.jpg)
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This from a doctor who knows what he is talking about and it pertains to Ebola: "I think he sent our troops there just to be sure of that. Being the "astute student" of history that he is, I'm sure he didn't think to realize that the Spanish flu pandemic came home with the troops after WW1."
===
Fordham University qualifies for the PC prize of the year. (See 1 below.)
The New York Met's anti-Semitic Opera about Klinghoffer is today's equivalent of "The Ship of Fools!" movie. (See 1a below.)
===
ISIS training Chechens who could become a thorn in Putin's side. (See 2 below.)
And with the passing of each day, ISIS gobbles territory while Obama claims we are effectively degrading their efforts.. Is losing a new way to describe winning? You decide.
Meanwhile, the explanations the administration is putting out to calm the public's anxieties regarding Ebola are changing as fast as the virus is spreading!
Virtually every month the Obama Administration seems to be involved in another disaster.
It all began with his Egyptian Apology, followed by Obamacare, then Beergate, Fast and Furious, Keystone Pipeline Veto, Contemptible behaviour towards Israel's Netanyahu, The Ft Hood Massacre, The IRS Scandal, Benghazi, Veteran Care, Islamic Radicals have been eliminated, Red Lines in the Sand, Border Penetrations, swapping terrorists for a deserter,Questionable Golf outings, ISIS and now Ebola.,
Finally the hapless Kurds ask for weapons and The Obama White House responds you are in our thoughts and prayers!
Finally the hapless Kurds ask for weapons and The Obama White House responds you are in our thoughts and prayers!
What do you think Obama has in store for us in November and December and just think, only two more years to go!
===
Dick----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Kafka Was the Rage
At a Catholic school, a professor fighting the academic boycott of Israel is investigated on secret charges
By Doron Ben-Atar
The email arrived on the last Friday afternoon of the spring term shortly before 5:00 p.m. Anastasia Coleman, Fordham’s Director of Institutional Equity and Compliance, and its Title IX Coordinator, wanted to meet with me. “It has been alleged,” she wrote, “that you may have acted in an inappropriate way and possibly discriminated against another person at the University.”
I was stunned. My wife, kids and friends have been warning me for years that, in these prudish times, my outrageous sense of humor and intellectual irreverence (my last book is about bestiality) could get me in trouble. I imagined myself brought before an academic disciplinary tribunal from Francine Prose’s Blue Angel, where all my past transgressions would be marshaled to prove that I don’t belong in the classroom. My mind raced, recalling the many slips of the tongue I had in three decades of teaching. I perspired profusely and felt the onset of a stomach bug. What would I tell my mother?
“Did it have anything to do with a student?” I shot back anxiously, hoping to get a sense of my predicament before the director left for the weekend. I was lucky. Coleman responded immediately. “This does not involve students and is about your behavior regarding American Studies.”
What a relief. But it was also very odd. The decision of the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli universities in December 2013 had upset me. I wrote emails, circulated articles, and was pleased that my university president quickly declared his opposition to the measure. I joined a national steering committee that set out to fight the boycott and participated in the drafting of a few statements. As an American historian who delivered in 1987 his first paper at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association and served on the executive committee of Fordham’s American Studies program, I wanted Fordham’s program to sever official ties with the national organization until it rescinded the measure. Other programs have taken this courageous symbolic step, and I thought it proper for the Jesuit university of New York to take the moral stand against what most scholars of anti-Semitism consider anti-Semitic bigotry.
It was this stand that led Fordham’s Title IX officer to launch the proceedings. During an emotional meeting convened to discuss the appropriate response to the measure, I stated that should Fordham’s program fail to distance itself from the boycott, I will resign from the program and fight against it until it took a firm stand against bigotry. The program’s director, Michelle McGee, in turn filed a complaint against me with the Title IX office, charging that I threatened to destroy the program. (As if I could? And what does this have to do with Title IX?) This spurious complaint (the meeting’s minutes demonstrated that I did not make such a threat) ushered me into a bruising summer that taught me much about my colleagues, the university, and the price I must be willing to pay for taking on the rising tide of anti-Zionism on American campuses.
