- Home
- About Us
- Contributors
- Departments
- Topics
- Back Issues
- Weekly Archives
- AmSpecBlog
- Subscribe
- Newsletter
- Advertise
- Donate
- Contact Us
- Daily Digest
- Templeton Essays
Among the Intellectualoids
The Cost of Hollow Words
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, as Senator Ted Stevens recently discovered. For Jews vigilance tends also to be the price of survival. When we forget to look over our shoulder we are likely as not to get a knife in the back. This is why I step out of character to tolerate the existence of Holocaust scholars.
The title has such a phony ring, conjuring up a vision of the dean's brother-in-law reading a few Auschwitz memoirs and cultivating rich survivors in return for an endowed seat where he can watch Donald Duck cartoons in stocking feet. Even those who take it very seriously and exhaustively research every aspect of the Holocaust are one real discipline short of a professorship. Still we tolerate. It is a small luxury we afford ourselves to be assured of sentries standing at the gate. We figure if the big one ever comes down the pike again, these folks will sound the alarm early.
When one of these personalities steps out onto the political stage to comment on a policy or candidate, there is one standard by which to judge this utterance: is it freighted with maximum consideration for potential danger to Jews? Paranoia is acceptable, exaggeration is understandable and overprotectiveness is livable. Only carelessness is offensive, an offense which brooks no clemency.
With this in mind, I believe that the endorsement of Barack Obama for President by Deborah E. Lipstadt, resident Holocaust scholar at Emory University, is an atrocity in its own right. It represents a profound betrayal of the raison d'être of her creed.
MS. LIPSTADT begins by saying that McCain is pro-life and Palin even disapproves of abortion in cases of rape and incest. This is an unwarranted intrusion into a personal family matter. It also conflicts with Torah, which puts the life of the mother ahead of the unborn child. Many rabbinical opinions include mental health as a factor, considering the danger of losing her mind equal to losing her life.
Lipstadt concludes: "Were McCain and Sarah Palin to write their pro-life beliefs into law, their policy could create both an obstacle to Jewish law and severe invasions into our private lives."
God, how I wish I was eloquent enough to show you how viciously, corruptly, grossly false this is! Grrrrr. The citing of Torah in support of this position is a horror. By Torah law, abortion is a form of murder. The justification for putting the mother's life first is self-defense (despite lack of malice), as Maimonides explains, just as an outside attacker can be killed. To apply this in the arena of mental health requires a finding that the mother is in danger of going crazy if the child is born and adopted.
No state had a law disallowing abortion if the life of the mother is in danger, even before Roe vs. Wade. No state has a legislature favoring such a law. The Republican platform does not advocate such a law. Neither McCain nor Palin supports such a law. The chances of such a law ever being enacted in the United States under any combination of executives, legislators or jurists is absolutely zero for the foreseeable future. Anyone who really looks to the Torah for guidance must in good conscience hold the identical view as that expressed in the Republican platform.
But let's forget the legal categories for a minute and look at it from the perspective we would assign to a Holocaust scholar. There are two segments of society, expressing views on a public matter. One says: "The wording in a law may annoy me in my private life and could possibly be enforced to the point that a woman with fragile mental health might have to give birth in an unhealthy predicament. Therefore, I prefer to see fifty million babies killed over thirty-five years." The other says: "Yes, there may be some dislocation of individual situations, but I am prepared to endure that to save fifty million lives."
Which of those points of view should be of concern to a Holocaust scholar? Which of those groups is likely to stand up on behalf of a beleaguered Jewry if the Gestapo makes a comeback?
The next section of her essay belongs in the theater of the absurd. She explains that the Torah promotes charity and compassion, so she prefers Obama's health-care plan. After we shrug off fifty million murders of convenience, it is time to heal the sick with other people's money.
LIPSTADT is not through dispensing wisdom. She turns to the
question of Israel and its security. Obama impressed Benjamin
Netanyahu, she says, by his grasp of the Iranian threat. How do
we know this? Simple, he told it to the Jerusalem Post. As if he
would tell them otherwise if he believed otherwise.
