Uncut: Whole Foods Co-CEO John Mackey “On the Record.”

Uncut: Whole Foods Co-CEO John Mackey “On the Record.” Video. On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. Fox News, January 17, 2013. Also find it here.

Whole Foods’ John Mackey speaks out against Obamacare while promoting his new book. By Husna Haq. The Christian Science Monitor, January 18, 2013.

Whole Foods Founder John Mackey On Fascism And “Conscious Capitalism.” By April Fulton. NPR, January 16, 2013.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey On Obamacare “Fascism”Remark: “I Regret Using That Word.” By Meenal Vamburkar. Mediaite, January 17, 2013.

New clips quote Morsi calling Obama a liar, urging Muslims to nurse hatred of Jews.

New clips quote Morsi calling Obama a liar, urging Muslims to nurse hatred of Jews. By Ron Friedman and AP. The Times of Israel, January 18, 2013.

Egypt’s Morsi in 2010: Obama Insincere; We Must Nurse Our Children and Grandchildren on Hatred of Jews. MEMRI TV, Video Clip No. 3713, January 16, 2013. Also find it here. Transcript here.



US condemns Morsi’s 2010 anti-Semitic remarks. By Hilary Leila Krieger. Jerusalem Post, January 15, 2o13.

Dutch Jewish author: Aid to Egypt like aid to Nazis. Jerusalem Post, January 17, 2013.

US says Morsi backtrack on anti-Semitic remarks inadequate. AP. The Times of Israel, January 17, 2013.

A Morsi moment in the media. By Simon Plosker. The Times of Israel, January 16, 2013.

US condemns Egyptian leader’s anti-Semitic comment. AP. The Times of Israel, January 15, 2013.

Morsi’s Context of Hate. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, January 16, 2013.

BBC Corrects Report on Morsi Video. By Alana Goodman. Commentary, January 17, 2013.

Whitewashing Islamists. By Michael Rubin. Commentary, January 17, 2013.

Raised on Hatred. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. New York Times, January 17, 2013.

Other posts on Morsi videos here and here.

In Israeli politics, a new dawn for women. By Elhanan Miller.

In Israeli politics, a new dawn for women. By Elhanan Miller. The Times of Israel, January 17, 2013.

Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right. By Arie Perliger.

West Point center cites dangers of “far right” in U.S. By Rowan Scarborough. Washington Times, January 17, 2013.

New Study Highlights Threat From Far Right-Wing Groups In U.S. By Hayes Brown. Think Progress, January 18, 2013.

West Point Military Study Warns Of “America’s Violent Far-Right.” By Noah Rothman. Mediaite, January 18, 2013.

A New Anti-Terror Front? Yes, theGovernment Thinks It’s “Right-Wing Extremists.” By John Fund. National Review Online, January 18, 2013.

West Point: “Far right” dangerous to U.S. By Michael Carl. WND, January 18, 2013.

Right-wing terrorism is real. By David Sirota. Salon, January 22, 2013.

Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right. By Arie Perliger. The Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, November 2012. Also find it here and here.

Scarborough:

The West Point center typically focuses reports on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists attempting to gain power in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through violence.

But its latest study turns inward and paints a broad brush of people it considers “far right.”

It says anti-federalists “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government. Extremists in the anti-federalist movement direct most their violence against the federal government and its proxies in law enforcement.”

The report also draws a link between the mainstream conservative movement and the violent “far right,” and describes liberals as “future oriented” and conservatives as living in the past.

“While liberal worldviews are future- or progressive -oriented, conservative perspectives are more past-oriented, and in general, are interested in preserving the status quo.” the report says. “The far right represents a more extreme version of conservatism, as its political vision is usually justified by the aspiration to restore or preserve values and practices that are part of the idealized historical heritage of the nation or ethnic community.”

The report adds: “While far-right groups’ ideology is designed to exclude minorities and foreigners, the liberal-democratic system is designed to emphasize civil rights, minority rights and the balance of power.”

