Is Stealing Wrong? Not On The Left By Dennis Prager and The ADL Convenes a Summit of Anti-Semites to Fight Anti-Semitism By Daniel Greenfield and Kristallnacht: When the Jews were StrandedBy Larry Domnitch
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Kristallnacht: When the Jews were Stranded By Larry Domnitch
Photo Credit: wikimedia
Burning Synagoge Kristallnacht 9 November 1938
During the summer of 1938, with an urgent situation facing Jews in lands under control of the Nazi regime, thirty-two nations gathered in Evian France to find a solution to the Jewish refugee crisis. German, Austrian, and Czech Jewry were desperate to leave but few nations would accept them beyond their meager quotas. At Evian, nothing was resolved, as delegate after delegate on behalf of their respective nations refused to expand their meager quotas. Then representative of the Jewish Agency at the time, Golda Meir (then Meyerson) who attended the conference said that, "nothing was accomplished at Evian except phraseology." At a press conference, she stated, "Before I die, my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore." The London Jewish Chronicle predicted that the Evian Conference, "will be numbered among the many conferences whose name is failure."
The horrors of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, exacerbated the German Jewish refugee crisis as Nazi hordes swept over Jewish communities in Germany inflicting destruction and terror, removing any doubt that the hour of German Jewry's demise was near. Nearly one hundred Jews were murdered and thirty thousand were sent to concentration camps. Five hundred synagogues were burnt down and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed. Over two hundred thousand German Jews had not yet left and 200,000 Jews of Austria were under German occupation, which was seized and occupied by the Nazis after the Aunchlus (unification) as of March 15 earlier that year. In addition, the Jews of the Sudetenland, handed over to Germany in the aftermath of the Munich accords, were then under Nazi control. Exactly, one year later, on March 15, 1939, the Germans seized all of Czechoslovakia.
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Just six weeks before Kristallnacht as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain triumphantly proclaimed "peace in our time" following the ill fated Munich deal signed with Hitler, the horrors of Crystal Night shattered any such illusions of peace.
A full page advertisement in the London Jewish Chronicle one week later in an appeal for German Jewry simply stated, "HELP! Before it is too late."
The British did react with a gesture. The Kindertransport presented to the British Parliament on November 15, 1938, allowed for 10,000 German and Austrian Jewish children to be brought into Great Britain. The first train left December 10, 1938 with six hundred children.
Many Americans realized after Kristallnacht, known then as 'Black Thursday,' that along with the Jews, all Western civilization was in danger. One newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted that "The Jews are not the sole sufferers. This is a pogrom against Christian civilization itself. Decent world opinion and civilized governments cannot remain indifferent or silent."
United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did extend the visas for 12,000-15,000 German Jewish refugees who were already in the US as visitors but would not change US immigration policies. At a White House Press conference, Roosevelt expressed shock at the news of the pogrom, "I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization." When asked if immigration restrictions would be relaxed, he responded, "This is not in contemplation. We have a quota system."
Roosevelt's position mirrored the views of most Americans. According to a Fortune Magazine poll after Kristallnacht, 83% of Americans opposed enlarging quotas, 8.3% were undecided, and 8.7% were not opposed. Years of demagoguery and anti-Semitic hate mongering by the likes of Father Coughlin and Gerald K. Smith had its impact. There was revulsion at the violence but a continued unwillingness to respond meaningfully.
However, President Roosevelt could have nonetheless still taken action. Economic sanctions could have been imposed on Germany. Refugees could have been permitted to settle temporarily in a U.S. territory such as the Philippines or the Virgin Islands.
Jewish organizations did not protest. There were no rallies, no protests, no significant effort mounted to call for refuge. Influential leader of the American Jewish Committee, Samuel Rosenmann stated that bringing in refugees "would create a Jewish crisis in the USA."
Some members of Congress sought action. The Wagner- Rogers Bill proposed admitting 20,000 German Jewish children under the age of fourteen, but it was rejected by congress in February 1939. It never came to a vote.
According to Laura Delano Houghteling, the wife of the Commissioner of Immigration, and a cousin of FDR, the problem with the Wagner- Rogers Bill was that, "Twenty thousand charming children would all soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults."
One nation offered sanctuary; the Dominican Republic under Rafael Trujillo. Dominican law #48 proposed on December 23, 1938, agreed to accept one hundred thousand Jewish refugees on their Caribbean island nation, but they were pressured by none other than the U.S. State Department to rescind their offer.
What about refuge in the Land of Israel and the promises made by the British Balfour Declaration in 1917 (supported by Western nations) and the League of Nations San Remo Conference in 1920 to facilitate the creation of a Jewish State?
On November 16, 1938, less than a week after Kristallnacht, the New York Times expressed its opposition to Jewish statehood in an editorial, entitled, "The Refugees," declaring that Palestine is no answer." They reasoned; "Even if that small state were capable of supporting a much larger population than its most enthusiastic friends believe, Palestine would serve as a refuge only for a comparatively small number of Jews, and the problem of the refugee is not limited to any group."
Tragically, the voices in support of Jewish immigration to "Palestine" were not loud enough.
On May 17, 1939, the British Government caving in to Arab pressure and Arab terror, issued the MacDonald White paper which limited total Jewish immigration into Palestine for the next five years to 75,000, negating the prior promises of Jewish Statehood. The Jewish Agency responded despondently stating, "It is the darkest hour of Jewish history that the British government proposes to deprive the Jews of their last hope and to close the road back to their Homeland."
Throughout the 1930s, nations of the world were far too tolerant of Nazism and reluctant to take any action to ameliorate the sufferings of Jewry. Not coming to terms with the emerging Nazi threat that would soon endanger them as well.
In today's times, western nations have been far too tolerant of the forces of radical Islam which includes the ruling regime in Iran, Isis, Hizbollah, Hamas, and other terror groups.. They threaten Israel and the West as well.
Those who spoke out against the rise of Nazism in the1930s were often labeled as war mongers. Today, those who cite the threats posed by radical Islam face the same labels and similar criticisms.
After Kristallnacht, some members of the Nazi regime openly called for the genocide of the Jews. In today's times, the Iranian regime and its supporters call for the destruction of Israel. Somehow, then and now, this rhetoric is deemed by too many to be acceptable.
Once again, the Jewish establishment maintains its silence in the face of the current threats, fearing the reaction of the outside world as it did seventy years ago.
The horrors of Kristallnacht shocked the world and signaled the extreme dangers posed by the Nazi regime to the Jews and all humanity.
The ADL Convenes a Summit of Anti-Semites to Fight Anti-Semitism
When three Jewish teens were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas, Israel fought back, Jews mourned, and Sheera Frenkel rushed to claim that Hamas wasn't responsible.
"There is a Hamas official in the story saying they are not Hamas," she insisted on Twitter.
It was a low point in her career of smearing Israel with lies and hate, but not unusual.
Frenkel had accused Israel of using white phosphorus, falsely claimed that there had been a blast at an Iranian nuclear facility, wrongly described an Israeli ban on construction materials, and concluded her coverage of the brutal murder of a Rabbi and his family in India with a quote suggesting that "the attitudes of the Chabad, which gives the sense of an elite club for Jews alone, is part of what provoked the terrorists to target them for the attack."
This is the sort of ugly hateful behavior the ADL should be condemning, not celebrating.
After a career of spreading disinformation against the Jewish State, Sheera Frenkel got a job covering "disinformation" for the New York Times. And she'll be taking part in a conversation on the spread of "disinformation" at the opening session of the ADL's Never Is Now summit.
At the ADL virtual event longside the notorious anti-Israel bigot will be fellow New York Times activist Kara Swisher who has her own history of anti-Israel tweets including a link to a column in the paper defending BDS, Rep. Rashida Tlaib along with the rest of the antisemitic "Squad", and arguing that it's possible to "oppose Jewish ethno-nationalism without being a bigot".
This is how the ADL is promoting antisemitism while claiming to be fighting antisemitism.
When the ADL convenes its latest Never Is Now summit, Kamala Harris and Lost actor Daniel Dae Kim will be speaking, so will activists associated with anti-Israel hate groups like J Street and the Israel Policy Forum, but not a single pro-Israel group will be represented at the event.