The following Monday, Coleman appeared in my office to conduct her investigation. Alas, she refused to explain what I was accused of specifically or how what I supposedly did amounted to a Title IX violation. Remaining vague, she hinted that others, including perhaps Fordham College’s dean, who chaired the fateful meeting, supported the complaint. Who are the others, I asked? Is there anything beyond that supposed one sentence? She would not disclose. I told Coleman that I took the complaint very seriously, but at the advice of my attorney I needed to think things through. Coleman told me she’d be in touch with my attorney, and we parted ways.
Over the next few weeks, Fordham’s general counsel, Tom DeJulio, and my attorney engaged in a few friendly conversations, in which we were led to believe that Fordham agreed I was perfectly within my First Amendment rights to oppose the boycott. We informed DeJulio that I’d be happy to meet with Coleman, even though we were still not informed what the specific charge was. I resigned from Fordham’s American Studies program because it refused to distance itself from anti-Semitic bigotry. Five other Jewish members of the program did the same. Not a single non-Jewish member resigned in solidarity.
Coleman never asked to meet me, and I assumed that the attempt to muzzle my opposition to the boycott died down. In late July, however, I received Coleman’s report in which she cleared me of the charge of religious discrimination. It was the first time that I learned what I was actually accused of doing, so I’m still not sure how opposing anti-Semitism amounts to religious discrimination. But Coleman was not satisfied to leave things at that. She went on to write that I refused to cooperate in the investigation (even though my attorney informed DeJulio weeks earlier of my willingness to meet her), and concluded that my decision to use an attorney was an indication of guilt. Coleman determined that in declaring I would quit the American Studies program should it not distance itself from anti-Semitism, I violated the university’s code of civility.
It was a sobering summer. I have had to defend my reputation against baseless, ever-evolving charges, ranging from sex discrimination to religious discrimination. I went through a Kafkaesque process in which I was never told exactly what I supposedly did wrong, nor was I ever shown anything in writing. Eventually I learned that the charge was religious discrimination born of my opposition to anti-Semitism. The implication is that anti-Semitism needs to be tolerated at Fordham, and that those who dare to fight it run afoul of university rules.
Administrators and colleagues failed to protect my First Amendment rights, and fed the assault on my character. A person utterly unqualified to understand anti-Semitism sat in judgment of a scholar who publishes on and teaches the subject. A report has been issued without letting me even defend myself. My choice to have legal representation has been cited as proof of my guilt. Most painful was realizing that my commitment to fighting anti-Semitism, so central to who I am, has been used against me in a most unethical manner not only by the member of the faculty who filed the baseless charge, but also by the office of the University Counsel.
Fordham remains my intellectual home. Some colleagues, appalled by the charge and proceedings, turned out to be actual loyal friends who supported me through the ordeal. But I also learned about another part of the university where colleagues resort to legal bullying to settle political scores; where heartfelt utterings at faculty brainstorming become evidence for politically motivated character assassinations; where those charged with protecting women against real abuses engage in a politically motivated witch-hunt; where fighting against the oldest hatred—anti-Semitism—makes one a pariah. The Jesuit University of New York should do better.
###
Doron Ben-Atar is a professor of History at Fordham University and a playwright. Teatron, Toronto’s Jewish theater, is producing his play Peace Warriors in November.
1a) Klinghoffer Jews: Proud, Terrorist-Humanizing and Meek
Peter Gelb has generated a drama worthy of an important new opera about the American Jewish community. And here, inThe Jewish Press, is an exclusive of the cast and the story line.
Gelb is the managing director of the Metropolitan Opera. It was Gelb's decision to stage John Adams' opera about the terrorist murder of a disabled, elderly American man, Leon Klinghoffer. The Arab terrorists shot Klinghoffer in the head and in the chest and had him and his wheelchair thrown overboard as evidence of their unyielding position to swap innocent lives for convicted terrorist Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
Klinghoffer was selected for the sacrificial murder because he was a Jew. Not an Israeli, but a Jew.
John Adams, along with Alice Goodman (born a Reform Jew, now an anti-Semitic Anglican minister), who wrote the heinous librettos, in their own words, set out to "humanize" the terrorists. That is thegoal of the opera.
