After All It's His First Job! Red Neck Relating and Tybee Vacationing! EPA To MIners - Cool It! Been There and Done That Repeats Itself!

You might be a 'good ole red neck' if you can relate to any of these and vacation at Tybee!

And if not, think about what you are missing!




===

It’s been a very hard three weeks for Israel.  Israel has had 64 military casualties, and every one was a precious soul in the prime of his life. The nation is in deep mourning.  Lamentably, the UN,  United States, Western European  and other donors are actual accomplices to the terrorism.  The Palestinians in Gaza have  had more than 1500 casualties, and there are thousands of injured on both sides. Israelis feel terrible about those deaths as well, because all of it is so senseless. When will it end?  When the world realizes  what Hamas has done to their own civilian population,  reigns in on Hamas and forces them to terminate their blind hatred of and objective of destroying Israel .  But the world  maintains old prejudices and because  Palestinians are  weaker, favors them as the underdog victims.  Even the United Nations, that great institution  formed to  prevent war and bloodshed, has failed again.  

Watch the cartoon to the end:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d67b21r8vnI

===

Israel develops The Iron Dome, with funding help from America,  resulting in low Israeli casualties due to unwarranted and indiscriminate attacks from incessant Hamas rockets.

Obama then joins The U.N. and others in attacking Israel because their casualties are disproportionately  less than Hamas' which places citizens and children in structures from which Hamas rockets are fired.

But we should not be  too critical  of Obama simply because....

Hamas  attacks Israelis , Russia attacks Ukrainians, The Middle East is smoldering.  Boko Haram is massacring.  ISIS is marching.  Iran seeks nuclear weapons and  N Korea threatens with theirs. China's navy challenges their neighbors. 

Meanwhile, our southern border is dissolving.  Our debt is skyrocketing.  Far too many Americans remain unemployed .  Our enemies are laughing. Obama is  golfing , vacationing and fundraising.and when  earning his pay is violating the Constitution's Separation of Powers Clause.

  

 After all, it is his first job!

Just another job killing clear  day in the life of  Obama's EPA! (See 1 below.)

===

Jihad spells blood and if you believe it will remain within borders think again. 

Feckless and appeasing  behaviour on the part of  West Leaders is a hopeless defense and will not contain it.

Because the world needs a scapegoat and Jews are a small but visible and generally successful minority we become the 'stuckees.'

Bad things begin to happen, and get out of control because few are willing to stand against the red tide of hate born out of religious hatred and economic  insecurity.

Now that Israel is a state surrounded by those who hate and would prefer to live in darkness and Israelis say 'never again' and are prepared to defend themselves that too angers the world and so we find the world inevitably repeating age old history.

You would think 'been there and done that' and the destruction that follows  would sink in and deter but anytime there is a period of peace something comes along to upset the apple cart.  (See 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d  and 2e below.)

===

Dick

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1)  Pushing Back Against Obama's War on Coal

A dozen states filed suit on Friday to stop an ideological EPA campaign that will damage the U.S. economy.

By

MIKE KELLY

A dozen states filed suit on Friday to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from enacting its "Clean Power Plan," new rules that will put many coal-fired power plants out of business. The filing came the same week the EPA held nation-wide public hearings about the plan—including in Pittsburgh, where thousands of coal workers turned out to register their unhappiness with the Obama administration's intentions.

Coal workers are upset because the White House-ordered regulatory scheme will badly damage the coal industry and cost Americans in higher electricity costs and lost jobs while doing little to fight climate change. It was good to see coal finally get a public hearing. The bad news is that President Obama and the EPA have already issued their guilty verdict and handed down the sentence.

Coal generates 40% of America's electricity—more than any other energy source. Its stable price and abundance insulates the U.S. economy from spikes in energy demand. Yet the EPA is proposing to destroy coal's benefits by imposing onerous emissions standards on all existing power plants, under the threat of crippling fines, which is certain to lead to plant closures

The EPA's war on coal has troubling economic implications for every American and U.S. business. As the new regulations take effect, Americans could see their electric bills increase annually by more than 10%—$150 for the average consumer—by the end of the decade, according to the American Action Forum.

By keeping energy rates reliably low, coal helps give U.S. manufacturing its global edge against foreign competitors. On June 2 the National Association of Manufacturers warned that the EPA rule "could single-handedly eliminate this competitive advantage by removing reliable and abundant sources of energy from our nation's energy mix."

Coal also provides, directly and indirectly, hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. In my state of Pennsylvania, more than 40,000 jobs are tied to coal production, including thousands of manufacturing jobs in factories powered by coal. Federal regulations have already forced two plants in my district to close over the past two years. The National Mining Association estimates that more than 300 plants will retire nationwide due to EPA rules over the next six years. When mines and plants shut down, manufacturing costs rise and employment plummets.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the result of the EPA's proposed rule "will be fewer jobs and less income for American families." A study by the foundation released in June predicts that the EPA's anti-coal crusade could terminate 600,000 American jobs by 2023 while dampening economic growth by more than $2 trillion.

What is the point of all this pain? China and India, not the United States, are the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide from coal. China alone has increased coal production by more than 24% since 2005, according to the Energy Information Administration, while the U.S. power sector's carbon emissions have declined by 15%. According to the National Mining Association, a coal plant built today emits 90% fewer emissions than a plant built in the 1970s. That's not clean enough for the EPA.

The New Republic puts it this way: "The goal of these regulations is not to stop global warming, but to prove to the international community that the U.S. is ready to pay additional costs to combat climate change." In other words, the Obama administration expects the American people to sacrifice for the sake of mere symbolism.

I recently introduced the Coal Country Protection Act (H.R. 4808) in the House of Representatives, a companion Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's legislation in the Senate. This bipartisan bill—co-sponsored by West Virginia Democrat Nick Rahall, among others—would halt new EPA regulation on power plants until there is a guarantee that there will be no loss of American jobs, no drop in gross domestic product, no higher electricity rates and no interruption in energy delivery.

In January 2008 as a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama promised that "electricity rates would necessarily sky-rocket" under his policies and boasted that "if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can—it's just that [it] will bankrupt them." He has shown as president that he intends to make good on that promise by eradicating coal from American life.

