The President's Random Comment

Someone named Joel Pollak from Los Angeles recently tweeted:

"Being a Democrat in the Age of Obama requires you to believe cops kill black kids on purpose but radical Islamists kill Jews by accident."

To be more precise, this is an inaccurate characterization of Obama. He never said that Islamists murder Jews by accident. He never even admitted that Islamists murder anyone.

Rather, he made reference to "a bunch of violent vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris."

1) Obama never even acknowledged that they were Islamists at all.

2) He claimed that the "zealot" shot "a bunch of folks." No acknowledgment that he shot Jews.

3) He claimed that the "zealot" shot the folks "randomly." That means indiscriminately and casually. Obama agrees that the "zealot" shot them with intent, not by accident, but purports that he did so without premeditation or any one particular target.

4) Obama described the location as some generic or random deli in Paris. No mention of the fact that it was a kosher supermarket on Friday, the busiest day for Shabbat-observant Jews to shop for Shabbat.

So we can rephrase the tweet as follows:

"Obama wants you to believe cops kill black kids on purpose, but when radical Islamists kill Jews, they aren't necessarily Islamists nor are the victims necessarily Jewish per se. It was just some random zealot who randomly decided to go on a random killing spree of random folks in a random deli."

Or: "Being a supporter of Obama requires you to believe that black kids get killed by white cops, but Jews don't get killed by anyone in particular, certainly not by Islamists."

Read more about Obama's not-so-random remark.

World Upside-down

It's confirmed.

Our nation is officially upside-down.

A man is a woman, if he "sincerely" identifies himself as one. Said individual is entitled to use women's locker room, as per gym's "gender identity non-discrimination policy."

Protests made by anyone, even by a woman appalled to encounter said individual in the ladies' room, are deemed "inappropriate" and "disruptive," and protester shall be ousted from gym, according to ABC News.

Indecent exposure is art form, as long as it's on MTV. Pornography is merely "artistic imagery."

Nothing is black and white anymore. It's all been reduced to various shades of grey. Speaking of which, sexually-explicit movies that promote misogyny, exploitation and subjugation of women are artwork too.

Moral deformity is merely "artistic expression" and "freedom of speech." An opera at the Met has every right to dramatize, condone, and perhaps glorify, savage murder of a wheel-chair bound senior.

Mass murder is no longer terrorism. It's heroism, as long as the victims happen to be of the same ethnic or religious affiliation as the much loathed "Occupiers."

Promoting genocide isn't incitement. It's artwork. It's just a video game available at Google Play Store.

Conversely, artwork depicting Muslim "prophet" is incitement, of course.

Hate speech is fine, as long as it's is aimed against "Zionists" and "Zionism," what ever that means.

Beheaded infants are "settlers" guilty of "illegal occupation."

Puny Israel is Goliath. Who is David? Mass murderous Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, ISIS, etc., funded by: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.

Bloodthirsty assailants are in fact the victims. The assaulted are the aggressors, especially if they fire back.

Islamic State is not Islamic, we are told, just as Crusades had nothing to do with the Cross. Of course, both twelfth century Crusades and ISIS share the same contemporary relevance (!?).

Any attempts to describe Islamic State as "Islamic" are simply Islamaphobic.

Mass murder is merely a misunderstood form of protesting illegal "occupation," "Zionist world domination," blood libels, Crusades, Mohamed cartoons, and other such "crimes," for which the appropriate response is humiliation, rage and murderous retaliation.

"Never again" is a benign slogan, tolerable if used in reference to a defunct and obscure foe of last century. However, if invoked in current times with regard to a modern-day state with stated genocidal goals and nuclear aspirations, then it is an insult to the President of the United States and an insult to US intelligence, or, shall i say, lack thereof.

Even worse, it's repetitive, nonproductive, electioneering and polarizing.

Worst of all, it doesn't offer any alternatives.

Intimidation on campus is par for the course. Especially if the chief intimidator is teaching your course.

Premeditated shooting sprees at Parisian Kosher deli are random. Spike in antisemitism in Europe, US and US universities are all random too, I suppose.

In Gaza, nothing is random. Not even the weather. Winter flooding isn't random, but a deliberate act of aggression. Of course, Israel must have opened its dams in order to flood Gazan villages. (Never mind the fact that Israel has no dams in the south.)

A Gazan fisherman shot dead while breaking an Israeli blockade is very newsworthy. A black man in Wisconsin shot dead by a white policeman is somewhat newsworthy. Ten-fold increase of antisemitic incidents in Wisconsin is not newsworthy.

