Tuesday, January 7, 2020

THE REAL ECONOMY - PIER 1 TO CLOSE 450 STORES

Pier 1 Imports to close up to 450 stores, nearly half of its locations

 
 
 
 
Dozens of Bed Bath & Beyond stores projected to close their doors by 2020
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Pier 1 Imports plans to close up to 450 locations, nearly half of its 942 stores, the company announced Monday.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based home goods retailer said the decision to reduce its store footprint is needed "to better align its business with the current operating environment."
Pier 1 Imports plans to close up to 450 stores.
Pier 1 Imports plans to close up to 450 stores.
“Although decisions that impact our associates are never easy, reducing the number of our brick-and-mortar locations is a necessary business decision," Pier 1 CEO and Chief Financial Officer Robert Riesbeck said in a news release.
The company will also close certain distribution centers and reduce its corporate expenses because of the "revised store footprint."
“Fiscal third quarter sales and margins remained under pressure as we completed our efforts to clear out non-go-forward merchandise," said Riesbeck, who was named CEO in November. "Looking ahead, we believe that we will deliver improved financial results over time as we realize the benefits of our business transformation and cost-reduction initiatives."
According to Bloomberg, the company is preparing to file for bankruptcy. Pier 1 officials reached Monday by USA TODAY declined to comment. 
In April, Pier 1 announced it could close as many as 145 stores, about 15% of its nearly 1,000 locations. A week later, S&P Global Ratings warned that the "potential for a bankruptcy filing or debt restructuring is continuing to increase" for Pier 1 as its retail performance continues "to deteriorate significantly."
Then-interim CEO Cheryl Bachelder repeated that "up to 15%" of locations could close on Sept. 25 during a quarterly earnings call with analysts and said officials were working with A&G Realty to "determine the ideal footprint." 
In Monday's news release, the company said it is "utilizing the services of a third-party liquidator to help manage the store closings." What stores will close and a timeline for when the liquidation sales will start was not immediately available.
Follow USA TODAY reporter Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pier 1 Imports store closings 2020: Up to 450 stores to shutter

OBAMA AND THE MUSLIM TERRRORIST

BARACK Hussein OBAMA: THE CLOSET MUSLIM PSYCHOPATH WHO HATED AMERICA!
"But the Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. And so we get bizarre pieces like these."

The mullahs rolled in cash as a result of rolling Obama and his gullible team over the deal, knowing that Obama was desperate for some sort of legacy.  MONICA SHOWALTER

MUSLIM DICTATORS, INCLUDING THE 9-11 INVADING SAUDIS, FUNDED THE PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES OF BUSH, CLINTON and OBAMA!

 ISLAMIST BARACK OBAMA


“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM

"But the Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. And so we get bizarre pieces like these." MONICA SHOWALTER

"Along with Obama, Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
GLOBALIST BARACK OBAMA AND NANCY PELOSI’S CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY AND KEEP AMERICA FLOODED WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS

"Along with Obama, Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY

 

One of the most disgusting things to come out of the Obama administration was "Operation Fast and Furious," where members of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed illegal gun sales to go through – commonly referred to as "gun walking" – in order to track buyers and sellers they believed were connected to the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms were sold and were eventually found throughout the United States and Mexico. Two of them were used to k ill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. BETH BAUMANN


Cruz: Missiles Fired by Iran on U.S. Base ‘Paid for by the Billions the Obama Administration Flooded the Ayatollah With’

1:28

Tuesday during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-AZ) discussed the surface-to-surface missile attack by Iran on a U.S. military base in Iraq.
Cruz maintained Trump was justified in ordering the airstrike on Iranian general Qasam Soleimani. He added that Democrats and the media speculating about World War III was a product of their hysteria and anti-Trump fervor.
The Texas Republican went on to suggest those missiles that struck the U.S. base were financed by money delivered to Iran as a result of the nuclear deal brokered during the previous Obama administration.
“If you look at Iran policy, I think you’ve seen a dramatic shift,” he said. “Under Barack Obama, as you noted, the policy was appeasement. The policy under the disastrous Iran nuclear deal under Obama was to give over $100 billion to Iran. They literally flew $1.7 billion in cash, in unmarked bills on pallettes in the dead of night into Iran. In a very real sense, the missiles that we saw fired on U.S. servicemen and women tonight were paid for by the billions the Obama administration flooded the Ayatollah with. If history teaches anything, it’s don’t give billions of dollars to people who hate you and want to kill you.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor





THE (REALITY) OF THE GLOBALIST 

DEMOCRAT PARTY AS IT SERVES THE 

RICH, “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGALS and 

MUSLIMS:

Anti-Semitic, open borders for cheaper labor and funded by criminal banksters… and these pols are making vast fortunes sucking the blood of America!


We must not let them cheat their way to power over the rest of us.  Their ongoing vote fraud must be stopped and the Democrats need to take a look at themselves and at what they have become. It's not a pretty picture.  What they have become threatens to destroy the greatest nation on the planet and they are doing it on purpose.  They have nothing but contempt for the US as founded and for those of us who love this country. PATRICIA McCARTHY – AMERICAN THINKER

“Then we suffered the rattling election of Barack Obama, whose active membership in a white-, Jewish-, and America-hating church was well known to the electorate.  His close personal relationship with the likes of his adored Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan was no secret.  Obama was open about his goals.  He told us he was out to "fundamentally transform America" and the world.”  ALAN BERGSTEIN
“There is a deep racist and anti-Semitic disease in the leadership of the Democrats. As Senator Cory Booker brings his hatred for the Jewish State to the Senate, he should be asked whether he agrees with his hero, “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist we must take a lesson from Hitler”. DANIEL GREENFIELD

ISLAM: THE SCOURGE OF WESTERN CIVILAZATION

A radical Muslim wants to cut your head off. A peaceful Muslim is praying that a radical Muslim cuts your head off.


Why are we defended the borders of these Muslim dictators when we can’t defend our own borders against NARCOMEX?
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS is an amazing book, extraordinary in its detail and riveting in its narratives and analysis.  This book documents the history of horrors, violence, brutality, oppression, conquests by the sword, beheadings of hundreds of thousands (probably millions), destruction of civilizations and cultures, corruption, deception, and lies that are part of the Islamist culture, and every other evil that you can imagine that one group of humans could impose on others in the name of an ideology or, in this case, a pseudo-religion.  

ONCE A MUSLIM, ALWAYS A MURDERER!

Muslims Stone to Death Christians in Barack Hussein Obama’s hometown of Kenya



Earlier this month, jihadists of the Al-Shabaab terror group hijacked a bus heading to Garissa and ordered all the passengers to exit the vehicle. The assailants asked for identification cards, then proceeded to separate the Muslims from the Christians.

When two Christians refused to recite the Islamic statement of faith, or Shahada, they were executed.

ISLAMIST BARACK OBAMA



“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM


"But the Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. And so we get bizarre pieces like these." MONICA SHOWALTER


"Along with Obama, Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY



Obama Welcomed Terror Leader Behind Iraq Embassy Attack To White House

 
Daniel Greenfield

Democrats and their media allies are spinning the attack on our embassy in Iraq as Trump's Benghazi. The reality is that it's still Obama's Benghazi.


As this Daily Mail story reminds us
Hadi al-Amiri was Iraq's minister of transport under then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and stood in the Oval Office as part of Maliki's delegation on a visit to the White House in December 2011.
On Tuesday, al-Amiri was among those leading the charge against the US embassy in Baghdad when it was stormed and set alight by pro-Iran militants. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shared a photograph of Amiri amid the rioters, condemning him as an 'Iranian proxy,' and calling those shoulder-to-shoulder with him 'terrorists.'
The head of a leading pro-Iran Shia faction, Amiri exerts great power within Iraq's state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and was highlighted by Pompeo among three other men as the ringleaders of the siege.
A former guerrilla fighter who fought for Tehran in the Iran-Iraq War, Amiri has been accused of terrorism against the US, of helping Iran to ship arms to Bashar al-Assad in Syria and has been pictured bowing before the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Not that Amiri was getting special treatment. The White House of the day had opened its doors to a legion of foreign and domestic Islamists. But it also highlights the degree of collusion between Obama and Iran.

VIDEO - RAYMOND IBRAHIM DISPELS THE LIES ABOUT ISLAM'S WAR ON THE WEST

THE (REALITY) OF THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY AS IT SERVES THE RICH, “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGALS and MUSLIMS:

Anti-Semitic, open borders for cheaper labor and funded by criminal banksters… and these pols are making vast fortunes sucking the blood of America!

We must not let them cheat their way to power over the rest of us.  Their ongoing vote fraud must be stopped and the Democrats need to take a look at themselves and at what they have become. It's not a pretty picture.  What they have become threatens to destroy the greatest nation on the planet and they are doing it on purpose.  They have nothing but contempt for the US as founded and for those of us who love this country. PATRICIA McCARTHY – AMERICAN THINKER

“Then we suffered the rattling election of Barack Obama, whose active membership in a white-, Jewish-, and America-hating church was well known to the electorate.  His close personal relationship with the likes of his adored Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan was no secret.  Obama was open about his goals.  He told us he was out to "fundamentally transform America" and the world.”  ALAN BERGSTEIN
“There is a deep racist and anti-Semitic disease in the leadership of the Democrats. As Senator Cory Booker brings his hatred for the Jewish State to the Senate, he should be asked whether he agrees with his hero, “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist we must take a lesson from Hitler”. DANIEL GREENFIELD

ISLAM: THE SCOURGE OF WESTERN 

CIVILAZATION

A radical Muslim wants to cut your head off. A peaceful Muslim is praying that a radical Muslim cuts your head off.


