"This identity fraud is not without consequences. It is at the center of one of the greatest intellectual and political manipulations of all times, which has notably led to the recent votes in Europe on the recognition of a "Palestinian State" which corresponds to nothing historically."

For which sons does Rachel weep?

This week, I visited the Tomb of Rachel, the matriarch of the Jewish people, located at the entrance to Bethlehem. Rachel, who was Jacob’s wife and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, was the heroine of the biblical chapters read in recent weeks in synagogues across the world.

The exterior of her mausoleum has nothing to do with the pastoral paintings that have adorned the walls of Jewish homes throughout the world for centuries. The Oslo Accords and the second intifada have turned this site of pilgrimage into a concrete fortress, allowing Jewish worshipers a sort of relative security. Inside, near the presumed location of the tomb, there is an ancient stone plaque, engraved with a passage from the prophet Jeremiah:

“Thus said the Eternal, and a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. Thus says the Lord: ‘Restrain your voice from weeping And your eyes from tears; For your work will be rewarded and they will return from the land of the enemy.’”

The Prophet Jeremiah witnessed the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem (in 586 BC) and refered to the Jews leaving the Holy Land for exile in Babylon. Long convoys passing by Rachel's Tomb inspired Jeremiah to pen these words, as inspiring as they are premonitious.

Not far from Rachel's Tomb is the Aida refugee camp, one of the many camps of misery in which Arab countries have left their "Palestinian brothers" after the wars of 1948 and 1967. At the entrance to the camp is a large gate topped with a huge bronze key. The key, which was donated by Germany, symbolizes the hope of return. But what is most interesting is the plate on the door which bears the following inscription: "Your sons will return to their borders," the phrase which has been taken word for word from Jeremiah, but decontextualized and misused.

This example is one among many in the methodical policy applied by the Palestinian Arabs to stick to the history and the ethos of the Jewish people. Regarding Rachel's Tomb, in 2001, textbooks in Palestinian Authority schools replaced the traditional name of "Dome of Rachel" with that of "Al Bilal Mosque," converting it into a Muslim holy site. It was then endorsed by UNESCO in 2010 as "part of Palestinian Heritage". This kind of reclamation of identity is part of the same process used in the first centuries by the Fathers of the Church, who developed the Theology of Replacement according to which the church has replaced the Jews as God’s children.

The appearance of a "Palestinian people driven from his home” reminds us of ancient Jewish history and the exile of the Jewish people driven out of Judea by the Romans. Hence was born the term "Jewish Diaspora", which coincidentally gave rise to the "Palestinian diaspora" in Palestinian Arabic lexicography.

 Examples abound: exodus, wandering, camps, the centrality of Jerusalem, the odious comparison between Gaza and Auschwitz, between the Dura child and the Warsaw Ghetto, are trying to superimpose the suffering of the Jews in the ghettos onto the Palestinian people. Even Jesus, who was born and died as a Jew, has suddenly become a "Palestinian who fought against the occupier." Certainly, but against the Roman occupiers and his Jewish brethren, not to mention all the biblical characters who converted to Islam.

This identity fraud is not without consequences. It is at the center of one of the greatest intellectual and political manipulations of all times, which has notably led to the recent votes in Europe on the recognition of a "Palestinian State" which corresponds to nothing historically.

Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas said a few days ago that there are "six million refugees waiting to return to their homes." Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid had the courage to denounce "the cynical use and operation of the status of 'refugee' by the Palestinian authorities, with the help of this UN institution. "

It is therefore not for the return of the Palestinian Arabs, a recent invention, that our matriarch Rachel is weeping, but for the Jewish exiles. And when the prophet Jeremiah announced the return of her sons to their borders, he was not referring to residents of the Aida refugee camp.

The Talmudic sages teach us that "the world is based on three things: Truth, Justice and Peace." Peace is not a means to achieve other goals. It is the result of Truth and Justice.

Shraga Blum is an independent journalist. He publishes a weekly press review in the "P'tit Hebdo" and political analysis on Israeli-French language sites.

http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/54119-141211-for-which-sons-does-rachel-weep

When faced with a Rabbi suffering from Alzheimer's, most of us respond with denial...

