Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

For Jews to blame the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman — the only president with a Jewish child and Jewish grandchildren, moreover — for increasing anti-Semitism is another example of a truism this Jew has known all his life: Unlike Jewish liberals, who get most of their values from Judaism, Jewish leftists are ethnically Jewish but get their values from leftism.

The biggest increase in anti-Semitism in the last 10 or so years has come from the left. Just ask young Jews who wear yarmulkes or are vocally pro-Israel on most American college campuses. And this generation’s threat of Jewish annihilation comes from Israel’s Iranian and Arab enemies.

As a Jew who attends synagogue every Shabbat, and as an advocate for the carrying of concealed weapons, I fervently pray we will not need armed guards at American synagogues. America’s uniqueness has been exemplified by the fact that Jews do not need armed guards in their synagogues.

Rabbi Wolpe writes:

My synagogue is on the west side of Los Angeles. On a rough guess, about half of my congregants support Donald Trump. Many of those who do, but certainly not all, are from the Persian community. We have had frank discussions. They know I deplore many of the things he says and I oppose much of what he does. They know that I have criticized, publicly and privately, the inflammatory rhetoric of his presentations and warned them of its effects. They also know that we respect and listen to one another, that I do not preach politics at them but do speak with them and learn from them, and that our relationship in many cases is not only one of affection, but of genuine love.

So when I see major American Jewish figures tell me that my congregants are illegitimate, my blood boils a little bit. After the tragedy in Pittsburgh, perhaps because I spend so much of my time at the bedside of the sick and dying, I expected that the first impulse of Jews in particular would be to simply offer messages of sorrow and condolence.

It’s what I imagined I would read when I opened “A prayer for Squirrel Hill— And for American Jewry” from Franklin Foer, whom I know somewhat and have always respected. Instead, I read this: “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome.”

In other words, more than half of my Shabbat morning congregants, and in some more traditional synagogues, almost all of them, should have the doors barred against their entry. Jews who make minyans, pay shiva calls, underwrite nursing homes and kindergartens — people who make Judaism possible, with their flawed but real human presence, for other people — should be cast out of our midst because of the levers they pull in the privacy of a voting booth. And what, after all, would a Jew who fled from Iran know about anti-Semitism — or protecting the Jewish community?

As Shabbat ended in Los Angeles, a city where in 1999 there was a terror attack against a Jewish Community Center, I saw this from another reporter whose work I have always esteemed very highly, Julia Ioffe: “And a word to my fellow American Jews: This President makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it.”

The calculation here, I suppose, is that people voted for Trump to get an embassy move and their vote proxy murdered other Jews. How careful should one be, should a distinguished reporter be, when accusing others of such enormities, even indirectly? How do people think this message will fall on the ears of those who fled from Iran, to be told that they are in fact guilty in the death of Pittsburgh’s Jews?

Or — even more shamefully — on the ears of Judah Samet. Mr. Samet, a Holocaust survivor, escaped death by 4 minutes because he was a little late to shul. He is also a strong supporter of Trump. Frank, Julia: Would you stand before this 80-year-old man, not in a tweet or online piece, but face to face, and tell him he is responsible for the death of his friends, the people with whom he prays each Shabbat? Would you bar him from the shul where he almost died, again, at the hands of Jew haters? Really? And that would make us the righteous ones?

From The Advocate:

The mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue reportedly happened during a ceremony for the children of a gay couple.

The Delta Foundation of Pittsburgh, a local LGBTQ group, revealed that the violent attack occurred during a bris — a Jewish rite of male circumcision — for the couple’s adopted twins. Their identities have not yet been made public.

“We were just informed that this morning’s tragedy was happening during a Briss for a set of twins adopted by a gay couple,” the organization posted Saturday on Facebook. “Our hearts and prayers go out to all that were involved including the members of the Synagogue, law-enforcement and first responders.”

“We have witnessed the worst of America this morning in our town Pittsburgh. More than ever we must come together as people and change the temperament of our country,” the statement concluded.

There are a reported 11 fatalities and six injured in the attack on the Tree of Life Congregation. After surrendering to police, assailant Robert D. Bowers said he “wanted all Jews to die,” according to a Pittsburgh police report. Bowers was charged with 29 criminal accounts by federal officials.

LGBTQ groups and public figures have condemned the bigotry that fueled this attack. In the immediate wake of the shooting, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, noted how the likely hate crime was “motivated by anti-Semitism.”

