June 28, 2017

(Jewish Group) Im Glad the Dyke March Banned Jewish Stars

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

This weekend, at a lesbian march in Chicago, three women carrying Jewish pride flags — rainbow flags embossed with a Star of David — were kicked out of the celebration on the grounds that their flags were a “trigger.” An organizer of the Dyke March told the Windy City Times that the fabric “made people feel unsafe” and that she and the other members of the Dyke March collective didn’t want anything “that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism” at the event.

Laurel Grauer, one of the women who was ejected, said she’d been carrying that Jewish pride flag in the march, held on the Saturday before the city’s official Pride Parade, for more than a decade. It “celebrates my queer, Jewish identity,” she explained. This year, however, she lost track of the number of people who harassed her for carrying it.

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Well, in practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history. Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

By that hierarchy, you might imagine that the Jewish people — enduring yet another wave of anti-Semitism here and abroad — should be registered as victims. Not quite.

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Jews on the left, particularly in recent years, have attempted to square this growing discomfort by becoming more anti-Israel. But if history has taught the Jews anything it’s that this kind of contortion never ends well.

It may be wrong to read too much into an ugly incident at a single march, but Jews should take what happened in Chicago as a lesson that they might not be as welcome among progressives as they might imagine. That’s a warning for which to be grateful, even as it is a reminder that anti-Semitism remains as much a problem on the far-left as it is on the alt-right.

entire article

June 25, 2017

Thoughts on the death of my grandmother

This morning, around 12:35am CST, I got a text from my mother telling me my grandmother, Nanny, had died. She had been hospitalized earlier in the day, and the diagnosis was grim. She was 69. She was my mom's stepmother, but I grew up with her as my grandmother. She was a retired RN and it was because of this I learned of the immense value of nurses and realized THEY are the ones you want on your side. She was a great Nanny. She attended very wedding, bar mitzvah, graduation, and major event in the lives of her grandchildren (all 9 of us), and her great-grandchildren (18), and even had three great-great-grandchildren. As my husband describes her, she had a very bubbly personality and loved to laugh. She also, like me, loved chihuahuas. My last text exchange with her, a few weeks back, was her thanking me for sending her money and she ended it with, "I love you and (your husband) very much. Love, Nanny".

Nanny was very accepting and open with understanding I was gay. She even tried to set me up once. That didn't take. She absolutely adored my husband and once told me, "You have yourself a good man, honey. You better be good to him and not let him go!". Of course, it all went back to when I was 21, and we were in the Bahamas at a casino, drinking Bahama Mamas, and she just blurted out:

"I love you. And I don't care who you love. You are my grandson and I will always love you!"

After picking my jaw off the ground, we talked for hours. She wanted to know everything. She even commented on the guy I hooked up with down there by saying, "Wow he's got a nice butt! My grandson has great taste." Kinda funny to hear your grandma say something like that!

When she met my then partner, now husband, for the first time, she walked up to him, hugged him, and said, "Call me Nanny. I am your grandmother now." I was always treated with respect by her and she demanded it of others.

While I am very sad, I am still happy that I, at 48yo, still had a grandmother. She was my last grandparent. I will miss her very, very much.

ETA: I wanted to say "Thank you" to each one of you who took the time to respond. It lifted my spirits on a very sad day. I will try again, but know I really appreciate it. (I am having problems with DU not loading correctly after multiple postings.) From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

June 24, 2017

'Wonder Woman' Will Be The Highest Grossing Live-Action Film Directed By A Female

“Wonder Woman” is about to break yet another awesome record for women in Hollywood. 

This week, the Patty Jenkins–directed film not only crossed the $600 million threshold, but it will also surpass Phyllida Lloyd’s 2008 “Mamma Mia!” to become the highest grossing live-action film directed by a woman, The Hollywood Reporter first noted. “Wonder Woman” hit $609.5 million for its global sum ― $293.2 million domestic and $316.3 million international ― through Thursday, and will officially break the record sometime Friday, Warner Bros. said in a statement to HuffPost. “Mamma Mia!” earned $609.8 million worldwide. 

“It’s an incredible achievement when you look at the success of this movie,” Warner Bros. President of Domestic Distribution Jeff Goldstein told HuffPost Friday, saying that with each passing day and week the film continues to outpace where any historical comparisons predicted it should be. 

“The real story is the fact that Princess Diana has really hit everybody ― young and old, male and female,” Goldstein added. “It’s truly a four-quadrant movie. The universal themes of what ‘Wonder Woman’ stands for are really positive. When you look at what Patty Jenkins put together in a movie, it really is fun.”

