Sunday, February 17, 2019

Democrat Identity Politics allow Jew-Haters to seep through the cracks - Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer


by Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer 


Long after it had seemed that the Democrats finally had forgiven the Republicans for taking away their slaves, the new era of Democrat Hate has come.

Pseudo-Nazis now are coming out of the woodwork in the Democrat party. To mix metaphors, it is the first bumper crop since the days of Ku Klux Klan Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd of West Virginia.  Long after it had seemed that the Democrats finally had forgiven the Republicans for taking away their slaves, the new era of Democrat Hate has come.

In great measure, it stems from Identity Politics.  When the culture was one of encouraging a Melting Pot, a common culture, and a common language, there certainly were xenophobic “insiders” who doubted and hated the outsiders and newcomers. That always happens; every society is plagued by “Us” versus “Them.” But there also always has been a strong countervailing American trend away from xenophobia for the immigrants’ second and third generations as the children of newcomers ultimately fit in, adopting Western culture and the English language of America while becoming faithful to its Constitution.

Tragically, Obama hatefully restored Identity Politics to the fore, and Hillary tried to replicate it as an election device but botched it, dividing people by race, ethnicity, gender, and religion — “Us” versus the “Basketful of Deplorables.”

Once you get people standing up and saying “My ticket into the room is that I am Muslim,” or “that I am Native American,” or “that I am this” or “that,” you do not end division but simply encourage a new social divide, a new “Us” versus “Them,” where each Identity Player feels empowered to exile others from outside the Intersectional Divide.  

Suddenly, Whites have to defend themselves. Men have to justify their existence, as Crazy Mazie Hirono, Senator from Hawaii, tells “men to shut up.”  Catholics have to defend their right to believe and practice their faith, and to join the Knights of Columbus.  And, as all too often happens, the “canary in the coal mine” is the Jew. Just as coal miners would bring a canary inside so that, if the canary suddenly were to die, they could see that oxygen is running perilously low because deadly gas is leaking and imperiling them all , so a society’s first certain sign of impending danger is when “They” (whoever “They” may be) start coming after “the Jews” with impunity.

There are all kinds of Nazis.  The worst ones are the Hitlers, the Eichmanns, the Goerings, the Streichers, the ones who went on trial at Nuremberg. And then there are the lower-level Jew-haters who never rise to that level but comparably harbor hate deep within their souls. 
Thus, Jew-haters take different forms, but they all share that same deep-rooted visceral hate that somehow ultimately targets “the Jews.” Some hate “the Jews” because of a landlord, and others hate “the Jews” because of a tenant. Some hate “the Jews” because of the same kinds of liberals that so many Jews ourselves cannot abide, and others hate “the Jews” because of conservatives like Sheldon Adelson and the comparative political conservatism of Israel’s and the growing conservatism of the Jews of England. Some blame “the Jews” for Communism (Karl Marx, Trotsky) and others blame “the Jews” for capitalism (the Rothschilds, Milton Friedman).  It is what it is.

But what now is unfolding in the Democrat Party — the party that always speaks of “racism” and “sexism” and “dog whistles,” and that finds racism and this-ism and that-ism in every word that deviates from left-liberal dogma — is that real Jew-haters are starting to come out of the cracks. It is ironic that, even as Louis Farrakhan has termed Jews to be “termites,” his Democrat acolytes of hate are the ones emerging from the woodwork. We have beheld the emergence of Jew-haters (and White-haters and man-haters) Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory as the new leaders of the rapidly decomposing “The Women’s March.” And now two new Democrat Congressional representatives have emerged as outright Jew-haters: Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the once-“Nice” state where Keith Ellison, anti-Semite, likewise holds court.

Omar, who hails from Somalia, now tweets about Jews and money.  Quite a thing when newcomers who themselves are members of demographic groups (Muslim, Somalian) that are labeled by stereotypes, begin stereotyping others. Omar is an irrepressible Jew-hater.  The things she says and tweets about Israel, for example, are not simply the legitimate expressions of someone who articulates a political counterpoint.  It is perfectly fine to disagree with this or that aspect of Israeli democracy or Israeli politics. For many years, I wrote passionately against Israel’s then-socialist economy. Nowadays my political concern is Israel’s continued failure to increase Jewish housing in Judea and Samaria and finally to annex all of Judea and Samaria — or at least the region known as “Zone C.”

