An Open Letter to David Harris of the American Jewish Committee
David Harris, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee
Dear David:
Re: 47% of American Jews Would OPPOSE Saving Israel!!!!
THE TRAGIC PREDICTABILITY OF THE JEWISH VOTE
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive CommentaryBy Don Feder, November 17, 2008
Doubtless you have seen this Don Feder piece that contains the results from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) 2008 Survey of American Jewish Opinion. Putting aside Feder’s conservative leanings, you have to admit that this AJC survey finding is jarring, if not an embarrassment to American Jews, Israel supporters and Zionists, including many Christians. Could it be that this result reflects the virtual loss of the Zionist ethos not only here in America, but also in Israel? How else could you explain the current Olmert ‘caretaker” government doing little to protect Israeli citizens living in Western Negev towns like Sderot and the Southern city of Ashdod being hit with daily barrages of Kassem and Grad rockets launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The “Hudna” or ‘regrouping’ in Arabic is tantamount to a War on Jews by Islamic terror groups. Israel needs to strike back, as provocation is long past and hundreds of thousands are now threatened with death from the skies. This goes on while the government of Israel blithely releases 250 Palestinian Arab prisoners and at the urging of the UN and US State Department delivers ‘humanitarian aid’ to those ‘huddled masses’ in Gaza.
There is a canard in political science about the voting pattern of American Jews: ‘they earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.’ Blinded by the liberal ‘light’ American Jews have abandoned their Jewish and Zionist roots in favor of politically correct multicultralism-the disease that created Eurabia and Londonistan. As a former member of the boards of AJC chapters, I witnessed some of that. However, I also witnessed the courageous efforts by you and some of your key staff to stifle reversion to the ancestral genes of the AJC-’anti-Zionism’. This is not to ’shoot the messenger’, hardly, but to commend you for telling the ‘emet’- the truth about the dismal state of the American Jewish mindset. Unfortunately, that mindset is like that of German Jews in the early 1930’s who eschewed Herr Hitler and his Nazi murderers of the Six Million, because ‘he wouldn’t amount to much.’ Our Christian allies in America and the EU are astounded and flummoxed that American Jews would not save their Israeli brethren in the event of an attack-such as the ones going on in Gaza, daily. If Jews don’t care, then why should our allies? When Jews lose their ‘neshumeh” (soul) then is all lost? That issue needs an urgent airing if American Jews and Israel are to survive in the 21st Century.
Jerry Gordon
What does Mr. Gordon expect Mr. Harris to do with the facts? Lead a jewish revival movement?
These Jews have cut themselves off from their own roots. Not the first time in history. Tragedy awaits.
Comment by Shy Guy — November 18, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
Thanks, Shy Guy, for your comment.
I’m glad that there was no attempt to blame Americans or Christians for the problem. We have our own problems, of course — in the case of Americans AND Christians, we have largely forgotten our roots. There is a conscious effort afoot to CAUSE both Jews and non-Jews to forget who they are and where they came from, and to re-fill the empty minds with a philosophy that disregards God, history, cause-and-effect, absolute right and wrong, and every other aspect of reality. Of course, reality itself wars against such philosophies and they ultimately fail (as did the Third Reich). Before they do, though, catastrophes can happen.
There are things about Jewish “roots” that I would just as soon forget; such as the propensity of Jews to hate non-Jews, and the gentile response. Religious Jews tend to be disrespectful and disdainful of non-Jews, while their non-religious brethren are bending over backwards to gain acceptance from the same. Both types of Jew are trying to address the same problem. The efforts of the irreligious are futile, because God doesn’t WANT the Jews to become acceptable to the ungodly. At the same time, the religious labor in vain; because God made them to be a light to the gentiles, and their brusqueness and snobbishness makes them beacons of darkness: God Himself is at war with both parties, because both parties are warring against His purpose.
Is there a way out of this situation? Obviously, the irreligious Jews need to return to Torah, and stop trying to conform themselves to the world (In fact they have exceeded this: They try to teach the gentiles how to be ungodly and to DISobey Torah). But if in returning to Torah they just become priggish, ungodly snobs, they become a desecration of God’s name. It is up to the religious, who claim to know Torah, to teach Torah correctly with their LIVES. If they aren’t genuinely concerned with propagating Torah among non-Jews, they are fighting against the light.
There is only one group propagating Torah among the gentiles, and it is not the Jews. Of course, the Jews complain that those propagators are not doing a good job of it: They are presenting flawed goods, they say. The reason the goods are flawed, of course, is that it is ignorant gentiles doing the propagating instead of Jews. Jews need to preach THEIR gospel; but I warn you, as you already know only too well: If you preach to people, you win converts; and then you have to live with them. That is probably the reason religious Jews do NOT want to win over the heathen — not that they don’t want to be defiled, but because they have to love others AS THEMSELVES. The awful truth of the matter, is that religious Jews don’t even love other religious Jews as themselves, much less non-religious Jews, and much, much less non-Jews.
I’m just an ignorant goy, or course. What do I know? Better you should ask a Jew — How about H. Peskin?
