Have the Talk Today: Speak to Your Kids about Safety

Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz

We are all busy before Pesach, so let’s get right to the point.

Please see to it that you speak to your children about child safety/abuse prevention before Pesach if you’ve never had that discussion with them, and give them a refresher talk if you have.

It is literally a matter of life and death that you have such a conversation.

Year after year we get a significant spike in abuse-related calls to our child safety helpline immediately before, during, and following the Pesach and Sukkot holidays. Why? Because our kids are in a less structured environment at home, in shul and at play, and are also exposed to a wide range of children, teenagers, and adults who they don’t come in contact with all year round. If you need convincing, just tally the number of people your kids interact with during a regular school week, and then do the same for the week of Pesach.

Thankfully, there is now an unprecedented awareness of the importance of child safety/abuse prevention in our community and we have come to the painful understanding that we are not immune to the ravages of abuse and molestation.

But, to be perfectly frank, the average person in the street (probably you) still cannot believe that seemingly normal, well-respected people – including close family members – can do unspeakable things to vulnerable children. This is a classic case of cognitive dissonance where your mind knows something to be true, but your heart just can’t accept it as fact, thereby leaving you in total denial.

Case in point: this time of year, caring, decent parents are still allowing their young children to collect charity door-to-door completely unsupervised.

L’ma’an Hashem; haven’t we learned anything from all the tragedies and ruined lives of kids who have been abused? At least in previous years, many or most of us thought our community was somehow immune from problems of this nature. What is the excuse now? (FYI; have a look at Girl Scouts Safety 

Guidelines for Cookie Sales.)

My dear friends, this lack of supervision is simply unconscionable knowing what we now know about the scope and magnitude of child abuse nowadays.

I plead with you to take this matter seriously and do everything in your power to keep your kids safe by seeing to it that your children are supervised properly over Pesach while at shul or during play time, and by having effective, research-based child safety talks with them that will educate and empower your children without frightening them.

There are four basic messages that children need to internalize in order for any abuse prevention program to be effective:

• No secrets from parents
• Your body belongs to you
• Good touching/bad touching
• No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable

Please educate yourself before speaking to your children so that yourdiscussions generate light and not heat. Additionally, it is important for you to know – and to share with your children – that although “stranger danger” is a genuine concern, the vast majority of molesters are people well-known to and trusted by the children.

We encourage you to take advantage of free, online resources that we at The Center for Jewish Family Life posted to help educate you about effective child safety training:

Providing Your Children with the Skills and Tools to Protect Themselves is an excellent article by Dr. David Pelcovitz and our 3 short videos on child safety education, Safety Video #1, Safety Video #2 andSafety Video #3 will serve you well in beginning the education process. Additionally, you can download the read-aloud version of our Let's Stay Safe Child Safety Book for the most minimal contribution.

If you suspect that your child may have been molested, please seek the counsel of a licensed mental health professional, preferably before you speak to your children. If your child was, G-d forbid molested, please report it immediately to the authorities.

Thank you for taking the time to read these lines, and kindly take a minute to forward this article to others. To be sure, the only way our children and grandchildren will be safe, is when each and every one of them is well educated about child safety.

Best wishes for a Chag Kosher V’samayach

Yakov Horowitz

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, the Director of The Center for Jewish Family Life, received The Covenant Award in recognition of his lifelong contribution to Jewish education and his advocacy for child abuse victims. The Hebrew version of The Center for Jewish Family Life’s best-selling Let's Stay Safe Child Safety Book is scheduled for release in May 2015.  

The Beauty of It All: Obama Does Not Matter

Kish Mich Vee Dee Yeedin Huben Gereet

And now President Barack Obama is threatening Israel and American Jews that he will bypass Mideast peace negotiations that include Israel and instead will go directly to the United Nations to impose, by U.N. fiat, a fait accompli, a “Two-State Solution,” on Israel.

Do you realize the beauty of it all?  For people of faith — Jews, Christians — Obama does not matter. 

And for people lacking faith — Obama also does not matter.  

When Sennacherib came upon the Kingdom of Judah, his fierce armies threatened King Hezekiah, camping outside Jerusalem in their myriads. That threat’s resolution is recounted in II Kings 18-19. 

