The Jews who were murdered in Germany and Poland cannot speak out. The rest of us, however, have absolutely no excuse.
Helen Thomas’ stomach-turning comments about the Jews returning to Germany and Poland, where 6 million were killed, are striking for their racism and insensitivity.
Whether she said them out of senility or anti-Semitism is beside the point. Either way, it shows she had no business working for any respectable media organization or sitting as the senior White House correspondent directly in front of the president of the United States.
One can only imagine the uproar against Thomas had she said that all blacks should go home to Africa, or illegal immigrants to Mexico. It seems that Jews are the only group that you can attack with impunity, because they are the only ones unwise enough to tolerate it. Better yet, we’re the only group often filled with so much self-loathing that we actually initiate many of the attacks.
Few of us are surprised that it is a coterie of Jewish advisers to President Barack Obama who have joined him in condemnations of Israel over Jews building in Jerusalem.
On June 6, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Michael Chabon (www.tinyurl.com/359xfhj) arguing that many Jews are “blockheads” and notions of Jewish intelligence are highly overrated.
Chabon, a resident of Berkeley, might be correct. But as I read this strange screed, headline “Chosen, but not special,” from one of America’s most celebrated Jewish novelists, I wondered if, say, Maya Angelou would ever pen an article about how many black dumbbells there are. Attacks on one’s own seems to be an art form perfected specifically by Jews.
Helene Cooper, the New York Times’ White House correspondent, wrote a recent column examining whether Israel has become a strategic liability to the United States. (www.tinyurl.com/3anle2f).
She quoted many senior Jewish political advisers to the Democratic Party who advised that if Israel continues to embarrass the United States, it might be time for the superpower to distance itself from the little Jewish irritant.
The criticism made for interesting reading, implying as it did that while Israel is an embarrassment to the U.S., the United States’ relationships with such great human rights exemplars as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey
ought to be sources of downright pride.
Turkey merits special mention because not only does its media accuse the U.S. military of harvesting organs from helpless Iraqis (which they cite as one of the reasons for the American invasion), but because Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees fit to call Israel barbarous, lecture Jews about not murdering and refers to Hamas as freedom fighters.
Cooper’s article, of course, quotes J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami, whom journalists have come to appreciate because of his consistency and reliability in always saying something disparaging about Israel. In this case he is quoted as saying “he represents Jews who … are raising the issue of Israeli government actions as a strategic liability for the United States.”
I lived in England for 11 years and was sickened by the regular abandonment of Israel by some of the most high-profile Anglo-Jews whenever Israel’s actions became controversial.
For those wondering why a floodgate of anti-Semitism has opened in Britain over the last few years, look no further than the fact that Israel’s greatest haters can often point to Jewish critics as being much more strident than them. And still it continues, with even high-profile Jewish leaders such as Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks remaining mum on Israel even while it was assailed last week.
Still, I never believed that American Jewry would emulate this cowardice.
But Obama’s public abandonment of Israel is directly traceable to the small price he pays among American Jews. On my radio show, many callers contend that Obama is an anti-Semite. I condemn such character assassination in the strongest possible terms. Obama has elevated Jews to some of the highest positions, including his most recent nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan.
Rather, the president’s inability to condemn Hamas and support Israel, which is a stain on his presidency, results from his considerable moral confusion and a misguided sense of right and wrong. Under Obama, the United States has retreated substantially from president George W. Bush’s policies of promoting democracy and human rights and has reverted to Kissingerian realpolitik, ready to make deals with tyrants so long as it promotes an artificial sense of peace.
But Obama can get away with it because American Jewry has become so silent and so weak.
Whenever Israel undertakes controversial action, American Jews begin writing op-eds in the Atlantic and the New Yorker about how the once moral nation has lost its way. Funny how those same writers do not condemn Obama’s policy of Predator drone strikes against Taliban leaders that inevitably involve considerable civilian casualties.
Sorry guys. Israel is going to remain controversial, as one might expect from any country under a constant existential assault from nearly all its neighbors. When threatened by Hitler, Britain leveled whole German cities. The U.S. did the same to the Japanese. Israel has never even pondered such actions, even as thousands of its citizens have been blown to smithereens.
The Jews who were murdered in Germany and Poland cannot speak out in support of a Jewish state.
The rest of us, however, have absolutely no excuse.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network and the author of “Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.” This piece first appeared in the Jerusalem Post.