Staying Real in Israel
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When the United States of America National Security Adviser feels free to open his address to a Washington-based Middle East policy organization with an anti-semitic joke, one can only wonder what to expect next in the land-of-the-free.

U.S. President Obama’s openly hostile attitude towards America’s greatest ally, Israel, has apparently set the tone for what is and is not politically and socially acceptable today in America. Clearly, blatant attacks on the Jews have become the norm, with nary an eyebrow raised in Washington circles.

Unfortunately, the racist anti-semitic jokes and nasty anti-Jewish, anti-Israel words are all too often followed by physical acts of violence.

I know, I know…not in America…America is different…Yada yada yada…

That’s what they said in Germany…And in Spain…And in France…And in Portugal…And in England…
Feel free to pick your century…You have your choice of many…

(You can view video of the joke below)

U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones..Less Than PC

James Jones apologizes for ‘Jewish merchant’ joke after uproar

ADL says joke in which Jewish merchant swindles thirsty Taliban fighter ‘inappropriate and stereotypical.’ National security advisor: I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke

Reprinted from YnetNews.com Yitzhak Benhorin

National Security Adviser James Jones opened his remarks at the 25-year anniversary gala of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy last weekend with a joke in which a Jewish merchant fleeces a thirsty Taliban fighter.

CBS reported that the joke, which many claimed was in bad taste, was conspicuously absent from the version of the remarks distributed to the media.

Here is how it went: “A Taliban militant gets lost and is wandering around the desert looking for water. He finally arrives at a store run by a Jew and asks for water.

The Jewish vendor tells him he doesn’t have any water but can gladly sell him a tie. The Taliban begins to curse and yell at the Jewish storeowner. The Jew, unmoved, offers the rude militant an idea: Beyond the hill, there is a restaurant; they can sell you water.

The Taliban keeps cursing and finally leaves toward the hill. An hour later he’s back at the tie store. He walks in and tells the merchant: “Your brother tells me I need a tie to get into the restaurant.”

Foreign Policy reported that the participants, many of whom were Jewish, laughed heartily, but conservative blogs and some Jewish community leaders pounced on the remark.

Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman called the joke “inappropriate,” saying, “It’s stereotypic,” he said. “Some people believe they need to start a speech with a joke; this was about the worst kind of joke the head of the National Security Council could have told.”

Jones apologized on Monday, saying, “I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by it. It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: that the United States commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct.”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the joke was not included on the transcript because the release was based on Jones’ prepared remarks.

Gibbs was quoted by CBS News as saying that the White House had not requested the apology and that it “rightly speaks for itself.”

Given that there is nothing like apartheid whatsoever in Israel, these global university celebrations are even MORE disgusting…Join the effort to fight this sick, hateful anti-semitic ritual…

Pro-Israel groups set to counter campus apartheid claims

At universities across the globe, the annual springtime ritual known as Israel Apartheid Week is kicking off this week, and Jewish students and pro-Israel groups have been readying themselves to respond in force.

Reprinted from JTA

Unlike past years, when intense pro-Palestinian activity in the wake of Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon caught many Jewish students off guard, this year the pro-Israel community is ready with initiatives of its own.

The largest effort, Israel Peace Week, is helping coordinate responses at 28 campuses and counting. StandWithUs, the Los-Angeles based pro-Israel group, is promoting a U.S. speaking tour by Israeli soldiers to counter claims that the Israel Defense Forces engaged in widespread misconduct during 2009 offensive against Hamas in Gaza. The David Project, the Anti-Defamation League and CAMERA all have made material available online to counter the apartheid charge and help students disseminate pro-Israel literature.

Hasbara Fellowships, a campus Israel group affiliated with the outreach group Aish Hatorah, is promoting a film about anti-Semitism on campus through the Web site Campus Intifada. And in Canada, where Israel Apartheid Week activity is often far more intense than in the United States, a pro-Israel initiative called Size Doesn’t Matter enjoyed a brief spell of notoriety when it released a sexually suggestive video that spoofed Israel’s smallness.

Continuing the below-the-belt theme, the pro-Israel PR house BlueStar released a poster with information about how to cure “Anis” — Anti-Israel Fixation Syndrome.

“On the pro-Israel side, I think there’s much more of a focus on this week than I’ve ever seen before,” said Eliot Mathias, the director of Hasbara Fellowships. “So many different organizations and groups. There is more of an awareness of what’s happening.”

Now in its sixth year, Israel Apartheid Week is actually two weeks, running March 1-14. Mainly confined to university campuses, the internationally coordinated series of events aims to reinforce the analogy between Israel and Apartheid South Africa and strengthen the activist tools that helped bring that regime to its knees.

Events often employ an element of political street theater — obstructing campus byways, for instance, with mock Israeli checkpoints or an “apartheid wall” — in addition to more conventional lectures and film screenings. Israel Apartheid Week is closely aligned with the so-called BDS movement — an acronym for boycott, divestment and sanctions — and calls for an end to Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and the right to return of Palestinian refugees.

Given the harsh rhetoric and strident anti-Israel policies encouraged by the events, Israel Apartheid Week has united a broad spectrum of Jewish groups that while often agreeing on few other Middle East questions, have all condemned the Israel-South Africa analogy as illegitimate and anti-peace.

Joining StandWithUs, the David Project and Hasbara Fellowships in their condemnation of Israel Apartheid Week is J Street and its campus arm, J Street U, and the liberal Zionist group Ameinu.

J Street has taken a slightly different tack than the other groups, largely eschewing on-campus flyers in favor of a campaign it calls Invest Don’t Divest, which aims to promote fund raising for cooperative efforts between Israelis and Palestinians that “help set the context for a sustainable peace.” A spokesperson for J Street told JTA the group did not want its “nuanced pragmatic” approach to get lost in the “shouting match” that some groups engage in during Israel Apartheid Week.

And inevitably, the shouting does happen. Israel Apartheid Week reliably brings at least a few speakers each year who shock the campus Jewish community by tiptoeing ever so close to the line separating ant-Zionism with outright anti-Semitism — and arguably marching right over it.

Even so, the wider significance of Israel Apartheid Week is a matter of some dispute in the pro-Israel community. At many, if not most, American schools, little or nothing is done for Israel Apartheid Week, whose official Web site lists events in 45 locations, only about a quarter of them in the United States. Anti-Israel activists at some schools — like the much-discussed University of California, Irvine — run apartheid activities other weeks that are not listed on the official site.

“In the U.S., I’m aware of some isolated pockets of activity, but in five years that IAW has been running, we haven’t seen it catch on in the mainstream campus community,” said Stephen Kuperberg, the director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, an umbrella group comprising 30 groups.

Still, virtually everyone in the pro-Israel campus community agrees that the frequency and intensity of apartheid/BDS activity is growing. And some even link it to a spike in anti-Semitic activity on campuses. At the University of California, Davis last week, a Jewish student found a swastika carved into her dorm door.

“I think it’s absolutely a big deal,” said Lawrence Muscant, the acting executive director of the David Project. “The fallacious lie of Israeli apartheid is seeping into the maintream. It’s extremely disturbing.”

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It’s not what you think!!!…Mumps are striking religious Jews in the US and Canada…Also…Israel is fighting Black Fever (with Bill Gates’ help)…And…Ancient leprosy in Jerusalem…Plus…Israel’s war on teen drinking begins…And…Shakshuka hits Thailand, MTV Music Awards hits Tel Aviv (maybe)…All this and more on “The Marty Roberts Show”…