When Will Jewish Lives Matter?
As I mourned the latest Islamic terror attack, this time in Barcelona, Spain, I noticed that virtually all media listings of prior terror attacks where vehicles were used as weapons failed to mention even one of the car, truck, bulldozer, bus, and other vehicle rammings that take routinely place in Israel.
The first occurred in 2008 in Jerusalem and proved so successful that the copycat terrorists understood that this was a new way of effectively terrifying and murdering innocent people.
Israel has always been the canary in the coalmine – the incubator for successful Muslim terror attacks. The suicide and homicide bombings, the knifings, Molotov cocktails, stonings, all were tried out in Israel, found to be successful, and implemented worldwide.
Sadly, this history of ongoing Muslim terrorism in Israel is taken for granted, and the media forgets or decides to exclude it from its list of monstrous murders.
When, if ever, will Jewish lives matter?
Helen Freedman
Co-Executive Director
Americans for a Safe Israel/AFSI
Selective Indignation
I’m watching, with great trepidation, the ugly pile-on by various rabbis and Jewish groups commenting on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, with nary a word about the violent, hateful leftist side that included Black Lives Matter, other anti-police groups, and the usual professional agitators the left always manages to have on hand.
Once again, the left-wing clergy, the media, and the “Never Trump” movement hold sway and lecture both Trump and the rest of the nation. He didn’t say enough, he didn’t condemn enough, he included more than just the KKK and the neo-Nazis as perpetrators, his secondary comments weren’t sufficient, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
When does it end? When does the hard-left, angry about losing in November, cease the horrific, mean-spirited avalanche of dishonest and disingenuous vitriol against a duly elected president? When do vile, disgusting, and un-American screeds inviting violence against the president end? When will the Secret Service perform one of its main functions and arrest and question such unsavory people?
I’m not advocating the silencing of free speech. I’m advocating equality. Don’t like Trump? Fine. Say so, but also include your condemnations of the anti-Semitic left, the hateful agitators of Black Lives Matter, and the documented inclusion of communists and anarchists at “rallies” (some of which have included arson and destruction of property).
Myron Hecker
(Via E-Mail)
What Trump Should Have Said
President Trump has to know how to speak so that he is not misunderstood. Unfortunately, he lacks this ability and so those who dislike him have even more reinforcement to pounce on him for whatever he says.
What is desperately needed in the White House is someone like Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has the extraordinary ability to state exactly what he means. President Trump should have issued a very simple statement declaring that he will never permit anti-Semitism and anti-black racism to fester.
He should also have stated that he wants America, as always, to be the special nation that stands for liberty, equality of opportunity, and democracy – one nation under God, not a nation divided. If he had said that immediately after Charlottesville, he would not have given the Trump haters such an opening.
Toby Willig
Jerusalem
Evil Meeting Evil
There’s no question that the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacist groups are a hateful bunch with despicable ideologies.
In modern times, however, the left has perpetrated more physical harm and property damage in America than all the above hate-groups combined.
The left’s history of disrespecting, verbally abusing, and often physically harming those on the other side of the political divide is indisputable.
What happened in Charlottesville is that the left met its match; basically, evil met evil. President Trump was absolutely right in condemning both sides.
To condemn both side is not making light of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists – it’s making a point about how evil the left has become.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, NY
Shocked By Editorial
The Aug. 18 editorial “President Trump’s Charlottesville Comments” should shock the conscience of every committed Jew and every other honorable person.
The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville included KKK members and Nazis proudly waving the flag of the Third Reich. They chanted anti-Semitic slogans including “blood and soil,” the translation of Blut und Boden, a standard Nazi refrain.
They were not there simply to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, as the editorial suggested, but to spew their bigoted blend of racism and anti-Semitism. Many were armed with clubs, wore helmets, and some gave Nazi salutes, actions that made them reminiscent of the SA, the Brownshirts who helped facilitate Hitler’s rise to absolute power.
Equating Nazis and their sympathizers with some of the counter-protesters who identify as antifascists is both ironic and inaccurate. Well out of proportion to their percentage in the population, American Jews fought Hitler and the ideology he and his supporters espoused. Quintessential antifascists, they risked or gave their lives to defeat fascism and preserve a free society.
Forty years ago, the American Jewish community, many non-Jews and, as I remember, The Jewish Press, spoke out against Nazis who sought to march in Skokie, Illinois, the home of thousands of Holocaust survivors.
Last week conservative Republicans and CEOs of large corporations, people who presumably have much to lose by disagreeing strongly and publicly with the president, did just that. They thus placed principle above partisanship, political convenience, or financial reward.
The absence of similar words from The Jewish Press constitutes a deafening silence. Jews above all others must condemn those who would deny or repeat that unique horror of the Holocaust. Blurring the lines between antifascists and Nazis gives inadvertent license to the latter, the once and would-be destroyers of our people and of civilization itself.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jenkintown, PA