A Roundup Of Antisemitism: Resisting The Socialism Of Fools

Yay, another week, another wave of bombing threats against Jewish Community Centers and Jewish schools. It’s shaping up to be a new weekly routine in the Orange Fuhrer’s America.

EDIT: Update from Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-jewish-idUSKBN16625E

At least 16 Jewish community centers and schools around the United States reported receiving bomb threats on Monday, NBC News reported, the fifth wave of such threats this year that have stoked fears of a resurgence of anti-Semitism.

The threats, all of which appeared to be hoaxes, were received at centers in North Carolina, Delaware, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Florida and Indiana, according to NBC News. For some centers, it was the second or third time this year that they have been targeted.

The JCC Association, an umbrella group for U.S. Jewish community centers, confirmed there had been a number of threats, but was still compiling details.

Jewish groups, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli officials have all condemned the surge in disruptive threats, as well as the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries. Police said on Sunday that about 100 headstones had been toppled at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, about a week after a similar act of vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis.

Children were also evacuated on Monday from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, and the Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, Virginia, after receiving telephoned bomb threats, according to a statement by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

Some Jewish groups see the vandalism and threats as a sign that anti-Semitic groups have been emboldened by Trump’s election. His campaign last year drew the support of white supremacists and other right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

Trump has said he is the “least anti-Semitic person” in the world, and noted that one of his daughters, his son-in-law and some of his grandchildren are Jewish.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by David Gregorio)

Jews: threatened by Trump’s followers
Trump: “I can’t be antisemitic! Some of my family members are Jewish!”

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Reuters’ framing in that headline is interesting. If the bomb doesn’t exist but the threat of a bomb, i.e. the call or email that said there is a bomb, is real, should that really be called a “hoax bomb threat”? “Hoax bomb” would work as does the simpler “bomb threat”, but their phrase implies that the threat itself is fake. If i encountered that phrase in the wild it would imply to me that the alleged receivers of the threat are the hoaxers.

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(JTA) — President Donald Trump reportedly is considering cutting a number of special envoy positions, including one dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, as part of a forthcoming budget proposal.

Trump will propose increasing defense spending by $54 billion and make cuts to federal agencies to accommodate the 10 percent defense increase in the new budget plan, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing unnamed administration officials.

As part of these cuts, Trump is considering whether to nix some special envoy positions, including ones dealing with anti-Semitism, climate change and Muslim communities, according to Bloomberg.

Congress mandated the position of special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism in 2004 with the passage of the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. The measure directs the State Department to establish the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, to be headed by the special envoy.

The State Department page for the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism now comprises a brief description of the office, with a link to the archived reports compiled by the office during the Obama administration. Still on the website is the State Department definition of anti-Semitism, including how certain types of attacks on Israel qualify.

The White House did not respond immediately to JTA seeking comment on the Bloomberg report.

Ira Forman, the former executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, most recently served in the envoy position under President Barack Obama. Forman’s LinkedIn page lists him as having served in the position; Trump has not named a replacement.

On Monday, the Trump administration denounced vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats made against Jewish community centers across the country hours after at least 21 Jewish community centers were hit with bomb threats in the fifth wave of such incidents this year, and a day after about 100 headstones were found toppled at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia in the second such incident in a week.

“The president continues to condemn these and any other form of anti-Semitic and hateful acts in the strongest terms,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer, adding that “[n]o one in America should feel afraid to follow the religion of their choosing freely and openly.”

Last week, Trump — following pressure from Jewish groups and political leaders to condemn anti-Semitism in the wake of what has been called an uptick in incidents since he was elected — said “Anti-Semitism is horrible and it’s going to stop, and it has to stop.”

Trump came under fire earlier this month for his response to a reporter who asked at a news conference about the prior JCC bomb threats and what the government’s response would be to “an uptick in anti-Semitism.” Although the reporter did not suggest Trump was anti-Semitic, the president answered by denying he is an anti-Semite and called the question “insulting.” He ordered the reporter to sit down and did not answer the question.

Sure, Don Cheeto, you’re not anti-semitic, your daughter and grandkids are Jewish!

And you obviously don’t care about any other Jews beyond that select group.

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An outpouring of support for beleaguered YouTube megastar Pewdiepie results in a Twitter storm using the hashtag “#GasTheJokes” this weekend.

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But clearly they’re just joking, right? How are we supposed to know what’s in their hearts? /s

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Says the Trump Administration?!

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George W. Bush’s daughter is giving a speech to raise funds for Planned Parenthood and according to Franklin Graham that’s “like raising money to fund a Nazi death camp—like Auschwitz”.

