli Courts,”  7 p.m. March 28 in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 3900 Forbes Ave..

"Grandfather was...", Or Obama's faith

Why is so little attention paid to the choice of vice-president? Unless, that is, this is somebody of whom the left entertainment business can make a bogey like it was made of Palin. Why is there only one debate between the VP candidates, when even on the memory of the present generation the VP has become a POTUS twice? Moreover, aren't they supposed to be a team, in consultation with each other? I would suggest then that the debates should be conducted between the candidate POTUS-VP teams, with the same question answered by both in the couple, first by the prospective POTUSes and then by VPs, with the latter then being able to show their ability to contribute and, if needed, to replace the president. To be sure, the inability would also manifest. Perhaps at some point the debate rules will be so changed. No rules, however, need to be changed in order to discuss the president's convictions. Here we go, with no segue.

I don't care what religion anybody professes, if any, as long as that anybody leaves mine alone. One would think that this criterion should leave me indifferent to the issue of Obama's faith and religiosity. Shouldn't Obama's religion, anyway, concern only those firmly assigned to the category of wingnuts, in the company of "birthers", those certified paranoids who keep pointing out that Obama was listed as "born in Kenya" until after the start of his first presidential campaign? Shouldn't Madonna only  be allowed to call him a "black Muslim in the White House" without raising an outcry? Obama himself has emphatically called himself a Christian, attended a church for 20 years, and held a Reverend from that church as a member of his family until he was told he should not anymore (can happen to anybody). That's what he is then, right?

It seems, however, that the hypothesis of Obama's Islam is viewed as offensive by the Democrats and the media not only because of all  the above, but also because it has been considered to be detrimental to his candidacy - despite his handlers' supposed view of Islam as a religion at least equal to Christianity. Sometimes the stridency of insistence on Obama's Christianity is reminiscent of Clinton's "I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman". Even mentioning his second name is considered an affront, as if it were something shameful and "Barack" were not a Muslim name as well. I have been reprimanded by an Obama faithful for using his three initials, as if that was any different from FDR, JFK or LBJ. A progressive colleague of mine prefers "BO" instead, which is, I think, a real insult. Is it Islamophobia among Democrats, including Obama himself? I can't see any other possible reason for these consistent attempts to dissociate Obama from Islam. Be it as it may, apparently, nobody has been ready to celebrate the first Muslim-born President (in Islam, one is a Muslim if born to a Muslim father) - at least, as much as the first "black" president was celebrated (even though Morgan Freeman says Obama is not "black" - and Freeman should know). 

Do I then smell hypocrisy in Obama's declaration that "part of [his] responsibility as President of the United States [is] to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear" - a promise he has made to no other religion? Not to Christianity in Islamic countries, where conversion to it is punished by death, and Christians are persecuted into extinction, as they are in Egypt and in the "Palestinian" territories. Not to Judaism in both the realm of institutionally antisemitic Islam and in some Christian countries where the Jews are still routinely maligned as hell's spawn. Can you imagine Obama traveling to Jerusalem and telling Israelis that it is his responsibility to fight against antisemitism everywhere? It is hard to imagine him traveling to Jerusalem at all,  the city he called the undivided capital of Israel in front of a Jewish audience - just before he took his words back when no longer facing it. Now nobody in his entire administration can find Israel's capital on the map.  

It is this smell of hypocrisy that drives me wingnuts about Obama's beliefs - that and some concrete facts. For instance, if one is to believe Obama's memoirs, a barber once asked him, upon learning his name, “Barack, huh. You a Muslim?”. To which Barack Hussein gave a rather evasive response, "Grandfather was". The question was not about his grandfather, and he did not say "yes" or "no". Or did he? Hardly any curious barber would be satisfied by this response. 

Then the reader of "The Dreams..." learns that the "Muslim faith" was in Obama's mind "linked with the Nation of Islam". Nowhere in the book that has any negative connotation, while "the much-admired success of the Nation of Islam in turning around the lives of drug addicts and criminals" is noted more than once. He "would occasionally pick up the paper from these unfailingly polite men, in part out of sympathy to their heavy suits in the summer, their thin coats in winter; or sometimes because my attention was caught by the sensational, tabloid-style headlines (CAUCASIAN WOMAN ADMITS: WHITES ARE THE DEVIL)" - but that "sensational, tabloid-style" is the extent of his criticism of the fascist movement. I can't imagine how such a headline could catch anyone's attention, unless it evoked interest rather than disgust. It is then not surprising he got no criticism - until forced to have it - for the man "who helped introduce [him] to [his] Christian faith", another fascist. The latter quote suggests that before Wright's "introduction" he had no such faith. Whether that was the case, and whether he was a Muslim or tabula rasa in that regard, I can't know for sure, but I do surmise that Christianity was more promising in his political  "mind" of an aspiring "community organizer" than Islam, his obvious alternative choice.

What kind of Christianity - is a different matter. As it happens, the religion of Rev. Wright, Obama's spiritual father who baptized Obama's children and connected him to the black community, was such as to give Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan  - because, in Wright's view, the antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam "truly epitomized greatness." The award was a year before Obama's election and his abandonment of the Trinity Church under the campaign's pressure. That award must have been part of what Obama called "the much-admired success" of the Muslim faith. Indeed, in many ways, the odious "Christianity" of Wright and the "Islam" of Farrakhan, the fellow antisemites and racists, are alike. It would be an insult to everybody's intelligence to insist that Obama was unaware of that similarity and the mutual sympathies between Wright and Farrakhan, just as it is unlikely he had not heard anything truly revolting throughout the 20 years of his attendance of Wright's sermons.

One would think, however, that by the election time Obama had found out that the Nation of Islam's Islam was a bit different from historic Islam, however diverse that historic one still is. Perhaps that "link" was weakened, but not Obama's with Islam. When the time came for his foreign affairs, he declared "A New Beginning" for the relations between the US and... not another country, as one would think appropriate in those affairs, but with Islam, supposedly a religion. Now, that makes Islam a polity, doesn't it? His first TV interview was with Al-Arabiya, and in it he addressed "the Muslim world" - an entity that exists only in the minds of those who think that Islam unites countries and separates them from the other countries, a split into the world of Islam and the world of "disbelief", a familiar structure of Dar ul Islam and Dar ul Harb, the realm of Islam and the realm of war. Whereas in fact there is no "world of Islam" among the eternally conflicting "Islamic" countries and groups and tribes within them, Obama's declaration of America's reconciliation with the "Islamic world" creates that world in full accordance with Muslim mythology.

Then, of course, came the much-discussed Cairo speech, in the Al-Azhar University, "a beacon of Islamic learning" as the president, ostensibly knowledgeable of that learning, referred to the place. That's the same place whose Grand Imam, Tantawi, legitimized suicidal terror and wrote a 700-page book on antisemitic Islamic exegesis. His death in 2010 was lamented by Obama, as spoken of in his spokesman Gibbs's statement. It is this murderous source of "Islamic learning" who "graciously hosted President Obama last June in Cairo". Sure, Obama did admonish somebody anonymous in that Cairo speech that "Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews [which is done any time when the Jews are mentioned in a mosque] -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve." Bad memories, you see - as if the "peace process" has not resulted in hundreds of terror murders and is not by itself a war negating peace. 

Then Obama negated that admonishment anyway by equating terror and wars that Israel has been subjected to since before its reestablishment in 1948 with "the pain of dislocation of the Palestinian people" they "have endured" for "more than 60 years", that is, since 1948. No word about how those dislocated came to be dislocated, and what "occupation" he means that he speaks of in the very next sentence. There was no occupation "more than 60 years ago" - unless Obama agrees with the "Palestinian" narrative of "Naqba", whereby it is the very existence of Israel that is the occupation. To Obama, Israelis and Arabs are just "two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive," even though it is only for the "Palestinian people" that the situation is "intolerable" in his view. To Obama, the war waged by Arabs and Islam against Israel is nothing more than finger-pointing - "for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond." In his opinion, to see this conflict from the Israeli side is as wrong as seeing it from the Arab side and means to "be blind to the truth". What is Obama's truth? Simple: forget who the aggressor is and meet the "aspirations of both sides... through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security". Never mind that even in the poisonous internationally doctored prescription for that, "land for peace", Israel's part is "land". Peace is denied by the Arabs, regardless of how much land Israel is willing to give up.

While paying lip service to the need for the "Palestinian Authority" to "develop its capacity to govern" (Abbas's capacity to govern should have expired in January 2009), he demands that "Israelis must acknowledge [Palestine's right to exist] just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's" - as if that "right" of "Palestine" has not been asserted by Israel since Rabin. If Obama thinks that acknowledgment is still lacking, just as the Arabs do, nothing can convince him it's not. It is all the same to him that "privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away" and that "many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state" (obviously, not privately). Aside from the question about how he could penetrate the private thoughts of "many Muslims" - how exactly can one compare the alleged private thoughts and the official position of the Israeli governments? Another question is why those thoughts are still "private" - despite all the Osloism and "peace process". The response is, of course, that those who might have such thoughts run the risk of being murdered by the "many Muslims" if they make those thoughts public. To Obama, it is "continued Israeli settlements... construction" that  "violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace" - not the continued Arab terror, incitement, the official glorification of "martyrs", and the fact that the articles calling for the annihilation of Israel have never been removed from the "Palestinian" ruling Charter, despite the "peace process". Sure, Obama said that "Palestinians must abandon violence", but in the very next sentence he calls it "resistance", exactly what terror is called by Fatah, Hamas, Hizballah and all other terrorists and terrorism supporters. He is concerned that this "resistance" will not succeed "through violence and killing"  - not about that "Palestinians" have no right to that "resistance", moral or otherwise. This is exactly what is expected from the pupil of the antisemites and Israel-haters Rev. Wright, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said.

Just as he whitewashes terror by calling it "resistance", he whitewashes Islam by using the standard lie that "The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind.  (Applause.)  And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.  (Applause.)" As other disingenuous apologists of Islam, he does not give the complete quote of this Koran 5:32 verse, 

"Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors." 

There is a teaching, but it is Jewish, indeed found in the Talmud. It is referred to as a Jewish belief in the Koran, which is "holy" only to the Muslims. Nowhere is it seen that Islam accepts this belief despite all the applause of the Al-Azhar audience. What sounds much more genuine is another statement of Obama's that caused applause, the one expressing his pride that "the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it". One wonders why the US government does not yet punish those who interfere with the "right of women and girls" to wear burqa - in fact, it wages a war against people who "protect" that right, in Afghanistan, wasting, as it were, the lives of young Americans.

In the end, it does not matter whether Obama's choice is antisemitic Islam or Wright's racist version of Christianity, the "black liberation theology". Both are terrible. What matters is Obama's position on the concrete issues that is defined by his ideology. This position, in which the perfectly legal building construction is equal to murder, Israel is called to return to the pre-1967 "borders" with no tangible obligation on the part of Arabs, and Jerusalem is no longer Israel's capital. This is the position where America's enemies are to be mollified and promised "more flexibility", while America's friends are to be let into the White House clandestinely, if at all, and maligned behind their backs.  It is of no interest what Obama's grandfather's faith was. His grandson's is no good, whatever its name.