Nearly Half The Terror Plots In New York Since 1992 Have Had Jewish Targets

According to the New York Police Department, almost 50 per cent of terror plots in NYC over the past nineteen years have been aimed at Jewish individuals or at Jewish institutions.

Read more here

The lines of these no doubt well-meaning but woefully misinformed, smug-seeming folk who appear in this video, airily renouncing the option of making aliya, have fallen in pleasant places, to use Biblical phraseology.

Would they be so quick to spurn Israel, I wonder, if they had had the misfortune to be born in a benighted land, or if the terror targetting identified by the NYPD ever escalated in the United States?

"Some Troubling Questions About The Far Left Agenda": The Helen Thomas Affair (video)

Here's an interview between Marc Golub and Rabbi David Nesenoff, regarding Helen Thomas's vilification of Israel.  Rabbi Nesenoff took the footage that led to Ms Thomas's removal from the White House press corps. He talks here of his shock at her words, at her denial of Jews' connection with Israel, and at the "sub-media" of bloggers and others who feel that her freedom of speech was removed and that the fuss her opinion unleashed was much ado about nothing (Newsday didn't cover the incident at all, he notes). The words I quote in the header are Golub's, in his introduction regarding current manifestations of antisemitism in the United States.

Rabbi Neseneoff notes that many of the 25,000 items of hate mail he has received since he made Helen Thomas's words known contain explicit obscene stuff, by no means always anonymous, the senders having no shame.

Observing that he reports those messages that contain death threats against him to the police, he asks rhetorically: "Who do I call about the death threat against the Jewish People?"

The video's almost 50 minutes in length - but it can be regarded as something to listen to rather than to watch.

Israel Supporter Baits Anti-Israel Vipers (video)

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a  line of mainly middle-aged protesters spewing out their venom against Israel for having the audacity to respond to the recent attacks from Gaza on its civilians is approached by a good guy.
"What Jewish family?" asks one, when he tackles them regarding hypocrisy and double standards.  (Watch the derisive, dismissive smiles on their faces as the Israel-supporter explains that it was a family "killed the other day".)
"I hate commiters of genocide, so I oppose the Israeli state!" hisses another, wild-eyed with rage at being cornered.
The recent attacks on Palestinians in Syria? No words of condemnation at all.
The vipers' venom is reserved for Israel, of course.
You might have already seen this video on other blogs, including, inevitably, the fastest draw in the west (and not only the west!), Elder of Ziyon.
In showing up the ignorance, spite, and sheer ugliness of the Israel-demonising Left, including Jews who lustly join in the demonisation of Israel, the video is a classic.

 
Regarding Jews in the ranks of Israel's foes, I'm reminded of Isaac Deutscher's "non-Jewish Jews" (deracinated types like revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who refused to countenance a separate destiny for the Jewish People or to protest wrongs committed specfically against Jews), as well as of something Isi Leibler wrote recently regarding pro-BDS elements within Israel:

"The Jewish state remains the only country in the world which, since its inception, has been obliged to defend itself from neighbors committed to its destruction, and whose civilians are still subject to ongoing rocket attacks. In a recent poll, the vast majority of Palestinians reaffirmed their desire to kill every single Jewish man, woman and child.

Yet Israel remains one of the most robust democracies in the world. It boasts the highest level of free press. Its leaders, including the president and prime minister, are held to stricter accountability than ordinary citizens. And Israel provides its Arabs citizens (who amount to 20% of the population), the right to elect radical MKs who express the views of those seeking our destruction....

In recent years, much of the Israeli Left seems to have lost the plot. Not so long ago, the dominant Israel Labor party prided itself on representing the essence of the Zionist establishment. Its role models were pioneers and farmers creating settlements and transforming deserts into gardens.

In contrast, today the Israeli far Left has been hijacked by urban post-Zionists. Many left-wing academics seem to have absorbed the cosmopolitan characteristics of diaspora Jewry. Some, like the 19th-century Russian Jewish Social Revolutionaries who regarded pogroms as necessary to create revolutionary consciousness among the masses, today even identify with the Palestinian jihadists and pay tribute to their culture of death.

