Saturday, September 1, 2018

Julia Salazar and the Jews

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of ZiyonJews Down Under, and The Jewish Press.}

NY State Senate candidate
Julia Salazar
New York State Senate candidate Julia Salazar has the pro-Jewish / pro-Israel world vaguely annoyed... while we are having a sandwich for lunch. Others in recent weeks have occasionally noted her existence with a raised eyebrow over their Wheat Chex.

There have been a few notes concerning this person including, for example, the Tablet piece by Armin Rosen.

She is a new figure on the scene, coming on the heels of Uncle Bernie, following other self-righteous political "women of color" who despise Israel.

There are, at least, three reasons why many of us find her vaguely annoying.

These are:

1) Her apparently untrue claims to be Jewish.

2) Her antisemitic anti-Zionism.

and

3) Her anti-democratic socialism.

The first two reasons combined represent her cocky, devil-may-care, progressive-left, anti-Zionism "as-a-Jew" anti-Israel schtick. There are few things that pro-Israel Jews enjoy more, after all, than semi-maybe-Jews using their sorta Jewishness to urinate all over the Jewish state of Israel.

The third reason is her socialism. It amazes me that after so many examples of failed twentieth-century socialist states -- not to mention the current Venezuelan misery -- that socialism is back in fashion among twenty-something hipster politicians like Julia Salazar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who describe themselves as "Democratic Socialist."

I think that we need to be cognizant of the difference between regulatory capitalism and socialism. And I recognize that these terms have different political resonances between North Americans and Europeans and Israelis. Sometimes when people in the US talk about the need for "socialism" what we are referring to is the need for a sound economic social safety-net and basic rules concerning racism and sexism in hiring and firing, as well as environmental and industrial safety rules, and so forth.

When I was a younger man this meant "social justice" and it essentially referred to the ideological liberalism of people like Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am a liberal, but we need to stop confusing the hard American-Left with liberalism.

They are not the same thing.

Given the fact that Salazar is running for a significant public office, when she refers to herself as a "socialist" we must assume that she means it in the formal definition of that term. That is Julia Salazar, who is running for a seat on the New York State Senate, believes -- according to the very definition of the word socialism -- that the workers should own the means of production.

What this requires is the government obtaining ownership of private property through violence and/or the threat of violence. There is no possible way to bring about socialism by democratic means, despite the most well-meaning claims of the Democratic Socialists of America. Theft can only be obtained through force because it is only through force that the "bourgeoisie" will simply hand over their property to the government.

My problem with Salazar is not her semi-who-cares claims to Jewishness. I honestly have no reason to doubt that she has ancestry of Jewish heritage or that her interest in Judaism as an undergraduate at Columbia University was genuine. And I have no reason to doubt that she has a sense of "Jewishness" within her own heart. And, in truth, there are not very many of us who are qualified to draw the hard theological or ethnic distinctions, anyway.

{How many of us here are rabbis or priests or geneticists?}

But it seems obvious to me that if we oppose this candidate we should do so not on religious grounds, but political ones. She is a member of the New York branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.

As scholar Paul Berman tells us in Tablet on August 7, 2017:
The national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America voted the other day in favor of the boycott-Israel movement, or BDS, and the success of the pro-BDS resolution caused the assembled delegates to break out into a rousing chant of “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free!”
The issue is not Salazar's Jewishness. It is the antisemitic anti-Zionism embedded within the progressive-left and, thus, also within the Democratic Party.

The best grounds to oppose Salazar should have nothing to do with her personal religious or ethnic claims but on her antisemitic anti-Zionism and hard-left ideological blinkertude.

23 comments:

  1. The rules of Leftist / Progressive / Socialist Political Correctness give blacks a free pass to commit anti-Semitism and never be penalized for it, forever. Not merely a regular free pass, but an UNLIMITED free pass.

    New York State Senate candidate Julia Salazar is not black, but she is Hispanic and female, which gives her the same number of Political Correctness points as a black man (or very close to it), which means that she has an UNLIMITED free pass to commit anti-Semitism and never be penalized for it, forever.

    In contrast, white men are never allowed to commit any kind of racism, because they have no Political Correctness points to shield them from criticism.

    ===================================
    Time Magazine vs Truth:

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/08/time-magazine-vs-truth.html

    ===================================
    Who are the Palestinians?

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/06/who-are-palestinians.html

    ===================================
    How Torah Can Defeat Terrorism:

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2017/08/defeat-terror-with-torah.html

    ===================================
    Did Captain Kirk believe in negotiating with terrorists?

    http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/08/can-jews-learn-from-captain-kirk.html

    ===================================
    How to Pray for Tzahal-IDF:

    http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-to-pray-for-tzahal-idf.html

    ===================================
    Rambam Rejected Childless Messiah:

    http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/08/rambam-rejected-childless-messiah-by-mr.html

    ===================================
    Was Daniel an Orthodox Jew?

    https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/03/if-daniel-were-alive-today.html

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  2. Also, I suggest reading Daniel Pipe's article:

    https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/israel-25-years-after-the-oslo-accords-why-israel

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  3. http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-problem-of-anti-semitic-leftist.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FromNyToIsraelSultanRevealsTheStoriesBehindTheNews+%28from+NY+to+Israel+Sultan+Reveals+The+Stories+Behind+the+News%29

    and

    http://abuyehuda.com/2018/08/taking-the-ghetto-out-of-the-jew/

    in either order.

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  4. BTW, from the River to the Sea, most of Palestine is already free. The parts which aren't are Ramallah, Gaza, and of course the entire section not between the River and the Sea, aka Jordan (from Dan, an Israelite tribe).

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  5. I think that she's pretty.

