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Monthly Archives: July 2019

Maureen Dowd is Right!

28 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Human rights, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ 2 Comments

Like many of you I have gone back and forth about the wisdom of impeachment of our President.

The Mueller Report shows that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice on at least 5 occasions and of soliciting and accepting help from a foreign adversary in the 2016 election without reporting his campaign’s numerous contacts with Russian operatives to the FBI. If that were not enough, his ongoing violation of the emolument clause of the US Constitution is cause for impeachment. This in addition to his racism, xenophobia, misogyny, cruelty to political asylum seekers and their children, pathological lying,  malignant narcissism, and personal attacks on distinguished Americans ought to be enough to send Trump packing from the White House.

Nothing would be more emotionally satisfying for me than to watch as Trump is driven from office before his term is done. However, nothing is more risky than putting the country through an impeachment process if our goal is to elect a Democrat to the White House in 2020, keep the US House of Representatives in Nancy Pelosi’s hands, and elect a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Maureen Dowd, as smart, seasoned, and wise a Washington columnist for the NY Times as there is, puts the issue exactly right in her column “Spare Me the Purity Racket” (NY Times op-ed – Sunday, July 28, 2019).

I suggest that all moderates and progressives take what Ms. Dowd says to heart.

I confess that the day after Mueller appeared before Congress, I wrote to my Congressman Adam Schiff and said that it’s time for Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings. Maureen Dowd changed my mind.

Adam – please forget what I wrote you!

See Dowd’s piece – https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-trump-impeachment.html

“We went to the west bank to see the occupation and came back more connected to Israel” – Forward

26 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Social Justice

≈ Leave a comment

For the first time, J Street funded a “Birthright Trip” for 40 young American Jews to experience Israel in a way that traditional Birthright trips do not offer its participants. This trip included visiting the border of Gaza and the West Bank and talking with Israelis under threat from Hamas bombs and Palestinians living under occupation. Nothing was sugar coated or denied. The students understand that one can be pro-Israel and committed Zionists and be against the occupation of another people.

The student writers (link below) and most of their fellow travelers returned from this experience with far greater understanding not only of what the State of Israel means to the Jewish people as our national home but also how the occupation has had a corrosive effect on the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.

See – https://forward.com/opinion/428232/we-went-to-the-west-bank-to-see-the-occupation-we-came-back-more-connected/

Note: I serve as a national co-chair of the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet of more than 900 rabbis and cantors.

J Street is a pro-Israel pro-peace political and educational organization based in Washington, D.C., and advocates for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

J Street’s national policy conference will take place in Washington, D.C. from October 26-29. For more information, go to http://www.jstreet.org.

Renewal in a Toxic Political Environment

22 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ 3 Comments

Like so many, I’ve become a news junky, especially since Donald Trump became President.

For those who care about government policy as a vehicle to help improve our nation’s quality of life, who believe in the partnership between government, the private sector, NGOs, and religious communities in moving the nation forward as a just and compassionate society, and who yearn for a foreign policy that is strategically sound, peace-oriented, and dignified – Trump is anathema.

Yet, despite my strong interest in the news, for my own well-being – and perhaps for yours too – we need to be able to step back and disengage from time to time from the toxicity of politics in general and the malignant narcissism of Trump in particular.

To these ends, I was moved this week when listening to an interview of the veteran conservative commentator George Will (a never-Trump former Republican) of The Washington Post by Preet Bharara on his “Stay Tuned with Preet” Podcast (July 18, 2019).

Will said:

“One of the invaluable messages after the political intoxications of the 20th century is that politics should not be what defines your identity; that government has a great and stately jurisdiction but it’s not everything. And if you are looking for excitement; if you are looking for spiritual fulfillment; if you are looking for the meaning in life, don’t look to politics because we see what happens when mass movements become intoxicated by political movements fighting faiths, fascism, communism and the like that try to envelop their lives – it’s not healthy.”