For the past six months, a stalwart collection of grass roots activists, largely based in the New York City area, have been working to inform a critical mass of Americans that it was a grotesquely offensive decision to stage the Klinghoffer opera (falsely titled: the "Death of Klinghoffer" - he didn't just die, just as Daniel Pearl did not just die - each was murdered because, as Jews, they were powerful propaganda tools).
Should a dramatist decide to write an opera about the sturm und drang on the streets of New York regarding the Klinghoffer opera, there would be three distinct types being cast.
PROUD KLINGHOFFER JEWS
The first type to be cast would be what we'll call the Proud Klinghoffer Jews, PKJ. This is a new group of actors/activists on the scene. These are the ones who have been forged in the crucible created by years of passive Jewish leadership and streetwise but unwieldy passion. It has been unleashed by the staging of what many consider an inciteful (not insightful), anti-Semitic, philo-terrorist opera at a time of rising anti-Semitism and global terrorism. There would be starring roles amongst these singers.
One, certainly, would be Richard Allen, the fifty-something New York businessman who - completely against type - has emerged as the ultimate grass roots Jewish, effective pro-Israel activist. Allen is not a grandstander; he prefers to remain in the background, dishing out credit to his fellow activists the way most ringleaders dish out criticism. Instead of claiming credit, Allen gets the job done. The man is the ultimate terrier - he puts his teeth in the calves of organizations whose acts harm Israel, and does not let up until he has accomplished more than anyone thought possible.
Another player - probably a baritone would be cast - is Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. Wiesenfeld is a businessman but also a seasoned political operator, having worked in the D'Amato, Koch and Pataki administrations. More of an "insider" than Allen, Wiesenfeld sits on the board of the City University of New York (where he's made waves of his own as a principled pro-Israel Jewish New Yorker). It is Wiesenfeld who is usually the master of ceremonies at the larger, more effective and unequivocally pro-Israel Jewish rallies in New York.
And a newcomer to the stage: Leonard J. Weiss. The ultimate White Knight who, very publicly, bolted from what had been his beloved Metropolitan Opera. Weiss, recognizing the stench of moral decay, chose to very publicly redirect the money he had been donating to the Met to assist in helping his new comrades create a public astringent, hoping to cleanse the rot.
And Weiss has led the way for other Jews to stand up against this desecration of art. Eugene Grant, a real estate developer, announced that he was suspending his $5 million gift to the Met.
Then there are several indefatigable grass roots players who have been involved in pro-Israel activities for decades. People like Dr. Marvin Belsky, Dr. Paul Brody, Beth Gilinsky (who practically single-handedly forced the New York City to come to grips with the anti-Jewish animus surrounding the Crown Heights riots in 1991), Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans For a Safe Israel, terrorist victim and now rights activist Sarri Singer and Liz Berney, a trusted deputy of Zionist Organization of America's executive director, Mort Klein.
There are others, a growing number of them, who would comprise the PKJ chorus.
The polar opposites of the PKJs would also have to be cast. These would be referred to, in short-hand, as the Anti-Klinghoffer Jews.
TERRORIST-HUMANIZING KLINGHOFFER JEWS
Peter Gelb, of course, is the man responsible for bringing the Klinghoffer opera to the Met, and the man who has thus far successfully convinced his board members that the Klinghoffer opera must be staged. He will have a starring role as one of the sinister bad guys. Every one of his lines will contain the words "artistic freedom" and "art as insight," as if glorifying murderers of old disabled Jews is akin to speaking truth to power. It is Gelb and his cronies who have retreated into the would-be-laughable-if-not-so-offensive stance of guardians of the First Amendment for refusing to "censor" the opera.
No one has asked the Met to criminalize the words used in the opera, no one is suggesting that Adams or Goodman be jailed for lionizing the villains and ridiculing the victims. Rather, the Met has been asked to refrain from glorifying terrorism. And Gelb et al have refused.
In 2005, the Toll Brothers luxury homes builders took over from Texaco as the corporate sponsor of the Metropolitan Opera's international radio network. The Toll Brothers are Jewish, and the executive director, Robert I. Toll, sits on the Met's managing board. The Annenberg Foundation is another major corporate sponsor of the Met's radio network, and Leonore Annenberg, the former chair of the Foundation, was also on the Met's managing board.
While Gelb decided to pull the live streaming of the Klinghoffer opera (but only well after it was already in the lineup and only after the initial wave of criticism), it is difficult to imagine that major funders of any part of the enterprise could not have made their views known - and had an impact - on Gelb's grinding in his heels about staging this opera.
MEEK KLINGHOFFER JEWS
The final major type to be cast is one that, sadly, has the widest pool of potential players. This type is called the Meek Klinghoffer Jews. These are the ones who really probably wish there was no Klinghoffer opera, but who are too uncomfortable raising their voices at all about anything, including anti-Semitism, but most especially when that anti-Semitism is dressed up in fancy clothes. Like at the Metropolitan Opera.
While the grass roots activists began organizing against the Klinghoffer opera last spring, it wasn't until September - September! - that the mainstream official Jewish organizations finally got around to saying anything publicly about the travesty.
What they came up with is a good letter in terms of calling the opera what it is. For example, it mentions that the "opera's juxtaposition of terrorists and their victims on the same moral plane is gravely inappropriate," and pointing out that "anti-Jewish attacks and expressions of hatred against Jews have reached frightening levels around the globe, and innocent American journalists have been cruelly beheaded by radical Islamists."
But, undoubtedly because the letter-writers were aiming for as broad a group as possible, the letter reads like more of a "oh, this is too bad" letter, rather than a "this is unacceptable!" letter.
The organizations whose leadership signed the letter runs the gamut from the stalwartly supportive of most strongly pro-Israel activities, such as the National Council of Young Israel and the Religious Zionists of America, all the way to the surprising appearance of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, various New York-based JCCs, JCRCs and even the president and the chair of the board of the UJA Federation of New York.
For example, it says the opera "runs the risk of legitimizing terror." Runs the risk? Just a risk? Then there is a truly tiny slap that lands on nobody in particular. This happens in the second paragraph of the letter, regarding the timing of the staging of this opera in New York at this time:
Gelb and his small chorus of T-HKJs may be a bit upstaged when certain New York Jewish "communal leaders" are revealed as members of the board of the Metropolitan Opera.
There are two members of the board of the Met who are bona fide Jewish communal leaders. One isStanley M. Bergman. Bergman is not only a Met board member, he is the president of the American Jewish Committee!
The AJC chose not to sign on to the communal mainstream letter to Gelb. Instead, it penned its ownletter of criticism, and its executive director signed a letter which ran in the New York Times. The AJC used strong words in its letter, but whether Mr. Bergman was made aware of them, or of the AJC's official pronouncement of "profound disappointment" in the Met staging this travesty remains unknown.
The other Met board member who plays a second role in this drama is Linda Mirels. Mirels sits on the advisory board of the Met, but she is also the president of the executive committee of the UJA Federation of New York and is even a signatory on the MKJs' letter. Whether either Bergman or Mirels made an effort to convince Gelb or the other board members that the opera is simply in terrible taste and should not be staged is unknown.
What is known is that neither of the two who appear in dual roles have followed the lead of either Leonard Weiss or Eugene Grant and publicly stated that funds earmarked for the Met would be either withheld in protest or diverted to support the free speech of the protesters.
FIRST AMENDMENT BOGEYMAN
A final note: it has been said that at least some Jewish leaders who recognize the disturbing aspects of the opera refrained from coming out more strongly against it because of "First Amendment" concerns.
Let us slay that bogeyman right here. The First Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the U.S. Constitution shortly after its ratification.
The Bill of Rights protects U.S. citizens from actions by the government. The government could not, consistent with the First Amendment, shut down the Metropolitan Opera for staging something that profoundly disturbs the sentiments of a major segment of the community. But people who are supposed to be Jewish leaders are not barred by the First Amendment from calling for what they think is right. And claiming to use the First Amendment as a shield in that way is simply an act of ignorance or cowardice or both.
The first group has already been cast. The PKJs will be starring in another protest outside the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, Oct. 20th. That is the first night that the Klinghoffer opera will be staged at the Met. Join the PKJs.
© 2014 The Jewish Press. All rights reserved.
1a) Klinghoffer Jews: Proud, Terrorist-Humanizing and Meek
Peter Gelb has generated a drama worthy of an important new opera about the American Jewish community. And here, inThe Jewish Press, is an exclusive of the cast and the story line.
