"All Talk No Action???" (Donald Trump at AIPAC conference in March 2016: Will veto anti-Israel moves at UN, move US embassy to Jerusalem)

מיין טאכטער ​​איז א אידענר

Trump turns noncommittal on Jerusalem embassy move  
    

Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and other Arab allies have warned the White House of severe repercussions should it proceed with the move. 

WASHINGTON -- Once committed to quickly moving America's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Trump administration is now expressing caution, promising only to review the matter extensively and in consultation with "stakeholders" in the conflict.

That deliberative process tracks closely with the policy evolutions of two prior presidents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who also campaigned on a pledge to move the embassy. Both ultimately reversed course while in their first terms office.

"If it were already a decision, then we wouldn't be going through a process," Sean Spicer, the new White House press secretary, said in his first press briefing on Monday. He declined to commit the administration to moving the embassy by the end of Trump's term, four years from now. "His team is going to continue to consult with stakeholders as we get there."

Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and other Arab allies have warned the White House of severe repercussions should it proceed with the move, including a review of bilateral relations with both the US and Israel. Arab states have also warned of an upsurge in violence should the embassy be relocated.

Trump's campaign promise was unflinching: "We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem," Trump told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March. He repeated that commitment at several subsequent campaign events.

"The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable," he said.

(Donald Trump at AIPAC conference in March 2016: Will veto anti-Israel moves at UN, move US embassy to Jerusalem)

"But when the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace really rise and rises exponentially. That’s what will happen when Donald Trump is president of the United States.
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
And we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel.
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)"

READ: http://time.com/4267058/donald-trump-aipac-speech-transcript/

In readouts from the prime minister's office and the White House on Sunday, neither said that a phone call between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made any mention of the embassy relocation.

By delaying the move, the White House buys itself time to weigh how such a move would adversely impact its coalition against Islamic extremists and its plans for a Middle East peace initiative, to be led by the president's adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It also suggests the administration is mindful of the impact such a dramatic act would have on the politics of the world's most tumultuous region.

"We're at the very early stages of that decision-making process," Spicer said.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Trump-turns-noncommittal-on-Jerusalem-embassy-move-479389

The charges involve five main cases. In the first, Metzger allegedly took bribes from rich foreigners seeking to convert to Judaism or determine their religious status. The alleged go-between was Rabbi Gabriel Cohen, head of the Los Angeles rabbinic court. Cohen allegedly gave Metzger half of each bribe. In one case, from 2011, Metzger referred to Cohen a Russian businessman who had immigrated to Israel and wanted his two children converted. After the conversion, Metzger and Cohen allegedly split evenly between them the $360,000 the man paid

Reports: Ex-chief rabbi to be jailed for 3.5 years

 

Under plea bargain, Yona Metzger would confess to slew of corruption charges in exchange for reduced prison sentence

Former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger (l) seen at the Jerusalem District Court during his trial, where he is suspected of taking bribed, fraud, and involvement in criminal activities, on July 21, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Former chief rabbi Yona Metzger is reportedly to be jailed for three and a half years in a plea bargain about to be signed.

Metzger reached a plea agreement with state prosecutors over a slew of corruption and bribery charges involving some NIS 10 million ($2.6 million), Channel 2 reported Sunda 

Metzger will plead guilty to fraud, theft, conspiracy, breach of trust, money laundering, tax offenses and accepting bribes. In addition to serving jail time, the state will foreclose on an apartment in Metzger’s name in central Tel Aviv.

The plea deal was offered after months of negotiations between Metzger’s attorneys and senior officials in the State Attorney’s Office, the report said.

In March of last year, Metzger’s trial began at the Jerusalem District Court, with Metger facing charges of accepting some NIS 10 million in bribes through various nonprofit groups, and keeping about NIS 7 million ($1.8 million) for himself.

Metzger stepped down as chief rabbi on July 24, 2013 due to the pending fraud investigation, just before the end of his 10-year term in office.

Former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger (r) seen at the Jerusalem District Court at the opening of his trial, where he is suspected of taking bribed, fraud, and involvement in criminal activities, on March 10, 2016.

In 2014, the Israel Police’s National Fraud Unit, also known by its internal police moniker Lahav 433, opened a months-long investigation into alleged scams linked to Metzger involving millions of shekels of funds purportedly siphoned into his accounts. The case was then handed to the Jerusalem District Attorney’s office, which examined it before passing it on to then-attorney general Yehuda Weinstein, who brought the charges against Metzger.

Police said Metzger had stashed about $200,000 with his sister in Haifa, and a search of his home turned up NIS 40,000 (over $11,300 at the time) in cash hidden in various books. At the time, Metzger contended that the money in Haifa came from an inheritance, but the investigation found this claim to be untrue.

According to the indictment, various nonprofit organizations connected with the rabbi during his term in office received millions of shekels in donations, some of which Metzger allegedly took for his personal use.

In addition to profiting from donations to charitable causes, he was also accused of taking bribes meant to sway his opinion on matters he attended to as chief rabbi.

 Israel has two chief rabbis, one Ashkenazi, or of European Jewish heritage, and one Sephardi, hailing from Jewish communities of the Muslim world. Their responsibilities include running the rabbinical courts and regulating the kosher food supervision industry.Metzger was voted into the prestigious position in 2003 with the support of the senior ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authorities at the time.In 2005, he was questioned on suspicion of receiving benefits from a hotel in Jerusalem in return for favors, and police recommended he be tried for fraud and breach of trust.

