T. Belman. Blum nails it. She is the daughter of the late Commentary editor, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Commentary was my favorite publication when growing up. I read every article and saved every edition for many decades.
Kindly note how she spells “antisemitic”. Today. it is most common to spell it “anti-Semitic”. I am with her and I often amend articles that I post to correct the spelling. In the fifties and sixties, the only spelling one used was antisemitic. This is not about being against Semites. It is not about Semites. It is about Jews.
The response to the former US president’s Truth Social post has been nothing short of a hysterical – purposeful – misreading of his words, which were neither threatening nor antisemitic.
The response to the former US president’s Truth Social post has been nothing short of a hysterical – purposeful – misreading of his words, which were neither threatening nor antisemitic.
The latest brouhaha surrounding former US President Donald Trump pertains to comments he posted on Sunday about – and directed to – American Jews.
“No president has done more for Israel than I have,” he wrote on his platform, Truth Social. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US”
All true, other than the “surprisingly” part. The majority of Jews in the United States wouldn’t support a Republican if their lives, or Israel’s, depended on it. A befitting quip that circulated in Jerusalem ahead of the 2012 election was that if then-President Barack Obama were to nuke Tel Aviv, the Jewish vote for him might drop to 75%.
Trump continued, “Those living in Israel, though, are a different story; highest approval rating in the world. Could easily be PM!”
Again, though characteristically self-congratulatory, what he said is accurate. During his tenure, many adoring Israelis joked about wanting to elect him to the premiership. And with good reason.
He canceled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal with Iran. He moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which he recognized as Israel’s capital. He ceased funding for the terrorist-supporting UNRWA. He shuttered the PLO mission in Washington. He recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. His State Department removed the word “occupied” from references to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). He designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. And he brokered the historic Abraham Accords.
Still, his political and personal foes were furious that he dared to take credit for being the best friend that Israel ever had in the White House. What really got their bilious juices flowing was his warning that “US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel, before it is too late!”
The response has been nothing short of hysterical, and not in the funny sense.
“We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and antisemites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship,” tweeted Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “It is not about a quid pro quo; it rests on shared values and security interests. This ‘Jewsplaining’ is insulting and disgusting.”
Greenblatt is actually the one who has no business talking about “shared values” with Israel, whose harshest critics he regularly defends. It is he who could use a hefty dose of “Jewsplaining,” to remind him of what his role is supposed to entail.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America spewed equally vile vitriol. “More unabashed anti-Semitism from GOP leader Donald Trump,” the group tweeted. “His threat to Jewish Americans and his continued use of the antisemitic dual loyalty trope fuels hatred against Jews. We will not be threatened by Donald Trump and Jewish Americans will reject GOP bigotry this November.”
This is particularly worthy of note in its idiocy. Trump issued no “threat,” and he certainly wasn’t invoking the “dual loyalty trope.”
On the contrary, he was calling on Jews to be more, not less, invested in Israel’s future and well-being. And he was warning that failure in this regard would have negative consequences for the Jewish state. What about this is wrong, let alone antisemitic? The answer is: nothing.
Nevertheless, White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre parroted the false accusation, though “plagiarized” would be a better depiction.
“Donald Trump’s comments were antisemitic, as you all know, and insulting both to Jews and to our Israeli allies,” she told reporters on Monday. “But let’s be clear, for years, for years now, Donald Trump has aligned with extremist and antisemitic figures. … We need to root out anti-Semitism everywhere it rears its ugly head. We need to call this out. With respect to Israel, our relationship is ironclad and it’s rooted in shared values and interests. Donald Trump clearly doesn’t understand that either.”
Really? Maybe she ought to tell her boss to “root it out” of the Democratic Party and its backers in academia, where it’s been “rearing its ugly head” with a vengeance.
Perhaps, as well, she might want to review the definition of “ironclad.” You know, since the Biden administration refers to Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli military as “both sides” when urging restraint and de-escalation.
This brings to mind comedian Jay Leno’s 2014 barb about then-President Barack Obama knowing “just how unbreakable the US-Israel bond is, since he’s been trying to break it for years.”
It was Trump who turned this around, to the dismay of the very progressive Jewish organizations that have been slandering him for his Truth Social post. They and numerous media outlets have been going so far as to compare his statements to those of rapper/designer Kanye West (a.k.a. Ye), whose recent rants have been filled with unapologetic Jew-hatred with violent rhetoric.
It’s a neat trick, since West is a pro-Trump conservative. But, comparing Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband – who boasted of his intention to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” – to Israel’s proven ally isn’t merely disingenuous. It’s also transparent.