When faced with a Rabbi suffering from Alzheimer's, most of us respond with denial ("It won't happen to all Rabbis") or extreme efforts at prevention of letting the world know. But global health expert and TED Fellow Alanna Shaikh sees it differently. She's taking three concrete steps to prepare for the moment — should it arrive — when all of them get Alzheimer's disease.

"It was only when I began to experience the bad of the orthodox world, the cultural aspects that had nothing to do with G-d or Torah, that I realized there was much in my secular upbringing that would benefit the Jewish world if ..."

The Frum World

Here is something that is unfortunately not acknowledged enough, that is seen as almost shocking to believe, even heretical. But it shouldn’t be: the secular world has a lot to offer the orthodox world.

This took me a long time to realize because, often, the process of becoming a baal teshuva involves rejecting the world you came from, trying to see all the negative in it, so that you can make that clean break, so that you can truly work to change yourself from the inside out.  And, of course, the people who brought us in are often all too willing to encourage that feeling.

It was only when I began to experience the bad of the orthodox world, the cultural aspects that had nothing to do with G-d or Torah, that I realized there was much in my secular upbringing that would benefit the Jewish world if I was properly motivated by trying to bring Hashem’s truth into the world (rather than a simple desire to rebel).

A small but powerful example: art.  Whatever anyone says, the orthodox religious world has a long way to go.  Often, even the people drawn to art do not see it as an expression of their unique neshama, but rather as an expression of their culture.  Thus, we see a billion paintings of tzadikim that look exactly the same.  We see rehashed stories, written no differently than they are told.  We hear music that is no different than the kind they were brought up with.

A baal teshuva that accepts this reality, that tries to conform to it, simply because he believes the orthodox culture is the right one, the G-dly one, is sacrificing his neshama’s purpose in order to conform.  He is killing this aspect of himself, especially if he had access to the lively world of secular art (as profane as it often is).

When he does not meld the worlds he came from, when he does not see that the world he came from has value, something to teach the orthodox world, he is betraying himself and he is betraying Hashem’s mission for him.

Art is an easy example, but there are so many more.  From manners to business ethics to sexual abuse, the secular world, the world the baal teshuva came from, has something to offer.  Why else would Hashem have brought him into the orthodox world?  Why would he have made the baal teshuva go on this journey?  To be the same?!  To fit in?!  It makes no sense.  Hashem wants us to take the value of the secular world, transform it into G-dly energy, and meld it into the orthodox world.

Anyone who denies this denies the power of a baal teshuva.  And this is often the reason so many yeshivas, so many rabbis and leaders, often “cut [baalei teshuva] in half”, as Steinsaltz said.  They believe their job is to make us conform.  They are only half right.

And the implications of this betrayal of a person’s neshama are more far-reaching than improving the orthodox world.  As I said, this also applies to the world at large.....

READ ENTIRE ESSAY:

http://hevria.com/elad/baal-teshuva-world-wake/

A Rotten Frankfurter - Keep 'Em In The Dark!

Lawsuits and More Lawsuits....

Comedian Bill Cosby sued for defamation by sexual assault accuser

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, asserts that Cosby himself is liable for the conduct of his legal and press representatives.(Reuters) - Comedian Bill Cosby was sued for defamation on Wednesday in Massachusetts by a sexual assault accuser who said he branded her a liar in public statements made through his representatives denying her allegations of abuse.

The eight-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, is believed to be the second lawsuit arising from a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against Cosby, 77, by more than a dozen women since October.

The plaintiff in Wednesday's lawsuit, Tamara Green, 66, a lawyer who lives near San Diego, has said Cosby sexually assaulted her at her apartment after drugging her at a Los Angeles cafe in the early 1970s.

Neither Cosby, who resides in western Massachusetts, nor his attorney was immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit said denials by an attorney and a publicist representing Cosby in response to her allegations in articles published in Newsweek magazine and the Washington Post were false and defamatory.

The complaint was filed on Green's behalf by Joseph Cammarata, a Washington-based attorney who initially represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit in the late 1990s against then-President Bill Clinton.

He said the defamation lawsuit provides a new avenue for Green and others accusing Cosby of sexually assaulting them decades ago to bring their allegations to court without the complications posed by statutes of limitations.

"This case presents a forum for Tamara Green to have her day in court," her lawyer said. "One person says it happens, the other person says you're a liar. OK, a jury of your peers will decide which is telling the truth."

