Hillary, Huma & Weiner

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Weiner and Abedin are the new Paul Wolfowitz and Shaha Ali Riza.

* I heard from a wise friend that Huma and Antony are still married only to prevent testimony on one another.

* To Hillary, Weiner and Abedin don’t seem like weirdoes.

* Whereas to any normal person Weiner comes across as repellent both in looks and behavior.

* Do we Americans need to be exposed to this carnival freak show, this Confederacy of Dunces?

We do not.

It is well past time to elect leaders who will put Americans first. It is time to turn our backs on the cesspools that our ancestors climbed out of to come here — or the ones our ancestors, and we, never had anything to do with!

It is time for US to vote.

* If you watch the Weiner documentary, you definitely get the sense that they’re not married-married, and (surprising for me because I want to hate her) Huma comes off as a very sympathetic figure. She’s stuck with this narcissistic deviated prevert and really seems to make the best of it with a stiff upper lip and all that. In private she seems positively girly in a charming way, which I did not expect given her close association with uber-shrike HRC. You really do come away feeling that she’s a human being and he’s, well, the other thing. So, part of me hopes that she’s not the lone sacrificial goat who takes the hit for a vast criminal organization.

* Service to the Muslim Brotherhood means that a woman may have to do many distasteful things for the sake of Allah.

* I never thought the pairing was odd at all. Hillary needed for Huma to have a beard to dispel stories about her and Huma having a lesbian affair and Huma being a kept woman.

Enter the patsy, one Mr. Weiner, a ambitious, stupid and relatively clueless man desperate to climb the political ladder. Then installed in a lifeless and probably sexless marriage – everything goes well until he cracks.

Oh I doubt she could do any better in terms of a fake mate for a multitude of reasons. Most men simply have more self-respect than that, and simply sell out the old fashioned way to some monied interest so he gets the bucks and bimbos.

In religious terms, her fanatical family allowed it for one reason – it gave the KSA/MB direct intel as to what is happening in one of the most powerful families in D.C. For all intents she’s a Mata Hari. Otherwise she’d be found strangled to death in her parents home like so many other Muslima who stray.

* Apropos of Comey’s decision to go public with the reopening of the case against Hillary, and, apparently, against standard protocol and the urging of Loretta Lynch, I think the interpretation that makes most sense by far is the obvious one: the FBI has found something very significant in those emails, and he couldn’t justify doing anything else.

In the end, Comey has got to be concerned fundamentally with his own reputation. Suppose he believed that, in fact, in the end, these emails might well turn out to be nothing of consequence. Yet he has now violated the standard protocols and the DOJ admonishments, and has turned the election against Hillary at a critical juncture. Under those circumstances, when the day would arrive that the concern with the emails was dismissed, he would never be able to recover his reputation–he would become a legendary object of scorn. I just don’t see how a man in Comey’s position would ever take those steps.

People are imagining all sorts of bizarre scenarios under which Comey might be helping Hillary or helping Trump by this move, even though he knows that the emails are likely not significant. But the one thing that he won’t be able to do in either of those scenarios is save his own reputation — he will be demonized forever over any such clear chicanery. Nothing could make this worthwhile for a man in his position.

I infer from all this that Comey must believe that there are smoking guns in this batch of emails, and that the case for illegality is very strong. That is his only way out of this mess with his reputation intact.

* That’s why isolationism is a natural turn of events for the USA. Most people are tired of the M.E., and Europe has to solve its own squabbles. I mean, Old Ironsides was a great vessel to destroy the Barbary Coast nasties, but, heck, we have nukes, and, we don’t need Europe or the M.E. Everyone wants our soldiers out of the M.E. for good – the national debt is too high – “the rent is too damn high.” U.S. needs to rebuild the economy of the Rust-Belt and Plains States. The infrastructure must be rebuilt.

* The leading story on Google News right now is one from the Washington Post headlined “Trump’s bizarre claim that the Clinton email controversy is bigger than Watergate.”

A story that should utterly destroy Clinton’s chances at winning is somehow spun into a story against Trump. Only in today’s MSM.

* I’ve visited the Temple Mount twice, as is my right under the “status quo”. Before going up you get searched twice, once for weapons and once for prayer articles – they open your wallet to check you haven’t got a copy of grace after meals. Then you go up surrounded by a group of Israeli police armed with submachine guns pointed inwards at you whilst leering Arabs hurl abuse. The second time I was arrested for … kissing a rock with my hands and bowing slightly as I left. I’ve now signed a solemn statement promising never to act in such a disgraceful manner again. The UN resolution describes this as “far right extremists” “storming” the temple mount. So, yes, Italy can go F themselves.

* Part of the problem is that Abedin is romantically linked to Hillary. The inclination is to not fire your spouse, even if they are a screw-up, and this complicates efficient policy and administration and tangles lines of authority.

* It’s been my longstanding impression that contrary to what we hear about the Syrian mess being a “war for Israel” and so on, that the Israelis were actually vaguely supportive of the Assad regime in their pragmatic realpolitik way. From the Israeli point of view, they preferred Assad, as a religio-ethnic minority tyrant projecting power onto Syria’s religio-ethnic majority, to an alternative where the Syrian majority projects power against its neighbor Israel. And therefore the Israelis were not enthusiastic about the Obama-Hillary project of poking the Syrian hornet’s nest.

I actually partly agree with the Jew-phobes that the US often is too deferential to Israel and to (perceived) Jewish interests. It is ironic, therefore, that when the the US–well, Obama and Hillary, who aren’t really American, but you know what I mean–finally does act against Israeli interest, it does so in a way that is against US interest as well. In fact, that is the only unifying thread I have ever found in all of Obama’s and Hillary’s actions: they always do whatever they think will most harm America.

* Both women needed a beard and also felt they should have a child. Finding a man willing to marry them under such an unconventional circumstance entailed making compromises in the type of man available. Both ended up with sex-addict men with the understanding they could go their own way as long as they fulfilled the beard, career and child part of the bargain. However, both these men have turned out to be huge public embarrassments and real liabilities.
I understand that at the time of the creation of Israel the Saudi monarch was not particularly opposed to it. They’ve had to pay lip service towards Arab solidarity over the years just for political reasons but no official Saudi soldier has been killed fighting Israel in the years since. The Saudis do not trust the other Arabs who may want to see them toppled so for Israel to keep them all in disarray works in their favor. Of course Huma lets her family members know what’s going on and they in turn pass it on. The connection is worth it’s weight in gold so they’re delighted that their daughter made the supreme sacrifice with her body to help them in this way.

* It should be noted that in the first open mommy v. daddy election that the ‘take downs’ resemble something out of the family courts. The orchestrated release of the Access Hollywood tapes and then the “11 women to come forward” smells of high conflict divorce proceeding replete with Gloria Allred appearing publicly with the broken housewife (albeit it one who was a washed up porn star). There is zero chance that there could be a legal action with any of these women; their only purpose is to gain leverage, but rather than custody or alimony the prize is thwarting the Donald’s Presidential bid. Even the pukey Alicia Machado- Miss Piggy – eating machine crisis of a month ago (which has disappeared) came across like a jilted past lover with an ax to grind.

The funny thing is that this could come down to Anthony Wiener playing the one last card in his hand. No doubt, Huma is drilling him for custody, visitation, alimony, and the family assets. Based on what he has been accused of, his chances in court are slim and his future looks like a metaphoric cremation followed by a secret burial with no headstone. Huma’s future is to live out her life with her true love and all the cash and prizes, just like many divorces. In most divorces this would be where the husband outs the wife’s drug use or promiscuous lifestyle but in Huma’s case it is protecting her employer’s / mentors criminal enterprise. Usually, it is the man’s job that ace’s him out. In this case it is her’s.

For multiple reasons, this was the absolute best time for Huma to dump Weiner. They have only been married 6 years so there is no long term marriage (assuming NY is like California). Her income stood to leap up due to her central position in the pay to play insider deals while his looked like they were heading South for good. This means there would be no possibility of alimony for Huma or a settlement that would have gotten her free of alimony. Using the leverage of the underage texting, that pretty much killed Weiner’s ability to get anything more than supervised visits thereby killing child support. This was THE opportunity to dump him, only she had some skeletons in the closet too. The couple deserved each other.

