Reviving My Father's Accomplishments Along With Others. American Universities Losing Prestige. Prophetic Disturbing Articles?

 

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Thank you for being an important part of our online program highlighting TK Thorne’s new book, “Behind the Magic Curtain.”

The program will be Monday night, June 21, at 7 pm central time/8 pm eastern time.

The proposed title of the program will be “Legends, Lessons, Legacies.”

It will focus on the role of the Birmingham Jewish community during the Civil Rights era with an emphasis on Abe Berkowitz, Rabbi Milton Grafman and Karl Friedman, the three Jewish leaders mentioned most frequently in TK’s book.

The program also will highlight the important role these three played in advocating for Israel and the impact they had on the Zionist movement in Birmingham and beyond.

The format will be:

Welcome, opening remarks, Larry Brook (Larry also will mention and thank our co-sponsor, the Atlanta Israel Coalition, and briefly highlight AIC’s work.)

“Behind the Magic Curtain” TK Thorne — reflections on the role of the Jewish community, and particularly on the three men. (She also will mention their Israel activities, which they were engaged in at roughly the same time.)

Audience questions for TK, moderated by Larry

Introduction of panel — Richard Friedman.

Panelists — Stephen Grafman, Richard Berkowitz, Tracy Friedman Stein. 

Possible comments from the editor of the Bham Times (our city’s African American paper) regarding the partnership with Southern Jewish Life 

Conclusion & fundraising appeal — Richard Friedman.

We especially thank our co-sponsor, the Atlanta Israel Coalition and its executive director Cheryl Dorchinsky, for her willingness to promote the program and manage the Zoom.

Richard Friedman

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Hunter Biden Could Be Charged As Federal Probe Brewing.

And:

American Universities Have Lost Their Prestige By Victor Davis Hanson

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I fear these articles will prove prophetic and if so not good for peace. Kerry has proven , time and again, the truth eludes his tongue. 

