T. Belman. I don’t think the Jewish leadership lacks courage, though they do, so much as it is a matter of them having embraced the wrong values. As Valerie puts it, embracing Leftism rather than the Jewish Community. Meaning they have joined with their progressive partners rather than their Jewish brothers. It is not a matter of courage so much as it is a matter of having turned their backs on the Jews.
by Valerie Sobel
Another history pivoting moment today at the White House as President Trump signs an executive order for recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over The Golan. With Bibi at his side proclaiming President Trump’s lifelong affinity for Israel and the Jewish People, the world witnesses a President who is doing more than paying lip service to Israel’s security.
This should make anyone with even a fractional Jewish DNA thrilled, n’est-ce pas? Israel’s survival is critically dependent on military security of The Golan Heights, how could anyone ethnically Jewish object? That this official recognition of the Golan is a good thing is a foregone conclusion and finds no argument in the Jewish world anywhere, including Jewish community leaders and candidates in the upcoming Israeli election.
No doubt a cause to celebrate, right? Just about now we should see an incoming volley of statements by Jewish Community leaders expressing delight at this turn of events. But if history is any indication and memory serves us right, except for a tiny number of grassroots Jewish organizations, most will stay in the lazy boy of their gratuitous silence, their CNN-conditioned disdain for the President, and their deathly fear of poking the Arab bear. In other words, expect status quo.
Amidst the three plagues above, disdain for the President is the predominant driver for their copious absence from the conversation. Frankly put, their trembling knees can’t openly abdicate MSM-induced Trump Derangement Syndrome with inevitable wrath of leftist board members and Trump-hating clergy looming. To say nothing of probable financial abandonment by leftist donors!
Furthermore, they’ve dug into their Trump-hate slough so deep, any forthright support of President’s actions now looks like an embarrassing about-face. Admitting they’ve been wrong is worse than death itself. The mere mention of the word “Trump” in a complimentary context spells out their ideological blunder in front of thousands, if not millions. Public rallying behind Trump wouldn’t be cool if he cured cancer, let alone as he advocates for Israel now. Hence, continuance of feigned ambivalence for public consumption is their only option.
By contrast, a litany of emails and public statements from Jewish Federations and Synagogues condemning terror in a New Zealand mosque ensues till this day. Calls for vigils and even monetary funding of survivors was called for by various Jewish Groups. Similarly, tripping over themselves leaders of American and Canadian Jewish organization inundated us with a week-long flow of condemnation of the Quebec Mosque shooting in 2017. Any official statements by the same condemning the murder of Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger a few days ago? How about Ari Fuld last year? Any officially expressed grief over the killings of 130 Nigerian Christians this month? How about the brutal rape and murder of an innocent 19-year-old girl by a Palestinian mosque employee on February 7th, 2019?
Jewish Federations said nothing at the events leading up to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge: the gruesome kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas and the 4,564 Gaza rockets and mortars showering citizens of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Just as they said nothing last March when Hamas-led tire burning threatened the lives of thousands in tiny Israel. Just as they said nothing when rockets lit up the sky over Tel Aviv ten days ago on March 15, 2019. Just as they will say absolutely nothing today when Gaza rockets fall and injure 7 Israelis, two of whom are children. No Jewish sorrow or threat to Jewish survival in Israel will be sufficient enough to solicit their stern censure in the public eye.
No scorn was dished out for Congresswoman Omar’s unabashed recurrent antisemitism because she is a Muslim. No contempt for Democratic Party’s inability to pass a resolution condemning Omar’s insightfully dangerous Jew-hatred of the very community they represent will ever be heard. Had this antisemitic rhetoric left the lips of a conservative politician or speaker even once, we would drown in the sea of condemnations by Jewish organizations virtue-signalling in the safety net of their political correctness.
If these feckless leaders claiming to represent the Jewish diaspora kept silent at the long over-due recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel by President Trump, do we really expect them to say something today with respect to the recognition of The Golan?
Have these Jewish leaders been so ideologically indoctrinated and cowed that they can’t even utter simple words of public sympathy or joy (as the case may be) when it concerns their own ethnicity and heritage, their own congregants, their Israeli brethren, their fellow Jews?
Herein lies the litmus test for true identification and loyalty of these Jewish organizations: Leftism vs. Jewish Community. With Russian Collusion illusion by the wayside, will they continue to piously follow the mantra of Trump hate served by mainstream media all-seasons menu? Or will they find a shred of decency to show humble gratitude to a President who continues to do for Israel what no other president has done before him?
Amidst an exponential rise in antisemitism across the world, if these Jewish leaders cannot find a scrap of integrity, a crumb of nobility to openly and unapologetically applaud the President’s actions today, they emphatically fail to represent those they fundraise off.
History doesn’t educate when leftism is chosen over blood. Shtetl mentality and sheeple adherence to political correctness didn’t die with German Jewish leadership of 1930s Germany. Thankfully, the difference today is the existence of strong and sovereign Israel. Moreover, ample critical skills of Diaspora Jews facing harsh realities of rising Islam in the West and concurrent rise of antisemitism on the streets and in politics are not to be underestimated. We will prevail by choosing Israel and our survival each and every time, with or without the help of our politically correct Jewish leaders.
Anyone wanting to know whose coffers to send their hard-earned cash into, just track down letters of grief about fallen Israeli soldiers, outrage over continued terror in Israel, condemnations of political antisemitism, denunciations of jihad, outcry over the killings of Christians in Islamic regions, organized vigils & funding drives for victims of Jew hatred, or even the slightest mention of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in the organization’s public statements. When you find one, let the rest of us know.
It would behoove Jewish leaders of Federations, Synagogues and other groups to think on Churchill’s famous words: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others”. President Trump has it, it’s time you find yours.
@ AryehbnBaruch:
Amen ! They are embarrassments.
Unfortunately, about 90% of the non-Orthodox seem to care more about how progressive they appear than how Jewish they appear. These 4+ million Jews are largely intermarried and assimilated into the American melting pot and are Jews in name only.
You are right, Ted. It is less a matter of *procedure* (“courage”), and more a matter of *substance* (values).
In America today, this inherent conflict for.leftist Jews is going to crystallize further and further where if their inherent “dual-loyalty” towards the current liberal,progressive agenda over any Jewish /Israel identification or support is going to lead to a real, probably penultimate, example of an oxymoron where these “liberal “ Jews will prefer to support congresspeople like the three current musketeer congresswomen now apparently somehow, amazingly but, in reality, pulling the leadership,strings of the mainstream Democratic Party, that their “liberal-Progressive” agenda will be so,progressive to such a case where theses, not oxymorons, but actual morons, will vote into existence people and policies that, maybe be the hand, will lead them right back into the ovens- and then it will be too late, and, without an Israel, or another United States to flee to, they’d have to seek asylum in the Islamic continent of Europe. Have fun. They really don’t want the wall built because then they wouldn’t be able to cross it in the other direction.