Melanie Phillips: Getting to the bottom of a tragic 'disloyalty'
There are many reasons why the Democrats and their Jewish supporters refuse to call out the anti-Jewish bigots on their own side and instead accuse President Trump, the most pro-Israel president in American history, of antisemitism.Caroline B. Glick: BDS is Primarily an Assault on American Jews
As has also been demonstrated in Britain over the epidemic Jew-hatred within the Labour Party, there is an iron conviction on the left that they cannot be guilty of antisemitism because they are “anti-racists.” Their political identity is rooted in their belief that they are always on the side of virtue against evil-doers.
If they were ever to admit evil attitudes on their own side, their political and moral identity would collapse. So they turn reality inside out to defend the indefensible. And to protect themselves, they project their own evil onto their opponents. Thus, they falsely accuse President Trump of having the odious views of which their own side is guilty.
Nor can they admit that the Palestinian cause they support may be vile. The journalist Peter Beinart tweeted in defense of Miftah: “Frustrating to hear people who’d never heard of Miftah until today use its alleged sins to distract from deep injustice [Omar and Tlaib] were going to witness. As if an anti-white comment by SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee which fought for black civil rights) justified segregation.”
Genocidal attitudes and attacks by Palestinians most certainly do justify the security measures Israel uses against them. Through this tweet, Beinart has not only supported a virulently antisemitic outfit, but also whitewashed the Jew-hatred and Israel-bashing of those it promotes — and promoted his own.
Such moral bankruptcy has become a pathology that is steady poisoning the Democratic Party against the Jewish people, towards which those American Jews who still support the Democrats are indeed displaying a most tragic disloyalty.
Given the context in which Trump made his remarks — that is, the Democratic Party’s open embrace of anti-Semites and anti-Semitic messaging — it is literally impossible for even a semi-literate person to misunderstand what he was saying.
Moreover, it is telling that the same people insisting that Trump’s statement was anti-Semitic are giving a pass to the Democrats for refusing to take any action to rein in their Jew hating members. It shows the disingenuousness of their sudden professed concern for anti-Jewish bigotry.
American Jews refuse to see what is happening to them while it is happening.
The likes of Tlaib and Omar are rendering them political non-entities. By attacking Trump, the main politician supporting them, while giving a free pass to the Democrats who are facilitating discrimination against them, American Jews are disenfranchising themselves. Democrats see they can abandon the Jews without consequence, and Republicans see that there is no point in sticking up for the Jews who will hate them no matter what they say and do.
This is a tragedy of epic proportions, first and foremost for the American Jewish community but really for America as a whole and for the Jewish people as a whole.
Left-wing antisemitism has had British Jews debating loyalty for years
The mainstreaming of antisemitic rhetoric within Labour’s ranks ushered in a debate within the Jewish community and beyond on whether it was ethical, sensible and — yes — loyal for Jews to continue to support Labour.Ruthie Blum: Right From Wrong: What Trump doesn’t understand about Jews
The Conservative cabinet minister Sajid Javid angered some Jews when, in a Rosh Hashanah greeting last year, wrote that when British Jews are feeling under threat from Corbyn, “all decent people” must “stand together and celebrate our Jewish community.” To critics, the implication was that Jews who support Labour aren’t decent.
Others have been more explicit. Fred Dalah, a 64-year-old Jewish businessman from Edgware in northern London, wrote in 2018 in the Jewish News of London that, “Jews who vote Labour are lambs to the slaughter.”
In addition to Sacks, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and three of the leading British Jewish newspapers have called Corbyn an existential threat to British Jewry. These warnings were designed to sound an alarm and prevent Corbyn from becoming prime minister. But they also emboldened British Jews and non-Jews to call out Jewish supporters of Corbyn as traitors.
At the same time, Corbyn’s supporters cite these loud warnings as a political attempt to weaponize antisemitism and sabotage a left-wing politician’s chances.
All this means that, in Britain, “Now you have the situation where there is good Jews, bad Jews, and good antisemites and bad antisemites,” said Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust and author of a 2016 book, “The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and antisemitism,” during a speech in 2018. “I don’t think this is really going to work.”
Contrary to the outcry on the part of his critics, Trump was not accusing Jews of being disloyal to America, but rather to themselves.Pierre Rehov: Palestine - The Invention of a Nation
In his bull-in-a-china-shop way, he was inadvertently repeating the aphorism coined in the 1950s by social critic Milton Himmelfarb: “Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.”
In other words, Trump was expressing shock and disappointment that Jews would willingly betray their own interests. In his eyes, this means that they must be ignorant of the direction in which the party they overwhelmingly support has been going. If not, they appear to be purposely sabotaging US relations with the single state established in their ancestral homeland to protect their people and serve as America’s buffer against hostile, anti-democratic forces in the volatile, strategically important region.
THOUGH TRUMP’S disillusionment may be understandable, it indicates that he doesn’t know much about Jews. This is peculiar, considering the massive amount of time he has spent around them throughout his life as a New York real estate guy and Hollywood reality TV star.
Here is what he doesn’t grasp: Only a handful of non-Orthodox Jews vote Republican; the rest pray at the altar of the Democratic Party, no matter what, even when the party turns against Israel.
This apparent oddity spurred my father, Norman Podhoretz – a lifelong liberal Democrat who became a conservative Republican – to write an entire book examining the phenomenon.
Was there a country called "Palestine" before 1948? Who really are the Palestinians? What was the connection between Nazism, communism, and Palestinian nationalism? Why do media always take Palestinians side against Israel? And so much more. Everything in this film is factual and can be checked. (h/t vwVwwVwv)