Starfish Takes A Wife
Posted on December 18, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
There are seven million Jews in Israel, and seven million Jews in America. The homophobic rabbi claims he speaks – for all Jews – thus I use “Jews” rather than Israelites.
Maoz and Kirill – sound like the same person! Astronaut Scott Kelly said Putin is conducting “gendercide” in Ukraine. He wanted to say “terrorist bombing”. Write your Congressman and Jewish groups in America, and insist Moaz clarify his relationship with Russia – and distant himself from Putin and Kirill.
The Senate is going to vote to codify Same Sex Marriage. My James Bond novel ‘The Royal Janitor – has come true. FOR REAL Victoria Rosemond Bond is fighting the enemies of Democracy.
Scroll down to read about Jewish groups condemning Trump having famous Anti-Semites for dinner!
INSANE! UNREAL!
John Presco
Long suspected of having once been an agent of the KGB — the Soviet era security service that frequently singled out religious dissidents — Kirill is a symbol of the resurgence of the Orthodox Church under Putin, who has used religion to bolster his nationalistic, anti-Western vision. In 2013, Kirill decried same-sex marriage as “a very dangerous sign of the apocalypse.” Four years later, he criticized Western Europe for the “grave mistake” of straying from Christianity.
on November 10, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The prospect of a hardline, ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic, homophobic nationalist being appointed as the next government’s head of “Jewish identity” was met with staunch rebuke from politicians from the outgoing coalition on Sunday, with lawmakers slamming the move by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu as “insanity,” “racist” and “unreal.”
Avi Maoz, the single lawmaker of the fringe Noam party, is one of the Knesset’s most far-right politicians, holding non-pluralist Jewish views and sexist, anti-LGBT and anti-Arab positions.
Maoz has also said that he wants to increase Jewish education in Israeli public schools and wants to scrap unspecified “progressive study programs,” including undefined “gender studies.” Maoz has recently advocated shutting down Pride parades, reinstating “mother” and “father” on government forms in lieu of the newly-adopted “parent,” and enabling now-banned and debunked gay conversion therapy.
He will be appointed as a deputy minister and head a to-be-created authority for Jewish identity, which will be housed under the Prime Minister’s Office, following an agreement signed Sunday with Netanyahu.
While Netanyahu’s Likud only shared partial details of the agreement, the party said that among the organizations to be transferred to Maoz’s authority is Nativ, which is responsible for processing Jewish immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union.
Maoz has said he wants to constrain eligibility for Jewish immigration to Israel by removing the ability for grandchildren of Jews who are not Jews themselves to qualify under Israel’s Law of Return.
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Many immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union obtain their citizenship under the so-called grandfather clause, and transferring the office that handles their applications to Maoz’s purview may affect their processing.
MK Avi Maoz, left, and Likud head Benjamin Netanyahu after signing a coalition deal on November 27, 2022. (Courtesy, Likud)
Maoz and religious political allies are also pushing to carve out non-Orthodox conversion to Judaism from acceptable proofs of Jewishness for immigration.
His Noam party has likened Reform Jews to the Nazis.
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Maoz has also said that he wants to increase Jewish education in Israeli public schools and wants to scrap unspecified “progressive study programs,” including undefined “gender studies.” Maoz has recently advocated shutting down Pride parades, reinstating “mother” and “father” on government forms in lieu of the newly-adopted “parent,” and enabling now-banned and debunked gay conversion therapy.
Trump’s Jewish Allies Denounce Dinner With Kanye West and Nick Fuentes
Story by Jonathan Weisman • Yesterday 7:29 PM
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For much of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, Jewish Republicans rationalized away the bigoted fringe of Mr. Trump’s coalition, arguing that the unsavory supporters in his midst and the antisemitic tropes he deployed paled in comparison with the staunchly pro-Israel policies of his administration.
Former President Donald J. Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference in Las Vegas on a video call this month.© Mikayla Whitmore for The New York Times
But last week, Mr. Trump dined at his Palm Beach palace, Mar-a-Lago, with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, granting the antisemitic fringe a place of honor at his table. Now, even some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters say they can no longer ignore the abetting of bigotry by the nominal leader of the Republican Party.
