As a Jew who is active in Jewish causes, IMHO one of the worst things another Jew can do is make false charges of Antisemitism. Not only does it weaken the effect of real charges of Antisemitism, but it goes against Jewish law regarding how people should talk about each other.
Writing in the Huffington Post Monday, Peter Dreier made a false claim that Donald Trump is a serial anti-Semite. Sadly, Dreier wouldn’t know Antisemitism if it jumped up, did a backflip and kissed him on the lips.
Putting aside for a moment, that for Trump to be an anti-Semite he would have to hate his daughter Ivanka who is a Shabbos- observant Jew, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, their three children, and his son Eric’s wife Lara Yunaskav, all of them are Jewish. But like most liberals Dreier is trying to brand Trump as a hater to make it easier to elect Hillary Clinton who along with her supporters has a track record of not being friendly to Jews.
To prove his false tale of hatred, Dreier uses, the infamous Jewish Star that he thought was a sheriff’s badge picture. The picture that was insensitive because somebody in the campaign should have known it may have caused problems.
But the badge but it was not in the least anti-Semitic (unless of course one is a liberal). If this Trump pictur
e is anti-Semitic, so is every member of the Sheriff’s department in Suffolk County where I live, whose badges are the same shape. (and I can assure you they aren’t). Taos New Mexico and San Francisco sheriffs use the exact same shape to name a few.
According to Dreier Fox News war on Christmas is also anti-semitic so the fact that Roger Ailes may be giving him advice is also an indication of Trumps anti-Semitism. Of course an effort to protect the right of one faith, does not necessarily mean you are anti- another faith. And as a Jew who has been watching Fox News for years, I have never had the slightest inkling that their “war on Christmas” was anti-Semitic (that’s because it isn’t).
Dreier claims:
Trump’s most recent anti-Semitic remarks were in a speech, and a tweet, last week that included this line: “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.” He didn’t need to use the word “Jew.” This imagery of a global banking cabal will be familiar to anyone who has read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-Semitic forgery that has fueled anti-Jewish violence for over a century. These are well-known anti-Semitic code words. The speech — typical of Trump’s paranoid conspiracy theories — was designed to fire up Trump’s white nationalist, anti-Semitic base
PULESE! So It was OK when Bernie Sanders campaigned on the basis that Hillary was beholden to the big banks? The reason Trump didn’t use the word “Jew” was because he wasn’t talking about Jews. Perhaps he was thinking about occupy Wall Street which used the anti-Semitic imagery that Dreier was talking about. That same occupy Wall Street which was supported by President Obama and other prominent Democrats. Dreier also points to the anti-Semites who support Trump. But if he is going to do that, he should point to the anti-Semites who support Clinton.
A look at Hillary Clinton’s supporters shows an extensive list of Jewish and Israel haters. Below is a sample, a baker’s dozen of Hillary’s haters, whose anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bigotry is ignored by Dreier and others in the mainstream media.
Note: for those of you who don’t believe that hating Israel is the same as hating Jews I give you two quotes: “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You’re talking Antisemitism” The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. “To attack Jews is Antisemitism, but an outright attack on the State of Israel is also Antisemitism. There may be political disagreements between governments and on political issues, but the State of Israel has every right to exist in safety and prosperity,” Pope Francis.
With the hatred identified, lets take a look at some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters who stir the pot of hatred:
Rev. William Barber II: Tried to de-legitimize Israel during the DNC by claiming that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.Rev. Barber’s branding of Jesus as a Palestinian wasn’t really the result of a flaw in his education, he was repeating a piece of Palestinian propaganda. It’s one of the things they use to disassociate Judaism from its roots in the holy land. Jesus was not a Palestinian. He was a Judean. The name Palestine was given to the Jewish State by the Romans as a punishment a century after Jesus lived. After the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE the Romans punished the Judeans (Jews) for revolting again by changing the name of their country from Judea (after the Tribe of Judah which is where the term Jewish came from) to Syria Palaestina. The name came from Phylistiim, the Roman word for the ancient Jewish enemy, the Philistines. According to page 313 of the Oxford encyclopedia of archaeology in the Near East, had disappeared in the late 5th century B.C.E.