Obama is no Sennacherib; he is a struggling golf player who, to demonstrate how “cool” he is, delights in walking down airport stairways without holding the railing.  That is all he is.  An empty suit, a Constitutional scholar who never was, a law review president who never published a single piece of legal scholarship, a reverse-Midas who ruins or tarnishes everything he touches.  Hugo Chavez did not fear him.  Vladimir Putin does not regard him.  The Iranians do not take him seriously.  America’s deepest enemies see him and act with a full sense that the vault is open, its contents free for the taking. 

If he was potentially someone of substance six years ago, he now is exposed as one of America’s weakest Presidents, both domestically and abroad.  Because of his station, he cannot be disregarded — but he is not to be feared.  Obama does not matter.

Among the Great Masters — Rembrandt, Van Gogh —  none painted with the beauty rendered by the Master of the Universe. 

 It is a thing of beauty:  

Obama's six years of incessant private tantrums and public threats and pressures against Israel — infantile gestures like refusing to have dinner with Bibi, making faces and digging his fingernails into his chair as Bibi spoke with him at the White House, demands that Israel stop building residences in Judea and Samaria, demanding along with Hillary and Biden that Jews stop building homes even in Jerusalem, speaking of Israel moving to pre-1967 lines, and now intimating that he will support “Two State” resolutions in the anti-Jewish U.N. — all have set new more-extreme “red lines” for Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), Hamas, and others who represent the Arabs of Judea and Samaria.  

Although a new American President later can “walk back” Obama’s unilateral narcissistic fits of vituperative pique, history shows that Arab leaders in Judea and Samaria cannot walk back their intensified demands.  Once demanded, they are engraved. 

And here is the beauty:

Each time Obama applies new pressure on Israel, he inadvertently strengthens Israel in Judea and Samaria.  

Every time Obama demands a unilateral Israeli withdrawal (a la Obama’s one-way hasty exits from Iraq and Afghanistan, and like the unilateral withdrawals that Ehud Barak executed in South Lebanon and that Ariel Sharon replicated with similarly disastrous results in Gaza) — Obama  inadvertently forces Abbas, the PA (Palestine Authority), and Hamas to adopt their own more extreme stands.  We cannot blame them; he forces it on them, and then they later cannot back down.  

Every time Obama ups the ante, he inadvertently makes it even more impossible for any Israeli leader, right or left, to acquiesce to any future deal like Rabin’s Oslo or Sharon’s Gaza disasters.  

Meanwhile, life does not remain in stasis. Inevitably, more Jews build homes in Judea and Samaria. Despite Obama, Hillary, Kerry, Biden and their building freezes, there now are 750,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem and in the rest of post-1967 Judea and Samaria.  

In 2009 when Obama’s Reign of Error began, there were fewer than 200,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and fewer than 300,000 Jews in the rest of Judea and Samaria.  Six years of pressure from Obama and his henchmen has resulted in increases to 325,000 and 425,000 respectively.  In total, a fifty percent increase.  As Obama hardens his lines —something he does nowhere else and to no one else — he compels Arab leaders there to harden their lines, guaranteeing perpetual stalemate, leaving the Jewish numbers to rise. 

The “Two State Solution” died when Obama became President.  He killed it without knowing it.

It is a thing of beauty:

The absurd “Two State Solution” that Sharon never should have accepted in the first place, died when Obama became President.  As with so much other destruction that Obama has wreaked elsewhere in the world and at home, he killed it without knowing it.

Even without new construction, more Jewish children are born each day to those 750,000 Jews.  Relatives move in.  Human increase cannot be stopped.  With those numbers, how is anyone going to move 750,000 Jews out of their homes? Not since Adolf Hitler has anyone moved that many Jews out of their homes. How is Obama or Hillary going to do it?  How would Buji or Tzipi? This is not Yamit or Gush Katif.  This is nearly a million Jews.  

Short of a Hitler-like Panzer blitzkrieg, backed by cattle cars and storm troopers — how is anyone going to move 750,000 Jews out of Judea and Samaria?  

And, thanks to Obama and his cohorts, that fascinating question can wait another day because Obama’s latest threats have pushed Abu Mazen and Hamas into harder lines, making “peace talks” even more impossible, leaving everyone in stalemate.  Meanwhile, while you were reading this, more Jewish children were being born in Judea and Samaria.

