Monday, August 26, 2019
From Ian:
Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty
John Podhoretz: About This Whole Loyalty Business… A reflection on the discourse.
Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty
Like the boy in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, President Trump has once again spoken a taboo truth: Some American Jews seem to be more loyal to an increasingly anti-Jewish and far-left Democratic Party than they are to the Jewish people. That’s not necessarily an immoral position for most American Jews to take: As individuals, they have no concrete duty of loyalty to the Jewish people, and it is their absolute right to seek stronger allegiances through political, rather than through religious or ethnic affinity. But American Jewish leaders, picked and paid as such by the Jewish community, are in a different position. Those Jewish leaders whose fiduciary duty of loyalty is to the Jewish missions of their organizations, but whose primary loyalty is to the Tlaibanized progressive movement and the party that champions it, are betraying that duty in some truly indecent ways.
Consider Reconstructionist Rabbi Toba Spitzer. As president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR), and as the long-time rabbi of the cultish Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, Spitzer has aggressively promoted extreme left-wing causes. Many are direct threats to the Jewish community: embracing anti-Semitic Islamist extremists like Linda Sarsour, hostility toward the U.S. government, hostility toward the Israeli government, support for the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street movement, support for the anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter movement, and open border refugee policies are some examples. Yet Rabbi Spitzer and the MBR insist that these causes are Jewish religious imperatives, even as they proclaim Jew-haters like the Hamas front group, CAIR, and the terror-affiliated Islamic Society of Boston to be their friends and allies. At the same time, Spitzer and the MBR demonize in vicious terms those fellow Jews who don’t agree with their political viewpoints.
Last year, Spitzer wrote that, when it comes to Israel, American Jews should ask themselves: “Do we believe that the physical continuity of the Jewish people supersedes other Jewish values?” In other words: Should the Israelis choose to die en masse instead of committing what Rabbi Spitzer feels is the unforgivable sin of perpetuating the fight with the Palestinians? Implicitly answering in the affirmative, Spitzer challenged the “existential narrative” of Israel, arguing that Jewish sovereignty -- and the Jewish lives protected by its existence -- should not supersede the Jewish values of “lovingkindness” (chesed) and “mercy” (rachamim) toward “supporters of Hamas” -- her words, not mine.
Rabbi Spitzer’s question, and the argument implicit in it, comes from ignorance. According to the Jewish canon, which deals with the laws of armed conflict at length, war against the likes of Hamas is literally a mitzvah. Beyond Judaism, the principle of individual and collective self-defense of life and property is a universal human value enshrined in the law of nations and in free sovereign legal systems like those of the United States. It is an inhuman demand, most often made by totalitarians, that a class of people die or submit to being robbed without putting up a fight -- for the good of another class or people. (h/t MtTB)
John Podhoretz: About This Whole Loyalty Business… A reflection on the discourse.
We American Jews are not disloyal when we turn our backs on Israel and insult its friends and treat them as though they are enemies–and when we treat its enemies as though they are our friends, Peter Beinart.Commentary Magazine Podcast: How Much Outrage Can Trump Generate?
At best, we are blind fools who do not see how a mere twist of fate has kept us from speaking Hebrew as a first language as we ride on a bus headed toward Mount Scopus that will be blown up or ensanguined by a knife-bearing terrorist.
At worst, we are far lower than merely disloyal. We are acting as active collaborators with those who wish our destruction. Such people do not bother sorting out which Jew is full of deep feeling for Palestinian rights and which Jew is a settler seeking to annex the entire West Bank. What they see is a Jew, and the Jew should be dead, and that Jew could be you or your mother or your baby.
Clearly, Trump shouldn’t have wandered into this minefield. But spare me the outrage about Trump saying no Jew should vote Democrat. This isn’t about Jews. Trump thinks no person in America should vote Democrat. This is just part of his own evolution as a partisan since he was a Democrat until about five minutes ago. Now, he’s a Republican, so he thinks everybody else should be, too, especially because he’s sure he so wonderful. Why is this surprising? Every liberal thinks everybody should vote liberal. Every conservative thinks everybody should vote conservative. Every Jew thinks every other Jew should vote the way he does. You think you’re right and the other side is wrong. You can work to understand the opinions of others and respect them, but you still think they’re wrong. If you didn’t, you would vote the other way.
Donald Trump says things no president has ever said before, and many of his rhetorical innovations have not been good for our political life or our country. But in this respect, he’s just like everybody else these days. (h/t IsaacStorm)
Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman‘The Squad’ Co-Sponsors Bill Claiming Israel Tortures Children, And Parrots Other Terrorist Propaganda
What was Trump doing talking about Jews and loyalty? Why does everyone have a cow every five minutes about what Trump says when he’s been doing the same thing for four years now? Whom does this help? Whom does it hurt? The whole podcast gang is back to offer maybe a little insight.
Many Americans now know that Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—two members of “the squad” of far-left congresswomen so much in the news—were recently barred from traveling to Israel to agitate for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Fewer know all four members of “the squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have co-sponsored a bill that accuses the Jewish state of torturing children. Fewer still know the claims made in the bill originate mostly from a group that could be described as the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.
The so-called “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act“ was re-introduced in the House by Rep. Betty McCollum, whose congressional district neighbors Omar’s in Minnesota. Until recently, McCollum was considered a supporter of Israel, but a critic of its government.
In February, however, she condemned “[t]he right-wing, extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its apartheid-like policies,” adding “there are now members of Congress who are not willing to ignore the Israeli government’s destructive actions because they are afraid of losing an election.”
McCollum’s invective prompted Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel to respond that Netanyahu “came to office in a fair and democratic election in which every Arab citizen of Israel had the same right to vote as any Jewish citizen.” Mellman added that “by suggesting that Jews have disproportionate influence on U.S. elections, the Congresswoman exploits an anti-Semitic trope widely used by far right forces from Czarism to fascism.”
McCollum’s bill, while not directly exploiting the anti-Semitic trope of blood libel, trades on the accusation that Israel treats non-Jewish children cruelly and inhumanely. The bill claims Palestinian children detained by Israeli defense forces suffer torture and physical violence, are deprived of lawyers and parents, not informed of their legal rights, and so on. (h/t MtTB)