Thousands of dead Syrians in the past month is not newsworthy, nor is two hundred thousand dead Syrians in past few years. Secret nuclear sites in Iran...not newsworthy. Iran's supreme leader's English tweets calling for genocide ..not newsworthy. Obama insulted by Israeli PM protesting bad deal with Iran? Very newsworthy.

So there you have it, folks. The summary of today's news.

A world upside-down.

Let's turn it back right-side up.

How?

It's high time to teach the world the Seven Noahide Laws.

Read more about it. Let's start promoting it.

Purim at joint session US Congress!

Did you hear the news?

Our government is really getting into the Purim spirit!

A Jew from Jerusalem was invited to tell the story of Purim to a packed joint session of the US Congress... he said the gantzeh megila! He also read a verse from the Torah at the end.

Evidently, the senators and congressmen really enjoyed themselves. They gave him dozens of standing ovations. Too bad they didn't have any graggers with them.

Unfortunately a number of lawmakers missed it due to party reasons, i.e. they must have been invited to different Purim parties.*

The big question is, will YOU be there? Tonight? 6:30pm at Chabad of Westboro. If our Congress & Senate stopped all their regular busy schedules to hear the megillah story, shouldn't we all ought be there tonight?

Benjamin the Jew brings the spirit of Purim to US Congress

And if you object to this email making light of a two-party divide, then we have just the thing for you! Two parties!! Take your pick: tonight (Wednesday) at 6:30pm, or tomorrow (Thursday) at 4:45pm.**

Or, best of all, you can be truly bipartysan and come to both! :)

The whole country is abuzz about it! Even our president weighed in. He criticized that Benjamin (sic) "said nothing new," that it was all repetetive from last year's megilah reading. Well, there's truth to that charge.

But it's as they say, "Old jokes, new audiences."

All jokes aside, there's nothing funny about the Purim story. As long as there are individuals and particularly world leaders who didn't hear or fully appreciate the Purim story, it needs to be retold. Everywhere. From Washington DC to Westboro, MA.

Especially when there are plenty of modern-day wannabee Hamans who didn't get the message, in Persia and abroad.

So please join us and help spread the Purim message!

Am Yisrael Chai! Happy Purim and see you tonight!
Rabbi Green 

* Our president said he unfortunately wasn't able to watch the Purim address, because he was at a Putin party. Close enough.
** We're reading the megila at 6:30 and 4:45 respectively, but you can come later too and join in the festivities!

The Most Important Story on Earth

Finally some newsworthy articles from our corrupt media, about our corrupt media.
They must have slipped through the cracks.

Much more to be said, but for now, here are links to the articles.

Former AP correspondent explains how reporters get it wrong

Ugly truths about New York Times

Please note: I do not necessarily agree with all points espoused by these writers.

ISIS, ISIL or IS? -- Nomenclature for a "State" of Genocidal Islamists

This summer we have been witness to the extraordinary and meteoric rise of the newest generation of rogue Islamists, along with the ethnic cleansing and Islamicization they have brought to their newly won territory. Of course, I refer to the genocide they have wrought on thousands of innocents, not to mention the beheading of two American journalists and scores of others.

I shall not bore you with a discussion of who these people are, if they can justly be called "people" at all, for that matter. Nor shall I describe their nefarious acts or crazed ideology of blood lust and mass murder. Instead, I ask once simple question. What is this entity called and why?

Strangely, no one seems to be in agreement about exactly what to call them in English.

The news media seems to favor the term ISIS, acrostic for Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, while the White House refers to it as ISIL, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or as I read today, "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." And now we are hearing just plain IS, Islamic State.

As we've discussed here in the past, our choice of words is rather revealing about our own often subtle biases. Long before the recent articles unmasking mainstream media's insidious yet shameless collaboration with Hamas, one could plainly recognize that the news media was not simply reporting a story, or offering objective commentary. Rather, the reporter was making a political statement and taking sides. Israel invariably was depicted as the aggressor, occupier and colonial power. Islamo-Fascist genocidal murderers or attempted murderers were depicted as victims. A baby girl beheaded in her crib is called the "settler," the aggressor, while the bloodthirsty savages who beheaded her are victimized Palestinians protesting "illegal occupation." Simple choice of words turns a report of  horrific crime (think Foley, Sotloff or Gaines, except it was a three-month-old infant) into a appallingly contorted political statement, or misstatement, to be more precise.

Name calling is even more telling. How do you define or identify this individual, group or area? For example, if it is the "West Bank," then it relates to the East Bank, or the modern state of Jordan, and there is implied justification for Jordanian occupation or Arab rule. If it is Judea and Samaria, then it is historically Jewish land dating back to antiquity, long before the Mohammedans or even Romans appeared on the horizon.

