Finally I have arrived at this conclusion, that a visionary is not someone who sees the future, but someone who has the power of clarity to see exactly what’s directly in front of him. Rabbi/philosopher Abraham Heschel said it better when he defined a prophet as someone “who knows what time it is.”  

We used to joke about Jewish guilt and excessive Jewish compassion. But this is not funny any more. Our lives are at stake in America, in Israel, and of course Europe, whatever Jews are left in that gawd-forsaken continent where hour by hour steeples are being replaced by minarets. (Happening here, too.)

What is it about Jewish people that keeps them turning to the Left when all signs point to Liberalism as a recipe for suicide?

Are we missing a gene?

At the Democratic National Convention when the word “Israel” was mentioned hundreds jeered. But still, Obama received nearly 80 percent of the Jewish vote – and if he ran again it would happen again. This time it is Hillary that they love. When I asked a friend why she loved Hillary so much, she could not answer. Hillary is a Liberal and that is enough.

Over this past year alone acts of anti-Semitism have increased to something like 800 percent. Jews are under attack everywhere and if I have to list all the assaults and all the incitements, you are not reading this anyway. You are not paying attention or you think they mean someone else when daily they threaten to wipe all Jews off the map.

Lately, for some reason, I’ve been getting scholarly online explanations as why Jews tend to act against themselves to the point of insanity.

In search of superior wisdom I keep reading these academic papers – surely they are all wiser than I am – but no one has the answer. Not to my satisfaction.

Best I can come up with is that we suffer some sort of character flaw that renders us soft, passive and delusional.

If anyone has a better answer, please. I am listening.

American Jews are especially easy to maneuver. The going motto is, “Things are good. Don’t make trouble.” Israel, whenever it defends itself, makes trouble.

But that’s no answer, either.

During the 1930s the warnings were all over the place and even when there was still time to leave, those who could leave, stayed.

They stayed and they perished because they could not see or refused to see what was directly in front of them.

They did not know what time it was.

So we know what happened in the past. We also know the tendency of American Jews to usually accept the other point to view to the detriment of the Jewish State. Try making the case for a strong fully Zionistic Israel at a typical Enlightened synagogue and watch yourself being denounced as a crazy right-winger.

But what’s Israel’s excuse? Maybe it’s getting lost in translation from the Hebrew to the English.

But it appears that virtually all politicians running for office these days favor more “painful concessions” and more land swaps. This is coming from politicians on the Left, of course, but also, amazingly, from politicians on the Right, who have become so awfully generous about land that does not belong to them, land that belongs to God – and try saying that at your local synagogue.

I said this before:

“A word of advice to any Israeli politician ready to give up land for peace, start by giving up your own home and neighborhood. Illustrate your sincerity.”

So I am saying it again and again I am asking what blessings have you received from thousands of prisoner releases and miles of territorial concessions?

Or is that even in Israel they do not know what time it is?

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the inside-the-newsroom tell-all thriller, The Bathsheba Deadline. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com