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Gratitude for Ricochet
I live in a Jewish community, so I know a lot of scared people. The acts of Hamas are awful, but not surprising. The response by so many in the US is nothing short of earth-shaking. “Kill the Jews” is the undertone for the huge street protests. The vaunted “safe spaces” that Woke created on college campuses are now exposed as nothing more than cover for institutionally-supported violence against Jewish kids. I have a kid at Rutgers – this is how Universities purge themselves of Jewish students.
If one reads the media, it seems the whole world is turning against us. If the Hamas atrocities can be openly disbelieved and ignored, then it means any attack against my person or my loved ones would garner the same response from those same people.
But I am fortified by this community. When others tell me how discouraged they are, I tell them that America has a lot of good people, people who know right from wrong and who are willing to stand up for those beliefs. I know this to be true because of all the good people here, on Ricochet.
I, a Jew who loves America, am deeply grateful. Thank You.
Published in General
Completely sympathize and this war is bringing back old memories. JAGC lawyer on the Kitty Hawk in 1973. In San Diego before the next cruise but Viet Nam war was over (for us anyway) so not too concerned. And then the Yom Kipper war. Once Israel took the first blows and started moving against both the Egyptians the Syrians, Russia starting mouthing about what it would do to help the Arabs. Nixon said enough and send out a Code Red. Our ship on high alert like all the carriers although too far from the Med to help anytime soon. But the Russian thugs got the message and we stood down after two days. Just wish after Hamas wiped out we could take out Iran. No chance with Slow Joe in charge. Maybe he is getting his Big Guy 10% cut of the Mullahs’ oil revenue.
George Washington likes and respects the Jews and so do I.
Thank YOU for being part of Ricochet.
Oh, yeah.
I’m with you and yours. Glad you are here and can articulate why it matters.
Thanks for being an inseparable part of the family, iWe!
A drunk Russian once asked me as an American, if we were willing to die for Jews. I found his tone irritating. “Oh ho ho, we’re ready to go a lot farther than that.”
Pat ourselves on each other’s backs, ladies and gentlemen; Ricochet membership provides its own Iron Dome. At least in this case, it takes the freedom of this R> website, with no conventionally defined safe zones, to be close to the goal of being the voluntary, self-policing, mutually supportive safe zone of equals that utopians aspire to create online.
Yes, that Ricochet Iron Dome also protects skeptics, doubters, naysayers. You don’t have to be Jewish.
But as Gilda Radner used to say, it wouldn’t hurt. ;-)
What I remember most about the Yom Kippur War( @iwe, please correct me if I’m wrong) is that when Israel seemed to be losing, the UN wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the hostilities. But when Israel surrounded an Egyptian army, crossed to the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal, and was on the way to Damascus, all of a sudden the UN decided to call for a ceasefire.
I heard that Russia told the US to stop Israel from taking Egypt or they’d enter the war.
You are generous to feel grateful for such a small part of your birthright as an American. I think I would be bitter.
It would no doubt shock some on the left to hear that a right-leaning site constitutes a safe space. May it ever be so.
Thank you @iWe for your post. I am pleased to agree with you about Ricochet. I am revolted by what I see reported on the news and apparently espoused by certain evil members of our government. The American tradition supports our Jewish brethren. Those who celebrate the likes of HAMAS are truly un-American.
That makes two of us.
Funny you should wonder that: I would bet a LOT that the mullahs do not share. They know he’s the Satan in that office.
I’m happy that you wrote this post.
I’m angry that it was necessary.
The fact that an American can feel unsafe in his own country because he is Jewish – I just can’t wrap my head around that. The fact that hatred for Jews is accepted, and even encouraged, by leftists around the world – I’ve never understood that. And now that leftists control America, hatred for Jews is accepted and encouraged here too.
That pisses me the %$#& off. This is America, for Pete’s sake.
I believe that in general, anger is an unhelpful emotion. But in this case, I hope anger at the left’s hatred of Jews spreads like wildfire.
Thanks for being here, iWe.
I’m not sure how to help. But for what it’s worth, I’m pissed off.
Many thanks for your presence here and contributions to our discussions. I have benefitted greatly from your contributions here relating to understanding the Tanakh.
And now, some good news. Hamas and Samidoun (a pro-Hamas/Hezbollah group that promotes hatred of Jews and Israel here) were banned in Germany effective this morning. Here is the link:
You can turn on English subtitles in the settings, if needed.
No kidding, man. Such vile public declarations of Jew hatred as we have seen in New York City (!) should not happen in the United States.
I second everything the good doctor said.
I’ve been trying to come up with ways.
One was, of course, putting an Israeli flag on my mailbox, attending vigils and the service at the synagogue (couldn’t last week because of Lewiston), preaching (ahem) assertive sermon(s) and wearing a Star of David on my person whenever I’m out and about (other than in uniform). My kids are doing the same things.
I’m also doing my best to wake up my neighbors and shame my fellow clergy into public support for Jewish Americans, even if they can’t (eye roll) bring themselves to “take sides” in the war. A topic for another day: I’ll take what I can get.
I’ve got Israel flag stickers that are going on every piece of mail that leaves the house.
@iwe
This is really the great dividing line of our moment, isn’t it? Maybe it’s been the dividing line of every moment throughout all of history. There is something percolating around inside my head that I haven’t figured out how to put into words yet, but Konstantin Kisin’s remarks at the ARC 2023 conference run by Jordan Peterson is sort of a down payment on what’s running around in my own head.
“We’re in the fight of our lives” starts to get at it. We have been on a multi-generational gaslighting binge that has demoralized many and made them question whether they even can “know right from wrong”. Something more assertive and less purely deliberative is needed. I think this was crystallized for me when, on another post at Ricochet, someone suggested, even after the rape and dismemberment of babies, we nevertheless need to “listen to them” to understand them. No, actually, they need to be killed. And everyone who celebrates or even just defends them needs to be unwelcome in civil society, told that they are unwelcome in no uncertain terms, and physically removed whenever the law allows.
But there is a weird knee-jerk cultural instinct in some that no matter how depraved someone tells us they are, no matter how they act, we should go on engaging in self-flagellation and endless self-abasement about “colonization” and “occupation” or various “phobias” and “systemic” whatever. Well, the people who have been wagging their fingers at everyone about those things are the same people who are now acting as apologists for the rape and incineration of our grandmothers. No more. No more cultural relativism. No more apologies. No more manufactured guilt.
This guy in the video below is the kind of thing we need more of. Less thumb-sucking and more cultural assertiveness.
More Paulie and less Ivy League.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RAS411gVhK8
Not at all. Jews have learned to never take hospitality for granted. I am keenly aware that while I am an American in tooth and claw, not all Americans see me that way – because I choose to be Jewish.
That makes no sense. I choose to be Christian, and I don’t see what impact that would have on my nationality.
None of this makes any sense.
Have you ever seen how animals of all kinds ostracize those they deem to be outsiders? It is a core human instinct, too.
The outsiders are the Marxists stinking up the place. Sadly, Jews who are lefties first, Jews second, voted them into office. They were abetted by atheists and by Christians who are lefties first and Christians second. What more proof dose one need that our foundation needs its religious, load-bearing wall to survive. Benjamin Franklin warned us. The secularization of our society will lead to our doom.
I don’t understand why Jews are outsiders, I guess.
There’s a lot of history that I don’t know much about, I’m sure. But from my perspective, it all seems so contrived. I don’t mean to sound insensitive to anyone’s beliefs (or perhaps I do, I suppose), but I really don’t understand the hatred of Jews.
On the other hand, I worship a Jew, so naturally I struggle with concept of hating them.
That is my recollection of what caused Nixon to respond and the ship to gear up.
Book of Esther chapter 3 gives insight into the reason for Jew hatred in biblical times. Maybe in our times as well.
What’s so striking about the all the hatred since Oct. 7 is that it was Israel who was attacked by terrorists, not the other way around. Usually that would cause at least some of the anti-Israel crowd to tone it down at least for while. But it seems to have enraged them even more.
There’s a phrase, “Europe will never forgive the Jews for WWII.”
Rather than try to become as good a society as Israel, many Muslims across the world would rather destroy the symbol of their failure.
In order to improve they’d probably have to give up islam.
This is all true in itself, but I think there is a deeper reason.
Islam, cousin marriage and the deep tribalism in Arabic society. Muhammad’s seventh wife Zaynab bint Jahsh was his first cousin. So unless you want to interpret Islam to say that Muhammad made a very big error and Allah did not correct him then you have to get rid of Islam.
I hear that Muhammad is viewed as being close to a totally perfect man in Islam so it sticks Muslim society in the seventh century and prevents them from advancing.