Over the weekend, there was a long, somewhat-helpful piece in the Times about David Yerushalmi, the Hasidic Jew who is leading the campaign against supposed "Shariah law" in the U.S., a campaign that demonizes Muslims. But the article left me wondering: how much of Yerushalmi's campaign has to do with Israel, and why doesn't the Times ever go near that angle? Reporter Andrea Elliott does write:
His interest in Islamic law began with the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, when he was living in Ma’ale Adumim, a large Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At the time, Mr. Yerushalmi, a native of South Florida, divided his energies between a commercial litigation practice in the United States and a conservative research institute based in Jerusalem, where he worked to promote free-market reform in Israel. After moving to Brooklyn the following year, Mr. Yerushalmi said he began studying Arabic and Shariah under two Islamic scholars, whom he declined to name. He said his research made clear that militants had not “perverted” Islamic law, but were following an authoritative doctrine that sought global hegemony...
If you want to know what Yerushalmi thinks about Israel and the occupied territories he lived in, you have to go to other sources. Richard Silverstein says that Yerushalmi is a Kahanist. He writes:
Even Yerushalmi’s name is fake. His family birth name is Beychok, born of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to America. To be clear, I’m not saying that Yerushalmi’s legal name isn’t that. I’m talking about the underlying motivations regarding Jewish nationalist identity that are involved in such a name change. Yerushalmi means “from Jerusalem.” Yerushalmi is as much a resident of Jerusalem as I am. He doesn’t live in Jerusalem nor do I. Let me make clear that I have no problem with Jewish olim changing their name once they move to Israel, taking Hebrew names such as Yerushalmi. But to do so when you live in America is pure preciousness. He wants to tell you that he supports the settler concept of the eternal inviolability of Jerusalem as a Jewish city and capital. He wants to tell you he believes in the whole nine yards of ultra-Orthodox extremism regarding God’s sacred gift of all of the Land of Israel to the entire Jewish people in perpetuity.)
And here is Paul Berger writing in The Forward about Yerushalmi a couple weeks back and making it clear that Yerushalmi is a Jewish fundamentalist on his view of the "chosen people." Berger found a 2007 article by Yerushalmi that says:
“One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one. Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people. These Jews, the overwhelming majority, have embraced modernity in its entirety.”
I found that Yerushalmi article here, and it's clear that the dude is a wild-eyed zealot on Israel-- and that he (like me) regards the Palestinian issue as a core issue between the west and Asia.
...Jimmy Carter’s (yes, Jimmy Carter's!) analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian problem is a heroic effort to detach reality from the blanket of lies and deceptions known as the Israeli response to the Palestinians. In what one might describe as a curious oddity, a non-People with the most murderous of intentions created almost single-handedly by the 20th century’s greatest terrorist has become the cause célèbre of white Christian and non-Christian conservatives. For these conservatives, much like the Jew hating Leftists, the Palestinians and their righteous claim for national political existence has been despicably denied them because Jews ran from Europe during and after the Second World War to take land which they had not occupied in any real way since the destruction of the Second Temple. And the kicker for this brand of conservative is that but for the presence and despicable behavior of the Zionists, the West would be living quite peaceably with the 1.3 billion Muslims the world over.
If you are reading this essay and don’t understand this position is so contrary to fact that it can only be plausibly described as blindness, then either you know nothing of the history of this region or of the people and faiths which populate it, which in and of itself says much given its centrality in our lives, or you too are blinded to what should be obvious to any serious and reasonable mind....[The] Leftist or Elitist critique... reduces its claims to one of two positions on the Jewish State: either the Jews have no business in Palestine and that this vicious, murderous non-people of clans and tribes known as Palestinians do; or, the Jews might have some right to a small, indefensible Jewish State but the Palestinian claim is "equally" valid and the UN vote on the Partition Plan was the world’s resolution of these equally competing claims and therefore Israel ought to retreat to the original borders determined by the world body in a democratic vote or minimally to the pre-1967 armistice lines.
I would argue, although I will not do more than merely assert it to be so here, that for a Christian to take the position that the Jewish homeland is not Israel or that it is not even what is derisively described as "Greater Israel" is something akin to a positive result on a Litmus test for the dark forces which have themselves contributed over the years of the Jewish Diaspora to the problem we all face today with Jewish liberalism.
It is clear that the Jewish right to the land of Palestine is at the heart of Yerushalmi's thinking. You have to wonder whether his anti-Shariah campaign was motivated by his hatred for Palestinians (much as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz's shift to neoconservatism in the 70s came out of concern over what the Democratic Party threatened to Israel).
The Times reporter says she spent hours talking to Yerushalmi. Too bad that the New York Times won't turn the page on this angle.
(It's not unlike this July 24 piece by Scott Shane that mentions Islamophobic writers Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller without citing their views on Israel, which are core in Geller's case.)
I can’t find the link to Yerushalmi’s grossly racist piece on African Americans, but wouldn’t an NYT journo know about this? Or is it too easy to airbrush this sort of thing out of the picture when neocon Israel-Firsters are concerned?
Aha! “On Race: A Tentative Discussion” 5th article down on this pdf:
link to mcadamreport.org
He’s really not “tentative” at all, and it’s a creepy, insidious article.
An article that links to the PDF referred to by Bumblebye, and contains an example of Yarushalmi’s racism was published in Mother Jones back in February, at the height of his push to get state legislatures to consider and enact his anti-sharia law boiler plate legislation. Here’s one quote:
I’ve written three articles about his and Geller’s role in trying to get this bill through the Alaska legislature during the 2011 session – two while the bill, House Bill 88, was under consideration, and one right after the Norway events:
1. Carl Gatto Brings Notorious Floozy Drunk to Juneau to Testify
2. Meet the Racist Fascist Bob Lynn and Carl Gatto Adore
3. The Tentacles of the Hate Network Breivik Adores Touch the Alaska Legislature
In talks with a couple of the MSM writers in Alaska on why there was no depth to the religious aspects of what little coverage they gave to HB 88 last winter, they essentially told me that they understood their editors would not allow them to go there. This lack of willingness to tackle religion in politics in a meaningful, investigative way is part of why Sarah Palin was able to so easily ascend from Wasilla City Council to mayor to governor to VP candidate.
I hope to mobilize some resources in Alaska against HB 88, when it gets brought back up in the 2012 Alaska legislature in January.
thanks for your links philip, especially the first one. that RT video of geller is a must see.
The Congressional Black Caucus is certainly determined to ignore the blatant racism of the Zionist state and its supporters.
pots, yep..time and again. good to see you back btw. it seems you’ve been missing lately.
To be fair, what is the Congressional Black Caucus supposed to do? The Democratic Party elite tells them “Sit down and shut up!” in response to blatant racism against African Americans! And look what happened to Cynthia McKinney.
I don’t know that its fair to criticize the Black Caucus for not speaking up. Look at Detroit, look at New Orleans; those used to be centers of power for the black middle class. And now what?
You are underestimating the scope of racism that the power bloc to which Zionism belongs and, in large part, represents is capable of.
Maybe the Black Caucus believes it knows on which side its bread is buttered? Maybe they believe in the new black church of reparative socialism? You know, like Obama does?
The one thing liberals and Tea Partiers can agree on is US taxpayer dollars to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing and occupation of the Palestinians.
That’s right, Les, and in that they are joined by conventional Democrats and Republicans. I don’t see any dissidents unless its in the Paul family and Dennis Kucinich.
I can definitely say that Sharia law is becoming a huge problem for us here in Central California. Why, just yesterday I saw a burka in downtown Bakersfield. Least I think it was a burka, but my GF swears up and down it was a gang member wearing a black bandana.
