Monday, June 14, 2021

Summer Camp in Gaza. This is No Way to treat a Child.

There are no lanyards, s'mores, swim lessons or silly songs around the campfire in Gaza summer camps. They are dead serious affairs, intent on indoctrinating and training the next generation of martyrs.



The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades was founded in 1991 as the military wing of Hamas. It is the largest and best-equipped of the Gaza terror groups.   Al-Qassam Brigades has begun recruiting  for its  "Vanguards of Liberation" summer camp 

Al-Qassam Brigades "Vanguards of Liberation" summer camp in Gaza

The stated goal of these camps aim to "ignite the flame of jihad in the generation of liberation, sow Islamic values ​​and prepare the expected victory army for the liberation of Palestine"

Recruiting for Al-Qassam Brigades "Vanguards of Liberation" summer camp in Gaza

Recruitment, at several locations in Gaza, was brisk.





Sadly, it looks like there will be no shortage of  jihadi-wannabe's and young martyrs for the next conflict.

In Which the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Issues a Foreign Policy Statement

 Via Emunah: Cross posted at Pro Israel Bay Bloggers

On Thursday June 17 the elected representatives at the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, whose stated mission is “to regulate residential rent increases in the City of Berkeley and to protect against unwarranted rent increases and evictions and to provide a fair return to property owners.” will be voting on a foreign policy resolution accusing Israel of violence, oppression, ethnic cleansing and calling for the “end of American funding of Israeli apartheid”

This resolution is one sided, inflammatory and does nothing to further a lasting peace between the people of the Middle East. Even more concerning is that the extremist rhetoric may led to an increase in attacks on Israeli-Americans and the local Jewish community, as we have seen worldwide. The use of false accusations against Israel including “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” have been used to justify antisemitic violence.

Antisemitic incidents, with 83% referencing the conflict in Gaza and Israel have skyrocketed 438% in the U.K. in the last month. Four men were arrested in London for shouting “F*** the Jews. Rape their daughters.” A group of Iranian American Jews were attacked in Los Angeles – one was hospitalized. Jews were assaulted near an anti-Israel rally in downtown Toronto. In our own community, Jewish owned businesses and community centers have been targeted with anti-Israel and antisemitic graffiti
How can you help? Please write or email the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, expressing your concern. TheRentBoard@cityofberkeley.info.
CC the Berkeley City Council. rkesarwani@cityofberkeley.info,mayor@cityofberkeley.info, ttaplin@cityofberkeley.info, jchang@cityofberkeley.info , KHarrison@cityofberkeley.info, SHahn@cityofberkeley.info, swengraf@cityofberkeley.info, RRobinson@cityofberkeley.info, ldroste@cityofberkeley.info, auditor@cityofberkeley.info

To submit an e-mail comment to be read aloud during public comment, email amueller@cityofberkeley.info .

Remember, these are our elected officials- they are accountable to the voters. The resolution appears below





Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Google Diversity executive lectures Jews on the lessons of the Holocaust

The Google Diversity Annual Report says: “Building a culture of belonging empowers people to do their best work. Google is a company where people of different views, backgrounds and experiences can come together and show up for one another.” 

Dr. Kamau Bobb is the Global Lead for Diversity Strategy and Research for Google, so you’d think that he would have a great deal of sensitivity to how people of different views, backgrounds and experiences should relate to each other. Which makes it quite surprising to read the audaciously offensive post that he wrote on his blog in 2007.

In this era of “cancel culture”, we’ve seen people held to account for what they posted online before they were adults. But Dr. Bobb had already received his PhD from Georgia Tech by the time he wrote the piece under discussion. Given that it was 14 years ago, it is possible that his views have changed since then, and if so, I’d genuinely welcome hearing from him about it. Because it certainly strikes me as grossly inappropriate for a non-Jew to be lecturing Jews on what we should have learned from the Holocaust (and prior centuries of persecution).

“Wait, what?”, you say. Yes, indeed. You can read his post  “If I Were a Jew” here.  His utter erasure of the genocidal calls to eradicate the Jews from the Jewish homeland, from the Mufti’s incitement in the 1920’s, though Azzam Pasha’s promise in 1947 that “this will be a momentous massacre”, all the way up to Fathi Hammad’s “cut off the heads of the Jews”, screams louder than his multiple misstatements of fact and his characterizations of Israel as having “an insatiable appetite for vengeful violence.”

Perhaps Dr. Bobb might consider this: some of the lessons that many Jews learned from the Holocaust (reinforced by subsequent events such as the Rwandan genocide and the oppression of the Uighurs) are 1) that the Jewish state has to be able to defend itself because we know that the world won’t act on “never again”, and 2) that we take antisemites quite seriously when they say that they intend to kill us.

Discussions along these lines do occur within the Jewish community-- and even within Israel itself. But those discussions occur among those with a shared sense of reference-- and in Israel, with a shared set of experiences and responsibilities. Just as I'd expect that there are certain conversations which take place within the Black community, in which outsiders are not welcome to lecture them.  

We’ve seen far more than our share of “Jews didn’t learn the lessons of the Holocaust.”  But those don’t usually come from those who are professionally employed to promote inclusion at worldwide companies. I’m sure that after reading that, many Jewish employees at Google won’t feel that he’s ready to show up for them against antisemitic abuse.

(h/t Alana Goodman)