Wednesday, October 31, 2018

The most dedicated, knowledgeable Jews support Trump!!!

Israelis by margin of 83% support Trump vs 4% support for Obama. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-two-years-later-israelis-love-trump-more-than-almost-any-other-nation-poll-shows-1.6515377

Orthodox Jews 70% for Trump. 90% among ultra Orthodox. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250068

He is the most pro Jewish, pro Israel President ever, following Obama who earned award of “most ANTI-Semitic act in the world in 2016 by the Simon Wiesenthal foundation. (That Barack Obama would exit his presidency with one final betrayal of Israel is a shameful act by the most relentlessly anti-Israeli president in history}

Trump has done more for Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, the poor, than any other President, with record low unemployment for all them and getting millions off of dependency on food stamps. . He has taken us from worst ever economic growth under Obama, to more than doubling the GDP rate (1.6% at end of Obama to over 4% now). He has started rebuilding the military. He is finally confronting all our adversaries like Iran, N Korea, China, Russia, whereas Obama appeased all of them. Jews who fail to support Trump are either stupid, fools or evil. Any Jew who cannot be convinced by reason, need to be shunned and ostracized, just as many of them call for ostracizing Trump supporters. Democratic Jews are BAD Jews who follow the religion of the New York Times and liberalism, not Judaism

An umbrella organization representing Orthodox synagogues defended President Donald Trump following criticism directed at him after the horrific anti-Semitic attack in Pittsburgh.

By: United with Israel Staff

On Wednesday, the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) addressed criticism of President Donald Trump following a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that represents the worst attack on Jews in the US in the nation’s history. NCYI counts 25,000 families among its members at 135 branch synagogues across the globe, in the United States, Israel, and Canada.

“We were horrified to hear the news about the anti-Semitic murderous rampage against Jews praying at Congregation Etz Chaim in Pittsburgh,” said NCYI in a statement published by Arutz Sheva. “Like our fellow Jewish organizations, we released a statement expressing unity with the victims, and we reached out to our Young Israel Synagogue several blocks away to offer assistance in the aftermath of this tragedy. Our hearts ache and our souls cry out for the shattered families in Pittsburgh.

“The strong condemnation by elected officials from both political parties, and especially President Trump and his administration, were clearly heartfelt and we very much appreciate it. President Trump’s decision to visit Congregation Etz Chaim, as well as the hospital in order to spend time with those wounded in the attack, together with his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and members of his administration, is a very important act of solidarity with our community.

“We are saddened that some, even within our Jewish community, have attacked the president and his policies instead of using this period as one of healing. This is not a time for political attacks. The mass murderer who targeted Jews in the Pittsburgh attack opposed President Trump and penned vicious things about him. President Trump is clearly not responsible for the deadly shooting, and his response to the attack and his strong words against anti-Semitism are greatly needed and appreciated. Those who have taken to criticizing the president were doing so prior to this horrific mass murder occurred, and it is unseemly that they would use this massacre to denounce the president at this time.”

The statement continued by lauding Trump as “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” noting that he “has stood up and defended Israel more strongly than any president before him” and “visited Israel on his first foreign trip,” becoming “the first president to visit and pray at the Western Wall while in office.”

Pro-Israel Officials, Pro-Israel Policy

The organization also expressed gratitude to Trump for “appoint[ing] the most pro-Israel Ambassador to Israel ever appointed, Ambassador David Friedman, a Young Israel member who assisted with President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” and for “treat[ing] its consulate in Jerusalem like any other consulate . . . rather than having it act like an embassy to the Palestinian Authority that reports directly to Washington, DC.”

The statement continued, “The leading anti-Semitic nation in the world is Iran, which regularly calls for Israel’s destruction and welcomes Holocaust deniers. President Trump has taken strong action by sanctioning Iran and ending the nuclear deal that enabled Iran to increase its defense budget by 40%. Iran is the leading supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, two major terrorist organizations committed to Israel’s destruction. President Trump also crushed ISIS, which has been an anti-Semitic terrorist organization. No U.S. President has taken stronger action against these entities than President Trump.

“President Trump has spoken openly and proudly about his deep love for his daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, and his three Jewish grandchildren. The President also has an Orthodox Jewish advisor in Jason Greenblatt, his Special Representative for International Negotiations and Middle East Envoy. UN Ambassador Nicki Haley has done an amazing job standing up for Israel at the UN and National Security Advisor John Bolton has a long history of being a great friend to Israel, and he has continued that friendship in his current position. Vice President Mike Pence has given extraordinary speeches of support to Israel in the Knesset and in commemoration of Israel’s 69th Anniversary, and he helped repair Jewish graves in St. Louis when they were vandalized.

“One does not have to be a supporter of the president to hear the heartbreak in his voice when he made multiple statements concerning the tragedy, each statement getting stronger and stronger in tone. Israel’s Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister, Naftali Bennett called President Trump’s comments the toughest comments ever made by a president against anti-Semitism. President Trump called anti-Semitism a ‘historic evil,’ later saying ‘there must be no tolerance for anti-Semitism in America.’ In an extremely powerful and poignant statement, President Trump said, ‘This evil, anti-Semitic attack is an assault on all of us. It is an assault on humanity. It must be confronted and condemned everywhere it rears its ugly head. We must stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters to defeat anti-Semitism and vanquish the forces of hate. Those seeking their destruction, we will seek their destruction.’”

