I’ve Got You Babe: Obama, Israel and the Next Holocaust by Aliza Davidovit

Ask 100 people what the most non-kosher animal is and 100 people will tell you a pig. But the truth is that tigers, dogs, horses, camels and so many other four-legged friends are all equally on the “Do Not Eat Diet” for Jews.

So how did the poor pink pig earn such infamy? For the simple reason that it is a hypocrite. There are two essential traits that make an animal kosher: It has to have split hooves and, in terms of its digestion process, it must chew its own cud. Swine posses only one of these two characteristics, which thus renders them not sandwich worthy for Jews. On the outside they showoff their split hooves as if to boast, “Look I’m kosher,” but what’s really going on is another story. A pig never shows its true colors and so you don’t really know who or what you are dealing with and can be charmed into taking a figurative bite. I can’t help but think of the movie Babe, which was about a lovable little pig who wants to be a sheepdog. He is very successful at coaxing the sheep into submission and when asked how he did it, he replied, “I asked them and they did it. I just asked them nicely.”

Babe the pig might have something there. As Marxist philosopher George Sorel advocated, the masses can be united into a social force through nice sounding slogans and myths. Indeed, history has shown us how people have been bamboozled by slogans when they were “asked nicely” to join a cause. As Hitler himself said, “The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.” As such, over the centuries, the world’s greatest dictators and villains offered the unemployed and hungry “sheep” a dream to chew on, and they gobbled it up as if it was bread.

Today, as we contemplate Holocaust Remembrance Day, I can’t help but ask myself as I do every year, how did it actually get to the point where it was okay to send a human being into a gas chamber and turn a person into a lampshade? Such emotional and moral callousness could not have happened overnight. Certainly, it was built up.

I’ve heard it echoed through the years, “We shall never forget,” but I’m not so sure we are remembering the most important part. The number 6 million and the word Holocaust will likely never be forgotten. But what is even more important to remember is how we got there. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which defined exactly who a Jew was, were awful, but the tragedy didn’t begin there. It was incremental. First Jews weren’t allowed in parks, then restaurants, then universities, then into certain professions. Then Jewish businesses were boycotted, Jews could no longer be citizens and Germans were prohibited from interbreeding or marrying a Jew, etc. Every time the Jews thought it couldn’t get worse, it did…as it always does. A rolling ball doesn’t stop midway down the hill unless it is stopped. Yes, today we mourn the victims, but we must also mourn the intermediary steps which went unchallenged and allowed the final carnage to ensue.

Today, another set of incremental steps are taking place that are harbingers of what may be another destructive episode in Jewish history. Readers, I do not like what I’m seeing from Washington vis-a-vis Israel: I do not like it that Israel is being told where Jews can and cannot live in their own homeland; I do not like the path Obama’s nuclear agenda is taking compromising both America’s and Israel’s security; I do not like that Obama has never visited the Jewish State since he’s been President while making time to visit Muslim countries; I do not like it that Obama is considering imposing his own take-it-or-leave-it peace plan; I don’t like that Obama reportedly denied entry into the United States of an Israeli nuclear scientist who works on the Dimona reactor; I do not like it that Obama has refused to approve any of Israel's military requests since he entered office in January 2009. The ball is picking up speed.

My friends, when Obama was running for office he showed us his kosher-style hooves. When he visited Sderot in ’08 he said, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughter sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same.” When he spoke pre-presidency at AIPAC, he supported an undivided Jerusalem.” But now, my friends, it is apparent that he may have kosher hooves, but he doesn’t chew his own cud and those who supported him are being left to eat crow.

