Nadler |
U.S. representative for New York's 12th congressional district Jerry Nadler, proudly Jewish, recently spoke against a congressional resolution because it identified anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
“This resolution,” Nadler said, “does nothing to counter the
scourge of anti-Semitism.” The Congressman did not on this occasion share with
his fellow comrades measures that would be successful in countering the scourge
of anti-Semitism at, among other places, Harvard, Yale and New York’s own
Columbia and Cornell universities.
“The resolution, said Nadler, “states that all anti-Zionism
is anti-Semitism. That is either intellectually disingenuous or factually
wrong… While most anti-Semitism is indeed anti-Semitic, the authors [of the
resolution] if they are at all familiar with Jewish history and culture, should
know that Jewish anti-Zionism was and is expressly not anti-Semitic. This
resolution ignores the fact that even today certain orthodox and Hassidic
communities, the Satmars in New York and others, as well as others of the
pre-state Jewish labor movement, have held views that are at odds with the
modern Zionists conception. According to the Jewish encyclopedia, quote, ‘The
anti-Zionist world view of the ultra-orthodox groups like the Satmars perceives
Zionism and the establishment of the state of Israel as an anti-messianic act.’
That is to say, these ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jews believe that only the
messiah can bring about the true Israel. And I assure you, the Satmar Hasidic
Jews [and other orthodox Hassidic sects] are certainly not anti-Semitic.”
All this is true, and the distinction drawn by Nadler is an
important one. The anti-Semite likely will also be anti-Zionist, but the
anti-Zionist need not be anti-Semitic. Those who quarrel with the Jewish state,
Israel, should not be forced to wear on their chests a false badge of
anti-Semitism.
U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, a quarrelsome socialist
who votes in lockstep with the Democrat machine in Washington D.C., has during
his time in the U.S. Senate picked a few bones with President of Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu. Neither the Israeli president nor Sanders, Jewish like
Nadler, are anti-Semitic.
The so called Hamas “militants” in Gaza are both
anti-Semitic and anti-Zionists. They wish to “push Israel into the sea” – i.e,
destroy the state of Israel, and the Zionist idea itself – not because they,
like Satmar Hasidic Jews, believe that Zionism offends Jewish theological
principles, but rather because they, like the Nazis of old, are opposed to Jews
and a Jewish presence in the world.
There are, to be sure, Hamas “militants” (AKA terrorists),
and we have seen their handiwork in Israel on October 7, though few moderns –
reporters and editors of many newspapers, academics in “safe spot” Ivy League
universities, stupid students made stupid by stupid professors, anti-Semites
the world over, committed ideologues and so called leaders of the feminist
movement in the United States, which has not yet fulsomely denounced the rape,
torture and mutilation of innocent women and children in Israel – can bring
themselves to watch the videos proudly displayed as recruitment devices by the
terrorists.
In the meanwhile, the most important question hovering over
the Middle East war between Israeli and Hamas-Iran has not sufficiently been
addressed by Democrats and Republicans who bravely profess a politically dangerous
“friendship” with Israel.
That question is: Who decides battleground issues? Who
decides, in other words, which of the contestants shall win the war – and the
peace that inevitably follows wars that have been decisively won?
Should important decisions that undoubtedly will affect not
only the war in the Middle East but also the peace that usually descends upon
countries at war’s end be decided by Israel, Hamas, Iran’s proxy terrorist
instruments of destruction elsewhere in the Middle East, a United Nations
teetering on the edge of both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, fake Washington
DC political generals, the editorial boards of the New York Times, the
Washington Post and Iran’s IRNA and Tehran Times, or the state of Israel?
Prominent Jewish legislators in DC – i.e. U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senate leader from New York,
Chuck Schumer, among others – should seriously, often, and unambiguously,
provide answers to the to the questions presented above.
And the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who has vowed many times
that he has Israel’s back, though he has boasted in a recent highly staged
political event that he scrawled on a picture of Netanyahu and himself “I
disagree with you about everything” – as did former President Barack Obama –
might just borrow some courage from Democrat President Harry Truman, the first
notable Western leader of a free nation to recognize the state of Israel days
after it had been formed.
Biden most recently claimed at a Hanukkah reception at the
White House that he too was a Zionist -- like Truman, the earliest American
presidential Zionist. Truman stood quite alone at the time he formally
recognized Israel as a state, a solid eminence among cowering politicians both
at home and abroad. But then, Truman
knew that the coward-crouch was the usual posture of the usual flaccid, vote
seeking American politician.
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