Neo-Nazis and the Radical Left

The statement concluded, “We agree with Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, who stated that anti-Semitism comes from all sides, both conservative and liberal. He said ‘to simply say that this is because of one person, only comes on one side, is to not understand the history of anti-Semitism or the reality of anti-Semitism.’ Ambassador Dermer added that ‘one of the big forces in college campuses today is anti-Semitism. And those anti-Semites are usually not neo-Nazis on college campuses. They’re coming from the radical-left. We have to stand against anti-Semitism whether it comes from the right or whether it comes from the left.’

“The white supremacists and radical-left share their same BDS support and anti-Israel agenda, whether it is white supremacist David Duke, or proud BDS supporter from the left Linda Sarsour, who tweeted in 2012 that ‘Nothing is creepier than Zionism.’ The BDS activities of Linda Sarsour and her fellow anti-Israel activists fall squarely within the international working definition of anti-Semitism, which was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016 and is utilized by the U.S. State Department. This is why the pro-Israel policies of President Trump serve as a strong condemnation of the views of white supremacists and BDS supporters who oppose Israel.

“Over a year ago, there was a meeting and briefing for members of the Jewish community about the threat of terrorism. At the meeting, we said that our community’s main concern is attacks by white supremacists and radical Islamic terrorists. We would have made the same statement five years ago as well. The fact that American people of all types have come together and supported our community at this time is very much appreciated. This is not the time to play politics; rather, it is a time to come together.

“May God comfort Pittsburgh alongside the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” said the organization at the statement’s conclusion, quoting a verse from the Torah traditionally recited during the time of mourning.

Orthodox synagogues defended President Donald Trump following criticism directed at him after the horrific anti-Semitic attack in Pittsburgh.

An umbrella organization representing Orthodox synagogues defended President Donald Trump following criticism directed at him after the horrific anti-Semitic attack in Pittsburgh.

By: United with Israel Staff

Pro-Israel Officials, Pro-Israel Policy

Neo-Nazis and the Radical Left

The nonsense of blaming Trump for Pittsburg

The Danger of Blaming Trump for Pittsburgh

by Mark S. Golub

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a bilateral meeting during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 26, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria.

The Jewish community’s overwhelming sense of shock and grief at the senseless, callous, brutal mass murder of 11 people at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh on Saturday is heart wrenching.

The extraordinary outpouring of solidarity throughout the American Jewish community — indeed the entire Jewish world — is not only warranted, but an affirmation of the truth that the Jewish people is one “family” in which each feels responsible “one for every other.”

No less important is the extent to which the non-Jewish community has stood with the Jewish community at this horrific moment. Their outrage and support is yet again a testament to the tsunami of goodness that rises in the hearts and souls of people of good will when others must endure a grave desecration of life.

The Jewish community of Pittsburgh is not alone in its sorrow. It is enveloped in an embrace of compassion and love. The Internet resounds with beautiful words of comfort.

OCTOBER 31, 2018 10:00 AM

Special Editorial: #WeAreAllJews

The following is a joint editorial drafted by Jane Eisner, Editor-in-Chief of The Forward, and Dovid Efune, Editor-in-Chief and CEO...

Moreover, if the Pittsburgh massacre reveals anything about America it is the extent to which “hate” is an anathema to the people of our nation. There has been an immediate and total rejection throughout our country — from governmental officials to the man and woman in the street — of hate in general and antisemitism in particular.

The American response should be seen and appreciated for who and what the American people are and the extent to which the history of Jewish America is the pinnacle of Jewish Diaspora life unparalleled by any other “Golden Age” of Jewish history.

But there is a self-destructive response threatening to undermine Jewish perspective on the murders in Pittsburgh.

There are those in the Jewish community who are now blaming Donald Trump for creating “a climate of hate” that is the cause of Saturday’s shooting.

Whenever a tragedy like Pittsburgh occurs, there is a natural reaction to try to “make sense” of the event — to find “a reason” — to affix “blame.” But such responses tend to succumb to hysteria that creates ghosts, demons, and enemies where there are none.

According to a recent Mellman Group poll, more than 75 percent of American Jews disapprove of Donald Trump. Many Jews detest and despise the man. The upcoming midterm election is seen by many as a referendum on the Trump presidency, and they hope that a “blue wave” will change the political landscape significantly.

But it is simplistic and self-deceptive to blame Donald Trump for the murders at the Tree of Life Congregation. Such a suggestion is an ignoble expression of partisanship that threatens to fashion a frightening fiction of an emerging wave of violent antisemtism in America — demanding a series of responses by the Jewish community that threatens to distort the Jewish future.

Calmer heads must prevail for the Jewish community to emerge from this tragedy with an honest sense of what it means to be a Jew in America.

In reality, the Pittsburgh shooting has no more to do with Donald Trump than any of the prior mass shootings have had to do with prior presidents. America has a long and wretched history of mass murders that far predates Donald Trump. The phenomenon of hatred mixed with mental illness is a profound feature of American life, compounded by America’s unique obsession with guns and a host of firearms meant to kill other people.

