A series of anti-Semitic flyers were found in the West Valley area of the San Fernando Valley on March 18, as first reported by the Algemeiner.
The flyers show a picture of swastika and ask if it’s “a hate symbol”; it then asks if a Star of David is a hate symbol.
“The murder of innocent women and children by a Rothschild led Jewish Zionist armed militia to forcibly confiscate the Land of Palestine now known as Israel,” the flyer states.
Above this flyer was another asked, “What’s the difference between crackheads and Jews?”
According to the Algemeiner, four of the aforementioned flyers were discovered around El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills and another was found in close proximity to Nestle Avenue Charter Elementary School in Tarzana; they have since been taken down.
Dean Bennett, assistant principal of El Camino Real Charter High School, told the Journal in an email, “There were four flyers in total, all were taken down, and police were notified. The executive director and I did a perimeter check today and we didn’t see any additional flyers.”
Los Angeles Police Department Public Information Officer Drake Madison told the Journal in a phone interview that the LAPD is aware of the flyers being in “different locations” in the San Fernando Valley and that it is being investigated as a hate crime.
Nestle Avenue Charter Elementary School did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.
Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper told Algemeiner, “The language includes reference to Rothschilds which would seem to indicate someone who has been absorbing new/old anti-Semitic tropes on social media.”
Cooper told the Journal in a March 19 phone interview that the Rothschild anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which came into being 200 years ago, have been “resurrected” thanks to the Internet.
“You see someone using ‘Rothschild’ as an adjective for alleged Jewish greed, avarice, misdeeds, conspiracy to control, a la Protocols of Zion,” Cooper said. “The question is, where would someone in the year 2019 come up with a Rothschild, of all things?”
Cooper added that whoever is responsible for the flyer likely “cut-and-paste it from the Internet.” He also said that 20 different people had notified him about the flyers, suggesting that the flyers “hit a chord.”
StandWithUs tweeted:
Digusting flyers in #LA targeting LA schools and equate Jewish star with Swastika.
(JTA) — Writer and adventurer Blair Braverman appears to be the first Jewish woman to race in — and complete — the historic Iditarod sled dog race, finishing the grueling 1,000-mile course in 13 days, 19 hours, 17 minutes and 2 seconds.
The 30-year-old musher crossed the finish line Sunday in Nome, Alaska, in 36th place. Her sled was pulled by 14 dogs.
“WE DID IT!!!!!!” she tweeted Sunday. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And also the most beautiful. The dogs and I took care of each other the whole way. Stories to come, but for now we plan to nap (and eat) for days. All dogs and humans are doing great.”
Braverman told Alma last year that the Iditarod is “something I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid.” She grew up in Davis, California, and now lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband, Quince Mountain. They run BraverMountain Mushing (a portmanteau of their names).
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And also the most beautiful. The dogs and I took care of each other the whole way. Stories to come, but for now we plan to nap (and eat) for days. All dogs and humans are doing great. xoxo pic.twitter.com/r30l9k9H7x
On Twitter, where she has a dedicated following of over 70,000 people, Braverman tweets long-form stories. She shares her life raising dogs, racing and being the only Jew in her rural Wisconsin community. She’s become somewhat of an internet sensation: Her fans call themselves the “Ugly Dogs” following a Twitter troll that told Blair to “Go back to your ugly dogs, Karen.”
In an NPR profile of Braverman, she explained that she believes her Twitter popularity is due to the inaccessible nature of the rural sport.
She also reminds her followers time and again that all her sled dogs are Jewish (with the exception of one). As she told Alma, “they are proud Jewish sled dogs.” She also tweets about feeling “like a Jewish grandmother” when she watches her dogs eat.
“My dogs are my family,” she wrote in Vogue. “I love them like pets, but we also have a different, deeper connection that comes from relying on each other in the wilderness. That bond with my dogs — the love we share and the things we can do together — is the whole point of all of this.”
“I’ve lived in places where I’m the only Jew, particularly in rural Norway. And it’s dangerous, I think, for people to think they’ve never met certain kinds of people. Like if you think you don’t know any queer folks, or immigrants, or Jews — that’s how groups of individual humans are reduced to symbols and ideas. If I know someone, if I’ve lived with them, I don’t want them to be able to tell themselves that they’ve never met a Jew,” Braverman told Alma.