Our challenge, therefore, ought to be to stay engaged but maintain our emotional, psychological, spiritual, and creative balance while at the same time registering new voters, fighting voter suppression and foreign intervention in our elections, and voting in a new president and democratic controlled Senate in 2020. Along the way, as Will suggests, we need to be able to step away enough to be able nurture our hearts, minds, and souls in ways that are restorative.

 

 

The corrosive effect of hatred

18 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Human rights, Quote of the Day, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ Leave a comment

In light of the Trump hate tirade this past week I offer wisdom from across the centuries on the corrosive effect of hatred on the human heart and soul:

“Thou shalt not hate another in one’s heart.” –Leviticus 19:18

“In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.” –Mary Renault

“I feel fairly certain that my hatred harms me more than the people whom I hate.” –Max Frisch

“I can forgive the whites in America for hating the blacks; I cannot forgive them, however, for making the blacks believe that they are worthy of being hated.” –James Baldwin

“Never let yourself hate any person. It is the most devastating weapon of one’s enemies.” –Katherine Hepburn’s father

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” –Eric Hoffer

“Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.” –Anton Chekhov

“One of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense that once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with pain.” –James Baldwin

“In time we hate that which we often fear.” –William Shakespeare

“Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.” –George Bernard Shaw

“Never waste a minute thinking about people you don’t like.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” –Booker T. Washington

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to their human heart than its opposite.” –Nelson Mandela

“We must admit to ourselves that our own future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled nor enriched by hatred or revenge.” –Robert F. Kennedy

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” –Maya Angelou

“If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a person well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.” –John Steinbeck

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

 

 

 

Remember the Reverend Martin Niemoller’s warning

17 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Israel/Zionism, Quote of the Day, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ 1 Comment

Trump’s racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, and white nationalism are not only attacks against people of color, women, Muslims, and immigrants to America, but against all of us regardless of our color, national origin, and religious faith.

His so-called “pro-Israel” support is a cynical effort to sanitize his hatred while appealing to his extremist evangelical Christian base. In truth, President Trump, Senator Graham, and others who picked up his hateful gauntlet do Jews, the people and State of Israel a terrible disservice by identifying us as a protected minority while they attack everyone else as the hated “other.”

Martin Niemoller, the revered German Lutheran pastor and theologian (1892–1984), famously warned against the cynicism and hate of the Nazis when he said:

“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”

Yesterday I quoted the unknown author who said: “What you permit, you promote. What you allow, you encourage. What you condone, you own.”

Thankfully, 4 Republicans voted with the Democratic party last evening to condemn in the House of Representatives Trump’s racist tweets.

History will judge harshly as cowards and moral sycophants the rest of the Republican party that refuses to call this President what he is – a purveyor of hate and racism.

 

To all cowardly Republicans who refuse to condemn Trump’s blatant racism and misogyny

16 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day, Women's Rights

≈ Leave a comment

“What you permit, you promote. What you allow, you encourage. What you condone, you own.”
– Author unknown

Can Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice – by Hirsi Ali – Wall Street Journal – July 12

14 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Human rights, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Social Justice, Women's Rights

≈ 2 Comments

My gratitude to my friend Rick Feldman who posted this article  on the J Street Leader’s List serve. Hirsi Ali is always worth reading – and now especially with regards to Ilhan Omar and the 4 progressive Congresswomen.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-ilhan-omar-overcome-her-prejudice-11562970265?shareToken=st41fda349d9ed4b689237a19b1aab6a5a&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Can Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice?

I was born in Somalia and grew up amid pervasive Muslim anti-Semitism. Hate is hard to unlearn without coming to terms with how you learned it.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

July 12, 2019 6:24 pm ET

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar at a news conference in Washington, April 10. Photo: jim bourg/Reuters

 

I once opened a speech by confessing to a crowd of Jews that I used to hate them. It was 2006 and I was a young native of Somalia who’d been elected to the Dutch Parliament. The American Jewish Committee was giving me its Moral Courage Award. I felt honored and humbled, but a little dishonest if I didn’t own up to my anti-Semitic past. So I told them how I’d learned to blame the Jews for everything.

Fast-forward to 2019. A freshman congresswoman from Minnesota has been infuriating the Jewish community and discomfiting the Democratic leadership with her expressions of anti-Semitism. Like me, Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and exposed at an early age to Muslim anti-Semitism.

Some of the members of my 2006 AJC audience have asked me to explain and respond to Ms. Omar’s comments, including her equivocal apologies. Their main question is whether it is possible for Ms. Omar to unlearn her evident hatred of Jews—and if so, how to help.

In my experience it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to unlearn hate without coming to terms with how you learned to hate. Most Americans are familiar with the classic Western flavors of anti-Semitism: the Christian, European, white-supremacist and Communist types. But little attention has been paid to the special case of Muslim anti-Semitism. That is a pity because today it is anti-Semitism’s most zealous, most potent and most underestimated form.

I never heard the term “anti-Semitism” until I moved to the Netherlands in my 20s. But I had firsthand familiarity with its Muslim variety. As a child in Somalia, I was a passive consumer of anti-Semitism. Things would break, conflicts would arise, shortages would occur—and adults would blame it all on the Jews.

When I was a little girl, my mom often lost her temper with my brother, with the grocer or with a neighbor. She would scream or curse under her breath “Yahud!” followed by a description of the hostility, ignominy or despicable behavior of the subject of her wrath. It wasn’t just my mother; grown-ups around me exclaimed “Yahud!” the way Americans use the F-word. I was made to understand that Jews—Yahud—were all bad. No one took any trouble to build a rational framework around the idea—hardly necessary, since there were no Jews around. But it set the necessary foundation for the next phase of my development.

At 15 I became an Islamist by joining the Muslim Brotherhood. I began attending religious and civil-society events, where I received an education in the depth and breadth of Jewish villainy. This was done in two ways.

The first was theological. We were taught that the Jews betrayed our prophet Muhammad. Through Quranic verses (such as 7:166, 2:65 and 5:60), we learned that Allah had eternally condemned them, that they were not human but descendants of pigs and monkeys, that we should aspire to kill them wherever we found them. We were taught to pray: “Dear God, please destroy the Jews, the Zionists, the state of Israel. Amen.”

We were taught that the Jews occupied the Holy Land of Palestine. We were shown pictures of mutilated bodies, dead children, wailing widows and weeping orphans. Standing over them in military uniform were Israeli soldiers with large guns. We were told their killing of Palestinians was wanton, unprovoked and an expression of their hatred for Muslims.

The theological and the political stories were woven together, as in the Hamas charter: “The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The Stones and trees will say, “O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill me.” ’ . . . There is no solution for the Palestine question except through Jihad.”

That combination of narratives is the essence of Muslim anti-Semitism. Mohammed Morsi, the longtime Muslim Brotherhood leader who died June 17 but was president of Egypt for a year beginning in 2012, urged in 2010: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews”—two categories that tend to merge along with allegations of world domination.

European anti-Semitism is also a mixture. Medieval Christian antipathy toward “Christ killers” blended with radical critiques of capitalism in the 19th century and racial pseudoscience in the 20th. But before the Depression, anti-Semitic parties were not mass parties. Nor have they been since World War II. Muslim anti-Semitism has a broader base, and its propagators have had the time and resources to spread it widely.

To see how, begin at the top. Most men (and the odd woman) in power in Muslim-majority countries are autocrats. Even where there are elections, corrupt rulers play an intricate game to stay in power. Their signature move is the promise to “free” the Holy Land—that is, to eliminate the Jewish state. The rulers of Iran are explicit about this goal. Other Muslim leaders may pay lip service to the peace process and the two-state solution, but government anti-Semitism is frequently on display at the United Nations, where Israel is repeatedly compared to apartheid South Africa, accused of genocide and demonized as racist.