Tragically, during the years 2009 to 2017, there were nine mass murders. Barack Obama was president. Appropriately, no one blamed Barack Obama for creating a “climate of hate” when 27 were killed in a house of worship, the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs Texas. No group protested outside the White House accusing President Obama of having blood in his hands.

Appropriately, no one accused Barack Obama of creating a “climate of hate” when 49 people were murdered at Pulse night club in Orlando by a mentally deranged man who wanted to punish gays and exact revenge for America’s involvement in Syria. No one in Orlando told the president he was not welcome to visit the families of Orlando and express the nation’s grief.

For all of the nine mass murders during his term of office, no one blamed President Obama because Americans understood that mass murders are the acts of deeply disturbed individuals for whom “reason” is irrelevant.

Fortunately for the Jewish community, no synagogue or Jewish institution was the target of a mass murderer during the nine years of the Obama presidency.

But in July of 2006, a mentally ill Muslim man angry at Israel shot six women at the Seattle Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle — murdering Pamela Waechter. George W. Bush was president in 2006. No one blamed him or his policies for creating a climate or context that would prompt the shooting.

Seven years earlier, in 1999, a man entered the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles and fired 70 shots that wounded five people. Bill Clinton was president in 1999. No one blamed him or his policies for the shooting.

We have always understood that the social challenge facing our nation is the extent to which violence has always been an inherent quality of the American personality, expressed in a national obsession with guns that is unique in the civilized world. America’s shame is the extent to which it tolerates, excuses, and glorifies violence — especially gun violence.

This sad reality is exacerbated by a large and ever-growing population of Americans who suffer from severe mental illness. No matter how loud health professionals beg for the funds necessary to house and treat the mentally ill, our society remains unprepared to allocate the monies required for appropriate care. As a result, mentally ill people filled with hate and rage walk our streets and sleep on our sidewalks — and sometimes go mad with one or more guns at their disposal — and people tragically die.

The object of the hatred born of mental illness takes many, many forms. Gays are murdered. Americans of color are murdered. Christians are murdered. Muslims are murdered. Jews are murdered.

The tragedy of the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh is that a severely mentally disturbed individual decided he hated Jews and would kill them all. This is the transcendent message of the tragedy in Pittsburgh — and it is a message for all Americans: America must rein in its love affair with guns and must devote economic resources to treat the mentally ill.

Those in the Jewish community who make Trump part of the story make a serious mistake. The inappropriate fixation on blaming Trump for Pittsburgh threatens to warp the Jewish community’s strategic response. It suggests that there is a looming threat of more murders and that Jews should feel less at home in America. Neither concern reflects American reality.

We Jews have a long memory that goes back some 3,000 years. The older generation today well remembers the Holocaust of a mere 80 years ago in which Jews were gassed, incinerated, and murdered in unimaginable forms of human cruelty — only because they were Jews!

When a madman murders 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue screaming how he hates Jews, it evokes waking nightmares among anyone with a sense of Jewish history. But any Jewish leader who suggests that America is becoming “Paris” is guilty of a gross misrepresentation of America and perhaps, in some institutional settings, of self-serving aggrandizement.

Are there people in America who hate Jews? Of course. There will always be antisemites in every society. But the American people and the American social fabric is wholly non-antisemitic. There once was a time in America when Jewish children were taunted for being “Christ killers,” and were sometimes beaten up by Christian gangs for the crime of deicide. Jews were denied access to colleges and neighborhoods, professional opportunities and country clubs. When my mother first met her roommate at the University of Michigan, the roommate asked “innocently” if she could see my mother’s horns.

Virtually none of this is true in contemporary America. My wife and I have five wonderful children ranging in age from 30-50. My daughters have experienced sexism. None of my children have experienced antisemitism. This is the reality of American Jewish life today.

There will always be antisemites. They should never be taken for granted. Vigilance is a Jewish mitzvah! But there is no antisemitic threat to the Jews of America. Despite the tragedy of Pittsburgh, Jews need not live in fear or feel one wit less rooted in American life.

This is the message Jewish leaders need to stress today. For whatever number of skinheads, and white supremacists, and David Dukes and neo-Nazis may exist in various nooks and crannies of our country, they neither represent any significant piece of American society nor do they represent any concerted threat to the Jews of America.

The Jewish community should now have a moment to grieve and mourn. The healing that will follow need not be confused by making our family’s tragedy about Donald Trump. He had no more to do with it than any other president has had — and to suggest otherwise dilutes and distorts both our mourning and our healing with all the members of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation.

Mark S. Golub is an American rabbi, media entrepreneur, personality, and educator.

The ADL Is Reporting A ‘Surge’ In Anti-Semitism is FAKE NEWS

David Bernstein Debunks ADL Claim Of ‘60% Increase’ in Anti-Semitic Acts Since Trump

Chris Menahan
Information Liberation
October 31, 2018

George Mason University School of Law professor David Bernstein of The Volokh Conspiracy writes at Reason:

Those who wish to blame Trump [for an alleged surge in anti-Semitism] have an ace in the hole, an Anti-Defamation League study that purports to show an almost 60 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents between 2016 and 2017, which is implicitly blamed on Trump. This study has been cited on over and over in response to Pittsburgh.

