Jewish News: Prudence or Cowardice?

Witness for Peace has sent the following letter to the Washtenaw Jewish News and we’re currently awaiting response:

March 22, 2017

Ms. Susan Kravitz Ayer
Editor and Publisher
Washtenaw Jewish News
Re: An open letter to an Ann Arbor hate group, WJN September 2015

Dear Ms. Ayer,

A close friend to Witness for Peace has stepped up to the challenges presented by Victor Lieberman in his article, “An open letter to an Ann Arbor hate group”, which appeared in the September, 2015 issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News.

Mr. Lieberman writes, “Picketers [sic] have told me on numerous occasions that there was no such thing as the Holocaust … And, of course, they explain, Jews organized and directed the attacks of 9/11…”. He concludes, “I’d be happy to document any and all of these claims and to meet to discuss these issues.

Mr. Larry Brayboy of Ann Arbor has suggested an open debate with Mr. Lieberman on the topics listed above, specifically, the Holocaust and the attacks of 9/11. I personally suggest a public forum for this debate; however, Witness for Peace is open to hearing all available venues and times.

Thank you,

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
cc: Victor Lieberman

Keeping Our Sense of Humor

Vigil Supporter M takes this holiday’s spirit to heart as she creates a sign specifically for this date:

Comments?

This report dedicated to the memories of
John Alward and Bill Wilkerson

Two vigilers

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
America First Not Israel

Witness for Peace addresses Ann Arbor District Library

What good is BDS if not implemented? Quoting from the original Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS, “We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.”

Now, we feel that “broad boycotts” means exposing and challenging any and all attempts to normalize, or legitimize a state that practices Apartheid. At the local level a major contributor to this normalizing process is the Washtenaw Jewish News, which openly promotes communications, business dealings and travel to the Jewish Apartheid State (aka “Israel”).

When we found that our own publicly funded Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) was among the advertisers in this openly pro-Israel publication, we addressed the board of directors at their monthly meeting March 20. Here’s what we said:

Good Evening,

I’m here tonight to address an issue I find disturbing

The AADL has used its resources – including my tax dollars – to place an ad in a magazine that supports an Apartheid foreign government.

I’m referring to page 15 of this month’s issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News. There are two points I’d like to make.

First, that this newspaper, in addition to printing articles about the local Jewish community, also contains articles supportive of the state of Israel.

In this issue, there are articles discussing the Michigan-Israel Business Bridge, prominent men and women who study in Israel, and articles that encourage – and pay for – Jewish teens to travel to Israel.

Indeed, this ad, from a year ago, acknowledges the ties between Israel and Ann Arbor Jews. This lady is telling us that Israel exists in the marrow of Jews in this community.

Secondly, to support our claim that Israel is an Apartheid state I’ve printed for each of you the Executive Summary of a paper – authored by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley – from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. I’d like to read its opening paragraph:

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law.

So, as a member of the AADL, and a taxpaying supporter of the Library, I ask that WE cease purchasing ads in a paper that openly supports Apartheid.

Thank you

Here is a list of some the advertisers found in the March issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News. For the complete list, click here.

Afternoon Delight
Ann Arbor City Club
Ann Arbor District Library
Ann Arbor Film Festival
Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra
Chelsea Flower Shop
Michigan Theater
Mighty Good Coffee
People’s Food Coop
Purple Rose Theater
Zingerman’s

Comments?

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
America First Not Israel
Mar. 18: Three vigilers
Mar. 25: Four vigilers

Jewish Power Never Sleeps

Like Michigan rust on vehicles, Jewish Power remains relentless at getting its way. Just when Witness for Peace was to announce the installation of a local billboard – sponsored by sister organization Deir Yassin Remembered and carrying our message “America First, Not Israel” – we get “the call”. The billboard pictured below was taken down by Adams Outdoor Advertising one week after installation, effectively terminating a three-month contract.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hersko/Photos/Adams%20-%20Night%202017-02-06.jpg

That’s how long it took for Jewish Power to pressure Adams’ executives into seeing things their way. The call came from General Manager Mike Cannon, who admitted to receiving phone calls asking that the billboard be taken down. Mike claimed he was not the one who made the decision, and provided the phone number of Vice President of Human Resources Brian Grant to field my questions.

Brian developed a mantra for the conversation we shared: “the decision to remove the billboard was a collective decision and was made because the message did not meet Adams’ company standards. We removed the billboard and refunded your money. And that’s all I can say.” Brian fell back on this mantra at least a half dozen times during our 20-minute discussion. And reminded me that, since a clause in the contract allowed Adams to terminate at any time, there was no “breach of contract”.

Q: What were the company standards?
A: [Brian was not going to go into that.]
Q: How do you square the fact that the message was initially approved by Adams?
A: It should not have been approved; due diligence was not applied.
Q: Who were the people complaining about the billboard?
A: [Would not answer that.]
Q: What were the organizations calling for the billboard to be taken down?
A: [See above.]
Q: Would the decision to pull the billboard have been the same had the message been simply America First?
A: Well, you’re asking a hypothetical.
Q: You mean Adams would NOT run a billboard saying America First?
A: [No answer.]

And so it goes. By deception shall you make war. DYR and WfP lose the round; Jewish Power wins. We move on.

Ann Arbor placed on SPLC “Hate” Map

The Southern Poverty Law Center exercises its own brand of Jewish Power by placing Deir Yassin Remembered (and its satellite office in Ann Arbor) on its “hate” map. This information came to us, not by direct communication from the SPLC, but through an article appearing in the Rochester, NY Democrat and Chronicle, entitled: “Rochester area makes SPLC Hate Map”

Witness for Peace members are familiar with this tactic: Develop a “reputable” source, have that source label people a “hate group”, and allow others to “authoritatively” reference their false claims as a “source”. Case in point: Beth Israel’s own Victor Lieberman writes “Open Letter to an Ann Arbor hate group” published by the “reputable” Washtenaw Jewish News (whose editor Susan Ayers refuses to print our side), and presto! Witness for Peace is now a “hate” group. Whatever’s keeping the SPLC from jumping on this sliming bandwagon remains a mystery.

Defining “hate” proves difficult. A friend asks if forming a group which hates “hate” groups is in itself a “hate” group? Hmmm. The only clear example of hate speech that has come across this writer’s desk belongs to Holocaust icon Elie Wiesel:

“Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.”

Comments?

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
America First Not Israel

Feb 4: Four vigilers
Feb 11: Five vigilers
Feb. 18: Four vigilers
Feb. 25: Four vigilers

Jackie Robinson and Jewish Power

Emotions naturally flare at watching the PBS special shown on MLK day of the career of baseball icon Jackie Robinson. Who could not grow emotional when reminded that Jackie and wife Rachel were bumped twice from the planes carrying them to a spring training camp in Florida? What outrage is felt by viewers recognizing that this discrimination they experienced came merely because of the color of their skin and nothing else!

Yes, we get it. And we feel for the Robinsons; their plight was genuine. Racial discrimination still exists in America.

But what about Muhammed Ali, my friend and sandwich shop operator in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, Palestine? Muhammed grew up in Haifa, graduated high school there and earned a technical degree before being bumped, not just from an airplane, but from his home town. Yes, he cannot return to Haifa and swim in the Mediterranean the way his family did before him. He cannot even travel to the Haram esh-Sharif/Noble Sanctuary to practice his religion. Like Jackie Robinson, Muhammed is the wrong “color”: neither ethnic Jew, secular Jew, nor religious Jew.

Isn’t there a story here as well, PBS? Perhaps even more compelling than Robinson’s, because Muhammed has yet to break his “color” barrier. Hello, Hollywood, isn’t his story worthy – at least – of a two-hour documentary?

And what about the perfect made-for-Hollywood, emotional story of Ernst Zundel? Talk about compelling: here is a lifelong pacifist who leaves his Germany because he wishes not to serve its military and chooses Canada as his home. There he practices his skills as artist and publisher, while growing aware that his German people are being discriminated against, due to what Ernst believes is a falsification of history. He is forced to defend himself against charges of “spreading false news”, but reversed the tables and eventually caused Canada’s Supreme Court to strike down the same law under which he was prosecuted. *

His story doesn’t end there, however. He marries (naturalized US citizen) Ingrid Rimland, and seeks US citizenship at their new home in Pigeon Forge, TN. But instead of the US government granting this well-deserved citizenship, Ernst is effectively kidnapped from his mountain home by agents of this same government and whisked back to Canada where he is to spend two years in solitary confinement. From there Canada renders him back to Germany to a sham of a trial and five-year incarceration – not because of his skin color – but because of his political beliefs. The outrage that we felt for Jackie Robinson matches the outrage that a man is jailed not for who he is, but for what he believes and says.

