I took the view that immediately after the horrific Pittsburgh attack, where a neo-Nazi gunned down eleven people, mostly elderly synagogue attenders and police officers, was not the most appropriate time to delve into the side issues to this tragedy. However now, is the time to go into and comment on these side issues.
The first of these matters is the behaviour of the Left and especially the American Jewish Left with regards to the Pittsburgh attack. The American Jewish Left, a group that I increasingly see as more Left than Jewish, have behaved quite disgustingly during the aftermath to the Pittsburgh horror. They have had no moral qualms at all about exploiting this issue and lie about the motivations behind it, in order to attack President Trump. They have in the words of Caroline Glick in an excellent article on Brietbart, ‘dishonoured the dead’. I would strongly advise that readers of this piece take a look at Ms Glick’s piece as it exposes just how morally and ethically bankrupt the American Left and especially the American Jewish Left has become.
When I read Ms Glick’s piece I found myself getting more and more disturbed at the behaviour of the American Jewish Left. In fact some of the comments made by American Jewish leftists were of such a nature that they may not have been out of place coming from the mouths of avowed anti-Semites. Statements such as the need for American Jews to ‘shun Trumps Jewish enablers’ for example, is not that far away from sentiments issued by various anti-Semitic lunatics that Trump is ‘controlled by Jews’.
Ms Glick went onto describe the base and cynical way that tiny Leftist groups were falsely pushing themselves forward to the MSM as representatives of the Jewish community and blaming President Trump for the Pittsburgh atrocity. Ms Glick also expressed a great deal of concern about the main-streaming of extremist anti-Zionism within the US Democrat party. One point on which I particularly agreed with Ms Glick was some American Jewish organisations were infected by a leftist ‘insanity’ with regards anti-Semitism and how aiming criticism at President Trump instead of observing where the real threats were coming from was a dangerous thing to do. Ms Glick said that hyping faux anti-Semitism whilst ignoring genuine threats was ‘endangering Jews’.
The second matter that needs to be discussed is the security at the synagogue itself. From what I can gather from various news reports there was no overt human security at the shul, not even an unarmed Shomer or guard as can be found at many British ones. It seems inexplicable to me that a shul in a country that has been targeted by Islamic terrorists who hate Jews and also where there is the likelihood of a neo-Nazi headcase acquiring weapons, that the only person with a gun in this synagogue was the mass murderer himself. The presence of good guys with guns either at the door of the synagogue or among some of the congregants, may in my view either have prevented this atrocity entirely or reduced the number of innocent casualties. The lack of an armed guard at this shul is bad enough but to have no armed guard in a country where the possession of self defence weapons is a right is incredibly stupid.
Although it was a deranged neo-Nazi who pulled the trigger of the weapons that murdered innocents at Pittsburgh, I believe that complacency on the part of American Jews may have contributed to this atrocity. Complacency regarding the existence of clear and present threats to American Jews, threats both foreign and domestic in nature, along with chasing after what Caroline Glick called ‘faux’ anti-Semitism does endanger Jewish communities. The world’s Jews cannot afford complacency with regards potential threats, history has shown that on numerous tragic occasions failure to comprehend the nature of a threat can end up in death. There are a litany of stories out there about Jews who thought that the enemy had gone away or had reformed or that they were so safe that they could drop their guard coming unstuck. We should point to the dangers of complacency as there are too many examples of how complacency among Jews swiftly goes wrong. There were mediaeval Jews who mistakenly thought that they would be less oppressed under Islam than under Christianity, the Jews who thought Hitler’s pogroms would be no worse than the others that the Jewish people suffered. There is also the complacency of the modern Leftist Jews who think that there is no need to engage enhanced security at Jewish communal events because ‘this is America and the pogromists are not here’.
Threats to Jews can come from anywhere and everywhere. In the past the threats to many of the Jews who came to America from Europe came from the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches whose leaders regularly whipped up anti-Semitism among their flocks, but today’s threats are different but still very serious. Today the threats come from Muslims who imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk and from self radicalised non Muslim Jew haters such as the scumbag who committed the murders at Pittsburgh. Complacency about these threats will, if it continues, get more innocent Jews killed.
Complacency is I admit much more psychologically and emotionally easier than not being complacent. It’s easy and very comforting to forget that there are nutcases out there whose prime internal directive is to ‘kill Jews’. A ‘kumbayah’ approach to humanity is more appealing to those of a Western liberal (in the old sense of the word) nature which thrives in free and ordered societies such as been the case with Britain and the USA in the past and although nice, does encourage complacency with regards threats. Being the one who says ‘we need more security’ is not always t he most comfortable place to be. It felt a little like being the protagonist in a Bateman cartoon to be the one who suggested that we have a security guard at my son’s third birthday party. Sadly I now have the distinct feeling that, post Pittsburgh, those who laughed at me for hiring a well built martial arts dude to do the door at a kids party, will not be laughing now. Violent Jew hatred can come from a number of sources both on the political Right and the political Left and also from the Islamic community. All of us who are Jewish, no matter what path within Judaism we follow, need to lose the complacency and the feeling that ‘it won’t happen here’, and took note of the fact that sometimes ‘it can happen here’.
Although I am appalled by the deaths and injuries caused by this savage Pittsburgh murderer I am also disgusted by the way the Left has exploited the tragedy for political ends even going to the extent of pointing the finger at those like President Trump who are plainly not Jew-haters. This is something that is almost unforgivably dishonest and I hope that more Jews, not just those of us on the centre-right, start to realise that these Jewish leftists do not have at heart the best interests of either Jewish communities or the nations of which we are citizens or subjects. The aftermath of the Pittsburgh atrocity has exposed the Left and especially the small but loud Jewish Left for the mountebanks and cynical exploiters that they are. We are also seeing how complacency about security issues and a failure to see where the real threats are coming from are causing problems for diaspora Jewry. If there are two things that I want so see come out of this horrible atrocity it is that Jewish communities will start to understand where the real threats are coming from and how a failure to guard against such threats can end up in tragedy.