But the attorney general at the time, fearing an unsuccessful prosecution, decided against indicting him. Instead, he wrote a scathing report about Metzger, accusing him of lying to police and recommending that he resign immediately.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/reports-ex-chief-rabbi-to-be-jailed-for-3-5-years/

Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump In Church on Friday and Shabbos! Trump's Conversion Farce Must Be Repudiated, Rebuked & Delegitimized by Every Orthodox Rabbi! Kabbalat Shabbos With Jared & Ivanka! Israel & The Jewish People Have Every Reason To Be Concerned About Kushner's Total Rejection of Core Jewish Values (מומר להכעיס) , and In Essence, Contemptuous Conduct.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump - 3rd Row

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4140342/First-Family-waiting-starts-Inauguration-Day-church.html

Friday Night Kabbalat Shabbos With Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump - The "Jews" First Dance at 3:25.....

Despite Sabbath, Ivanka Trump and Husband Celebrate Inauguration (NY TIMES NO LESS)

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at the Liberty Ball on Friday evening. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times 

 

For Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, celebrating the presidential inauguration by attending the gatherings on Friday night posed an obstacle to their Orthodox Jewish observance of the Sabbath.

Ms. Trump, President Trump’s older daughter, and Mr. Kushner got special permission to break from strict religious laws that prohibit them from using technology or mechanized devices, such as cars, during the Sabbath, which begins on Friday evening.

A Jewish person who was briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it said on Friday night that they were given an exemption under the principle in Jewish law of pikuach nefesh, which suggests preserving the safety of a specific person over any religious consideration.

In the case of Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, that would have meant being outside security escorts once the Sabbath had started.

Ms. Trump, who converted to Judaism, said in a Vogue magazine interview that she and her husband were “pretty observant,” keeping kosher and the Sabbath.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-sabbath.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170121&nlid=32999454&tntemail0=y

Jared Kushner - Ivanka Trump and children at the National Cathedral on Shabbos Morning

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4143164/Donald-Trump-prays-presidency-service-n-D-C.html

 IVANKA TRUMP WAS CONVERTED TO JUDAISM UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE RCA AND HERSHEL SCHACHTER

HEAD OF RCA CONVERSION DEPARTMENT- HERSHEL SCHACHTER

The Black Stain on Hershel Shachter & the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) Forever - Passing Off Halachic Gentiles As Jews Until The End of Time!

Report: Ivanka Trump gets pass to travel on Shabbat for inauguration parties

The special permission was granted to protect the couple's safety. Life-saving measures, such as the work of surgeons or soldiers, are permitted on Shabbat. 

Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner celebrate Hanukka with their three children.

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have received rabbinic permission to travel by car on Friday evening following the inauguration of her father, Donald Trump, as the next president of the United States, according to a Kol Barama radio interview with Mark Zell, the chair of the Republican party in Israel.

Traditionally, traveling in a car on Friday evening or Saturday is a violation of the Jewish Sabbath. Jared Kushner is Jewish, and Ivanka converted to Judaism. In a November Jerusalem Post piece, Shira Schmid noted that Ivanka "took on observance of Shabbat, holidays and kashrut, and adopted the Hebrew name Yael."

"We observe the Sabbath. From Friday to Saturday we don’t do anything but hang out with one another. We don’t make phone calls," Ivanka told Vogue in March 2015.

Ivanka praised the way that Shabbat provides a "blueprint for family connectivity," in that it protects time for her to spend with her family, including her eldest child, Arabella. “It’s an amazing thing when you’re so connected, to really sign off," said Ivanka. "And for Arabella to know that she has me, undivided, one day a week? We don’t do anything except play with each other, hang out with one another, go on walks together. Pure family!”

According to Zell, the special permission to travel by car was granted in order to protect the couple's safety. Life-saving measures, such as the work of surgeons or soldiers, are permitted on Shabbat under the rule of pikuach nefesh, or protection of life, which overrides other commandments in the Torah.*

PATHETIC!

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Report-Ivanka-Trump-gets-pass-to-travel-on-Shabbat-for-inauguration-478905

Hundreds of Terrorists, Drug Pimps, Traitors --- Forgiven --- One White Collar Jew --- No!

 A Shvartz Yar To You Hussein Obama!

  Sholom Rubashkin is still in prison

Obama refused to grant despite pardoning a terrorist and a whistleblower, and hundreds of other chaleryas!

Previous outgoing presidents have pardoned a number of people during their last days in office.

President Obama stoked controversy in his last week in office by commuting the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, an unrepentant terrorist who was not pardoned by former President Bill Clinton because he had refused to renounce violence, and by commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who gave tens of thousands of documents to Wikileaks, including classified information.

However, President Obama has still failed to respond to Sholom Rubashkin's request for clemency.

In the last hours of the President's term in office, the family is extremely hopeful and praying hard for miraculous news. They urge anyone with a relationship with the President to contact him about this important case.

 Sholom Rubashkin (age 57) headed Agriprocessors, a meat slaughtering plant in Iowa for many years. About seven years ago federal forces raided the factory and brought charges of hiring illegal immigrants and minors.

 Sholom Rubashkin was acquitted of violating underage labor laws, but found guilty of financial fraud. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison and fined $31 million.

According to a November 2016 article in the Wall Street Journal, prosecutors overstepped, interfered with the process of bankruptcy and then solicited false testimony.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/223484


READ:

 https://www.justice.gov/pardon/obama-pardons

In his last major act as president, Barack Obama is cutting short the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes. The move brings Obama's bid to correct what he's called a systematic injustice to a climactic close.

More on this story http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/19/in-final-act-as-president-obama-commutes-330-drug-sentences.html

Obama Should Pardon This Iowa Kosher-Food Executive

Prosecutors overstepped, interfered with the process of bankruptcy and then solicited false testimony.

 
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-should-pardon-this-iowa-kosher-food-executive-1480278930

If God chose Trump, did God choose Obama? Mass Confusion about God's Choice For President!