Consider a hypothetical: 

Yenta the Matchmaker decides to marry Abe to Sadie.  Both are in their late 50’s, Abe bankrupt, Sadie infertile. Abe says he will marry Sadie only if she agrees to bear him five children.  Sadie responds that, at age 57, she no longer can bear but would agree to adopt five.  Abe insists: “I want you to bear five children, not adopted.”  Yenta next spends five years pleading with Sadie:  “Promise him you will bear two children.  I can get him down from five.”  Sadie responds: “Do you not understand me?  I cannot bear children.  By the way, now I am 62.” As Yenta threatens to increase pressure on Sadie to bear, Sadie adds: “And I want a million-dollar ring from him.”  Yenta explains that Abe is bankrupt and is counting on Sadie to support him.  Sadie responds “I can compromise.  His ring can be $900,000.”

This kind of stuff is what goes on in these Mideast negotiations.  Add some music and put in on Broadway, but there is never going to be a “Two State Solution.”  It was killed by three men, with two accomplices.  

The murderers:  Obama, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon.  The accomplices:  Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen.  

If there ever was a possibility that some Labor Party government unilaterally would impose an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, based on a Shimon Peres-like oblivion to the harsh realities of real life, Ehud Barak’s withdrawal from South Lebanon and Sharon’s from Gaza killed it.  

The withdrawals taught something shocking to the fools who had supported Oslo and unilateral withdrawals: 

 if you let them have cement and steel to build homes, they instead will built terror tunnels.  Now the rockets reach Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, so Israel’s “beautiful people” no longer are limited to watching reality on the news. The Tel Aviv café night-life bon vivants now get to experience bomb shelters in vivid color and 3-D surround sound.

In all the years, Arafat and Abu Mazen never gave an inch.  Barak even offered Arafat East Jerusalem, and Arafat responded with an Intifada, as if to say: “How dare you offer me a country of my own?” Ehud Olmert, still awaiting the opportunity finally to begin serving his well-earned six years in prison for corruption and bribery, likewise was denied.  They will not accept any deal that includes living alongside a country defined as “Jewish.”

That was Netanyahu’s point when telling the media there never will be a “Two State Solution” while he is Prime Minister.  “Two State” is ridiculous because, at the end of the day, the Arab leaders of Judea and Samaria will not accept any arrangement that includes Jewish Israelis living on land that Israel liberated after 1967. They will not abide any neighbor, regardless of borders, that defines itself as a “Jewish” country. And no one will be able to evict 750,000 people from their homes unless they engage in Hitler techniques, doubtful in Israel.

For those who can handle the truth, there never will be a “Two State Solution” — regardless of whether we want one.  Israelis of all stripes have come to realize that Iran and its Shiite surrogates are gobbling up parts of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and now Yemen.  They see that Hamas controls so much of Gaza and “the West Bank” that Abu Mazen has refused to call an election for six years since his four-year term ended in 2009.  They realize that any new Arab country established in Judea and Samaria instantly would become a haven for world terror. Israel’s national airport would have to close down permanently.

Let Obama’s pressure continue.  Let him continue forcing Abu Mazen and Hamas to ever-increasing negotiating extremes.  Meanwhile more Jewish children continue to be born every day in Judea and Samaria, and exorbitant housing prices along the coastal plane force a new Finance Minister who promised lower prices to find a way to increase home construction by enormous numbers to offset increased demand with increased supply.  Housing in East Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria will continue to rise.  The Jewish population will exceed the first million.  Obama does not matter.  It is a thing of beauty. 

Rabbi Dov Fischer is author of General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine (Steimatzky: 1985). His political commentaries have appeared on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review,  Los Angeles Times, and in other major American publications.  He formerly was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, is an adjunct professor of law at two prominent American law schools, and is Rav of Young Israel of Orange County, California.  He is author of Jews for Nothing (Feldheim: 1983) and is in his fifth year as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings can be found at RabbiDov.com  As with all of Rabbi Prof. Fischer’s writings, this commentary expresses his own views.

Obama Polishing Shoes for Ayatolla

The Truth about J Street, Video

Saudi Arabia Gives Israel Clear Skies to Attack Iranian Nuke Sites

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times of London reported Saturday.

In the week that the U.N. Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defense sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. To ensure the Israeli bombers pass without hindrance, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defense systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defenses will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a U.S. defense source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [U.S.] State Department.”

Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defense circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.

