My Love for Trump

I enjoyed watching Trump’s rallies in the closing days of the election campaign. The huge crowd sizes and overflows were amazing as was the enthusiasm which was booming. Amid the raucous chants of “USA” and “Lock Them Up” there was one unusual chorus I’d never heard before – least of all in politics.

"We love you!” they roared. Again, and again.

Well I guess I do too.

And it’s not just for all the bountiful gifts Trump has bestowed on our people and our Jewish state. From the Jerusalem embassy and Golan sovereignty to stifling the antisemitism at the UN, defunding UNRWA and holding Iran’s feet to the fire. More than that, I loved him simply as a kindred spirit.

Just think of how Trump came on the scene. As soon as he declared his candidacy he was demonized from all sides, right and left, as some sort of creature from the depths. I recall one conservative podcaster referring to him as ‘some kind of lizard’.

Once elected with a wide margin his presidency was promptly delegitimized, with hordes of protesters marching under the banner of “Not my president!” for months on end.

And then came the two impeachments over Russia and Ukraine. After 2 years and 40 million dollars of the Muller enquiry (staffed exclusively by Clinton supporters) it was found that there was no Trump collusion with Russia. Instead we learned that the whole Russia hoax was started by Clinton based on a fake Russian dossier to deflect attention from her own email scandal. Then as to Trump’s phone call to the president of Ukraine, it was found the only real story with Ukraine was Hunter Biden’s million dollar payoffs by corrupt Burisma and Joe Biden’s televised leverage of a billion dollars of US aid to get a Ukrainian prosecutor off his son’s back.

So it turns out, everything the Democrats accused Trump of, and falsely, they were actually doing themselves. Russia collusion to spy on the Tump campaign and abuse of Vice-Presidential privilege to hide Ukrainian corruption. Those are double standards by any measure.

These three elements: Demonization, Delegitimization and Double standards happen to be the 3D test of antisemitism as defined by former Russian dissident Anatoly Sharansky.

And there lies my kinship to Donald Trump.

Israel is today the World’s Jew. The Yid among nations. The one so many European leaders still wish had never come into existence, to mess up their lucrative deals with oil-rich sheikhdoms. The place they call ‘that shitty little country’. The one that is singled out at the UN for more punishment than all the despotic and rights-abusing members combined. Between the UN and EU, all 3D boxes are checked.

As the son of an Auschwitz survivor whose parents were gassed and incinerated on arrival, it hurts me every day that despite all that happened, the Jewish state is still the one country that is not welcomed in the family of nations – truly a nation that dwells alone.

Which is why I empathise with any victim of 3D – like Donald Trump. Truly a kindred spirit.

How ironic that in less than four years he made such stunning progress bringing together Arabs and Jews. And how sad that the Saudi icing on the cake will now melt away with new American empowerment of Iran.

Stop (Using) Antisemitism

Every year has its fads and buzzwords.

Aside from Brexit and MeToo, the word that seems to have dominated for us is, sadly, Antisemitism.

The exposure of Labour’s rotten underbelly has put our small community of British Jews into the spotlight as never before.
At something like 225,000 we are barely 1/3rd of one percent of the UK population – and yet, listen to the clamour!

In such small numbers, we’ve always minded our own business without drawing attention to ourselves. We’ve never made demands on the state like other ethnic communities. We are, as often described by Margaret Thatcher, a model community in Britain in terms of family life and moral standards.

And we’ve been content with the rights and privileges we have enjoyed in terms of religious observance and education which are the hallmarks of the beneficent nation which welcomed Jewish kindertransports and our other refugees from Nazi tyranny, including my own parents.

We are not used to this kind of attention. We don’t like it.

And the trouble with buzzwords is that they soon go out of style or lose their impact. Look how the word Holocaust has been devalued. Darfur was a holocaust, then Syria – now America’s southern border is likened to a Nazi concentration camp.

Besides, why should Jew hate have its own special word? Antisemitism.

People who hate Blacks aren’t called AntiBlacks. Neither is there a word like AntiPaki or AntiFrench.
All these are simply called racists!

The sad truth is that for many Corbynites, antisemitism is a virtue – a badge of honour.
And for the rest, ‘antisemitism’ will inevitably be devalued and cheapened just like Holocaust and concentration camp.

So, let’s make a New Year’s resolution for 5780.

Let’s not call the likes of Corbyn, Livingstone, Galloway and Williamson anti-Semites.

Just call them RACISTS! - plain and simple.

And the same goes for any Jew-baiter you may pass in the street or on campus.

Don’t use the A-word. Use the R-word.

See how different the reaction is.

Antisemitism was OK, but being called out as racist, they just can’t stomach.

It's the voters, stupid !

The Sunday Times revelations about the cover-up and tolerance of anti-Semites in Corbyn's Labour Party should come as no surprise to anyone in Britain, least of all its tiny Jewish community of some 220,000 souls.
For over a year there's hardly been a week in which some ugly story of Jew-hating or Jew-baiting hasn't been reported in the press. Nobody can be in any doubt about what is going in Labour.

Jews have seen the likes of Corbyn come and go in every generation and we will be expressing that very truism two weeks from now at our Seder tables. 
But we British Jews need to zoom out and take in the bigger picture - the much more worrying picture.

That is the bitter reality that this toxic party and its hateful and discredited leader is still consistently ranking level with the Conservatives in current election polling. 4 of the 6 most recent polls had them tied or within the margin of error. The Daily Mail's Deltapoll at the end of last month gave Corbyn's party a lead of 5 percent !

This should tell us a lot more about the great British public than it tells us about Corbyn & Co. 

So, when we do sit down to Seder this year, there will hopefully be more meaning to 'Next Year in Jerusalem'.

What is the secret of the Jews ?

We begin 2019 with a horrifying level of antisemitism being openly displayed in Europe and beyond, on a scale unprecedented since the days of Nazi Germany. 

But we must not be disheartened.

Instead we should energize ourselves by revisiting our unique mission statement.

Watch here:  

Hate Jews / Hate Israel – two sides of the same coin

This week in CorbynLand we’ve seen the British Labour Party rewrite the definition of antisemitism to allow their bigots to discriminate against Israel as a right of free speech.

Until the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews were discriminated against in all parts of the world. Along came Israel and it became the Jew Among Nations.

Long before the IHRA came up with its definition of antisemitism, one of the world’s most famous prisoners of conscience, Anatoly Sharansky came up with his own “3D Test” for antisemitism. The symptoms were: Delegitimization, Demonization, and Double-standards.

Which happens to fit exactly with the conduct of Corbyn and his supporters towards Israel.

Corbynites regard Israel as an illegitimate state, born in sin. They demonize it as racist and apartheid. And they require it to behave very differently to any other country on earth.

A fifth of the world’s countries have official state religions, including 27 Muslim and 13 Christian. But for the likes of Corbyn there is no place for even one single Jewish state, however tiny and however hunted and endangered its people may have been for all time. Even rooted in its biblically-certified homeland, it is for the likes of Corbyn illegitimate and illegal.

When the fledgling state of Israel turns out to be the only pluralist democracy in the entire region; when it absorbs millions of immigrants from Russia, Africa and Asia; and when it appoints Arabs to its parliament and supreme court, you might expect other free and developed nations to support and protect it like a precious jewel. Instead, quite the opposite, Israel is demonised as an apartheid state with a Nazi army.

When Israel is surrounded on all sides by murderous enemies who have tried 7 wars to destroy it in as many decades; when it is threatened with nuclear annihilation by a fanatical Iranian regime and faces daily security threats in its streets, buses, pizza parlours and airliners, you would expect others to recognize its unique defence needs and to cut it some slack for the occasional stray bullet or collateral damage. But no. For the Jewish state every accident is a war crime. Half a million may be wantonly massacred in Syria and Yemen, but only Israel merits a Goldstone enquiry. A truly monstrous double-standard.

So, it’s plain to see that Corbyn’s idea of ‘free speech’ on Israel passes the 3D Test of antisemitism with straight A’s.

I am a realist and accept that there will always be prejudice and pejoratives thrown about in any cultural mix. So, my preferred definition of an anti-Semite is someone who hates Jewish people more than absolutely necessary.

The same applies for Israel.

It’s a young and tiny state which has had to face up to challenges that no other country has faced, least of all within just two generations.

Criticise it more than absolutely necessary and you are a bigoted racist abuser of the Jew Among Nations.

Trump in 3-D

Victims of antisemitism are always welcome in Israel. It’s where a Jew can proudly observe all religious requirements, rites and customs as an equal citizen and without discrimination.

Natan Sharansky came up with a simple test to expose legitimate criticism of Israel as being the same old Jew-hatred.

He called it the 3-D test. 

This stood for Demonization, De-legitimisation and Double-Standards. If Israel was being demonized – like being compared to Nazis, if its fundamental right to exist was being de-legitimized – as a nation born in sin; and if it was being held out to a different standard to all other nations – like not being entitled to shoot back under fire from hundreds of missiles … well, that meant it was just the same old antisemitism.

I believe few people understand this better than Donald Trump – and not because of his Jewish family ties.

From the earliest days of his campaign Trump was demonized in all sorts of ways and this has continued to this day. He has also been delegitimized as not honestly elected or worthy of the office of president. And finally, perhaps more than anything else, he has constantly been held to a higher standard than the Obama-Clinton administration which obstructed justice, lied about paying ransom to Iran in pallets of used dollar bills and which sold America’s uranium production to the Russians under the most dubious circumstances. 

These are just a few examples but leave me in no doubt that Trump knows what it’s truly like to be a Jew.

Welcome to Israel Mr President.

Our people understand you.

The speech we need to hear from every European leader....