Did God choose Trump? What it means to believe in divine intervention

 

US rabbi rewrites prayer - to avoid blessing Trump

 

Open Orthodox rabbi and founder of religious 'social justice' movement says he can't recite prayer for success of president after Trump win.

Members of the clergy lay hands and pray over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Sept. 21, 2016. Photo courtesy of Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

(Editor’s note: Since Donald Trump’s victory in last year’s election, many Christians became convinced he was chosen by God to be president even though he hardly fits their mold of a virtuous leader. In our “Hand of God” series, we take a closer look at the widespread belief that God intervenes in our nation’s political process. We profile three people who think that’s the case. And we analyze why they believe what they do, and look at the potential implications for American democracy.)

WASHINGTON (RNS) Democracy may be based on the principle of “one person, one vote,” but some people who supported Donald Trump believe the Master of the Universe cast the master ballot.

“God raised up, I believe, Donald Trump,” said former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann after he won the GOP nomination. “God showed up,” the Rev. Franklin Graham said to cheers at a post-election rally. “God came to me in a dream last night and said that Trump is his chosen candidate,” said the televangelist Creflo Dollar.

For those who share this view, Trump’s victory was nothing short of miraculous, especially given that he beat out 16 other in the Republican primaries — some of them evangelical Christians with long political resumes.

“For me, that has to be providence. That has to be the hand of God,” said Paula White, an  evangelical pastor Trump has tapped to pray at his inauguration.

While it is unclear how many people accept this version of events, conservative Christians appear most likely to embrace it.

But taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that God is in control of earthly events leads to noxious moral positions and bad public policy, warns William Schweiker, an ordained Methodist minister and professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

William Schweiker is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a former president of the Society of Christian Ethics and an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. Photo courtesy of William Schweiker

“It means it’s OK with you and it’s God’s will that millions of people starve to death because of our actions,” he says.

“We don’t need to worry about the nations going under water because of climate change.”

For those who see Trump’s inauguration on Friday (Jan. 20) as disastrous, the idea that God endorsed him is easy to dismiss as wishful thinking on the part of conservative Christians who came out for the winner in such overwhelming numbers.

But theologians across faith traditions have taken the question of God’s role in human affairs quite seriously for millennia.

Among those who study religion and politics — even among those who don’t believe in God or reject the notion that he puts his thumbs on the electoral scales — the belief remains relevant if only because so many people hold it.

And while many scholars of divinity deem it theologically problematic, they still invite study of the issue. It’s an unsettled question in many minds, and complicated: Not everyone who believes God intercedes in human affairs believes so in the same way. Not everyone who believes God put Trump in office likes Trump.

The question of God and the election begs bigger questions — about the nature of God, and if and how God becomes involved in earthly affairs. It is also a question of comfort. For some believers a God who picks the president is a God close at hand.

“At bottom, it is connected to the belief that God cares about our lives, which is a great thing,” says Wheaton College theologian Vincent Bacote, who nevertheless subjects to close scrutiny any claim that God intercedes in American elections.

The divine ballot

Popular evangelical speaker Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum, blogged about Trump during the campaign: “I doubt he truly understands what real Christianity is.”

Photo courtesy of Creation Museum

Ken Ham, president of a creation science apologetics ministry, operates the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Photo courtesy of Creation Museum

Yet Ham does not doubt that God gave Trump the presidency.

“God is in total control,” Ham says. “He makes that very clear in the Bible where he tells us that he raises up kings and destroys kingdoms. He even calls a pagan king, Cyrus, his anointed, or his servant to do the things that he wants him to do.”

It’s an idea that sits well with many evangelicals who voted for Trump. The bragging and often crass president-elect, like the Persian King Cyrus in the book of Isaiah, may not behave as a God-fearing man should. But isn’t that just like God to use a far-from-perfect person to fulfill God’s grand plan?
Still, belief in God’s sovereignty and the Bible’s flawed prophets does not make the case for God choosing Trump for many mainline Protestant and Catholic theologians.

It’s a problem of theodicy – the tension between an all-powerful God and the fact of evil in the world — says Schweiker, who teaches that theology subjects religious belief to debate and rational argument.

“If you say God’s in control of everything then you’ve got to say that God is a really God-damned bastard,” he says.

A God in total control is not a problem for Ham in light of any tragedy, from the Holocaust to a tsunami. “People single out particular events and say, ‘Where was your God?’” says Ham, who is not disclosing his choice in the presidential election.

“But we’ve got to stand back and looks at the big picture,” Ham continues. “That was their turn to die. You’re going to die. The important thing is to look at yourself and ask, ‘Am I ready to face death, am I reconciled with my savior so when I die I’ll spend eternity with him?’”

This perspective riles Schweiker, who did not vote for Trump and asks of Ham: “He thinks there is no moral difference between natural death and murder?”

If God chose Trump, did God choose Obama?

On the first day of this year’s spring semester at evangelical Wheaton College, Bacote asked his students about the role of God in the recent election. One said his relatives believe God works through imperfect individuals.

Vincent Bacote, professor of theology at Wheaton College. Photo courtesy of Vincent Bacote

Assuming the student’s relatives had voted for Trump, Bacote asked him: “Did your relatives say that about Barack Obama?”

Bacote himself doesn’t rule out God’s involvement in politics.

But the professor questions how anyone could be so sure about God favoring any particular candidate, how anyone could be “so dialed into how providence operates.” He points to the Bible.

“If one is taking Scripture seriously you have to ask, ‘Where do you find the United States in the Bible?’ Well, you don’t.”

And, Bacote continues, if God had a hand in one contest, then did he have a hand in them all?

“Was God involved in gubernatorial races? Mayoral races?”

Ham, by contrast, believes Trump, even before he takes the oath of office, is already working in harmony with God.

Trump has appointed Christians to important positions in the new administration.

