GUEST POST: Schechter Sez – An Open Letter to My Fellow Jews and to All Americans

An Open Letter to My Fellow Jews and to All Americans

by Harvey B. Schechter

05/27/2011 11:20 PM 

During my 41-year career as a member of the Anti-Defamation League's professional staff and from the day I retired in 1993 to this very moment, I operated on a simple, fundamental principle, namely, if anywhere in the world a Jew is persecuted solely becase he or she is a Jew, it automatically becomes my personal problem because there but for the grace of God go I.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my relatives were victims of the Holocaust, but I am the beneficiary of decisions made by my grandparents in the 1890's to flee Eastern Europe and come to the United States.

This issue of SSEZ is directed not so much at President Barack Obama from whom I never expected anything good, particularly with respect to the Nation of Israel and the five-and-a-half million Jews who live there, it is directed primarily at America's Jews, an estimated seventy-eight percent of whom voted for Obama in 2008.  I also firmly believe Obama will get the lion's share of votes Jews will cast in the 2012 presidential election.  Maybe not 78%, but more than 50%.

There's an old political saying that Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.  This saying has an East Coast flavor and would now be stated as "...vote like Latinos and African-Americans," given the changes in the American political profile.  This attachment to the Democratic Party traces back to the passionate love America's Jews developed for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 because of the liberal things he said and did during the Great Depression and his vigorous opposition to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and  Imperial Japan.  Before 1932, large numbers of Jews voted Socialist and even Republican, the party of Abraham Lincoln, because in New York where more than a million Jews lived, the Democrats were under the control of corrupt Tammany Hall.  That changed with Roosevelt's victory in 1932.

Right now there is great turmoil in the American Jewish community and especially in Israel because of the speech President Obama delivered at the State Department a few days ago when he made reference to the 1967 borders as the starting point for land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians.   As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach just wrote, ". . . the president's claims to naivete are ridiculous.  To his detractors Obama is many things, but he is no fool.  He knew full well that to publicly call for a return to the '67 lines was a bomb waiting to detonate.  Obama knew the demand to return to the pre-Six Day War borders spoke directly to the Palestinian narrative."  I agree completely with Rabbi Boteach.

Come back with me to election night, 2008.  As the results poured in from around the nation clearly indicating the Democrats would win the White House and both Houses of Congress, I spoke with a long time personal friend, a very important and influential Congressman who was smiling with each new vote posting.  I told him his smiles would turn to tears when Obama shafts Israel. (I was more blunt than "shafts.")  He asked, "what if you are wrong?"  I said I would apologize in writing, but I knew I would not be wrong.

When Obama did his 1967 shtick, Mort Zuckerman, publisher of U.S. News & World Report, angrily accused Obama of "betraying Israel." Former Democratic Congressman and famous New York City former Mayor  Ed Koch said he will not vote for Obama in 2012.  Of course, November 2012 is almost eighteen months away and anything can happen.

If you watched Obama's face and body language when Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu spoke at the White House when Obama had to listen to a lecture about the realities in the Middle East, he was obviously boiling mad as Netanyahu in essence told him he didn't know what he is talking about.  As I watched Obama, it seemed to me that Obama was thinking about how he could get back at Netanyahu and at Israel for having had to suffer before the entire nation like a school boy being lectured to by his teacher.

Several liberal commentators and columnists were outraged and said that Netanyahu was ungracious and inappropriate for delivering those comments in a public setting.  It must also have been very painful for Obama even though he was in England to hear about the brilliant, passionate, and informative speech Netanyahu delivered to a joint meeting of the Congress to genuine thunderous applause and getting about twenty-five standing ovations from Democrats and Republicans alike.

And good old Hillary Clinton, our esteemed Secretary of State, looks like an absolute fool have said a week or so ago that Bashar Assad, the murdering, brutal dictator of Syra is a "reformer."  Yes, she called Assad a "reformer."  How can anyone ever believe them?

When Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he was magnificent.  I never thought I would say this about Senator Reid, but he was outstanding in his understanding of what is at stake in the Middle East between Israel and her Arab Neighbors, and he said it forcefully and convincingly.  Maybe the man in the White House ought to sit down with his Senate Majority Leader and have him explain the situation between Israel and the Arabs.

Again and again, we Jews are asked to explain the devotion of so many Jews to the Democratic Party which has paid and still pays homage to the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who in my opinion are enemies of the Jewish people and of Israel.  Would they be so tolerant of the equivalent of Jackson and Sharpton in the Republican party?  Of course not. Our Liberalism came to us with our mother's milk.  For most American Jews, their synagoguee is the Democratic party;  their faith is Liberalism;  and their Moses is Obama.

TO MY FELLOW AMERICANS:  Please know that the hatred of Israel in the Arab world is equaled only by their hatred of you and of America.  The Jews may be their first target, but all of us are on their hit list.  The 9/11 attack was an attack on America!

For the record, Israel gave up land for peace.  It gave back the Sinai Peninsula.  Now there is the possibility of serious threats from the Sinai.  What did Egypt's President Anwar Sadat get for signing a peace treaty with Israel?  He got back the Sinai Peninsula, a Nobel Prize for Peace, and deadly bullets from members of his own army.

Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians.  What did it get in return?  Thousands of deadly rockets raining down on its citizens.  If President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority repudiates his alliance with Hamas, he knows he will suffer Sadat's fate – a hail of bullets.

Israel also gave back territory in Southern Lebanon.  What did it get in return?  Thousands of deadly rockets fired by Hezbollah on Israel.

Dear Friends:  How long would we sit quietly while thousands of rockets poured down on us from Mexico and from Canada? Now you know what Israel is living with.

A friend sent me a marvelous cartoon of Obama meeting with the Queen of England who says to him, "I believe the borders of Britain and the U.S. should be based on the pre-1776 lines with mutually agreed swaps."  One picture is sure worth a thousand words.

                          Remember:  Be Well Because All Else Is Bubkiss

                Harvey B Schechter, 433 No. Palm Drive, #304, Beverly Hills, CA 90210

                PH:(310) 550-7332; FAX (310) 550-7364; harvespie@sbcglobal.net

Thought for Today

"For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion in America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties."

~~~~ Rabbi Louis Finkelstein

Thought for Today

"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations."

