BlackballingTimTebow

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Is David Yerushalmi Jewish?

Posted on 16:53 by Unknown
Previously we wrote about anti-Shariah crusader David Yerushalmi. He is back in the news again at the National Review and Mother Jones, according to Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches.

A strong objection at NR to Yerushalmi's crusade is that he proposes a preemptive solution to a problem that does not yet exist.

On 7/31/11 we wrote: The Times has a front page article on the lawyer, David Yerushalmi, "The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement" by Andrea Elliot. It is quite negative in tone, critical of his anti-Shariah agenda, his campaign against Islamic law.

We are opposed to every facet of Yerushalmi's bigoted campaign. Let us make it as clear as possible. Attacking Sharia as an evil by association with terrorism is equivalent to attacking Nike shoes because terrorists wear them. Law, scripture, propaganda -- all those can be the clothing of evil and terror. Going after the garb to make it outlawed is a misdirection of gargantuan proportions that will accomplish nothing except to engender a backlash.

Finally, the Times is catching up and catching on. Nearly five months ago we criticized this agenda, based on what we read in a Mother Jones article. On 3/7/2011, we posted this about David Yerushalmi:

Yes, David Yerushalmi is a Jew. According to an email by him published in Mother Jones, he is an Orthodox, practicing Jew. He says, "My parents are Russian Jewish immigrants who came to this country ...in the 20th century." Yerushalmi is an attorney and a right wing political activist.

The article in Mother Jones is quite negative and accusatory from the title on through, "Meet the White Supremacist Leading the GOP's Anti-Sharia Crusade." Its author Tim Murphy summarizes his attack on Yerushalmi, "States across the country are considering far-right bills to ban Islamic law. For that, we have hate-group leader David Yerushalmi to thank."

He goes on to describe the Yerushalmi campaign quite negatively:
Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make "material support" for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.

The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn't come out of nowhere. Though it's the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. (A court might refer to Sharia law in child custody or prisoner rights cases.) Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states. And while fears of an impending caliphate are myriad on the far-right, the surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a "war against Islam" and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.
The anti-Sharia movement gets quite Talmudic in the ways that tries to avoid the appearance of racism, while accomplishing its anti-Islamic aims. Yerushalmi's sample legislation, which he promotes, cloaks itself in language substitutions, as in,
...a sample bill Yerushalmi drafted at the behest of the American Public Policy Alliance, a right-wing organization established with the goal of protecting American citizens from "the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law."

In a 40-minute PowerPoint that's available on the organization's site, Yerushalmi explained the ins and outs of the sample legislation. His bills differ from the failed Oklahoma amendment in one key way: They don't mention Sharia. Instead, they focus more broadly on "foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines." As Yerushalmi explained in an interview with the nativist New English Review in December, the language is "facially neutral," thereby achieving the same result while "avoiding the sticky problems of our First Amendment jurisprudence."
We are not pleased to read about Yerushalmi accusations that he supports racists and racism,
Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that's consistent with SANE's mission statement, which emphasizes that "America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white." And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews "destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite." Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the "undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State."

Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. He's been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times. And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox.
Oy, we are liberal and Jewish and simply don't like being compared to "a fatal parasite" -- so Mr. Yerushalmi has not exactly won us over, even with his sharply argued Talmudic rhetoric.

The man replies after the fact to the article, having refused to be interviewed by the writer whom he accuses of "bigoted journalism." Okay but why now write an email? In it Yerushalmi denies that he is a "white supremacist" because, "As an Orthodox Jew, whose grandparents and parents were immigrants to this country, I am the first person that real white supremacists wish to murder. Have you not read neo-Nazi or KKK literature?" Murphy probably did read that literature, which adds to the contradictions that enhance the newsworthiness of this story.

Yerushalmi denies he is racist, even though he admits that his writings are suffused with racist discussions.

And he gets worked up because something else Murphy says.
Secondly, you suggest I am a racist because I criticize liberal Jews. I dare say that insofar as I am an orthodox, practicing Jew, my criticism of liberal Jews can hardly be counted as "racism;" yet, indeed, you make this asinine argument.
This fails the Talmud test, there is no logic here in the refutation. If Murphy sees fit to apply the tag racist to a Jew because of how he attacks other Jews, that is his right - and it is all the more ironic and interesting.

And then we listen as Mr. Yerushalmi calls other charges in Murphy's essay, "patently absurd" or a "patent falsehood" or "a bigoted ad hominem attack" and threatens Murphy with "a legal brief" and implies that he will sue Murphy for "actual malice."

Whew!

