[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

I suspect the number of Jews who could have fled or been relocated to Israel over nearly a decade would have exceeded 200,000. It's also worth noting that it was the UK's obligation to resettle Jews in the Jewish Homeland. A charge they accepted from the League of Nations and which they failed in at the cost of many lives.

I do think the author is correct that Churchill's motivation was political, FDR's antisemitism. Jews in Israel would not subvert American culture as Jews developing the atomic bomb presumably did.

As to FDR's support for restricting Jewish employment in professional positions in North Africa, it's interesting to note that the Sultan of Morocco refused to do the same thing under pressure from Vichy.

You Must Remember This: Sultan of Morocco Mohammed V protected the Jews of Casablanca.

[TexasFreeper2009]

I honestly just don’t “get” antisemitism.

why would anyone “hate” the jews?

why? what do they do to anyone? so ... we disagree on exactly who Jesus was.. big deal!

dig deep enough and you disagree with everyone on just about anything!

They are usually productive citizens who are not prone to violence or crime. They don’t “push” their religion on anyone. In fact, for the most part they just seem to keep to themselves for the most part trying to live their lives the best they can.

What the heck!?

[CrazyIvan]

One my political epiphamys happened when the FDR memorial was being planned. I realised that leftists see others, even their own as only a way to further a political cause. There was a huge debate about whether he should be depicted in a wheelchair, centered around what would benefit this or that cause. Not once did I hear any concern about what FDR would have wanted.

[jjotto]

In the context of the US Congress moving to cut off immigration of Jews into the US (under the GOP) beginning shortly after WWI, FDR’s actions shouldn’t be a surprise.

Second-guessing is too easy. Putting America first should be the instinct of American political leaders.

[TBP]

This is just progressivism at work. This is who progressives are.

[Wallace T.]

You have to understand FDR in the context of the time and place. He was an upper class white Northeastern Protestant who, despite his Dutch surname, was largely descended from English Puritans who settled New England in the 17th Century. Such people condemned the white supremacism and religious bigotry of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, which, in spite of the group's association with the South, was extremely strong in non-Southern areas like Oregon, Maine, and Indiana. They also opposed the radical racist views and extreme anti-Semitism of the Nazis.

That being said, the Northeastern establishment of that era was uncomfortable with the social advancement of Jews and, to a lesser extent, Catholics. FDR remarked to Leo Crowley, an Irish Catholic who was the chairman of the FDIC, that Catholics and Jews existed in America at the sufferance of the Protestant majority. The Wall Street financial powers that be allowed a Jewish-owned bank, the Bank of the United States, fail even as they helped other financial institutions in liquidity crises. The Northeastern elite were willing to have Catholic dominated political machines control the large cities and to have Jews enter retail businesses and the professions, so long as their suburban and central city enclaves, their private schools, Ivy League Colleges, and their corporate and financial interests remained in their hands.

That world was the one from which FDR came. They were uncomfortable with Jews and Catholics on a social level, but they were not driven to master race beliefs or fantasies about Jesuit or Zionist plots.

[DuncanWaring]

“[b]ombing Auschwitz would not have required any diversion of resources, because U.S. planes were already bombing targets that were less than five miles from the gas chambers, during the summer and autumn of 1944.”

Every bomb dropped with the goal of slowing Auschwitz would be a bomb diverted from winning the war.

Also, it was not just a matter of "OK, today we'll bomb Auschwitz, tomorrow we'll get back to bombing refineries, or factories, or whatever". It was not unheard-of to lose 20% of the attacking bombers in a single mission.

[Jim Noble]

The US war aims in Europe had nothing to do with the Jews, whether they were saved or weren’t was a matter of indifference to the administration, and to accuse FDR of failing to do something that he had no responsibility for and no interest in is extreme post hoc argumentation.

[TChris]

I always put FDR at the top of the "All-time Worst US Presidents" list.

Anti-Semite and Pro-Commie. Great combination...