* Hillary shares the establishment view of Israel as an obsolete ethnostate, which fortunately has the West Bank Arabs to prevent it lasting very long as a Jewish entity. Pleasure-seeking US Jews are going along with US foreign policy through incomprehension of its objectives. Ehud Barak knew better, and that is why he offered more that anyone before or since in return for finally settling the status of Arabs in the West Bank.

* Perhaps, but by the time of the documentary, it’s several years since they wed and their child is a toddler. Their body language certainly doesn’t convey that these are two people who are lovers – she’s often in a closed posture (arms crossed across her body defensively, leaning away from him) and I don’t think you ever really see any physical affection. You get the sense that he’d be all over her (or anyone else the least bit willing) but she doesn’t remotely reciprocate. Part of it seems to be that Weiner doesn’t possess the ability to interpret other people’s emotions, facial expressions, and body language – there’s one part where he’s re-watching his disastrous performance being interviewed on MSNBC by Lawrence O’Donnell and laughing at his obstinance while Huma is obviously crestfallen and embarrassed for him he just can’t seem to understand it. (This is, of course, at a time when one would think he’d be especially sensitive to his wife’s emotional state because he had just been caught for the second time).

Now, it is possible that this is because she’s been attending to her mistress in and around DC and he’s been left to his own devices in NYC for a while and they never had an extended period of being stuck together and living a married life.

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FBI Notes Reveal Security Concerns Over Huma Abedin

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Luke Ford

Paul Sperry published this two days before the FBI announcement about re-opening its Hillary Clinton email investigation. So far, it is the best article I have read on this story.

REPORT:

Protective detail assigned to guard former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her two residences complained that her closest aide Huma Abedin often overrode standard security protocols during trips to the Middle East, and personally changed procedures for handling classified information, including highly sensitive intelligence briefs the CIA prepared for the president, newly released FBI documents reveal.

The security agents, who were interviewed as witnesses in the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of an unauthorized private email server to send classified information, complained that Abedin had unusual sway over security policies during Clinton’s 2009-2013 tenure at Foggy Bottom.

FBI interview notes indicate that Abedin, a Pakistani-American Muslim whose family has deep ties to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the radical Muslim Brotherhood, was granted Top Secret security clearance for the first time in 2009, when Clinton named her deputy chief of staff for operations. Abedin said she “did not remember” being read into any Special Access Programs (SAPs) or compartments.

If Clinton wins the presidency next month, she is expected to tap Abedin as her chief of staff, a position that would give her the power to run White House operations — including personnel security and visitor access. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

Abedin now serves as vice chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign.In a now-disclosed September 2015 interview, a diplomatic security agent assigned to Clinton’s protective detail told FBI investigators that Abedin possessed “much more power” over Clinton’s staff, schedule and security than other former chiefs of staffs.

The witness, whose name is redacted by the FBI, said that “Abedin herself was often responsible for overriding security and diplomatic protocols on behalf of Clinton.”

While Clinton was traveling with Abedin in an armored vehicle during a trip to the West Bank, for example, the driver of the limousine was “forced” to ignore longstanding procedures to keep the windows closed for security reasons. After repeated orders to open a window so Clinton could be seen waving to the Palestinian people while in “occupied territory,” the driver relented and opened the window “despite the danger to himself and the occupants.”

Another guard assigned to Clinton’s residence in Chappaqua, N.Y., recalled in a February FBI interview that new security procedures for handling delivery of the diplomatic pouch and receiving via fax the highly classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) had been “established by Abedin.” The witness added that Abedin controlled the operations of a secure room known as a SCIF located on the third floor of the residence.

In her own April 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin contended that she “did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago, when it became public knowledge.” The clintonemail.com server was set up in the basement of the Chappaqua residence.

However, another witness told agents that he and another Clinton aide with an IT background built the new server system “at the recommendation of Huma Abedin,” who first broached the idea of an off-the-grid email server as early as the “fall (of) 2008,” ostensibly after Barack Obama was elected president.

The FBI pointed out that “the only person at DoS (Department of State) to receive an email account on the (clintonemail.com) domain was Abedin.”

In other words, Abedin, whose email account was [email protected], was the only State Department aide whose emails were hosted by the private Clinton server she claimed she didn’t know existed until she heard about it in the news.

Skeptical, FBI agents showed Abedin three separate email exchanges she had with an IT staffer regarding the operation of the private Clinton server during Clinton’s tenure at State. Abedin claimed she “did not recall” the email exchanges.

Making false statements to a federal agent is a felony.

“Multiple State employees” told the FBI that they considered emailing Abedin “the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton.” Abedin, in turn, “routinely” forwarded State government emails — including ones containing classified information — from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her Yahoo.com account “so that she could print them” at her home, the summary of her interview with the FBI reveals.

Another Clinton aide told the FBI that “Abedin may have kept emails that Clinton did not.”

By forwarding classified emails to her personal email account, Abedin appears to have violated a Classified Information NonDisclosure Agreement she signed at the State Department on Jan. 30, 2009, in which she agreed to keep all classified material under the control of the US government.

Even so, the FBI did not search Abedin’s laptop or Yahoo email account at any point in their year-long investigation into possible mishandling of classified information and espionage. Nor did the bureau call Abedin back for additional questioning, despite documentary evidence, as well as the statements from other witnesses, that clearly contradicted her own statements.

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Why Does Danielle Berrin Keep Writing Jewish Journal Cover Stories About Getting Groped By Famous Men?

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Luke Ford

I asked some attractive women for their analysis and they said in essence: She tries so hard to be smart but she’s not. That she wrote this article (and how she wrote it) confirms how dumb she is. Given her looks, if she had any talent, she would have moved on by now.

Danielle Berrin writes today:

Yesterday, Ari Shavit offered an apology — to no one in particular — for “misconstruing the interaction between us,” which he says he understood as “flirtation.”
His claim is absurd. The only thing I wanted from Ari Shavit was an interview about his book. No person of sound judgment would have interpreted his advances on me as anything other than unwanted, aggressive sexual contact.
As recounted in my article, he engaged in physically aggressive behavior — grabbing the back of my head, lurching at me for a kiss, pulling and pawing at me, and pressuring me to enter his hotel room — “We don’t have to have sex,” he told me. “I just want to give you a hug.” Except, he also implied he wanted to impregnate me and suggested I become his mistress. Throughout our interaction, he touched me in ways I did not want to be touched and he caused me to fear for my safety.
None of this was flirtation; this was an assault on my dignity and professionalism that frightened and disturbed me. According to the United States Department of Justice, the definition of sexual assault is “any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.” That Shavit would claim it was “flirtation” is not only misguided, it suggests I was participating in his scheme when, indeed, I was the victim; I was afraid he’d further assault me if I did not escape.
Many aspects of that night remain clear in my mind — the discomfort I felt, the sense of violation, the feeling of being trapped. But also, I remember how excited I was to interview the author of “My Promised Land,” a book of astonishing insight and self-reflection. It is mystifying to me how someone so deeply attuned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be so obtuse when it comes to human relationships.
I am glad Ari Shavit has at least acknowledged an encounter took place. As a committed Jew, I am always open to the possibility of forgiveness and redemption.
But Ari Shavit has yet to apologize for what he actually did; he did not apologize for committing sexual assault.

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Jewish Americans don’t vote with Israel in mind, they vote as liberals

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Luke Ford

Professor Jonathan Bronitsky writes:

The political behavior of the preponderance of Jewish Americans is in no way substantively different than that of secular liberals of any other religious background. Reform Judaism has been called “the Democratic party platform with holidays thrown in,” and the services in a Reform temple have been described as “the Democratic Party at prayer.”

Nor is the association between Jews and the Democratic Party a new phenomenon. Since exit polling began in 1972, Democratic presidential candidates have received on average 70% of the Jewish vote. In fact, according to several scholars, the 1920 presidential election was the last contest for the White House in which the Republican candidate bested the Democratic candidate among Jewish voters. And that was because the Socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs, siphoned support from the Democratic candidate, Ohio Gov. James M. Cox, capturing 38% of the Jewish electorate.

Personally, I’ve grown accustomed to Reform and even Conservative rabbis using — and arguably exploiting — the pulpit, especially during the High Holidays, to advocate for public policies virtually unilaterally endorsed by the Democratic Party (e.g., universal healthcare and gun control). Still, I was taken aback this year when a rabbi in my hometown used her sermon to preach the benefits and necessity of electing America’s first female president. I’m no constitutional scholar, but that action would seem to be a violation of her institution’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit status.

The “Jewish vote” matters, but most Jewish Americans don’t vote as Jews; they vote as liberals.

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The State Of Exception

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Luke Ford

In Judaism, life is almost always the highest value, just as self-preservation is usually the highest value of any nation state.

No legal system, no constitution, is able to maintain itself in all contingencies. Sometimes a nation to survive must ignore its own laws and turn over authority to a sovereign (the one who decides the state of exception to the law). The United States aka Weimerica seems headed in this direction.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Carl Schmitt:

On Dictatorship was followed by another essay in 1922, titled “Politische Theologie” (political theology); in it, Schmitt, who at the time was working as a professor at the University of Bonn, gave further substance to his authoritarian theories, analysing the concept of “free will” influenced by Christian-Catholic thinkers. The book begins with Schmitt’s famous, or notorious, definition: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” By “exception,” Schmitt means the appropriate moment for stepping outside the rule of law in the public interest. (See discussion of On Dictatorship above.) Schmitt proposes this definition to those offered by contemporary theorists of sovereignty, particularly Hans Kelsen, whose work is criticized at several points in the essay.

The book’s title derives from Schmitt’s assertion (in chapter 3) that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts” —in other words, that political theory addresses the state (and sovereignty) in much the same manner as theology does God.

A year later, Schmitt supported the emergence of totalitarian power structures in his paper “Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus” (roughly: “The Intellectual-Historical Situation of Today’s Parliamentarianism”, translated as The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy by Ellen Kennedy). Schmitt criticized the institutional practices of liberal politics, arguing that they are justified by a faith in rational discussion and openness that is at odds with actual parliamentary party politics, in which outcomes are hammered out in smoke-filled rooms by party leaders. Schmitt also posits an essential division between the liberal doctrine of separation of powers and what he holds to be the nature of democracy itself, the identity of the rulers and the ruled. Although many critics of Schmitt today, such as Stephen Holmes in his The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism, take exception to his fundamentally authoritarian outlook, the idea of incompatibility between liberalism and democracy is one reason for the continued interest in his political philosophy.[23]

The Concept of the Political[edit]
Schmitt changed universities in 1926, when he became professor of law at the Handelshochschule in Berlin, and again in 1932, when he accepted a position in Cologne. It was from lectures at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin that he wrote his most famous paper, “Der Begriff des Politischen” (“The Concept of the Political”), in which he developed his theory of “the political”.[24] Distinct from party politics, “the political” is the essence of politics. While churches are predominant in religion or society is predominant in economics, the state is predominant in politics. Yet for Schmitt the political was not an autonomous domain equivalent to the other domains, but rather the existential basis that would determine any other domain should it reach the point of politics (e.g. religion ceases to be merely theological when it makes a clear distinction between the “friend” and the “enemy”). The political is not equal to any other domain, such as the economic, but instead is the most essential to identity.

Schmitt, in perhaps his best-known formulation, bases his conceptual realm of state sovereignty and autonomy upon the distinction between friend and enemy. This distinction is to be determined “existentially,” which is to say that the enemy is whoever is “in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” (Schmitt, 1996, p. 27) Such an enemy need not even be based on nationality: so long as the conflict is potentially intense enough to become a violent one between political entities, the actual substance of enmity may be anything.

Although there have been divergent interpretations concerning this work, there is broad agreement that “The Concept of the Political” is an attempt to achieve state unity by defining the content of politics as opposition to the “other” (that is to say, an enemy, a stranger. This applies to any person or entity that represents a serious threat or conflict to one’s own interests.) Additionally, the prominence of the state stands as a neutral force dominating potentially fractious civil society, whose various antagonisms must not be allowed to affect politics, lest civil war result.

What is the Jewish answer to this statement: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

Sometimes rabbis are called upon to make emergency decrees to preserve the community by uprooting traditional Torah practices.

According to Wikipedia:

Classical Jewish law granted rabbinic sages wide legislative powers. There are two powerful legal tools within the halakhic system:

Gezeirah: “preventative legislation” of the classical rabbis, intended to prevent violations of the commandments
Takkanah: “positive legislation”, practices instituted by the rabbis not based (directly) on the commandments as such, e.g. rabbinical mitzvot.
However, the general term takkanah is used to refer to either gezeirot or takkanot.

Takkanot, in general, do not affect or restrict observance of Torah mitzvot. However, the Talmud states that in exceptional cases, the Jewish sages had the authority make a gezeirah even if it would “uproot a matter from the Torah”. In Talmudic and classical halakhic literature, this authority refers to the authority to prohibit some things that would otherwise be biblically sanctioned (shev v’al ta’aseh). Rabbis may rule that a Torah mitzvah should not be performed, e.g. blowing the shofar on Shabbat, or blessing the lulav and etrog on Shabbat. These gezeirot are executed out of fear that some might otherwise carry the mentioned items between home and the synagogue, thus inadvertently violating a Sabbath melakha, a greater sin than neglecting the banned mitzvah.

Another rare and limited form of takkanah involved overriding Torah prohibitions. In some cases, the sages allowed the temporary violation a prohibition in order to maintain the Jewish system as a whole. This was part of the basis for Esther’s relationship with Ahasuerus. (Sanhedrin)

Another way that Judaism deals with the state of exception is by the doctrine of Pikuach Nefesh: “In Judaism, Pikuach Nefesh (Hebrew: פיקוח נפש) describes the principle in Jewish law that the preservation of human life overrides virtually any other religious consideration. When the life of a specific person is in danger, almost any mitzvah lo ta’aseh (command to not do an action) of the Torah becomes inapplicable.”

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Ari Shavit Apologizes to American Journalist: I Didn’t Think I Committed Sexual Harassment

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

From Haaretz:

Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit issued a statement of apology on Thursday after a U.S. journalist accused him of sexually assaulting her during an interview.
“More than two and a half years ago, in February 2014, I met with Danielle Berrin in Los Angeles for a conversation. Today, I sadly understand that I misconstrued the interaction between us during that meeting,” Shavit said in a statement.
In an article last week in The Jewish Journal, entitled “My sexual assault, and yours: Every woman’s story,” Jewish-American journalist Danielle Berrin accused a prominent Israeli writer of sexually harassing and assaulting her as she tried to interview him in the recent past at an American hotel lobby.
In his statement, Shavit said that “prior to reading Berrin’s article, I thought that we had had a friendly conversation that included some flirtation.
“I did not for a moment think it involved any sexual harassment. But what I saw as flirtation, Berrin saw as inappropriate, even harassing behavior on my part.”
“As a person who deeply respects every woman and every human being, and as a person who abhors any form of sexual harassment, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for this misunderstanding. I did not mean to say anything unwelcome to Berrin, and I certainly never meant to cause her distress or hurt her feelings,” Shavit said.
In her article, Berrin wrote: “I’d agreed to meet him, an accomplished journalist from Israel, at his hotel around 10 P.M. He was in the United States only for 48 hours, and told me he was completely booked during the daytime. I believed him.”
She accused the journalist of trying to force a kiss and how she rejected his suggestions that they go up to his hotel room. Berrin described how the journalist asked her personal questions including whether the man he saw her with at an event was her boyfriend.
“But after I answered one of his questions in a way that moved him, he lurched at me like a barnyard animal, grabbing the back of my head, pulling me toward him. I turned my face to the left and bowed my head to avoid his mouth.”

TIMES OF ISRAEL:

Hillel International said late Thursday that it was suspending the upcoming campus tour of prominent Israeli journalist Ari Shavit amid accusations of sexual assault by an American-Jewish reporter.

Shavit, a prominent Haaretz columnist and author of the best-selling “My Promised Land,” confirmed the speculations Thursday with a statement carried by the newspaper, in which he apologized for the encounter and said he had “completely misinterpreted the interaction” with Berrin and “didn’t intend to do anything that was unacceptable” to her.

Hours later, Hillel announced that “in keeping with our strong position against sexual assault, Hillel International has suspended Ari Shavit’s campus tour,” adding that it was “not aware of any allegation of sexual assault made against Mr. Shavit during his Hillel visits.”

“Hillel International will be making staff available for any student or Hillel professional interested in discussing these issues privately,” the organization said in a statement.

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Rabbi charged with sex abuse to get 1 year of counseling, no prison

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Jewish Journal: Rabbi Sholom D. Levitansky has agreed to one year of counseling and residential treatment at Beit T’Shuvah, an addiction treatment center near Culver City, after pleading no contest to two counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object of a minor.

lev-photo_539_332_c1

At the Oct. 27 hearing at the Airport Courthouse on La Cienega Boulevard, his lawyer, Vicki Podberesky, told Judge Yvette Verastegui he had checked into Beit T’Shuvah the day before.
Levitansky won’t be officially sentenced until he completes the treatment program. Once he’s sentenced a year from now, he won’t face jail time but will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney spokesperson Ricardo Santiago.
Each count of sexual penetration with a foreign object carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison, but Levitansky will serve his time at Beit T’Shuva instead of a prison sentence.
Levitansky was arrested in the fall of 2015 on felony charges relating to the sexual abuse of two teenage female victims, between 1998 and 2002. Back then, Levitansky was in his mid-20s and working at the Living Torah Center, a Chabad center in Santa Monica, where he met his alleged victims.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged Levitansky with five counts of oral copulation with a minor, five counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object of a minor and one count of a lewd act upon a child. Originally, he pled not guilty to all 11 charges, but entered his two no contest pleas Sept. 26.
Sima Yarmush, one of the victims who has since publicly told the story of her abuse, indicated to the Journal on Oct. 27 that she was pleased with the outcome.
“I feel that I have done everything that I can do to seek justice,” she said.
Yarmush was 14 when she alleges the abuse began, and said it went on for more than two years.

Speaking with the Journal, she said she was the only victim who was willing to go through the court process, which likely resulted in a lighter sentence for Levitansky.
“It was literally me versus him,” she said. “There was zero, zero community support, aside from JCW [Jewish Community Watch] holding my hand and, of course, my family,” she said.
JCW is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Jewish victims of child sex abuse. In February 2015, more than half a year before his arrest, JCW posted a photo of Levitansky’s face on its online “Wall of Shame,” which lists accused sex abusers in the Jewish community.
Beyond JCW, Yarmush says she received help and support from her parents but few others. Years after the abuse took place, when she spoke about it with her parents, who ran the Chabad center, they immediately removed Levitansky from his post. But when her case was brought before a group of prominent Los Angeles rabbis for remediation, they ignored her, she said.
Levitansky arrived at court Oct. 27 flanked by a group of bearded men and a woman wearing a wig and holding a prayer book. Approached outside the courtroom, he declined through his lawyer to speak with the Journal.
He is scheduled to be back in court on Dec. 6 for a status review.

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MEET THE DAPPER WHITE NATIONALIST WHO WINS EVEN IF TRUMP LOSES – Alt-right founder Richard Spencer aims to make racism cool again

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Great article in Mother Jones (even though the author and the publication hate Richard Spencer’s views, they extend him a normal amount of empathy and do such thorough reporting that no matter your views, you are going to be interested and educated by this essay):

During a conversation over dinner, Spencer further recalled how he capitalized on his newfound fame. Back in the states soon after the Clinton speech, he found himself arguing over the phone with a representative from the National Press Club. He’d paid to hold a media event there on September 9, but the Press Club backed out citing security concerns, and then admitted, Spencer claims, that he made its employees uncomfortable. (The National Press Club declined to comment.)

…With his blandly named National Policy Institute, Spencer aspires to the stature of today’s Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute. But his is not the only vision competing for the mantle of the alt-right; he believes the movement is being pulled in a more moderate direction—if you can call it that—by Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon, formerly the executive chairman of Breitbart News, and Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos. Spencer says the Breitbart faction wants to jettison overt racial ideas and instead defend “Western values” and fight “political correctness.” He dubs them “alt-light.”

…Spencer was friends with the only African American student in his class, John Lewis, and once invited him for a sleepover. Lewis says he never thought of Spencer as racist, but another classmate who asked not to be identified recalls Spencer making “a bunch of conservative, racially laced comments” that were objectionable even in high school. Spencer says he has no memory of this and attributes the recollection to “backward projection,” noting that he did not think much about race back then.

After graduating high school in 1997, Spencer went to the University of Virginia, where he double-majored in music and English and became deeply involved in avant-garde theater, trying out and discarding various radical ideologies like costume changes. The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche made a lasting impression; Spencer found his critiques of equality and democracy darkly compelling. He identified with the German philosopher’s unapologetically elitist embrace of “great men” such as Napoleon Bonaparte and the composer Richard Wagner. Yet Spencer found little in Nietzsche about the organization of the state; it was only after entering the humanities master’s program at the University of Chicago that he discovered Jared Taylor, a self-proclaimed “race realist” who argues that blacks and Hispanics are a genetic drag on Western society…

By the time he entered Duke as a Ph.D. student in European intellectual history in 2005, his views were on his sleeve. Fellow students recall Spencer openly sharing his opinions on biological differences between races and endorsing books such as Harvard professor Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We?, which argues that Hispanic immigrants are less suited than Europeans for assimilation. One Caucasian woman who was a student at the time recalls Spencer saying that people with her level of education needed to bear more children. Yet Spencer was charming enough to maintain collegial relations with his peers; an official graduate student party that he hosted at his spacious apartment was well attended. “Not many of us had ever come across as an out-and-out fascist,” says a college professor who studied in the same history Ph.D. program as Spencer. “We didn’t know how serious he was.” (Spencer says he is not a fascist.)

Trump’s campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, has been a big promoter of anti-Muslim extremists.
Spencer was more explicit about his views on race and immigration with members of the Duke Conservative Union, where he says he clicked with a columnist for the campus newspaper and fellow DCU member named Stephen Miller. Miller—who would earn acclaim for standing up for white lacrosse players falsely accused of gang raping a black woman—is now a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

Spencer also defended the Duke lacrosse players, writing about the case for The American Conservative—but that’s not the only reason he and Miller hit it off. Spencer says Miller helped him with fundraising and promotion for an on-campus debate on immigration policy that Spencer organized in 2007 featuring influential white nationalist Peter Brimelow. Another former member of the DCU confirmed that Miller and Spencer worked together on the event. At DCU meetings, according to a past president for the group, Miller denounced multiculturalism and expressed concerns that immigrants from non-European countries were not assimilating.

“It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection,” Spencer says. “I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm Trump.”

…After dropping out of Duke, Spencer remained preoccupied with race while at The American Conservative, where he became an editor in 2007. Since its founding in 2002 by the paleoconservative and erstwhile presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and others, TAC had given voice to a ragtag group of Iraq War opponents, protectionists, anti-immigration activists, and Ron Paul libertarians, but Spencer was “a bit extreme for us,” recalls TAC editor Scott McConnell. After being fired, Spencer moved on to a new job as the sole editor of Taki’s Magazine, the online vanity publication of Taki Theodoracopulos, the scion of a Greek shipping magnate who was notorious for his racist remarks…

In Spencer’s telling, he steadily evolved Taki’s into a magazine aimed at white nationalists. By 2009 he’d published essays by Jared Taylor and was regularly using the term “alternative right” in its pages to describe his youthful brand of anti-war, anti-immigration, pro-white conservatism. In December 2009, Spencer left Taki’s to start AlternativeRight.com. The site caught the attention of the conservative publisher William Regnery II, who’d tried to start a whites-only online dating service, and, more recently, funded the white nationalist National Policy Institute. (His grandfather, William Regnery I, had bankrolled the America First Committee’s campaign against fighting Nazi Germany during World War II, and his uncle, Henry, founded the conservative Regnery Publishing, which is known for printing Ann Coulter’s books). With Regnery’s backing, Spencer took over NPI in 2011 and began championing its message.

But Spencer’s evolution into a hardcore ethno-nationalist was perhaps not as seamless as he makes it seem. In late 2007, he dated a woman who is Asian American. The two met when she was working for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.