We are grateful that this article and reply came out before the Jewish holiday of Purim. It gives us a chance to point out a timely seasonal irony.

To preface this, when we were twelve we wrote a school report on Judah P. Benjamin, a Jewish politician who supported slavery in the US Senate and then rose to political prominence in the Confederacy during the civil war. While in the Senate, once after Benjamin delivered an eloquent pro-slavery speech, one of his opponents rose to criticize Benjamin, calling him "an Israelite with Egyptian tendencies." Even at the age of twelve we could see that this a was delicious political rhetorical irony.

Shifting to the case at hand, the enemy of the Jews in the book of Esther is the nefarious Haman, the Agagite.

He conspires with the King of Persia in a racist anti-Semitic plot to have the Jews killed,
Then Haman said to King Ahasverus, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not for the king's profit to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed..." (Esther 3:8-9).
Well certainly, Yerushalmi is not seeking to pass legislation to kill all the Muslims in our kingdom.

But  he does go after a certain people dispersed among us, the Muslims. And he does go after their laws that are different from those of every other people. We do think it is fair to rise in the chamber of debate and to ask ironically, is Mr. Yerushalmi a Jew with Agagite tendencies? Is he acting in ways that appear nefarious and racist against another people? Obviously, Murphy thinks that he is, and it makes for an interesting article.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in antiSemitism, islam, politics, Purim, religion, wingnuts | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • Thanksgiving Turkey Drumstick Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin Pie Table Song - A Lone Pumpkin Grew
    Thanksgiving will be upon us soon and we sing traditional holiday songs at our Thanksgiving dinner. Here are the words to one of our favorit...
  • Update on the Insults: A Battle Over a Book: Haym Soloveitchik v. Talya Fishman
    Our once-upon-a-time teacher at Yeshiva University has panned a new book about rabbinic cultural development. It's a veritable battle ov...
  • Is Sigourney Weaver Jewish?
    Now it is far-fetched that anybody would think that actress Sigourney Weaver is Jewish. No, Sigourney Weaver is not a Jew. The tall actress ...
  • Is John Oliver Jewish?
    John Oliver is filling in for Jon Stewart this summer, 2013. He is one funny dude. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full...
  • Free Download of the Soncino Talmud in English Online at Halakhah.com: 25,000+ satisfied customers a month
    The Soncino Babylonian Talmud English translation is online - at a site that is not anti-Semitic or polemical. Download the Talmud in Englis...
  • Was Christopher Columbus Jewish?
    Yes, Christopher Columbus was a Jew according to some historians. Charles Garcia, writing via CNN, summarized the case for Columbus the Jew ...
  • Is Paul Volcker Jewish?
    No, we do not think that former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is a Jew. According to reporter Roni Sofer of the usually reliable Is...
  • Rav Soloveitchik's Dissertation at the University of Berlin
    In honor of the 20th yahrzeit of the Rav's passing (on Hol HaMoed Pesach, the 18th of Nisan, in 1993) and of the 110th year since his bi...
  • How Peter Salovey is related to Rav J. B. Soloveitchik
    In a comment to a Yale Daily News story , Peter Salovey, president of Yale explained his relationship to Rav Soloveitchik. (Hat tip to Billy...
  • Note to Self: Do not wear Geox shoes in the rain or snow. They have little holes in soles!
    We wear Geox shoes almost all the time nowadays. They are truly more comfortable for someone like us who mainly sits at a desk throughout th...

