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Jewish Run Company Brings Fresh Water To Tanzanian Village For First Time

by admin November 21, 2023

written by admin

Residents will no longer need to walk miles to avoid contaminated water.

(JNS)

A nonprofit entity that combines efforts at water access, improved agriculture and community engagement in sub-Saharan Africa has brought its innovations to an 18th community.

Water 4 Mercy has created a supply of fresh water for the Ausia village in Kondoa, Tanzania, a remote location that during dry seasons necessitated long walks for its 3,000 or so residents to retrieve uncontaminated water.

“In the process of getting this tainted water, it is common that women, who are traditionally tasked with water retrieval for the home, hurt themselves, are attacked by animals and in many cases raped,” said the nonprofit.

The project began in 2023 in collaboration with its partner group, Innovation: Africa. Water 4 Mercy tapped an aquifer to provide fresh water and installed solar panels to operate the pumps.

Nermine Khouzam Rubin, founder and CEO of Water 4 Mercy, noted that “this work would not be possible without the collaboration of our partners at Innovation: Africa, CultivAid and the Don Bosco Technical Institutes, as well as the donations of our patrons.”

November 21, 2023 0 comments

Biden’s Dangerous Palestinian State Fantasy

by admin November 18, 2023

written by admin

Under pressure from his party’s left wing, the president is justifying support for Israel’s war on Hamas by reviving the two-state myth. It’s a prescription for another Oct. 7.

Jonathan S. Tobin

(JNS)

Six weeks after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, the Biden administration is still sticking to a policy of support for Israel’s war to eliminate the terrorist threat in the Gaza Strip. Contrary to the expectations of many observers, both President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have not wavered in their support not just for Israel’s theoretical right of self-defense but for its campaign against Hamas.

At the same time, they’re also dealing with almost unbearable pressure from members of their own party who disagree with them about their support for Israel and the desire on the part of almost everyone on the left to impose a ceasefire on the conflict. That would essentially allow Hamas to get away with murder. This is more than a momentary kerfuffle with the party base. As much of the liberal corporate mainstream media has continually reminded them in the past few weeks, this could materially damage the president’s re-election chances. As a result, they’ve been flailing about trying to grandstand to the Democrats’ left-wing base that they haven’t abandoned the discredited visions of Middle East peace that previous administrations have promoted in the past.

That is the context for the president’s statement this week saying the aftermath of the fighting must result in the creation of a “real” Palestinian state alongside Israel. It seems to echo the Middle East peace prescriptions being offered by the administration’s favorite columnist, The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, who, despite being consistently wrong about every conceivable foreign-policy issue as Biden has been over the years, retains both his prestigious perch and the ear of decision-makers. Friedman has been urging Biden to lay down the law to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and insist that the price of continued U.S. support is the Jewish state’s acquiescence to an American diktat for a post-Gaza war two-state solution.

Biden’s political problems

That Biden is talking this way is a function of his political problems as much as anything else.

His support for Israel has been qualified by constant virtue signaling about avoiding civilian casualties in Gaza—advice that the Israel Defense Forces, which is looked to as a model for its practices in that regard by the U.S. military, doesn’t need. And while the administration’s pressure for “humanitarian pauses” and resumptions of fuel shipments into areas still controlled by Hamas is intended to help save lives, it’s equally true that these interruptions prolong the conflict by giving the terrorists a respite from the IDF’s efforts to root them out of the tunnels where they are hiding behind their human shields.

Still, Biden’s refusal to abandon Israel and to try to force an end to the campaign against Hamas is something of a surprise, especially to the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which is furious at him about this. The full-scale revolts among lower-level staffers throughout the administration, as well as among those who work for congressional Democrats, are just one indication of the way younger members of his party have embraced intersectional lies about Israel. They have exhibited a clear predilection to take the side of the Palestinians and Hamas terrorists. This is being illustrated by the polls showing Biden’s shrinking support among younger and minority Democrats.

A generation of Democrats who has been raised on the lies—rooted in critical race theory—about Israel being a “white” colonial enterprise and an “apartheid state” isn’t interested in peace so much as they are in supporting the Palestinian “resistance.” Biden’s vision of a future Palestinian state is at least a gesture in the direction of where his party’s base would like to go.

Friedman’s proposal is also music to the ears of the Obama-administration alumni club that makes up Biden’s foreign-policy team and might help mollify, if not completely put out, the fires on the left that are causing the Democrats so much distress. Friedman’s claims that the only reason Netanyahu has stated that Jerusalem will have to retain security control in Gaza after the war is to reassure his right-wing allies in the same sort of facile reasoning about Israel that prevails in the foreign-policy establishment.

But both Biden and his muse aren’t just wrong about the future of Gaza or two states. They are completely out of touch with reality in a way that will make it easy for even a politically weak Netanyahu or any conceivable successor to say “no” to advice that is not so much ill-conceived as insane.