Every single day that we remain silent the chasm grows and the shadow gets darker not only over the Jewish State but over all that this great country stands for. If we do not, with the full force of our abilities, resist this “gathering storm,” then I advise we change the slogan from “we will never forget” to “we will never learn.” Maybe in the end we are all just sheep pulling the wool over our own eyes while the little piggies go “ha, ha, ha” all the way home.
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Something to Remember Me By

I saw a Mel Gibson movie the other day and in it his character said that the bad thing about not having kids is that there is no one to bury you when you die. I found it a painful sentence until I digested it and thought, no, the bad thing about not having kids is that there is no one there to keep you alive in seed and deed and memory. I couldn't help but think back to last week during Yom Kippur when all Jews who have a deceased parent were obligated to say a prayer of homage called Yizkor, which in Hebrew means "remember." Maybe it’s a silly thing to make it obligatory for descendants because who would ever really forget a parent? But there is a substantive difference between not forgetting and remembering. The former is easy and convenient for the lazy and passive, the latter involves actively keeping the person, their teachings, their legacy, their heritage, their sacrifices alive. And just as God breathes life into man in Genesis in this week's Torah reading, we have to continually breathe life into those who have returned to the dust.

But remembering is also a national duty for all peoples. Probably the worst slogan that grates on my sensitive ears is the one in regard to the Holocaust: "We shall never forget." First of all, who is the "we" that will never forget: the generation who lived through it or the one today that is being taught that the Holocaust never happened? Perhaps it’s the ones being told it was a gross exaggeration by Zionists fabricating a casus belli to snatch the Promised Land? Is it Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad who will never let us forget or revisionists like Mahmoud Abbas whose Ph.D. thesis denied the Holocaust as well and who aids those denying the legitimacy of Israel's archeological sites?

What is it exactly that we won't forget? Hitler? Or the number six million? Is that all we have to remember in order to never forget, in order to recognize the warning signs when a new massacre for our people is being fomented on the streets of the world? If we truly haven't forgotten, then please I invite you to ask the average teenager today what were the Nuremberg Laws or ask them if they know what Treblinka is. Just don't be shocked if they think it's an iPhone app. I'm sure few would know it was a concentration camp where 800,000 men, women and children were murdered simply because they were Jews. So please, who are we kidding when we say "we will never forget”? It's meaningless and trite.

This week marks 38 years since the Yom Kippur War when Israel was hit by an Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack and 2,688 Israelis lost their lives. So who cares anymore, who remembers? The history books have recorded it; it’s time to move on. Right? Wrong! Those who do not remember the past will be condemned to repeat it.

Yes, it is a tragedy when you don't have kids to keep memories alive, but the bigger tragedy today is that parents are not giving their kids WHAT to remember. They don't even know for what Israel is fighting and if they do they are ashamed of it. Two weeks ago I went to listen to Alan Dershowitz speak about the rampant anti-Semitism on campus and he said one of his students was afraid to let people know he was a Zionist because then he wouldn't be able to get a date. So, silently, he walks through his campus as Israel's enemies attempt to delegitimize the state and call for divestments and boycotts. I can't help but think of Menachem Begin and his contemporaries who as teenagers risked their lives over and over again to boast about their Zionism and who fought for a homeland’s existence until they held its soil in their hands and turned sand and swamps into the beautiful verdant Eretz Yisrael.

How come we are not firing up the souls of our Jewish youth anymore to make them realize that Israel is our proud birthright and fundamental to our survival? Christians are fired up and standing tall for Israel with pride, why aren’t we? As Netanyahu said, Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East, it is what is right about it. Today's Jews, however, seem to have bequeathed to their children the materialism of the American Dream without also nurturing their Jewish pride, their sense of Jewish history, their Jewish place in this world and without honing their Jewish survival instincts. How dangerous it is in a time when Israel's enemies are indoctrinating their kids with a strong sense of purpose and history, albeit an invented one and we leave our kids with a vacuum of knowledge that Israel's haters fill with their poison. And I'm scared. I truly thank God for Israel's Christian friends who stand up for Israel when so many Jews are sitting down on the job.

The Jewish people are so quick to forget over and over again who they are and from whence they came when their very survival is in the remembering, in keeping the history alive just as Scheherazade kept herself alive by never stopping to tell her narrative. You see, I'm not worried that Jews will have no one to bury them, for that they will find many volunteers. I'm worried that Jews have squandered their best asset, their sole means of survival and justification for the Holy Land: Jewish memory. I'm not worried who will say Yizkor, I'm worried that soon will arise a generation that asks, "What is Yizkor?"
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Journalist and Former Rabbi’s Wife Takes on 400 Rabbis and Glenn Beck Detractors

I’m very impressed that in such difficult economic times 400 rabbis were able to come together to raise $100K for a newspaper ad in the Wall Street Journal condemning Glenn Beck and what they deem as his improper “references” to the Holocaust.

