Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
With the death of American hostage Omer Neutra now
confirmed, that leaves at most three American hostages in Gaza left alive. All
told, there are seven American hostages still held in Gaza; four of them,
including Neutra, are dead, their families denied even the right to bury their
dead and process their grief. Does it matter that come January 20th
a new, tough-talking sheriff in the form of President Elect Donald J. Trump is
coming to town?
It does and it doesn’t. The fact that someone in Israel’s
corner is moving into the Oval Office doesn’t change the fact that the American
hostages were betrayed by the most powerful nation on earth: America. It was
always a possibility because that’s the way it goes with American Jews.
American administrations come and go, some of them more and some of them less pro-Israel.
Some of them more and some of them less antisemitic.
Joe Biden, or whoever operates under his guise, doesn’t care
about some Jews who left America voluntarily to live in a state that is nothing
but a pain in the neck to Joe. A thorn in his side. (Those pesky Jews.)
President Trump will be far better, as was proven on Monday
afternoon following the news of IDF confirmation of Neutra’s death on October
7. Taking to Truth Social, President Trump issued a firm threat to Hamas:
Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held
so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the
Middle East - But it’s all talk and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to
represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the
date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will
be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated
these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than
anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of
America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!
This is my President! There must be serious consequences for holding any hostage but America needs to exact severe consequences for kidnapping and murdering AMERICAN hostages. https://t.co/Qh8dq78mUM
Netanyahu offered Israel’s heartfelt thanks to President
Trump for this strong show of support. Trump’s stern warning was exactly
what was needed but had been sorely lacking every day for the past 424 days.
The Biden administration, however, was focused only on restraining Israel while
appeasing Iran. Biden and his handlers just didn’t care about a handful of
American Jews who had chosen to leave the Land of Opportunity for a country
that everyone hates.
I want to thank President Trump for his strong statement yesterday about the need for Hamas to release the hostages, the responsibility of Hamas, and this adds another force to our continued effort to release all the hostages.
The betrayal by America of its hostages in Gaza is real, and
it should be food for thought for American Jews who have not yet been bit by
the Aliyah “bug.” It’s a fact: American Jews cannot count on their government
to protect them or help them in their time of need. The Biden Administration
proves the point. Some presidents may indeed help American Jews when they are
in trouble, but others won’t, and it won’t matter if said American Jews are
held in Gaza, slashed in the face on a street in Brooklyn, or harassed and
violently abused on an American university campus. Some administrations won’t
care enough to come down hard enough on the perpetrators to put the fear of God
into them.
Jews with American citizenship are, in the end, still less
worthy of protection than other Americans. Witness the Biden administration’s
lack of will to do much of anything at all for American citizens being held and
brutalized in Gaza because they are Jews. Trump coming into office will change
this dynamic for a while, and we can hope it will last a good long time, but
for the sake of self-preservation, American Jews would be well advised to
accept that America is not a place they can count on. When push comes to shove,
American Jews may or may not receive the help they deserve at the time it is
needed most.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
Joe Biden, if he hadn’t already lost the Jewish vote, lost
it for sure last week. First, Joe spilled the beans to Erin Burnett: he’d already
held up a weapons shipment to Israel.
Three days later, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that an arms shipment had been delayed. "We have paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs because we don’t believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities," said Sullivan according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
In addition to the "pause" on arms shipments, the Biden administration let slip, one day earlier, that intelligence, too, had been withheld from Israel—intel that might already have led Israel to Sinwar and to the hostages as well, some of whom might still
be saved, among them Americans. The Washington Post had the report:
“The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a
full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if
it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military
pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels,
according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers.”
The electorate knew what it was seeing. Joe Biden had
betrayed an ally and a people. Biden was withholding arms and information. He
had concealed critical intelligence for later leverage, and was now using it—carrot
and stick—to force Israel to stand down from Rafah.
It was/is not a good look. And it has cost Joe Biden the
Jewish vote.
Everyone knows why Joe Biden betrayed Israel—he did it to
swing the swing state of Michigan, the state that voted Rashida Harbi Tlaib into
office. But if Joe thought that betraying Israel would serve him well in
Michigan, he thought wrong. As of this writing, Trump is ahead of Biden in
Michigan by 7 points, with Trump at 49 percent, and Joe with 42 percent of the
vote. And that’s without looking at how many of those voters are Jews.
But, for argument’s sake, let’s look at that. The Jews are only 2.4 percent of American adults of voting age. Does it really matter if the Jews don’t vote for Biden? Could such a small number of votes make any appreciable difference to an election outcome?
Biden may have weighed this in his mind: the small number of Jews versus the loud clamor of the left, perhaps confusing “loud” with “many.” This would be a grave miscalculation. In Why the Jewish vote matters (2020) Jonathan Sarna writes: "[In] Lincoln’s day, only about five out of every thousand
Americans were Jews and today that number may not exceed 20 per thousand, one
wonders why anybody cares about Jews’ political proclivities. The 'Jewish vote' would seem far too small to matter."
Sarna says that the answer to this question says much about how American
politics work. For one thing, elections are often “dramatically close”:
Tilden vs. Hays (1876), Nixon vs. Kennedy (1960), Bush vs.
Gore (2000) – these and other razor-tight presidential elections demonstrate
why small groups, like the Jews, often hold considerable sway. When every vote
counts, especially in the electoral college, hundreds of thousands of Jewish
voters suddenly take on disproportionate significance.
Also, says Sarna, most of the Jews are concentrated in the
areas a presidential candidate would want to carry:
Some 85% of Jews live in 20 critical metropolitan areas; the
four states with the largest Jewish communities (California, New York, Florida
and New Jersey) carry 128 electoral votes of 270 needed to win an election. In
addition, numbers of Jews also dwell in historic swing states that often decide
American elections, particularly Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. This
dramatically elevates the significance of the small Jewish vote.
Sarna puts Jews showing up at the polls in third place (I
would have put it first):
Third, Jews are known to turn out and vote in high numbers
on election day — more than almost any other ethnic and religious group. Some
85% of Jews vote in key presidential elections. Asian Americans and Latino
Americans, by contrast, turn out at a rate of less than 50%. As a result,
although they are but 2% of the population, Jews may approach 4% of the
electorate.
Money comes in at last place, from Sarna’s point of view.
Maybe it seems a little unsavory, too much like an antisemitic trope to mention
it, but campaigns don’t run on air, and the Jews are, in fact, generous:
Finally, Jews contribute to political parties in totally
disproportionate amounts. An estimate published in 2016 proclaimed that “as
much as 50% of all monies raised by Democratic presidential candidates are from
Jewish funders; similarly, 25% of the Republican donor base is comprised today
of major Jewish contributors.” So far this year, according to a recent Jewish
Telegraph Agency report, 15 of the top 25 political donors in the U.S. are
Jewish or of Jewish origin. The Democrats among them have donated over $165
million to their party’s candidates, the Republicans almost $88 million.
Sarna concludes that Jews “punch above their weight in
American politics.” Biden would have done well to heed the author's words: “Small as the
number of Jewish voters may be, savvy politicians woo them intensely, as they
have done since the days of Abraham Lincoln.”
Jews vote in exceedingly high numbers; somewhere between 72% to 85% of Jewish voters live in “purple states” (states neither “red” nor “blue”) where the 2024 contest for the control of the Office of the President, the Senate, and the House will be determined, along with several state and local contests. As a reminder for non-American audiences, the Electoral College, not the popular vote, determines the outcome for the White House, where the winner must secure 270 Electoral Votes out of 538 electors.
Approximately 1.8 million Jewish adults, just under one-third of the total Jewish electorate, live in 25 congressional districts. Of the top 25 districts by Jewish population, nearly half are in New York, with ten districts. The remaining districts with large Jewish populations are found in seven states: Florida, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Florida’s 21st Congressional District, with 152,000 Jewish voters, and New York’s 17th Congressional District, in the Lower Hudson Valley, representing a significantly high percentage of Orthodox voters, constitute the nation’s two largest centers of Jewish voters. Identified below are some key states where the 2024 campaign may play out.
Many analysts believe that at this point, Florida (3.1% Jewish), Texas (.6%), and Ohio (1.3%) are most likely situated in the Republican column for this year’s election (parenthesis indicate percentage of Jewish voters), leaving several other states that are seen to be in play, among them, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, collectively these states have 87 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. In several of these critical states (Pennsylvania and Arizona, and to a lesser degree, Georgia), the “Jewish vote” might be particularly significant in determining the outcomes:
Pennsylvania – 2.3%
Arizona – 1.5%
Georgia – 1.2%
Michigan – .09%
Wisconsin – .06%
North Carolina – .04%
Thane Rosenbaum self-describes as a "die-hard
Democrat." But no longer. Not that he’s voting for Trump, mind you, whose
name does not appear once in So
Long, Democratic Party. No. He’s going to vote Independent. What brought
about this volte-face?
For me, the breaking point came with Joe Biden’s shameful
CNN interview where he made clear that the United States would not support
Israel’s incursion into Rafah to route the remaining Hamas terrorists
responsible for 10/7.
Let me get this straight: The United States devoted a decade
to hunting down and assassinating Osama bin Laden, killing 250,000 Afghani and
Iraqi civilians along the way. No condemning U.N. resolutions. No protests. No
International Court of Justice proceedings. All throughout America’s War on
Terror, Israel provided necessary intelligence and regional backup, and erected
a 9/11 memorial—the only one outside the United States listing the names of all
victims.
Yet, the Biden administration is withholding from Israel the
necessary weaponry (already earmarked by Congress) with which to conduct its
wholly justified military operations? Israel does not require Biden’s blessing.
And the precision of the Rafah campaign will now be less precise.
Thane makes very clear, that for him, this is a moral problem,
that Joe Biden’s behavior toward Israel is immoral. You can almost hear the
writer gnashing his teeth in frustration:
Curiously, the president repeatedly acknowledged that 10/7
was an unprovoked attack for which Israel has a moral and legal right of
self-defense, and that Hamas presents an existential threat that must be
eradicated. Biden’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel has already gone limp.
Apparently, unlike the United States, Israel must be denied its moral
obligation to bring justice to its people and security to its borders. It can
defend against missiles, but not dismantle them at the source.
Biden’s actions have given comfort to Hamas and its patron,
Iran. Why should Hamas return hostages (some, Americans), if Biden is
singularly focused on constraining Israeli military offenses?
Moreover, Biden just gave a shout-out to those ignorant
college students and their Jew-hating, anti-American professors. Sorry, “Genocide
Joe,” asserting your mojo and cultivating a youthful antisemitic constituency
won’t help you come November.
Rosenbaum is bitter—to my mind, rightfully so—and concludes—as
I do—that it’s all about winning Michigan:
For reasons only rabid progressives can explain,
Palestinians, who are more like Hamas accomplices than true civilians, are more
precious than the world’s other civilians. Is it because Jews aren’t permitted
to win wars, especially against brown-skinned people? The Jewish state must
always agree to ceasefires, perform humanitarian acts while fighting in
self-defense, and sue for peace.
This betrayal has little to do with moral equivocation and
everything to do with local politics. Biden will, apparently, do or say
anything to woo the 600,000 Muslim voters of Michigan, and stay within the good
graces of that dreadful Detroit Motown act, Bernie Sanders and the Squad. . .
. . . In the end, Joe Biden picked the Muslims of Michigan
over moral clarity, a coherent foreign policy, and love of country. Yes, he’s
increasingly addled. But he well knows that Jewish-Americans, or
Jewish-Israelis, are highly unlikely to ever burn an American flag and shout,
“Death to America!”
Thane is not alone in supporting Israel’s right to defend itself
against Hamas. Back in December, a poll commissioned by the Israel on Campus Coalition
found that over 80
percent of American Jews support what Israel is doing in Gaza, and wants
these operations to continue:
American Jews are overwhelmingly united in support of Israel
continuing its ground operation in Gaza and also approve of President Joe
Biden’s response to the war, according to a new survey commissioned by the
Israel on Campus Coalition.
The poll, conducted by Schoen Cooperman Research (SCR),
found that 81% of American Jews support Israel continuing its military
operation to “recover all Israeli hostages and remove Hamas from power.” Only
12% of respondents said they preferred “an immediate ceasefire to save
Palestinian lives, even if that means “Israeli hostages aren’t recovered and
Hamas remains in power.”
“We’re hearing increasing cries nationally for a ceasefire,
and examples of American Jews who are against Israel’s retaliation of Hamas.
That was the impetus for doing the survey, to hear where American Jews actually
are on this,” Carly Cooperman, CEO of SCR, told JI.
By tradition, Jews vote Democrat as a block, but this
election will be different. The viciousness of the attacks on October 7, followed
by ever-increasing overt antisemitism seemingly in every sphere and in every
country, have brought about a radical change. The Jewish people are no longer
so divided on the question of Israel, or even on what it means to be a Jew. The
Jews have closed ranks, and now they’re turning their backs on Biden. Joe’s
latest perfidy against the Jewish state was likely the coups de grâce.
Thane Rosenbaum isn’t the only “die-hard” Dem who has
withdrawn his support for Biden. Outspoken Israel supporter, actor Michael Rapaport
has declared that not only will he no longer stump for or vote for Joe Biden,
he may even vote for Donald Trump, a man he abhors.
In the run-up to the previous election, Joe Biden famously
(and offensively) told black people that if they vote for Trump, it means they
aren’t black, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or
Trump, then you ain’t black.”
This time around, at least one minority will require no ignorant,
bigoted declarations to tell them how to vote and who they are. With his latest double-stab in the
back to Israel, Joe’s actions speak louder than any words might do.
The Jews
have figured it out. Those who vote for Biden, ain’t Jewish.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
I generally abhor divisions in the Jewish community. There are too few of us to be able to afford partisanship and needless hate for our own.
For those reasons I have been reluctant to criticize fellow Jews outside of the fringe who are anti-Zionist or anti-Judaism. And I have been equally reluctant to criticize the leaders of American Jewish organizations, trying and wanting to assume that they do the best they can with the resources they have.
Betrayal is a strong indictment of those American Jewish leaders, on both the national and local levels.
The single biggest issue that should unify American Jews is the fight against antisemitism. But as Betrayal shows, the mostly self-appointed American Jewish leaders have been more interested in maintaining their positions of power than in going toe to toe with today's antisemites.
Worse, in example after example in this book, when grassroots Jewish groups organize to fight a specific threat to American Jews, these pseudo leaders generally try to dissuade and discourage them. They claim that their connections with other powerful people, and their quiet diplomacy, will carry the day. Their message to ordinary Jews who want to defend themselves from specific threats is "sha, shtill" - shut up and be quiet.
We cannot read minds, but the overwhelming impression given is that these so-called leaders enjoy their perks of being considered as such. They love to attend their interfaith breakfasts and to attend meetings and parties with local and national secular leaders. They don't want to make waves, to risk their positions and their perceived prestige, their speaking engagements at Temples, their parades for progressive causes.
Problems which should and could have been attacked early on - mosques with terror links, undermining K-12 and university education with the concepts of "wokeness" that slot Jews as oppressors and supremacists, BDS and campus "apartheid weeks" as well as the other constant attacks on Israel that these leaders prefer to sympathize with instead of battle against - have metastasized into major sources of today's American antisemitism.
An essay by Jonathan Tobin sets the tone with his analysis of how the Anti Defamation League has turned its back on fighting antisemitism and instead steered the ship to be more progressive and partisan rather than defending Jews. The organization's hiring of a rabidly anti-Zionist Tema Smith as "director of Jewish Outreach" was particularly risible.
Richard Landes describes how American Jewish leadership has exhibited cowardice in the face of the jihadist threat, preferring to partner with their Muslim friends rather than to ever confront them. Of course, this peculiarly Jewish tendency to compromise on principles in order to seek approval from others is not mirrored by the openly pro-Hamas Muslim American leadership, who - if anything - feel empowered to more extremism because the Jews are on their side.
Josh Block describes the failure of American Jewish leaders to push back against Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements, and this led directly to her emerging from the controversy as more influential than ever.
Caroline Glick observes that the "two state solution" has become a religion of sorts for American Jewish leaders, and instead of defending Israel they are defending cutting Israel in half and abandoning nearly all Jewish holy sites.
Naya Lekht notes how liberal Jewish groups have replaced Judaism with "social justice," a philosophy that comes from Stalin's Soviet Union and that is ultimately used against Jews.
The ADL, the AJC, the local JCRCs and Federations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs - all of them are stridently criticized as becoming part of the problem rather than the solution for the one theme that Jews should unite around, fighting antisemitism. Specific examples from grassroots groups who were stymied by their local Jewish "leaders" abound.
The only national organization that has held on to its principles of unwavering support for Jews and Israel is the Zionist Organization of America, and its president Morton Klein writes an essay as well demonstrating how the eagerness by other Jewish leaders to make nice with the anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic progressive philosophy hurts the Jewish community and makes everyone lose respect for their leaders.
One of the most interesting essays is by M. Zuhdi Jasser, of the Muslim Reform Movement, who has tried to partner with American Jewish leaders - only to be spurned because they prefer their partnerships with Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations that are actively antisemitic. His frustration of being abandoned by those who should be his natural allies is palpable.
Jacobs and Goldwasser's own essay doesn't only describe the problems, but offers a ten point program towards solutions - the exact thing that the supposed American Jewish leaders avoid. These pro-active ideas are what real leaders should come up with and implement.
Betrayal describes outrageous examples of failed and counterproductive leadership. It will make you angry, and it should.
American Jews pour millions into these organizations that have little or nothing to show for themselves. It is time to replace those fossils with real leadership, real ideas, and real passion. The authors of these 22 essays are all fine candidates to be true leaders of the North American Jewish community.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The Purim Ball at New York's Academy of Music in 1865 was one of the most extravagant events of the year - and the reviewer in the New York Herald found it extraordinary.
You can expand the illustration above from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper to get an idea of the revelry.
It had jokes and merriment, political spoofs and newspaper parodies, costumes and music, so much so that the poor writer couldn't cover everything.
Perhaps the other Academy of Music Purim balls were comparable, although I haven't found any descriptions quite like this. It did seem that the Purim balls nationwide would typically go all night. Those Jews knew how to party!
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday slammed as a “blood libel” comparisons of the Jewish state’s policies towards the Palestinians to South African apartheid.
“The comparison between the State of Israel and the apartheid regime is not a legitimate criticism—it is a blood libel,” Herzog said in a video address to the World Zionist Organization’s annual conference in Tel Aviv.
“It is a dangerous and intensifying terrorism, since the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the justification of its existence is directly related to its ability to protect itself and hence they are trying to undermine this ability,” he added.
Herzog also described the BDS movement as a “brutal campaign” spearheaded by organizations “spreading lies and false facts and seeking to build a long-term policy that will undermine the existence of the state.”
He continued: “Let’s make no mistake, this is not a peace-seeking campaign, it is a campaign promoting hatred and incitement.”
For his part, WZO chairman Yaakov Hagoel warned of a resurgence in antisemitism, which he called a “malignant cancer” that required “major medical surgery to remove… at its roots.”
Then there’s Hady Amr, who was recently made deputy assistant secretary of state for “Israel-Palestine” in order to promote the Palestinian Arab cause. One year after the 9/11 attacks, Amr wrote about his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network: “I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” the murderous terror campaign against Israelis from 1987 to 1993.
Or how about Maher Bitar, the senior director of intelligence at the National Security Council, who spent years promoting the boycott of Israel and was on the executive board of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Students for Justice in Palestine, which hounds Jewish students on campus and disseminates antisemitic propaganda.
