We Demand that Palestine Solidarity Campaign Rejects the Resignation of Jenny Tonge as Patron

Cowardice Beyond the Call of Duty - PSC forces Jenny Tonge’s resignation and Briefs Against Her 

Yesterday I learnt from the Facebook page of the far-Right Sussex Friends of Israel that ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign issued “deep concerns” about its patron Baroness Jenny Tonge, after she appeared to blame Israel for a resurgence in antisemitism in the wake of the deadly Pittsburgh massacre.’

In Jewish News I learnt that ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign told Jewish News it has “contacted Jenny Tonge to express our deep concerns at her post and is in the process of considering any further steps.” What did Jenny say that the Zionists reacted so furiously to and which PSC found impossible to defend?

Jenny Tonge said, in response to the Pittsburgh massacre:

“Absolutely appalling and a criminal act, but does it ever occur to Bibi and the present Israeli government that it’s actions against Palestinians may be reigniting anti Semitism? I suppose someone will say that it is anti Semitic to say so?”

The offending remarks

Jenny was attacked by Eric Pickles, former Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel and the nearest thing to a rattle snake in human form. Pickles ‘called on the minister to condemn the “the words of Baroness Tonge in suggesting that the murders in Pittsburgh were caused by the actions of the Israeli government”. It would apparently ‘cause great pain in Pittsburgh and falls foul of the International Holocaust definition of anti-Semitism.” I doubt if anyone in Pittsburgh was even aware of the comments of the noble Baroness but of course that wasn’t the point of Pickle’s attack.

Open Letter to Ben Sofa, Secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Pickles is the same foul creature who defended the Tory’s alliance in the European parliament with the European Conservatives and Reformists.  A group that contains at least 3 anti-Semitic parties and which was chaired by Michal Kaminski, who used to belong to the anti-Semitic and fascist National Revival before founding the mainstream anti-Semitic Polish Law & Justice Party. The ECR also included Robert Zile of the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party/LNNK. 

Unlike PSC America's Liberal Zionist The Forward isn't afraid to draw the connections between the Pittsburgh murderer, Trump and Netanyahu

Zile has a quaint habit of marching with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS every March, something which Pickles had no problem defending. As Jonathan Freedland observed Pickles

‘offered an appalling defence, telling the BBC last month that the Latvian Waffen-SS were only conscripts fighting for their country, and to say otherwise was a Soviet smear. Again, this misses the fact that a substantial minority of the Latvian Waffen-SS were eager volunteers, including veterans of pro-Nazi death squads who had already taken part in the first phase of the Holocaust – and that should be enough to decide that those who march in celebration of men who fought with Hitler, and against Britain and its allies, are beyond the pale. Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski

Pickles who sees nothing wrong with forming an alliance with Kaminski, who excused the Jedwabne massacre of Jews in 1941 (up to 1600 were herded into a barn which was then set alight) on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Soviet Union and a Latvian MEP who marches with formers members of the SS, was however concerned about “the words of Baroness Tonge in suggesting that the murders in Pittsburgh were caused by the actions of the Israeli government”. Apparently it “will cause great pain in Pittsburgh and falls foul of the International Holocaust definition of anti-Semitism.”

Netanyahu makes it clear that his and Trump's refugee policies are one and the same

Well it may well fall foul of the IHRA because that is the sole purpose of the IHRA, to conflate anti-Zionist comments with anti-Semitism.  Jenny herself posted on her  Facebook page that:

‘PSC are very worried about the furore surrounding my remarks following Pittsburgh and I have resigned to save them embarrassment!!! Sad day.

Let us look at the comments which have so aroused the Zionist ire and which PSC is too cowardly to defend.  First she condemned without hesitation the murders in Pittsburgh.  No one bar a malevolent mischief maker could therefore accuse her of anti-Semitism.

She then asked whether it has ever occurred to Netanyahu and the Israeli government that their actions may be reigniting anti-Semitism.  That is a fair question.  The only possible objection to the comment is not that it is wrong but that the actions of the particular individual, Robert Bowers, were those of a more traditional neo-Nazi who believed that Jews were responsible for the destruction of the white race by introducing into them non-white refugees.

