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friend-clarity · 5 years

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American Jewry's days of reckoning

On Rosh Hashanah, the [trans-denominational] East Side Synagogue honored [anti-semite] Sharpton at its service. In May, the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement held a conference in Washington, D.C., titled "Consultation on Conscience." They invited Sharpton, whom they touted as a "civil rights leader," to speak. ...

A couple of weeks before Trump delivered his address to the United Nations, the leaders of the Reform movement published a pre-Rosh Hashanah statement on the movement's website. Rather than concern themselves with Jewish continuity or spiritual renewal, the statement was a long diatribe against Trump. ...

The question is, what has the Reform movement done for American Jews? According to a few hundred Jewish demonstrators who congregated outside New York City Hall on Sept. 22, the answer is: nothing.

The purpose of the demonstration was to demand that city officials take effective action to stem the rising wave of anti-Semitic attacks in the city.

According to a report published in May by the New York Police Department, from January through May of this year, New York City experienced an 83% rise in hate crime. Fifty-nine percent of hate crimes in the city are directed against Jews, and anti-Semitic attacks have risen 90% in the past year.

The Union of Reform Judaism also didn't send a representative.

It isn't difficult to understand why almost every Jewish leader ignored the rally. The Jews under assault aren't their sort of Jews. And the people attacking them aren't their sort of anti-Semites.

The Jewish victims in New York are not Reform Jews. They are ultra-Orthodox Jews. And they don't live in Manhattan. They live in Brooklyn.

Shortly after the NYPD released its hate crimes report, New York's Mayor Bill De Blasio held a press conference in Brooklyn. There he insisted that the anti-Semitic assaults are the work of the far right. In his words, "I think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement."

He added, "I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right."

Unfortunately for De Blasio, there are no neo-Nazis in Crown Heights and Williamsburg. The perpetrators of the attacks against his city's Jewish community are not Trump voters. They are his voters.

Most of the perpetrators are African Americans, and as such, like the Reform Jews, they are members in good standing of the progressive camp in American politics.

The liberal Jewish establishment in America is far more comfortable talking about neo-Nazis than black anti-Semites.

American Jewry's days of reckoning, By Caroline Glick Published Oct. 7, 2019

On Sept. 29, U.S. President Donald Trump set out his nationalist political philosophy in his address before the United Nations General Assembly. Arguing that the nation-state is the best guarantor of human freedom and liberty, Trump set up a contrast between "patriots" and "globalists." "The future does not belong to globalists," he said.

"The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors, and honor the differences that make each country special and unique."

Jewish nationalists, that is, Zionists, could hear their core convictions echoed in Trump's statement. Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony made much the same argument in his book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” which was published last year.

One of the regimes most opposed to nationalism is that of Iran. Iran's leaders view the regime not as the government of the nation of Iran, but as the leader of a global jihad, which will end with the regime's domination of the world, in the name of Islam — not Iran.

Anti-Semitism is one of the animating doctrines of Iran's regime. Iran’s leaders subscribe to genocidal Jew-hatred. They use their commitment to annihilating Israel and war against the Jewish state as a means to build legitimacy for their regime and revolution throughout the Islamic world.

In his speech, Trump highlighted the regime's anti-Semitism and its commitment to annihilate Israel.

Trump also excoriated the Arab world for refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist, saying, "Fanatics have long used hatred of Israel to distract from their own failures."

Trump pledged, "America will never tolerate such anti-Semitic hate."

Rather than earning him plaudits, American Jews were caustic in their response to Trump's speech. Britain's Independent reported that several American Jews condemned Trump's speech as anti-Semitic. For instance, Laura Seay, a political science professor in Texas tweeted, "So … Trump condemns anti-Semitism in the same speech he started with anti-Semitic code language like ‘globalism.'”

Among other things, they alleged, "Since taking office, President Trump's words and actions have sowed division, spread fear, and expressed hateful views that go far beyond the legitimate expressions of policy differences that characterize healthy political debate."