~~~~~ John Adams

Thought for Today

"I know I am not only the bad conscience of the Nazis. I am also the bad conscience of the Jews. Because what I have taken up as my duty was everybody's duty."

~~~~~ Simon Wiesenthal

Why Do the Leftists Hate the Jews?

Many objective observers have noticed the unholy alliance between the left and radical Islam. Superficially, it seems so odd as to be inexplicable. After all, so many of their beliefs are diametrically opposed. Leftists believe – or so they say – in equality for women; Islamists treat women like chattel. Leftists believe in complete sexual freedom; Islamists kill homosexuals by stoning them or collapsing walls upon them. Leftists are often agnostics or atheists; Islamists believe that we all must live under strict sharia law. It would be hard to imagine any stranger bedfellows.

Closer examination shows that there is one consistent thread that unites the leftists with the Islamists: vicious, irrational hatred of the Jews.

Former Boston Herald columnist Don Feder has written a thoughtful, though disturbing, piece for GrasstopsUSA.com which was also picked up by David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine. It is called "Seven Reasons for Leftist Anti-Semitism," and you can read the whole thing here or here. Here's how it starts:

Old joke: Walking down a street, a rabbi is accosted by an anti-Semite who tells him “The Jews are to blame for all of our problems.” The rabbi replies, “You’re absolutely right. It’s all the fault of the Jews – and the redheads.” Puzzled, the anti-Semite asks, “Why the redheads”? The rabbi responds, “Why the Jews”?

But for the left, anti-Semitism makes perfect sense – almost as much sense as socialized medicine. Except for Islam (with which it’s increasingly allied), the left has a near-monopoly on organized anti-Semitism.

Last week, that geriatric Jew-hater Jimmy Carter was in Gaza condemning the “devastation” wrought by Israel’s military incursion to stop Hamas rocket attacks. “The citizens of Gaza are treated more like animals than people,” the man who put the ayatollahs in charge of Iran intoned.

At the American International School in Gaza, damaged by Israeli bombs, Carter told citizens of Hamas-istan, “I have to hold back the tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wrecked against your people.” That Hamas deliberately located a missile battery near the school is irrelevant to our pathetic ex-president.

The author of “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” – who’s become the most prominent Western apologist for the Hitlerites of Hamas (“first of all, Hamas has to be accepted by the international community") – Carter has never shed a tear for the Israelis killed by Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza or those murdered or wounded by Palestinian suicide bombers over the past decade.

Next stop on Jimmy’s trail of tears – the S.S. cemetery in Bitburg, where he’ll weep for the devastation wrecked against the German people, who were treated like animals by the Allies in World War II.

For Carter, the political is also personal. In a 2006 story in the Jewish Forward, Carter was quoted telling senior aides prior to the 1980 election “If I get back in, I’m going to (expletive deleted) the Jews.”

Even though it's admittedly disturbing, I strongly recommend that you read all of Don Feder's important essay. You'll come away with an increased understanding of how the twisted brains of the committed leftists function to distort reality. However, the deeper mystery of what sort of malignant process it took to twist those brains in the first place – particularly in the case of the significant population of self-loathing Jews who dwell among the other strange denizens of the Left – remains unexplained.

Sarah Palin on the Holocaust Museum Shooting

Yesterday, Governor Sarah Palin issued this simple, elegant statement following the National Holocaust Museum shooting:

"Our hearts and prayers go out to the shooting victims at the National Holocaust Museum. The museum itself remembers and honors the lives lost in one of the world's most horrific genocides. To have an act of intolerance further spread hatred at this place of reflection, further adds to the grief. My heart goes out to all those impacted, especially the brave guards who acted so selflessly to prevent further injury. May God Bless the Jewish community."

President Reagan couldn't have said it better.

The Virus of Anti-Semitism

For a disturbing, depressing, but deadly accurate discussion of anti-Semitism in its latest guise, read Phyllis Chesler's op-ed Our Eternal Struggle, first published in The Jewish Press, then reprinted in Pajamas Media's Chesler Chronicles. Here's a snippet:

Who would ever have dreamed that Israel would be condemned for trying to defend its civilians? Or that Israel would reap hatred for exercising restraint in its treatment of Palestinian civilians? Or that Israel's terrorist enemies would be praised for hiding behind their own women and children or would themselves be counted as civilians (even as they fire rockets at Israel) because they craftily choose to dress as such?

Who would ever have imagined that such Big Lies would be championed by western intellectuals, academics, journalists, students - not a few of them Jews and even Israelis?

Orwell would laugh. Or cry.

Judging by the amount and vitriolic nature of the hate mail the piece has been generating, it has apparently struck a nerve among the Jew-haters (or "anti-Zionists," as they now prefer to style themselves). To find out why, go read the rest of it.

Putting Israel At Risk

Israeli author Naomi Ragen tell us about Learning the Hard Way. Here's a pull quote:

I know that I am helpless to stop this juggernaut towards disaster. Perhaps it is America's turn to experience first hand what we in Israel experienced: the consequences of electing a leadership which does not have the best interests of the country in mind; which has an agenda that has nothing to do with those interests. Sometimes people have to make horrible mistakes in order to learn that they are horrible mistakes. In Israel, this included over 25,000 terrorist attacks. Children dying in the streets. Being afraid to walk to the bus stop or enter a store.

Kyle-Anne Shiver read it, then wrote this Open Letter to Americans Who Love Israel. It begins like this:

Please, dear reader, do call me a skeptic; I am one. I started learning the price of gullibility in first grade. I traded my chocolate chip cookies to a third grader for his promise of a new pencil sharpener at recess. He lied; I learned.

My grandfather helped. He taught me to “always consider the source” before believing a promise and to never place my trust in an untrustworthy person. I lived and I learned.

Now that I’m well into my sixth decade of life, I’m a very hard sell. And the higher the stakes riding on the promise, the more care I put into my decision to proffer my trust.

When it comes to Israel and her survival as a free nation, the stakes are so high that it behooves even the most trusting American to examine closely the words and records of our candidates in this regard. And, sadly, we are forced to admit that the only reason Joe Biden had to make the reassuring statement above to Jews in Florida is that his candidate, Barack Obama, has the most tenuous, nearly nonexistent, and utterly unreliable “record” of any candidate ever to seek the presidency.

Especially in the arena of foreign affairs. Especially with regard to Israel and the Palestinians.

If you care at all about the fate of Israel, you'll want to read both columns carefully.

Empowering Our Enemies

Mona Charen, author of Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us), asks in her latest column Does Obama's Friendship with Khalidi Matter to Jews?

In addition to his close and long-standing friendship with Rashid and Mona Khalidi, Charen mentions two more of the close friends which Obama would rather his Jewish supporters didn't know about, Jeremiah Wright and Mazen Asbahi.

Others have pointed out that Obama's past and present advisors include such notorious pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli individuals as Robert Malley, Samantha Power, former Congressman David Bonior, retired Air Force General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, and Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Can anyone not see a pattern here? Is it not true that a man may be judged by the company he keeps?

Why, then, is it likely that judging by their past voting records, approximately three-fourths of my co-religionists are going to vote for Obama in seven days? Won't they feel the least bit uncomfortable about elevating this unknown, inexperienced individual with his shady, mysterious past and his troubling associations to the most powerful position on earth? Can Jews really be that naïve and stupid?

I'm hoping the answer is No.