Why are we defended the borders of these Muslim dictators when we can’t defend our own borders against NARCOMEX?
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS is an amazing book, extraordinary in its detail and riveting in its narratives and analysis.  This book documents the history of horrors, violence, brutality, oppression, conquests by the sword, beheadings of hundreds of thousands (probably millions), destruction of civilizations and cultures, corruption, deception, and lies that are part of the Islamist culture, and every other evil that you can imagine that one group of humans could impose on others in the name of an ideology or, in this case, a pseudo-religion.  


Video: Raymond Ibrahim Dispels the Lies about Islam’s War on the West

Freedom Center Shillman Fellow unveils the taboo truths about Jihad.
 
Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was recently interviewed on The Pete Santilli Show. Ibrahim discussed a broad range of topics in the must-see video below, including dispelling the lies about Islam's war on the West. Don't miss it:



THE KORAN
BIBLE OF THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI

Koran 2:191 "slay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".
“The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood also wages its deadly campaign through its dozens of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.”
*
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI



We will take advantage of their immigration policy to infiltrate them.

* We will use their own welfare system to provide us with food, housing, schooling, and health care, while we out breed them and plot against them. We will Caliphate on their dime.

* We will use political correctness as a weapon. Anyone who criticizes us, we will take the opportunity to grandstand and curry favor from the media and Democrats and loudly accuse our critics of being an Islamophobe.

* We will use their own discrimination laws against them and slowly introduce Sharia Law into their culture..

Islamic Imam Used Koran Lessons to Sexually Abuse Kids in Texas

 
Daniel Greenfield
Unlike sexual abuse in the Catholic Church or any other religious group, there won't be any movies or national media coverage. Meanwhile, Texas has been enriched by yet more immigrants. And now our court system is being enriched by this alleged abuser.
Imam Mohamed Omar Ali is charged with three counts of indecency with a child and one count of sexual assault of a child, according to Fort Bend County officials.  
Ali, who immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia, was arrested on January 3, 2020. 
“We do believe that he’s been in several of the victim’s homes,” said Michael Alexander, lead detective of the case for the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office. “That’s part of what he does, he goes to people’s homes and teaches Quran lessons and that’s how he comes into contact with a lot of people is through some of the mosques and then he eventually goes to their homes.”  
Ali spent time as a religious leader in multiple mosques in Houston and Fort Bend County, although officials wouldn’t specify which locations. 
But he was an expert on the Koran.
“Even though Mohammad Ali was not an official employee of Fort Bend area mosques, his reputation as an expert on the Quran helped him gain the trust of adults which he then abused in order to hurt the children he was hired to teach,” he said, and applauded the survivors of Ali who came forward. 
As an expert on the Koran, I'm sure he knew the age at which Mohammed married and sexually abused Aisha.

GHETTO BLACK AMERICA: IGNORANT, RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC, ANTI-SEMITIC, VIOLENT AND WHITEY MADE HIM THAT WAY

Black Anti-Semitism and Leftist Paternalism
Infantalizing Blacks hurts Jews and Blacks.
 