Braverman joins a small group of Jews to have completed the Iditarod, now in its 47th year. In 2009, the Forward reported that 11 Jews have raced in the competition’s history; JTA could not independently verify that statistic.
Logging off for Yom Kippur. Shana Tovah, and wishing an easy fast to all my (fasting) Jews out there! pic.twitter.com/NzgtCmPwBu
The first Jewish musher to complete the race was Fred Agree, who raced in 1984 and 1985. His lead dog was named God and his wheel dogs — the ones in the back — were named Sodom and Gomorrah because, as his wife, Nona Safra, wrote in an email to JTA, “you should never look back.”
The 2011 Iditarod champion, John Baker, is of Jewish and Native Alaskan heritage. He is the only Inupiaq — and only Jew — to ever win the Iditarod. Baker competed in the Iditarod 22 times. His Jewish grandmother, Clara Levy, was born in 1914 in Kiana, Alaska. In 2002, Rabbi Mark Glickman traveled to Kotzebue, Alaska, for her funeral and wrote a moving account of her life and her family.
Jake Berkowitz is a three-time Iditarod finisher (in 2008, 2009 and 2013); he now covers the race for the Anchorage Daily News. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Forward reported that he attended Talmud Torah of St. Paul Jewish day school and studied at Hebrew University for a year after graduating high school.
Braverman’s fans have been vocal in their support for her throughout the race. They also started a campaign to support Alaskan schools as she races (naming the campaign “Igivearod”). As of this writing they have raised over $80,000 for Alaskan teachers and schools, funding over 100 projects.
Braverman had no idea that her fans were going to take on the fundraising project.
After finishing the race, she tweeted, “A few hundred miles into the race, teachers started hugging me in villages. ‘We haven’t been able to buy new glue sticks in six months, but now my classroom will have a garden and a project to get girls into engineering!’ one woman told me. I happy cried all the way up the Yukon.”
Anti-Semitic rhetoric and swastikas were drawn on at least 30 gravestones at the Hebrew Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts over the weekend.
The vandalism occurred over the weekend, according to River Fall police.
The Providence Journal reported that police responded to a call that a suspicious vehicle had been parked at the cemetery for two days. When the police arrived March 17 the car was gone.
“Heil Hitler,” “Hitler was right,” and “Oy vey, this is MAGA Country” were written on the graves. MAGA refers to Make American Great Again, the slogan from President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Two gravestones had the words, “Day of the Rope,” written on them. The ADL says this is a reference to the novel, “The Turner Diaries,” which is about a white supremacist army that overturns the United States government.
The ADL told the Journal that “the desecration of The Hebrew Cemetery of Fall River is an inexcusable act of anti-semitic hatred in the place where we honor and remember the lives of our community members.”
Alongside the Police Department and Temple Beth El, ADL is offering a $1,500 reward for any information leading to an arrest in the case.
Police in Fall River are investigating the incident.
Of the roughly 125 people participating in the American Zionist Movement’s Biennial Assembly in New York on March 10-11, few appeared to be below the age of 50. Most, in fact, appeared to be long past the eligible age for Social Security. The event’s sparse attendance may have been an indication of how Zionism has become a dirty word for some Jews, particularly those who are young.
Even Meredith Berkman, a 50-ish mother of four and creator of the Zionista Project, admitted to not being entirely comfortable out on the street while wearing the T-shirts and baseball caps she designed as part of her attempt to “rebrand” Zionism and make it cool again. And she lives on the Upper West Side, which is probably the Jewiest neighborhood in Manhattan. If you can’t be comfortable touting Zionist love there, where can you?
The conference included some provocative programming that could have been — should have been — seen by young Jews who are interested in Israel.
The American Zionist Movement (AZM) has 29 constituent groups spanning the ideological spectrum, from Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) and Habonim Dror on the left to the Zionist Organization of America and the expanding Herut North America, a secular group based on Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s ideology of Israeli imperialism, on the right.
And while a fair number of people representing liberal Zionist groups were present, including the Conservative and Reform movements and Ameinu — whose slogan is “Liberal Values, Progressive Israel” — the loudest voices audible at the conference came from those on the right.
It led me to wonder: Is there room today for progressives in mainstream Zionist circles, or has ardent support for the State of Israel been ceded to political right-wingers?