There are several problems with relying on this study for Trump-bashing, however. The first is that the study includes 193 incidents of bomb threats to Jewish institutions as anti-Semitic incidents, even though by the time the ADL published the study, it had been conclusively shown that the two perpetrators of the bomb threats were not motivated by anti-Semitism. One can only guess why the ADL chose to inflate its statistics in this way, but none of the explanations speak well of it.

Second, the ADL report itself acknowledges that some of the rise in incidents may simply be due to better reporting (“more people are reporting incidents to ADL than ever before”).

Third, “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of those incidents emanating from traditional forms of anti-Semitism that one might associate with Trumpian populism, and how many from leftist/pro-Palestinian sources? The ADL doesn’t say.

Fourth, the ADL counts ambiguous incidents as anti-Semitic incidents, so long as they were reported as such. For example, the report states, “Jewish graves or cemeteries were desecrated seven times in 2017. The desecration of Jewish headstones is a classic anti-Semitic act employed for hundreds of years. The majority of the cemetery desecrations occurred in the first months of the year, at the same time as the bomb threats were called in to Jewish institutions, which contributed to a sense that the Jewish American community was under siege.” The problem is that desecrations of cemeteries of all faiths is not uncommon, and are often the product of either bored teenagers or vagrants. In fact, at least some of the cemetery incidents counted by the ADL were ultimately determined by police not to be anti-Semitic in origin. The desecraton of a cemetery in St. Louis got a particularly large amount of attention. The police eventually caught the perpetrator, and determined that he was just “mad and drunk,” not anti-Semitic. The ADL has not updated its study or press release to reflect such facts. Other questionable “anti-Semitic” incidents I’ve seen reported include graffitti with a swastika and “TRUMP.” Is the “author” supporting “Trump the Nazi” or attacking Trump by accusing him of being a Nazi? My inclination would in most cases be to suspect the latter, but surely it’s at least unclear.

None of which is to say that we can rule out a “surge,” or at least a significant increase in anti-Semitic incidents during and perhaps because of the Trump administration. But the ADL study everyone is relying on to prove this doesn’t show any such thing.

Read Bernstein’s full report.

As Bernstein notes, nearly all of the JCC bomb threats were carried out by 19-year-old Israeli-American Michael Kaydar and a few copycat threats were called in by Juan Thompson, who is African-American.

Reason 2017 · Sometimes contrarian · Often libertarian · Always independent

Has There Been a Surge of Anti-Semitism Under and Because of Trump?

In short, probably not. And about that ADL study everyone is citing...

David E. Bernstein|Oct. 28, 2018 7:14 pm

In the aftermath of the horrific murders at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, a good part of the media, social and otherwise, wishes to blame Donald Trump. Surely, Trump's inflammatory rhetoric doesn't exactly calm societal waters, and his remarks on Charlottesville, though often exaggerated by hostile sources, did not exactly come across as a rousing denunciation of white supremacy. Nevertheless, there are some barriers to blaming Trump for anti-Semitic acts specifically.

First, Pittsburgh was hardly the first time an anti-Semitic gunman murdered people in a Jewish insitution in the U.S. Between the Clinton and Bush II years, there was a shooting at a Jewish Community Center in L.A., a shooting at an El Al counter at LAX, a shooting at the Jewish Federation in Seattle, a shooting at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, and a shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Lower levels of vandalism and violence have been even more common. It's true that the death toll in Pittsburgh was especially high, but that's just happenstance; any of the other shoooters would have been happy to kill as many or more. [UPDATE: It's worth noting that many commentators, such as Franklin Foer in The Atlantic, simply ignore these past crimes, and act as if the Pittsburgh murders were some unique event in recent American Jewish history.]

Second, the Trump administration includes some very strong opponents of anti-Semitism. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has fought anti-Semitism in the world body, one of the world's primary purveyors of it, with a vigor and effectiveness not seen since at least Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Trump appointee Ken Marcus, head of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, has devoted much of his career to fighting anti-Semitism (but was confirmed over the objections of Senate Democrats, some of whom thought he was too opposed to anti-Semitismtoo willing to identify certain types of Israel-bashing as a form of anti-Semitism).

(Some would add here that the Trump administration has been the most pro-Israel in history. While true, I'm not sure that this affects domestic American anti-Semitism one way or another, except perhaps to especially irritate anti-Semites.)

Those who wish to blame Trump have an ace in the hole, an Anti-Defamation League study that purports to show an almost 60 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents between 2016 and 2017, which is implicitly blamed on Trump. This study has been cited on over and over in response to Pittsburgh.

There are several problems with relying on this study for Trump-bashing, however. The first is that the study includes 193 incidents of bomb threats to Jewish institutions as anti-Semitic incidents, even though by the time the ADL published the study, it had been conclusively shown that the two perpetrators of the bomb threats were not motivated by anti-Semitism. One can only guess why the ADL chose to inflate its statistics in this way, but none of the explanations speak well of it.

Second, the ADL report itself acknowledges that some of the rise in incidents may simply be due to better reporting ("more people are reporting incidents to ADL than ever before").

Third, "college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016." How many of those incidents emanating from traditional forms of anti-Semitism that one might associate with Trumpian populism, and how many from leftist/pro-Palestinian sources? The ADL doesn't say.