“I am a child of survivors. I have become very frightened for my people,” Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, said on Monday, referring to his parents’ survival of the Holocaust. “Donald Trump is not an antisemite. He loves Israel. He loves Jews. But he mainstreams, he legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters. And this scares me.”
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Not all Republican leaders have spoken out, but Jewish Republicans are slowly peeling away from a former president who, for years, insisted he had no ties to the bigoted far right, but refused to repudiate it. Jewish figures and organizations that have stood by Mr. Trump, from Mr. Klein’s group to the pro-Trump commentator Ben Shapiro to Mr. Trump’s own former ambassador to Israel and onetime bankruptcy lawyer, David M. Friedman, have all spoken out since the dinner.
Kanye West and Mr. Trump at the White House in 2018.© Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
For Jews, the concern extends far beyond a single meal at Mar-a-Lago, though that dinner has become a touchstone, especially for Jewish Republicans.
Neo-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.© Edu Bayer for The New York Times
“We have a long history in this country of separating the moral character of the man in the White House from his conduct in office, but with Trump, it’s gone beyond any of the reasonably acceptable and justifiable norms,” Jay Lefkowitz, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and a supporter of many of Mr. Trump’s policies, said on Monday.
For American Jewry, the debate since the dinner has brought into focus what may be the most discomfiting moment in U.S. history in a half-century or more.
“The normalization of antisemitism is here,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League.
On Monday afternoon, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, went to the Senate floor to denounce Mr. Trump’s actions as “disgusting and dangerous,” then called them “pure evil.”
Mr. West, a figure with an enormous following, has espoused hatred of the Jews. The basketball star Kyrie Irving has spread antisemitic views with a tweet, though he eventually apologized. Neo-Nazis are returning to Twitter, bringing memes and coded messages not seen for years, now that its new owner, Elon Musk, has reinstated accounts that had been blocked for bigotry. Mr. Musk himself on Monday tweeted a cartoon of “Pepe” the frog, a symbol adopted by the alt-right segment of the white supremacist movement. That followed a tweet last month of a German soldier from World War II, which was cited by white nationalist Telegram accounts as evidence of Mr. Musk’s like-mindedness.
Activists wearing the flag of Israel at a rally against antisemitism last year in Washington.© Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
And House Republican leaders say they will reinstate Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, and Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, to committees from which they were jettisoned by Democrats in part for their antisemitic comments or associating with white supremacists like Mr. Fuentes.
Related video: How will Trump’s dinner with Kanye West, Nick Fuentes impact his presidential ambitions?
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How will Trump’s dinner with Kanye West, Nick Fuentes impact his presidential ambitions?
“The level of antisemitism being expressed, antisemitic acts at a very elevated level, and the acceptability of antisemitism — it is all creating an environment which is, thank God, unusual for the United States, and it has to be nipped in the bud. That’s it. That’s the moment we’re in,” said Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, which represents the branch of Judaism that has been most supportive of Mr. Trump.
Peter Hayes, a Northwestern University historian, drew comparisons to the 1930s, when popular figures like Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin used newspapers, radio broadcasts and the speakers circuit to echo the antisemitism then taking root in Germany. American Jews were deeply divided over whether to confront Nazism head-on through protests and boycotts or to work behind the scenes out of fear of inflaming antisemitism, said Mr. Hayes, a scholar of that era.
Now, Mr. West has promised on Twitter to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” The comedian Dave Chappelle delivered a stinging monologue on “Saturday Night Live” on “the Jews” and their numbers in Hollywood. And at the same time, American Jewry is divided over whether denunciations of Mr. Trump might harm American policy toward Israel, should he return to power, Mr. Hayes said.
“The more people prioritize Israel, the more they are willing to make excuses for Trump, and that just makes me sad,” he said.
