December 12, 2016

SOLACE Movie Review

Does Trump have a problem with Jews? You be the referee

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel, News, Rosner's Domain, United States, Worldwide / Shmuel Rosner

I've heard Democratic leaders – senior leaders – saying that President-elect Donald Trump is anti-Semitic. So it is fair to assume that these leaders are not pleased with Binyamin Netanyahu’s ” target=”_blank”>said: “I’m not a referee.” The right answer – but Israel, whether it likes it or not – is suddenly asked to be a referee in determining the level of anti-Semitism in the American political arena. Why Israel? Because of two reasons: One – Israel has convinced the world (the annoyance of Jewish leaders worldwide disregarded) that it is indeed the Jewish State and the weightiest voice of the Jewish people. Two – American Jewish leaders were not convincing in making claims pertaining to the supposed sins of the Trump team – because too many of them seemed politically inclined to indict Trump without ever giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Not that Israel can be trusted to be the fair judge of anti-Semitic tendencies in American administrations. In the last fews weeks it seems that Israel has clearly calculated that serving as the detergent of the Trump administration would be beneficial for it. A few weeks ago, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, ” target=”_blank”>made my decision a while ago).

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None dare call it treason

Leave a Comment / Marty Kaplan, Opinion / Marty Kaplan

In 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson, a man named John A. Stormer self-published a book called, “None Dare Call It Treason.” It accused America’s left-leaning elites of paving the way for a Soviet victory in the Cold War. The book sold seven million copies, but Johnson crushed Goldwater in the election.

Now that the C.I.A. has determined that the Russians intervened in the presidential election to help Trump win, the Cold War politics of left and right have been flipped. If Stormer rewrote his book for 2016, its thesis might go like this:

Beware of Donald Trump. Witlessly or willfully, he’s doing the Kremlin’s bidding. Anyone who enables him – on his payroll or in the press, by sucking up or by silence, out of good will or cowardice – is Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. This is a national emergency, and treating it like normal is criminally negligent of our duty to American democracy.

Trump as traitor: I can just imagine the reaction from the Tower penthouse. Lying media. Paranoid hyperbole. Partisan libel. Sour grapes. A pathetic bid for clicks. A desperate assault on the will of the people. Sad! (Note to Tweeter-in-Chief: You’re welcome.)

As a kid in a New Jersey household where Adlai Stevenson was worshipped, I thought Stormer was a nut job, so I won’t pretend that accepting the modern inverse of his case is a no-brainer. I’m also not trying to recast my political differences with the president-elect as a national security crisis. Trump won. Elections have consequences. I get that.

I may not like it, but I’m not surprised that Trump tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a crusading climate change denier and an advocate of dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, to run the E.P.A., presumably into the ground. Anyone who interpreted Al Gore’s meeting with Trump as a sign of his open-mindedness on climate change got played, just like Gore got played.

Similarly, I’m cynical, but not shocked that Trump’s picks for treasury secretary, National Economic Council and chief adviser – Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn and Steve Bannon – are alumni of Goldman Sachs. A billionaire managed to hijack Bernie Sanders’ indictment of Wall Street and brand Hillary Clinton as the stooge of Goldman Sachs. The success of that impersonation isn’t on Trump, it’s on us.

I’m infuriated, but not startled that Trump refuses to disclose his tax returns, divest his assets, create a credible blind trust, obey the constitutional prohibition of foreign emoluments or eliminate the conflict between fattening his family fortune and advancing American interests. That’s not draining the swamp, it’s drinking it.

It’s abysmal that Democrats didn’t have a good enough jobs message to convince enough Rust Belt voters to choose their economic alternative to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. It’s disgraceful that the media normalized Trump, propagated his lies, monetized his notoriety and lapped up his tweet porn. It’s maddening that the Electoral College apportions ballot power inequitably. But as enervating as any of that is, none of it is as dangerous to democracy as the C.I.A.’s finding that Putin hacked the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Without firing a single shot, the Kremlin is weeks away from installing its puppet in the White House.

Within days, Trump is expected to name Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s CEO, as his secretary of state. Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship, one of Russia’s highest civilian honors, on Tillerson, after Exxon signed a deal with Rosneft, the Russian government-owned oil company, to jointly explore the Black Sea and Arctic. The plan died when the U.S. and E.U. sanctioned Russia for annexing Crimea; Tillerson, whose Exxon shares’ value will skyrocket if sanctions are lifted, favors lifting them.

