Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

Why isn’t Israel accepting more refugees?

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

Despite considerable pressure from outside and in, Israel’s government stands firm in its commitment to take no Syrian refugees. All nationalists should admire Israel’s dedication to its best interests.

The Jewish state is an ethno-state, perhaps the most successful ethno-state given its difficult circumstances (surrounded by enemies who want to destroy it). By necessity, Israel contains a couple of million Arabs. That diversity weakens it. Israel would be stronger as a 100% Jewish state. No state is strengthened by containing people who hate it.

From an op-ed on Al Jazeera Sept. 22, 2015:

Netanyahu’s hypocritical stance on asylum seekers reflects country’s long struggle over ethnic and national identity.

The European refugee crisis has not gone unnoticed in Israel. The media have been dominated by images of Syrian refugees enveloping Europe, and Israeli opposition Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog recently called on the government to allow Syrian refugees into Israel, saying, “Jews cannot be indifferent while hundreds of thousands of refugees are looking for safe haven.”

His remarks, however generous they may seem, expose the hypocrisy of Israel’s center left. He evokes Jewish heritage when convenient and abandons it when necessary. While Syrians qualify as refugees for Herzog, the 45,000 Sudanese and Eritreans in desperate need of asylum in Israel are labeled as infiltrators under Israeli law, detained, and in some cases even deported to third countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly responded to Herzog’s PR stunt and rejected calls to accept Syrian refugees. In his statement, Netanyahu said that Israel is “a very small country that lacks demographic and geographic depth” and discussed his plans to construct a fence along the eastern border with Jordan.

His response is hardly surprising; when Israel faced an influx of African asylum seekers, the government erected a surveillance fence along the border with Egypt as, he said, “a strategic decision to secure Israel’s Jewish and democratic character.”

The recent refugee crisis in Europe brings to light once again Israel’s struggle to consolidate its values as a Jewish and democratic state. While Israel is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it never worked to establish a functional refugee system. As of March 2015, Israel recognized only four Eritreans and not a single Sudanese person as refugees.

While Israel is falling short in its obligations toward asylum seekers, the persecution of European Jews during the World War II remains an important part of Israel’s national narrative. The refugee issue has always been a politically loaded question in the Israeli context. At the same time that Israel acceded to the Refugee Convention in 1954, it adopted the Prevention of Infiltration Law. Under this law, all irregular border crossers are seen as infiltrators, and the Ministry of Defense is authorized to deport infiltrators, even before conviction. While the provisions of the law were directed primarily against the infiltration of armed fighters, the law is also invoked to prevent the entry of Palestinians into Israel or their return. Article 1(3) of the law defines an infiltrator as “a Palestinian citizen or a Palestinian resident without nationality or citizenship or whose nationality or citizenship was doubtful.”

Israel’s reluctance to incorporate the Refugee Convention into its laws may be explained by the context of the time. The vast majority of individuals arriving in the country in the 1950s were displaced European Jews, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, as well as Jewish refugees who fled to Israel from Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa. Since a central aspect of Israel’s identity is the notion that it belongs to Jews, Israel’s immigration laws automatically grant citizenship to the Jewish diaspora. Israel therefore has never dealt with the Jewish refugee population as refugees, because they are already perceived as integral parts of the Jewish nation.

But at the same time, Israel has been dealing with another refugee problem: the Palestinians it expelled in 1948. The Prevention of Infiltration Law provides a legal mechanism for preventing the return of Palestinian refugees. When African asylum seekers began arriving in the country, Israel quickly moved to amend the law to consider all irregular border crossers infiltrators, including asylum seekers.

Israel is constantly seeking to delineate its national narrative through amending its immigration policy; it has worked hard over the years to preserve the status of refugees solely for Holocaust survivors, and it has succeeded in doing so legally. Netanyahu’s recent refusal to accept Syrian refugees was a similarly motivated attempt graft security concerns onto humanitarian ones by labeling Syrian refugees as infiltrators before they even entered the country.

On Sept. 6, Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page that Israel must control its borders “and prevent migrant workers, infiltrators or generators of terrorism” from entering the country. After stating that “Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of the refugees from Syria and Africa,” he quickly moved to call Syrians and Africans “infiltrators” and “terrorists.”

In a Cabinet meeting that took place that day, he further linked the recent refugee crisis to security concerns by discussing the Sept. 3 attacks against five young ultra-Orthodox American yeshiva students in Jabel Johar.

In his short statement on the refugee crisis, Netanyahu managed to link Israel’s security concerns with asylum issues while resealing the Pandora’s box of Palestinian refugees. Applying this line was particularly important for him, especially after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Saturday for the absorption of Palestinian refugees now fleeing the war in Syria to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Even opposition leader Herzog did not dare refer specifically to Palestinian refugees in his calls for Israel to accept Syrians.

Israel’s apparent inability to come to grips with its duality as a Jewish and democratic state is at the core of its response to the refugee crisis. Israel’s refusal to absorb Syrian refugees, allow Palestinians from Syria’s Yarmouk camp into the West Bank or accommodate the 45,000 African asylum seekers in the country should all be viewed as a symptom of the same phenomenon: Israel’s assertion of its ethnic and national identity. In calling asylum seekers and refugees infiltrators, Israel chose to favor, once again, its demographic objectives over its commitment to international law.

