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<p>Now and then I get letters and e-mail messages asking why I am so "obsessed" with Jews and Israel. The question amuses me. It would be one thing if I often wrote about Mali, or Honduras, or Borneo, or any other nation or country most people remember only as a name from geography class.</p>

In this so-called ‘post-racial’ era, Halloween has become a new forum to push the envelope matters pertaining to race, free speech, and being funny, or what we think is funny. We’ve seen the images of the Ray Rice costume – complete with black face and a jersey dragging around a black female doll made to resemble his wife Janay. We’ve seen the image of someone dressed as a bullet ridden Trayvon Martin. We’ve seen the Halloween front yard featuring trees with lynched effigys. I’m pretty sure that an image of a Michael Brown, Darren Wilson or Eric ray riceGarner...

Tuesday, October 28, 2014 The Fat Terrorist Will Sing Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The protest has been held and the Death of Klinghoffer will go on. The fat terrorist will sing, the media will chant his praises and the old sad story of failed Jewish activism in America will go on. After the behind-the-scenes lobbying and the ignored letters to the editor, a protest rally fronted by two out of work Republican politicians brought more attention to the Met's pro-terrorist opera without doing anything to actually stop it from going forward. Rudy Giuliani, the protest's...

The Palestinian Authority has launched a campaign for the release of a Palestinian terrorist captured in Iraq. PA Local Authorities Minister Saeb Erekat said the arrest of Abul Abbas, head of the Palestine Liberation Front, violates the 1995 accord with Israel that granted amnesty for all Palestinian insurgents. Erekat said the agreement was also signed by then-President Bill Clinton. "The Palestinian-Israeli interim agreement signed on September 28, 1995 stated that members of the Palestine Liberation Organization must not be detained or tried for matters they committed before the Oslo peace accord of September 13, 1993," Erekat said. "This interim agreement...

TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LANDPalestinians honor Achille Lauro hijackerTerrorist responsible for killing Jewish American 'great national fighter' Posted: March 26, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Known globally for ordering an attack in which a wheelchair-bound Jewish American tourist was shot and thrown overboard from a cruiseliner, Muhammad Abbas nevertheless was eulogized by Palestinians this week as a "great national fighter." Abu Abbas The leader of the Palestine Liberation Front terrorist group, who died in a U.S. prison in Baghdad, was buried Tuesday in Syria. He was responsible for the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro in Italy in which Leon Klinghoffer...

“I will set no base thing before mine eyes; I hate the doing of things crooked; it shall not cleave unto me.” (Psalms 101:3) he New York Metropolitan Opera has decided to cancel the simultaneous broadcast of controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” during its upcoming season but has agreed to host the show in the upcoming season. The American opera, by composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, portrays the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger liner by the Palestine Liberation Front, during which Jewish-American hostage Leon Klinghoffer was murdered and thrown overboard. The English-language opera has been...

U.S. convicts "Prince of Marbella" of arms deal Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:17pm EST By Edith Honan NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal jury convicted a Syrian arms dealer and a co-defendant on Thursday of conspiring to sell $1 million in weapons...Monzer al-Kassar, 62, a longtime resident of Spain known as the "Prince of Marbella" for his lifestyle in the glitzy seaside town... Kassar has been selling weapons since the 1970s to the Palestinian Liberation Front and clients in Nicaragua, Bosnia, Croatia, Iran, Iraq and Somalia. In 1995, Kassar was tried and acquitted of supplying arms that were used...

One of the Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed an American Jewish passenger in 1985 has been released after more than 23 years in jail, officials said Thursday. Youssef Magied al-Molqui left prison in Palermo, Sicily, on Wednesday and was transferred to a holding center for immigrants in nearby Trapani while officials work to expel him, police in the Sicilian capital said.

The ringleader of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro ship will be expelled from Italy to Syria, the Associated Press reports. Youssef Magied al-Molqui has served only 23 years of his 30-year jail sentence for his role in the hijacking and murder of wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer. Italy’s Attorney General Gianfranco Pagano said that Molqui was to be flown on Saturday from his holding cell in Sicily to Rome and then onto Damascus. Molqui's claim that he should not be expelled due to his marriage to an Italian citizen was rejected by an Italian court. Nor did his...

Abu Abbas, mastermind of 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, dies of natural causes in U.S. custody in Iraq, says source

The Metropolitan Opera, despite vigorous opposition from many parts of the Jewish Community, is forging ahead with its plans to present the opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” during its Fall 2014 season. After a campaign of letter writing, demonstrations, and articles in the Jewish press, the Met has refused to remove the opera from its schedule, offering only to “compromise” by cancelling its worldwide HD simulcast programs, but not the production at the Metropolitan Opera House itself. This opera presents the takeover of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 by Palestinian terrorists, and their murder of 69 year old,...

It was rather crowded outside Lincoln Center late Monday afternoon. While yours truly was at Kennedy Airport waiting to return to Israel for Rosh HaShanna, several thousand people gathered outside Lincoln Center to protest the Metropolitan Opera's glorification of a terror attack that took place nearly 30 years ago. There's an extensive report with over an hour and a half of video and many pictures and slides here, and I urge you all to check it out. But I want to share one quote with you that really caught me eye. And finally, from writer, Jack Kemp: “One of...

The Metropolitan Opera will be performing an opera based on the murder of wheelchair bound Jewish American businessman Leon Klinghoffer at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. An opera that humanizes terrorism is bad enough but performing it in the murder victim’s hometown seems deliberately offensive. The performance will not occur without protest though.

Phyllis Chesler saw part of 'The Death of Klinghoffer' and reports there were shouts of protest from the audience There was such a large police presence and so many police barricades that anyone passing by would think that terrorists were at large. There were no terrorists on Broadway—although terrorists would soon be mounting the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. The police were protecting the right of the Opera House to present the Palestine Liberation Organization and their cause as mythically majestic and eternally just. Here’s what was also extraordinary: “The Suits”—men and women in positions of power, both politically, legally,...

At the Metropolitan Opera’s first performance of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” on Monday night, men and women in evening attire walked through a maze of police barricades, while protesters shouted “Shame!” and “Terror is not art!” One demonstrator held aloft a white handkerchief splattered with red. Others, in wheelchairs set up for the occasion, lined Columbus Avenue. Political figures, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, joined a rally, several hundred strong at Lincoln Center, to denounce an opera that has become the object of a charged debate about art, anti-Semitism and politics. But after months of escalating protests,...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyNew York — October 21, 2014 … Over 4,000 people attended a demonstration yesterday against the “Death of Klinghoffer” opera in New York City. Many were Jewish, some were Christian. All were angry. They all had one objective – to illustrate that this opera about a 69-year-old wheelchair-bound man, who was shot in the head by Palestinian terrorists on the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985 was an act of terror – not art. After hearing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani discuss the First Amendment and how it also applied to the protesters, listening...

Thousands In New York To Protest Death of Klinghoffer OperaBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyNew York — October 20, 2014 … Over five thousand Jews and Christians are expected to turn out for a demonstration today against the opening of “The Death of Klinghoffer” Opera at New York’s Lincoln Center. On Oct. 8, 1985, 69-year-old wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, was shot in the head by Palestinian hijackers on the Achille Lauro cruise ship. The terrorists brutally and unceremoniously threw his body and wheelchair overboard into the Mediterranean. His body washed up on the Syrian shore a few days later. “The four...