Trump’s Jerusalem embassy move validates 3,500 years of Jewish history

May 17, 2018

I was grateful for the White House invitation to witness the historic opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Truth be told, I believe that every Jew in attendance was thinking of a father, a grandmother, a sibling wiped out in the Nazi Holocaust or any of the millions of Jews, who over two millennia were scattered to the four winds of exile—and on whose shoulders we stand today. For it was they, from Baghdad to Moscow, from New Delhi to New York, from Warsaw to Waukegan who down through the centuries–against all odds– dared to dream that someday, somehow, their offspring would return home to Zion, to Jerusalem.

From abandonment to validation

For over 1,900 years Jews in exile lived with the bitter bile of abandonment, bereft of rights, subject to the whims of rulers, demonized by religious authorities and derided by neighbors for being different.
The ultimate abandonment came with the Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s with the destruction of European Jewry. In fact, it was the West’s abandonment of Jews in the 1930s that sealed their fate long before the Nazis mass-murdered 6 million of our people—one third of world Jewry.
Validation
So how was possible that less than three years after Auschwitz, that the Jewish nation was (re)born?
It was in large measure because of one man who bucked the advice of diplomats and pundits to support a Jewish state— President Harry S. Truman.
Watching the video in Jerusalem of President Donald Trump’s speech from the White House, I kept thinking about the similar challenges both presidents faced when it came to U.S. policy in The Holy Land.
Truman, who never expected to be the vice president in 1944, let alone could have imagined that he would soon be president of the United States, had zero experience in foreign policy.
Once he became president he would rely heavily on Secretary of State George Marshall, a World War II hero who would go on to win the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize for The Marshall Plan that rebuilt a Europe shattered by war.
Marshall was bitterly opposed to a Jewish state. He was more concerned about having an uninterrupted supply of Arab oil than a people devastated by war and was convinced that the Jews couldn’t withstand an Arab military onslaught.
Marshall’s opposition was buttressed by virtually the entire State Department. At one point Marshall even threatened Truman that he would oppose the president’s reelection.
No matter, “Give ‘em Hell Harry” — with a push from his Jewish buddy and partner Eddie Jacobson—decided to override the “experts” and actively support the Jewish people’s quest for freedom.
On November 29, 1947, he instructed the U.S. to vote for statehood at the United Nations. A few months later, Truman decided that the U.S. would be the first nation to recognize the State of Israel, just 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion declared the Jewish State.
Through his actions Truman not only changed history, he validated a people who had been left for dead.
Today the Jewish state is alive– a vibrant democracy and a font of ingenuity and creativity. But it is a nation still under siege—threatened by over 100,000 Hezbollah and Hamas missiles, terror tunnels and Iranian nuclear-tinged saber rattling.
Israel also faces a relentless asymmetrical war of demonization and delegitimization. From U.N. resolutions to church groups to academic assaults to global boycotts to social media campaigns, Zionists are denounced as racists and Israelis as Nazis, latter-day colonialists, interlopers and even  “fake” Jews.
Enter Donald Trump. With the stroke of a pen, he validated 3,500 years of Jewish history by opening the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, debunking the global smear campaign against the Jewish State.
His decision will also have an impact on Christian-Jewish relations. My grandparents fled Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th Century primarily because of theologically-fueled hatred from Christian churches and clergy.
They would have been shocked to see the hundreds of Christian Zionists who sat shoulder to shoulder with American and Israeli Jews at the embassy opening on Monday. And they would have been amazed to learn it was American Christians, led by a few million Evangelicals, who consistently reminded President Trump about candidate Trump’s promise to do right by Israel.
Unlike his predecessors who never lived up to their campaign promises — Trump just did. His place in history and in the annals of the people of Israel are secured forever.
The Article was published on Fox News

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Diary Reflections on Jewish Identity and Antisemitism in the Netherlands

“I stress time and again that most victims of ISIS are Muslims. And when a topper from our government said to me, when we were discussing anti-Semitism, that in the Netherlands today 98 per cent of anti-Semitism comes from Muslims living in our country, I pointed out to him that when 80 per cent of my family was murdered there was not a single Muslim to be seen in the Netherlands,” I wrote in my diary of 7 February. Let me add that the day after 7 October, I received a phone call from our minister of general affairs, Van Gennip, who asked interestedly how I was doing and told me that “both the Moroccan and Turkish communities in the Netherlands do not find the events of 7 October acceptable”.