Talya Sultana Swissa is a graduate of Columbia University pursuing her master’s degree at Sciences Po at the Paris School of International Affairs.

From the posted comments:

* The writer of this article is an idiot. Who in their right flipping mind would put their people at such high risk as to allow a bunch of Israel hating coo-coo nuts within their borders only for these nuts to attack and stab poor innocent citizens. Just like the current happening of those crazy insane brainwashed so-called ‘palestinians’ stabbing people, including children and toddlers at randoms these past few weeks.

* There is a reason they are not wanted. They are future problems for the country that accepts them. Israel knows this.

* Exactly! It’s not as if these refugees are Hebrews too, and part of the same family. No intelligent common sense leader would invite an army of sworn enemies onto their land, knowing without doubt that they’ll just be stabbed in the back, We all know it. Israel must put their people first and foremost always. These refugees are nothing but problems, cowardly men fleeing their country, then thinking they will deserve to go back once the Assad and real men have fought for it’s survival from the ISIS satanist and their buddies in arms, the criminal Syrian rebels.

* They are not just Syrian refugees, they are sworn enemies of Israel!!! Just as Pakistan is India’s sworn enemies. No good rational thinking leader would invite their KNOWN enemies into their cities and neighborhoods, now would they? Use your common sense.

* The West should investigate other routes. For instance, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry has calculated that because of all the social, health, housing and welfare benefits mandated by the state, supporting a single refugee in Norway costs $125,000 — enough to support some 26 Syrians in Jordan.

* How about the cowardly young and strong healthy Syrian men stay and fight for their country? How about that? This wouldn’t be happening now if it weren’t for those Syrian men being such low-life cowards.

* Israel is a tiny State; only 20 miles wide at the point Tel Aviv is located.

The Jews only have one country for refuge: Israel.

Also Israel does not want to lose it’s Jewish identity.

* Gee… you think maybe its because Syria is technically at war with Israel? Saudi Arabia has a lot more room for their Arab brothers. Let them settle there.

* For 70 years the Arab countries have not accepted even Palestinian refugees, whereas Israel is a country almost entirely populated by refugees.many of whom came from Arab, or other Muslim countries. Can you spell double standard?

* Is this a serious question/article? Not a single Arab country has agreed to accept any refugees from anywhere… Maybe we should be asking why Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Yemen etc. aren’t accepting refugees? The world expects the larger European countries to absorb a large proportion of the refugees, so maybe we should also look at the larger Middle Eastern countries for a similar response.

* I keep hearing Israel likened to the Nazis. People who do that are seriously uninformed about the Nazis. They should do some reading. I suggest The Holocaust — a History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert.

* Just want to remind you that Qatar, your financial backers, have accepted no refugees from Syria. Please pay attention to your own backyard before you criticize someone else. At least Israel have some legitimate reasons: culture is different and the fact that everyday Muslims aren’t fans of Israel.

* Israel is all is about building fences and borders to keep people out. Israel’s current government has a “bunker and war” mentality, incompatible with the compassion that is required to help other humans of “non-Jewish” origin. Even though the origins of this mind set are understandable, going down this road will not lead to positive outcomes for most Israelis. This is unfortunate.

* Israel has been providing free medical care to the wounded on all sides of the conflict in Syria.

* I just read in the Economist that israel has become a safe haven for rich (jewish) gangsters who want a second home where they will feel secure from prosecution. I guess if you have money you’re welcome anywhere no matter how you gained your wealth.

Posted in Immigration, Israel | Comments Off

Is sociopathy an illness?

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

I wonder how many people who read this essay will grasp its implications?

There’s no way that people who have evolved in different places are going to have identical abilities.

Anthropologist Peter Frost writes:

Is sociopathy an illness? We often think so … to the point that the word “sick” has taken on a strange secondary meaning. If we call a ruthless, self-seeking person “sick,” we mean he should be shunned at all costs. We don’t mean he should take an aspirin and get some rest.

Sociopathy doesn’t look like a mental illness, being much less incapacitating than schizophrenia and most mental disorders. A sociopath can deal with other people well enough, perhaps too well. As Harpending and Sobus (2015) point out:

It is a psychopathology because of what sociopaths do to us, and it has significant legal, political, and moral consequences for all of us. Most criminals are probably sociopaths according to some definition (the figure of 80% is often quoted).

Sociopaths regularly present the following characteristics:

onset before age 15, childhood hyperactivity, truancy, delinquency, disruption in school
early and often aggressive sexual activity, marital histories of desertion, non-support, abandonment
persistent lying, cheating, irresponsibility without visible shame
sudden changes of plan, impulsiveness, unpredictability
charm and a façade of sensitivity
high mobility, vagrancy, use of aliases

Sociopaths follow a life strategy that is adaptive for themselves but ruinous for society. Harpending and Sobus (2015) argue that they succeed so well because they know how to manipulate social relationships to their advantage.