Then there’s Reema Odin, deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, who justified Palestinian suicide bombings of Israelis in 2002—when hundreds of Israelis were being blown up in buses and pizza parlors during the second intifada—as “the last resort of a desperate people.”
And let’s not overlook Uzra Zeya, the under-secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights. As Alana Goodman reported in the Washington Free Beacon last year, during Zeya’s time working for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs she compiled research for a book arguing that “the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy” by establishing a secret network of “dirty money” PACs that allegedly bribe and extort congressional candidates into taking pro-Israel positions.
In a section entitled “Jewish Power in the Formulation of U.S. Middle East Policy,” the book claimed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gave American Jews secret marching orders on how to vote and which candidates to support financially.
It further argued that “non-Jewish Americans increasingly perceive their Jewish fellow citizens as members of a single-issue voting bloc which, at best, divides its loyalties between an increasingly exploitative Israel and an increasingly exploited United States.”
“The more strident lobbyists for Israel must also accept a major share of the blame for whatever changes have taken place in American public perceptions of the loyalties of America’s Jews,” it continued. “The inevitable public perception is that such ardent supporters of Israel have no real interest in making the United States a better place for all of its citizens, but only in making Israel a more secure and prosperous place for Jews.”
In other words, the book blamed Jews for antisemitism.
The chances of the new White House group calling out the bigotry of all these officials are clearly zero.
The likelihood is that this new strategy will as ever pin antisemitism on the “far-right” while ignoring it where it is most ubiquitous and powerful: In black and Muslim communities, the Democratic party—and the Biden administration.
The White House statement said the new strategy will “raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans.” It would seem that the White House itself needs someone to teach it just what antisemitism is.
Benjamin Netanyahu: The Biggest Lie in the Palestine vs. Israel Debate - Jordan B Peterson
Benjamin Netanyahu was recently reelected as Prime Minister of Israel, having previously served in the office from 1996–1999 and 2009–2021. From 1967–1972 he served as a soldier and commander in Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. A graduate of MIT, he served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations from 1984–1988, before being elected to the Israeli parliament as a member of the Likud party in 1988. He has published five previous books on terrorism and Israel’s quest for peace and security. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Sara. In his newest book "Bibi: My Story" the newly reelected prime minister of Israel tells the story of his family, the story of his people, his path to leadership, and his unceasing commitment to defending his country and securing its future.
Haym Salomon may not be the only Jew who helped to fund the
American Revolution, but his name is the one that is most likely to be familiar
to you. Honored with a commemorative stamp in 1975 for his contributions to American
independence, Salomon gave without limits to his country.
Wars, as everyone knows, are expensive, and when provisions are
lacking and salaries aren’t paid, soldiers can easily be stirred to mutiny. Haym
Salomon came through time and again with “loans” for the army to cover salaries
for officials, and to pay for countless essentials. All told, Salomon contributed
some $640,000 to the Revolution, an astronomical sum for those days. He never
accepted repayment.
Haym Salomon
Born in Lissa (Leszno), Poland in 1740, Haym Salomon came to
New York in 1775 and quickly established himself as a successful broker. New
York, in those days, was the British seat of government in the colonies.
Salomon joined the Sons of Liberty, a paramilitary organization much like the
Etzel. It was the Sons of Liberty who were responsible for the Boston Tea Party. They also popularized the use of tar and feathers
to shame and punish British government officials and loyalists. The Sons were
also not unknown to burn down a building (or two).
In a story reminiscent of Joseph, the prisoner who interpreted dreams, Haym Salomon was
arrested by the British in 1776 and imprisoned as a spy. Recognizing Salomon’s
talent for languages (he spoke ten), the Brits set him to work as an interpreter. After
his release, Salomon went back to work as a broker. His fortune grew and he gave generous aid to the colonists all the while.
The Polish immigrant remained within the sights of the
British, and was once more arrested for his activities on behalf of
the revolution. This time, Salomon was tortured and sentenced to be hanged, but
friends helped him to escape. Salomon managed to make his way to Philadelphia.
