A Montreal Jewish learning festival has canceled two sessions that would have been led by a pro-Palestinian activist who calls for Birthright Israel’s abolition.

Le Mood, a Limmud conference to be held this Sunday and funded by the local Jewish federation, pulled the panel titled “Where are all the radical Jews?” and another on the history of Montreal’s Jewish garment workers, both to have been facilitated by Sarah Woolf.

Woolf this spring helped launch and promote a website called Renounce Birthright that seeks to “educate young Jews about the connections between Birthright [Israel] trips, and the ongoing colonization and occupation of Palestine.”

Woolf and her co-facilitator on the “radical Jews” panel, Aaron Lakoff, wrote on Lakoff’s blog: “Ultimately, we’ve been banned from speaking at Le Mood because of our personal politics (or whatever Le Mood and Federation CJA perceive our respective politics to be), not based on the content of our panels, which were reviewed, accepted, and scheduled months ago.”

The two added that they are “deeply disheartened to learn that Le Mood has fallen victim to the very behaviours and attitudes it had promised to avoid: stifling, censorial, top-down and centralized notions of what Jewishness can and should be.”

Federation CJA’s president and CEO issued an Oct. 31 statement in which they said the session was canceled “because it involved speakers who challenge, actively and publicly, the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

Noting that Le Mood includes “those that are critical of Israel’s politics, decisions and actions,” the Federation CJA leaders said they had “exercised our right, as any organization would be expected to do, to draw the line at funding and providing a platform, whether directly or indirectly, to those who deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.”

The popular Crusader Kings II computer game has created Jewish roots and has gone for monotheism with the new fifth expansion of the game called “Sons of Abraham.”

The “Khazar Khanate” in the game begins in the year 867, when the nobility converted to Judaism. Once you start the game you can educate your heirs with a Jewish tutor to convert everyone in the kingdom. Then, with the right mouse clicks, you can build the Kingdom of Israel without the interference of the United Nations.

Crusader Kings II, for the informed, is a strategy video game set in the middle Ages but later moved back a few centuries, and the player controls a Medieval dynasty through the use of war, marriages, assassinations and other fun stuff.

All of the dynasties have been pagan, Muslim or Christian, featuring Catholic rulers such as the Templar Knights, the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, and all of them can be played with holy crusades.

Sword of Islam and Legacy of Rome were  introduced last year, giving each of them a chance to rule, but now it is the Jews’ turn, with the “Sons of Abraham.”

The Boycott Israel movement is going to go bonkers over this one. Let’s see how far they get with a worldwide embargo on it.

If the programmers had added the BDS movement as a function, the player could zap them while taking over Judea and Samaria before rebuilding the Holy Temple. There won’t be any protests from the Palestinian Authority because it is not part of the game, but that doesn’t matter because it never has played by the rules anyway.

John Kerry notwithstanding, the player can bring back ancient days to Jerusalem and even go to battle against two opposing forms of Sunni Islam.

The new version also allows the player to use Christian lords to gain influence in the Catholic Church by using a loyal bishop who can be appointed Cardinal. Once the time comes for white smoke, your friend the Cardinal can elect your favorite as pope, who will be happy to reciprocate by granting your best Catholic friend a divorce.

Now the Jews can manipulate the Catholics for a change, choose the pope, take control and make the world a better place.

It won’t work for long because how can the world consider it good if Jews are in charge?

Rihanna sang before a crowd of 50,000 in Tel Aviv at Israel’s largest performance venue, Yarkon Park.

Fans paid $100 and up for Tuesday’s show, part of the pop star’s “Diamonds” world tour and her second performance in Israel. She played Israel three years ago.

Rihanna came to Israel despite a campaign by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to convince her to cancel her performance.

She arrived early Tuesday afternoon, six hours later than scheduled, after performing in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. She participated in a photo shoot at the Dead Sea.

Rihanna was expected to leave Israel immediately after the concert.

Three more Jews, two of them with Israeli citizenship, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday, bringing to two the number of professors associated with Israeli universities who have been awarded Nobel prizes so far this year. Most of the winners have been Jews.

The-three man all Jewish team of Professors Aryeh Warshel, Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus, won the prize in chemistry for the development of multi-scale models for complex chemical systems.

Warshel is an Israel who was born in Kibbutz Sde Nachum, studied at Haifa’s Technion Institute and earned his doctorate at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv. Levitt, who also holds Israeli citizenship, was born in South Africa and is a professor at Stanford University. Karplus was born in Austria in 1930 and in 1938 escaped to the United States, where he earned his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology

Intentionally or not, TIME magazine’s report did not note that two of the winners were Israeli citizens.