“I am not the only Asian girl he has dated,” says Spencer’s ex, who spoke to me on the condition that her name not be disclosed. She said she’d initially been turned off by his talk of race-based behavioral differences, but she eventually softened to the idea. They dated for four months, including a trip she took with him to Texas to attend his high school reunion. She says she eventually broke up with him, but not because he was too politically radical. “We all have inconsistencies,” she said. “Especially with love. How can you control your heart?”

I asked Spencer about his Asian ex as he was digging into a bowl of Thai noodles at an eclectic restaurant in the quaint downtown of Whitefish. He seemed shocked that I’d brought it up, and peppered me with questions about how I’d found out. “I would rather you didn’t write about that,” he said, adding later: “You are probably going to nail me with this…I think some people in the movement would probably find that terrible.” He confirmed that she was not the only Asian woman he’d been with, but he said the relationships predated his evolution into a white nationalist.

Though Spencer now opposes interracial relationships, white nationalists have long looked east for inspiration—Hitler regarded Chinese and Japanese history as “superior to our own.” Jared Taylor and William Johnson, the leader of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, both speak fluent Japanese. “There is something about the Asian girls,” Spencer said. “They are cute. They are smart. They have a kind of thing going on. If I am looking at my own life objectively, it really doesn’t surprise me that much.”

…The town of Whitefish, where Spencer has lived since 2014, sits in a scenic river valley nestled in Montana’s Flathead Range, some 40 miles from the Canadian border. Over three days there in late September, it was tough to spot nonwhites. The hotel maids were white, the busboys were white, and the landscapers were white. But while this is part of why Whitefish appeals to Spencer, the town is not particularly thrilled with his presence. Several local restaurants have refused to serve him. He was compelled to resign his membership from the exclusive Big Mountain Ski Club after he got into a chairlift argument about the Iraq War with the neocon Randy Scheunemann, a former adviser to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and to John McCain in the 2008 election. In 2014, a local human rights group known as Love Lives Here urged the city to bar Spencer from conducting NPI business in town but settled for a resolution condemning hate groups.

A multicolored Love Lives Here poster hangs in the window of the Whitefish Hostel, near an apartment building recently erected by Spencer’s mother (who also owns the Bavarian-style mansion Spencer has lived in). Hostel co-owner Kirtlye Lohof seemed amused by Spencer and his concept of racial boundaries, noting that she’d initially thought Spencer’s wife, Nina Spencer, had a non-white ethnic background. “Then someone said no, she’s just dark-haired Russian,” Lohof said, taking a break from making organic smoothies.

Nina Spencer has translated the writings of Alexander Dugin, a prominent far-right Russian nationalist; she and Spencer have each appeared on Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language news and propaganda network. Some commenters on white-nationalist blogs have speculated that Nina Spencer is part Tatar, a predominately Muslim ethnic group. (Spencer says his wife is not Tatar, but is one quarter Georgian, a predominately Christian ethnic minority in Russia that also spans into Greece, Turkey, and Iran. Nina Spencer declined to comment on the record for this story; the couple is currently undergoing a separation.) Spencer calls Russia “the most powerful white power in the world” and admires Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism—he would gladly admit most Russians into his ideal ethnostate…

He seemed less amused by our lighthearted sparring when I pointed out that, according to the one-drop rule that dominated American law and culture for much of the 20th century, Spencer is technically black and would therefore be ruled out of a white ethnostate.

“Oh no, that’s absurd!” he protested, no longer smiling. “No one in my family tree…” He trailed off. “I almost wonder if this is thrown in [by 23andMe] for shits and giggles. Like, ‘We’re all Africans.'”

Spencer later clarified that he is “not a puritan” about race and would accept in his ethnostate “someone from southern Italy who might have Moorish blood or African blood but has a sense of Catholicism, has a sense of being Italian.” You have to look at culture and not just race, he further explained. But lighter skin color apparently matters more to Spencer than acculturation when it comes to Hispanics: He says he would let in Jorge Ramos but not George Lopez…

Spencer believes that Hispanics and African Americans have lower average IQs than whites and are more genetically predisposed to commit crimes, ideas that are scientifically controversial to say the least. When pressed about what really sets whites apart, he waxes decidedly unscientific: “I think there is something within the European soul that we haven’t been able to measure yet and maybe we never will,” he says, “and that is a Faustian drive or spirit—a drive to explore, a drive to dominate, a drive to live one’s life dangerously…a drive to explore outer space and the universe. I think there is something within us that we possess and that only we possess.”

On my last afternoon in town, Spencer finally agreed to show me his office. “You might literally be the first non-family-member who is a visitor,” he said, after ushering me through an unmarked door along a commercial strip downtown. On a bookshelf, titles such as IQ & Global Inequality and The Dispossessed Majority shared space with Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. A framed poster for a James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, hung on one wall—Spencer sees Bond as a heroic example of whiteness who is “perpetuating English tradition in the 21st century.” A whiteboard nearby outlined the table of contents for a forthcoming NPI book, a primer on the alt-right that Spencer is editing and wants to publish just in time for a conference the group is scheduled to hold in Washington, DC, less than two weeks after the election. The book is meant for people who may be familiar with alt-light—”someone who reads Milo or something”—but want to go deeper.

 The crown jewel of the alt-right’s media universe, Breitbart News now rivals the New York Post for traffic. The site often flirts with overt racism, as when it used a picture of Harambe the gorilla to illustrate a story about President Barack Obama and birtherism. Former executive chairman Stephen Bannon long championed anti-Muslim extremists on his daily radio show, and Yiannopoulos has portrayed alt-right figures as "dangerously bright." Breitbart News also connects to Spencer’s media orbit: The home page editor of Breitbart News, Katie McHugh, until recently dated far-right blogger Kevin DeAnna, who written articles and appeared in podcasts published by Spencer. ("My relationship was never ‘secret’ but it’s pretty funny it’s newsworthy to a shitlib, meaning you," McHugh wrote to me when I asked her for comment.) McHugh has drawn attention for her Twitter rants about Mexicans, Muslims, and "Third Worlders":

The anger fueling the alt-right can’t be summarily dismissed; it is the product of a white working class left behind by automation, outsourcing, and the era of rising income inequality. "Mainstream conservatism was never able to rethink itself," says Spencer, who faults the GOP for clinging to an outdated free-market ideology and ignoring the country’s massive demographic shifts. Despite the reality that blacks and Latinos still lag far behind whites in wealth and income, eight years of GOP-sanctioned demagoguery against America’s first black president has made it easier for some working-class whites to be persuaded that the system is rigged against them. In Spencer’s view, similar resentments have cropped up among younger, college-educated whites for whom "enforced multiculturalism" on college campuses is giving shape to a new kind of white identity politics. "The alt-right would not exist if it weren’t for terrible immigration policies and social justice warriors and liberalism and maybe the Barack Obama presidency," Spencer says. "They made us."

Then came the real shot in the arm. "Trump brought us from zero to 1," Spencer says. "He brought us from a movement that was very interesting but ultimately marginal—ultimately disconnected from reality, you could even say. We were talking to ourselves, talking to our own ideas. Now we are still doing that, but we are connected with a campaign, connected with attacking liberals. We’ve come so far."
 

When something is bothering Spencer, he likes to go for a hike. At his suggestion, we leave the office and hit a trail just outside of town. The autumn sun hangs low in the sky, making mountain maples glow yellow like tea lanterns. We stop and sit on a bench overlooking a rugged valley, a tableau that reminds Spencer of a painting by the 19th-century German landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich.

"I still feel like we are faking it until we make it," he confesses. "I mean, in some ways, you’ve got to fucking fake it. You have to project success and project power and kind of make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I do have this fear that it’s not going to ultimately get to that. We’ve gotten over the first hurdle, which is ignorance [of the alt-right], and now we need to get over the second hurdle, which is becoming a multimillion-dollar professional movement. I don’t want to go back to paleoconservatism or some intellectual white nationalism that has no connection with politics and the scene. That would be tremendously depressing."

But he has faith in the Overton window: the idea that the range of acceptable political discourse gets defined by a safe distance between extremes. "If you want to radically shift the Overton window, you need that far-right flank for that to make sense," he says. "Clearly, we are working with Trump in this way."