The Tillerson appointment is the latest dot in the pattern of Trump’s Putinophilia. When 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic emails, Trump – who’s refused most of his security briefings – rejected their conclusion, claiming at one point that it “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” at another that “it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.” I knew that Trump is a serial fat-shamer, but I didn’t know until now that being a Newarker puts me in his crosshairs, too.

It’s entirely conceivable that Russia has something on Trump. They may hold hundreds of millions of dollars of Trump debt. They may have spousally unsettling video of him – a K.G.B. specialty, and a plausible Trump susceptibility. Surely the Kremlin has mapped his character disorder. In the third debate, when Trump said Putin had no respect for Clinton, and she shot back, “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president,” Trump’s interruption – “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet, no, you’re the puppet” – sounded like a third-grader. Actually, it was a confession, what clinicians call projective identification. Putin’s psy ops must know every such string on him to play.

Before the election, when both parties’ congressional leaders were secretly informed that Russia had its thumb on the scale for Trump, Republican leader Mitch McConnell torpedoed a bipartisan plan to decry their intervention. Now that the news is out, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the intel “should alarm every American,” and they called for a bipartisan investigation to stop “the grave threats that cyberattacks… pose to our national security.”

Trump’s response? “I think it is ridiculous. It’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it. Every week it’s another excuse. We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”

As we don’t know. Trump’s Electoral College margin will rank 44^th among the 54 presidential elections that have been held since the 12^th Amendment was ratified. Nate Silver called Trump’s “landslide” claim “Orwellian.” The Washington Post gave it Four Pinocchios. Why not just call it a lie?

Trump blew off the Kremlin’s intervention in our election the way Putin denied Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Do we call that a lie, too?

Maybe there’s a better word we should dare to use.

Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

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Donald Trump says he wants Ivanka and Jared Kushner ‘involved’ in Washington

Leave a Comment / United States / Jewish Journal

President-elect Donald Trump, speaking of his Jewish daughter and son-in-law, said he “would love to be able to have them involved” in Washington, D.C.

Asked by host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” if Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were moving to the nation’s capital, Trump said they are “working that out right now.” Rumors started circulating last week that the couple were house hunting in the area.

“They’re both very talented people,” Trump told Wallace. “I think we’ll have to see how the laws read. I would love to be able to have them involved.”

Trump added: “If you look at Ivanka, you take a look, she’s so strong, as you know, to the women’s issue and child care, and so many things she’d be so good. Nobody can do better than her. I’d just have to see whether or not we can do that. She’d like to do that.”

Trump also said he would like Kushner’s help in dealing with other nations and Middle East peace.

“I’d love to have Jared helping us on deals with other nations and see if we can do peace in the Middle East and other things. He’s very talented. He’s a very talented guy. So we’re looking at that from a legal standpoint right now,” Trump said.

The wide-ranging interview, which included discussion of Trump Cabinet appointments and the transition process, was Trump’s first Sunday show interview since winning the election in November.

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Bob Dylan speech at Nobel: Never had time to ask myself if my songs were literature

Leave a Comment / Culture / Jewish Journal

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan said in a speech read at the Nobel Prize awards presentation that he “never could have imagined” that he would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” Dylan wrote in the speech read Saturday night by the U.S. ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, in Stockholm. “I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.”

Dylan, who last month told the Swedish Academy in a letter that he would be unable to travel to the Swedish capital to receive his Nobel Prize, citing “pre-existing commitments,” said in the letter that “I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize.” He said it took him “more than a few minutes to properly process” the fact that he won the prize.

He said he thought that William Shakespeare would have thought of himself as a dramatist – wondering where he could procure a human skull for Hamlet and how to stage his plays — rather than considering if what he wrote was literature.

Singer Patti Smith performed Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” in an arrangement for the Royal Philharmonic by Hans Ek, but had to apologize after blanking out on some of the lyrics due to nervousness.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman and raised Jewish in Minnesota, Dylan, 75, wrote some of the most influential and well-known songs of the 1960s. His hits include “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Times They Are a-Changin’.”

Dylan in his speech said when he started writing songs as a teenager, his big dream was to make a record and hear his songs on the radio.

“I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world,” he said. “But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures, and I’m grateful for that.

“Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?'” he added, concluding: “So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.”

Dylan is still required to deliver a Nobel lecture in order to receive the $927,740 prize. The lecture must be given within six months starting from Dec. 10, and can be given at the place of Dylan’s choosing. The academy has indicated that the lecture could be a concert.

Also speaking at the banquet, the Swedish Academy’s literary historian Horace Engdahl said Dylan “gave back to the language of poetry its elevated style, lost since the Romantics.”

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Jerusalem mayor sees a bright future for city in the Trump era

Leave a Comment / Israel / Jewish Journal

It’s been nearly 50 years since Israel captured eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. For the past eight years, Nir Barkat has been this city’s mayor.

On Sunday evening, six months ahead of the “united Jerusalem” jubilee, Barkat received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he gave the keynote speech. A staunch advocate of Israeli control over all of Jerusalem, he thanked President-elect Donald Trump for his “commitment to strengthen our city by moving the U.S. Embassy home, to Jerusalem, the united and eternal capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

Late last month, Barkat sat down with JTA in his Jerusalem office to discuss in more depth his vision for the city. Having made a fortune as a high-tech entrepreneur, he easily slipped into industry jargon, speaking of the need to increase Jerusalem’s “market share” of the hearts of Diaspora Jews. He also said that all its residents were his “children.”

Barkat made clear that he sees Jerusalem as an integral part of Israel and should not be part of negotiations with the Palestinians, and expressed confidence that Trump – with whose Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, he is friendly – shares his vision.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JTA: What does it mean for you to receive this honorary degree?

Barkat: For me, it’s recognition of the changes happening in the city of Jerusalem. The honorary degree is being received on behalf of the residents of Jerusalem. I feel very proud that indeed Jerusalem is going in the right direction, but there is lots of work still to do. Toward its jubilee next year, I think it sharpens the fact that we all need to do everything we can to improve the city year after year.

JTA: What are the positive changes you see in Jerusalem?

Barkat: Jerusalem is going through economic growth, fast economic growth, and a cultural renaissance. Practically in almost every parameter we look, this city is making progress relative to years before and relative to its peer group. I think Jerusalem is fulfilling a very important role in the world of how do you make so many different people work in one city, in one inclusive economy, with democratic values.

JTA: Jerusalem also faces problems. Palestinian terrorism surged here earlier this year, and it is still the poorest city in Israel. How do you deal with problems like that on the municipal level?

Barkat: With respect to the round of violence we had, you have to understand that today Jerusalem is 10 times safer than New York. When you look at, for example, the murder rate for crime and terror together, your chances of getting killed in the streets of New York are 10 times higher than the city of Jerusalem. I settle for being one of the safest cities in the world, focusing on economic growth and making the city tick better, work better.

We have a lot of poor people, but this city is moving year after year as a better place to live. And the more we develop our economy and education system and infrastructure, that will naturally reflect on having a better future.

JTA: As the mayor of Jerusalem, why is it important for you to reach out to the Diaspora?

Barkat: For thousands of years, every Pesach [Passover] and every wedding and practically every major occasion, the longing for returning and building and connecting to Jerusalem is in our prayers and it’s in our hearts. Everyone is a shareholder in the city of Jerusalem. It’s the capital of the Jewish people forever, and I think developing that relationship, increasing that market share of people’s hearts, is in the mutual benefit of the city and the Jewish people around the world. And my role as mayor is to expand that relationship and bonding.

JTA: Why must Israel retain control of all of Jerusalem when the Palestinians claim the eastern part of the city as their capital?

Barkat: There’s a very famous phrase in the Bible that Jerusalem makes all peoples friends. Jerusalem had and has and will always have a special role of including people. God forbid, if you divide Jerusalem it will never function. It’s one economy. It’s one vision. It will never ever function as a divided city, as it did not function for 2,000 years.

Since the reunification of the city of Jerusalem, we’re working very hard to catch up with neglect and investments. There’s lots of work to do, but the philosophy is only one, and by the way, there’s no split city in the world that ever functioned. So Jerusalem is off the table, off the negotiation table, and our goal is to make it better for all residents of the city — Muslims, Christians and Jews. They’re all my children. I need and I do take care of all of them in order to improve quality of life for all.

JTA: Do you think President-elect Donald Trump shares your vision of Jerusalem?

Barkat: It seems that the vision and the understanding of the Trump administration is more aligned with the understanding of myself and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The statements that have been said support that feeling that indeed it’s going to be different. The prior administration had different thoughts as to the future of the city of Jerusalem and other elements, and hopefully that change will indeed be executed. I have good reasons to believe that’s going to be the case.

JTA: Would you like to see Trump move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as he promised during his campaign?

Barkat: Not only I, not only Israelis, I also think the majority of Americans would like to see the embassy moved. It’s a statement of understanding the role and the importance of Jerusalem for the Jewish people. It was disappointing that it did not happen so far, but it’s better late than never.

JTA: Do you expect to be freer to build your vision of a united Jerusalem with Trump in the White House?

Barkat: With the prior administration, every once in a while, we heard the sort of statement like: Freeze building in Jerusalem. So I asked the administration: Freeze what exactly? Freeze everything? Or God forbid, do you mean that I have to ask somebody if he’s Jewish or Muslim or Christian before I as mayor of Jerusalem give him a license? It’s against the American Constitution.

When we plan Jerusalem and develop it, our master plan that we share with people shows and demonstrates that we indeed are honest and fair and enable all growth — of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the city of Jerusalem — on an equal basis. I believe and hope that the new administration understands that very, very well and will let us build Jerusalem for the benefit of all residents.

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Netanyahu to lobby Trump to ‘undo’ Iran deal, help on two-state solution

Leave a Comment / Jewish Insider, United States / jacobk

This story originally appeared on “>recommended him to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state that forbids the presence of Christian or Jewish citizens, or that discriminates against people on the basis of religion, and not to pressure Israel to withdraw to borders “that make attacks and conflict more likely.”

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump suggested he’s serious about getting his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, involved in the Middle East process. “I’d love to have Jared helping us on deals with other nations and see if we can do peace in the Middle East and other things,” the President-elect said. “He’s very talented. He’s a very talented guy. We’re looking at that from a legal standpoint right now.”

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Romanian Jewish heritage: my first (long-ago) impressions

Leave a Comment / United States / Ruth Ellen Gruber

“>Jewish Heritage Travel that this trip sowed the seeds of my interest. And I also wrote about parts of the trip for UPI, including the stop we made at Radauti, where were found the grave of our great-grandmother in the unkempt Jewish cemetery.

1991

Synagogue in Bystrica, Romania, used as a concert hall

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Pasadena trial focuses on Nazi-looted masterpiece

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles, News / Ryan Torok

When David Cassirer was a child, he and his sister, Ava, would make voyages across the Atlantic Ocean to England on the Queen Mary to visit their great-grandmother, Lilly, a German Jew who fled Nazi Germany in 1939.

“It was great fun to do this trip. Imagine … playing shuffleboard, getting into trouble on the ship, swimming in the pool,” remembered Cassirer, who is now 62 and splits his time between California and Colorado. “It was a great adventure.”

Decades later, Cassirer has found himself embroiled in a much more serious exploit involving his late great-grandmother. Playing out in federal appeals court instead of an ocean liner, it involves a Nazi-looted piece of art worth more than $30 million and the dramatic story behind how it came to hang in a Madrid museum.

At the center of the court case — David Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, which began Dec. 5 in Pasadena at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — is an 1897 impressionist masterpiece by Camille Pissarro. Known as “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain,” the Paris streetscape belonged to Lilly before she fled the Nazis. In fact, she and her second husband, Otto, traded it for exit visas in 1939 following Kristallnacht.

Later, the piece was smuggled into the United States, where it was traded among specialists in Nazi-looted artwork in galleries in Los Angeles and New York until 1976, when it was purchased by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, “an individual whose family had long-standing ties to the Nazi regime and who had trafficked in Nazi stolen art,” according to Cassirer’s attorneys.

In 1992, Thyssen-Bornemisza opened a museum with his extensive collection, the Pissarro included, in a building offered by the Spanish state. In 1993, the Spanish government acquired the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

The Cassirer family discovered the painting’s existence in 1999 after a friend of Cassirer’s late father, Claude (Lilly’s grandson), saw the painting in a museum catalog and notified the family. The family had thought the piece was destroyed during the war.

