Billboard Wars II

There is NO valid reason that the (dis)organized Jewish community cannot respond effectively to the digital billboard exhorting motorists on westbound I-96  to lobby Congress to end aid to Israel. Money is no object.  It is backbone and conviction that are the lacking resources in our community.

 The billboard, which according to the Arab American News, will change location every three months, appears to be the brainchild of a few groups united by their seething racism against the Jewish state, including Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, whose nine years of harassing Jewish worshipers at Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor is documented in photos at the website FEH.

Another of the backers of this project said his organization, Deir Yassin Remembered “helped to initiate this billboard in the hope that others will continue to speak to Zionist power that drains American treasure and blood for the benefit of an apartheid state.  This billboard is a symbol that blind support of racist Israel is antithetical to basic American values.”

Hateful words.  Dangerous words.  Lies.  And lies left unchallenged become accepted as truth.

So what is the Jewish communal response? From all the organizations and synagogues and rabbis who hold themselves out to be champions of Israel and the Jewish people? From our Federation and its JCRC? From the ZOA and all those groups who recently hosted “Judeophobia” to warn us of the alarming acceleration of the scourge of anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism?  Easy to talk the talk in the confines of a Jewish community theater; true leadership requires walking the walk to confront challenges and defend against danger.

Thirty-nine rabbis recently wrote a letter to the Jewish News flaunting their Zionist bonafides as a defense against harmful outreach to radical Islamists in our midst.  Where are those proudly Zionist rabbis now?  Where is the collective outrage?  Where are the op-eds in our metro Detroit dailies? Doing nothing does something very menacing.  It sends a signal of weakness, of apathy.  Of a people that has not learned that “sha – be still” does not avert evil. 

Our community had better quickly come to the realization that we are placing our trust and protection in a Wizard of Oz delusion – pull back the curtain and there is nothing there.

Shame on our community that we don’t have the strength or moral fortitude of Rita Tilley of Bay City, a Christian lover of Israel and freedom and justice, who spent her nest egg to publicly proclaim solidarity with the Jewish State. 

Tilley, a Christian who has never been to Israel, said she started contacting billboard companies, and was undeterred even after one told her they didn’t want to be involved in a “political” message, saying they only did strict advertising…Finally, she found another company that gave her an affordable price.”

Tilley put up the $2,500 for the two-month display of a billboard on southbound I-75 near Saginaw and Bay City this past fall.  The billboard she helped design featured two crossed American and Israeli flags and read: “Stand with Israel our friend and ally.”  We the People of Mid-Michigan, the local tea party with which she is active, provided organizational sponsorship.  Tilley said she was inspired to show her support for Israel by Glenn Beck’s Restoring Courage extravaganza in Israel and his appeals to Americans to stand with Israel.

What a heartwarming gesture of friendship and support for Israel from a woman of such modest means, yet rich in what means the most.

Surely, our Federation alone, could easily underwrite such an effort.  And so could any one of the myriad organizations who fundraise in our community to ostensibly support Israel.

Talking Tachlis hopes they put their mouths where our money is!!

Why is Shaarey Zedek and ZOA Undermining Our Jewish Community?

Metro Jewish Detroit’s Dirty Little Secrets are hurting all of us.

There is a conspiracy of silence, an “omerta” if you will, by our communal “bosses” and organs of power to hide the truth, to deflect our focus away from serious and growing threats to much more pedestrian or newly-hyped issues of the day. To read the Detroit Jewish News of late, one would think that bed bugs and cluttered closets are our biggest worries. If only that were true. Granted, it is much harder to confront difficult and inconvenient truths, but we fail to do so at our own peril.

The sad reality is that not only have our leaders failed to address the accelerating dangers; not only have they reneged on their responsibilities to be the front guard protecting our welfare and security; in too many cases, they are the problem – in bed with the wrong bed partners.

To wit, the Jewish News just weeks ago featured a front-page cover story hailing the 150th anniversary of Congregation Shaarey Zedek. In the glowing review of the synagogue’s and clergy’s vaunted history was, by way of pointing out its ecumenicalism, a brief mention of the synagogue’s commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. No mention of the participating imam or his troubling ties to a “radical anti-Semitic” Pakistan-based Islamist organization whose founder likened Jews to parasites and presaged the “extermination” of the Jews. No mention of ADL’s warnings not to grant the legitimacy the organization craves to mainstream itself in advancing its ‘extremist ideology’. No mention that authorities stated the organization influenced the radicalization of a young American teen to become Al Qaeda’s top English language propagandist and the alleged mastermind of the cargo bomb plot targeting Chicago synagogues who was killed alongside Anwar Al-Awlaki in the recent US drone strike in Yemen. No follow-up analysis or enterprise reporting from the Jewish News. Only one small letter to the editor from a concerned communal activist that had to fight its way into the paper and only after it was gored of much substance.