Gelb is the managing director of the Metropolitan Opera. It was Gelb's decision to stage John Adams' opera about the terrorist murder of a disabled, elderly American man, Leon Klinghoffer. The Arab terrorists shot Klinghoffer in the head and in the chest and had him and his wheelchair thrown overboard as evidence of their unyielding position to swap innocent lives for convicted terrorist Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
Klinghoffer was selected for the sacrificial murder because he was a Jew. Not an Israeli, but a Jew.
John Adams, along with Alice Goodman (born a Reform Jew, now an anti-Semitic Anglican minister), who wrote the heinous librettos, in their own words, set out to "humanize" the terrorists. That is thegoal of the opera.
For the past six months, a stalwart collection of grass roots activists, largely based in the New York City area, have been working to inform a critical mass of Americans that it was a grotesquely offensive decision to stage the Klinghoffer opera (falsely titled: the "Death of Klinghoffer" - he didn't just die, just as Daniel Pearl did not just die - each was murdered because, as Jews, they were powerful propaganda tools).
Should a dramatist decide to write an opera about the sturm und drang on the streets of New York regarding the Klinghoffer opera, there would be three distinct types being cast.
PROUD KLINGHOFFER JEWS
The first type to be cast would be what we'll call the Proud Klinghoffer Jews, PKJ. This is a new group of actors/activists on the scene. These are the ones who have been forged in the crucible created by years of passive Jewish leadership and streetwise but unwieldy passion. It has been unleashed by the staging of what many consider an inciteful (not insightful), anti-Semitic, philo-terrorist opera at a time of rising anti-Semitism and global terrorism. There would be starring roles amongst these singers.
One, certainly, would be Richard Allen, the fifty-something New York businessman who - completely against type - has emerged as the ultimate grass roots Jewish, effective pro-Israel activist. Allen is not a grandstander; he prefers to remain in the background, dishing out credit to his fellow activists the way most ringleaders dish out criticism. Instead of claiming credit, Allen gets the job done. The man is the ultimate terrier - he puts his teeth in the calves of organizations whose acts harm Israel, and does not let up until he has accomplished more than anyone thought possible.
Another player - probably a baritone would be cast - is Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. Wiesenfeld is a businessman but also a seasoned political operator, having worked in the D'Amato, Koch and Pataki administrations. More of an "insider" than Allen, Wiesenfeld sits on the board of the City University of New York (where he's made waves of his own as a principled pro-Israel Jewish New Yorker). It is Wiesenfeld who is usually the master of ceremonies at the larger, more effective and unequivocally pro-Israel Jewish rallies in New York.
And a newcomer to the stage: Leonard J. Weiss. The ultimate White Knight who, very publicly, bolted from what had been his beloved Metropolitan Opera. Weiss, recognizing the stench of moral decay, chose to very publicly redirect the money he had been donating to the Met to assist in helping his new comrades create a public astringent, hoping to cleanse the rot.
And Weiss has led the way for other Jews to stand up against this desecration of art. Eugene Grant, a real estate developer, announced that he was suspending his $5 million gift to the Met.
Then there are several indefatigable grass roots players who have been involved in pro-Israel activities for decades. People like Dr. Marvin Belsky, Dr. Paul Brody, Beth Gilinsky (who practically single-handedly forced the New York City to come to grips with the anti-Jewish animus surrounding the Crown Heights riots in 1991), Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans For a Safe Israel, terrorist victim and now rights activist Sarri Singer and Liz Berney, a trusted deputy of Zionist Organization of America's executive director, Mort Klein.
There are others, a growing number of them, who would comprise the PKJ chorus.
The polar opposites of the PKJs would also have to be cast. These would be referred to, in short-hand, as the Anti-Klinghoffer Jews.
TERRORIST-HUMANIZING KLINGHOFFER JEWS
Peter Gelb, of course, is the man responsible for bringing the Klinghoffer opera to the Met, and the man who has thus far successfully convinced his board members that the Klinghoffer opera must be staged. He will have a starring role as one of the sinister bad guys. Every one of his lines will contain the words "artistic freedom" and "art as insight," as if glorifying murderers of old disabled Jews is akin to speaking truth to power. It is Gelb and his cronies who have retreated into the would-be-laughable-if-not-so-offensive stance of guardians of the First Amendment for refusing to "censor" the opera.