Mr. Trump tried during his presidency to keep the racists and antisemites who supported him at an arm’s distance without banishing them altogether. Many Jews accepted the sleight of hand because his policies delivered gift after gift to the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu: moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, relentlessly pressuring the Palestinians, recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights, scuttling the nuclear accord with Iran, pursuing peace accords between Israel and the Gulf States, and above all, dropping any pressure to dismantle Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The issue nearly came to a head after the racist, antisemitic “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when Mr. Trump said there had been “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly confrontation. Prominent Jewish members of his administration nearly resigned over Mr. Trump’s refusal to renounce the bigotry more forcefully.
Mr. Klein, in an interview, again defended Mr. Trump’s actions on Charlottesville, though he acknowledged being troubled by the president’s failure to clarify his “both sides” remark. Even now, Mr. Klein conceded, denouncing Mr. Trump was difficult for him. His group honored the former president at a gala on Nov. 13 for his actions on behalf of Israel, “and,” Mr. Klein said, “he deserved it.”
But Mr. Trump’s excuses for dining with Mr. Fuentes and Mr. West — that he didn’t know the white supremacist and was offering his help to the musician — have fallen short. On Monday, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, wrote on Twitter, “President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites. These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, denounced the dinner as well.
Mr. Shapiro, who came under near-constant attack in 2016 from neo-Nazi Trump supporters but stood by Mr. Trump at the time nonetheless, also rejected the former president’s excuses: “A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know,” he wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
The Orthodox Union not only called on Mr. Trump to condemn his dinner guests and cut all ties with them, but also asked “responsible leaders — especially those in the Republican Party — to speak up, as former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has, and be counted among those who explicitly reject antisemitism.” Quoting the Talmud, Rabbi Hauer, the group’s executive vice president, said Mr. Trump’s good deeds on Israel did not negate his bad deeds on hate, and vice versa.
“That’s what makes life complex,” he said.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who harbors ambitions to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, said, “I hope someday we won’t have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done. In this instance, it’s important to respond.” He accused the former president of “empowering” the country’s bigoted extremes.
Others seem to have equivocated as they waited to see whether Mr. Trump would again weather the controversy. The Republican Jewish Coalition’s initial statement condemned Mr. Fuentes and Mr. West for their “virulent antisemitism” but did not mention the former president, instead calling “on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership meeting this month in Las Vegas.© Mikayla Whitmore for The New York Times
Facing criticism, Matt Brooks, the group’s executive director, then followed with, “Let me dumb it down for y’all. We didn’t mention Trump in our @rjc statement even though it’s obviously in response to his meeting because we wanted it to be a warning to ALL Republicans. Duh!”
Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary under George W. Bush and a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board, said he accepted Mr. Trump’s statement that he didn’t know Mr. Fuentes. But he said Mr. Trump should have added that, “had he known, Fuentes would never have been allowed into Mar-a-Lago.”
Still, Mr. Fleischer tempered his criticism of Mr. Trump with an old photo of former President Barack Obama with Louis Farrakhan, the virulently antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam. And he added, in an email: “I should also mention that I do not consider Trump an anti-Semite and I remain appreciative of his deep support for Israel and for the four peace treaties he helped secure in the Middle East. I do consider the former president someone who mistakenly succumbs to flattery from dangerous places.”
Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s vice president, also said Monday that he did not believe Mr. Trump was an antisemite or a racist. But he told Leland Vittert on the broadcaster NewsNation that Mr. Trump had “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving those individuals a seat at the table” and that he should apologize and “denounce them without qualification.”
Many Republicans have said nothing, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who aspires to become the House speaker next year, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s strongest rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Calls and emails to Jewish figures of Mr. Trump’s administration, such as former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and to prominent Jewish Republican donors including Miriam Adelson, Lewis Eisenberg and Paul Singer, all went unanswered. Gary Cohn, a senior economic adviser who nearly quit after Charlottesville, declined to comment. Ron Lauder, a prominent fund-raiser, issued a statement reading, “Nick Fuentes is a virulent antisemite and Holocaust denier plain and simple. It is inconceivable that anyone would associate with him.”