It is doubtful that TIME was suddenly being so pro-Israel that it wanted to bury the facts from the Boycott Israel movement, which includes academics in Britain and other countries in Europe as well some in Australia who want to punish for the supposed “occupation” Israel by breaking off ties with its universities.

That would mean the Israelis would not be able share research with them, but in this childish game, it is the anti-Zionists who would lose out. Perhaps they deserve their own punishment. If the BDS folks were intellectually honest, they would protest against the Nobel Prize judges for awarding professors from Israleli universities.

There also is plenty of leeway for the anti-Semitic crowd to claim that Jews, including a Holocaust survivor, are running the world since they have won no less than six of the Nobel prizes awarded this week. A couple of non-Jews also have been recognized, and their numbers will likely rise as prizes are announced in the fields of literature and peace.

Francois Englert, a Belgian Jewish professor at Tel Aviv University and a Holocaust survivor, shared the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their discovery of the Higgs particle, known as the “God particle,” which is said to have caused the Big Bang.

On Monday,  Jewish Americans James Rothman of Yale University and Randy Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley, joined German-born researcher Thomas Suedhof, a non-Jew from Stanford University, in winning  the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Israeli leaders were as excited as the Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, if not more so.

President Shimon Peres called and congratulated Prof. Warshel and joked, “How does it feel for a man from the kibbutz to win a Nobel Prize?”

President Peres continued and said, “I want to congratulate you on behalf of the State of Israel and the Jewish people and every person who hopes to overcome sickness and suffering because of your work. I am sure that your breakthrough will lead to advances in medicine and further scientific breakthroughs.”

He asked Prof. Warshel to convey his congratulations to the other prize winners, professors Levitt Karplus.

Israelis have won no less than six Nobel prizes in the past 11 years.

The BDS movement has not commented.

A Johannesburg High Court has been asked by Boycott Divestment and Sanctions SA (BDS), a pro-Palestinian pressure group, to declare the removal of its anti-Israel billboard unlawful and unconstitutional, IOL News reported Sunday.

An ad company named Continental Outdoor Media removed one of BDS’s billboards in Johannesburg. The billboard, according to BDS, stated facts on the plight of the Palestinians.

BDS claims that COM infringed on its right to freedom of expression.

In papers filed at the Johannesburg High Court, BDS says its campaign was intended to draw attention and public support to ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and the billboards explains “the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands”.

BDS commissioned the billboards from Sweetworks Advertising Agency in Johannesburg last year.

COM said the billboards broke City by-laws on prohibited outdoor advertising, because they were “indecent or suggestive of indecency, prejudicial to public morals, or insensitive to the public or any portion thereof or to any religious or cultural group.”

COM also said the advertisement broke some of the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) codes and the lease agreement between the company and BDS SA.

BDS put up seven of the 12 Palestine solidarity billboards last year and only one was contracted to Continental Outdoor Media.

The other six hired out through other advertising companies still remain, according to BDS.

BDS SA’s Muhammed Desai said they had served their papers on Continental Outdoor Media this week. At its Mangaung conference in December, the African National Congress, South Africa governing party, endorsed the Palestinian BDS campaign.

American Jews are debating where Jewish federations in their communities draw the line on funding programs associated with varying opinions about Israel, especially activities by “Zionists” who are nothing but anti-Zionists.

Boston

In the Boston area, a recent test case for the local Jewish federation—Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP)—revolves around its relationship with Leonard Fein, the founder of organizations including the National Coalition for Jewish Literacy, Moment Magazine, and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

In an Aug. 24 column for the Forward, Fein called for a boycott of the Israeli city of Ariel, which is located beyond the 1949 Temporary Armistice Lines that existed until the Six-Day War in 1967.

“Specifically, I believe American Jews visiting Israel should stay away from [Ariel], treat it as an offense against peace,” Fein wrote.

He had been a guest speaker for CJP and has a long-term relationship with that federation’s leadership groups. Asked if that relationship would change due to Fein’s stance on Ariel, CJP Executive Director Barry Shrage said it would not, and regarding whether CJP is willing to continue to invite Fein as a speaker, Shrage said, “Sure.”

“Certainly an argument about settlements, and how to protest settlements and how to support settlements, is part of the daily life of the Jewish community that has a healthy ongoing debate about important issues,” Shrage told JNS.org.

While Shrage believes Fein’s call for a boycott of Ariel was “a very poor tactic,” he stressed that Fein is “a highly respected member of our community.”

“We’d be so much poorer a community if we drive out people like Leonard Fein,” Shrage said. “The future of the community is about binding people together.”

But Charles Jacobs, head of the Boston-based advocacy group Americans for Peace and Tolerance, believes CJP crosses a red line by continuing to work with Fein. Jacobs called the policy of welcoming a “big tent” of organizations and individuals with varying views on Israel a “slippery slope.”

“The CJP-certified Leonard Fein is now one more slip down the slope,” Jacobs told JNS.org. “Leonard Fein, who in the midst of Middle East madness, where Arabs are murdering and gassing and torturing each other—and each other’s wives and children, from Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad—Fein blames Israelis for the lack of peace in the region.

“Beholden to major donors, many of them on the left, it seems that some federations have become disconnected from the larger Jewish community. So if CJP does not excommunicate Fein—if it has no red lines—it will show just how disconnected it has become.”

Shrage said CJP does have red lines. Advocating for the destruction of Israel or harming Israel are “stances that place people outside the community,” but Fein is “a Zionist” and working with him does not cross a line, despite his stance on Ariel, according to Shrage.

“The line here is whether you are anti-Zionist, anti-Israel,” he said.

Fein told JNS.org that while he called for a boycott of Ariel because its location 10 miles beyond the 1949 armistice line presents “a very distinctive problem” and “essentially destroys the possibility of a two-state solution,” he opposes the broader Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“I think each potential target of that kind of approach of boycott, divestment and sanctions needs to be treated on its own terms, on its own merits, or lack of merits,” Fein said, explaining that he disagrees with a movement that issues boycott calls “with a broad brush,” like the BDS movement does.

New York

Shrage called hosting Fein a “far cry” from hosting BDS activist Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple, who appeared at New York’s 92nd Street Y in May, a story that The Jewish Press exposed here.

The Y also scheduled an event this spring with Roger Waters, the anti-Israel Pink Floyd band member, which was ultimately canceled after The Jewish Press revealed it here.

On Sept. 12, JCC Watch and Americans for a Safe Israel partnered on a protest outside the UJA-Federation of New York building that called for Jews to stop donating to the federation, due to a lack of guidelines preventing federation funding of programming that gives a platform to anti-Israel voices like Walker and Waters. The Y receives $900,000 annually from the federation.

“We have a pattern of forces within the UJA-Federation diverting charitable dollars to further political purposes, and these purposes are anti-Israel,” Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, told JNS.org.

When a UJA donor and volunteer told Allen at the protest that the funding in question is “only a small part” of the federation’s budget, Allen said he replied, “Even if it’s one penny, it’s wrong, and it makes the whole organization basically treif.”

The UJA-Federation declined to comment for a JNS.org article on the Sept. 12 protest and did not return a comment request for this article.

Washington, DC

Like JCC Watch, Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art (COPMA) is calling for a halt to donations to its local federation, citing the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s funding of the Washington DC Jewish Community Center’s Theater J.

COPMA was formed in 2009 as a response to Theater J’s work on “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza,” a series of short plays in which parents repeat anti-Israel narratives while mulling how to speak to children about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One actor advises a parent not to tell a child that “Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.”

Robert G. Samet, COPMA’s chairman, said his group does not intend to impede artistic freedom, but rather specifically opposes the federation’s support of Theater J.

“It’s just, don’t do it on our nickel,” Samet told JNS.org. “Don’t do it on [federation] contributors’ support, it’s not appropriate. It’s a fringe view that’s being supported by mainstream contributors.”

Four days after The Jewish Press exposed Jewish funding for Theater J here, Robert Levi, chairman of the board of the National Council of Young Israel, wrote an an Aug. 26 letter to the DC Federation and joined COPMA’s call for the discontinuation of federation support for Theater J, due to the theater group’s planned performance of Motti Lerner’s “The Admission” from March 20-April 27, 2014.

“As you may be aware, [‘The Admission’] reflects a neo-anti-Israeli perspective, which is contrary to the mission of the Federation,” Levi wrote. “The climatic scene of play implies a fictitious 1948 massacre conducted by a colonel in the Israeli defense brigade. You may not be aware that many of Mr. Lerner’s dramas are not performed in Israel due to their harmful message.”

Last week, the federation responded to COPMA with an “open letter to our community.”

“Love of Israel and openness to a diverse array of thought are compatible goals,” the federation’s letter stated.