“Our hearts are with the community of the Tree of Life Synagogue, the first responders who bravely rushed into danger to save lives, the people of Pittsburgh, and all those impacted by this tragic act of hate violence,” Griffin said in a statement released by the LGBTQ organization.

Sarah McBride, HRC’s national press secretary, likewise called out the “real, insidious, and pervasive” anti-Semitism in the United States. The Tree of Life shooting is the deadliest attack on the country’s Jewish community in decades.

Goy says:

Today my 5-year old asked, “Daddy, why are they saying ‘globalist’ is an antisemitic vide word for Jews? Jews aren’t globalists, are they?”

Not really. But honestly my 8-year old was asking me if we’re Jewish and what a synagogue is and what HIAS is and why that guy was mad at HIAS. Geez. My 8-year old isn’t buying Jake Tapper’s narrative.

All I could reply was: “Honey, many people will hate you if you ask those questions. Are you sure you want to ask those questions?”

A Twitter account that's allegedly the latest ban-skirting reincarnation of white nationalist former congressional candidate Paul Nehlen praised the Pittsburgh shooting and posted a meme showing the Pittsburgh perp, Dylann Roof, Anders Breivik, and Timothy McVeigh as saints.

— David Hines (@hradzka) October 28, 2018

White nationalists talking to each other acknowledge that their conversion process breaks people, especially in the step to hardcore anti-Semitism. Lots of people who take that step basically go crazy to some degree. Some stabilize, some don't. Nehlen has continued to spiral.

— David Hines (@hradzka) October 28, 2018

Before conversion, Nehlen was a driven, successful achiever who set & accomplished real goals in life. This is what happens when an driven achiever breaks: they are driven to achieve at being broken.

The odds that Paul Nehlen will someday perpetrate a terrorist act are not zero.

— David Hines (@hradzka) October 28, 2018

From Steve Sailer’s blog:

* Do you think that all these insane recent events could contribute to a revival in Christianity in the United States?

Churches would have to play it right and do some good marketing. However, they could go by some slogan like “if you’re tired of all the madness, and want order, community, and love, join our Church”.

I view Christianity and organized religion as the antidote to this, and would love a revival. Any thoughts on this?

* I’ve been a supporter of gab, and want it to succeed for free speech reasons, but…

Free speech isn’t free. To some extent letting people voice their anger or even their criticism against certain groups will cause some people to radicalize, espouse violent ideologies, and take horrible action.

We know there is a trade off in some of our cherished democratic values. Allow people to have freedom and it will have some bad consequences, not just good ones.

* This is why Whites need our own country. We are effectively not allowed to criticize other groups, however detrimental their behavior maybe, lest someone go out and do something stupid and counterproductive. Multiculturalism is just not working out.

* No ethnic cleansing in the USA? Detroit’s white population went from 1.5 million to 0.05 million.

* Free speech is actually one of the antidotes to violence. When you forbid people to speak about an issue, their only response becomes violence. This individual in Pittsburgh didn’t attack and kill all those senior citizens in that synagogue because he had free speech rights, he did it because he had a screw loose.

Free speech should never be limited or banned.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Easterbrook

Actually, his Wikipedia entry doesn’t list that for which Mr. Easterbrook is most notorious.

I regard him as a “thinking man’s James Fallows.” Whereas he writes essays for “respectable” venues such as Atlantic and The New Republic, on “respectable” topics such as the environment or national defense spending, his thoughts sometimes take him to contrarian or iconoclastic positions. For example, it was Easterbrook who wrote about how the cheaper Northrup F-20 may be a better figher plane than the General Dynamics F-16, so why was the U. S. Air Force ignoring the F-20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark

His notoriety, however, derives from the time that he thought-out-loud an iconoclastic thought in public (I am paraphrasing), “When so many Jews are victims of violent attacks, in Israel, here at home, and in many other parts of the world, why do Jewish executives in Hollywood think it is a good idea to derive corporate profits from so many films glorifying violence?”

Who boy, did that get a reaction, for Crimethink on three separate levels. One was thinking that words or actions by specific Jewish persons could in any way even remotely contribute to or in the slightest way be responsible for Jews as a group being victims of violence connected to anti-Semitic hate. The second was invoking the anti-Semitic stereotype of monetary greed, especially the alleged pursuit of profits in disregard of any ethical or moral or social consequences. The third was the anti-Semitic trope that “(the) Jews run Hollywood.”

Given the buzz saw of public criticism Mr. Easterbrook ran into, I was thinking that he would get un-personed, air-brushed out of the Party photos. Commenting at Little Green Footballs, which was the Blog of Noticing of its day in the era before Charles Johnson terminated his post 9-11 truce with the conservative, neo-conservative and nativist Right, I ran into that same buzz saw by attempting to defend Easterbrook in suggesting that, yes, there are persons of Jewish heritage who serve as Hollywood executives, this material fact may have been the consequence of many Hollywood founders migrating to the U.S. as a result of Czarist-era persecution. Under the Hayes Code a Jewish movie executive accepted the wisdom of restrictions on movie content set by a Catholic priest as a win-win both for studio profits and social peace, so suggesting that movie moguls had a self interest in moderating the content of their movies (think of the recent iSteve thread where violent movies are discussed), wasn’t off base. Other commenters at LGF called my arguments “garbage.”

This latest tragedy is a Progressive Agenda two-fer. Because a person off-their-nut shoots and kills people, we have to give up our guns. Because a white anti-Semite off-his-nut shoots and kills Jewish people, we have to give up any public remarks regarding how either specific Jewish persons or factions within or the Jewish community as a whole participate in our multi-cultural American society?

* Steve Sailer: Gregg Easterbrook lost half of his income when he got fired from ESPN.com for supposedly anti-Semitic blogging criticizing Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” at … Marty Peretz’s TNR. Peretz, no shrinking violet in defense of Jewish interests, was fine with what Easterbrook said about how Jewish movie executives should not rush to fund the gore fests of Tarantino (who is not Jewish). Easterbrook is an old member, IIRC, of the Kinsley Klique of talented opinion journalists along with Fallows, Kaus, etc.

But he got fired from his football column at Disney/ESPN for several years. One thing that is striking to me is that I wouldn’t go out of my way to unjustly injure the younger brother of … heavyweight federal judge Frank Easterbrook. But that consideration of prudence didn’t stop Michael Eisner and/or his minions.

Eventually, after Eisner was out (whether coincidentally or not), Easterbrook got his football column back at ESPN.com.

* All victims are equal, but some are more equal than others.

I don’t recall quite the same outpouring of denunciations and calls for rethinking free speech, etc in the wake of Dylann Roof’s killings of blacks, or for that matter, Sergeant Bales’ killings of Muslim women and children. We seem to be divided on Muslim terrorism; half of us call for the most spectacularly genocidal responses, while the other half try to pretend such attacks didn’t happen. As some have noted, black killings of whites go completely uncovered.

For some reason, the victims in Saturday’s attacks are different; could someone specify what the distinction is?

* Ron Unz: Well, just as I expected, my morning NYT had wall-to-wall coverage of the Pittsburgh shooting, naturally with much of it focusing on the horrific anti-Semitism involved, plus the right-wing anti-immigrant angle.

It certainly does seem to be the worst anti-Jewish attack in modern American history. The Times described the previous most deadly anti-Semitic attack as having been the killing of a family of four in 1985, none of whom were Jewish, and the killing of three non-Jews as recently as 2014.

Given that all these previous examples of monstrous anti-Jewish attacks actually killed no Jews, that made me a little curious, so I went to Wikipedia, that font of our Respectable Truth. Unsurprisingly, there’s a huge 10,000 word article on the massive history of Anti-Semitism in the United States, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t list a single case of an actual anti-Jewish killing.

Presumably some Jews must have died in the large number of random mass-shootings we’ve had in recent decades, but when was the last time any Jews actually died in anti-Semitic attacks? Considering the gigantic decades-long MSM focus on anti-Semitic violence, there must surely have been at least some since the celebrated Leo Frank case of 100 years ago, but offhand I can’t think of any.

Sometimes the impression you get from the MSM is a little distorted…

* I think we should be careful before rushing to judgement about whether Bowers acted on generalized anti-semitism.

He’s reported to live in Castle Shannon, which has been among the areas most badly targeted for resettlement (https://archive.is/JR0aR).