Black Lives Matter: Hillary supports the Black Lives Matter moment (BLM). In its official demands document BLM supports the anti-Semitic BDS movement, based on this false rhetoric:
[Support to Israel] not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Every day, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded apartheid wall. —Build invest/divestment campaigns that ends US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex and any government with human rights violations.
Max Blumenthal: Some call Max Blumenthal a self-hating Jew, that is a falsehood. He Loves himself. Max is a Jew hating Jew. Max is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, the friend of Hillary that has been connected to the email scandal. Max Blumenthal’s writings about Israel go beyond a simple criticism of the Jewish State and into the repulsive realm of Antisemitism . His latest book Goliath includes chapters comparing Israel to the Nazis, such as “The Concentration Camp,” or “The Night of Broken Glass,” and others which are just slanderous, like “How to Kill Goyim and Influence People,” all of them reminiscent of the anti-Semitic blood libels popular in medieval Europe. F. Glenn Miller Jr., the 73-year-old avowed anti-Semite accused who shot and killed three Jews outside a Jewish community center in Kansas two years ago, was a huge fan of Max Blumenthal’s anti-Semitic rantings. Max’s writings were emailed to Hillary by his father. She sent them around to the State Department to read.
Sidney Blumenthal: Max may have gotten his anti-Israel/anti-Semitic feelings from good friend of Hillary Clinton, his dear old dad, Sidney. Sid Blumenthal sent many emails about Israel. Along with forwarding articles from his anti-Semitic son Max, Sidney sent policy recommendations about Israel, generally one-sided describing Israel as the oppressor. Like the time Hillary was preparing for her 2010 AIPAC speech and Blumenthal
instructed Clinton to “hold Bibi [Netanyahu]’s feet to the fire” on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “Perhaps most controversial,” he continued, would be for Clinton to “remind [AIPAC] in as subtle but also direct a way as you can that it does not have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion. Bibi is stage managing US Jewish organizations (and neocons, and the religious right, and whomever else he can muster) against the administration. AIPAC itself has become an organ of the Israeli right, specifically Likud.”
You can find more of Blumenthal’s Israel emails to Hillary at National Review:
By the way, if you asked Likud, they would claim that AIPAC favors Israel’s leftist parties, and the Democrats in the U.S.
Center For American Progress (CAP) In the lead up to the last election Politico published a piece about how CAP was fighting to change the Democratic Party to the Anti-Israel party. Stories by CAP bloggers had appeared in the vehemently anti-Israel fringe publication The Electronic Intifada. CAP bloggers have also accused American Jews of a dual loyalty, calling them “Israel-Firsters” The Simon Wiesenthal Center went beyond calling CAP anti-Israel, they called them anti-Semitic.
Rep John Conyers (D-MI) : Considered one of the most anti-Israel members of congress. In May 2002 Conyers was one of 17 House Democrats who voted against a Resolution (HR 392) expressing support for Israel as it faced terrorist attacks that had killed more than 600 civilians, including several Americans. Conyers has opposed Iran sanctions and U.S. funding of the “Iron Dome” anti-missile system, which saved hundreds of Jewish lives.
Laurie Cumbo– A NY City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo justified the black-on-Jew “knockout game” attacks in Brooklyn because, they were worried “they would be pushed out by their Jewish landlords or by Jewish families looking to purchase homes.” She made it clear that Jewish real-estate speculators are a prime enemy in her anti-gentrification outlook.
Tim Kaine: Mr J-Street. Open Secrets reports that J-Street was the number one donor($178K) to Tim Kaine campaigns over the course of his entire political career. In turn Kaine has shown himself to be a supporter of J-Street. In 2016 he spoke at the group’s national convention for the second time, saying in part, “There is no organization no NGO in the United States now that so stands for the values of diplomacy as J-Street” Allow me to provide examples of the “diplomacy” Kaine supports. During the 2008 Israeli action against Hamas, when the IDF was protecting the country after it suffered tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza, J Street called Israel’s “escalation in Gaza counterproductive.” It also made a moral equivalency argument between the policies of Israel and Hamas, stating that they found difficulty in distinguishing “between who is right and who is wrong.” The group has also advocated that the US negotiate with Hamas, rewarding the group for its terrorism. And tried to get the U.S. Congress to endorse the discredited anti-Israel Goldstone Report.