Sociopathy is at least moderately heritable (Hicks et al., 2004). Interestingly, it seems to cluster with hysteria in first-degree relatives, with sociopathy being expressed in the males and hysteria in the females. Harpending and Sobus (2015) argue that “hysteria is the expression in females of the same genetic material that leads to sociopathy in males.” In short, “sociopathy in females is the result of a greater dose of the genetic material that leads, in smaller doses, to hysteria, namely, hysteria is mild sociopathy.”

If sociopathy is adaptive, why does it affect only a minority of us? It seems that the rest of us have developed counter-strategies of looking for signs of sociopathy and expelling suspects from society … and the gene pool. This is probably why sociopaths tend to be always on the move—if they stay too long with the same people, they risk being detected and dealt with.

Gene-culture coevolution

We adapt to our cultural environment as we do to our natural environment. More so in fact. The last 10,000 years have seen far more genetic change in our ancestors than the previous 100,000, this speeding up of evolution being driven by the entry of humans into an increasingly diverse range of cultural environments.

Sociopathy may thus propagate itself more easily in some cultures than in others, with the result that its incidence may likewise differ from one to another. In a small band of hunter-gatherers, a sociopath will not last long because he is always interacting with the same small group of people:

In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe “a man who … repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and … takes sexual advantage of many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment.” When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”(Lilienfeld and Arkowitz, 2007)

In a larger community, a sociopath may evade detection long enough to reproduce successfully and pass on his mental traits. Finally, in some cultures he can use his manipulative skills to dominate the community, becoming a “big man” and enjoying very good opportunities for reproduction.

This Pandora’s Box was opened when humans gave up hunting and gathering and became farmers. First, farming supported a much larger population, so it became easier for sociopaths to move about from one group of unsuspecting people to another. Second, farming created a food surplus that powerful individuals could use to support underlings of various sorts: servants, soldiers, scribes, etc. There was thus a growing class of people who did not directly support themselves and whose existence depended on their ability to manipulate others.

Finally, in the tropical zone, farming greatly increased female reproductive autonomy. Through year-round farming, women could provide for themselves and their children with less male assistance. Men accordingly shifted their reproductive strategy from monogamy to polygyny, i.e., from providing for a wife and children to inseminating as many women as possible. This kind of cultural environment selected for male seducers and manipulators rather than male providers. Conversely, it selected for women who feel only an intermittent need for male companionship and who from time to time are able to coax assistance from people who are not so inclined:

Ethnographic descriptions of women who live in social contexts of low male parental investment portray women who are very demanding. Young women demand help from kin on behalf of children. When the help is not forthcoming the mothers often summarily dump or deposit the child or children at the door of a relative who (in their judgment) will not turn the children away. Women demand gifts from boyfriends for themselves.(Harpending and Draper, 1988)

In women, this selection pressure favors a condition known medically as Briquet’s syndrome and more commonly as “hysteria”:

When males are not good risks for parental investment, females will adjust their behavior accordingly. A common clinical characterization of Briquet’s syndrome is a woman who exaggerates need, who demands high levels of attention and investment, who deceives herself and others as to her requirements. The strategy (learned or inherited) makes sense for a woman with high exposure to low investment males. These males, however, are so fickle and so mobile that they can be dunned only in the short run.(Harpending and Draper, 1988)

Sociopathic behavior, be it hysteria or full-blown sociopathy, is not favored in hunter-gatherers, since both sexes invest heavily in their offspring and in each other. The selection is for men and women who can bond strongly with one partner:

[…] abandonment of the pair bond by either partner is likely to be deadly for the offspring. Draper (manuscript) finds that men with more children spend more time hunting than men with fewer dependents; that is to say that more offspring are directly translated into more parental work for the male. Pennington and Harpending (manuscript) found that infant mortality among women who had more than one mate during their reproductive careers was nearly twice as great as infant mortality of women who had only one husband. […] In societies of this type the contexts for the anti-social trait are unfavorable. There will be no pay-offs for anti-social behavior and the bearer of the trait will be readily detected and ostracized. (Harpending and Draper, 1988)

Strategy and counter-strategy

Sociopathy is therefore not an illness but a strategy. It has been least successful in small societies where both sexes invest heavily in care for their partners and offspring. It has been more successful in larger societies, particularly those where men invest less in partners and offspring. Indeed, because sociopathy does so well in such contexts, it may have hindered the development of larger and more complex societies.

In most large societies, people seek out and expel sociopaths from their local kin group and treat everyone else with suspicion. The result is the “amoral familialism” we see throughout much of the world. People prefer to deal with relatives, hire only relatives for their businesses and, as a rule, act morally only towards relatives. Thus, the high-trust environment of the family cannot extend to society in general. Among other things, this is why the market economy has failed to develop spontaneously over most of the world and over most of history. Without strong-armed government intervention (military pacification, police, courts, etc.), markets remain marketplaces—places of exchange that are highly localized in space and time. The market principle cannot spread to most economic transactions.

Some humans have resolved this problem by freeing themselves from the straitjacket of kinship, by adhering to social rules that apply to everyone, and by ruthlessly expelling rule breakers wherever they may be. This is the adaptation that Europeans have developed to the north and west of the Hajnal line. The relative weakness of kinship ties and, correspondingly, the relative strength of individualism favored a complex of psychological traits that may be summarized as follows:

– capacity to internalize punishment for disobedience of social rules (guilt proneness).

– capacity to simulate and then transfer to oneself the emotional states of other people, especially when such people are affected by rule-breaking either by oneself or by others (affective empathy).

– tendency to frame moral rules in universal, absolute terms, i.e., moral universalism and moral absolutism, as opposed to situational morality based on kinship. Rule-breakers are likewise condemned in absolute terms and may be expelled from the entire community, as opposed to being ostracized by close kin.

The above mental package brought Northwest Europeans closer than other humans to the threshold where one could escape the limitations of kinship and organize society along other lines, notably the market economy, the modern State, and political ideology. It thus became possible to meet the challenge of creating larger societies while ensuring compliance with social rules and a high degree of personal autonomy.

COMMENTS:

* Do you think that modern society selects for sociopaths ?

It has never been easier to quickly move through social circles and from city to city.

Modern ethics condemns many mechanisms which punish sociopathic behaviour such as gossip, shunning, feuding between families and extralegal revenge.

The website Chateau Heartistes provides advice that suggests that sociopathy may be a plus in the modern dating game.

Social services provide for the offspring of abandoned children in a way that they did not for most of human history.

* A book of Carlton Coon told the story of a whaling ship’s black cook put ashore in Inuit territory to spend a few weeks making molasses, he impregnated a quarter of the women in the district.

Eysenck found the greatest predictor of psychopathy was ticking the box for “my mother is not a good person”.

* Apart from sociopathy as an adaption where an individual exploits the vulnerabilities of others in his own group, could there also be entire groups who have evolved sociopathic strategies to exploit the vulnerabilities of a larger group whose society they live within as a minority?

* Ordinary Westerners have been indoctrinated for several decades now to believe that there are no such things as out-groups and non-kin.

They think and behave differently when they believe otherwise, as can be seen in history or in contemporary Westerners who were formerly liberal until they became acquainted with HBD or racialist literature.

* Some aspects of modern western society suit the lifestyle of a mobile sociopath, but others present significant obstacles.

More casual social mores and weaker family ties makes it easier to live a “pump and dump” lifestyle but, integrated computer databases mean that travelling from country to country is now difficult for sociopaths, and the tight labour market makes it tougher for sociopaths to find reasonably high paying work. I’d imagine the number of successful middle class sociopaths is relatively low compared with 40 years ago, but the number of sociopaths among the working class is probably increasing. A working class sociopath could probably do quite well out of more informals types of work such as drug dealing, construction work or working in the sex industry.

* Sociopathy is low empathy. The hysteria-spectrum disorders, many of which are today known as conversion disorders, are also characterized by a desire to have other people drop everything they are doing to focus on the “victim”.
Perhaps that explains why the left is composed of sociopaths like JFK and Clinton on the one hand, and hysterical tumblerinas and BLM activists on the other?

* In the coastal PNW, Bundy’s MO was often to approach women of college age, feigning an injury (arm in sling, e.g.) and asking for help with something (appeal to empathy). All his known victims were white women aged 15 to 26, and most were students (in the PNW at least, that is very likely Northern European ancestry).

* My suggestion was that all human beings naturally treat some people in a way we describe as “sociopathic”. Everywhere and always – except for special groups such as the religiously enlightened or highly empathic – some out-groups and their members are systematically treated as almost subhuman. That is, their humanity is ignored as being irrelevant. Even hunter-gatherers, nomads and primitive farmers living in small villages regard all outsiders as enemies.

Today we mostly live in huge nation-states, and the inhabitants of each nation-state tend to treat the inhabitants of other nation-states as different, inferior, suspect and potential enemies. Americans, for instance, see almost all foreigners as inferior, and some – such as Russians, Chinese, and Arabs – as enemies by definition (regardless of their actual behaviour).

But, even within a single nation-state, those of sociopathic disposition treat their fellow-citizens like out-group members – but secretly, without appearing to do so. Game theory showed long ago that, when 19 out of 20 or so of a group behave altruistically and in a trusting way, there are distinct benefits for all group members. But, at about this level, a niche opens up for the remaining one out of 20 to behave cynically and exploitatively, pretending to be altruistic and trustworthy while in fact cheating and lying. This is the criminal class, plus the “secret” criminal class that runs business and government.

Posted in Anthropology, Diversity | Comments Off

Why Is AIPAC Silent on Syrian Refugees?

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

Like much of America, Jewish organizations have become increasingly inward and tribal over the past 40 years.

Peter Beinart writes:

Many American Jewish groups balance the Holocaust’s tribal and universal lessons. The most powerful one doesn’t even try.

The last two weeks have brought a festival of American ugliness. Since the attacks in Paris, virtually every Republican governor has declared their state off-limits to Syrian refugees. GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz has called for allowing in Syrians only if they’re Christian. Donald Trump has mused about registering American Muslims and falsely accused them of celebrating 9/11. The bigotry and cowardice are jaw dropping. France, which lost 130 lives on November 13, has nonetheless committed to accepting 30,000 desperate Syrians. Barack Obama wants to accept 10,000 and the Republican Party has erupted in nativist hysteria.