He used his first-year political capital to try to pass a cap-and-trade plan, but that legislation failed even in the Democratic Senate. Now he is leading the charge again through regulatory fiat. The Clean Power Plan must be stopped—not just for coal country, but the whole country.

Mr. Kelly is a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2) Jihad means there will be blood

By Amil Imani

From Northern Iraq to Northeastern Syria, from Nairobi, Kenya to Benghazi, Libya, from Lahore, Pakistan to the rugged mountains of Mali and Afghanistan, radical Muslims have executed hundreds of their fellow Muslims and are on a killing rampage against Christians. The world is shocked and distressed.

The Muslims' killing campaign did not end with their defeat at the gates of Vienna. Their eviction from Spain was a temporary forced retreat. But now Muslims have, in huge numbers, penetrated the gates of every city and town in Europe and North America without even having to use their swords.

Distressed by the Muslims’ trouble-making and killing sprees, civilized nations are bending over backwards in the hope of placating them and helping them join the family of humanity by admitting hordes of immigrants and offering them all manner of hospitality and assistance. All these gestures remain in vain and to no avail. Many of the new arrivals, deeply infected by the violent side of the Islamic ethos, find it impossible to assimilate in the host countries. Instead, they strive to impose their own order, which is the cause of their own backwardness and inhumanity in the nations from which they have emigrated.

The non-Muslim world is at its wit’s end. No accommodation or kindness seems to stem the tide of Islamic violence. Countless numbers of proposals have been advanced in dealing with this systemic Islamic disorder.  Some feel that, in general, Muslims are law-abiding citizens of their adopted countries and it is only a minority that is responsible for the violence and mayhem. Thinking along these lines has prompted people to say that the solution to Islamic violence rests with Islamic leaders. That is, Islamic leaders should speak up and condemn jihad and jihadists.

Western armchair theorizers and wishful thinkers need to take time and study the Islamic system in order to avoid making demands on Muslim leaders -- demands that will never be met because they are completely unrealistic.

Islam presently has its hold over on over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims. Islam, yet again, has risen from the ashes of defeat and is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of fanatical Islamic foot soldiers are striving to kill and get killed.  What they all want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulses, on their way to Allah's promised glorious paradise. And in the background, granting the foot soldiers' wishes, are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs.  Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death -- what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.

America, with a long tradition of protecting religious freedom, still clings to the “hands off” practice of leaving alone any doctrine or practice billed as religion. A thorny problem is in deciding what constitutes a religion and who is to make that call. There is a glimmer of hope that the American people are finally waking up to the deceit and the menace. Their opposition to the building of the mosque at Ground Zero showed that the creeping Islamization of America is indeed something to stand against and prevent before it is too late.

As more and more Muslims arrive in America, as they reproduce with great fecundity, as they convert the disenchanted and minorities, and as petrodollar-flush Muslims and Muslim treasuries supply generous funds, they gather more power to mount a serious challenge to the American system of governance, representative democracy. As for democracy, the rule of the people, Muslim theology has no use for it at all. Devout Muslims believe that Allah’s rule must govern the world in the form of a Caliphate, a theocracy. Making a mockery of democracy, subverting its workings, and ignoring its provisions is Islam’s way of falsifying what is already believed to be a sinful and false system of governance invented by infidels.

I have been sounding the alarm for decades about the ever-increasing menace Islam is posing to America and our way of life. Apathy, political correctness, and massive Islamic lobbying have successfully prevented the public from truly grasping the all-pervasive Islamic assault.

Time and again we are told by the politically correct “experts” not to worry about Islam posing a threat to our way of life. We’re also told, not to worry about the horrific things that are happening on the other side of the world! If Muslims act heinously toward non-Muslims, it is just the way things are in those countries and it is hardly any of our business. This is the same attitude that set the Islamization of Europe on a seemingly irreversible track. One European country after another is rapidly buckling under the weight of Islamism.

With heavy assurances like this, coming from so many know-it-all authoritative figures, we can sleep soundly without the aid of sleeping pills. Yet, the problem of aggressive Islam is very real and deadly. Neither the pronouncements of the experts, nor the tranquilizing pills of the mind can make it go away. Islam will continue its bloody conquest, as mandated in the Koran.

2a)The Kerry-Qatar Ceasefire Document: What it Says About American Strategy in the Middle East

by Dr. Jonathan Rynhold

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 261

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Last week's  failed ceasefire proposal by John Kerry highlights the clash between the Obama administration's approach to the  Middle East, and the strategy preferred by Israel and other American allies in the region. 

Alas, US policy fails to distinguish between pragmatism and moderation, while evincing reduced support for its regional allies in favor of a less interventionist approach. This suggests an inability to discern between situations which require a conciliatory approach and those which require assertiveness.

There has been widespread consternation in Israel over the Israel-Hamas ceasefire document proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry last week. 

Not only did Kerry=92s proposal accede to many of Hamas' demands, it upgraded Hamas' international standing. Israel was not the only actor that was dumbfounded. The European Union, the Palestinian

Authority and the Arab League all back the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, not the Kerry document which was heavily influenced by Hamas' backers, Qatar and Turkey.

The US has subsequently altered its ceasefire proposal to incorporate several Israeli concerns. However, if the leaked transcript of the tough conversation between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is genuine, it would seem that underlying tensions remain.

Moreover, even if the leaked ceasefire document was only a draft of some ideas, the fact that it was even presented opens a window into the way of thinking within the Obama administration.

The question then is; what lay behind this mishap, and what does it say about US strategy towards the Middle East more generally?

The tendency has been to focus on Kerry himself or the rising death toll in Gaza. However, the core of the problem lies in the clash between the Obama administration's strategy towards the Middle East, and the strategy preferred by America's core allies in the region.

For Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, the key threats come from Iran and from radical Sunni Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. They seek to maintain and promote a balance of power against these forces. An advance of these radical forces in one place is viewed as having negative political and strategic consequences in other places. These states look to the US to provide the leadership required to confront these forces. Consequently, they seek a ceasefire that weakens Hamas and they expect the US to strongly support them in pursuing that objective.

