The fact that the proud Senator Lieberman whose nomination on the Democratic
ticket in 2000 caused waves of ecstatic jubilation among many Jews, also
refused to support Barack Obama in 2008 and spoke at the Republican National
Convention in support Senator John McCain is ignored. Most American Jews
continue to be oblivious to the fact that the most outstanding, talented
Jewish individuals in public life uniformly saw the obvious dangers of an
Obama presidency and warned against: Fox News commentator Charles
Krauthammer, former White House Press secretary Arie Fleischer, Scholar at
the American Enterprise Institute, Joshua Muravchik, columnist and editor of
the Weekly Standard Bill Kristol, political analyst and former campaign
advisor to President Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, Editor of Frontpage
Magazine, David Horowitz, National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg, author
of Liberal Fascism, Senator Joe Lieberman, author and columnist Dennis
Prager, writer Monah Charen, author of Useful Idiots, Dianna West, author of
The Death of the Grown-Up, editor of Commentary Norman Podhoretz, author
Hillel Halkin who now resides in Israel, journalist and writer Bernie
Goldberg, Ronald Radosh, author (Divided They Fell: The Demise of the
Democratic Party, 1964-1996. New York: Free Press, 1996), film producer
David Zucker and comedian Jackie Mason.
Even those prominent Jews who argued strongly for Barack Obama in 2008,
former Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, the country's most well-known trial
lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Republican congressional candidate Rabbi Shmuely
Boteach, and publisher and editor Mortimer Zuckerman, have since removed the
Obama stickers from their cars and are now pleading ignorance or betrayal.
The Democrat world-view that still holds an anachronistic stranglehold on
many Jews has to be reminded that no ethnic vote is cast in stone, that
Jewish support for Republican or Fusion candidates like Jacob Javitz and
Fiorello La Guardia turned its back on the corrupt Democratic Tammany
political machine in New York in the 1940s and 50s. Jews, from the time of
the first post-Civil War election until 1932 traditionally voted Republican
or even Socialist rather than for the party identified in large parts of the
country until the 1960s with Sunday "blue laws," discrimination against
blacks, and segregation.
Even as late as 1948 American Jews were still sufficiently sober and proud
to give a deserved slap in the face to the Democrats in the run up to the
presidential election of 1948 in spite of their idealization of FDR. By
early 1948, Truman had been cowed by his State Department advisers to
abandon the partition proposal for Palestine and were preparing to announce
that U.S. preferred "international trusteeship"- meaning no Jewish state.
White House adviser Max Lowenthal urgently warned Truman that if a Jewish
state were proclaimed without U.S. recognition, Republicans, the left
leaning American Labor Party and the newly formed leftwing Progressive Party
under former Vice President Henry Wallace would lead a chorus of protests
and capture the Jewish vote. The administration would pay a high political
price in Jewish votes for it is especially important in the upcoming
presidential election. Truman received crucial phone calls from Bronx
Democratic leader Ed Flynn and former New York governor Herbert Lehman,
warning about the electoral repercussions in New York if he abandoned the
Jews. A Congressional vote in the Bronx had already unseated a veteran
Jewish Democrat to fill a vacant seat and Truman realized he had to make
good on his original pledge of partition and recognition of Israel.
Under Democrat President Wilson, with his dismissal of Blacks from federal
jobs, apathy to lynching, restrictive immigration policy, attendance at a
special festive showing of the racist film Birth of a Nation in the White
House, sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan and promotion of the notorious sedition
laws ('red scares') in which thousands of East European and Jewish
immigrants were deported and imprisoned for their stand against American
entry into the war, caused a revulsion among Jewish voters. In 1920, they
threw out two Democrat Jewish congressmen and elected 10 Republicans and two
Socialists to Congress. This information that no ethnic vote is cast in
stone hasn't yet been absorbed by current Jewish dinosaurs who can swallow
any insult and proclaim that black is white or that Jewish values mean same
sex marriage and unlimited abortion as long as the Democrats have proclaimed
that it is "progressive."
Many Jewish liberals whose identity had been stamped three generations ago
by their grandparents under FDR, continue to picture themselves as
enlightened and the true inheritors of the mantle of Jewish concerns for
"social justice," followed Obama wherever he led, rather than view the
candidates with an open mind. This election will see the pot boil over for
those Jews who need no more evidence. They will have to face up to taking
the cure or remain partners in their own demise as an influential and
respected community.
