April 27, 2019

(Jewish Group) My Jewish faith should not undermine my place in the feminist left

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Since starting University, my identity as both a feminist and a Jew has been increasingly called into question. Somehow my religion seems at odds with the language and space of the student Left that most of the time I am comfortable and fluent in. Yet surely, by virtue of being Jewish, and even more so because I can’t pass off as being a ‘white-Jew’, I am part of the host of minorities that the Left should be fighting for. More often than not however, this is not the case.

Even the Women’s March Movement last year was described by an article in the New York Times as “roiled by accusations of anti-Semitism”. It was reported that Women’s March activists were “grappling with how they treat Jews – and whether they should be counted as privileged white Americans or “marginalised” minorities”. This was put into sharper focus in the aftermath of the October mass shooting in Pittsburgh, when 11 people were gunned down at their synagogue. If not clear before, it is undeniable after that antisemitism continues to exist.

Thus, what these activists face is a test of intersectionality. A chance to look at a gendered experience in a way that shows how women’s experiences are defined and attacked on account of their identity, religion, ethnicity, class and race; and how often these attacks do not adhere to the neat categories of the Left. Vanessa Wruble, an early organiser of the Women’s March, said that she was told by one of the march leaders that “we really couldn’t centre Jewish women in this or we might turn off groups like Black Lives Matter” since members of the group have expressed solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli Occupation.

Yet my relationship with Israel has never been uncomplicated and it should not undermine my place in the feminist Left. We can acknowledge Palestinian oppression and anti-Semitism at the same time – they are not mutually exclusive. In the words of April Rosenblum, an academic and activist, “Every oppression is different, and every oppressed group deserves our time and commitment to learning what their specific experience is like, and how we can best support their struggle for liberation.” Moreover, the conflict does not justify the use of Anti-Semitic tropes that place ‘the Jew’ in a capitalist, religiously conservative, right-wing discourse. Such tropes hugely undermine our struggle for mutual understanding and equality. While, of course, this recycling of Anti-Semitic tropes isn’t confined to feminist spaces, it is unequivocally a feminist issue.

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“Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.” -- Victor Klemperer

March 17, 2019

Pittsburgh Jewish Group Raises Money for New Zealand Muslim Community After Mosque Shootings

A Pittsburgh Jewish group is raising money for the victims of mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand as a show of gratitude for the previous generosity shown by Muslim groups.

Last October, after a gunman killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, Muslim groups were quick to raise money for the Jewish community there.

In the wake of Friday’s terror attack on two Christchurch mosques that took the lives of 49 people and injured at least 40, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh is working to reciprocate the support that Pittsburgh’s Jewish community received from Muslim groups in its own time of need.

Last October, a crowdfunding campaign called “Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue” raised more than $200,000 in four days for the Pittsburgh shooting victims. In a Friday statement, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said it is now accepting donations to help repay that kindness.

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February 19, 2019

A Day to Remember in Infamy...77 years ago...today, February 19th...Executive Order 9066

Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans in U.S. concentration camps.

February 12, 2019

Tennessee Again Tries to Undo Marriage Equality, Force Court Case

After multiple failed attempts, right-wing Tennessee lawmakers are again trying to undo marriage equality in the state — and apparently hoping to send the issue back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

State Sen. Mark Pody and Rep. Jerry Sexton, both Republicans, last week introduced the Natural Marriage Defense Act, which would prohibit government officials from “recognizing any court ruling that affirms same-sex unions, and specifies they cannot be arrested for failing to comply with court orders that do so,” The Tennessean of Nashville reports. Pody, who has claimed God called him to stop same-sex marriages, was a force behind previous bills to this effect introduced in 2015 and 2017, both of which failed to pass.

The new bill contends that the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling doesn’t apply to Tennessee because the state had both a law and a constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely a union between a man and a woman. Many other states, however, had such statutes and amendments, and the Supreme Court found that they violated the U.S. Constitution, so the Tennessee bill is on shaky legal ground.

If the bill became law, it would almost assuredly be challenged in court, but it contains language that would require the state attorney general to defend it — indicating that its proponents are hoping it could result in the Supreme Court reconsidering marriage equality, said Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ rights group. That’s “the far right’s dream scenario,” he told The Tennessean.

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February 4, 2019

100 Years Later, Dearborn Confronts the Hate of Hometown Hero Henry Ford

Deadline Detroit publishes “Henry Ford and ‘The International Jew’” with permission from The Dearborn Historian, a city-funded quarterly magazine of the Dearborn Historical Commission. The story appears in the Historian’s current issue, which marks the 100th anniversary of Dearborn native Henry Ford buying the weekly Dearborn Independent, which he used to attack Jews.

The Historian story is Dearborn’s first detailed examination of Ford’s anti-Jewish crusade, whose content lives on today in the online world of anti-Semites and other hate groups as anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise. While Ford’s dark side has been off-limits in Dearborn, the city has taken steps in recent years to come to terms with its other symbol of hate, Orville Hubbard, the segregationist mayor from 1942-78.

The story’s author and editor of The Historian is veteran Detroit journalist Bill McGraw, a Dearborn resident who co-founded Deadline Detroit with Allan Lengel. The Historian has no online presence; the story has been edited for posting on a website.

Chapter 1: Mass-Producing Hate

Henry Ford was peaking as a global celebrity at the conclusion of World War I, having introduced the $5 workday, assembly line and Model T -- revolutionary changes that transformed the way people lived. Reporters staked out the gates of his Fair Lane mansion. Ford loved the limelight and he constantly made news, even running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan as a Democrat in 1918. He narrowly lost.



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The author of this piece was fired for writing this article and the publication was halted.

February 4, 2019

How Henry Ford's anti-Semitism stings in 2019

Half a lifetime ago — specifically, the morning after the 18-year-old Rambler American I had purchased from my brother-in-law for the bargain price of $50 gave the last full measure of its devotion during my rush-hour commute home — I hitched a ride to a nearby dealership and purchased the first new car I had ever owned: a Midnight Blue Ford Fiesta.

I had no delusion that my manual-transmission econobox would become an object of envy, even among my thrifty newsroom peers. But I was surprised when one of those colleagues, a college classmate with whom I shared a two-bedroom apartment, sneered at my new ride with undisguised contempt.

"You bought a Ford?" he asked. "Weren't you a history major?"

In fact, I had been a history major. But I knew practically nothing about the history of the Ford Motor Company, or about the anti-Semitism that had been its founder's least attractive obsession.

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See: U.S. Group Protests Decision to Halt Distribution of Article on Henry Ford's anti-Semitism

Dearborn, Michigan magazine editor fired for article about Henry Ford's anti-Semitism

January 29, 2019

Can you be fired for being gay? Answer depends largely on where you live

Karen Pence, the wife of Vice President Mike Pence, garnered national attention this month after she returned to work at an evangelical Christian school that bars LGBTQ employees and students. While the Virginia school’s policies sparked criticism, they also highlighted the complicated patchwork of employment protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers across the country.

“If you are an LGBT employee in the U.S., you face a very complicated legal landscape when it comes to whether or not you can be discriminated against by a prospective employer,” Ineke Mushovic, executive director of Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank, told NBC News.

This “complicated legal landscape” involves conflicting court rulings, differing interpretations of civil rights laws by federal agencies, a patchwork of state laws and carve outs for religiously affiliated organizations.

THE COURTS

For starters, there is no federal law that expressly prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. However, LGBTQ workers across the U.S. have called upon Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of “sex,” to take their employers to court.

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Check out where it is not illegal to fire GLBT people.... http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/non_discrimination_laws

January 28, 2019

Far-right Polish group leads anti-Semitic protest at Auschwitz during commemoration ceremony

Source: The Independent

Far-right Polish nationalists organised an anti-Semitic protest during a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Auschwitz.

The small group of hardline activists held their demonstration inside the former concentration camp at the same time as the official Holocaust commemorations on Sunday.

The 50 protestors from the Polish Independence Movement were led by Piotr Rybak, who was once jailed for burning an effigy of a Jew.

Mr Rybak told reporters they were there to oppose the official – and historically accurate – narrative that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis with the active collaboration of some Poles.

"It's time to fight against Jewry and free Poland from them,” Mr Rybak said, a Polish newspaper reported.


Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/holocaust-memorial-day-auschwitz-antisemitism-farright-poland-nazi-a8749816.html

January 27, 2019

International Holocaust Remembrance Day:Have you ever been to a Concentration Camp or met a survivor

On November 1, 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 60/7 to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and is meant to honor the victims of Nazism. The same resolution supports the development of educational programs to remember the Holocaust and to prevent further genocide.

Resolution 60/7 not only establishes January 27 as “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust,” it also rejects any form of Holocaust denial. The resolution encourages member states of the UN to actively preserve sites that the Nazis used during the "Final Solution" (for example, killing centers, concentration camps, and prisons.) Drawing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the resolution condemns all forms of “religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief” throughout the world.

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Holocaust survivor remembers: 'I was a living corpse'
Holocaust: Told in the first person
One in 20 Britons does not believe Holocaust took place, poll finds
Holocaust remembrance in Germany: A changing culture
How will generations that didn't experience the Holocaust remember it?
Far-right activity at universities rising as more young people deny Holocaust, experts warn
Nazi blueprint for North American Holocaust acquired by Canada archive
Remembering The Gay Victims Of The Holocaust, Whose Persecution Is As Relevant As Ever
Holocaust Memorial Day: How the pink triangle became a symbol of gay rights

January 27, 2019

How will generations that didn't experience the Holocaust remember it?

The Soviet Red Army liberated the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, on Jan. 27, 1945.

This year, the United Nations and 39 countries will commemorate that date with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This date acknowledges the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. But, as a Jewish studies scholar, I have found it also reveals how traumatic memory works in the present and can serve as a reminder about the need for collective action.

Remembering past crimes

The United Nations memorial day connects Holocaust memory to issues in the present.

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