With no money left, Haym was forced to restart his business from the ground up.
With whatever profits he made, he purchased food for the starving soldiers of
the Continental Army. Among those who sought Salomon’s aid were such luminaries as Washington,
Lafayette, and Von Steuben.
In the colonies, it was common knowledge that if you needed
money, you went to “the little Jew.” The diaries of Revolutionary leaders
attest to this. “When any member of the Revolutionary Congress was in
need,” wrote James Madison, “all that was necessary was to call on Salomon.”
Along those lines, in a letter to Edmond Randolph, who was to become the nation’s first attorney general, Madison wrote:
I cannot in any way make you more sensible of the importance
of your kind attention in making pecuniary remittance for me than by informing
you that I have for some time been a pensioner on the favor of Haym Salomon, a
Jew broker. I am almost ashamed to acknowledge my wants so incessantly to you,
but they begin to be so urgent that it is impossible to suppress. The kindness
of our little friend in S. Front Street near the coffee house, is a fund that
will preserve me from extremities, but I never resort to it without great
mortification as he obstinately rejects all recompense. The price of money is
so usurious that he thinks it ought to be [extorted] from none but those who
aim at profitable speculation. To a necessitous delegate he gratuitously spares
a supply out of his private stock.
Eventually, colonial Secretary of the Treasury Robert Morris
appointed Haym Salomon as broker to the Office of Finance. Salomon was also paymaster
to the French troops in America. Beyond his own substantial “loans” to the
colonists—which were really gifts—Salomon negotiated numerous real loans for
the colonies from Holland and France, taking no commission for himself.
There’s an anecdote that one time, General Washington
appealed to Haym Salomon for funds to help sustain his tattered troops. This
would not have been unusual except that it happened to be Yom Kippur that day.
Though Salomon was devout, service to his country was for him, an integral part
of his religion. Turning to his fellow congregants for their help, Salomon
interrupted services long enough to secure pledges to cover the requested
funds. Only then were the Yom Kippur prayers resumed.
Haym Salomon died at the age of forty-five, penniless, his boundless patriotism limited at the last by the final obstacle, death.
Israel lambasted the United Nations on Saturday after a key committee approved a draft resolution Friday calling on the International Court of Justice to urgently issue its opinion on the legal consequences of supposedly denying the Palestinian people the right to self-determination as a result of Israel's actions since the 1967 Six-Day War.
The measure was vehemently opposed by Israel, which argued it would destroy any chance of reconciliation with the Palestinians.
"This step will not change the reality on the ground, nor will it help the Palestinian people in any way; it may even result in an escalation. Supporting this move is a prize for terrorist organizations and the campaign against Israel," Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement, adding that "the Palestinians want to replace negotiations with unilateral steps. They are again using the United Nations to attack Israel."
The vote in the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee was 98-17, with 52 abstentions. The resolution will now go to the 193-member assembly for a final vote before the end of the year, when it is virtually certain of approval.
The draft cites Israel's supposed violation of Palestinian rights to self-determination "from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures."
It would ask the court for an opinion on how these Israeli policies and practices "affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all states and the United Nations from this status."
The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, is one of the UN's main organs and is charged with settling disputes between countries. Its opinions are not binding.
"Israel strongly rejects the Palestinian resolution at the United Nations. This is another unilateral Palestinian move which undermines the basic principles for resolving the conflict and may harm any possibility for a future process," Lapid tweeted and thanked that handful of countries that voted against the resolution with Israel. "We call upon on all the countries that supported yesterday's proposal to reconsider their position and oppose it when it's voted upon in the General Assembly. The way to resolve the conflict does not pass through the corridors of the UN or other international bodies," he continued.
When Netanyahu became prime minister again in 2009 and in the 12 years that followed, when there was no thought of Ben-Gvir being a minister, the same arguments about Israeli policies being oppressive and alienating American Jews were heard over and over again.
During this time, as the anti-Semitic BDS movement gain footholds on American college campuses and on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, there was no talk about Ben-Gvir or the evils of Israel being governed by right-wing and religious parties.