America’s Exodus from Marriage. By Peter Wehner.

America’s Exodus from Marriage. Peter Wehner. Commentary, January 17, 2013.

Secession and Patriotism. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Secession and Patriotism. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, January 17, 2013.

Abbas: “Right of Return” Trumps Palestinian Lives. By Evelyn Gordon.

Abbas: “Right of Return” Trumps Palestinian Lives. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, January 16, 2013.

Rape in the “New India.” By Lakshmi Chaudhry.

Rape in the “New India.” By Lakshmi Chaudhry. The Nation, January 16, 2013.

Crying for Manti Te’o. By Dave Zirin.

Crying for Manti Te’o. By Dave Zirin. The Nation, January 16, 2013.

It’s Not the Bad Guys—It’s the Guns. By Mychal Denzel Smith.

It’s Not the Bad Guys—It’s the Guns. By Mychal Denzel Smith. The Nation, January 16, 2013.

America’s New Cold War with Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen.

America’s New Cold War with Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen. The Nation, January 16, 2013.

Veronique Pozner, Newtown Mom, Dreams About Son, Urges Gun Law Reform. By John Christoffersen.

Veronique Pozner, Newtown Mom, Dreams About Son, Urges Gun Law Reform. By John Christoffersen. The Huffington Post, January 16, 2013.

What the “Lobby” Knows About Animus for Israel. By Ruth Wisse.

What the “Lobby” Knows About Animus for Israel. By Ruth Wisse. Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2013.

The Jewish state, as the “little Satan,” is a stand-in for the “big Satan” and Western values.

The Brotherhood’s Compassionate Conservatism. By Max Strasser.

The Brotherhood’s Compassionate Conservatism. By Max Strasser. The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, January 16, 2013.

Selling Grown-Up Policies to an Adolescent-Minded Electorate. By Jim Geraghty.

Selling Grown-up Policies to an Adolescent-Minded Electorate. By Jim Geraghty. National Review Online, January 17, 2013.

Tragedy Spurs Action . . . Even If It’s Irrelevant to That Tragedy. By Jim Geraghty. National Review Online, January 17, 2013.

Cohen Yearns for “Abolishing” Right to Own Handguns. By Jim Geraghty. National Review Online, January 15, 2013.

Ethnic Religions. By Peter Berger.

Ethnic Religions. By Peter Berger. The American Interest, January 16, 2013.

Life After Blue. By Walter Russell Mead.

Life After Blue. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 16, 2013.

Better Elected Islamists Than Dictators.

Better Elected Islamists Than Dictators. Intelligence Squared Debates, October 4, 2012. Panelists: Reuel Marc Gerecht, Brian Katulis, Daniel Pipes, M. Zuhdi Jasser.

Israel Is Destroying Itself With Its Settlement Policy: Intelligence Squared Debate.

Israel Is Destroying Itself With Its Settlement Policy. Video. Intelligence Squared, January 15, 2013. YouTube. Debate chaired by Tim Franks. Speakers for the motion: Daniel Levy, William Sieghart. Speakers against the motion: Dani Dayan, Caroline Glick.

Bye-Bye London. By Caroline Glick. CarolineGlick.com, January 21, 2013. Also at FrontPage Magazine. 

Britain’s Little Anti-Semitism Problem. By Douglas Murray. Gatestone Institute, January 28, 2013.

Debate description:

Patriacide. Nationcide. Whatever you want to call it, that is what Israel is doing with its settlement policy: it is killing itself. If ever greater numbers of Jewish settlers are installed on land regarded by Palestinians as the basis for a state of their own, the possibility of a two-state solution grows ever more remote. Yet the single state alternative, involving annexation of the West Bank, would result in a country where Arabs vastly outnumber Jews and then you won’t have a one-state or a two-state solution: you’ll have a no-state solution. For those who love Israel and wish to preserve a democratic Jewish homeland, as much as for those who hate it, the settlements must stop. That’s what many left-wing Israelis and their friends say. But defenders of the settlements see things very differently. The two-state solution has long been a dead letter in their view: why stop building settlements in the name of a peace plan that is frankly unattainable? Whatever the eventual solution – it could even be a West Bank jointly governed by Jordan and Israel – there is no good reason why both Israelis and Palestinians shouldn’t both expand their settlements in the interim before an eventual peace deal.







