By Debbie Schlussel

*** MORE: Robin Williams Wished Israel a Happy 60th Birthday (VIDEO) ***

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It’s tragic that Robin Williams is gone, as he was an incredibly talented actor who could traverse comedy and drama and all genres in film. But suicide is the most selfish act a human being can commit, rivaled only by homicide. And Robin Williams committed that act, despite leaving a wife and three adult children wondering why.

Yes, it is true that Williams was mentally ill and apparently sought help for depression. But he had everything in the world compared to most Americans, and everything in the world to live for. Born into a wealthy family, he attended Detroit Country Day School, the most prestigious (and expensive) private school in Michigan. He had incredible wealth and fame, incredible talent, and a lifetime of terrific acting in plum roles. But we coddle those who say they are mentally ill or have depression. In the good old days of America, people didn’t have time to check into rehab and take psychotropic drugs and contemplate their “woe is me” lives in Hollywood mansions. They had to struggle to survive and support their families. And I’ll bet the suicide rate was significantly lower (along with the narcissism rate).

Just because someone is “depressed,” doesn’t mean it’s an excuse for checking out forever. We treat it as if it is, as if this selfish act cannot be condemned and we must automatically condone the action once the “D”-word is uttered. And he willingly chose to use and abuse drugs, which probably led to his depression and other mental issues. Given that my late father–who wanted to live–had his life taken from him by cancer, I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be the 20-something daughter of a physically healthy man who willingly, cowardly took his own life and left everyone who loved him to pick up the pieces. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

The UN asked an anti-Israel sharmutah, George Clooney’s fiancee Amal Alamuddin, to “investigate” Israel for “war crimes” against HAMAS. Thankfully, the HAMASnik who shares Clooney’s bed turned it down . . . but not before attacking Israel.

That the U.N. wanted Alamuddin and originally named to her to investigate Israel, tells you what kind of people the U.N. chooses as “impartial” investigators. They are no such thing. Maybe the U.N should have asked Eichmann to “investigate” Holocaust victims’ “war crimes” against the Nazis, too. That’s the attitude here.

Back in March, well before their engagement, I told you about George Clooney’s girlfriend Amal Alamuddin, the anti-Israel, Lebanese lawyer, who wrote an anti-Israel “textbook” on international law. And I told you how I met her and her anti-Israel family at a wedding I attended . . . and how they peppered me with the most vile, racist, anti-Israel comments and questions. Now, this harpy will, thankfully, not have the opportunity to go after Israel, as she’s always wanted to do with the cover of the anti-Israel United Nations. But here’s what she said in turning down the offer:

George Clooney’s fiancee has turned down the United Nation’s offer to put her on a commission to examine possible war crimes in Gaza … because she says she’s simply too busy. Amal Alamuddin — an international lawyer — says she’s got 8 cases on the front burner and can’t accept the role to become a member of the 3-member commission. She says “I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed.” Read the rest of this entry »

In one episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos”, notorious crime Boss Tony Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini) and his cohorts complain about a protest organised by American Indians, at Newark’s forthcoming Columbus Day Parade. Christopher (Michael Imperioli) explains to them that they native Americans were murdered, Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) answers “It’s not like we didn’t make up for it; giving them a bunch of stuff like land, reservations and casinos.”

Tony decides to meet up with the chief who runs the casino in rustic Connecticut, that if he could get his men to call off the protest, Tony would use his mob connections to help the casino.

During the course of the meeting, over dinner, Tony points out to the chief that he doesn’t behave Indian. The Chief grins wryly and says, in spite of his one-sixteenth blood heritage, he had an “epiphany” that led him to identify with his native American origins and start the casino.

As viewers, we are left with the musing, that there isn’t much difference between a Mafia boss and an imposter Indian. They are both in it for the money.

Back in 1995, about seven years before that particular episode of the “The Sopranos” aired, “Sixty Minutes”- a Foxwood program- did a story revealing the same point; that Indian casinos were a big con. The subject of their expose was Skip Hayward, the Pequot chief who was formerly a pipefitter before he got his “epiphany” that running slots games would enhance his people’s economy.

