Epilogue: Israeli Neo-Nazis Jailed November 24, 2008

The macabre story of the Israeli neo-Nazi clan, Patrol 36, has now come to its fitting end with one- to seven-year sentences for the members, and a lifelong psychological stigma for one.

As Time Magazine’s Tim McGirk reports:

Tel Aviv District Judge Zvi Gurfinkel called their crimes “shocking and horrifying” and sentenced the youths, ages 16 to 19, to between one and seven years in prison. The judge conceded that the sentences were severe, but his objective, he said, was to discourage other young Israelis from joining neo-Nazi gangs.

The…gang of skinheads had painted swastikas and naked women on the doors of a Haifa synagogue. They had also attacked a drug addict in Tel Aviv and forced him to grovel and beg for forgiveness for being a Jew. They videotaped the spectacle and posted it on their website, spliced with clips of Adolf Hitler. And they weren’t particularly secretive about their identities, having strutted around the beaches of Tel Aviv showing off their Nazi tattoos.

McGirk concludes by telling of the defendants’ demeanor in court:

In the Tel Aviv courtroom on Sunday, the defendants looked scared and repentant. As one of them remarked at the end of the proceedings, “I’m going to live with this my whole life. My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. She just doesn’t believe it.” She is not alone in her disbelief.

Three of the former Patrol 36 members were minors at the time of the attacks for which they were charged. The gang’s head, Erik a.k.a. “Eli the Nazi” received the harshest penalty.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. These people never belonged to Israeli society from the beginning — separating them from it is a far lesser offense than allowing them to remain. Patrol 36s should never exist in Israel, and ideally should not have to exist anywhere. Creating a Patrol 36 in Israel means that one is doing worse than “biting the hand that feeds”, it means creating the precise bacterium for which Israel was to be the antibiotic on Israeli soil. The judge was being more than gracious by not charging them of treason or similar crime against the state — a charge faced by any chassid who hawks Neturei Karta anti-Zionist material.

Patrol 36 should be as ashamed of themselves as their sacrificing Jewish ancestors are ashamed of them as they watch from the Next World.

Let the Racists Suffer November 21, 2008

The Los Angeles Wave detailed yesterday that which we all, in the back of our minds, dreaded (or knew) would happen.

Since the election of Obama to the nation’s highest office, racists have become incensed, and racist incidents have risen as a result. Columnist George E. Curry recounts some of the notable recent incidents:

Parents in Rexburg, Idaho, contacted police after second and third graders on a school bus were heard chanting, “Assassinate Obama.” I doubt that any of them could spell the word assassinate, yet they were recycling hate learned from their parents.

Some might have learned how to hate in school if what happened in Allison Park, Pa., is an indication. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a teacher’s aide told a biracial 11th grader that Obama will be shot, the U.S. flag will be changed to the KFC flag and that the national anthem will be changed to “Movin’ On Up,” the theme song from “The Jeffersons” sitcom.

Something similar happened to me in Flatbush the week following Election Day. The son of a prominent Brooklyn rebbe asked me if I would be willing to rap at the White House for Chanukah. Obviously I replied “yes” emphatically, contrasting my music with the music of Kol Zimra, a Flatbush a cappella group whose music accompanied the menorah lighting a couple years back.

He replied, “Yeah, you should, because rap is the only language [Obama] understands”.

This type of racism is apparently being brought out of people that feel cornered. Racists are watching their imagined hierarchy crumble in the reality of multiculturalism, and a black man in the White House is the crushing blow to the lie so many of them have built their lives around.

According to the Traverse City (Michigan) Record-Eagle, employees at Hampel’s Key and Lockshop flew the U.S. flag upside down — an international signal for distress — the day after Obama was elected president. In an interview with the newspaper, one employee, Rod Nyland, said the flag was being flown upside down because, “We feel our country is in distress because the n—– got in.”

These people are so distressed over the “n—– getting in” the White House that they intend to fly the American flag upside down.

Rather than open their minds up — not to the oh-so-shocking possibility that all ethnicities can perform any job equally — to the objective data, the true markers of a president’s success, these people will sit and lament every day that they can’t turn on a State of the Union address and see a white face.

According to AP, one White supremacy Web site attracted 2,000 new members the day after the election. One person posted a note to the site that said, “I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how ‘messiahs’ come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed.”

The real danger is when hate talk is converted to hateful acts. According to Newsday, two 18-year-olds were among a group of New York Whites who yelled “Obama” as they assaulted a Black teenager with a baseball bat on Staten Island the night Obama was elected president.

Also in the early hours following Obama’s election, a Black church is Springfield, Mass., was destroyed by arson.

Their America has lost. Our America — the America that looks towards the fulfillment of dreams like Martin Luther King’s — has won, and these people are furious to the point of violence, arson, and cross-burning. Perhaps this shows that more minority members need to defend ourselves, and perhaps we will see increased policing around Washington, DC and increased Secret Service presence.