Ari Roth, artistic director of Theater J, told JNS.org that “The Admission” is all based on “actual research done by three historians,” rather than implying the “fictitious 1948 massacre” that Young Israel’s Levi described in his letter. “The Admission” was also featured in an April 2013 workshop that was underwritten by the Israeli Consulate of New York, which Roth called an Israeli “hechsher” on the play.

COPMA does not acknowledge Theater J’s slate of more than 35 plays and workshops relating to Israel over the last 16 years, said Roth, who among other plays the group has performed cited “Dai” (“Enough”), which details the experiences of 14 different Israelis in the moments before a suicide bombing.

Theater J also never actually produced “Seven Jewish Children,” explained Roth. Instead, the group held a “critical dissection” of the play, featuring readings of “Seven Jewish Children” and response plays, as well as a talk to start the event that included “what troubled me about the play,” Roth said.

The DC federation, in an April 2011 statement, said it would not fund “any organization that encourages boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel in pursuit of goals to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish State.” Theater J “stands squarely” against the BDS movement, Roth told JNS.org.

“We are all about bringing Israeli art over here, engaging with Israel,” he said. “We are a leading importer of Israeli cultural talent to Washington.”

In its letter on COPMA last week, the federation said it was not its job to meddle in the “autonomous decision making” of its partner agencies, or to “single out a few programs from the thousands we support that may make some uneasy.”

Samet, chairman of COPMA, told JNS.org that it was “only with great reluctance that we went to a mass email campaign urging people to suspend or terminate contributions until such time as [the] federation does something about [the Theater J issue].” But the federation ultimately crossed COPMA’s red line.

“We didn’t want to take it that far, but they pretty much forced our hand by ignoring us, and ignoring the issue,” he said.

On Thursday evening, September 12, a group of between 50 and 75 staunchly pro-Israel New Yorkers attended the latest effort to publicly expose what they are calling Donor Fraud in the institutional Jewish community.

Their campaign is called, “Close Your Wallets,” and they are hoping to encourage Jews to withhold their donations to Jewish institutions until specific guidelines regarding the use of that money are adopted.

The loosely organized group whose leader is Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, has been gathering outside Jewish institutions on a regular basis for several years.  They do this in an effort to draw attention to the use by large Jewish institutions of Jewish charitable donations to support anti-Israel activities and anti-Israel individuals.

This week’s vigil was held outside of the United Jewish Appeal – New York Federation building on East 59th Street in Manhattan.  The vigils will continue until the NYC UJA adopts effective guidelines along the lines of the pledge adopted several years ago by the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee in Florida.

In the past, rallies were held outside of the Manhattan Jewish Community Center and the 92nd Street Y.

According to Allen, the JCC was the first focus because it was showing movies and promoting organizations that work to delegitimize Israel.  Later, the 92nd Street Y was the site of several rallies.

The 92nd Street Y was chastised for supporting and promoting two of the anti-Israel world’s most visible  celebrities, Roger Waters, a musician formerly with the powerhouse rock band Pink Floyd, and Alice Walker, author of the phenomenally successful novel, “The Color Purple.”

But both institutions receive funding from the single largest recipient of Jewish donor funds, the UJA-NY Federation, all of which is solicited in the guise of being used either for Jewish causes or in furtherance of Jewish values.

Allen was joined outside of the UJA building by Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans for a Safe Israel, and dozens of others, in a symbolic burning of checks made out to the UJA.

When asked whether he thought the UJA will be amenable to adopting the guidelines, Allen told The Jewish Press he thinks it will take time and only a serious groundswell of support will be successful in getting the UJA to adopt effective guidelines regarding the use of Jewish donor dollars.

“Remember Johnny Friendly, from the Marlon Brando movie, ‘On the Waterfront?” Allen asked.  “Well, nothing moves on the Jewish Waterfront without John Ruskay’s approval.”

Allen knows that Ruskay, still the top NYC UJA professional, is opposed to setting guidelines.  Allen referenced an op-ed penned by Ruskay shortly after one of JCC Watch’s earliest rallies.

The article was published in the Jewish Week and bemoaned the efforts of some groups who seek to determine when criticism of Israel becomes beyond the pale.  Ruskay’s line is much broader than is the one painted by Allen and those who have activated the Close Your Wallets campaign.  Ruskay’s vision is that of the largest possible tent, where the greatest number of Jews get to say whatever they want about Israel so long as they count themselves as “supporters.”