The slots were a big hit. It didn’t take long for us to have gaming machines on the web inspired by them. The success of the slots games led to the creation of Foxwoods, with seed money from Malaysia. The entitlement of people with only ‘one-sixteenth’ of Indian heritage, gaining from profits of a casino was what enraged “Sixty Minutes”.

In 1633, the smallpox virus decimated about 90% of tribe, followed by colonists will killed several more four years later, it is surprising that a significant one-sixteenth of Pequot survive to claim heritage.

The issue of Indian casinos is not an unfamiliar one. In the small village of Sullivan County 90 miles shy of New York City, after several years of legislative dispute, the county received the go-ahead from Governor Cuomo to set up a casino. It was supposed that this would improve the region, which had been greatly affected by the downfall of tourism. For many locals, casinos present a life saver- a balloon float thrown to a drowning man at sea- much like fracking; another suggested solution to the county’s deficient economy.

After tracking the Indian casino dialogue in the Sullivan County papers for more than twenty-five years, I strongly believe that local resistance to the casino is a lot more influenced by the message behind that episode of Sopranos than anything else. If there is anything a white racist despises more than a destitute Indian, it’s clearly a wealthy one.

The Pequots and a neighbouring tribe, the Stockbridge-Munsees, submitted bids for a casino in Sullivan County. However, they retracted them when they discovered that Orange County, which is 30 miles closer to New York City had also been given permission to bid as well. It is common knowledge that casinos are more successful the closer they are to big cities. And if a casino is closer to New York, it will enjoy a larger proportion of the bounty.

This is one major reason not many tribes start casinos. For instance, it would be counter-productive for the Lakota, the Blackfoot or any existing tribes of the once-brave Indian settlements to start a casino since they are very far from the big cities.

In 1988, Congress ruled on the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that permitted them, to not only erect casinos on reservations but also be exempted from Governmental taxes and policies.

After enduring hundreds of years of genocidal persecution, American Indians have cultivated survival strategies specific to a time and location. The right to make money from gaming casinos is one of those strategies, even if some critics perceive it as contradictory to the image of the “decent” Indian. That particular Indian was obliterated back in the 19th century, like the bison which the tribal Indians relied on for nutrition, accommodation and clothing.

It is up to the modern Indian to create their own identity, just as they did in the past. Our role as supporters of natives’ rights is to proffer our solidarity. The battleground may have changed, but the objective is the same- to protect the rights of America’s indigenous peoples.

By Debbie Schlussel

Out of law school and in the midst of my MBA studies, I went to Los Angeles for a job interview with Cannon Films, the movie studio founded by Menahem Golan (also spelled, “Menachem Golan”), who died Friday at 85. He’d already left the company and would soon return to his native Israel, where he served as a fighter pilot in the War of Independence. But Golan’s contributions to the movie world are legendary, if often unfairly panned by mainstream (translation: liberal) movie critics.

My favorite Golan movies truthfully depict what we face from Islamic terrorists, and Cannon Films–a partnership between Golan and his cousin, Yoram Globus (also spelled, “Yehoram Globus”)–was a pioneer in that respect. In my top two Golan movies, I put 1977’s “Operation Thunderbolt” a/k/a “Mivtsa Yonatan,” a Hebrew-language film telling the story of the Islamic hijacking of a plane full of Israelis and Jews and the successful July 4, 1976 raid on the Entebbe, Uganda airport, in which most of the passengers were rescued (and in which Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s brother, Yoni (or “Jonathan”), heroically gave his life to save them). Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

It’s August, the pet cemetery of movies, where studios generally send all of their garbage movies to die. And so it’s no surprise that it’s yet another subpar weekend at the movies, with one interesting but very weird new release, one okay disaster movie, and three annoyances chock-full of typical liberal claptrap (“Step Up All In” was not screened for critics):

* “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles“: This is yet another unnecessary remake–this one of the 1990 movie of the same name. When TMNT was a big hit in the early ’90s, I thought it was a dopey idea. But I came to this movie with an open mind. I left with the same conclusion I had in the 1990s. It’s dumb, dopey, cheesy, and pointless. Unless you count the fact that the plot of this version has been souped up to include the boring, old, stock Hollywood liberal narrative in which the corporate CEO and his company are the villains who try to poison the world with disease. Yaaaawn. And, for a kids’ film, I was surprised at how violent it was. The turtles are electrified, people are killed, and so on. On top of that, star Megan Fox utters the S-word, and a turtle jokes about Fox, “She’s so hot, I can feel my shell tightening up.” Really? In a kids’ movie? Come on. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

I’m absolutely outraged by a Detroit jury’s verdict, yesterday, in the trial of a man whose only “crime” was defending himself and his home. And you should be, too. The man was found guilty for shooting a drunken, high woman who banged on his home in the middle of the night and tried to come in. The verdict is a complete travesty of justice.

If you’ve been watching the national news, you may have seen coverage of the trial of Theodore Wafer. Many in the media tried to brand him as a racist and compared his shooting of Renisha McBride with the shooting of Trayvon Martin. But it’s not even close, even though that was an instance of self-defense, too.

Renisha McBride was drunk and high on the night she banged on Ted Wafer’s home in the middle of the night. She had been in a car accident with a parked car–and it is just luck that she didn’t hit a car with an actual person in it and kill someone. She walked more than a half-mile and banged on Wafer’s door and on the windows and walls all around his house at 4:40 a.m. Wafer, who lives alone in his Dearbornistan Heights home, was asleep on a chair in his house. He awoke to the sounds of banging all over his house, thinking a mob was about to attack him. Wafer opened the door with his gun ready to go. He accidentally shot Renisha McBride, and she died. He was charged with Second Degree Murder, of which a jury convicted him in Detroit, yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

If you watched Megyn Kelly’s FOX News show last week or many of the posts and coverage across the net, you probably saw video of a woman who Megyn Kelly told you was used as a human shield by the Palestinians. The thing is, the story is fake and the woman, Hanan Qahwaji Tudor a/k/a “Brigitte Gabriel,” is a fraud who is really a Palestinian Muslim (with a lot of disturbing things in her past and present). She was NEVER a human shield for the Palestinians and, in fact, she IS a Palestinian Muslim who has for many years paraded as an oppressed Maronite Christian, a very lucrative business (Cha-ching!).

If FOX News or Kelly had done even the most basic research or fact-checking (and this blatantly shows that they don’t), they’d have known that 1) the Palestinians did not use human shields at the time that Tudor/”Gabriel” claimed to have been used as a human shield (1975-76) and they did not fire rockets or other weapons from populated areas (including where Gabriel lived) at that time; and 2) neither the Israelis nor any other forces fired or shot anywhere even remotely near the area of Lebanon where she lived–Marjayoun and Qlaya’a–at that time, so there would be no way there could be “human shields” there, even if the Palestinians wanted to use them. Further, Tudor/”Gabriel” claimed she was in a bomb shelter at the time. But there weren’t even any shelters in the area at the time. Major Saad Haddad started his movement (the Free Lebanon Army) in 1975 (it became the SLA or South Lebanon Army in 1983), and there was Israeli presence in the area, so there would be no way Israel would be shooting at the area for “human shields” to be used. But Kelly declared, “You were a human shield,” anyway. A complete lie without a single shred of evidence because there isn’t any. It’s a total fabrication. In fact, in Lebanon, it was Hezbollah that first began using human shields (at the U.N. school in Qana in 1996) during the Israeli operation “Grapes of Wrath,” well after the phony, Tudor/”Gabriel” was gone from the country. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

*** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ***

You may have seen this blurb, below, in the New York Daily News a couple of weeks ago about ABC, “The View,” and me. (I didn’t see it until a few days ago, so I’m late to my own story.)

NAMING NAMES ON ‘THE VIEW’

Conservative columnist and talk-radio host Debbie Schlussel says she’s in the running to join Whoopi Goldberg on “The View.” “I would challenge a lot of the people on the show,” she tells The News’ Reuven Blau. “Whoopi always tells people that the Redskins name offends a lot of people. I would tell her that as a Jewish-American, (her) using the last name ‘Goldberg’ mocks Jews. I would ask her if she’s going to change her stage name.” Schlussel says a producer contacted her about the job on July 2. “It was really out of the blue,” she adds.

