It Can Get Worse But Why Wait?

 

The articles and editorials all point to the same truths. It is painful to read about but we read it anyways. Those who read here regularly know the feeling and most made of sterner mettle read on if for no other reason than the hope that in the story there will at the least be a single ray of hope. The stories from the last few days held no such light. Stories from across Europe and back again, from the campuses of the United Kingdom to across the Ukraine to Paris, the capital city of France, the stories are all too similar. The names of the victims change and all too often the perpetrators remain unidentified and probably without remorse. The only time these beasts feel remorse is before the television cameras and the media and even then the discerning realize their remorse is that they will face legal proceedings. Then there are the few defiant who cannot understand that they had committed any crime and demand to have explained what they did that was wrong, after all, they had merely beaten the life out of a Jew. And these miscreants often come in small groups up to a half dozen or so and attack as a mob again a singular target or perhaps two Jews both teens or old men. They rarely take their vengeance and hate out on any Jew physically capable of dealing harm to at least one or two before numbers take their toll. These stories rise out of Europe and one of the rare voices reporting on these heinous acts has been the Italian journalist Giulio Meotti. His most recent article ”Welcome to Europe’s Four Capitals of anti-Semitism” was one of a series of articles over the past week which served as the impetus for this article.

 

There has been one ray of light we have kept in mind when reading these stories, and that is that more and more European Jews are choosing Aliyah to Israel as the solution to the growing menace in Europe. The information we have seen indicates that Israel is the number one choice followed by the United States with a small number choosing elsewhere such as South America and Canada or even Asia. The main group we would like to speak with directly, and to anyone knowing of such people, are those deciding that the United States, and by inference anywhere other than Israel, as their destination where they can restart their lives anew and be safe. We are not trying to imply that currently the problems for Jews in the United States is something dire and that it is a reckless choice which places them in nearly the same level of danger as that is definitely not the situation. But on the other end of the scale, we are speaking as amongst those who made Aliyah to Israel from the United States. The main reason is that one of us had promised themselves at an early age that they would retire in Israel when the opportunity arrived. We lost a great deal of financial security by doing so having now to rent at a far higher price than the mortgage we paid on our home in Oklahoma. We can tell you that the sacrifice was more than worth it. That leaves the question as to why we would make such a move and that gets to the crux of why we recommend that the United States not be at the top of any Jew’s list of safe destinations. If your reason is that you have relatives in the United States and you are moving near them, then by all means go to the United States as having supportive relatives of close friends should always be amongst the highest priorities. But, if the choice is purely which destination would be best, then choose Israel.

 

First, we can give a couple of startling facts comparing Israel and the United States. Taking in all types of criminal acts even including terrorism, one is more likely to have a violent crime committed against their person in the United States than they are in Israel. The best means of avoiding such a fate is identical in Israel as it is in the United States; simply avoid areas where criminal acts are most often perpetrated. Do not visit certain places or at least minimize visiting such places to daylight hours and one severely diminishes the probability that they will fall victim to violence. We will grant that there is a definitive difference in the likelihood of a military attack on the nation between the United States and Israel. Mitigating this problem is that the Israeli government has made a great deal of effort into protecting the people, particularly the children, from the ravages of war. There are shelters throughout the country and should the sirens sound, simply follow the flow of people to reach the closest shelter. During the last Gaza war the seeming biggest question on virtually every Western journalists’ list came across asking, “Where are all the dead Jews to match the Palestinian losses?” Of course, it was not phrased so clumsily, well except one journalist who said almost exactly that, but they were all seemingly fascinated in the fact that more Gazan civilians appeared to be dying than Israel civilians. Now we must point out that these very same journalists were following the crowds of Israelis heading for the shelters when the sirens sounded and they marveled, as did we all, at the unbelievable accuracy and kill rate of the Iron Dome batteries. But, despite witnessing the exact reasons for the disparity, they were not making a comparison as much as a political statement which basically could have been read, what makes the lives of Israelis more important than the lives of Gazans. They were asking the wrong side, that is what they should have queried the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as to why they too had not permitted their civilians the protections they reserved for their fighters. But that was a lesson that Israel will spend just as much if not more, fifty-thousand dollars a missile cost for Iron Dome to prevent a rocket costing a few hundred dollars if that, preserving the lives of her citizens, all her citizens. Israel has recently completed fortifying every school roof and structure to withstand the majority of rocket strikes and further enforced the kindergartens and many daycare facilities. Israel requires that all new residences come equipped with a shelter which will withstand rocket attacks up to a certain level. Basically, Israel is a nation with bomb shelters spread across every city, town, kibbutz and community and invests in the best intercepting systems all in the name of keeping the people safe.

