By Alexander G. Markovsky, AMERICAN THINKER
Winston Churchill called Jews “the most formidable and the most remarkable race, which has ever appeared in the world.” As a Jew, I am perplexed by the Jews’ remarkably irrational commitment to the Democratic Party and their formidable opposition to Donald Trump.
The old saw, “There are two types of Jews: those who believe that Judaism is about social justice and those who know Hebrew,” contains more than a kernel of truth. By and large, orthodox Jews voted for Trump in 2016, showing superior foresight.
Domestically, as the Trump economic policies are producing prosperity and economic dynamism, Jews benefit just as the rest of Americans and arguably more. Internationally, Trump has proven to be an unabashed supporter of Israel; he terminated the Iranian nuclear deal, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, persuaded Saudi Arabia to cooperate with Israel against Iran, and broke the back of the Palestinian Authority. He destroyed ISIS and supplied Israel with the most sophisticated weaponry in the American arsenal. Incredibly, he has accomplished all of this in his first 18 months in office. No American president has done for Israel so much in such a short period of time. As a matter of record, with the exception of President Richard Nixon, no president has done for Jews and Israel so much, period.
A vast majority of American Jews remain unimpressed. They are not motivated by concerns for Israel; they are not motivated by the interests of the United States and are eminently not practical about their own necessities. What they all passionately care about is social justice. Social justice, in terms of helping the sick and the poor, is deeply embedded in Judaism; for Jews, it is a case of irrational obsession. With the emergence of the industrial revolution and massive generation of wealth, Jews took up economic inequality and embraced ideas of socialism.
The Jewish love affair with socialism which began in Russia with the fanaticism of the grandparents has been transformed into the fear of the parents and subsequently into the conviction of the children and grandchildren; it is embedded deeply in the Jewish DNA.
Living in ghettos for two millennia, the Jewish people have been struggling to reconcile their tragic history with the logic of modern reality. They have a difficult time coming to terms with the freedom and equal opportunities that America offers. They continue to fight for social justice, refusing to recognize that, as far as Jews are concerned, what they have accomplished in this country goes well beyond their wildest expectations. Sons and daughters of the first immigrants, who dug trenches and washed dishes in New York, became doctors, lawyers, senators, bankers, and industrialists.
Unfortunately, the descendants of the first immigrants inherited the genetic memories of their ghetto ancestors. They feel guilty for achieving a standard of living as good as or better than any other ethnic group in this country. The guilt associated with their own success has led them to take on, and support, the cause of every underdog and liberal and socialist movement in sight, no matter how undeserving, no matter how irrational.
Although socialism brought terrible suffering to Jews, they would not abandon their devotion to the cause. As prominent Zionist Zev Jabotinsky once said, “logic is an art of the Greeks; a Jew has his own logic. Jewish logic is the logic of catastrophe. Jews do not detect danger; they face it when it comes.”
But history punishes willful blindness, and catastrophes keep reappearing.
In many ways, the 1917 socialist revolution in Russia was in fact a Jewish revolution. Jews founded and shaped the Soviet state. Yet these same Jewish Bolsheviks quickly became the first state’s victims. Over the next twenty years, by 1937, practically all of them were executed or murdered abroad.
In the late 1920s, some German Jews voted for Hitler’s National Socialist Party, only to become victims of the Holocaust a decade later. They chose to ignore Hitler’s anti-Semitic rhetoric; he could not be bad, much less evil. After all, he was a socialist!
Jews passionately supported and continue to admire Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1939 denied entry for Jews seeking asylum from Nazi extermination and sent them back to the concentration camps. Nevertheless, Jews voted for FDR and still love him – after all, the New Deal was a giant step toward socialism.
In our own time, Jews continue to ignore the teachings of Karl Marx, their fellow member of the tribe, that socialism is about redistribution of wealth. The aim is to take it from the rich, even though there are many Jews among them. This is what Bernie Sanders’s suicidal “Future to Believe In” is about.
What is really remarkable is that over the last century, no social macrocosm has more consistently voted against its own self-interest and survival. We may expose Jewish devotion to socialism and shame Jews for betraying their own interests; however, conviction is stronger than reason.
As the leadership of the Democratic Party dropped all pretenses and openly advocates socialism in this country, the heritable socialists impelled by conviction will ignore once again the political necessities and vote for the party that speaks their language.
Alexander G. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and author of Anatomy of a Bolshevik and Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It.
@ Bear Klein:
Yes, I read Arutz 7 several times a day, as they change their headline news article often.
@ Edgar G.:
As you know well, this was in response to your question…”what did Washington and Lincoln do for Israel”, a comedy comment, and I responded in the same way, whereupon you begin talking about athletes. You shouldn’t fly so far afield.
@ Edgar G.:
Who, the athletes from this year? They got their faces on currency notes? In what science fiction novel, pray tell?
And just google: “soil exhaustion civil war” no quotes. The articles go on and on and on. You asked what my concentration as a HIstory major was. This was it.
Jstore is the academic database that professors read.
@ Edgar G.:
He worked behind the scenes in the border states to get them to abolish it and they did. Johnson reinstated it in everything but name and was impeached for it leading to Congressional Reconstruction which was then reversed under “Redemption.” Yes, Grant’s infamous order banning Jews from an area was very antisemitic. He retracted it under pressure from Lincoln and later apologized for it in his memoirs. Neither here nor there. I said I was speaking in the spirit of Lincoln, who was a friend of the Jews, but Israel wasn’t reborn yet so I am saying the second Johnson was a greater president than Lincoln, because, yes, I am that tribal and partisan, thank you very much – there is a new book about it — but who rightly only cared that Grant won battles not about his personal habits or anything else. I didn’t say he was a friend of the Jews. I said the second Johnson was, he died a broken man, and somebody ought to honor him for it, dammit.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That was a minor part of his platform which contained a bit of this and a bit of that. His opponent was Seward who was a verbrente slave supporter.
As for “soil depletion, I have perhaps 70-80 books on the Civil War, the battles the commanders, the tactics and strategies, and many are social histories of the times ..and NOT ONE mentions “soil depletion;. There were 5-6 States whose soil was particularly suitable for cotton, They also included parts of Texas and California, plus Maryland. They could also grow most other vegetables. We can assume, in farming country I hope, that crop rotation was a well known practice there.
To intimate that they needed other states because their soil was wearing out is ridiculous. Lincoln, by the way, heavily reprimanded John Brown. There is no doubt but that the South was entirely agrarian, and geared only to that way of life, so at a heavy disadvantage right from the beginning, in such a disproportionately balanced war..
A peculiar anomaly was that most of the Presidents had been from the South before Lincoln…..and….by the way….. I know all about the Grant story and the case of the same brand to every general. …I believe it’s anecdotal. .Grant. by the way, was very harsh towards Jews, in fact detested them,,us. .
Does it not tell you something, that when Lincoln “freed the slaves” he made sure that it was only in the Southern States with which he was at war… A big pile of PR, aided by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and etc There are ample documented statements and learned opinions which have slavery already on the wane and dying out within the next 30 years. And I’m sure you know slave importation had been banned from about 1805-6 or so.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
They got their faces on currency notes.
I can just tell you what I’d like to see happen to those athletes who kneel in protest during the anthem, while they’re down there. Heh heh.
And whether the Gulf of Tonkin incident was real or bogus and whether he had a hand in it or not, we were right to defend South Vietnam and his successor allowed a genocide to happen. The only thing wrong we did was to open peace negotiations and withdraw. We should have fought it to the bitter end, no matter the price. All wars should be fought to the end. The last man standing wins and winning is all that matters.
In the spirit of Jabotinsky, I like secular democracy and I think capitalism with a safety net is generally better but I don’t fetishize form and will go with whatever gets the job done.
Though propaganda is everything of course. So, I will lay my hand on my heart and sing the pledge where needed.
@ Edgar G.:
Slavery had to expand or die because of soil exhaustion. Lincoln ran on a platform of containing slavery in the newly acquired territories out west like Kansas. The Confederate states seceded almost the moment he was elected. They intended to conquer their way south into South America and create a slave empire.
Nothing else you mentioned about Johnson is relevant. In deciding on the greatness of a President, you need to ask yourself only one question: “Was he good for the Jews?”
The rest is sound and fury signifying nothing.
In the mold of Lincoln whose commanders complained of Grant being promoted over their heads, despite being an alcoholic, Lincoln replied, “He wins battles, find out what brand of whiskey he drinks and send a case to each of my generals,” I say “whatever alleged farts or faults Johnson may have had, he did his best to protect Jews and the Jewish state throughout his career, no other President can come even close, so let’s make virtues of them and incorporate them into the seder.”
As for sounding like a ten-year old, I regard that as high praise. Only ten year olds, and those who preserve the mentality of ten year olds can be certain of, or enthusiastic about anything. And that’s what’s required to win a war. Ideological child soldiers. That’s the ideal. That’s why Obama won and Trump is winning.
@ Michael S:
What did Washington or Lincoln do for Israel?
@ Michael S:
Washington was merely the leader of a rebellion, and fortunately had stubborn enough followers that stuck it out. That he was the first President of what later became a mighty world power is purely incidental and never intended by him. It was the Constitution which made America different from all other countries and that was the product of about 6-7 of the “Founding Fathers”, like Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison. and of course George Washington.
Preserving the Union,…. The Republicans, of which Lincoln was one, were unfairly oppressing the Southern States economically hugely, paying fire-sale prices for imported cotton, and on top of that made them pay extra-large prices on all goods imported from the North, their only economic suppliers, and prevented them from importing from elsewhere….. THAT’S what started the war, the bad feeling built up from years of Northern chicanery and sharp practice. Slavery was only incidental and only became an extra nuisance issue quite a while after the war began.