Repeating Sharon’s experiment

Whatever may follow the conclusion of the fighting in Gaza—and there’s no certainty about how long it will take for the IDF to complete its vital mission of destroying Hamas—some things are certain. Chief among them is that after the experience of allowing Gaza to be Jew-free, as well as a no-go zone for the Israeli military, there is no way that any Israeli government, no matter its political composition, will allow a repeat of the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s experiment in the summer of 2005 in which every soldier, settler and settlement was pulled out of the Strip.

Sharon and military strategists repeatedly assured Israelis that if the Palestinians were so foolish as to pass up the opportunity to use the withdrawal and the promised Western investment in the area to create an incubator for peace—and instead use it as a launching pad for terrorism—then the Jewish state would have no problem reversing the process. This was a catastrophic mistake in terms of its expectations about Palestinian intentions, international opinion and Israel’s ability to contain or create deterrence against Gaza-based terrorism.

Everyone knows what happened after Sharon betrayed his pledges to his Likud voters and carried out the very plan that he had opposed when running for re-election in 2003. Palestinian elections that were imposed by President George W. Bush during his naive democracy promotion crusade led to a victory by the Islamist terrorists of Hamas in 2006. The next year, they followed up that triumph with a bloody coup in which they seized control of Gaza while the corrupt Fatah Party led by Yasser Arafat’s successor—Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas—continued to govern the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria.

For 16 years, Israel tried to live with the Hamas government in Gaza, where it ruled what was for all intents and purposes an independent Palestinian state in all but name. The missile fire that made life hell for southern Israel, and eventually for much of the rest of the country whenever Hamas and its Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist rivals chose to start a round of fighting, proved a problem Jerusalem could never solve. Nor could it do anything about the ability of Iran to prop up its Gaza proxy. Israel also could not find a way to prevent the billions in “humanitarian aid” that poured into the coastal enclave from funding the building of Hamas’s tunnel system that fortified the strip against attack. Repeated campaigns that the military called “mowing the grass” failed to establish the deterrence that the Israeli security establishment—as well as Netanyahu and his political rivals—were sure they could establish.

This problem culminated in the disaster of Oct. 7 and the sickening Hamas atrocities that left more than 1,200 dead, thousands wounded and as many as 240 men, women and children dragged back into captivity in Gaza. While much of the world may not have been outraged by the appalling crimes committed by the Palestinians that day which included gang rape, torture and the murder of entire families, the Jewish people will never forget the largest mass slaughter of Jews since World War II and the Holocaust.

The notion that Israelis can be sold on allowing Gaza to return to being a terrorist bastion is a non-starter. But the conceit of the Biden peace plan as envisaged by Friedman and the rest of the “wise men” who have been promoting two-state solutions for the last 30 years is even crazier than that. What it amounts to is a demand that Israel repeat Sharon’s Gaza blunder in the far larger and more strategic West Bank, and even part of Jerusalem.

A peace based on the ideas of partition, coexistence and mutual respect, in which both Jews and Arabs would have sovereignty over part of the small country that they share, has been at the heart of every plan to solve the conflict since the 1930s. Yet all have collapsed, despite the Jewish acceptance of this concept because the majority of Palestinian Arabs have never been interested in any of it. That’s why they rejected the “Arab state” in Palestine that the United Nations voted for in 1947, in addition to repeated Israeli offers of an independent state over the course of the last quarter century.

Palestinian opinion hasn’t changed

It may be hard for many in the West and for liberal Jews to accept, but the incontrovertible evidence of the last century of history has shown that Palestinian nationalism is inextricably tied to a war on Zionism that will not allow any of their leaders to accept even the most favorable two-state solution. The reason is because it involves their having to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state. That is something that generations of Palestinians have refused to do, no matter where the borders of that Jewish state might be drawn.

Nor have the events of the last six weeks changed any of that. Biden and Friedman’s plans are predicated on an almost religious belief that the Palestinians want peace even though they have rejected it at every point in the last century. It is also a matter of faith in the administration that most Palestinians have nothing to do with Hamas. Yet as a new poll conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development has shown, the residents of the West Bank still support Hamas, even after its atrocities and the calamities it has brought down on its own people. Slightly more than three-quarters of them have a positive view of Hamas, and approximately the same number approve of the terrorist crimes committed on Oct. 7. If Abbas has refused to hold another election in the West Bank since 2005, it is because he believes that Hamas will win. And that belief is backed up by this and virtually every other poll of Palestinian opinion.

Common sense dictates that there is no alternative to Israeli security control in Gaza. Alternatives such as a joint force put together by the Arab nations is a fantasy, as those countries understandably want no part of having to deal with the Palestinians and their intransigent refusal to give up their dream of eradicating Israel. Nor is the United States or any Western nation going to go down that rabbit hole. The only choices are a return to the pre-Oct. 6 situation in which the terrorists run Gaza and have free reign to make good on their promises to repeat their Oct. 7 carnage again and again, or Israeli control.

That might not be what Biden, the foreign-policy establishment and the corporate mainstream media that has helped mainstream antisemitism or international opinion want to hear. But it’s the stark truth.

Sadly, there is no “solution” to the conflict between Jews and Arabs over the tiny strip of land between “the river and the sea.” As long as the Arabs are behind Hamas’s mad genocidal war to eliminate Israel, the only answer for the Jewish state is to be strong, defend itself and await a future in which a sea change in Palestinian political culture that will lead them to give up their dream of a Jew-free Palestine achieved by a second Holocaust. Anyone who cares about avoiding more terrorist atrocities and wars must stand behind Israel and against the dangerous delusions of a two-state solution.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.

November 18, 2023 0 comments

Community Education JTVC Breaking News

Parents Urge Universities To Do More To Protect Their Children On Campus

by admin November 17, 2023

written by admin

A New York psychologist who works with young people told JNS she is hearing of students going to Hillel and Chabad for the first time, to study there instead of at the library.

Deborah Fineblum

(JNS)

A Jewish student’s nose broken at Tulane University in New Orleans. In Manhattan, Jewish students resorted to hiding in a Cooper Union library as anti-Israel protesters pounded on the door, and in New York state, Cornell University’s kosher dining hall closed after antisemitic death threats.

Jewish college students have faced these and other threats since Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, thousands of miles away. And parents, who tend to foot hefty tuition bills for these elite universities, are worrying from afar about their children’s safety, even at U.S. colleges and universities they once deemed pristine.

A rabbi on the West Coast whose child is a student at Harvard University was one of several parents who only agreed to talk to JNS without being named, citing concerns about their children’s safety.

“It always hurts to pay the $46,000-semester bill,” the dad sighed. “But at this time, I have such grave misgivings about what’s happening, and it hurts even more.” The father added that he had never seen anything like this—“much less my daughter, who was simply not prepared for the venomous attacks.”

Signs in dorms used to be “Donuts on floor three,” the dad said. Now they refer to Israel with expletives.

Sharon S. of Boston, whose daughter is a first-year student at Cornell, told JNS that she worries that antisemites are becoming more outspoken on college campuses. She lamented the theory of intersectionality, whereby “Native Americans and other minorities, the pro-choicers, and certainly, the media are ‘showing solidarity’ with Hamas and the Palestinians.”

“I know my daughter is anxious,” Sharon said. “She’d only been a college student for a month when all this started.”

The main entrance to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Credit: Rdsmith4 via Wikimedia Commons.

‘Every time she calls, I get worried’

Laura O. of Stamford, Conn., told JNS that pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been “fairly peaceful” at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where her daughter is a student and is involved in the Jewish community.

She noted that materials distributed on campus purporting to be a newspaper accused the university administration of being complicit in Palestinian genocide.

“Every time she calls, I get worried,” Laura said of her daughter. “I’m both proud and concerned that she’s involved in such a public way.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of the AMCHA Initiative, told JNS that after Oct. 7, it hasn’t been possible to hide campus antisemitism by masking it as anti-Zionism.

Anti-Israel protesters start to burn an Israeli flag during a rally at Tulane University in New Orleans on Oct. 26, 2023. Photo by Pnina Sasson.

“It’s particularly hard for Jewish students, who identify as progressive in every other way, to squeeze into that space when it comes to their fellow Jews in Israel being tortured, kidnapped and murdered,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “Even when so many of their friends and professors are jumping on the Palestinian bandwagon.”

“Parents need to know the brainwashing that’s going on on many campuses now,” said Rossman-Benjamin. “With so many professors identifying as ‘social-justice warriors’ making anti-Israel allegations in their classrooms, that’s not education. That’s indoctrination that incites antisemitism.”

AMCHA research suggests that college and university definitions of who constitutes oppressed minorities don’t tend to include Jews, who therefore are afforded less protection, Rossman-Benjamin said, and social media spreads hate quickly, fanning the flames.

“This allows antisemitism to quickly go viral across a campus,” she said. “Still, parents have the power of the purse, and they need to use it.” That’s especially true on campuses with Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, she said. (Brandeis and Columbia banned SJP earlier this month. Florida did the same on public campuses.)

Andrew Pessin, professor of philosophy at Connecticut College in New London, Conn., sees college campuses today as “an incubator for antisemitism.” (Among Pessin’s publications is the co-edited, 2018 volume Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech and BDS.)

The anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement took hold on U.S. campuses two decades ago, Pessin told JNS.

“That began to foment a series of lies about the Jewish state—lies that dehumanize Jews,” he said. “The Hamas slaughter gave people who want to murder Jews the excuse of supporting Palestinian liberation, while the truth is you can care about the fate of the Palestinians and still be horrified at what Hamas is doing to innocent people.”

‘Know your kid’

Parents face difficult choices, according to Pessin.

Andrew Pessin, professor of philosophy at Connecticut College. Credit: Connecticut College.

“Pull their kid out and yield the field to the opposition or keep their kid in an environment where they’re exposed to harassment because they’re Jews,” he said. “To figure it out, you have to know your kid.”

Still, parents may not always anticipate how their children will respond to Jew-hatred in a freer academic environment.