Do Muslims drive lowered ’64 Cadillacs with skulls airbrushed on the quarter panels???? I bet they do! Probably loaded to the gills with crack coccaine and stolen handguns too! Yep, I steer clear of East Bakersfield, cause ya never know when one of them Arab ragheads is gonna do a drive-by.
Uh oh. I see in the paper that there WAS a drive-by shooting yesterday, and two latino gang members were arrested as a result.
Sneaky Muslims. They aren’t foolin’ me by golly!
Some things we’re trained not to notice. The NYT’s reporter spent hours talking to Yerushalmi and didn’t notice that in front of him was a flaming zionist. The same thing occured in their 2010 coverage of Pam Geller. In a long article on her role in the islamophobic movement, the sole reference to the Jewish state was a single sentence on page 3 describing her childhood: “Israel, which now forms a crucial piece of Pamela Geller’s politics, was not frequently discussed.” That’s it. Apparently it wasn’t considered crucial enough to explain the connection to the NYT’s readers.
I contend that anybody not wearing blinkers who went to Geller’s site would recognize immediately that there was a theme behind all the hatred. Israel and “antisemitism” are really what her posts are all about.
That is the case PTJ.
Abe Foxman did exactly the same thing in has Wa Po article a few days ago, trying to paint Brevik’s zionism as a “bizarre twist”. He compared Geller to a nazi but made no mention of Geller’s fanatic zionism.
I maintain that the whole Ayn Rand schtick is nothing more than a lame marketing ploy for Geller. She knows diddly-squat about objectivism and never mentions it in any of her posts. She uses it to try and present her repulsive and extremist viewpoints as patriotic and all-American when nothing could be further from the truth. Geller is an Israeli-first, by a long shot.
In the US, the State Department has a special office to monitor antisemitism.
Hannah Rosenthal heads the office. Among the antisemitic acts Rosenthal’s office looks out for, across the globe, are speech or acts that suggest a:
Now consider the incident where, according to Yossi Melman of Haaretz reported by Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam, Mossad assassinated an Iranian academic, in the presence of his wife as they were picking up his daughter from Kindergarten — Melman Hints that Mossad Killed the Wrong Man
So let’s think about this: If Hannah Rosenthal’s office in the US State Department monitors situations in which Israel is held to a “double standard,” will her office investigate the allegations and suspicions that Israel has a program to carry out extra-judicial killings of foreign nationals, in their own home countries, for reasons of Israel’s own concoction, or does the United States State Department consider that assassinations are within the standards of behavior acceptable from ALL states, against all states?
But aren’t all us democrats allowed, when our vital interests are at stake, to eliminate people who have evil moral principles and who threaten us or seriously appear to threaten us with WMDs? A licence to kill extra-judicially isn’t worth that much if you have to submit to the sort of restrictions that apply in judicial contexts, like not acting when there is reasonable doubt.
The system worked pretty well in Libya — we got the wrong guys, er, children, really — aerial bombardment killed more of Qaddafi’s children, but hey, pseudo-charlatan Bernard Levy whatzis name was in the right place at the wrong time, and set in train a whole railroad of bad sh*t that killed Libyan civilians, before Qaddafi could get the chance to act on the tough-talk that Levy claims he heard Qaddafi utter.
Dennis Kucinich was not amused: link to youtube.com
A June 10 piece in the Forward reported that residents of New Square, a town of 7,000 in Rockland County, must walk streets strictly divided by gender, with women on one side and men on the other, as dictated by Yiddish signs posted on telephone poles lining those streets. Women are not allowed to drive. Students at New Square yeshivas who wish to travel outside the town must obtain permission from the yeshiva — not just from their parents — before doing so.
