March 31, 2018

LGBTQ Americans Won't Be Counted in 2020 U.S. Census After All

LGBTQ advocacy groups are outraged after proposed questions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity were quickly removed Tuesday from a just-released draft of the 2020 U.S. Census.

The U.S. Census Bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, is required to issue a list of categories it plans to track three years before the survey is conducted. Tuesday's list showed categories ranging from race and gender to the type of plumbing in homes and the length of a person's daily commute to work. Each category is followed by a table showing the federal agencies that rely on the data to make decisions about law enforcement, health care, equal employment opportunities and more.

No previous U.S. Census has ever included LGBTQ Americans, which makes it challenging for federal agencies and researchers to accurately track the size, demographics and needs of the community. In addition, the more detailed American Community Survey also leaves out LGBTQ categories. Tuesday's initial release from the Census Bureau proposed including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people on both surveys.

Advocacy groups have been campaigning for years to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, and were briefly elated when the 2020 Census draft was released. But hopes were dashed when the proposed addition suddenly disappeared, and a statement was issued by the Census bureau that called the LGBTQ inclusion a mistake.

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March 31, 2018

(Jewish Group) How The Right And The Left Share A Double Standard About Anti-Semitism

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

When DC Councilman Trayon White claimed climate change was a conspiracy of the famously Jewish Rothschilds, he quickly made headlines, and not in a good way. Interestingly, some of his strongest defenders came from within the Jewish community.

“We believe that we can best address anti-Semitism and misinformation in this moment by engaging and educating rather than denouncing,” said Jacob Feinspan, executive director of Jews United for Justice (JUFJ).

As a Jew local to the DC area, I was initially skeptical. But the Councilman has since made a sincere apology and reached out to Jewish leaders in order to learn. JUFJ’s approach, which leveraged a longstanding relationship with Councilman White, offers an intriguing example.

And yet, this sort of “calling-in” doesn’t always work.

When news broke of the continued relationship between the egregiously anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan and Women’s March co-leader Tamika Mallory, many condemned the association. And yet some progressive Jewish groups moved quickly, to attack Mallory’s critics.

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I and others have been saying this for YEARS. It is pretty sickening to watch other Jews speak out of both sides of their mouths in regards to anti-Semitism, but have NO fucking problem being full-throated in responses to other forms of bigotry.

March 27, 2018

(Jewish Group) Anti-Semitism an Ill Wind, From Right or Left

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Passover is the ultimate expression of “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.”

(Anyone unfamiliar with that line should check the expiration date on their MOT membership card.)

--snip---

Frankly, an ill wind, regardless of the direction from which is blows, is still an ill wind.

A whiff of anti-Semitism emanates from the intersectional left, whose leaders appear disinclined to denounce (let alone dissociate from) the latest anti-Jewish diatribe by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, leaving some otherwise supportive Jews to question their allegiance.

A similar aroma arises from the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement when rhetoric opposing Israeli government policies veers into denigrating Jews who support Israel.

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Seems Weisman is getting some more push back. Good. Though, I am interested in the book.

March 22, 2018

(Jewish Group) Conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds are a symptom. The problem is deeper.

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Last week, D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. blamed the Jews for bad weather.

“It just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he said in a video posted to his Facebook page. “That’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.” The Rothschilds, of course, are a Jewish banking dynasty whom hateful conspiracy theorists have impugned for everything from the Kennedy assassination to the Islamic State.

The punchlines write themselves: If Jews really controlled the climate, Tel Aviv wouldn’t be so humid, New York would feel like Los Angeles, and anyway, George Soros and Sheldon Adelson would never be able to agree on how to set the thermostat. “The good news,” wrote Bard College’s Walter Russell Mead, is that “paying off the Rothschild family to stop climate change has got to be easier than shifting the whole global energy system.”


But although this story may be funny on the surface, it masks something deeply unsettling beneath.

---SNIP---

Yet even as it has become increasingly apparent that these bigoted disinformation bubbles exist and have ensnared numerous individuals, many are still in denial and dismiss the inevitable anti-Semitic outbursts they provoke as isolated incidents. This is true on the right — where no matter how many neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and Islamophobes that President Trump retweets, white supremacy and bigotry is viewed by many as incidental to his appeal. And it’s true on the left — where anti-Semitic incidents are too often ignored or explained away as distractions or exceptions, from the Women’s March organizers and their Farrakhan fandom to the Chicago LGBT march that ejected lesbians displaying Jewish stars.

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to DonViejo for posting this article in General Discussion (take a look)!

March 19, 2018

Greece: Thessaloniki grapples with Holocaust taboo

On the University of Thessaloniki's campus, there is a memorial to the Greek victims of the Holocaust. It was built in 2014 — very late for a city once known as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans."

"There are still people in Thessaloniki who don't know that the campus used to be part of the Jewish cemetery," says filmmaker Lydia Konsta.

The cemetery was destroyed during the Nazi German occupation. This was done in cooperation with the city's administration, who were pursuing goals of their own. Large parts of Thessaloniki had been destroyed by fire in 1917 and the Jewish gravestones were to be used for the remaining repairs. Thus, one of the world's largest Jewish cemeteries disappeared into the streets, sidewalks and churches of the city.

---snip---

The many victims' associations in Greece use the term "Holocaust" in connection with the cruel massacres committed by the Nazis, in which non-Jews were also killed. "The Jews were killed for the simple reason that they were born. Most others were killed for purely political reasons," says Molho. "A lot of people haven't understood this. And many still don't want to understand it. For me, that's anti-Semitism."

This form of anti-Semitism is sometimes openly expressed: "The Germans killed 360 people in my village," a retired teacher from Crete told DW, "but Hitler was right about the Jews. They still hold the world's power to this day, and they don't respect the crucifix." A 41-year-old animal keeper from Serres in northern Greece says: "Why should we deal with such stupidities as the Holocaust today? Anyway, the young generation has nothing against the Jews."