Spencer laments that Trump may have shown up too late to win over an increasingly diverse country, but too early to fully benefit from the alt-right’s emergence. A bigger, more organized alt-right could become an effective opposition movement that is catered to by politicians who need its votes to win elections. Spencer believes this may even coalesce around a more liberal set of economic ideas—nationalized health care, a higher minimum wage—but with those policies only held together by the glue of "white culture." "We weren’t quite ready for Trump, but we need to get ready right now," Spencer says, reprising the case he says he has been making lately to potential donors, in hopes of acquiring prestigious office space for NPI in Washington. "We need a footprint that says, ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.’"

He envisions a beachhead on K Street as part of an evolution toward nothing less than the collapse of the American political system as we know it. "In this weird way that Trump is trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to America, he’s also, like, bringing America to an end in the sense that he is a first step to white identity politics, which will bring about fragmentation," Spencer says as we walk back through town. "This is where I am kind of a Hegelian. Whenever you see a phenomenon, you see its negative aspect. There is a dark side to something that is happening, and I think that is Trump’s dark side, that he is reviving America and accelerating…"

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Will Sex In The Toilet Renew Zionism?

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

From Mondoweiss in 2013:

We have given a lot of attention to the Israeli journalist Ari Shavit’s book, My Promised Land, because so many leading American media have embraced his revivalist-Zionist themes, from the New York Times to NPR. Just the other night, PBS News Hour interviewed him and described his book as “acclaimed.”

The problem I’ve hammered on is that Shavit is a provincial: an excellent reporter of the Israeli Jewish scene, he operates completely inside the Israeli mindset. And so, as Jerome Slater showed in this devastating post, Shavit is an unreliable narrator when he claims that the Arabs have always wanted to destroy Israel. Or when he states that Syria and Iraq and Iran have threatened another “Holocaust” by building nuclear reactors.

These political stretchers need to be taken on strongly.

But here I wanted to focus on another aspect of the book that threatens Shavit’s role as an unreliable narrator: the sex reports. Shavit introduces his book by saying that Israel is a “powerhouse of vitality, creativity, and sensuality”– my emphasis– and at several points in the book and in interviews, Shavit lauds promiscuity in nightclubs as a healthy sign of Israel’s vitality. Myself, I have nothing against promiscuity in nightclubs. What’s unsettling about Shavit’s detailed observations is that they verge on prurience and worse, they are offered as a measure of Israel’s cultural promise. When it’s just young Jews having anonymous sex.

Indeed, the emphasis on anonymous sex brings to mind the Weimar Republic and Christopher Isherwood’s stories of licentious Berlin. But Shavit never really raises questions about what the sexual activity means. He’s like Tony the Tiger about it, he thinks it’s g-r-r-r-eat! Especially when compared with cultural repression in Arab societies. Except for comments he makes near the end of his sex report– the last part of my excerpts below.

Shavit has brought up the sex in interviews. When he talked to Sally Quinn at the Washington Post, he said that Israelis are uniquely sexy. On Terry Gross’s show, he said “being hedonistic is perfectly OK as long as you are moral and realistic.” With Margaret Warner the other night, he described Israel’s success story as one in which Israelis “have chosen life and are celebrating life.”

What follows are excerpts of Shavit’s sexual reports. Cool or creepy? Judge for yourself.

Michal Nadel [velvet rope woman at Tel Aviv club Allenby 58] says it feels like a tribe… She thinks it’s all very primitive and wonderful. When she gets into it and closes her eyes and moves her head from side to side, she can actually hear in the music the beating drums of ancient African tribes, the hooves of wild horses….”And everybody is together in this sexy, insane thing.”…

In an extravagant getup, with her provocative mannerisms, she tells the bouncers who to let in and who to turn away, all the while looking for the guy she’ll have fun with at dawn…

“Sometimes thousands crowd the doors. Guys in leather pants, girls with their breasts half bare. Because everyone knows that I will only let in the gorgeous ones.”

Ravid Zilberman [25-year-old barwoman]:

“It’s incredible to watch the soldiers. Water and oranges, that’s all they have–they don’t even drink alcohol. But even so, from midnight to six a.m., they never stop. They give everything they have on the dance floor. And when the night is over they go straight from Allenby 58 to the buses that will take them to Lebanon or to the territories or to some godforsaken skirmish Really, Israel is such a crazy place. And when these kid soldiers kiss their girls goodbye and put on their uniforms and go, I can’t help but get emotional. It really breaks my heart.”

Ori Stark, owner of the club Allenby 58:

Ori tells me they are now a movement….”Because this nation is all about war and death. Even our religion is very sad,with its Yom Kippur and all, always telling you to suffer and sacrifice… But here we have something very powerful that says ‘Fuck it.’ We don’t have to suffer and sacrifice anymore. Because now we are a fifty-year-old nation, and the armies of the surrounding Arab nations won’t invade us.”…

“We deserve it,” Stark continues. “Of all the people in the world, we deserve it.. So let us live….

“Now there is no shame, no pretense, no pressure to say anything. You don’t sing about love, you have sex. Sex now, sex right now, sex in the toilets. And this new physical authenticity is what’s real, this need for stimuli and pleasure and excitement. This is what Israel is about. Forget the Zionist crap. Forget the Jewish bullshit…

“And when they leave the toilets after a quarter of an hour, I watch them: there is no embrace, no affection, no tenderness. He goes this way, she goes that way. That’s it. We came, we came, we went.”

Shavit in his own voice:

They are very good looking, these youngsters. Here is an Israeli success story few write about. … And the closed intense space of Allenby 58 makes this sexy beauty all too apparent.

Without uttering a word, they make a statement through their liberation, though their sexual openness and their rhythmic ritual. They make it in trying to create a space of their own that is ritualistic, lustful, and fun….

Something extremely poignant happens when all these different sexual energies collide in one space, under one roof. Wiry boys with shaved heads hug each other by the stage. Gorgeous girls in diaphanous shirts dance by the bar. … And every minute, some couple goes off to do it in the other room. Boy-girl. Boy-boy. Girl-girl….

[A]nyone who thinks the new Israel is a fundamentalist theocracy doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about…

I end the night at a hip underground club in Tel Aviv located in a cellar, its walls painted black. Straight stuff, gay stuff, mixed stuff. A lot of dark stuff. “People really need it hard,” a twenty-five-year-old blond psychology student tells me as she offers me a tiny vial of cocaine, which I politely refuse….

The kids are good-looking all right, as sexy as ever. Lustful and provocative.

…What will happen to these beautiful dancers and to this sexy Tel Aviv when some of our really powerful rivals decide to strike? Returning from a quick encounter, the twenty-five year old blonde rejoins me at the bar. Looking around with glazed eyes and a bewildered smile, she says to no one in particular, ‘It’s a bubble. It’s an amazing bubble. It won’t last.”

A Jewish friend says to me:

Unfortunately, Shavit’s book highlights the fear that many Christians have of Jewish values. As you know even among Orthodox Jews attitudes toward sex differ tremendously from traditional Christian values, both among Catholics and Protestants.

It appears that Israelis (and especially secular Israeli Jews) share the same views on sexual mores as do the Jews who promulgated cultural Marxism, sexual loosening in Post WWI Germany, pornography in many nations, mass media in the United States. Even Joe Biden pointed out that same sex marriage probably wouldn’t have been acceptable in America except for the “softening up” of resistance by Jews in the mass media.

We now have this bizarre situation where some feminists like sexual empowerment to the point where they can “screw anything that moves,” yet retain the option to accuse any man of making an “unwanted” advance of sexual harassment. The fact that Trump (and apparently Shavit) stopped their advances once the women made clear they weren’t interested. The question is as Steve Sailer has asked is the difference between a wanted sexual advance and an unwanted sexual advance is wholly up to the recipient. Isn’t it better to not “criminalize” the historic way in which men asked women out and reserve the outrage for persistent advances not only after they have been rejected, but in fact the recipient emphasizes they don’t want any more.