The congregations based out of that synagogue, particularly the Reform ‘Dor Hadash’ congregation, have been extremely supportive of refugee resettlement (in other people’s neighbourhoods). https://web.archive.org/web/20181027190824/https://www.jfcspgh.org/national-volunteer-week/

I would not be shocked to learn that this man was affected by refugee crime against his friends or family or his own person, made the link back to those who brought them in, and overreacted in this very unfortunate way.

* The irony that the vast majority of the heroes of the Alt-Right like Richard Bowers, Christopher Cantwell, Dylann Roof, Adolf Hitler, etc have fathered ZERO White offsprings.

* I remember Alt-Lite Gavin McInnes owned these pathetic childless Alt-Right trolls by saying “I fathered 3 kids, how many fucking children do you have? That’s right ZERO”.

* The number of Jews who died in the [9/11] attacks is variously estimated at between 270 and 400.[152][153][154][155] The lower figure tracks closely with the percentage of Jews living in the New York area and partial surveys of the victims’ listed religion. The U.S. State Department has published a partial list of 76 in response to claims that fewer Jews/Israelis died in the WTC attacks than should have been present at the time.[152][156] Five Israeli citizens died in the attack.[157]

* I would guess that even among the very few hardcore anti-Semites you’d be hard pressed to find any of them who try to justify any murder, especially mass murder. Also, many who are critical of the Jews come from a conservative Christian tradition (E. Michael Jones, late Joe Sobran, etc.) where committing or even intending harm to anyone is gravely immoral and absolutely prohibited (the decline of Christianity is not good for the Jews in the long run).

* Richard Spencer admits there would be NO free speech in his fantasy White ethnostate.
Which makes sense because free speech did not exist in Nazi Germany either and Richard Spencer sees Nazi Germany as the blueprint for a White ethnostate.

* HIAS Statement on Central American Caravan
Oct 22, 2018

SILVER SPRING, Md.–Under longstanding U.S. and international law, individuals fleeing persecution have the right to seek asylum. HIAS urges the United States government to respect the rule of law, provide all asylum seekers the opportunity to present their claims as required by law, and treat all migrants fairly and humanely. We hope that the asylum seekers and migrants stay safe and that they comply with established laws and procedures for seeking asylum and entering the United States. Most fundamentally, we must remain committed to upholding the human rights of those seeking asylum.

HIAS Statement on Possible Executive Action Restricting Asylum
Oct 26, 2018

SILVER SPRING, Md. – Yesterday it was reported that President Trump is considering an executive action to deny entry to Central American asylum seekers on the Southern border, including those currently traveling as part of the caravan. If signed, this ban would take effect immediately.

Under American immigration and international laws, people who arrive at the U.S. border have the fundamental right to seek asylum. This action would ban most Central Americans from making an asylum claim in the U.S., shutting down a legal, life-saving avenue for refugees in the region to seek protection.

“The individuals arriving at the Southern border are not a threat to our safety. They are women, children, and men who are fleeing some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and are simply seeking safety and protection for their families,” said Mark Hetfield, President and CEO of HIAS. “Once again, we remind the President that seeking asylum is not illegal, and that the U.S. must respect the rule of law.”

Individuals who arrive in the U.S. with a credible fear of persecution must have their claims heard. HIAS calls on the Administration to respect the rule of law, and ensure a fair and humane process for all asylum seekers who arrive at our borders and seek protection.

HIAS Statement on Pittsburgh Tragedy
Oct 27, 2018

SILVER SPRING, Md.–In response to the tragedy in Pittsburgh today, HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees, issued the following statement:

“There are no words to express how devastated we are by the events in Pittsburgh this morning. This loss is our loss, and our thoughts are with Tree of Life Congregation, our local partner Jewish Family and Community Services (JFCS) of Pittsburgh, the city of Pittsburgh and all those affected by this senseless act of violence. As we try to process this horrifying tragedy, we pray that the American Jewish community and the country can find healing.”

As one of the nine national refugee resettlement agencies, HIAS partners with the United States government to resettle refugees as part of the U.S. refugee admissions program. Founded in 1881 as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS stands for a world in which refugees find welcome, safety, and freedom. Guided by Jewish values and history, HIAS rescues people whose lives are in danger for being who they are.

In which I will always be grateful to HIAS. Why the Tree of Life Shooter Was Fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society https://t.co/kCpg6vMlro

— masha gessen (@mashagessen) October 28, 2018

* If he’s a Knausgård fan, his one million word manifesto/memoir will turn up shortly.