Glick [Bye-Bye London]:

In an interview with Haaretz in November 2010, British novelist Martin Amis said the following about discussions of Israel in his motherland:

I live in a mildly anti-Semitic country, and Europe is mildly anti-Semitic, and they hold Israel to a higher moral standard than its neighbors. If you bring up Israel in a public meeting in England, the whole atmosphere changes. The standard left-wing person never feels more comfortable than when attacking Israel. Because they are the only foreigners you can attack. Everyone else is protected by having dark skin, or colonial history, or something. But you can attack Israel. And the atmosphere becomes very unpleasant. It is traditional, snobbish, British anti-Semitism combined with present-day circumstances.

After participating last week in a debate in London about Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines organized by the self-consciously pretentious Intelligence Squared debating society, I can now say from personal experience that Amis is correct. The public atmosphere in England regarding Israel is ugly and violent. 

The resolution we debated read: “Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy. If settlement expansion continues Israel will have no future.”

 

My debating partner was Danny Dayan, the outgoing head of the Yesha Council.

 

We debated Daniel Levy, one of the founders of J-Street and the drafter of the Geneva Initiative, and the son of Lord Michael Levy, one of Tony Blair’s biggest fundraisers; and William Sieghart, a British philanthropist who runs a non-profit that among other things, champions Hamas. Levy has publicly stated that Israel’s creation was immoral. And Sieghart has a past record of saying that Israel’s delegitimization would be a salutary proces and calling for a complete cultural boycott of Israel while lauding Hamas.

 

We lost overwhelmingly. I think the final vote tally was something like 500 for the resolution and 100 against it.

 

A couple of impressions I took away from the experience: First, I can say without hesitation that I hope never to return to Britain. I actually don’t see any point. Jews are targeted by massive anti-Semitism of both the social and physical varieties. Why would anyone Jewish want to live there?

 

As to visiting as an Israeli, again, I just don’t see the point. The discourse is owned by anti-Israel voices. They don’t make arguments to spur thought, but to end it, by appealing to people’s passions.

 

For instance, in one particularly ugly segment, Levy made the scurrilous accusation that Israel systematically steals land from the Palestinians. Both Dayan and I demanded that he provide just one example of his charge. And the audience raged against us for our temerity at insisting that he provide substantiation for his baseless allegation. In the event, he failed to substantiate his allegation.

 

At another point, I was asked how I defend the Nazi state of Israel. When I responded by among other things giving the Nazi pedigree of the Palestinian nationalist movement founded by Nazi agent Haj Amin el Husseini and currently led by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, the crowd angrily shouted me down.

 

I want to note that the audience was made up of upper crust, wealthy British people, not unwashed rabble rousers. And yet they behaved in many respects like a mob when presented with pro-Israel positions.

 

I honestly don’t know whether there are policy implications that arise from my experience in London last week. I have for a long time been of the opinion that Israel shouldn’t bother to try to win over Europe because the Europeans have multiple reasons for always being anti-Israel and none of them have anything to do with anything that Israel does. As I discuss in my book, these reasons include anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, addiction to Arab oil, and growing Muslim populations in Europe.

 

I was prepared to conduct a civilized debate based on facts and reasoned argumentation. I expected it to be a difficult experience. I was not expecting to be greeted by a well-dressed mob. My pessimism about Europeans’ capacity to avail themselves to reasoned, fact-based argumentation about Israel has only deepened from the experience.