Another Cosby accuser, Judy Huth, sued the entertainer earlier this month, saying he molested her in 1974 when she was 15 at the Playboy Mansion after serving her alcohol. Her lawsuit claims that trauma from the incident caused psychological and mental anguish that she has only come to terms with in the last few years.

In 2006, Cosby settled for an undisclosed sum a lawsuit brought by another woman, Andrea Constand, who claimed he had drugged and sexually assaulted her.

Cosby has never been charged, and through his lawyers has insisted none of the allegations against him are true.

Green's lawsuit says she met Cosby through a mutual friend in 1969 or 1970 when she was a young, aspiring model and singer, and that he sought her help to raise money from investors to establish a club that the entertainer wanted to open.

Over lunch one afternoon in the early 1970s, according to the lawsuit, Cosby gave Green some pills that he told her was cold medicine after she complained of not feeling well, and then took her back to her apartment when she began to feel woozy.

Once there, the lawsuit says, Cosby undressed the two of them and proceeded to sexually assault Green, who was too weakened and disoriented to fight back and got Cosby to stop only after she managed to upend a table. She says Cosby eventually left her apartment, leaving two $100 bills on a coffee table.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/10/us-people-cosby-idUSKBN0JO21820141210

Oddly reluctant to cry ‘hate crime’ - So why isn’t shouting “Kill the Jew!” while stabbing a Jewish student in a temple enough to raise the hate issue?

When someone enters a synagogue with a knife and stabs a rabbinical student there, it sure looks like a hate crime. Multiple witness reports that the attacker shouted “I want to kill the Jew!” seem a clincher.

Yet the NYPD and most media seemed strangely reluctant to acknowledge that angle in the early wake of Tuesday’s attack in Brooklyn.

The NYPD officers’ conduct in responding to the attack was exemplary. A video shows the immense restraint of a policeman repeatedly demanding the suspect drop the knife.

It’s only after the suspect appears to surrender as he sets the knife down, but then abruptly grabs the knife, continuing his threatening gestures and advances that the police, left with no choice, use lethal force.

Happily, the victim, 22-year-old Levi Rosenblat, was in stable condition yesterday, recovering from stab wounds to the head.

Media accounts near-universally mentioned that the knife-wielding suspect reportedly shouted “I want to kill the Jew!” and “Kill the Jews!”

But some stories feature the police saying he may have said only, “I will kill all of you” — though, again, in a synagogue, that’s still pretty telling.

Remarkably, the New York Times account didn’t even see fit to mention any “kill the Jew” statements, though it did link to a Chabad.org article noting that “according to witnesses, the perpetrator was heard repeatedly saying: ‘Kill the Jews!’”

Yet the Times only reports the part caught on video where the suspect tells worshipers, “You want me to kill you.”

And initial reports treated it as a crime with no known motive. Headlines read: “Police Shoot, Kill Stabbing Suspect at Brooklyn Jewish Center,” “NYPD shoot, kill man who stabbed rabbinical student in synagogue,” “Police kill knife-wielding man in NY synagogue.”

That the suspect may have yelled stuff about killing Jews wasn’t the focus of any articles I found.

Contrast that with the tale of Ahmed Aden, a mentally disturbed Kansas City man who intentionally ran over a 15-year-old boy outside a Kansas City mosque — which the media quickly (and correctly) highlighted as a potential hate crime.

It helped that news swiftly broke that the perp had made prior anti-Muslim statements — on the other hand, no reports tried to suggest it wasn’t a hate crime because the man was also delusional and mentally ill.

Headlines read: “FBI eyes Kansas City man’s car kill as anti-Muslim hate crime,” “Police report reveals man accused of killing 15-year-old in hate crime threatened others before.”

So why isn’t shouting “Kill the Jew!” while stabbing a Jewish student in a temple enough to raise the hate issue?

An initial NBC New York reports stated that the police weren’t even investigating the Brooklyn attack as a hate crime. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is now saying that the hate-crimes unit is investigating.

That seems mandatory: State law defines a hate crime as a “crime committed when an offender selects a victim because of a belief of perception about the victim regarding race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation.”

The 49-year-old suspect wasn’t robbing anyone or committing any other known crimes. Before viciously stabbing the student in the head, he entered the synagogue asking for a Bible. His actions and ramblings certainly suggest mental issues, but that does not rule out anti-Semitism.