Danusha V. Goska

Husband: "Ya fired the cleaning woman!"
Wife: "She was stealing!"
Husband: "But she's colored!"
Wife: "So?"
Husband: "So the colored have enough trouble!"
Wife: "She was going through my pocketbook!"
Husband: "They're persecuted enough!"
Wife: "Who's persecuting? She stole!"
Husband: "All right! So? We can afford it!"
Wife: "How can we afford it? On your pay? What if she steals more?"
Husband: "She's a colored woman from Harlem! She has no money! She's got a right to steal from us! After all, who is she gonna steal from, if not us?"
Wife: "I married a fool!"
Woody Allen depicted his character, Alvy Singer's, parents having this argument in his 1977, Academy-Award-winning film Annie Hall. The argument echoes in January, 2020, in the wake of numerous, headline-grabbing attacks by African Americans on Jews in the New York City area.
On December 10, 2019, two shooters, influenced by the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology, shot to death four people in Jersey City, NJ. Their target was a Kosher supermarket. On December 28, 2019, a lone man, also influenced by Black Hebrew Israelite ideology, barged into a rabbi's home in Monsey, New York, during a Hanukah celebration. The assailant stabbed five people before guests threw furniture at him and he fled.
These violent attacks received relatively greater attention than other recent assaults, although Seth J. Frantzman pointed out in the Jerusalem Post that the Jersey City shooting did not receive the attention that other comparable shootings receive. Frantzman wrote,
"The murder of three people at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City was mostly ignored in the United States. No rallies or marches against the antisemitism that led to it. No major political upheavals or even much recognition. The usual anger over gun violence after mass shootings was nowhere to be found … America as a whole can’t mourn Orthodox Jews and it can’t confront perpetrators when the perpetrators come from a minority community. This is inconvenient antisemitism and it is a kind of antisemitism privilege. Despite widespread anti-racism programs in the US, there are still those in America for whom being antisemitic is a birthright and not something to be ashamed of."
I live fourteen miles from Jersey City and I am a voracious consumer of news media. Frantzman is correct. It was a long time before concerned residents were informed of what exactly transpired, who the assailants were, and what their motive was. When this information finally was released, it was rapidly buried. If Jewish assailants, armed with an arsenal including a pipe bomb, had attacked a black-owned business and its customers in broad daylight, no doubt at least a week of news stories would have followed.
The Monsey and Jersey City attacks are part of a trend. An incident on December 24, 2019 is fairly typical. A Jewish man is walking on the sidewalk of Albany Avenue and Lincoln Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Seven young black males approach him and throw something at his head. The Jewish man is knocked off center but continues walking, rapidly, away from the youths. Three of the youths, one armed with a long object, chase after him. Two punch him. This is all recorded on video. At first, the victim did not report this attack to anyone. Such attacks had become part of life for Jews in the New York metro area. Further, new "reforms" would make the victim's name known to his attackers. They could come at him again, using means other than street assault. Seth J. Frantzman calls the frequency of these attacks "a slow-moving pogrom."
One might think that after the Monsey and Jersey City atrocities, news accounts, editorial pages, Twitter and other social media would be flooded with demands that African Americans confront the antisemitism percolating in their communities, that schools would be developing curricula to educate those in thrall to irrational hatred and violence, and that elected officials would be fearless in naming and shaming the ideologies and resentments that incite violence and hate.
Those reasonable expectations would be thwarted in any perusal of mainstream and social media in early January, 2020. Rather one finds an almost science-fiction phenomenon at work. Jews condemning police protection. Jews insisting that blacks not be associated with antisemitism. And, of course, a rally in support of an antisemitic schoolboard member.
In the wake of the kosher market shooting, Jersey City schoolboard member Joan Terrell-Paige posted a protest against Jews on Facebook. Terrell-Paige referred to "jews" – lower case – as "brutes" who "wave bags of money" to get their way. Terrell-Paige implied that the shooters were martyrs, trying to protect the black community from evil Jews. "Drugs and guns are planted in the black community" she alleged, perhaps by Jews. Jews are guilty of an "assault on Black communities of America. My people deserve respect and to live in peace."
New Jersey Governor Murphy asked that Terrell-Paige resign. As of this writing, she is still a member of the Jersey City schoolboard.
What's more, Patch.com reported on December 30 that a candlelight vigil was planned to support Terrell-Paige. Al Sharpton's National Action Network defended Terrell-Paige. Gov. Murphy and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop "need to shut their mouths" said the National Action Network's Carolyn Oliver Fair. Terrell-Paige "said nothing wrong. Everything she said is the truth. So where is this anti-Semitism coming in? I am not getting it," said Oliver Fair, who also alleged that the Jersey City shooters were Jewish. The shooters were not Jewish; rather, they were influenced by the Black Hebrew Israelites, a hate group that insists that Jews are "imposters" and that the real Jews of the Bible were black.