In this dark time, the organized American Jewish community has been a source of light. In 2011, during another spasm of Islamophobia, the Anti-Defamation League shamed itself by opposing the building of an Islamic Center near the site of the World Trade Center. This time, by contrast, it has joined with nine other American Jewish groups to pen a letter to Congress declaring that, “To turn our back on refugees would be to betray our nation’s core values.” Even the right-leaning Orthodox Union has declared that, “While security concerns must be paramount, our focus as a nation should be on ‘getting to yes’” and accepting Syrian refugees.

Why is an American Jewish establishment so untroubled by the denial of Palestinian rights in Israel so concerned about America’s treatment of Syrian refugees? Because human beings think analogically. When new events arise we scan our brains for similar events in the past and then use the lessons of those past events to determine how to respond. If the last time you ate carrot cake you got sick, you’re unlikely to eat anything that looks like carrot cake again.

For American Jewish leaders, the most powerful analogy is the Holocaust. But it contains two, radically different, lessons. Lesson number one is to be on the lookout for Nazis. Thus, when Iranian leaders call for the elimination of Israel, American Jewish leaders assume that, like Adolf Hitler, they will use any weapons at their disposal, no matter the risk, to murder Jews. Lesson number two is that anyone suffering a Holocaust—or some lesser persecution–deserves help, as long as they are not Nazis themselves.

The first lesson is tribal; the second is universal. The first inclines Jewish organizations to take a hard line against Iranian’s nuclear program and Palestinian nationalism. The second inclines them toward empathy for Syrians fleeing persecution and gays and lesbians who want the right to marry.

This summer, during the Iran fight, most American Jewish organizations activated the right sides of their brain. Now, this fall, during the Syrian refugee controversy, they’re activating their left. And in the process, they’re showing compassion when it’s needed most.

But there’s a problem. While the organizations that petitioned Congress on behalf of Syrian refugees respond to both halves of the Holocaust analogy, they don’t wield much power in Washington. They’re far less influential than AIPAC, which focuses only on the first. AIPAC leaders invoke the Holocaust constantly, but only to imply that Israel’s enemies are Nazis, never to suggest that non-Jews suffering oppression deserve help. That’s why AIPAC won’t weigh in on Syrian refugees. It’s also why AIPAC has repeatedly hosted the Reverend John Hagee, even though he’s said Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans because the city was hosting a gay pride rally. For AIPAC, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Hagee supports Benjamin Netanyahu against Israel’s Nazi-like foes.

People in the American Jewish community take this for granted. But they shouldn’t. In the mid-twentieth century, the idea that American Jewry’s most powerful communal institution would ignore everything except Israel would have struck Jewish leaders as perverse. Back then, before AIPAC became the powerhouse it is today, America’s most influential Jewish groups cared about Israel. But they cared about civil rights and civil liberties inside the United States even more. J.J. Goldberg notes in his book, Jewish Power, that in the 1940s American Jewish Congress employed more lawyers fighting racial segregation than either the NAACP or the Department of Justice.

In the 1950s, before it even opened an office in Israel, the American Jewish Committee funded the research by psychologist Kenneth Clark that helped sway the Supreme Court in Brown v Board of Education.

American Jewry’s values haven’t changed much since then. That’s why American Jews voted overwhelmingly, twice, for Barack Obama. But American Jewry’s distribution of power has changed. The “war on terror,” the rise of the mega-donor, the assimilation of liberal Jews, the growing influence of the Orthodox and the prime ministership of Benjamin Netanyahu have all tipped the balance in favor of a tribal interpretation of the Holocaust analogy.

It’s wonderful that so many American Jewish groups are expressing solidarity with Syrian refugees. And it’s tragic that AIPAC remains more powerful than all of them put together.

Posted in America, Immigration, Jews | Comments Off

Why Russian-Jewish Refugees are Different From Syrian Refugees

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

Yuri Kruman writes:

In a recent op-ed entitled “I’m a Russian-born American Jew. My people’s rejection of Syrian refugees breaks my heart,” Ilya Lozovsky slanderously paints all Russian Jews as fascist hypocrites for failing to join his crusade to resettle Syrian refugees in America.

As a Russian-born American Jew, I beg to differ with his shallow smear campaign.

Let’s first be clear that as recent refugees ourselves, most Russian Jews in America know and remember well what it is like to be a refugee — not knowing where food or shelter may come from next, stuck in Austria or Italy on the way to the States or Israel. We get it like few others.

Humanitarian tragedies know no borders or nationalities, and deserve our help through the provision of food, temporary shelter, clothing, and medication.

But resettling refugees in the US is another matter altogether. The relevant policy questions to consider will have serious implications for our country. There is no place in this necessary and civilized argument for smears of racism and worse. Unfortunately, Mr. Lozovsky has stooped to this lowest of levels.

Do the proposed immigrants share our society’s values and respect the local rule of law? Given their average educational level, tolerance for other cultures and religions, as well as contributions to society back home, will they manage to integrate and succeed in America? Frankly, will they contribute significantly to the economy, civil society, and the preservation of democratic institutions? Lastly, do they have a core group of countrymen or co-religionists that will help them with integration, jobs and other big and little “logistics?”

With Russian Jews and with Syrians both, the situation was urgent and needed common-sense help immediately. We had only Israel as a challenging alternative. The Syrian refugees’ wealthy Gulf Arab brethren haven’t lifted a finger to help.

When it came to a community ready to help, Jewish organizations all over the country stood ready to help and indeed resettled hundreds of thousands of us successfully. We paid back our keep and much more by achieving high average educational level, high average salary, and strong participation in the economy and civil society. Syrian-Americans in Detroit, meanwhile, have remained reticent about accepting any Syrian refugees.

Do Russian Jews share American values? You bet.

Do Syrian refugees share our values? That’s a much more difficult question. Whether they’re rebels (Al-Nusra or Al-Qaeda), ISIS or just “regular folks,” they come from a society that’s deeply and universally misogynistic, intolerant of gays and other religions, profoundly anti-American and antisemitic, rife with conspiracy theories, etc. Every family’s case is different, but we must take their society of origin into account.

It’s true that most of this could well be said of Russian refugees, as well. However, Jews were long persecuted (and often killed) in the Soviet Union for religious practice, prevented from participation in civil society, filled the ranks of dissidents, and nevertheless managed high educational and scientific achievements despite state-sponsored antsemitism.

In short, as much as the Syrian refugees deserve our tactical help, they have other alternatives, don’t share our values to a large degree, and have little infrastructure ready to absorb them in the US. These are arguments that must be considered when debating the issue.

Posted in Immigration, Jews, Russia, Syria | Comments Off

Israel Shows Us How To Deal With Unwanted Refugees

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

Israel is a light unto the nations with its serious commitment to its survival. Part of that commitment means keeping out people who are incompatible with a Jewish state. Would that America was similarly pragmatic.

Black Africans are incompatible with a Jewish state. The influx of over 100,000 Ethiopians claiming to be Jewish has been a disaster.

From the Jerusalem Post:

NGOs lodge appeal over policy for migrants denied refugee status

The legal decision over how to handle the issue of around 45,000 African migrants who crossed into the country illegally, but claim refugee status, is somewhat up in the air.

…The Supreme Court also essentially validated the state’s goals of trying to deter future African migrants and shrink their current population size via detention and pressure to self-deport.

This paved the way for Beersheba District Court Judge Rachel Lavi-Barkai to uphold the part of the state’s policy that depended on giving certain migrants the choice to self-deport or be indefinitely detained…

Around 33,000 of the 45,000 migrants are Eritrean, and the state has recently taken the position that most Eritreans in Israel are not refugees.

Posted in Africa, Immigration, Israel | Comments Off

Senate Dems meet with Jewish leaders, talk Iran and refugees

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Senate Democrats meeting with Jewish organizational leaders pledged to police the Iran nuclear deal and applauded Jewish backing for resettling Syrian refugees…

The senators were moved by presentations on the refugee crisis by Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, the lead Jewish agency handling immigration issues, and Greg Rosenbaum, the chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council. The overwhelming majority of Jewish groups back Obama’s plan to settle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States over the next year, despite a swelling of GOP opposition to the program in recent weeks.

Other topics discussed included the boycott Israel movement. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., expressed alarm at its growth on California campuses.

Posted in Immigration, Jews, Syria | Comments Off

Social Justice

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

Letters to the Fort-Worth Star Telegram:

* Your Nov. 22 editorial (“Syrian refugees and terrorists are not the same”) said that “Jews must have cringed at the memory of times in their history … when they were required to wear badges signifying their faith.”

A core teaching of Judaism is social justice, mutual aid and tolerance. This teaching in ingrained in the fabric of all Jews, whether religious or secular.

The slogan “Never Again” means more than just the Holocaust. It means never again will we be silent in the face of injustice.

As Albert Einstein, a secular Jew, stated in 1938, the bond that unites Jews is “the democratic ideal of social justice coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men.”

This is why we speak out in a voice larger than our 2 percent of the U.S. population.

Posted in Immigration, Jews, Syria | Comments Off

ZOA Chief: Don’t Accept Syrian Refugees ‘Because They Hate Israel and Jews’

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

From Haaretz:

Annual gala of Zionist Organization of America, featuring Sheldon Adelson, breaks into wild applause over far-right views and the prospect of a Republican president.

NEW YORK – The United States should not accept any Syrian refugees, Zionist Organization of America president Mort Klein told attendees at a gala banquet here Sunday night, adding that many of them hate Jews and Israel. In addition, he said, parents and siblings of terrorists should be deported unless they publicly condemn, in Hebrew and Arabic, the acts of their family member. Klein was speaking to an audience of more than 1,000 people at the 2015 Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award Dinner, held at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt hotel.
“Don’t bring these refugees here. Treat as pariahs all those who promote radical Islam. … We must crush radical Islam as we crushed Nazism,” Klein said.
Attendees greeted both of Klein’s proposals with wild applause. It was one of several moments of right-wing ideology met by popular — though perhaps, given the $700 per person ticket price, not populist — acclaim.
“I don’t even know the legalities of it,” Klein told Haaretz after the dinner, of the deportation proposal. “I am so frustrated by the horror, the terror almost every day. The streets of Israel are empty, stores are 80 percent down in sales, people aren’t going to the Kotel. This is terrible. We can’t allow them to destroy Israel’s society,” he said, adding that ZOA’s board had not yet approved his idea but he expected it to do so at a meeting later this week. “These are extraordinary times and we need extraordinary measures.”
At the event, which was billed as “ZOA’s Superstar Gala,” actor Jon Voight received the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer was given the ZOA’s Dr. Bob Shillman Award for Outstanding Diplomacy.
Dermer, in his remarks, called on world governments to wage war against militant Islam and castigated them for not coming to Israel’s defense during the current round of terrorist attacks. “In the past few weeks, 19 Israelis have been killed and some 200 have been wounded in terror attacks. … But rather than support Israel … we hear outrageous statements about a cycle of violence and the need for both sides to act with restraint.”