Fourth, the ADL counts ambiguous incidents as anti-Semitic incidents, so long as they were reported as such. For example, the report states, "Jewish graves or cemeteries were desecrated seven times in 2017. The desecration of Jewish headstones is a classic anti-Semitic act employed for hundreds of years. The majority of the cemetery desecrations occurred in the first months of the year, at the same time as the bomb threats were called in to Jewish institutions, which contributed to a sense that the Jewish American community was under siege." The problem is that desecrations of cemeteries of all faiths is not uncommon, and are often the product of either bored teenagers or vagrants. In fact, at least some of the cemetery incidents counted by the ADL were ultimately determined by police not to be anti-Semitic in origin. The desecraton of a cemetery in St. Louis got a particularly large amount of attention. The police eventually caught the perpetrator, and determined that he was just "mad and drunk," not anti-Semitic. The ADL has not updated its study or press release to reflect such facts. Other questionable "anti-Semitic" incidents I've seen reported include graffitti with a swastika and "TRUMP." Is the "author" supporting "Trump the Nazi" or attacking Trump by accusing him of being a Nazi? My inclination would in most cases be to suspect the latter, but surely it's at least unclear.

None of which is to say that we can rule out a "surge," or at least a significant increase in anti-Semitic incidents during and perhaps because of the Trump administration. But the ADL study everyone is relying on to prove this doesn't show any such thing.

UPDATE: The most-read article in the Washington Post this morning is this piece by Dana Milbank. To my lack of suprise, he both ignores all the previous shooting incidents at American Jewish institutions and backs up a rather hysterical tone with, you guessed it, the ADL study.

Some of my friends tell me that adding reasonable context to the Pittsburgh shooting "excuses" Trump, and thus makes future incidents more likely. On the contrary, I think that reasoned criticism of Trump is useful—for example, noting that Trump's conspiratorial mindset inadvertently feeds anti-Semitism because the latter is a product of the same mindset, or that Trump should have unequivocally rejected support from white nationalists during his campaign, or that Trump is too narcissistic to apologize when he retweeted from anti-Semitic websites, and so on, though I would draw the line at blaming Trump for the incident, unless one wants to also explain why there were similar shootings before Trump, and also talk about all the other currents of anti-Semitism on both left and right that contribute to Jews' being by far the most targeted religious group for hate crimes for many years running.

Meanwhile, Trump's hardcore supporters are ever-alert for "fake news." Exaggeration, double-standards, failure to provide context, and blatant falsehoods about Trump simply feed their narrative that all news is fake news. And citing the obviously flawed ADL study not only ultimately is counter-productive to legitimate criticism of Trump, it also ultimately will highlight the extent to which the ADL itself has dipped its toe into the fake news business (it's not the only example). The ADL should be taken to task for its malfeasance in spreading dubious statistics, not relied upon, if one wants to retain the ADL's credibility in the long-run.

ONE MORE UPDATE: Putting aside the question of an increase in "incidents," has there been an increase in anti-Semitic attitudes among Americans that correlates with Trump? Are Trump supporters disproportionately like to be anti-Semites? I've been asking those who insist that both those things are true to provide me with survey or other data backing these claims. Yes, data, not anecdotes, not feelings. I haven't had any responses.

The ADL Is Reporting A ‘Surge’ In Anti-Semitism, But Do The Facts Bear Out The Headline?

The ADL report cites 163 bomb threats to Jewish organizations. Of these threats, 150 were perpetrated by a single Jewish man.

By Chad Felix Greene

MARCH 6, 2018

The Anti-Defamation League is reporting a “surge” of anti-Semitism swept the U.S. in 2017, based on their finding that anti-Semitic incidents rose 57 percent last year. But a closer look at the facts doesn’t quite bear out the headlines its generating.

“This is what happens when the President of the United States embraces white supremacists and does not decry racists,” Soledad O’Brien tweeted about the study.

“While the tragedy in Charlottesville highlighted this trend, it was not an aberration,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement on the study. “Every single day, white supremacists target members of the Jewish community — holding rallies in public, recruiting on college campuses, attacking journalists on social media, and even targeting young children.”

The available data are certainly far from comforting, but not so easy to interpret as the ADL and others would suggest. For instance, even though the number of incidents the ADL found did rise sharply, the total number of incidents could still be considered small — 1,986 in 2017. In another example, a vast majority of more than a hundred bomb threats were perpetrated by one Jewish man. While instances of anti-Semitism do appear to be on the rise, but the reality isn’t so bad as ADL suggests.

The ADL provides a selected list of 1,215 examples of the incidents on the report’s website. This chart is composed of police reports, media reports and individual reports to the ADL directly. The ADL also watches social media and interviews individuals who report anti-Semitic events on the various platforms, although it is unclear how well these reports are vetted. When sorted, roughly 73 percent of the incidents involved a form of vandalism, with about 60 percent of the incidents involving swastikas. The remaining examples are a wide range of Nazi and anti-Semitic graffiti, anti-Semitic fliers, stickers or literature and various harassment to Jewish organizations including emails, phone calls and social media posts.

Greenblatt addressed the report’s finding of a 94 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in K-12 schools. “Certainly, when it comes to kids, they repeat what they hear,” he said in an interview with NPR. “So as we see a decrease in civility and an increase in intolerance, no one should be surprised that that is infecting the environment where our children learn.”