 

Israel can offer one guarantee; she will not enter into any conflict which can be avoided by negotiations or other means to mitigate the necessity of war. The same cannot be stated about her neighbors, especially Hamas, Hezballah, the terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula (who are fortunately busy fighting one another), Syria (which is also engaged with internal struggles), Jordan, Egypt or Iran. What is interesting about Jordan and Egypt is that the nation’s leaders in both countries are less inclined in fighting with Israel than are the people, with the Jordanian people actually having the highest and most deeply ingrained hatreds for Israel largely due to their listening to Palestinian Authority radio and television, stations Israel licenses and permits to broadcast. That is largely financed by the European Union, United Nations, many individual European governments and likely the United States funds are also used for these broadcasts and at least the first three would all be up in arms should Israel shutter these incitive voices of hatreds. Some claim that Israel is high upon the list of the Islamic State as a target to attack should the opportunity present itself. This was revealed to be untrue when one of the commanders in the areas closest to the Golan Heights was asked if striking Israel was a priority to which he responded that striking Israel was not even on their to do list as they would incur serious and irreparable damage resulting from such a foolhardy move. If only all our enemies thought so clearheaded and logically. The main thing is Israel will do everything possible to refrain from engaging in a war, often going further than the majority of the population in such efforts. Once such conditions exist, the safety of the population becomes of paramount concern. Israel is a nation which stocks her shelters regularly and such activity being hastily performed nationwide would be a greater sign of potential for coming conflict than the opening of weapons bays and other such readying which other nations take as a sign of impending conflict.

 

So, even in worst-case scenario, one would be equally safe residing in the United States as in Israel. We must grant that residing in Israel would decrease the numbers of holidays one could celebrate as other than the Jewish celebrations, the other communities mostly celebrate on their own and theirs are not national holidays. On the other hand, with Synagogues plentiful and the vast majority of food retailers selling only Kosher foods and many restaurants also serving kosher food, it is far easier to be a practicing Jew here in Israel. Outside of certain neighborhoods in the United States, the same is not the case and it would be next to impossible in large swaths of the United States or at the least most difficult. In some areas, one would need look far and wide and likely further just to find sufficient men for a Minion for morning prayers forcing one to recite them alone, not a conducive setting for remaining religious. Assimilation in Israel means becoming more Jewish aware if not Jewish while assimilation in the United States makes one more secular Christian where you are either secular or Christian, both is difficult. So, should your concern be remaining a practicing Jew or becoming a practicing Jew, Israel should be your destination. If within you is even just an ember, a mere spark, of being a practicing Jew, Israel will nurture that spark until it lights the fire and from there you decide. In the United States, such an ember would be doused with ample water unless one was to protect it with great effort. So in Israel such an ember is given to lighting the passion of being a religious Jew and this is made much easier in Israel while in the United States the driving force is to make one a secular humanist and possibly a leftist who discards Hashem as they believe only those things they can see, touch and explain with formulae.

 

The final reason to choose Israel is the most difficult for people to accept, the growing anti-Semitism in the United States. For much of the last seventy-five years, anti-Semitism in the United States has been swept under the carpet. Much of this has been accomplished by those wishing to hide the brutal truth so as to make the United States appear moral. They also wished to deny that any trace of anti-Semitism was existent within their great nation. The problem is that despite these efforts, anti-Semitism has been measurably rising. The often-strange property of this rise in anti-Semitism is its tendency to rise fastest in those communities with the fewest or no Jews. All too often acts of anti-Semitism were perpetrated by people living outside of the neighborhood or even the city or town where the incident occurred. This has permitted the explanation that the act was a one-out or rare occurrence which poses no threat to the Jewish population. Such thinking is desperately erroneous. It is exactly this sort of anti-Semitism which is most dangerous because beneath such an act is a seething anti-Semitism which will only be furthered by the punishment of the miscreant. This will be interpreted as the Jew victimizing one member of their community and punishing them to an extreme for some minor act. My fortune was to, more often than not, live in an area where there was some distance, often more than five or even fifty miles, between me and the next Jewish family. Of course as I have resided in Wyoming; there in one town if there were not a person matching some description, it was at least fifty miles to the next town with maybe three homes between the two, so we are talking fair sized towns of at least seventy-thousand. Yes, that included where I resided in Wyoming.

 

While growing up as a youth anti-Semitism decreased hitting a low mark somewhere near or soon after the Six Day War as that made many in the United States feel as if they were a little bit Israel for that one week. Nevertheless, within a few short years, anti-Semitism began to grow, and in a most peculiar place, the far-left wing of the political spectrum. The far-right, today called the alt-right, actually remained relatively constant and more of a nuisance than an actual threat. The far-left had a simple problem with Jews, and that was Judaism and little ideas such as the Ten Commandments, the Torah and the entire Bible (Old Testament) and the morality within these documents. Adolph Hitler spoke of this hatred of a Jewish morality when he declared, “The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention; it is a blemish like circumcision.” And “…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” Hitler included Christianity as another of the items which prevented mankind from reaching its glorious heights he envisioned once Judeo-Christianity was dead. That is the overriding side of anti-Semitism left from many discussions, that what is the target is not as much the Jews as the Torah and the rules Judaism gave to human civilization. Judaism is the root from which Christianity grew and set at the core the Jewish morality which Christianity accepted as was with minor alterations making the practice more suitable for their target audience, the Roman pagans. Christianity kept many of the basics upon which Judaism is based, including but not limited to, the Ten Commandments, Love the stranger, treat others how you wish to be treated, and numerous other teachings which were gleaned from the words of Jesus. One item which remains in the backgrounds about Jesus was that he lived and died as a Jew, taught Judaic laws, preached from Torah and everything he said and performed he did so as Judaism taught and within the moral and legal codes of Judaism.

 

 

Since the early to middle 1970’s anti-Semitism has grown regularly. This has been in part due to money flowing to anti-Semitic organizations with a great deal of this money invested on college-aged youth across the nation’s campuses. Many of these organizations and entities are under the collective arm of the Muslim Brotherhood often through multiple channels making direct tracing near impossible. Some of these organizations were recently linked to the Hamas terrorist group during the Holy Land Foundation trial which included amongst the numerous named co-conspirators Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). There was found numerous links from Palestinian Arab aligned groups especially the Students for Palestinian Justice (SJP) and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), all of which come together for a singular cause, the destruction of the Jewish State followed by the systematic eradication of the Jews worldwide as called for in the Hamas Charter. The destruction of the Jewish State is also included in the Palestinian Authority Charter. These groups use far left tactics of intimidation, harassment, and ridicule targeting anybody who might give an even and unbiased review of anything to do with Israel. There are a growing group of colleges and universities which Jewish parents oppose sending their children there for further education and many of the names are as amazing as it would appear to many as unbelievable. This list on its own would be sufficient to prove that a serious problem exists at many of the leading liberal arts colleges and universities across the United States. What makes this even more threatening is that it is exactly these institutions which are producing the national leaders of the next generation and the generation beyond. These colleges have become central places of indoctrination of a curriculum and faculty fiercely anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. There will be those who claim that being anti-Israel is not against the Jews but the nation and its policies. They will also claim that Zionism is a form of racism and that they are against racism so of course they are not again the Jews. Yet the only nation these people demand be removed from the community of nations is Israel, the sole Jewish State. The only nativist group they call out as racist is the Jewish Israelite nativist calling. They have no problem with China basically destroying the Tibetan culture step by step removing forcefully Tibetan people moving them thousands of miles away into China and replacing them with Chinese peasants from rural areas of China. These groups have no problem with North Korea, Syria, Turkey, Canada and their indigenous people of the Inuit and other native tribes or a plethora of other nations and peoples we could name. Oh, many also have a problem with one other nation, the United States, where many will point to the problem that Jews have disproportionate power over the government. When pressed to explain, they basically just repeat that the Jews have too much influence and point out that President choose too many Jews for Cabinet posts and other important positions. If these are the most qualified people for these positions, we wonder why they should not be chosen. They always get to the same point, too many Jews alive and working hard and getting ahead. The simple answer is to come home now before the deluge starts, as it is coming. Some point in the near, far too near, future the United States will reach a critical point and past that point Jews will not be safe in the United States. This will signal the end for Jews in Europe as well and who knows where else. The Jews have already been wiped from the Arab World and pretty much from Russia. Europe will be next and when the United States pushes out her Jews, the end will have arrived. On that day, Israel has best be prepared because she will have no friends in the world and a mere half dozen nations remaining on talking terms. What comes after that, we are afraid to guess, really afraid to guess.

 

Anti-Semitic Cartoons top from Judge magazine
bottom from April 15, 1896 issue of Sound Money magazine

 

The end of this story brings us full circle. Most anti-Semitism in much of the world generates the hatred for Jews in the baby’s milk. They are all but born with it permeating the conversation throughout their childhood. It is introduced as something as natural and normal as love for Mom and Dad. Life includes anti-Semitism is felt to be as normal as anything else in life and children are reared with anti-Semitism as if it were the right thing to do. Such hate simply is something that far too many children the world over are taught anti-Semitism just as they are taught their A, B, C’s and addition and subtraction. There is nothing strange or abnormal about such hatreds. That is the saddest of truths which the world must face.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Time for Apologies for Such Slanders and Libels has Passed

This past Sunday the London Times published a  political cartoon authored and Illustrated by Gerald Scarfe which was defaming, insulting, offensive, and disrespectful of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu specifically and Israel and Jews in general. The caricature of a Jewish Leader performing the vile act and inference of abuse of power to act out hatreds was reminiscent of the cartoons from the Nazi era newspapers in Germany and the rest of the Third Reich and other anti-Semitic cartoons over the centuries. Depicting Jews building or benefiting from the pain and suffering of others is exactly the depiction of the greedy Jewish banker or money lenders that permeates throughout European history. This cartoon was so far beyond the pale that it should have set off alarms throughout the entirety of the long and winding path it needed to travel from the artist’s first sketch to the printer’s setting of the type and picture for the actual printing that somebody had to have at least thought to challenge whether such an insult was or should be worth printing. The fact that nobody along the way found the cartoon worth objecting and at least asking the question as to whether the London Times would wish to put their name and reputation by approving and printing this cartoon is simply astonishing. And to print this on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is just another knife in the back under the cover of night to the Jewish people, citizens of Israel, and all people of principle and moral upbringing. The fact that a number of people attached to the London Times have come out and apologized begs another question, where were they when this horrid cartoon was approved for publication and on International Holocaust Remembrance Day at that.

The acting editor of the Sunday Times newspaper, Martin Ivens, met with members of the Jewish community in Britain on Tuesday and apologized after they had filed a complaint with media regulators. Mr. Ivens stated, “The last thing I or anyone connected with the Sunday Times would countenance would be insulting the memory of the Shoah or invoking the blood libel. The paper has long written strongly in defense of Israel and its security concerns, as have I as a columnist. We are however reminded of the sensitivities in this area by the reaction to the cartoon and I will of course bear them very carefully in mind in future.” One would think that the acting editor would have had to approve any cartoon to be printed on the editorial page in order to perform his duties or they should be released for incompetence. So, we can likely assume that Mr. Ivens must have seen the cartoon in question (you should go back and look at it if you have not yet done so) and not seen any reason not to publish the offensive image on what has to be possibly the worst timing in history as the rest of the world is remembering and honoring the victims of one of the worst atrocities ever committed by human beings on their fellow human beings. Mr. Ivens protestations seem quite incredulous with his comments of his history of articles supporting the Jewish people and citizens of Israel which makes this beyond logic or reason unless Mr. Ivens was in full agreement with the cartoon and found it perfectly presentable. His might have given, though I cannot say definitively as I do not know Mr. Ivens, the emptiest apology ever if he actually approved the printing of the cartoon in question as one should have observed the pure anti-Semitic hatred that had to be present for such a hateful imagery to be authored and one would think also present to authorize its publication.

Rupert Murdoch’s apology, which he posted on Twitter, “Gerald Scarfe has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times. Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon.” Still, even this apology begs a few questions such as if, as Mr. Murdoch posted, “Gerald Scarfe has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times.” Why his cartoon was even accepted for consideration? One might also want to know if Gerald Scarfe has ever had other of his editorial cartoons posted on the Times and even if not, why was this particular cartoon not vetted with an even more critical eye since his work was not consistent with the Sunday Times opinions. Also, is this the new way of making apologies, posting a blurb on Twitter? One would also have hoped that Mr. Murdoch would have written a more lengthy and heartfelt apology, if not on the front page of the next issue of the Times, at least on the editorial page where this insult first appeared. Perhaps Mr. Murdoch might place an apology in this week’s Sunday Times. How about it, Mr. Murdoch?

There is a line we will draw on whose apologies we will not accept as there is no possible reason on Earth that an apology from Gerald Scarfe, the author of this insult could possibly be sincere and thus worth even the time it would take to hear it. Nothing Scarfe could ever say would mitigate the senselessness and cruel hatred displayed by this editorial cartoon. The evident malice, vindictiveness, and vile cruelty towards the Israeli Prime Minister and through the degrading, insulting and offensive anti-Semitic motif of this cartoon to all Israelis and Jews is so beyond acceptable that it is doubtful anyone who took insult from this cartoon could accept any manner of apology or repentance by its author. Anything Gerald Scarfe would offer in an effort to mitigate the insult would be seen as empty and contrived, and as such, unacceptable. Should his career of writing editorial cartoons come to an abrupt end due to this cartoon, that would be a minimal result but likely the only one acceptable to our polite society. It is due to this polite society that this cartoon takes on an even more offensive stench. By the way, did I mention that I am greatly disturbed by this cartoon and its author, Gerald Scarfe?

Beyond the Cusp