Day: March 25, 2018

Jewish groups disagree about Muslim migration to US; internal pact revealed

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It seems that the fifty or so Jewish groups operating in the US have a secret pact to not speak ill of each other. However, that agreement seems to be coming apart as complaints involving the more conservative Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) have been filed.
One of those complaints appears (no one is revealing complete details) to involve a possible complaint by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which is not happy with ZOA pointing out HIAS’s financial incentive to admit and resettle more Muslim ‘refugees’ to America.
 

Hetfield in DC synagogue
Mark Hetfield, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society speaking at one of many anti-Trump events he was involved in. See more on the schism among American Jews here:   http://jewishexponent.com/2017/11/08/groups-see-surge-activism-since-2016-election/

 
(HIAS, for new readers, is one of the nine major federal resettlement contractors*** placing refugees as secretively as they can into your towns and cities. HIAS played a major role in filing lawsuits against the Trump Administration’s so-called Muslim ban.)
First here is information from Forward in a story entitled:

Presidents Conference’s Secret Rules Bar Jewish Groups From Attacking Each Other

(President refers to the Presidents of each of the Jewish advocacy groups.)

Top American Jewish organizations agreed last year to adhere to rules that ban them from attacking each other, the Forward has learned.

The rules, which regulate the discourse of American Jewish leaders, have never been publicized, and are unknown to the vast majority of the constituents of the organizations that have agreed to abide by them. First written in 1995, they were quietly revamped in early 2017.

All of the fifty-odd Jewish groups that belong to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are subject to the rules, which now ban “insults, ad hominem attacks, and name calling” against the Presidents Conference or its member organizations, and statements that are “false, inaccurate or unfairly exaggerated.”

Alleged violations of the rules are referred to a committee that has the power to recommend that organizations guilty of serial violations be expelled from the Presidents Conference. The membership and procedures of that committee, which also were updated last year, have never been made public.

At least four alleged infractions of the rules are currently pending before the committee, the Forward has learned. Those four all involve the Zionist Organization of America, a hawkish pro-Israel group, which is the subject of two of the complaints and has filed two more.

“I criticize other organizations all the time,” said Mort Klein, the ZOA’s president. “You just can’t lie, and you can’t say don’t support them. You can’t call names.”

[….]

The Presidents Conference did not respond to a request for its current governing documents. It also did not respond to questions about what complaints are currently pending before the tribunal, and whether the tribunal had ever acted against a member organization.

[….]

According to one person active in the Presidents Conference, both the Jewish refugee aid organization HIAS and the Anti-Defamation League currently have complaints that have long been pending against the ZOA. The ZOA’s Klein told the Forward that his group has brought its own complaints against the ADL and Ameinu, a progressive Zionist organization.

None of the organizations would describe the content of their complaints. But that they relate to the ZOA is not surprising, given the organization’s willingness to publicly attack its colleagues. In a letter to the editor published in the Forward in 2017, Klein suggested that there was a “profit motive” behind the HIAS’s opposition to President Trump’s Muslim ban.

“Some refugee resettlement groups, such as HIAS, which have invoked ‘morality’ arguments….have been receiving millions of dollars of government grants to resettle refugees,” Klein wrote.

HIAS would not say whether the January 2017 letter, or some other public statement by the ZOA, was the subject of its complaint to the committee.

“I do not want to prejudice the proceedings in any way by commenting before the process has run its course, which I hope will be soon,” said Mark Hetfield, HIAS’s president and CEO.

More here.
The letter and the allegations against HIAS:

hetfield-at-wh
Here is Hetfield again protesting against the President. Hetfield pulls down an annual salary of over $350,000.  Where is Congress? Cut their federal funding!   https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/03/05/dear-donald-give-bibi-a-gift-today-cut-federal-funding-to-hias/

This is a portion of the 2017 ‘Letter to the Editor’ by Morton Klein (supporting President Trump) that seems to have Hetfield steamed:

…. under Jewish law, someone with a potential “profit motive” to favor a particular position is in no position to judge. Some refugee resettlement groups, such as HIAS, which have invoked “morality” arguments to promote admitting poorly vetted refugees have been receiving millions of dollars of government grants to resettle refugees.

There is also no moral equivalence between Trump’s executive order and Franklin Delano Roosevelt slamming the doors on Jews trying to escape from Nazi Europe. The 1930s Jews posed no terror threat to the U.S., were in imminent danger of annihilation, and had nowhere else to go. By contrast, immigrants from the seven countries of concern are infiltrated by terrorists, are often already in Turkey or Jordan where there is no imminent danger, and have 50 other Muslim nations that can be pressured to accept them. (ZOA also favors safe zones in the Middle East.)

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes survey (2009) found that over 90% of Muslims in surveyed majority Muslim nations held strongly unfavorable (anti-Semitic) attitudes towards Jews. Bringing more Jew-haters into the U.S., who will join surging vicious anti-Semitic activities on college campuses and the anti-Israel Congressional lobby, is dangerous and immoral.

More here.
Our complete Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society archive is here.  HIAS is very close to the SPLC, by the way.
 
*** These (below) are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors and I say all of them have a profit motive (including Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc) to resettle more refugees including Muslim refugees.
And, I think one of the greatest insults to taxpayers is that these same groups, which are paid by us to take care of refugees, have become super-sized Leftwing community organizing and agitating groups.  HIAS is the leader in attacking Trump!
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with jobs, and get them signed up for their services!  From most recent accounting, here.

 

Venezuelans are not refugees, but you will be told they are!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but people on the move because they need work and food (or their climate is changing some), or fear crime in their own countries are not legitimate refugees requiring resettlement.
 

Venezualans into Brazil
Venezuelans pour into Brazil.  Photo: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brazil-declares-state-of-emergency-on-venezuela-border-over-migrant-influx-52fnsb7wg

 
By the internationally understood definition, a legitimate refugee must be able to show a credible fear of persecution—that they will be persecuted in their home country due to their race, religion, political persuasion and so forth.
The No Borders Left has for decades been trying to blur the definition suggesting that everyone moving for any reason is a refugee when the vast majority around the world are economic migrants.
Because the socialist government, in the once-rich Venezuela, has so ruined the country that people are starving is not a reason for refugee resettlement protection, nevertheless, watch for demands for resettlement as the crisis deepens.
Here Bloomberg headlines a story earlier this month with this choice of words:

Venezuelans, Go Home: Xenophobia Haunts Refugees

The story focuses on how Panamanians don’t want (poor and hungry) Venezuelans flooding in.  Besides the word ‘refugees,’ you will be hearing that word Xenophobia more often too—-like in South Africa when the black South Africans are violent against their fellow black Africans. LOL! They can’t call it racism.
Xenophobia is the cool word, but what it really means is that humans are tribal, and horror-of-horrors no one wants to admit that!
Here are a few snips from the Bloomberg story with that headline:

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse are crowding into cities and makeshift camps in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and throughout the region, the largest mass emigration in modern Latin American history. The resulting friction mirrors that in nations from the U.S., where immigration pervades the national debate, to Germany, where war refugees have upended politics, to Italy, where an anti-migrant party made stunning gains Sunday.

In Panama, the sympathy that greeted early arrivals from Venezuela, many wealthy professionals, is giving way to fear and resentment of the poor and desperate. It is evinced by outbreaks of nationalistic insults, harassment and even violence.

[….]

Venezuela’s slump since socialist autocrat President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013 is the deepest in the Americas in recent history. Oil output, the economy’s mainstay, has plunged as the state producer runs out of money — and as Maduro imprisons its officials and replaces them with military men. Hyperinflation has made the currency worthless, and malnutrition is now endemic.

Almost 2 million Venezuelans are living outside the country.

Here is where they are:
 
venezuelans to US
 
Much more here.
I haven’t been following the Venezuelan issue and wondered if there was a push for Temporary Protected Status for those in the US, and sure enough there was such a push last summer (even Senator Marco Rubio was pushing it), but I can only assume the Trump Admin is not entertaining it.
I have a little-used  category on South America.  This post will be archived there and I expect more news will be coming from that region of the world as time goes on.
Since Brazil is being overrun by Venezuelans will they be so eager to take in more Syrians?
Endnote: I wonder if the SPLC hate list creators will create a new hate category (in addition to racists and Islamophobes) for xenophobes?  For example, do you remember a few weeks ago when Somalis were fighting with African Americans (tribalism!) in a Minneapolis high school? Did the SPLC refer to the Somalis as xenophobes?  What a dilemma for the SPLC—two of  their favorite protected groups hate on each other!