Not only has Goldstein heard stories of multiple viewings by both men and women, but Father’s Day stood out as a particularly successful day. 

more...



LOVED the movie!!

June 9, 2017

"You can be anything." - Lynda Carter a.k.a. Wonder Woman

I love the mixing of the two Wonder Woman versions. I LOVE IT!

June 8, 2017

(JEWISH GROUP) How the Jewish identity of Wonder Womans star is causing a stir

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!!!!

“Wonder Woman” has drawn all kinds of controversy over gender politics since its release last Friday, but it has also put the spotlight on Jewish debates over race and nationality. The star of the film, Gal Gadot, who speaks English with an Israeli accent, has become an Israeli star and generated buzz both here and abroad.

Ahead of the film’s international release, Lebanon banned the film because of Gadot, who, like most Israeli citizens, served a mandatory two-year stint in the Israeli Defense Forces as a combat trainer. (Jordan is also reportedly considering a ban on the film.)

In 2014, Gadot posted on Facebook support of the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza while lighting candles with her daughter and writing “Shabbat Shalom,” the common greeting Jews say to one another on the Sabbath.

Gadot, whose grandfather survived Auschwitz, was born and raised in Rosh Haayin in Israel and was Miss Israel at age 18. In an interview with ABC, Gadot joked that being pregnant as Wonder Woman (she did some shoots when she was five months pregnant) was harder than being in the Israeli army.

Gadot’s role in the film, which grossed $103.3 million domestically and $228.3 million worldwide in its debut, has also resurfaced a debate this week among American Jews over race. In a piece at comicbook.com, Matthew Mueller argued that Gadot was the first woman of color to appear in the superhero genre.

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I loved this movie!!! It was awesome! Anyone boycotting this because Gadot is Israeli IS NOT about "intersectionality", they are nothing but BIGOTS trying to justify their bigotry!

May 6, 2017

(Jewish Group) This day in history: May 5th: Blame the Jews Day (1881)

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

Four years of pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia were set in motion on this date in 1881 by mobs of peasants who attacked Jewish stores and homes in the Ukrainian villages of Konsky-rosdor, Popiko, Andreyevka, and the city Orekhov, after Jews were incorrectly blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya on March 13th. Through the spring and summer the rioting would spread to Odessa and other sites, large and small, and after a brief remission, to Warsaw on Christmas Day and to Balta on Easter, 1882, with increasing ferocity and casualties, including many rapes and deaths. “In Belorussia and Lithuania,” according to Jewish Virtual Library, “where the local authorities adopted a firm attitude against the rioters, large fires broke out in many towns and townlets; a considerable number of these were started by the enemies of the Jews.

more...

The Pogroms were just starting, and eventually end up with the displacing, raping, and murdering of thousands of Jews in Ukraine, Russia, and the Settlement of the Pale. It also was the start of the Jews fleeing to other parts of Europe, which would prove fatal for many, and more fleeing to the US and Canada.

(Didn't get a single comment in GD, only one recommend, and only 209 reads.)

May 5, 2017

This day in history: May 5th: Blame the Jews Day (1881)

Four years of pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia were set in motion on this date in 1881 by mobs of peasants who attacked Jewish stores and homes in the Ukrainian villages of Konsky-rosdor, Popiko, Andreyevka, and the city Orekhov, after Jews were incorrectly blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya on March 13th. Through the spring and summer the rioting would spread to Odessa and other sites, large and small, and after a brief remission, to Warsaw on Christmas Day and to Balta on Easter, 1882, with increasing ferocity and casualties, including many rapes and deaths. “In Belorussia and Lithuania,” according to Jewish Virtual Library, “where the local authorities adopted a firm attitude against the rioters, large fires broke out in many towns and townlets; a considerable number of these were started by the enemies of the Jews.

more...

The Pogroms were just starting, and eventually end up with the displacing, raping, and murdering of thousands of Jews in Ukraine, Russia, and the Settlement of the Pale. It also was the start of the Jews fleeing to other parts of Europe, which would prove fatal for many, and more fleeing to the US and Canada.

May 1, 2017

(Jewish Group) Trump-era anti-Semitism changed my family we started going to synagogue

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!!

My grandmother took a bunch of photo albums and boxes down from a closet and told me about how her mother’s family name was shortened — Americanized — after they passed through Ellis Island. I sifted through the photos, examining each one and listening to the stories my grandmother remembered about the people staring back at me in shades of black and grey, chins and noses pronounced, hair dark.