What is more astounding is the number of Jewish spokespersons who took a similar approach. On December 30, 2019, the Labour-Leftist aligned British daily The Guardian managed to round up enough tweets to publish an article entitled, "Jewish Groups Push Back Against Police Surge in Wake Of Antisemitic Attacks. Liberal Groups Say the New Policing Measures Put Forward by Mayor De Blasio Will Divide Communities." All the words in that headline are spelled correctly. The grammar works. But that's where sanity ends. In the wake of deadly attacks, one inside a private home during a holiday celebration, The Guardian wants Jews to forgo police protection in the name of leftist identity politics.
Where have we encountered this selection of one group's suffering as earning priority over another group's suffering? Oh, yes. After women were raped, sometimes gang-raped, by Muslim migrants in Europe, they were often told to keep quiet, because reports of these rapes would interfere with migration policy. (See herehereherehere, and here).
It's weird enough that non-Jews would tell Jews to forgo police protection and endure beatings, even death, in the name of political correctness. But Jews are doing it, too.
On December 29, 2019, the Jewish Voice for Peace blamed "rising white nationalist violence" for attacks on "Jews, Muslims, Black people, and all people of color." Police protection for Jews was unwanted. Jews should not "rely on the very forces detaining and locking up and killing our friends, family, & neighbors."
David Klion, editor at Jewish Currents and published in The Nation, The New York Times, and The Guardian, tweeted on December 29 that "I never want out of my mind" that "We should not give one inch to right-wing forces within and outside of our community exploiting these attacks to legitimize racism."
The "racism" at work in these attacks is expressed by black people who despise Jews. And Klion wants never to have "out of his mind" (no pun intended) that right-wing racism is the problem? Well, yes. Because, as Klion tweeted on December 27, "Flooding POC neighborhoods with cops is going to carry real costs, potentially even fatal ones, for tens of thousands of people who have no complicity in these attacks. I'm also deeply uncomfortable with the optics of cops functioning as security for Jews against POC."
Jews shot; Jews stabbed; Klion is worried about "optics" of a police presence. In reply to Klion's tweet, Twitter user "TalkToTheHand" posted a photo of National Guard troops accompanying black children to school in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement. Thank you, TalkToTheHand.
Ariel Gold asked, "If the National Guard are deployed and more police are on the streets to keep Jews safe, what will that mean for Black communities? Is the trade off worth it? Is this the answer? Is this lasting safety for all?" Think about the "tradeoff" Gold mentions. She's talking about keeping Jews safe from street assaults. What is the other object in this trade? "more police … in Black communities." To Gold, that is a bad thing. More police. Less crime. Bad. Think about that.
Sophie Ellman-Golan tweeted, "This sends a pretty stark message to non-Jewish POC living in these neighborhoods that their safety matters less than the safety of their Jewish neighbors. That's really really bad for literally everyone except our common enemies, who benefit when we're divided."
The Forward insisted that "Anti-Semitism Isn't Blacks vs. Jews. Saying So Hurts Us All." The article insisted that no relation be drawn between any aspect of African American culture, no matter how fringe, and attacks on Jews. Apparently the attackers have all been lone wolves with no connection to any aspect of black culture.
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice tweeted that "Our response to antisemitic violence must focus on building solidarity with other groups targeted by white supremacy, not increased policing."
What makes the above-cited material all the more surreal is how much it differs from rhetoric that accompanies accusations of antisemitism when the accused are more clearly identified as Christians, and, in the case of my own research, identified specifically as Polish Catholics. My book Bieganski details rhetoric about Poles and other Eastern European Christians in relation to accusations of antisemitism. As I demonstrate in the book, antisemitic crimes committed by Poles are spoken of as inseparable from Polish identity. This approach can be summed up as, "You did the bad thing you did because you are Polish. Polish people do bad things." When it comes to blacks, the analysis becomes, "You did the bad thing you did because you are a victim of oppression. The people who are oppressing you are responsible for the bad thing you did."
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski was captured by the German Nazis and imprisoned in Auschwitz. He made it out – and immediately co-founded, in Nazi-occupied Poland, Zegota, the only organization in Nazi-occupied Europe whose sole purpose was to rescue Jews. After the war, he protested against antisemitic atrocities committed by his fellow Poles, as co-founder of the All-Poland Anti-Racist league. For this, he was imprisoned by the Soviets.
And yet, the very Polish, devoutly Catholic Bartoszewski faced verbal abuse in both Germany and Israel. Why? His ethnic identity. Polish identity has been conflated with antisemitism for too many people. If you are a Pole, you are an anti-Semite.