What is though clear is that Bowers was motivated by the racist atmosphere that has been stirred up to fever pitch by Donald Trump against refugees, in particular the refugee caravan. It can hardly have escaped even PSC’s notice that Netanyahu has been to the forefront of this campaign.  Netanyahu has done his best to deport 40,000 Black African refugees because they are neither Jewish or White.  He has even tweeted in support of Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Clearly Netanyahu has contributed to this anti-refugee campaign of Trump with his own, not inconsiderable efforts.

Jenny’s observation that Israel’s attacks against Palestinians are stirring up anti-Semitism in the West is a fact.  Zionist bodies go out of their way to say that Jews, all Jews, support Israel’s attacks against the Palestinians.  Only recently the Board of Deputies defended Israel’s shooting of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. Is it surprising that when the self-proclaimed body that represents British Jews supports Israel’s murderous actions in Gaza that some people will then blame and even attack British Jews?

However just as racists like Pickles reject the idea of connecting what Israel does with anti-Semitism in the West, so Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett was reported in The Times of Israel as saying that connecting Trump to the attack is wrong because Trump has been a good friend to Israel and has strongly condemned anti-Semitism, in particular he had moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Bennett defended Trump’s anti-Semitism on the grounds that he is pro-Israel. This is the standard Zionist defence of anti-Semites. 

“Using the horrible anti-Semitic massacre to attack the president is unfair, it’s wrong. He condemned anti-Semitism in the strongest possible words. Clearly President Trump is a great friend of Israel and of the Jews.’

There is however a very clear connection between Trump and anti-Semitism (and therefore Netanyahu). After the election of Trump Dana Millbank of the Washington Post wrote Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody. In it Dana described how Trump’s election campaign had deliberately used anti-Semitism as a means of appealing to the White Supremacist vote.

In the wake of the Pittsburgh massacre Dana Milbank wrote describing how Trump’s election ‘began with genteel anti-Semitism, progressed to dog whistles and ended with a full-throated targeting of Jewish “globalists.’ Millbank gave us a few examples:

Telling Jewish Republicans they wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money.”

Tweeting an image from an anti-Semitic message board with a Star of David atop a pile of cash.

Saying “I don’t have a message” for supporters who threatened anti-Semitic violence against a Jewish journalist, and Melania Trump saying the writer “provoked” the threats.

Branding his campaign with the “America First” slogan of the anti-Semitic pre-war movement.

Alleging that “blood suckers” and “a global power structure” including “international banks” are secretly plotting against ordinary Americans.

And, when urged by the Anti-Defamation League to stop using traditionally anti-Semitic tropes, repeated the tropes in an ad with images of prominent Jews, including George Soros.

Once in office, in addition to making common cause with the Nazis of Charlottesville, Trump stocked his administration with people like Stephen Bannon and other figures of the nationalist “alt-right;”, issued a Holocaust remembrance statement without mention of Jews; and lamented the attempts to silence Alex Jones, who peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; declaring himself a “nationalist,” as well as increasing verbal attacks on “globalists,” particularly Soros. This was in addition to appointing as an advisor the openly neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka.

PSC shamefully leaked against its own patron

The attacks on Jenny Tonge are wholly hypocritical and for PSC Executive and its Secretary Ben Sofa, to have bowed before the tide of Zionist hypocrisy, beggars belief. If PSC Executive don’t retract and either refuse to accept Jenny’s resignation or alternatively invite her to reconsider then I shall move a motion of censure on PSC Executive at the forthcoming AGM.

It would appear from the latest issue of Jewish News that PSC have accepted Jenny’s resignation and they also quote me as saying ‘“I suggest that you retract your resignation as nothing you said was in the least bit wrong. I am at present writing them a letter and now I know this will adjust it accordingly. Please retract your resignation“.

See also the excellent Mondoweiss article The Israeli government is exploiting the Pittsburgh murders to try to demonize Palestine solidarity

Sussex Friends of Israel’s Attempt to Disrupt and Prevent a Palestine Solidarity Stall in Brighton Town Centre

Fascist Tactics as the Zionist Far-Right and Christian Fundamentalists Unite to Silence the Palestinian Voice

Daniel - one of the main Christian Fundamentalists

James Dyer, a Christian Fundamentalist who was warned by the Police, who registered a racial incident, when he called me a kapo - I told him if I was a kapo he must be a Nazi!

In 2014, after two years of demonstrations, Israel’s Sodastream shop in Brighton closed.  Sodastream had intended the Brighton shop to be the first of many. However so unhappy was their experience, it being both a financial and public relations disaster, that they thought better of it.

