Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Its sobering to live in a world overdosing on Ahasueruses and Hamans but missing Esthers and Mordecais.Today, Israel and the United States are led by modern Ahasueruses.Drunk on power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu foolishly paralyzes an entire country for a year in his desperate refusal to retire. For years, many of us believed that whatever our disagreements with him, he woke up daily asking Whats best for Israel and the Jewish people? Today, he just seems to be asking Whats best for Bibi?Drunk on ego, US President Donald Trump foolishly puts his prejudices ahead of Americas core ideals. And just like Ahasueruss ultimate switch to save the Jewish people didnt undo other mistakes he made, Trumps pro-Israel policy doesnt negate the other damage his bullying causes.Hamans spread like coronavirus. Palestinian dictators and enablers train children to hate, teenagers to kill, and their people to accept living in misery, as the elites live grandly while getting coddled as the worlds favorite underdog. We have strongmen galore, from Hezbollahs bloodthirsty Hassan Nasrallah to Irans oppressive Ali Khamenei to Russias wily Vladimir Putin to Syrias murderous Bashar Assad.True, these contemporary Hamans arent as menacing as the Hitlers and Stalins or even the Nassers and Arafats. Yet their power is amplified today because we lack the Esthers and Mordecais of yesteryear.In Israel, the yearlong electoral stalemate has demoralized most voters and sullied the Bibi alternatives.Within the Right, you wonder what might finally propel Naftali Bennett or Ayelet Shaked to break the predicted third logjam by working with Blue and White a party that includes former generals and former colleagues on the Right who accept Israels security consensus because people like Moshe Bogie Yaalon, Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz helped define it.You also wonder whether any of the Likud munchkins, who have been diminished by their total devotion to their Perpetual Leader, will ever break, or shake up the Likud bloc.In the Center, the excitement that surrounded the Blue and White campaign launch a year ago has faded.Politics is ugly, and the public arena has become poisoned, Gantz said in his eloquent opening speech, denouncing todays self-absorbed leadership. This election three-peat has clouded his and his allies impressive achievement in creating a party from nothing and winning the most votes in September. Any potential Esthers in the party lack star billing, while none of the four leaders has wowed voters as a modern Mordecai.AT LEAST the four-headed Blue-and-Whiters figured out how to unite against the greater threat. In the US, as Elizabeth Warren slashed, Bernie Sanders bellowed and Michael Bloomberg stumbled, it became clear who won the ninth Democratic debate in Las Vegas: Donald Trump.Its always hard when an incumbent president coasts to renomination, as candidates in the other party first slug it out. Ronald Reagan chuckled in 1984 as Gary Wheres the Beef Hart tagged Walter Mondale as a creature of special interests, just as Barack Obama beamed in 2012, watching the never-ending GOP contest yank moderate Mitt Romney ever rightward.Still, 2020s Democratic civil war feels particularly uncivil and self-destructive. Rather than pulling it together, Trumpophobia seems to be tearing the party apart. At the debate, few even bothered offering anything lyrical, constructive, redemptive: no Reaganesque Morning in America, no Obamaian Yes We Can, to motivate and mobilize.Even worse, the leading candidate (for now), Bernie Sanders, is a walking, talking (or hollering) worst-case scenario for the Democratic Party and the Jewish community.Sanders seems to be channeling Trumps strategy of motivating an aggressive minority to bully, then outlast, the moderates, the party grown-ups. The menace from Bernie bros is not some Russian ploy and serious enough to infuriate Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg, who challenged Sanders at the debate: ask yourself what it is about your campaign in particular that seems to be motivating this behavior....Beyond that, pushing the Democratic Party to the far Left in an election that hinges on moderate swing states is like steering the Titanic toward the iceberg.Even before Sanders libeled AIPAC, claiming it offers a platform... for leaders who express bigotry, his rise seemed determined to torture pro-Israel Democrats. Choosing between Trump and a senator who has never shown much love for the Jewish state, who cavorts with antisemites like Linda Sarsour and Ilhan Omar, and acts like a proud Bash-Israel-firster, would be nightmarish. It would be like choosing between eating a poisonous falafel ball laced with ham and a poisonous gefilte fish stuffed with hot peppers.Perhaps, the Berge the Bernie surge will force Democrats to stop ignoring the disturbing fact that after decades as Americas most pro-Israel party, their party, while still majority pro-Israel, now houses a wing that is sneeringly, obsessively anti-Israel and welcomes, even excuses, some antisemites, too.Ive said it before. In 1991, the leading right-winger William F. Buckley exposed the Jew-hatred behind Pat Buchanans isolationism and anti-Zionism, saying it violated Republican values. Its time for Barack Obama or another leading iconic Democrat to read out the Israel-haters from the party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nancy Pelosi all passionate pro-Israel liberal Democrats. Thats not a job for a Mordecai or an Esther although Jewish Democrats must stop covering up the problem. Thats a job for a non-Jewish hero willing to defy Twitterdumb and the bullies inside the Democratic Party, while preserving Democrats greater goal unseating Trump.The writer is the author of The Zionist Ideas, an update and expansion of Arthur Hertzbergs classic anthology, The Zionist Idea. A distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University, he is the author of 10 books on American history, including The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s.

Read the original here:

Center Field: Comparing today's world leaders to Ahasueruses and Hamans - The Jerusalem Post

Category: Ashkenazi
Tags: