I realize that NARAL is not a Jewish group, but find it funny, in a sad way, that Jews4Barack would list it amongst Jewish groups and individuals that support Obama.
Some Jewish groups take it for granted that Jews in general, and Jewish women in particular, would automatically be anti-natalists, since they seem to think that “Jewish” is synonymous with “support for anything ‘progressive‘.”
Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to the 94th National Convention of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America:
“Senator Obama’s firm support for protecting a woman’s right to choose is essential. America needs a President who will make sure that as women, our rights will be protected, our choices will be preserved and our bodies will be our own.”
The first state ever to legalize abortion: The USSR (which also created the Siberian Israel)
The second state to legalize abortion (for Jews and other “impure” races): Nazi Germany.
I guess Wasserman Schultz and Hadassah would have endorsed Stalin and Hitler. After all, they were very socially ‘progressive‘ for their day.
On Abortion, the Welfare State, Keynes and Hayek, The Brussels Journal, 2005-07-01:
A Nazi law of March 9, 1943…stated that “persons who are not German State citizens belonging to the German people” could be exempted from punishment for abortion. This law applied to ethnic Germans who had formerly lived in Russia. They were not considered to be as racially pure as ‘German Germans’ and, hence, were granted the ‘right’ to abort their children. According to a document of October 25, 1943, from the Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA), the Race and Colonisation Department of the SS, the Nazis had a problem because “reactionary Catholic doctors” refused to cooperate in these unpenalised abortions. (Note that both the SS and feminists…use the same word – “reactionary” – when describing anti-abortion attitudes.)
The SS decided to take action against doctors and nurses refusing to perform abortions. They were defamed and brought to court. In 1948 the Americans condemned RuSHA-Colonel Ulrich Greifelt as a war criminal in Nuremberg because of the 1943 document. Who could have imagined then that, barely 40 years later, not only in Germany but everywhere in the West, even in America, doctors and nurses would again be condemned by courts for the obstruction of legal abortions? Is World War II, as Irving Kristol has remarked, a war that Hitler lost but that his philosophy won?
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Abortion in Israel: Terms of Termination
Jewish Virtual Library
A 1977 law ensures a low-cost, and in some cases free, legal abortion to any woman who fills one of four criteria:
She is under 18 or over 40 (cost to those in between: 1,500 shekels [$370]).
She is carrying a fetus with a serious mental or physical defect (free).
She claims that the fetus results from forbidden relations such as rape or incest (free) or, in the case of a married woman, that the baby is not her husband’s (not free). Single women also fall under this clause, and they too must pay.
She shows that by continuing the pregnancy, her physical or mental health would be damaged (free).
In 1980, a fifth criterion that allowed abortions for women living in economic hardship was abolished due to pressure from religious political parties.
A woman who seeks to terminate a pregnancy must appear before one of the 41 abortion committees operating in public and private hospitals around the country. These committees include three members — a physician whose field of expertise is obstetrics and gynecology; another physician who is either a family doctor, psychiatrist, internist or gynecologist, and a social worker. At least one woman must be present on each committee.
Six separate committees consider requests for termination when a fetus is beyond 24 weeks old. No hospitals in Jerusalem, however, will perform these abortions.
In 1999, 19,674 applications out of 20,581 were approved (96%) and 18,785 pregnancies were terminated. In addition, 16,000 abortions were illegally performed in private doctors’ clinics. In general, about 40,000 abortions are carried out in Israel every year. The Health Ministry approves about half of them, and private doctors perform the rest, without the supervision of the state and at the cost of thousands of shekels.
EFRAT [1-800-273-4314] is an Israeli group dedicated to discouraging Jewish infanticide and encouraging Arab infanticide.
Accessing their website is inadvisable due to multiple malware infestations.
In 2005, Israel + Gaza + The West Bank was 50.7% Jewish and 49.3% Arab.
“Friends of Efrat is a group of volunteers who identify strongly with Efrat’s goal that no Jewish child should be lost to the Jewish People due to the economic concerns of the parents. A corollary of that goal is that no Jewish woman should have to go through an abortion due to financial concerns.”
Efrat provides women who are considering abortion for economic reasons with a choice of financial assistance, including:
- A month’s worth of groceries delivered to the door over a 12-month period. 1,200 families are presently receiving a monthly Efrat food package.
- A monthly delivery of baby formula, disposable diapers, baby wipes and baby food.
- The Yad Chava Baby Fund – which delivers a brand-new crib, stroller, and baby bath directly to the new mother’s home.