“While a fair number of people representing liberal Zionist groups were present … the loudest voices came from those on the right.”
Some progressive Jews’ enthusiastic backing of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who recently suggested that American Jews have dual loyalties if they support Israel or the lobbying group AIPAC — the third anti-Semitic remark she made in a few weeks — makes the question feel particularly urgent.
“The problem is that there are more right-wing organizations” at the conference, Sarrae Crane, executive director of the Conservative movement’s Zionist arm, Mercaz USA, said in a later conversation with me. “It’s the same issue as in the Presidents Conference, where the left wing is so marginalized that they just don’t feel interested in participating.”
Elan Carr, President Donald Trump’s recently appointed Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, gave the conference’s keynote address, which he peppered with Hebrew phrases.
“Anti-Semitism is emblazoned on my family’s collective memory,” said Carr, whose mother was born in Iraq. As a young girl, his mother saw her father arrested around the time of Israel’s independence. In Iraq, her father was marched through the streets with other local Jewish leaders in leg irons, put on trial and convicted of being a Zionist, for which he served five years in prison, Carr said.
His wife’s family has Holocaust survivors, including a grandmother who survived Auschwitz, he added.
“[The Jewish people’s] history is of being driven from one place to another, desperately seeking refuge,” Carr said. “How blessed we are that this is the United States of America, which, for all of our problems, is the most philo-Semitic country ever.”
Carr’s speech came on the heels of Trump tweeting that the Democratic Party was the “anti-Israel, anti-Jewish party” because its leaders declined to rebuke Omar specifically for her latest anti-Semitic remarks.
Meredith Berkman of Zionista. Photo by Debra Nussbaum Cohen
“My boss, the president of the United States, is absolutely ferocious in his determination to fight anti-Semitism,” he said to energetic applause and whoops from an audience containing many Trump supporters.
Carr made no mention of Trump’s missteps and dog-whistles to anti-Semites, as when the president said “there are good people on both sides” after torch- and gun-wielding neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville, Va., chanting, “The Jews will not replace us!” and one of whom was later convicted for killing an anti-racism demonstrator after running her down with a car.
Ironically, perhaps, given the fact that three of Carr’s closest relatives (his mother, father and stepfather) were immigrants to this country, he did not mention Trump’s policies severely limiting immigration from the Middle East and Mexico, or his administration’s policy of separating young children from their parents as soon as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
President Donald Trump’s recently appointed Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr; Photo by Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Carr is a former Army anti-terrorism officer who served in Iraq before becoming a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County, where he prosecuted violent felonies, including sex crimes and murders. Carr unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for Congress in 2014 and lost in the nonpartisan election for a seat on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in 2016. Sheldon Adelson was one of his largest backers.
One of the AZM’s more interesting speakers was Rabbi Amitai Fraiman, director of Zionism 3.0, an annual conference launched in 2015 by the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif. The goal of the conference is to bring a Jewish peoplehood orientation to Zionism and direct it away from politics, Fraiman said. Some 1,100 people attended the most recent conference in December — nearly 10 times more as were at the AZM gathering.
Z3, as it is known, is considering franchising its model to other Jewish communities across the country, similar to the way the TED conference licenses groups to create their own offshoots, called TEDx. Franchisees would be required to adhere to rules like being inclusive of speakers who oppose the occupation, as well as those who adhere to a Greater Israel view; to confront challenging ideas in Zionism rather than shunning them, as so many Jewish groups do to avoid splintering; and to focus on what is shared between Israeli and American Jewry rather than the divisions.
Earlier in the day, Gil Troy, a historian at McGill University in Montreal and author of the book “The Zionist Ideas,” spoke about “The Future of Zionism in America.” He had lots of pithy but soundly rooted ideas for reframing what it means to be a Zionist in the 21st century, such as making Zionist education positive and pleasurable, rather than about obligation and guilt.
“I’m so tired of the heaviness, of starting every conversation with a crisis,” Troy said.
He suggested making it a tradition to eat ice cream for breakfast on Israel’s Independence Day, and instead of focusing Israel education on heavy intellectual and historical topics, talking about Israeli celebrities.
More seriously, he said, “We have to move away from political Zionism, from just defending the State of Israel, to now also using the state to build identity. We need Identity Zionism.”
Troy added that while Trump has poisoned the word nationalism for many by “putting his golden ‘T’ on it and saying, ‘I’m a nationalist,’ and my young friends run away,” that Zionist American Jews have to take back the term. “There is no Zionism without nationalism,” he said. “We have to fight the false cosmopolitanism of our kids getting to university and dropping their particularism to become citizens of the world.
“The new Zionism is based on the idea that we can sit down together and ask, ‘Who am I?’ using the building blocks of a 3,500-year-old conversation” rooted in Judaism, of which Zionism is an inextricable part, Troy said. “It has rooted me and rooted my kids in a story deeper than the ‘me-me-me’ impulses of the modern world. We’ve got to stand up. We’ve got to teach our kids” about the value of that identity.
Troy also argued for nuance and complexity in dialogue about Israel, which today is getting ever more polarized. “Too much of the Israel conversation is either the guilt trip, or we teach in too many Jewish day schools that Israel is this perfect place, all ‘Havah Nagilah’ and blue-and-white flowers,” he said.
“We need a new organization with a youth voice, pushing back and showing, ‘Wait a minute, we’re alive, we’re proud, we’re thriving,’” Troy said.
Unfortunately for all who care about the next generation feeling connected to Israel, virtually no young people were in the audience, listening, who could take up that charge.
Debra Nussbaum Cohen is the Jewish giving maven at Inside Philanthropy and is a freelance journalist in New York City.
A recent March poll from the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) found that nearly 9 in 10 Jewish college students in France have experienced anti-Semitism on campus.
According to the French magazine L’Express, 89 percent of the 405 French Jewish students surveyed in the poll said that they had experienced some form of anti-Semitism on campus, which included tropes, jokes about the Holocaust and Jewish stereotypes. Of those students, 85 percent said they had been subjected to an anti-Semitic trope, 75 percent said they had been on the receiving end on Jewish and Holocaust jokes and 19 percent said they had been subjected to anti-Semitic “aggression.”
Additionally, 19 percent of the surveyed Jewish students who were subjected to anti-Semitic acts said that they did nothing about them because they didn’t want face retaliation from those who perpetrated the anti-Semitic acts.
Forty-five percent of the 1,007 non-Jewish students surveyed said they had witnessed an anti-Semitic incident, an additional 63 percent said that Jews have been “unfairly” scapegoated. However, 18 percent said that Jews exploit the Holocaust to further their own gain and 17 percent said that Jews wield “too much power” and wealth.
According to French government statistics, anti-Semitic incidents increased by 74 percent and anti-Semitic assaults increased in the country by 270 percent from 2017 to 2018.
The Palestinian terrorist who allegedly murdered an Israeli soldier and a rabbi on March 17 has been killed in a March 19 firefight with Israeli soldiers, according to the Shin Bet.
The Jerusalem Post reports that that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Shin Bet and Yamam special unit surrounded a building in the Abwein village close to Ramallah where they believed the terrorist, 19-year-old Omar Abu Laila, was located in. Gunfire ensued after Abu Laila shot at Israeli forces, and he was subsequently killed in the firefight. No IDF soldiers were reported injured.
Laila allegedly stabbed 19-year-old Sgt. Gal Keidan, and then used Keidan’s gun to fatally shoot Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, 47, a father of 12. The IDF arrested Laila’s father and brother on March 18.
A new mural on the side of the building housing kosher restaurant Osher Bar & Grill in Pico-Robertson is generating conversation for its depiction of “Mr. Monopoly,” the animated character from the classic board game, holding bags of money, dancing atop a pile of greenbacks, and wearing Star of David pants.
The mural was painted on Monday. By Tuesday morning, the stars of David had been covered up with blue paint, an effort by the popular street artist—who goes by the name of Alec Monopoly—to curb the community’s negative reactions.
Osher co-owner Joe Kamelgard told the Journal that he will be painting over the mural as soon as possible. “I don’t believe anyone actually knew what he was going to actually draw ahead of time,” Kamelgard said. “It was a gesture of friendship but it was an unfortunate choice of imagery for the location.”
The mural happened while Kamelgard was offsite, he told the Journal. A staff member and friend of Alec Monopoly’s had brought him to the restaurant. When the popular street artist spied the open wall, he offered an impromptu mural, at no charge.
“Once he became aware it was offensive he took action immediately, to rectify [it] as to not hurt any one,” said Jonathan Fronen, a friend of the artist who spoke up for him in various Facebook threads.
The money bags are part of the artist’s signature Mr. Monopoly character, and appear in most of Alec’s murals. The stars of David, which prompted the strongest reaction from the community, were intended as a greeting to Jews in celebration of Purim. (“Happy Purim to my Jewish family,” read the caption on the Instagram photo of the artist mid-creation.)
“It is very typical for graffiti artists, and other types of artists, to have a unique motif they repeat,” said Anne Marie Hromadka, local curator and founder of AMH Art Advisory. “The problem was the incorporation of the stars of David and the location of the mural. Placing his Monopoly man in the center of Pico-Robertson takes on a different meaning and can read anti-Semitic.”
“We advised them that putting up the Monopoly guy holding money bags on the wall of a kosher restaurant in a very Jewish neighborhood might be in poor taste,” said Rabbi Daniel Chorny, who was walking by with Rabbi Jason Rosner, when they saw the artist creating the mural. “They put it up anyway. At the time I couldn’t tell he was putting stars of David all over the pants. It’s even worse than I anticipated.”
The mural was painted on Monday. By Tuesday morning, the stars of David had been covered up with blue paint, an effort by the popular street artist—who goes by the name of Alec Monopoly—to curb the community’s negative reactions.
On Monday night, one passerby said the image scared her “because of what’s happening with ‘the Benjamins,’” (referring to language used by U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to criticize the influence of lobbying groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). However, absent the stars of David, she said, she wouldn’t think the image was anti-Semitic.
Another passerby, local resident Isaac Begin, disagreed. “My parents were survivors. It brings back memories of terrible things that they experienced before the war,” he said. “And as the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Because it’s on the side of a kosher restaurant, to me, the message is very clear.”
Kamelgard spoke with the artist on Tuesday morning. “He feels terrible because the last thing he wanted to do was to offend anyone,” Kamelgard said. “This was a gift. He wants to do something uplifting for the community, which is what he thought he was doing before it generated such difficult emotions in people.”
Osher Bar & Grill, currently closed for renovation and rebranding, will re-open in April, coinciding with the planned return of Alec Monopoly to Los Angeles.
“[Alec] told me he wants to do something else with input from the community,” Kamelgard said, which he hopes “will enhance the area and maybe become a place for people to take pictures, as his other work is around the country and around the world.”
The painting has being painted over March 19. Photo by Esther Kustanowitz
Here on the Two Nice Jewish Boys podcast, we’ve recorded episodes with authors, we’ve done an episode about the discovery of THC, we did one about the navigation system within bats and one about the fraudulent binary options industry. But one subject seems to be, without intent, a recurring theme. It’s not hard to guess which one, either. I suppose it just goes to show, how ingrained it is in the Israeli psyche. That is, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And it seems that every episode we do, every guest we bring to speak about this topic, has another view point. As the saying goes, two Jews, three opinions.
But regardless, however many opinions there might be, one thing seems constant. At least, so far. The conflict doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. But is there anything we can do in the meantime? Some people think that separation, walls, borders and retreats are the solution to reach peace in the area. But for others, the way to go about it, is by building – not settlements – but human relations.
At least that was the notion that led Inon Dan Kehati to innovate and seek for new ways to approach the problem. Instead of looking at the macro level, he chose to look at the micro, and to build connections between people, in the hope that in the future, peace will pursue. And that’s exactly what he’s doing with his non for profit organization, The Home.
We’re really excited to have Inon with us on the podcast today.
(JTA) — The Israeli spacecraft Beresheet successfully conducted its final major maneuver as it continues on its journey to the moon.
The spacecraft burned its engine for 60 seconds as it moved to an elliptical orbit around the earth that will intersect the moon’s orbit and be captured in it. The rendezvous is scheduled for April 4 at 251,655 miles from earth, SpaceIL said in a statement.
The lunar lander is expected to land on the moon’s surface on April 11.
The landing site has been identified as the northeastern part of Mare Serenitatis, or the Sea of Serenity, a flat area on the moon’s surface.
The spacecraft continues to communicate with the Israel Aerospace Industries and SpaceIL control room in Yehud in central Israel.