In contrast, the Obama administration does not view Islamism as an over-arching threat to the US, and it champions a grand strategy of retrenchment that seeks to maintain quiet and minimize military intervention. The administration is not enamored of Islamism, but it distinguishes between Al Qaida, which needs to be confronted, and the Muslim Brotherhood (including previous Morsi regime in Egypt and the like), which it believes can be successfully engaged.

Tarring all Islamists with the same brush, and confronting them collectively is viewed as inducing a boundless commitment to unreachable objectives that will only serve to unite disparate groups into a common anti-American cause.

Therefore, according to this administration thinking, the US should be less assertive so as to avoid blowback counter-balancing. Instead, Washington seeks to manage regional conflicts, to keep things quiet.The administration argues that retrenchment is not isolationism, and that the US remains deeply engaged in the Middle East. It has engaged Muslim publics and the Iranian regime, while deepening strategic consultations with Israel and its Gulf allies in an attempt to reassure and restrain them over Iran.

But America's allies are not reassured. For them, the Kerry-Qatar ceasefire document is part of a pattern. They look at the equanimity with which the Obama administration greeted the Muslim Brotherhood take-over of Egypt, the rise of ISIS in Iraq, and the administration's failure to stand behind the red line it drew in Syria, and they are worried. Their biggest fear is US policy aims to kick the can down the road rather than confront Iran over its nuclear program. They believe that only an assertive US policy backed by the credible threat of an American military strike will induce the required level of pragmatism for the Iranians to back down.

The fact that Obama has adopted a relatively modest strategy is not the problem per se; rather the problem lies in three specific places.

First, it is necessary to recognize the difference between pragmatism and moderation. Islamists like Hamas can be pragmatic, but they are not moderate. Empowering genuine moderates increases moderation. However, increasing the power of pragmatists usually reduces their pragmatism, because it reduces the constraints that make them pragmatic in the first place. On the contrary, encouraging such pragmatism requires limiting their capabilities and imposing costs for aggression.

Second, in order to achieve this objective with a less interventionist grand strategy, the US needs to support its core allies more, not less. This was the essence of the Nixon doctrine that accompanied the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and which led to increased US support for Israel.

Third, if a more modest US strategy is not to collapse into appeasement, it must be able to discern between situations that require assertiveness and those that do not.The threat of a nuclear Iran that will trigger nuclear proliferation in a region where radical Islamists like ISIS could eventually get control of such weapons requires American assertiveness. Similarly, though on a smaller scale, American assertiveness regarding a ceasefire in Gaza must be directed not just towards quiet for its own sake, but to managing the conflict on terms that weakens Hamas, thereby dampening the morale among proponents of the radical Islamist cause throughout the region.

Dr. Jonathan Rynhold, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a senior lecturer of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, and director of its Argov Center for the Study of Israel and the Jewish People.

2b)    Crying 'ceasefire' in a crowded military theater: On walking with Kerry

By Rabbi Dov Fischer

The Government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done well to avoid being cowed into a poorly conceived ceasefire in the midst of its defensive struggle to stop Hamas from raining rockets and terror indiscriminately on the people of Israel. It has been encouraging, even inspiring, to read and hear the loud and angry responses throughout Israel — condemnatory across the board, from right to left — denouncing each of the respectively ludicrous ceasefire proposals that have been floated by John Kerry, United States Secretary of State, partly on his own and partly in consultation with two of the world's most notorious generators of Israel-hate: Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the leadership of Qatar.

Erdogan only recently accused Israel, as he often does, of barbarism worse than Hitler, and Qatar underwrites terrorism and murder all over the world, perhaps more than does any other financial center including Iran. Indeed, political commentator Charles Krauthammer has described Qatar as being more a bank for terrorism than an actual polity.

It may seem beyond belief that a well-spoken American Secretary of State would be so oblivious to the facts on the diplomatic ground that he would continue crying "ceasefire!" in the crowded Middle Eastern military theater, even after Hamas unilaterally has violated so many of them already, most tragically the latest "72-hour ceasefire" of last Friday that they violated within 90 minutes, murdering three Israeli soldiers including Hadar Goldin, whose gorgeous smile broke all our hearts this past weekend. Most Israelis do not know John Kerry as well as we Americans do. If one picture is worth a thousand words, then this video of John Kerry testifying in Congress against his own American countrymen is worth an encyclopedia.

In his 1971 testimony, he focused on his memories of being in Vietnam during the war effort, amid the most barbaric of people — American soldiers:

"They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. . . . We found most [Vietnamese] people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American. . . . We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong. We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We sawAmerica lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum."

To understand John Kerry circa 2014, one need only replace "Viet Cong" with "Hamas," "Vietnamese" people with "Palestinians," and "Americans" with "Israelis." Like watching the movie "Groundhog Day," we are witnessing John Kerry experiencing his chance, forty years later, to relive his youthful days of Vietnam self-righteousness, to conclude his unfinished business, to see indigenous "Third World" victims of "Western imperialism" finally vindicated.

And, yet, as Israelis rightfully throw up their hands in disbelief and frustration over the Secretary of State who "married up" to become enriched with money but who continues otherwise without a clue, there is good reason for Israel's defenders to hope that he will not — because he cannot — mess things up for Israel, if only Israel stands strong.

Thus, Israel must understand who Kerry is, where he stands in America outside the liberal redoubt of his Massachusetts base, and to understand that, beyond Kerry's dramatic limitations, the Obama Administration itself now is limited and partly incapacitated in ways that few American governments have been since America's emergence as a world power a century ago.

First, the American people had a chance to elect John Kerry to be our President a few years ago in 2004. He only had to defeat a somewhat unsteady George W. Bush, who was seeking a second term. Kerry came into the three Presidential debates with the reputation of being a world-class debater, a star from Harvard, facing a man from Texas whom the liberal media depicted as a bumbling fool.

Indeed, Kerry won the first debate, as Bush entered completely unprepared. And then the American people got to know Kerry. The more they learned about him, the more they shrugged and decided that Bush was not such a bad guy after all.

