Rabbi Denies Calling For The Arming Of European Jewry
A prominent rabbi and Jewish leader who made headlines last week when he called for the arming of Jews in Europe is now taking to American airwaves to clarify his proposal and to defend the plan from critics.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin is the director general of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe and the European Jewish Association, which is the largest federation of Jewish organizations and communities in Europe.
On Sunday, Mardolin went on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer to declare that his proposal has been widely “misinterpreted” by critics and misreported by international news media.
“In some media outlets in Europe, they said that I called for every Jew to carry a gun in Europe, which is exactly the opposite of what I said,” Margolin stated.
Margolin clarified his proclamation, first reportedly made in a letter to EU ministers sent last week, according to Newsweek.
Margolin stated: “Our first demand is that the European governments will understand that each Jewish institution, such as kindergarten[s], schools, kosher stores, supermarkets, restaurants, museums, synagogues, everything must be protected by the police or the army.”
He said his weapons proposal only applied to “a country [that] is … unable to ensure that its security will be able to protect the Jewish institutions for the long term.”
In such a scenario, Margolin explained, “what we ask is that each Jewish community will choose a few people that their responsibility will be to protect the institutions and these people will be armed with a gun.”
The prominent rabbi’s proposal generated immediate backlash, including from some voices in the European Jewish community.
However, Margolin told Klein those critics were reacting to the “false” reports that he called for the arming of all European Jews.
The Unexplored Soros-De Blasio Connection
An investigative report by the Washington Times Thursday documenting George Soros’s central role in financing the protest movement in Ferguson, Missouri, raises new questions about the billionaire’s largely unreported relationship with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
This column first reported the larger Soros-de Blasio connection last week. De Blasio has made numerous comments implying that the New York Police Department is racist. His controversial remarks have fueled racial tension between police and protesters.
On Thursday, the Washington Times reported that Soros’s Open Society Institute has provided a staggering $33 million or more in just one year to support organizations that have emboldened and aided the activists and protesters in Ferguson.
“The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre,” the Washington Times stated.
The Times documented that Soros-funded groups have mobilized protesters and were leading the nationwide social media and public relations campaign focusing on Ferguson, where a white officer fatally shot black teen Michael Brown.
“Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive.”
The new report prompts questions about de Blasio’s own ties to Soros and his role in helping to fuel the anti-police protests in the wake of the decision by a grand jury not to indict a police officer for the death of Eric Garner.
In 2011, using his position of public advocate, de Blasio launched a nonprofit called the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending, or CAPS. The group received its primary launch donation of $400,000 from Soros’s Open Society Institute.