I don’t know a single Jew in my real life who wants more Muslims in America. I suspect most Jews in America and in the West don’t want more Muslims around. Yet Jewish elites through the major Jewish organizations keep pushing for more Muslim immigration.
These Jewish elites are rich and they don’t have to worry so much about Muslim aggression. Regular Jews and regular goys pay the price for Muslim immigration.
WASHINGTON (JTA) – American Jewish organizations don’t see the Syrian refugees as a threat; they see them as a reminder.
With rare unanimity on an issue that has stirred partisan passion, a cross-section of the community has defended the Obama administration’s refugee policy in terms recalling the plight of Jews fleeing Nazi Europe who were refused entry into the United States.
“The Jewish community has an important perspective on this debate,” the Orthodox Union said in its statement. “Just a few decades ago, refugees from the terror and violence in Hitler’s Europe sought refuge in the United States and were turned away due to suspicions about their nationality.”
Echoed the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly: “We can sadly remember all too well the Jews who were turned away when they sought refuge in the United States on the eve of, and during, World War II.”
Eleven Jewish organizations joined another 70 groups in pleading with Congress to keep open the Obama administration’s program, which would allow in 10,000 refugees over the next year from among the 200,000 to 300,000 in Europe. Neither the Orthodox Union nor the Rabbinical Assembly signed the letter.
Among the signatories were mainstream bodies like the the Reform movement, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the National Council of Jewish Women, as well as HIAS, the lead Jewish body dealing with immigration issues, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for Jewish public policy groups.
Officials from the organizations that support allowing in the refugees said they were not likening the magnitudes of the two catastrophes, but could not help noting the reluctance in the 1930s, as now, to accept refugees and the accusations that the refugees posed a danger.
“It’s obviously a sensitive comparison, but it’s the right point to make,” said Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center. Both the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Assembly added in their statements that the administration and Congress should also take into account legitimate security concerns, while pressing forward with resettlement.
The consensus among the three major streams of U.S. Jewry – Reform, Conservative and Orthodox – is derived from a shared understanding of Jewish scripture, said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center.
“Our role is to be the pure rabbinic voice that lifts people up beyond their narrow partisan views,” he said of rabbis.
Rabbi Steve Gutow, a Reconstructionist who is the outgoing president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said sympathy for the refugee was written into the Jewish cultural genetic code.
“We’ve been facing the need to have refuge since we left Egypt,” he said. “To think about not speaking out flies in the face of who we are.”
Being on the losing side of a political debate is nothing new for organizational American Jewry, said the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, noting that the ADL in 1958 solicited a book from a “young senator from Massachusetts” — John F. Kennedy — to counter rising anti-immigrant sentiment. The future president wrote and published “A Nation of Immigrants.”
“‘We were once strangers’ is core to our identity,” Greenblatt said.
There are signs that support for the refugees may not always be a partisan one.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has a rigorously bipartisan board, has weighed in backing the program. And Michael Chertoff, President George W. Bush’s secretary of Homeland Security, who is Jewish and otherwise has been sharply critical of the Obama administration, joined his Democratic successor, Janet Napolitano, in urging Obama to safeguard the resettlement program, describing the current screening program as “robust.”
Jen Smyers, the director of advocacy for Church World Service, one of several groups involved in refugee advocacy and resettlement, said she expected more Republican backing for the refugees once grassroots activists contact their representatives during the Thanksgiving break.
“This is a powerful week to be in touch,” she said, referring to the holiday commemorating refuge.
COMMENTS:
* Clergy and religious organizations are pressuring politicians to allow the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. This reminds me of the 1600 Rabbis for Obama who I fought years ago when I was chairman of Rabbis for Romney. I am a lonely voice who is attacked by organized groups and politicians primarily democratic. I will not back down . I hope you will voice your concerns to your clergy and politicians. They are backing Obama. I believe these Muslim refugees have not been vetted enough and our country and families are in jeopardy.
* So, Mr. Kampeas, it becomes clearer that you are a lib. These Jewish organizations are shameful. There is no comparison with the Jews on the St. Louis or any other Jews being turned away. Those Jews were really, really seeking refuge from those that would kill them. THese so called refugees are only about 10% families seeking true refugees. The rest are young men between 19 and 45 who are coming here and to other countries to take us all over. I am very thankful to G-d for making me Jewish, but I am shamed of all the stupid Jews who are cowards, afraid to fight, afraid to let people know they are Jewish, afraid to stand up for what is right and godlike in this world.
* You are not alone Rabbi Rosenberg. Many Jews stand with you! We know a hostile invasion when we see one. The major organizations are run by Democrat party lackeys and guilt-ridden Libs, who will rue the day they invited these Jew-haters, when they will, no doubt, give America a taste of what’s happened to France.