And around his Kentucky home this year, Ham says, more people said “Merry Christmas,” as opposed to the “Happy Holidays” they had offered in previous years.

Ham’s certitude might draw challenges from theologians like Bacote. But he might get points for consistency.

“If Hillary Clinton would have won,” Ham adds, “we would need to accept that God had put her there for whatever reasons.”

God’s to-do list

Talking about God and the 2016 election, the discussion often turns to parking.

Schweiker, the Methodist theologian, arguing against those who see God’s hand in even mundane human affairs, offers the example of the “little old man who prays for parking places and then gets a parking place and says it’s God’s act for him.”

But in attributing a prime parking spot or cash found on the sidewalk to God, people tend to point to their own specific experiences without considering the negative effects on others, Schweiker says.
“That little old man may have kept a very sick person from getting a parking place and getting to the hospital on time,” he says. “Since Christians are supposed to love their neighbors, that’s a bit of a problem.”

Carmen Fowler LaBerge, host of the Christian radio program “The Reconnect.” Photo courtesy of Carmen Fowler LaBerge

Carmen Fowler LaBerge, who hosts “The Reconnect,” a Christian radio show, also offers the parking space example — not necessarily to challenge claims that God intervenes in everyday human affairs, but to show the various ways Christians can approach the issue.

“The fun part about this conversation,” says LaBerge, “is that it ranges from ‘what is God’s will for all of known history, and then there’s like, ‘God’s will that I get a particular parking space.’
”
Many Christians believe God intercedes in mortal lives in grand terms: his plan that the human story have a particular ending, for example, as described in the New Testament.

LaBerge, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, says she knows God’s will because she has “read to the end of the book.”

When it comes down to the way a sovereign God works on a smaller scale, as she and all human beings go about their days, LaBerge sees it this way: “God made me a free person … in the way I live my life, the choices I make, the words I use.”

She applies this view to her thinking on God and whoever wins an election.

“If God’s hand is on the scales, what I can tell you is the way it is happening is through human agency. It’s the way the Holy Spirit is leading individuals to discern and then to act,” LaBerge says.
She says “if” God’s hand is on the scales. What about Christians who are sure about God choosing Trump?

Even those who share Schweiker’s objections to the idea of God steering humans to parking may understand this year’s election as a sharp turn in the course of history, with the stakes high enough to explain God’s direct intervention.

The Rev. James Bretzke. Photo courtesy of Boston College/Lee Pellegrini

The belief may be tempting, but the Rev. James Bretzke counsels against it. He does not imagine the Holy Spirit could have had anything to do with Trump’s election.

The Jesuit and Boston College professor of moral theology also invokes the concept of free will and agrees that God has chosen flawed people to work his will in the past … but not Trump in 2016.

Those God chose in the Bible were flawed because they were unassuming and unexpected, he says. Gideon was an ordinary shepherd. David was the last of his brothers. And David was a flawed leader. “But ultimately what sets him apart is when confronted with his sins he acknowledged them” and repented.

“I don’t think that’s the Donald J. Trump life story,” Bretzke says. “I don’t think that’s where I would put the smart biblical money.”

http://religionnews.com/2017/01/17/did-god-choose-trump-what-belief-in-divine-intervention-really-means/

Religion touches on the deepest hopes and fears of the human condition. There is a yearning for such certainty.

ANOTHER MAJOR MILESTONE - 75 MILLION PLUS UNIQUE VIEWS!

"When religion can no longer be taken for granted, it is still possible to have faith, but that faith will also be accompanied by a penumbra of doubt. One may decide to have faith, but every decision is in principle reversible. Religious certainty becomes a scarce commodity. Religion touches on the deepest hopes and fears of the human condition. There is a yearning for such certainty.

Fundamentalism can be described as a project to renew a past certainty or to embrace a new one. Such a project may be religious or secular, but its psychology, I think, can be best explained by the sociology of religion. The basic aim must be to suppress or contain doubt. If the fundamentalist project is to be imposed on an entire society, it requires a totalitarian state that will effectively prevent any cognitive contamination from the outside. Modern information technology makes this very difficult, as do the communications requirements of a modern economy. Slightly less difficult is a tactic of giving up on the larger society and confining the fundamentalist project to a sectarian or subcultural community. It helps if the community can be located in a physically isolated space.

Brigham Young understood this very well as he led the Mormons across an entire continent until they got to Utah, where he could say, “This is the place!” If the location is urban, the physical isolation must be replaced by social and psychological isolation. A perfect comparison is between the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and in Jerusalem. Both have constructed quasi-Disneyland replications of a traditional east-European shtetl—rigorously segregated not only from the wider pluralistic society but from the wider Jewish community—separate schools, separate media, relations with the outside world limited as far as possible to economic ones. In both cases the residents know that they could leave—the police could not stop them—they would just have to leave behind every vestige of Hasidic garb, put on a baseball cap, and (as the case may be) take the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan, or a bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I find it particularly instructive that in both cases there is even a linguistic barrier against the outside—Yiddish used as a vernacular, fending of the contamination that could come in through English or modern Israeli Hebrew! It is obviously difficult for an individual raised in this environment to “jump over the wall.” Difficult, but not impossible."..........

READ MUCH MORE:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/01/11/a-jewish-take-on-pluralism/

It’s about nostalgia. The French and the rest of them can’t get over the good old days when Jews could be rounded up and TRANSPORTED to Auschwitz.

Opinion: France and another roundup of Jews

 Paris conference just another attempt by Europeans to solve the 'Jewish Question'.

NEVER FORGET - NEVER FORGIVE - NEVER AGAIN - PM (ADD-ON)

Honest, I thought they were kidding when I read that leaders from 70 countries were heading for Paris to once and for all solve “The Jewish Question.”

The meeting took place on Sunday and yes, it wasn’t put quite like that; they have it as a Paris Conference to solve the Israeli/Arab issue – as if they really have Israel’s best interests at heart. This is baloney. All they care about is some new trick to divide Israel out of existence. The paperwork has already been done.

First of all, 70 countries? How many bigots can you squeeze into one room? Apparently most of the world.

So that’s the story. They have nothing better to do than zoom in on six and a half million Jews at home in the Jewish State. That Obama is a part if this makes is doubly obnoxious.

Trump will have to fix this and pronto.

That these Jews live with nearly two million Arabs in the only democracy in the Middle East – never mind.

That the Arab/Israeli conflict is the least important issue facing the world at the moment – forget this too.

It’s about nostalgia. The French and the rest of them can’t get over the good old days when Jews could be rounded up and TRANSPORTED to Auschwitz.

The Wannsee Conference comes to mind and if you don’t know what happened there we’ll talk about it some other time.

Except that it was at Wannsee where Hitler’s top lieutenants got together to discuss how best to TRANSPORT Europe’s entire Jewish Population.

We know the result. No amount of diplomatic double-speak can hide the fact that this is the same Europe all over again.

Why am I bringing up Wannsee when more to the point, for me personally at least, I should be bringing up Vel’ d’Hiv. This was a French indoor bicycle stadium that was used by the French as a way station, a first stop toward transport to the death camps.

Jews brought there had no food, no water, no air, no pity, no hope. They had nothing but horror. (Drancy was another and actually the first transport stop.)

The history books have it as the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup, or The Roundup of Paris, but my family needs no history book to know what happened.

Over a period of two days and nights, July 16/17, 1942, more than 13,000 Jews were rounded up for transport – among them 4,000 children and infants.

The Gestapo were delighted. They had asked for only about half that number. The French had never been so efficient.

Our home was Toulouse. This was the Free Zone according to Vichy. Free Zone?

“Not at all,” says Sarah. “The Gestapo were all over the place. They were directing traffic on my way to school – in German.”

Jews were being picked off along the streets. Everybody waited for the knock on the door. We were next…and all of it happened awfully fast.

One day you’re a proper citizen of France surrounded by hospitable Christian neighbors. Next day you’re a criminal.

Altogether more than 70,000 Jews living in France were handed over to the Gestapo throughout the war.

My sister covers it in her memoir “Sarah and Abraham.” I tell it in my memoir “Escape From Mount Moriah.”

The film “The Sorrow and the Pity” documents France’s shame. Alain Delon tells it well in the movie drama “Mr. Klein.”

So this is a big story and it is nothing new. It is simply happening again. Once again the nations are disturbed.

They are disturbed by the fact that the Jewish people can’t be rounded up for transport. It used to be so simple.

Now the Jews have a home – Israel. This is what irks them and here they come again to fix their “Jewish Problem.”

So I have a personal say in this and I say France’s shame will endure longer than a meeting on Sunday. This is a shame unforgivable and everlasting.

Ditto the rest of this heartless world.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist: “News Anchor Sweetheart,” a novelist’s version of Fox News and Megyn Kelly. Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

The internal war in America and among Jews over Trump is not just about politics, it’s also about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass. That is equally true among Jews.

Trump’s Jews and Obama’s Jews

The Left is losing the culture war within the Jewish community.

  by Daniel Greenfield

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district.

The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into mourning at Hillary’s loss.

East of Prospect Park, in a vast sea of blue, is what looks like a red sofa. Trump won here with the Chabad Chassidim of Crown Heights. He won in the more mainstream Orthodox Jewish communities of Flatbush. He won by huge margins among the Russian Jewish immigrants of Brighton Beach who listen to a man dubbed the “Russian Rush Limbaugh.”

As the left-wing Forward put it, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was in a Jewish neighborhood.” But it was a certain type of Jewish neighborhood. The wrong type.

“You can compare them to Rust Belt voters,” a Forward source states. “They are hardworking people, not college educated.”

And then in Far Rockaway where the housing projects by the beach give way to the red Orthodox Jewish communities that extend into Long Island.

There’s a line that recurs again and again in the attacks on David Friedman; the man picked by President-elect Trump to serve as the ambassador to Israel. It’s not stated openly. It’s implied.

“David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island,” is the sneering summary.

Remnick, the New Yorker’s left-wing editor, took the sneering to a new level, titling his smear as “Trump’s Daily Bankruptcy.” Jewish identity, he declares, has never been a matter of “bankruptcy law.”

To a certain class of elites, it is self-evidently absurd that a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island be appointed to anything or be listened to about anything. David Remnick is a Washington Post man married to a New York Times woman who went on to inherit the editorship of the New Yorker and turn it into a left-wing echo chamber. He lives in a $3.25 million four-bedroom Manhattan apartment with a wood-burning fireplace.

And David Friedman is the Orthodox son of a Rabbi from Woodmere who still lives there. His father was a Republican who hosted President Reagan. He might occasionally be allowed to read the New Yorker.

And that’s about it.

Yet it’s hard to think of anything that might recommend Friedman more to Trump.

Over at New York Magazine, Frank Rich and Fran Leibowitz famously chuckled over Trump being “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” David Brooks, the token slightly right of the left voice at the New York Times, full of contempt for Trump, in an infamous moment, studied Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” and came to the conclusion that, “he’ll be a very good president.”

“I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” Brooks has said.

Obama spoke like one of the collective “us”. Trump and Friedman don’t talk like “us”. Their voices are distinctly working class. Their New York values are those of a grittier and grimier country.

Trump’s calling card was, “Make America Great Again”. Obama’s was a memoir about race and identity that was a hit on college campuses. Two cultures could hardly be further apart.

The internal war in America and among Jews over Trump is not just about politics, it’s also about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass. That is equally true among Jews.