For his part, Mr. Trump shows no sign of contrition. His spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, told a right-wing broadcaster on Monday that Mr. Trump was “probably the most pro-Israel president we’ve ever had,” then added: “President Trump is not going to shy away from meeting with Kanye West.
Gov’t leaders, LGBTQ+ groups fume over Netanyahu-Avi Maoz agreement
Story by By JERUSALEM POST STAFF AND ELIAV BREUER • Sunday
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Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Israel’s top LGBTQ+ advocacy group all condemned prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition deal with MK Avi Maoz’s one-man Noam faction on Sunday.
MK Avi Maoz attends an Arrangements Committee meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, on June 21, 2021© (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
As part of the agreement signed between the Likud and Maoz’s religious extremist party, Noam’s one and only MK will serve as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, in charge of a new “National Jewish Identity Department.”
A ‘low point’ for the State of Israel
The Aguda – The Association for LGBTQ+ Equality in Israel said the inclusion of Maoz in Netanyahu’s future government is a “low point” for the State of Israel.
“The man who called us perverts and pedophiles, and referred to our sexual orientations as ‘upside down,’ has no right being a deputy minister in an Israeli government,” the Agudah said in a statement. “His work revolves around an obsession to take away rights from the LGBTQ+ community and to legitimize hate against it.
Noam MK Avi Maoz attends a discussion at the Knesset, at the assembly hall of the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, on November 22, 2022. (credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)© Provided by The Jerusalem Post
Noam MK Avi Maoz attends a discussion at the Knesset, at the assembly hall of the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, on November 22, 2022. (credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)
“We will not allow even the slightest violation of our rights,” the LGBTQ+ group stated, further warning the incoming government that any such attack on the pride community’s rights will be followed by a “widespread public response by the dominant majority within the Israeli public.”
“[Avi Maoz’s] work revolves around an obsession to take away rights from the LGBTQ+ community”The Aguda – The Association for LGBTQ+ Equality in Israel
Last week, Maoz spoke out against Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton’s new set of guidelines for how to treat LGBTQ+ kids in school that were designed to protect the children. In the Knesset, he said that these guidelines violate the children’s rights and that the parents’ consent and knowledge of the guidelines was more important. He ended by mocking Shasha-Biton and asking her if she prefers to be addressed as ma’am or sir.
Related video: Israel coalition talks: Netanyahu signs deal anti-LGBTQ radical
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Israel coalition talks: Netanyahu signs deal anti-LGBTQ radical
Lapid was also quick to respond to the agreement, writing on Twitter that “it appears that, instead of a ‘fully right-wing’ government, the one being formed is fully unhinged.”
עם כל יום שעובר מסתמן שבמקום ממשלת ימין על מלא, נבנית פה ממשלת טרלול על מלא. העובדה שנתניהו ימנה את אבי מעוז, נציגו של הרב טאו, לסגן שר בלשכת רה”מ היא לא פחות מטירוף הדעת. pic.twitter.com/Y0pcEDwgUQ— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) November 27, 2022
“Netanyahu hiring Avi Maoz, rabbi [Zvi] Thau‘s representative, as deputy minister is nothing short of insanity,” the prime minister said.
Gantz also condemned the coalition agreement, saying that Maoz’s Jewish identity is a “racist identity. We will fight this extremist Netanyahu government with all the tools at hand,” he stressed on Twitter.
זו לא זהות יהודית – זו זהות גזענית.
ניאבק בממשלה הקיצונית של נתניהו בכל הכלים שברשותנו. pic.twitter.com/XzjWBvx2xa— בני גנץ – Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) November 27, 2022
Maoz to take charge of Israeli body in contact with Russian Jewry
In addition, Maoz will also take charge of “Nativ,” a body within the Prime Minister’s Office charged with liaising with Jewish communities mainly in the former Soviet Union, his spokesman confirmed. The organization can determine the eligibility of people wishing to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.
This drew the condemnation of the Reform Movement, which stated it “would like to remind the incoming new department head that there is more than one way to be Jewish.
“Avi Maoz, who received a job laden with funds from [Netanyahu], will not decide for millions of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora what those ways are.”
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