Category
May 16, 2011
Opinion: Here we go again—UC Irvine’s annual propoganda parade
Here we go again. It’s spring, and for the Muslim Student Union (MSU) at UC Irvine (UCI), spring means it’s time for the MSU’s annual weeklong propaganda parade of hate programs against Israel and calls for punishing it with boycotts and divestment. Forget the real Arab spring, during which masses of people have been risking their lives to demonstrate against dictatorial rule. The MSU is obsessed with only one issue: convincing students that the democratic state of Israel is evil, has no right to exist, and should be punished and dismantled.
Opinion: Recognize Palestinian statehood—Today
At 4:00 in the afternoon, sixty-three years ago today, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion took to the podium in the auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum to make a bold and historic announcement. The preceding days had been filled with often difficult deliberations among Zionist leaders over whether to move ahead with it in the face of American opposition. Eventually, Ben-Gurion garnered enough support among his colleagues to carry the day. On May 14, the fifth of Iyar in the Hebrew calendar, he stood and declared with a sense of historical moment: “We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be known as the State of Israel.” For Ben-Gurion and fellow Zionists, this announcement brought to an end the millennial aspiration of “Jews…in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland.”
A Kristallnacht lesson for our generation
It was Nov. 9 – Kristallnacht, the night of \”broken glass\” – when hundreds of Jewish businesses and virtually every synagogue throughout Germany and Austria were set ablaze. On that terrible night in 1938, my father, Sol, ran into a burning synagogue near his home in Vienna and rescued a Torah that would otherwise have been consumed by the flames. He and his brother, Morris Brafman, carried that Torah halfway around the world, ultimately bringing it to the United States, where it was restored and is currently in a yeshiva in Far Rockaway, Queens, N.Y., in an ark dedicated to the memory of my father and his wife of 55 years, my mother Rose.
Mass graves database to go online
Information gleaned from Father Patrick Desbois\’ years-long search for mass Jewish graves in Eastern Europe will be made available on a database. Desbois\’ organization, Yahad-In Unum, has joined with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish Committee to set up an online database of his findings since 2004 of mass graves in more than 600 towns and villages in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Poland.
White House: Israel has a right to defend borders
The White House said Israel has a right to defend itself from unauthorized border crossings and blamed Syria for \”inciting\” violence. White House spokesman Jay Carney on Monday addressed incidents along Israel\’s Lebanon, Syria and Gaza Strip borders the day before in which Palestinians marking Israel\’s 1948 founding attempted to cross over.
Obama to address AIPAC
President Obama will address this year\’s AIPAC conference. Obama\’s decision to keynote the American Israel Public Affairs Committee\’s annual policy conference, rumored for days, was confirmed Monday by Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, to reporters traveling with the president aboard Air Force One. AIPAC confirmed the news.
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