Ils sont betes, ces fascistes
A French Facebook friend just posted a link to this page, Nationalistes Anti-Sionistes Anti-Macons.
It was launched not long ago, heading into the French elections; it translates as "Anti-Zionist, anti-Masonic Nationalists."
Scroll down, and you'll spot a photo of Richard Prasquier, the director of the CRIF, the umbrella body for French Jewry. He is posing with outgoing president Nicolas Sarkozy and incoming president Francois Hollande,.
Helpfully, the page manager points a yellow arrow at Prasquier and explains: "He's the boss!"
Most telling about this group (if it's more than a single yutz) is its logo: It features Asterix.
The wisecracking, pun-proficient Gaul hero who helped turned BD into a literary form (and who taught me the little French I can manage.)
Who was created by Rene Goscinny.
Who is buried in a Jewish cemetery, who according to Wikipedia left much of his money to the French rabbinate.
Who was Jewish. Read here his daughter's moving account of his first and last visit to Jerusalem, two months before his death:
Il était juif, toute sa famille avait été assassinée pendant la guerre. Aller en Israël était symbolique. Comme un voyage prémonitoire avant le grand voyage.
He was Jewish, his entire family was murdered during the war. Going to Israel was symbolic. Like a prep for the great voyage.
Oh for an Obelix moment here: "They're not so bright, these fascists."
The group's logo -- considering Goscinny's brilliance -- is especially galling (forgive -- nah, don't forgive, enjoy -- the pun.)
First France -- then the world.
Geddit?
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Memo to White House: Google those Jewish names, Gertrude Stein is a no-no-UPDATE
Why on earth, considering what we know about Gertrude Stein and her dalliances with Nazis, would the White House cite her in a presidential proclamation marking Jewish American Heritage Month?
From the proclamation:
From Aaron Copland to Albert Einstein, Gertrude Stein to Justice Louis Brandeis, generations of Jewish Americans have brought to bear some of our country's greatest achievements and forever enriched our national life.
The timing is particularly ironic given the current controversy over the Gertrude Stein-related exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In response to complaints that the exhibit ignored the writer's relationship with fascism, the museum is now changing its exhibit.
UPDATE: White House spokesman emails to say:
A version of this proclamation was sent out in error. The corrected final version has now been issued.
The corrected version removes the above sentence. Otherwise, , as far as I can tell, the proclamation is the same.
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Pipes and Emerson hit Christie: He may be pro-Israel, but he’s not anti-Sharia
In National Review Online, Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson excoriate Chris Christie, New Jersey's governor as "siding with Islamist forces time and again."
Mat Duss at Think Progress picks this claim apart.
Perhaps the weirdest unsubstantiated declaration in the NRO piece is this one:
Christie takes an ostentatiously pro-Israel stance, as reflected by his speeches and his recent “Jersey to Jerusalem” trip; this makes him unusual, for a pro-Israel stance typically goes hand-in-hand with concern about Shari’a.
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Ya’alah, Hillel
This solicitation for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's annual conference just popped into my inbox:
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Millenials stealing Jewish voters’ script
Hey, those meddling kids are stealing our script!
Poll shows President Obama ahead, but lagging behind 2008 performance with key voting bloc. Mitt Romney and Republicans working to make headway with said voting bloc. The president working hard to shore up support.
Once thought to be solidly behind President Barack Obama, younger voters burdened by a bleak employment picture, high gas prices and student loan debt are being aggressively wooed by the Democrat and his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
In 2008, Obama had a 34-point advantage over Republican Sen. John McCain among voters under age 30. He won about two-thirds of the vote in that age group.
But a new Harvard poll suggests the president may face a harder sales job with younger voters this time around. Obama led Romney by 12 points among those ages 18-24, according to the survey. Among those in the 25-29 age group, Obama held a 23-point advantage.
Romney announced Monday that he backs Obama's efforts to hold down interest rates on college loans, while also making the case that it's time for younger voters to try a new brand of hope.