But beyond protecting myself and others from them, I have no use for these racists, and neither does America. To people like this — people who would rather see the country suffering under a white man bumbling through office than a prosperous USA under a solid administration with black leadership — I can only opine, in the words of Fear Factory, “Suffer! Bastards!”. If you can not see your own good fortune though it stares you in the face, so be it.

The venom of racism flows at far too high a concentration through America’s veins. G-d willing, the election of Obama will have provided just a little bit of anti-toxin.

Is It Utopia? No, it’s Transnistria! (or Pridnestrovie) November 16, 2008

The PMR (Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic), also known as plainly “Pridnestrovie” or Transnistria, is a small Southeastern European republic between Moldova and Ukraine. The landlocked country with a little over half a million inhabitants spans a little over 4,300 square miles (slightly smaller than Delaware), has Tiraspol as its capitol city, and declared (yet to be internationally recognized) independence in 1990. Their currency is the Transnistrian ruble.

I had not heard of Transnistria until today when I happened to be skimming through an article at The American Muslim, and read the bio of a professor who advocated the international recognition of Transnistrian independence. I decided to Google the country, and found out something interesting.

According to its tourism website, this place is utopia. Pridnestrovie has finally achieved the ideal of becoming completely racism-free:

Pridnestrovie is tolerant and multi-ethnic. Slavs (mainly ethnic Russians and Ukrainians) make up almost 58% of the population. Ethnic Moldavians represent 33%.

The rest? A vibrant cultural mix of Poles, Bulgarians, Jews, Gagausians, Germans, and others, living in peace. There is no racism and the country is completely devoid of any racial conflict or ethnic hatred whatsoever.

In Pridnestrovie, says their website, xenophobia “does not exist”. One of six marriages in the PMR is an “ethnic intermarriage”. Pridnestrovie has “no racial conflict” and “no religious strife”.

Describing life in Pridnestrovie as “almost upbeat”, Pridnestrovie.net goes on to accent that there is “no censorship in Pridnestrovie” and that “there are no restrictions on talking to anyone, anywhere.” In fact, PMR has no “pay phones” — unlimited local calls are free on any of PMR’s subsidized public phones.

Obviously claims like these must be taken with a grain of salt — and one must remember the PMR’s frames of reference: they repeatedly accent that they are not like Kosovo or Bosnia, places whose ethnic cleansing campaigns have no doubt been branded into the psyche of all residents of the region. Obviously no chamber of commerce could ever vouch for the thought processes of all of a nation’s citizens. Racism is such a low-level psychological cognition-based sickness that only the most adept psychologist could fully assess it — and I am sure the PMR did not commission such a wide-scale psychoanalysis of its half-million strong populace.

But I must admit that I’m sorely tempted to take the PMR at its word. Wouldn’t it be nice? Xenophobia — non-existent? No religious strife and no censorship? A place where there “is no racism” — in fact they don’t even accept racism — and “no ethnic conflict whatsoever”? What member of any minority group doesn’t dream of such a place? Was Dr. Martin Luther King, in his immortal words envisioning a place where one would not be judged by color but rather by their character, envisioning Transnistria?

Even if it is just to distinguish itself from its neighbors, Pridnestrovie’s decision to brand itself as “the Southeastern European destination with no racism” is admirable, for one major point: it puts up a racism-free society as an ideal, and counts progression toward that ideal as something to be proud of. When a country moves towards reducing its carbon footprint, when a company comes in line with ISO certification, when an automaker moves toward a stricter emissions standards — the PR people get moving. They want to let the world know on every piece of media they can get their hands on. Why?

Because a sustainable environment, sound business practices, and cleaner air are all things that we can all agree that humanity benefits from. Working towards these things is a reason for a pat on the back — for creating more benefit and less potential harm. Pridnestrovie has assigned the same weight to racism, touting its achievements to at a minimum not be like their neighbors as something to publicize.

Not “come and see our culture, unchanged by immigrants for centuries”, not “we members of ethnic group X are a proud people”. Instead, Pridnestrovie gives a different message:

No matter where you are from or what language you speak, you are welcome in Pridnestrovie.

Politically Defining “Mortal Sin”? November 14, 2008

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman of Greenville, South Carolina is furious about the results of the election.

The Washington Post’s Under G-d column tells of how the South Carolina priest has dubbed voting for Obama a “mortal sin”, going so far as to say that parishioners found guilty of having voted for “intrinsic evil” shall not receive communion in his church until they have done penance:

A Catholic priest in South Carolina has decided that the democratic act of casting a vote is, in some cases, a mortal sin. Therefore, he has decided that parishioners who voted for Barack Obama are not entitled to the grace of Christ through communion until they’ve done penance.

“Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law,” Rev. Jay Scott Newman wrote in a letter to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville.

“Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

The priest’s letter (read the full text of the letter here) was received favorably by parishioners who supported Rev. Newman’s sentiments by a “9 to 1″ margin.

