I stayed up very late recently listening to the results of the UK’s general election. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party had moved toward policies so far-left, the entire country might have had to be renamed Venezuela. They lost to Boris Johnson and his Conservatives, and lost hugely.
The defeat of Corbyn, named by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as the world’s number one threat to Jews, and the defeat of his party, might well be very good news for American Jews, especially as they occurred in the same week where there was very bad news for us.
The appalling attack and killing of Jews in Jersey City came from two blacks associated with the hate group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites. This group, together with their beliefs, really seem like characters from Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian,” except of course that they are not in the least bit funny.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop tweeted saying he suspects the intended target of the murderers was the address next door: a cheder containing 50 Jewish children.
Almost as bad was the recorded reaction from local residents to the slaughter. They blamed the victims, not their murderers.
“My children are stuck at school because of Jew shenanigans,” one woman said. “They are the problem. Because if they ain’t come to Jersey City this [expletive deleted] would never go on.”
There were others who said much worse.
The reaction from some in the Democratic party like Rep. Rashida Tlaib was unsurprising. While they didn’t actually blame the victims, they were loudly silent about blaming their murderers. She tweeted, “This is heartbreaking. White supremacy kills.” Upon discovering that the killers were black, she deleted her impetuous tweet and then went totally quiet over the whole event.
Leftist talk show host Joy Behar, while interviewing Chris Christie, said. “You will concede that these white nationalists have been let out of their holes?” Alas, although Behar now knows the identity of the killers, she has issued no apology.
But the culture of silence when it comes to those who attack Jews is hardly exclusive to blacks, like those in Jersey City, or Italian Americans, like Behar.
When I was a teenager growing up in Scotland, my best friend was from a Reform family. I was always in his home and we have kept in touch ever since, even though our lives took very different directions. He became a college professor and a communist.
Recently one of his social media friends butted into a debate we were having about Jeremy Corbyn’s attempts to have the UK’s annual “National Holocaust Day” changed to remove the Jewish “label” and be a general “Genocide” day instead.
The non-Jewish friend wrote, “The Jews had their own concentration camps too!” I challenged him to supply evidence. Instead he cited evidence of Jewish Kapos assisting the Nazis in their camps. My leftist old friend’s reaction appalled me. He claimed that this anti-Semitic slander was not anti-Semitic at all.
It’s something Times of London columnist Melanie Philips writes is ingrained in the left’s worldview. They have the unshakable belief that what they believe and only what they believe is true and good. Those who hold those views are incapable of saying anything that is false or bad.
They believe that black people are oppressed and therefore are really incapable of actual badness, so they fall silent when it comes to Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, or the killers in Jersey City. White people are all privileged and innately racist, so the finger of blame instinctively swings towards them.
And sadly, the worst sufferers of this pathology are often Jews.
Let me just pause for a moment and google Ilhan Omar’s statement about the slaughter of the Jews in Jersey City. Wow, gosh, I couldn’t find a single thing!
Yet, good old Bernie Sanders repeatedly rushes to her defense against charges of anti-Semitism, and Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer are “silent” about the “Squad” and Labour-like anti-Semitism within their party.
Blacks cannot be racist, which is of course a racist statement. Try telling that to the Black Hebrew Israelite who lives near me and keeps pretending to point a gun at me and firing. Muslims like Omar or Tlaib cannot be anti-Semitic because they are Semites too. Try telling that to Hamas whose founding charter calls for the killing of Jews anywhere in the world. Socialists cannot be anti-Semitic. Try telling that to Jeremy Corbyn who laid a wreath at the grave of one of the Munich killers.
And that is why Labour’s huge defeat may well be good news for American Jews in a week of bad news.
Another Times of London columnist, Gerard Baker, recently wrote a piece called, “Defeat for Jeremy Corbyn could be a win for Michael Bloomberg.”
“Since its 2016 defeat, the Democratic Party has been pulled leftwards in ways that are reminiscent of Labour-style politics.
While Labour has made a concerted appeal to the “woke” generation, the Democrats have actually outdone them.” He cited the party’s presidential candidates, who have endorsed amongst other things abortion up to the moment of birth and wish to decriminalize illegal immigration, thereby removing the primary legal means by which a nation protects its borders.
“You don’t need to be especially right-wing to think that this agenda may prove too much for a majority of Americans next year.”
He concluded, “Mainstream Democrats are alarmed.”
It’s about time they were.