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What Did Americans Say About Jewish Holocaust Refugees?

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

From Haaretz:

Back in the 1930s and ’40s, the fear was of Nazi and Communist infiltrators sneaking in along with the refugees rather than the ISIS militants or Mexican criminals that some fear today.

JTA – They were called “so-called” refugees, told they were alien to American culture and warned against as potential enemies of the United States.
This heated anti-refugee rhetoric in America was directed against Jews trying to flee Europe, not Mexicans or Syrians. Back in the 1930s and ’40s, the fear was of Nazi and Communist infiltrators sneaking in along with the refugees rather than the ISIS militants or Mexican criminals that some fear today.
Here’s a snapshot of what Americans were saying about Jews as they sought to escape Hitler’s Nazi vise for refuge in the United States.
‘Try to keep them out’
In 1938, when Hitler’s threat to Jews in Germany already was apparent, America still was emerging from the Great Depression, and xenophobia and anti-Semitism were commonplace. In a July 1938 poll, 67 percent of Americans told Fortune magazine that America should try to keep out altogether German, Austrian and other political refugees, and another 18 percent said America should allow them in but without increasing immigration quotas.
In another 1938 poll, cited in the book “Jews in the Mind of America,” some 75 percent of respondents said they opposed increasing the number of German Jews allowed to resettle in the United States.
In January 1939, 61 percent of Americans told Gallup they opposed the settlement of 10,000 refugee children, “most of them Jewish,” in the United States.
In May that year, 12 percent of Americans said they would support a widespread campaign against Jews in the United States and another 8 percent said they would be sympathetic to one, according to the book “FDR and the Jews.” By June 1944, the number had risen to 43 percent of Americans who said they would support a campaign against the Jews or would be sympathetic to one. Polls cited in “Jews in the Mind of America” showed 24 percent of Americans believed Jews were “a menace to America.”
At the same time, however, 70 percent of Americans said in an April 1944 poll commissioned by the White House that they supported creating temporary safe haven camps in the United States where war refugees could stay until the war’s end. Only one such camp was set up, at Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York; 982 refugees were placed there in August 1944.
‘A Jewish empire’
Representative Jacob Thorkelson, a Montana Republican, said Jewish migrants are part of an “invisible government” tied to the “communistic Jew” and to “Jewish international financiers.”
Senator Robert Reynolds, a North Carolina Democrat, said Jews are “systematically building a Jewish empire in this country.”
“Let Europe take care of its own people,” he said. “We cannot care for our own, to say nothing of importing more to care for.”
Reynolds told Life magazine he merely wanted “our own fine boys and lovely girls to have all the jobs in this wonderful country,” according to TheIntercept.com.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself warned that Jewish refugees might be Nazi spies, coerced to do the Reich’s bidding with threats against relatives back home. At a news conference, Roosevelt explained how refugees – “especially Jewish refugees” – might be forced into service for the Nazis with the threat that if they declined, they would be told, “We are frightfully sorry, but your old father and mother will be taken out and shot.”
Similar warnings against Nazis disguised as refugees appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest and American Magazine, according to Reason.com.
The numbers
America did not take specific action to help Jewish refugees until January 1944, when Roosevelt, conceding to pressure from members of his own government and American Jews, established the War Refugee Board to help rescue Jews in Europe.
Until then, several thousand Jewish refugees had gained admittance into the United States under the German-Austrian quota from 1938 to 1941, which wasn’t limited to Jews. But for most of Roosevelt’s presidency, the U.S. quota for immigrants from Germany went less than 25 percent filled, according to the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. In all, more than 190,000 quota places from Germany and Axis-occupied countries sat unused during the Holocaust.
In 1938, just two weeks after the Kristallnacht pogrom, the U.S. interior secretary floated the idea of settling refugees in Alaska, and soon his office began researching the possibility. In March 1940, Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Frank Havenner of California proposed bills to resettle 10,000 war refugees in the remote territory who wouldn’t count toward America’s immigration quotas. But the idea ran into opponents in Congress who expressed concerns that “these foreigners cannot be assimilated in Alaska, and will constitute a threat to our American civilization.”
In one of the most infamous incidents involving Jewish refugees, the SS St. Louis, a ship loaded with Jews fleeing the Nazis, sailed to the waters off of Florida in 1939, its passengers begging Roosevelt to enter the country. But Roosevelt said no, and the ship – once close enough for passengers to see the lights of Miami – returned to Europe. Nearly half its passengers would perish at the hands of the Nazis.
Even after World War II, Jewish refugees and displaced persons who wanted to resettle to the United States faced tight restrictions. Overall immigration to the U.S. did not increase after the Holocaust, but in an effort to bypass congressional inaction and help war refugees, President Harry Truman ordered that existing immigration quotas be filled by displaced persons. Under the provisions of the Truman Directive, some 22,950 DPs came to the United States between late 1945 and 1947; two-thirds were Jewish.
In 1948, Congress loosened immigration restrictions to allow 400,000 DPs into the United States. Most of those spots went to Christians, however; only about 20 percent, or 80,000, were Jews.
In all, 137,450 Jewish refugees had settled in the United States by 1952, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
By comparison, more than four years into Syria’s civil war, America has accepted about 1,500 Syrian refugees.