The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

Why US State Declassified the Report on Israel’s Nuclear Capabilities

Israel’s foremost enemy is the US State Department.

by Lee Kaplan

The writer heads Stop the ISM. He is an investigative journalist and contributor to Front Page Magazine, senior intelligence analyst and communications director for the Northeast Intelligence Network, and also heads Defending America for Knowledge and Action (DAFKA). He appears frequently in the US media.

Normally when somebody wants something from somebody else, they show their best behavior toward the person they want it from. Even a child knows this and will do what its parents want in order to get that ice cream cone or trip to Disneyland.

Why is it we never see this normal human reaction from the Palestinians with regards to USAID and the President of the United States in order to get their “Palestinian state”? 

Machmoud Abbas continually praises terrorists who murder Jews, declaring memorials and naming streets after them.

Abbas makes daily threats to the long term existence of Israel.  

Even if they get that Palestinian state, they will take all of Israel later, he says, in mimicking the late Abu Amar. Palestinian TV, funded by USAID, runs children’s shows calling for the extermination of Jews and it is a known fact that kids are being groomed to be future terrorists. 

Murderers in Israeli jails are being paid salaries with money provided by the US taxpayer. That story broke, the aid never stopped and it won’t. Israeli leadership is equally guilty of looking the other way. Now that the election is over, Bibi is running to give the withheld tax money to the PA.

The simple truth is that the Palestinians have been promised behind closed doors by the United States that they will have their Palestinian state no matter what. 

Common logic should tell us this from the behavior of the Palestinians. They know something the average Israeli does not know; it doesn't matter how obnoxious or murderous they are, the US is going to get them that state. 

The Arabs know this and so does the US State Department. It didn’t just start under Obama but goes back to Bush 41 and before that.

Believe it or not, a member of Palestinian “royalty” lives on my street in America. We once had a conversation about the “peace process.” He told me the US promised the Palestinians a state no matter what they do, nor how long it takes. 

When Arafat was the only survivor of a plane crash in the Libyan desert, Ronald  Reagan dispatched a helicopter from a US aircraft carrier to save him.  Arafat could have been wiped out in Lebanon too in 1982 and in the Mukata  in 2002, but US intervention saved him and his terror movement.

Jewish Republicans in the US talk as if the Republican Party is the savior of Israel. And Democrats are more than willing to absorb accusations of anti-Israel bias from the other side of the aisle. But the fact is both parties are not such great friends to Israel.

 Israel’s foremost enemy is the US State Department. 

The presidents and politicians, are just the summer help to State. Obama and Kerry have just been more outspoken about carrying out State’s mandate than previous administrations that gave lip service to Israel, but also quietly stabbed her in the back.

Israeli politicians too, both the Left and Right, also play this game of ostrich with its head in the sand.  The open defiance of Abbas, of Hamas and the continuing daily knifings, stonings, and burnings of the common Israeli by terrorists are regarded as petty crimes and not worth disturbing the natural order of things.

Here is what is going on: 

The Arabs and to a greater extent the Muslims, have a vision for the world of Islamic supremacy. Serbia and Bosnia both fell to Muslim forces who attacked those Christian countries with mercenaries and jihadists while staging diplomatic maneuvers that ultimately turned them into Muslim states. 

The Serbs were winning their war until NATO and US planes joined in and bombed them. The same was true in Bosnia which today has as its main exports drugs and prostitution—but it’s Muslim and that’s all that matters.

The leaders of Israel fear the same fate that befell those two Christian states will ultimately happen to Israel. Abbas’s call to join the kangaroo court at the ICC is just a part of this grand scheme. 

Susan Rice has openly called for using foreign troops to “protect” the Palestinians from the Israelis. 

 Common sense should tell anyone after the Disengagement that a Palestinian state next door in Yesha is a non-starter. Yet the US State Department, Obama, and even Netanyahu (after a brief moment of clarity) are still talking of this.

Israel has become dependent on the US for trade, loans and military security. However, Israeli leaders know also the US State Department’s real plans:  Israel has to worry that one day the Arabs may get the EU and US to decide to send NATO forces to give them that state they were promised no matter how they behave.

Which brings us to the US declassification of Israel’s nuclear capabilities by State  while retaining security classification for similar capabilities for other allies like the UK and France. If the US decided to join NATO in forcing Israel to vacate Yesha and create a “Palestinian state”, Israel could sustain a war for two years at most, but most likely would be overrun—except for Israel’s own nuclear umbrella. 