    I was originally going to name this thing something like, "Julia Salazar is a pretty, little anti-Zionist."

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  6. Eh, white, Latino, she can be like her hero Sarsour, and put on a hijab and POOF! She will have become a Jewish/Muslim/White/Latino/(your answer here) person that anyone with can vote for. She’s scary!

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    Replies
    1. It may be that the American-Left has clued into something from a marketing perspective. Put out young, attractive, idealistic girls "of color" in their twenties. It doesn't really matter if they know much of anything, so long as they are articulate, because the constituency will lap it up like cream.

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  7. She is promoted by Glenn Greenwald's Intercept. Glenn freely admits he harbors neo Nazi beliefs while the Intercept was created by an Islamist billionaire. You can't get more progressive than that.

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  8. Agreed. But, and I am sure you know this, the left seems to have blurred “articulate” with “intelligent”. lol

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    Replies
    1. One day I’d like to see someone explain why the left hates all “organized religion” except Islam. Lots of guessses in my part, like self hatred.

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    2. Because to the left everything is really little more than a bus you ride toward the final extermination of society. Islam is a handy bus for that.

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  9. Correction: "...by being presented with the following quote."

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  10. I'm more used to everyone on the internet behind a screen pulling the whole "I'm Jewish and..." or "As a Jew," thing solely right before bashing Israel, not doing it in person!!!

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  11. She also claims to be an immigrant. She is not. She also claimed she grew up poor. She did not. She also claimed her parents were never married. They were. She also claimed at various times to be both militantly pro life and pro choice. She currently lives in a Brooklyn high rise she claims is 'housing for the poor' because it doesn't have a doorman. Not a single point in the CV is legitimate. She more or less NYC's version of Obama. And none of this will make the least difference to her rich hipster Bushwick voter base. Not in the least. At all.

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    Replies
    1. Rabbis who lived more than 18 centuries ago predicted that in the era immediately before the era of the messiah “THE TRUTH WILL GO LOST” (וְהָאֱמֶת תְּהֵא נֶעְדָּרֶת) (Mishnah, tractate Sotah, last chapter, last paragraph).

      We now live in a post-truth-era, in which it is acceptable to speak of “my truth”, which means that each person has his or her own version of the truth, which means the real truth is lost like a needle in a haystack.

      Politicians like Julia Salazar who constantly lie, and get away with it, because the people who vote for them do not care about truth, are another indication that this ancient prediction is coming true in our time.

      Another big indication that the truth has gone lost is the way that the United Nations Organization UN) relentlessly bashes Israel, while never criticizing Muslim terrorists who murder Jewish children and Muslim children. (When I say this, I speak of the pre-Donald Trump era at the UN.)

      Delete
  12. Just as there is such thing as being self-defeatingly pollyannaish, there is such thing as being self-defeatingly pessimistic.


    "Try, try, try, try."


    -- Winston Churchil

    Part of what creates the mindset of the Left is their perception that certain injustices exist. If they perceive enough evidence that those perceived injustices don't exist, their mindset will become more rational. Not all people who are politically "Leftists," but many. There is simply not enough presentation of the simple basic facts of the situation. There just isn't. Most Leftists don't know those facts. And when they are presented with them, they may view them as being lies, or they may not process those facts, because those facts are not presented enough or because those facts aren't presented by sources which those Leftists view as being credible.

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  13. She should be opposed on grounds of truth. Claiming to be a Jew and an immigrant do matter, when one examines her brother's testimony and her birth certificate.

    If she will lie about her past, how can she be trusted not to lie in her role as a legislator?

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    Replies
    1. In other words, her political views are irrelevant. Her deceptions go to her character. Not to mention she's a confused lady, who apparently was a pro-life Christian in college.

      From an interview:

      "Growing up, I always knew a lot of my family was Catholic. I also knew I had a Sephardic last name, and it made me curious. I was told that I had Jewish family when I was growing up. My parents gave me an intellectual interest and spiritual interest in both Christianity and Judaism. My dad would talk about his dad being Sephardi, and then he would talk about it as a spiritual and geographical connection. And it was confusing as a kid. I read a lot, and my parents encouraged me to read the bible and apologetics and Torah as well. But I didn’t have a bat mitzvah, or a confirmation, or any of that sort of thing.

      My father died tragically when I was 18. In the wake of him dying I was more motivated than ever before to understand my lineage.


      https://jewishcurrents.org/conversation/julia-salazar-in-her-own-words/

      And, according to lore, she's an immigrant, too!

      Elizabeth Warren on steroids.

      These are among the worst traits of a politician, especially when that person eventually lectures about morality.

      Delete
  14. "If they perceive enough evidence that those perceived injustices don't exist, their mindset will become more rational."

    I'm a case in point to some degree. David Horowitz is also a case in point. He was a hardcore ideological Leftist. He was an actual Communist and was raised Communist by his parents. It took the killing of one of his friends by a group he considered to be underdogs and whom he and his friend worked for (the Black Panthers) to reshape his political mindset. A less extreme example of someone whose political was "Leftist" but became more rational by his exposure to revelatory facts is David Rubin.

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  15. Related

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0iL0ixoZYo

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  16. I think it might be a little more subtle, like condemning the "premature" move of our embassy to Jerusalem. The fact that the move specifically left sovereignty over parts of the city open for negotiation will of course not be mentioned. And add a few other slights which will add up to what you say. Most of the crude stuff will remain outside the convention centre like last time but leak in. Soon there will be Jeremy Corbyn style admonitions for "zionists" to "learn some history."
    http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2018/08/corbyn-praises-universities-and.html

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  17. Also it turns out she's a thief who's been arrested more than once

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  18. Correction:

    "Never, never, never, never give up."

    --Winston Churchill

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