The study states, “Although the largest number of incidents typically occur in public areas, in 2017 K-12 schools surpassed public areas as the locations with the most anti-Semitic incidents, at 457 incidents being reported in K-12 schools …”

About 20 percent of total incidents provided indicated a form of verbal harassment, with a little over half described as “bullying.” Several examples even describe teachers experiencing anti-Semitic attacks from students. About 50 examples describe Holocaust jokes and attacks, with nearly a dozen involving the Nazi salute by students. A half-dozen claim students threw coins or money at a Jewish peer. One Pro-Trump Jewish student was called a “Nazi” by fellow students.

Of the incidents beyond the schoolyard, the majority are anecdotal reports. There are instances of random drivers yelling at Jewish passersby with all manner of anti-Semitic insults. There are assorted crazy people shouting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories outside courthouses or harassing rabbis. A few standing outside holding signs or shouting anti-Semitic things at no one in particular. Multiple examples claim that various individuals in the customer service industry, from cashiers to airplane attendants to taxi drivers attacked Jewish customers with slurs or insults. Many overheard what they considered anti-Semitic conversation, or heard individuals use phrases or comments they felt were offensive but were not directed towards them.

Many examples are as vague as “Jewish woman harassed online” or “Anti-Semitic comment on YouTube” and the ADL reported they received a single rude phone call. One remarkable example states: “A Jewish lawyer was asked by a judge if he had horns under his kippah. The judge also made other anti-Semitic remarks.”

Swastikas have a deeply disturbing impact on Jewish people and therefore whenever one is discovered it sends ripples of panic, outrage and fear throughout Jewish communities. The difficulty is that the symbol is provocative, regardless of whether it’s malicious, a prank or a false report.

An op-ed in a Canada paper cited swastika graffiti as the most common hate crime in Ontario, but quoted the head of the local hate crime unit saying most of them likely weren’t motivated by anti-semitism. “The majority of the 20 swastikas investigated by Hamilton police last year were probably made by young people who drew them because they were easy and provocative rather than because the culprits are anti-Semitic,” the piece reads, attributing the sentiment to Det. Paul Corrigan.

In College Park Maryland in 2017, an African-American man was charged with spray-painting a swastika inside a resident hall at the University of Maryland. Also in 2017, in Upstate New York, a Jewish man was charged after painting the symbol on his own home and reporting it as a hate crime. Another student at Beloit College in Wisconsinwas arrested after causing a panic involving the police due to multiple religious and racial slurs painted himself on his own dorm room door.

The ADL found that the majority of the incidents happened in states with large Jewish populations, with the biggest numbers in New York followed by California, Florida, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and on America’s most liberal college campuses, including Princeton University, Berkley, Georgetown University, and Rutgers University. The Daily Beast reported a shocking level of anti-Semitic hate at Berkley in 2015. Alongside swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti, they report, “…during the conflict in Gaza this summer, he also came across sidewalk graffiti on campus that exhorted “Death to Israel” and “Kill all the Jews.”

AMCHA, a Jewish organization stated that their 2015 study “…provided for the first time a quantitative account of the prevalence of antisemitic activity at schools most popular with Jewish students… [and] the presence of anti-Zionist student groups, faculty boycotters and anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) activity are each strong predictors of anti-Jewish hostility.” In the first half of 2016, “287 incidents involving either Targeting of Jewish Students for Harm, Antisemitic Expression, BDS Activity, or some combination of these… 64 (57%) of these schools had incidents involving one or more kinds of these activities.” The study also confirmed that anti-Semitic incidents were more common when faculty members engaged in anti-Israel boycotting.

In terms of the “rise of anti-Semitism” on college campuses, unfortunately the ADL only seems concerned with White Supremacy rather than the more common and academically condoned anti-Semitism from the Left.

The most popular schools for Jewish students also happen to coincide with the above mentioned states and schools with the largest number of anti-Semitic incidents. The BDS movement, the Anti-Zionist movement and pro-Palestinian activity are almost exclusively Left-leaning or Islamic driven efforts on college campuses as well. The co-founder of the Women’s March, Tamika D. Mallory attended a remarkably anti-Semitic event by Louis Farrakhan and praised him on social media. Linda Sarsour, another leader in the Women’s movement, openly embraces the above anti-Israel sentiment and has expressed anti-Semitic stereotypes on “Jews in the media.” Often the rhetoric from a White Nationalist or Pro-Palestinian advocate are indistinguishable. The ADL has addressed many anti-Semitic and anti-Israel positions taken by Black Lives Matter leaders and supporters and listed the Nation of Islam and multiple Imams perpetuating anti-Jewish hatred in their study.

The ADL report cites 163 bomb threats to Jewish organizations. Of these threats, 150 were perpetrated by a single Jewish man. An additional eight came from a known copy-cat with a history of violent and unpredictable behavior. The ADL justified including these examples, saying, “ADL included the bomb threats in the total count because, regardless of the motivation of any specific perpetrator, Jewish communities were repeatedly traumatized by these assaults on their institutions and threats to their safety. … These crimes meet the textbook definition of hate crimes: Jewish community institutions were intentionally-selected and targeted — and the bomb threats sparked widespread fear at these institutions, causing evacuations, significant service disruptions, program cancellations, and deep community anxiety.”

There were several disturbing incidents across the country of Jewish cemeteries being desecrated or tombstones knocked over. These appear to be of legitimate malicious intent or done as a cruel prank. Muslim and Christian groups came together with Jewish organizations to rebuild them, and Vice President Mike Pence’s visited the desecrated Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, Missouri, in February.

Assaults decreased from 36 incidents in 2016 to 19 in 2017. Often these occurred to random Jewish citizens who were verbally and then physically attacked by strangers. People threw rocks at synagogue windows and a Jewish-themed children’s school bus was set on fire. A legally blind, 62-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman was attacked in Brooklyn, New York, by an unknown assailant who shouted obscenities to her and violently pulled off her wig.

There certainly seems to have been a rise in White Nationalism and racist worldviews. Paul Nehlen, a Republican running against House Speaker Paul Ryan, posted a hate list of Jews he accused of publicly attacking him (of which I was included). Nehlen has been a vocally anti-Semitic voice, gathering a disturbingly large following on social media, although he was recently banned from Twitter permanently. But pretending the issue is exclusively in this domain denies a great deal of evidence as to how anti-Jewish bigotry impacts our country.

While the efforts to collect reports of attacks are important, it is equally important that these examples represent real concerns. There is no doubt that in a country of 350 million people there will be crazy, violent, bigoted and irrational individuals. Jews seem particularly easy to target whenever social tensions rise across the country and anti-Semitism has taken on an edgy appeal to those wishing to simply rebel and shock society. The problem however, is when the leading voice in reporting these threats include petty, trivial, absurd and even false or misrepresented claims alongside real instances of hate, it destroys the credibility of all who report.

There are plenty of anti-Semitic experiences throughout the country, from both the Right and the Left, to provide us a clear understanding of the issue without padding the numbers. It is vital that when reporting on student bullying or harassment of Jewish citizens, we dedicate time to understanding and detailing the attacks rather than taking them at face value.

There are important questions to ask.

Are any individuals who report discovering anti-Semitic graffiti vetted before included in the report? Anyone working at any business in the country found to be harassing Jews or using anti-Semitic language is likely to be fired immediately, so where are these instances occurring? How is anti-Semitism occurring at such high levels in public schools without intervention or media reporting? Why are reports of significant events like cemetery desecration held in equal concern with abusive online comments?

Just as anti-Semitic graffiti, literature, posts or fliers can represent a real threat, a prank, or a self-imposed hoax for attention, so too can incidents of harassment or discrimination. But we need real numbers of substantiated events without political bias or selective inclusion of offenders to fully understand the problem. The ADL has a responsibility to give us a true and accurate portrayal of what’s going on. But unfortunately, they appear to only be more interested in perpetuating a political narrative.

Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of the "Reasonably Gay: Essays and Arguments" series and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.

About Those Misleading ADL Statistics On Anti-Semitism (And Right-Wing Violence)

JOHN SEXTONPosted at 1:01 pm on October 31, 2018

After GQ reporter Julia Ioffe appeared on CNN and claimed Donald Trump had radicalized more people than ISIS, she quickly backtracked and apologized for exaggerating. She then offered what she thought was a more solid, factual basis for blaming President Trump for the shooting in Pittsburgh: “According to the ADL, the number of anti-Semitic attacks has jumped by nearly 60% in the first year that Donald Trump was in office.” But that’s not any more accurate than her claim about ISIS, as Robby Soave at Reason pointed out yesterday.

The ADL statistic captures anti-Semitic “incidents,” which is a much broader category of behavior than “hate crimes” or “attacks.” Incidents include things like bullying in schools—which is bad, but usually not indicative of criminal conduct…

The ADL report came up with three subcategories of anti-Semitic incidents: vandalism, harassment, and assault. An increase in vandalism accounts for much of the overall increase, but Bernstein doubts that all of the included incidents were actually examples of anti-Semitism. The harassment category also saw an increase, largely due to a series of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the U.S. made by a disturbed Israeli teen. It’s not at all clear that these threats were motivated by anti-Semitism.

Finally, the assault category saw a 47 percent decrease.

Soave also refers to this article at the Volokh Conspiracy by David Bernstein which suggests the ADL report is intentionally misleading, at least with regard to the bomb threats against Jewish Centers (something I wrote about extensively when it was happening):

There are several problems with relying on this study for Trump-bashing, however. The first is that the study includes 193 incidents of bomb threats to Jewish institutions as anti-Semitic incidents, even though by the time the ADL published the study, it had been conclusively shown that the two perpetrators of the bomb threats were not motivated by anti-Semitism. One can only guess why the ADL chose to inflate its statistics in this way, but none of the explanations speak well of it…

Third, “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of those incidents emanating from traditional forms of anti-Semitism that one might associate with Trumpian populism, and how many from leftist/pro-Palestinian sources? The ADL doesn’t say.

Fourth, the ADL counts ambiguous incidents as anti-Semitic incidents, so long as they were reported as such. For example, the report states, “Jewish graves or cemeteries were desecrated seven times in 2017…The problem is that desecrations of cemeteries of all faiths is not uncommon, and are often the product of either bored teenagers or vagrants. In fact, at least some of the cemetery incidents counted by the ADL were ultimately determined by police not to be anti-Semitic in origin. The desecraton of a cemetery in St. Louis got a particularly large amount of attention. The police eventually caught the perpetrator, and determined that he was just “mad and drunk,” not anti-Semitic. The ADL has not updated its study or press release to reflect such facts.