"I think young voters in this country have to vote for me if they're really thinking about what's in the best interest of their country and what's in their personal best interest...."
"The president's policies have led to extraordinary statistics. When you look at 50 percent of kids coming out college today can't find a job or can't find a job which is consistent with their skills, how in the world can you be supporting a president that has led to that kind of economy?" Romney said. "I think young people will understand that ours is the party of opportunity and jobs."
And here's a Karl Rove-organized video:
Obama's clearly paying attention -- he's in the middle of pulling off the youth vote equivalent of his Jeffrey Goldberg interview-AIPAC speech Jewish double dipper a few months back... a Rolling Stone interview, Jimmy Fallon appearance and campus visits.
For the Huffington Post, the big news in the Rolling Stone interview was the president's attempt to explain the federal government's crackdown on medical marijuana dealers (think of it like the president responding to claims that he's pressuring Israel and talking too much with Iran).
And now... the president slow jams the news (like issuing a Passover message or visiting the Holocaust museum) ...
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Bibi, the cat, the parrot
I'm ancient enough to remember the younger Benjamin Netanyahu warning audiences to pay attention to what Yasser Arafat says in Arabic, as opposed to his relatively moderate pronouncements in English.
Such warnings are passe, with the onset of the Internet and a multilingual, wired world -- if a leader says something provocative/embarrassing/saber-rattling in his or her native language, it'll be out there in English, guaranteed, within minutes.
Even in those days, Israeli leaders were not immune: Yitzhak Shamir got into trouble for likening Palestinian attackers to grasshoppers in 1988. In that case -- and one suspects in many others involving Arab leaders -- the hyperbolic condemnation of Shamir was overstated. Language is the most primal expression of a culture, and one uses different referents in different tongues.
Bringing us back to Bibi and his two totally different Independence Day messages, one geared to Israelis and one to Americans. In the former he looks forward to hanging around the "mangal" or barbecue grill tomorrow, and he lists priorities for next year: A fence separating Israel and the Egypt, expanding Iron Dome, free education for kids from age 3 and reducing the cost of living (in that order.) He extols Israel's advances in high-tech.
For Americans and other English speakers, his cast is "Israel is unique." He emphasizes "restoring sovereignty" for a powerless people, and also becoming a "global technological power" (although here he qualifies that with a "despite threats"). He extols a "vibrant liberal democracy" where women are equal and says Israel is especially unique for the "tens of millions" of supporters it has, Jewish and non Jewish.
Nothing at all wrong with this: Two different constituencies, two different messages. Happens everywhere.
What throws me off, though, are the cat and the parrot singing "Hineh mah tov" at the end of the Hebrew version (which features Arabic subtitles). The cat is miserable, and apparently paw-cuffed; the parrot appears ready to hop into the blender standing alongside it.
What message are these unhappy creatures meant to convey?
Why are Israelis guided, unprepared, into this 20-second nightmare?
Here's the Hebrew version:
And here's the English version:
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Netanyahu, Iran, the Holocaust and Wiesel’s rejoinder
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by talking about ... Iran:
"I believe in our ability to defend ourselves," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during the ceremony. "People who dismiss the Iranian threat as a whim or an exaggeration have learned nothing from the Holocaust. To cower from speaking the uncomfortable truth – that today like then, there are those who want to destroy millions of Jewish people – that is to belittle the Holocaust, that is to offend its victims and that is to ignore the lessons."
So did Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, in a speech today at the commemoration ceremony at the Capitol. (I have the prepared remarks; if there are significant differences with the remarks as delivered, I will update):
Consider this: Eighty years ago, the world was scarcely in the mood for confrontation. People were weary from the devastating losses of a recent war. Economies were in crisis. Unemployment was high, foreclosures commonplace. People were focusing inward,grappling with their own problems. Meanwhile, a radical militant movement dreamt of regional and global domination. Headed by a Supreme Leader, the movement burnt books and crushed its democratic opponents. It amassed vast arsenals of advanced weaponry and invaded neighboring countries. The radicals played on their nation’s injured pride and stressed its racial superiority. The movement denigrated the Jewish people as a cancer that had to be cut out.