What we do know is that the leftist professoriate in the United States, where Obama has his roots, is far from pro-Israel and has for two decades allowed pro-Palestinian rhetoric to dominate the academy. Obama himself praised Rashid Khalidi, former spokesman for Yassir Arafat, for helping him to identify some of his own "blind spots and biases." Funny, but that sounds to me like a sound-bite which might perk up the ears of a Holocaust scholar. I guess not.
Her clincher argument is this. Obama came into his meeting with the editor of the Jerusalem Post all by his lonesome and said the right things. McCain, by contrast, brought Joe Lieberman into the meeting and when unsure of a particular detail he deferred to Lieberman. This tells Lipstadt that Obama is better prepared to help Israel.
Once again, the Holocaust maven is faced by two scenarios. One, a cocky non-Jew who thinks he knows all the answers. The second, a humble non-Jew who brings an Orthodox Jewish Senator along and graciously defers to him when in doubt. Which one sounds like the safer bet for the long term?
Clearly, Lipstadt has learned nothing from her own subject. She glibly hands the key to Israel's future to a man who loses no sleep over fifty million souls bartered for convenience and "privacy." King David had it right when he admonished us: "It is better to rely on God than to rely on man."
Comments
Leave a Comment
Are you in a mob?
The Democrats say Obamacare opponents are a mob. Are they right?
Participating in this survey will subscribe you to the American Spectator email newsletter. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Mary Grabar| 10.29.08 @ 8:11AM
"Holocaust Studies" hmmm. Reminds me of Don DeLillo's novel, "White Noise," with the professor of "Hitler Studies." What is wrong with these people teaching? They seem to be leading us to another holocaust. The Jews seem to be first ones to go.
John Gridley| 10.29.08 @ 11:09AM
Israel will be carved up and destroyed peacemeal just as Lolome was in Allen Drury's novel, A Thing of State, if Obama is elected.
megapotamus| 10.29.08 @ 12:45PM
I am a non-Jew secular Zionist and have long supported Israel though I have no true connection to her. How is it that I and my like-minded fellows are far more concerned, existentially, for Israel than Jews at large? Jews, do you really want to persist? To exist? Does your theoretical moral purity really count for more than taking another breath? I'm over it, frankly. The Jews have convinced themselves that jihad is a Republican electoral smear and they have convinced a large number of others. I am through defending idiots from themselves (is there a pattern here?). Looks like the Jews are going to have to face murder and eviction again to figure out who are their friends and who are their foes.
David J| 10.29.08 @ 12:57PM
Is anybody here the least bit curious about the video the LA Times is witholding with Obama and Jew hating the PLO members ( I can't pronounce the names, let alone spell them). How about the Palestinians in Gaza who are calling Americans asking them to vote for Obama? Do the Jews really want another Holocaust? Seems to me like they are voting for one.
David J| 10.29.08 @ 12:57PM
Is anybody here the least bit curious about the video the LA Times is witholding with Obama and Jew hating the PLO members ( I can't pronounce the names, let alone spell them). How about the Palestinians in Gaza who are calling Americans asking them to vote for Obama? Do the Jews really want another Holocaust? Seems to me like they are voting for one.
Kent Lyon| 10.29.08 @ 1:27PM
Mr Hominick may be aware that Obama has called for a civilian national security force, the size of the US military and funded at the same level, e.g., some $500 billion. Combine that with the fact that Obama has some connections with anti-Semites like Khalidi and Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson (whose son chairs Obama's campaign, all of whom have been neighbors in Chicago), who let slip, in Avian, France, the comment that "Zionists" would have much less influence on American policy in an Obama administration, and that his advisors have already been meeting with Hamas, and one might be forgiven for fearing a more imminent return of the Gestapo than otherwise might be expected. I sort of have a mental picture of the practice of the Fascist Juan Peron administration in Argentina of sending truckloads of thugs cruising the streets of Buenos Aires; when they found a Jew walking down the street, the driver would stop the truck and all hands would jump out and beat the Jew to death (Jorge Luis Borges describes such an event, for which he was charged with being anti-Semitic himself, which he was not, rather the opposite, and on such grounds, along with not being a Marxist, he was denied a Nobel Prize in literature, despite being the greatest writer of the 20th Century). Just government policy. It's not hard to envision similar happenings, say, in Jackson's "Hymie-town" under Obama, perhaps effected through one of the many sub-organizations of ACORN, that may morph into that national security force Obama has proposed. Oh, but wait, similar things have already happened (Crown Heights in the Lubavitch Hasidic community in 1991 and Lubavitch students shot on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994). So I'm too late, and Jews have nothing to fear from Obama that hasn't already beset them many times before, right? Right.