While the ADL has not seen fit to invite any pro-Israel activists, it did find a place for Amy Spitalnick, the former press secretary for J Street, who had worked on Anthony Weiner's mayoral campaign and then went on to serve as a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Earlier this year, Spitalnick appeared at a virtual J Street event alongside Peter Beinart, who supports BDS and recently wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined, "I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State". Spitalnick, who currently claims to be fighting Nazis, had defended the antisemitic play Seven Jewish Children which even The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg described as "anti-Jewish agitprop" and a Guardian op-ed compared to a medieval blood libel.
The ADL, which claims to fight antisemitism, is now literally allying with blood libelers.
Before Spitalnick had reinvented herself as combating Nazis, she was defending material that has been compared to Nazi propaganda and depicts Jews as the new Nazis.
And that's the sort of thing that the ADL decided is a good fit for Never is Now.
In addition to Spitalnick, Oren Jacobson, the head of a pro-abortion group, is affiliated with the Israel Policy Forum, and will also be speaking at the ADL's event. The ADL however chose not to extend invitations to anyone affiliated with pro-Israel groups to defend the Jewish State.
It did however invite Sara Yael Hirschhorn who, as Moshe Philips at Israel National News pointed out, had accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing". "The Palestinian case shares some common features with South Africa—population transfer/ethnic cleansing," Hirschhorn had tweeted, and falsely claimed that Israel is guilty of "daily violations of human rights."
Hirschhorn has cultivated a storied career of bashing Israel with New York Times op-eds like, "Israeli Terrorists, Born in the U.S.A." Her book, City on a Hilltop, attacking Jews living in their historical homeland in Judea and Samaria, was featured, along with the author, at a Foundation for Middle East Peace event. FMEP, a part of the Arab Lobby, accuses Israel of "apartheid".
Past Never is Now conferences had at least tried for the pretense of balance by inviting a liberal pro-Israel activist or two. But now the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt is taking off the mask.
Along with Israel, the ADL is putting Jews and anti-semitism on the back burner. The opening session of Never is Now features Daniel Dae Kim talking about anti-Asian hate. The third session is titled, "Confronting Anti-Black Racism to Fight Antisemitism" and falsely claims that "Anti-black racism is… an issue in our synagogues, schools and Jewish Institutions."
The ADL was never a good organization, but I can remember when it used to condemn Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan instead of echoing them.
Now the ADL's idea of fighting antisemitism is telling Jews that they're a bunch of racists.
"Without addressing the impact of racism," the ADL falsely claims, "we cannot move forward in the fight against antisemitism" and touts a panel that will "explore how critical it is to fight anti-black racism in order to build a stronger and more effective movement across communities to dismantle antisemitism." Making fighting antisemitism secondary to fighting racism is the most obvious symptom of a sellout organization that puts wokeness ahead of its core mission.
The NAACP does not tell its members that fighting racism should be secondary to fighting antisemitism. Nor does it create the artificial linkage that the ADL proposes which not only makes antisemitism a secondary issue, but demands that Jews admit to being racist.
After the past few years in which there were two domestic terrorist attacks against Jews by members of the the Black Hebrew Israelite hate group, in which major leftist movement leaders have praised Louis Farrakhan, and in which there have been repeated antisemitic hate crimes in the New York area carried out by black attackers, the ADL should be addressing black antisemitism, instead of accusing Jews of racism. But the ADL doesn't care about antisemitism.
Only the final sessions, "Combating Anti-Zionist and Antisemitic Activism in Progressive Spaces" and "Confronting Antisemitism on Campus" actually address commonplace everyday antisemitism. Instead of putting the fight against antisemitism first, the ADL puts it last.
The careful tenor with which it addresses leftist antisemitism on campus and in organizational life is very different from its willingness to denounce every other form of bigotry. When it comes to its condemnation of racism against "Black, Latinx, AAPI, Muslim, LGBTQ+", the ADL doesn't engage in nuance or seek to distinguish between legitimate opinions and racist ones. Yet when it comes to leftist antisemitism, the ADL is careful to cultivate an imaginary distinction between good leftist hatred of Israel and bad leftist hatred of Jews so as not to offend its political allies.
Antisemitism is the only bigotry that the ADL believes requires nuance toward the bigots.
