Rabbi Abraham Cooper

Will the Threat From ISIS End the Double Standard on Israel?

November 23, 2015 by Robert J. Avrech 3 Comments

Welcome to postmodern Europe. — Welcome to Europe.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is one of my oldest friends. We attended Yeshiva Flatbush elementary school together. When Karen and I made our first exploratory trip to Los Angeles, Abe was one of the first people we contacted. At the most difficult time in our lives, Karen and I called on Abe to officiate at our son Ariel Chaim’s funeral. And just last week, Karen and I had a delightful Shabbat dinner at Abe’s home.

Abe has written a sharply focused essay about the IslamoNazi threat to civilization and the double standard applied to the Jewish state by the liberal West.

Jews are butchered in Israel every day. Yet Paris, Brussels, Berlin, London and Stockholm continue to insist, blindly, that the IslamoNazi war on Israel is somehow different.

The End of Pax Americana, The Jews of Ukraine Under Threat — Again

March 3, 2014 by Robert J. Avrech 11 Comments

This monument to the genocidal Jew-killer Bohdan Khmelnytsky still stands proudly in modern day Kiev. — This monument to the genocidal Jew-killer Bohdan Khmelnytsky stands proudly in modern day Kiev.

The Pax Americana which defined and stabilized the post-Soviet world has been discarded by Obama and the Democrat party.

Under the focus-tested phrase “smart power” the Obama Democrats have embraced the inertia of nothingness as foreign policy.

Putin watched as Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, thereby betraying Israel and the Egyptian people; Putin grinned as Obama played Chamberlain to the nuclear Mullahs of Iran. And Putin laughed as Obama erased his Syrian red line, thereby allowing Putin to control the Syrian situation and rescue Assad’s machinery of slaughter. And how Putin must have danced a Hitlerian jig when Chuck Hagel announced that the American military is being eviscerated—in order to make it, um, stronger.

Vladimir, an old and ruthless KGB hand, no doubt recognized the duplicity of Hagel’s Soviet Newspeak.

Putin took the measure of Obama, and correctly concluded that America is willfully making itself over as a power averse, Western European welfare state.

Putin no longer has to worry about a geopolitical leadership that will put limits on his use of military power. There was a time when American presidents projected strength and leadership with the threat of force as a credible deterrent. But Obama’s “leading from behind” is code for surrender, a ghastly punch line for late night television. There is zero chance that Obama will use military force. As for sanctions, well, Putin will run rings around the hapless EU and the equally ineffectual community organizer.

Putin is a predatory wolf. Obama, a slice of meat.

And you better believe that the Chinese are watching Obama carefully.

They say that history repeats itself. This is not true. People repeat themselves. And Obama’s history of appeasement is about to play itself out once again.

In the meantime, the Jews of the Ukraine are under grave threat from all factions.

Jew-Hating US Church Goes Progressively Medieval

February 18, 2014 by Robert J. Avrech 22 Comments

Painting of blood libel in Sandomierz Cathedral

The Jew-hating agenda of Presbyterian Church USA is cloaked in liberal/progressive/leftist/Democrat sloganeering — in other words, Orwellian Newspeak. The PCUSA utilizes the fashionable squawk of social justice, but mixes it with the blood-soaked theology of supersessionism.

The church’s published work, “Zionism Unsettled,” is a poisonous document that argues for delegitimizing Israel. The subtext of this study guide — a media presentation with all the intellectual posturing and iniquity of the Nuremberg Laws — is an attack on Judaism and Torah whose underpinning is the medieval blood libel.

Make no mistake about it: PCUSA has adopted Jew-hatred as official social and theological doctrine.

The following article was written by my two close friends, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein.

Presbyterian churches are teaching that their Jewish neighbors are inherently racist and prone to abusing the rights of others.

