Rafael Medoff always has interesting stories concerning the dark days of the Holocaust when some people thwarted rescue and others tried to do whatever it took to save Jewish lives. FDR (the patron saint of liberal Jews) was no friend of the Jewish people either in America or in Europe. In my opinion, Barack Obama has taken the measure of the Jewish community (what Israel Zangwill in the 19th century once referred to albeit the British Jewish community, as a bunch of “trembling Israelites“) .
by Rafael Medoff
Anyone wondering why President Barack Obama’s 30-point lead over Mitt Romney among Jews in New York has shrunk to just eight points need look no further than the president’s meeting last week with a delegation of Jewish leaders.
According to the latest survey by the Siena College Research Institute, one of the top polling agencies covering New York State, Obama’s previous 62-32 edge over Romney among the state’s Jewish voters has dwindled to 51-43. That’s the lowest Jewish support for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1980.
A few days before the poll came out, a delegation of Orthodox Jewish leaders met with the president at the White House. In a memo to his congregants this week, Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein of Manhattan’s Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue described the meeting.
“When asked about the perception that Israel is being pressed on the peace process more than are the Palestinians,” Rabbi Lookstein wrote, “the President indicated his belief that both sides need to compromise and that he has pressured both sides. However, in truth, he only cited pressure on the Israelis with respect to stopping settlement activity. He indicated that all of the United States assistance to Israel on security issues is problematic for the Palestinians, but, of course, that doesn’t constitute pressure on them to do anything. The one thing the Palestinians have to be pressured to do is to sit down at the table and negotiate without preconditions. The President has not done this and he avoided giving a clear response to the question of how he is specifically pressuring the Palestinians.”
Although the president and his advisers had plenty of time to prepare for the meeting, and even though the meeting was, as Rabbi Lookstein put it, “carefully scripted,” President Obama “avoided giving a clear response” regarding pressuring the Palestinians. One would think he would have come up with at least one example, even if it was more rhetorical than substantive, to soothe the concerns of the Jewish delegation. No such luck.
Rabbi Lookstein, the author of Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers?, an important book on American Jewry’s response to the Holocaust, has a keen sense of history. He recalled, in his memo, how some prominent Jews with access to President Franklin Roosevelt hesitated “to ask the hard questions or raise the tough issues.”
In December 1942, after the US had verified that mass murder of Europe’s Jews was underway, Jewish leaders were granted half an hour with the president. He spent the first 23 minutes telling jokes and commenting on other subjects. Then FDR spoke in generalities about the Nazi genocide for a few moments. And then – one participant later wrote – he “pushed some secret button, and his adjutant appeared in the room” to usher the Jewish leaders out.
In his diary, Roosevelt’s vice president, Henry Wallace, wrote about an incident in March 1944, in which FDR met with Jewish leaders and “caused [them] to believe that he was in complete accord with them…” The very next day, Roosevelt boasted to his cabinet that he had told the Jewish leaders “where to get off” and had warned them that their agitation for Zionism was “going to be responsible for the killing of a hundred thousand people.” “Enraged Arabs” would retaliate by attacking Americans in the Middle East, FDR claimed.
[......]
American Jews in the 1940s had no way to know President Roosevelt’s true feelings on these issues, and Jewish leaders were reluctant to speak up. “Thank God, we live in a very different world today,” Rabbi Lookstein wrote this week. Today’s Jewish leaders are much more willing than their predecessors to ask the president the difficult questions that need to be asked.
At the end of the meeting with President Obama, Rabbi Lookstein gave the president’s Jewish chief of staff, Jack Lew, a copy of his book, which he inscribed, “May you, unlike American Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, speak truth to power when the opportunity presents itself.”
[......]
I hope so, too. But unfortunately, so far President Obama evidently prefers to “avoid giving a clear response” regarding pressuring the Palestinians. If that continues to be his policy, then the president may well find his Jewish support decreasing even further.
Read the rest - Why Obama’s Jewish support is slipping
Tags: Rafael Medoff
It will always amaze me how Jews these days can vote for and consider themselves dumocrats, when there’s so much evidence that antisemitism is alive, well, rampant and even welcome in dumocrat circles almost without objection.
@ Bob in Breckenridge:
I don’t either. Buzz has an excellent perspective and has written several times on the subject. I guess it’s history and sentiment.
Me, I have a pretty good sense of who hates my guts, and would rather have an honest enemy than a smiling backstabber.
My family were democrats, and I was for a large part of my life. For me the mask is off, and he demoncraps can kiss my ass.
I’d like to hear someone name a single Democrat “interest group” that can demonstrate long term benefits from the Democrats. Blacks? Jews? The Poor? Hispanics? Unions? The Middle Class?
Jews have been duped, but they’re certainly not alone.
@ Bob in Breckenridge:
@ citizen_q:
Evan Sayet has an excellent take on this as well. Momentum, and the poignant belief that liberalism and its peculiar brand of tolerance is somehow our great friend. Many believe that the Holocaust was largely due to intolerance, and since the liberals claim the mantle of all things tolerant, they must be morally superior. It matters little that the truth is entirely different.
What is ironic, FDR campaigned heavily on the Jewish vote, and appealed to that duty of tolerance and charity as the thrust of his appeal.
Flyovercountry wrote:
Then FDR and obama have that in common given the incident cited in the article.
citizen_q wrote:
The triumph of ideology.
citizen_q wrote:
The Jews would have been better off if they had made FDR actually earn their vote.
@ Speranza:
OTOH, those were pretty frighting times.
I don’t know enough of the history.
Nowadays though, I know a rat when I see one. obama and the demoncraps are rats.
citizen_q wrote:
The history is pretty simple,American Jewish leadership was cowardly. What a surprise!
@ Speranza:
I am hoping this is the election where there is a major rethink of support.
citizen_q wrote:
If it is not this election then there never will be.
MacDuff wrote:
It is much easier to lie to someone then it is to explain to them that they are being lied to.
O/T But a chilling story. Especially so in light of embalm-a-care supporters admiration of Briton’s NHS
Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year
@ citizen_q:
Just look at British teeth.
@ citizen_q:
This is what Obama wants here.
Flyovercountry wrote:
There was, right around FDR’s campaign for a third term, a little couplet that was making the rounds. It was supposed to be FDR speaking to Eleanor:
You kiss the n*ggers and I’ll kiss the Jews
And we’ll stay in the White House as long as we choose.
@ Speranza:
Jews would have been better off if they supported the Republican Party after Nixon helped Israel.
@ Bob in Breckenridge:
Charles Barron in NY is a prime example.
@ Speranza:
Don’t they practice DIY dentistry?
Why are smart people so stupid?
@ buzzsawmonkey:
And there it is, the sickening truth of how people are willing to sell themselves out for any kind of a fake kindness and the most transparent of flattery. The Roosevelts probably laughed themselves silly over the fact that they were able to pimp themselves out so cheaply to win those two constituencies. I guess the thing that I find so intriguing about the entire process is how anyone at all can believe the meme that we Jews control the world. If it had been me voting in the 30′s, I would have at least demanded that Franklin had the common decency to give me a reach around while he f@#$ed me.
Whoa!
Supreme Court may reveal healthcare verdict Thursday
ht drudge
Flyovercountry wrote:
As the obama’s are now playing the same game.
Urban Infidel wrote:
I’m reading Osprey’s suggested book, “The Secret War Against the Jews”. It reads like a novel, even though each page is annotated with factual accounts. The authors make the case that starting in the 1920′s “Jack” Philby, the traitorous father of the traitorous Kim Philby, made alliances between Ibn Saud to explore and profit from oil. He had John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles as anti-Semitic allies in the US, along with the large US oil companies. The Dulles faction used American intelligence services, and the Philby father and son penetrated the British intelligence agencies. All along, the long-standing Muslim, British, and American Anti-Semitism was there to be used by the spies, and everyone got rich who became a go-between or the recipient of oil money. It started during WW1, extended during WW2, where everyone was against the Jews as much as Hitler was. There was literally NO COUNTRY in the world that would take the Jews trying to exit from Germany. That includes the US and Canada. The Zionists did not see through the machinations around them.
