On Saturday November 16, nearly 100 trucks carrying aid into Gaza were violently set upon by armed Arab gangs. According to Reuters, Louise Wateridge, UNRWA’s Senior Emergency Officer would not say who carried out the ambush. Reuters added that “An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of its war against Hamas, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was U.N. distribution challenges.”
Tor Wennesland, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process – no friend of Israel – was more explicit in his remarks to the United Nations Security Council on November 18 when he specifically called out “organized armed Palestinians” as the culprit in stealing humanitarian aid.
Tor Wennesland remarks to the UNSC on November 18, 2024
The New York Times would have none of it. It blamed the looting of aid on Israel.
The Times alternatively called the militants “looters” and “attackers” without giving any description as to who committed the attack. It even tried to use passive language that the aid “was looted” to avoid placing blame on local Gazans.
Later in the article the Times said that “it was not clear who was responsible for the looting,” but the surrounding text made it very clear: Israel was responsible, even if it didn’t commit the looting.
The Times blamed Israel for “restrict[ing] a huge amount of the humanitarian response” in which the “woefully inadequate food supplies have led to looting.” Israel is to blame because of “the collapse of law and order… and the policies of Israeli authorities.” Further, Israel placed aid workers at risk from “attackers” who steal the much needed assistance from “desperate Palestinians.”
Israel has long complained that aid trucks are being looted by Palestinian militant groups and not making it to civilians. When the charge became abundantly clear to the entire world, the Times reoriented the story that Israel remains at fault. Such is the anti-Israel animus in the media today.
It is alarming to watch mainstream media excuse rampant antisemitism as stemming from the Gaza war. It’s not about Gaza; it’s about a global jihad to purge Jews from Jerusalem.
New York Times article arguing that “Israel’s asymmetric response to Oct 7” has brought out the antisemites who are also making “many Muslims in Europe… feel threatened,” diverting the narrative that the prime attackers against Jews are radical Muslims.
Hamas labeled its war against Israel the “Al Aqsa Flood,” meaning the launch of millions of Muslims into Jerusalem. As Hamas stated in starting the war, “the battle of the beginning of the Liberation of Al-Quds [Jerusalem], our land, our people and our prisoners held in the jails of the Zionist occupation…. Today, the enemy has had a political, military, intelligence, security and moral defeat inflicted upon it, and we shall crown it, with the grace of God, with a crushing defeat that will expel it from our lands, our holy city of Al-Quds, our Al-Aqsa mosque, and the release of our prisoners from the jails of the Zionist occupation.”
They were clear. The genocidal jihadists are waging a war to eradicate the Jewish State and to reclaim Jerusalem, as though we were in the Middle Ages fighting Crusades.
The slightly less genocidal Palestinian Authority headed by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas has done his best to gather the Muslim world to join in the jihad. Its Wafa media site continues to claim that “fanatic Israeli settlers… broke into the compounds of al-Aqsa… and raided the holy Islamic Mosque” to inflame hatred against Jews around the world. [Note: the “storming” was regular Jews walking around the Jewish Temple Mount during regular visiting hours and never stepping foot into the al Aqsa mosque.]
Others have sought to recruit Christians to the jihad for Jerusalem, most infamously Jordanian King Abdullah II.
Abdullah spoke at the United Nations in September 2022. At 9:13 of the talk, the king took aim at Jews “Undermining Jerusalem’s legal and historical status quo triggers global tensions and deepens religious divides,” meaning Jews wanting to pray at Judaism’s holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount.
He continued: “As custodians of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites, we are committed to protecting the historical and legal status quo and to their safety and future. And as a Muslim leader, let me say clearly, that we are committed to defending the rights, the precious heritage, and the historic identity of the Christian people of our region. Nowhere is that more important than in Jerusalem.Today, Christianity in the holy city is fire. The rights of churches in Jerusalem are threatened. This cannot continue. Christianity is vital to the past and present of our region and the holy land. It must remain an integral part of our future.”
For clarity, neither Christianity nor Islam are under threat in Jerusalem. The Jewish State has allowed full access for the two global faiths in the Jewish State. Further, the Jordanian king has no rights or control of Christian sites but only Islamic ones with the permission of Israel. This was a naked and dangerous call for the Christian world to join the Islamic one to combat Jews in Jerusalem.
And the Muslim world is enormous. At roughly 1.9 billion people, it is almost twice the entire population of North, Central and South America combined.
When agitators storm campuses or graffiti synagogues, they write “Free Palestine” because they are part of the global jihad against Jews everywhere to destroy the Jewish State. When university professors from Columbia and Cornell express their “joy” about the mass murder of Israelis, they believe they are seeing the beginning of the “liberation of Palestine.” They are not considering the casualties that will come upon Gaza.
When anti-Israel groups made a mapping project of Jewish institutions in Massachusetts they were zoning in on Zionists. When CAIR called out Jewish groups like Hillel as “enemies,” it was months before the October 7 attack.
The “martyrs” in Gaza are marketing fodder to enlist people in the global jihad. Like an advertisement, the product being sold is not the ad but the item itself, in this case, the annihilation and expulsion of Jews.
The People of The Book know history. They read and analyze their own texts and consider what others write and say. They:
know Muslim Arab Antisemitism. They reviewed the various ADL surveys which showed Muslims are two to five times more antisemitic than Christians in European countries. They now watch Muslim mobs engaged in ‘Jew hunts‘ in those same places.
are seared by the October 7 Palestinian Massacre. EVERYONE in the small country knows someone who was killed, injured or abducted on that horrible day. They’ve watched the videos that Hamas took of themselves slaughtering women, babies and the elderly, and movies reviewing the rapes of Israelis by thousands of Gazans. They listened to the calls of Palestinians bragging to their parents how they killed Jews with their bare hands.
Hamas terrorist shooting civilians in their homes
know about the broad Palestinian support for the heinous crimes against humanity. They watched videos of dozens of Gazans hitting and spitting on a dead Israel woman being hauled into Gaza, who was later found beheaded. They’ve read the polls of overwhelming Palestinian support for the gruesome massacre.
Hamas hauls the body of woman into Gaza where crowds cheer as they beat and spit on her corpse
know Palestinian Arabs want to continue to kill as many Jews as possible. They watched leaders on news programs say they intend to repeat the mass atrocities “again and again.”
know the United Nations supports those Palestinian goals. They have read the global organization’s condemnations of terrorism everywhere else in the world and demands for justice, but never in Israel where it immediately called for “maximum restraint.“
know the need for Justice includes accounting for every Gazan who participated in the October 7 slaughter and for bringing hostages home. They know the only way to live in peace is to be alive, at home, with enemies unable to act upon their evil aims.
know the war in Gaza taking place, intimately. Israel has a citizen army and they or members of their family have either been fighting in Gaza or participating in the war effort. They are consumed with the news from Gaza because they not only get firsthand accounts, but attacks emanating from there have not stopped, and over 100 hostages remain in captivity.
Image released by the Israel Defense Forces on Oct 29, 2023 shows its ground operation in the Gaza Strip
know the anti-Israel media bias. They read how newspapers constantly refer to the Israeli government as “right-wing” yet never label Hamas a “designated terrorist group by the US and many other countries.” They read opinion pieces that refer to Hamas supporters as “decent Palestinians”, “many Muslims” and “human beings,” while vilifying Israelis as cold, heartless and clueless with “heads in the sand” and “lacking sensitivity.”
Article by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times stating that Israelis have their heads in the sand about Gaza, arguing that Palestinians are decent human beings with no agency
know the desire to protect certain people – other people – involves inverting actual cause-and-effect. They read absurd claims that Palestinians are “resorting” to violence and that Muslim gangs are “reacting” to the situation in Gaza, while they know basic facts that the SAPs launched their premeditated genocidal jihad.
know the International Criminal Court has wrongly accused them of a “genocide.” They are actively engaged in a defensive war they didn’t start, don’t want, and would end immediately if the hostages were released and the terrorists would surrender. They know the steps they take to minimize civilian casualties as they prosecute a war against an enemy intent on maximizing civilian casualties, with the lowest civilian-to-combatant ratio in urban warfare.
know they are a beleaguered minority-minority with centuries of ingrained scars at the hands of wide range of attackers. They have Holocaust survivors in their families and truncated branches of the family trees due to the Holocaust and various pogroms.
The People of The Book know history. They are writing new chapters about their attackers and abetters. The testaments will act as a guide for future generations and the testimonies will beg Gd to pass judgment on the wicked and save the Jewish people today.
Jewish organizations once again rallied people to Washington, D.C. for a “Stand Together” event. The Jewish Federations of North America invited many groups to attend, a spectrum of religious leaders and those with diverse political views to assemble and stand with fellow Jews and the Jewish State of Israel, including Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Gov.Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI). The speakers included Blacks and native Americans, soldiers and children.
They had a variety of backgrounds and beliefs but were united in being pro-Israel and for fighting antisemitism.
But there were a number of left-wing radical groups which refused to join the unity event. J Street published a joint statement that a number of groups in its orbit including Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Habonim Dror North America, New Israel Fund, New York Jewish Agenda, Partners for Progressive Israel and T’ruah had joined it in boycotting the event.
Joint statement by far left-wing groups to boycott an event in Washington DC which included a wide range of pro-Israel organizations
This cohort didn’t simply decide to quietly not show up for the event but banded together and issued a joint statement denouncing unity at moment when it is sorely needed. [Note that Ameinu and Americans for Peace Now merged in February 2024, although they are still listed separately by the Conference of Presidents.]
Instead, J Street took to the soapbox to demand the U.S. withhold weapons to Israel as the Jewish state engages in a multifront war. It slammed President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
And it is urging the U.S. Congress – and perhaps the Biden Administration at the United Nations – to use its remaining months in office to severely punish Israel. This same pro-Palestinian (marketed as “pro-Israel”) group has never once suggested harming the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs).
At the end of President Barack Obama’s term in 2016, J Street effectively lobbied the administration to allow UN Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass, making it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), including in the Old City of Jerusalem. It publicly thanked Obama and disgraced Secretary of State John Kerry for their efforts to make Jerusalem Jew-free as a “moral” matter.
Full page J Street ad in The New York Times in January 2017 quoting Secretary of State John Kerry after the Obama administration allowed UN Security Council 2334 to pass, making it illegal for Jews to live in Jerusalem and the “West Bank.”
Many Jewish groups are assessing whether to allow radical groups that harm Israel and the Jewish people to remain in the same tent. These umbrella groups should make plain that if these groups lobby the U.S. administration to punish Israel in the lame duck session, they will be kicked out of the community, much like they removed themselves from Standing Together in Washington.
ACTION ITEM
Write the various umbrella groups to warn J Street, New Israel Fund and others that lobbying Congress to punish Israel will result in their exclusion and/or expulsion.
The metropolitan New York City area is home to the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world. For clarity, as most religions do not have a “diaspora”, it means that outside of the Jewish homeland of Israel, more Jews live in the greater NYC area than any location in the world.
Despite the size of the community, the last several years have seen the area’s Jews come under fire, both literally and figuratively.
In 2018, radical left-wing extremists started to win seats in Congress in response to the 2016 presidential election of Republican Donald Trump. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) was the first to win a seat in New York’s 14th Congressional District, followed two years later by Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th CD. The two woke New Yorkers pushed the outer limits of the Democratic Party, voting against measures like the Infrastructure Bill, and supplying security aid to Israel.
Rank-and-file antisemites followed their leaders. They shot up a synagogue in Pennsylvania in October 2018. Then another synagogue in California in April 2019, and a kosher supermarket in Jersey City (part of the NYC metropolitan area) in December 2019. By 2022 they were taking hostages in synagogues in Texas to free jihadi murderers in jail.
New York’s Woke members of Congress appreciated the cesspool of Jew hatred and coddled up to jihadists at New York City’s Columbia University who continue to celebrate the 2023 massacre of Jews in Israel, and raised money for the election campaign from Hamas supporters. Their incessant calls of “white supremacy”, “patriarchy”, “colonialism” and “imperialism” echoed the Columbia lies to distract from the toxic woke antisemitism embedded in the radical left and as a rallying cry for the socialist-jihadi campaign.
New York’s political class of radical leftists paraded reasons why Jews in school should not be given any police protection, including Rosie Mendez who claimed Jews discriminate against the gay community; Daniel Dromm who said Jews are robbing from public schools; Teamsters Local 237 which said taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay to protect Jewish students; and the American Federation of School Administrators which was appalled that taxpayer money should be spent in any manner on private schools (should the fire department not respond to a fire in a yeshiva?), amongst others.
On October 7, 2023, as the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was unfolding in Israel, New York’s Jews lay vulnerable and unprepared for the assault from the socialist-jihadi alliance.
New Yorkers are fed up with being targeted because of who they are. Angry with not being given time nor space to grieve for 1,200 people brutally massacred. Incensed that rioters show up at synagogues and Jewish Day Schools to scream that Jews have no history, heritage or rights in Israel.
The tide may be turning.
On October 15, 2024, the United States and Canada labeled Samidoun a sham charity funneling money to Palestinian Arab terrorist groups. White Plains-based WESPAC, which also funds terrorist groups, has not yet been banned or lost its tax-exempt status, but that may hopefully change soon.
Bowman lost in the Democratic primary in the summer of 2024 to a moderate pro-Israel candidate. AOC’s popularity is seemingly fading, as she was not able to secure 70% of the general vote in November 2024, her lowest tally since entering Congress, and among the lowest for any Democrat in New York City.
Trump’s victory and the Republican takeover of the Senate (and maybe retaining control of the House) may portend a defunding of schools that either take money from state sponsors of terrorism like Qatar, or give antisemitism a free hand to harass, intimidate, discriminate and attack Jewish students, faculty and buildings.
Individuals are scoring victories too. In October 2024, Columbia University’s paper announced that alumni are shunning their alma mater. It is likely due to the school’s disgusting treatment of Jews.
Still, the Democratic Socialists of America – endorsers of Bowman, AOC and others in the socialist-jihadi alliance like Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) – are still operating openly in New York, even as they call for violent attacks against Israeli civilians. Perhaps they will also come under prosecution as decent people and the government start to push back against the anti-Jewish vitriol.
Democratic Socialists of America label all Israelis as fair targets for violent attacks
The Battle of Vienna in 1683 turned back the Muslim Ottoman Empire’s quest for expansion and conquest in Christian Europe. The world we live in today is a byproduct of that battle.
History may one day consider what happened when the ‘Globalize the Intifada’ pogroms came for the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community. All of us have an opportunity to play a part in that battle.
On June 5, 1968, on the one year anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, shot and killed Senator Robert Kennedy while he was campaigning to be the president of the United States. Sirhan assassinated the American politician because of his support for Israel.
On October 7, 2023, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War, the Iranian proxy of Hamas massacred 1,200 people in Israel and took over 250 people hostages. In the ensuing months, other Iranian proxies went to war with Israel including Hezbollah from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen, while the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump as he campaigned to be the next president.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (photo: Gene J. Puskar / AP)
On February 1, 2024, the FBI filed a lawsuit against members of the US designated foreign terrorist group Hamas. The suit mentions Iran 79 times as a partner for Hamas’s October 7 massacre, as well as ongoing support for the group. Beyond that gruesome day, the suit alleges that Hamas and Iran “knowingly and intentionally combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed together and with each other to kill nationals of the United States.“
The Iranian proxies are public with their threats on the U.S. On October 28, 2023, one of Hamas’s leaders broadcast “The U.S. Administration and the Western countries supporting the aggression are full partners with the occupation in the genocidal war and the cascade of blood that flows from defenseless civilians.This blood will be a curse and a volcano of fury from the masses of our Ummah [i.e., the Muslim community] and the free people of the world against these killers.” An October 18 broadcast from Hamas had a similar message that Hamas is “stating loud and clear that the American administration and the Western countries that support the aggression are full partner countries along with the occupation forces in this annihilation war.” On December 2, 2023, a Hamas official said on Hamas media that “[t]here is not a single crime that the U.S. has not committed against Gaza. May Allah settle the score with America, and may He take revenge on that criminal Nazi country.”
The jihadi war against the United States predates the October 7 jihadi massacre. For example, as stated in the lawsuit, “On or about December 22, 2017, Hamas spokesman Abd Al Qadir Al-Hawajiri spoke at a Hamas rally that was broadcast on a Hamas media outlet. In his speech, Al-Hawajiri condemned American support for Israel, proclaiming that ‘that entity [i.e. , Israel] will cease to exist, as will America.‘”
The vitriol against the United States accelerated after President’s Trump’s pro-Israel actions, specifically mentioning “the American Declaration that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem to be the entity’s [i.e., Israel’s] capital, as well as to America’s recognition of the legality of the settlements.”
But the jihadi war against Israel is not about the “settlements” or the capital, but Jewish presence in any form. As Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Hamas movement said months before he was assassinated in Iran, “We do not want to see you [Jews] on this land; this land is ours, Al-Quds is ours, all of it is ours… there is no place or residing for you.” He went on to commit to waging war and never negotiating or compromising with Israel.
Iran and Hamas actively recruited monetary support from the United States and elsewhere to wage their genocidal war. In November 2020, Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV held a “First Electronic Pioneers Conference” in which Haniyeh said “We need to upgrade the support, from support through soft power to support by means of money and weapons. Yes, I would like to make it perfectly clear: I am talking about support by means of money and weapons, for the mujahideen and the murabitun [the people who harass Jews visiting the Jewish Temple Mount] in Jerusalem and its environs.” Members of South African parliament were in attendance.
Millions of dollars were routed – and continue to be routed – to Hamas via Gazan charity groups. That money is used to kill Israelis, Americans and to fund assassination attempts on American leaders.
Jihadi groups are not just waging a war on Israel but also on America. The genocidal assassins are not limited to the fanatical leaders of Iran and Palestinian groups and include members of the socialist-jihadi alliance in the United States who provide material support for the violence.
The United States is considering the final tallies from the 2024 presidential election. While the numbers are not quite final, there are a few obvious takeaways: Republican Donald Trump won, and spent a lot less to do so.
Trump won roughly 4.5 million more votes than VP Kamala Harris. According to Open Secrets, Trump spent about one-third less than Harris on the campaign, about $1.0 billion to $1.5 billion for Harris. Taken together, Harris spent $22.00 on average per vote compared to Trump’s spend of about $14.06, 56% more.
Progressives have long decried the spending of AIPAC, the bipartisan pro-Israel group, as “an existential threat.” They assembled far-left anti-Israel groups into a Reject AIPAC coalition, claiming that “This influx of [pro-Israel] money to oppose the strongest progressives in Congress and to support election deniers hurts our democracy.”
But democracy is seemingly fine when progressives spend billions of dollars.
The anti-Israel progressive group lies are multiple: AIPAC supports many progressives, but only those who share the pro-Israel philosophy which is the mission of the group, much like abortion PACs support politicians focused on that one issue. They also support conservatives who are pro-Israel.
Post by Rep. Jamaal Bowman who was primaried by George Latimer with the support of AIPAC because of his demonization of Israel and anti-Israel and Jew ambivalent actions, posting on X about ‘Palestine’ in a reflection of the Harris loss. Seemingly looking for a job among the socialist-jihadi alliance.
Second, and to the point here, progressives love spending money as witnessed in the Harris campaign. They spent one-third more and still lost both the popular vote and electoral college. Democrats only point to the money when its spent against them, and especially if they can make it look like the source is powerful Jews operating behind the scenes in classic antisemitic stereotypes.
AIPAC was highly successful in its campaigns in the 2024 election cycle among Democrats and Republicans. They helped Asian-Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, vets, progressives and conservatives win their races. Their success stands in sharp contrast to the failure of Democratic groups to elect Harris with so much money to lose so badly.
Money is important in elections but isn’t the deciding factor as the $1.5 billion spent by Democrats in the failed effort to get Harris elected demonstrated. It will be interesting to see if there is an audit of the enormous Democratic spend and whether many people enriched themselves during the race. People should also track whether “progressives” continue to only talk about money when Jews are spending it.
Shoplifting has become de facto legal in California. Mobs enter shoe stores, pharmacies, department stores and ransack the location of its goods. The scene has become rampant after the state’s left-wing government passed laws minimizing the theft of items below $950 to only a misdemeanor, which police do not prosecute.
Store owners are helpless to confront the new normal. They have instructed their security officials to no longer confront shoplifters and allow the lawlessness to run amuck. The lack of consequences has enshrined anarchy, with hundreds of brazen store invasions in the state occurring monthly.
Jews in the United States and Israel suffer personal assaults under the common umbrella of immunity.
University professors are granted tenure and cannot be fired unless there are particularly outrageous actions. Knowing this, people like Columbia professor Joseph Massad tells students that the Jews in the Bible are actually “Palestinian Hebrews.” He shared his feelings of “jubilation and awe” about the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. He and other professors routinely hold classes that Jews have no history in the holy land and are engaged in a project of “European Settler Colonialism.“
No worries. Columbia has Massad teach a class on Zionism.
Antisemitic and anti-Israel Columbia University professor teaches course on Zionism
Liberal governments and organizations started taking positions that “over-policing” of majority-minority groups like Blacks was systemic and a key issue in holding minority groups down after the death of George Floyd in May 2020. The Southern Poverty Law Center made this clear in October 2020 when it essentially removed Black hate groups from its database because it may have been used to “justify the over-policing and surveillance of communities of color.” Black “separatist” movements would no longer be classified as hate groups because of society’s power imbalance; they were just punching up “because they oppose a white supremacist power structure.”
Blacks were granted immunity from being called racists, to commit non-hate crimes against Whites.
In San Francisco in 2018, the school board voted to rename schools which might be perceived to carry “white supremacy,” which included removing the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln from the schools. At the same time, they voted to teach the students Arabic with an external group that called Israel an “apartheid state” that engages in “colonialism” which should be free “from the river to the sea.”
Anti-Zionism as well as denial of Jewish history and rights was being instilled into the fabric of the future. Don’t like it? Too bad. Teachers’ unions are fighting hard to keep parents out of the classroom.
Los Angeles teacher unions organize for anti-Israel indoctrination
Good luck trying to topple the teachers’ unions which are a specialized protected class by Democrats. They are free to act with impunity as they have carte blanche immunity.
This happens constantly at the United Nations. Its facilities are considered “inviolable” so Gazans and terrorists use them to store and fire rockets at Israel – whose schools are not “inviolable.” Tens of thousands of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) join UNRWA to get immunity, free to collaborate with a host of Palestinian terrorist groups. They believe they can rape as a form of “resistance,” blessed by the UN which has canonized every “refugee.”
The head of the United Nations made clear that this protected class of people have immunity, and Israel cannot judge or punish the rapists and murderers. The Palestinian Arabs are free to carry out their barbarism with impunity.
It is a sad truism that social unrest bleaches racism and antisemitism. But that is just the start.
The granting of broad immunity to particular people because they are viewed as deserving of special protection appears noble, only at first glance. Empathy that enables and encourages lawlessness comes for the Jews. Always.
It has now been revealed that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the administration of Columbia University to “keep heads down” and ride out the controversy of antisemitism on campus. He said that issue of rampant Jew hatred were “political problems are really only among Republicans,” and that Jews and the country would soon move on.
To unpack those statements, the most powerful Democratic politician outside of the Executive branch dismissed the Jew-hatred at Columbia despite one of the rabbis on campus telling Jewish students to go home, “no one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.” He encouraged the university to do nothing to assist the beleaguered Jews, and that once Democrats took over the House of Representatives, university presidents would no longer be dragged to Washington.
Others also believe that only Republicans cared about the systemic Jew hatred at American universities. Rep. Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that Democrats would drop investigating Jew hatred at universities should they win the House in the November 2024 election.
Schumer’s suggestion that leaders wait out setbacks in attacking Jews has precedent.
During Donald Trump’s term in office, former Secretary of State John Kerry under Democratic President Barack Obama passed a message to Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President [Donald] Trump’s demands.” Kerry predicted that Trump would last a single term and then a Democratic Administration would go easy on the PA, and apply hard pressure on Israel.
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Secretary of State John Kerry discuss the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015
Democrats know that Jews are a minority-minority, a very small and forgiving people. The old guard Democratic leaders like Schumer and Kerry believe that Jews’ ongoing quest for “tikkun olam / repairing the world” would include self-annihilation, if so required. They believe they know history that Jews (non-Orthodox at least) will look past any insult and cleave to the Democratic Party regardless of actions. Jews will give up land, rights and dignity just as they handed over the Judaism’s holiest site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, if peace so dictated.
The new generation of Democratic leaders is less convinced. It is waging a war to strip Jews of power, position, wealth and property in a broad redistribution to majority-minority groups like Blacks, as chanted by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, and their sponsor at Justice Democrats.
The cleft in the Democratic Party between the old and new guards is a tactical decision whether to wait for Jews to hang themselves or to give clearance to rob, rape and murder them immediately. Regrettably – no, frighteningly – the party’s view of Jews has been buried under an avalanche of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) that elevates Victims of Preference, even when those groups are directly coming for Jews.
Like many Jewish Americans, I am a registered Democrat. Unlike many, I have no party loyalty and vote for the person I think is best suited for the job.
My friends were shocked when I voted for the libertarian candidate for president in 2016. They rattled off the many offenses of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and that I was wasting my vote. I did not disagree. But I could not vote for Trump or Clinton. Not only had Clinton proven herself to be awful but Trump was a vulgarian wildcard. I believed Trump was such a “deal guy” that he had no sense of the compromises that are needed to run a country of 330 million. He would be bad for America, Israel and the whole world.
I ended up being quite wrong about Trump on Israel. Surrounded by a strong team of advisers, he understood what was required for an ENDURING PEACE in the Middle East, not just the paper to get to a peace agreement. He delivered an amazing array of achievements for America and the Middle East over his term, including the fewest deaths of Arabs and Jews over any four year stretch in modern history.
Yet I remained worried. America was deeply divided and I could not imagine Trump being the solution to bring the country together. Four years on I looked for an alternative.
I cast my lot initially with Mike Bloomberg as a centrist, who had pushed aggressively for Hillary over Trump in 2016 under the premise that she was basically like a prostitute who is deeply unloved but gets the job done. Bloomberg was my version of #NeverTrump meets #NeverBernie Sanders. But he was eliminated early on.
I settled on Biden as the “centrist” to help address the “Mason-Dixon Plaid” that pitted neighbor against neighbor. I wanted to stop the brewing civil war, and too many people hated Trump for him to be the solution. I similarly voted for centrists in Congress, rejecting mainstream media’s endorsement of far left-wing radicals like Jamaal Bowman. I picked a winner at the top of the ticket but saw extremist radicals taking over Congress.
Those radical members of Congress had no need to compromise the way a president must. They incited their base, and brought antisemitism to deplorable levels after the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. Fading Biden had no idea or desire to stem the vicious tide.
Jewish members of Congress like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) turned on Israel and refused to combat the wave of antisemitism. Young Democrats and liberal universities revealed themselves to be deeply hostile to Israel and Jews.
The divide in America now felt more personal. It was no longer about Republicans versus Democrats, but more immediately, radical antisemitic extremists which had metastasized inside the Democratic party and liberal institutions against American Jewry. The general tension in the country is no longer my priority, but the specific targeting of minority-minority Jews which made even leading Jewish politicians hide in fear.
Pundits like Bret Stephens may argue that Trump continues to be a danger, and I was a NeverTrumper just like him. Many friends who are devout liberal Jews continue to believe that the antisemitism is really just a minor issue which will subside when the Iranian proxy war against Israel ends.
Sen. Bernie Sanders explaining that Kamala Harris will side with the alt-left when she is not bound by Biden’s preferences as it relates to Israel
Israel is laying the groundwork for an enduring peace in the Middle East by ridding the region of jihadi extremists who intend on annihilating local Jewry. It is tragic and ugly but essential. Americans – DEMOCRATS – need to similarly take actions which may seem displeasing, including voting for Trump, to end the toxic antisemitism drowning Jews today.