Khizr Khan: Muslim-American father of Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in action fighting in Iraq in 2004. Captain Khan is a hero who should be honored for his sacrifice. And his parent should be comforted for their loss. But Hillary supporter/ gold star dad Khizr Khan’s feeling about the Jewish State of Israel, matches that of many other Hillary supporters”
Media Matters For America: Uses anti-Semitic rhetoric including the canard that American Jews have a dual loyalty (they use the term Israel-Firsters). They’ve also claimed “evil Zionist lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy. Media Matters tried to promote the falsehood that the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to attack Israel, Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood and attacks Israel constantly. A 2010 Media Matter article written by Lara Friedman, of Americans for Peace Now, and Isaac Luria from J Street (both groups regularly demonize Israel) we learned that the years of Hamas rocket attacks against civilian towns in the Negev were Israel’s fault, Israel should negotiate with HAMAS, and Israel doesn’t need to be recognized as the Jewish state, which is nothing short of anti-Semitic.
Will Quigg: The Grand Dragon of the California KKK announced in March that he endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Al Sharpton: Led two anti-Semitic pogroms in NYC, Crown Heights and Freddy’s Fashion Mart. According to the sworn testimony of Efraim Lipkind, a former Hasidic resident of Crown Heights: “Then we had a famous man, Al Sharpton, who came down, and he said Tuesday night, kill the Jews, two times. I heard him, and he started to lead a charge across the street to Utica. —” Giving the eulogy at Gavin Cato’s funeral Sharpton said “The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid [Jewish] ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not Antisemitism; the issue is apartheid” The Freddy’s massacre was incited on Sharpton’s radio show, with calls for the money grabbing to stop trying to push the Black people out of Harlem.
George Soros: Creator of the anti-Israel organization J-Street. Recent document leaks exposed Soros‘ Open Society Foundation’s funding of anti-Israel advocacy groups. Soros condoned European Antisemitism saying it is “a result of the policies of Israel and the United States.” George Soros spewed an anti-Israel article in the NY Review of Books in 2007 where he complained the powerful Israel Lobby [those damned Joooos], were preventing peace in the Middle East.
Hillary Clinton: Orthodox Jews are like Iranian fundamentalists Clinton trashed Israel by expressing concern for Jewish State’s social climate in the wake of limitations regarding female singing in the IDF and gender segregation on public transportation. Both were accommodations made to the Orthodox communities in Israel and Hillary’s complaints were based on false information.
Clinton referred to the decision of some IDF soldiers to leave an event where female soldiers were singing; she said it reminded her of the situation in Iran. It did? Wow! In Iran the women would have been lashed or executed. In Israel they were allowed to sing, and the people who felt it was against their religious beliefs were allowed to walk out. That’s it! Most senior officers in the IDF supported the women’s right to sing. That’s called religious freedom.
I would suggest that Mr. Dreier never had to face Antisemitism, doesn’t understand it, or is simply pulling any excuse to label Trump as a hater out of his back pocket. The bottom line is that Dreier, a Jew, should sit down with his Rabbi and learn about the term, “lashon hara” known in English as evil tongue.
Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through speech. The Rabbis tell us that the harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating someone financially: money lost can be repaid, but the harm done by speech can never be repaired. A Chasidic tale vividly illustrates the danger of improper speech: A man went about the community telling malicious lies about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends. The rabbi told the man, “Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds.” The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned to tell the rabbi that he had done it, the rabbi said, “Now, go and gather the feathers. Because you can no more make amends for the damage your words have done than you can recollect the feathers.”
Mr. Dreier, you didn’t prove that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, but you did prove you need a remedial course in loshen hara.
