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Ron Jager
Ron grew up in the South Bronx of New York, making Aliyah in 1980. Served for 25 years in the IDF as a Mental Health Field Officer in operational units. Prior to retiring was Commander of the Central Psychiatric Clinic for Reserve Solders at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring has been involved in strategic consultancy to NGO's and communities in the Gaza Envelope on resiliency projects to assist first responders and communities. Ron has written numerous articles for outlets in Israel and abroad focusing on Israel and the Jewish world.
The Farhoud Pogrom remembered – June 1-2, 1941
A vast Jewish Diaspora underwent a process of communal annihilation prior to Israel’s establishment and continued during Israel’s formative years, yet we Israelis rarely talk about or commemorate these historic events. On the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel, at least 800,000 Jews lived in Arab countries. Today, those ancient Jewish Diaspora numbers only a few thousand at best. These numbers alone should give us pause: Emigration of more than 99 percent of the Jewish population in such a short time is unparalleled in modern Jewish history. Even the Jewish communities of Europe, which experienced the most extreme suffering of anti-Semitic violence, did not vanish entirely, or so abruptly. The story of the Jews from Arab lands is a saga that extends over hundreds of years and over a vast geographic region.
More than 800,000 Jews lived in the countries of the Arab world at the time of Israel’s founding. Virtually all of them fled or were forced out of their homes and communities after Israel’s establishment with more than three-quarters of these Jewish refugees moving to Israel. The once-thriving communities they had established in places such as Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Tunisia shrunk and, in some cases, virtually disappeared. The Jews of these Arab nations were forced to leave behind most if not all of their property and businesses with no compensation other than being allowed to remain alive to flee.
Thousands of pages of testimony have been collecting dust in various government offices in Israel since the 1950s. Under the bureaucratic heading “Registry of the Claims of Jews from Arab Lands,” they tell of lives cut short, of individuals and entire families who found themselves suddenly homeless, persecuted, humiliated. Together they relate a tragic chapter in the history of modern Jewry, a chain of traumatic events that signaled the end of a once-glorious Jewish Diaspora. Yet for all its historical import, this chapter has been largely repressed, scarcely leaving a mark on Israel’s collective memory, largely ignored by the mainstream printed and broadcasted media. The issue of Jewish refugees from Arab nations has not been on the agenda of the academic world always in tune to remain politically correct, proactively refraining from endangering the accepted false narrative of Arab refugees central to Palestinian Arab propaganda.
On the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, June 1-2, 1941; 83 years ago, the Muslim residents of Baghdad carried out a savage pogrom against their Jewish neighbors. In this pogrom, known by its Arabic name al-Farhoud, the pogrom of "violent dispossession" was carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad. Over 180 Jews were murdered and mutilated and thousands wounded; Jews were killed randomly, women and children were raped in front of their relatives, and babies crushed. Jewish property was plundered; homes, business, places of worship, communal institutions were looted, set ablaze and destroyed. Historians have referred to the Farhoud as being a pogrom associated with the Holocaust. The Farhoud has also been called the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq, propagating the mass migration of Iraqi Jews out of the country, of which the majority made Aliyah in masse to the newly established State of Israel.
The linking of the Farhoud to the Holocaust is based on historical record and involved Muslim leaders who fully identified with the Nazi regime and played an active role in promoting the annihilation of Jewry of the Middle East. At the time, under the auspices of the British Mandate representatives, a governmental commission of inquiry was established concerning the Farhoud, and determined that the Nazi propaganda of Radio Berlin had been one of the massacre’s foremost instigators. The first Arab-language Nazi radio station was launched in Berlin prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, broadcasting anti-British, anti-American, anti-Soviet, and particularly anti-Semitic propaganda. It thus helped spread radical anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The messages in the propaganda broadcasts were designed to achieve certain goals, such as winning the Arab population’s sympathy for the Nazis and the Führer, stoking Arab national sentiments, incitement against the Jews, and blaming the Jews for being behind all the Arab world’s calamities and failures. The commission’s report also identified the main individuals who had impelled the assault. It pointed to the extensive activity of Dr. Fritz Grobba, the German ambassador to Baghdad, and to the activity of the former mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini, who had fled to Iraq from Mandatory Palestine in October 1939 and begun inciting against the Iraqi Jews. The mufti had also worked with Iraqi subversive elements, including Rashid Ali, to overthrow Iraq’s ruling Hashemite monarchy and install a pro-Nazi regime.