That rhetoric is used to conflate Polish identity with antisemitism and to shield African American identity from any association with antisemitism may be of little interest to anyone but Poles. But this dichotomy is in fact pertinent to African Americans.
It's undeniable that antisemitism has played a significant role in Polish culture and that Poland was site of antisemitic atrocities carried about by Poles. Poles are not protected by political correctness. Why? Political correctness is a concern of the left and Poles are not likely recruits  in bringing on world revolution. Poles famously fought the Soviets, significantly in 1920, in the Polish-Soviet War that Poles, miraculously, won. Poles fought the Soviets again after Soviets, along with their allies, the Nazis, invaded Poland in 1939, and then again in 1945, with resistance lasting till the end of communism in 1989. Poles are notoriously Catholic, and Catholics are not likely fodder for world communist revolution. Leftists have no reason to use rhetoric to protect Poles. Rather, leftists are all too happy to insist, inaccurately, that hate is a Christian thing, and that Catholicism is responsible for antisemitism.
The ease with which Poles are identified with antisemitism, and the difficulty of naming African Americans as anti-Semites, is reflected in Deborah Lipstadt's December 29, 2019 piece in The Atlantic MonthlyLipstadt is the professor of Holocaust history of Emory University. Her essay appeared after the Hanukah stabbing, after the Jersey City shooting. She had plenty of reason to address African American antisemitism. She did not. She chickened out. In fact she never uses the words "black" or "African American."
Whom does Lipstadt accuse? The Poles. And the Slovaks. Eastern European, Christian populations. Her bashing is not warranted. Szczecin, a city in Poland, wanted an explanatory note added to a commemorative plaque, clarifying that the victim the plaque commemorated was murdered by German Nazis. That's a reasonable and necessary request, given how Holocaust history is distorted. Slovaks? Thugs desecrated a Jewish cemetery. A very bad thing, but not representational of Slovaks, and not pertinent to Monsey.
The simple truth is, neither Lipstadt nor The Atlantic Monthly will catch one bit of flak for bashing Poles and Slovaks, who don't matter to Atlantic Monthly readers or Emory University or America's elite. Go after easy targets. With them, be as racist and as essentializing as you want. Poles do bad things because they are Poles. African Americans do bad things because they are oppressed, but that's potentially controversial, so we won't even mention it in this article.
Their lack of politically correct protection has, ultimately, been to Poles' advantage in some ways, though Poles may find that hard to perceive. Poles have been accused before the world of being essential, unchanging and unchangeable anti-Semites. Those accusations have prompted mass examination of conscience in Poland. Those outside of Poland are probably largely unaware of these national mea culpas, confessionals, and resolutions to reform, but they are very real. Nobel-prize winner Czeslaw Milosz produced two of the earliest significant works of art addressing the Holocaust, "Campo de Fiori," and "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto." Pope John Paul II became the first pope to enter a Jewish house of worship "since St Peter," and he was the first pope to visit Auschwitz, where he made it a point to pray at the monument to Jewish victims, defying communist propaganda that downplayed the Jewish identity of most victims. John Paul insisted on the continued validity of God's covenant with the Jews.
I could go on, naming filmmakers, authors, theologians, and average citizens who have taken it upon themselves to address and to work to eliminate Polish and all forms of antisemitism. I pray that in my own small way, I continue this mission.
As quoted above, Seth J. Frantzman wrote that "There are still those in America for whom being antisemitic is a birthright and not something to be ashamed of." The key word here is "shame." Shame drives some Poles to address and defeat antisemitism. Shame, combined with pride in Poland's multicultural heritage, its tradition of "For your freedom and ours."
The publications, organizations, and social media users insisting on not addressing those aspects of African American culture that allow antisemitism to metastasize are not doing African Americans any favors at all. Shame is necessary to human community. Years ago I was on a bus in my majority minority community. Garbage on the street is a major problem here. People throw their garbage on the street, in the river, on playgrounds, without a second thought. A young man got off the bus and was about to throw garbage on the street. I glared at him. For a second he caught my baneful glare. He actually stopped, and carried his garbage to a garbage can. I shamed him. His behavior changed.  
No, not all African Americans are anti-Semites. Only a minority are. No, no decent person wants to return to the bad old days of vicious stereotyping. But the violent attacks are going to continue until someone has the courage to stand up, root out, and analyze the ideologies that give a free pass to the black antisemitism that does exist. We can't do that as long as we are virtue signaling. Servicing one's own reputation as a good, paternalistic liberal infantilizes and betrays black people.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.