What a shame that these same rabbis and their confreres who are so worried about the preservation of Jews didn’t read the January 19th article in Haaretz: “Israel’s greatest threat is not security, it's poverty” with 1,774,800 citizens living in destitution. They sure could have bought a lot of sandwiches for $100,000. And how many of them actually work on behalf of the impoverished Holocaust survivors still extant who barely make ends meet and have to beg at the doorstep of Federations, Jewish Family Services, and the Claims Conference?

I’d also like to know where Glenn Beck’s “thank you” note is from these same rabbis for being among the very few journalists/commentators who stood up for Israel during the Gaza Flotilla crisis when the whole world was against it. Couldn’t George Soros lend them 44 cents for a stamp? They may want to watch Beck’s show of 06/02/10 wherein he expounds upon Israel’s history and points to the facts legitimizing the Jewish Homeland when its very right of existence is being questioned and threatened at every bend. With sanctions, boycotts and divestments being the latest vitriolic war against the Jewish State, odd how Glenn Beck’s use of the word Holocaust is what’s ratcheting up their ire?

I’m sick and tired of Jews who keep sticking up for our enemies. And George Soros, at the center of this issue, is no friend to Jews or Israel. As one of the world's richest men, let his relatively sparse philanthropy toward Jewish causes speak for itself. Let his support for J Street with its alleged agenda to delegitimize Israel speak for itself. In 2003 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ran a story saying, “George Soros says Jews and Israel cause anti-Semitism.” Wow, is there anything lower than blaming the rape victim for the rape.

Perhaps these same rabbis love watching CNN and the BBC where Israel seems to be blamed for all the world’s ills. Is it so hard for them to digest that Fox has been unbiased toward Israel from Operation Cast Lead to the flotilla fiasco?

Why don’t these rabbis take out ads against the United Nations whose Human Rights Council has adopted more resolutions against Israel —than any other country in the world, while terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, who are fighting a proxy war for Iran, are given immunity by that scam of an international body.

Did these same rabbis write angry letters to Columbia University when it invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust ever happened, to speak to impressionable young students?

Did the same rabbis write letters to President Obama saying they were offended that he is forcing Israel to make peace with a Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Ph.D thesis was a blatant denial of the Holocaust? Or do they only know how to love those who hates us and hate those who love us?

Maybe these same rabbis are also part of the Goldstone fan club and prefer to gaze east from the gas chambers than from Mt. Scopus.

In addition, since when is there a copyright over the word Holocaust and how it can be used? All Jews are equal shareholders. I own the history too! But, moreover, since when has the word Holocaust become solely a Jewish fiefdom? Can only a Jew make such references with impunity? Or is this group no better that the Muslim fundamentalists who decry the use of the name of Mohammed by infidels—surely cause to exterminate the offender…not! Whether you like it or not, the Holocaust is just a word, just as is Nazi. What counts are the millions of people who were murdered--if these same rabbis want to honor the memory of the dead, let them behave like menschen and say thank you to today’s friends.

And so, I thank Glenn Beck for keeping not only the memory of the Holocaust alive but the evermore important lesson, how the Holocaust came to be to begin with. By teaching how history unfolded he is doing much more than simply reiterating the slogan “never again,” he is pointing to the incremental steps that eventually led to the Holocaust and alerting us to the signposts.

As an aside, I’d like to remind these rabbis about the Talmudic decree that it is a sin to embarrass a person in public which is regarded as tantamount to murder. If they have a problem with Glenn Beck or Fox, why not raise their complaints behind the scenes? Their act makes it obvious that there is a much bigger agenda at play here.

The Jewish state is in greater peril now than perhaps it has ever been since its coming into existence. Antisemitism, as well, is also on the rise. It would serve our people much better to galvanize around the common purpose of survival rather than posing centerfold in the Wall Street Journal. If they are looking for a word war let them play a crossword puzzle in the New York Times. They will find themselves at home there.