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JTA: US rabbis urge leaders to welcome refugees

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Luke Ford

JTA: More than 1,000 US rabbis have signed a letter calling on elected officials to welcome refugees.

The letter, sponsored by HIAS, the lead Jewish body dealing with immigration issues, said the rabbis are “alarmed to see so many politicians declaring their opposition to welcoming refugees.”

Rabbis in 46 states as well as Washington, DC, are among the signers. A condensed version of the letter and the full list of rabbis who signed on to it will appear in the print editions of Politico and the daily Forward on Thursday.

“Since its founding, the United States has offered refuge and protection to the world’s most vulnerable,” the letter says. “Time and time again, those refugees were Jews. Whether they were fleeing pogroms in Tzarist Russia, the horrors of the Holocaust or persecution in Soviet Russia or Iran, our relatives and friends found safety on these shores.

“Last month’s heartbreaking attacks in Paris and Beirut are being cited as reasons to deny entry to people who are themselves victims of terror. And in those comments, we, as Jewish leaders, see one of the darker moments of our history repeating itself,” the letter continues, citing the US turning away the SS St. Louis in 1939, sending some 900 Jews back to Europe; many were killed by the Nazis.

The letter urges elected officials to support legislation to resettle refugees and oppose any measures that would “actually or effectively halt resettlement or prohibit or restrict funding for any groups of refugees.”

COMMENTS POSTED:

* Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg: I believe there is a big difference between European Jews before and during World War II — who were not just caught in a war zone, but were being actively persecuted — and Syrian-Muslims. These young Syrian Muslim men, who make up the vast majority of the would-be refugees, should be fighting for their country. These young men from Syria — and in many cases young women — should be trained to be the boots on the ground against, first, ISIS, and then Assad. They are caught in a war zone. They are not being persecuted for who they are.

The story of Syrian Christians (and, in fact, all Middle Eastern Christians) is quite different. Their plight is much more similar to that of the European Jews in World War II. These Christians are being actively persecuted and killed and would probably not be accepted into a Muslim army fighting ISIS and/or Assad. Middle Eastern Christians merit refugee status.

I think a strong argument could be made for forming a 21st century version of the Kindertransport for Syrian Muslim children under the age of 12. That way they could be given safe haven until they can be reunited with their parents in a (hopefully) safe and sane Syria.

On a similar note, discussion on immigration into the U.S. has, by and large, neglected a very important issue: demographics. The U.S. is not replacing its population. The birthrate is dropping precipitously. If this is to remain a Judeo-Christian country, we must strongly re-think any opposition to Latino immigration. These people from Central and South America are a strong Christian (predominantly Catholic) church-going community —and we need them and their children if the Judeo-Christian ethic in the U.S. is to be maintained.

To all my facebook friends and supporters:
I need your help. While Rabbis and clergy are busy supporting Syrian refugees coming in to America without assurances by the FBI that they are not threats, I am fighting them knowing in my heart that Americans will be killed if this is not done correctly. No one can tell me that there is no connections between what happened in California and Syrian indoctrination. IN addition I sent material re my being threatened by a former student at Rutgers. Nothing has been done by the university, the Jewish newspapers, or the local Rabbis

* Absolutely, or force Muslims countries to take them,they will be much happier where they share religion and language.

* These clowns and their handlers are trying to drive Jews away from Judaism.

* Hopefully the Rabbis who have spoken will lead and follow their words and take a refugee family into their own home and set an example of their belief in their words.

* Sooooo…..perhaps these 1000 rabbis want to check their history. The linkage and comparison between THESE refugees and those from WWII are different worlds altogether! The Jews etc were not bent on the destruction of their new host country. Here, we have already.seen the affects of terrorists coming in under the.guise of ”refugees.” Witness Paris…

* What is wrong with these rabbis? Have they gone all insane? Who are they? Does anyone have a list of names and denominations?

* Homicidal maniacs were not seeded throughout the population of Jews who went to the death camps. There is no comparison. Misplaced pity is a crime. There are scores of Muslim nations to send these people. Many filthy rich.

* For the sake of the rest of us Jews, gather up these crazy rabbis and ship them to Syria.

* These idiotic rabbis, most likely from Reform movements have a wish to turn American cities to the European cities where the Jews are no longer safe. HIAS is selling out for few dollars they can earn upon sponsoring the Muslim refugees.

* These rabbis are speaking only for the lost souls within the misguided American Jewish communities who live in the la la land.

* As a reform Jew from south I am disgusted with these rabbis wanting these muslim fanatics to settle in the u.s.a.they are all wolves in sheep’s clothes.

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