Can you feel the hate?

A great deal of attention has been paid to hate-filled protests in front of synagogues by the Westboro Baptist Church or school protests in Beit Shemesh, but in Ann Arbor hate-filled left-wing protests have taken place in front of a synagogue every Sabbath for a decade.

What you are seeing is one of a few photos from Ann Arbor's Beth Israel Congregation and some of the photos get uglier than this. There has been astoundingly little media commentary on this, though if a right-wing group had been harassing a synagogue every Shabbat for a decade, there would have been four documentaries and eight books out on it by now. The FEH site dedicated to exposing the protesters is a disturbing look into the mindset of the twisted, mentally ill left. Liberal Jewish groups would like you to believe that harassment like this comes only from Neo-Nazis, but the Ann Arbor situation demonstrates that it is at least as likely to come from their own fellow travelers. Aimee Smith of the Huron Valley Greens Party amplifies her objections to Celebrate Israel Day outside the JCC on May 17, 2009. Though not Muslim, Smith who wears a hijab, scolded the crowd, “Stop pretending you’re from Arabia. Be proud of your European roots.” At a previous JCC event she chanted, “Defecating on children’s drawings will not bring peace.” Smith, who brought her daughter to help shout down the Jewish community event, was her party’s candidate for Congress.

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What exactly is the difference between this woman and the loons from the Westboro Baptist Church? Aimee Smith appears to have been wearing the hijab since at least 2003 when she began running for office as a candidate of the Green-Rainbow Party on a platform of protecting Cambridge from the Patriot Act and COINTELPRO. Despite being endorsed by the Mystic Green Rainbow Coalition, the Palestinian American Congress and Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, her campaign was sidelined when her campaign manager, Amer Jubran faced deportation for a fake marriage, terrorist ties and assault. The media studiously ignores people like this or even praises them. You don't hear the Green Party being classed with Neo-Nazis, even if their members insist on acting the same way. Or this woman?

One told him, “Jewish prayers should be disrupted. You pray for genocide.” A white-haired woman holding a sign denouncing Israel rushed over to add, “It’s true! It’s true!”

Or this one?

Gloria Harb said she participates because she believes the United States’ political system is corrupted by Jews intent on furthering Israel’s agenda before America’s. “I’m just one member of the group, and I focus on the American public and breaking the silence,” she said. “I know there are some of us who hold out hope of reaching some of those people in the synagogue, but not me.”

Fun fact. Harb means sword in Arabic. There's also this tragic story.

On most Saturdays, congregants and passersby will also see Marcia Federbush holding signs. Though the smallest in height and the oldest at 75, Federbush brings some noteworthy stature to the group. In 1988 she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame for her pioneering work battling gender discrimination in education. She divorced her husband before their 32nd anniversary about a year later. Until about a year ago, her daughter, Laurel, was a mainstay at the Shabbat protests and staunch defender in local media and blogs. However, she no longer joins them and is now a member of Beth Israel Congregation herself. “She had an epiphany, of sorts, I guess,” Herskovitz said. “Laurel’s gone to the dark side. She quit the vigils, and voted for McCain.”

Then there is this class act. Sol Metz.

His long white hair and frothy, prolonged beard make Metz hard to miss, and he isn’t hiding from anybody. Somewhat of a throwback from Ann Arbor’s counter-culture and anti-war movements, Metz often spoke his mind on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through frequent letters to the editor submissions to the Ann Arbor News... Decades later, his own journeys to disputed territories after the second Intifada solidified his desire to take his ex-hippie wares to a new cause. Though he is now a Quaker, Metz—after a long pause—acknowledges that two of his four children are practicing Jews today and don’t have much respect for his efforts. It was right before and during that period of transition through the divorce that finances became a stiff challenge, he said. He insists that at Rosemary’s urging, he turned to the local Jewish Federation for help with clothing and other needs for his family. He said groups like the Federation are what need to be stopped because of the money they raise for Israel. He is convinced the majority goes to military projects and settlements rather than humanitarian causes, despite his own experience with them. He’s aware of the hypocrisy, but remains unfazed by it. “That’s fair to say, but I don’t see a big problem with it,” Metz, 66, explained. “The U.S. government helps me too, but I don’t have any problem criticizing them either. I didn’t want the (Federation’s) help and I didn’t think they [his children] needed it.”

I've seen these types of people locally. They're a mix of elderly ex-Commies, professional leftist activists and the fourth wave of college graduates with useless degrees who majored in gender studies and critical race theory. Many of them are mentally ill. Most of them are filled with hate. During the Bush years, the media embraced these people and their rallies. Just like they embraced OWS which attracts the same type of loons. Except they're not loons. They're mainstream figures on the left. Going back through the years takes us to Aimee Smith's original appearance at a 2003 rally. Also there was Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky seen here embodying the best of '90's # fashion. “There is a war going on in Iraq and a war going on here,” Gould-Wartofsky said. “Harvard is a colony that needs to be liberated.” The pair protested in song, with Gould-Wartofsky rapping “Drop beats, not bombs” to the rhythm of Ogunnaike’s drum." Many Americans might agree that Harvard is a colony that needs to be liberated... but from the likes of Gould-Wartofsky. Today Gould-Wartofsky has improved his fashion sense to the best of 00's hipster fashion and blogs at the Huffington Post. According to his bio Michael is an award-winning author from New York City and a MacCracken Fellow in Sociology at New York University. In addition to The Huffington Post, his work has appeared in The Nation, Salon, The Harvard Crimson, Monthly Review, Jewish Currents, and the books Poets Against the War (Nation Books, 2003) and Making War: English Literature and the Invasion of Iraq (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). His writing has received Harvard’s James Gordon Bennett Prize and the New York Times James B. Reston Award. He has also won recognition for his work as an activist, photojournalist, violinist and fiddler. He is currently writing a book about Occupy Wall Street. ...of course he is. And yes The Wart hates Israel. Of course he does. And so I leave you with these deep thoughts from The Wart of Harvard. Like the other artists, Gould-Wartofsky focused his readings on the topic of homelessness “just like you might write a love poem and get a girl to think of you in a deeper way. You can write a poem about, say, homelessness, and get people to think about that in a deeper way.” Similarly you can spend a decade harassing a synagogue to get people to think about what the hell is wrong with the left in a deeper way. The Ann Arbor hate group has apparently managed to disgust even one of its own members so badly that she joined a synagogue and began voting for McCain. Imagine how much it has "radicalized" the people actually in the synagogue. Now that's deep.