Not only does it serve to highlight the subpoenaing of Trump to testify before the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riots; it also constitutes a Hail Mary pass on the part of all those praying to stave off a likely defeat for Democrats in the upcoming midterms. Prominent among the worriers are Jews.
Though Trump is not alone in bemoaning their counter-intuitive ballot-box behavior, he makes the mistake of taking the age-old phenomenon personally. As the late sociologist Milton Himmelfarb famously pointed out in Commentary magazine in 1973, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”
Fortunately, there are exceptions to that rule. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), for example, announced on Friday that it will be awarding Trump its Theodor Herzl Medallion. The honor will be bestowed on the “best friend Israel ever had in the White House” during the organization’s gala on Nov. 13 in New York City.
Kudos to the ZOA for giving gratitude where it’s due.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
@Edgar G.
How to keep saving the latest version of your Word file (usually in a main Documents folder or you can use other folders):
When your Word file is open, on the top left you will see a colorful circle.
To the right of the colorful circle there is an image of a computer diskette (if you float your mouse cursor over it, it will say “Save”).
To save the latest version of your Word file, left-click the “diskette” – the file will update itself but it will stay open and you can keep adding more posts to it.
It makes sense to click on Save after copying each of your posts and pasting it into the file.
@Edgar G.
I copy and paste my posts into a Word file right away after they post on Israpundit (if they have to disappear, they usually disappear AFTER being posted) – remember to keep saving the file to keep the latest version.
There should be a menu in your browser (I don’t know which one you have, I know that Chrome is not considered safe in terms of privacy), and there should be a browser menu – look on top of the browser screen.
Inside the browser menu, try to find Settings, and within Settings there should be something like “Open previous windows and tabs” at Startup – put a check mark there, or ask your daughter to help with it.
@Edgar
I have a couple hundred tabs open at any given point in time. The reason why they disappear when you restart your PC is due to the browser memory being overwhelmed, which is why the RESTORE option is missing when you restart the PC. You might try restarting the PC more frequently to avoid this issue. There is a way to expand the amount of memory allocated to the browser memory, but this is beyond my knowledge, so I just restart the PC frequently and they restore pretty readily, even maintaining my yet to be submitted posts here on Israpundit.
As to how to save a running list of your posts, if you have Microsoft Word, Office or Word Pad, you can type your comments in one of these softwares and then save it as a running file, ie add to it with each post that you write. After saving the updated file with your new comment, you can copy the recent comment that you intend to post (highlight the post and then hit Control and C simultaneously) and then paste it in the box here on Israpundit and hit submit (click on the dialogue box under the related article where you want to attach the post and hit Control and V simultaneously). Then hit Post Comment below the dialogue box.
This way you will have a list of all your comments saved in a running file in MS Word, for instance, saved on your PC. Hope this helps.
@Sebastien
I wasn’t correcting you or the point you were making. Just noting that the Haaretz story was badly flawed, particularly the conclusion that since there was a sharp drop in early 2022, the proposed new trend of increase aliyah from the US was obviously false, without considering the consequence of the most recent Covid waves as I described. Though they discuss the possibility that the reduced aliyah was related to the drop in the stock market and rising cost of real estate in Israel, they fail to consider anything related to the recent waves of Covid.
As to the point you were raising, it is clear that only a small trickle of the 30% of US Jews who make aliyah to Israel every year. I wasn’t challenging this conclusion, as I think it is fairly stated.
@ Peloni According to this 2019 article from The Jewish Agency 32,000 olim had arrived from the US in the past decade. Iists by country.
DECEMBER 22, 2019; NEW YORK
The Jewish Agency Summarizes a Decade of Aliyah
Over a Quarter Million Immigrants Moved to Israel from 150 Countries; 2019 Is Decade’s Record-Breaking Year for Aliyah, With Arrival of More Than 34,000 Immigrants
Chairman Herzog at a meeting with immigrants and their native-born Israeli children: “You’ve fulfilled the Zionist dream and stren
https://www.jewishagency.org/the-jewish-agency-summarizes-a-decade-of-aliyah/
This doesn’t refute my point. 25 percent of 6 million American Jews is 1 million, five hundred thousand. One million four hundred sixty-eight thousand stayed. 32,000 made aliya. This is the 25 percent that is pro-Israel. Those who made aliya over a ten year period constituted 6.8 percent of genuinely pro-Israel Jews in the US.
Russia, with around 66,800 immigrants
Ukraine: 45,670
France: 38,000
United States: 32,000
Ethiopia: 10,500
Great Britain: 6,320
Belarus: 5,530
Brazil: 4,320
Canada: 3,640
Argentina 3,150