“We are at an unprecedented time, and none of us can be expert in handling this moment that continues to unfold at an alarming rate,” Tara Liberman, a child and adolescent psychologist in New York, told JNS. “Your kids need to understand that, too, and that fear and confusion are normal.”

Some students may opt to be outspoken in favor of Israel. Some will avoid any controversy and engagement. And some will openly support Palestinians.

Liberman, a member of the Association of Jewish Psychologists board, advises parents to ask about their children’s experiences and feelings without rushing to judgment or pushing them to reach a simplistic understanding of complex situations, she explained. Students should check in regularly with their parents and also identify adults on campus they can trust.

Tara Liberman, a child and adolescent psychologist. Credit: Courtesy.

Many students are going to Hillel and Chabad centers on campuses for the first time, including to study there instead of in the library, Liberman is being told.

“In the face of this marked rise of antisemitism on campus, many of them find community there,” she said. “Some will be able to see this in the context of Jewish history and also how resilient our people are.”

If parents see that their children are unable to attend classes or to care for their basic needs in a prolonged or dramatic way, it may be time for them to visit their children and take them home, if necessary. “Most kids will get through this, but parents and students need to know there’s no shame in taking a break,” Liberman said.

‘Not have to go it alone’

Many students worry about being identifiable as pro-Israel or Jewish, according to Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Israel education organization StandWithUs.

“Your children should not have to go it alone,” she told JNS. “This is a time for students to be part of like-minded Jewish and pro-Israel groups, and build bridges with non-Jewish allies who care about Israel and the Jewish people.”

The Cornell Center for Jewish Living at 106 West Ave., with the adjacent 104 West Ave., in Ithaca, N.Y. Source: Google Street View.

Alan Rubenstein, senior director of university student programs at the Tikvah Fund, told JNS that what is happening on college and university campuses can impact America’s future.

“We think of the next generation of leaders being trained at these universities—many of which teach values that are very far from the American mainstream—with faculty often stepping up to defend terrorism and brutality,” he said. “You get people graduating from these top schools being recruited as future leaders in the law, government and business.”

If graduates try to remake institutions in line with the extreme beliefs that they learned in college, Rubenstein said, there is “a serious concern if this antisemitism and hatred of Israel become the norm for the next generation of leaders.”

Image: Anti-Israel protesters start to burn an Israeli flag during a rally at Tulane University in New Orleans on Oct. 26, 2023. Photo by Pnina Sasson.

November 17, 2023 0 comments

Community JTVC Breaking News

Despite War, Cranes Arrive In Israel’s Hula Valley

by admin November 15, 2023

written by admin

“In these sad and complicated days, perhaps nature can bring comfort,” says Inbar Shlomit Rubin, who manages the site for KKL-JNF.

Eran Itzkovitch

(JNS)

Nature continues to take its course as Israel wages war against the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip, with thousands of cranes arriving at the Hula Valley nature reserve in the north as they do every fall.

The cranes are joining flamingos, pelicans and thousands of other birds which also migrate through Israel on their way to Africa.

“In these sad and complicated days, perhaps nature can bring comfort,” said Inbar Shlomit Rubin, who manages the site for KKL-JNF.

“As every year, the migratory birds arrive at the nature reserve in the fall. It is one of the most important humid habitats in Israel, which is a critical stop for birds migrating between Europe and the African continent and back, both in terms of the wealth of food it offers to a variety of species and in terms of a safe haven for the birds during the long journey,” she said.

Thousands more cranes are expected to travel through the Hula Valley nature reserve, which is closed to the public due to the war, during the coming weeks. Some cranes will remain in the nature reserve throughout winter.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Cranes seen at the Hula Valley lake in northern Israel on Jan. 26, 2023. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90.

November 15, 2023 0 comments

Terrorism

UN Must Visit Shifa Hospital

by admin November 14, 2023

written by admin

Firsthand accounts by official witnesses make it more difficult to deny facts on the ground.

Jerome M. Marcus

(JNS)

Israel stands on the brink of controlling Shifa Hospital and other medical centers in the Gaza Strip. In categorical violation of the law of war, Hamas has used these buildings as command centers, ammunition dumps, safe havens for its fighters and entrances to its tunnel system.

When Israel takes control of these buildings, it must immediately demand that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres come and inspect them.

Why is this necessary?

First, the secretary-general, continuing a long U.N. tradition, has blamed Israel for deaths and destruction in Gaza, and has said that “U.N. premises, hospitals, schools and clinics must never be targeted” by Israel’s military.

This demand is itself a clear contradiction of international law. Article 19 of the Fourth Geneva convention provides that “the protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled” is lost when such facilities “are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy.” Hamas has for years done exactly this. The same is true of the schools, clinics and mosques throughout Gaza that are used as launching sites for rockets and missiles, as weapons and ammunition storehouses, and as entrances to Hamas’s web of tunnels, built with resources provided to Gaza for civilian and humanitarian purposes.