No one has asked the Met to criminalize the words used in the opera, no one is suggesting that Adams or Goodman be jailed for lionizing the villains and ridiculing the victims. Rather, the Met has been asked to refrain from glorifying terrorism. And Gelb et al have refused.
In 2005, the Toll Brothers luxury homes builders took over from Texaco as the corporate sponsor of the Metropolitan Opera's international radio network. The Toll Brothers are Jewish, and the executive director, Robert I. Toll, sits on the Met's managing board. The Annenberg Foundation is another major corporate sponsor of the Met's radio network, and Leonore Annenberg, the former chair of the Foundation, was also on the Met's managing board.
While Gelb decided to pull the live streaming of the Klinghoffer opera (but only well after it was already in the lineup and only after the initial wave of criticism), it is difficult to imagine that major funders of any part of the enterprise could not have made their views known - and had an impact - on Gelb's grinding in his heels about staging this opera.
MEEK KLINGHOFFER JEWS
The final major type to be cast is one that, sadly, has the widest pool of potential players. This type is called the Meek Klinghoffer Jews. These are the ones who really probably wish there was no Klinghoffer opera, but who are too uncomfortable raising their voices at all about anything, including anti-Semitism, but most especially when that anti-Semitism is dressed up in fancy clothes. Like at the Metropolitan Opera.
While the grass roots activists began organizing against the Klinghoffer opera last spring, it wasn't until September - September! - that the mainstream official Jewish organizations finally got around to saying anything publicly about the travesty.
What they came up with is a good letter in terms of calling the opera what it is. For example, it mentions that the "opera's juxtaposition of terrorists and their victims on the same moral plane is gravely inappropriate," and pointing out that "anti-Jewish attacks and expressions of hatred against Jews have reached frightening levels around the globe, and innocent American journalists have been cruelly beheaded by radical Islamists."
But, undoubtedly because the letter-writers were aiming for as broad a group as possible, the letter reads like more of a "oh, this is too bad" letter, rather than a "this is unacceptable!" letter.
The organizations whose leadership signed the letter runs the gamut from the stalwartly supportive of most strongly pro-Israel activities, such as the National Council of Young Israel and the Religious Zionists of America, all the way to the surprising appearance of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, various New York-based JCCs, JCRCs and even the president and the chair of the board of the UJA Federation of New York.
For example, it says the opera "runs the risk of legitimizing terror." Runs the risk? Just a risk? Then there is a truly tiny slap that lands on nobody in particular. This happens in the second paragraph of the letter, regarding the timing of the staging of this opera in New York at this time:
it could well have been anticipated that this production, and the sensitivities around its story, would generate divisiveness. The disappointment and negative reaction that is now playing out is therefore not surprising.It could, it might, it would, but nowhere is the money line: Don't stage this abomination!
Gelb and his small chorus of T-HKJs may be a bit upstaged when certain New York Jewish "communal leaders" are revealed as members of the board of the Metropolitan Opera.
There are two members of the board of the Met who are bona fide Jewish communal leaders. One isStanley M. Bergman. Bergman is not only a Met board member, he is the president of the American Jewish Committee!
The AJC chose not to sign on to the communal mainstream letter to Gelb. Instead, it penned its ownletter of criticism, and its executive director signed a letter which ran in the New York Times. The AJC used strong words in its letter, but whether Mr. Bergman was made aware of them, or of the AJC's official pronouncement of "profound disappointment" in the Met staging this travesty remains unknown.
The other Met board member who plays a second role in this drama is Linda Mirels. Mirels sits on the advisory board of the Met, but she is also the president of the executive committee of the UJA Federation of New York and is even a signatory on the MKJs' letter. Whether either Bergman or Mirels made an effort to convince Gelb or the other board members that the opera is simply in terrible taste and should not be staged is unknown.
What is known is that neither of the two who appear in dual roles have followed the lead of either Leonard Weiss or Eugene Grant and publicly stated that funds earmarked for the Met would be either withheld in protest or diverted to support the free speech of the protesters.
