Paul Haeder, Author

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and the so-called woke artists will be used as pawns . . . so more live shit in a rural county I have to forego!!

I was interested in some jazz, some live music, and then this — that terrorist group hosting it, running it, taking over the Black History Month about it.

Shit — LINK.

Imagine, the fucking concert, spoken word even, I am sure, will be a tribute to the great genocidal Isra-Hell, and yet another black face performance will be plied for that purpose. See our Lincoln County Feb. event below.

First, thouse What is the message to non-Jewish leaders in the region?

B’nai B’rith’s CEO Dan Mariaschin: Especially to the democracies: let them all know that this is the time to support the only democracy in the Middle East because if you don’t defend the way of life of a democratic country, all the other democratic countries are in danger of the same thing happening to them. If Hamas had been victorious in what they did, believe me they are still for Europe and they are still against the Arab monarchies in the region, because they would continue until they form their caliphate. So it’s important for everyone to support what Israel is doing now.

A high-profile European Union official says she is “deeply honored” to receive an award from a group that supports Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and war crimes in Gaza.

Katharina von Schnurbein is receiving the “Human Rights Prize” from the European branch of B’nai B’rith, an international Jewish communal organization.

B’nai B’rith denies that there is an Israeli military occupation in the West Bank in the first place.

Its leaders have repeatedly issued statements denouncing anyone who uses the word occupation to accurately describe the legal and brutal physical reality of Israel’s decades-long military rule over millions of Palestinians who are denied their most fundamental rights.

And when Israel was slaughtering 11 children per day in the occupied Gaza Strip during the summer of 2014, B’nai B’rith Europe sent a “solidarity mission” to support the soldiers who were doing the killing.

In short, B’nai B’rith is a pro-occupation, pro-apartheid, anti-Palestinian organization that forcefully rejects even the EU’s most minimal and ineffective efforts to oppose Israel’s settlements on occupied Palestinian land. (Source)

Comment – Peace Prizes and Baloney, Stefano R. Baldari replied on Fri, 04/27/2018 – 22:31

If premeditated murderers like Henry Kissinger (Viet Nam), Shimon Peres (The Butcher of Qana), Barack Obama (multiple, multiple unjust and unnecessary wars, and grovelling to the Israel Lobby), anyone could win a, Piece (no misspelling) Prize, than why shouldn’t Katharina Von Schnurbein? In fact, in an age where being a mass murderer, promoting virulent hate, advancing Islamophobia, encouraging needless, senseless, wars, seeing white, and only white, Jews as defining “real” Jewishness, like B’nai B’rith, ADL, AIPAC, ZOA, Hillel, et al anyone could receive an Ignominious Piece of a Prize. Big deal!

Phil Darius Wallace | Keynote Speaker | Book for Your Event

from Oregon Coast Today: Acclaimed as “bold, stylistically diverse, rhythmically rich,” “My Words Are My Sword” is a groundbreaking musical drama for actor and orchestra that fuses jazz, hip-hop and classical music.

The Siletz Bay Music Festival will present the piece on Friday, Feb. 9, in a celebration of Black History Month with two performances at the B’nai B’rith Camp near Lincoln City.

The evening’s event will also serve to honor the life and work of the late Yaacov “Yaki” Bergman, who provided the festival with guidance and inspiration as its longtime artistic director prior to his untimely death in 2023. A reception will follow the concert.

A celebration of Black music, culture and history, the piece was written by poet and actor Darius Wallace in collaboration with Portland-based, Brazilian-born pianist and composer Jasnam Daya Singh and with Bergman, who first presented the work in 2022 with performances by the Portland Chamber Orchestra and the Walla Walla Symphony, both of which he served as conductor.

Many of the Portland Chamber Orchestra’s members will travel to the coast for the presentation in Lincoln City. A full orchestra will perform the piece, conducted by Raúl Gómez-Rojas, music director of Portland’s Metropolitan Youth Symphony. Gómez-Rojas has won accolades for his guest performances with the Oregon Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic and Oregon Ballet Theatre, among others.

“This is one of the freshest, most unvarnished and relevant new works we could share with our audience in times of so much division and hunger for hope and reconciliation,” said Bergman at the time of the work’s premiere. “The work explores the magical word ‘if’ and how true liberation grows from an understanding of the manifestation of self within body, mind, soul and spirit, specifically toward a people but universally towards all. The term ‘Blackness’ is redefined through story, monologue, characterization, poetry and song as it addresses current issues with the buried history of Black bravery and excellence.”

Currently based in Memphis, Wallace is a founding company member of that city’s Tennessee Shakespeare Festival and has performed extensively around the country in schools, universities, theaters and libraries in a one-man show as Frederick Douglass. In writing “My Words Are My Sword,” Wallace has “incorporated text from the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., poetry by Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, the writings of Malcolm X and a reenactment of Douglass’ childhood history.