Sussex Friends of Israel, which had been formed to defend the shop, was at a loss. Not knowing what to do, some of them relocated to Brighton’s New Road handing out leaflets persuading people to oppose ‘anti-Semitism’.

In fact it was mainly the Christian fundamentalists of SFI who continued the battle, replete with Israeli flags.  Most people who encountered these god botherers realised very quickly what they were about and either ignored them or, it would seem, gave them a hard time. Earlier this summer SFI had had enough in New Road. They complained that because the Police wouldn’t protect them from the public they would relocate to the Clocktower in order to harass us.

Brighton and Hove PSC has had a stall at Brighton’s Clocktower for nearly two decades. Every Saturday between 12 pm and 2 pm we hand out leaflets and mount exhibitions to demonstrate the plight and oppression of the Palestinians. This has been a source of continuing annoyance to SFI who have nothing positive to say about Israel and find it difficult to defend things like house demolitions, shooting unarmed demonstrators and gaoling children. For the Christian zombies all and every injustice if part of Gods plan to return the Jews to the holy land!

Blowing on whistles is their main form of activity as they have nothing positive to say

So once every 2 weeks for the past few weeks, SFI have turned up in the same place as the PSC stall, with the specific intention of trying to disrupt what we were doing. This has included standing directly in front of our stall or as was the case last weekend blowing whistles and making as much noise as possible to prevent conversations, coupled with a few individuals who tried to snatch leaflets from people. They have even employed someone who is mentally ill to harass people.

This is not unique to Brighton. It is clear that as part of Israel’s counter-BDS strategy, groups of Zionist activists nationally have decided to try and harass and disrupt Palestine solidarity activities. I have covered this in a number of posts and identified many of the individuals involved.

me on the megaphone which they tried to prevent on a couple of occasions!

Shame on Time Out for Supporting Apartheid - Inminds Activists Destroy Israeli 'Ice-Cream' Hasbara Stunt

Focus on Fascism - More News from Tommy Robinson’s Zionist Supporters & Reactions to My Revelations

EXCLUSIVE – Focus on Jonathan Hoffman’s Fascist Friends

EXCLUSIVE – Lifting the lid on Collaboration between the Far Right and Zionist Activists

The Zionist – Fascist Alliance was Consummated at the Al Quds Demonstration

Many of these same people have taken to picketing and trying to disrupt Palestinian solidarity meetings, led by one particular individual, Jonathan Hoffman, a former Vice-Chair of the Zionist Federation. These Zionist activists are on the far-Right, many of them involved in Tommy Robinson’s DFLA.

Brighton & Hove PSC has maintained a stall at Brighton’s Clocktower for nearly two decades.  In that time we have distributed thousands of leaflets, help in the education of many people concerning the world’s only Apartheid state – it has been almost completely incident free.

The Zionist call to arms

The clocktower - this is SFI's justification for relocating to the Clocktower

There is no doubt that with the level of provocation and deliberate disruption that SFI are already causing a public order problem will develop.  Indeed SFI are going out of their way to provoke incidents. SFI are not interested in persuading people of their cause because they don’t have one.  And as they have found out from New Road people are not interested in apologetics for racism and apartheid.  That is why they are intent in causing as much disruption and as many incidents as possible in order to prevent Brighton PSC holding its stall.

Although a couple of Police have been posted in the vicinity of late that is just a palliative.  It is therefore important that supporters of the Palestinian, anti-racists and anti-fascists and those on the Left in Brighton and Hove show their solidarity and support the right to organise and hold anti-racist/anti-imperialist stalls and activities without attempts by supporters of Apartheid to disrupt and close down free speech and the right of free assembly.

Sussex Friends of Israel were formed during the campaign to close Sodastream

One of the main Zionist activists in London is over the moon at the election of a fascist as Brazilian President

Tony Greenstein

Hamas condemns terror attack on Pittsburgh Synagogue

As Zionists try to shift the blame for the murders away from White Supremacists and Trump America's Muslims raise over $100,000 for the victims

Yesterday Hamas, the  Islamic Resistance Movement in Gaza, condemned the murder of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.  A synagogue that the Chief Rabbi and the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel won’t even recognise as Jewish and 11 worshippers who they also won’t recognise as Jewish. 

This is the same Hamas which the far-Right Sussex Friends of Israel called ‘an antisemitic, genocidal, terror group - whose very charter calls for the killing of Jews’ in an attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

The far-Right so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism lumps in Muslims and supporters of the Palestinians - the only people they don't blame are those who encouraged Robert Bowers

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism went even further and employed the old Nazi tactic of rolling all your enemies into one in order to provide a single focus for their hate. The CAA blamed the massacre on ‘far-right, far-left and Islamist extremists are stoking the flames of Jew-hatred, with too little done to stop them.”  without, of course, stopping to think that maybe the alliance between Netanyahu and the Zionist movement with Trump and the alt-Right over the Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem and in their joint hatred of refugees may have played a part. The fact that Zionist billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, a close confidant of Netanyahu, supported Trump’s election campaign financially, should be a matter of deep shame.

Rabbi Blau, Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi refuses to recognise the Tree of Life as a synagogue or those murdered as Jews

Israeli Labour Party leader Avi Gabbay says that Jews in America should do what the neo-Nazis want them to do and leave

These miserable bigots, racists and Zionist fascists who purport to oppose anti-Semitism, in their anxiety to follow in the footsteps of Robert Bowers, Trump and his far-Right allies, completely ‘forgot’ to mention the appeal Muslims United for Pittsburgh Synagogue which to date has raised over $120,000.

Where Muslims spread peace and reach out, Israel and the Zionist movement can only preach hate. These Zionist propagandists are determined to continue to spread the seeds of hate and racism that fuelled Robert Bowers.

Prominent Zionist ‘Rabbi’ Shmueley Boteach, a friend of Trump and Sheldon Adelson, blamed the ‘demonisation and deligitimisation of Israel’ but not of course his support for the very far-Right whose demonization of refugees inspired the murderer.

Of course none of this is as bad as yesterday’s statements from Yoav Eliasie, a hate rapper known as The Shadow who blamed the victims for their own murder, justifying the murderer.  That is truly shocking but it is a consequence of the warped and perverted Zionist idea that Jews, by remaining in the diaspora are responsible for their own persecution. They used to call it the ‘negation of the diaspora’ one of the founding principles of Zionism.

In a Facebook post Eliasi portrayed the massacre as a legitimate response to HIAC’s progressive agenda.

According to Eliasi, Bowers

“was a man fed up with subversive progressive Jewish leftists injecting their sick agendas” into his country. Explicitly echoing the neo-Nazi’s manifesto, Eliasi added that “HIAS brings in infiltrators that destroy every country. The murderer was fed up with people like you. Jews like you brought the holocaust and now you’re causing antisemitism. Stop bringing in hate money from Soros.”

Hamas Statement Condemning the Murders at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue

28 October, 18

Member of the International Relations Bureau Basim Naim stated the following:

It is with deep regret and profound sadness that we received the news about the terrorist attack on a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, which resulted in killing 11 innocent Jews and injuring six others.

As Palestinians who have been enduring the terrorism of the Israeli occupation, we are the most to realise what terrorism means and its destructive consequences.

On this sorrowful occasion, we would like to extend our sincerest condolences to the families of the victims, wishing the wounded a speedy recovery.

This aggressive act against 'worship places', which is highly condemned, highlights that terrorism has no religion nor ideology.

Dr. Basin Naim

Member of International Relations Bureau

Background information

A gunman opened fire on Saturday inside the 'Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue' in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during a service, killing 11 Jewish worshipers and injuring six others.

Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin has said that the Islamic Palestinian Resistance Movement condemns the killing of any human, whether he is a Muslim, Christian, Jew, or a follower of any doctrine.

We Mourn the Jewish Victims of Fascism & White Supremacy at the Tree of Life Synagogue just as we mourn the Palestinian Victims of Snipers in Gaza

Robert Bowers pulled the trigger but it was Trump and Netanyahu who created the climate of hate which led to this massacre

In the wake of the worst anti-semitic massacre in US history we have the spectacle of Likud Party members in Israel JUSTIFYING the murders. 

“The murderer was fed up with people like you”

In a Facebook post, Yoav Eliasi, aka The Shadow , who I have covered recently, — a prominent Israeli hate rapper and Likud Party member in good standing — portrayed the massacre as a legitimate response to HIAC’s progressive agenda.

According to Eliasi, Bowers “was a man fed up with subversive progressive Jewish leftists injecting their sick agendas” into his country. Explicitly echoing the neo-Nazi’s manifesto, Eliasi added that “HIAS brings in infiltrators that destroy every country. The murderer was fed up with people like you. Jews like you brought the holocaust and now you’re causing antisemitism. Stop bringing in hate money from Soros.”