Categories

  • 9/11 (1)
  • Alan F. Segal (1)
  • amazon (33)
  • antiSemitism (14)
  • apocalyptic (1)
  • apple (11)
  • archetypes (35)
  • are-they-jewish? (73)
  • ariely (1)
  • art (18)
  • atlantic beach (3)
  • audio book (1)
  • barack (20)
  • baseball (2)
  • beyond belief (1)
  • bible (48)
  • bloggers (12)
  • bobby knight (1)
  • book club (3)
  • book serialization (14)
  • books (83)
  • boteach (2)
  • brooklyn (10)
  • buddhism (5)
  • christianity (59)
  • circumcision (3)
  • copyright (4)
  • daf yomi (4)
  • daphne (1)
  • dead-sea-scrolls (4)
  • dirty tricks (4)
  • egalitarianism (3)
  • einstein (2)
  • film (20)
  • footnote (2)
  • gay rights (12)
  • golf (8)
  • google (15)
  • haaretz (5)
  • haggadah (9)
  • Harvard (1)
  • hasidism (17)
  • health (36)
  • heath (1)
  • hebrew (18)
  • history (12)
  • Holocaust (18)
  • huckabee (1)
  • hullin (3)
  • humor (76)
  • inventions (30)
  • iPad (12)
  • iPhone (9)
  • Is-it-kosher? (46)
  • islam (19)
  • israel (108)
  • juergensmeyer (2)
  • kabbalah (12)
  • kaddish (6)
  • kindle (33)
  • kosher (16)
  • kugel (1)
  • kushner (1)
  • laptops (1)
  • lex talionis (1)
  • madoff (15)
  • madonna (4)
  • Maimonides (5)
  • meditation (22)
  • menorah (2)
  • Merkin (10)
  • microsoft (1)
  • Minnesota (8)
  • Mishnah (2)
  • money (65)
  • mormons (5)
  • morton smith (3)
  • music (29)
  • nazis (3)
  • netanyahu (1)
  • New York Jews (46)
  • norman lamm (5)
  • obama (19)
  • orthodox (86)
  • Passover (20)
  • politics (91)
  • pools (13)
  • prayer (92)
  • Purim (9)
  • rabbis (124)
  • rahm emanuel (1)
  • rav (15)
  • recipes (2)
  • religion (170)
  • schachter (1)
  • science (45)
  • shaiel (1)
  • sikhs (3)
  • smoking (2)
  • software (6)
  • soloveitchik (17)
  • soul (2)
  • sports (47)
  • statins (1)
  • supreme court (1)
  • Surfing (1)
  • synagogues (73)
  • talmud (117)
  • Talmudic Books (30)
  • teaneck (37)
  • terrorism (6)
  • texas (1)
  • Thanksgiving (4)
  • theodicy (1)
  • tim tebow (3)
  • universities (56)
  • videos (19)
  • wikipedia (1)
  • wine (3)
  • wingnuts (22)
  • women (64)
  • yeshiva (41)
  • yiddish (5)
  • youkilis (2)
  • zev zahavy (21)
  • zichron ephraim (12)
  • zionism (21)

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (187)
    • ►  August (5)
    • ►  July (30)
    • ►  June (23)
    • ►  May (25)
    • ►  April (30)
    • ►  March (33)
    • ►  February (17)
    • ►  January (24)
  • ▼  2012 (313)
    • ►  December (31)
    • ►  November (23)
    • ►  October (16)
    • ►  September (15)
    • ►  August (20)
    • ►  July (20)
    • ▼  June (34)
      • Is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor Jewish?
      • Is Peter B. Madoff Jewish?
      • Where is the Fifth Avenue Synagogue?
      • New Yorker's Talmudic Account of a Madoff Panel
      • J. Ezra Merkin settles Madoff-related lawsuit with...
      • Video: The Jewish Channel Exposes Anti-Zionist Wor...
      • Slate: What is the Penalty for Eating a Non-Kosher...
      • AP: Blackwell Burke Law Firm has Sued ConAgra Food...
      • Book Notice: Relics for the Present: Contemporary ...
      • Is David Yerushalmi Jewish?
      • SPIEGEL: A Tired and Withdrawn Pope Ignores the Va...
      • Happy Father's Day? Celebrate the Life of Your Dad
      • Please Excuse My Son's Absence from Class. He will...
      • Teaneck's Moshe Butler pleads guilty to criminal ...
      • Get the Kindle Babylonian Talmud in English
      • A Hebrew Charter School is Seeking Approval for a ...
      • Are Mormons Jewish?
      • Are New Jersey Jews Jewish?
      • The Astounding Koren Talmud Bavli has a little sis...
      • Is Philosophy Jewish?
      • Is it Kosher? Rabbi Yona Metzger, Chief Rabbi of I...
      • Love at First Sight - the Koren Talmud Bavli Berak...
      • Is Quentin Tarantino Jewish?
      • Talmudic Sexual Practices and Menstruating Women -...
      • WSJ Video Interview with Israeli-Iranian Singer Ri...
      • Check out The Hebrew Scriptures in Judaism and Chr...
      • Times: Vatican Cracks Down on What is Kosher Catho...
      • Teaneck Deputy Mayor Adam Gussen for Congress agai...
      • The Introduction to Zev Zahavy's book, "Whence an...
      • Is Bar Refaeli Jewish?
      • Sunday - Free Kindle Book - Define Judaism by Tzve...
      • ADL: Arabic Talmud has 'dangerous and defamatory' ...
      • PUBLIC PRAYER AND THE SHALIACH TZIBUR - free in PDF
      • TNR: Peter Schäfer Pans Daniel Boyarin's Jesus Book
    • ►  May (19)
    • ►  April (38)
    • ►  March (39)
    • ►  February (31)
    • ►  January (27)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile