Robert Bowers pulled the trigger but it was Trump and Netanyahu who created the climate of hate which led to this massacre
In the wake of the worst anti-semitic massacre in US history we have the spectacle of Likud Party members in Israel JUSTIFYING the murders.
“The murderer was fed up with people like you”
In a Facebook post, Yoav Eliasi, aka The Shadow , who I have covered recently, — a prominent Israeli hate rapper and Likud Party member in good standing — portrayed the massacre as a legitimate response to HIAC’s progressive agenda.
According to Eliasi, Bowers “was a man fed up with subversive progressive Jewish leftists injecting their sick agendas” into his country. Explicitly echoing the neo-Nazi’s manifesto, Eliasi added that “HIAS brings in infiltrators that destroy every country. The murderer was fed up with people like you. Jews like you brought the holocaust and now you’re causing antisemitism. Stop bringing in hate money from Soros.”
This is the same kind of Zionist anti-Semitism that led to collaboration in the 1930's between Zionists and anti-Semites, the Nazis included.I
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| Robert Bowers - the mass murderer |
We feel the pain of the survivors of
the massacre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania yesterday. This was the action of a
cold and calculated neo-Nazi who sought to ‘take
revenge’ on this community for their support of refugees.
Bower’s comments on social media site
Gab make it clear that he held ‘the Jews’
and this community in particular, responsible for the influx of refugees into
America.
His last message was ‘HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by
and watch our people get slaughtered. Screw your optics I’m going in.’
HIAS is the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society which since 1881 has aided refugees. At first it
supported Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Czarist Russia but today it helps
all refugees. HIAS has put out a statement on
what happened in Pittsburgh.
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| First Responders at the scene of the massacre |
The congregants of the Tree of Life
Synagogue were heavily involved in supporting HIAS’s
programmes and for that they paid a very heavy price.
Bowers was a Christian anti-Semite
who had on his web page the message ‘jews
are the children of satan. (john 8:44) --- the lord jesus Christ is come in the
flesh.” America is full of fundamentalist, bible-bashing Christians, most
of whom combine their anti-Semitism with ardent Zionism, like Norway’s Andrei Brevik
who murdered over 70 people, mainly young socialists, seven years ago.
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| People gather for a vigil at Squirrel Hill |
It is no accident that the worst
anti-Semitic attack in American history, with 11 confirmed dead, should take
place during the Presidency of Donald Trump. It sticks in the craw when Trump
makes a statement (see video above) ‘It’s
a terrible terrible thing what’s going on, with hate frankly in our country and
all over the world.’ There is no person who bears a greater responsibility for
that hate than Trump.
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| some of Trump's 'fine people', a comment that Netanyahu found it difficult to criticise |
In Charlottesville last summer, as
America’s neo-Nazis and the alt-Right marched to the chant of ‘the Jews will not replace us’ Trump told
Americans that there are ‘“very fine
people on both sides”, thus equating anti-fascists with neo-Nazis.
Trump has made the demonization
of refugees the focus of the Republican’s election campaign for Congress next
month. He has in particular targeted the
march in Central America of a few thousand refugees hoping to gain entry into
the United States. Apparently there are
no bigger threats facing a wealth country of 300 million people than these
refugees. Trump’s description of himself as a ‘nationalist’ last week was
rejected by Bowers who described him as a ‘globalist’ (a euphemism for ‘Jew’)
As Dana Milbank wrote
in the wake of Pittsburgh, Trump’s election ‘began
with genteel anti-Semitism, progressed to dog whistles and ended with a
full-throated targeting of Jewish “globalists.’ Millbank detailed some of
the examples of Trump’s anti-Semitism for anyone who believes that because his
daughter married Jared Kushner, this somehow renders him immune from charges of
anti-Semitism. Those who believe this nonsense should recall that many of leaders
of Croatia’s puppet Nazi state, the Ustashe, were married to Jews but that
didn’t prevent them setting up the only extermination camp not controlled by
the Nazis, Jasenovac, in order to wipe out Serbs, Roma and Jews. Millbank’s
examples of Trump’s anti-Semitism include:
Telling
Jewish Republicans they wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money.”
Tweeting
an image from an anti-Semitic message board with a Star
of David atop a pile of cash.
Saying
“I don’t have a message” for supporters who
threatened anti-Semitic violence against a Jewish journalist, and Melania Trump
saying the writer “provoked” the threats.
Branding
his campaign with the “America First”
slogan of the anti-Semitic pre-war movement.
Alleging that “blood suckers” and “a global
power structure” including “international
banks” are secretly plotting against ordinary Americans.
And,
when urged by the Anti-Defamation League to stop using
traditionally anti-Semitic tropes, repeated the tropes in an ad with images of
prominent Jews, including George Soros.
Once
in office, in addition to making common cause with the Nazis of
Charlottesville, Trump stocked his administration with Stephen K. Bannon and
other figures of the nationalist “alt-right;” … issued a Holocaust remembrance
statement without mention of Jews; lamented the attempts to silence Alex Jones, who peddles
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and, declaring himself a “nationalist,”
increased verbal attacks on “globalists,” particularly Soros.
Millbank forgot to mention the appointment as an advisor of the openly
neo-Nazi Sebastian
Gorka. Also worth reading is Millbank’s Anti-Semitism
is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.
There is no foreign leader who is closer to America’s bigot-in-chief than
Benjamin Netanyahu. In January 2017 Netanyahu tweeted
‘President Trump is right. I built a wall
along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great
success. Great idea.’
It is no surprise therefore that Netanyahu dispatched
the most racist member of Israel’s cabinet, Naftali Bennett, leader of Jewish
Home to Pittsburgh. He once remarked
that ‘I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with
that.’
In April, Netanyahu reached a deal with the UN High Commission for Refugees
whereby for every refugee taken in by Europe another would stay in Israel.
Bennett led
the campaign against the deal saying that it "will turn Israel into a paradise for infiltrators."
Sending Naftali Bennett to comfort the Jews of America is like sending a
member of the KKK as Ambassador to Barbados.
Trump’s partner in race hatred is Netanyahu,
who has made it his business to demonise the Black African refugees who mostly
live in South Tel Aviv. Their crime being Black and not Jewish. Netanyahu has
done everything humanly possible to deport these refugees back to Africa
knowing full well the danger they would be in. For Netanyahu and Israeli Labour
Party leader Avi Gabbay their problem is that they threaten
‘the social fabric of society, our
national security and our national identity."
What happened in Pittsburgh
demonstrates graphically where the threat to Jews in the West comes from and it
isn’t the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ of the Labour Party. It is the White Supremacist
groups who make up America’s alt-Right and in Europe the parties of the
far-Right who are part of the governments of Italy, Poland, Hungary, Austria
and other East European states.
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| Sussex Friends of Israel use the massacre of liberal Jews in America to attack Jeremy Corbyn |
It was therefore entirely predictable
that the far-Right Sussex Friends of Israel, at least one of whose leading
members has joined supporters of Tommy Robinson in demonstrations, should seek
to make political capital out of the attack in Pittsburgh. When Jeremy Corbyn stated
that his thoughts were ‘with those killed
or injured in this horrific act of antisemitic violence, and with their loved
ones. We must stand together against hate and terror.’ The SFI response
was to attack ‘the gross hypocrisy of
someone calling an antisemitic, genocidal, terror group - whose very charter calls for the killing of Jews - his
‘friends’ and then of offering his sympathies when they actually are!’
Hamas, to whom SFI are referring, is none of these things.
Ha’aretz’s Chemi Shalev spoke
for many when he wrote that ‘The victims
of the horrific terror attack on the Tree of Life synagogue were murdered first
and foremost because of their identification with the values that both leaders
abhor.’
Shalev observed that when Trump said
that the massacre might have been avoided if there had been armed guards, he
was blaming the victims. Pulling no punches Shalev commented that ‘if the support of their own foul-mouthed,
race-baiting president wasn’t enough of a burden, the hypocritical expressions
of support emanating from Jerusalem...
add insult to the American-Jewish injury.’
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| Dan Stein, one of those murdered |
The oldest victim was 97 year old Rose
Mallinger. Details of some of the victims are printed by the Jewish
Forward.
Perhaps the most telling remarks were made by Avi Gabbay, the leader of the
Israeli Labour Party. His advice
demonstrates that Zionism is a surrender to anti-Semitism.
‘the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting should spur American Jews to
move to Israel’ and ‘come home.’ The report noted ‘While
others focused on sending sympathy, the tone-deaf Gabbay called “upon the Jews of the United States to
immigrate more and more to Israel, because this is their home.”
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| Avi Gabbay, leader of the Israeli Labor Party, agrees with America's neo-Nazis that Jews do not belong there |
There is nothing that Bowers and America’s
neo-Nazis desire more than for American Jews to depart for Israel. As the founder
of America’s alt-Right Richard Spencer has often declared,
he is a White Zionist. Gabbay demonstrated
that when it comes to Jews in society, Zionism’s belief is the same as the anti-Semites
– Jews do not belong. Our message should equally be clear. Jewish homes are
where Jews reside. Israel is not the
home of world Jewry.
The irony is that although Robert Bowers recognized
the Jews of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue as Jewish, the Israeli state
does not. Conservative Jews are not considered Jewish by Israel’s Orthodox
Rabbinate. Thus it is that Israel’s Chief Rabbi refused to call the Tree of
Life a synagogue preferring to say that it was ‘a place with profound Jewish flavor’. In Israel Jews are the herrenvolk and you have to have precise
and clear definitions of who is part of the master race. That is the role of Orthodox
rabbis. Israel's
Chief Rabbi Refuses to Call Pittsburgh Massacre Site a Synagogue Because It's
non-Orthodox
Peter Beinart of The Forward The
Special Kind Of Hate That Drove Pittsburgh Shooter — And Trump asked
‘Why did Robert Bowers murder eleven people yesterday at the Tree of
Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh? We’re unlikely to ever fully grasp his motives.
But he was enraged, it appears, by the fact that synagogues were participating
in a program run by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that dedicated special
Shabbat services to the plight of refugees. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in
that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw
your optics, I’m going in,” Bowers wrote hours before his attack. In another post, he
declared, “Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL
Muslims into the Country!!”
Beinart observed that
‘Sheldon Adelson — who thinks all terrorists are Muslim
— is Trump’s biggest financial backer. Mort Klein, head of the Zionist
Organization of America — who recently referred to “filthy Arabs” — is thrilled that Trump is
trying to keep Muslims out of the United States. Last year, Republican Josh
Mandel, who was running for the Senate in Ohio, retweeted a tweet declaring
that, “I am so sick and tired of PC
idiots worrying about offending Islam. I stand with Israel and my
Judeo-Christian culture and I find Islam offensive.” Joel Pollak is
senior-editor-at-large of Breitbart, which warns endlessly about the threat
Americans face from depraved Muslim and Latino refugees.
Beinart argued that:
‘For Jews, the lesson
of yesterday’s massacre is very simple and very old: Protecting the strangers
among us is not charity. It is self-defense.’'… “Hate them, not us” is a losing
strategy because once empowered, bigots widen their targets. For people who
define America as a white Christian nation, Jews will never be white enough.’
As Beinart notes, 36 times in the Torah
Jews are reminded to be like Abraham and Lot: To remember the heart of
the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. It is not a lesson
that Zionism and the State of Israel wish to hear when seeking greater racial purity.
The Jews of
Pittsburgh died because they rejected Zionism’s values and that is how they
should be remembered. I recommend the article below.
Tony
Greenstein
What
Has Trump Done To Us, America?
October 27, 2018
I have another daughter who is a nurse practitioner and right now is delivering health care to the Rohingya, whose plight is creating the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world.
And yet today, the daughter I am most worried about is the one in Brooklyn, who takes her children to synagogue on Shabbat as often as she can.
Because today, a synagogue on Shabbat was a deadly, terrifying place for a Jew to be.
What has happened to America?
We have become a nation in which Jews are increasingly targeted and attacked. The Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit of anti-Semitism found that anti-Semitic incidents rose 57 percent in 2017, the largest single year increase on record and the second highest reported since the ADL started to keep track in 1979.
No one is immune: At least one incident occurred in every state. In schools, community centers and cemeteries. And now, this year, in a synagogue.
What has happened to America?
We have become the nation of immigrants that is turning its back on immigrants, throwing them away from the border, separating families, locking up their children, and portraying them as satanic creatures ready to invade rather than ordinary people fleeing untenable circumstances.
So is it any wonder that Robert Bowers, the man arrested for shooting eleven people dead this morning at Etz Chaim synagogue in the heavily Jewish Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, was obsessed with HIAS, the legendary immigrant aid society that has helped Jews and non-Jews for more than a century?
“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he wrote on a social media post that has since been deleted. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
We have become a nation where even the sacred space of worship no longer offers protection against raging white men with guns. (And they are almost always white men with guns.) Etz Chaim in Pittsburgh will now join the ignoble list of religious sanctuaries splattered with blood. Southerland Springs, Texas in 2017 (26 people dead.) Antioch, Tennessee in 2017 (one dead, many wounded.) Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 (nine dead.) The list really can go on.
But very worst of all, we are a nation with a president who stokes this anger — against immigrants, against minorities, against anyone who disagrees with him at any moment — and then, when violence and death stain the landscape, blames the victims for not protecting themselves enough, as if that were the reason for the bloodshed.
It’s time for the Jewish community in all its many facets to confront the complicity of the man in the White House, and all who support him — with money, votes, political expertise and moral cover.
Because if you excuse the radical divisiveness spawned by this man, you are part of the problem. If you ignore his hateful tweets because you like his policies on Israel, you are part of the problem. If you silently cheer at the fascist-like rallies before only adoring audiences because you’ve got a few more dollars in your pocket, you are part of the problem.
If you want an America where every school, church, synagogue and mosque looks like a National Rifle Association convention, then you are part of the problem.
“These senseless acts of violence are not who we are as Americans,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said this afternoon.
Oh, but it is. It is who we are as Americans. This is who we have chosen to lead us. Every day that he diminishes the grandeur and privilege of his office, he destroys what’s left of our fundamental values — and if we don’t object, he’ll simply do it again.
We need to confront this ugly aspect of the American character and defeat it. That is the only way to take the memory of those murdered today and turn it into a blessing.
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