Dearbornistan's mayor wants no mention of Henry Ford's antisemitism

The mayor of Dearborn in Michigan, the bastion of notorious antisemitic car manufacturer Henry Ford, doesn't want an article about the creepy mogul's antisemitism and nazi-backing published there because even Muslims condone his record:

Dearborn was also the hometown of Henry Ford, the auto industrialist whose factories attracted Arab immigrants to Dearborn in the 1920s. “Palestinian Muslims arrived in the second decade of the 20th century, attracted by the prospect of work on the assembly lines that produced Ford’s revolutionary Model ‘T’,” according to a report in the National. While Ford was heralding the arrival of Arab immigrants to this country to work in his factory, he was also widely spreading his virulent anti-Semitic blood libel.

However, the mayor of Dearborn today, John B. O’Reilly, Jr. (pictured above), wants to sugarcoat the unpleasant part of Ford’s biography dealing with his many anti-Semitic writings and pronouncements. Mayor O’Reilly decided to ban the distribution of a city-financed historical journal containing an unflattering article about Henry Ford’s record of anti-Semitism that the mayor deemed to be too much of a "distraction" for Dearborn’s “diverse” population. He also severed the city’s ties with the editor of the publication and long-time Dearborn resident, Bill McGraw, who had written the article to educate Dearborn residents today regarding their hometown hero Ford’s “dark sides.”

Mr. McGraw’s article ran afoul of the mayor’s politically correct speech code. “It was thought that by presenting information from 100 years ago that included hateful messages — without a compelling reason directly linked to events in Dearborn today — this edition of The Historian could become a distraction from our continuing messages of inclusion and respect,” Mayor O’Reilly said in a statement issued last Friday. Although Mr. McGraw’s article can still be read online, Mayor O’Reilly’s moves to block the distribution of Mr. McGraw’s article and to sever the city’s ties with him were punitive acts that most likely violated the First Amendment.

The mayor claimed that Ford’s anti-Semitic views were old news, no longer relevant to today’s "diverse" Dearborn population. The exact opposite is true. Ford’s writings are just as popular with some white nationalist extremists today as when they inspired Adolf Hitler. Ford’s writings also appeal to Jew-hating Islamists. His hate speech against the Jews’ aspirations for a state of their own in the Holy Land has a sympathetic audience amongst Dearborn’s current Arab-American and Muslim population.

And this is why I can't bring myself to buy Ford products (or even the now defunct Mercury brand), and consider it a disgrace the Lincoln luxury brand was bought and owned by them early on. Ford may be long gone, but the grisly legacy he formed continues, as does the devil worship he spawned with his influence.

It is time for Mayor O’Reilly to eat some crow again. He should either reverse his decision regarding Bill McGraw’s article on Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism and reinstate Mr. McGraw, as officials with the Dearborn Historical Commission have urged, or he should resign his office. Henry Ford’s brand of anti-Semitism has no expiration date. To deliberately whitewash Ford's anti-Semitic history is to say that exposing anti-Semitism no longer matters. But it does matter more than ever, including most especially in Dearborn.

And a good way to protest, depending how Ford motors handles its business today, is to boycott their products. I never found Mustangs very appealing anyway; they always seemed so dull in comparison to Chevy Corvettes and Dodge Vipers.

Gantz's defense of a bad step hinders him

Amnon Lord says that when Benny Gantz defended and whitewashed Ariel Sharon's atrocity from 2005, he just exposed who he really is:

Gantz's comments on the 2005 Disengagement Plan show us who he really is. He doesn't think there are any lessons to be learned from the unilateral uprooting of settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.

He apparently thinks the plan was so good that Israel should do more of the same and to hell with the consequences this could have on Israel's national security and diplomatic standing. [...]

Gantz's interview with Israeli celebrities Shlomo Artzi and Hanoch Daum shows that he wants to be at the heart of the Israeli mainstream and to harp on the nostalgia associated with Artzi and his songs.

Gantz has stepped into a minefield without having a map to guide him. In fact, a party headed by Artzi and Daum would have been much more appealing than Gantz's Israel Resilience Party.

Advocating a second disengagement plan was a misstep. It shows that despite his denials, he sees eye-to-eye with the ideological leaders of the Left, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Gantz was a remote-controlled candidate until that interview. Everything was staged and scripted down to the finest of details. He even knew what questions he would get from the handpicked crowd. He even had the answers prepared in advance.

Artzi and Daum are good people but they cannot be programmed. As their interview shows, even a shallow rut in the ground can cause an unfit paratrooper a sprained ankle.

It's important to remember that the PLO's been stripped of their office in the USA, and the Trump administration stopped funding them, and that doesn't exactly help the platform Gantz wants to run on. So far, if there's any bad entity who's been supporting Gantz, it's the PLO:

With peace talks frozen for years, Gantz's comments were welcomed by the Palestinians, who have been boycotting the Trump administration since its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, praised "the signs coming from Gantz about settlements," calling them a step in the right direction should he win the election and prove "willing and ready" for peace.

"It's encouraging if he succeeds and he sticks to this opinion," Rdeneh told reporters.

This is telling too. What next, will Gantz attack the most positive of US policies? It wouldn't be shocking if he did. One more reason why he has to be opposed.

An Israeli-Arab woman was murdered in Turkey

Here's an example of Israeli Arabs falling victim to Muslim honor murders over in Turkey:

Siwar Keblawi, 20, from Umm al-Fahm in the Lower Galilee, has been killed in Izmit, Turkey, the Foreign Ministry confirmed on Thursday.

Turkish media reported that the body of Keblawi, a student who had been living in Izmit for the last few months and was enrolled in a local university, was found on Wednesday night outside the building in which she was staying, adding that her neighbors claimed she had been thrown from the balcony. According to a report by Haaretz, police are investigating the suspicion that she was murdered.

The young woman’s father and brother were arrested on suspicion of being involved in her murder.

However, Turkish authorities reported that she had jumped from the third-floor balcony to escape her father and brother after a fight broke out between them.

After surviving the fall, it’s alleged that she was then murdered by the pair. Local media reported that she had been strangled to death.

What are the odds the Turkish police will let the two monsters off the hook? Tragically, the chances are very high that's what'll happen, as anybody who studies the conduct of Islam carefully knows. And this being Turkey where it took place, their hostility to Israel could easily play a part in any exoneration of the perpetrators that's bound to happen.

Grenoble closing jihad-preaching mosque

Here's one positive step being made over in France, with the Grenoble council shutting a mosque that was preaching jihadism (via Jihad Watch):

Fearing potential terrorist attacks, the south-eastern city of Grenoble will temporarily close a mosque in which imams were allegedly calling for “armed jihad.” Over 400 worshippers attended the mosque each day.

The Al-Kawthar mosque, located in a populous Rue des Trembles district of Grenoble, has become fertile soil for disseminating “ideas and theories that provoke violence, hatred and discrimination,” the local prefecture said. It claimed the imam legitimized “armed jihad… Sharia and discrimination against women.”

The imam’s sermons allegedly stirred up hatred towards those practicing other religions. It is thought that over 400 Muslims attended the Al-Kawthar each day, according to French media.

The mosque will now be shut for six weeks and its assets will be frozen. To do so, Grenoble authorities invoked a specific French law which deals with prevention of terrorist attacks and threats to national security.

The city, which is home to over 162,000 residents, accommodates 20 mosques, including the Al-Kawthar, according to a local Muslim-oriented website.

Last year, it emerged that mosques in Aix-en-Provence, Sartrouville and Marseille were also closed for preaching radical Islamism. The move came after a string of terrorist attacks sent shockwaves across France, leaving multiple people killed and injured.

Grenoble itself witnessed a terrorist attack in 2015, when a man was found beheaded at a local factory and an Islamist flag was seen flying over the facility. A 35-year-old man, Yassin Salhi, was arrested in the manhunt that followed. It later transpired that the victim of the attack was his boss.

In 2016, French authorities closed around 20 mosques considered to be spreading violent extremism.

All mosques in the city should be shut down to prevent more terrorism.

Benny Gantz lets more of the mask slip

The politician who's become the media darling because of his leftism regurgitates old, dangerous cliches:

Israel Resilience Party chairman and former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz said Israel must find a solution to the settlement crisis.

“We are not looking to control anyone else,” Gantz said in his first interview since announcing his candidacy for prime minister.

Speaking with the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot in an article published Wednesday, Gantz said, “We must find a way that does not require us to exercise control over other people.”

Which implies he wants to separate Arabs from Jews, plain and simple. It gets worse:

When asked if he would solve the settlement problem through means similar to the 2005 Disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Gantz praised that unilateral move.