 

One positive note, I had a breakfast discussion last Wednesday morning with activists from the Zionist Federation of Britain. The people I met are committed, warm, hardworking Zionists. I wish them all the best, and mainly that means, that I hope that these wonderful people and their families make aliyah.

 

While their work is worthwhile, there is no future for Jews in England.


Murray:

How bad must things get before people notice that their country has an anti-Semitism problem?

 

Three striking stories from recent days go some way to demonstrating that though Britain may not admit it, we have a problem.

 

Earlier this month the Israeli writer Caroline Glick came to London to take part in one of the Intelligence Squared debates. Intelligence Squared is a smart, up-market debating forum which attracts world-class speakers and a somewhat upper-echelon audience. The motion put before the audience on this occasion was: “Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy. If settlement expansion continues Israel will have no future.”

 

There are good places and reasons to debate Israeli settlement policy. But it is, to say the least, questionable to make the one Israel debate in a debate series a discussion proposing that it is settlements that threaten Israel’s future. Rather than (plucking them off the top of my head) the promise of nuclear-bomb-owning Mullahs or say (admittedly old story) the seven-decade long refusal of any leading Palestinian to recognise the Jewish State? There is something obscene about presenting a debate in such terms. But debates need to be punchy and provocative. They also need to involve open minds. What Glick and the other Israeli guest on her side – Danny Dayan – had to witness was very far from a demonstration of that.

 

Glick rightly saw that the case for Israel needed to be made. But against her and Dayan were two young darlings of the London anti-Israel establishment. The undeservedly arrogant J-Street founder Daniel Levy enjoys a following in such London circles because of his father (Lord Levy)’s money. Meanwhile, the other member proposing the anti-Israel motion, William Sieghart, is a member of a prominent London family who did poorly in the family brains distribution and so has ended up promoting Hamas. Both are the sort of rich, privileged figures who mistake their own ignorance and stupidity for profundity with daring. Their careers are spent providing respectability to those who would erase the Jewish people.

 

Unfortunately, and predictably, the smart London audience sided overwhelmingly with the local idiots, heckling and shouting down points made by the visiting team. The hostility – heckling, booing and more – shown towards Glick and Dayan was unique and appalling. At the end the vote was 5 to 1 in favour of Levy and Sieghart.

 

In a searing response to what she had seen, Glick penned the article “Bye-bye London,” writing:

I can say without hesitation that I hope never to return to Britain. I actually don’t see any point. Jews are targeted by massive anti-Semitism of both the social and physical varieties. Why would anyone Jewish want to live there?

Of course this is the sort of thing that is reacted to angrily by most British Jewish spokespeople. They claim such sentiments are “over-the-top,” “unhelpful” or some other pseudo Foreign Office phrase.

 

Such panjandrums also point to the “successes” they have. These routinely include, for instance, the numbers of prominent politicians and “faith leaders” who take part in Holocaust Memorial Day events. Thus events around this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day have been particularly instructive. Take the scandal which enveloped one Liberal Democrat MP in the days before this year’s commemoration.

 

Until last week absolutely nobody had heard of David Ward MP. He is one of those one-man walking demonstrations of the need to have fewer MPs. But last week he became a minor figure when the ballsy “Commentator” website picked up on the fact that Ward had had a “Jihad-Jenny” moment. These are moments named after the disgraced Liberal Democrat peer, and former MP, Baroness Jenny “Boom” Tonge, whose track-record of slurs and libels against Jews and Israel mounted so significantly over many years, that finally even the Liberal Democrat party ended up saying she had gone too far.

 

Anyhow, in his “Jihad Jenny” moment, Mr. Ward was recorded saying:

Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.