Made for Hollywood. A perfect, emotional story, much like Muhammed’s. But because “Jews totally run Hollywood” (Joel Stein, LA Times) we are unlikely to hear these stories. Likewise, it appears PBS selects the stories we are to watch, and those they decide the public will not see.

Jewish Power in action. It’s there for the witnessing.

*- The Great Holocaust Trial by Michael Hoffman, p. 120

Comments?

Three vigilers
Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
America First Not Israel

Will Trump Usher in the End of Political Correctness?

Not all Donald Trump voters were those as described by JD Vance in “Hillbilly Elegy”. Some were actually people who consider themselves lefties, but sick of the never-ending demands of political correctness. Tiny example: in the PC town of Ann Arbor – where it is now illegal to smoke tobacco in open-air City parks – a stop sign was adorned with the word “WAR”, pasted underneath. “STOP WAR”: clever, cute and within the bounds of Ann Arbor political correctness. It lasted for years.

But when a local ne’er-do-well pasted US AID TO ISRAEL beneath STOP on a sign two blocks away, that message – clearly deemed unacceptable to the lefties in the Water Hill district – lasted a week and a half. One toke over the line. Offensive. Not funny. Get it outta here.

Another mini-example: We’re all familiar with the bumper sticker urging “co-existence” between Muslims, Jews and Christians, as if telling an abused spouse to “just get along” with her abuser would be greeted with the same tolerance. This bumper sticker is found on many an Ann Arbor car:

But when this writer adorned his car with the same word, these PC activists went to work scraping the sticker away:

BDS Yes, Synagogue Protest No

Witness for Peace members feel the same PC-sensitive folks are the ones comfortable with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (as long as Jewish leadership remains strong and fighting anti-Semitism trumps Palestine Liberation), but draw the line at holding Jews accountable for their support of the crimes committed by the Jewish state.

Huh? The Jewish community remains the source of Jewish chauvinism and racism that drives the overtly racist Jewish state. Former US Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams himself declares: “Where is it possible to find a group of Jews who are committed to Israel, and whose children are likely to honor that commitment? The answer is, in a synagogue on the Sabbath.”

Witness for Peace has documented that the Rabbi at Beth Israel Congregation (a) leads his congregation in prayers for the Jewish state, (b) takes Jewish children on junkets to the Jewish state, where they pose with armed soldiers perched upon military vehicles and (c) supports the use of torture, under the rubric of necessity and invoking Jewish religious law.

What’s it Gonna Take?

If, after next week, America has an “America First” president willing to throw PC to the wind, will activists join us in the longest running street protest in Ann Arbor history? Will they recognize that the PC chains holding them back from challenging Jewish Power at its source are merely self-imposed and easily discarded? Will they watch the four-part video of Al Jazeera’s expose of Jewish Power in the United Kingdom and wonder what can be done to take action against this corrosive misuse of power?

The answer is clear: join us.

Comments?

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
America First Not Israel
Dec. 31: six vigilers
Jan. 7, 2017: four vigilers
Jan. 14: five vigilers

Can’t Get No Respect

The Amcha Initiative is an on-line complaint desk for incidents of alleged anti-Semitism on America’s campuses. You can visit their website and search by state and college for these nefarious incidents. Curiously, Witness for Peace’s 13-year-old “harassment” of a Jewish house of warship hasn’t made the list. True, we operate slightly off the University of Michigan’s campus, but as the letter below indicates, we’re only a traffic light away.

Amcha Initiative is currently in the possession of this reported concern from a local citizen, so we know they know about us:

My home of Ann Arbor, Michigan has been subjected to a 13-year-old protest in front of Beth Israel Congregation every Shabbat. This location is merely a traffic light away from the University of Michigan campus’ famed “Rock”, where students frequently paint slogans or images, such as the recent, proudly painted Israeli flag. Students traveling along the busy Washtenaw Avenue are subject to what a friend has labeled “objectively anti-Semitic”.

