I don’t like to say I told you so, but I told you so. On March 1, I wrote about the rash of bomb threats against Jewish targets in the US, which a large segment of the opposition media gleefully used to malign President Trump:
The question this leaves me with is whose political agenda is served by continuing to publicise what have clearly been bomb threats that haven’t materialised up to now? The threats, which do generate real fear and disruption themselves are the mode of attack. So far, thankfully, there haven’t been any real bombs threatening life. Unlike, for example, the real rockets that flew out of Gaza toward Jews in southern Israel in the past couple of weeks that received no international attention (until Israel bombed Hamas).
The publicity and associated panic run the risk of perpetuating this and spreading it worldwide. Jews will be terrorized worldwide, not by real bombs but by phone calls. It is not a sign that Jew hatred has increased, decreased or anything else: you cannot infer anything relative about the numbers of people hating Jews or the virulence of their hatred from the successful promotion of a tactic that can be carried out by one person or many. We just don’t know at this point.
There was barely any concealing the way in which media outlets and far-left Jewish organisations like the ADL used these calls to scream immediately about a rising tide of far-right antisemitism. This was completely contrary to what those of us who have spent the last decade watching global Jew-hatred know. While there is and always has been an underlying current of anti-Jewish feeling from a small far-right contingent, by far the biggest threat today comes from the left-wing alliance with Islam. The main increase in global antisemitism comes from movements that claim to be “pro-Palestinian” while really being virulently anti-Israel and, nearly always, virulently anti-Jewish too. This has been under-reported for a long time.
It still came as somewhat of a surprise to many when news broke just before the weekend that the suspect is an 18- or 19-year-old Israeli youth living in Ashkelon (mainstream reports can’t even agree on his age):
The suspect arrested Thursday for a wave of bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers in the United States employed an array of technologies, including Bitcoin and Google Voice, to make himself virtually untraceable for months, The Daily Beast has learned. But in the end, it only took one careless slip-up to lead police to his door.
Police arrested 19-year-old Michael Kaydar, who has joint Israeli-U.S. citizenship, at his home in Ashkelon, a coastal city in southern Israel. He’s suspected of phoning in over 100 bomb threats to JCCs and Jewish day schools in 33 states since January, with the most recent calls made two weeks ago. Police also suspect him of making similar threats in Israel, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
The first reports specifically mentioned that the massive, worldwide publicity for his threats spurred the teenager to keep doing it, exactly as I had predicted almost a month ago.
He used some reasonably elaborate methods to hide his identity, but eventually got sloppy. He is not the only person arrested for these crimes, so far, but he does appear to be suspected of the majority of them. There was one other arrest:
Meanwhile, the bomb threats continued, coming in six separate waves. Jewish centers and day schools began evacuating with almost routine regularity. The threats were generally seen as evidence that anti-Semitic fringe groups were feeling emboldened by the election of Donald Trump. Then in March, a St. Louis man was arrest for a handful of copycat bomb threats he allegedly staged in an effort to frame an ex-girlfriend.
The St Louis man, of course, was also about as far from a white supremacist Trump supporter as anyone can get. Juan M. Thompson is black and firmly from the left side of the political tracks:
Thompson attended Vassar College and is a former journalist who was fired from the online news site The Intercept in 2016 for fabricating sources and quotes in his articles. A statement Friday from The Intercept said of Thompson’s arrest, “These actions are heinous and should be fully investigated and prosecuted.”
Breitbart had a much fuller delve into the Bernie-supporting Juan Thompson:
Thompson’s Twitter account also reveals he supported socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. “I voted for Bernie Sanders, but his supporters are annoying as fuck. ‘I almost cried when I got a Bernie sign’. Yuck,” he tweeted in July.
This puts Sanders in an awkward position. Only days before Thompson’s arrest, he told J Street: “I hope very much that President Trump and his political adviser Mr. Bannon understand that the entire world is watching, that it is imperative that their voices be loud and clear in condemning anti-Semitism.”
No matter how many phone calls were made, it is obvious now that the numerous attempts to infer an increase in Jew-hatred in the US flowing from Trump’s rise was malicious and wrong. There are reports now on Israeli TV that the Israeli man arrested may have received funding from the US to make the calls:
The special [Israeli Police] Lahav 433 investigation unit discovered a Bitcoin account operated by the suspect. A series of large deposits from overseas sources suggests the suspect may have been working on behalf of foreign interests.
This doesn’t explain all the physical manifestations of Jew-hatred such as daubed swastikas (Colombian and Puerto Rican man arrested), turning a Jewish Chanuka symbol into a swastika (non-whites arrested), or damaged graves (some may have been the weather). However, many of these stories turn out later to have been perpetrated by anyone but the stereotypical white nationalist the press tries to blame on first report.
Predominantly left-leaning and anti-Trump Jewish institutions in the US, such as the Anti-Defamation League, under the stewardship of Soros-backed Jonathan Greenblatt, jumped on the story and pushed it, until eventually President Trump lead off his address to the joint session with a mention of the hoax calls:
Tonight, as we mark the conclusion of our celebration of Black History Month, we are reminded of our Nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that still remains. Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a Nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.
And even then they weren’t happy. On the day before that speech, the media made a highly speculative leap in order to tie these events to Trump and paint him as not caring enough about Jew-hatred. Worse still, they took hearsay as fact and (despite later denials from the White House) ran headlines claiming Trump spoke of conspiracy theories:
Trump Reportedly Suggests Wave of anti-Semitic Incidents Could Be False Flags Perpetrated by Jews
Trump spoke to a gathering of state attorneys general from across the country that included Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Shapiro told reporters in a conference call after the meeting that Trump suggested that the attacks could reflect something other than anti-Semitism, saying that “the reverse can be true” and “someone’s doing it to make others look bad,” according to Philly.com.
A journalist asking the questions “who, what, where, when and why” might look into the background of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro to figure out if he has any reason for reporting Trump in an unfavourable light (besides reporting that he’s Jewish). Especially as he is the single source for the story. A quick date limited Google search finds that “Attorney General Josh Shapiro” has been a vocal opponent of Trump. The first result of that search:
17 Attorney Generals, Including Josh Shapiro Condemn Trump Executive Orders On Immigration
HARRISBURG — Seventeen Attorney Generals across the nation, including Pennsylvania Attorney General, Josh Shapiro issued a joint statement on Sunday condemning the executive orders by Donald trump as ‘un-American.’
Nowhere in Ha’aretz’s reporting can we find any reference to any inherent biases this progressive and politically ambitious Democrat Attorney General may have. The “why is he saying these things” of the story in this case. Those details weren’t important because the story aligned with the bash-Trump agenda of Ha’aretz.
Even now that the story has broken about the main suspect phoning in these threats from Israel instead of being a knuckle-dragging white racist with a swastika tattoo, the ADL’s Jason Greenblatt can’t take his teeth out of Trump:
In a phone interview Thursday from Washington, where Greenblatt was discussing anti-Semitism with members of Congress, he said, “It’s not the identity of the culprit that’s the issue,” but the outcome of threats themselves, which terrified Jews and disrupted Jewish life.
More extreme-left Jewish organisations, such as the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect (which seems to exist solely to malign President Trump using the cloak of the Holocaust), manage to ignore completely all facts and reason in their far-left crusade against Trump:
Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a civil rights and social justice group based in New York, said the arrest in Israel doesn’t change Trump’s record of being slow and insufficiently forceful in condemning anti-Jewish prejudice and bigotry in general. The center had repeatedly pointed to the bomb threats as evidence of “a national emergency of anti-Semitism” and accused Trump of failing to recognize the “real evidence” behind the problem.
All of this Jewish-backed hatred for Trump, emanating from the far-left, is absolute anathema to a non-dhimmi Jew, such as myself, who is living in Israel and fully awake to the threat of jihad all around me. These are the elements of the Jewish left in America that pushed for the insane Iran deal and wanted to see Hillary installed as President to further push Israel into a dark corner. These are the elements of American Jewry that can’t keep out of partisan politics in the US, with the worst accusations and insane insinuations that Trump is Hitler causing untold damage.
It is deeply unpalatable to say that Jews are responsible for antisemitism, but it also takes willful blindness to look at these Trump-hating actions of some elements of the US Jewish community, amplified to extraordinary proportions by the anti-Trump media, and fail to understand how this looks in the eyes of bemused Trump voters who have no real idea of the rifts within American Jewry and have nobody to explain the nuances.
Kay says
If American Jewry, or even a majority or vocal portion of them, would espouse awareness like that of Brian Thomas, it would do a great deal towards waking up the rest of the Left. At the very least, it would remove the Left’s false cloak of righteousness.
ElderlyZionist says
There *is* a vocal and growing portion of American Jewry that recognizes the threat of globalism and the global jihad. So far, the left shouts us down, and so do some on the right. I doubt we will ever be able to ‘turn’ the left as a whole, we don’t have that much influence. But we ourselves are turning.
Noah T says
“the ADL’s Jason Greenblatt”
I must correct you; the director of ADL is Jonathan Greenblatt NOT Jason Greenblatt.
Jason Greenblatt is a Jewish lawyer who works for Donald Trump. He’s a special representative of the Trump Administration for International Negotiations.
Please don’t confuse the two!
Brian Thomas says
Thank you, it was fixed as soon as it could be. I guess I’ve been following Jason Greenblatt’s twitter feed obsessively and it wormed its way into my brain.
RonaldB says
I want to thank Brian Thomas for his post. It’s gratifying to see a Jewish point of view that reflects real Jewish interests. Sometimes I think I’m living in an “Alice in Wonderland” world.
I see a lot of anti-Semitic posts and letters from reading Twitter and comments to articles and YouTube videos.
There are anti-Semites who think they have a reason for disliking a Jewish presence, but who would not dream of harming or threatening a Jew personally. I myself believe these people should not be lumped in with people who advocate violence or extermination of Jews. I myself engage them when possible. Sometimes they respond rationally, and some respond emotionally, and can’t be reasoned with. Often, anti-Semites believe Jews are smart and that Jews act as an identity group to damage or destroy Western civilization. They can’t quite get their heads around the fact that politically, Jews are stupid and are acting 100% against their own interests by advocating for Muslims and Muslim immigration. And mainstream American Judaism is totally against immigration restrictions.
Violent anti-Semites, like anyone violent, should be arrested and prosecuted. There is a class of anti-Semites who may or may not be violent themselves, but who claim 1) The Nazis never committed genocide against Jews, but 2) they should have. These people, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to engage at all. They’re impervious to fact, and operate from blind emotion and hatred.
There’s an interesting class of people who advocate for maintaining the identity of Western culture and the European character of the United States, but who hold every injustice, imagined or real, taken towards the Palestinians as evidence that Israel is illegitimate. My view is that every country, US included, has dirty linen. Just the process of taking over territory and established authority is going to result in personal injustices. Every country now in existence has come into being through conquest and revolution. It’s to the point that when Israel decides, through legal processes, to remove a band of illegal, squatter goat herders, it becomes an international incident.
But, to the point of the article, mainstream (reform and conservative) US Jews are acting totally, 100% against their own interests. They’re like zombie ants: the leftist virus has taken over their brains, and they act reflexively to their own destruction. Not only are they demolishing their own safety inside the US by advocating Muslim immigration: they are endangering Israel through their leftist ideology. I think Israel can do without the massive foreign aid the US gives to it, but Israel is totally isolated in the UN and other international organizations. Most countries would vote to boycott and isolate Israel in a second. It is the US that prevents coordinated international sanctions against Israel. Once the US slides enough to the left that it stops opposing international sanctions against Israel, Israel will be in the same situation as the South African government before the African National Congress took over: a viable but demoralized government.
mortimer says
I personally never pass an anti-Semite without speaking out. I stop to educate them, whether they like it or not. If everyone did so, anti-Semites would soon be exposed to massive reality.
Almost 6 million Jews live in North America, and unfortunately, many of them are completely unaware of the JIHAD THREAT to them as Jews … even though they do not identify strongly as Jews, Muslim terrorists identify them strongly as Jews. They are so naïve and vulnerable, some days I simply weep!
ElderlyZionist says
“I personally never pass an anti-Semite without speaking out. ”
You must be constantly talking.
Brian Thomas says
I’m also constantly bemused by this part of your excellent comment:
“There’s an interesting class of people who advocate for maintaining the identity of Western culture and the European character of the United States, but who hold every injustice, imagined or real, taken towards the Palestinians as evidence that Israel is illegitimate. “
The same people who know that 95% of mainstream reporting on Trump is #FakeNews do not even begin to understand that 99% of mainstream reporting of Israel’s “injustice” toward Palestinians is even more #FakeNews. I’d contend that reporting on Israel was one of the places the media developed and honed its skills in this field.
Barry Goldberg says
Unfortunately, he probably never has the circumstances to stop talking. But, bless you, Mr. Thomas, and all true Zionists, now and forever!
Westman says
“Once the US slides enough to the left that it stops opposing international sanctions against Israel..”
It seems that the Obama administration already started in that direction by obstaining in its last opportunity to support Israel. Thankfully, they are gone and Trump has stated inequivocal support for Israel.
mortimer says
Political correctness through the ‘Islamophobia’ smear campaign will endanger lives (especially Jewish lives) BY EMBOLDENING THE TERRORISTS. Jews, who are the biggest targets of terrorism, will be the most endangered in the US as they now are in Europe.
Secular Jews in the US keep their heads firmly IN THE SAND, and keep their minds UNINFORMED and IN DENIAL about Islam’s JIHAD DOCTRINE, MISOGYNY DOCTRINE, ANTI-SEMITISM DOCTRINE, KAFIR DOCTRINE and BLASPHEMY DOCTRINE.
When America’s naïve, pollyannish secular Jews PULL THEIR HEADS OUT of the sand, the Muslims may by then be empowered enough to cut them off! The Leftards are creating the vulnerability that if unchecked may some day soon lead to Islamic subjugation.
Joey Goest says
The ADL is more concerned with filling its coffers from Soros and his ilk than speaking out on anti-Semitism. I no longer donate to this sham organization. I hope others will follow suit.
Stan Lee says
Individuals thought to be Jews by their surnames is not reliable identification any more. Whether one has a name commonly associated by others as Jewish, or one having a surname which could be Irish or Anglo-Saxon, we cannot solve a name and ethnicity question any more by the old presumptions still existing. The operative words in all of this are “thought to be.” or “commonly associated.” Either one of those reasons could be dead-wrong.
Once a person of any ethnicity becomes involved and committed in a life-absorbing political agenda, that person is more likely on the secular-side of religion but an ardent Democrat. Senator Schumer (NY) is an example. He does give lip-service to Judaism when it serves his purposes, but he is more ideological about being a life-time Democrat by far, than having been raised (I suppose) in a Jewish household in his formative years. Given the knowledge we may think we have, I believe we can take any “thought to be” individual’s name and apply an erroneous belief which can be wrong as much as being right, but about his/her politics we’d usually be correct.
For such reasoning, I never bought into Bernie Sanders as a Jew, based upon a Brooklyn,NY accent, therefore I prefer to waive that curiosity. But, what became more important was his political ideology, which he was well-prepared to amplify had he become the President. About Hillary Clinton, I never thought of her as a member of any faith, except her drive for power by any means possible.
The same “folk lore” follows George Soros and his history has been distorted in so many ways, that one fact looms greater than any other of his early life. His father and young”Georgi” worked in the Hungarian Fascist movement that accommodated the NAZI SS which occupied Hungary during WW2 and undertook shipping of Hungarian Jews who were sent to NAZI death camps. The Soros adult male and his young son located Hungarian Jews for the Gestapo and SS, after which those authorities arrested Jews and sent them to NAZI death camps. Some people say Soros WAS a Jew, some insist he was not. I’ll take the easy option on this one, his father and Georgi, the son, were deeply involved in pointing out Hungarian Jews for termination. Was he a Jew, a Protestant, a Catholic? It doesn’t matter, the Soros’ were evil and capitalized on evil, and still do. So, what’s in a name? Obviously a lot less than most of us know.
Kay says
I think Jesus said something like this in John 8:
If you are Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham.
Pong says
It is the american phenomenon. In Israel and other countries jews support President Trump. American jews have a hutzpa to demand support from the president against anti-semitism. President Trump doesn’t owe anything to american jews, as over 70% of them voted against him.
In Australia, for example, overwhelming majority of jews support President Trum (majority of the australian jews vote conservative). There are, of cause, some, who like to present themselves as expressing the community views, are leftists, especially those in “academia”, but nobody takes them seriously.
It is painful for many jews around the world that the President has little support from the secular jewish community in America. Stiil, religious jews do support the president and hopefully this support will grow. Being of very mixed parentage, with some jewish blood, I feel pain for those shameles jews, who put their leftist agenda before the surviving of their fellow jews.
ElderlyZionist says
True ’nuff ‘dat.
Speaking as a secular American Jew, the issue is that we were raised and largely remain loyal to the Democratic Party, and to the ghosts of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. We are loyal because it was the Democrats who defeated not only the Nazis, but the Klan – and the Klan was and remains a threat to Jews. The Holocaust in Europe, the Bund Stormtroopers and the Klan Night Riders who terrorized minorities in the United States, left a mark. We are too easily spooked by a few loud-mouthed crack-pot Nazis, blowing hard on the internet.
Most posters on this site are friendly and welcoming enough, but the Stormfront creeps post often enough that many Jews are uncomfortable here. Still, I think American Jews are waking up to the new reality, where Trump is a better friend than Linda Mansour, and we just ignore David Duke and Richard Spencer.
RonaldB says
To ElderlyZionist:
I think you need to check on your facts. The fact is, the Klan was associated with, and supported by, the Democratic Party. Remember, Harry Byrd, Hillary’s friend and mentor in her early Senate affiliations, was an active KKK member. This is typical.
Second, the Klan today exists only to provide employment for FBI informants and SPLC money shills. The KKK represents absolutely no real threat to anyone.
Third, if a Jew is snowflake enough to stay off a site that has occasional unpleasant comments, let them stay off. In fact, there are plenty of Jews who post here: you’re one of them. I think rational anti-Semites should be engaged with; not dealt with by point and sputter.
Fourth, unfortunately US Jews, particularly the mainstream Jewish community, is totally leftist and by a vast majority, thoroughly opposed to Trump. Check out the figures: 70% of US Jews voted for Hillary.
Some people say it is secular Jews that support the leftists. This isn’t true. The Reform Jewish organizations, especially the Union for Reform Judaism, is totally leftist. I know that Orthodox Jews will argue that Reform Jews have left Judaism, and aren’t really practicing Judaism, but that begs the question of self-identified Jews being overwhelmingly leftist.
If you look at the articles on the Union for Reform Judaism website, you’ll see a professed support for Israel, but strong criticism for almost any actions Israel takes to maintain itself as a viable country with a distinct cultural identity. Also, the Union for Reform Judaism affiliates itself with far left and minority-identity groups, which always are strongly and fundamentally critical of Israel. It’s like a strong cognitive dissonance: mainstream US Judaism is maintaining two, contradictory positions. My own prediction is that in the next 10 years or so, liberal US Judaism will basically jettison support of Israel. Probably the break will come when Israel responds as it will have to do, when Hamas or Hezbollah fighters set up rocket emplacements by schools, hospitals, or civilian housing. Israel will bomb them and the world will be horrified.
By the way, my support for Israel is as an American. I do not support the US acting for Israel if it is not in US interests. But, in fact, the US interest is served by Israel’s existence as a strong, independent, stable territory in the Middle East, representative of Western thought and culture.
ElderlyZionist says
It’s true that the Klan in the 1940s-60s was closely linked with the segregationist ‘Dixiecrat’ southern wing of the Democratic Party. It’s also true that it was the Democratic Kennedy and Johnson administrations who broke with the Dixiecrats, forced desegregation and prosecuted Klan terrorists. The Klan was reduced to a fringe group. In the New South, noted Dixiecrats like Harry Byrd and George Wallace adapted to the new reality and reconciled with black Democrats.
While the Klan and Stormfront are fringe phenomena today, some of their activists think that their time has come, and are redoubling their noise. You can’t dismiss them with a wave of your hand.
I’ll work with you if you’ll work with me.
Angemon says
Imagine my surprise!
awake says
Excellent article and one that speaks the truth about leftist Jewish organizations in the U.S.
The most troubling part of the whole incident to me is the suspect. It appears that the MSM has all but shoved the whole story straight down the memory hole. What was the motive behind this. I heard a lot of quick rationalizations about the suspect being impaired in some capacity, even though he went to great lengths to disguise his identity. We are told that the world-wide attention to these calls compelled the suspect to continue to make them, while not offering a single suggestion as to exactly why he started in the first place.
Was he acting alone of was this an intentional act, solely aimed to bring shade upon Trump? This should be investigated, but it is all the more likely that we will never hear anything about this person or incident, again, and that is problematic in my estimation.
Lioness says
I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros’ money was part of the “foreign” payments that was funnelled to this guy.
Jeanette says
Why doesn’t Trump get rid of those horrid yellow sari-silk, Muslim-looking curtains? They were installed by Obama, and it’s way past time that they were removed and burned.