Now Mr. Ward had a number of ways of explaining himself when a backlash against his comments got underway. But among them he explained that he had gone to Holocaust Memorial Day events in the past. Some people saw this as the anti-Semite's version of the old “some of my best friends are black” defense, famously made by racists caught on the back foot. It may, however, signify something else. Mr Ward was careful to stress that he had indeed taken something away from such events. And there is a serious problem: You may get someone to jump the low bar of attending a “commemoration” of the Holocaust. But they may still take from it – as Mr Ward clearly did – a profoundly anti-Jewish message. In a society that increasingly equates Jews with Nazis, it does not matter how many Holocaust “commemorations” someone has been pushed into going to. The culture has gone rancid.

 

This was further demonstrated by the fact that this year on Holocaust Memorial Day itself, the Sunday Times of London – bastion of the moderate center of British politics – ran as its principal cartoon a characteristically witless “satire” by Gerald Scarfe. With the caption “Will cementing peace continue,” the cartoon depicted a thuggish-looking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall made of bricks, blood and Palestinians. Perhaps Mr Scarfe attended the Intelligence Squared debate?

 

What these three things have in common is now unmistakeable – as are the conclusions we must draw from them.

 

Jews will continue to live in Britain, and in the main, continue to live perfectly peaceful and pleasant lives. But there will be a price. And that price will be the volume of their support for Israel. For the “decent” mainstream has made a decision: Israelis are now what the Nazis were then. The Israelis are the easy target for needed outrage, the focal-center of pretended morality and the diversionary enemy in an era where the real problems seem too large to tackle.

 

Naturally there will be enough people to continue for a while to demand the odd complaint about this or that. They may manage to force a backtrack here and there. But these will be forced not because anybody has been persuaded of the complete wrong-headedness of what they have said – nor because they have realized the unbelievable wickedness and inaccuracy of their claims – but simply because the “timing” may have been inappropriate, or it should not have been said in this way, or on this or that day, or to these or those people. What all these events have in common is that they demonstrate that the friends of truth are losing. Any wins on these terms are skirmish wins in a war which has turned against the Jewish people.

Party of Strivers. By David Brooks.

Party of Strivers. By David Brooks. New York Times, August 30, 2012.

Matt Yglesias: Sorry haters, Obama’s kids are worth more than yours.

Matt Yglesias: Sorry haters, Obama’s kids are worth more than yours. Twitchy, January 16, 2013.

Protection For Obama’s Kids, Gun-Free Zones For Ours? Video. NRA News, January 15, 2013. YouTube.

Lost Tribes. By Daniel Levy.

Lost Tribes. By Daniel Levy. Foreign Policy, January 15, 2013.

This Israeli election is not about Bibi. It’s about nothing.

iBennett. Video. Eretz Nehederet (“A Wonderful Country”). Mako. In Hebrew.

Levy:

Israel’s most popular political satire show, Eretz Nehederet (“A Wonderful Country”), has caricatured him [Naftali Bennett] as a new software app: the iBennett, a modern version of the old settler model –“no beard, no crazy-mystical gaze, smaller kippa”—but with occasional glitches (the spoof iBennett character recognizes there are other nations in God’s promised land, sounding reasonable, but then reverts to type by claiming “God will strike them with a plague of frogs”).

Failing History: Colleges Neglect Core U.S. Principles. By Peter Berkowitz.

Failing History: Colleges Neglect Core U.S. Principles. By Peter Berkowitz. Real Clear Politics, January 15, 2013.

Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History? By Ashley Thorne, Peter Wood, and Richard W. Fonte. National Association of Scholars, January 10, 2013.

Israelis Await New Government Amid Old Security Perils. By Peter Berkowitz.

Israelis Await New Government Amid Old Security Perils. By Peter Berkowitz. Real Clear Politics, January 4, 2013.

Israel remains an “island of stability” among hostile Islamist movements. By Amos Harel. Haaretz, December 21, 2012. Also find it here.

The Brotherhood’s Agenda, Cairo’s Catastrophe. By Ilan Berman.

The Brotherhood’s Agenda, Cairo’s Catastrophe. By Ilan Berman. Forbes, January 14, 2013.