THE PARAGRAPHS OF THE DAY

Today’s paragraphs come to us from Ron Jager, a 25 year veteran of the IDF (Israel Defense Force) and, today, a major consultant and strategic adviser  specializing in psycho-trauma and psycho-education programs.

Mr. Jager has written a commentary for americanthinker.com, with some very strong opinions on what the 2016 election means to Jewish liberals in the United States.  Here are the first three paragraphs:

For most American Jewish liberals, November 8 was not only a watershed election, but a day in which the music died.  They have been left speechless and silent, unwilling to fathom the implications.  These liberal Jews have become disoriented and unsure about what to do and what to say; they seem to be suffering from a bad case of PTSD (Post Trump Stress Disorder).  For many of these liberal Jews, they are slowly waking up to a new reality of losing their political clout, being left out of the multiple loops of power and access to the White House.  They have been demoted to the rank of irrelevancy.

Betting on the wrong horse is always a wrenching experience.  Over the past eight years, liberal Jews supported and abetted a president and a Democratic Party that was overtly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian.  During this period, Islamic terror attacks  have spread throughout America,  and anti-Semitism has blossomed in America’s universities and campuses, poisoning the minds of America’s future political and business leaders.  This is real anti-Semitism, not the made up anti-Semitism associated with the emerging Trump administration.  In recent years, Jews have been attacked and vilified at levels never seen before in recent history.  All this didn’t matter; the Democratic Party was a sure bet as far as they were concerned.

Jewish liberals became drunk with Jewish power.  In a wide variety of domestic spheres – immigration and refugee policy, civil rights and affirmative action, abortion rights, church-state separation issues – Jewish liberals became major players, helping to make the rules and call the shots on matters from health care to zoning.

It was during these eight years that Jewish liberals felt free to preach and moralize to us Israelis publicly about how Israel conducts itself nationally and internationally.  Many Jewish liberals freely accused Israel of being non-democratic verging on Apartheid, they demanded of Israel to agree to political concessions that clearly endangered Israel’s national security; they funded and lead many of the organizations that spread the poisonous message of Jew-hatred by the BDS movement.  It is easy to see why a Jewish liberal never saw it coming, actually believing that the invented narrative of BlackLivesMatter and transgenderism and Obamacare and unrestricted immigration is actually good for America.  Donald Trumps’ election might well signal the beginning of an era in which Jewish liberals refrain from preaching and moralizing to us as if they have a monopoly on social justice and truth.

I can’t say I agree with everything Ron Jager has to say.  But I agree with most of it.  And I am saddened by what I believe to be the fact that a great many of the Jews he references will angrily dismiss his analysis without giving even one second’s thought to the points it makes.

Old habits die hard, and it is never fun to admit you are wrong.  But maybe it is time – long past time, actually – for some of my fellow Jews to allow both to happen, and learn from doing so.