Allen doesn’t see much point in welcoming those into a tent who are determined to spread what he and his colleagues see as false, malicious and existentially harmful propaganda about Israel.  His view is that Ruskay’s method may prove to be like the proverbial successful operation which, unfortunately, kills the patient.

The next step for the Close the Wallets campaign is the institution of a wave of individual representatives at New York City synagogues who will be like educational community organizers, informing congregants about the harm caused by those in the economic and political warfare program against Israel, known as the BDS (Boycotts of, Divestment from and Sanctions against Israel) movement.

The second step for the educational community organizers is to explain how Jewish communal dollars are being misused by those whose fiduciary duty it is to spend the Jewish communal dollars in strict accordance with the representations made when the money was solicited.

“This campaign is not going to succeed overnight, but it will over time,” Allen said.  “We’re not going away.”

Back in 1976, when the burgeoning punk movement began transforming the rock’n’roll landscapes of London and New York, a young punk rocker named John Lydon scrawled the words “I Hate…” on his Pink Floyd t-shirt.

With this one stroke, Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, demarcated the past from the future: eschewing the lengthy and ponderous compositions of Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, Rotten and his mates set about delivering sharp, angry tunes in a compact three-minute format.

Almost 40 years later, popular music has undergone numerous other transformations, but Rotten (who now calls himself Lydon again) and Waters have remained polar opposites. And as Israelis know better than most, that’s true both inside and outside the recording studio.

Back in 2010, Lydon rounded on critics of his decision to play a gig in Tel Aviv by telling them, “I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won’t understand how anyone can have a problem with how they [the Palestinians] are treated.”

By contrast, Waters, outwardly, a much more refined and eloquent fellow, has firmly hitched himself to the movement pressing for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Waters’s support for BDS is thought to be the reason that his scheduled appearance at the 92nd Sreet Y in New York City was canceled back in April, while more recently he tussled with the Simon Wiesenthal Center over an accusation of anti-Semitism that stemmed from a feature of his live show, in which a Star of David is projected onto a flying inflatable pig.

In his response to the Wiesenthal Center, Waters denied he was an anti-Semite, coming out with the standard response that hating Zionism and hating Jews are completely distinct. But a subsequent letter written in August to “My Colleagues in Rock’n’Roll” – his legendary pomposity remains unaltered – is certain to revive the charge. This time, it’s hard to see how Waters can wriggle around it.

The letter begins by citing another British musician, the violinist Nigel Kennedy, who slammed Israeli “apartheid” during a recent concert that was recorded by the BBC. “Nothing unusual there you might think,” Waters wrote, “[but] then one Baroness Deech, (nee Fraenkel) disputed the fact that Israel is an apartheid state and prevailed upon the BBC to censor Kennedy’s performance by removing his statement.”

Why did Waters think it necessary to point out the maiden name of Baroness Ruth Deech, a noted academic and lawyer? The answer is obvious: before she was Deech, a name that resonates with English respectability, she was Fraenkel, a name that sounds positively, well, Jewish. And much as she might try to hide her origins, the intrepid Waters is determined to out her, along with her nefarious Jewish –sorry, I mean, Zionist – agenda.

Sarcasm aside, this is anti-Semitism of the ugliest, most primitive kind. Appropriately, Waters’s letter appeared first on the website of the Electronic Intifada, a U.S.-based outfit that has emerged as one of the prime organizing platforms of the BDS movement.

The Waters letter ends as follows: “Please join me and all our brothers and sisters in global civil society in proclaiming our rejection of Apartheid in Israel and occupied Palestine, by pledging not to perform or exhibit in Israel or accept any award or funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”

In case it’s not clear, in the BDS movement, such elaborate formulations are code for “until such time as the state of Israel, which was born in a state of original sin, is finally eliminated.”

Here’s the rub, though: ten years ago, when the BDS movement was a relatively new phenomenon, statements like these would have set off a minor panic in the Jewish world. These days, we’re far more sanguine, and we’ve learned that Israel can survive and flourish no matter how many graying prog-rockers like Waters dedicate their lives to removing the world’s only Jewish state from the map.

As unpalatable as this may be for Waters’s digestion, the plain truth is that the BDS movement has failed. Its original aim was to replicate the massive outcry against South African apartheid during the 1980s, when songs like “Free Nelson Mandela” and “(I Ain’t Gonna Play) Sun City” ruled the airwaves. Instead, it has remained a fringe movement, a minor irritant that has had precious little impact on Israel’s economic life and garners media attention only when someone like Waters decides to shoot his mouth off.