On this week, where we commemorated the first anniversary of the brutal murder of eleven Jews bent in prayer at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, we should remember the wise words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
“The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Quaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat first and foremost to Europe, (and Western civilization), and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.
Antisemtism is not about Jews. It is about antisemites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the first World War, and that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous this is. Not just to Jews, but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.” For the full statement, please click here
Like our colleagues at AIPAC, I have long believed that support for Israel should be a bipartisan issue. Once this become a partisan issue, we create enormous enmity for the State of Israel within at least fifty percent of the population, which would ultimately give succor and support to Israel’s enemies. And it certainly does not help the Jewish state survive if an incoming President regards Israel as “the other party’s issue.”
That is why my heart is so heavy when I read that mainstream leaders of the democratic party, such as Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and almost all of the major contenders within the democratic party have attended the J Street Conference.
What is even more concerning is that many of the speakers in this week’s conference have made outrageously naïve and even hostile statements about the State of Israel, demonstrating no empathy for what the Jewish state must contend with, to rapturous applause.
Such was the case when Senator Bernie Sanders stated that some of the $3.8 billion annual assistance to Israel “should go now to humanitarian aid in (Hamas controlled) Gaza.
(For the whole article, please click here)
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