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Israelis Finger Ari Shavit For Groping Danielle Berrin

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

A few years ago, I took a silent pledge to stop writing about Danielle Berrin because it felt like picking wings off a fly. Yeah, such writing was fun, but I hated myself for doing it. Critiquing her articles was like mocking someone with Down’s Syndrome. Yeah, it was easy, but at what cost to my soul? One day I will meet my Maker and He will ask me how I have used my talents, and if I answer that I analyzed the life and thought of @HollywoodJew, surely I will be consigned to eternally burning hell fire.

Now this latest story hits and I must blog about it.

In 2011, Danielle dated R. David Wolpe for a few months. She met him through her work as a journalist for the Jewish Journal.

Who’s more believable in this story? Ari Shavit or Danielle Berrin? Who is more ridiculous? Ari Shavit for making a pass at Danielle or Danielle meeting Ari at his hotel at 10 p.m. expecting a meeting of the minds? What’s more logical in that situation? Exchanging ideas or exchanging bodily fluids?

Ari’s looks are as far removed from Danielle’s as Danielle’s intellect is far removed from Ari’s.

It sounds like in the matter at hand, Ari behaved like a horny 15 year old boy while Danielle’s article sounds like the work of a tipsy 15 year old girl.

Richard Silverstein writes:

I don’t know whether Berrin realized how easily her readers, especially those familiar with Israeli media, would figure out who he was.  At rate, there is only one name on everyone’s lips on social media: Ari Shavit.  He is one of Haaretz’s best-known columnists and sits on its editorial board.  His book, My Promised Land, was published in 2013.  In 2014, it was published in English to great acclaim in the mainstream Jewish community.  It hit the NY Times Bestseller list.  Shavit did a 28-campus tour for Hillel International.  He was represented by the famed Harry Walker Agency, which means his speaking fee was probably in the high five-figures.  Reviewing Google for his speaking engagements back in 2014 reveals he was everywhere.  Clearly, he spent a huge amount of time here that year.  HBO announced they were turning his book into a documentary (though there has been no further word about the project since 2015).

Berrin covers Hollywood for the Jewish Journal.  Her work shows a distinct liberal Zionist perspective.  She specializes in a high-brow integration Israel and Hollywood glitz into the same story.  Shavit’s book was the talk of the liberal Zionist world.  It integrated a tough, yet humane (if you are liberal Zionist) perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  It was the perfect “shooting and crying” book, allowing Jews to decry the harm done to Palestinians while saying at the same time, it couldn’t be helped.  He validated some of the worst prejudices Israelis hold about Nakba and Palestinian rights, while proclaiming you can still be a decent humane Zionist while embracing them.  Ari Shavit, at that time, was the type of “get” any young Jewish journalist would die for.

The media watchdog, 7th Eye, notes further circumstantial support for Shavit as the culprit is that every major Israeli publication has published a story about Berrin’s piece–except for Haaretz [udpate: Haaretz published its own story shortly after this post was published, but well after other outlets had published. Naaman Hirschfeld notes that the Haaretz version leaves out key elements of the Berrin story  which point to Shavit].  It protects its own.

While this sort of story could have a sort of voyeuristic element, that’s not why I published it.  As readers here will know, I’ve chronicled the sexual abuse suffered by Israeli women at the hands of powerful Israeli men who believe they’re entitled to take what they want.  I’ve reported on cases of rape and sexual abuse which often either aren’t prosecuted, or sometimes not even investigated.  Ari Shavit unfortunately is not an anomaly.  He is a ‘type.’  An Israeli type.

This news cannot be good for Haaretz.  It already publishes a columnist regularly, Yitzhak Laor, who’s been accused by his female students of rape.  Another editor, Benny Ziffer, once justified the right of artists to engage in illicit sex for the sake of their art in one of his columns.   Now one of the newspaper’s most well-known journalists faces grave charges of sexual assault.  Haaretz, like much of the Israeli media is heavily male-dominated.  The publisher, managing editor and much of the senior editorial staff are men.  I can’t recall a female managing editor the entire time I’ve been reading Haaretz (the English edition is edited by a woman).  It seems to me that what ails Haaretz is what ails much of Israeli society: an overweening domination of the levers of power by men.  The attitudes that arise from this toxic phenomenon encourage sexual predation and aggressive behavior toward women.  Of course there are women journalists, and very good ones.  But they don’t carry the same weight and often don’t get to make the major decisions in the way men do.

I suspect that when she was beautiful, Danielle, sadly, she’s no longer a ten, was able to get many famous men to open up to her. I wonder if her access diminishes as she ages or perhaps the wisdom that she accumulates makes her even more compelling to alpha males?

Why would Ari Shavit or any accomplished man want to talk to Danielle if she were not attractive? For her soaring intellect and prose style? In my experience, few men care much about what women think. When you ask college professors who are their brightest students, they usually name men. Women tend to get better grades because they are more likely to color between the lines. Women tend to be conformist. They rarely innovate.

I had this girlfriend who was offended that this older guy, a macher in Jewish philanthropy, took her to dinner to pick her brain one night and then it turned out he thought it was a date. Just as my ex-girlfriend would never have dated him, this guy would never have talked to her mind if he didn’t think he had a shot at her body as well.

Feminism is all about diminishing male sexual choices and expanding female sexual choices. Steve Sailer’s First Rule of Female Journalism is: “The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.”

Jerusalem Post:

Media criticism website The Seventh Eye reported Thursday that Channel 10 said if Ha’aretz columnist and New York Times bestselling author Ari Shavit turns out to be the person Berrin hinted at, then he will be removed from their Friday night news panel. Ha’aretz publisher Amos Schocken denied a report that Shavit was put on unpaid leave and declined to comment further.

Berrin, however, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, said she is disappointed in the Israeli media’s focus on a “whodunit” about the perpetrator’s identity, which is distracting from the real issue at hand, that women feel emboldened to talk about sexual assault after a tape of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals surfaced.

Berrin explained that she told her personal story in the first place in order to bring attention to the issue of sexual assault in the community that is the Jewish Journal’s audience, Jews in the Los Angeles area., and to contribute to the national conversation parked by the Trump tape.

“I think the obsessive focus on the identity of the person is an utter distraction from the conversation we need to be having about sexual assault and violence in our communities and the world, what that looks like and how we create awareness,” she said. “It’s not about [my assailant], it’s not about Trump or any one person. It happens every day to women around the world, and we need to be talking about that, not about this one person in Israel.”

UPDATE:

‘Haaretz’ journalist Ari Shavit answers sexual assault accusations

Shavit: We met in 2014 and I never thought the encounter constituted sexual harassment.

Senior Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit admitted Thursday night that he was the Israeli journalist accused of sexually assaulting Los Angeles Jewish Journal reporter Danielle Berrin in a column she published last week. In the column, Berrin recounted her story of the alleged assault.

Berrin’s cover story for the newspaper, “My sexual assault, and yours: Every woman’s story – How the Trump video launched a collective soul-searching over sexual harassment and assault,” began to circulate on Israeli Twitter and Facebook accounts on Wednesday, a week after it had been published. In it, Berrin said the journalist – who she declined to name – pawed at her and tried to convince her to come up to his hotel room.

Shavit, for his part, said he saw their 2014 meeting differently, until he read Berrin’s column.

“I thought we had a friendly encounter which included elements of courtship,” he wrote on Haaretz’s website late Thursday evening. “I never thought for a moment that this constituted sexual harassment, but what I saw as courtship Berrin saw as unacceptable behavior and even harassment.”

Shavit is one of the paper’s senior columnists and the author of the bestselling My Promised Land, which came out in the US in 2013.

Shavit wrote that he respects “every woman and person” and “apologized from the bottom of his heart for the misunderstanding.”

Berrin told The Jerusalem Post she was disappointed with the Israeli media’s focus on “whodunit” about the perpetrator’s identity, which was distracting from the real issue at hand: that women feel emboldened to talk about sexual assault after a tape of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals surfaced.

Berrin explained that she told her personal story in order to bring attention to the issue of sexual assault in the community that is the Jewish Journal’s audience – Jews in the Los Angeles area – and to contribute to the national conversation sparked by the Trump tape.