I think that should put to rest the claim that there was a major spike of anti-Semitic attacks in 2017. That’s not true if you’re talking about assaults and if you’re talking about the other categories the increase may not be anti-Semitic or may not be coming from the right.

I could wrap this up here but I’d like to point out that the ADL also publishes an annual report titled “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 20xx.” In 2016, the ADL published this striking claimwhich got quoted quite a few times by people on the left: “Over the past 10 years (2007-2016), domestic extremists of all kinds have killed at least 372 people in the United States. Of those deaths, approximately 74% were at the hands of right-wing extremists, about 24% of the victims were killed by domestic Islamic extremists, and the remainder were killed by left-wing extremists.”

Last year I asked ADL if they could provide the information to back up that claim because the actual data is not available on their website and wasn’t included in the 2016 report itself. Initially, they responded and agreed they would pull together some information for me. But it never arrived. I sent 2 or 3 follow-up emails over a period of months and they never responded to those at all.

The information in the annual extremism reports published by the ADL is based on a database of extremist murders which the ADL keeps to itself. Its definition of extremist murders includes murders that, by the ADL’s own admission, were not ideological in nature. The 2017 report includes an actual list of incidents cited in the report and here’s one that gets counted as a right-wing extremist murder:

Greeley, Colorado, August 16, 2017. Kelly Raisley, believed to be a member or associate of the 211 Crew white supremacist gang, was arrested on first-degree murder charges for the murder of his uncle, Randy Gene Baker. Baker’s wife and sister were similarly arrested. The motive was apparently personal.

Here’s another example where the violence seems to be personal rather than ideological:

North Judson, Indiana, March 3, 2017. Aryan Circle member Edward Blackburn allegedly shot and killed another man who was reportedly dating his ex-girlfriend.

This one also seems to take a lot of liberties with the truth:

Lafayette, Indiana, January 16, 2017. Wesley Andrew Hampton, a self-declared white supremacist, and another defendant allegedly robbed and murdered a man in a home invasion.

Here’s a Journal & Courier story about the robbery and murder in question:

Several people wearing masks pushed their way into the apartment where John Byler was killed about 6 a.m. Jan. 16, according to witnesses cited in a probable cause affidavit.

Witnesses told police the men demanded drugs and money, according to the affidavit.

Police believe Wesley Andrew Hampton, 39, and Aarron Christopher Vance, 35, were two of the people wearing masks.

What the ADL doesn’t tell you is that Aaron Christopher Vance, Hampton’s accomplice in the crime, is black. None of the reporting on this suggests it was a hate crime or even mentions the race of the victim. This appears to have been a drug robbery gone wrong. The shooter may, in fact, be a white supremacist but it’s not clear that mattered here.

These are a few examples but there are several more like this including prison murders which may or may not have a racial motive and other domestic disputes turned violent. All of these are included in the ADL report as “non-ideological murders” but still count as murders by white supremacists/right-wing extremists. Here’s an explanation of that from the ADL’s 2015 report [emphasis added]:

Ideology played a primary or substantial role in 10 of the 17 incidents in 2015, accounting for 34 of the 52 victims. The other seven incidents involved murders in which the perpetrator’s ideology seems to have played little to no role in the violence. Typically, white supremacists make up the vast majority of non‐ideological perpetrators, as white supremacists engage in a large amount of gang‐related and traditional criminal violent activity in addition to their hate‐ or ideologically‐motivated violence. In this sense, they are doubly dangerous.

That’s one way to look at it. I guess it’s fair to say white supremacists are doubly dangerous to their immediate family, but I don’t think that’s what most people have in mind when they skim a report titled “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 20xx.”

Similar to what it is doing with its handling of anti-Semitic incidents, the ADL appears to be padding the numbers. In the case of the extremism reports, the ADL never hid the fact it was including these non-ideological murders, but I suspect most people reading a quote second hand, like the one I started this with above, aren’t fully aware what is included in the bottom line.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

The most dedicated, knowledgeable Jews support Trump!!!

Pro-Israel Officials, Pro-Israel Policy

Neo-Nazis and the Radical Left

Orthodox synagogues defended President Donald Trump following criticism directed at him after the horrific anti-Semitic attack in Pittsburgh.

Pro-Israel Officials, Pro-Israel Policy

Neo-Nazis and the Radical Left

The nonsense of blaming Trump for Pittsburg

The Danger of Blaming Trump for Pittsburgh

by Mark S. Golub

Special Editorial: #WeAreAllJews

The ADL Is Reporting A ‘Surge’ In Anti-Semitism is FAKE NEWS

David Bernstein Debunks ADL Claim Of ‘60% Increase’ in Anti-Semitic Acts Since Trump

Has There Been a Surge of Anti-Semitism Under and Because of Trump?

In short, probably not. And about that ADL study everyone is citing...

The ADL Is Reporting A ‘Surge’ In Anti-Semitism, But Do The Facts Bear Out The Headline?

About Those Misleading ADL Statistics On Anti-Semitism (And Right-Wing Violence)

Blog Archive

Translate