The question is, what has the Reform movement done for American Jews? According to a few hundred Jewish demonstrators who congregated outside New York City Hall on Sept. 22, the answer is: nothing.

The purpose of the demonstration was to demand that city officials take effective action to stem the rising wave of anti-Semitic attacks in the city.

Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, was the only leader of a major Jewish organization among the participants. Aside from two New York City councilmen, no Jewish politicians attended the event. New York Senator Charles Schumer wasn't there. Neither were any of the Jewish representatives from New York.

The Union of Reform Judaism also didn't send a representative.

It isn't difficult to understand why almost every Jewish leader ignored the rally. The Jews under assault aren't their sort of Jews. And the people attacking them aren't their sort of anti-Semites.

The Jewish victims in New York are not Reform Jews. They are ultra-Orthodox Jews. And they don't live in Manhattan. They live in Brooklyn.

He added, "I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right."

Unfortunately for De Blasio, there are no neo-Nazis in Crown Heights and Williamsburg. The perpetrators of the attacks against his city's Jewish community are not Trump voters. They are his voters.

Most of the perpetrators are African Americans, and as such, like the Reform Jews, they are members in good standing of the progressive camp in American politics.

The liberal Jewish establishment in America is far more comfortable talking about neo-Nazis than black anti-Semites. That is a large part of the reason that in its annual reports on anti-Semitic attacks in the United States in 2017 and 2018, the Anti-Defamation League tried hard to give the impression that most anti-Semitism in the United States emanates from the political right, and is inspired by President Trump. But the facts point to a different conclusion.

Last month the Amcha Initiative, which documents, investigates and combats anti-Semitism on college campuses, published its 2018 report on-campus anti-Semitism. The report revealed that classic anti-Semitic attacks — that is, right-wing anti-Semitic attacks — decreased by 42%. In contrast, 2018 saw a 70% increase in leftist anti-Semitic attacks on campuses.

The report's most alarming finding is that faculty members are playing a central role in propagating and inciting anti-Semitism on campuses by pushing academic boycotts of Israel. Their decisive role — and the fact that their actions are largely backed by university administrators — indicates that anti-Semitism has become institutionalized in American academia.

Rather than fight against this dangerous state of affairs, major Jewish groups have been diffident in their responses. While anti-Israel groups like J Street oppose legislative initiatives to penalize companies that boycott Israel, other liberal groups, like the ADL, sit on the fence. They give lip service to anti-BDS laws while grousing incoherently that supporting the penalization of those who discriminate against Israeli Jews somehow breaches the First Amendment or otherwise causes undefined harm to the Jewish community.

The frustrating fact is that these liberal Jewish organizations could make a difference if they wished. If major Jewish groups, including the Reform movement, were to wage a serious, sustained campaign against U.S. academia's institutionalization of anti-Semitism, liberal politicians would be doing much more than they have been to combat the phenomenon.

Notably, as they hem and haw, the same Trump administration which the liberal Jewish establishment regularly accuses of unleashing anti-Semitism is taking steps to curtail the scourge of academic Jew-hatred.

Last month, for instance, the Education Department sent warning letters to Duke University and to the University of North Carolina after they used federal funds to finance an anti-Semitic conference.

Which brings us to the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. The attacks against the Jews of Crown Heights, Williamsburg and Boro Park are serious and growing more frequent.

Jews walking down the streets are beset by assailants who call them "Dirty Jew" and beat them with sticks and fists. Jews are sideswiped with bricks. Jewish women are assaulted, their head coverings violently removed. Synagogues are vandalized.

The violence against the Jews of Brooklyn is reminiscent of the black community's violent pogrom against the Jews of Crown Heights in 1991. In August 1991, more than 180 members of the Chabad community were injured in a three-day, four-night pogrom carried out by African and Caribbean American rioters. Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Melbourne, Australia, was beaten and stabbed to death.