To this day, parts of headstones from Jewish cemeteries can be found embedded in sidewalks around Thessaloniki

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March 19, 2018

(Jewish Group) Why The New York Times Got the Fight Against anti-Semitism in America Wrong

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Jonathan Weisman compares the reluctance of U.S. Jews to speak out against the hate crime to the European failure to prevent the Final Solution, which is wrong on many levels

---snip---

Weisman’s article echoes the theme of his book that hits stores this week – “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump” – which is billed as “taking to task the Jewish community in the United States for a single-minded obsession with Israel that blinded it to the threat inside its borders.”

I don’t know precisely what American-Jewish community Weisman is describing, but his generalizations bear little resemblance to the one I’ve been reporting on. It is certainly true that anti-Semitism has surged during the rise of Donald Trump. But the American Jews I’ve watched have been anything but sheeplike in their response.

The ADL’s press releases that flood reporters’ inboxes and their hyperactive Twitter feeds don’t reflect a group that has trouble asserting itself, or one that lacks support from mainstream Jewish organizations and many individual American Jews.

---snip---

It would be more helpful for American Jews to remove partisan blinders and improve their ability to see and denounce anti-Semites regardless of ideological or political orientation – recognizing that disturbing hatred of Jews exists in both mild and extreme forms on both sides of the partisan divide.

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BOOM goes the dynamite! Awesome! This was a response to the piece I posted yesterday, Anti-Semitism Is Rising. Why Aren't American Jews Speaking Up?. She NAILS it, including taking on the idea that anti-Semitism is not just right or left!

March 19, 2018

(Jewish Group) Anti-Semitism Is Rising. Why Arent American Jews Speaking Up?

(THIS IS THE JWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise, up 57 percent in 2017 from 2016, the largest single-year jump on record, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That increase came on top of the rise in incidents in 2016 that coincided with a brutal presidential campaign.

I have personally seen the anti-Semitism, in online insults, threatening voice mail messages and the occasional email that makes it through my spam filter.

If not quite a crisis, it feels like a proto-crisis, something to head off, especially when the rise of anti-Semitism is combined with hate crimes against Muslims, blacks, Hispanics and immigrants. Yet American Jewish leaders — the heads of influential, established organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations of North America — have been remarkably quiet, focused instead, as they have been for decades, on Israel, not the brewing storm in our own country.

But American Jews need to assert a voice in the public arena, to reshape our quiescent institutions and mold them in our image. And Jewish leadership must reflect its congregants, who are not sheep.

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I have mixed feelings about this article/opinion piece. While it seems to mainly be finger-wagging at Jews on the right, combatting and speaking out against anti-Semitism is not the sole, or even the main, responsibility of Jews. ALL people should be speaking out!

March 17, 2018

Holocaust museum stands tall as tide of anti-Semitism laps again around its walls

The striking glass facade of Warsaw's Polin Museum rises from a tree-lined square in what was once a key district for the city's Jewish community.

Infamously turned into a ghetto by the Nazis, who later snuffed out an uprising there, the location could not be more fitting for a museum dedicated to tracing the history of Poland's Jews who, on the cusp of World War II, comprised the largest Jewish population in Europe.

Inside, the curved walls of Polin's cavernous main hall divide dramatically, symbolising the rupture in the 1,000-year history of Polish Jews that the Holocaust represented.

Visiting the museum last weekend, the bitter controversies over a new law in Poland related to responsibility for Holocaust crimes were never far from the mind.



Read more: https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/holocaust-museum-stands-tall-as-tide-of-antisemitism-laps-again-around-its-walls-36714134.html

March 17, 2018

104-year-old Holocaust survivor recalls the Anschluss

"Even before the Anschluss, Austrians had the Nazi symbol hidden under their lapels," says Marko Feingold, the oldest living Austrian survivor of the Holocaust.


Almost 105 years old, he shared with AFP his sometimes startling memories of Hitler's takeover of Austria in March 1938 and how anti-Semitism lingered on well after the war.

"Anti-Semitism was already very much in evidence in the 1920s," he says.

"But [Austro-fascist chancellors of the 1930s] Dollfuss and Schuschnigg created such poverty that 80 percent of Austrians welcomed the Anschluss", the centenarian Jewish community leader in the city of Salzburg recalls.

Feingold had moved to Italy in the 1930s to escape that poverty. But he happened to find himself back in Vienna when, on March 13 1938, German troops made their triumphant entry into the Austrian capital.

He was 24 years old and admits to having "no idea" of the true nature of what was afoot, as Vienna celebrated the Nazis' arrival in a carnival atmosphere.


Read more: https://nation.com.pk/17-Mar-2018/104-year-old-holocaust-survivor-recalls-the-anschluss

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104 years old and still speaking out against anti-Semites!

March 17, 2018

Macedonia prepares to unveil new Holocaust memorial museum

Ninety-eight per cent of the Jews of Macedonia were murdered in Treblinka during the Holocaust. Yet, 75 years after their deportation, an extraordinary museum has opened in the country’s capital Skopje, a joint project of the government and the now-tiny Jewish community.

The Holocaust Memorial Centre, designed by renowned museum specialists Berenbaum Jacobs Associates (BJA), is due open to the public next month.

But a series of ceremonies last weekend saw the project blessed by the Bulgarian Prime Minister, members of the Macedonian government, scholars from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the US special envoy for Holocaust issues, Thomas Yazdgerdi.

Dr Michael Berenbaum, principal of BJA and himself a renowned Holocaust scholar, said that the Macedonian community is one of the most ancient in the diaspora.


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