Media also play their part. There is very little freedom of expression in Muslim-majority countries, and state-owned media churn out anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda daily—as do even media groups that style themselves as critical of Muslim autocracies, such as Al Jazeera and Al-Manar.

Then there are the mosques, madrassas and other religious institutions. Schools in general, especially college campuses, have been an Islamist stronghold for generations in Muslim-majority countries. That matters because graduates go on to leadership positions in the professions, media, government and other institutions.

Refugee camps are another zone of indoctrination. They are full of vulnerable people, and Islamists prey on them. They come offering food, tents and first aid, followed by education. They establish madrassas in the camps, then indoctrinate the kids with a message that consists in large part of hatred for Jews and rejection of Israel.

Perhaps—I do not know—this is what happened to Ms. Omar in the four years she spent in a refugee camp in Kenya as a child. Or perhaps she became acquainted with Islamist anti-Semitism in Minnesota, where her family settled when she was 12. In any case, her preoccupation with the Jews and Israel would otherwise be hard to explain.

Spreading anti-Semitism through all these channels is no trivial matter—and this brings us to the question of resources. “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” Ms. Omar tweeted in February, implying that American politicians support Israel only because of Jewish financial contributions. The irony is that the resources available to propagate Islamist ideologies, with their attendant anti-Semitism, vastly exceed what pro-Israel groups spend in the U.S. Since the early 1970s the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has spent vast sums to spread Wahhabi Islam abroad. Much of this funding is opaque, but estimates of the cumulative sum run as high as $100 billion.

Thousands of schools in Pakistan, funded with Saudi money, “teach a version of Islam that leads [to] anti-Western militancy,” according to Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy—and, one might add, to an anti-Semitic militancy.

In recent years the Saudi leadership has tried to turn away from supporting this type of religious radicalism. But increasingly Qatar seems to be taking over the Saudi role. In the U.S. alone, the Qatar Foundation has given $30.6 million over the past eight years to public schools, ostensibly for teaching Arabic and promoting cultural exchange.

For years, Qatar has hosted influential radical clerics such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and provided them with a global microphone, and the country’s school textbooks have been criticized for anti-Semitism. They present Jews as treacherous and crafty but also weak, wretched and cowardly; Islam is described as inherently superior. “The Grade 11 text discusses at length the issue of how non-Muslims should be treated,” the Middle East Media Research Institute reports. “It warns students not to form relationships with unbelievers, and emphasizes the principle of loyalty to Muslims and disavowal of unbelievers.”

The allegation that Jewish or Zionist money controls Congress is nonsensical. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the Israeli government has spent $34 million on lobbying in Washington since 2017. The Saudis and Qataris spent a combined $51 million during the same period. If we include foreign nongovernmental organizations, the pro-Israel lobbying figure rises to $63 million—less than the $68 million spent lobbying for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In 2018 domestic American pro-Israeli lobbying—including but not limited to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac—totaled $5.1 million. No comparable figures are available for domestic pro-Islamist lobbying efforts. But as journalist Armin Rosen observes, Aipac’s 2018 total, at $3.5 million, was less than either the American Association of Airport Executives or the Association of American Railroads spent on lobbying. Aipac’s influence has more to do with the power of its arguments than the size of its wallet.

Now consider the demographics. Jews were a minority in Europe in the 1930s, but a substantial one, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Today Jews are at a much greater disadvantage. For each Jew world-wide, there are 100 Muslims. In many European countries—including France, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K.—the Muslim population far exceeds the Jewish population, and the gap is widening. American Jews still outnumber Muslims but won’t by 2050.

The problem of Muslim anti-Semitism is much bigger than Ilhan Omar. Condemning her, expelling her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, or defeating her in 2020 won’t make the problem go away.

