#abe foxman

Chris McGreal at The Guardian:

Jimmy Carter’s terminal illness reignited a bitter dispute over accusations the former president was antisemitic after he wrote a bestselling book likening the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories to South African apartheid. Prominent American supporters of Israel lined up to denounce Carter and the book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, when it was published in 2006. Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, called the former president a “bigot”. Deborah Lipstadt, who is now the Biden administration’s special envoy against antisemitism, accused him of having a “Jewish problem”. Alan Dershowitz, the US constitutional lawyer and ardent advocate for Israel, said Carter set out to offend Israelis and Jews. “Jimmy Carter’s sensitivities seem to have a gaping hole when it comes to Jews. There is a term for that,” he wrote.

Others did not beat around the bush and called Carter an antisemite. Pro-Israel pressure groups placed ads in the New York Times accusing Carter of facilitating those who “pursue Israel’s annihilation” and claiming he was “blinded by an anti-Israel animus”. But nearly two decades later, the book looks prescient given that leading Israeli politicians and major human rights organisations now accuse Israel of imposing a form of apartheid on the Palestinians in breach of international laws. News that Carter had entered hospice care at the beginning of the year prompted calls for critics to apologise for the abuse, drawing an admission from at least one critic. Among those outraged by Carter’s book in 2006 were members of the former president’s own foundation, which has built an international reputation for its work on human rights and to alleviate suffering. Steve Berman led a mass resignation from the Carter Center’s board of councillors at the time. Earlier this year, Berman revealed that he later wrote to Carter to apologise and to say that the former president had been right. “I had started to view Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians as something that started in 1967 as an accident but was now becoming an enterprise with colonial intentions,” Berman said in his letter to Carter. Shortly before Carter’s death, Peter Beinart, described as “the most influential liberal Zionist of his generation”, said the time had come for the former president’s critics to apologise for the “shameful way that the book was received by many significant people”.

When the late Jimmy Carter released his Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid book in 2006, the book’s release drew a lot of controversy because it called out Israel’s occupation of Palestine and compared their situation to South Africa’s highly controversial and racist Apartheid policies aimed at non-Afrikaner South Africans, especially the Blacks.

by Alana Goodman

CHICAGO—The longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League, who now serves as director emeritus, expressed concern about Jews being forced to meet in "secret locations" at the Democratic National Convention due to security threats and anti-Semitism.

"I know in my heart that in the future, it will be better, for Jews in America, then [sic] it is today. But I fear it will never be the same," said Abraham Foxman in a Twitter post on Wednesday.

"After 50 years fighting anti-Semitism in America, I could not have imagined a time Jews would have to meet in secret locations in Chicago at DNC."

Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, served as director of the Jewish civil rights organization from 1987 to 2015. The ADL is now run by Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama aide, who has steered it in a much more partisan direction.

Foxman’s comments come as Jewish groups holding events on the sidelines of the convention have kept their meeting locations a closely guarded secret.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America held panel discussions with former U.S. ambassador to Spain Alan Solomont and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), but attendees were required to register before receiving the location. Private security and metal detectors were present at both events.

The Israeli-American Council only disclosed the location for its "Hostage Square" discussion to attendees a few hours before it started, the Times of Israel reported on Wednesday.

The security concerns appeared justified. On Tuesday, pro-Hamas agitators disrupted a DNC event with hostage families hosted by Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group. The protesters shouted, "Zionism has got to fall" and "Shame on you" at attendees. Dozens of anti-Israel protesters were also arrested after clashing with police near the convention Tuesday night.

Jewish Democratic leaders acknowledged the concerns about anti-Semitism at the DNC but also downplayed the divisions within their party.

Wasserman Schultz, speaking at a JDCA event on Thursday, said she had "angst for over a week over what the reaction would be" when the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the eight Americans being held captive by Hamas, spoke at the DNC on Wednesday.

Wasserman Schultz said there was a lot of "hype about how many protesters there were going to be," and she felt relieved when there were no disruptions from the audience.

But Democratic politicians have also seemed reluctant to mention Israel’s war with Hamas and the Oct. 7 attacks on the convention stage. None of the prominent Jewish Democratic speakers—including second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—mentioned Israel or the hostage crisis in their remarks.

The only speakers to broach the subject were Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who are aligned with the left-leaning anti-Israel movement. Both politicians called for an Israeli ceasefire.

Abe Foxman, who served as chairman of the Anti-Defamation League for 27 years (from 1987 to 2015), was born on May 1, 1940 in Poland. When the Germans invaded a few months later, they herded the Jews in the ghetto, and Foxman’s parents decided to leave him with his Catholic nanny. She adopted him, baptized him and gave him a new first name and her own last name. For all intents and purposes, he grew up as a Catholic in Vilnius, Lithuania through the years 1940-1944. 

When his parents returned after the war, the nanny did not want to return the child, and it took a series of court battles in the Russian legal system for the parents to obtain custody. By that time, he was a good Catholic boy, to the extent that he had even been taught to hate Jews — and he informed his parents that he didn’t plan to change. 