According to the New York Post of March 21 some NYC Hasidim fear that a gentile-owned company might take over the private bus company that operates from Borough Park to Williamsburg and run routes on Saturdays, fail to separate men and women riders, and stop giving discounts to yeshiva students, as has been the case up to now.
for what it’s worth, which might not be a lot, geller has a post up on her front page titled ‘David Yerushalmi: “The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement”‘, where she discloses he’s her lawyer.
Egads, can you imagine the stench with those two in the same courtroom at the same time? Perhaps we could arrange for Dershowitz to make an appearance, thereby asphyxiating the whole bunch.
I mean hey, its worth a try.
Unfortunately, they’d throw said stench all over anyone attempting to prosecute either of them! Consider the career damage they could do, and then wonder who’d dare try. If the email was from Breivik, and if the govt went after Geller, I’d predict a show trial designed to fall apart at an early stage because of the people who’d be upset by her being convicted.
This just in from the Holy Land:
The Oslo-syndrome: Supporters of terrorists become victims.
link to jpost.com
Or:
A wish for Boycott against occupiers and sympathy for occupied people?
I have that syndrome.
I hope to live with this syndrome for a long time.
“This just in from the Holy Land”
“One of the most sensitive aspects of the murderous terrorist attack in Norway by a right-wing gunman is this irony: The youth camp he attacked was engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program”
Hmmmm. Barry Rubin, eh? I wonder, is he related to Jennifer?
We truly live in a terrifying age.
How could we possibly have “evolved” to the state we now find ourselves? Is it really evolution when we find the same kind of sick and twisted religious minds, grabbing the reins of power, and prodding us to bestial inhumanity against each other, century after century?
Apparently the only thing that has REALLY evolved, is the technology with which we slay each other. And that should scare the shit out of you.
It does.
The only hope lies in our getting scared enough to be more sensible, though that is probably going to take more bitter experience. (Do you know Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’?)
I think that the decision to found an international peace organisation after WW1 was, for all the failures since, a constructive step.
I heard LH was inspired by Arabian poetry–the hanging poems?
Thank you, Citizen, for that information, which I hadn’t heard before. LH does seem to offer one of the few really effective prophecies in poetry, in that it was written in the 1830s and seems to expect a vicious war waged with flying machines. Somehow the hero still has hope!
RE: “the article left me wondering: how much of Yerushalmi’s campaign has to do with Israel” ~ Weiss
SOMETHING ELSE TO PONDER: Inside CUFI’s 2011 Washington “Summit”, Special to JewsOnFirst.org, July 29, 2011
Our eyewitness report on Christians United For Israel’s annual Washington conference
ENTIRE REPORT – link to jewsonfirst.org
P.S. ALSO SEE: To Post Ombud, Critics of ‘Muslims Did It’ Blogger Are the Real Monsters, by Peter Hart, FAIR Blog, 08/01/11
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to commondreams.org
I find this characterization of Christian fundies very accurate, based on the ones I know, especially this: “actual interaction with Jews of diverse opinions is significantly lacking.” And for many, if not most, any actual interaction with any Jews is significantly lacking.
You know all of these details, but you don’t what to do? Hmmm. Me either How did it come to this?
Richard Silverstein says that Yerushalmi is a Kahanist.
The Kahane network is on the US Terror list. Why aren’t the US State Department, and the US Treasury Dept Office of Terror Finance & Intelligence (an office established by a AIPAC-endorsed Stuart Levey) applying strict sanctions to Kahane network and every tangential agency, institution, charity, and state, that Kahane brushes up against?
If the same rules were applied to Kahane network as are applied to anything Iranian, then the United Jewish Foundation, World Jewish Congress, NYCity Jewish annual parade, Israeli airlines, Israeli settlements, Edgar Bronfman and the other moneybags mentioned as funders of the various Islamophobic organizations, and the state of Israel itself, would be placed under sanctions, with the full force of the US government behind them.
Step up to the place, Daniel Cohen at Treasury and Hillary Clinton at State Department: sanction the Kahane network & its affiliates; they are US designated terrorists.
link to state.gov