They’d been buying Southern cotton for many years, and knew it was produced mainly by slave labour. John Brown the abolitionist, was killed by the Northern Army just a couple of years before the civil war.
You may not have noticed that the mantra..”Lincoln freed the slaves” was all very well, but he made to free only the Southern slaves, to try to hinder their war effort, whilst carefully not freeing the Northern slaves. It was Johnson, the one who was impeached, who actually passed most of the laws beneficial to slaves and former slaves.
Lyndon Johnson inherited the Vietnam embroglio from Kennedy, but when he took office there were only a few thousand U.S. “advisors” in Vietnam. It was he who faked the Gulf of Tonkin scam and piled in the hundreds of thousands of troops, mostly very young and untrained, with little oversight. He handled that war like a cross-eyed grizzly bear in hibernation.
The adulation Sebastien is giving him is like a 10 year old kid with a “crush” on the newest girl in class with the perfumed curly hair. Of course he’s young yet, not reached 3 score and 10 yet.
“I just discovered all this. I think [LBJ] was our greatest President ever.”
I don’t agree. The “greatest” honor should go to those who preserved the Union during its times of greatest danger, internal and external. George Washington definitely deserves this honor, along with Abraham Lincoln. In his day, FDR, for his part, saw the country through its greatest-ever economic catastrophe, followed by one of its costliest wars.
Lyndon Johnson was certainly the best news ever for the State of Israel, if for no other reason than the fact that he was too tied down in Vietnam to get America’s sticky fingers involved in the Middle East. He had a reputation for being somewhat corrupt; and his “Great Society” programs certainly had mixed results. He was led by the nose into a foolishly deep involvement in Viet Nam, by military hawks; and American society was torn apart under his administration.
Johnson doubtless had good qualities; and he inherited most of his major problems from the dreamer, J F Kennedy.. From an objective standpoint, however, it can arguably be said that he got America INTO more difficulties than he got us out of.
@ Edgar G.:
I only discovered all this recently. Nobody honors him and I think it’s wrong. I think he deserves to be honored. As a freshman Congressman, he defied FDR to rescue Jews, illegally, during the Shoah. As the youngest ever Speaker of the House, he defied Eisenhower and blocked sanctions against Israel. As President, in the crucial two years leading up to the Six Day war, he gave Israel military aid for the first time (JFK required cash payments and Truman and Eisenhower maintained an arms embargo), gave Israel offensive weapons for the first time. He shielded Israel from diplomatic pressure to give up territory after the Six Day war, ended U.S. pressure over nukes and Arab refugees, shielded Israel from flack over the Liberty. So, what if he couldn’t put together a coalition to stop the blockade or send warships at the height of the Vietnam war when it turned out not to be necessary.
He was also right about Vietnam. It was a struggling nation like S. Korea and we betrayed our committment to them and let a genocide happen in the aftermath.
Most crucially, in both 1956 and 1968, he opposed Israel giving up territory.
Let me repeat that. He opposed Israel having to give up territory. He is the only President who can say that.
I just discovered all this. I think he was our greatest President ever.
@ adamdalgliesh:
True within the U.S. too. There are different Jewish communities. Liberal left-leaning mostly Ashkenazic Jews are the most numerous and the noisiest and visible but they don’t represent all American Jews; they just think they do. The Russian Jews of Brighton Beach, the ultra-Orthodox of Boro Park, insular Sephardic Jewish groups like Persian (they don’t usually call themselves Iranian) Jews. They have fewer outlets and they tend to keep to themselves. On Facebook, there are closed (by membership, you ask to join) Zionist American sites like: Persian Zionist Jews, Americans for a Safe Israel, Daily Schmutz, Friends who like Stand with Us.
The online and print newspaper, The Jewish Press http://www.jewishpress.com/
LIberals and Conservatives don’t talk to one another. Not sure if it’s possible. I’ve tried.
They are all very much on the same page as we are and support Israel.
Much of this article is insightful and true. However, it is also flawed in certain respects. While a majority of American Jews remain “left” in their orientation, this is no longer true of the Jews of Brtain and France. While I am less informed about other diaspora communities, my impression is that there are few if any of them other than the United States where leftists still form the majority of these communities and are supported by their mainstream solutions. I have seen no evidence, for example, that there is any leftist sentiment at all remaining among the 1 million plus Jews who remain in the “former Soviet Union.” Of course, there is little or no evidence of continued leftist sentiment among any group in these countries. Even the Russian Communist Party is now essentially a right-of-center, conservative party.
Leftists remain a large and very powerful minority in Israel. But the majority of Israeli Jews no longer support the Left.
Orthodox Jews have always been opposed to the left, even in Russia during the bad old days, and even today in modern America. There is also little leftist sentiment among the 25 per cent or so of Israeli Jews who are Orthodox. The persistant allegiance to left-leaning policies among Jews seems to be mainly an American Jewish, not a universal Jewish, phenomenon.
Trump if reports are true not only has established a joint US – Israel Iran military command (headed by one US & one Israeli General each) but actually had a joint operation on the border of Iraq and Syria attacking Iran lead Iraqi Hezbollah fighters and killing 25 of them.
That takes things to a whole new level.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That all may well be, and my following comments are not a dispute against. I haven’t read the book, but only the newspapers of the the time, and radio broadcasts of a large variety of commentators, so I can’t argue with you. He, as far as I can recall, was the most ruthless adversary, for whom nothing was too low to attempt in pursuit of his goal. His reputation in the House for cruel opportunism has never been equalled. Yet, his Human Rights record was very good, in contrast to his persona.
On this site I’ve described my summer conversations with a tennis partner who’d just returned from Vietnam. It must have been at the beginning of the Johnson Presidency, and she told me that within the year there would be a half million soldiers in Vietnam. I think it was a little later that Johnson faked that “Gulf of Tonkin” scheme.
I was just reading the Wiki article about him , in which he told Abba Eban that a host of Rabbis came to him and wanted him to sail every aircraft carrier he had through the Straits of Tiran……..Well….why didn’t he …at least ONE measly ship….He was exaggerating just to make his point as to why he didn’t or couldn’t… Typical crafty Johnson. He didn’t do it, and his desperation and indecisiveness were very marked in those days… which I remember VERY WELL.. Why was it that he was not able to get a single country to support the United States in a simple show of keeping International waters open. I never found out. Perhaps it was the always present hate of Israel and Jews…..just a suggestion.
As for his experts saying that Israel would win anyway….. a question…was that book written AFTER the War, when they HAD won…or before…..????
Oh, right and JFK harassed Israel about it’s nuclear program, obsessively. Johnson put a stop to that. I think the best you can say about JFK is that he was a little less hostile than Eisenhower but “friend?” No. Reagan, often touted as a great “friend” also pressured Israel to give up territory. Ironically, Bush ’41, whose image was of somebody who was not friendly to Israel, also gave with one hand while taking back with the other. He personally spoke passionately before the U.N. and got it to rescind the “Zionism is racism” resolution.
Only Johnson and Trump have been unequivocal friends, thus far.
@ Edgar G.:
Well, the same article says he tried but his intelligence said Israel would win anyway and then he resisted pressure to pressure Israel to give up territory and to make an issue of the sinking of the Liberty.
He tripled aid to Israel in 2 years after taking office, gave military aid to Israel for the first time, sold Israel advanced weapons for the first time, sold Israel offensive weapons for the first time.
Kennedy sold advanced weapons to Nasser, condemned Israel in the security council for a retaliatory strike against Syria, required cash payment for only defensive weapons, pressured Israel to take back 10 percent of the Arab refugees from ’48.
So far the Johnson and Trump have been the only presidents to refrain from pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Arabs.
I don’t care about his or anybody else’s personal habits. I read a perceptive article that said conservatives regard the President as a workman hired to do a job not some kind of personal example, echoing Lincoln regarding Grant. I don’t know if that was always true, but that’s how I feel about it. And, if the conservatives and progressives were to switch sides on Israel tomorrow, so would I, echoing Jabotinksy. I presume you get the references. If you don’t, references will be provided upon request.
Oh, and since nobody read the article, it’s also worth mentioning that he got hundreds of Jewish refugees from Germany into Texas illegally on fake passports, as a freshman congressman in the 30s.
He was a mensch, in my book. And, he was right about Vietnam. The article in The Jewish Press, the American equivalent of Arutz Sheva concludes with my agreement: “If there was one thing that threatened Johnson’s amicable relationship with American Jews – and, by extension, Israel – it was the vocal opposition of Jewish liberals to the war in Vietnam.
Johnson felt Jews, of all people, should have understood that South Vietnam, like Israel, was a small notion in constant peril. He complained that Jews “want me to protect Israel, but they don’t want me to do anything in Vietnam.’’
At one point during an otherwise friendly discussion with Abba Eban toward the end of his presidency, Johnson remarked, with considerable bitterness, “A bunch of rabbis came here one day in 1967 to tell me that I ought not to send a single screwdriver to Vietnam – but on the other hand should push all our aircraft carriers through the Straits of Tiran to help Israel.”
It was, of course, Vietnam and its poisonous effects on American society that would lead Johnson to forgo seeking a second full term as president. He left the White House in January 1969 a vilified and broken man. He died four years later, not yet 65 but looking like a man two decades older.
Whatever else can be said of Johnson, he proved a true friend to Jews and Israel. He proved it as a young lawmaker when, with limited clout and resources, he did what he could to bring Jewish refugees from Europe to Texas; he proved it as one of Israel’s strongest and most important backers in Congress during the state’s early years; and he proved it as president by granting Israel then-unprecedented levels of financial and military aid and by refusing, in marked contrast to Eisenhower’s actions in 1956, to force unilateral concessions on Israel following the Six-Day War.
His three immediate predecessors in the White House were a mixed bag on Israel – Truman blew hot and cold in the years leading up to statehood and embargoed arms to Israel during its war of independence; Eisenhower ranged from indifferent to hostile; and Kennedy, while speaking in warmer terms than Eisenhower ever did about U.S.-Israel relations, essentially pursued the Truman-Eisenhower policy of even-handedness.
It was Lyndon Johnson who, in both word and deed, can fairly and accurately be called the first genuinely pro-Israel American president.’
The thing I remember most about Johnson is that he fell down BADLY on his absolute promise that he would keep the Straits of Tiran open, being afraid to do it alone, as he easily could have, this precipitating the 1967 War, which happened to have been a good thing for Israel after all, the long-term results of which they, in hindsight, handled so utterly woefully, as to the events which followed both with the Yom Kipur War, and after, culminating in the disaster of The Oslo Accords .
The only other thing I recall, is his after office revelation of his habit of playing with his testicles whilst in discussions with visitors and staff members.
The thing I remember most about Johnson is that he fell down BADLY on his absolute promise that he would keep the Straits of Tiran open, being afraid to do it alone, as he easily could have, this precipitating the 1967 War, which happened to have been a good thing for Israel after all, the long-term results of which they, in hindsight, handled so utterly woefully, and were a large contributor to the events which followed both with the Yom Kipur War, and after, culminating in the disaster of The Oslo Accords .
The only other thing I recall, is his after office revelation of his habit of playing with his testicles whilst in discussions with visitors and staff members.
But, it is true that Kennedy ended the arms embargo on Israel even if he was a very mixed bag. https://www.historycentral.com/Israel/1962KennedyApprovesHawks.html
NIxon was another mixed bag. He came to Israel’s rescue during the Yom Kippur War despite Kissinger and the State Dept. but he also pressured Israel from day one to withdraw to the ’67 lines. Johnson never did that. He also resisted pressure to make an issue of the accidental attack on the Liberty which antisemites make an issue of to this day. http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/who-was-the-first-genuinely-pro-israel-u-s-president/2017/08/30/
“…By February 1969 the Nixon administration appeared ready to impose such a peace on the basis of the Rogers plan. It called for an overall guarantee of security to all the nations in the area and freedom of navigation along the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran, in return for which Israel would, with minor modifications, revert to the pre-1967 boundaries. Negotiations were begun with the Russians and a cease-fire was arranged. Arms shipments to the area, including promised Phantom jets, were held up…Even if Nixon had no special attachment to Israel, he could be depended upon in a crisis to act in Israel’s interests, motivated by the realpolitik of the Middle East situation. Nixon was re-elected in 1972. The aid which he extended to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, particularly the airlift which supplied much needed arms, showed him as a supporter of Israel.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/richard-nixon It’s this Rogers Plan which nobody seems to talk about any more which Kahane refers to in this prophetic 1976 article, “…Those in Israel and without, who refuse to understand that nothing will deter America from demanding that Israel make the maximum concessions, play the same fool. Those who do not understand that there is nothing that Israel can possible do, that there are no compromises it can make, that there is nothing short of full retreat to the 1967 borders that will satisfy the United States-are the same fools as the servant who ate, got whipped and in the end had to pay anyhow,
Their refusal to make the difficult choice of telling the Americans “no”, now, at this moment, will see them making the retreats they hope will avert American anger; it will see this effort fail even as the frontier moves from its present lines within the Arab heartland to new ones close to the Jewish cities; and most important, the Americans will make the same demands they always have envisioned since the days of the Roger Plan-total Israeli withdrawal. And since this is a thing that not even the most dovish of Israelis will agree to, the result will be an ultimate Israeli firm “no”, an ultimate American anger of the kind all men of “new initiative” propose to avert today by compromise, and exactly the same conditions of confrontation that would come anyhow if the Israelis said their “no” today. There would be one great difference, however, a “no” today will bring the crisis while Israel stands poised near the Arab capitols. A “no” tomorrow, after all the hapless and confused compromises and “initiatives,” will bring the same crisis near Tel Aviv, Beersheva and Netanya.
This is what happens when foolish and confused Israelis, by refusing to pay the price of saying “no” to the stinking fish of pressure, attempt to eat it, submit to getting beaten over it and then learn to their dismay that there is no escape from the difficult decision that they should have made in the first place.
Let the Israeli government, its men of “new initiative” and the Jewish leaders in America understand several basic axioms:
1) America is committed to the Rogers Plan and the world’s interpretation
of Security Council Resolution 242, i.e. Israeli withdrawal from all (but insignificant) parts of the lands of 1967. This includes the Golan Heights, Gaza, the entire West bank and the entire Sinai as well as changing Jerusalem’s present Jewish sovereignty status.
2) American interests lie, in the minds of most officials in Washington, with
Arab oil, the huge potential Arab market and with supplanting Soviet influence with American. This means, at best, an “even-handed” policy rather than a pro-Israeli one.
3) America is moving steadily to recognition of the “Palestinians” as a people
and of whomever they decide to have as their leaders. Those leaders are clearly the PLO and already the move to “moderate” the PLO, “public-relations-wise” is underway so that Washington can more easily pressure Israel into recognizing them.
4) The Ford-Kissinger administration is determined to prevent stagnation and
will pressure Israel into concession after concession.
5) No administration will got to war for Israel and no administration will continue
the present aid level no matter what Israel does or concedes. The frantic search for human allies will end as unsuccessfully as those Jews in the past who forgot what faith in the Jewish G-d was and who turned to Egypt or Assyria or other “allies” for help, only to learn to their dismay that the allies betrayed them.
Stinking fish are not made to be eaten or to get whipped or. One must have the courage to look at the truth and pay the bitter price of honesty. America is tired of the Israeli nuisance and wishes it would eat the fish already. The time to loudly proclaim “no” is now.” http://barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com/2014/09/israel-us-and-stinking-fish-1976.html
@ Bear Klein:
“In its Middle East policy the Kennedy administration made little effort to change the evenhanded approach pursued by its predecessors. As part of an all-out effort to win the affections of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kennedy pushed hard for large increases in aid to Egypt and in early 1962 instructed his UN ambassador to vote to condemn Israel in the Security Council following an Israeli retaliatory strike in Syria.
Kennedy also constantly prodded Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on the issue of Arab refugees – Secretary of State Dean Rusk wanted Israel to agree to take back at least 10 percent of the total number of Arabs who had left Israel since 1948 – and even more so on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which became something of an obsession for Kennedy and his foreign policy advisers…In The Bomb in the Basement, his history of Israel’s procurement of nuclear weapons, Israeli author Michael Karpin writes that “as soon as [Johnson] entered the White House the pressure on Israel on the [nuclear] issue ceased…”
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/who-was-the-first-genuinely-pro-israel-u-s-president/2017/08/30/
@ Bear Klein:
But it was Nixon who cursed at Kissinger and ordered immediate rush rush vital armaments to Israel during the Yom Kipur War, and always strongly supported Israel no matter what his private tape comments were. He was the product of his age, when they were all like that, but rose above it when Israel was in the direst need.
Kissinger is still mumbling in his whiskers about Israel being gone before another 10 years. It’s something like Abbas being in the 25th year of his 4 years term.
@ ArnoldHarris:
What I like is that just about everything you say is straight from the shoulder, Your comment about being “charmed” took me aback a little, and I suspected that there would be a barb following which I wouldn’t discover until I sat down. But I was wrong, and I thank you. (who was the other good poster of similar age who always seemed to be on the same page with you…his name escapes me)
I remember seeing the Dewey headline facsimile in an Dublin newspaper where he “beat” Roosevelt. When seeing pictures of him I always thought of Warner Baxter, whom you will certainly remember. And Yes, Eisenhower was a good army organiser and a rotten President for Israel. I think that any High Army officer would make a poor Civilian President of a country. Rigidity and immediate obedience are far too deeply stamped into their psyche.
And re your health regimen, I’m unfortunately far too lazy to do what you do. But in my youth , up to age about 21-22 I boxed a lot, had 61 fights and only lost my 2nd, and last 2, having retired a year before them, but was dragged out to make up 2 of our, club tournaments against “deadly” rivals. I played Tournament level Table tennis well into my 60s, then fell off a bike.and badly broke my arm and shoulder, so that was that…..Led my area team to the Canadian Winter games 3 successive times, (no age segregation,,the standard wasn’t that high.). Strictly kosher always, vegetarian over 50 years and a non smoker a lot longer than that. So I can’t complain…for a Jew that is..
Weeell…..I have a bit of this, and an ache just at the… and in winter my… this and that you know.
As for being a fossil, we both lived through an age in history where the most momentous events happened, like in no other era. Kids…..what do THEY know…Bless them.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-22/israeli-memorial-recalls-kennedy-president-who-committed-us-israels-defense
@ Sebastien Zorn:
JFK was also pro Israel no?
@ ArnoldHarris:
Eisenhower was a schmuck. In 1956, he threatened Israel with global BDS through the UN. He threatened to criminalize voluntary contributions by Americans to Israel, which was not yet receiving aid from the U.S. government of any consequence. In this case, it was Democratic Senator Lyndon Johnson, who stood in his way. He would later become the first pro-Israel president.http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/who-was-the-first-genuinely-pro-israel-u-s-president/2017/08/30/
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Truman was also responding to the threat from Dewey. “Thomas E. Dewey (1902-1971), governor of New York and unsuccessful Republican presidential nominee, was the first candidate for the White House to raise the Nazi persecutions and Zionism as campaign issues.
Dewey declared March 9, 1943, the opening of the Bergson Group’s We Will Never Die pageant in New York City, as a day of mourning for European Jewry. The following month, he issued a statement calling for international action “to help in every way possible in saving the Jews of Europe from extermination.”