And in what is perhaps the most painful and dangerous sellout of all, the Zionist Organization of America has thrown our community under the bus. Tonight at its annual Balfour Concert, the ZOA Michigan Chapter, with the backing of the national ZOA, is honoring CSZ Rabbi Joseph Krakoff, despite the fact that the ZOA knows full well about the imam’s associations because the ZOA itself made the rabbi and synagogue aware of them in vain hopes CSZ would preclude the imam’s participation or refuse itself to participate.

Instead of calling out an enabler of dangerous anti-Semitism and radical Islamism; instead of criticizing the appaling derelictions of due diligence that allowed this to transpire, the ZOA is honoring and rewarding the betrayal of our community. Why would the most stalwart of Jewish organizations make a a sham and mockery of their mission?

There is no organization stronger or more principled than the ZOA in defending Israel…in calling out university presidents, diplomats, generals, US Secretaries of State and Presidents and even Israeli Prime Ministers when they undermine Israel’s legitimacy and strength. But isn’t the strength and security of our local community worth speaking out for as well? What good are all the ZOA speakers and programs warning us of the looming threats when they help to enable and empower them in the first place? Just this past week, the ZOA Midwest campus coordinator wrote a crying appeal for communal support after a high-ranking Bedouin Israeli speaking here at the University of Michigan was treated malignly by a group of MSA students. Instead of gala concerts enabling the enablers, why didn’t ZOA, Rabbi Krakoff and his imam colleague go to the university to support the speaker, to insist he be treated civilly and to demand the university ensure the rights of Jewish students are honored and protected?

Bottom line: The rabbi didn’t want to hurt the imam. ZOA didn’t want to hurt the rabbi. Does anyone care that they are hurting our children??

CSZ and ZOA are hardly the only local institutions to have compromised our communal integrity and welfare. They are just the most recent. TT hopes desperately that all our communal organizations will take to heart their avowed obligations to speak and act on behalf of our interests. If ever there was a time for scrupulous vetting, for reassessment of priorities, for reorientation, it is NOW!

Read the report below.

ADL: “Despite its effort to ‘mainstream’ itself, IONA maintains its official ties to Pakistan and remains committed to its goals and extremist ideology.”

Joe Kaufman, Americans Against Hate: "If one wishes to keep away from extremists and caution others to do the same, one would certainly not join up with CAIR or IONA. One would shun them."

The Zionist Organization of America Michigan chapter, with the knowledge of the national organization and despite appeals from supporters and concerned community members, will confer its highest honor upon a rabbi who, along with the decision-makers of his synagogue, recently legitimized the leader of an organization described by the ADL as a “radical anti-Semitic” Pakistan-based organization seeking a global Islamic caliphate and who is also vice chair of a Michigan coalition (CIOMonline.com) which partners with CAIR, ISNA et al.

Tonight, Rabbi Joseph J. Krakoff will be awarded the Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award at the 78th annual Balfour celebration of the ZOA Michigan chapter. Just last month, at an interfaith commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks (www.liftupsouthfield.org) , Rabbi Krakoff yielded his bimah to Imam Mustapha Elturk, the head of IONA, the reconstituted US arm of Tanzeem-e-Islami, an organization described as a "Nazi-style Islamist movement" in a Pajamas Media article by Joe Kaufman of Americans Against Hate. (http://pjmedia.com/blog/cair-leader-tied-to-nazi-style-islamist-mosque/).

Elturk recently penned a whitewashing tribute to Islamic sharia law. He was also quoted last year in the Arab American News mourning the death of Hezbollah spiritual leader and US designated global terrorist Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.

The organization's history of anti-Semitsim has been documented by ADL and many sources. According to a report in Canada’s National Post on Tanzeem-e-Islami founder Israr Ahmad and included in an Investigative Project onTerrorism (IPT) report:

“He compares Jews to parasites, calls the Holocaust "Divine punishment" and foresees the "total extermination" of Jews at the hands of Muslims.”

According to Kaufman, and as documented by many other sources chronicling the organization:

“The movement was founded by Israr Ahmad, a religious fanatic who, according to IONA’s website, had broken away from the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in 1957 because of the group’s “involvement in the electoral politics.”

A couple of Ahmad’s favorite targets are Jews and Christians, whom he chillingly describes as “enemies of Islam...”

Ahmad brought his movement to America in 1993, under the name Tanzeem-e-Islami North America (TINA). In 2003, the organization changed its name to the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA), after Ahmad had appointed Mustapha “Steve” Elturk to be the group’s new leader.