Howard Hirsch| 10.29.08 @ 3:31PM
Thank you for a great insight, Jay. The sad fact is that all too many of us would vote for Hitler if he were exotically non-white.
Howard Hirsch
Dayton, Nevada
ruth| 10.29.08 @ 3:58PM
Mr. Homnick, I have read and enjoyed your fine columns for years and I wanted you to know that you are not alone, conservative Christians will always stand shoulder to shoulder with you. God bless you, sir.
Izzzmeister| 10.29.08 @ 4:02PM
Perhaps she would like to diversify her efforts to study TWO Holocausts...
Peter Kubicek| 10.29.08 @ 4:26PM
McCain and his crew of blind supporters are really getting desperate. They are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel for slime: Obama is a terrorist, he is a buddy of a bunch of anti-semites, a vote for him is a vote for Hitler, now he is even likened to Juan Peron (a pretty amazing connection); and what's this now about "fifty-million murders of convenience?"
Are these people brain-dead ?
jr| 10.29.08 @ 4:42PM
A question for you Deborah Lipstadt, supporter of abortions on demand. If the only abortions permitted were Jews, would that be okay with you? If not, why would you change your mindless mind?
ruth| 10.29.08 @ 4:48PM
Yeah, Peter, and the slime is starting to stick!
Beth| 10.29.08 @ 6:13PM
How many warnings do we need about an Obama presidency? Let's count - advisors with PLO connections (Khalidi), friends with terrorist or Communist pasts (Dohrn, Ayers, Marshall), pastors of Black Liberation Theology (Wright and Pfleger), convicted felons (Rezko), groups with questionable dealings (ACORN, et al). Oh, and the biggest warning- Iran's endorsement of Obama. The mind is boggled...
Ken Roberts | 10.29.08 @ 8:05PM
Sounds very much like Peter is a troll looking to disrupt the posting . sure nothing sticks to Obama he is bullet proof and Teflon coated, all will realize maybe to late that he is what we say he is .
John| 10.29.08 @ 9:37PM
People like Lipstadt rise antisemitism with her "softcore". Maybe she didn't got her "hard core" last night!
Peter Kubicek| 10.29.08 @ 9:54PM
Sure, Ruth,
If I pour a bowl of excrement over your head, some of it will stick and you will stink. Will that reflect badly on the recipient of the shit, or on the one who flung it?
And did you hear? David Axelrod is really an Arab and a rabid supporter of Hamas.
And Colin Powell? Well, why don't you use your imagination and make up some slime about him? After all, his skin color is really suspicious, isn't it?
Fortunately, by next Tuesday night it will all be over and we will thankfully be able to say, "Thanks, but no thanks" to the mumbling George W, the bumbling Maverick, the barracuda of the frozen Alaska wilderness, and to all of you vicious charmers....
ruth| 10.30.08 @ 1:55AM
Peter peter peter, where's your love, your tolerance? I thought liberals were supposed to be so tolerant. Another liberal lie, there are so many of them. Nice mouth, loser.
Beth| 10.30.08 @ 5:44PM
Peter, even you can't deny that Obama's alliances with a wide variety of questionable characters is disturbing. God bless Israel, who will be standing alone in the Middle East if he becomes president.
And God bless America.
Juba Doobai| 11.1.08 @ 9:07AM
I have long noted that many liberal Jews seem to lack a sense of self-preservation. I've asked one Jewish man I used to work with about this; he never gave me an answer, but he did get angry with me. If 6 million was not enough, how much is enough before Jews, wholesale, defend life?
Walking away, because some Jews don't seem to care about the dangers to them that are likely to arise from an Obama presidency, is not the answer. We, Christians, in particular, must be ready to defend and stand with our older brothers who don't seem to regard their danger. Why? In part, it is our duty; in part, because the danger will likely come from one who is nominally one of us and we must openly and loudly reject him and his racist associates for XP's sake.
Obama has too many lies in his personal history for him to be trustworthy, either to Jews or to XPians.