- The EFRAT Layette – which includes sheets, a baby blanket, clothing, bibs, bottles, pacifiers and even a tiny comb and brush set.
“Israel is currently fighting a war for her very survival as a Jewish State. As this is being written Israel’s borders are in jeopardy due to the demographic threat of being out numbered. The Arab birthrate is about double the Jewish birth rate of 2.3. It is forecasted that the Arabs will be the majority in Israel by the year 2020, less than fifteen years from now.”
”Since the founding of the state of Israel, more than one million Jewish children have been lost,” says Tzvi Binn, a spokesman who helps raise funds for Efrat in the United States. “It’s a constant struggle to maintain the Jewishness of the state, but saving Jewish lives helps us in that struggle.” Whereas attacks by militants killed an average of one person a week in Israel last year, and car crashes nine people every seven days, Efrat says 900 babies a week were aborted.
Organization: Efrat-C.R.I.B. Address: 333 West 86th Street # 1003 City: New York State/Country: NY Zip: 10024 Website Address: www.friendsofefrat.org Contact Person: Tzvi Binn Title: Program Director Phone: (800) 273-4314 Email: efrat@friendsofefrat.org
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau: “That’s why we must help support and assist as much as we can so that Efrat’s message will echo, resonate, and penetrate the hearts.”
Israeli President Moshe Katsav: “I would like to praise Efrat for fulfilling a national duty of great importance. There was never a period in all the years of Jewish history that such a duty was as essential as it is in this generation.”
VIDEO HERE
* * * * *
My purpose is not to criticize Efrat per se, since I believe they are doing good work. It’s problematic that they are solely concerned with the fate of Jewish babies, but at the same time I recognize that Israeli Jews and non-Jews have separate social supports.
Working to support Jewish mothers and discourage them from killing their babies does not necessarily mean that they support the killing of non-Jewish babies. However, the utilitarian and so-called “pro-choice” statements of Efrat staff bother me. They are careful not to criticize abortion in general, but are only concerned that Israeli Jews not be aborted so much; and that only because of utilitarian, demographic concerns. That seems, to me, typical of the kind of immorally relativistic thinking that corrupts Israeli society, and will, in the long term, doom Israel as a state.
* * * * *
Amongst Efrat’s supporters, there are a few instances of incredible hypocrisy:
One of EFRAT’s strongest supporters is Jewish Democrat Senator Chuck Shumer, who is strongly pro-abortion. He opposes all bans or restrictions, including on Partial Birth Abortion; with a 100% NARAL approval rating), except, obviously, when it comes to killing Jews. He is a strong proponent of funding infanticide [abortion] in U.S. racial minority communities [the main "beneficiaries" of groups like Planned Parenthood] and in Africa and Asia, but worries about Jewish babies getting killed in Israel.
“Schumer can be especially strident on abortion. When Congress was debating a bankruptcy bill, he pushed an amendment to ban pro-life activists from avoiding fines by declaring themselves insolvent. These special rules would not have applied to animal-rights protesters or anyone else.”
Efrat & US Jewish groups + US Senate [PDF]
[To anyone who follows the links, please note that the Zionist Organization of America--the leader of which supports Efrat--is a separate organization from Haddasah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, which is a very anti-life movement. Haddasah opposes any and all restrictions on abortion in the USA: "Based on Jewish law, which mandates that protecting the life and health of a woman comes before the protection of her fetus. Under that law, a woman is forbidden to give her life in exchange for the life of her fetus." (Forbidden!?) According to Haddasah, in the US a Jewish fetus is only part of a woman's thigh. I suggest they hire a few qualified physicians to give them some anatomy lessons.]
Rabbi Menachem Genack, head of the powerful O.U. Kashrut Division (that provides kosher certification to more than 200,000 food products under the auspices of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America), is strongly and morally anti-abortion [for Jews] in Israel (”I honor Dr. Schussheim and those associated with EFRAT, for their extraordinary work.”), but in the States, gave President Clinton The O.U. Kosher Seal of Approval, supported the presidential campaign of Joseph Lieberman (”A Modern-Day Mordecai“), campaigned for Hillary Clinton (managing her finances), and now supports Obama. All four politicians support even “Partial Birth” Abortions, and have 100% approval ratings from National Abortion Rights Action League for their pro-abortion voting records.