That the knife attack echoes the recent deadly hatchet attack in a Jerusalem temple even suggests a copycat hate crime.

Today, the mere fact that a cop is white and a suspect is black is enough for much of the media to quickly imply racial motivations in shootings. This makes the silence deafening when the same media ignore the strong likelihood that the Brooklyn assault was anti-Semitic.

Hatred of Jews and Israel is spreading around the globe like wildfire. Recently, a 19-year-old woman was tied up and raped in a horrific anti-Semitic attack in France.

If we’re not willing to acknowledge the motive in these attacks, we’re inviting more of them.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/09/oddly-reluctant-to-cry-hate-crime/

Rabbi Who Installed Hidden Cameras in Dorm to Open New Seminary

Rabbi Who Installed Hidden Cameras in Dorm to Open New Seminary

December 9, 2014 by Hannah Katsman Leave a Comment

In May, 2013, Haaretz reported that Rabbi Tully Bryks, director of the Bar-Ilan overseas program, was forced to resign after installing hidden cameras in the hallways of the girls’ dormitories.

The surveillance cameras were discovered within hours by several stunned students living in adjacent rooms, who immediately lodged a complaint with program administrators citing severe invasion of privacy and who demanded police intervention.

Bryks was soon thereafter relieved of all his responsibilities at the program and barred from any contact with students.

Bryks posted an apology on his personal Facebook page, claiming that he installed the cameras in order to investigate complaints against the maintenance staff:

In the middle of last year, Rabbi Bryks began teaching a weekly class once a week at Tomer Devorah, a Jerusalem seminary for women. According to a mother who attended an event in the Five Towns, Rabbi Bryks is now planning to open his own seminary for the coming school year 5776 (2015-16). According to the website of Bnei Akiva Toronto, Rabbi Bryks represented both Tomer Devorah and the new seminary, Meorot, at a visit to its high school on November 18, 2014.

Representatives of Israeli Seminaries

Yet Tomer Devorah’s site does not include Rabbi Bryks on its list of 37 staff members. The not-yet-opened seminary, Meorot, also has a website. Rabbi Bryks is not listed as astaff member there either.

But a simple check reveals that Tully Bryks is listed as the registered owner of the domain “MyMeorot.com”:

If Rabbi Bryks is visiting high schools as a representative of two seminaries, and operates one of their websites, he should be included in the public staff listings. According to the mother attending the event, Bryks is not only the recruiter . He is a founder of Meorot.

It’s safe to assume a connection between the fact that Rabbi Tully Bryks left his last job under a cloud, and the omission of his name on the websites of the two institutions.

Bryks has not been convicted of a crime, and may possibly be guilty only of a lapse in judgment. There was a police investigation, that was closed.

Bryks’ activities at Bar Ilan could be indicative of more serious concerns. Parents have a right to know that someone with such a history is involved with an institution, and in what capacity. Anyone considering sending to an institution should demand full transparency.

http://www.amotherinisrael.com/tully-bryks-camera-meorot-seminary/

Obama’s Threats Won’t Hurt Netanyahu

Few savvy observers took Secretary of State John Kerry at his word earlier this week when he piously proclaimed that the United States had no thought of attempting to intervene in Israel’s elections. The animus bordering on hatred felt by President Obama’s inner circle toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not exactly a secret.

 But it didn’t take long for a leak to an Israeli newspaper that is among the PM’s most rabid foes to dispel any doubts about the administration’s hopes that it could somehow derail his bid for a fourth term. The report from Barak Ravid, Haaretz’s diplomatic correspondent that the White House held a meeting whose purpose was to plan possible future sanctions against Israel to punish it for continuing to build homes for Jews in Jerusalem and West Bank settlement blocs, is a shot fired over Netanyahu’s bow. But the real question here is not so much Obama’s desire to see the prime minister defeated, as it is why anyone in the administration thinks this gambit will succeed now after the same tactics have failed repeatedly before.

The Haaretz report makes it clear that the administration is looking ahead to another two years of escalating confrontation with Israel. The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly demonstrated its lack of interest in negotiating, let alone signing a peace agreement that would end the conflict. Nor do the construction of homes for Jews in existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem or even in the settlement blocs that everyone (including President Obama) knows would remain inside Israel if peace were ever achieved constitute any sort of obstacle to a two-state solution.