“I think the obsessive focus on the identity of the person is an utter distraction from the conversation we need to be having about sexual assault and violence in our communities and the world, what that looks like, and how we create awareness,” she said. “It’s not about [my assailant], it’s not about Trump or any one person. It happens every day to women around the world, and we need to be talking about that, not about this one person in Israel.”

As for the argument that naming the journalist who assaulted her could prevent him from doing the same to other women in the future, Berrin said a “national conversation” that helps people identify and stop tolerating this kind of behavior, and for people to share their stories, will create systemic change.

“It’s not about meting out justice to one person,” she added. “I think we have to be very careful about how much attention we want to put on one man…It’s a systemic problem, we have to remember that.”

Berrin said she was sorry how the emphasis had been changed, saying “I regret that any kind of description I offered in my story led to this” focus on the perpetrator’s identity. “That was not my intention.”

(JTA) — A reporter for a U.S. Jewish newspaper alleged in a cover story that she was sexually assaulted by “an accomplished journalist from Israel” during an interview.

Danielle Berrin did not name the journalist in her column published last week in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. She said the incident took place several years ago in the lobby of a hotel.

News of the alleged assault, reported in a column titled “My sexual assault, and yours: Every woman’s story. How the Trump video launched a collective soul-searching over sexual harassment and assault,” began circulating Wednesday in the Israeli media and on social media.

“I’d agreed to meet him, an accomplished journalist from Israel, at his hotel around 10 p.m. He was in the United States only for 48 hours, and told me he was completely booked during the daytime. I believed him,” Berrin, who has worked at the Jewish Journal for the last decade, wrote of the encounter.

“Back then, the book he’d written was among several titles having an impact on the Jewish conversation, and many local community leaders wanted to meet with him. If I was going to be a part of this conversation, this was my opportunity.”

Berrin said the journalist put the interview on hold to ask her some personal questions.

“I’ve learned that if you’re Jewish and younger than 35, your relationship status is typically the first thing another Jew will ask about,” she said. “Besides, the man was married, with children, and a public figure. I figured I was safe. But after I answered one of his questions in a way that moved him, he lurched at me like a barnyard animal, grabbing the back of my head, pulling me toward him.

“I turned my face to the left and bowed my head to avoid his mouth,” she wrote, adding that he asked her to go up to his hotel room and said he had an “arrangement” with his wife.

“In the end, I guess, I consider myself ‘lucky.’ Very, very ‘lucky.’ Because although I was groped and grabbed and pulled — sexually assaulted — I was not raped or otherwise harmed. Many women do not emerge from such situations still whole. Nevertheless, none of this feels like a gift,” Berrin wrote.

She said she told her story in response to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s derogatory and lewd comments about women that were captured on video, providing the impetus for many women to step forward and talk about being sexually assaulted.

JEWISHJOURNAL:

This also wasn’t the first time a man I went to interview has treated me like I was a loaf of warm bread. In fact, my first notable article described another instance of sexual assault on the job — when film director Brett Ratner molested me during my first big Hollywood interview.
In my nearly 10 years in Jewish journalism, I have felt physically vulnerable in professional situations a handful of times. I’ve been demeaned, objectified and infantilized more times than I can count — because I am a woman.
But my story is not unique. Every woman — probably every single woman in this world — knows the feeling I felt walking to my car at night with a man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Most women — and even some men — have stories of sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation over the course of their lifetime. Sometimes it happens in private, sometimes in the light of day. But almost always, these stories remain secret because the consequences of coming forward to expose them often far outweigh the benefits.
Thanks to Donald Trump, that appears to be changing.
The public exposure of the Republican presidential nominee’s lewd comments to Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” awoke a sleeping giant in our culture and put sexual assault at the forefront of the national conversation.
“I think it’s crazy fantastic,” Oscar-nominated filmmaker and activist Amy Ziering told me in an interview.
Ziering and her partner, Kirby Dick, were nominated for an Academy Award for their 2012 documentary, “The Invisible War,” about sexual assault in the U.S. military. Because of the overwhelming response to that film, which screened at the highest levels of the U.S. government, they followed up with the 2015 doc “The Hunting Ground,” about the scourge of sexual violence on college campuses. Despite some criticism of the second film, Ziering and Dick’s work has been widely credited for bringing sexual assault into the national spotlight. But even Ziering is stunned that this topic would become so central in a presidential campaign.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the essential talking point on the national platform for both parties would be sexual assault,” she told me. “And that the two [campaigns would be] duking it out over which team harbors the worse predator. That’s ironically an odd gift that Donald has given the conversation. ‘Make America talk rape again’ should be his slogan.”
Though Trump has dismissed his comments as “locker room talk,” Ziering said such “talk” is still harmful.
“Studies show that actually words lead to incidents of violence,” she said. “When you have cultures that turn a blind eye to derogatory discourse about any kind of ‘other,’ you definitely see a remarkable uptick in violent crimes against the people being disparaged.
“Why are we so offended about using certain terms to describe Black people? Because they correlated to violent acts. We shouldn’t look at these words as so innocent.”
The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Ziering noted that Hitler’s rhetoric — in his writings and speeches — paved the way for policies of extermination.
“We saw this all through Nazi Germany,” Ziering said. “Hitler was very clever in rhetorically renaming Jewish people. It was a campaign over several years, but when you did that, and equated Jews with rats and vermin over and over again, then starting to do things against them was normalized.”

A never-married child of divorce who’s had relationships with at least two rabbis, there’s something broken in the way Danielle relates to men and in the way she uses the Jewish Journal to try to exorcise her demons.

She writes Oct. 5, 2016:

“Dear Friends,” the letter began. “With the high holy days a month away, I write to share some painful news …”
It came from the president of the Miami congregation I grew up in, telling us our longtime senior rabbi had self-reported to the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) that he had engaged in “moral failures” during his service.
Because of this, he is now required to undergo an intensive teshuvah process and has been suspended indefinitely “from the practice of the rabbinate in any institution.”
There are emotions we feel at moments in our lives that are indescribable. For me, this was one of them. And it was compounded by the fact that this was not about my private feelings alone, it was an event that shook our entire community. Most especially, it hurt my rabbi’s family — his four amazing sons and his former wife, a true eshet chayil and balabusta, if ever I’ve met one. For many people, the fallout from this quake will endure.
I first met my rabbi when I was in sixth grade and a student in the synagogue’s day school. We became fast friends when, at 12, I told him he was destroying our community with his plans to remodel our campus and build a new sanctuary. He reported to my mother that I was “petulant.” I took it as a compliment — proud that my personality inspired a word I had to look up in the dictionary.
I still remember the 30 minutes I got to spend with him while preparing for my bat mitzvah. I was mesmerized by the way he opened up the possibilities of Torah and made it a book I wanted to read. I still remember our conversation, how excited I was to write and deliver my drash. In just one meeting, he had awakened me to the essence of Jewish tradition and created in me a craving for Torah that lives to this day. He did the same for my mother, who grew up in a Christian home after her own mother died, inspiring her to re-engage her Judaism as an adult and create a Shabbat experience for her family.
Over the years, my rabbi became a kind of father figure to me. I can’t recount how many times I sat in his study, sharing my struggles and dreams, and seeking his wisdom, which he offered unreservedly. He encouraged me to make the most important decision of my young life — to move to California — and in doing so, helped me become an adult.
Part of me understands why he faltered. That he had a burning need to explore parts of himself and his dreams that had long been prohibited by his circumscribed life as a religious leader. I can imagine the strain he must have felt with all that responsibility — to take on the problems of the world, the politics of a community, the private pain of individual congregants, the needs of a growing family — and how all that left very little space for himself.
But another part of me is disappointed and hurt. He was supposed to be the model of morality, not the transgressor. He was supposed to do better than everyone else.
In the weeks since I read the letter, I’ve wrestled with a central question: Is it unreasonable to expect that our spiritual leaders (and, dare I say, political leaders) should behave better than we do?
Years ago, a young rabbi that I knew told me that, sometimes, what he most craved was “the opposite of responsibility.”

Danielle reminds me of a female friend who keeps getting raped by men she’s dating. She keeps getting into bed naked with them and is then shocked when they take her.

Posted in Abuse, Ari Shavit, Danielle Berrin, Israel, Journalism, Rape | Comments Off on Israelis Finger Ari Shavit For Groping Danielle Berrin