The text of the letter itself doesn’t seem so virulent, in fact Rev. Newman calls Obama an “extraordinarily gifted man” whom he prays receives G-d’s guidance in public policy. I don’t think that the Washington Post, Greenville Online, or anyone is calling Rev. Newman “evil” or racist, or anything of the sort. But, this does show, that for no other reason than abortion, Rev. Newman would have been OK with any number of things: new wars, financial flub-ups, anything — as long as abortion would be curtailed. Plus, McCain didn’t even oppose Roe v. Wade — Rev. Newman would have had to wait at least until a Palin administration before seeing the criminalization he seeks.

It seems like restricted abortion would seem a small consolation in the face of another real estate fiasco. When religious voters reduce their entire political repertoires to single, hot-button issues “of relevance to the voter of faith” (as decided by whom?) no one benefits. In 2004, Orthodox Jews were literally forced into voting for Bush in large numbers — the following year Katrina would happen (and can anyone say Bush acted as an agent of G-d’s Will there?).

How can a clergy member look an unemployed factory worker right in the face and say — “yes, so your job has been outsourced because of his free-trade agreement, but hey, at least there’s no abortions going on!”? “Yeah, your husband just got sent back on his 9th tour of duty to Iraq, but hey, no abortions!” Is this really the set of priorities that G-d-fearing voters are supposed to have? Fetuses before family? “Life” before survival?

May G-d guide Obama as He guides all world leaders, as it is written in Proverbs.

Praise G-d for the Left Wing.

Who Got High at the Obama Victory Party? November 6, 2008

I was gonna support Obama, but I got high…

“We’re smelling just a little bit of weed…”

That and virtual reporters.

Media-driven hilarity. Would you like some news with your entertainment?

President Barack Obama: A New Reason for America to Celebrate Itself

Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States of America.

Just say that phrase a few times. Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States of America. Yes, the Barack Obama. Yes, the United States.

History was made last night in those election results. When MSNBC broke the projection telling the world that Barack Obama had indeed won — I wasn’t at my computer watching at the time, actually, I was working on a track with DJ Handler/Diwon; I would find out the results in an ecstatic phone call from Baltimore — my emotions ranged from joy to tears in an instant. I was overcome. One of my friends who I texted was bawling. In Crown Heights, one could hear cheers from windows, and shouts of “Obama!” and “We won!” in the streets. Cars were honking their horns, fireworks could be seen in Manhattan. It was a beautiful night for America.

I ended up the night in Park Slope, Brooklyn, hanging out with some famous bloggers at a mini-get together until about 12:30, at which point, we decided to walk down the street to see if anyone was celebrating. Celebrating. On Election Day. Usually this would seem to be a bit much even for the most politically savvy town. But this was different. Obama had just been elected President.

We would not be disappointed. The entire Fourth Avenue was sprinkled with revelers: loud bars were spilling into the streets, taxi drivers were honking their horns yet not drowning out their shouting passengers, random drunks could be heard screaming “Obama!” from every corner. A woman fell over me trying to order to a drink in one particular bar. Slurring her speech, she looks up glassy-eyed at the bartender and attempts to order a Long Island Iced Tea. Of those four words, perhaps “tea” was pronounced right. When the bartender, obviously gauging her ability to hold down another drink, asked her a sharp “what?”, her sole reply was “Obama!!”. It seemed oddly appropriate. For the first time in a long time, and perhaps the first time I can remember, everyone was ecstatic just to be an American and to have the ability to vote in the US Election. She got her drink, I got my next one, and the whole bar settled in to watch CNN — tallying oh, 300, 400, 2000 electoral votes for Obama at this point — on mute, and listen to makeshift (make-do?) choirs twist choruses of every song to be about Obama (Obla-di, Oba-ma, life goes on…).

On the streets, “Obama” had attained full-on greeting status by 1:30 am, with strangers exchanging hi-5’s and smiles to mutual “Obama!!” cheers as they walked. Ubiquitous hollering made it as if everyone had “gone wild” while decked in winter coats. Every taxi driver’s attention could be gained with a hearty “Obama!” from the curb, and — while he still may not have taken the fare — he would smile in reply. My cabbie’s English vocabulary perhaps maxed out at a few hundred words, but he was beaming and using every word he knew to express how great he felt. Like Newsweek’s Anna Quindlen says:

Occasionally America turns out to be every bit as good as its hype. It’s thrilling to be around to witness one of those moments.

Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.

Maybe we were happy to see the dawning of a new America, maybe we were just happy to get a Democrat in the White House and get rid of W. Maybe we had just whipped ourselves into a frenzy with a cocktail of media and merchandising.

Whatever the reason, we were happy last night. We hugged each other and toasted mazel tov. We thanked G-d. We cheered. We cried. We partied through our little piece of American history.

And it was a night none of us on Fourth Avenue will soon — if ever — forget.

Our President is Barack Hussein Obama.