Composer Singh is a Latin Grammy-nominated concert and jazz pianist whose performances in many countries have earned worldwide acclaim for their innovative style and virtuosity. His music draws from a broad range of influences, including the samba music of his native Brazil, straight-ahead jazz and the European classical tradition.

The Siletz Bay Music Festival was founded to bring multi-genre world-class music performed by outstanding musicians to the area, reaching across race, culture, age, social and economic barriers and providing extraordinary musical experiences.

On Friday, Feb. 9, the 1:30 pm concert will be presented free for area students in grades 7 through 12. The evening performance will begin at 7 pm, with tickets priced at $40 and $15 for students. B’nai B’rith Camp is located at 3509 NE East Devils Lake Road, just outside Lincoln City. For more information and tickets, go to http://www.siletzbaymusic.org

Blackness and Jews?

Violent demonstrations by Eritrean asylum seekers in Tel Aviv

Under international law, Israel cannot forcibly send migrants back to a country where their life or liberty may be at risk.

Ahead of an official visit to Cyprus, Netanyahu said the ministerial team was seeking to deport 1,000 supporters of the Eritrean government who were involved in Saturday’s violence.

“They have no claim to refugee status. They support this regime,” Netanyahu said. “If they support the regime so much, they would do well to return to their country of origin.”

About 25,000 African migrants live in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, who say they fled conflict or repression. Israel recognizes very few as asylum seekers, seeing them overwhelmingly as economic migrants, and says it has no legal obligation to keep them.

Continued, defending Defamation: Checkpoint Full Film- By Yoav Shamir

Shamir —

“Defamation defamed” Yoav Shamir

“Defamation defamed” Yoav Shamir

I dispute David Hirsh’s criticism of my film about antisemitism. Far from ‘easy targets’, it is a difficult debate Israel must have

In David Hirsh’s critique of my film Defamation, he accused me of finding “easy targets” as subjects for my film. I can only assume that “targets” is common terminology for him; quite simply, all the subjects in my film (including him) are people who willingly chose to participate.

Let me start with the first person he chose to label “an easy target”: my beloved 94-year-old grandmother. My grandmother lost her husband, my biological grandfather, in the 1948 war of independence, in which he served as an officer with the forces defending Jerusalem; she was left with two young children, my mother and her brother (he is the Israeli ambassador in Germany). She then married the man I knew as a grandfather, an Auschwitz survivor who became a freedom fighter in the Ezel – the underground movement that operated alongside the Haganah and Lechi.

My grandmother loved the film and was proud to take part. Hirsh sees her as an “easy target”, and although I personally completely disagree with what she stated on camera, her perspective represents the very early Zionists thinkers such as Nordau, who wrote Degeneration, and Herzel, “the visionary of the [Jewish] state”. This small and marginal group (representing less than 3% of the entire Jewish population at the time) were young, secular, socialist Jews who wanted to create a “muscle” Jew; a Jew who would be different from all of what they resented in their parents’ generation. My grandmother is a genuine representative of this school of thought. She opens the film, not only because she is a great character who expresses what many people of her generation and, in fact, many Israelis feel toward tdiaspora Jews, but she is a reminder of the vicious cycle that Zionism became caught in – the state that was supposed to be a cure for what antisemitism started, as both Foxman and Finkelstein are actually saying, has ended up generating antisemitism.

The next “easy target” is the ADL. I don’t see how an organisation operating on $70,000,000 a year can be considered an easy target. Abe Foxman, whom I actually like and have a great sympathy for, is one of the most influential figures in the Jewish world of diplomacy, who meets with world leaders, heads of states and foreign ministers. When I approached the ADL, I came with the intention of learning, and after spending many hours with Foxman and key members of the ADL, I believe that they are doing what they are doing because of their true concern for Israel, and a real wish to help the Jewish state. Unfortunately, even though I can understand their drive, I totally disagree with it.

A scene that I witnessed, at the end of their Auschwitz visit, is a sort of game in which each of the ADL members has to name five non-Jewish friends who would hide him if someone came knocking at their door – with reference to the Nazis passing from house to house looking for Jews. As the game continued and none of them could think of five gentiles who would protect them, they then go down to three, then one … and sadly, they cannot think of a one righteous soul who would come to their aid. The lesson is, as Foxman’s book is appropriately titled, “never again”. I am happy to say that, at least in in my Tel Aviv social circle, this is not a very popular game; in fact, I was quite shocked to have witnessed it in Auschwitz. But it was a great insight into that mindset.