So what can the media's and White House's disparity on the "Islamic State of Where ever" tell us about their respective agendas?

At first glance, the Levant is a much larger area than Syria. It includes Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Cyprus and Southern Turkey. So it would seem that the White House is identifying the broader ambitions of the IS hordes, perhaps in attempt to justify military US intervention, whereas the media seeks to minimize the scope of the threat.

On second thought, "Levant" is a term most rank and file Americans are unfamiliar. Even in academia, the "Levant" has been relegated to the fields of archeology and literature.  Perhaps the administration chooses to use a largely irrelevant and ambiguous term to downplay the threat. Or perhaps "Syria" is a buzzword, since the government of Syria has massacred close to two-hundred thousand of its own people in recent years, so ISIS is to be avoided, as it pits IS against Assad regime, one group of mass murderers against another. In American foreign policy, we need a clearly defined bad guy.

After further reflection, however, it seems that none of these explanations are plausible. Simply speaking, Americans don't care what the acronym stands for, or that it is an acronym at all. "Isis" sounds good from the media's perspective, while our president hears a more White House-friendly message in "Isil."

"Isis" rhymes with crisis. Crises make headlines, sell newspapers, garner clicks. Crisis also implies an unanticipated upheaval or sudden change for the worse. Furthermore, "Isis" sounds like a medical term, perhaps an abnormal condition or disease. In other words, Isis is a bizarre phenomenon. It could not have possibly been anticipated. It certainly was not festering for decades, ignored or even abetted by Western powers. This would fit neatly into the mainstream media's agenda of downplaying the true evils of the Islamo-Fascist world, instead promoting Muslim victimhood and reaction. Isis cannot possibly be a product of Islamic rage, the cause celebre of the Western media. Instead, it is an anomaly, a disease, but a crisis nonetheless.

The president apparently took this a step further. Not only was it an anomaly, it was not even a crisis worthy of world attention. It was "Isil," an isolated problem, confined to Iraq (we completely withdrew from that place, remember?) and the "Levant," some indistinct area shrouded by obscurity. No cause for worry or any US intervention. That's why the President wasn't even ashamed to admit that he had no strategy on Isil. Why should he have had one? Does the US need to respond to every isolated tribal skirmish in the world?

Sadly, our President has a penchant for promoting the most puritan (i.e. extreme) elements of the Islamic World, like the Muslim Brotherhood, through the guise of "Arab Spring" and ostensibly well-intended efforts to democratize the Middle East. Libya and Egypt are prime examples. And here was Islam in its rawest, most literally Koranic form, operating under the name of "Islamic State." But beheadings and mass murder is bad PR for a president who seeks to protect the image of extreme Islamic movements. So he called it "Isil," isolated.

That was up until last week. After public opinion turned sharply against ISIS following the gruesome beheading of one then two US citizens, Obama was forced to take action, albeit reluctantly. Now obliged to concede that this JV jihadi group is indeed a formidable force that threatens the entire region, even the entire world, the president has chosen a new rhetoric. Isil is not Islamic, he declared. It has nothing in common with Islamists throughout the world, so it is still Isil, isolated. No connection between Isil and Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, cried the State Department. Qataris, Saudis, and all the rest of the depraved Salafis, share nothing in common with the isolated anomaly called Isil. Islam is a religion of peace, we are told repeatedly. Hence the term "Isil."

The one term both the White House and media avoid is IS, Islamic State. No one wishes to concede that this is indeed a state, or that it is Islamic. However, it is in fact the most accurate, and is what they call themselves. Perhaps the reluctance stems from the old "Emperor's new clothes" syndrome our leadership suffers from -- the inability to see or acknowledge that Islamic State is not an isolated phenomenon at all. It is representative of a much broader problem, the depraved state of worldwide Islamo-Fascism and the consequence of Western pacifism and denial, or worse, collaboration.

Re: Steve Sotloff Yom Kippur Initiative

Dear Friends,

This past Friday, I sent out a community email announcing the Boroughs Sotloff Initiative calling on all local Jews (whose health allows) to fast this Yom Kippur  in tribute to Steve Sotloff's courage and heroism. As always, I welcome your thoughts and appreciate your feedback.