By the autumn of 1943, in view of the likelihood that Dewey would be the GOP’s next presidential nominee, some prominent Democrats began to worry he would adopt a pro-Zionist position to lure Jewish votes away from President Roosevelt, especially in the crucial electoral state of New York. Dewey “has lots of political canniness… he would steal the show right from under our noses,” Congressman Emanuel Celler warned White House aides.
In the days leading up to the June 1944 Republican national convention, Dewey approved a proposal by Jewish activists to include a plank in the party platform calling for rescue of refugees from the Nazis and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It marked the first time either major political party made those positions part of their official platform, and prompted the Democrats, at their 1944 convention, to adopt similar language. Nonetheless, Dewey received only about 10% of the Jewish vote in his race against President Franklin D. Roosevelt that year.
After the war, Dewey repeatedly called on Great Britain to permit the immigration of Holocaust survivors to Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state there. The expectation of a major Dewey statement on the subject in the autumn of 1946, and its possible impact on the midterm congressional elections, was a major factor in spurring President Harry Truman to issue his first-ever public statement supporting establishment of a Jewish state. In the 1948 presidential race, Dewey won about 28% of the Jewish vote nationwide, and about 22% of Jewish votes in New York State.
Sources: Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 88, 172-183;
Medoff, FDR and the Holocaust, pp. 214, 218-219.”
http://enc.wymaninstitute.org/?p=172
Truman’s recognition of Israel’s existence should not be overrated. In fact, the first country to formally recognize the State of Israel de jure on 17 May 1948 was the Soviet Union. The President’s press secretary’s statement three days earlier, – where the White House acknowledged “the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel”, – notwithstanding.
The arms embargo Truman enacted on Israel while the Arabs were receiving weapons from America’s ally Britain, almost doomed the newborn state of Israel. American demands that Israel unilaterally surrender all territory it had captured beyond the 1947 U.N. partition plan lines were an outrage.
To be fair in his attempts to support the Israeli state, Truman had faced serious opposition from his State Department. And not only there.
Reform rabbis had founded the American Council for Judaism to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It grew into an organization of over fourteen thousand members, which collaborated closely with Antisemitc State Department officials, including Dean Acheson and Loy Henderson. Opinion leaders, including Arthur H. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times and Eugene Meyer, the publisher of The Washington Post, opposed Zionism.
American Jews should remember this and exercise humility on this topic, rather than exuberance.
It appears that a very large number of the Leftist Jews in the USA have morphed into an identity that were they are Leftist Americans first. Jews were very slow to be accepted into American Society. The Jews worked their way into acceptance by fellow Leftists into American Society who were generally not very strictly religious no matter their religion.
They relate and identify in general strongly with the leftist doctrines. Many of them want to keep being accepted by their fellow leftists even if it means abandoning the Jewish State of Israel. So when the Leftist leader (such as Obama) is being criticized by the Prime Minister of Israel for giving Iran a path to nukes, the majority of these leftists side with their leader Obama and not the Jewish State. They want to make sure their loyalties are reflected as being Leftist Americans first. This is who they are period in large part. They have assimilated completely for the most part.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar. I’m simultaneously charmed and astounded by your comment and that of Eddie Dee. To no small degree because our four children and now our two grand-daughters — everyone except my wife of almost 50 years — seem to regard me and my presence among them as something akin to that of a two-legged human fossil. But whom in hell am I to argue with most of my family?
By the way: People who survive into their mid-80s had best adopt a regiment of extensive and daily workouts at a local gymnasium, and a diet sufficient to shrink the human abdomen into something that all of us can smirk in admiration as we smile knowingly at what we see in the mirror. I do that scrupulously and perhaps religiously each day.
About Truman and Dewey. Even at 14, there was something about the latter that I never cottoned to whenever I saw him on the early television screens of the late 1940s. In any case, the first national election in which I could vote was in 1956, when I had reached 22 years of age. Upon hindsight if not foresight, I-Like-Ike proved out to have a far more impressive commander of the armies of the Western allies than he did as commander of chief in the White House.
“Willkie, Wendell ‹ Encyclopedia
enc.wymaninstitute.org/?p=541
Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee, spoke out on behalf of rescuing Jewish refugees and creating a Jewish state. Willkie (1892-1944) …
http://enc.wymaninstitute.org/?p=541
Alf Landon, Unlikely Friend of the Jews – The David S. Wyman …
new.wymaninstitute.org/2011/11/alf-landon-unlikely-friend-of-the-jews/
Alf Landon, Unlikely Friend of the Jews … Most important, Landon had a hand in the decision to include a pro-Zionist plank in the 1944 Republican Party …
Jewish refugees and creating a Jewish state. Willkie (1892-1944) …”
“In the days leading up to the June 1944 Republican national convention, Dewey approved a proposal by Jewish activists to include a plank in the party platform calling for rescue of refugees from the Nazis and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It marked the first time either major political party made those positions part of their official platform, and prompted the Democrats, at their 1944 convention, to adopt similar language. Nonetheless, Dewey received only about 10% of the Jewish vote in his race against President Franklin D. Roosevelt that year.