Subsequent to the name change, IONA has made the claim that it is somehow independent from TI. Yet, the web address tanzeem.us is a mirror address of IONA’s official website, ionaonline.org.

As well, the group never relinquished the harsh anti-Western and Nazi-like rhetoric of its Pakistani parent.”

The national ADL profile concurs: “Despite its effort to ‘mainstream’ itself, IONA maintains its official ties to Pakistan and remains committed to its goals and extremist ideology.”

Tanzeem-e-Islami/IONA, according to the ADL, Southern Poverty Law Center and other sources, purportedly influenced Samir Kahn, the online editor of al Qaeda's English language Inspire Magazine, who was taken out alongside American cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, in the Sept. 30 US drone strike in Yemen. According to a Fox News report citing federal authorities, Kahn “admitted he was behind the October 2010 cargo printer bomb plot” which targeted synagogues in Chicago.

The Michigan ZOA Balfour fundraiser will also honor a local Jewish member of the US military. That is certainly noble, except for the fact that the honoree rabbi’s embrace of Imam Elturk degrades the tribute to the Jewish first lieutenant. As noted by the national ADL, Tanzeem’s founder expressed support for the Taliban as it is “based on upholding the supremacy of Islamic shariah.” Last Sunday, 13 Americans were killed in a Taliban bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. The death toll of US soldiers in Afghanistan now tops 1,700.


What is so vexing is that the Detroit ZOA, which made the rabbi and Congregation Shaarey Zedek aware of its objections to the imam's inclusion in the 9/11 commemoration and provided documentation of the the imam’s extremist ties, would honor the rabbi despite his failure to rescind the invitation to the imam, to back out of the event or to issue a public statement disavowing the imam and IONA. Even more curious is the ZOA’s refusal to take up the rabbi on his reported offer to bow out of the ZOA honor in the wake of this controversy.

It is reported that the rabbi turned to the local ADL and AJC to vet the imam, who greenlighted him despite the national ADL's extensive documentation and warnings to the contrary.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/american-jihadi-samir-khan-killed-awlaki/story?id=14640013

http://pjmedia.com/blog/cair-leader-tied-to-nazi-style-islamist-mosque/

http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Community&article=3199

http://www.investigativeproject.org/539/fbis-latest-outreach-outrage

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/american-al-qaeda-proud-traitor/story?id=11855126

http://ciomonline.com/resources/partner-organizations

http://www.islamicity.com/Articles/articles.asp?ref=RS1108-4817

http://www.adl.org/main_Terrorism/al_qaeda_english_magazine.htm

http://www.adl.org/main_Terrorism/samir_khan.htm?Multi_page_sections=sHeading_4

http://www.adl.org/mian_Terrorism/samir_khan.htm

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/fall/ten-years-after/grown-at-home

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/29/us-public-opinion-afghanistan-war

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=b4e39c78-3eb3-43e8-a418-cc61adc044c5

Goldstone's Mea Culpa Too Late to Undo the Hate

Justice Richard Goldstone's stunning repudiation of his infamous report attacking Israel for its military reprisal into Gaza comes too late to undo the international community's vicious isolation of Israel that his report fueled. With Israel's back against the wall -- condemned as a pariah state on the world stage and being set up for a UN vote this fall granting statehood for the Palestinians -- Justice Goldstone's contrition leaves a lot to be desired.

If his chest-thumping is sincere, he must retract his flawed report publicly before the United Nations, the very same body whose imprimatur made the biased findings so lethal for Israel. Executioner Goldstone must act NOW, before the UN carries out its death sentence against Israel. Mort Klein, president of The Zionist Organization of America, issued a statement late Monday, calling for Goldstone to

"do the only other respectable thing left to him, by actively working to try and undo the delegitimization and demonization that he has caused by working to have the United Nations rescind his report and withdraw all support for its use in any UN forum.”

Goldstone Promises to Recant -- but he can't

Goldstone will try to do just that "after the dust settles" and is also, according to reports late Tuesday, planning a trip to Israel to tour the southern communities hardest-hit by Hamas'rocket pounding. The invitation to Goldstone from Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai lifts the nation's blacklisting of the South African Jew after he issued his report.

Despite Goldstone's pledge to nullify his report made to Yishai and Danny Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Cedric Sapey, spokesman for the UN Human Rights Council that commissioned the report, is quoted by the UK Guardian as saying: "The UN will not revoke a report on the basis of an article in a newspaper. The views Mr Goldstone expressed are his own personal views." A move to change or withdraw the report would either require a formal written complaint from Goldstone, backed unanimously by his three fellow authors, or a vote by the UN general assembly or the human rights council, Sapey said.

Hamas crimes aimed at civilian targets "intentional;" Israel did not "intentionally" target civilians

Talking Tachlis agrees with the New York Sun that Goldstone's retraction, published this past Friday in the Washington Post is indeed "galling." As the Sun notes, Goldstone now says that it “goes without saying” that the “crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional” in that “its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.” Moreover, what he calls the “allegations of intentionality by Israel” were, he now says unfounded. Big-time bungle for Inspector Clousseau! In a sharp about-face, the South African Judge admits that “that civilians were not intentionally targeted" by Israel "as a matter of policy.”

Goldstone's blood libel has earned a place in infamy next to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As noted by the NY Sun:

"it is all too common that accusations made against Israel, when followed by sober investigation, turn out to exonerate the Jewish State. It happened in respect of the massacre at Jenin that turned out not to have taken place. It happened with the shooting of Muhammad al-Durrah."

How tragic that Goldstone's slanderous report powered a global tsunami of Israel-bashing and gave license to Hamas to attack Israel with impunity. By condemning Israel as the perpetrator of war crimes, the world has seemed to justify and excuse away Hamas' stepped-up campaign of terrorism. With his 'tale' between his legs, Goldstone tearfully confesses:

“At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality.”

Goldstone is now requesting that the U.N.’s Human Rights Council condemn Hamas’s “heinous acts in the strongest terms” and also condemn the “inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.” Fat chance! More likely that the UN would screen "Obsession" in its august chambers. Or, as the Sun correctly observes:

"For Mr. Goldstone to suggest, even by implication, that the U.N. Human Rights Council has any concern whatsoever for truth in respect of Israel simply asks the world to lend credence to a body that would be best disbanded."

The ZOA must-read statement on the Goldstone fiasco rightly calls out the media and other institutions for failing to give Goldstone's retraction the same long-play, blaring exposure as they did the original 2009 report.

Our area has seen an alarming escalation of anti-Israel programs at the universities and in the community, some premised exclusively on the fraudulent Goldstone report. We at Talking Tachlis won't hold our breath for such Israel demonizers as Jewish Voice for Peace, Norm Finkelstein, Mondoweiss blogger Philip Weiss, the International Anti-Zionist Jewish Network and others of their sorry ilk to exonerate Israel now that Goldstone has reprised his report.

Goldstone Report Poisoned Academia

The ZOA and other organizations committed to supporting Israel need to follow up these important statements with action that will have traction. The need is especially great on our college campuses, where a toxic anti-Israel climate now prevails in the aftermath of the Goldstone Report Big Lie. In the intervening two years, rabidly anti-Israel professors and lecturers have capitalized on the Goldstone Report's falsehoods to demonize Israel with abandon.

The ZOA, StandWithUs, Hillel, AIPAC and others should now demand equal time to set the record straight. Wayne State and University of Michigan, for example, have given speakers platforms to spew virulently anti-Israel polemics based on the Goldstone Report's spurious findings. Now, in the interests of academic integrity and restoring any semblance of balance, the campus should roll out the welcome mat to those best qualified to deprogram the students subjected to unrelenting anti-Israel indoctrination.

It was just last week that the Arab American News ran an article assailing the "Wall of Lies" ad placed in the U-M Dearborn student newspaper by the David Horowitz Freedom Center in response to Israel Apartheid Week on campus.

University of Michigan-Dearborn Vice Chancellor Stanley E. Henderson was quoted by the Arab American News as saying "Intolerance is a cancer; it sucks the vitality, the glow, even the life out of good people as surely as a tumor. A one-sided view such as the 'Wall of Lies' ad does not present a path for peace in the Middle East and it does not represent the core values of our campus," he added.

Never mind that the temperate vice chancellor did not see fit to apply the same standards to the malignant hate-inspiring Israel Apartheid Week. Never mind that Horowitz's 'Wall of Lies' is a straightforward expose of the libels against the Jewish State which, Horowitz claims, neither the vice chancellor nor the Arab American News could refute.

Given Palestinian activist Ann Wright's recent guest speaking engagement at the University of Michigan's main Ann Arbor campus (co-sponsored by the Arab Student Association along with the Ford School of Public Policy and the Barger Leadership Institute of Organizational Studies) at which she reportedly solicited funds for the next Gaza-bound flotilla, the university's own standards would compel it to counter such a "one-sided view" which surely "does not present a path for peace in the Middle East" nor "represent the core values" of the university.

Talking Tachlis can't help but wonder if the I Love Hamas production staged at the Ann Arbor campus late last year with university support represented the "core values" of the university? Surely not the core values of its generous Jewish donors!

--MT Beadle and The Mole