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NEW SQUARE - Nazi swastikas and the words “get out” were spray-painted in black along a vinyl fence on the border of this Hasidic Jewish village, in the latest anti-Semitic incident in Rockland County.

Residents found the graffiti Tuesday night on Polnoya Road. It was painted on a white, 6-foot high fence separating the village from the Friedwald House rehabilitation facility on New Hempstead Road in New City, Ramapo Police Chief Brad Weidel said Thursday.

Police detectives were called to the scene at 8:10 p.m. and are continuing to investigate the incident.

“At this time, it cannot be determined how long the graffiti has been on the fence but it appears to be have recent,” Weidel said.

Mayor Israel Spitzer called the spray-painting bigoted and an attack against the community, which was formed in 1961 after Skver grand rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky sent a group of followers from Williamsburg in Brooklyn to a 130-acre dairy farm bought in 1954 along Route 45.

Twersky led his followers to the United States from Ukraine after the Holocaust and World War II.

“On behalf of the residents of the Village of New Square and in the strongest terms possible, I condemn this hateful act of anti-Semitism against our community,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer said he is confident that Ramapo police and Rockland Sheriff’s Office “will do all they can to try to identify the individual or individuals behind this crime.”

Rockland County Executive Ed Day condemned the graffiti as “another act of hate in our community.”

“These actions do not reflect or represent the sentiments of the vast majority of people who live in Rockland and value the diversity of our county,” said Day, adding that the county’s Department of Human Rights was reaching out to New Square leaders.

Earlier this month, The Journal News/lohud reported that swastikas and other hate graffiti had been spray-painted on a dozen trees in a wooded area off Heritage Drive in New City. That case had been first reported to Clarkstown police in July; they have not made an arrest and the graffiti remained on the trees for months after its discovery.

The property owner painted over the swastikas shortly after The Journal News/lohud report was published.

Another incident occurred just after the tree spray-painting when people detonated three powerful M-98 fireworks on Aug. 9 outside the homes of two rabbis with the Chabad Lubavitch of Rockland. Clarkstown police said they had identified young suspects but they lacked enough evidence to charge them.

The swastikas spray-painted in New Square comes at a time when tensions are high in Ramapo over housing, social and other issues.

It also comes at the same time as a rash of bomb scares toward Jewish community centers and a reported increase in anti-Semitic incidents around the nation.

For context, New Square, NY, is a ~7,000 person village in downstate NY that is 100% Jewish–Chasidic, to be precise. And while I have my criticisms of the place… yeah.

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My backyard, so-to-speak:

This isn’t some backwater, it’s a mid-size city.

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The horns are mostly due to Saint Jerome, I believe. 4th century or thereabouts? But then it just grew, out of a combination of ignorance and Vatican-sponsored hatred for “Christ killers”.

Peasant: “Father, the holy books show the Jews with horns, but the Jews in the ghetto don’t have horns, why is that?”

Priest, thinking quickly: “Oh, my poor ignorant child, their parents saw them off when they are born, of course. They saw off their tails, too! If your child is born with a tail it means your wife has been consorting with Jews, the filthy sinning hussy, and will have to be chastised.”

I have a lot of religious books. It’s not unusual for older bibles to show the various old testament patriarchs with horns. Usually not as blatant (or lopsided) as Michelangelo’s Moses, but still visible. Modern readers usually mistake them for hairstyling.

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Recent tweet but not sure if recent event:

https://twitter.com/zlando/status/836766859399729152

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I’m a graduate of the University of Evansville, and the temple in the article is the one I mentioned attending. My senior year I also lived in a house that was just a few blocks from an Islamic studies center (and also the house used for exterior shots on Roseanne, but that’s another story).

I assume it’s because of the college that Evansville was, and I hope still is, a wonderfully diverse place, but I also can’t say this surprises me.

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A friend of mine through my girlfriend is a professor there, and we go down every now and again. It still seems pretty diverse.

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A Jewish cemetery in Rochester, New York is the latest to report topped headstones, after Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis and Philadelphia reported hundreds of similar incidents. At least five headstones were toppled at Vaad Hakolel Cemetery, also called Stone Road Cemetery. Rochester has two Jewish cemeteries.

Michael Phillips, director of the Britton Road Association, which manages Rochester’s Jewish cemeteries, was hesitant to call the incident anti-Semitic. “I don’t think there’s any proof of that,” he told the Democrat and Chronicle. None of the headstones were defaced, as many had been at the cemeteries in St. Louis and Philadelphia, he said.

This is in my city; I could drive there in less than 15 minutes.

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