The current appellate case follows a 2015 decision that dismissed Cassirer’s claim that the Cassirer painting belongs to him and his family.

The family has been trying to reclaim the painting for close to two decades. It is one of many instances of Jewish families affected by the Holocaust attempting to gain back artwork that was taken from them due to the circumstances of the Shoah.

Local attorney Randy Schoenberg — whose grandfather, Arnold, knew the Cassirers before the war started, at a time when the Cassirers were active in Berlin’s cultural scene — is famous for winning back the Gustav Klimt painting popularly known as “Woman in Gold” for his survivor client Maria Altmann. He told the Journal he hopes the outcome is similar for the Cassirers.

“Anything can happen in these cases at any time,” he told the Journal. “It’s very tough and sad. This is a case where the painting was forced away from the Cassirers originally and never been returned. I think if you look at it from that simple perspective — property taken, never returned — it would be very, very sad if no legal remedy recognized that wrong.”

In 1958, the German government gave $13,000 to Lilly to cover the painting’s loss. However, U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, who concluded in 2015 the painting belonged to the museum, acknowledged Lilly accepted this payment without knowing the painting still existed.

Cassirer’s current defense team includes notable attorney David Boies, who argued on the side of Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and for the unconstitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Their argument is that the museum’s claim to the painting — that it has been in the collection for more than six years and thus, under prescriptive Spanish law, belongs to the museum — is void: The museum, even if it purchased the piece not knowing it was looted work, benefits by having the painting and is thus an accessory to the theft, Boies said in court on Monday.

No one is disputing that the painting was stolen from Lilly, not even the museum’s attorney, Thaddeus J. Stauber.

Lilly died in 1962, and her only child, Eva, became her heir. When Eva died, Claude, who used to play in Lilly’s parlor in Berlin in the 1920s, where the Pissarro painting hung on the wall, became the heir. Claude died recently and David Cassirer, his sister and the Jewish Federation of San Diego County became the heirs.

As to what the family plans to do if they win back the painting, Cassirer said he does not know for certain yet. All he knows is that the museum, what with its name being associated with a family that helped finance the Nazis, is not the place for it.

“No matter what happens, I hope it will continue to be able to be seen by people but not in the hands of the Spanish government and the Thyssen museum. My family feels very strongly the museum knowingly accepted this painting into their collection when they would have easily and no doubt did know this was Nazi-looted art when they took it in. We don’t think that behavior should be rewarded on our level, a Jewish level, the case level, the Holocaust level,” he said. “On so many levels this behavior should not be rewarded and is one of the reasons I feel so passionately about the case.”

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American F-35 stealth fighter jets arrive in Israel

Leave a Comment / Israel / Jewish Journal

Two F-35 stealth fighter jets touched down in Israel for a handover ceremony from their American pilots to their Israeli pilots.

The planes arrived five hours late for the ceremony on Monday after being delayed in Italy due to fog.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was in Israel for the arrival of the airplanes. Earlier in the day, Carter met in Tel Aviv with his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Liberman, and they “discussed the depth and strength of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and reflected on the unprecedented defense cooperation between our two countries over the last eight years — including robust developments on missile defense, counter-tunneling, cyber security and intelligence sharing,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Carter and Liberman also discussed “regional security challenges in the Middle East,” as well as the campaign to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group.

“Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to the U.S.- Israeli defense relationship and the United States’ unwavering commitment to Israel’s security in the future,” the Department of Defense said.

During the handover ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Carter for coming to Israel.

“It’s a sign of your personal commitment to Israel’s security on many fronts,” Netanyahu said, adding: “And I wish to thank as well, along with all the people of Israel, President Obama. Israel is your best and most reliable ally in the Middle East — in my opinion beyond the Middle East. We will always remain so. Thank you, Secretary Carter.”

Following the handover, Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, along with Israeli military officials, affixed the symbol of the Israel Air Force on the planes, which are known in Israel by the moniker “Adir,” or Mighty.

Each plane costs about $100 million. An additional six planes will arrive in the coming year.

Last month, Israel ordered 17 more of the advanced aircraft under the 10-year, $38 billion U.S. military aid package for Israel signed by Obama in September. Most of the aid must be spent in the United States. The F-35 is built by Lockheed-Martin.

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