Since black babies are disproportionately killed by American abortionists, what is one to make of Genack and Schumer’s practical support for abortion in America and practical opposition to aborting Jews? In fact, “American Jews support abortion rights more strongly than the other ethnic groups surveyed (Asian-, Arab-, African-, Italian- and Hispanic-Americans).” That was from a Jewish magazine. And the widespread (but not complete) Jewish American support for “abortion rights” can be confirmed by browsing the major Jewish-American groups’ websites. And yet B’nai B’rith has said that pointing out that Jews are disproportionally represented in the abortion movement is comparable to the “blood libel” of the Middle Ages.
* * * * *
Chief Rabbis of Israel Rule Abortion “a Grave Sin” (and delaying the coming of the messiah)
LifeSiteNews.com | January 2, 2008
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel ruled on December 24 that abortion is a grave sin and that abortion is delaying the coming of the messiah.The Chief Rabbinate decided that it would establish a special committee to lobby to reduce the number of abortions carried out in Israel, and was supported in its ruling by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.Dr. Eli Schussheim, director of the anti-abortion organization Efrat, made a presentation to the Chief Rabbinate in which he presented the figures concerning abortion in Israel. According to the presentation, over 50,000 abortions are performed yearly in Israel, only 20,000 of which are legal.
“The vast majority of abortions are unnecessary and strictly forbidden according to halacha because they are carried out even when the pregnancies do not endanger the mother’s health,” the rabbis wrote in their decision.
The rabbis further believe that abortions are delaying the messiah, based on an expression uttered by the Jewish sages which can be construed that the messiah will not arrive until all children to be born to Jewish mothers are born.
The rabbis based their ruling primarily on Genesis 9:6, which reads: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” The rabbis, in making their ruling based on this text, affirmed the dignity of unborn persons, all of whom are made in the image of God.
According to the Mishnah, a record of oral interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures, abortion is only permitted when a woman’s life is in danger.
* * * * *
Efrat refers to the abortion of Jews as a “Holocaust”, but Paul Spiegel, president of Germany’s Central Council for Jews, condemned the Roman Catholic Pope, John Paul II, for comparing abortion “with the German laws which declared the Jews non-persons and allowed them to be murdered by the state.”
So Jews are free to call the killing of Jewish babies a holocaust, but a Roman Catholic referring to all abortions as a holocaust can expect to be accused of insensitivity towards women’s alleged “rights”?
Spiegel said, “The Catholic Church does not understand or does not want to understand that there is an enormous difference between mass genocide and what women do with their bodies.”
John Paul wrote that abortion and legalized genocide are both the result of people usurping the law of God.:“We have to question the legal regulations that have been decided in the parliaments of present-day democracies. The most direct association which comes to mind is the abortion laws. Parliaments which create and promulgate such laws must be aware that they are transgressing their powers and remain in open conflict with the law of God and the law of nature.”
Efrat puts up posters in New York and other places saying things like, “STOP The Silent Holocaust — 2,000,000 children destroyed by abortion in Israel.”
One wonders what would happen to the present Pope, Benedict XVI, a German citizen, if he were to dare repeat John Paul’s opinions on German soil.
He might find himself thrown in jail, charged under Nazi-inspired laws designed to crush dissent.
Secularist Europe Silences Pro-Lifers and Creationists
Brussels Journal, 2007-06-23Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for Volksverhetzung (incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust.
…
Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase annually by at least 150,000. … Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn to the killing of the Jews in Auschwitz during the Second World War. On 14 June, a court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had “incited the people” because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany. Hence, Herr Lerle was sentenced to one year in jail. Earlier, he had already spent eight months in jail for calling abortionists “professional killers” – an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because, according to the court, the unborn are not humans. [However, abortion is restricted in Germany.]Other German courts convicted pro-lifers for saying that “in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed,” because this terminology evoked Hitler’s euthanasia program, which used the same language. In 2005, a German pro-lifer, Günter Annen, was sentenced to 50 days in jail for saying “Stop unjust [rechtswidrige] abortions in [medical] practice,” because, according to the court, the expression “unjust” is understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not.
Volksverhetzung is a crime which the Nazis often invoked against their enemies and which contemporary Germany also uses to intimidate homeschoolers.
…
In Germany, believing abortion to be as murderous as the holocaust is a crime, and educating your own children is a crime too. In France, saying that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” is a crime, and so is the distribution of pork soup to the poor. In Belgium, speaking out against immigration is a crime.
* * * * *
The following articles deal with some related topics:
Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?