The same divide exists between the slick branding of J Street’s conferences stocked with self-appointed thought leaders who have never worked for a living and the hard-working Jewish communities who loathe the New York Times for its hostility to Israel. These are the Jews who have never been represented in national politics. Whom most of the left didn’t even know existed.

Friedman’s appointment led leftists like Remnick to undertake a baffled archeological survey of Arutz Sheva: a popular pro-Israel news site that no one at the New Yorker had ever heard of. The elites of the left have suddenly had to grapple with the existence of people who don’t talk like “us” or think like “us”.

And that for many voters, non-Jewish and Jewish, encompassed the thrill of Trump. Voting for Trump forced the elites that had ignored them out to acknowledge their existence for the very first time.

The split is as real among Jews as it is in the rest of America. Trump’s victory allowed Jewish communities that had been shut out of the national dialogue to have a voice. The divide over Israel is not only about policy, but about culture and class. The divide between readers of the Jewish Press and the Forward is as real as the yawning gap between country music listeners and the NPR audiences.

Trump and Obama both have inner circles filled with Jews. But they are as different as David Remnick is from David Friedman, as Jan Schakowsky is from Boris Epshteyn, or as J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami is from Jason Greenblatt, a Trump advisor who performed armed guard duty while studying in Israel.

Obama is legitimately baffled by accusations of anti-Semitism. His inner circle of left-wing Jews agree with him that the Jewish State is the problem and aiding Islamic terrorists is the solution. His echo chamber elevated marginal left-wing organizations like J Street or Yeshivat Chovevei Torah into representatives of American Jews. Meanwhile his people, like ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, took over already liberal Jewish organizations and turned them into lobbies for his anti-Israel agenda.

Now suddenly the President-elect is surrounded by a very different breed of Jews. Instead of tenured academics, progressive journalists and irreligious clergy for whom Jewish values, like American values, mean appeasement and surrender to terrorists, a very different kind of Trump Jew is now on the rise.

Trump’s Jews are scrappy businessmen and tough lawyers. They live in traditional suburban communities instead of hip urban neighborhoods. They are more likely to be religiously devout and have large families. And they don’t look or sound like the “us” of the leftist elites.  They don’t have the “perfectly creased pant”. Instead they look like the suburban dads and granddads that they are.

They believe that you have to work hard to get ahead. They know that you have to be tough to succeed. And they’ve learned to get ahead without caring what the liberal elites think of their manners and style.

In that they’re a whole lot like Trump. And a whole lot like the stereotypical Israeli.

It’s not just the substance of their message, pro-American, pro-Israel and pro-work, that horrifies the Remnicks of the left. It’s the conviction that they’re part of a social underclass that doesn’t belong on stage. The Remnicks have worked hard to ape the manners and attitudes of their progressive betters.

There was a time when his ilk dared to be pro-Israel. But when the liberals went left, they went with them. They justified their betrayal by blaming Israel for “moving to the right” and alienating them.

But Trump’s Jews, whether it’s his advisers, who look like every other professional or small businessman in Long Island or Teaneck, or the Chassidic and Haredi Jews of Brooklyn who voted for him, make no apologies for who they are. They pray toward Jerusalem, not Martha’s Vineyard. They do not cringe inwardly when Israel takes out a terrorist. They are not politically correct. They are Biblically correct.

They are not ashamed of their Jewishness. And now their voice is being heard.

In the fall of ’84, President Ronald Reagan showed up at the home of a Long Island Rabbi for a Sabbath meal. David Friedman’s mother spent three days shopping and prepared stuffed chicken cutlets, apricot noodle pudding and an apple crumb cake. Reagan toasted her as “a woman who makes a meal better than a state dinner.” Meanwhile outside, left-wingers protested hysterically against the visit.

At Rabbi Friedman’s synagogue, President Reagan declared, “the so-called anti-Zionists that we hear in the United Nations is just another mask in some quarters for vicious anti-Semitism. And that's something the United States will not tolerate wherever it is, no matter how subtle it may be.”

The United States has tolerated it for far too long from Barack Hussein Obama.

When Rabbi Friedman passed away, Donald J. Trump, a future Republican president, drove to Long Island through a snowstorm to pay a condolence call to his son. Trump has chosen the man who sat at the table with President Reagan, that “bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island” as ambassador to Israel.

The left is so angry because it senses that it is losing the culture war within the Jewish community. The future does not belong to David Remnick. It belongs to David Friedman.*

Footnote: I am a life-long Conservative Republican, and always voted (R), this time I did not vote for Trump (or Clinton), but I  am rooting for him and wish him every success as our 45th president. PM

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18 Dirty Jews!

37 Arrested In Brooklyn Gas Scam Probe 

 

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Dozens of people have been arrested in a gas scam investigation.

Thirty-seven people, including seven National Grid employees, are charged in the alleged scheme.

Prosecutors say a group of National Grid employees, led by a former employee, are accused of installing gas meters without inspections or authorization in Brooklyn and Queens. In return, they were allegedly paid by landlords and property owners who wanted to start renting their apartments out without waiting for the proper process to be completed, CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported.

The alleged mastermind, 47-year-old Weldon Findlay, worked for National Grid until 2010, prosecutors said. Other defendants in the case include landlords, property managers, and contractors. They face charges of enterprise corruption, first-degree falsifying business records, second-degree criminal tampering and second-degree commercial bribing, prosecutors said.

CBS2’s cameras were rolling exclusively as many of those men turned themselves in to police in Manhattan in the morning. Many of the men were accompanied by friends and family at the precinct when they turned themselves in, Bauman reported.

“We simply will not allow the lucrative real estate market in Brooklyn to feed criminal activity and potentially endanger lives,” Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said. “These defendants showed contempt for rules and regulations specifically put into place to protect public safety. And they did this with callous disregard on a regular basis.”