Second, while Holocaust denial after World War II did not erupt on a wide scale while the grounds of the camps were still wet with Jewish blood, in this war, the denial is already being shouted from rooftops. Basem Naim, for example, the so-called Head of International Relations for Hamas, told Sky News: “We [Hamas] didn’t kill any civilians” on Oct. 7, calling it “Israeli propaganda.”

Hamas has denied abuse of Gaza hospitals and other civilian facilities in the Strip. There is every reason to expect that Palestinian defenders of Hamas and enemies of Israel will continue these lies in an effort to delegitimize Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas. A public record of Hamas’s abuse of these facilities is thus essential.

As the Second World War was ending, Gens. Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Omar Bradley toured Ohrdruf, one of the just-liberated Nazi concentration camps. Following the visit, Eisenhower ordered all American units in the area and not engaged in frontline battle to be sent to see the camp. He cabled Gen. George C. Marshall, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., requesting that members of Congress and journalists be sent to liberated camps to witness and document the horrific scenes U.S. troops were uncovering.

Eisenhower understood that it was important for the world to understand what the Germans had done both because the guilty had to be called to account and because it would explain the need for the actions of Allied Forces fighting the German army. The result was a library of film footage and accounts by impartial official witnesses that has made it difficult, though not impossible, for people to deny that Germany committed the Holocaust’s atrocities.

Hamas’s systematic abuse of humanitarian and civilian situses is of a piece with its larger strategy of taking the entire population of Gaza as hostages and human shields. Documenting these practices not only defends Israel; it defends the Arab population that has itself been abused and whose deaths have themselves been used as weapons in Hamas’s effort to destroy Israel. One of Hamas’s leaders has forthrightly proclaimed that the terror organization intends to repeat the slaughter of Oct. 7 over and over again until Israel is no more.

The abuse of the civilian population of Gaza is an essential part of Hamas’s scheme. If Israel is ever to be able to live side by side in peace with its Arab neighbors, Islamist abuse of Arab civilians must end. Revealing the truth—and forcing the world to see this truth—is the only way this can happen.

Image: On an inspection tour of the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp, U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and a party of high-ranking U.S. Army officers, including Gens. Omar Bradley, George S. Patton and Manton S. Eddy, view the charred remains of prisoners burned upon a section of railroad track during the evacuation of the camp, April 12, 1945. Credit: Courtesy of Harold Royall/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via Wikimedia Commons.

November 14, 2023 0 comments

Community

Amid rising campus antisemitism, Catholic schools offer ‘safe haven’ to Jewish students

by admin November 14, 2023

written by admin

“It is a call to conscience,” said Robert Nicholson, head of the Philos Project. “If Franciscan can do this, why can’t Notre Dame or Yale?”

Menachem Wecker

(JNS)

John Carroll, who studied in Europe due to anti-Catholic, pre-revolutionary American laws, became the first U.S. Roman Catholic bishop in 1789—the same year he founded Georgetown University. Nearly 235 years later, Catholic schools are among the nation’s most respected colleges and universities, and some are offering “safe haven” to Jewish students, who are increasingly subjected to antisemitic hatred on campuses.

Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio announced on Oct. 18 “an expedited transfer process for Jewish students in danger of antisemitic discrimination and violence on campuses across the United States” in the “wake of the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7.”

“With our fellow Christians around the world, we are praying for justice and peace,” stated Franciscan Fr. Dave Pivonka, the school’s president. “But with too many universities preaching tolerance but practicing prejudice, we feel compelled to do more. We are witnessing a very troubling spike in antisemitism and serious threats against Jewish students. We want to offer them the chance to transfer immediately to Franciscan.”

Pivonka added that the community would welcome Jewish students “with generosity and respect.”

“Our religious differences will not cause any conflict. On the contrary, at Franciscan, our radical fidelity to Christ and the Catholic faith demands of us fraternal charity toward our Jewish brothers and sisters, as it does toward all people,” he said.

In a release, Pivonka invited other presidents of Catholic schools to join the effort.

On Oct. 23, Walsh University, a Catholic school in North Canton, Ohio, announced that it “joins Franciscan University of Steubenville in providing a safe place of refuge for any Jewish college student experiencing antisemitism by providing direct admittance to Walsh University.”

“As the region balances on the brink of war, with fears of widespread terror and more deaths, we condemn this unspeakable evil and denounce those who choose to ignore or seek to justify unthinkable acts of barbaric behavior against Jews in Israel,” stated Tim Collins, president of Walsh.

“Harassment and antisemitism in this country, and particularly on college campuses, is unacceptable and in stark contrast to Walsh University’s Catholic mission and Judeo-Christian values,” he added. “We believe that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. Our Jewish brothers and sisters seeking a safe haven have a place here on our campus.”

Robert Nicholson, president of the Philos Project, told JNS that rising antisemitism on college campuses across the county is “disgusting.”

“Not only do we condemn it as Christians, who believe in universal human dignity, we condemn it as Americans committed to civil discourse and pluralism,” Nicholson said. “Through the ‘safe-haven’ policy, Franciscan is showing all of American higher education that there’s a better way to show our support for Jewish students. It is a call to conscience—if Franciscan can do this, why can’t Notre Dame or Yale?”

