Horrible: Leftist Jews attack pro-Israel and pro-Trump Jews over Pittsburgh massacre by an anti-Trump anti-Semite
Atlantic columnist Franklin Foer: “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome.”
Following the horrific massacre of eleven Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, liberal commentators have not only blamed President Donald Trump for the climate in which the massacre took place, but also Trump’s Jewish supporters.
One of those commentators was Aaron David Miller, famous for being a Middle East peace processor in the 1980s and 90s.
On Facebook, Amb. Alberto Fernandez characterized Miller’s argument as “certifiably insane.” He added, “excusing the targeting of Jews because of Israel is a staple of anti-semitic Islamic and Far-Left/Neo-Nazi propaganda.”
Miller at least possessed the self-awareness to take the tweet down. Other liberals believe they’re onto something.
Julia Ioffe charged that supporting Trump’s move of the United States embassy to Jerusalem was responsible for the shooting.
And a word to my fellow American Jews: This president makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it.
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) October 27, 2018
Franklin Foer followed in this theme.
Also, the organized shunning of Adelson, Kushner, and other Jewish enablers is a matter of protecting the security of the community.
— Franklin Foer (@FranklinFoer) October 27, 2018
(Ioffe and Foer were referencing arguments they made in longer form articles that were published in The Washington Post and The Atlantic, respectively)
However, Rabbi David Wolpe reacted harshly to Ioffe and Foer in an article published in Tablet Magazine.
First Wolpe responded to Foer, who wrote, “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome.”
Wolpe pushed back:
In other words, more than half of my Shabbat morning congregants, and in some more traditional synagogues, almost all of them, should have the doors barred against their entry. Jews who make minyans, pay shiva calls, underwrite nursing homes and kindergartens—people who make Judaism possible, with their flawed but real human presence, for other people—should be cast out of our midst because of the levers they pull in the privacy of a voting booth. And what, after all, would a Jew who fled from Iran know about anti-Semitism—or protecting the Jewish community?
In response to Ioffe’s assertion, “And a word to my fellow American Jews: This President makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it,” Wolpe wrote:
The calculation here, I suppose, is that people voted for Trump to get an embassy move and their vote proxy murdered other Jews. How careful should one be, should a distinguished reporter be, when accusing others of such enormities, even indirectly? How do people think this message will fall on the ears of those who fled from Iran, to be told that they are in fact guilty in the death of Pittsburgh’s Jews?
Wolpe’s also provided a concrete response to the offensive suggestions of Ioffe and Foer. He presented the case of Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who also survived Saturday morning because he arrived at synagogue late:
He is also a strong supporter of Trump. Frank, Julia: Would you stand before this 80-year-old man, not in a tweet or online piece, but face to face, and tell him he is responsible for the death of his friends, the people with whom he prays each Shabbat? Would you bar him from the shul where he almost died, again, at the hands of Jew haters? Really? And that would make us the righteous ones?
Wolpe did an excellent job at undermining the dishonest arguments of Foer and Ioffe, but there’s also a faulty premise behind their vicious smears: that President Trump is responsible for the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism that led to Saturday’s massacre.
News organizations have, of course, recklessly fed this narrative by quoting statistics from the ADL showing that there’s been a huge spike in anti-Semitic crimes since Trump’s election.
However, the ADL hasn’t exactly been honest in its survey. David Bernstein debunked the ADL’s numbers in Tablet Magazine.
After explaining why some of the ADL’s count was misleading or incorrect, Bernstein pointed out:
Finally, it’s worth noting, that despite showing a 57% increase in incidents overall, from 1,267 to 1,986, the ADL study shows a 47% decrease in physical assaults, from 37 to 19. This is obviously inconsistent with the meme that 2017 saw a surge in violent anti-Semitism. Physical assaults are also the most objective sort of incident to document, which adds to concerns about the robustness of the rest of the data.
Worse this wasn’t just the result of some bad editing, but rather appears to be the intent of the organization’s leader:
ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt distorted the report’s findings as recently as two days ago in the New York Times, asserting that the ADL report found a 57 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017. He added rather misleadingly that this figure includes “physical assaults,” though one assumes he understands that the report actually showed a large decrease in physical assaults.
It’s bad enough when left-wing journalists show that they have no moral bearings. It’s worse when an organization distorts data to justify the vicious smears of those journalists.
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Comments
Trump has not been calling for violence. The Democratic Party has.
Not only calling for it but actually acting on it.
I love God’s chosen people. Their God is my God. Anyone who seeks to harm them is my enemy.
These poor people were murdered. And the Democrats and the media have gleefully used their deaths to try to score cheap political points.
We’re not talking about days later – their Trump attacks started within minutes. They were excited, energetic – what a great day! Innocent people were murdered and we get to falsely blame Trump.
It’s an interesting…and insane…stretch to connect the movement of an embassy to the hate of this killer.
I doubt very much that move made one iota of difference in his “thinking”.
On another note, is “shunning” a real thing in Jewish culture? I would have thought the opposite true…
“On another note, is “shunning” a real thing in Jewish culture? I would have thought the opposite true…”
Yes and no. There is Harem which is sort of the same thing. It’s the complete expulsion of a person from the Jewish community and it is pretty rare. Think of it like Catholic excommunication.
extremely rare in our times.
BUT these JINOs should be.
they practice lib-rule-ism NOT Judaism – think soros.
Yes. I understand that every organization needs to sever itself from people who cease to have any affinity for it.
Some religions, such as the Jehovah’s Witness, have a very developed “shunning” that seems highly counterproductive and mean-spirited. This is short of excommunication.
But the Jewish community never seemed to me to support “shunning” as such. Indeed, one of the things that I think of as Jewish traits is tolerance of unconventional views, while also making strong arguments against them.
Historically it’s been a way of putting social pressure on those who disrupt community life, e.g. by contempt of court, to force them back into compliance.
She didn’t suggest that the embassy move contributed to the shooting; she says supporting Trump for the embassy move comes at the price of overlooking his (purported) role in encouraging an antisemitic atmosphere that produced the shooting.
The thing is, while Trump has some antisemitic supporters, and perhaps bears some responsibility for them, this guy was not one of them.
The synagogue shooting is the latest outrage after centuries and centuries in which murderous hatred of Jews waxes and wanes, yet somehow never seems to depart forever. It’s hardly as if this murderous hatred of Jews was somehow newly invented in the time of Trump.
The durability and viciousness of this ancient hatred seems ultimately inexplicable. Yet as Mencken noted, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
There have been many explanations for anti-Semitism, yet as inadequate as all have been, “It’s Trump!” must be the least plausible one yet.
This is not true. Ioffe made no such charge. Her position is that the two things are completely unrelated: Trump moved the embassy, which is good, but he also promoted this atmosphere of antisemitism, which is bad. She likes the embassy move, but opposes Trump anyway because of the antisemitism. She accuses those Jews who overlook the antisemitism, and support Trump anyway because of the embassy, of making this terrible bargain, effectively accepting the shooting as the price to be paid for moving the embassy. Thus “I hope it was worth it”.
Don’t forget that Ioffe has personally experienced the vicious antisemitism of a sector of Trump supporters. It is not a myth, it is very real and frightening, and anyone who minimizes it is himself an antisemite.
“This president makes this possible” (Ioffe’s tweet quoted above).
How is this not a statement that Trump is, at least in part, responsible for the shooting? And from what source do you get the notion that “she likes the embassy move”?
Perhaps you are referring to something outside of the four corners of the tweet.
It certainly is a statement that Trump is, at least in part, responsible for the shooting. Where did you get the idea that I thought she wasn’t saying that? That is her whole point: Trump is responsible for the shooting, and therefore those who support him anyway, because he also did something good, have effectively accepted the shooting as the price of that good thing.
I get the notion that “she likes the embassy move” from the fact that she is a committed Jew and politically conservative. Even most left-wing Jews liked the embassy move, though it hurt them to say so; it’s impossible to imagine a right-wing Jew, even an Trump opponent like Ioffe, who didn’t like it. Her tweet now merely says that if it comes at the price of the Pittsburgh shooting it’s not worth it.
You take your time to defend this woman? So what if there is some technicality that makes your meaningless point valid?
I take the time to defend her because she’s a good, solid conservative, and a good person, and the only reason you hate her is because she dares to oppose your golden calf. And for that she has personally experienced a constant stream of the most vicious antisemitic attacks from the sewer that follows Trump around.
we Jews are a tiny population and splitting us further by means foul is not a GOOD thing – it only breaks us apart more than necessary.
with the rates of intermarriage, non observance and ignorance –
we need to have an HONEST discussion of who we are.
———————-
as an a side note Jew hatred is connected with our success and jealousy of non Jews not understanding how we CAN be successful.
the only conclusion the haters can come to – it’s a plot !
intermarriage? You sound a bit stuck in the Old Testament, unsurprisingly.
Jonathan Greenblatt is a long-time Democratic Party activist, who has moved the ADL away from its traditional focus on antisemitism, and into coalition with the political left. To his credit he still condemns his allies when their attacks on Israel are too blatant to ignore, but he’s very cautious about it, while wholeheartedly throwing the ADL into fights that have nothing to do with it.
So basically ignore anything Greenblatt has to say.
This how you get more Trump. Jexit.
one of the reasons that JINOs HATE DJT is that has and is proud of his Jewish observant daughter and grandkids –
and that the Clintoons have neither.
Leftist, reformed (even conservative), and progressive Jews rewrite the Torah to conform with their ideology, too.
If I may paraphrase, “It’s the Jews’ own fault. Were they not Jews in the first place and allying themselves with people who support Jews who support Jews everywhere including Israel, there would be no reason to target them.”
These people are insane.
What they’re positing is the lunacy that anti-Semitism didn’t exist at all, prior to the Jerusalem embassy move; it magically appeared, the day after.
A conceit as patently foolish and idiotic, as it is ignorant and offensive.
These contemptible propaganda smears represent the age-old anti-Semitic notion that, if only those pesky Jews wouldn’t be so bold about practicing their faith, so vociferous about supporting their State (Israel) and so committed to generally living their lives as proud and unabashed Jews, the anti-Semites of the world wouldn’t be provoked into attacking them.
No, they are not positing that at all, and it’s dishonest to pretend they are.
What they’re positing is that Trump is somehow responsible for the shooting, and therefore Jews who support him share that responsibility. They say that the reason these Jews support him, despite his (according to them) support for antisemites, is his positive policies on Israel, and that the exchange is not worth it.
Fallacious parsing and splitting hairs. Your perpetual gadfly act is as tiresome as it is infantile, with your irreppressible urge to constantly rebut others’ comments. Begin by analyzing why you feel the need to do so — your behavior is psychologically unhealthy.
References to the embassy move in relation to a totally unrelated shooting are made to proffer the conceit that Jews have provoked anti-Semites, largely in the Islamic world, by supporting the embassy move and Trump’s pro-Israel policies. That the shooter at issue, here, wasn’t Muslim, is irrelevant, because the mere invoking of the embassy move is made to posit that American Jews are acting out of place and are being too unabashedly pro-Israel. And, yes, obviously, Jews being criticized for supporting Trump for his pro-Israel policies is part of the equation — you state the obvious.
In other words, Dems said the Jewish shooting victims asked for it, and deserved being murdered.
I am amazed at the grace and strength that has been displayed by Rabbi Wolpe. He suffered through an horrific experience and now has to deal with personal attacks from moronic keyboard warriors. Through it all, he has shown so much class. What an inspiration he is.
Wolpe hasn’t suffered through anything.
He’s just a “Progressive” Californian minister who’s been made to understand that if he wants to keep his job he’ll keep his leftist politics out of the pulpit. Which is nice of him, give him credit for that. It puts him head and shoulders above that crazy Presbyterian minister in the other thread.
I’m extremely confused! When did Trump every say or do anything anti-Semitic? He is a huge supporter of all things Israel and has Jewish grandchildren.
The anti-Semite was Obama and his whole Administration…