Horror New Year

Hanukkah Five stabbing victim in grave condition as authorities block information on suspect.


January 2, 2020 
Lloyd Billingsley
“Hanukkah stabbing victim’s ‘dire’ condition revealed,” headlined the January 1, 2020 Fox News story by Travis Fedschun. The victim was Josef Neumann and according to a statement from his family, “the 70-year-old was stabbed multiple times during the attack, sustaining injuries that included three cuts to the head, one cut to the neck, a shattered right arm, and a knife that penetrated his skull directly into the brain.”
Doctors are not optimistic about Neumann’s chances to regain consciousness, and “if our father does miraculously recover partially, doctors expect that he will have permanent damage to the brain; leaving him partially paralyzed and speech impaired for the rest of his life.”
A photo released Wednesday by the  Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council in Hudson Valley showed the unconscious Neuman with his bloodied and bruised head heavily sutured. The 70-year old was one of five victims of an attack in Monsey, New York, last Saturday at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg.
Shortly before 10 p.m., as the rabbi was lighting the candle on the seventh night of Hanukkah, a man with face partially covered burst into the home and began stabbing people with a machete. The attack claimed five victims, including the rabbi’s son. The suspect was covered in blood when police arrested him in New York City on December 22.
The suspect was identified as Grafton Thomas, 37, an African American from Greenwood Lake, New York. News reports said the suspect’s arrest record had been sealed and the mystery about possible motive continued into 2020.
“Judge mum on why suspect was set free last year,” read the second half of the Fox News headline. As Fedschun revealed, Thomas had “multiple run-ins with law enforcement” including an arrest for “assaulting a police horse.” The judge assigned to the case refused comment, calling it a “sealed case.”
After the attack, New York’s Democrat attorney general Letitia James, proclaimed “zero tolerance for acts of hate of any kind and we will continue to monitor this horrific situation.”
At this writing, James has offered no explanation why the prior case was sealed and district attorneys have declined comment. 
After the Hanukkah stabbings, New York governor Andrew Cuomo cited recent attacks, “motivated by hate. They are doing mass attacks. These are terrorists in our country perpetrating terrorism on other Americans, and that’s how we should treat it and that's how I want the laws in this state to treat it.” At this writing, the governor has made no public demand that the suspect’s previous cases be unsealed.
In similar style, New York authorities have announced no plans to prosecute the case as terrorism. The Southern District of New York is charging Thomas with five counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon, and resulting in bodily injury. NBC News describes the counts as “federal hate crimes charges.
As Fedschun’s story noted, in journals recovered from his home Thomas questioned, “why ppl mourned for anti-Semitism when there is Semitic genocide,” along with a page with drawings of a Star of David and a swastika. Thomas’ phone revealed repeated internet searches for “Why did Hitler hate the Jews” as well as “German Jewish Temples near me” and “Prominent companies founded by Jews in America.”
Thomas’ court-appointed attorney Susanne Brody claimed the suspect has struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Attorney Michael Sussman, retained by the family, told reporters Thomas had been hearing voices and may have stopped taking psychiatric medications. According to Sussman, nothing found in Thomas’ home pointed to “an anti-Semitic motive.”
According to a statement from Thomas’ family, the suspect has no history of violent acts, no history of anti-Semitism and is not a member of any hate groups. The family did cite a long history of mental illness but an insanity defense could prove difficult.
Such a defense shifts the burden of proof to the accused, who must prove beyond reasonable doubt that he did not know the difference between right and wrong at the time of the crime. The suspect has already exhibited evidence of planning the attack, and according to victims he covered his face with a scarf. His flight from the scene also betrays knowledge of criminal intent.
In 2002, Grafton Thomas joined the U.S. Marine Corps but left the service within a month. Marine Captain Karoline Foote told reporters the Corps was required to keep the details private. President Trump commander in chief of U.S. Armed Forces, might give Capt. Foote a call.  
President Trump condemned the “horrific” attack at the rabbi’s home and tweeted: “We must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism. Melania and I wish the victims a quick and full recovery.” At this writing, recovery looks unlikely for Josef Neumann.
Meanwhile, after the attack, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio told Fox News, “An atmosphere of hate has been developing in this country over the last few years. A lot of it is emanating from Washington and it’s having an effect on all of us.” Also after the attack, California Democrat Eric Swalwell tweeted “Anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. And it’s being stoked by @realDonaldTrump who won’t condemn it.”