Liberalism can’t abide conservative evangelicals.
City Journal, Winter 2008
In the United States, the two groups that most ardently support Israel are Jews and evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Jewish support is easy to explain, but why should certain Christians, most of them politically quite conservative, be so devoted to Israel? There is a second puzzle: despite their support for a Jewish state, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are disliked by many Jews. And a third: a large fraction of African-Americans are hostile to Israel and critical of Jews, yet Jewish voters regard blacks as their natural allies.
The evidence about evangelical attitudes is clear. In 2006, a Pew survey found that evangelical Christians were more favorable toward Israel than the average American was—and much more sympathetic than either mainline Protestants or secularists. In another survey, evangelical Christians proved much likelier than Catholics, Protestants, or secular types to back Israeli control of Jerusalem, endorse Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and take Israel’s side in a Middle Eastern dispute. (Among every religious group, those who are most traditional are most supportive of Israel. The most orthodox Catholics and Protestants, for instance, support Israel more than their modernist colleagues do.)
Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn’t seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don’t return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction—about 16 percent—of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists.
The reason that conservative Christians—opposed to abortion and gay marriage and critical of political liberalism—can feel kindly toward Jewish liberals and support Israel so fervently is rooted in theology. One finds among fundamentalist Protestants a doctrine called dispensationalism. The dispensationalist outlook, which began in early-nineteenth-century England, sees human history as a series of seven periods, or dispensations, in each of which God deals with man in a distinctive way. The first, before Adam’s fall, was the era of innocence; the second, from Adam to Noah, the era of conscience; the third, from Noah to Abraham, of government; the fourth, from Abraham to Moses, of patriarchy; the fifth, from Moses to Jesus, of Mosaic law; and the sixth, from Jesus until today, of grace. The seventh and final dispensation, yet to come, will be the Millennium, an earthly paradise.
For dispensationalists, the Jews are God’s chosen people. For the Millennium to come, they must be living in Israel, whose capital is Jerusalem; there, the Temple will rise again at the time of Armageddon. On the eve of that final battle, the Antichrist will appear—probably in the form of a seeming peacemaker. Fundamentalists differ over who the Antichrist will be (at one time he was thought to be Nero, at another time the papacy, and today a few have suggested the secretary-general of the United Nations), but dispensationalists agree that he will deceive the people, occupy the Temple, rule in the name of God, and ultimately be defeated by the Messiah. Many dispensationalists believe that how a person treats Israel will profoundly influence his eternal destiny.
Christian dispensationalists were early Zionists and continue to support Israel today, for it is there that they believe Christ will return. In 1878, William Blackstone, a well-known dispensationalist and the author of Jesus Is Coming, wrote a document that argued for a Jewish state in Palestine. It appeared in 1891, five years before Theodor Herzl called for a Jewish state and six years before the first Zionist Congress. Blackstone got more than 400 dignitaries to sign his document, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the Speaker of the House, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and several other prominent Americans, almost all of them Christians. After President Benjamin Harrison ignored the petition, Blackstone tried again in 1916 with President Woodrow Wilson, who was more sympathetic—and who supported the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, a devout Protestant, when in 1917 he issued his famous declaration calling for a Jewish home in Palestine.
Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian preachers enthusiastically promote this pro-Israel vision. In a study of preachers in 19 denominations, political scientist James Guth of Furman University found that evangelicals were much likelier to back Israel in their sermons than mainline Protestants or Catholics were, a difference that persisted after controlling for age, sex, party identification, and type of media used to reach congregations. Guth also showed that self-described evangelicals who attended church regularly, and thus heard their ministers’ sermons, were much more inclined to support Israel than were believers who did not attend regularly.
Evangelical preachers are reinforced by popular Christian books. In 1970, Hal Lindsey published The Late Great Planet Earth; in 1995, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins followed with Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, and went on to write 11 more volumes on the same theme. Lindsey can claim more than 35 million sales, and the Left Behind books have sold 60 million. These bestsellers tell the dispensationalist story, discuss Armageddon, and argue for the protection of Jews and of Israel. Lindsey argues that, based on the book of Revelations and related biblical sources, “some time in the future,” there will be “a seven-year period climaxed by the visible return of Jesus Christ” but that this will not happen until the Jewish people have reestablished their nation in their ancient homeland.
Whatever one makes of his prediction, Lindsey is unambiguous about the importance of Israel to him—and, by extension, to his millions of readers. Reinforcing the preachers and writers are various pro-Israel evangelical organizations, including Bridges for Peace, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel.