Probably I am a little too naive, because as far as I know, no mosque or Islamic community has dared to publicly distance itself from the 7 October massacre. Yes, a number of befriended imams let out a sincere and condemning sound in a personal conversation (I will not mention their names here, to avoid getting into Islamic trouble), but the Islamic silence at the time and the anti-Israel demonstrations at the opening of the Holocaust Museum and the anti-Herzog call by two hundred mosques do not make me feel good and worry for the future of Jewish Holland. Where were those two hundred mosques immediately after October 7? And I dare even ask myself: is there any future for the Jewish community in my homeland?

And the Netherlands is my homeland! Through my father’s line, I am the fourteenth generation after Chief Rabbi Moses Uri Halevi, the founder of the Portuguese-Israelite Congregation in Amsterdam. His congregation made Amsterdam into Amsterdam, put the city on the map and thus made a gigantic contribution to today’s Mokum. This makes it all the more painful to see the anti-Israel demonstrations and the enormously rising anti-Semitism close to the place from which 46 thousand Amsterdam Jews were deported on the trams of the GVB in World War II to end up, via Westerbork, on the trains of our own Dutch Railways, finally via the chimneys of the crematoria in the extermination camps in the dark hole of oblivion.

I dare even ask myself: is there any future for the Jewish community in my homeland?

How was the official opening of the Holocaust Museum? King Willem-Alexander, the president of Israel, the president of Austria and the chairman of the German Bundesrat spoke impressive, well measured words. The music, the speech by my friend Emile Schrijver, director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, the other speakers, the voices of survivors, the children and the master of ceremonies Petra Katzenstein. If I wanted to properly put into words the impression this unforgettable, historic day made on me, I would read a few lines without words.

Every word I would write would be one too many, because the opening, the ceremony, the togetherness transcended all words. It was a deeply emotional event. Words describe, but words also limit and so: not a word I can dedicate to it.

And yet something also went wrong, wrong. Throughout the happening, anti-Semitic protests were heard. While the speakers were not drowned out, the music remained audible, their roar was like false-sounding background music, which, while not distracting from the perfect programme, demonstrated how necessary the Holocaust Museum is. In my opinion, the emotional damage done to survivors present was not adequately taken into account. And although, thank God, I was born only after the war, I too felt brutalised by the shouting crowd. I cherish freedom of speech, but the bestial manner in which I was shouted at, and with me so all those who came outside the Snoge, I find unacceptable. I do not understand why this was tolerated. The location from where the chanting was carried out was also painful: Waterloo Square, the source of Jewish life in the Jewish quarter at the time!

During the ceremony, fortunately I had my phone set to ‘do not disturb’, as a number of calls had come in from enraged Jewish people who, I later learned, found it unacceptable that protests were allowed and guests were allowed to be booed as they left the Snoge. At the amazing lunch at the Jewish Museum and especially when touring the Holocaust Museum, I was able to provide a lot of pastoral care. Many felt deeply hurt and abandoned … Yet, the feeling of gratitude and joy that this great monument was officially opened prevailed with everyone.

I cherish freedom of speech, but I find the bestial way I was called names unacceptable.

With this afternoon’s anti-Semitic roar still buzzing in my ears, I watched the documentary on the Jewish Council. It won’t be too bad, it was thought at the time. And so the Jewish Council was established. How do we view the growing anti-Semitism in 2024? Will it not be too bad?

But I must stop now to pack my suitcase and then quickly go to bed. Tomorrow at six o’clock the taxi will arrive and I will be on the plane at ten to eight on my way to Oporto for a three-day conference on kashrut. I hope and expect to learn a thing or two there. Keynote speakers from the rabbinical world, experts on kashrut, will give the speeches. I also have to speak, but what and where is not quite known yet. Probably at the unveiling of the monument being unveiled there in memory of the victims of 7 October.

And meanwhile, I float between my bed and the documentary on the Jewish Council, meet the grandsons of Asscher and Cohen, the chairmen, and wonder whether I am alarmist or realist. Cohen’s grandson fights with me against rising anti-Semitism. I don’t feel myself more unsafe than usual, but anti-Semitism is getting closer … am Jisraeel chai!

Een onvergetelijke dag

Statement from Our Advisory Board Member Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs

Our Advisory Board Member Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs (NL) statement after the main group of protestant churches in holland made a statement apologising for their treatment of jews through the ages and during the war. 
 
On Sunday 8 November, the PKN, the union of Protestant Churches in the Netherlands, put forward an official apology for antisemitism throughout the ages and especially for their position during the Shoah (Holocaust).
 
In a live interview on Dutch Television last night, EJA Advisory Board Member, Rabbinical Centre of Europe Director of interfaith relations and Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands Binyomin Jacobs gave his response.
 
Extracts of his comments are below:
 
“It is commendable that the current church leadership admit wholeheartedly and in no uncertain terms that the Church as an institution could and should have done more. I am grateful for that recognition, that statement is important. But I want to make it clear for my part that I don’t blame the current Church leaders, because they have done nothing wrong.
 
They are from after the war, nothing can be blamed for them. They did not send my family to the gas-chambers, they did not even watch.
 
When I was asked by the PKN to attend the official celebration of 500 years of the Reformation on October 31, 2017, I initially refused to accept that invitation. I declined to attend a meeting where a notorious anti-Semite would be honoured.
 
Of course, the scribe today cannot help the fact that his great-great-grandfather held Luther’s erroneous theology towards the Jews of paramount importance as a Christian. In fact, he completely disagreed with the anti-Semitic statements of the great Christian master.
 
But how can I, as a Jew, join the celebration? “Show that you renounce his anti-Semitic statements, exclaim that you find that unacceptable,” I said to my friend Rev. de Reuver. He agreed wholeheartedly. Twice at that meeting, in the presence of our Lord, they publicly distanced themselves from the anti-Semitic writings and statements.
 
Fifty years after the war, I was confronted with a tidal wave of monuments commemorating murdered Jews. Disclosure after disclosure. I remember asking a young mayor at the beginning of that period: why only now? Had it not been noted earlier that fellow Jewish citizens had not returned? And his answer has always stayed with me: “My predecessor did not want to be reminded of 1940 -45.That period did not suit him, those years had to be covered up as much as possible.
 
Within that framework I see this statement. I am deeply grateful to the heroes who saved the lives of my mother and many others without any form of profit, free of charge, at great risk to their own lives. I think of Rev. Overduin, Rev. Slomp, Rev. Koopmans, Rev. Buskes, and I also think of Mgr. de Jong.
 
And I am certainly thinking of resistance fighters who were arrested by cowardly betrayal before they could have done anything. No one has heard of them, they were brutally eliminated for refusing to watch. Above all, let us never forget them and keep commemorating them, despite their anonymity.
But at the same time we know that far too little was done in the war, that the churches certainly also kept silent too much and that “over the centuries the church helped prepare the breeding ground on which the seeds of anti-Semitism and hatred could grow”, as was reflected in the statement. For centuries Jews were dismissed as G-d killers who would receive their just deserts.
 
And it was good that the period after the war was also mentioned. My grandparents made every effort to take in their nieces and nephews whose parents had been murdered. To keep them for Judaism, as their parents would have liked. Driven by their faith, these ‘parents’, who had saved their lives completely selflessly, refused to return their Jewish children in hiding to where they should be. Many of these orphans are still suffering from the identity crisis afflicted them, the result of an unhealthy and unacceptable urge to convert.
 
The Christian Churches have put a line behind the past with their confession and recognition. But, more importantly to me, it has been clearly stated that they intend to fight with us against contemporary anti-Semitism.
 
In the time of the Crusades we had the wrong faith and entire Jewish congregations were exterminated by the crusaders. In the Middle Ages we were the virus that caused the plague and so we had to be exterminated, my dear parents were of the wrong race. And I am a Zionist! Of course there can be criticism of Israel’s government policy, half Israel is against Netanyahu, just as not every Dutchman is for Rutte (I am!). But anti-Zionism is committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, the extermination of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
 
Daily through the ages, we offer our prayers towards Jerusalem. Jerusalem, where today all religions in the world are allowed to live their religion in freedom, is inextricably linked with the Jewish people, with the survivors of 1940-45, with me.
 
Churches: leave politics to politicians. Recognize the mutated virus that has destroyed millions and millions of my people over the centuries and is now called anti-Zionism.
 
The PKN of today should not have had to explain the mea-culpa for me, the past is over. But the link so clearly drawn from the persecution of the Jews through the ages and the passive attitude of the majority of the churches when my family was taken away never to return, that link to the now and to the future, the intention to develop Judeo-Christian relations into a deep friendship, in which everyone can remain himself and therefore no attempts are made to convert, to want to be connected in the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism, that purpose, that statement makes me deeply grateful. The words of the statement, of the Christian churches, were good. I have hope yes, but expectation too.”
 

Greece: Kosher slaughter 'under direct attack'

Jewish freedom of religion is under direct attack across Europe from the very institutions that have vowed to protect our communities, says European Jewish Association Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, after the Greek Supreme Court ruled that slaughter without stunning violates EU law.
The move comes as a consequence of the European Court of Justice Ruling last December that member countries may ban the practice of ritual slaughter in order to promote animal welfare, without infringing the rights of religious groups.
The December ruling said that the EU’s animal slaughter regulation “does not preclude member states from imposing an obligation to stun animals prior to killing which also applies in the case of slaughter prescribed by religious rites”, but encouraged member states to find a balance.
It is now clear that a number of member states are zealously applying the former whilst ignoring the latter.
In a statement this evening, the Chairman of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association, which represents hundreds of communities across the continent, said: “We warned in December about the downstream consequences that the European Court of Justice ruling carried with it, and now we see the outcome. Jewish Freedom of Religion is under direct attack. It started in Belgium, moved to Poland and Cyprus and now it is Greece’s turn.
“These direct attacks are coming from many of the same governments and institutions who have sworn to protect their Jewish Communities. What we are witnessing is rank hypocrisy. When it comes to antisemitism, governments and institutions rightly stand behind us. But when our faith and practice is assailed left and right by laws, they are nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be found. What use is it to protect Jews while legislating fundamental pillars of our religion out of existence?
“We will be urgently making representations to the highest levels of the Greek government to get direct answers to this simple but fundamental question: How can there be Jews in Europe if you keep bringing in laws against us?”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/315829

UK Labour to suspend Jeremy Corbyn following antisemitism report

Welcoming the expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn from the British Labour Party today, Our Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin said “we at the EJA congratulate the Labour Party leadership for their decision to suspend former leader Jeremy Corbyn who actively enabled a culture of rabid antisemitism and anti-Zionism to spread under his tenure. Let his suspension act as a catalyst to any mainstream political party in Europe that harbour antisemites in their midst. The British Labour Party is a case in point for what not to do when antisemites gain a foothold, allowing a culture of deceit and denial to grow and grow…
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