Op-Eds

It was refreshing indeed to hear Thursday’s news that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who seem to represent a long-underrepresented constituency of terrorist supporters and America-haters, will be barred from setting foot in Israel after all. Looks like Rashida Tlaib, to cope, will have to satisfy herself with her sense that the Holocaust was calming. And with Benjamin Netanyahu having made the decision to bar her, Ilhan Omar can tweet, “See, I told you it was about the Benjamins, baby.”

with Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld — As a host of mainstream Jewish organizations joined the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to restate our community’s rejection of the misuse of Holocaust imagery, a cadre of Jewish progressives rushed to defend the (in)famous “AOC.” An entirely new organization sprang up, “Never Again Action”, whose mission was presciently described by Ms. Friedberg in 2018: to “exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel.”

This mass-shooting phenomenon never before has happened with such prevalence. Therefore, I deem it a unique crisis comprising a clear and present danger. There is no rhyme nor reason. It can be at a Batman movie in Colorado, at a Congressional softball game attended by a Bernie Sanders supporter, at a political rally where a female Democrat Congressional representative is shot by a former campaign volunteer, at churches, at mosques, at temples, at state fairs, at garlic festivals, at Walmarts, at schools.

Racism is racist. That is to say, an observer’s own racism defines whether he accuses another of racism. And the Left is racist in a way that the conservative right cannot even fathom because the conservative right simply does not operate on racial terms.

Language has no meaning. The most fascist group in America today is called “Antifa,” short for anti-fascist. Any criticism of a non-White is called “racism.” Any criticism of a non-male is “misogyny.” An innocent righteous Caucasian male gets tagged before a Senate Judiciary Committee by a perjurious woman as a “rapist.” Even the term “Holocaust” is up for grabs.

An ability to dribble hardly makes one expert on social justice or world affairs. My favorite poster boy: the egomaniac NBA All-Star who changed his name legally in 2011 from Ronald William Artest Jr. to Metta World Peace. In 2004, Mr. World Peace was embroiled in a wild violent riot — so unique in NBA history that it is remembered as “Malice at the Palace.” In 2007, Mr. World Peace was arrested for domestic violence, ending up sentenced to jail time followed by a work-release program. Truly an appropriate life for someone devoted to time on the court.

His quiet retirement from public life and fading into the woodwork of social wall-paneling would have been a well-deserved phase, except for one thing. That one thing is that he allowed his name to be used for two years to do terrible damage. To our country. To our society. To the President of the United States. And also to certain individual human beings whose lives have been destroyed in his name, though apparently not by him.

I couldn’t help but think of the “Say Hey Kid” while watching Robert Mueller’s rambling, awkward, uncomfortable, and disjointed testimony before two congressional committees on Wednesday. It was clear the former special counsel was out of his element, and unfamiliar with much of the report that bears his name. He clearly did not write it and, arguably, did not even bother to read it.

In Orthodox Judaism, homosexuality is not a matter of pride. Certainly, it must never be a basis for social or employment discrimination, never for mockery. As with heterosexuality, it is a matter for privacy, no one else’s business.

Although the Squad live in an echo … echo … echo … chamber of similar extreme radical-left Democrats, including outright communists like Bernie Sanders, they misread the greater American landscape. Not everyone in this country calls the President of the United States an “M-F’er.” Not everyone here in this country — and not even a sizeable number, unlike in Somalia — is a Jew-hater.