“The Disengagement was carried out with a lot of political consideration,” he said. “All sides had a lot at stake and the state managed to do it without tearing the country apart. It was done legally, carried out by the State of Israel and the IDF, and even though it was very painful for the settlers, it was handled well,” he said.

“We must take the lessons of the Disengagement and implement them in other arenas.”

There were only bad "lessons" in an act carried out by a man who turned out to be a monster - Ariel Sharon, including how it was done most brutally, without any consideration for the people expelled from Gaza, or even the disaster that followed as the Hamas used this to launch rockets at Israeli targets. Now, Gantz is basically saying he's willing to do the same as Sharon did, and enable further disaster for Israel. He's probably even willing to divide Jerusalem for the sake of his futile beliefs. That's what makes Gantz dangerous, aside from how he's far from having any experience as a diplomat.

And that's why the right-wing had better make sure they're united for this election, because to have a repeat of the 1992 election disaster could easily make it possible for such an awful man to come to power, at a time when Iran's also a serious threat with their nuclear weapons.

Update: Dror Eydar, who was appointed Israel's ambassador to Italy, makes another case for why right-wing unity is important.

Political parties and public alike on the right must do everything they can to avoid a repeat of the 1992 election

With the Israeli election underway, it's strongly advised for anyone who cares about the country to make sure they're not making the mistake of throwing away votes over parties whose electoral chances are very uncertain. Especially since the threshold wasn't lowered, so far as I know. As Ariel Kahana notes, this is what it was like in 1992:

That year, no fewer than six parties were vying for right-wing votes, both religious and secular: Rafael Eitan's Tzomet; Tehiya, led by Yuval Neeman; Moledet under Rehavam Ze'evi; the National Religious Party; and the parties of Rabbis Eliezer Mizrahi (Geulat Yisrael) and Levinger (Torah Ve'eretz Yisrael), who planned to take votes from the NRP.

At the time, some warned that votes would be wasted and Knesset seats lost, but the party leaders didn't heed their warnings. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wasn't good enough for them and they started splitting ideological hairs. Certain that the Right would win, the parties stayed in the election until the end, which led to disastrous results. Tehiya, Mizrahi, and Levinger failed to reach the minimum electoral threshold, which cost the Right precious seats and led to the establishment of a left-wing government and – two years later – the return of PLO founder Yasser Arafat.

It's been 27 years, and it looks as if the national camp, particularly the wing that is more to the Right than the Likud, is on the same path. In 2019, we're also seeing six parties jockeying for position in the small sector to the Right of the mother party: Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked's New Right; Habayit Hayehudi under Rafi Peretz; the National Union under MK Bezalel Smotrich; Zehut and Otzma Yehudit, led by far-right activists Moshe Feiglin and Baruch Marzel, respectively; and former Shas leader Eli Yishai's Yachad party. Every one of these party leaders is convinced that he can draw enough support to make it into the even though the minimum electoral threshold (3.25%) is higher now than it used to be, and it takes about 150,000 votes to reach it.

This situation will undoubtedly lead to a loss of votes on the Right. Even if some of these parties were to merge, it wouldn't be enough, because too many players are crowded onto too small a field. In the 2015 election, Yishai and Marzel ran together but didn't make it over the minimum threshold, which led to the Right losing at least four seats. This time, with more parties competing in the exact same sector, it will be even more complicated to arrange a joint ticket.

Well that's why I'm honestly angry that Moshe Feiglin, who said some very distasteful things in the past, is now crowding the field with his own new party, probably so he can deliberately harm the right. Considering he never actually attacked the left-wing parties in past campaigns, that's one more reason why he's not qualified and doesn't deserve to be in the Knesset.

What's really disturbing now is if polls mean anything, and Benny Gantz, the new darling of the left, could take over from where Labor leaves off, and what if he does manage to unite some leftist parties into one? It could be bad.

Former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said:

Barkat responded to the poll results: "Now, as the Left is uniting and posing a threat, we must put together a strong team that will strengthen Likud and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and thwart attempts by Benny Gantz and the Left to topple the right-wing government."

And it's entirely possible the left will try to unite, so the right had better make sure they don't make mistakes by running separately, and do some mergers to help the cause of Israel. This is serious business, and it would do everyone a lot of good if they'd prove their capability of remaining united for the election.