Islamists have understood well how to couple Muslim anti-Semitism with the American left’s vague notion of “social justice.” They have succeeded in couching their agenda in the progressive framework of the oppressed versus the oppressor. Identity politics and victimhood culture also provide Islamists with the vocabulary to deflect their critics with accusations of “Islamophobia,” “white privilege” and “insensitivity.” A perfect illustration was the way Ms. Omar and her allies were able to turn a House resolution condemning her anti-Semitism into a garbled “intersectional” rant in which Muslims emerged as the most vulnerable minority in the league table of victimhood.

As for me, I eventually unlearned my hatred of Jews, Zionists and Israel. As an asylum seeker turned student turned politician in Holland, I was exposed to a complex set of circumstances that led me to question my own prejudices. Perhaps I didn’t stay in the Islamist fold long enough for the indoctrination to stick. Perhaps my falling out with my parents and extended family after I left home led me to a wider reappraisal of my youthful beliefs. Perhaps it was my loss of religious faith.

In any event, I am living proof that one can be born a Somali, raised as an anti-Semite, indoctrinated as an anti-Zionist—and still overcome all this to appreciate the unique culture of Judaism and the extraordinary achievement of the state of Israel. If I can make that leap, so perhaps can Ms. Omar. Yet that is not really the issue at stake. For she and I are only two individuals. The real question is what, if anything, can be done to check the advance of the mass movement that is Muslim anti-Semitism. Absent a world-wide Muslim reformation, followed by an Islamic enlightenment, I am not sure I know.

Ms. Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Correction
An earlier version misstated the sum spent on lobbying for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Opinion: Democrat Progressive 'Squad' is Giving Nancy Pelosi a Headache

Opinion: Democrat Progressive ‘Squad’ is Giving Nancy Pelosi a Headache

Ever since Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts were elected, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has found herself taking heat. Images: Getty/AFP Composite: Mark Kelly

A Matter of Character

07 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Human rights, Quote of the Day, Women's Rights

≈ 2 Comments

In his book Tyrant – Shakespeare on Politics, Stephen Greenblatt (John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University) probes the nature of tyranny in the works of Shakespeare. Greenblatt focuses particularly on the character of Richard III.

I offer one passage but recommend the entire short volume (189 pages):

“Shakespeare’s Richard III brilliantly develops the personality features of the aspiring tyrant already sketched in the Henry VI trilogy: the limitless self-regard, the law-breaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate. He is pathologically narcissistic and supremely arrogant. He has a grotesque sense of entitlement, never doubting that he can do whatever he chooses. He loves to bark orders and to watch underlings scurry to carry them out. He expects absolute loyalty, but he is incapable of gratitude. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. He has no natural grace, no sense of shared humanity, no decency.

He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt. He divides the world into winners and losers. The winners arouse his regard insofar as he can use them for his own ends; the losers arouse only his scorn. The public good is something only losers like to talk about. What he likes to talk about is winning.

He has always had wealth; he was born into it and makes ample use of it. But though he enjoys having what money can get him, it is not what most excites him. What excites him is the joy of domination. He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way. He enjoys seeing others cringe, tremble, or wince with pain. He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree. Though they know that he is dangerous, the followers help him advance to his goal, which is the possession of supreme power.

His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can have anything he likes. He knows that those he grabs hate him. For that matter, once he has succeeded in seizing the control that so attracts him, in politics as in sex, he knows that virtually everyone hates him. At first that knowledge energizes him, making him feverishly alert to rivals and conspiracies. But it soon begins to eat away at him and exhaust him.

Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and un-lamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Richard III never been born.” (pages 53-54)

Though Greenblatt published this study of tyranny in 2018 in the midst of the Trump era, it is the character of Richard III – after all – that he describes in his brilliant short work. Before his death, Philip Roth endorsed the book with these words: “Brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable.”

And remarkably current!

 

 

 

 

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