By the time the election arrived, Bush did not seem so stupid any more. Because, in two consecutive debates, Bush ran circles around the Ivy League Kerry. So Kerry has presented himself to the American people, who took his measure and found him wanting. He was rejected. He is Secretary of State today only because he was an early supporter of Barack Obama for President, at a time when others backed Hillary Clinton or Kerry's former running mate, John Edwards. Obama owed Kerry a favor. And, perhaps unwittingly, Obama did Israel a favor, too.

More than that, it is important for every Israeli to understand what really is on Obama's and Kerry's plate today, in between Kerry's efforts to cry "ceasefire!" in a crowded military theater.

Although it may seem to Netanyahu and his cabinet that nothing is more important to Obama and Kerry than imposing a ceasefire, the actual situation as it now stands sees Obama plagued with an unprecedented boatload of profound problems all over the place, most of much higher priority than whether Israel will cease defending against Hamas. Consider just a smattering:

1. Crimea - Ukraine - Russia. Putin has seized Crimea from right under Obama's nose, and he rightly guessed that Obama and Kerry would not know how to stop him or force a reversal. Obama came back and lectured, saying that Putin is "on the wrong side of history." Putin somehow recovered from the insult and next supplied Ukrainian separatists with the kinds of weapons that recently took down Malaysian Flight MH17.

Still on the wrong side of history. Now Putin not only is supplying separatists with weapons to fight a civil war, but he has launched a Cruise missile, violating a sacrosanct treaty that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had signed in 1987 at the height of the Cold War. That now is on Obama's plate. Obama and Kerry need to deal with that — immediately.

2. ISIL/ISIS is shaping a modern-day Islamist Caliphate out of northeastern Syria and western Iraq. They now are driving Kurds out of northern Iraq, have seized financial institutions giving them $2 billion in assets, and even claim control of the Mosul Dam, which gives them new fighting leverage. The Syria of past decades no longer exists. While Al Qaeda is now crucifying Christians , ISIL has driven Christians out of Mosul where they had lived for nearly two thousand years. Nouri al-Maliki is struggling to hold Iraq together, and Obama wants a replacement for Maliki to save what is left, to bring in Sunnis and to hold Baghdad.

When Obama became President, George Bush had left a long-term apparatus in place to secure gains in Iraq, and Obama abandoned those achievements when he failed to reach a comparatively common status-of-forces agreement with Maliki.

Now all of Iraq may fall — either to ISIS/ISIL, or it might become an extension of Shiite Iran, as Lebanon often has been an extension of Assad Syria. Obama and Kerry need to deal with that — immediately.

3. Libya is going into partial civil war, and Benghazi is in insurrection. Although he and his Administration dishonestly claimed originally that the American ambassador to Libya had been murdered on September 11, 2012 in Benghazi because of a cheaply made short homemade clip on Youtube, Obama in fact presided over a security disaster that saw Al Qaeda regroup in Libya and wreak murderous chaos against America by design on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center bombing. Obama proudly "led from behind," and we therefore left no long-term apparatus in place to secure the gains in Libya from disappearing in a vacuum when Kaddafi fell. Obama and Kerry now need to deal with that — immediately.

4. Iran is building nuclear weapons that not only will threaten Israel but also will have capabilities of endangering all of Europe and eventually the United States. Obama and Kerry need to deal with that — immediately.

5. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied children presently are being smuggled into America by drug dealers and cartels from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The problem erupted into a frenzy when Obama started advancing the argument that, although illegal immigration cannot be countenanced, the children of adult lawbreakers should not be punished.

Word reached South America that Obama will not deport children, and the race to the border commenced, with drug cartels inducing desperately poor parents to pay a king's ransom in return for promises to smuggle the little ones into America and away from drug-gang violence in their own countries.

America even has refugee camps forming here. The flood tide has gotten so bad that Governor Rick Perry has called his state's National Guard to guard the Texasborder, while cities around the country are seeing everyday citizens riot against secret Obama efforts to move undocumented children into their towns. The United States Congress has recessed for the summer without solving the mess, and Obama is threatening to act beyond his Constitutional powers as a result.

Meanwhile, the Congress already is suing him in the federal courts for acting dictatorially in a series of matters, in violation of the American Constitution's laws that separate the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

Obama and Kerry need to deal with that — immediately. 6. All of America, across the political spectrum, recently was shocked to learn that the nation's heroes, past veterans of American military service, who are assured premium quality health care at special hospitals run by the United States Veterans Administration (VA), in fact have been the victims of scandalous VA incompetence, bordering on criminal misconduct.

Dozens of veterans were allowed to die, many needlessly, because they were put on lengthy "waiting lists" to see doctors, so never received medical care in time. Two thousand or more others never even were put on the "waiting lists."

In Phoenix, Arizona alone, the wait to see a doctor was four months, with 1,700 never even wait-listed. The scandal began with Phoenix and now has been revealed to be systemic throughout the country. Obama needs to deal with that — immediately.

7. The Internal Revenue Service of America (IRS) oversees income-tax collection. Americans have a long-admired national system of voluntary and mostly honestly reporting income and paying taxes every year.

The IRS properly audits suspicious situations, keeping the system honest and the "playing field level" for everyone. It has long been a central principle of American society that the IRS never mixes politics with tax-collecting, and the effort by the Nixon White House to politicize the IRS led to an Article of Impeachment against him:

"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

Forty years later, it now emerges that Obama supporters in the IRS targeted lawful anti-Obama political groups for excruciating audits during the months preceding the 2012 Presidential elections that saw Obama reelected.

At the center of the scandal that has shocked much of the country is a woman named Lois Lerner, who was Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS.

In Congressional hearings, she repeatedly has invoked her right, as an American, to refuse to testify about her role in the scandal — on grounds that her testimony may lead to her incrimination. When Congress demanded that the IRS produce copies of emails from Lerner's computer, the IRS produced documents and did not produce many thousands more, ultimately saying that Lerner's computer had "crashed," and all her emails were lost.

Americans know that, if the IRS demands emails of them during an IRS audit, that excuse will not work. Now, amid all the scandal, new experts within IRS have emerged to testify that her computer hard disk did not crash, just sustained scratches, and thousands of pages still probably could have been produced.

The investigators are wondering whether Lerner contacted and coordinated with people in the Obama White House when targeting his opponents for audits. Yes, Obama needs to deal with that — immediately.