America smashes its moral compass and drags the world behind it

Obama repudiated UN Jew-bashing at Durban. Biden has embraced it

Melanie Phillips

For eight years, the administration of former President Barack Obama behaved as if the security needs of the State of Israel were such an irritating impediment to American foreign-policy aims that it had no compunction in brutally swatting them aside. As a result, the Obama years were very difficult for Israel. Appallingly, it looks as if the Biden years may be even worse. Much concern has already been expressed about President Joe Biden’s posture of appeasement towards Iran, along with other moves such as his withdrawal of support from Saudi Arabia and his decision to cut and run from Afghanistan. This has thrown some of the world’s most dangerous places into a state of even more dangerous flux. Until now, it was possible to believe that his administration was merely hopelessly naïve, appeasement-minded or delusional as a consequence of its utopian liberal ideology, and that Israel just happened to be particularly vulnerable to its correspondingly bone-headed blundering in the Middle East. Now, however, there is evidence that the administration is driven by actual malevolence towards both Israel and Zionism itself, which lowers it into a pit of infamy fouler even than Obama’s hostility and disdain. That evidence concerns the infamous 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that was held in Durban, South Africa, a few days before the 9/11 attacks. This was an eye-watering, anti-Israel, anti-Jew hate-fest, whose sole purpose was to demonize and delegitimize Israel under the Orwellian banner of “human rights” and which erupted into openly Nazi-referenced antisemitism. The notorious, forged handbook of deranged Jew-hatred, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was distributed to attendees. Leaflets saying Hitler should have finished “his job” circulated, along with fliers depicting him asking “What if I had won?” and receiving the answer: “There would be NO Israel and NO Palestinian bloodshed.” Jewish participants feared for their safety as activists chanted “Zionism is racism, Israel is apartheid,” and “You have Palestinian blood on your hands.” The Jewish Centre in Durban was forced to close because of threats of violence. The conference’s NGO Forum attacked every Jewish organization in attendance and passed a resolution calling Israel “a racist apartheid state,” guilty of the “systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing … and state terror against the Palestinian people”. The conference’s final declaration brought this verbal pogrom to its climax by listing only the Palestinians as “victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” It thus singled out Israel alone as an instigator of those evils. The sheer lunacy of such a claim, identifying the Jewish state as so monstrous that it was in a category all of its own, placed that declaration itself squarely in the frame of classical antisemitism. In 2011, the United Nations organized a meeting to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Durban conference. The United States, along with thirteen other countries, boycotted it. In a strong statement, the Obama White House explained that this was because the meeting would reaffirm in its entirety the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action “which unfairly and unacceptably singled out Israel.” The United States, it said, “did not want to see the hateful and anti-Semitic displays of the 2001 Durban Conference commemorated”. Durban 2001 indelibly marked the moral collapse of the United Nations. It was the point at which the “anti-racist” and “human rights” movement turned itself into a propulsive motor for antisemitism, serving as the launching pad for the campaign of demonization, delegitimization and destruction of Israel that has continued ever since. The countries that in 2011 boycotted the Durban process held the line against this bigotry. That was then. Now, shockingly, the United States has obliterated that line. Last month, it reversed the Obama administration’s Durban position. Having just rejoined the UN Human Rights Council, America promoted a statement of commitment to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance linked to “recalling the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action”. Obama had repudiated this declaration on the grounds of its unjust demonization of Israel and the “hateful and anti-Semitic displays” around its creation. The Biden administration has embraced it. Now there is to be a yet further attempt to re-weaponize Durban. In September, the United Nations plans to hold a 20th-anniversary meeting where the original declaration will be reconfirmed. As the blogger “Elder of Zion” has observed, given America’s endorsement of Durban at the Human Rights Council it’s entirely possible that the Biden administration will attend the September meeting — and thus associate the United States with what the Obama White House condemned as a commemoration of the “hateful and anti-Semitic displays of the 2001 Durban Conference”. Shocking as all this is, it makes perfect sense in light of the Democrats’ embrace of intersectionality and identity politics. Intersectionality holds that Jews and the State of Israel are “white privileged” oppressors (even though most Israeli Jews are brown-skinned, coming from regions of the Middle East). According to this dogma, Israel can’t be the victim of Iran or the Palestinian Arabs (although it indubitably is), and no people of colour can be anti-Semites (which some indubitably are). Proponents of intersectionality view only white people as a threat. This is now the view of the Biden administration. In his address on Wednesday night to Congress, Biden said, according to the prepared text on the White House website (when he actually delivered the speech he managed to mangle his words): “The most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today is from white supremacist terrorism.” He made similar remarks in February when he said white supremacists were “the most dangerous people in America,” calling them “demented”. But he doesn’t think those Palestinian preachers and officials who say things like the Jews are “thirsty for blood to please their god” or that the Jews were forced out of Europe in the past because of the threat posed by their “evil nature” are demented. He doesn’t think the Iranian leaders who deny the Holocaust, allege a Jewish conspiracy to replace Islam by western imperialism and claim Jews seek to dominate the entire world are demented. Instead, he treats the Iranians as rational actors with whom he wants to negotiate and into whose terrorist activities he intends to help funnel billions of dollars. And instead of acknowledging the Palestinians’ exterminatory antisemitism as demonstrating “racism, xenophobia and related intolerance,” he declares them to be the principal victims of such attitudes. When Britain’s Labour Party was in the grip of its hard-left, anti-Israel and antisemitism-promoting leader Jeremy Corbyn, there were Americans who took comfort in the