His father wanted to introduce him to Judaism, but he waited for the right opportunity. That opportunity arrived on Simchat Torah 1945; his father thought that a day like this — filled with dancing, joy, and candy for the kids — would be the right moment.

On the way to the synagogue — Abe retold many years later — they passed the monastery, and he crossed himself and ran to kiss the hand of the priest who emerged from the building. His father was obviously unhappy, but he did not say a word.

They arrived at the synagogue, which was actually just a ruin of what remained of the synagogue before the war, and as they entered, little Abe drew the attention of a Jew dancing in a Russian soldier’s uniform. 

The soldier approached his father and asked: “Is this boy Jewish?” The question was appropriate, because Abe had blond hair and blue eyes. 

“Yes,” his father answered.

The soldier turned to the boy and said, “Can I lift you on my shoulders and dance with you?” 

Abe agreed, and the soldier danced with him all evening. When he returned home, Abe told his mother that he loved the Jewish “monastery”…. 

This story was told by Abe Foxman himself at an event at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. One researcher was deeply moved by the story, and decided to look for the soldier who had danced with Abe that night. 

She soon discovered that there is a song written by Abie Rotenberg, which tells about an elderly Jew he met traveling back from a wedding in Chicago. This fellow, who was a holocaust survivor from Vilnius, clearly had difficulty walking, so Abie asked the old man why he bothered to travel to weddings altogether.

The man answered that traveling to weddings was never a hassle; he was overjoyed to participate. This was his story:

He was in Vilnius right after the war, when he decided to go to the synagogue on Simchat Torah. There were no Torah scrolls to dance with, but he noticed a little boy entering the synagogue. Suddenly, he realized that it was the first time in a very long time that he had seen a Jewish child… He lifted the child on his shoulders and danced with him all evening… 

The researcher reached out to Abie Rotenberg, who connected her with that Holocaust survivor. It was really him — Leo Goldman, a rabbi in Detroit, Michigan. In 2010, sixty-five years after they danced together at Simchat Torah in Vilnius, Abe Foxman reunited with Rabbi Leo Goldman.

When World War II broke out, Leo Goldman was a 19-year-old yeshiva student in Poland. In the beginning of the war, the Russians took over his town and recruited him into the Red Army to fight the Nazis. In one battle, he was wounded and sent to a hospital in Uzbekistan where he remained hospitalized for a long time. He was not recruited again, and thus his life was saved. 

In Uzbekistan, he met a Jewish girl and they married after the war, and when they left Russia, they came to Vilnius to search for living relatives. They arrived in the city during the holiday season, and on Simchat Torah, Leo decided to go to the synagogue. There, he saw this little boy, and he suddenly realized that during all his travels from Uzbekistan to Vilnius — thousands of miles — he had seen hundreds of destroyed Jewish communities, and not a single Jewish child! 

He took the child in lieu of a Torah scroll, and turned to the others and said, “Let’s dance with this child — he symbolizes the future of the Jewish people.”

Quelques images tirées de la presse antisémite

L’Anti Defamation League (ADL) est un importante organisation nord-américaine qui, comme la LICRA en France, en Suisse et en Belgique, a officiellement pour vocation de lutter contre le racisme (et surtout sa variante antisémite) mais consacre en réalité le plus clair de son temps à faire l’apologie de l’Etat prétendu juif et à le soutenir mordicus vaille que vaille.

Ce soutien passe par des…

Et tu, Abe?

“Their major issue is the safety and security of the Israeli people,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “Trump is a great friend and a great advocate for the Israeli people.”

But the president, he said, can be both a defender of Israel and a dangerous accelerant for anti-Semitic passions in the United States. “The fact that someone supports Israel doesn’t vitiate the impact he has on other issues that touch upon Jews,” Mr. Foxman said.

“Trump is not an anti-Semite,” he said. “He’s a demagogue.”

I’m not as charitable as Mr. Foxman, though I agree Trump is not himself an anti-semite. He’s a narcissist enjoying the power and prestige of being president and playing dangerous games to appeal to his power base, which is not Jews...even if every Jew in America were further to the Right than Abe Foxman we’d still be too small in numbers to be worth appealing to, in and of ourselves.

First Draft: Bernie Sanders Suspends Jewish Outreach Coordinator After Reports of Her Criticisms of Israel

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Jason Horowitz

and Maggie Haberman

Photo Senator Bernie Sanders at the Caspe Terrace, a Jewish community center in Waukee, Iowa, in September.Credit Brian Frank/Reuters

Two days after the announcement of her hiring, the Sanders presidential campaign suspended its national Jewish outreach coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, on Thursday after…

First Draft: Bernie Sanders Suspends Jewish Outreach Coordinator After Reports of Her Criticisms of Israel

[ad_1] 7:00 pm ET7:00 pm ET Jason Horowitz and Maggie Haberman Photo Senator Bernie Sanders at the Caspe Terrace, a Jewish community center in Waukee, Iowa, in September.Credit Brian Frank/Reuters Two days after the announcement of her hiring, the Sanders presidential campaign suspended its national Jewish outreach coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, on Thursday after revelations that she had…