Mainstream Protestant groups, such as the National Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches, have a very different attitude toward Israel. The NCC, for example, refused to support Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967, and immediately afterward began to protest victorious Israel’s expansion of its territory. From that point on, the NCC’s positions ran closely with Arab opinion, urging American contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization, for instance, and denouncing the Camp David Accords because they supposedly ignored the Palestinians’ national ambitions. In 2004, the Presbyterian Church decided to study a proposal to divert its investments from firms doing business with Israel. Within a year, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and parts of the Methodist Church followed suit. As Paul Charles Merkley sums up in his book about Christian Zionism, mainline Protestant churches’ “respectable leadership had backed away from Israel; all of her constant friends were seated below the salt.”
Why do mainline Protestant leaders oppose Israel? That question becomes harder to answer when one recalls that Israel is a democratic nation with vigorously independent courts that has not only survived brutal attacks by its Arab neighbors but provided a prosperous home for the children of many Holocaust survivors. As with any other nation, Israel has pursued policies that one can challenge. Some may criticize its management of the West Bank, for example, or its attacks on Hamas leaders. But these concerns are trivial compared with Iran’s announced desire to wipe Israel off the map by using every weapon at its disposal, including (eventually) a nuclear one.
The answer, I think, is that many Christian liberals see Israel as blocking the aspirations of the oppressed—who, they have decided, include the Palestinians. Never mind that the Palestinians support suicide bombers and rocket attacks against Israel; never mind that the Palestinians cannot form a competent government; never mind that they wish to occupy Israel “from the sea to the river.” It is enough that they seem oppressed, even though much of the oppression is self-inflicted.
After the Marxist claims about the proletariat proved false and capitalism was vindicated as the best way to achieve economic affluence, leftists had to stop pretending that they could accomplish much with state-owned factories and national economic plans. As a result, the oppressed replaced the proletariat as the Left’s object of affection. The enemy became, not capitalists, but successful nations.
That shift in focus has received encouragement from certain American academics, such as Noam Chomsky, and from the European press, including the BBC, the Guardian, the Evening Standard, and Le Monde. All tend to denounce Israel in the most unrestrained terms. When Israeli ground forces sought to root out terrorists hiding in a Jenin refugee camp, they lost 23 soldiers and killed 52 Palestinians. Among other press critics, the British writer A. N. Wilson, uninterested in the facts, called the episode a “massacre” and a “genocide.” The Left will always have its enemies; Israel has merely replaced John D. Rockefeller at the top of the list.
But why do so many Jewish groups and voters abhor their Christian evangelical allies? To answer that question carefully, we would need data that distinguish among Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and secular Jews. It is quite possible that Orthodox Jews welcome evangelical support while Reform and secular ones oppose it, but I could find no data on which to base a firm conclusion. Most Jews are political liberals, devoted to the Democratic Party and liberal causes generally. As Milton Himmelfarb once put it, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” Such voting habits are not hard to explain in a population that historically includes victims of discrimination, oppression, and mass murder. By contrast, evangelicals tend to be conservatives to whom politics seems less important than their dispensationalist beliefs.
That liberal politics trumps other considerations—including worries about anti-Semitism—for many American Jews becomes clearer in light of other data. The most anti-Semitic group in America is African-Americans. This wasn’t always the case. Many early black leaders, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Ralph Bunche, were quite supportive of American Jews. Du Bois even criticized Bunche for being “insufficiently pro-Zionist.” The NAACP endorsed the creation of Israel in 1948, and the Jewish state received continued support from Paul Robeson, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King, Jr. But by the time of the 1967 war, much of that leadership had left the scene. Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, James Forman, Malcolm X, and Shirley Du Bois (widow of W. E. B. Du Bois) were critical of Israel. At a New Left convention in the late 1960s, black delegates insisted on passing a resolution condemning the “imperialist Zionist war.” Nowadays, according to several polls, about one-third of U.S. blacks have very anti-Semitic attitudes, and this hasn’t changed since at least 1964, when the first such poll was conducted. And it has been African-American leaders, not white evangelicals, who have made anti-Semitic remarks most conspicuously. Everyone recalls Jesse Jackson’s reference to New York as “Hymietown,” to say nothing of Louis Farrakhan, a great admirer of Hitler, who has called Jews “bloodsuckers.”
Yet African-American voters are liberals, and so often get a pass from their Jewish allies. To Jews, blacks are friends and evangelicals enemies, whatever their respective dispositions toward Jews and Israel.
But another reason, deeper than Jewish and evangelical differences over abortion, school prayer, and gay marriage, may underlie Jewish dislike of Christian fundamentalists. Though evangelical Protestants are supportive of Israel and tolerant of Jews, in the eyes of their liberal critics they are hostile to the essential elements of a democratic regime. They believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and worry about the decay of morality; they must wish, therefore, to impose a conservative moral code, alter the direction of the country so that it conforms to God’s will, require public schools to teach Christian beliefs, and crush the rights of minorities.
Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, analyzed four surveys of self-identified evangelicals and found that, while they do think that America was founded as a Christian nation and fear that the country has lost its moral bearings, these views are almost exactly the same as those held by non-evangelical Americans. Evangelicals, like other Americans, oppose having public schools teach Christian values, oppose having public school teachers lead students in vocal prayers, and oppose a constitutional amendment declaring the country a Christian nation. Evangelicals deny that there is one correct Christian view on most political issues, deny that Jews must answer for allegedly killing Christ, deny that laws protecting free speech go too far, and reject the idea that whites should be able to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods. They overwhelmingly agree that Jews and Christians share the same values and can live together in harmony. Evangelicals strongly oppose abortion and gay marriage, but in almost every other respect are like other Americans.
Whatever the reason for Jewish distrust of evangelicals, it may be a high price to pay when Israel’s future, its very existence, is in question. Half of all Protestants in the country describe themselves as evangelical, or born-again, Christians, making up about one-quarter of all Americans (though they constitute only 16 percent of white Christian voters in the Northeast). Jews, by contrast, make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, and that percentage will shrink: as many as half of all Jews marry non-Jews. When it comes to helping secure Israel’s survival, the tiny Jewish minority in America should not reject the help offered by a group that is ten times larger and whose views on the central propositions of a democratic society are much like everybody else’s. No good can come from repeating the 1926 assertion of H. L. Mencken that fundamentalist Christians are “yokels” and “morons.”
James Q. Wilson, formerly a professor at Harvard and at UCLA, now lectures at Pepperdine University. In 2003 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. His article is adapted from a Manhattan Institute lecture.
Israeli President Endorses President Obama
Another Friend O’Bama: “It’s The Jews!”
Obama’s official site reveals Zionist Occupied Government etc etc
The Obamafile on Obama and Islam
Bush talks about Appeasers. Obama says, “He must be talking about me!”
Shaul Shay: Islamic Terror and the Balkans
Shelby Steele: White Guilt, War & Obama
“The Eurabia Code” by Fjordman
David Warren on 20 Years of Canadian Depravity
Why are most US Jews de facto supporters of Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.?
2 Comments
July 31, 2008 at 5:16 am
You write that “ZOA opposes any and all restrictions on abortion in the USA” and proceed with two additional comments falsely attributed to the ZOA. The website that you link to is the Hadassah website, representing Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America– a separate organization unaffiliated with the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America).
July 31, 2008 at 7:28 am
Sorry for having assumed that the Women’s Zionist Organization of America is part of the Zionist Organization of America.
Thanks for letting me know that they are in fact separate.
I edited the post accordingly.
My purpose is not to criticize Efrat per se, since I believe they are doing good work. It’s problematic that they are solely concerned with the fate of Jewish babies, but at the same time I recognize that Israeli Jews and non-Jews have separate social supports.
However, the utilitarian and so-called “pro-choice” statements of Efrat staff bother me. They are careful to not criticize abortion in general, but are only concerned that Israeli Jews not be aborted so much; and that only because of utilitarian, demographic concerns. That seems, to me, typical of the kind of morally relativistic, amoral and immoral thinking which corrupts Israeli society, and which will, in the long term, doom Israel as a state.
It also bothers me that “Jewish” seems to have less and less to do with Judaism, and is increasingly identified with whatever is the trendy “progressive” concern of the day (even if that trend is anti-Semitic or anti-Israel). It seems to me there’s a real arrogance there. For example, people like Alan Derschowitz boasting “Jews have always been in the forefront of every socially progressive movement!” (Maybe he should read Proverbs 16:18: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. לפני-שבר גאון, ולפני כשלון גבה רוח . Of course, I know that Dersch thinks the Bible is “out-of-date”.)
Perhaps ZOA shares some of my concerns.
Anyway, thanks again, and sorry about the mix-up.
God bless you.
Shalom.
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