“These defendants ignored safety for personal profit, skirting critical steps and undermining the gas authorization process, according to the charges,” said Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark G. Peters.

National Grid releasing a statement saying it has “zero tolerance for unethical and illegal behavior.”

“The alleged misconduct, although limited to a handful of former employees, contradicts the dedication and professional values of our 15,000 hardworking men and women who are committed to serving our customers,” the utility said. “National Grid has fully cooperated with and has supported the Kings County District Attorney’s Office and the NYC Department of Investigation throughout their investigation, has conducted safety inspections, and has taken corrective measures where needed.  National Grid is also conducting a thorough internal investigation and will be working hand-in-hand with its regulator, the NYS Public Service Commission, to take the steps necessary to enhance our existing controls and to implement any additional controls and recommendations required to prevent a similar situation from recurring in the future.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/01/12/brooklyn-gas-scam-investigation-arrests/

Cuomo’s plan would also allow victims to bring civil lawsuits for 50 years after their attacks took place and would open up a one-year look-back window for survivors who under current law can no longer bring cases to do so.

Cuomo unveils plan for Child Victims Act that would do away with statute of limitation 

Gov. Cuomo shared his own plan for a Child Victims Act designed to help child sex abuse survivors seek legal recourse as adults.

BY Kenneth Lovett

 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

 

Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 2:56 PM

 

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo is weighing in for the first time with his own plan for a Child Victims Act designed to help child sex abuse survivors seek legal recourse as adults.

Cuomo, as part of a formal written agenda to be given to the Legislature Tuesday, said he wants to do away entirely with the statute of limitation that prohibits those who were abused as children from bringing criminal cases after their 23rd birthday.

Cuomo’s plan would also allow victims to bring civil lawsuits for 50 years after their attacks took place and would open up a one-year look-back window for survivors who under current law can no longer bring cases to do so.

In addition, the plan would treat public and private institutions the same by doing away with a current requirement that gives those abused in a school or other public entity only 90 days from the attack to notify of their intent to sue.

California nixes 10-year statute of limitations on sex crimes
 
"Child victims are one of the most vulnerable populations of this state,” Cuomo wrote in his message, a portion of which was obtained by the Daily News. “The outdated laws of New York do not adequately address the needs of these young victims.”

Kathryn Robb, a sexual abuse survivor and advocate, told The News she expects the governor to get a bill passed this year.

He added that “New York needs to address this injustice in the fight against child sexual abuse.”
Cuomo has told advocates and the News, which made the issue a campaign in 2016, that the Child Victims Act would be a top priority for him in 2017.
While the issue is part of his overall agenda he plans to release later Wednesday, the governor never publicly mentioned it during his six regional State of the State addresses he gave this week.

Dennis Hastert’s sex abuse victim calls disgraced pol 'a monster'
 
Kathryn Robb, a sexual abuse survivor and advocate who has regularly met with Cuomo’s office, told The News earlier this week she expects the governor to get a bill passed this year.

Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan said last week it was too early to say whether the Child Victims Act will reach the floor for a vote this year.

“Just as the governor did the impossible in opening the Second Ave. subway, we believe that he will clear a path and lead so many victims to justice,” Robb said. “We trust his promise, we trust his commitment to justice and fairness, and the safety of children.”
She added that “the governor serves the people first, and he does so not by the particular words in a speech, but more by the conviction in his heart and honor in his deeds. The new session is upon us. We trust he will lead us to justice."

The Child Victims Act has been around for over a decade. And while it had passed the state Assembly early on, it has never passed the Senate.

Sex abuse survivors lodge rallying cry for Child Victims Act
 
Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan said last week it was too early to say whether it will reach the floor for a vote this year.

For additional information please visit our website at www.sfjny.org.

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“A lot is based on ignorance and myth. Parents aren’t desperately well informed because they don’t follow secular media,” he explained. “Sometimes they say the rebbe told them not to immunise, but when I speak to the rebbes they vehemently deny it. There’s a certain laissez-faire attitude due to people no longer knowing what these diseases are. Immunisation is a victim of its own success.”

Children at risk as Charedi parents say no to vaccinations

Charedi children in Stamford Hill are at risk of contracting potentially deadly conditions like measles and the community is in danger of being affected by an epidemic because too many parents are not getting them immunised.

Members of the Jewish community in Stamford Hill 

The issue also affects the country’s fastest-growing Charedi community in Prestwich, Manchester.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has held discussions with communal leaders from the north-east London suburb, home to Europe’s largest strictly Orthodox community, because of “persistent outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs)”. The organisation has decided to intervene via its Tailoring Immunisation Programme (TIP), which was designed to identify susceptible populations.

Low uptake levels threaten to “jeopardise disease elimination”, according to WHO, which is why medical experts are working with community leaders — many of whom are calling for action now.

Chief among those is Stamford Hill GP, Dr Joseph Spitzer, himself an Orthodox Jew. More than 80 per cent of his patients in Cranwich Road Surgery are Charedi.

Dr. Joseph Spitzer

“Parents who don’t immunise their children are totally irresponsible, for their own children and other people’s,” he said.

For diseases to be wiped out, communities must have “herd immunity”, whereby well above 90 per cent of people are immunised. When that is not reached, as in Stamford Hill, where the percentage is well below 80 per cent, there is the risk of an epidemic, particularly among the elderly, young children and pregnant women.

Evidence provided by City and Hackney Public Health Team revealed that uptake of the 5-in-1 vaccine (combating diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Hib), which should be delivered in early infancy, was around 30 per cent lower in concentrated Charedi areas than in the rest of the borough of Hackney. In Stamford Hill, the uptake in 2015-16 was 64 per cent, compared with 90 to 95 per cent elsewhere in the borough.

Rates for the MMR vaccination in the same area for the same period were 76 per cent, while the uptake across Hackney was 85 to 89 per cent. This is significantly better than previously, but is “slowly and steadily declining”, a council spokeswoman said.

When Rachel Fein’s daughter was four months old, she contracted measles at the creche at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School, where Mrs Fein is deputy head.

“She was too young to have the MMR so when she was exposed to measles she developed it with complications,” said Mrs Fein. “Thankfully there were no long-term effects, but she was admitted to hospital with a high fever, lethargy, a rash and dehydration.”

Children are no longer accepted in the creche without vaccinations, unless there are specific medical reasons.

Dr Spitzer said that reasons for the drop in vaccination rates are “hard to define”.

“A lot is based on ignorance and myth. Parents aren’t desperately well informed because they don’t follow secular media,” he explained. “Sometimes they say the rebbe told them not to immunise, but when I speak to the rebbes they vehemently deny it. There’s a certain laissez-faire attitude due to people no longer knowing what these diseases are. Immunisation is a victim of its own success.”

Babies should be vaccinated from eight weeks onwards, but that advice often falls on deaf ears. “Occasionally we have outbreaks of measles, rubella and mumps which are entirely preventable,” Dr Spitzer said.

The Cranwich Road Surgery is among three in the area to employ a Charedi nurse to boost take-up. Naomi Freeman was previously funded by Hackney Public Health to do just that across the borough and was highly successful. However, she was recently made redundant due to budget cuts.

“I got rates up from 54 to 87 per cent [within the community],” said Mrs Freeman, who was taken on by Dr Spitzer last month. At that time, immunisations at Cranwich Road were just 50 per cent.

“Health visitors would be told that Pesach is coming up and they can’t immunise for six weeks,” Mrs Freeman added. “The health visitors took that at face value, but I say ‘put your kugel in the oven and come to me’.”

Excuses for not seeking vaccinations are numerous, according to Mrs Freeman, who says the risk is heightened by overcrowding and the high proportion of pregnant women and young children in the community.

But there are real pressures which deter parents. She explained: “Most mothers don’t drive and every week there’s Shabbos to prepare for. They are so overloaded so often they can’t face having a child that’s going to be unwell for several days. But the side-effects are so minute in comparison to getting the actual illnesses.” She continued: “I had someone who never immunised because family members said it was too dangerous. Would you ask your cleaner for medical advice? Of course not. So why go to family when doctors and nurses want the best for your children?”

She cited a recent example of a child from another Charedi community who had three limbs amputated after contracting meningitis. “Maybe the mother forgot her appointment or didn’t want her child to cry for a few days. Would you want that guilt?”

Rabbis are vital to reverse the trend, she believes and somebody playing his part is Rabbi Avrohom Pinter, chairman of the Orthodox Jewish Health Forum.

He said: “People don’t take immunisation seriously because they’ve seen those illnesses and think ‘it isn’t that terrible’. They don’t realise that it could kill somebody else. We have a responsibility to others as well as to ourselves.”

Rabbi Pinter believes the inaction is partly due to enduring fears about MMR, sparked by former doctor Andrew Wakefield who was discredited over claims the vaccine caused autism. He said: “Some people say ‘it’s in God’s hands and I’m not going to take that risk’. That view has no basis in Yiddishkeit.”

Rabbi Pinter is critical of the NHS’s decision to axe Mrs Freeman’s role, but commends her continuing involvement. “Somebody outside the community may accept some of the excuses out of political correctness, but she understands the issues,” he said.

The importance of vaccinations within the community was emphasised by Professor David Katz, an immunopathologist who is chairman of the Jewish Medical Association (UK).

He said: “All communities need to be engaged with immunisation. The Stamford Hill Jewish community is not unique, but they may need more encouragement, and a different, sensitive approach from healthcare workers.

“It is very unfortunate that previous efforts to support high rates of immunisation in that community seem to have been disrupted due to changes in service funding and provision. Doctors have already seen serious complications, requiring hospital admission.

“The good work done in this community in the past must not be dissipated.”

The issue also affects the Charedi community in Prestwich, Manchester. According to Dr David Hibbert, a local GP who is strictly Orthodox, it is a problem he has repeatedly encountered in his 30-year career. “I’m sat here at my desk with a load of immunisation refusers that I need to chase up,” he said. “On the whole these people blame anecdotal stories of this person who had a reaction or that person who fell ill, or they are just mistrustful of the whole system.

“If the government was really interested in raising rates they would just insist that no child could go to school without immunisations, like they do in France.”

Dr Hibbert acknowledged that some people are simply “overwhelmed” by the pressures of large families which is why his practice periodically organises home visits to immunise children.
Two years ago a report into the health of the Salford Jewish community’s health revealed that uptake was a problem among Charedim in the area.

The report showed that just over half of people (58 per cent) were totally happy about immunising their child, while the remainder were either unhappy about it or unsure. It concluded that a “new, hard-hitting marketing campaign on immunisation” was needed.

Dr Marc Herscovitz, a GP working with the Charedi community in Gateshead, painted a rosier picture. He said: “Rates of immunisation here are within the expected norms, with local rabbis supporting vaccinations.”

According to Shlomi Isaacson, of the Jewish Council of Gateshead, the local Labriut Healthy Living Centre has worked closely with Charedi families and with GPs’ surgeries to boost numbers being vaccinated and there are currently few concerns about take-up.
Low take-up rates are not uncommon within Charedi communities elsewhere in the world. As a result, there have been reports of several epidemics of preventable diseases in recent years, including measles outbreaks in Brooklyn in 2013.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/children-at-risk-as-charedi-parents-say-no-to-vaccinations-1.430122