Yes, it is all true (and the fact that Whoopi Goldberg insists the Washington Redskins team must change its name “because it offends people,” yet she won’t change her offensive stage name–I’ve written about this on this site several times). Late on July 2nd, top ABC executives contacted me for consideration for “The View,” the morning yenta-hag-fest of which I’ve been critical many times over the years. As you may have heard, the show is in the ratings dumps, and the network is looking to revive it with new “conservative” and Latina co-hosts to debate issues with Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell. I am not going to give the names of those who contacted me and with whom I spoke because I don’t need to 1) help the competition and the professionally jealous; 2) help my enemies and naysayers; and 3) make these people hate me because of unwanted contact from others. Here is the e-mail they sent me:

From: [REDACTED]@abc.com
Date: Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: Meeting with ABC
To: “writedebbie@gmail.com” writedebbie@gmail.com Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

The people who run the major pro-tennis groups never miss an opportunity to screw Israel, and now they’ve canceled the Israel Open tennis tournament set to take place in late September in Tel Aviv. The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) claims this is about safety and security, when we all know that a tennis tournament held in Israel would be the safest and most secure tournament in history. You are far more likely to be killed or subject to a terrorist attack at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open than in Israel. 9/11 didn’t happen there nor did the Tube bombing.

Over the years, I’ve told you of many instances of Tennis Apartheid against Jews and Israel (see here, also). And this is just the latest instance because Jews all over the world continue to tolerate it and patronize pro tennis anyway.

As I’ve told you before, ATP would not allow an audience when the Israeli team played Sweden in the Davis Cup in Malmo. That’s because they couldn’t guarantee security from the Muslim mobs in the city, but they didn’t cancel the competition, as they are doing with the far safer Tel Aviv. And, as I noted, ATP refused to cancel tournaments in Qatar, Dubai, and other countries that discriminate against Israeli Jews and Jews with Israeli stamps in their passports, refusing to allow them to play in their Open tournaments (see the links above). The only player with any balls to refuse to play in protest was the great Andy Roddick, who pulled out of the 2009 Dubai Tennis Championships over its apartheid policy against Israeli Jews, and he’s now retired. The Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, refused to do anything with regard to the women’s tournaments in those countries and continued to play, even though Venus sits on the board of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and could have done something.

Pro Tennis is very political, and its politics are anti-Semitic. It’s just that simple.

The ATP regrets to announce that the inaugural Negev Israel Open in Tel Aviv, Israel, will not take place in 2014 due to security concerns arising from the military conflict in the region. The Negev Israel Open had been set to become the first ATP World Tour event in Israel since 1996. The tournament, previously hosted in St. Petersburg, Russia, had been due to take place from 15-21 September. Read the rest of this entry »

By Debbie Schlussel

While American military personnel sent back to Iraq to protect the U.S. Embassy and officials from ISIS were ordered not to drink alcohol or to eat in front of Muslims during Ramadan, the Muslims don’t exactly observe their religious traditions the way our Armed Forces were forced to. In fact, Muslims snuck around during Ramadan to get a taste of their beloved, forbidden alcohol (which is forbidden always in Islam, not just during Ramadan). Yup, they are phonies, but preach against us and our decadence. They like their Johnnie Walker even more than they like their Johnnie Walker Lindh. And if you are Christian, selling alcohol is the only job available to you, even though it can be deadly. (Hey, aren’t you glad Bush “liberated” Iraq from one group of Muslims who hate us to another who hate us and persecute Christians more?) Check out this report that ran last night on National Palestinian Radio a/k/a NPR:

Listen to the report:

Or read it:

After a long, hot month of fasting, Baghdad is springing back to life now that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is over. But that doesn’t mean it’s just restaurants and shops that are reopening: Baghdad’s liquor stores are also back in business. Along Saadoun Street, the sidewalk in front of a strip of liquor stores looks like a big block party — lots of young men decked out in new clothes, buying booze. It can get pretty rowdy here. There’s not a woman in sight, and a lot of the men are drunk. In one dark corner, someone’s passed out on the pavement. Soheil, who owns one of the stores, says he had to close early on the first night of Eid — the celebration marking the end of the Ramadan — because it got so crowded. Read the rest of this entry »