This is the same kind of Zionist anti-Semitism that led to collaboration in the 1930's between Zionists and anti-Semites, the Nazis included.I

 

Robert Bowers - the mass murderer

We feel the pain of the survivors of the massacre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania yesterday. This was the action of a cold and calculated neo-Nazi who sought to ‘take revenge’ on this community for their support of refugees.

Bower’s comments on social media site Gab make it clear that he held ‘the Jews’ and this community in particular, responsible for the influx of refugees into America.

His last message was ‘HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch our people get slaughtered. Screw your optics I’m going in.’

HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society which since 1881 has aided refugees. At first it supported Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Czarist Russia but today it helps all refugees. HIAS has put out a statement on what happened in Pittsburgh.

First Responders at the scene of the massacre

The congregants of the Tree of Life Synagogue were heavily involved in supporting HIAS’s programmes and for that they paid a very heavy price.

Bowers was a Christian anti-Semite who had on his web page the message ‘jews are the children of satan. (john 8:44) --- the lord jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” America is full of fundamentalist, bible-bashing Christians, most of whom combine their anti-Semitism with ardent Zionism, like Norway’s Andrei Brevik who murdered over 70 people, mainly young socialists, seven years ago.

People gather for a vigil at Squirrel Hill

It is no accident that the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history, with 11 confirmed dead, should take place during the Presidency of Donald Trump. It sticks in the craw when Trump makes a statement (see video above) ‘It’s a terrible terrible thing what’s going on, with hate frankly in our country and all over the world.’ There is no person who bears a greater responsibility for that hate than Trump.

some of Trump's 'fine people', a comment that  Netanyahu found it difficult to criticise

In Charlottesville last summer, as America’s neo-Nazis and the alt-Right marched to the chant of ‘the Jews will not replace us’ Trump told Americans that there are ‘“very fine people on both sides”, thus equating anti-fascists with neo-Nazis.

Trump has made the demonization of refugees the focus of the Republican’s election campaign for Congress next month. He has in particular targeted the march in Central America of a few thousand refugees hoping to gain entry into the United States.  Apparently there are no bigger threats facing a wealth country of 300 million people than these refugees. Trump’s description of himself as a ‘nationalist’ last week was rejected by Bowers who described him as a ‘globalist’ (a euphemism for ‘Jew’)

As Dana Milbank wrote in the wake of Pittsburgh, Trump’s election ‘began with genteel anti-Semitism, progressed to dog whistles and ended with a full-throated targeting of Jewish “globalists.’ Millbank detailed some of the examples of Trump’s anti-Semitism for anyone who believes that because his daughter married Jared Kushner, this somehow renders him immune from charges of anti-Semitism. Those who believe this nonsense should recall that many of leaders of Croatia’s puppet Nazi state, the Ustashe, were married to Jews but that didn’t prevent them setting up the only extermination camp not controlled by the Nazis, Jasenovac, in order to wipe out Serbs, Roma and Jews. Millbank’s examples of Trump’s anti-Semitism include:

Telling Jewish Republicans they wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money.”

Tweeting an image from an anti-Semitic message board with a Star of David atop a pile of cash.

Saying “I don’t have a message” for supporters who threatened anti-Semitic violence against a Jewish journalist, and Melania Trump saying the writer “provoked” the threats.

Branding his campaign with the “America First” slogan of the anti-Semitic pre-war movement.

Alleging that “blood suckers” and “a global power structure” including “international banks” are secretly plotting against ordinary Americans.

And, when urged by the Anti-Defamation League to stop using traditionally anti-Semitic tropes, repeated the tropes in an ad with images of prominent Jews, including George Soros.

Once in office, in addition to making common cause with the Nazis of Charlottesville, Trump stocked his administration with Stephen K. Bannon and other figures of the nationalist “alt-right;” … issued a Holocaust remembrance statement without mention of Jews; lamented the attempts to silence Alex Jones, who peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and, declaring himself a “nationalist,” increased verbal attacks on “globalists,” particularly Soros.

Millbank forgot to mention the appointment as an advisor of the openly neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka. Also worth reading is Millbank’s Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.

There is no foreign leader who is closer to America’s bigot-in-chief than Benjamin Netanyahu. In January 2017 Netanyahu tweeted ‘President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.’

It is no surprise therefore that Netanyahu dispatched the most racist member of Israel’s cabinet, Naftali Bennett, leader of Jewish Home to Pittsburgh. He once remarked that ‘I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.’

In April, Netanyahu reached a deal with the UN High Commission for Refugees whereby for every refugee taken in by Europe another would stay in Israel. Bennett led the campaign against the deal saying that it "will turn Israel into a paradise for infiltrators."

Sending Naftali Bennett to comfort the Jews of America is like sending a member of the KKK as Ambassador to Barbados.

Trump’s partner in race hatred is Netanyahu, who has made it his business to demonise the Black African refugees who mostly live in South Tel Aviv. Their crime being Black and not Jewish. Netanyahu has done everything humanly possible to deport these refugees back to Africa knowing full well the danger they would be in. For Netanyahu and Israeli Labour Party leader Avi Gabbay their problem is that they threaten ‘the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity."

What happened in Pittsburgh demonstrates graphically where the threat to Jews in the West comes from and it isn’t the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ of the Labour Party. It is the White Supremacist groups who make up America’s alt-Right and in Europe the parties of the far-Right who are part of the governments of Italy, Poland, Hungary, Austria and other East European states.

Sussex Friends of Israel use the massacre of liberal Jews in America to attack Jeremy Corbyn

It was therefore entirely predictable that the far-Right Sussex Friends of Israel, at least one of whose leading members has joined supporters of Tommy Robinson in demonstrations, should seek to make political capital out of the attack in Pittsburgh. When Jeremy Corbyn stated that his thoughts were ‘with those killed or injured in this horrific act of antisemitic violence, and with their loved ones. We must stand together against hate and terror.’ The SFI response was to attack ‘the gross hypocrisy of someone calling an antisemitic, genocidal, terror group - whose very charter calls for the killing of Jews - his ‘friends’ and then of offering his sympathies when they actually are!’ Hamas, to whom SFI are referring, is none of these things.

Ha’aretz’s Chemi Shalev spoke for many when he wrote that ‘The victims of the horrific terror attack on the Tree of Life synagogue were murdered first and foremost because of their identification with the values that both leaders abhor.’

Shalev observed that when Trump said that the massacre might have been avoided if there had been armed guards, he was blaming the victims. Pulling no punches Shalev commented that ‘if the support of their own foul-mouthed, race-baiting president wasn’t enough of a burden, the hypocritical expressions of support emanating from Jerusalem...  add insult to the American-Jewish injury.’

Dan Stein, one of those murdered

The oldest victim was 97 year old Rose Mallinger. Details of some of the victims are printed by the Jewish Forward.

Perhaps the most telling remarks were made by Avi Gabbay, the leader of the Israeli Labour Party. His advice demonstrates that Zionism is a surrender to anti-Semitism.

‘the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting should spur American Jews to move to Israel’ and ‘come home.’ The report noted ‘While others focused on sending sympathy, the tone-deaf Gabbay called “upon the Jews of the United States to immigrate more and more to Israel, because this is their home.”  

Avi Gabbay, leader of the Israeli Labor Party, agrees with America's neo-Nazis that Jews do not belong there

There is nothing that Bowers and America’s neo-Nazis desire more than for American Jews to depart for Israel. As the founder of America’s alt-Right Richard Spencer has often declared, he is a White Zionist.  Gabbay demonstrated that when it comes to Jews in society, Zionism’s belief is the same as the anti-Semites – Jews do not belong. Our message should equally be clear. Jewish homes are where Jews reside.  Israel is not the home of world Jewry.

The irony is that although Robert Bowers recognized the Jews of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue as Jewish, the Israeli state does not. Conservative Jews are not considered Jewish by Israel’s Orthodox Rabbinate. Thus it is that Israel’s Chief Rabbi refused to call the Tree of Life a synagogue preferring to say that it was ‘a place with profound Jewish flavor’. In Israel Jews are the herrenvolk and you have to have precise and clear definitions of who is part of the master race. That is the role of Orthodox rabbis. Israel's Chief Rabbi Refuses to Call Pittsburgh Massacre Site a Synagogue Because It's non-Orthodox

Peter Beinart of The Forward The Special Kind Of Hate That Drove Pittsburgh Shooter — And Trump asked

‘Why did Robert Bowers murder eleven people yesterday at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh? We’re unlikely to ever fully grasp his motives. But he was enraged, it appears, by the fact that synagogues were participating in a program run by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that dedicated special Shabbat services to the plight of refugees. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” Bowers wrote hours before his attack. In another post, he declared, “Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

Beinart observed that

‘Sheldon Adelson — who thinks all terrorists are Muslim — is Trump’s biggest financial backer. Mort Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America — who recently referred to “filthy Arabs” — is thrilled that Trump is trying to keep Muslims out of the United States. Last year, Republican Josh Mandel, who was running for the Senate in Ohio, retweeted a tweet declaring that, “I am so sick and tired of PC idiots worrying about offending Islam. I stand with Israel and my Judeo-Christian culture and I find Islam offensive.” Joel Pollak is senior-editor-at-large of Breitbart, which warns endlessly about the threat Americans face from depraved Muslim and Latino refugees.

Beinart argued that:

‘For Jews, the lesson of yesterday’s massacre is very simple and very old: Protecting the strangers among us is not charity. It is self-defense.’'… “Hate them, not us” is a losing strategy because once empowered, bigots widen their targets. For people who define America as a white Christian nation, Jews will never be white enough.’

As Beinart notes, 36 times in the Torah Jews are reminded to be like Abraham and Lot: To remember the heart of the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. It is not a lesson that Zionism and the State of Israel wish to hear when seeking greater racial purity.

The Jews of Pittsburgh died because they rejected Zionism’s values and that is how they should be remembered. I recommend the article below.

Tony Greenstein

What Has Trump Done To Us, America?

Jane Eisner October 27, 2018 

I have one daughter who is a freelance journalist and has reported from all sorts of dangerous places in the Middle East and Africa.

I have another daughter who is a nurse practitioner and right now is delivering health care to the Rohingya, whose plight is creating the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world.
And yet today, the daughter I am most worried about is the one in Brooklyn, who takes her children to synagogue on Shabbat as often as she can.

Because today, a synagogue on Shabbat was a deadly, terrifying place for a Jew to be.
What has happened to America?

We have become a nation in which Jews are increasingly targeted and attacked. The Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit of anti-Semitism found that anti-Semitic incidents rose 57 percent in 2017, the largest single year increase on record and the second highest reported since the ADL started to keep track in 1979.

No one is immune: At least one incident occurred in every state. In schools, community centers and cemeteries. And now, this year, in a synagogue.

What has happened to America?

We have become the nation of immigrants that is turning its back on immigrants, throwing them away from the border, separating families, locking up their children, and portraying them as satanic creatures ready to invade rather than ordinary people fleeing untenable circumstances.

So is it any wonder that Robert Bowers, the man arrested for shooting eleven people dead this morning at Etz Chaim synagogue in the heavily Jewish Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, was obsessed with HIAS, the legendary immigrant aid society that has helped Jews and non-Jews for more than a century?

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he wrote on a social media post that has since been deleted. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

We have become a nation where even the sacred space of worship no longer offers protection against raging white men with guns. (And they are almost always white men with guns.) Etz Chaim in Pittsburgh will now join the ignoble list of religious sanctuaries splattered with blood. Southerland Springs, Texas in 2017 (26 people dead.) Antioch, Tennessee in 2017 (one dead, many wounded.) Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 (nine dead.) The list really can go on.

But very worst of all, we are a nation with a president who stokes this anger — against immigrants, against minorities, against anyone who disagrees with him at any moment — and then, when violence and death stain the landscape, blames the victims for not protecting themselves enough, as if that were the reason for the bloodshed.

It’s time for the Jewish community in all its many facets to confront the complicity of the man in the White House, and all who support him — with money, votes, political expertise and moral cover.
Because if you excuse the radical divisiveness spawned by this man, you are part of the problem. If you ignore his hateful tweets because you like his policies on Israel, you are part of the problem. If you silently cheer at the fascist-like rallies before only adoring audiences because you’ve got a few more dollars in your pocket, you are part of the problem.

If you want an America where every school, church, synagogue and mosque looks like a National Rifle Association convention, then you are part of the problem.

“These senseless acts of violence are not who we are as Americans,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said this afternoon.

Oh, but it is. It is who we are as Americans. This is who we have chosen to lead us. Every day that he diminishes the grandeur and privilege of his office, he destroys what’s left of our fundamental values — and if we don’t object, he’ll simply do it again.

We need to confront this ugly aspect of the American character and defeat it. That is the only way to take the memory of those murdered today and turn it into a blessing.