In and of itself, it can be fair to express criticism of Israel.  But when one criticizes Israel as a cover for going after Jews, typically reflected by holding Israel to an insanely higher standard that is not expected of any other country, then — ding! ding! ding! — we have uncovered a Jew-hater.  When someone has no problem with the state of human rights in Saudi Arabia, Putin’s Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Erdogan’s Turkey, and the like — but demands uniquely that Israel be boycotted and sanctioned, and that investments in companies that deal with Israel be divested, we have not “anti-Zionism” but “anti-Semitism.”  It is like saying “I am not against Catholicism. I only despise the Pope and the Vatican and the College of Cardinals and the Archbishops and Bishops and nuns and the Eucharist. But I have nothing against Catholicism.”  Zionism, like kosher dietary rules, is part of Judaism.

This Jew-hating Ilhan Omar is a perfect example.  It begins with variations on the trope that some of one’s best friends are Jews. For example, once a Jew-hating Israel-hater finds that a George Soros or a Bernie Sanders or others of that self-demeaning ilk stand at the forefront of attacking Israel on a wide swath of issues to prove that they are “open-minded,” finding fault in almost everything that Israel does, it is easy for that Jew-hater to align with the Soros-Sanders sorts who give them cover and to point to those Jews as friends and allies. 

Then an Ilhan Omar starts degrading Israel, lying about Israel, and comparing it to the worst of imaginable societies. Same with a Linda Sarsour or a Rashida Tlaib or a Tamika Mallory. Since these Jew-haters label themselves “progressives,” their Jew-hatred then keeps progressing level by level. The next thing you know, an Ilhan Omar starts tweeting about Jews and money — ding! ding! ding! —  even as a Linda Sarsour starts tweeting that Israelis are so non-human that people should avoid “humanizing” them.

And then we soon find ourselves with Farrakhan calling Jews “termites” and his protégé, Tamika Mallory of “The Women’s March,” tweeting  — ding! ding! ding! — that Farrakhan is the GOAT: Greatest Of All Time. Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib was a columnist for a Farrakhan publication and tweets a storm of anti-Israel invective with anti-Jewish tropes.

See the progression of the Progressives?
1. I am not an anti-Semite.  I have lots of Jewish friends.
2. I like George Soros and Bernie Sanders.
3. I am not an anti-Semite. I am only an anti-Zionist.
4. BDS — Boycott, Divest from, and Sanction Israel. But not Erdogan’s Turkey or China or Iran or anywhere else.
5. Don’t humanize Israelis.
6. Jews throw around their “Benjamins” ($100 dollar bills) and buy people.
7. Jews are termites.
8. The person who calls Jews “termites” is the GOAT — Greatest Of All Time.
9. I would like a seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
10. I am not an anti-Semite.  I have lots of Jewish friends.

The progression of the Progressives.
It is amazing watching the brazenness. The Democrat Left engages in the first steps of dehumanizing Israel and tweeting Jew-hatred, and they divert attention from themselves by accusing the most pro-Israel President in American history, the father of an Orthodox Jewish daughter and grandfather of Orthodox Jewish grandchildren, of anti-Semitism, even as they elevate within their ranks outright Jew-haters to such posts as the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer of New York stands politically paralyzed and Jewishly not only circumcised but neutered, having waited for so long to succeed Harry Reid, that he silently accepts his place behind Nancy Pelosi and silently watches Kirsten Gillibrand of New York join with almost every other leading Democrat Presidential aspirant in voting against a pro-Israel bill barring BDS that nevertheless passed the Senate because of robust Republican backing with a modicum of Democrat backing, too.

In a single generation, we have beheld the transmogrification of the Democrat Party of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Henry “Scoop” Jackson to that of Keith Ellison, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.


A favorite term of the Democrat Left is that they hear the “dog whistles.” They see racism everywhere. They see White privilege it in a bowl of milk with Cocoa Krispies. Yet, even as the Democrat Left sees and hears “racist dog whistles” everywhere, they are oblivious, blind, and deaf to the actual racists, bigots, and haters now popping up like poison mushrooms in their midst.

With the Speaker of the House now having appointed Ilhan Omar to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, even as Omar now tweets “apologetically” that she recognizes that she needs to begin learning more about her bigotry and getting educated about anti-Semitic tropes, it is imperative that this Jew-hater be removed from that committee. If she is not removed now, the demand will arise again because Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism is so deeply ingrained that she will not be able to avoid exposign it again — and again.


Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com .

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23461

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