Michigan AG Says Jews Must Forego Self-Interest
After about seven decades at the typewriter/keyboard scribbling about politics, you think you have heard it all.
As they say, nothin’ new under the sun. Until now…
The Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel made some remarks recently that I am still trying to process. And I continue to fail.
My conclusion first: They were weird, warped, depraved, decadent. I can offer other adjectives but I think you, dear reader, get the picture.
Now for some of what she said. Speaking at a private gathering of Democrats, she said Democrats may have to “sacrifice even the very future of our own people (Jews) for the sake of humanity.” Jewish Democrats have a “moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest.”
She continued:
“It is perhaps up to us now …[to] sacrifice comfort, safety, and security, and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.
“It’s so easy to hate people right now, especially other Democrats who seem to have thrown us under the bus, despite our lifelong contributions to our party.”
While many Jewish Democrats, she added, feel they “must choose between our faith and our party,” she urged them to stick with Democrats.
“What good is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?” Nessel asked. “The Republican Party would have you believe that the biggest issue our nation faces is transgender girls playing JV volleyball.”
Did I say warped, decadent…Given the seriousness of this issue, I am working very hard not to slide into satire/sarcasm.
I read this statement many times, trying to assure myself I wasn’t missing a comma, a period or some other punctuation marks which were distorting my understanding of her speech. I wasn’t.
Then, I worked to parse what she meant and, no matter how many times I did that, I came up with the following: She feels Democrats need to vote for their candidates and risk the annihilation of Jews and destruction of Israel and thereby defeat Republicans and save the world.
Stated another way: She contends we must vote for anti-Jewish, anti-Israel Democrats that threaten the very existence of Jews who, she acknowledges, have made many contributions to the party (I think the country and the world as well).
Yes, warped.
She even went biblical, citing the Persian Queen Esther, who risked her life to save the Jewish people when they faced the threat of extinction in the Persian Empire. Yes, the Queen endangered her own safety by outing the evil Haman who planned to exterminate the Jews, but she did that to save Jews not have them commit suicide. If she went to Hebrew school, she must have failed the course that studied this story.
Lest we forget, she is urging support for the Democrat Party whose convention she would not attend because she, as a Jew, she did not feel safe. At the time, she said:
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying.”
One more time: warped.
Never in human history has any religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, etc. called to destroy itself in the interest of saving the world (or win an election.)
For thousands of years, Jews have fought discrimination, expulsions from countries around the globe, a Holocaust, and survived –- and did so proudly.
Rather than fighting the ugly antisemitism that has inflected the Democratic Party and other sectors of our body politic, Nessel advises us not to stand in the way of those who want to destroy Jews and its homeland. We should not to be selfish but, instead, we should surrender our self-interest –- to survive. What chutzpah we have!
And the timing could not be more perfect: Just when we celebrate Rosh Hashana (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
I don’t know what kind of the prayers will be said at the Nessel family’s holiday observances. But here is the nonpartisan prayer I will lead with my ancestors in mind along with my children, grandchildren and future great-grandchildren.
“Dear God, we thank you for helping us survive through the centuries and ask your continued blessing, support and mercy for the future. We are facing some difficult times and implore you, once more, to give us the strength to hold fast and defeat those who would defeat us. We promise that we will never, never surrender. With your help and guidance, we will continue to work to be a beacon unto the world.”
(Berl Falbaum is a veteran journalist and author of the recently published, The Media’s Defamation of Israel: A Critique of the Israel-Hamas War News Coverage.)