One of the main black leaders who incited the pogrom was Rev. Al Sharpton, the self-styled civil rights leader. Despite the fact that Sharpton never apologized for stirring up the mass violence against the Jews and then maintaining it for days after it first began, over the past decade, Sharpton has risen in stature in the Democratic Party to the point where Democratic presidential hopefuls make pilgrimages to him in the hope of securing his endorsement. MSNBC gave him a show.

And, in recent months, as the Jews of Crown Heights again absorb blows from their African American neighbors, the Reform Jewish movement has joined Sharpton's fan club.

On Rosh Hashanah, the tony East Side Synagogue honored Sharpton at its service. In May, the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement held a conference in Washington, D.C., titled "Consultation on Conscience." They invited Sharpton, whom they touted as a "civil rights leader," to speak.

Rosenbaum's brother Norman Rosenbaum decried the RAC's decision to invite Sharpton in an op-ed in the Washington Examiner. "Sharpton has never apologized or shown any remorse for his actions during the 1991 Crown Heights Pogrom," he noted.

"How pathetic it is that the Religious Action Center's conference is titled ‘Consultation on Conscience.' That organization, in having Al Sharpton speak, only demonstrates that it has none," he concluded.

The liberal Jewish leadership's decision to pretend away progressive anti-Semitism is not unhinged. As a decade of survey data has shown conclusively, their communities are in a state of demographic collapse. With the lowest fertility rates in America, with the majority of non-Orthodox Jews intermarrying and with Jewish literacy at an all-time low, the liberal Jewish establishment seeks to retain its members by embracing their lowest common denominator.

That commonality is not Judaism. It is progressivism.

Whereas the 2013 Pew survey of American Jews showed that a mere 19% of American Jews believe that observing Jewish law is an essential part of what it means to be Jewish, 56% said working for justice and equality is an essential part of Judaism.

In light of the data, facing mass assimilation and a membership with an increasingly weak sense of Jewish identity, many non-Orthodox Jewish communities now conflate progressive politics with Jewish identity. By serving as a political outlet for their members, the apparent thinking goes, these non-Orthodox communities hope to retain their members.

The problem with this strategy is that with anti-Semitism rapidly becoming a major component of progressive politics, the more strongly liberal Jews embrace progressivism, the less capable they become of defending their Judaism — much less defending their fellow Jews who aren't progressive. And if nothing changes in the trajectory of progressive politics, sooner rather than later, liberal Jews will be forced to abandon either their Jewish identity or their progressive identity.

For the American Jewish community to survive this clash, the leaders of the community need to begin fighting for their rights as Jews. Unfortunately, at present, there is little reason for optimism.

Long-time JWR contributor Caroline Glick is an award winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

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dustinwmooney · 7 years

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Asia's Dilemma: China's Butter, or America's Guns?

by Rodger Baker

Flying into Singapore's Changi Airport, one is struck by the fleet of ships lined up off shore, the tendrils of a global trade network squeezing through the narrow Malacca Strait. Singapore is the hub, the connector between the Indian Ocean, South China Sea and Pacific. Since the late 1970s, with little exception, trade has amounted to some 300 percent of Singapore's total gross domestic product, with exports making up between 150 and 230 percent of GDP. Singapore is the product of global trade, and the thriving multiethnic city-state can trace its trade role back centuries.

Having arrived in Singapore from Auckland, the contrast was stunning. It's not that New Zealand isn't heavily integrated into global trade networks — some 50 percent of its GDP is based on trade, and since its early days as a British colony it has been heavily dependent on distant trade partners. But whereas Singapore sits at the center of trade flows, New Zealand is at the far fringes, a remote outpost that has come to represent the leading edge of free trade agreements and calls for globally agreed-upon trade rules.