After receiving numerous responses, I'd like to clarify several points. In current times of widespread confusion and moral relativism, it is sometimes necessary to state the obvious:

1. My intention was not to skim over or minimize the horrific murder and tragic loss of James Foley. Dismayed and outraged by the atrocity, I mourn his death as do all our fellow Americans and, in fact, all human beings of moral conscience. However, Steve Sotloff's personal story that came to light only after his death captured my imagination. Not only because he was a fellow Jew with a profound connection to Eretz Yisrael, or that he was a grandchild of Holocaust surivors, but because he managed to observe Jewish traditions in the very unthinkably worst of conditions, amidst the most brutal and egregious of villains the world has seen since the Holocaust, at great personal risk.

2. The Hebrew date this past Friday, the day I had read the news report and sent you the email, was the tenth of Elul, exactly one month before Yom Kippur. Our Sages taught that we begin to review the laws of a holy day in preparation thirty days in advance. After it has become known worldwide that Steve Sotloff fasted and prayed toward Jerusalem on Yom Kippur in ISIS captivity eleven months ago, it seems obvious that we all ought to be inspired to prepare for Yom Kippur in a more meaningful and committed way than ever before.

3. The fact that I made no mention of the Islamic identity or jihadi agenda of his barbaric murderers and captors was not intentional. Please do not construe it as failing to identify the enemy, or downplaying the real and present threat of global and local jihad, growing Islamic fanaticism, and the West's self-destructive pacifism, or worse, its tacit complicity. The fact I chose to highlight was Steve's courage and moral conviction, not the enemy's bloodthirsty brutality, or its deranged and immoral ideology. In fact, it was a rather unimportant detail. The real story was the eternal triumph of the Jewish neshama.

It is in fact crucial to understand that ISIS (or what ever it is they call themselves), Al Kaieda, Hamas, their Qatari supporters, Al-Shabab, the Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, so-called "moderate" groups like Fatah or "Palestinian Authority," and all others of their ilk, including the Shiite Iranians and so-called Hizbollah, are all manifestations of the same underlying prolem. In past blog posts, I have referred to it as Genocidal Islamo-Fascism. This problem is compounded many times over by the deafening silence of Muslim leaders and laymen worldwide and hence, the irrelevance of the self-professed moderates, the shocking distortions of the complicit world media, the EU and UN's antisemitic obsession, our own government's apparent indifference, or "lack of strategy," if you will.

In a broader sense, our own nation's befuddled political correctness is symptomatic of a much greater problem, namely, the lack of moral clarity. True and uncompromising moral clarity can only be based on belief in a Supreme Being, G-d Almighty, Who imparted the Seven Noahide Laws as a universal code of morality for all mankind. As a light unto the nations, it is we, the Jewish People, who are entrusted with the mission of bringing this message to the world and teaching the Noahide Laws to our fellow humans of all creeds, races, and ethnicities.

But again, all this was not the focal point of the email. Rather, it was about the indomitable bond between a Jew and his Creator.

Please join us in our initiative this Yom Kippur.

Best wishes,
Rabbi Green

Funding the Problem

Dear Friends,

It has been quite a while since I've blogged here, and lack of time is mostly to blame. However I do intend to resume blogging in the near future.

For now, I cannot help but share a frightening realization.

Several years back, I voiced my ire on this blog about the Enemy Among Us. I deplored our unsuspecting sponsorship of the egregiously-morally-bankrupt media outlets simply by clicking on their news stories, not to mentioning clicking on their advertisers or subscribing to their worthless publications. No, I was not only referring to Al Jazeera or RT, but to CNN, BBC, and all others of their ilk, as I clarified in subsequent Clarification. Please read the original post for context.

At that time, I wrote: "Why are we funding propagandist organizations that tacitly endorse terrorism?" (Parenthetically, please re-read blog post War of Words for elucidation and critique of the term "terrorism," and my alternative term of choice, IGM.)

Well, I now have come to realize that I am personally guilty of far worse. Ok, maybe not personally, but certainly collectively. You see, I have just come to realize that my very own US government is directly funding a notorious, world-recognized jihadi-terrorist organization, Hamas.  Here's a link about this shocking turn of events. So now I know how my tax dollars are being spent, to fund Islamo-fascist genocidal murderers, kidnappers, suicide bombers, jihadi warriors, war criminals and baby killers.

Great job, Barack. You've got some foreign policy. Foreign, indeed. Foreign and bizarre that any western power or self-respecting government from the free world would so unabashedly and flagrantly violate their very own laws that prohibit dispensing taxpayer money to recognized terrorist organizations.

But what is more bizarre that we sit by silently while this outrageous malfeasance goes largely unnoticed.

Where are the mass protest, popular uprising, civil disobedience, or at least a few picket signs? Where are all the Jewish organizations? Why aren't we all up in arms?

The silence is deafening.

Someone once aptly commented, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

It seems to me that the very first step of the solution is to stop funding the problem.