There is a lot of talk in DC about “litmus tests,” single questions which are taken to demonstrate a nominee’s suitability for a position or office. But now, sadly, we have a litmus test for a Jew who has sold out the Jewish people: those who defended AOC’s deplorable description of border detention facilities as concentration camps.
Besides our press release, I urge you to peruse Rabbi Fischer and Rabbi Gordimer’s op-eds on this fiasco — and the three of my own. I wrote so much about this because I am truly dismayed that some in the Jewish community would leap to, in Rabbi Gordimer’s words, defend the indefensible.
As we were preparing this update, many of these same individuals condemned Israel’s Education Minister, Rabbi Rafi Peretz, for referring to Jewish assimilation in America as a “Second Holocaust” — a painful but accurate remark that in no way trivializes the loss of six million Jews. The Holocaust was not unique in its barbarism or its hatred — but its magnitude. The rabbi has a point.
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Press Releases
Rabbinic Group Slams AOC for Trivializing the Holocaust
Jun 19 – To use Holocaust terminology regarding the refugee situation at the border is deeply offensive, and for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to first use the term ‘Never Again’ and then deny making the comparison is compellingly dishonest.
Rabbis Defend Israel’s Education Minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz on Concern for Spiritual Holocaust
Jul 10 – The Holocaust was a horrific physical destruction of our people, while intermarriage and assimilation are causing a spiritual destruction no less detrimental to Jewish continuity. They are by no means the same, but both extinguish the Jewish future – and repeated studies of the American Jewish community bear this out.
Letters and Statements
Letter to Pres. Esteban of DePaul University Defending Prof. Jason Hill
May 13 – It is amazing that the very same groups which claim it a violation of free speech for a state to dissociate itself from discriminatory, Antisemitic boycotts now demand that Professor Hill be muzzled. But the hypocrisy is hardly limited to free speech.
Follow-Up Letter to Prof. Esteban Calling for Denunciation of Antisemitism
Jun 17 – The faculty endorsement of an SJP-initiated effort to demonize Prof. Hill, combined with the well-documented, proven link between SJP and acts of Antisemitism directed at individual Jewish students, may be deemed sufficient to establish the university’s liability for creating a hostile environment for its Jewish students.
Thanking Rep. Michael McCaul for Comments at CUFI Summit
July 9 – You decried Rep. Omar’s Antisemitic comments, and referred to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “joining in on the chorus against the Jewish people.” It was deeply heartening to hear you insist that “this cannot stand in the United States of America,” and to see 6000 people rise to their feet in enthusiastic response
Featured Op-Eds
All of our board members’ op-eds since our last update can be accessed here.
AOC’s Death Camp Defenses Are Both Dishonest And Disgraceful
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Daily Wire, Jun 19
When Twitter erupted, Ocasio-Cortez provided a series of mutually contradictory defenses. She could not decide whether she meant to compare the southern border to Auschwitz, whether they are in fact comparable, or whether it was appropriate to make the connection at all. So she tried all three within just three hours on Tuesday morning.
What AOC’s ‘Concentration Camp’ Comments Tell Us About the Deconstruction and Breakdown of American Education
by Rabbi Dov Fischer, American Spectator, Jun 19
AOC is the product of a broken education system that deconstructs facts and reality, teaching instead that there are no facts at all. Rather, I have “My Truth,” and you have “Your Truth.” If college professors can spout any foolish, false narrative they wish, safe in the knowledge that their life tenure grants them a safe harbor to mislead, to lie, and to brainwash their defenseless minions who must get good grades in their courses, it is not surprising that O-Cortez emerged as she did.
AOC is Wrong – Don’t Defend the Indefensible
by Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Times of Israel, Jun 20
This is not a matter of making “political hay” – it is a matter of diluting and distorting the Holocaust. Liberals such as NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders condemned AOC’s remarks, as did NBC’s Chuck Todd. While I am not fan of these men’s politics, their position on this matter should be lauded, as they realize that the issue is apolitical and that a serious wrong was committed by AOC.
Why AOC’s Comments Crossed the Border
by Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Cross-Currents.com, Jun 21
Every politician knows you can’t needlessly offend ethnic and other constituencies. The idea that you can make a career out of bigotry towards a particular minority is a notion America was supposed to have discarded 50 years ago.
AOC Is Dividing Americans And Inciting Anti-Semitism
by Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Daily Wire, Jun 24
After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) used “concentration camps” and “Never Again” together — a unique reference to the Nazi death camps — and then retweeted leftist Jews hoping to justify the linkage while she simultaneously denied that she ever connected them in the first instance, I honestly thought it couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.
The Myth and Fraud That There Ever Was an Arab Country or People Called ‘Palestine’ (Two Part Essay)
by Rabbi Dov Fischer, American Spectator, Jun 25-26
Even true friends of Israel in Washington, D.C. like Sen. Lindsey Graham have succumbed to decades of the Biggest Mideast Lie: that there ever was an Arab political entity of “Palestine” or that there ever was a “Palestinian Arab nation.” The dizzying repetition of that Big Lie for so many decades causes even United States Senators and House Representatives who should — and who privately do — know better to speak of “The Two-State Solution.”