belief that such a development couldn’t happen in their own country. In fact, the Biden administration is even more baleful. Whether Biden is too mentally fragile to grasp what he’s doing or whether he has made a cynical calculation of where his interests lie in today’s increasingly radical Democratic Party, it would seem that there’s a puppet of the hard left in the Oval Office. And it’s not just America and Israel which are likely to feel the impact of this. When the United States boycotted the 2011 Durban meeting, so did many other nations besides Israel. Now the reverse has happened. Every other nation that boycotted Durban 2011 signed the US-led Human Rights Council statement supporting the original Durban Declaration. The demonization of Israel has helped smash the cultural moral compass of the west. Now America is smashing its moral compass in politics, too — and as a result is dragging the rest of the so-called civilized world behind it, to the potential endangerment of all. Jewish News Syndicate And: Abraham Accords Could Be Next In Biden's Retreat-----------Former Israeli ambassadors say Kerry’s history of conflict with Israel lends weight to Iranian accusation Abraham Accords Could Be Next In Biden’s Retreat By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun As Washington retreats from prior conditions it has set to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, Arab allies recalculate their approach to the Islamic Republic. Can reversal of the Abraham Accords be far behind?  “We are seeking to have good relations with Iran,” Riyadh’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Saudi TV this week. Huh? Until recently the Kingdom’s de-facto ruler was considered one of the region’s top hardliners on Iran. Now his emissaries are reported to meet in Baghdad with top American and Iranian officials. What changed? America. Washington’s attitude toward the Islamic Republic is obviously much softer than it was under President Trump. But now it seems to have softened even in the course of President Biden’s first 100 days. Gone is National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s vow to seek a “longer and stronger agreement.” Instead American negotiators in Vienna now toil to appease Tehran counterparts with the hope of merely returning to the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Yet another American condition for reinking the JCPOA is fast eroding. Washington said it would not remove sanctions before Tehran reverses all recent enrichment violations. That condition is now melting, even as Tehran is resolute, vowing to not move an inch before all sanctions are removed. To return to the deal, “the Biden administration is considering a near wholesale rollback of some of the most stringent Trump-era sanctions,” the Associated Press reported this week. Those, according to the AP, may include sanctions related to the Islamic Republic’s terrorism and other non-nuclear activities. “Considering” isn’t as futuristic as it sounds. One reason American-imposed sanctions hurt the Iranian regime so badly was that the international banking system is dominated by the greenback. When America threatened to block access to dollar-based commerce, potential sanction busters shunned trade with Iran. Now the mere talk of “wholesale rollback” effectively amounts to actual sanction removal. In February, South Korea sent $1 billion to Tehran from frozen funds previously held when banks dreaded dealing with Iran. The quicker such fears fade, the faster Iran dwindling coffers will replenish. So just as in John Kerry’s days as Secretary of State, America seems eager to lose any leverage to meet all of Tehran’s demands. Mr. Kerry has befriended the Iranian Foreign minister, Javad Zarif. According to a leaked recording of the ever-smiling Iranian diplomat’s hours-long chat with a regime buddy, he often talked to Mr. Kerry in the last four years. They even compared notes on Israeli military operations in the region. Yet, as the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo reported this week, such purported friendship is limited to Americans in the mold of Mr. Kerry, not to their country. “I believe Iran and the US will never be friends as long as the Islamic Republic preserves its identity,” Mr. Zarif says in one previously unreported nugget from that taped chat. The recording exposes Mr. Zarif’s self-admitted political weakness and his government’s inability to confront figures in the military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Nevertheless, America continues to race toward a deal with Mr. Zarif’s underlings even as Iran’s June national elections fast approach. Poised to sweep that election, which is widely projected to be shunned by the vast majority of Iranians, the military escalates confrontations with America. Earlier this month the US Navy fired warning shots at IRGC vessels that habitually swarm and harass American ships in the Gulf. Naval muscle flexing aside, however, America seems eager to quickly resume the Obama-era diplomacy of showering Tehran’s regime with funds in order to cut down Mideast military activity. Meanwhile the Biden administration frowns on Saudi Arabia, scoring its human rights record even as it overlooks similar, and worse, Iranian violations. Worse, it threatens a cut in arms deliveries to Riyadh, highlighting the role of the Saudi Crown Prince, known as MbS, in waging the cruel war in Yemen (and overlooking Iranian-backed Houthis’ increased attacks on Saudi territory.) No wonder Riyadh appears eager to please its American ally and benefactor by making nice to Tehran. According to several reports, CIA Director William Burns secretly flew to Baghdad recently to meet with a top Iranian general, Ali Shamkhani. (Secretly because Washington officially shuns direct negotiations with Iran.) In the room, beside the two and Iraqi officials, was a Saudi representative, apparently negotiating an end to the Kingdom’s involvement in Yemen. The frantic diplomacy points in one direction: America is returning to President Obama’s attitude toward the Saudi-led Sunni Arabs, instructing them to “share the neighborhood” with the Iranian regime. Sensing where the desert wind is blowing, the Saudis signal readiness to join America’s frantic diplomacy. Meanwhile, remember: the Kingdom is yet to join the Abraham Accords but peace between Arab states and Israel would have been much weaker without tacit Saudi support. So “share the region” with an Iranian regime that vows to never tolerate the presence of a “Zionist regime” in the Mideast? Paradoxically, one way Riyadh can try to please Washington by appeasing Tehran while avoiding real harm to core Saudi interests is to publicly distance itself from the Abraham Accords. It would harm regional peace but, hey, at least some in Washington will applaud — even though these peace treaties are just about the only Trump-era policy Mr. Biden wouldn’t reverse. He even vows to deepen them. Twitter @bennyavni Finally: Former Israeli ambassadors say Kerry’s history of conflict with Israel lends weight to Iranian accusation The backlash over allegations that former Secretary of State John Kerry may have provided Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif inside information on Israeli military operations has sparked calls for an investigation. By Dmitriy Shapiro John Kerry, who serves as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate in the Biden administration and was secretary of state during the Obama administration, continues to face a backlash over allegations that he may have provided Iranian foreign minister and nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif inside information on Israeli military operations. Three Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote a joint letter the U.S. State Department inspector general on Wednesday to demand an investigation into whether Kerry did indeed provide information, as Zarif claimed in a recording provided to The New York Times, the details of which were published in a story on Sunday. In what was reported to be a conversation with an Iranian economist, Zarif claimed that Kerry told him that Israel had attacked 200 Iranian targets in Syria. “If this report is true, Secretary Kerry severely undermined the American-Israeli alliance to provide intelligence about one of our most trusted allies to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) said in a news release. “John Kerry and Joe Biden have proven to be pro-Iranian before by championing the failed Iran nuclear deal, but this type of betrayal of a staunch ally is simply unconscionable. We need the inspector general to launch an immediate, impartial investigation to determine the validity of these claims,” according to Barr. He was joined in the letter by Reps. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) and Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), with both questioning whether Kerry should remain in his current position in the Biden administration. “The State Department must investigate the massively alarming allegations that John Kerry, in his capacity as Secretary of State, leaked information to Iran on covert Israeli military operations,” Zeldin said in the release. “If it’s proven that Kerry actively undermined one of America’s staunchest allies, he needs to resign from the Biden administration immediately and have his security clearance revoked.” Other prominent Republicans calling an investigation—or for Kerry’s resignation—include Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, among a growing list. Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and former Knesset member Michael Oren said that while he had a good working relationship with Kerry during his tenure from 2009 to 2013, Kerry seemed to have an “unhealthy obsession” with Israel during his time in office. Oren cited Kerry’s speech in 2016 after failed Israel-Palestine peace negotiations, where he spent more than an hour lecturing Israel on its settlements while war was raging out of control in neighboring Syria.  “At the same time when Syrian [President] Bashar Assad was killing a half million of his own countrymen and the U.S. government refused to intervene, Kerry found time to give an hour-long speech condemning Israeli settlements,” said Oren. “What was going on north of [Israel] was the largest massacre in post-World War II history.” The speech was especially puzzling, Oren pointed out since Kerry blamed Israel alone for the failure of the peace talks. Oren said that he didn’t know whether Zarif was telling the truth in the recording, but it was well known during the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal Kerry and Zarif had a close relationship, something that troubled Israel. “He made no attempts to disguise that,” said Oren. “And for Israelis, this was very disturbing. This was the representative of a government that was sworn to destroy us—actively seeking to destroy us. It wasn’t passive. It wasn’t just rhetoric. “That’s disturbing to the Israelis and should have been disturbing for Americans because this is a regime that oppresses gay people and free speech, and imprisons people and tortures people. I mean, it should have been more disturbing for a person, I think, of a liberal outlook such as John Kerry.” ‘You have two leaders, and one of them is lying’ Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said that he listened to the recording of Zarif and it sounded authentic, but one has to take into consideration the sophisticated propaganda of Iran. “I think it is a very serious allegation. It involves the closest ally of Israel and the worst enemy of Israel,” he said. “I really hope that it’s not true. But, you know, you have two leaders and one of them is lying. It’s either Zarif or Kerry.” Kerry denied the reports in a tweet on Monday. “I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false,” he tweeted. “This never happened—either when I was Secretary of State or since.” Danon said Kerry was investing a lot of energy in creating the Iran nuclear deal and was trying to speak to all sides, so it was known that he kept in touch with Zarif, even after he left office. “It’s the U.S. policy to decide with who they are speaking and about what, but once it involves our security or our interests, that’s something we expect our allies to protect our interests the same way we protect U.S. interests,” explained Danon. If the allegations against Kerry are true, which he hopes they are not, it would be a problem. “One can argue how much it risked our lives or not, but I think it’s more than that,” said Danon. “It’s about what you are talking with whom when it comes to our interests.” But he added that the bond between Israel and the United States is stronger than mistakes made by any particular leader. While it remains unclear from the recording whether Kerry told Zarif the information before or after the details were already public knowledge, Oren said it wouldn’t matter, as Israel’s policy at the time was not to comment on its operations to prevent a situation where Assad would be obliged to respond militarily to Israel. What really upset Oren, he said, and Israeli officials during the Iran nuclear deal negotiations was the existence of secret backchannel negotiations between the United States and Iran through Oman. “These negotiations were conducted under the auspices of Kerry. … Israel was being assured repeatedly, every week, that no backchannel, no secret negotiation was going on with Iran when, in fact, there were,” he said. The existence of these negotiations became public in November 2013, a month after Oren was no longer ambassador. Oren said that the seriousness of what he called a “betrayal” was such that had he still been the ambassador, he would have seriously considered resigning. “The point is that Kerry presided over negotiations that were conducted behind Israel’s back on an issue vital to Israel’s security, if not its survival. And deliberately misled us about them,” he said. “We took it very seriously,” emphasized Oren. After all, he said, the United States is “our No. 1 ally,” and it was “negotiating behind our back with our No. 1 enemy.” Israeli settlements may be an issue, he said, but Iran is “a matter of national survival for this country.” +++++++++++++++++++++++