In the event of such an attack, Israel could only hope at best for a Pyrrhic victory, but nonetheless, the deterrence against a repeat of Serbia and Bosnia is immeasurably stronger with those nukes.

ohn Kerry’s negotiations in Switzerland are an attempt by US State to stop an Iranian bomb, yes, but also to set up the Middle East as a nuclear free zone and prevent an arms race. 

No doubt Iranian negotiators have demanded of Kerry why they should not have a bomb when Israel has one. Common sense should tell us that Israel doesn't threaten to use theirs on anyone, or to attack other countries unless they pose an existential threat to Israel. But State doesn't think that deeply, nor does this current US President, Obama. I predict the US will soon put Israel’s nukes on the negotiating table as negotiations are extended.

The release of classified info on Israel’s nukes will become part of the US negotiations with Iran. If the US can get Israel to disarm its nukes in the name of “peace” in the region, then maybe they can get the Iranians to do the same. US State sees its new Middle East as having Sunni states aligned against Shiite Iran in a new map of the Middle East. And as usual, Israel is plop dead center of that map. If Israel no longer has nukes, then the US and EU can also do some map shifting as was done to Serbia and Bosnia, any threat to NATO forces from Israeli nukes would be mitigated so Israel could become, well, Palestine.

All the anti-Semitism and boycott nonsense we are seeing at American campuses was orchestrated by the US State Department. That goal is to groom future generations in America to oppose a Jewish state. The State Department quietly funds many such seminars at campuses that try to persuade the uninitiated that ending a Jewish state will mean “peace.” 

Even some of the Jews in America are falling for the ruse.

The infrastructure of Israel would still exist, but she would no longer be a Jewish state, but one dominated  by Arabs and the Muslim ummah. The resulting pogroms against Jews and Christians are an after effect that would be tolerated for the long term “good.” 

We’ve seen a reluctance to save Christians, Kurds and Yazidis besieged by ISIS here in the US,  so this will probably be the same scenario.

It’s time Israel begin an austerity program to distance herself from the US State Department. Israel needs to develop its own aircraft and arms export industry and  not take orders from Washington. Right now, Kerry is talking about giving the Iranians a ten year threshold to develop nuclear weapons later on.

Israel needs to tout its nuclear capabilities right now, its technological exports and most of all to stop playing ostrich whenever the Palestinians make existential threats.  It’s a myth that America has always been Israel’s number one ally. 

In 1948 the US put an embargo on weapons, in 1956 the US made Israel withdraw from Sinai for nothing in return, in 1973 the US was content to make Israel bleed until Golda Meir threatened to use those same nuclear weapons.

Like a spoiled child being told it’s time to leave home, Israel needs to wean itself from the US for its own security and safety. 

It could start by stopping US AID to Palestinian TV and other Palestinian  “charities” until it passes rigorous inspection by Israel. Politicians will only dither until it’s too late.

American Jews Can Only Rely on Israel, Not US according to Vice President Joe Biden

US Vice President makes shocking statement, telling American Jews :
'no matter how involved you are in the US, the only guarantee is Israel."

An incredible admission by US Vice President Joe Biden has been revealed, in which he told Jewish leaders that should the American Jewish community be in danger, it has only Israel to rely on - and not America.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reveals in the April issue of The Atlantic how at a Rosh Hashana event in Biden's home last fall, the vice president told Jewish leaders and Jewish officials in US President Barack Obama's administration how he met former Prime Minister Golda Meir when he was a young Senator.

"I’ll never forget talking to her in her office with her assistant - a guy named (Yitzhak) Rabin - about the Six-Day War,” 

he recalled. “The end of the meeting, we get up and walk out, the doors are open, and...the press is taking photos. ...She looked straight ahead and said, ‘Senator, don’t look so sad...Don’t worry. We Jews have a secret weapon.'"

Biden states he asked Meir what the weapon was, noting "I thought she was going to tell me something about a nuclear program" - an ironic comment given the US's recent declassification of documents revealing Israel's nuclear program in a breach of understandings with the Jewish state.

But according to Biden, "she looked straight ahead and she said, ‘We have no place else to go.'" 

Addressing his guests at Rosh Hashana, Biden paused for effect and repeated, "we have no place else to go."

"Folks, there is no place else to go, and you understand that in your bones," Biden said. "You understand in your bones that no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States...there’s only one guarantee."

"There is really only one absolute guarantee, and that’s the state of Israel," he stated.

Responding to the statement, Corey Robin of Salon wrote how disturbing the statement is, given that it consists of "a sitting vice president telling a portion of the American citizenry that they cannot count on the United States government as the ultimate guarantor of their freedom and safety."

"The occupant of the second-highest office in the land believes that American Jews should look to a foreign government as the foundation of their rights and security," 

she added. "A country that once offered itself as a haven to persecuted Jews across the world now tells its Jews that in the event of some terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism they should…what? 

Plan on boarding the next plane to Tel Aviv?"

MTA must defend itself in court for refusing to put Ads on buses that state that Hamas kills Jews

by Pamela Geller

Last Tuesday, my ace lawyer David Yerushalmi of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) argued before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on our motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to enter an order requiring New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to run our AFDI anti-Hamas, anti-jihad ad on MTA buses.

I was there, and let me tell you, the foes of free speech made some telling and fascinating admissions.

The foremost of these concerned the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). 

Yerushalmi asked Jeff Rosen, the Director of Real Estate for the MTA — that is, the wonk who decides what ads to take and what ads not to take — this question: 

“The MTA does have a standard that prohibits libel, does it not?” 

Rosen acknowledged that it did. 

Yerushalmi then asked Rosen about our ads comparing CAIR to Hamas and identifying CAIR leaders who have been convicted of jihad terror-related crimes.

Then came the bombshell. Yerushalmi asked: 
“Now, after this ad ran CAIR contacted the MTA and asked it to remove it on the basis that it violated the libel standard, correct?”

Rosen answered, “On the basis that it was defamatory, yes.” 

Yerushalmi noted that the records that the MTA turned over to the court for this hearing indicated that the MTA declined CAIR’s request. 

Asked why, Rosen explained: “My understanding was that their stated objection was that — was not with respect to the naming of the individuals but with respect to the equating of CAIR and Hamas and we did not understand that — based on review with counsel, we did not understand that to be defamatory.”

Yerushalmi drove the point home — that “even when criticized or when challenged by the organization CAIR itself, the MTA allowed my client to criticize Hamas publicly.” 

He asked Rosen: “And would you understand as a lawyer that linking an organization such as CAIR to Hamas would be defamation, per se?” That is, if our claim had been false, but it wasn’t: 

Yerushalmi then reminded Rosen that the MTA had asked us for documentation of CAIR’s ties to Hamas, as well as records about the terror convictions of its officials pictured in the ad.

The bottom line: the MTA refused Hamas-CAIR’s demand that it take down an ad exposing its links to Hamas because the MTA knew our ad was accurate:

 CAIR really does have ties to Hamas.

The ad we won the right to put up at this hearing also involves Hamas; it features a quote from a Hamas music video: 
“Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah.” 

We’re trying to call attention to Islamic anti-Semitism, and the MTA is determined that we don’t do that.

Yet Rosen admitted that he had no knowledge of First Amendment issues. So when he rejected our ad, he was making these decisions not with any awareness of our First Amendment rights, and not with an understanding of the legal implications of what he was doing.

Rosen and the MTA had rejected this ad, they have said, because they were afraid that it would lead to violence from Muslims who would mistake it for a pro-Hamas ad. 

That’s absurd enough on its face. But in his testimony that day, Rosen contradicted the previous declaration he had submitted to the court. 
The MTA acknowledges that this same ad ran in Chicago and San Francisco without incident.

Raymond Diaz, the MTA’s Director of Security, insisted under oath that our ads have been consistently subject to graffiti and vandalized. It is interesting that the MTA has never reported this salient fact to me. I don’t think what he was saying was accurate, and neither does David Yerushalmi, as there is nothing in the written record to suggest this, but he was certainly adamant. 

The Court asked Diaz if the graffiti was actually specific to my ads or was just the graffiti that is increasingly common once again in the New York subway system, as the city steadily abandons the law-and-order policies that Rudolph Giuliani adopted to turn New York around in the 1990s. Diaz never gave a clear answer to that question.

It’s clear that the MTA chose to challenge this ad out of all of our ads in order to establish that it constituted a true threat, or incitement, or fighting words — all legal grounds to keep from running it. They picked this particular ad hoping that they would get the ruling they wanted and establish a precedent against all of our ads, even though their discriminatory policies against our ads are purely content-driven and hence unconstitutional.

They tried to make the rejection of this ad a security issue. Having lost on first amendment issues, NYC now tried to come at free speech from a different angle: “security.” 

The MTA’s guidelines said that ads should only be rejected after a security assessment had been made, and it was “reasonably foreseeable that the display of the proposed advertisement would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace and so harm, disrupt, or interfere with safe, efficient, and orderly transportation operations.” 

But under questioning, Diaz admitted that he had contacted the New York Police Department twice for an opinion on whether our ad would provoke violence, and they refused to provide one.

That speaks volumes. This proves that there was no security concern. And the San Francisco transit authority, which clearly despises our ads, stated most emphatically that it had absolutely no problem whatsoever when the ad ran — despite the cajoling, the nudging, the leading of the witness by Diaz.

Diaz had his underling Phillip Hoffman, who works for the MTA’s Department of Security, write to Scarlett Lam, the Terrorism Liaison Officer and Coordinator and Manager of Emergency Management, Systems Security, and Special Events for the San Francisco Transit Authority. Diaz had Hoffman ask Lam if the “volatile language” of our ad led to a public outcry and violence. Lam answered “No” to all his questions; there was no violence resulting from our ad.

Then Yerushalmi asked the obvious question: 

“On what basis, what empirical factual basis did you assess that that ad would lead to reasonable foreseeability of violence or lawlessness?” 

Diaz answered that our ad “advocates violence.” 

He explained: “Well, you are telling us in the top of that ad that killing Jews is worship that draws us to Allah. So, in a radical’s mind, that killing Jews is going to bring us closer to God and that is this person who, I guess, that we are attributing that comment to, who, I guess, is a jihadist; that is his jihad, killing Jews.” 

He referred to “people who are easily radicalized.” He admitted that this would include “some Muslims.” Diaz unwittingly went off the politically correct reservation when he admitted: “I think most New Yorkers — and again, and I think there could be misinterpretation of the phrase, but I think the common interpretation of the phrase jihad is a call to violence.”

Yerushalmi then asked, “Is it important to you in your security assessment that this quote was from Hamas MTV?” 

Diaz answered that it was. 

He identified Hamas incorrectly as “the military wing of the PLO,” but acknowledged that it is “a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and that “if an individual provides material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization that that individual has committed a felony under federal law.”

 In other words, he admitted that the MTA’s claim that jihadis would see this ad and act on it as if it were a pro-Hamas ad was absurd on its face: no one would think that the MTA was running ads on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization.

Yet that was Diaz’s claim. 

He testified: “When I first saw this ad I said, well, I am reading something wrong here, because AFDI is a pro-Jewish organization, so why would they be sponsoring an ad such as this. And then, thinking about it more, I said, well, this ad could be taking both sides as a call to violence. Whether you are pro-Hamas or whether you are pro-Jewish, I think it would be the same interpretation because — and my thoughts were, if I saw this on a wall of a terrorist camp or if I saw this on the wall of an Israeli Army company, it would be getting the same advocating of violence. His jihad is killing Jews.Well, if it was in the Jewish camp, that’s his jihad, killing Jews, to the soldiers in the Israeli camp. What is your jihad? What are you going to do about that? What call to violence are you going to do?”

Yerushalmi asked: “Now, is it really your security assessment, Mr. Diaz, that most reasonable New Yorkers would think that the MTA would take funds from Hamas or some group affiliated with Hamas and run an ad advocating the death of Jews?”

Diaz answered: “I don’t think most New Yorkers would want this ad to be run, if that’s the question.” 

Yerushalmi persisted: “Is it really your security assessment that the MTA would take funds from a designated terrorist organization — Hamas — or someone affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and post an ad calling for the death of Jews?” Diaz finally said, “We would not take money to do that, no.”

Then Yerushalmi asked him: “And, in fact, in this case, even knowing that my clients had no intent to advocate for jihad, in fact criticized jihad, your entire focus in your security assessment was how Muslims or Jews might react to this ad, correct?” Diaz agreed. 

Yerushalmi continued:

 “Part of your security assessment includes an assessment of the reasonable foreseeability risk that an individual is going to feel insulted by an ad — not advocated but insulted by an ad, and jump up and commit imminent violence, correct?”

To that, Diaz answered no. 

“Then why,” responded Yerushalmi, “did you include Jews in your security assessment?” 

Diaz explained again: “Once I read the AFDI and realized that this is not an ad that was proposed by Hamas but by pro-Jewish organization, I read it then conversely, that killing Jews is worship that draws us to Allah and saying this to the Jewish community, his worship is killing Jews, that’s his jihad, that’s his call to violence to further his religion, what is yours — asking the person of the Jewish faith, well, what is your jihad? What is your call to violence to counter his killing of Jews?”

Yerushalmi pointed out that Diaz had written: “Whether that violence or breach of the peace would be the work of a violent, self-radicalized, would-be jihadist like the man in Queens who attacked NYPD officers with a hatchet, or the apparently deranged man who, in early December, fatally stabbed an Israeli student in the head at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn while screaming ‘I want to kill the Jew,’ or of a Jew driven to retaliation by anger and fear, I had no way knowing for certain, of course.”

Yerushalmi pressed Diaz on his moral equivalence: “Was the reasonable foreseeability of violence by the radicalized Muslim greater or lesser than the threat that a Jew would take umbrage at this ad and engage in violence?” 

Then Diaz admitted: “I would say that reading the first lines, the banner part of the ad, that of course that it would — I would lean towards the radicalized Muslim before someone of the Jewish faith.” 

However, he stuck to his ground: “I think they both, whether you read it from both sides, I think they both advocate violence… I think both sides — I think reading this ad from both sides, I think it proposes violence on both sides, yes. It would be tough to say equally.”

He said he was worried about Jews reacting violently to the ad, but if he was really worried about Jews acting out, how could he have allowed any ad critical of Islam, given how some Muslims react violently to the slightest thing they consider offensive? 

Yerushalmi then asked him, 
“So, based upon that testimony and your declaration, I understand that part of your assessment is to examine the risk that individuals will be angered by an ad, not agree with it, but be angered by it and commit violence, correct?”

Diaz answered: “Part of the assessment, yes. As part of my recommendation to the chairman I would add something else to it.” 

When Yerushalmi asked him what he would add, Diaz made a bombshell admission:

 “That this ad and we knew in the future that nobody was ever going to do that — if we could read into the future — but the fact is that 
it advocates violence.
 If nobody ever committed a violent act as a result of that, I thought that it advocated violence. I still don’t think it is an ad that we should have run.”

By this standard, anyone can threaten violence and get a denial of the free speech of anyone he dislikes.

Yerushalmi reminded Diaz about “all the other ads that my clients ran that were critical of Hamas, critical jihad, critical of Palestinians who engage in jihad against Israel and calling them savages.” 

He asked: “In your security assessment of the ads that you have described in your declaration, in some detail you indicated that there was no security assessment to be concerned about relative to all of those other ads that criticize Hamas, jihad, Islam, savages, what have you; correct?” 

Diaz denied this: “There were concerns — that is not correct. There were concerns but no concern that I thought that there would have been violation of the ad.”

Again Yerushalmi pressed him on his contradictions: 

“You mention these angry Jews relative to the Hamas ad because they would think the MTA authority was running a Hamas ad and they would get angry. Did you not think that all these radicalized Muslims, these mujahideen that are out there working in the city, would not see these ads that you approve that criticize Hamas, criticized jihad, call individuals savages?” 

Diaz admitted: “I would think there would be concern on that side too, yes” — yet he approved those ads.

Yerushalmi also pointed out: “The disclaimer at the bottom is fairly large print, correct?… It is fairly large, to be visible so that the MTA won’t be blamed in the ad.” In fact, it is fully 25% of the ad space.

Yerushalmi asked him: “The fact that there was no violence when those ads ran did not affect your assessment?”

Diaz answered: “No, it did not.” Incredible.

David Yerushalmi argued brilliantly, asking the court to enjoin the MTA’s speech restriction on First Amendment grounds. And we will win. If we don’t, it isn’t just us who lose — it’s anyone who values the freedom of speech.

What leftists who oppose us don’t get is that our free speech victories are their free speech victories. But today’s “journalists” don’t seem to have any understanding of the value of free speech.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.