Entry sign to Walsh University. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

‘Tradition of enrolling those in need continues’

Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and a former president of DePaul University in Chicago, told JNS that many Catholic universities “were founded during waves of immigration that included both Catholics and Jews.”

“When other universities were putting enrollment caps on Jewish admission, our Catholic universities were welcoming them,” said Holtschneider, a Catholic priest. “Today, our universities are about 50% Catholics nationwide, and the tradition of enrolling those in need continues.”

Franciscan, which has an undergraduate enrollment of 2,785 and a 67% acceptance rate, is tied for 26th place in the most recent U.S. News & World Report Midwest regional universities ranking. The more than 75-year-old school ranks 21st for best value schools, 11th best for veterans and 37th in top social mobility performers.

Walsh, per U.S. News, has 1,558 undergraduates and a 72% acceptance rate. It ranked 352nd among national universities and is tied for 164th in top social mobility performers.

November 14, 2023 0 comments

Community

Majority of likely US voters view Netanyahu favorably

by admin November 12, 2023

written by admin

Tracking with other polling data, Rasmussen found that voters under 40 were nearly three times as likely to sympathize with Palestinians as older groups.

(JNS)

Most American voters view Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favorably and more than two-thirds agree with his government’s rejection of calls for a ceasefire in the war with Hamas.

A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 54% of likely U.S. voters have a favorable impression of Netanyahu, including 28% who view the Israeli leader very favorably. Thirty-one percent (31%) view Netanyahu unfavorably, and another 15% are not sure.

In 2019, 37% had a favorable opinion of the Israeli prime minister.

The research also reveals broad American support for the Jewish state’s war to crush the Hamas terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip, though cracks have formed among younger adults.

The pollster surveyed 995 likely voters from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2, asking for responses to Netanyahu’s statement: “Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen.”

The results showed 68% agreement, 21% disagreement and 10% unsure. Among supporters, 49% agreed “strongly,” while 10% of those in disagreement did so “strongly.”

Those numbers tracked with a question about the broader history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and which side the respondent embraced. Those sympathizing with Israel totaled 59%, compared to 18% for the Palestinians and 23% undecided.

Tracking with other polling data, Rasmussen found that voters under 40 were nearly three times as likely to sympathize with Palestinians as older groups.

Image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Dana Kopel/POOL.

November 12, 2023 0 comments

Community

Jewish Woman Stabbed In Her Home In France

by admin November 5, 2023

written by admin

Police found a swastika drawn on her door • Lyon Mayor Grégory Doucet condemnts “unspeakable” surge of violence.

Menachem Wecker

(JNS)

A 30-year-old Jewish woman was stabbed twice in her home in Lyon, France on Saturday, and police found a swastika drawn on her door.

The woman’s condition is “very serious but not life-threatening,” the Daily Mail reported, citing French media. The suspect was still at large.

“A Jewish woman was stabbed this Saturday. An antisemitic inscription was found on the door of her home,” Grégory Doucet, the mayor of Lyon, wrote on social media, in French. “Such a surge of violence is unspeakable. All my support to the victim, to her loved ones.”

The male attacker was masked and clad in black, according to the victim’s statement, and police are reviewing surveillance footage, Le Figaro reported.

“Her home was identified as a Jewish household because there was a mezuzah—a piece of parchment containing Jewish scripture—on the doorframe,” the Daily Mail reported, citing an “investigating source.”

“Early inquiries suggest an antisemitic murder attempt, especially since a Nazi swastika was spray-painted by the attacker on the front door before he left,” the source added.

“Initial findings have led the Lyon public prosecutor’s office to open an investigation into the attempted murder charge, aggravated by the fact that the act could have been motivated by an antisemitic motive,” the public prosecutor’s office stated on Saturday evening, the European Jewish Press reported.

There have been 857 antisemitic incidents in France since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said last week. (An Anti-Defamation League report, released on Oct. 24, cited Darmanin saying there had been 588 at the time.)

Darmanin told French Jews not to be afraid, the Jewish Chronicle in London reported last month. “If anyone touched a hair of a Jewish person, the state will act in the strongest manner,” he said. “You pray for France’s security on every Saturday. It’s only natural that the state protects you in turn.”

French President Emmanuel Macron had not commented on the attack on social media at press time. He has previously expressed support for Israel. Macron said on Friday that Paris will host a “humanitarian conference” on Nov. 9. “We are calling for a truce because the fight against terrorism does not justify sacrificing civilians,” he said, of Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas terrorists.

Hamas is known to use human shields, as the White House and U.S. State Department have noted repeatedly in recent weeks.

‘Protect their Jewish community’

Earlier on Friday, France’s foreign ministry demanded an explanation from Israel after the French Institute in Gaza had been struck. “We have asked the Israeli authorities to communicate to us without delay by appropriate means the tangible elements which motivated this decision,” it stated in French. “No agent of the institute, nor any French national, was on the premises of the institute.”

Catherine Colonna, the French minister for Europe and foreign affairs, said on Friday that France reacted with “astonishment” and “incomprehension” to the attack.

The French government expressed “deep concern” about “several thousand” civilian deaths in Gaza, and it condemned attacks on United Nations sites, humanitarian workers and media headquarters, it stated on Friday in French.

“The protection of civilians is both a moral imperative and an international obligation. We call for concrete steps to be taken by Israel in this regard,” it added, calling for a “humanitarian truce” to “allow the protection of civilians and the delivery of humanitarian aid in a sufficient and sustainable way and to allow the care of the wounded.”

“The civilian population of Gaza did not have to pay for the crimes of Hamas,” the French government stated. “We must avoid at all costs the trap set by Hamas and extremists of all stripes who want to generate hatred for the next generations.”

It also called for the hostages to be released, and noted that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Many analysts, and at times the White House and the U.S. State Department, have said that a “ceasefire” or “pause” benefits Hamas and allows it to rebuild its capacity to attack Israel again.

“Deeply disturbing,” wrote the European Jewish Congress, of the attack on Saturday in Lyon. “Jews have the right to exist without being attacked. We wish her a speedy recovery and hope the police can bring this cowardly individual to justice.”

“French authorities must do everything in their power to protect their Jewish community,” wrote the Anti-Defamation League.

In August, three people assaulted a 13-year-old boy Jewish boy, who was wearing identifiable Jewish garb, in Lyon and told him that they would kill him if he told anybody what had happened.

“Antisemitic violence is particularly very much present in France,” Anne-Sophie Sebban-Bécache, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Paris branch, told JNS at the time.

“The number of violent antisemitic attacks has increased by 8%,” she added. “The case of this young man was covered because local media from Lyon decided to make a story out of it, but unfortunately, this kind of antisemitic assault is not an exception.”

November 5, 2023 0 comments

Education

Teaching Muslim children Quranic Jew-hatred

by admin November 3, 2023

written by admin

Quranic justification for antisemitic incitement is being taught to American Muslim children.

Andrew Bostom

(JNS)

One would have hoped that the barbaric Oct. 7 Hamas massacre would prompt at least transient denunciations of the terror group and its Islamist ideology from the majority of the American Muslim community. The community’s response on the street, at universities and now a Colorado mosque teaching impressionable children have extinguished that pipe dream.

On Oct. 22, Imam Umar Mitchell of the Umar Ibn Al-Khattab mosque in Aurora, Colorado taught a Quranic lesson to children at the Colorado Muslims Community Center. His lesson included defamatory descriptions of Jews that appear in the Quran. He called the Jews inveterate liars (2:10, 3:75) who never abide by their contracts and covenants (2:61, 3:112, 4:155, 5:13), murder their prophets (2:61, 3:112, 3:181, 4:155) and even attempted to murder Jesus.

Mitchell also recounted the Quranic story of Jewish fishermen transformed by Allah into “literal physical monkeys” for fishing on Saturday (2:65, elaborated in 7:163, 7:164, 7;165, 7:166; verse 5:60 refers to the Jews as “apes and pigs”). He further insisted that Israel consistently defeats the Palestinians because the Jews deceive Palestinians into trusting them. He added, “It is not hate speech for you to be aware of these things.”

This depressing litany of defamatory slurs was interspersed by Mitchell’s call-and-response with his indoctrinated audience:

Mitchell: So I’m going to ask you: If this is the group of people who broke their rules with Allah, should you trust these people today?

Children: No!

Mitchell: Does this sound like good worshippers?

Children: No!

Mitchell: He (Allah) made them into monkeys. Literal physical monkeys. Monkeys. Does this sound like a people you want to do business with?

Children: No!

What is tragic is that Mitchell’s Quranic interpretations are consistent with authoritative classical and modern interpretations, as well as modern Islamic pedagogy.

Since the end of the 12th century CE, Egypt’s Al-Azhar University and its mosque have represented the apogee of Sunni Islamic religious education. It is essentially the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. By and large, its pedagogy supports Mitchell’s presentation.

It has been validated, for example, by the former head of Al-Azhar’s religious fatwa committee, Sheikh Atiyyah Saqr. In 2004, Saqr publishedJews’ 20 Bad Traits As Described in the Koran, which provided Quranic citations accusing the Jews of lying, believing lies, disputing and quarreling, hiding the truth and supporting deception, rebelling against the prophets and rejecting their guidance, hypocrisy, wishing evil on people, feeling pain at others’ happiness and happiness at others’ afflictions, rudeness and vulgarity, murder of innocents, mercilessness and heartlessness, breaking promises, cowardice and miserliness.

Further authoritative confirmation of Mitchell’s message is evident in the scholarship of Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the renowned late grand imam of Al-Azhar. He was one of the most revered modern authorities on Quranic exegesis, having edited a 15-volume contemporary commentary on the text. He also helped create the largest online website of classical and contemporary Quranic commentaries.