8. "Operation Fast and Furious." The Obama Administration concocted a plan to trace weapons sales by and to Mexican drug cartels by introducing 1,400 firearms into Mexico in October 2009, then monitoring their transfers. Thing is, the Obama Administration lost track of the weapons that now were circulating among the drug cartels. Compounding the calamity, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered at the border in December 2011, and two of the "Fast and Furious" firearms were found at the scene of the murder. Obama needs to deal with that — eventually.

9. On March 31, 2014, United States Marine Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi was driving along the southern border of the United States. He made a wrong turn, accidentally entering Mexico. In his car's trunk were three legally registered guns, a very common phenomenon in the American culture, particularly for a Marine. Four months later, the Mexicans will not release him, have abused him in prison, and Obama for some inexplicable reason cannot get him freed. The story is on the national news every other night, and his mother pleads passionately. Obama needs to deal with that — immediately.

10. Continued cracks in Obama's much-vaunted "Affordable Care Act," also known as ObamaCare. The majority of Americans hate the law, and it is killing aspects of the American economy and personal household income, as employers reduce hiring full-time 40-hour-weekly workers and instead hire workers for 29 hours a week, because the law does not require employers to pay ObamaCare premiums for workers who work fewer than 30 hours a week. A wide range of lawsuits against the law are moving forward in the courts, and one provision after another has been getting overturned. Obama needs to deal with that — pretty soon.

11. The mad rush of corporate inversions, as major American corporations link up with small irrelevant European companies in a ruse to avoid inflated American corporate taxes and stifling corporate regulations, now has erupted — seemingly overnight — as the new rage in American markets. Obama needs to deal with that — immediately.

2c)  And the war came

By Paul Greenberg

The innocent American could only read the headlines and shake his head sorrowfully at the continuing carnage in Gaza -- a pillar of fire by night and a cloud of smoke by day. How did this happen again? Simple: Hamas renewed its indiscriminate attacks on Israel through overhead rockets, underground tunnels, words and deeds -- and Israel finally responded in force.

Not just the innocent but the sophisticated observer has to wonder: Why? What's the sense of it? There seems none from the rational -- that is, the conventionally Western -- point of view. Which may explain why generations of Western diplomats, denizens of think tanks, and Deep Thinkers in general, have failed to make sense of this ever-renewed conflict, let alone end it.

All these modern Panglosses come off as hopelessly naive as John Kerry, and as completely ineffectual as Hillary Clinton -- the last two secretaries of state to preside over Americanforeign policy in that always dangerous part of the world. And both succeeded mainly in making it more dangerous.

Despite all the years of negotiations, hopeful beginnings that prove false starts, agreements that no one may agree with soon enough, temporary truces that prove all too temporary, the missiles and rockets soon fly again. And we're all back to reading, and some of us may even have to write about, the latest war in the Middle East as the bodies pile up. The place has been a trap since the days of Samson and the Philistines, and a trap it remains. Even if this latest temporary truce had held, it was fated to be only temporary.

Despite the best intentions of all, naive or knowledgeable, who cry Peace, Peace ... there is no peace. For the violent bear it away time and time again. Violence seems as endemic toGaza as its heat and flies. And its wars.

Why? Surely it doesn't have to be this way, and yet the war came. Why? At such times the heretical thought occurs that, yes, it does have to be this way, for there are some conflicts that are by their nature irreconcilable, irrepressible and therefore unavoidable, even inevitable

As unacceptable as so heretical a thought has become in the more nicefied precincts of the West, it keeps recurring. Lest we forget, there was a time when Western civilization, too, was split by holy wars fueled by religious fervor. It was not until 1648 that the treaties of Westphalia put an end to the Thirty Years' War and its slaughter by assigning disputed principalities to the formal faith of their sovereigns. But even after religious wars no longer divided Europe, they became national and ideological in character, and even deadlier.

One such irrepressible conflict finally bubbled to the surface even on these supposedly peaceful shores, and could no longer be put off any longer -- despite the best efforts of statesmen whose talents far exceeded those of the present generation's. Statesmen like Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and the great compromiser himself, Henry Clay. Yet all failed to put off the Irreconcilable Conflict forever. And the war came.

The saddest and most vicious breed of war, civil war, would ravage a no longer United States of America, and neither North nor South would emerge as they were before. The old republic would be forever gone, replaced by one nation indivisible, the old South dead. However much nostalgists miss it, and lovers of freedom hated it, the antebellum South is beyond reviving. War can change things, sometimes definitively. It did the Union, even though it now goes by the same name.

Many and complex reasons are still adduced by historians who, in the way of historians, can be relied on to come up with still another explanation for the Civil War in every generation. For it remains the central tragedy of American history. It was left to one of those earlier statesmen, to sum up in a few words the cause of that irrepressible conflict. Abraham Lincolndid it in his second inaugural address. With its concise clarity and Biblical overtones, it still echoes and re-echoes in time because of its eloquence and understanding -- and simplicity:

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it -- all sought to avert it. ... Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."

Some conflicts are as simple as they are terrible. In today's continuing, and surely to be continued, war between Hamas and Israel, one party would make war rather than let a nation survive, while the other would accept war rather than let it perish. Which is why so many Israelis seem to recognize that this is all part of one long existential war, that is, a war concerned with their nation's very existence. And that some conflicts will not be settled till they are settled by force.

That is the irreconcilable, the undeniable, obdurate essence of a war that may make no sense from afar, but whose outcome, in this round or any that follow, makes all too much sense to both sides. To one, nothing but the obliteration of the other would be an acceptable outcome of the whole, long struggle. Hamas' very charter, its constitution, its founding document, says so. The other, Israel, feels its very survival is at stake, and is not about to cooperate in its own extinction. And the war came.

2d) Welcome to the 1930s

By Roger L Simon

When I was a kid, I mean a little kid, my favorite nurse in my father’s office — he was a doctor — was Mrs. Mindus. I’m not sure how old she was or even how she spelled her name — I was about six and the year was 1950 — but she was a sweet woman and very welcoming to me when I visited the radiology office. She used to bring me crayons and a coloring book and sometimes candy as if I were her own child. The only other things I remember about her were that she spoke with an accent and she had a string of numbers tattooed on her arm.

I wondered what the numbers were. I had never seen anything like that on a grownup’s arm. She explained to me she had been in a concentration camp — Auschwitz — and felt lucky to have gotten out, maybe guilty as well, because the rest of her family had been gassed. My father told me about it too — about Mrs. Mindus’ dead husband and their dead children and so forth. I think he wanted me to know about it.

This was, as you might imagine, hard for a six-year old boy to wrap his mind around. But those macabre numbers on Mrs. Mindus’ arm had a profound effect on me. I thought of them frequently growing up and I think they had some influence on what I did in life, joining up with the civil rights movement at the age of twenty and then later making some movies about the Holocaust.

Often, however, as with many memories, Mrs. Mindus faded from my mind as I enjoyed my life, living la vida artistica, writing novels and films, traveling abroad. Those horrifying events were in the past. It could never happen again. Even when Israel was at war in 1967 and again in 1973 I never really worried. (Later histories by Michael Oren and others have taught me otherwise.) Anti-Semitism was, for the most part anyway, a thing of the past, of concern only to the Anti-Defamation League and similar organizations. They could take care of the rare outbreaks.

How naive I was!

Now more than ever in my life I am haunted by Mrs. Mindus. The tatooed numbers spook me, not because I expect to see friends and family being carted off to the camps, but because I see a world of anti-Semitism metastasizing so quickly across the globe there might not be time for that. From Paris to Caracas, from Brussels to Bangkok we hear chants of Jew-hating as loud, ugly and perhaps even more wide-spread than we did in the 1930s. Paris has even had a new Kristallnacht. And in dear old Blighty, “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!” goes the cry on the London streets with Jewish Labor Party leader Ed Miliband for all intents and purposes leading the band himself!

2e)  Exodus: Europe's Jews Are Fleeing Once Again

The mob howled for vengeance, the missiles raining down on the synagogue walls as the worshippers huddled inside. It was a scene from Europe in the 1930s – except this was eastern Paris on the evening of July 13th, 2014.

Pro Palestinian protester burns an Israeli flag during demonstration banned by police, in support of Gaza in central Paris, July 26, 2014.Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Thousands had gathered to demonstrate against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But the protest soon turned violent – and against Jews in general. One of those trapped told Israeli television that the streets outside were “like an intifada”, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

Some of the trapped Jews fought their way out as the riot police dispersed the crowd. Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister, condemned the attack in “the strongest possible terms”, while Joel Mergei, a community leader, said he was “profoundly shocked and revolted”. The words had no effect. Two weeks later, 400 protesters attacked a synagogue and Jewish-owned businesses in Sarcelles, in the north of Paris, shouting “Death to the Jews”. Posters had even advertised the raid in advance, like the pogroms of Tsarist Russia.

France has suffered the worst violence, but anti-Semitism is spiking across Europe, fuelled by the war in Gaza. In Britain, the Community Security Trust (CST) says there were around 100 anti-Semitic incidents in July, double the usual  number. The CST has issued a security alert for Jewish institutions. In Berlin a crowd of anti-Israel protesters had to be prevented from attacking a synagogue. In Liege, Belgium, a café owner put up a sign saying dogs were welcome, but Jews were not allowed.

Yet for many French and European Jews, the violence comes as no surprise. Seventy years after the Holocaust, from Amiens to Athens, the world’s oldest hatred flourishes anew. For some, opposition to Israeli policies is now a justification for open hatred of Jews – even though many Jews are strongly opposed to Israel’s rightward lurch, and support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

As Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, argues: “These people were not attacked because they were showing their support for the Israeli government. They were attacked because they were Jews, going about their daily business.”

One weekend in May seemed to epitomise the darkness. On May 24th a gunman pulled out a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and opened fire, killing four people. The next day the results of the elections to the European parliament showed a surge in support for extreme-right ­parties in France, Greece, Hungary and Germany. The National Front in France won the election, which many fear could be a precursor to eventually taking power in a national election.

Perhaps the most shocking result was the surge in support for Golden Dawn in Greece. The party, which has been described as openly neo-Nazi, won almost 10% of the vote, bringing it three members of the European parliament.

In parts of Hungary, especially the impoverished north and east, Jobbik is the main opposition to the governing right-wing Fidesz. Jobbik won 14.7% of votes at the European elections. The party denies being antisemitic but even Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, ruled out cooperating with them in the European parliament.

In November 2012, Marton Gyöngyösi, a senior Jobbik MP, called for a list to be made of Hungarian Jews, especially those working in Parliament or for the government, as they posed a “national security risk”. (Gyöngyösi later apologised and said he was referring only to Jews with dual Israeli-­Hungarian citizenship.)

Some saw the Brussels attack and the election results as dark portents. “At what point,” asked Jeffrey Goldberg, a prominent American Jewish journalist, “do the Jews of America and the Jews of Israel tell the Jews of Europe that it might be time to get out?” Around now, it seems.

GETTING OUT

A survey published in November 2013 by the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union found that 29% had considered emigrating as they did not feel safe. Jews across Europe, the survey noted, “face insults, discrimination and physical violence, which despite concerted efforts by both the EU and its member states, shows no signs of fading into the past”.

Two-thirds considered anti-Semitism to be a problem across the countries surveyed. Overall, 76% said that anti-Semitism had worsened over the past five years in their home countries, with the most marked deteriorations in France, Hungary and Belgium. The European Jewish Congress has now set up a website, sacc.eu, to give advice and contacts in the events of an attack.

“The tendency is very alarming,” says Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency, which links Israel with diaspora communities and organises immigration. “The level of concern about security in Europe is higher than in Asia or Latin America. This feeling of insecurity is growing. It’s difficult to imagine that in France, Belgium and many other countries Jewish people are told not to go out on the streets wearing a kippah.”

A survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York found similar results. The ADL Global 100 surveyed 53,000 adults in 102 countries. It found that 26% held deeply anti-Semitic attitudes, answering “probably true” to six or more of 11 negative stereotypes of Jews.

