Israeli teacher guarding children outside. Misleading photo made me believe gun ownership was lax in Israel.
Posted on 04/06/2015 1:17:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When I was young, and passionate about all things, I’d take great joy in arguing loudly at parties or poker games, often and about everything. Living in New York City, I was the token conservative for so many people that it was easy to find disagreement. People would save up what they’d been planning to say to me. They’d spot me at parties and hustle across the room to debate me. As recently as a month ago a friend told me he had been waiting to get my opinion of something stupid Sarah Palin said in Iowa. Sarah Palin! The world is on fire, our president is on a permanent break from history, and they still can’t get enough of the Sarah Palin.
It was easier for me to be conservative in NYC than it might be for others since my community, Soviet-born Jews, tends to lean right, but it was still wasn’t easy. People who barely knew me were downright hateful to me. I never hid who I was, even when it was difficult or uncomfortable. I was confident in my beliefs, unafraid to be open about them when engaged. If someone didn’t want to be friends with me because I believe in lower taxes or a strong foreign policy, that was their bad.
In the last year, my pride at being a Jewish conservative has been at an all-time high. Last summer, when Israel and Gaza flared up, I watched liberal Jewish friends lose their bearings. Who were they? Who were their friends? I’d watch them get into arguments and see their surprise that their friends thought Israel should just accept a few rockets and kidnapped teenagers. The confusion often turned to despair. They couldn’t believe they had to explain again and again why it was imperative for Israel to defend itself, why the discovery of the tunnels was a huge deal, why the barrage of rockets mattered. They were sad and I truly was sad for them.
Me? I watched my conservative non-Jewish friends change their Twitter avatar and Facebook profile pictures to Israeli flags. Their defense of Israel was more robust than even mine. They stood with Israel, they were unwavering. They made a horrible, scary time better. As the world turned on Israel, they let me know they’d never abandon Israel or Jews like me. There was no moral equivalency. They had my back forever.
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, there were no bigger applause lines than when Israel was mentioned. The level of comfort I feel among my political allies is likely equal to the discomfort my liberal Jewish friends feel among theirs.
On Tablet magazine’s website, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, writes “It is not OK to be openly pro-Israel anymore, and I know why. My DM boxes on Twitter and Facebook are filled with people like me—liberals, culture reporters, economics reporters—baffled and sad at the way the cause of Jews avoiding another attempt at our genocide has gone from a liberal one to a capital-c Conservative one.”
Much as I love that I exist on the right side of this, it’s a tragedy that the “cause of the Jews” should be limited to a political side. I have no friends on the conservative side who don’t think of the “cause of the Palestinians” and want the best for them too. Yes, they abhor their leadership and their methods, but they don’t shrug their shoulders at their death toll, they wish for peace for both sides, they hope for amicable solutions.
It’s an even bigger tragedy that American Jews are choosing not to be openly pro-Israel and to keep their support quiet. This is a travesty, a shonda. Ms. Brodesser-Akner knows this. She calls it “a nightmare of self-loathing.” She calls it “our birthright.” She writes “We do not speak up now. We didn’t speak up then. We might have to look ourselves in the mirror and say, yes, we stand idly by, and we would have as our relatives were being sent off to the gas chambers back then.”
This we is not me. I know that I am among the luckiest Jews in history and I will never be quiet in Israel’s defense. If you are of this “we,” now is the time to change. It’s powerful to bring up the Holocaust, it is our lowest point as a people, but there is much in Jewish history to tell you to be brave, to stand up for your own people. Esther, Moses, the Jews of 1973 Israel who fought off everyone to survive, look to your history for the strength.
If you’re an American Jew, you’re not actually on the front-lines of this fight. You’re not in Israel, conscripting your children to the IDF. You’re not in Europe fearing for your physical safety. You’re in the same place as a conservative at a NYC cocktail party. No one will kill you for your opinion. You don’t owe anyone your silence to make them more comfortable. Your words are literally the least you can do. You must be braver, you must speak up. The worst that will happen is you will lose an acquaintance or a bad friend. If not now, when? If not you, who?
For home reading.
Bravo!
It is unfathomable to me how Jews can support American Liberals (see my tagline).
If only more people would realize that there is more at stake than just short term political gain or loss. Certain ideas need to be regarded as eternal and above petty politics. Some people eventually come to see this. If only we could reach more.
Listen to Mark Levin. He is an unabashed lover of America, AND the Christian churches which support Israel.
When I was the only conservative working for the US subsidiary of an Israeli company I got invited to lots of wonderful parties. But politics was the number one topic and they only spoke to each other to get agreement. I politely disagreed with as many facts as I could command but found I was continually being assaulted with straw man arguments that moved the argument from facts to an assault on their word about some situation only they knew about. I generally left as soon as my tormentors got drunk as I needed to maintain a working relationship. But being continually assaulted made being around these people a trying experience. The only other option was to agree and I found that impossible. Avoiding the subject was impossible, too. I found myself reading the words conservative Jew and thought, “wow, I’ve never met one.” The closest I came was when Obama got elected and a friend sat in my cube, leaned forward and whispered, “I need to buy a gun and plenty of ammo. What do you suggest?” We’re still in touch, though he had to sell his new gun collection when he moved back to Israel last year. They have really tight restrictions on letting civilians own guns and he didn’t qualify. And, even if he did, he’d have to buy it there.
I was going to post the same point. Levin is spot on.
I know it's a cliche, the self-loathing Jew... but I wonder if it's self-loathing so much as just plain fear and sucking up to The Man, the way the kapos did it in the camps. Not because they hated Jews or Jewishness but because they made the cold-blooded decision to survive by being a Nazi henchman (even though the survival was always pretty much short-lived). Self-loathing Jew is a step above what they really are: cowardly traitors.
Why is he writing this in the New York Observer? That’s like writing in Jewish Week or Tikkun. The Jewish liberals who read it are so far gone he will get a hostile reception at best.
BUMP from another Jewish conservative!
If only more people would realize that there is more at stake than just short term political gain or loss.
It seems like Jacob and Esau. Only on a massive scale.
American Jews would give up their birthright to appease those who will not be appeased just to make themselves "feel good"
But then again, isn't that Liberalism in a nutshell?
In a situation like that, I usually become the most obnoxious, stereotypical, weirdly leftwing kook that I can be...
“No only should women be allowed to have abortions, but people who oppose it should be forced by the police to escort her to the clinic and write the check for it!”
You do not understand the Jewish “ethos” at all, why so many Jews are Democrats, why so many Jews were communists, etc.
I hope you will expand your knowledge by learning about Tikkun Olam, the Gates of Prayer, and other things that Jews think about many times a day or week (you would have done well to come to a Seder this week!), and have thought about many times a day or week for thousands of years, instead of focusing on the Kapos, as if the self-administration was a Jewish invention, as if it went on after or before the Holocaust, as if the Holocaust were a phenomenon representing Jewish Culture.
C’mon-a-my-house and you’ll understand why Jews traditionally question, traditionally give, traditionally refuse to hate, and in some cases have been lured by the false promises of the left.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Israeli teacher guarding children outside. Misleading photo made me believe gun ownership was lax in Israel.
I don’t know what the teacher’s status is, but Joe, a citizen, had a license for a 9mm. He was supposed to take a course every year and did not. The police showed up at the door and confiscated his 9mm. He said, at the time, and I don’t know when that was, it was hard to get a license. Some activities are required each year forever. If you don’t perform them they come take your gun. (I suspect I lost it in a boating accident won’t fly.) He had to sell the substantial collection he acquired here after 2008 as he could not take them with him.
Ping for your Reading Interest!
I was raised catholic and support Israel and Judaism, one of the main reasons is because my parents always told me to respect my elders and I consider the Jewish faith as being somewhat of a parent faith of Catholicism.
While even though I may not always agree with Judaism, as sometimes I don’t always agree with my parents, I do respect and honor the religion and country that it came from by supporting Israel and Judaism where I can!
Besides, Jesus and most all of his apostles were Jewish!
So I Honor my elders because my parent raised me right!
I agree with you 100%.
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