Tantawi’s Ph.D. thesis provided a summary gloss on the Quranic depiction of Jews, emphasizing its timeless relevance and denouncing Jews who rejected Islam as “maleficent deniers.” He granted Muslims license to commit violence against them in order to extirpate Jewish “evil”:

Quran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah (2:61, 3:112), corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places (4:46), consuming the people’s wealth frivolously (4:161), refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do (3:120, 5:79) and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted (lascivious) envy (2:109). … Only a minority of the Jews keep their word. … All Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims (3:113), the bad ones do not. … The Jews always remain maleficent deniers. … They should desist from their negative denial. … Some Jews went way overboard in their denying hostility, so gentle persuasion can do no good with them, so use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil. One may go so far as to ban their religion, their persons, their wealth and their villages.

Tantawi’s gloss on Quran 5:60—which dubs the Jews “apes and pigs”—condemned in broad terms “the corrupt thinking and false assumptions and claims of the Jews.” He further maintained, “What you [Jews] claim is even more evil as shown in the penalty that has befallen you as you have been cursed and become estranged from Allah’s mercy and compassion, and what has befallen your ancestors, of whom some were transformed into apes, others into pigs.”

In April 2002, as grand imam, Tantawi referred to Israeli Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.” That same month, he sanctioned suicide bombing “martyrdom” operations against “any Israeli, including children, women and teenagers,” notwithstanding the gruesome Netanya Passover massacre on March 27, 2002.

We must take such an expert at his word and conclude that, sadly, when Muslim clerics and educators engage in antisemitic incitement, they have more than enough Quran on their side.

November 3, 2023 0 comments

JTVC Breaking News Judaism

The Spiritual Front Of This War

by admin November 3, 2023

written by admin

Let us set aside 25 hours to return to our essential selves, our true identity and our sacred Jewish values.

Rabbi Warren Goldstein

(JNS)

In addition to the all-too-real—and critical—physical battle raging in Gaza for the safety and security of the Jewish state, there is a spiritual war going on. Hamas, a terror group that explicitly targets Jews for being Jewish, launched this war on Shabbat and Simchat Torah. They marched into Jewish homes on this holy day and massacred Jewish families.

Let’s be clear. This is not just about our physical presence or the borders of our state. This was not about political or military gain. Hamas’s stated aim—carried in their founding charter, but expressed more clearly through their savage actions—is to obliterate Jews from the face of the earth; an objective shared with Iran, Hezbollah and other murderous groups. It’s about who we are and what we stand for. It’s about our values, our history and our destiny.

This is what our enemies seek to uproot. And we all feel it, as Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora have been brought onto the front lines with the recent surge in antisemitic incidents. Antisemitism is not a conventional form of racism. We Jews are not a race; we’re white and black and brown, a multitude of ethnicities and cultures. We are our values, our Divine mission and destiny.

This evil needs to be defeated physically by the noble military battle being waged by the brave soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. But this spiritual attack also requires a spiritual response. We need to reaffirm our values and our Jewish identity, to tell our enemies loud and clear that they will never destroy us. Am Yisrael Chai: “The Jewish people live!” We live through our values. And at the heart of our values, our Jewish identity, is Shabbat.

It’s no coincidence that the attack took place on Shabbat. Shabbat is the very soul of the Jewish people. It is the God-given gift that has within it everything we need at this time of historic challenge and forever—resolve and inner peace, faith and purpose, family and community, and the eternal meaning of being a Jew.

This year’s Shabbat Project arrives within days of the shloshim—the 30-day period of mourning—marking the passing of the more than 1,400 Jewish martyrs brutally murdered by Hamas. Our answer is a call to arms to keep Shabbat. It is a clear statement of intent that we will not succumb, we will not submit, we will not forsake our eternal values.

Let the word go forth that on this year’s Shabbat Project, Jews in every part of the globe will keep Shabbat from sunset on Friday, Nov. 3 until stars out on Saturday, Nov. 4. It will be a sublime moment of global Jewish unity: one people, one heart, one Shabbat. Keeping it together for Israel.

Let us join together in our homes and synagogues, in community centers and in the streets of cities worldwide. Let us gather with family, friends and neighbors, and with our brothers and sisters throughout the world, as one people with one heart.

Let us light the candles to usher the light of peace and holiness into our homes. Let us bless our children and gain a renewed appreciation for our own blessings. Let us say the words of Kiddush, the mission statement of the Jewish people. Let us make the blessing on two challahs representing our faith and trust in God. Let us pray together as communities. Let us set aside our work and our chores and our devices—all the demands and distractions diverting our attention from the people closest to us. Let us set aside 25 hours to return to our essential selves, our true identity and our sacred Jewish values.

And just as we brought Shabbat in with light, let us see it out with light—the light of the Havdalah candle, its illumination spilling like wine from a cup into the week ahead. Let us spread the light of Shabbat throughout the world, and keep these 25 hours as a badge of pride, proclaiming to the generations of Jews who came before us and the generations of Jews yet to come: Am Yisrael Chai.

Images: Tea lights. Credit: Ri-Ya/Pixabay.

November 3, 2023 0 comments