 But the administration still clings to the illusion that the problem is Netanyahu and settlements rather than a Palestinian political culture that makes peace impossible and PA head Mahmoud Abbas’s incitement to violence. That means it is entirely possible that, as Ravid breathlessly predicts, the administration will no longer make do with bitter denunciations of Israeli actions in the future but will, instead adopt measures intended to punish the Jewish state. That might take the form of refraining from vetoing anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations Security Council or other actions intended to downgrade or undermine the alliance between the two countries.

But the notion that picking yet another fight with Netanyahu will hurt his chances of reelection tells us more about the administration’s continued inability to understand Israel than anything else. After all, President Obama has repeatedly tried to do this throughout his first six years in office. But every time the U.S. attempted to use Jewish building in Jerusalem to attack Netanyahu, the only result was that the prime minister’s political standing at home increased. 

Though the PM is under attack right now from both foes on the left and a crowded field of rivals on the right, there seems little reason to believe that his policies on Jerusalem or even on negotiations with the Palestinians has rendered him vulnerable. All the polls agree that Israeli voters appear poised to elect a Knesset that is even further skewed to the right than the existing government that was lambasted by American critics for being not interested in concessions to the Palestinians.

As even Ravid notes in the conclusion to his piece, Netanyahu always gains when he can portray himself as standing up to foreign pressure on security issues. The reason for that is that, unlike the Obama administration and Israel’s liberal critics abroad, the Israeli voting public has been paying attention to what the Palestinians have said and done during the last 20 years of peace processing. Israel has tried to trade land for peace and gotten more terror and no peace. 

At the present moment it is inconceivable that any Israeli government of any stripe would withdraw from the West Bank in order to make way for what could be an even larger and more dangerous version of the Hamas terror state that currently exists in Gaza.

It is true that the decimated Israeli left and their liberal American supporters such as the J Street lobby believe that the Jewish state must be saved from itself by heavy-handed U.S. intervention. Indeed, it is only by international pressure designed to thwart the verdict of Israeli democracy that their misguided agenda might be implemented. But it boggles the mind as to how anyone, either in Israel or the U.S., would think that the Israeli voting public would regard efforts to thwart their judgment in this manner as a good reason to vote against Netanyahu. 

Indeed, the commitment of the U.S. to a policy of heavy-handed pressure is the best argument for Netanyahu continuing in office since he is the country’s only major political figure with the experience and the tenacity to stand up to such treatment from the country’s sole superpower ally.

The three months between now and the election constitute a political eternity and Netanyahu cannot take his victory for granted even if the polls indicate he is the only possible choice for prime minister. But if Obama and his friends at Haaretz imagine such leaks will lead to Netanyahu’s downfall, it’s clear they have learned nothing from the past six years of such efforts.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/12/04/obamas-threats-wont-hurt-netanyahu-elections-settlements/

LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday his force would investigate ANY sexual assault charges against the embattled entertainer, OR ANYONE ELSE, regardless of whether they were covered by the statute of limitations, which limits how long after the fact lawsuits can be filed...

Cosby sex abuse accuser takes case to police

 Judy Huth was assaulted 40 years ago! 

The only woman to have filed a sex assault lawsuit against Bill Cosby took her case to police Friday, accepting an offer to have her claims investigated despite them dating from 40 years ago.

Judy Huth, who filed legal action against the veteran comic earlier this week, was accompanied by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred to meet detectives at Los Angeles Police Department.

LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday his force would investigate any sexual assault charges against the embattled entertainer, or anyone else, regardless of whether they were covered by the statute of limitations, which limits how long after the fact lawsuits can be filed.

"Today Judy Huth and I came here... to meet with detectives of the LAPD to request an investigation of Mr Cosby," Allred said in a statement in front of the police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

"She is here because she believes that it is important that Bill Cosby be investigated... we are here to accept Chief Beck's invitation," she added.

"We also urge others to go to the LAPD and ask them to investigate."

Fresh allegations

The LAPD did not immediately comment on the meeting.

Around 20 women have now accused the 77-year-old Emmy and Golden Globe winner of sexual assault and even rape in alleged incidents dating mostly from decades ago.

So far the only one who has taken legal action is Huth, a 55-year-old former Playboy hostess who filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles on Tuesday claiming Cosby assaulted her at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion in 1974.

