Sharpton to GOP candidates: ignore me, lose the African-American vote

Al Sharpton, it seems, is still having trouble making up his mind. Should he be the pot or the kettle?

Townhall reported today that Sharpton, angry that the supposed non-partisan NAACP was not attracting enough Republicans to its forums, lashed out at the Republican Party's lack of pandering.

"We can only assume you weren't courting us," Sharpton said. "Republicans have to lay out their policies and court the African-American vote."

Obviously, with the detailed plans the Republican presidential candidates have thus far laid out on health care, the war in Iraq, homeland security, taxes, and immigration, Sharpton didn't mean "Republicans have to lay out their policies and court the African-American vote." He meant Republicans have to court the African-American vote. They have already laid out their policies, quite publicly and often.

These tactics are nothing new; in 2004, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond called on the African-American community to oust President George W. Bush because he and his fellow Republicans "preach neutrality and practice racial division."

At the time, Bush's secretary of state was Colin Powell, and his national security advisor was Condoleezza Rice — both African-American. Rice is now, of course, the secretary of state.

Between the abhorrent name-calling practiced by the NAACP (they repeatedly insulted Bush, and compared cabinet members to the Taliban) and its status prohibiting it from participating in partisanship, it was clear that Bond was the one that was "preach[ing] neutrality and practic[ing] racial division."

Sharpton's attempts to force African-Americans to vote against the GOP unless they pander to self-appointed leaders like himself sets African-American political participation back decades, by removing their voting freedom and individuality.

Sharpton's antics are never harmless stunts. It's probably why Jason Whitlock, a columnist for the Kansas City Star who is African-American, called Sharpton and his buddy Jesse Jackson "terrorists" after Sharpton led the charge against Don Imus, leading to Imus's firing.

"Because that's what Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are," Whitlock told MSNBC's Tucker Carlson. "They go around the country lighting fires and dividing people, and then start picking everyone's pocket."

Whitlock, known for his often courageous honesty, was actually being quite literal. Nearly everyone remembers how in 1991, after a Hassidic Jew accidentally ran over an African-American child in Crown Heights, Sharpton led the anti-Semitic riots that ensued, during which rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum, surrounded by a crowd chanting "kill the Jews", was stabbed to death by Sharpton's followers. At the time, Sharpton's term for Jews was "diamond merchants."

And who can forget what happened in 1995, when the Jewish owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem raised the rent on his African-American subtenant? The Jewish owner was forced to raise the rent, of course, because the building's African-American landlord raised the rent on the Jewish owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart.

But that didn't stop Sharpton from rushing to the scene and shouting "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."

Sharpton was successful; the "white interloper" was, thanks to Sharpton's efforts, unable to expand his business. That is because one of Sharpton's followers burned down the store after shooting four employees. Seven employees were killed in the fire. It was a testament to Sharpton's influence, because it happened right after the Sharpton-led mob outside the store shouted "Burn down the Jew store!"

Sharpton's oppression of the African-American community is deplorable. And the candidates who don't kowtow to him or serve his agenda should be commended.

Textbook case of Leftist propaganda

I have to say, this is a first. I have never before been compelled to write something about Israel because of the Quakers.

But the Quakers are owed the lion’s share of credit for this post, because at first I was willing to ignore the news that Labor activist/education minister Yuli Tamir approved the following line in a third-grade textbook meant for Israeli Arabs: “The Arabs call the war ‘nakba,’ a war of disaster and loss, while the Jews call it ‘the War of Independence.’”

The line does three things that makes us question Tamir’s competence as an Israeli education minister (though her resume is now picture-perfect for that same position in Ramallah or Gaza City).

First, the line puts the Arab version of the war before the Israeli version; second, the line lends legitimacy to any discussion about what to name the war, as if it were a personal preference issue and not a state history issue; and third, the line offers a creative definition of the Arabic word “nakba” — it does not mean a “war of disaster and loss”, it means “catastrophe.” There is a significant difference, as well as a simple accuracy issue that shouldn’t slip past an education minister.

Now, back to those Quakers. I wasn’t going to write anything about this, because I naïvely assumed that the world understood that the use of the word nakba was simply an attempt by Arab propagandists to rewrite history — mostly, in fact, to mislead their own people.

Along comes the American Friends Service Committee, a peacenik, campfire, Sesame Street clone of any number of worldwide dovish support groups. In its own words:

"Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims, AFSC's work attracts the support and partnership of people of many races, religions, and cultures.
AFSC's work is based on the Quaker belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice."