After the war, Dewey repeatedly called on Great Britain to permit the immigration of Holocaust survivors to Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state there. The expectation of a major Dewey statement on the subject in the autumn of 1946, and its possible impact on the midterm congressional elections, was a major factor in spurring President Harry Truman to issue his first-ever public statement supporting establishment of a Jewish state. In the 1948 presidential race, Dewey won about 28% of the Jewish vote nationwide, and about 22% of Jewish votes in New York Statehttp://enc.wymaninstitute.org/?p=172.
Sources: Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, pp. 88, 172-183;
Medoff, FDR and the Holocaust, pp. 214, 218-219.”
@ Edgar G.:
Tenks. The pun’s the thing to catch the conscience of the king. Google their names and some relevant term like, “Zionism,” or “Jews” and stuff comes up. There was a good book about Hoover in 2012, “Herbert Hoover and the Jews.” He was saving Jews during WWI and was instrumental in the Bergson group during the Shoah. As President in 1933, he ordered the State Dept. to German Jews and FDR immediately reversed that upon taking office.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I knew about Hoover and Wendell Willkie but not the others,,,. I remember the huge headlines in the local Irish Newspapers at that time that Willkie came out of nowhere or something like that. Such excitement, in Ireland of all places, but we all were expecting to be invaded by Germany at any moment.
That second last sentence of yous was a pippin…. The old Zorn is back too….
Yes, Truman was also an antisemite. All four of the Republican candidates who ran against FDR and Truman and lost, Hoover, Landon, Wilkie and Dewey were ardent Christian Zionists who supported Jewish rescue and statehood in and out of office but we were very clever in supporting antisemites like FDR, Truman, Obama, Hillary Clinton. You see we were taking a page out of the book of Ephriam Kishon’s Sallah Sabati who is forced into the public housing he has been unsuccessfully trying to get into by protesting against it. He wins by implementing the words of wisdom he repeats throughout the film, “You always get what you don’t want.” Well, now with Trump being elected, it looks like our strategy has finally paid off. And now, look at Lauder. See, we have consistently had wise leaders at the Chelm. Nice, huh?
@ ArnoldHarris:
Welcome Back Arnold, you stay away for long periods when once you didn’t. Perhaps that’s why you constantly announce to us your age, thinking we’d forgotten you. It is not neccessary as your posts are far more interesting than as a product of mere age.
{(I keep my own age private ever since I saw Groucho Marx on the Merv Griffin show one night. When asked how he was, he moaned…and he was right..”I’m just as good today as I was last year, and yet now being over 80 I’m an old man, and nobody will even listen to an old man. They have no time for me now. They look right though me as if I wasn’t there..etc.etc” (paraphrased)..}
I differ with you on Truman however. He was just as much a Democrat as Roosevelt, and he certainly did not love Jews, although he felt they had the same rights as others.. He rejected his former partner’s-a Jew- request that he meet with the leaders of the Jewish Agency, and when he was a Senator for 10 years he did nothing positive to show he cared anything about Jews, And this was during their most horrific experiences.
Eventually he succumbed and met with Weizmann who impressed him so deeply that he became inclined to support a Jewish State. Most strongly opposed by General Marshall, a man he almost deified, and the whole State Dept. calling doom and gloom on the idea, he was urged towards recognition both by his meeting with Weizmann and the very strong support of Clark Clifford who was Truman’s long time aide and then Advisor to the President, with whom he had a strong positive relationship..
Weizmann kept his finger on the inner workings all that were going on, and it was a lot, When the US Delegation wished to postpone recognition for a while, Weizmann cabled Ben Gurion to declare IMMEDIATELY “it’s now or never”. He either had the inside track or was I direct communication with the Almighty.
An odd thing was that General George Marshall of the Army, the most influential person in the USA had at that time, not only didn’t know, him but never heard of Ben Gurion”..
Again Welcome Back Arnold. I personally missed your strongly worded contributions, and also another poster of similar age and opinions, whose name has eluded me.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Arnold:With tears in my eyes, i bow to you in thanks!
I mourn those who cannot think, and act, for themselves.
For most of my 84 years, I have been a hard-core right-wing Jew with no apologies whatsoever to the most foolish of Jews of socialism. Harry S Truman would have been the only president of the USA for whom I would have voted, except that I couldn’t vote at all as a 14-year-old in 1948, when he ran for re-election. In fact, one of the reasons I so strongly like Donald Trump is because his personality reminds me strongly of that of Truman. Both these men are noted for saying precisely what was in the mind of Truman, and what is now on their mind of Trump. During our year and one-half living and studying in Israel at the Hebrew University, my wife Stefanija and I were reinforced in our opinions of all of the above.