Der New York Stürmer

In a vicious, unforgivable cartoon over the Passover holy season, the international edition of Der New York Stürmer published a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog — a dirty Jew dog — with a big Jewish Star of David hanging from its neck.  Get it?  Jew dogs?  Get it?  A Star of David?  Get it?

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) surely got it.  Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) certainly got it.  In fact, lots of Democrats running for President would have gotten it: Irish-Scottish Robert “Play-Doh” O’Rourke, Princess Speaking Bull Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders.

Just recall the outrage when Roseanne Barr, in one of her idiot moments on Twitter, tweeted that Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett was the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes. Hold the presses!  African Americans and apes? End of the “Roseanne” show.  End of the Roseanne career.  No apologies accepted. No matter whether she was drug-induced, alcohol-induced, stress-induced. She. Is. Permanently. Finished.

But compare Jews with dogs? Well, tomorrow is another day.

There is a rabid strain of new anti-Semitism now rife throughout the Left, permeating well into the Democrat party’s lowest and highest echelons and their media wing. It is a raw Jew-hatred that masks itself as “anti-Zionism.” 

Anti-Zionism? Baloney. It is raw Jew-hatred.  It holds Jews to standards that no one else is held to. It creates insane stereotypes of Jews that are so crazy that they actually generate self-fulfilling prophecies. Take a look and listen to this recent “anti-Zionist” conference sponsored by universities including the University of North Carolina and Duke University, with a $235,000 grant from the United States Department of Education. When you go to this link, focus at 2:20 and following. Your tax dollars at work.

We soon shall return to the Jew-haters now running for President on the Democrat side, but first back to Der New York Stürmer’s cartoon. The Jew Dog is pulling along a big fat blind man with a yarmulka — a Jew cap like the one I wear — bearing the face of Donald Trump. Get it? The Jews are pulling Trump along.  He does not know they are pulling him because he is stupid and blind.  And besides he wears a kippah, a yarmulka.  Like, what, he is secretly a Jew?  How did the Nazi Ilhan Omar once put it?  Oh, yes: the Jews of Israel are hypnotizing the world.

Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza#Palestine #Israel — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 16, 2012

If ever there has been an “America First” President it has been Donald Trump. Whether in dealing with protecting our southern border or confronting NATO or imposing devastating tariffs on foreign goods coming from international trade cheaters from China and Europe and Asia, or turning America into a net exporter of energy — this President is not led by his nose by anyone.  His support for Israel is because he knows, as do the vast majority of all Americans and the almost-unanimous predominance of Republican conservatives, that Israel stands in lockstep with America, while every other entity in the Middle East has had one foot in with the former Soviets or the present-day Russians, one foot here, one foot there. 

Israel is the one place in the Middle East where the United States reliably can station weapons for use elsewhere as needed to protect American interests in the region.  It is the one country in the region that never would deny American air force access to air space. Every time Israel destroys a Russian-made tank or plane, it shares the lessons learned with the American Defense Department. 

As Russians develop new weapons to shoot down American fighter planes, Israel is the laboratory in its wars with the Arab Muslims where American-made counter weapons are employed and tested. Often, Israel’s experience in combat then leads the Israelis to upgrade the American weapons from battlefield lessons drawn, and all those upgrades then are shared with America.  That is the reason that, from one American Administration to another, Israel often has had problems with America’s State Department and foreign diplomats who imagine they can curry favor with terrorists like Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) and the Saudi Wahhabis, but Israel always enjoys the strongest of its backing from America’s Defense establishment. Because the Defense establishment has access to the guarded military secrets that protect our nation — and they know.

That is why this President stopped sending hundreds of millions annually to the Palestine Authority for them to pay lifetime annuities with our money to families of terrorists who have murdered American and other civilians.  Why this President recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and then moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — a promise that even Obama made, as did Bush 43 and Clinton before him.  The President pulled out of the Iran Deal because “America First” means not having crazy Shiite mullahs with nuclear missiles pointed at Washington, D.C.  He pulled out of the U.N. Human Rights Council because it is anti-American no less than it is anti-Israel and is comprised of blood-thirsty cut-throat regimes.

By the way, since she took her Nazi tropes public, Ilhan Omar has raised $1 million. When using Nazi stereotypes to attack Jews, it’s about the Benjamins, baby
Donald Trump does what he believes is best for America First.  The Left — even Der New York Stürmer  — regularly attacks him for just that. And although Netanyahu and Israel would have loved for America to remain highly engaged militarily in Syria, President Trump made clear that “America First” means changing course to pulling our troops out of Syria, much as we have to get our boys home from all those dirt holes. No one pulls this President around.

Back to Der New York Stürmer.  The message of that cartoon came straight out of Nazi Germany’s Der Stürmer, whose cartoons were the same. The implication of the all-powerful International Jew. The ones who run the world with their money.  How did the Nazi Ilhan Omar put it? “It’s about the Benjamins, baby!”  (By the way, since she took her Nazi tropes public, Ilhan Omar has raised $1 million. When using Nazi stereotypes to attack Jews, it’s about the Benjamins, baby.)

Many observers will wonder: Are you saying that Jews are anti-Semitic? Isn’t Der New York Stürmer owned and operated by Jews, the Ochs-Sulzberger family? Well, if a century and a half of Karl Marxes (actually, the anti-Semitic son of a father who converted to Christianity) and Leon Trotskys and Lev Kamenevs and Grigory Zinovievs and George Soroses and Bernie Sanderses have not yet made it clear, here is a cup of coffee — smell it and wake up to it: some of the worst anti-Semites in every generation are Jews.  They are there to give cover to the haters, to clear the air and pave the way for the White Nationalists at one extreme and the rabid Communists at the other extreme to go after the Jews.

Remember how Ilhan Omar was going to be condemned for being the Nazi she is?  Remember how a resolution was going to call her out for saying that Jews hypnotize the world, dominate the world with their money?  And then along came Bernie Sanders — an anti-Semite who honeymooned in the most anti-Semitic place on earth, Communist Russia; a Communist who praised Soviet breadlines and admired the Soviet Union — and he gave the all-clear to Ilhan Omar. That is all it took.  A Jew came out to clear her, so now the rest of the Democrats could line up with her.

Before long, we found Elizabeth Warren white-washing Omar while calling Netanyahu the racist.  Irish-Scottish Play-Doh O’Rouke, who does not have a Mexican or other Hispanic bone or gene in his body, suddenly paused from his skateboarding and free-falling in the polls to call Netanyahu a racist.  One by one, led by the anti-Semitic Bernie Sanders, they each now defame Netanyahu as a racist while giving the Nazi Omar a free pass.  It always begins with a Jew.  Just as the same Sanders led the fight in the Senate against the bill to punish the “BDS” campaign against Israel. Just as Sanders led the way to bring into the Democrat party certain anti-Israel individuals who never before could gain entry at that level. 

Just as Sanders’s own campaign staffs have included people so anti-Semitic that even he had to fire them. Like Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Soros, so it is that Sanders does not fight all Jews. Only those who comprise the majority of Israel’s Jewish electorate, only those who oppose BDS, only those who stand for Torah principles, only those who believe that Israel has a right to defend itself as it sees it must.

And so it is with Der New York Stürmer.  A “Jewish” newspaper?  During the Holocaust, they white-washed the Nazi murder machine, giving it almost no coverage, just as their Walter Duranty white-washed Stalin’s Golodomor, the Ukrainian Holocaust.  By and large, they refused to report on the unfolding Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews. Between 1939 and 1945, they published more than 23,000 front-page stories. Of those, 11,500 were about World War II. Only twenty-six — in six years — were about the Holocaust.

Next, as a country named “Israel” became a possibility after World War II, Der New York Stürmer led the American media effort to prevent the country from ever rising. They gave undue coverage to a minute, meaningless group called the “American Council for Judaism,” an utterly irrelevant organization comprised of some Reform Jews who opposed a Jewish country.  And for the past seven decades since Israel’s founding, they have given disproportionate coverage and attention to every Israeli flaw while white-washing the full destructive reality of Hamas on Israel’s southern border, Mahmoud Abbas’s Arab terrorism on Israel’s eastern border, and Hezbollah terrorism on Israel’s northern border. In covering Israel’s wars, they report civilian casualties without giving the context that Hamas sets up its weapons and terror infrastructure in school buildings, hospitals, mosques, and apartment buildings to force Israel to choose between allowing the terror a free sanctuary or bombing those buildings while imperiling civilians.

And they create a myth of some kind of illegality in Jews living in Judea and Samaria.

The people of Israel are tired of being told by anyone where Jews in Israel may live and where Jews may build. For two thousand years Jew haters have been telling Jews where not to live.  England expelled all Jews in 1290.  France expelled its Jews in 1182. As their economy started collapsing, they allowed the Jews back in 1188. Then they expelled Jews again in 1306. As the French economy started collapsing again, they invited Jews back in 1315. They expelled Jews again in 1394.  Spain, at the height of their world power, expelled all Jews in 1492.  Within a hundred years, their Spanish armada collapsed in 1588, and now Spain is a charming destination for a nice cruise to visit once-important historic locales. Portugal, once the greatest world power alongside Spain, even leading along with Spain in exploring the New World, expelled all Jews in 1497.  Today Portugal makes a nice side excursion during the cruise of Spain historic sites, perhaps to pick up a bottle or two of Port wine. And so it goes.  For purposes of space, we will omit the history in Germany.

For two thousand years Jew-haters have told Jews they may not live here and may not live there, ending with the refrain: “Why don’t you damned Jews just get out of Europe and go live in Israel?”  Now in the modern era, Jews have been driven there by haters in Europe, and by others in the Soviet Union who drove out a million, and by an entire Arab Muslim world who expelled 800,000 Jews from North Africa in the 1940s and 1950s to go to Israel.

And now they would tell Jews in Israel that they may not build homes for themselves even in Israel, even in Biblical Judea and Samaria, even in Jerusalem? As recently as the Obama Wasted Decade, Obama demanded that Israel not build Jewish homes in East Jerusalem. Hillary screamed that Israel not build Jewish homes in East Jerusalem. And Joe Biden blasted Israel for building Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.  Yet, for all Biden’s endless recent apologies over other public policies that he legitimately and properly advocated in the past, his vulgar opposition to Jews building homes in Jerusalem remains a true crime for which Biden never has apologized.

So Der New York Stürmer finally has shown its true colors: red, white, and black — the colors of Hitler’s swastika flag.  Not merely because of one hateful anti-Semitic cartoon it published on the holy seventh day of Passover. But because of a century and more of attacking Jews, whitewashing the Nazi Holocaust, over-emphasizing the American Council for Judaism and fighting the rise of Israel, and tilting its coverage towards Arab demands against Israel. Whether they are publishing op-eds insanely arguing that “Jesus was a Palestinian” or editorializing against Jewish rights to live in East Jerusalem, Kiryat Arba, elsewhere in Judea and Samaria, or just publishing Jew-hatred in pictures, they now are exposed: All the Jews That Can be Hit in Print.

The writer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. .