Given the significance of trade to the two, it is perhaps no wonder that New Zealand and Singapore were both part of the P3 countries (alongside Chile) that initiated Pacific trade talks in 2002, which emerged three years later as the first iteration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), adding Brunei as the fourth founding signatory. Only a decade earlier, in the 1990s, trans-Pacific trade had exceeded trans-Atlantic trade, marking a shift in global patterns established for several centuries. Trade is the lifeblood of the Asia-Pacific, and even with rising examples of nationalism, the globalized world is still seen here as a greater benefit than risk. Whereas colonialism was exploitative, globalism is seen as the provision of opportunity for growth and national strength.

It is interesting that the theme of the "easternization" of the global system — the assertion that China is set to usurp the leadership role of an inward-turning United States — is not nearly as pronounced in the region as it is in the West. With regard to Singapore and New Zealand, one could argue that British heritage and history may play some role, but discussions with businessmen and policymakers from countries around the region seem less focused on the so-called Asian Century than on ensuring that global multilateral trade pacts remain the norm. Asia may trade primarily within Asia, but that doesn't mean it has any interest in being isolated from the rest of the world. And aside from assertions in some sectors in China (perhaps reminiscent of similar ideas espoused in Japan in the 1980s and early 1990s), there is little expectation that Asia is ready to take the lead, except perhaps in the promotion of open trade.

Growing Angst in the Asia-Pacific

Perhaps the most common theme I encountered in discussions in New Zealand and Singapore, and with individuals from around the region, was the future of the global trade environment — specifically, the implications of a potential trade war (or even a minor spat) between the United States and China. Like many countries in the Asia-Pacific, both Singapore and New Zealand have adapted to a basic post-Cold War regional status quo, one where economics center on China and regional security centers on the United States. But with the Brexit underway, the TPP gone, the United States flirting with a more nationalist rather than globalist trade policy, and China expanding its military activity throughout the region, there is growing angst that this unofficial balance will no longer be sustainable.

This is particularly pronounced among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the 10 Southeast Asian countries (nearly all post-colonial entities) that have for decades sought to strengthen their hand internationally through cooperation and shared negotiations. Nearly a quarter of ASEAN trade is within the bloc, but better than 19 percent is with China and Hong Kong. Overall, Asia and the West Pacific account for more than 66 percent of ASEAN's total trade. Just 10 percent is with the European Union and 9.4 percent with the United States. While economics is regional, security looks abroad. Two ASEAN members, Thailand and the Philippines, are formal treaty alliance partners with the United States, and several others have established or developing defense relations. There is little real complaint from the ASEAN states (or from countries including South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) of the United States' unofficial role as guarantor of freedom of navigation in the seas in the region. But there are growing challenges with China's expanding military activity and evolving assertion of its own role as the rightful regional security hegemon.

So long as China was largely seen as a beneficial trading partner and a source of investment, but fairly innocuous when it came to involvement in local politics or security, the dualistic approach toward Washington and Beijing was seen as not only acceptable, but preferential. China's economic heft balanced the United States' military heft, and vice versa. A slight sense of competition for regional friends between Beijing and Washington could be exploited to ASEAN's benefit, and even South Korea, Australia and New Zealand — close U.S. partners — saw merit to the system. China would increase its offer of preferential investments or trade access, Washington would counter with offers of more trade but also keep China's broader regional ambitions in check. This semi-equilibrium has been breaking down over the past several years, with two apparent case studies being the Philippines and South Korea.

When Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took office last year, he challenged the country's defense relationship with the United States, arguing that close ties with Washington had undermined Philippine relations with Beijing without providing security against China's occupation and construction on disputed islets. Essentially, the Philippines lost economic opportunities with China yet failed to benefit from security guarantees by the United States. It was the worst of both worlds. Duterte has since pursued a policy far different from that of his predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, who doubled down on the relationship with the United States and took a largely confrontational attitude toward China. This is not to say that Manila has simply accepted the dual economic and security role for China in the region. It continues to assert its own rights, is expanding economic and security ties with Japan, and continues to engage with U.S. military forces in the region — and in the Philippines itself.