To the contrary, the so-called centrists of Israeli politics—Lapid and Gantz—were just as reviled by those who spread the “apartheid state” smear as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are today. The same claims about a mythical old “good” Israel being destroyed were made by those who opposed Netanyahu.
Those who think one Jewish state on the planet is one too many didn’t need Religious Zionists in Israel’s cabinet to be convinced that Israel shouldn’t exist. American Jews who are embarrassed by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were already embarrassed by Netanyahu and even some of his left-leaning opponents in the Knesset. Their failure to magically make the conflict with the Palestinians disappear has been cited by those who note a decline in support for Israel in the years since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, and even before that while the delusion that it might succeed was still alive.
This goes beyond the fact that the claims that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are fascists is without real substance. As I’ve noted previously, the talk about the winners of last week’s election being enemies of democracy is just an echo of the Democratic Party talking points about Republicans in the U.S. and just as specious. Whatever one may think of either man, their party doesn’t oppose democracy.
None of that matters because this discussion isn’t rooted in the facts about Israel or those who will make up its next government. Rather, it is an expression of unease with the reality of a Jewish state that must deal with a messy and insoluble conflict with the Palestinians as well as one where the majority of its Jews don’t think or look like your typical liberal Jewish Democrat.
Israel-haters will work for its destruction no matter who is its prime minister or the composition of the government. As has always been the case, the anti-Semites don’t need any new excuses for their efforts to besmirch and delegitimize the Jewish state.
One needn’t support Netanyahu or his partners to understand any of this.
Rather than apologizing for Ben-Gvir or the other aspects of Israeli reality that make readers of The New York Times cringe, those who care about the Jewish state and its people need to stop longing for an Israel which looks like them and embrace the one that actually exists. By buying into the disingenuous claims that this government will be less worthy of their support than its predecessors, they are merely falling into a trap set for them by anti-Semites.
Those who support the right of a Jewish state to exist should stop apologizing for it not conforming to some idealized liberal vision of Zionism, and understand that the people who voted for Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are just as deserving of respect and representation as they are.
While Ben Gvir calls for Palestinian terrorists to be expelled from Israel, we know that Arab entities (including the Jordan-occupied West Bank and the Egypt-occupied Gaza) indiscriminately expelled all Jewish residents decades ago. We also know that Israel’s enemies are “bent on wiping the Jewish state and its inhabitants off the map” (as Canadian National Post columnist John Robson put it). As racist and as anti-democratic as Israel’s far right is, it is nothing compared to Israel’s enemies. That is of course cold comfort to those who are genuinely concerned about Ben Gvir and his ilk, but it points to a double standard.
Criticizing Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right while giving a pass to far worse Palestinian groups is a double standard. It sets high expectations of Jews while setting much lower expectations of others. It is obviously a form of antisemitism.
Using Ben Gvir to demonize Israel is not a new concept. Before Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right became popular, it was Netanyahu and his Likud party who were the favorite target of anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism was not born with Ben Gvir’s entry into Israeli politics, nor was it born with Netanyahu’s entry into Israeli politics. It has existed ever since Israel exists. Anti-Zionism was just as strong, and perhaps even stronger, when Israel was governed by socialists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.
In essence, there are two types of criticisms of Ben Gvir. There is the criticism that aims to make Israel better (or at least not worse). This criticism comes from Zionists in Israel and abroad. And there is the criticism that uses Ben Gvir as a new and more convenient way to demonize Israel. This criticism comes from anyone who hates Israel and does not give a fig about Israeli Arabs but looks on with glee as Ben Gvir weakens the fabric of Israeli society.
To Zionists, Ben Gvir is dangerous for several reasons. He is likely to weaken Western support for Israel, he is likely to weaken Israeli democracy, and he is likely to increase Israel’s investment in West Bank settlements which make a one-state bi-national solution increasingly likely. To Zionists, Ben Gvir is a problem. But to anti-Zionists, these are all reasons to celebrate. To them, Ben Gvir isn’t a problem, he’s an opportunity.
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