On Thursday Cosby's lawyer, Marty Singer, counter-sued Huth in the LA Superior Court, accusing her of trying to extort up to $250,000 from him in return for her silence.

On Friday a new accuser came forward, another former Playboy "bunny" who claimed that she and at least 12 other fellow employees were raped by Cosby.

P.J. Masten, who began working as a Playboy waitress in 1972, claimed that Cosby drugged and raped her after inviting her to his hotel room in Chicago, and offering her a glass of what he said was Grand Marnier.

"The next thing I knew, it was four o'clock in the morning," she told CNN.

"I woke up in a bed naked, bruised. He was laying next to me, and I slithered out of the bed... I got myself together, I went downstairs, I got in a cab and I went home," she said.

But she was certain that he had raped her while she was unconscious. "This man has to be held accountable. He's a serial rapist. He's been that way since the '60s," she told the broadcaster.

She was not the only former "bunny" to be raped by the entertainer, she claimed.

There were "12 former bunnies that I know of that are ashamed to come forward, frightened to come forward, married with families (and) don't want to come forward," Masten said.

"But they were also drugged and raped by Bill Cosby."

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner issued a statement on the scandal Saturday. "Bill Cosby has been a good friend for many years and the mere thought of these allegations is truly saddening," he said. "I would never tolerate this kind of behavior, regardless of who was involved."

Cosby Hollywood star vandalized

Overnight Thursday a vandal scrawled the word "rapist" on Bill Cosby's Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

The word was written three times on the star on the storied Walk of Fame, the stretch of sidewalk honoring Hollywood celebrities that is visited by millions of tourists every year.

A worker cleans actor Bill Cosby's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 5, 2014  (AFP)

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which looks after the stars and organizes ceremonies for new inductees, acted quickly to have the graffiti removed.

"The Hollywood Walk of Fame is an institution celebrating the positive contributions of the inductees," it said in a statement.

"When people are unhappy with one of our honorees, we would hope that they would project their anger in more positive ways than to vandalize a California state landmark."

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/culture/53729-141208-cosby-sex-abuse-accuser-takes-case-to-police

"In the racist cesspool known as the United States, black people are routinely treated like second-class citizens, if not subhumans. Oh, and by the way, please remain calm. Wink, wink."

Saul Alinsky Lives in Ferguson

If the late Saul Alinsky—the America-hating godfather of community organizing—had fathered a black son, he’d look like Barack Obama.[1]  Obama has embraced, revered, and employed Alinsky’s philosophy and tactics of social revolutionfor decades. Indeed, he even taught Alinsky’smethods in community-organizing workshops and seminars in Chicago, when he was a much younger Marxist. As we witness the continuing racial unrest sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson grand jury’s subsequent decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, it is vital to understand that everything the protesters/rioters are doing—in Ferguson and elsewhere—is straight out of Alinsky’s most famous publications,Rules For Radicals and Reveille For Radicals. And Obama has encouraged them, every step of the way.

Obama and Alinsky never actually met in person, as Alinsky died when Obama was just 11 years old. Happily for the future president, by that time he had already been introduced to the man who would mentor him throughout his adolescent years—the America-hating, pro-Soviet, pro-Stalin, Communist writer Frank Marshall Davis. Thus, when Obama eventually encountered Alinsky through the latter’s writings, the young community organizer was well prepared ideologically to soak up Alinsky’s message.

In his quest to cultivate the type of chaos that would spark social revolution against America’s capitalist system, Alinsky exhorted activists to constantly “rub raw the resentments of the people” and “fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression”—but to do this in measured tones, so as not to “scare off” middle-class Americans.

Thus did Obama dutifully and blandly call for “unity” and calm in the immediate aftermath of Michael Brown’s “heartbreaking and tragic” death, even as he repeatedly reminded us that: “police should not be bullying or arresting” anyone without cause; “in too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and left as objects to fear”; “there is no excuse for excessive force by police”; “the justice gap” between whites and nonwhites is unacceptable; “the criminal-justice system doesn’t treat people of all races equally”; and “too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.” And when the grand jury in Ferguson subsequently chose not to indict Darren Wilson because the officer obviously had shot Michael Brown in self-defense, Obama pronounced the black community’s indignation to be “an understandable reaction.”