Fantastic. They even have a Nobel Peace Prize. Another thing they have is a glossary of terms related to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Here is their definition of nakba: “‘The Catastrophe’ — Refers to the loss of Palestine to the Israelis in the 1948 War.”

Wow. So “Palestine” was lost to “the Israelis” in the war? That sounds terrible. It’s a good thing it’s not true. Not only was the land divided and independence declared before the war, Palestine wasn’t lost to anybody, and the way this is worded, well, it’s a denotation nakba.

The definition is an absolute disaster, and it’s one of the reasons many in the government called for Tamir’s job. Because Arab propaganda spreads so quickly and so thoroughly, Tamir’s nakba textbook description is at best foolish ineptitude and at worst treasonous. There is likely a BBC desk job awaiting Tamir after her work here is done.

One imagines what else is in the “history” book. Does it describe Passover as a holiday when according to Jews we spread haroseth on our matzah but according to Arabs we spread the blood of Christian babies? Does it refer to Jerusalem as al-Quds? Or maybe it offers one of the now-popular and unequivocally ridiculous pieces of propaganda characterizing Jesus as a Palestinian (he was Judean, born in Nazareth long before it was called Syria Palaestina or Palaestina).

The truth is that the Arabs don’t need Tamir’s help; they write their own textbooks — dishonest manuals of hate, racism, and corruption — and far better than what Tamir can write for them. I would suggest she read them, but I don’t want to give her any ideas.

It’s really just self-serving politics; Tamir has a chance to use her platform to release the nakba of her poisonous left-wing imagination.

A new low for terrorist apologists

There is a worthwhile article from today’s Jerusalem Post on Augustus Richard Norton’s new public relations campaign for Hezbollah. Norton is, of course, calling it a “book”, a word that looks great on a resume.

Norton is a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University who has just published “Hezbollah: A Short History”, a whopping 184-page epic about the “complex” nature of Iran’s proxy terror club, though one would think that this magnificent ode to the lighter side of murder — about the size of a feature story in The New Yorker magazine — would be evidence enough that Norton has looked in all the wrong places for “complexity.”

Either way, Jonathan Schanzer’s review in the Post, titled "Answering the call of jihad", exposes Norton as a fraud. I encourage everyone to read the review, so I won’t quote much of it here, but I will point out that according to Schanzer 24 of the 159 pages of written text in the book mention Hezbollah’s impressive record of killing innocent people — what most of us call terrorism, though Norton likes the word resistance.

But this book comes straight from the Leopard Doesn’t Change Its Spots Department. Norton was interviewed by Harper’s Magazine one year ago yesterday, during the Second Lebanon War, which was sparked by a Hezbollah cross-border raid in which three Israeli soldiers were murdered and two were kidnapped (Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the captives, are still missing, and Hezbollah has provided no signs of life).

While Norton’s paid work is done for Boston University, it is his volunteer work that is truly spectacular. A long-time member of Hezbollah’s street team, Norton was called on by Harper’s to explain the war to the masses.

The magazine’s Ken Silverstein asked Norton six questions. The article was titled Six Questions for Augustus Richard Norton on Lebanon.

The first question was “Why did Hezbollah snatch the Israeli prisoners last week?”

In his answer, he showed just why he makes the big bucks as an educator.
“I believe Hezbollah acted autonomously,” he said, claiming that all Hezbollah and Iran share are “a worldview.”

I assume most readers couldn’t stomach the rest of the interview, but those that finished reading found out a whole lot about Norton’s own funhouse mirror-reflection worldview.

For example, Norton says that Israel struck back with force because Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wanted the Israeli defense establishment to hit Iran “indirectly.” But wait, don’t Iran and Hezbollah only share “a worldview”? I was confused, but not as confused as Norton, who said that Hezbollah’s rockets were an impediment to Israel’s coming attempt to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Norton then said that Israel’s reaction was “grossly excessive”, and proceeded to lie about how many Lebanese civilians had been killed and why.

And then Norton finally unmasked himself. After he made the following statement, I exhaled, relieved that he had finally put any credibility he could have possibly had as an academic, informed, sane intellectual. He said Israel had made a profound mistake in another example of “its vainglorious attempts to consolidate hegemony over its neighbors”.

Norton has become the Andromeda Strain of terrorist apologists: at first seemingly dangerous to the point of provoking overreaction, then morphing himself into something so ridiculously insignificant as to become unworthy of anyone’s time or attention.