The highest levels of prejudice were found in the Arab world, with the Palestinian Territories topping the list at 93%, followed by Iraq at 92%. In Europe Greece topped the list at 69%, while France scored 37% and Belgium 27%. Britain had 8%, the Netherlands 5% and Sweden was the lowest at 4%. In Eastern Europe Poland had 45% and Hungary 41%. The Czech Republic was lowest at 13%.

But the picture is more complex than the survey suggests. Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, is one of the most unsettling places in Europe for Jews. Anti-Semitic attacks tripled between 2010 and 2012, when the community, around 700-strong, recorded 60 incidents. In October 2012 a bomb exploded at the Jewish community centre.

Jewish leaders accused Ilmar Reepalu, who served as mayor between 1994 and 2013, of inflammatory comments. Reepalu called for Jews to distance themselves from Zionism, and claimed that the Jewish community had been “infiltrated” by the Sweden Democrats party, which has its roots in the far-right. Reepalu has denied being anti-Semitic. But his remarks provoked a storm of protest and he was forced to retract them. Hannah Rosenthal, the former US Special Envoy for combating anti-Semitism, said Malmo was a prime example of the “new anti-Semitism” where hatred of Israel is used to disguise hatred of Jews.

It is not anti-Semitic to criticise the Israeli government or its policies towards the Palestinians, say Jewish leaders. A reasoned, open debate on the conflict is always welcome – especially now, when passions are running so high over Gaza. But the morbid obsession with the only democracy in the Middle East, they say, its relentless demonisation and the calls for its destruction are indicative of anti-Semitism.

Social media provides an easy platform for the spread of hate, which has been given impetus by the alliance between Islamists and the left, says Ben Cohen, author of Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Anti-Semitism. “Saying that Jews are the only nation who don’t have the right to self-determination, smearing Israel as a modern incarnation of Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa, asserting that the ‘Israel Lobby’ manipulates American foreign policy from the shadows is unmistakably anti-Semitism.”

Youths make the "quenelle" gesture outside the a concert hall in Nantes where a banned show by French humorist Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, also known as Dieudonne, was due to take place, January 9, 2014. Critics say the comic's trademark straight-arm gesture is a Nazi salute in reverse. Dieudonne, 46, says it is anti-Zionist and anti-establishment, but not anti-Semitic. Stephane Mahe/Reuters

HEARTS TURNED EAST

In 1997 I wrote a book about Muslim minorities in Europe, called A Heart Turned East. It was optimistic, and, with hindsight, naïve of me. I travelled across France, Germany, Britain, Turkey and Bosnia. I hoped then that a tolerant, modern Islam could emerge in Europe, in the Ottoman tradition. The Ottomans had not been perfect, but they had been comparably tolerant – especially in comparison to the Catholic church. In France I met Muslim intellectuals, exiles and artists. They were resentful of their second class status, and had been scarred by racism and discrimination. But their anger was directed at the French authorities and they were keen to co-exist with their Jewish compatriots.

So what went wrong? The undercurrents had long been swirling, but had been little noticed. They date back to the Islamic revolution in Iran, the siege of Mecca and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, says Ghaffar Hussain, of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think-tank in London. “Islamist extremism experienced a global upsurge post 1979. These events played into the hands of Islamists.” That anger was further fuelled by the Bosnian war, which helped nurture a global Muslim consciousness.

Many western Muslim communities are suffering an identity crisis, says Hussain. The politics of hate offers an easy escape and a means of blaming personal feelings on others. “In many cases it resonates with the life experiences of young Muslims. They feel alienated and disenfranchised, due to negative experiences, personal inadequacies or even cultural differences.”

Jews, Muslims, African and other immigrants once lived in reasonable harmony in the banlieues, sharing hard time. La Haine (Hate), a hugely successful thriller directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, released in 1995, starred three protagonists: one Jewish, one Afro-French and a third from a North African family. The violence and brutality are experienced by all three friends.

Such a film is nearly unimaginable nowadays. The turning point came in January 2006 with the kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi. A 23-year-old mobile telephone salesman, Halimi was lured into a honey-trap, abducted and held for three weeks in Bagneux, outside Paris. There he was tortured while his abductors telephoned his family, so they could hear his screams. Youssouf Fofana, the leader of the gang, was later sentenced to life imprisonment.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the case was that 28 people were involved in the kidnapping and many more living on the housing estate knew about it. “The murder of Ilan Halimi was the first murder of a Jew because he was a Jew,” says Roger Cukierman, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF). “The prejudice and lack of humanity were impressive. It is unbelievable that in the 24 days he was held and tortured not one of the people involved even considered making an anonymous call to the police.”

Many blame the controversial comedian Dieudonne and his “quenelle”, supposedly a modified version of the Nazi salute, for fuelling hatred. Social media are awash with his followers, performing the quenelle in front of synagogues, Holocaust memorials, the school in Toulouse where three Jewish children and a teacher were murdered and even at the gates of Auschwitz.

Dieudonne denies that the gesture is anti-Semitic. The quenelle, he says, is a “gesture of liberation” from slavery.  Dieudonne is also the creator of the "ShoahNanas" (Holocaust Pineapples) song, which he sings, accompanied by a young man wearing a large yellow star over a pair of pyjamas.

Now a new ingredient has been tossed into the cauldron: the wars in Syria and Iraq. The French government estimates that 800 jihadists are fighting in Syria, accompanied by several hundred from Britain. Among their number was Mehdi Nemmouche, who is accused of the attack on the Brussels Jewish museum. French police found he had in his possession a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a pistol, which they believed were used in the attack.

Together with the weapons, police found a white sheet emblazoned with the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), the militia judged too extreme even for al-Qaida, which has captured large swathes of Iraq.

In May 2012 in Toulouse a gunman killed seven people, including a teacher and three children, at a Jewish school. “Jews in France or Belgium are being killed because they are Jews,” says Cukierman. “Jihadism has become the new Nazism. This makes people consider leaving 

France.”

The murders have not dampened anti-Jewish hatred. On the contrary, they seem to have inflamed it. The spike in anti-Semitism has seen emigration to Israel soar. In 2011 and 2012 just under 2,000 French Jews emigrated to Israel.