Today, too, there is such a radical regime —- in Iran. It also has a Supreme Leader. It also butchers its democratic opponents, supports terror, and seeks regional and global hegemony. The Iranian regime similarly espouses racism. It denies the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis while pledging to murder another six million -- in Israel. And to achieve its abominable goals, Iran is developing military nuclear capabilities and the missiles to deliver them.
Elie Wiesel is not happy with such comparisons. Asked specifically by Globes, the Israeli business daily, about Netanyahu's tendency to draw the Iran-Holocaust comparison, he says:
Iran is a danger, but to say it will create a second Auschwitz? I don't compare anything to the Holocaust.
One more thing about Oren's speech, at least as prepared: I don't know of any Iranian leader "pledging" to kill six million Jews. I have heard leaders hoping that Israel disappears and, when asked for details, envisioning a kind of mass Jewish exodus. These "hopes," of course, mask threats. But for precision's sake, they have not specified an Iranian role in bringing about this exodus, nor have they suggested that it would involve murdering the entire Jewish population of Israel.
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Eric Cantor’s pregnant silence
Mike Allen of Politico today asked Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, if he's detected anti-Semitism among members of Congress.
Cantor's initial response is "no."
Then he says he doesn't want to say "anything about those remarks," presumably referring to an allegation attributed to his office that Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), whose defeat in a primary last month Cantor helped engineer, had once said that Cantor needed to be "saved."
He adds he doesn't "want to talk about anything having to do with the darker side about any kind of comments made whenever."
Allen presses him: "So you're saying there is a darker side."
Cantor skates to a broader answer about how America is a nation that strives for equal treatment but "we've still got work to do."
Allen circles back: "We're talking about the House Republican conference."
What does Cantor's shrug say?
ThinkProgress and the National Jewish Democratic Council describe his shrug as an acknowledgment that anti-Semitism persists among his fellow Republicans.
That's a leap. But an elaboration from Cantor would be good.
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Thomas Friedman wants Mike Bloomberg to run for president
Thomas Friedman’s call for Michael Bloomberg to run for president is odd in that the New York Times columnist doesn’t think that the Big Apple’s mayor needs to be in it to win it. (It's a good thing since Bloomberg himself has previously suggested that America’s not yet ready to elect “a short, Jewish billionaire from New York” -- though that didn’t stop him and his aides from flirting with a run.)
Instead, Friedman suggests that Bloomberg could usefully contribute just by getting in the debates:
Bloomberg doesn’t have to win to succeed -- or even stay in the race to the very end. Simply by running, participating in the debates and doing respectably in the polls -- 15 to 20 percent -- he could change the dynamic of the election and, most importantly, the course of the next administration, no matter who heads it. By running on important issues and offering sensible programs for addressing them -- and showing that he had the support of the growing number of Americans who describe themselves as independents -- he would compel the two candidates to gravitate toward some of his positions as Election Day neared. And, by taking part in the televised debates, he could impose a dose of reality on the election that would otherwise be missing. Congress would have to take note.
It’s unclear whether the business-building, aircraft-piloting, short, Jewish billionaire would get in a race he didn’t think he was going to win.
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So beginneth the Jewish campaign buttons war
I'm an afficionado of Jewish campaign buttons. I think the Republican Jewish Coalition might be first out of the gate with this one:
As long as I'm talking RJC, I forgot to blog, awhile back, this effective ad.
Effective, not because I agree or disagree with its premise -- that President Obama is untrustworthy when it comes to Israel -- but because of how it uses criticism of the president from Democrats, and in proper context.
Each of the Democrats featured will tell you that things have changed since then -- the president gets it now. (Eliot Engel, for instance, told me this in an interview when the video was posted last month.)
The RJC answer to that argument -- expressed, for instance, today in this tweet -- is that a President Obama without the prospect of reelection is dangerous for Israel.
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