Today’s paragraphs come to us from Melanie Phillips, writing for the Jerusalem Post.
This is from her latest commentary, which discusses the astounding level of self hatred – often unintentional, but nonetheless just as virulent – shown by Jews regarding Israel:
In America, four liberal rabbinic organizations have scrapped their participation in the annual conference call in which the president traditionally offers his greetings for the Jewish New Year.
Their reason? President Donald Trump’s statements about the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville were “lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred.”
Faced with left-wing aggression and bigotry, many American Jews display a high degree of cognitive dissonance. That’s because they think not as Jews, but as leftists – not least because they can’t discern the difference.
Left-wing antisemitism is running at epidemic level. Demonization of Israel based on lies, double standards and a near-supernatural attribution of cosmic malevolence is the default position on the Left.
Liberal American Jews aren’t merely allowing their liberalism to supersede their Judaism.
They are actively siding with the enemies of the Jewish people and the Western civilization built on Jewish values.
They fell over themselves to have their annual Rosh Hashana conference call with former president Barack Obama, a man who refused to say that the slaughter at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris in 2015 was an antisemitic attack.
They voiced no outrage when Rep. Keith Ellison, who once had close ties to the profoundly Jew-hating, black racist organization Nation of Islam, supports Hamas and who has a history of troubling remarks about Jews, was elected vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Every word true. And especially sad for me, a Jew and supporter of Israel.
I have heard liberal/left Jews – intelligent, well-meaning people who would know better if they wanted to – regurgitate the media-promoted lies about what Donald Trump said in Charlottesville.
No, Trump did not equate White supremacists and neo-nazis with people who are against White supremacism and naziism. One read of the transcript of what Trump says shows the only equivalence he made was that both sides at Charlottesville were violent.
No Trump did not say White supremacists and nazis are “very fine people”. He specifically excluded them from that description.
But people I am friendly with and respect “know” he said those things anyway, and hate his guts for it.
Melanie Phillips wins Paragraphs Of The Day honors for talking honestly about this sad, even pathetic, anomaly – a President who has spent decades supporting Israel with words and donations being nailed as a Jew-hating nazi sympathizer.