Shalom shalom
Comment by BlandOatmeal — November 18, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
“Then the LORD your God will turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will return and gather you from all the peoples, where the LORD your God has scattered you… And the LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers conquered, and you shall conquer it.” Deuteronomy 30It is a commandment for Jews to live in the Land of Israel. Regardless of the Talmudic prohibition to return here by force, a statement beloved by Satmar and Netorei Karta, there is an explicit commandment to return, conquer and settle this land. Whatever the Talmud imagines, that commandment is perpetual rather than time-bound. Only in the Land of Israel can Jews lead a normal life without calibrating their actions to gentile preferences. Only in our own country we can live as free people – free, that is, to live as we wish. If that sounds strange, ask yourself why every country fought foreign aggressors instead of quietly submitting to their rule.
It is unnatural for a nation to live under foreign dominance, whether we’re talking of Russians ruled by Germans or Jews – by well-wishing Americans. Some of the worst problems we had from well-wishers. Antiochus Epiphanus sought Jewish good by making us equal to his Greek subjects. In the nineteenth century, Russians, Germans, and Austrians wanted Jews good by forcing them to study secular subjects in Jewish and state public schools. Americans think they are doing us good by opening WASP society and its establishments to Jews.
Before the eighteenth century, gentiles allowed us to dwell alone in their countries. Jewish administrative autonomy included religious practice, marriage issues, education, and courts – sometimes even with the power of capital punishment which the rabbis employed regardless of the Sanhedrin’ absence. Christian rulers realized they cannot integrate us into their societies. Secularization prompted forced integration in the Antiochus’ manner. Progressive Jews worked with secular authorities to destroy traditional Jewish communities, and open them to innovations. Today, American Jews enjoy tremendously less religious freedom than in almost any country, Christian and Muslim alike, four centuries ago. New York police actually investigates Jews for cruelty to animals because of the kapparot sacrifice, and animal rights groups want us to revise shehitah slaughter. American religious Jews have no courts, not even jurisdiction on family matters. Secularism tramples Judaism, but we have no right to a Maccabean revolt in the Diaspora.
We need to go home where we at least can deal properly with those who subvert Jewish values.
Comment by yamit82 — November 19, 2008 @ 3:13 am
Jerry’s good points aside, what can be done, that has not yet been tried to make more Jews recognize that their wellbeing and that of Israel are inextricably linked and thus to care about Israel’s vitality, security and thriving viability forever and a day.
My suggestion is to get Rabbis and Jewish leaders talking openly about the issues that weaken the Jewish connection to their identities and their pride in their Jewish heritage and in so doing instill in Jewish youth a desire to have a strong Jewish identity and pride in their Jewish heritage. That can be accomplished by preaching and teaching all Jews, committed and disaffected alike, especially Jewish youth that Jewish identity and pride in being Jewish is relevant to their everyday lives regardless of whether they are Orthodox or a secular Jew.
In all my years that I have advocated this, including suggesting same to Rabbis and leaders, I have yet to hear any Rabbi or Jewish leader preach, teach or speak to Jews in this way.
Comment by Bill Narvey — November 19, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
Narvey here is one for you to consider:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/23/national/main4542317.shtml
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/5376_12.htm
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/5366_75.htm
Comment by yamit82 — November 19, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
US: 37% are anti-Semites
ADL poll finds out that 37% of Americans strongly believe that Jews run the Hollywood with the intent of undermining domestic religious values, or politically correctly undecided on the issue.
Which is true. Jewish liberals are at the forefront of anti-societal activity in America and elsewhere.
The poll reflects falling influence of Jews in Hollywood as Arabs and international corporations take over the major studios: “only” 22% of Americans strongly believe that Jews run the national mass media. Unlike the ADL, we won;t take that for anti-Semitism but a mere statement of fact. The problem is, we the good Jews don’t like those Hollywood Jews either: for anti-Semites they are Jews, but for us they are Jewish anti-Semites.
On other hand, if the ADL takes those 22% of Americans for anti-Semites, then the US situation for Jews is no different from the European one: on the Old Europe, a hotbed of anti-Semitism, it traditionally runs at about 25-30% even in the countries such as Germany, Poland, and France. The European situation historically erupts in major pogroms every few decades.
Refreshingly, the ADL poll shows half the Americans retained common sense: they support moral censorship of mass media, believe the media is unacceptably tolerant to subversive lifestyles and doesn’t share the population’s values. Which is true.
Comment by yamit82 — November 19, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
Welcome to a recreation of 1930s Europe but in the 21st century, USA. Political Correctness, Marxism exists and is spreading like a curse across this land, our children are being “re-educated” with revisionist theories being paraded as facts, our founding fathers are being taught as actually being Muslim due to their Masonic Aprons, and Jews are showing their ignorance just like those Jews in 1930s Europe who thought no one would take Hitler seriously and “Change” can be so good.
Ummm what was the death toll of this “Change?”
Comment by Hinda39 — November 19, 2008 @ 9:49 pm