It is of course, non-Jews who can most clearly discern this. Whatever
exceptional respect Jews have enjoyed has stemmed primarily not from winning
Noble Prizes but from the close association in the minds of most American
Christians that the Jews imparted much of their high ethical code, moral
values and beliefs in the dignity of all people through Christ and the New
Testament to all humanity.
It is no accident that Martin Luther King (a life-long Republican and a
strong friend of the State of Israel) was animated to appeal to non-violence
and the words of the scriptures from the Old Testament to convince his white
fellow citizens in the cause of equal rights for his people. What would the
Reverend King have done at the 2012 DNC in Charlotte were he still alive?
He would have told the nay-sayers that they have rejected their own dearest
heritage and that generations of Christian clergymen and statesmen from
Disraeli through Sir Winston Churchill and President Harry Truman came to
advocate the Zionist cause. Without their help and encouragement there would
indeed be no Israel today - "a world without Zionism" as the Iranians would
like to contemplate. Israel cannot be undone and not just because of the
heritage of the Bible alone.
As early as February 1941 in spite of the wholehearted desire of the
American Protestant establishment not to risk involvement in World War II,
Reinhold Niebhur spoke out convincingly through the journal he founded
"Christianity and Crisis" and sounded a clarion call of warning about
Nazism. Its final goals were not simply the eradication of the Jews but the
extirpation of Christianity and the abolition of the entire heritage of
Christian and humanistic culture.
This is the only kind of "World Without Zionism" that the Iranian and many
Arab leaders long for. Niebhur based his views not on any literal
"Evangelical" interpretation of Biblical promises but the essentials of
justice for the nations and also called for some form of compensation to
those Arabs in Palestine who might be displaced if their own leaders refused
to make any compromise possible.
Liberal Jews who cannot be dissuaded from their narcotic like support of the
Democrats take refuge in spurning Israel to feel comfortable with the
"Progressive" camp or recall that their major interest is really in
furthering what they think is "social justice," linking it to the
traditional Jewish concern for "Tikkun Olam" (Repair of the World). In this
regard they are mistaken and have accepted the contemporary Hollywood
ultra-liberal Reform interpretation that Jewish tradition and the Biblical
injunctions of the prophets promoted what they think are "progressive"
social and economic policies. As argued cogently by biblical scholars not in
the thrall of apologizing for the Democratic Party and author Hillel Halkin
in his article "How Not to Repair the World" (Commentary magazine, July,
2008), the expression "Tikkun Olam" is not the automatic Liberal agenda on
social and economic policy so fondly embraced by a majority of the Jewish
electorate - including abortion, feminism, pacifism, opposition to gun
rights, affirmative action, environmental conservation, etc.
On almost all these issues, observant Jews are fundamentally at odds with
the Secular/Liberal Jewish majority. Basically, the thrust of Tikkun Olam is
in the opposite direction.. "For the Sake of the Public Interest" rather
than "Repairing the World." It was this concept that was cited by many
rabbis in the Middle Ages when they ruled that Jewish communities should not
rescue Jewish captives taken by pirates if it meant paying an excessive
ransom. To do so would actually encourage more attempts at kidnapping and
put the entire community at greater risk.
Indeed, several varying concepts are embraced under the terms "Tikkun Olam"
but the predominant one that emerged from the two great failed revolts of
Judea against Roman rule in 70 and 135 A.D. that ended Jewish independence
for almost two thousand years, was the fundamental need NOT for prophetic
utopian visions but the necessity for laws, authority, routines, and
organization to prevent future wild and unrealistic messianic fervor.
Likewise, appeals to Jews by Democrats committed to higher and higher taxes
for the "common good" ignore the many rabbinic rulings and Old Testament's
definition of charity as a purely voluntary act and that its highest form is
from an anonymous donor to an anonymous recipient. Taxation to support the
priestly class was the tithe - a flat tax of 10%, NOT a progressive one!
Their scant knowledge of both the Bible and Talmud is, as could be expected,
derived from supporters of a wholly secular Democratic platform.
Some prominent American Jews, particularly among those who cannot escape the
trance they have inherited as "progressives" and are essentially secular and
ultra-critical of capitalism and American society with its underlying
Christian values, have developed a new kind of psychological self-hatred to
exhibit a disassociation from the State of Israel and their religious
heritage. They are upset over the close Israeli-American friendship and wish
to be absolved from the heinous charge that they once may have actually
subscribed to a sense of Jewish solidarity when that meant only solidarity
with victimhood - the Jews as eternal martyrs.
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 12:56 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: [RC] Reply to a Jewish friend Re:Krauthammer article
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