I have to believe that the eavesdropped-on Netanyahu “liar” exchange between Sarkozy and Obama has caused many Americans, including many Jews, to wonder what the hell we’ve gotten into with the special relationship. But it has caused parochial Jews to freak out too. Here is such a person saying that Obama’s complaint about Netanyahu, “You’re fed up with him but I have to deal with him every day,” has caused Jews to worry about their safety in American society. Seems like quite a stretch, huh? But let Elaine Fogel, a marketing consultant and blogger, do the math in the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. She describes the exchange as a defining moment:
For Democratic Jews, who have been supportive of the president and his agenda, this faux pas will certainly cause some to rethink their allegiances. [i.e., they’re going to become Republicans]
And, for independent Jewish voters, one can only guess, but for those with strong ties or commitment to Israel, the Obama gaffe may be a tipping point from which there is no return….
I expect to see this political blunder linger longer within our Jewish communities than other incidents. When the president speaks, even off the record, he speaks on behalf of all Americans. And that’s what will worry many American Jews.
This is pathetic, and it only proves that the American Jewish community has a long ways to go before it can play any fruitful role in the Israeli-Palestinian case.
Is she indirectly gluing an Anti-Semite label on Obama’s back ,or am I in a state of delusion??
>> When the president speaks, even off the record, he speaks on behalf of all Americans.
Imagine that: He speaks for all Americans, not just American Jews.
>> And that’s what will worry many American Jews.
What worries American Jews? That the president doesn’t belong to them? That he dislikes a thug such as Bibi? That he’s tired of Israel’s sense of entitlement? That non-Jewish Americans may agree with him on this?
So let her move to Israel and LIVE under Netanyahu if she wants to feel safer. And not vote in the US.
Yea, that is pathetic and ridiculous.
How does what Obama said about Yahoo have to do with Jews safety in the US?
If I had to guess, this story plant is another scare tactic for ‘support Israel or perish’ or a ploy for a GOP vote.
I mean what a dead giveaway…..Jews so stupid they think Israel is what is keeping them alive? Well maybe some are that dumb, but it’s hard for me to believe any one with a normal I.Q. believes Israel is some guarentee of US Jews survival …….in fact quite the opposite these days.
But reminds me of a story I saw in the news yesterday:
Israel to Boston: We want our citizens to return to their homeland
Ads use emotion and guilt to lure those who’ve lingered in the diaspora to
return to their Jewish roots
By Alex Beam | Globe Columnist November 18, 2011
That’s odd. You’re driving north on Fresh Pond Parkway, heading for the
Concord Avenue rotary on your way to either the Fresh Pond Mall or the
Alewife T station, and you see a huge billboard in Hebrew. I can’t be
responsible for the Hebrew, but it’s a picture of a young father carrying
his son on his shoulders, with one gigantic word spelled out in English:
“DADDY.’’
Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption placed the Cambridge billboard, as
well as two others in New York, three in Los Angeles, one in Palo Alto,
Calif., and two in Miami, as part of a new fillip in an ongoing campaign to
lure Israelis back to Israel. The government has used many different
incentives in its long-term program to reverse the “brain drain’’ of highly
qualified citizens to Western Europe and the United States. This most recent
campaign attempts to use a new tool: guilt.
The message of the Cambridge billboard, which is reprised in several
30-second TV ads you can see at the website klita.gov.il, is that Israelis
who linger too long in the diaspora risk losing their Jewish roots. In one
of the ads, a family is Skyping their grandparents in Israel at Hanukkah,
and the presumably assimilated daughter refers to the season as “Christmas.’’
A look of pain shoots across her grandparents’ faces. The point of the
“Daddy’’ ad is that real Israeli children call their fathers “Abba,’’ not
“Daddy.’’
Kelly Anne Smith, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Consulate, admits that the
new campaign, which also ran for a while on an Israeli TV station available
in the United States, “comes from an emotional standpoint. We don’t want to
force people to go back to Israel, but it’s something we’d like them to
explore. Life is pretty comfortable here, but parents need to ask themselves
if this is where they want their children to grow up.’’
It’s too early to judge the campaign’s effectiveness, she says.
There are 10,000 Israeli citizens in the Boston area and perhaps a million
in the United States. Israel offers generous incentives, including 10 years
of tax relief from overseas income or investment, Hebrew lessons for
children – even 200 free cellphone minutes – to returnees.
It’s a tough sell, as former MIT economics professor and now governor of the
Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer explained in an interview with Newsweek: “The
conditions are enormously better in the United States. A graduating student
in economics who gets his first job in the United States will earn three or
four times what he earns in Israel. And the universities are better equipped
and all that. It demands something of people to come back.’’
Several friends of mine mentioned the billboard to me, and I asked what they
thought about it. “I actually had tears in my eyes as I watched the videos,’’
occupational therapist Nancy Mazonson wrote me in an e-mail. “Why was I, a
non-Israeli, tearing up? Deep-seated, primal guilt. Because as an American
born in the ’50s, I grew up being told that Israel is my homeland and that I
must consider making Aliyah – moving to Israel. My freedom to be a Jew in
America, I was taught, was and would always be dependent on the sacrifices
of the Israelis to maintain that homeland.
“Imagine, then, how powerful that message is when you guilt trip Israelis
who have come to the States and, GOD FORBID, chosen to raise their children
here while Skyping with Grandma back home on Hanukkah, telling her about
Christmas. It’s the whole guilt package – done very well.
“Israel is in a tough place. There is a brain drain. The best and the
brightest can have the same opportunities there and here, but here there is
more affluence to be had, and more importantly, less fear and worry about
safety and security . . . not to mention no heartbreak thinking about that
sweet blond curly haired kid who called his dad Abba having to one day be in
the military.’’
“A homeland is inevitably worried when its citizens voluntarily live outside
its borders,’’ explains Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history
at Brandeis. “When Israel was created, it was declared that Jews could only
be safe inside that homeland. But America challenges that, offering a place
where Jews can live in equality with other people and not suffer from
anti-Semitism.
“A few years ago, the Jewish Agency complained that Jews were ‘vanishing’ in
America. The portrayal of America in Israel is of a place that is good for
Jews but has a harmful impact on Judaism. In America, Israel is viewed as a
dangerous place with terrorism all over.”
It’s this kind of thinking I don’t get…..>“Why was I, a non-Israeli, tearing up? Deep-seated, primal guilt. Because as an American born in the ’50s, I grew up being told that Israel is my homeland and that I must consider making Aliyah – moving to Israel. My freedom to be a Jew in America, I was taught, was and would always be dependent on the sacrifices of the Israelis to maintain that homeland.”
I mean, I get childhood brainwashing by parents but at some point when the adult mind develops reason and logic should kick in. The older generation of Jews who instilled this in their children have done them a great diservice….and if anything has made them unsafe it is the mentality…that no matter which country they actually live in, their real country is Israel.