In their blind support of Israel, which is the supposed means for fulfilling this “never again” dictum, they are contributing to a place that is driving itself towards the edge of a cliff. Thanks to US support, the drive is a very smooth, air-conditioned and fast. But, nevertheless, it is headed towards a cliff.

I can only encourage every Jew living in the western world, when next visiting Israel, to detour from the 433 Highway into the capital and accompany an Arab Israeli in his search for an apartment in one of the Jewish cities (such as Tel Aviv, Holon and Petach Tikva) and to take a short trip into Nablus or Ramallah. If they have any sense of human dignity, it will change the way they look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But I am sure that most of the educated, liberal and mostly very pleasant people I met in my travels with the ADL are blinded by a false image of Israel. An image that blinds them as they travel from Ben Gurion airport to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, to the many empty holiday apartments they keep in Jerusalem, which they occupy maybe one week a year; on the 443 Highway, which is prohibited for the Palestinians to travel, although it passes right through the middle of their land. No “easy targets” here, but simply a group of very influential group of people who will go to great lengths defending and securing their “insurance policy” – Israel.

David Hirsh also referred to the interviews with the group of black residents whom I met in Crown Heights, where both blacks and Jews live, although in fairly segregated circumstances. In this scene, a local Jewish reporter claims that if a (black) robber wanted to rob someone, he would choose a Jewish person, because “a Jewish person would be an easier target”. The black residents replied that “actually, if they got caught robbing a Jewish guy, the judges would sentence them to more [prison] time because they would classify it as a hate crime”. They went on, expressing many stereotypes about Jews, ending up with a sad reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Is this antisemitism? Of course it is. The question is, what would be the best way to deal with it? A wise local rabbi acknowledged the problem but blames the ADL for inflaming situations like these, because, as he says, “Foxman needs a job.”

Finally, we come to the group of “15-year-old Israeli students on their trip to Poland”, as Hirsh says (in fact, the students were between 17 and 18 years old during the filming, and as you are reading these lines many of them have enlisted in the Israeli army). When the film came out in Israel, I invited the whole class and their parents to the premiere at Doc Aviv documentary film festival. These intelligent young high school students responded very openly and honestly to the film. Adi, the young woman who is one of the main protagonists in the class, told me that it gave her a lot to think about and thanked me for making the film. Their teacher, Assaf, responded in a similar way.

I don’t blame these kids for acting the way they did. Most of them were flying out of Israel for the first time, and being brought up thinking that everybody hates them, find themselves in a cycle that is very hard to break.

I could go on further to address the rest of these “easy targets” Hirsh accuses me of taking advantage, such as Norman Finkelstein, a bestselling author and academic; Dina Porat, head of the center for research on antisemitism at Tel Aviv university; or Charles Jakob, who is very active online, but I think the point is clear: these are people who are passionate about their views and are very happy to share them with me. I am a filmmaker who simply gave them the floor.

Hirsh wonders why is my narration in English? This is a version narrated for an English-speaking audience, and obviously my narration is in Hebrew for the version shown in Israel. In Germany, it will probably be dubbed into German; in France, into French, and so on. There is no hidden agenda about the intended audience, simply basic requirements set by different broadcasters.

Hirsh concludes his article by regretting that he was not invited to speak at this year’s conference about how to combat antisemitism convened by the Israeli foreign office, which he attributes as probably caused by his appearance the film. But I can inform him that, at this year’s conference, Abe Foxman stated that the situation of antisemitism is the worst since the second world war, just as he had said last year and just as he will probably say next year, too.

At the conference I filmed, Hirsh regrets he came out as a hero – his interpretation, of course, as I never declared him one. But in that year, he was the only one speaker who said anything disputing the general consensus and for that, I thought he deserved credit.

It is true there are many Israelis who oppose the occupation and other violations of human rights; but unfortunately, there are not enough. The current Israeli government is the most nationalist, rightwing government in the history of the state of Israel. Those few who oppose and fight against racism, and violations of human rights, risking their freedom – last week, the head of the Israeli human rights association was arrested for demonstrating against the taking over of Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem – those I consider heroes. In fact, my new film is about these unsung heroes.

Defamation is the personal quest of an Israeli Jew trying to understand certain aspects of his society and raising issues that I, living in Israel, don’t think are discussed enough. I am very happy to read all the comments and debates the film has started in the UK: starting a discussion around this subject is something I was waiting for and the many responses here just prove that it is a discussion many are interested in. As for David Hirsh, I warmly invite him, next time he is in Israel, to join me for a tour of the occupied territories.

+—+

Recommended Reading

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History by Norman Finkelstein

Anti-Semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present by Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control by Abraham Foxman

More on B’nai B’rith

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