Obama’s carefully chosen words—all delivered in the type of nonthreatening tenor advocated by Saul Alinsky—clearly communicated a single, foundational theme to African Americans: In the racist cesspool known as the United States, black people are routinely treated like second-class citizens, if not subhumans. Oh, and by the way, please remain calm. Wink, wink.

Alinsky also taught that in some cases activists must be completely willing—for the sake of the moral principles in whose name they profess to act—to turn up the proverbial heat and watch society descend into chaos and anarchy; to “go into a state of complete confusion and draw [their] opponent into the vortex of the same confusion.” “Wherever possible,” Alinsky counseled, “go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”

Mobs of shouting protesters can accomplish that objective quite effectively—even if, as in the present case, they are oblivious to the irony that the poster-child of their crusade is a multiple felon who tried unsuccessfully to murder a police officer. Such demonstrations tend to give onlookers the impression that a mass movement is not only well underway, but may actually be preparing to shift into an even higher gear at any moment. A “mass impression,” said Alinsky, can be lasting and intimidating. Thus did President Obama recently meet at the White House with Al Sharpton, his leading advisor on race-related matters, and other protest leaders from Ferguson, urging them to “stay on course” with their activism.

Yet another highly noteworthy observation by Alinsky was this: “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” “The threat,” he explained, “is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Thus, “if your organization is small in numbers,… raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.”

This can be well achieved by orchestrating a host of simultaneous demonstrations in multiple cities or venues, exactly as the highly organized Gentle Giant crusade has been doing. The stature of these rallies is magnified by the fact that they receive lots of media attention, while scores of millions of ordinary Americans who view them with contempt and dread are busy quietly going about their lives, caring for their families, working at their jobs, and pursuing their personal aspirations as they see fit. Such people are many thousands of times more numerous than the perpetually aggrieved rabble-rousers of the Left, but Alinsky understood—as Obama understands today—that a spraying skunk inevitably gets all the attention when it intrudes unexpectedly upon a picnic.

The America-hating Alinsky also taught that activists, in order to cast themselves as defenders of high-minded principles, must theatrically convey “shock, horror, and moral outrage” whenever any of their demands—however inconsequential—are not met. And no one conveys such emotions more convincingly than Obama’s aforementioned racial “advisor,” Al Sharpton, who vows to continue the Michael Brown/anti-police brutality crusade until the end of time if necessary. Alinsky understood quite well that even a pathetic moral degenerate like Sharpton can be an effective revolutionary if he is skilled in the otherwise worthless arts of bluster and righteous indignation.

Lest anyone think there might be a way to bridge the gap between civil society and the revolutionaries in the vanguard of the current Gentle Giant Brigades, a dose of reality is in order: Alinsky emphasized that the overarching objective of any crusade is never to promote peace or reconciliation, but rather to be unwaveringly “dedicated to an eternal war” in which “there are no rules of fair play” and “no compromise” whatsoever; to mercilessly “pulverize” people with “fear”; and ultimately to “force their capitulation.”

We got a glimpse of this mindset recently when we learned that two New Black Panther Party members were plotting not only to blow up St. Louis’s famed Gateway Arch, but also to assassinate Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson and the city’s prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch. And a shrieking Louis Farrakhan, for his part, has been busy urging black Americans to throw Molotov cocktails at white people in order to fulfill a scriptural “law of retaliation”; condemning whites for allegedly “killing us” in large numbers; and warning that “we’ll tear this goddamn country up!”

Like all Marxists, Obama, Sharpton, Farrakhan, and the rest of their fellow revolutionaries seek to tear society apart by pitting the “races,” the “classes,” and the “genders” against one another—“rubbing raw” their respective “resentments” until hatred abounds in every person’s heart and mayhem fills the streets. Michael Brown’s corpse is merely a building block for these rabble rousers. They know that someday another African American will be killed by a white police officer and thus be anointed as their movement’s next martyred saint. Bit by bit, the inconvenient fact that Brown was a violent, abusive criminal whose death was brought about entirely by his own actions will be airbrushed out of public memory. And the grievance mongers of the “civil rights” movement will wistfully remember him as just another innocent black victim whose life was tragically cut short by white depravity.

Saul Alinsky would be proud.

NOTE:
[1] In March 2012, not long after the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, President Obama famously said: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/saul-alinsky-lives-in-ferguson/