FIRST AMENDMENT BOGEYMAN
A final note: it has been said that at least some Jewish leaders who recognize the disturbing aspects of the opera refrained from coming out more strongly against it because of "First Amendment" concerns.
Let us slay that bogeyman right here. The First Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the U.S. Constitution shortly after its ratification.
The Bill of Rights protects U.S. citizens from actions by the government. The government could not, consistent with the First Amendment, shut down the Metropolitan Opera for staging something that profoundly disturbs the sentiments of a major segment of the community. But people who are supposed to be Jewish leaders are not barred by the First Amendment from calling for what they think is right. And claiming to use the First Amendment as a shield in that way is simply an act of ignorance or cowardice or both.
The first group has already been cast. The PKJs will be starring in another protest outside the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, Oct. 20th. That is the first night that the Klinghoffer opera will be staged at the Met. Join the PKJs.
About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) ISLAMIC STATE GROOMS CHECHEN FIGHTERS AGAINST PUTIN
Author: Michael Winfrey
Source: Bloomberg. 
(Photographer: AP Photo/militant social media account via AP video)
Islamic State Commander Omar al-Shishani, center, is seen in this video image dated… Read More
When the Islamic State commander known as “Omar the Chechen” called to tell his father they’d routed the Iraqi army and taken the city of Mosul, he added a stark message: Russia would be next.
“He said ‘don’t worry dad, I’ll come home and show the Russians,’” Temur Batirashvili said from his home in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, on the border with the Russian region of Chechnya. “I have many thousands following me now and I’ll get more. We’ll have our revenge against Russia.”
As the U.S. and European countries assess the risk of home-grown jihadists returning to stage attacks on their native countries, the turmoil in the Middle East also reverberates in the Caucasus. The region wedged between Russia, Iran and Turkey is an intricate web of tensions that’s erupted into violence in the past three decades in hot spots from Chechnya to Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia.
Batirashvili’s son Tarkhan comes from an area that Russian President Vladimir Putin accuses of aiding Islamist rebellions that he’s spent more than a decade trying to crush. While Russia is focusing on the conflict in Ukraine, Georgians remember the humiliation in a five-day war in 2008, when Putin helped cement the separatist movements in the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Temur Batirashvili, the father of Tarkhan Batirashvili, also known as Omar al-Shishani (Source: Bloomberg)
Temur Batirashvili, the father of Tarkhan Batirashvili, also known as Omar al-Shishani (Source: Bloomberg)
The red-bearded commander now known by the nom de guerre Omar al-Shishani is a leader of the forces fighting for an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Among them are dozens of youths from Pankisi who, disaffected by a lack of jobs and angered by Russia’s dominance in the Caucasus, have followed the call to jihad.
‘Brilliant’ Maneuvers
Al-Shishani is the tactical mastermind behind Islamic State’s swift military gains on the ground in Iraq’s Anbar province, west of Baghdad, including an encirclement in which his forces killed as many as 500 Iraqi troops and captured 180 more near Fallujah, according to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Al-Qaeda's Heirs
“The group’s recent success in Anbar can be attributed primarily to one exceptional field commander and ISIL official, Abu Umar al-Shishani, who executed a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers,” he wrote today, using another form of al-Shishani’s name, for War on the Rocks, a website that provides analysis and news on military conflicts.
Chechen Jihadists
The force includes about 1,000 Russian-speaking jihadists, or about half of the fighters from outside Syria and Iraq, according to Elena Suponina, a Middle East expert and adviser to the director of Moscow’s Institute for Strategic Studies.
Most of them are Chechens, with many from Pankisi, a jagged gash eight kilometers (5 miles) long and two kilometers wide tucked in Georgia’s remote mountains between Chechnya and South Ossetia. It’s home to about 11,000 Georgians, Chechens and Kists, a subgroup of the nation.
“It’s a serious problem because, for the Russian security services, the Pankisi Gorge has been a source of militant activity since the first Chechen war,” Suponina said by phone Oct. 7. “Tbilisi doesn’t control Pankisi and people from there can easily get to the Middle East. It’s a black hole in the security of the Caucasus.”
Russian-Chechen Conflict
Russia’s conflict with the Chechens dates back centuries, including a 1785 uprising, with the modern hostilities reigniting as a separatist movement gained momentum as the Soviet Union broke apart a quarter century ago. Russia fought two Chechen wars in the past 25 years in part to counter attacks that originated in the region and spread through the country.
Apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999 that killed hundreds and the conflict spreading to the region of Dagestan were the immediate trigger for the second Chechen war, in which Putin laid the foundations of his image as a leader capable of restoring the country’s might. While Russia finally gained control of the republic during Putin’s first presidential term, the loyal regime he installed forced the insurgency to simmer in the rest of the Caucasus.
In Pankisi, where unemployment is at 90 percent, old men and youths idle under trees in villages thronged by playing children. Most families subsist by herding animals around well-kept houses that show the influence of remittances from relatives working abroad.
‘Easy Targets’
Traveling for work also provides a cover story for some. The family of 18-year-old Beso Kushtanashvili thought he was in Turkey until they heard he’d died as a jihadist.
Iza Borchashvili, a head teacher who remembers Beso as a bubbly, fun kid, said economic issues are the main factor driving young men abroad, along with the idea of being part of something bigger than themselves.
“They are young and easy targets,” Borchashvili said. “These boys have nothing to do, they are unemployed and they’re all seeking something abroad. That’s the main problem.”
The exodus has also caused tension within Pankisi. Many people refuse to talk about the absent fighters at all. Older residents like Soso Kavtarashvili, a village elder who said he fought in the 1990’s to protect the valley from “militant criminals,” lament both the fighters’ departure and the practices of extremists.
‘Won’t Forgive’
“This puts the whole village, the whole society in a very difficult situation,” he said. “I don’t like this. God won’t forgive their killing civilians and innocent people for the religion.”
This week, a 19-year-old suicide bomber killed five policemen and wounded 11 other officers in Grozny, about 60 kilometers (36 miles) north of Pankisi, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee.
The attack added to the more than 1,000 civilians, militants and police who have died since 2012 in almost daily attacks from the Black Sea to the Caspian, according to Caucasian Knot, a Moscow-based research group.
Russia has accused Georgia of turning a blind eye to what it says is the Pankisi community’s harboring of militants who want to overthrow Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov — a Putin ally on whose head Shishani put a $5 million bounty last month – - and create a caliphate like Islamic State, Suponina said.
Security Threat
“Once they have built their caliphate, they will return home and fight,” Suponina said. “This is also a security threat in Georgia because these extremists want to establish Shariah everywhere where central government control is lacking.”
Georgian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Nino Giorgobiani declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg. The government’s main priority is to protect its citizens, according to Irakli Sesiashvili, chairman of the Defense and Security Committee in Georgia’s parliament.
“We plan to take drastic preventative measures, including new legislative changes, to regulate shortcomings like crimes committed abroad while taking part in terrorist organizations,” he said today by phone from Tbilisi. “Our aim is to prevent others from following the path so they won’t think that if they do the same it will go unpunished.”
The government in Tbilisi has carried out several anti-terrorist operations in Pankisi, including a 2003 offensive to push al-Qaeda militants out of the region. Eleven people died in the most recent one, in 2012.
The same year, Tarkhan Batirashvili was released from a jail sentence he received for possessing weapons illegally. Born in 1986 to a Christian father and Georgian Chechen Muslim mother, he had fought in the 2008 war and rose to the rank of sergeant in an intelligence unit. Two years later he was dismissed for health reasons.
Omar’s Path
It was during his subsequent prison term that his religious faith deepened and upon his release he returned home and burned his family’s pictures of himself, according to his father Temur.
Batirashvili then left Georgia to resurface as Omar al-Shishani, or “Omar the Chechen,” leading dozens of his compatriots and others in the siege of Aleppo in northern Syria. He soon after assumed control of Islamic State’s northern forces.
As tales of the fighting trickle home, he’s become a role model for some in Pankisi. One young man in his late teens who called himself “Vaynakh,” a word Chechens use for themselves, and would give no other information about himself for fear of reprisal, said he’s eager to join returning Chechens to fight the Russians. Vaynakh said that’s a dream he’s had ever since he first shot an assault rifle as a young boy.
“I would go fight,” he said. “They fight for the name of God and for the name of the brotherhood to revenge for Chechnya. They will come back better prepared and more powerful. I’m sure of it.”
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