South Korea is another case study in the dualistic policy of tying the economy to China and security to the United States, perhaps more overtly than most other countries in the region. South Korea has free trade agreements with both the United States and China. A quarter of South Korean exports go to China, a number that nears 30 percent when adding in Hong Kong. This compared with 14 percent to the United States. Meanwhile, China accounts for 21 percent of South Korean imports, while the United States accounts for just 10 percent. And China's role in the overall Korean supply chain, particularly with electronics, is masked in these baseline numbers. But when it comes to defense, the balance is entirely one-sided. The United States maintains 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula and retains operational control of South Korean forces in the Combined Forces Command, should hostilities with the North break out.

South Korea's decision to host the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system triggered a strong outcry from China. Beijing began complaining even before Seoul and Washington entered formal discussions about the deployment, and since a decision was made it has used unofficial measures to strike at the South Korean economy. Tourism flows to South Korea have slowed, Korean cultural and entertainment exports and tours in China have been curtailed, and Korean businesses are facing boycotts, spools of red tape and bureaucratic sluggishness. Washington, in return, has accelerated the pace of THAAD deployment, hoping to complete the placement of the systems before early South Korean elections, which are likely to bring a progressive candidate to power — one who could revisit the THAAD agreement.

A Broken Consensus

With U.S. participation in the TPP off the table, and U.S. defense seen as either insufficient to address regional concerns or, going to the other extreme, exacerbating economic challenges with China, there is a growing sense throughout Asia that the United States is simply not able to be counted on as a counterweight to China, at least not for the next several years. China's expanded military capability and activity is only reinforcing these views. The consensus forming is that the status quo balance between Chinese economy and U.S. security has already broken down. China's expansion was not effectively countered, whether by the so-called U.S. pivot (or re-balance) to Asia or by U.S. engagement with ASEAN and regional trade initiatives. For many in the region, it is not a question of what they prefer, but rather an acknowledgement of the shifting regional realities. When a country the size of China begins to assert its own interests, changes to the existing regional structure are inevitable.

The discussion now is about options. Simply accepting that China will be a regional hegemon is unlikely for most countries in the region. Even the Philippines, which has seen such a dramatic shift in its public policy, is looking for a balancer to China's regional power and influence, possibly in Japan. And South Korea is re-thinking its overreliance on the Chinese economy. Some countries that were in the expanded TPP are looking to maintain momentum even without the United States, hoping that together they can either shape China's economic behavior or perhaps lure the United States back into at least a modified version of the trade agreement down the road. ASEAN is pressing for the long-delayed Code of Conduct with China to try to curtail China's apparent expansionist tendencies. But few individually or together have the overall heft of the United States.

In Singapore and New Zealand, two countries that have successfully navigated their dual relations with Washington and Beijing for some time, there is a fear that they may be forced to choose. If a trade war breaks out between the United States and China, it will not be only about trade; it will be about regional relationships, about interpretations of the rights of passage through the South China Sea, about the options for dealing with North Korea — in short, about the whole of Asia-Pacific stability. China is facing deep structural challenges as it undertakes the painful transition from an export-based economy to a consumption-based one, and it will consider any strong U.S. economic action to be a clear attempt to disrupt the transition and contain China. The United States sees each further step by China to assert its military capability through the South China Sea as a clear challenge to a core interest of freedom of navigation and control of the seas.

Stuck between these two powers lie the Asia-Pacific countries, adapting to the changing balance of power and fearing a dramatic break in the pattern. Their ability to play both sides, to use the bookend powers of the Pacific Ocean as counterweights, may prove untenable if the there is a substantial slide in U.S.-China relations toward the negative. Few in the region are eager to choose sides, all are assessing their limited options, and the pervading hope is that somehow Washington and Beijing will continue their uneasy dance, leaving Asia-Pacific countries space enough to cheer both on.

Asia's Dilemma: China's Butter, or America's Guns is republished with permission of Stratfor.

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