 The Alarming Escalation of African American Attacks Against Jews

Are full-fledged riots and mass massacres next?
January 3, 2020 
Joseph Klein
Anti-Semitic attacks have reached epidemic proportions in the New York metropolitan area. A shooting early last December at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City left several people dead, including two Hasidic Jews. A policeman was also killed by the same shooters nearby. The killers aimed to kill as many Jews as possible before they were struck down. Last Saturday night, five Jewish people were stabbed by a Jew-hater wielding a machete at a Hasidic rabbi’s house in the suburb of Monsey, New York. One of the victims suffered serious head injuries, which has left him in a coma and may result in permanent damage to his brain. Orthodox Jews residing in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg are living in constant fear, triggered by a slew of anti-Semitic incidents that were a near daily occurrence during December and have continued into 2020.
These were not violent crimes committed by white nationalists. While white supremacists continue to pose a major threat to the lives and well-being of Jews and other minority groups nationwide, the alarming series of recent anti-Semitic attacks in the New York metropolitan area were conducted primarily by African Americans.
Anti-Semitic propensities among some African Americans have been simmering for years, as documented by a survey conducted back in 2013 by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a second survey conducted by the ADL in 2016. The 2016 survey noted that over the past four years, “Anti-Semitic views among the African American population have remained steady and are higher than the general population.” As compared to the white population, anti-Semitic propensities among African Americans as measured in 2016 were more than double that of whites - 23% versus 10% respectively. This survey also found that Hispanic Americans born outside of the U.S. have even higher anti-Semitic propensities (31%) than African Americans. The anti-Semitic propensities of U.S. born Hispanics were measured at 19%, higher than whites but lower than African Americans.
Why do they keep doing this to us?” asked one Hasidic woman after the New Year’s Day incident that occurred close to her home. “We mean them no harm, yet they’re always cursing at us and hitting us.”
Part of the answer is rooted in a hate-filled black supremacist ideology that has influenced some African Americans willing to move from militant rhetoric to violence.
The Jersey City murderers were Black Hebrew Israelites, a sect which includes black supremacists who believe that they are God's true chosen people as the real descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible. They dismiss whites who call themselves Jews as imposters.
The accused Monsey machete slasher reportedly kept journals that were filled with anti-Semitic rants reflective of this ideology and that referred specifically to “Hebrew Israelites” in one passage.
Even the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) listed 144 Black Hebrew Israelite groups as “hate groups because of their anti-white and antisemitic beliefs.” SPLC noted that these Black Israelite groups “believe that, as members of the 12 Tribes of Israel – consisting only of African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans – they are God’s ‘chosen people.’” They regard Caucasians and members of the LGBTQ community as ‘devils.’
“Extreme Black Hebrew Israelites believe that individuals outside the movement are deserving of slavery or death,” SPLC added. Remember that this assessment is coming from the same organization that finds white supremacists and Islamophobes lurking everywhere.
But extremist ideology is not the entire answer for the escalating violence by African Americans against Jews. Some African American leaders have stoked anti-Semitic accusations that Jews possess too much economic and political power in the United States, which Jews are supposedly exploiting against African Americans who live in the same neighborhoods. African Americans believing such false accusations turn their anger into self-justifications for violence. Hasidic Jews wearing religious garb living in these neighborhoods stand out as the most vulnerable targets.
Following the murder of Jews in Jersey City, a black school board member named Joan Terrell-Paige posted on Facebook a diatribe against Jews who have moved to the city. She pooh-poohed the concerns expressed by some political and religious leaders over the anti-Semitic killings.
 “Where was all this faith and hope when Black homeowners were threatened, intimidated, and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the jewish community,” Terrell-Paige wrote. “Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the Black communities of America?” she added, displaying shocking indifference to the slaughter of innocent Jews as well as of a policeman.
Terrell-Paige said that she did not regret her post. While some New Jersey government leaders called for her resignation, a House candidate John Flora viewed her post as a teaching moment. “To me her remarks were an invitation for the entire city to discuss honestly what led up to such a horrific event," Flora said Tuesday. "There is a lingering resentment in certain transitioning neighborhoods that I’m not sure repeated sit-downs with the same community leaders will ever resolve.” He announced a vigil in support of Terrell-Paige on Thursday.
The Hudson County Democratic Black Caucus said that while it did not agree with “the delivery of the statement made by Ms. Terrell-Paige we believe that her statement has heightened awareness around issues that must be addressed.”
Rabbi Avi Shafran responded to such outrageous excuse-making in an op-ed article entitled “Not-So-Good People.” He wrote:
“No, dear Caucus, the only issue that must be addressed is black anti-Semitism.
That phrase, of course, isn’t intended to implicate the larger African-American community, any more than the phrase ‘white anti-Semitism’ implicates all Caucasians.
It simply acknowledges the sad reality that Jew-hatred exists not only in the fever dreams of racists who hate blacks but also in the delusions of some of those they hate.”
Progressives leading the Democratic Party leftward, along with their friends in the mainstream media, refuse to acknowledge this reality. They shrink from speaking out forcefully against the violence of black racists, while using every opportunity they can to denounce white supremacists. Heaven forbid that they upset the narrative of “white privilege” and white “oppression” of minorities, which casts Jews as part of the oppressor class and people of color as always the victims.
Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib even blamed “white supremacy” for the Jersey City murders by the black supremacist Hebrew Israelites. “This is heartbreaking. White supremacy kills,” she wrote in a tweet. Tlaib has since deleted this absurd tweet, but it reflects her clear anti-Semitic bias.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio reverted to form last Sunday when he blamed the recent spike in anti-Semitic attacks in New York on an "atmosphere of hate" that has been “emanating from Washington.” He mentioned only President Trump by name. While placing some of the blame on divisiveness in Congress, he did not call out the leading anti-Semites in Congress, Representatives Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The epidemic of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York metropolitan area are emanating from within the local African American communities themselves. The attacks are rationalized or ignored by leftists who believe that only “privileged” whites commit hate crimes.
Misguided policies that coddle criminals are making it easier for the violence against Jews to spread, because word gets around that the perpetrators face no serious consequences. Indeed, the irresponsible no-bail catch and release policy in New York, which technically went into effect on January 1st,  has already put an anti-Semitic offender back on the street to continue her rampage. The get-out-of jail card will likely mean the quick release of most of the other offenders as well. What good are the increased police patrols in Jewish neighborhoods promised by Mayor de Blasio and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo if the attacks against Jews are treated like petty crimes?
Will there be a repeat of the anti-Jewish riot in Crown Heights that occurred in 1991? Are massacres of Jews resulting in many deaths and injuries inevitable if nothing is done to stem the current level of violence? It’s a distinct possibility. The seeds of African American anti-Semitism have already been sown. The fertilizer contributing to their potential fruition into full-fledged riots or mass massacres consists of a radicalized left obsessed with “white privilege,” lax criminal laws, and government leaders unwilling to directly confront the scourge of African American anti-Semitism. Hopefully, there is still time to turn the tide.