The ADL leadership is deferential toward leftist antisemitism because, unlike far right antisemitism or any kind of racism or prejudice, it concedes that leftist antisemitism has a point.
The roster of anti-Israel bigots it invited to present at Never is Now signals as much.
Instead of opposing leftist antisemitism, the ADL would like leftists to moderate it, to draw lines between appropriate and inappropriate hate, but as the history of its own collaborators in leftist antisemitism show, that line is as imaginary as the ADL's Jewish commitments.
The ADL's decision to not only stock its virtual conference with radical leftists who wage a disinformation war against Jews, but to invite high school students to attend shows just how destructive to Jewish life the organization's wokeness under Greenblatt has become.
Instead of calling its conferences Never is Now, maybe the ADL should call them Now Again.
To most readers of this column, the question is absurd. The reason is not because the question is, in fact, absurd; it is because most readers of this column are conservative, and many are religious.
Am I implying that most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong?
Yes, I am.
As incredible as this assertion is to just about all religious people and virtually all conservatives, most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong. Since I always draw a distinction between those on the Left and liberals, let me add that I suspect most liberals think stealing is wrong. But it almost doesn't matter because they vote for people who do not think it is.
One proof is the passage of Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, under which theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted. As a result, in Democrat-run California cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, retail theft has soared.
Walgreens stores in San Francisco are racking up four times the average amount of theft in Walgreens stores across the country; spending on security guards in San Francisco is 35 times more than the chain's average in other cities. Walgreens has been forced to close 22 stores in the city since 2016.
As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle: "The Safeway located in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood … was a longstanding, 24-hour fixture in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. But as of last week, the store's hours have been cut back to 6 a.m. to 9 p.m … A Safeway spokesperson (said) that the cutbacks are 'due to an increasing amount of theft at the store.'"
Further proof that the Left doesn't consider theft wrong – at least when committed by a person of color – was an interview broadcast on NPR last year with the author of a book titled "In Defense of Looting." The NPR interviewer threw only softball questions to the author.
In the last election, Los Angeles voters elected San Francisco's previous district attorney, George Gascon, as Los Angeles's district attorney. It was Los Angeles's way of declaring that stealing is not wrong. And it is worth noting that it is not only racial minorities and the poor who make these elections possible; it is also prosperous whites. The Los Angeles DA is a wealthy white, and he was supported by a white billionaire, George Soros.
It is hard to believe that millions of Americans do not deem stealing from stores morally wrong, so let's try to explain how this has come about.
Reason No. 1 is moral relativism. For as long as there has been a Left, it has rejected moral absolutes. As the great British historian, Paul Johnson, pointed out a half-century ago in his magnum opus, "Modern Times," the secular world applied the relativism of the natural sciences to morality.
Reason No. 2 is the reason for reason number one: the collapse of the Judeo-Christian value system and the accompanying abandonment of, and often disdain for, biblical ethics. Biblical morality posits moral absolutes – meaning that stealing is wrong for everyone, certainly people of every color. Yes, one can offer a biblical defense of a starving man stealing food for his starving family. But that is hardly what is happening in San Francisco and other American cities.
Reason No. 3 is Marxist morality. From Marx to the present, Marxism has divided the world not between right and wrong, but between economic classes. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for members of the poorer classes to steal from members of the more affluent classes. This notion has made its way into young people's minds for decades. About 30 years ago, I spoke to students from four Cleveland high schools. I asked them to raise their hand if they would steal something they really wanted from a department store if they were certain they would not get caught. Nearly all the students raised their hands. When I asked some of them to justify their reasoning, they all said the same thing: they wouldn't steal from a mom-and-pop store, but they would steal from a department store. It is OK to steal from "the rich."
Reason No. 4 is leftists' view of nonwhites, especially blacks, a view that conservatives have never shared. Leftists truly believe that blacks are intellectually and morally inferior to whites. The evidence? They do not believe blacks should be held to the same intellectual and moral standards to which leftists hold whites. Leftists do not defend whites who steal, and they hold whites to higher intellectual standards. Leftists do not argue for lowering math standards for whites, only for blacks.
The bottom line is the Left is immoral. That is why it defends stealing.