Amcha Initiative now joins the Anti-Defamation League in NOT reporting our anti-Israel vigils. Readers may remember our report of January 10, 2015 where we requested to be placed on Abe Foxman’s “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups” and were similarly denied.

Why the Chill? Let’s Conjure up some Reasons

Perhaps the main reason for being non-reported is our size: yes, we’re tiny, but are there other reasons that mainstream Zionist organizations ignore our presence? Are the issues we raise: (1) Israel’s legitimacy, (2) corrosive effects of Jewish Power* on US interests, (3) endless wars on behalf of the Jewish state, etc. too sensitive for our opponents to take head-on?

We know the local Jewish Power wielders close their ears to the sound of supporters’ car horns driving past Beth Israel Congregation every Saturday. In spite of their efforts to reduce our visibility by cowing local publications to refuse our paid advertisements, our messages still reach 1000 vehicles during each vigil, and of those who respond to us, over 75% are positive. Do regional and national Jewish Power leaders also close their ears? Is Witness for Peace too hot to handle?

Comments?

*- Jewish Power: The power to silence criticism of Jewish Power. Click here for details.

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
7 vigilers
America First Not Israel

Jewish Power From the Outside

About a year ago, we reported how Lamar Outdoor Advertising refused (after first running) our billboard, which calls for a proper orientation of national priorities to reflect American interests above Israel’s. In that report we identified the Detroit, Michigan branch of the Anti-Defamation League and the Detroit Jewish News as being players in squelching our side of the story. Questions of open and fair news reporting were raised, and although we have no smoking gun, Witness for Peace and Deir Yassin Remembered feel strongly that the organized Jewish community of Detroit bears responsibility for Lamar’s cave-in. Read on …

Driving along America’s highways, we often encounter empty billboards calling for business by listing available space along with a phone number. A trend has been established:

1. A call is placed contacting the company from Deir Yassin Remembered
2. The call is routed to a sales agent
3. The sales agent is affable and somewhat excited about a new business opportunity
4. The sales agent looks forward to receiving the desired image
5. After consulting with his superiors, the sales agent informs us that they will be unable to run our billboard “at this time”. No explanation given.

The short list of advertisers who have denied our request is:

Lamar Advertising
Reach Outdoor Advertising
L & W Advertising
International Outdoor Advertising

DYR and WfP do not consider these refusals a failure on our part; rather, we encourage readers to consider the scope of Jewish Power, especially how it erases even the most mundane political statement from public view. What, exactly is politically incorrect in encouraging our government to put our interests ahead of another state which openly practices Apartheid?

Jewish Power From the Inside

Just as their (Right) Zionist cousins work to deny alternative points of view via billboard advertising, the Left Zionists, now represented by the Jewish leadership of Code Pink, have denied our friend Alison Weir her ability to disseminate crucial information. Richard Edmondson strikes the nail on the head when he pens “Running from the Truth: Code Pink Excludes Alison Weir from Event” Another trend is observed:

1. Jewish Voice for Peace bans Alison Weir
2. Jewish-led US Campaign for Palestinian Rights bans Alison
3. Jewish-led Code Pink doesn’t quite ban Alison but reneges on their invitation to have her join their Tribunal December 1-2. In her words, this decision “… in no way gives these facts the dissemination they would have received if they had not been sidelined from the main two-day event”, although she is “…pleased they’ve posted my testimony on the Code Pink website.”

Echoing the conclusions of Mr. Edmondson, we ask why Jewish leaders are “…ducking and running” from hard truths? Going a step further, we ask why these Jews are not confronting their own local Jewish communities, exposing the racism and supremacism existing there? Jews who do not engage in challenging these obvious forms of Jewish power are fulfilling Gilad Atzmon’s definition of Zionism: A Jewish tribal preservation project.

Want to Earn $100?

Be the first reader to discover a billboard company willing to use our “skin” (the vinyl covering containing our message – 14ft by 48 ft). Once you identify a willing host, merely contact this writer with that information. When the board goes up, Deir Yassin Remembered will have your check in the mail.

Comments?

Dec. 3: Five vigilers
Dec, 10: Six vigilers
Dec. 17: Five vigilers

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace