The New York Times recently ran a piece about President Trump’s address to Congress on March 4.
It sought to explain the differences between this address, which was not a State of the Union address, and one which is. If the author gets paid by the number of times people click to read what he writes, he condemned himself to a slimmer than usual paycheck this month. The problem lay in his choice of headline.
“It’s a Presidential Speech to Congress, but not a State of the Union Address…and the distinction may make very little difference.”
I mean to say, if there is very little difference between the two and whatever miniscule distinction makes no difference, why waste your time reading the piece? After all, there are so many more interesting things to read in this “Paper of Record” prepared for your education and edification.
An enticing example caught my eye just the other day. A woman was pictured holding a cardboard handwritten sign which read:
‘First They Came For Mahmoud…’
Underneath, the Times explained…
“People protested the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil in New York in response to the Trump administration’s move to deport him. A permanent legal U.S. resident, Khalil recently graduated from Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against high civilian casualties in Gaza during Israel’s campaign against Hamas.”
Oh! That’s what Khalil was doing, eh? He was not in any way involved in a campaign that supported Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist organization? Nor, I’m guessing, was he associated with creating a regime of threats and intimidation at Columbia, that closely paralleled Nazi students and their intimidation of Jewish professors and students nearly a century ago. Nor I imagine, would it be any use pointing out that the civilian casualties in Gaza were astonishingly low due to the Israeli’s attempts to minimize them being harmed.
But it was the NYT choosing to show a picture, which appropriated one of the Nazis bravest non-Jewish opponents, that was the most vomit inducing feature of this piece.
Pastor Neimuller was a WWI German U-boat captain and Ace who was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. As the war came to an end, he decided to become a pastor, as he explained in his book “From U-boat to Pulpit.”
Initially a Hitler admirer, he became an opponent and was imprisoned in Dachau. He is most well remembered for the words he penned in 1946:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”
That is the poignant and haunting prose that was stolen and corrupted in the NYT’s picture. It tried to turn someone who supports Hamas, who aspire to outdo the first Nazis, into a “Jew” and a victim, instead of what he is, a supporter of Hamas, these second Nazis.
This of course is a common technique of Hamas supporters. Israeli flags are often reproduced with the Star of David replaced with a Swastika. Not too long ago, a depiction of Holocaust victim Anne Frank appeared wearing a keffiyeh. This evil and sickening imagery portrays Hamas and its supporters as the “New Jews” fighting against evil oppressors as opposed to what they really are, “New Nazis” whose goal and ambition is the extermination of all Jews everywhere and anywhere in the world.
That fact is clear and obvious to the Jews who read this newspaper. Many of them are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Jews who somehow survived the first Nazis. It is entirely unclear to many American Jews today when it comes to the second Nazis, those of the Islamo-Nazi variety.
Four years ago, I saw a picture taken long ago by the famous photographer, Roman Vishniac. It was of four Orthodox Jewish men sitting on a bench outside a house somewhere in Ukraine. One of them was solemnly lecturing the other three. Their facial expressions show they were very skeptical about whatever it was he was trying to tell them.
I took the picture, gave the figure delivering the lecture the name “Shmuel” and drew a speech balloon coming out of his mouth. I had him telling his three listeners:
Shmuel: “Can you believe it Rabbosai, that if we succeed in getting out of this awful anti-Semitic country and make it to America, in just a few generations time, our children’s children will have become so assimilated that just like in the Chanukah story, many of them will side with the anti-Semites against their own people?
Other Three: “Shmuel you have gone totally meshugah! What a completely ridiculous thing to suggest.
Shmuel: “Just you wait and see! As sure as my name is Sanders and yours are Schumer, Nadler and Schiff… it’s going to happen.
Of course, when I put my version of the photograph on my Facebook page (pre-Trump administration # 2 and before Zuckerberg’s mea culpa) it was taken down in a nanosecond. I doubt if that would happen today, and anyway, so much has happened since then that makes that tongue in cheek alteration, no longer a joke. It is so much more accurate and serious in today’s post-October 7 world.
As recently as March 7, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and Congressman Adriano Espaillat issued the following statement:
“Revoking federal grants to Columbia University isn’t about combating anti-Semitism; it’s about the Trump administration’s war on education and science.”
Suuuure it is Jerry. Try telling that to the Jewish students who faced violence and threats there since the Hamas mini-Holocaust. “Hey Kids! You know how President Trump is defunding Columbia because of its encouragement of antisemitic attacks? Well, that Jewish Congressman, Jerry Nadler is supporting…Columbia…NOT you!”
Or take Senator Chuck Schumer. He sought to avert the sanctioning of the antisemitic International Criminal Court which seeks to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister and its former defense minister Yoav Galant.
With the exception of Senator John Fetterman, every single Jewish Democratic Senator supported killing the bill.
The stated reason for their opposition is risible and was widely ridiculed in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. Senator Tom Cotton, a co-sponsor on the bill, said:
“They had 10 months to negotiate this bill, but instead waited until the last minute to demand unworkable changes that would give carve-outs to big tech. Make no mistake – Democrats weakened our national sovereignty and Israel’s ability to defend itself today.”
Bernie Sanders is traveling around the U.S. at present speaking to tiny audiences of extreme leftists and demanding the blocking of arms sales to Israel along with the rest of his usual anti-Israel rhetoric.
So, we live in a world turned upside down. Hamas and its supporters claim victimhood of the kind suffered by Jews under the heel of the first Nazis and Leftist Jews and politicians stand shoulder to shoulder with ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan who supports and shakes hands with the second kind of Nazis.
President Trump did not give a State of the Union Address on March 4 but it nearly was and the message is clear, the tolerance and even encouragement of antisemitism by the Biden-Harris administration is being challenged, stopped and swept away. Hamas are being exposed as the second Nazis and the reign of terror on America’s campuses is being uprooted.
Oh! And my imagined conversation between those four Jews on that bench in Ukraine, was sadly not a joke after all.