In 2013, the year after the Toulouse attack, 3,289 left. In the first quarter of this year 1,778 Jews emigrated. “This year I expect 5-6,000 Jews to leave,” says Cukierman. “If they move to Israel because of Zionism, it’s OK. But if it is because of fear, then that is not pleasant. The problem is that democracy is not well equipped to fight against terrorism. What we saw in Toulouse and Brussels is terrorism.”

Member of the Belgian Parliament Laurent Louis speaks in front of a closed congress hall in Brussels May 4, 2014. Local authorities banned what they called "an anti-semitic congress" which was co-organised by Louis, local media reported. Francois Lenoir/Reuters

TERROR ATTACKS

Across Europe Jewish communities are investing in security infrastructure and boosting protection. After the Toulouse attacks, the Jewish Agency established a Fund for Emergency Assistance. So far it has distributed almost $4m to boost security at 116 Jewish institutions in more than 30 countries. In Britain the government pays £2.5m a year for security guards at Jewish schools.

There is a direct link between events in the Middle East, especially ­concerning Israel/Palestine and spikes in anti-Semitism, says CST spokesman Mark Gardener. Gaza has caused a new spike in attacks. “The situation is like a pressure cooker, awaiting any spark to set it off, with local Jewish communities the targets of racist attacks.”

So far, British Jews have not suffered a terrorist attack like Toulouse or ­Brussels, but not for want of jihadis trying. In 2011 Somali troops shot dead an al-Qaida leader in Africa when he tried to ram his car through a checkpoint. Documents found inside his car included detailed plans for attacks on Eton College, the Ritz and Dorchester hotels, and the Golders Green and Stamford Hill neighbourhoods of London, which have large Jewish populations.

The following year nine British jihadis were convicted of plotting terrorist acts including the potential targeting of two rabbis, and a husband-and-wife team from Oldham, north England, were convicted of plotting terrorist attacks on Manchester’s Jewish community.

Muslims are over-represented among the perpetrators of anti-Semitic incidents, says Gardener. “It is not as extreme as France, Belgium, Holland or Malmo, where the levels of anti-Semitism make life difficult for Jews, but it is a phenomenon. A large number of Muslims believe that 9/11 was a Jewish plot, that Jews run the media and that Jewish money controls politicians. Of course there are Muslim organisations that speak out against anti-Semitism and many Muslim leaders are fully aware of the damage anti-Semitism does to their own community.”

Yet the picture is not all bleak. In Berlin and Budapest Jewish life is flourishing. The epicentre of the Holocaust seems an unlikely centre for a Jewish renaissance. But the German capital is now home to one of the world’s ­fastest-growing Jewish communities, tens of thousands strong. There is a growing sense, particularly among younger Germans, that the city is incomplete without a Jewish presence, especially in the arts, culture and literature. The glory days of the pre-war years can never be recreated, but they can be remembered and used as inspiration for a new form of German-Jewish culture.

Berlin’s Jewish revival is boosted by influxes from Russia and a growing number of Israelis who have applied for German passports.

Hungary is home to the region’s largest indigenous Jewish community, usually estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000, although perhaps a fifth of that number are affiliated with the Jewish community. Still the city is home to a dozen working synagogues, a thriving community centre, kosher shops, bars and restaurants and each summer hosts the Jewish summer festival, which is supported by the government and the municipality. District VII, the traditional Jewish quarter, is now the hippest part of town, home to numerous bohemian “ruin-pubs”.

Communal life was moribund under Communism. Until recently, the ­Jewish establishment was perceived by many as insular and self-serving. Only now are a new generation of activists such as Adam Schönburger revitalising Jewish life, in part by focusing on cultural, social and ethical issues, rather than religion. Schönburger is one of the founders of Siraly, a Jewish cultural centre that will re-open later this year.

The result is a new confidence among many Hungarian Jews and a pride in their heritage. So much so that they are boycotting the government’s Holocaust commemoration events, accusing the government of whitewashing the country’s collaboration in the Holocaust – which the government strongly denies, pointing out that numerous officials, including the president, have admitted Hungary’s responsibility.

“We have to redefine what it means to be Jewish,” says Schönburger. “I don’t see many possibilities through solely religious continuity. We need to educate people about their heritage and have new reference points for them to feel connected. These can be cultural or through social activism, the idea of Tikkun Olam, ‘healing the world’.”

ENRICHING A KINGDOM

Few of the angry youths of the banlieues know that Muslims and Jews share a common history, of tolerance and co-existence.

Jewish life flourished under Islamic rule in Spain, an era known as the Golden Age, which produced some of the most important works of Jewish scholarship and a flowering of knowledge and science. Jews served as advisers to the Muslim rulers, as doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers. Although there were sporadic outbreaks of violence, Jews living under Muslim rule in medieval times were far more prosperous, secure and integrated than those in Christian Europe.

When in 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II was so incredulous that he sent a fleet of boats to collect them. Such a prize, of doctors, lawyers, scientists and traders, could not be allowed to slip by.

“Do they call this Ferdinand a wise prince who impoverishes his kingdom and enriches mine?” he asked. The Jewish immigrants settled across the Ottoman empire, from Salonika to Baghdad.

Teaching about that common heritage, and the shared roots of Islam and Judaism could help defuse the hatred, argues Roger Cukierman. “We have to teach children, from the age of five or six to respect their neighbours, whatever their colour, religion or origin. This is not done today. We have to educate parents and the media, not to promote hatred.”

Moderate Muslim and Jewish leaders are working together against campaigns to ban circumcision and ritual slaughter, says Ghaffar Hussain, of the Quilliam Foundation. “We only hear about what the extremists are doing. But we need to challenge extremist narratives and work for a liberal, secular democratic space, where people from a wide variety of backgrounds can thrive and co-exist.”

The future of European Jewry is more than a question for Jews themselves, argues Natan Sharansky. “I would like to see strong Jewish communities in Europe, but they are more and more hesitant about what their future is. Europe’s leaders are working hard to convince that Europe is multicultural and post-nationalist. But if the oldest minority in Europe feels uncomfortable and is disappearing, that raises questions of education and citizenship. That is the challenge for Europe’s leaders.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------