Passover 2012

By Alan Caruba

If you want to understand what Israelis and most Diaspora Jews think about the threats made against Israel, ask any Holocaust survivor. They will tell you, “When somebody says they want to kill you, you should believe them.”

Below are two excerpts from a March 30 Jerusalem Post article by Martin Sherman:

Goals: Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence. Method: Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic… in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished…. Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine.

– Fatah Constitution

Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it…. Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…. The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight [kill] the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

– Hamas Charter

Fatah and Hamas both claim to represent the Palestinians, often killing one another’s members to prove it. Fatah is located on the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza, a place where rockets are launched into Israel every day in order to incite it to retaliate. Then, of course, the world gets to condemn--who?--the Israelis!

In July 2010 J. D. Longstreet, in July 2010, a widely read commentator, wrote, “Going back to 1937 we learn that “a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."

Palestine, in fact, was a name imposed on Israel. As J.D. Longstreet pointed out, “In the second century A.D., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name “Palaestina” to Judea. Judea was the southern portion of what we now call the West Bank. It was an attempt, by the Romans, to isolate Jewish identification from the land of Israel.”

The Empire of Rome is no more, but 3,700 years after its founding, Israel has risen from the ashes of its history and been reborn. For much of that history, Jews have lived with the scourge of anti-Semitism. It remains a core element of Islam. These days it takes the form of an effort to impose a non-existant “nation” called Palestine on its borders. The proponants of this refer to land won in in the 1967 war when Israel was attacked by its “neighbors.”

As Ted Belman, better known as the “Israpundit” wrote:

“The Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) is a treaty between signatory states that are called High Contracting Parties (HCP). It regulates the obligations of one HCP who occupies the land of another HCP. It defines the terms “Occupying Power” and “Occupied State”. Thus this convention does not apply to the territories because they were not the land of any HCP. They have never been the land of an HCP. Prior to 1967, Jordon was in occupation of these territories, just as Israel is currently in occupation. Jordanian sovereignty over these lands was never recognized and ultimately Jordan relinquished any claims she claimed to have over these lands. The FGC was never applied when Jordan occupied the land and it shouldn’t be applied now that Israel does.”

Israelis and everyone else have been debating a “two state solution” to grant the murderous Palestinians some legitimacy. For my part, I think American Jews should stay out of this discussion. Intrinsically, almost genetically liberal, they experienced the Holocaust protected by the Atlantic Ocean so, while one assumes they support Israel’s existence, it is entirely up to the Israeli’s to make such decisions. Parenthetically, even the Israelis have been divided over the issue, but not over their survival.

How secure do the Israelis feel these days? Not very. Over the high holy days of Passover, beginning this year on Friday at sunset, the Israeli Defense Force will be on full alert, anticipating possible attacks. In the preemptive 1967 “Six Day War” the Israelis thwarted the intension of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt to attack them yet again. The Israelis captured the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River—formerly known as Samaria and Judea, ancient Jewish provinces.

Worse yet, as former Ambassador John Bolton wrote on April 4th in the Jewish World Review, “The Obama administration appears to be conducting an organized campaign of public pressure to stop Israel from attacking Iran's well-developed nuclear-weapons program. So intense is this effort, and so determined is President Obama to succeed, that administration officials are now leaking highly sensitive information about Israel's intentions and capabilities into the news media.”

This is tantamount to giving aid and comfort to Iran--a self-declared enemy of America--as it pursues its quest for nuclear weapons.

On Friday evening Israelis and other Jews around the world will sit down to the Seder, the traditional meal that celebrates the liberation of the Jews from captivity in Egypt. They will do so knowing that much of the world shares a mindless, baseless hatred for them, but they share a collective memory of having survived far longer than those empires and tyrants that tried to destroy them and failed.

They are not called the “chosen people” for nothing.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Anti-Semitism, a Growth Industry in Bad Times

By Alan Caruba

In bad times, anti-Semitism seems to crawl out of the sewers like a repugnant odor. It is not subject to a rational response. It is pure emotion and a very nasty one at that. Lately we got a whiff of it at some of the Occupy protests.

On November 3rd, the Anti-Defamation League released a nationwide study that found that “anti-Semitic attitudes have risen slightly in America, demonstrating once again that ‘anti-Semitic beliefs continue to hold a vice-grip’ on a small but not insubstantial segment of America.”

“The ADL survey found that 15 percent of Americans—nearly 35 million adults—hold deeply anti-Semitic views, an increase of 3 percent from a similar poll conducted in 2009, and matching the levels of anti-Semitic propensities recorded in the U.S. in 2005 and 2007.” Even so, what passes for anti-Semitism today is not remotely comparable to earlier, pre-World War Two generations.

One of the lesser reported aspects of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been a strong element of anti-Semitism. Little wonder that it has been endorsed by the American Nazi Party and other extreme groups, both Left and Right.

As Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL National Director, noted, “The fact that anti-Semitic attitudes have increased significantly over the past two years is troubling and raises questions about the impact of broader trends in America—financial insecurity, social uncertainty, the decline in civility and the growth of polarization—on attitudes toward Jews.”

For example, 19 percent of those polled answered “probably true” to the statement that “Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street”, an increase from 14 percent in 2009. This indicates that Jewish stereotypes remain strong; particularly claims that Jews control Wall Street and the media.

This reflects events and attitudes in Europe as well. In an article published in the UK newspaper, The Guardian, on November 6, Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch MEP who heads the anti-racism lobby at the European Parliament, was quoted saying that “We are at a crossroads in European history. In five year’s time we will either see an increase in the forces of hatred and division in society, including ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism, or we will be able to fight this horrific tendency.”

Thomas Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the study, said, “As anti-Semitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, Islamaphobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century.”

The difference worth noting is that the Jews of Europe never had any intention of taking over those nations while Muslims have made it clear they want to impose Sharia law.

Kristallnach 1938

November 9-10 is the anniversary of Kristallnach in 1938 (the Night of Broken Glass) in which Jews and their synagogues suffered violent attacks throughout Germany, the recently annexed Sudetanland, in Hanover, and the free city of Danzig. It was the beginning of what would evolve into the Holocaust, the deliberate extermination of Europe’s Jews.

Some Jews, in response to Europe’s entrenched anti-Semitism, joined the Zionist movement, beginning in the 1890s to create a Jewish homeland in Israel, moving there before the cataclysm of the Holocaust. At the time it was a protectorate of the British. Post-World War Two Holocaust survivors moved there and, in 1948 Israel declared its sovereignty. Thereafter, many Jews fled Middle Eastern nations for the sanctuary Israel provided and were later joined by Russian Jews fleeing the Soviet Union.

These days, the Holocaust-deniers in Iran openly boast of their intent to destroy Israel (and America) with the nuclear weapons they are developing.

The ADL report’s findings are unpleasant, but hardly surprising. Anti-Semitism in America is a phenomenon of the fringes of political movements of the Far Right (neo-Nazis) and Far Left (Communists).

In these times, however, Israel has no greater support than among American conservatives and evangelicals; Jews have no better friends.

The American historian and scholar, Thomas Cahill, said, "The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside—our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact—new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice—are the gifts of the Jews.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Epicenter of Anti-Semitism

By Alan Caruba

Anti-Semitism has a very long history.

In June, Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak, a Jewish historian, posted a section of her forthcoming book, noting that “The Roman Empire committed a genocide of the Jewish people under its occupation (63 BCE – 324 CE) of the land of Israel. From about 3,000,000 Jews in the first century CE (Common Era), about 200,000 survived until the 7th century, most of them killed or enslaved.”

How does this differ from the Arab agenda that has existed since the day that the modern state of Israel was resurrected and was immediately attacked by five Arab nations in 1948?

Islam’s exponents in Hamas and Hezbollah have always made it clear that the purpose of their existence is the destruction of Israel and both are instruments of Iran’s expressed intention to “wipe Israel from the map.”

The United Nations, despite its role in the recognition of Israel, is the epicenter of modern anti-Semitism and a facilitator of Jew-hatred.

It has provided a shameless platform for every virulent call for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. If for no other reason, the UN has no right to exist. The United States should not be a participant or party to this obscenity.

The UN’s role in the furtherance of global anti-Semitism is so manifest it is impossible to ignore. Its sponsorship of the Durban conferences, allegedly to oppose racism, has fostered the most egregious anti-Semitism. In September 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the conference and repeated every tired lie about Judaism and Jews. Out of 192 UN members, only eleven got up and left. The United States and Israel had chosen not to attend.

In September 2010 Ahmadinejad used his UN invitation to New York to claim that that “segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the (9/11) attack” on behalf of “the Zionist regime”; only seven nations including the U.S. departed the General Assembly.

Simply not attending these events without a strong, vocal denunciation is a weak response.

The “tilt” of the Obama administration against Israel has only encouraged Arab states. In the two and a half years Obama has been in office, he has expressed support for a mosque within sight of Ground Zero, has openly insulted the Israeli Prime Minister on his first trip to Washington, and backed a UN investigation into the Turkish flotilla to Gaza, among other overt acts.

Most recently, the UN leadership endorsed the Iranian-sponsored “World Without Terrorism” conference on June 25-26. It was a confab attended by some of the leading actors when it comes to terrorism including Sudan and Pakistan, both of which were hosts to the late Osama bin Laden. By far the leading facilitator for terrorism is, of course, Iran. This Alice-in-Wonderland approach to the truth is typical of Arab and Persian Islamic deception and incitement.

In June, the UN General Assembly elected Iran as one of its vice presidents and Qatar as its president. Each will begin a year-long term in September. Durban III is scheduled for September 22, 2011.

The Palestinians will push for recognition as a nation-state in the General Assembly where the U.S. has no veto. Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, noted that “General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, and that body has no authority to recognize states, although its actions can be politically powerful, as the 1975 ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution demonstrated.”

Bolton is urging Congress to make it clear that any resolution to recognize Palestinian statehood will result in a cutoff of funds to the UN, but not to separate agencies such as the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and others.

From the days of ancient Rome, to the last century’s Holocaust, to the present existence of the United Nations, anti-Semitism remains an evil component in the affairs of the world

© Alan Caruba, 2011

How Are the Jews Doing?

By Alan Caruba

Wondering how the world’s Jews are doing may seem a trivial question, but I have long thought of Jews as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When events turn nasty in the world, it is the Jews who are most often its first victims.

If there is a rise in anti-Semitism worldwide it is, frankly, hard to detect from the constant, endless background noise from those who hate Jews full-time and would be utterly bereft of any purpose in life if there were no Jews.

Sadly, Christians in the Middle East are suffering attacks that have long been familiar to Jews throughout history and, these days, the Israelis. There is no room for live-and-let-live in that region of the world where the two Islamic sects, Sunni and Shia, do not hesitate to kill one another.

When one considers that the Iranian mullahs, desperately trying to construct their own nuclear weapons, have vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the map, inquiring as to the Jews’ welfare in general and Israelis in particular is not a trivial question. A nuclear attack could easily cascade into a general exchange of such weapons, a goal the mullahs actually want to trigger.

Thomas Cahill, an Irish author, said, "The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside - our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews."

So, perhaps, in a way, we are all Jews.

In October 2010, my eye was caught by a speech by the press magnate, Rupert Murdoch, to the annual banquet of the Anti-Defamation League in New York. “We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews,” said Murdock.

This may be difficult for most Americans to comprehend because perhaps no where else in the world, other than Israel, have Jews not only prospered, but found a level of acceptance that is truly unique. In Israel, being a Jew is the ultimate definition of normality.

Murdoch, however, said that “conventional” anti-Semitism has largely failed, citing the wars against Israel since its founding in 1948. Now, said Murdock, Jews are the target of a “soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it.”

This is going to be particularly evident when “Durban III”, a United Nations conference, takes place in September.

Originally called the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance” the UN conference name was shortened to the “World Conference Against Racism.” Suffice to say, as with most things involving the UN, the conferences have been the exact opposite of their announced purpose.

The previous Durban conference in Geneva caused European delegates to walk out when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, a keynote speaker, launched into a tirade against Israel and Jews. The Conference is recognized worldwide as a cesspool of anti-Semitism. In both conferences the hatred was directed against America as well as Israel.

Durban III will be held in New York!

It will be instructive to see if the U.S. government will send delegates to this hate fest or will officially and outspokenly protest and reject its message.

As Murdoch noted in October, there is a “curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran—a nation that makes no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction—pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.”

Murdoch said that anti-Semitism has found “a disturbing new home…in polite society, especially in Europe” and expressed concern that America was “distancing herself from the Jewish state.” He added that “the most virulent strains of anti-Semitism “come from the left”, often dressed up “as legitimate disagreement with Israel.”

He warned that Obama administration policies, generally called an outreach to the Muslim world, “Far from making peace more possible…are making hostilities more certain.”

The Iranian mullahs and their Syrian puppet have been supplying an enormous stash of rockets to Hezbollah, the Iranian's Palestinian entity in Lebanon, just as they fund and direct Hamas in Gaza. 2011 may well be a repeat of the 2006 hostilities and Israel will surely not repeat the mistakes that prolonged the last conflict.

So 2011 is yet another year in which to ask how are the Jews doing around the world.

The U.S. and its allies have been militarily engaging virulent Islamists since 9/11, but Islamist attacks predate that event by many years. The Islamist threat has spread to Europe and England, and remains active against America.

The Holocaust is a symbol and a warning of what happens when Jews or any other group is targeted for extermination. Death to America is chanted daily by some. Afterward, “genocide” entered the lexicon as the practice infected parts of Asia and Africa.

The Jews remain the most useful barometer to determine the advance or retreat of evil in the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

America's Bad Karma

By Alan Caruba

When times turn ugly and people begin to worry about the future they begin to look for some group on which to pin the blame.

Fears manifest themselves as prejudices and this accounts, I think, of the recent flare up over Shirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture employee who was misidentified as a racist, treated shabbily by the White House and, astonishingly, by the NAACP as well before being swiftly exonerated.

Political pundits are saying that the one thing the first black President least wants to deal with are any charges of racism in his administration and that is entirely understandable. What is not understandable is the pass the Department of Justice gave some New Black Panthers who were clearly trying to intimidate voters at a polling place in Philadelphia.

Racism in America goes way back in our history. After visiting America around the same time, 1831-32, as Alexis de Tocqueville, the French economist, Michel Chevalier, noted that “An American of the North or South, whether rich or poor, ignorant or learned, avoids contact with blacks as if they carried the plague. Free or slave, well dressed or badly, the black, or man of color, is always a pariah.”

When a group of twenty-three Jews of Dutch ancestry arrived in New Amsterdam in September of 1654, its Governor Peter Stuyvesant did not want them to put down roots in what would later become New York, but the officers of the Dutch West India Company thought otherwise and overruled him.

If America was a hell on Earth for blacks taken into slavery, for Jews America was literally the closest thing to paradise they could imagine. It wasn’t that prejudice didn’t exist. It was that America provided opportunity and upward mobility in ways the Old World did not. To an extraordinary extent, they prospered and they gave back to America with their talents, their intellect, and their wealth.

Jews are closely identified with Hollywood, but some ugly things have been occurring there of late. There was the latest anti-Semitic outburst attributed to actor Mel Gibson whose previous 2005 arrest for DUI revealed a deeply felt hatred of Jews.

This was followed by a July 25 report on NewsBusters.org concerning an interview by director, Oliver Stone, with the London Sunday Times in which he railed against the “powerful lobby” of Jews in America. Stone’s upcoming Showtime documentary series, the “Secret History of America”, reportedly puts Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.”

How one concludes that either of these two monsters can be justified or excused of their crimes against humanity in any fashion defies the imagination and is deeply offensive. Stone, like so many Hollywood liberals is particularly fond of dictators of every description. Nothing good can come of his re-writing history to suggest that the mastermind of the Nazi Holocaust was simply a tool of German, British, and American “industrialists.”

Stone who has associated himself with Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s dictator, Hugo Chavez, has apparently never met a despot with whom he could not break bread.

Hitler used anti-Semitism to stir the passions of Germans that were experiencing economic troubles in the 1930s. It’s a textbook tactic of all dictators in all times. Let’s not repeat it here or fail to protest it. Celebrities like Gibson and Stone should be shunned.

These and other incidents must especially be guarded against and condemned in times when the search for a scapegoat is too often the easy answer as opposed to understanding the actual dynamics of the nation’s economic troubles.

Bigotry is quintessentially un-America.

In 1790 President George Washington wrote to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, saying, “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy; a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

We shall never be wholly free of the bigots among us, nor of any feelings we may have in our own hearts, but we can never permit ourselves or others to indulge in bigotry without considering the often terrible lessons of history.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Jews of Venezuela

By Alan Caruba

A few days ago a friend linked me to a video about the Jews of Venezuela which I posted on my blog because, as a student of history, I know that whatever first happens to Jews anywhere eventually happens in a similar fashion to people everywhere. They lose their freedom and then they lose their lives.

Then, the same day, I received an email which said, “If you’ve never read ‘The Protocols of The Elders of Zion’, find it attached along with a current article that connects these protocols with what is happening today. The sooner we learn who our real enemy is, the sooner we can successfully fight battles.” It was signed, “Blessings, Loretta.”

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic screed cooked up by the state police under the Russian Czar, Nicholas II. One of the first things the Bolsheviks did was assassinate him. Life in the Soviet Union did not improve for its Jews. When the opportunity arose many of them immigrated to Israel.

Despite the fact that it is an ugly piece of propaganda the Protocols remain popular, particularly in translated editions throughout the Middle East. The sole purpose is to further the gross libel that Jews secretly control the banks, the media, and the world

This is so absurd it defies logic. The worldwide Jewish population is 13.3 million. Jewish population growth worldwide is close to zero percent. Some six million live in Israel and another six million in the United States. After Hugo Chavez took control of Venezuela, many among its small Jewish population fled.

If American Jews are so smart, why did they vote in large numbers for Barack Obama in the last election? Throughout his formative years, Obama hung out with some of the worst anti-Semites in Chicago that included Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Not since Jimmy Carter has the United States had a more anti-Semitic president. Not surprisingly it was ex-President Carter who helped Chavez gain control by certifying election results that were widely regarded as rigged.

In Venezuela, synagogues in Caracas, private Jewish schools, and other identifiable Jewish community centers have been vandalized and then covered with graffiti saying, “Jews get out” and similar statements; all of which remind those with any historical recall of Nazi Germany.

It’s an old game called scapegoating as Chavez tries to distract Venezuela’s population from his gangster regime.

Anti-Semitism as government policy is a threat not just to Venezuelan Jews, but has global ramifications, not the least of which is Iran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Israel has twice destroyed nuclear facilities, in Iraq and in Syria. Israel must attack Iran’s facilities. This may occur while the most anti-Semitic American administration in the modern era has demonstrated its antipathy to Israel. It is a dramatic policy break with all previous U.S. administrations dating back to Truman’s.

I have often written that the Jews are the world’s canary in the global coal mine. What happens to them always precedes what will happen on a larger scale to others. For now, though, Venezuela’s Jewish population needs to find sanctuary elsewhere.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Jew Hatred, Fanaticism, and True Believers

By Alan Caruba

On Friday, September 4, I wrote about new efforts by “gun-grabbers” trying to find ways around the Second Amendment. At one point in the commentary I referred to the way the Nazis banned gun ownership and how this contributed to the way German Jews and others were rounded up and systematically murdered in concentration and death camps.

That was quite enough to unhinge some who read the piece and proceeded to email me to dispute the six million figure of Jewish victims that included Jews from all the conquered nations in Europe; one that is commonly agreed upon and cited when mentioning the Holocaust.

Warning: Profane language to follow:

“Hey, Alan, YOU wouldn’t know WHAT it takes to serve this country, you ill-read, cocksucker, so go fuck yourself. Non servium (sic) faggots like you make me sick! I really do suspect you of being a Zionist kike piece of shit, what with your baseless, factless, kike propaganda. Matter of fact, I am going to make you a prime candidate for my wrath and let everyone know what a lying, resourceless cocksucker you are.”

He concluded saying, “if the holocaust actually happened the way the jews say it did, we would be CELEBRATING it instead of DENYING it!”

I will spare you the rest of this rant, but the writer had identified himself as “a marine” in a prior email and I had replied that he was a disgrace to the uniform. For the record, I served in the U.S. Army, so I know what it means to wear my nation’s uniform. If he was or is a Marine, he is a prime candidate for what we used to call a “Section 8” discharge for being a mental case.

It happened that I was re-reading Eric Hoffer’s classic book, “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements” when the email arrived. If I were to construct a list of books that everyone should read, Hoffer’s would be among them. It is available in softcover from Harper & Row, Perennial Library these days. It was first published in 1951.

“All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.”

The fervor that Barack Obama stirred in the 2008 campaign was a tad frightening to those of us familiar with a long line of tyrants from the last century and this one. It’s the reason a lot of parents reacted instinctively to the prospect of his addressing the nation’s school children, complete with Department of Education teacher instructions on how to use this event. This wasn’t Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush issuing greetings at the start of the school year. This reeked of indoctrination.

Hoffer wrote, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he though the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: ‘No…We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.’”

Jews have served this purpose for both Christianity and Islam. They became a convenient and tangible representation of “the enemy” and they retain this status to this day, despite the horror of the Holocaust.

Hoffer wrote at a time when Communism was the predominant mass movement of the age, but he also made frequent mention of Islam in ways that one would call prescient today. “The practice of terror serves the true believer not only to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith.”

The bile and hatred spewed by the writer of the email confirms what Hoffer wrote more than a half-century ago. “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause, but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.”

Why do I suspect my email correspondent is rushing to his computer this very moment to let loose yet another senseless diatribe about the Jews?

Editor’s Note: A visit to the website of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (http://www.jpfo.org) includes a chart documenting what happens when populations are denied the right to own weapons. Historically, they died in the millions.

The Lone Gunman

By Alan Caruba

As the details about James W. von Brunn, the alleged killer of Holocaust Museum security guard, Stephen T. Jones, make their way through the media, we are sure to be told that he was “mentally ill” or at least perceived to be by those who knew him.

A deep hatred of people because of their race or religion is not so much an illness as a choice. It is a choice because it gives purpose to the life of the person doing the hating. It “explains” everything he wants to know about a very complex and often frightening world.

No doubt von Brunn, like so many others, “figured out” that the Jews were to blame for everything wrong in his life and in the world. Why stop there? He also hated Afro-Americans and, one presumes, all people of color. And, largely unreported, he hated Christians. While instantly identified in the media as an instrument of the Far Right, von Brunn was, in fact, a creature of the Far Left.

Reporting on FrontPageMag.com, Ben Johnson wrote that, “A review of his lengthy associations reveals Von Brunn hardly fits the stereotype of a Religious Right, GOP precinct captain. He denounced the Christian faith as a dastardly Jewish conspiracy, a “HOAX” invented by the Apostle Paul to “DESTROY ROMAN CULTURE” from within by undermining its pagan virility. (All screaming capitalization and grammatical errors in this piece appear in the original.) Like others on the racist fringe, the shooter proclaimed clearly: ‘SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West.’” Read the article at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35192

So now von Brunn has entered the annals of the many “lone gunmen” who have sought to change history by acting out their fantasies, their hatreds, their grandiose view that, if they just kill the object of their hatred, they will transform history.

Some, in fact, do. The assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and John F. Kennedy no doubt sent the nation off in directions no one could have anticipated. In the 1960s assassins struck down Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan came within inches of being another assassination victim, but was spared. His would-be killer was, indeed, mentally ill.

I was not surprised that the murder scene was the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. There, where the stories, the memories of millions of innocent people are enshrined and where their suffering and death speak to us from the last century, the museum was a magnet for anyone so consumed with anti-Semitism that one suspects von Brunn wanted to martyr himself for one last chance to act upon his hatred.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum stands as testimony that millions of European Jews did die in Nazi concentration camps. The famed German efficiency was devoted to mass murder of the innocent and let it be said that the anti-Semitism that fueled the Nazi death camps exists still today in Germany, throughout Europe, and in Russia.

It exists in South America in places like Venezuela where the break-in of a Caracas synagogue led solely to the stealing of a computer disk with the names and addresses of that nation’s Jewish families. Time for them to leave, to flee for their lives.

The entire Middle East roils with anti-Semitism. Islam burns with it and that is why no peace was or ever will be negotiated with the state of Israel. The Muslims dare not admit that Jews have a right to their ancient homeland, let alone to live. They speak of Jews as monkeys, dogs and pigs. This is commonplace throughout the Middle East where Islam is the religion of citizen and state. They hold the same harsh views of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. Islam regards them all as infidels, unbelievers.

We would do well to remind ourselves that the very word “assassin” refers back to Muslim fanatics, active in Persia and Syria from about 1090 to 1272, who were dedicated to the killing of Crusaders.

The Jews are civilization’s canary in the coal mine. When they begin to die from causes other than natural death, it is a signal that something evil is loose in the world and, if history is our guide, it signals that countless thousands who are not Jews will die as well.

The Obama administration has let the world know it intends to turn away from our nation’s historic and spiritual relationship with Israel. His former pastor of two decades, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, just complained that “them Jews” around him would not let him talk with his famed former parishioner.

If things go terribly wrong in America, I am sure that, along with Barack Obama, the blame will fall or be shifted to “them Jews” in his administration.

The lone gunman has done his job though he has inadvertently focused our attention on the evil from which we want to avert our eyes. We do so at our peril.

Shootout at DC Holocaust Museum

By Alan Caruba

Our prayers are with the family of the slain security guard killed today at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Anti-Semitism killed six million of Europe's Jews in the last century. The same Nazi criminals killed five million Christians and others designated "enemies of the state."

Anti-Semitism is the refuge of despotism. Its victims cry out from their graves for justice still today and must be heard because they speak for all humanity.

Never forget!

Islamic Anti-Semitism is a Very Old Story

By Alan Caruba

There is, in fact, nothing new in the recent arrest of four American-born Muslims seeking to kill Jews in their houses of worship, two synagogues in New York City.

The killing of Jews goes back to the early years of Islam when the Jews of the Qurayzah tribe, one of a few that had settled in Arabia, refused to accept Mohammed’s claim to be the prophet of a new religion called Islam.

By that time, after Islam was initiated in 622 A.D., Judaism had been around over two thousand years and the story of their own prophets had become a history that the emerging religion of Christianity incorporated as well, along with its own saints and martyrs

In true seventh century fashion, Mohammed ordered that all seven hundred men of the Jewish tribe be put to death and their women and children sold as slaves. (Hadith Book 019, Number 4364) Killing Jews entered the Koran and Islamic lore as a wholly
acceptable thing to do. Though Jews have lived in Arab nations for centuries, they have done so always at the sufferance of the ruling powers and with no hope of protection.

When Israel announced its founding in 1948, thousands of Jews throughout the Middle East were forced to flee to the new nation for their lives. In the years leading up to its independence, attacks on Jewish settlers were commonplace.

In America, Jews have been the victims of attacks by jihadists, radical Islamists, going back to the late 1970s. In March 1977 Hanafi Muslims seized three buildings in Washington, D.C., including the headquarters of the B’nai B’rith. They held hostages for 39 hours. There was one death as a result.

In November 1990, El Sayyid Nosair assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in a New York hotel. In March 1994, Rashid Baz, a Palestinian immigrant, opened fire on a van carrying orthodox Jewish boys crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one of them.

In 1997, another Palestinian, Ali Hasan Abu Kamal, shot at seven tourists visiting the top of the Empire State building, killing one and wounding another. His suicide note said that U.S. was using Israel against the Palestinians.

The 9/11 Islamic terrorists killed not only Jews in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but co-religionists and, of course, many Christians. With the exception of the Muslims they killed, the others were all infidels, unbelievers, and their death is prescribed in the Koran. “When ye encounter the infidels,” Mohammed said, “strike off their heads till ye have made a great slaughter of them.”

Muslims deny the truth of both Jewish and Christian doctrines, nor are they apparently reluctant to kill other Muslims when they gather for prayer in their mosques.

There are other incidents, but they all represent the hatred many Muslims feel toward Jews even if they have never met one. More than sixty years of attacks on Israel tells you everything you need to know about how Middle Eastern Muslims feel about Jews. The entire region is suffused in anti-Semitism, they breathe it like the air.

So the news of the arrests of four criminals, all of whom had converted to Islam while in prison, will now be added to the scoreboard that all American Jews carry around in the back of their mind.

It is ironic that Barack Hussein Obama garnered so much of the Jewish vote to become President. This is a man who wants to close down “Gitmo” and put its terrorist detainees in American prisons where they presumably will be able to infect other prisoners with the same cancerous hatred that motivated the thwarted wannabe jihadists.

At this point, not only will no state will accept the Guantanamo detainees, but no other nation wants them either. One out of seven of those released to date has returned to the occupation of Islamic terrorist.

This latest batch of holy warriors for Islam was not taken on the field of battle in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were born here.

A word to the wise for all those who think America is to blame for terrorist acts; they are authorized by the Koran.

A tip of the hat to Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum for his catalog of attacks on American Jews in recent times.

The UN's Durban II Hate-Fest

By Alan Caruba

On Monday, April 20, the United Nations will convene Durban II, a conference which purports to encourage efforts to end the scourge of racism that has driven much of the history of mankind.

Like everything that emanates from that disgusting international organization, it has no intention of living up to its Declaration on Human Rights. If it did, it is unlikely that Iran’s Mamoud Ahmadinejad would receive a warm welcome, nor that Iran would have been the vice-chair of the preparatory committee led by Libya’s representative.

When Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN General Assembly last September, he said: “The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small, but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”

For Ahmadinejad, all of the Arab nations of the Middle East, and a large number of European nations, everything wrong with the world is conveniently explained by blaming the Jews. Durban I, held in South Africa, was such a hate-fest of anti-Semitism that the U.S. representatives withdrew and refused to participate.

Under the Obama administration, some of our diplomats tentatively attended planning sessions of Durban II despite knowing that it was going to be a repeat of Durban I. In doing so they signaled a degree of legitimacy for this most vile conclave. The Obama administration has decided to renew its membership in the UN Human Rights Council, something the Bush administration refused to do.

The previous UN Human Rights Commission was so vile that it had to be “reformed” into the present Council, but its membership includes the African and Asian groups, neither of which is famous for anything other than repression, corruption, and racism.

Member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference hold a majority in each of these groups, giving it the balance of power. Neither the U.S. vote, nor that of its “Western European and Others” group play any role in ameliorating the abject racism of the Council.

Durban II intends to criminalize any “defamation of Islam” based on a Pakistani proposal that only mentions Islam by name and ignores the other religions of the world such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and, of course, Judaism.

Islam regards all other faiths as “infidels” or unbelievers and the Koran explicitly says they should be subjugated and that their adherents can be killed, especially if they are Jews. It is a crime in Islamic nations to speak ill of Islam and the punishment is death. Converting to another religion will get you killed as well.

In a statement to the April 17 meeting of the preparatory committee held in Geneva, Switzerland, Anne Bayefsky of Eye on the UN, said, “The eyes of millions of victims of racism, xenophobia and intolerance are upon YOU, the representatives of states and the United Nations. And instead of hope you have given them despair. Instead of truth you have handed them diplomatic double-talk. Instead of combating anti-Semitism, you have handed them a reason for Jews to fear UN-driven hatemongering on a global scale.”

When it convenes on April 20th, the birth date of Adolph Hitler in 1889, his spirit will dominate the proceedings of Durban II. The good news is that no U.S. diplomats will attend. One hopes other nations whose people suffered and died as the result of his genocidal hatred will not attend either.

Durban II is yet another example of the Islamic jihad, its centuries old war on all other faiths. Those that deny its existance will continue to suffer its consequences.

Obama: Reversing Course and Going Nowhere Fast

By Alan Caruba

It is standard procedure in Washington, D.C. for a new administration to reverse course on many of the initiatives of the previous administration, particularly if it represents the other political party. After eight years of the Bush administration, one might reasonably expect the Obama administration to change direction.

The great irony for President Obama is, after two years of proclaiming he was going to pull troops out of Iraq, declaring it a bad war, he inherited an Iraq that peacefully conducted its second national election for someone other than the dictator, Saddam Hussein. Thank you, George W. Bush.

At a recent press conference, the general in charge over there rather bluntly said that he expected U.S. troops to remain for at least two, maybe three, or more years. If history is any indication, after we invade a nation, we tend to stay around for a couple of decades.

So, poor Obama has to do something and that something is to transfer troops from Iraq to the world’s worst place to fight a war, Afghanistan. Ask the Russians. They had 100,000 troops there at one point, suffered 14,000 casualties, and watched their government collapse after they pulled out.

The Obama administration has reversed course in another way that can do nothing but tarnish America’s reputation. It intends to send a U.S. delegation to the upcoming United Nations Durban Review Conference in April. The last Durban Conference on Racism resulted in the U.S. delegation leaving rather than be a party to the appalling attacks on Israel in particular and Jews in general.

The first Durban conference managed to ignore problems in Sudan’s Darfur section or any of the many other incidences of racial and religious bigotry in the world. It was an Islamic wet dream.

The obscenity called the United Nations is working toward a second such conference. Recently a meeting was held in London attended by more than 35 countries to discuss what to do about the platform for Islamic hatred of everything and everyone who is not Islamic, but mostly about hating Jews.

The London meeting issued a declaration saying that the nations in attendance “must not be witness or party to another gathering like Durban in 2001.” The U.K. Foreign Office sponsored the meeting because there is the very real possibility that Durban II will try to impose restrictions on freedom of speech involving any criticism of Islam.

The Bush administration deliberately did not participate in the preparations for Durban II.
To date, only Canada and Israel have formally announced that they will not participate. The United States should, if it had a shred of dignity and respect for its most fundamental creeds, join these two nations, but no, it is sending a delegation.

The conference preparations have been going on since 2006. There is nothing the U.S. delegation can accomplish at the last moment except to lend legitimacy to the process and weaken the resolve of some Western nations to avoid attending.

Gregg Rickman, formerly with the Bush administration as its special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, denounced the Obama decision. “How can the United States possibly be a part of this insanity?” he asked. “If we join this charade, we extend this dishonor through our presence, sullying ourselves in the process.”

How, indeed? Given that this President has made a series of moves to demonstrate his solidarity with Palestinians—at least the farcical Fatah Party—and chose Al-Arabia as the first news organization to grant an interview, a pattern has emerged that suggests a strong tilt toward Islamic interests.

I am sure this must have pleased Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya that chairs Durban II and even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran that serves as vice chair. Not pillars of tolerance, you say?

So far Barack Hussein Obama’s administration is reversing course and going nowhere fast; at least nowhere some 35 other nations want to go.

Obama and the Jewish Vote

By Alan Caruba

Assuming that Sen. Obama is the Democrat nominee, it is going to be very interesting to watch the Jewish vote in the forthcoming national elections.

As Richard Baehr noted recently in a commentary on American Thinker.com, it “has got Jewish Democrat activists worried” and well it should. The notion of a Jew—any Jew—voting for someone named Barack Hussein Obama approaches the realm of fantasy.

The notion that all American Jews are Zionists is a fantasy as well. Whether significantly or merely nominally committed to the survival of Israel, it is well known in the U.S. Jewish community that it is Republicans who are the strongest support for Israel while many Democrats tilt, like Jimmy Carter, toward sympathy and even support for the Palestinians.

Jews know that it is the large evangelical community, a mainstay of the Republican Party that is Israel’s most staunch supporters, alongside of the Jewish community. While the economy, illegal immigration, and Iraq are likely to be the major issues of the 2008 elections, the theological alignment of both evangelical Christians and Jews should not be discounted. They share some important values.

American Jews have been polled and surveyed for a long time. Their political history is well known. I have many friends who ask, “Why are Jews so liberal?” A look at the way Jews have voted reveals that, “The Democrats’ 50 point win over Bush with Kerry is now but a 29 point lead for Obama over McCain (61-23 with 7% undecided.). Baehr points out that a state like Florida with approximately 400,000 Jewish voters in presidential election years represents a net shift of about 85,000 voters.

Recall now, the thin, but decisive margin that gave Bush his first-time victory. These days, McCain is ahead in virtually every poll in Florida.

Obama’s problem is compounded by his statements that he would meet with someone like Mamoud Amadinejad, the president of Iran, a nation that threatens the very existence of Israel. His view that America must meet with its enemies is not borne out by history that has many examples of the failure of such policies, though the long, patient negotiations with the former Soviet Union can be cited in its favor. The open hatred of Israel throughout the Middle East and elsewhere suggests this is a failed approach in these times.

His affiliation with a Chicago church led by a pastor whose views on Jews are not likely to be friendly is another concern of the Jewish community. That pastor, too, is a longtime admirer and friend of Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Black Muslim movement, a fact that does not go unnoticed in the Jewish community.

Jews and others will take note that Obama was sent initially to an Indonesian madrassa in his formative years and even when attending a Catholic school in Jakarta, he was identified as a Muslim. In a careful examination of Obama’s early years, Daniel Pipes, a Mideast scholar, cited not just his birth as a Muslim, but the fact that he and his family were perceived and understood to be Muslims. Pipes noted, “But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.”

The fact that Sen. McCain has a long record of support for the U.S.-Israeli relationship, plus his greater experience, will also play a large role in the way the American Jewish community will vote in November. At least nine key states with significant Jewish populations will determine the outcome of the 2008 elections.

Jews have a long history of identifying with American ideals. They have been in America ever since their arrival in New Amsterdam and their right to settle here was supported by the Dutch West India Company. From Washington to Lincoln, they found support in a nation that is based in part on the separation of church and state. Until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jews voted overwhelmingly Republican. Their long association with progressive ideas led to the change in their affiliation to the Democrat Party.

Today, however, they are no longer the guaranteed 90% Democrat vote. It is closer to 75% to 60% depending on the candidate. Their voting clout, too, is in decline as can be seen in states such as New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, and California. They constitute around 4% of voters.

The rise of anti-Semitism around the world will be on their minds in November and events in the Middle East will play a role in how they vote. When they step into the voting booth, most will hesitate to vote for Barack Hussein Obama no matter what their party affiliation may be.

Kristallnacht

By Alan Caruba

An interesting thing happened in Prague last November. There was, so far as I can determine, virtually no news of the event except in a few newspapers that might be expected to cover it.

The place was Prague, but what precipitated the event had occurred in 1938 in Nazi Germany and had come to be called “Kristallnacht”, the night of broken glass when synagogues and other places associated with Jews were attacked and destroyed.

By the time it ended, Nazi stormtroopers had killed 91 Jews and 30,000 others had been rounded up and sent to concentration camps. It marked the beginning of what was to be known as “the final solution”, the deliberate murder of millions of European Jews that has since been called the Holocaust.

In Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, the word went out that several hundred neo-Nazis were preparing to march on the city’s Jewish quarter on the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

They found themselves confronted by thousands of Czechs who filled the streets that Sabbath Saturday to show their solidarity with their nation’s Jews. Masses of non-Jews showed up wearing yellow Stars of David inscribed with the word “Jude”, the same symbol the Nazis had required Jews to wear.

There were some bloody street fights, but the 1,400 police who had been mobilized, along with the sheer numbers of the anti-Nazi protesters were sufficient to maintain the peace. It was the first time in recent memory that residents of a former Eastern bloc capital had taken to the streets to protest anti-Semitism.

Only about 1,500 Jews live in Prague, but an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 protesters were on hand for the day’s events that included prayer, musical performances, and presentations by Holocaust survivors that were projected on a large outdoor screen.

While there are probably less than 1,000 active neo-Nazis in the Czech Republic, there are others throughout Europe and anti-Semitism, though muted, remains a part of European culture.

Prague Mayor, Pavel Bern, addressed thousands during a ceremony sponsored by the Jewish Liberal Union. “We need to cultivate the national memory to avoid what happened in the past.” The Nazis murdered 80,000 of Czechoslovakia’s 120,000 Jews during World War II.

The Czechs remembered. They came together to protest the evil of anti-Semitism, but we all have to remember and we all have to protest whenever some group, any group, is singled out from the family of man for murder.

When the Iranian leaders say the Holocaust is a myth, the truth cries out from six million graves. We must not be silent. When they threaten tiny Israel with nuclear death, we must not be silent. We must say to ourselves, “Never again.”

We must all become Jews in the face of evil. Silence is the ally of those who would perpetrate such horrors.