That’s the key message of PCUSA’s new congregational study guide, “Zionism Unsettled.” Released by its Israel-Palestine Mission Network, the guide “explores the theological and ethical exceptionalism of Jewish and Christian Zionism, which have been sheltered from open debate despite the intolerable human rights abuses rooted in their core beliefs.”

To be clear, this is no mere attack on Israeli policies, but rather on the very legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise.

PCUSA has theologically resurrected the UN’s infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution (later rescinded). It puts all on notice that lovers of Zion — Jews and Christians alike — are bigots.

To be clear, this is no mere attack on Israeli policies, but rather on the very legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise.
PCUSA’s depiction of Zionism as a sin fills a niche in the global political campaign casting Israel as an illegitimate colonial/historic mistake. It also means that a major (albeit ageing and shrinking) mainline Protestant denomination declares the majority of Jews to be a bunch of morally decadent untermenschen, worthy of condemnation and disparagement. Will the faithful now be taught that Jews are people like us, just a little less so?

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Warrior: Ariel Sharon, 1928 – 2014

January 13, 2014 by Robert J. Avrech 11 Comments

Oct. 10, 1973. Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon, right, consults a battlefield map with Maj. Gen. Haim Bar-Lev in the Sinai desert, during the Yom Kippur War.

The first few days of the Yom Kippur War were confusing and frightening.

We heard that things were going badly for Israel on both fronts. Later, after the war, we learned that Moshe Dayan told Prime Minister Golda Meir that the Third Commonwealth was about to fall.

Turning the tide of war called for operational genius.

Ariel Sharon had that genius, and a plan. There was a narrow gap in the Egyptian line. Sharon believed he could cross the Suez, and exploit that seam. Sharon’s superiors had little faith in Sharon’s plan. They ordered Sharon to stop sending forces across the canal. Instead, they wanted him to widen the gap on the Israeli side of the Suez.

Sharon read the battlefield differently. He knew that only decisive, offensive action could rescue the Jewish state. His plan, grandiose and brilliant, was to cross the canal, encircle the Egyptian Third Army, and threaten that army with complete annihilation.

Sharon’s military superiors believed the Egyptians would sniff out the plan, close the gap, and destroy Sharon’s small, vulnerable force.

Sharon disobeyed orders. He claimed there were communication problems. Perhaps the oldest, most reliable fiction soldiers use to neutralize their commanders.

Sharon knew from years of fighting Arab armies that attacking from the rear, destroying the missiles that wreaked havoc on the Israeli Air Force, ambushing reinforcements, destroying supply depots, and sowing chaos across the entire front, would cause the Egyptian army to collapse. Arab armies are notoriously unimaginative when face with a nimble, improvisational enemy. They have a tendency to fall back into a defensive, suicidal posture.

And this is exactly what happened.

Of course, Sharon’s superiors were furious with him. But deep down, they knew that the man who had defied them, had saved the Jewish State.

Sacred Heart Nazis

October 3, 2011 by Robert J. Avrech 17 Comments

Sacred_Heart_Nazi_Parade_2 — Sacred Heart Nazi parade in Thailand.

With a population of 64 million, there are less than 1,000 Jews living in Thailand—formerly Siam, as in The King and I, 1956—a predominantly Buddhist country.

And yet Jew-hatred is alive and well.

Which just goes to show that the absence of Jews does not preclude Jew-hatred. Just look at the Arab Muslim world, Judenrein by force, where Jew-hatred is mother’s milk.

Sacred_Heart_Nazi_Parade_3-small — Instead of teaching the Catechism, Sacred Heart children learn the Seig Heil.

My friend, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, guides our attention to a disgraceful parade by the exclusive Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The parade was led by students who gave the Seig Heil salute and carried Nazi flags. Gun-toting adults proudly accompanied their children. The march started on the school grounds and continued into the streets of the adjoining neighborhood.

Sacred_Heart_Nazi_Parade_5-small — Sacred Heart's version of Mommy & Me. Sweet.

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