Speranza wrote:
Yes, the Jewish leadership of the WWII era was cowardly—as the American Jewish leadership is, with far less excuse, today. But the Jews of the WWII era had a much better excuse.
I have been told by people of my parents’ generation—those who were of an age to have served in WWII—just what an astounding thing the establishment of the State of Israel was, and what it meant to Jews everywhere. We who were born long after that happened can only dimly imagine—perhaps by thinking back, if we are old enough, to the way terror changed to elation during the course of the Six-Day War.
People who were of my grandparents’ generation saw their families butchered in the mud streets of their miserable villages by the swords of government-paid Cossacks; their parents were of the generation which had fingers lopped off by their own parents to prevent their children being kidnapped for 25-year military service by the Czar’s press gangs. Compared with what they’d fled, America was something beyond Heaven—but there was still antisemitism in America, that manifested itself in both “genteel” ways (e.g., hotels that openly advertised that they “had no Hebrew patronage,” buildings that would not rent to Jews, restrictive covenants on land which could not be sold to Jews, professions that Jews were discouraged from entering), and in less than genteel ways, like being beaten up by a gang of toughs for being a “christkiller” or a “yid.”
Jews, despite their already prospering in the US, were also “stateless persons.” Poles came from Poland, Germans from Germany, Swedes from Sweden. There were nations they were truly “from” (Russia did not consider the Jews to be Russians), and there were consulates and embassies that other nationalities could, at need, appeal to.
The Jews did not have this—so, what difference was it that they had prospered? That merely made them targets during the Depression; look at Father Coughlin. Jews fleeing Hitler’s Germany had been turned away from the US—think of the St. Louis—including the children of the Kindertransports, which America would not accept. The Land of Israel was a pipedream; it was full of hostile, Nazi-sympathizing Arabs, there was no place for the millions of Jews in the US, and Britain had, in any event, closed the doors. Where could the Jews of America go if the US government decided for some reason to expel them? What could they do? The Japanese had been interned in camps—why would the Jews believe they were in any way “safe”? Jews had been interned in England as enemy aliens.
You have to realize how much closer and bigger all these terrors were for the Jewish leaders in the WWII era, and how frighteningly reasonable they seemed. What is sad is not that the Jews of that era succumbed to these terrors, but that these terrors have been transmitted, in place of Judaism, to two or possibly three generations of Jews.
@ Speranza:
Have you read ‘The Secret War Against the Jews’? I cannot imagine that you wouldn’t like it.
@ yenta-fada:
I have that book. I only got partially through it, pretty depressing if I remember.
@ waldensianspirit:
Son of Beeetch! Sheeet! I wonder if Chief Justice Roberts moved the decision forward due to the shit today?
@ yenta-fada:
The House of Saud has no influence in America. I am just paranoid!
/////
citizen_q wrote:
What it CLEARLY demonstrates is how much the deck was stacked against the Jews, even well before WW2. The only thing more depressing than the book is the current STACKING OF THE DECK against the Jews in a permutation of the 1920′s. I will NOT blame the Jews for this. We are not plentiful enough to tip the balance against the Muslim world, the Leftist/Communist agenda, the reality of demographics, and the PROPAGANDA efforts that have never stopped. Yes, we Jews have a responsibility to wake up, but we are outnumbered and outgunned in every way I can imagine.
Rodan wrote:
Hey, you would like this book because it follows the intrigues between the Muslim world, the Brits, the Americans, and the Europeans.
You are definitely not paranoid about The House of Saud. They hate Jews with a sustained and mighty passion. Ibn Saud was NOT a Wahabist radical.
Macker wrote:
I was thinking the same thing.
yenta-fada wrote:
I read it years ago. A nightmare.
@ yenta-fada:
This time its not just Jews being targeted. This is bigger than Jews this time. That book stumbled onto something. Wat may have started off as something anti-Jewish has morphed into something else. The Islamic-Leftist-Establishment Conservative alliance is the most powerful political coalition ever.
Look at the US Military instructor fired for speaking the truth on Islam. Look at how Romney and Obama both support the Muslim Brotherhood. This is way bigger than Jews being targeted this time around.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
See my comments on not blaming the Jews for the greatest parts of their misfortunes.
@ Macker:
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/06/20/congressional-report-obama-admin-spent-10-billion-to-create-355-green-jobs-per-year/
@ yenta-fada:
They also hate Christians. It was the Saudis who pressured NATO to bomb Christian Serbia. Its Saudi Arabia who is pressuring both parties in the US to help the Muslim Brotherhood.
@ Speranza:
The Arab Lobby is a good companion as well.
Rodan wrote:
I completely agree. The Jews are, again, the canaries in the mine. Agenda 21 wants all the land, all the resources, all the money, all the rights, etc.
Rodan wrote:
Yep. Communism never wants any God except their own rulers.
@ waldensianspirit:
Thank you. May have to leave Fox News on at work all day tomorrow.
Speranza wrote:
Yes, but very informative and does allow one to re-focus the present in terms of 20th century history.
@ yenta-fada:
We are totally screwed. Until the tentacles of the House of Saud/Muslim Brotherhood is removed things will not get better.
yenta-fada wrote:
Sigh, yes. Add Hitler’s Willing Accomplices to your reading list. Along with the Secret War Against the Jews, you have a powerful one two punch to your well being.
I may or may not be outgunned, but I am at least gunned.
Later.
citizen_q wrote:
A VERY important distinction!
Rodan wrote:
Kirly-doomage.
@ yenta-fada:
Yup. Jews and Christians are screwed.
But we have a higher power behind us.
Rodan wrote:
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
@ brookly red:
Yup!
Friday the Catholic Bishops launch a fortnight against
Obama with the Red Mass.
I hope that all people of good will join. It’s crunch
time.
@ yenta-fada:
The look on my sister in-law’s turkish husband’s face was priceless when he saw my gun-safe and I told what it was for, and I really needed another because I had too many guns for it, but it was the biggest one I could get through our doors.
New Thread
Rodan wrote:
Of course, between the mighty Tar-Sands of the Caribou from Canada, and our own frakking and oil shale and the like, we could laugh at the stinking Saudis for 200 years plus without a problem.
Instead, we’re dotting the land with giant propellers, distilling tofu and puddling around with algae.
citizen_q wrote:
Are you referring to Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, or another book?
Rodan wrote:
I am always kinda shake my head when people see events unfolding around them and wonder why… it’s not like we haven’t told hows it gonna go down.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Hitler’s Willing Executioners, I got the title wrong.
Senility or fatigue? take your pick.
@ citizen_q:
I just wanted to make sure I knew which book you were talking about.
If you’ve got more room on your Depressing Shelf, I recommend a copy of The Enemy at His Pleasure, by S. An-Ski.
It’s a report on the atrocities which were committed in Eastern Europe following WWI, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the civil war in Russia. It makes you realize that, aside from the existence of camps designed for slave labor or mechanized slaughter, every single atrocity visited upon the Jews of Eastern Europe by the Nazis had already been done in the 1918-21 period.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Understood. I feel a little silly not remembering a the title of a book I own. No harm, I would rather admit my mistake and be correct.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I will have to take a look at it. I have Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder, that I have not read yet, The Enemy at his Pleasure sounds very close in topic to Bloodlands.
@ citizen_q:
Bummer it seems that The Enemy at His Pleasure is only available used.
citizen_q wrote:
Grab it. It’s not easy to find, and it’s written by the same guy who wrote the play, “The Dybbuk.”
You can always upgrade if you find a new copy.
citizen_q wrote:
I read it a few months ago. Very good history book although he does repeat himself quite a bit.