Our Billboards Receive National Attention

United Press International has picked up the story that was published by the Bay City Times covering the billboard sponsored by IfAmericansKnew.org, Deir Yassin Remembered and Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends. Since this publication we have issued a press release which readers can download and disseminate to their local papers. The UPI article reads:

BAY CITY, Mich., March 8 (UPI) — A Tea Party group said it placed a billboard supporting Israel on Interstate 75 in Saginaw County, Mich., prompting an opposing billboard.

The billboard paid for by the mid-Michigan Tea Party group reads “Stand with Israeli our Friend and Ally” while opponents put up a billboard reading “$8 million/day to Israel? Our Money is needed in America,” The Bay City Times reported Thursday.

The opposition billboard, paid for by several political groups, is visible from the southbound lanes of Interstate 75 in the Detroit area.

A spokeswoman for the pro-Israel Tea Party group, We the People of Mid-Michigan, said their advertisement was prompted by fears the Obama administration is backpedaling on its support of Israel.

Henry Herskovitz of Ann Arbor, Mich., said after seeing the We the People billboard his group, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, partnered with two other groups to fund their own billboard opposing aid to Israel.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hersko/Photos/Design%2003-02-12.jpg

JWPF at Ann Arbor City Council

This writer spoke about “Carts and Horses” at this week’s Ann Arbor City Council meeting. See video by advancing to 00:25:15. Text follows signature.

Guess Who’s Not Invited to Dinner

Glancing over the list of US sycophants invited to the AIPAC gathering in Washington, DC this past week, we note one exception: the one man who pledges to terminate financial aid to Apartheid Israel, Ron Paul. Check out the obsequiousness issued from the Commander in Chief:

“When the Goldstone report unfairly singled out Israel for criticism, we challenged it,” Obama continued. “When Israel was isolated in the aftermath of the flotilla incident, we supported them. When the Durban conference was commemorated, we boycotted it, and we will always reject the notion that Zionism is racism. When one-sided resolutions are brought up at the Human Rights Council, we oppose them. When Israeli diplomats feared for their lives in Cairo, we intervened to help save them. When there are efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, we will stand against them. And whenever an effort is made to de-legitimize the state of Israel, my administration has opposed them. So there should not be a shred of doubt by now: when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

As Mazin Qumsiyeh noted, “Too bad he doesn’t have America’s back!”

Five Vigilers
Speaking the Truth for Eight Years
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends

Speech to City Council

March 5, 2012 “Carts and horses”
[379 words]
Good Evening,
I’d like to address Council on a matter of getting the horse in front of the cart, for so often the media has it turned around. My friend Herman called me last night and said he heard on Talk Radio that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu welcomed President Obama’s statements on Israel’s right to self-defense. That – as we all know – is political code language, giving Israel the green light to preemptively attack Iran.

Herman relayed to me what he heard on the radio: that Israel was a small country, and being threatened by a neighbor gave it – in his view – a right to defend itself. I told my friend that the talk radio people had positioned the cart AHEAD of the horse. I asked Herman how he – a black man living in Detroit – would feel if Whites from Grosse Ponte forcibly evicted him from his neighborhood in their attempt to convert Detroit to become a White City. He replied instantly that he would fight to the end to protect his right to live in his city, his home.

I then explained the true initiation of events in Palestine was Zionist Jews from Europe invading and massacring the people living there in their effort to create a Jewish state. And they attempted to legitimize this theft claiming a false interpretation of biblical reading: Historians now – even Jewish historians like Ilan Pappe and Shlomo Sand – will tell you that Ashkenazi Jews like myself have no relationship to the Jews of biblical times. Arab historians have been trying to tell us this for decades.

Conversely and notably, no Palestinians ever invaded Poland and forcibly massacred the Jews living there to create an Islamic state, based on a similarly misconstrued version of the Qu’ran.

It was the other way around, and even Professor Victor Lieberman of the University of Michigan, who teaches a course on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, agreed with me on this point at his presentation at Washtenaw Community College on November 17th of last year.

In closing, I’d like to remind Council that attacking Iran is nothing new to the Jewish community. I hold in my hand a 8-year-old brochure produced by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee beating the war drums on Iran at their meeting in Chicago, February 2004.

Thank you