politics to go

The Democrats’ ‘anti-hate’ resolution

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I am usually able to separate my emotions from the goings on in DC, but this was different. The Democrats had one job — one! All they had to do is condemn anti-Semitism, and they couldn’t pull it off. Now I am terrified of the future.

With a 407–23 vote, the Democratic Party-led House of Representatives announced that me, my wife, my two kids and the other 6,850,860 Jews living in the United States don’t matter.

After Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar made her second anti-Semitic statement in the past month. The spineless Democratic Party leadership couldn’t muster the courage to address it. Instead, they passed a generic resolution that basically said that being mean to others is bad. Really? I learned that lesson when I was a child watching programs such as Romper Room, Howdy Doody, and Captain Kangaroo.

As for Omar, she not only voted for the measure, but celebrated it as a step toward fighting Islamophobia. Omar, and other anti-Semites in the Democratic Party, celebrated — an indication that they took the vote as a sign that Jew-hatred is okay.

Ilhan Omar is an adult. She is not an idiot. She knew exactly what she was saying. Per the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, before she was elected to Congress, she met with leaders of the Jewish community in Minneapolis who gave her “lessons” about anti-Semitism:

“Last year, before she was elected to the House of Representatives, before she emerged from a crowded Democratic field in Minnesota’s liberal 5th Congressional District, leaders of Minneapolis’s Jewish community fashioned what could be described as an anti-Semitic intervention of Omar, a rising star of the left whose remarks had made many fellow Democrats in the Jewish community uncomfortable.”

The meeting was not held to criticize her policy stances but to explain to her that the words she uses to illustrate her positions can be hurtful.

According to State Sen. Ron Latz, who hosted the meeting, “Over the course of about two hours, we shared with her our concerns for things, including language that has references and meanings beyond just the meanings of words. Tropes, dog whistles — call them what you will. We explained to her how hurtful, and factually inaccurate, they were.”

Omar got a two-hour lesson about anti-Semitic “dog whistles.” I can guarantee one of the whistles was the dual loyalty canard. She knew exactly what she was saying a week ago when she accused Israel’s supporters of dual loyalty.

The Democratic Party has already rejected different types of hatred, even when they aren’t even there. Because I used the term Islamist terrorism, I was called Islamophobic. Disagreeing with the policies of President Barack Obama motivated Democrats to brand me and others as racist. And yet they refuse to recognize anti-Semitism.  

Those who believe that the message of the Democrats’ resolution is “all hatred is terrible” are naïve. My first article warning that the Democratic Party was becoming anti-Semitic was posted on January 29, 2007. Eleven years later, the party’s anti-Semitism has metastasized and infected much of the party. The message the Democrats sent with their feckless resolution was that the party officially embraces the Jew-hatred that has affected them. They do not care about Jewish Americans.

Why don’t the Democrats and their protectors in the mainstream media believe people matter? Jews have served in every American war. We’ve served the country in government, in charitable organizations. Jews pay taxes, we teach our children to love this country. I have never been in an American synagogue that did not display Old Glory. Outside of the African American community, the Jewish community fought harder for civil rights than any other American ethnic group.

I love this country that took in my grandparents when they were fleeing the Cossacks in Odessa. Only in America did my family members have the opportunity to get a decent job, feed their families and practice their faith.

But now a member of the Democratic Party has questioned my loyalty to this country, and they refuse to censure her. Instead they pass a resolution that buries her hatred in a sea of unrelated bigotry. Are they saying that the country that welcomed my family 125 years ago no longer welcomes us?

After last week’s vote, it feels that way.

Liberal commentators are protecting the Democrats. On Fox and Friends, the day after the vote, Juan Williams claimed that most Jews don’t really mind Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitic statements; it’s the Republicans who are trying to divide the Democratic Party. He added that the only people who care about Omar’s remarks are the Evangelical Christian supporters of Israel.

Before Omar’s latest, I tried to reach out to Juan Williams because he has refused to acknowledge the Democratic Party’s growing’ anti-Semitism.  Even sending him long letters sending him examples of his party’s hatred with links to the sources. But Williams, who has more than once declared a racist comment “hurtful,” has never responded. Does he not believe that Jews can feel hurt by anti-Semitic statements?

Many Jews, including me, are more than hurt by the rash of anti-Semitism. We are terror-stricken. According to the FBI, almost 60% of religion-based hate crimes in 2017 were against Jews. Per the ADL, anti-Semitism in the US is growing substantially; anti-Jewish incidents increased by 57% in the US in 2017.

Anti-Semitism is rising sharply across Europe, experts have said, as France reported a 74% increase in the number offenses against Jews last year. Germany has said the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks has surged by more than 60%. In Great Britain, the number-two party, Labour, is being recognized as anti-Semitic.

Almost a century ago, a small party in Germany began to make anti-Semitic statements: Jewish money controls the government; Jews are not loyal to Germany. Most Germans said it was just talk. Eventually, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was elected to power, and six million Jews were murdered.

Extremists are taking over the Democratic Party, and like the Nazis and Communist Russia, they are making the Jews their scapegoats. And like the Germans of the 1920s and 1930s, today’s traditional Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi, claim that anti-Semites don’t really mean it. And commentators like Juan Williams claim Jews aren’t bothered.

I am frightened for my family and my people. Jew-hatred is growing all across the world, and here in America, one party refuses to recognize and censure it.

Can another Holocaust happen? This is how it started in Germany, and the Germans said it could never happen there.