--snip---

Suddenly, the relative safety and privilege that I grew up with as a white American Jew has cracked wide open, revealing the rotten underbelly that’s always been here, the one I have chosen not to see. Anti-Semitic hate crimes are at their highest levels in years. Jewish Community Centers around the country are getting bomb threats at an alarming rate. Steve Bannon, an anti-Semite, is in the White House. Swastikas appear like hideous confetti, decorating walls and buildings all over the country. Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized. This hatred is not new; it has been here all along. But its brashness is something new. It is meaner, darker, more ominous. It is more urgent. It is knocking on my door, begging to come in.

And while President Trump may have reminded us about his Jewish family members, and assured us at a recent press conference that we’re “going to see a lot of love” under his administration, so far, I don’t see it. And using his family to prove he isn’t anti-Semitic is about as effective as using one’s black friend to prove they’re not racist. It’s empty, hollow, a silencing tactic. Of course, there are other communities that have much more to be afraid of under Trump’s reign, marginalized people whose fears are more urgent and are already playing out in devastating ways via ICE raids, deportations, and imminent threats of violence. People of color in America who have been afraid their entire lives, for whom this kind of fear is not new. A fear that my grandparents and their parents felt, that my own children may, too. A fear that has turned walking into synagogue with my family into an act of bravery.

---snip---

We come from the oppressed and, mostly, we have become privileged through the assimilation of many Jews into whiteness. But with assimilation and privilege can come complacency, which is something that many white Jews like myself and the people I grew up with can fall into all too easily. It is through complacency that we forget even the recent past, the Holocaust of only two generations ago. It is through complacency that we can become perpetrators of the oppression we were once victims of via a vote for Trump or a belief in marginalized people’s ability to “bootstrap” their way to success.

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Our existence is resistance in and of itself, but it’s time to do more. Today I teach my children to assert our faith and become part of a Jewish community when once again the world tells us that we don’t deserve to exist. But we do deserve to exist, and we will fight for that right, just like we always have.

entire article

There exists a battle within our community but also exists outside of it in alleged and supposed "allies."

April 27, 2017

(Jewish Group) NYC Democratic City Council Candidate Runs Hate Campaign, Cites Ethnic Cleansing,

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!!

NYC Democratic City Council Candidate Runs Hate Campaign, Cites ‘Ethnic Cleansing, Greedy Jewish Landlords’

While the United States has been observing a week devoted to marking the loss of millions of Jews and other nationals during the Nazi Holocaust in World War II, a Democratic candidate for the New York City Council is campaigning on a message of anti-Semitism and hate.

In the most recent video footage uploaded by Thomas Lopez-Pierre, his campaign message on YouTube blames “greedy Jewish landlords” and “Donald Trump” for the problems in the seventh district on the upper West Side of Manhattan.

Lopez-Pierre is running in a primary set for September 12th against incumbent New York City Council member Mark Levine, who is Jewish, and who he accuses of “taking $100,000 in political money from greedy Jewish landlords.”



source

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The link has a transcript as well. But how disgusting is this?! Anti-Semitism never goes out of vogue.

April 27, 2017

(Jewish Group) Did Jon Ossoffs Jewish Faith Prevent Him From Winning Outright?

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

Democrat Jon Ossoff, who placed first in the special election for Georgia’s sixth congressional district with 48% of the vote but who needed 50% to avoid a runoff, overcame a great deal of adversity.

---snip---

Will Kremer, reporting for georgiapol.com, observed that one of the Republican candidates in the race, Mohammad Ali Bhuiyan, wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page, “As you know, Jon Ossoff (an Orthodox Jew) has already accepted millions from special interest groups and will be under the control of Jared Kushner (Trump’s Son-in-Law) and in turn under the control of Donald Trump.”

Other Facebook posts also highlighted the “connection” between Kushner and Ossoff.

Bhuiyan, a Muslim Republican who ultimately won a scant .022 percent of the vote in the special election, also took shots at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at a candidate forum, calling it a “Jewish-owned newspaper.”

Ossoff, who marketed himself as a moderate, also found it necessary to criticize the “deeply offensive” words from his political mentor, Rep. Hank Johnson, who labeled Jewish settlers in Israel as “termites,” according to the Atlanta Jewish Times. But that didn’t keep the Democrat from being accused of having ties to Al-Jazeera, “a mouthpiece for terrorists,” in a commercial funded by a super PAC affiliated with House speaker Paul Ryan (Ossoff’s documentary film production company counted the cable channel as a client).


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Given how close it is, even with just one candidate, I wager they will start an anti-Semitic smear campaign sometime in mid to late May.