They share the outlook of European post-modernists, and classify Israel with European post-colonial guilt. They spew hatred against their own people, demonize the IDF and paved the way for the Goldstone Report. In so doing they were assured instant recognition and standing among their European counterparts. [My emphasis]" http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=230119"

Anti-Israel Fanatics in San Francisco (video)

Here they are, a typical mix of usual suspects, carrying placards and flags and chanting hate-filled slogans ... But they don't have it all their own way ...
The subtitles, by supporters of Israel, are a welcome antidote to the spleen.

BDS Berks (video)

While I was focused on Marrickville Council's dance with the devil I missed this:

For the good news see: http://www.divestthis.com/2010/04/bds-loses-big-at-berkeley.html

Just the Stuff to Give the Reform Troops: A Rabbi's Stirring Avowal of Israel and Zionism

At the outset, being a response to modernity and emancipation, the Reform wing of Judaism disavowed the age-long Jewish hope and expectation for restoration to Zion, and today sections of the Reform Movement - especially of the more radical Liberal Movement in Britain - have not been as ardent in support of Israel as we who are Israel's friends and admirers could wish.

Indeed, the Rabbi Emeritus of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London has often appeared to be on the side of Israel's mortal foes.  Too often, Liberal Jews in Britain seem to have reverted to the quaint if then understandable nineteenth-century mode of being "Englishmen [and women] of the Mosaic persuasion" - with all that implies for identification with the Jewish State.

How welcome and uplifting, then, are the following remarks by Rabbi Richard (Rick) Jacobs (pictured), incoming President of the Union for Reform Judaism in the United States, to the Religious Action Center’s Consultation on Conscience, delivered on 2 May.

Here's a very small and inadequate taste.  For the entire long and stirring address see: http://weareforisrael.org/2011/05/03/rabbi-rick-jacobs-speech-to-the-consultation-on-conscience/  A video of the speech is also available on that website.

'I fell in love with Israel. It was during my junior year of college, which I spent studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ever since, working to strengthen Israel’s security and well being, well that’s been at the core of my public life.

What is the source of my passion for Israel? Yehuda Halevi best expressed my commitment when he wrote: “My heart is in the East.”

I love the extraordinary and complex mosaic that is contemporary Israel: the secular, the settlers, the peaceniks, the Orthodox, the Bedouins, the Reform, the new immigrants, the chalutzim, the Arab-Israelis, the left, the right and the center. They are all part of my Israel. I’m responsible for all of them.

Like all of you, I am proudly and strongly pro-Israel. While there are many legitimate ways to express pro-Israel commitments, I believe all must uphold Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. By “Jewish state” I mean a state with a stable Jewish majority, and by “democratic state” I mean a state that grants full political and civil rights to all who dwell permanently within its borders.

Now, being pro-Israel means always standing in solidarity with the State of Israel.To me, Jewish life cannot be imagined without Israel at its core. Occasional disagreements with Israeli policies are a necessary part of serious engagement with our Jewish state. But our love for Israel is not dependent on who is prime minister or on what issues are before the Knesset or the chief rabbinate....

Attempting to delegitimize Israel, on too many college campuses and throughout much of Europe, critics try to portray Israel as though it is some apartheid-like state. It is an absurd assertion. Anyone who knows what apartheid was, and who knows Israel today, is well aware of that....

Aleinu -”it is up to all of us” to foster a deep love for and engagement with Israel among Reform Jews of North America, young and old. We need Israel and Israel needs us....

Our hope is not lost -

The hope of two thousand years:

To be a free people in our land,

The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Ken yehi ratzon'

Louis Farrakhan's Judeophobic Rant at Howard University (video)

Here is as sickeningly poisonous an antisemitic speech as any that is likely to assail our ears.  It comes from that incorrigible American judeophobe Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.  Note the appreciative noises from his audience.

Regarding this speech, see http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10180