A Polish Politician Extinguishes a Hanukkah Menorah. What do you do when the worst stereotypes seem to be true?

 

A Polish Politician Extinguishes a Hanukkah Menorah

What do you do when the worst stereotypes seem to be true?

 

Grzegorz Michal Braun is a 56-year-old Polish parliamentarian. On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, Braun used a fire extinguisher to snuff out the candles on a Hanukkah menorah erected in the Polish Parliament, the Sejm (pronounced "Same"). Warsaw Rabbi Shalom Stambler and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Piotr Zgorzelski had lighted the candles. The rabbi was accompanied by two of his children, ages 7 and 11. Chabad Rabbi Stambler has been lighting Hanukkah candles in the Sejm for the past seventeen years.

 

A Jewish woman, Dr. Magdalena Gudzinska-Adamczyk, physically confronted Braun and attempted to stop him. He sprayed her in her face and she required medical attention. She displayed courage in spite of being a petite woman, smaller than Braun (photo here). She later said, "I have stopped feeling safe in this country." Dr. Gudzinska-Adamczyk also said, "This is my religious symbol, I have the right to defend it, because we live in a free, democratic country. And no one has the right to direct a powder extinguisher in my face because I am defending my religious symbol."

 

Attempting to justify his crime immediately afterward, Braun said, "Those who take part in acts of satanic worship should be ashamed … There can be no place for the acts of this racist, tribal, wild Talmudic cult on the premises of the Sejm … You are not aware of the message of this act innocently called Hanukkah … I am restoring a state of normality by putting an end to acts of satanic, racist triumphalism because that is the message of these holidays." His statement was booed by other parliamentarians.

 

Braun's antisemitic vandalism was immediately and widely condemned, including by members of his own party.

 

"All decent people think exactly the same thing, this is an unacceptable thing, this must never happen again. This is a disgrace," said Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who assumed office on December 13, 2023.

 

Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told Reuters by telephone that Braun's actions were not representative of Poland and that he was "embarrassed" by them.

 

"I declare that I am ashamed and apologize to the entire Jewish community in Poland," said Cardinal Grzegorz Rys.

 

Mariusz Blaszczak is chairman of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, or Law and Justice Party Parliamentary club. Law and Justice is a right-wing party; it recently lost its parliamentary majority. Blaszczak said that "Braun should be expelled from Confederation," that is, Braun's own party should expel him. "If he is not expelled, it will mean Krzysztof Bosak [the head of Braun's party] stands by him, and he [Bosak] should step down as deputy speaker of the Sejm … There is no justification for the attack because it was an attack on Poland … It is an attack conducted by a man who is either completely irresponsible or someone who acts to the detriment of our country."

 

Piotr Glinski, former Deputy Prime Minister and current Sejm member also spoke on behalf of Law and Justice. "I am turning to the Confederation community," he said, addressing Braun's party. "We are crossing a terrible line in politics … This is aggression not only on religious grounds, but also on interpersonal grounds. There were little children there. This is not to be defended and not to be spun."

Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children: Hannah Barnes' new book demolishes trans extremism

 

Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children
Hannah Barnes' new book demolishes trans extremism

 

Swift Press describes itself as an "independent press." In February, 2023, three-year-old Swift Press published Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children. Author Hannah Barnes is, according to her online bio, "an award-winning journalist at the BBC's flagship current affairs program Newsnight … Hannah has specialized in investigative and analytical journalism." My review copy of Time to Think is 445 pages long, inclusive of 59 pages of notes and an eight-page index.

 

Before Swift Press accepted Time to Think, it had been rejected by twenty-two publishers. Some publishers praised Barnes' proposal as an important story that needed to be told, but not by them, because the transing of children was a "sensitive" and "controversial" topic and if they published the book they would face backlash. Barnes says that "Swift did not require my manuscript to be scrutinized by sensitivity readers, nor did they ask me to change a word."

 

Thank the Lord for Swift Press.

 

I have never read another book that so thoroughly smashes to smithereens a powerful ideology. Those who understand trans extremism as a fad and social contagion await an event called "peak trans." Peak trans is that tipping point when trans extremism reaches its greatest power, after which it begins to diminish. Time to Think will contribute to peak trans. No rational person can read this book and not think twice about the transing of children.

 

Barnes is not anti-trans. She uses chosen pronouns and supports transing for some children. In interviews, she places distance between herself and "right-wingers" who want to, as one interviewer put it, "kill all trans people." Barnes includes brief accounts of some former GIDS patients who are happy with transitioning. Barnes presents without criticism speakers' reasons for insisting that they are the sex opposite to their own. Males are "really" female because they wear fingernail polish and high-heeled shoes, or because they dance ballet and hate sports. Females are "really" male because they prefer rough and tumble sports to Barbie dolls, or because they were interested in computers.

 

Barnes is not an ideologue. In interviews, she is a soft-spoken woman in unglamorous attire. She speaks slowly and hesitantly and often stutters as she appears to be searching for the least controversial way to state an astounding fact. Barnes looks a lot like that girl in high school science class who wore no make-up and paid a lot more fascinated attention than anyone else to the anatomy of the dissected frog.

 

Time to Think could have been written by a robot. That's not an insult. Time to Think is dispassionate. It has all the literary style of a workplace report in a three-ring binder; there's no tugging at heartstrings, and no real narrative drive. There is just a series of facts. In spite of Barnes' clinical approach, a roomful of readers would not be silent; rather, the room would resound with the sound of gasps, hands slapping foreheads, and outraged cries of, "How could they?"

Israel and Hamas: For the Shocked and Confused

 

Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel: a primer

 

Some friends on social media remain unclear about the following. What did Hamas do in Israel on October 7? Why have so many around the world responded with anti-Semitism? Let's take these questions one at a time.

 

What did Hamas do in Israel on October 7?

 

Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and murdered, tortured, and kidnapped defenseless Israeli men, women, and children, ordinary civilians doing ordinary things like eating breakfast.

 

The extensive evidence of Hamas' atrocities includes the corpses of a father and child tied together with wire and then burned alive, and twenty children tied together and burned; bodies with hacked off limbs and gauged out eyes; and bodies bespeaking gang rape so severe that victims' leg and pelvic bones were broken. First responder Asher Moskowitz found a baby that Hamas had cooked to death in an oven. The oven's heating element was still attached to the corpse.

 

Captured terrorists offered full confessions. One said, "We became animals. We did things that humans do not do." One confessed that the corpses of young women were raped. Stephen D. Smith reports that there was "an instruction to bring back the dead body of an IDF soldier and posthumously crucify him."

 

Hamas made and shared, via social media, videos. They videorecorded the murder of a helpless grandmother, and posted the video on her Facebook page, so that her loved ones would watch. A child hostage was forced to watch Hamas videos. If the child cried, Hamas members pressed a gun to the child. In videos, terrorists shoot household pets dead.

 

Ben Shapiro posted a compilation. A YouTube poster responded. "As a US Iraq war Vet I started to watch this episode and stopped … I've seen a lot, done a lot but I caved … Tears streamed down my face as I watched without stopping, without looking away, gritting my teeth ... If I could return to the battlefield and join your brothers and sisters and do what I could to avenge/protect/free those that are captured I would in a heartbeat … I salute Israel … I bow my head in prayer multiple times throughout the day that this evil will end."