For those interested in further exploring the rich history of Iraqi Jewry, and learning more about the Farhoud, I highly recommend visiting The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, located in the central Israeli town of Or Yehuda. The Center was established in 1973 to preserve the history of the Jewish community in Iraq and to ensure that it remains part of the future narrative of the Jewish nation. The Center fosters research, preservation and publication of the culture and folklore of Iraqi Jewry. Adjacent to the Center is the Museum of Babylonian Jewry, opened to the public in 1988 and exhibiting chapters from the history of Babylonian Jewry throughout the generations over the course of more than 2,600 years.
As we in Israel and throughout the Jewish world everywhere process the tragic and painful consequences of the May 7th massacre in Southern Israel, we should always remember that this infamous date will join a long line of dates and events such as the Faroud on June 1-2, 1941 when Jews were murdered for no other reason than being Jews. It is our imperative to give meaning to their deaths by not only commemorating but ensuring that we learn from the past and never forget.
Denial, Bewilderment, and the American Dream
Being a former New Yorker, and going thru my formative years on the Grand Concourse in the South Bronx hasn’t made it any easier understanding the mindset of those that I met during my recent visit. The aftermath of the Oct 7 massacre by the Hamas terror group and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip, the explosion of anti-Semitism on the campuses and streets of America, the rise of former President Donald Trump as November 4th approaches, and the snowballing demise of President Joe Biden have changed the rules of the game, and as a result American Jews are questioning many former assumptions and uncontested givens that have been valid for many years. It seems that although the Jewish people are a resilient and overly optimistic people, so sure that our successes will be sustainable, it takes a while for changes to sink in. For some of us, we wake up in time, but for the majority, it will be too late when they realize what the future will bring to their doorstep.
Surprisingly, yet the most obvious and all-encompassing sign of the change that America is going through has to do with the fast-food chain McDonalds and the direct consequence of the progressive Democratic Party’s economic policies and interference in the most successful business model since Henry Ford improved the assembly line. The fast food industry thrived by offering edible food at low prices and was the perfect answer for working mothers who needed to give their kids a meal. Under Joe Biden’s watch, inflation and the unionization of fast-food workers along with unrealistic state-mandated minimum wages have made fast food something it was never intended to be: a luxury item. I was simply unprepared for how many had mentioned the exuberant price of a big Mac these days.
The largest denomination of American Jews that I met, had nothing to do with their religious affiliation and were equally represented by the full spectrum of orthodox-traditional-reform Jews. This group were top heavy in the area of Nassau Country in Long Island where I am staying. They have “made it” and are living out the American Dream: nice homes, second homes in Florida, a high standard of living, money is not their primary concern. They are able to avoid the hard realities of street anti-Semitism, they never ever do public transportation, their exposure to the war in Gaza is limited to prime time, and their college age kids do zoom or go to exclusive or religious and safe academic institutions. They actually believe that nothing has really changed, that the current situation will blow over, and that they will continue to be impervious and distanced from the harsh realities of Jew hatred sweeping the Western World. They act as if all of this is not their problem.
Those in denial were mainly found among the progressive Jews who seemed unable and unwilling to take off their progressive life jackets, holding on with dear life. Even after Oct 6th, they blame Israel and Zionism, they blame Netanyahu, they blame the Jews; they refuse to publicly support Israel, the Middle East’s most tolerant, most liberal, and diverse country. They refuse to admit that the Jewish nation are made up of an indigenous people who overcame centuries of programs and never ending persecution, overcoming and defeating their colonial masters and rebuilding modern Israel into a thriving liberal Democracy. They deny that Israel is based on a vibrant, tolerant, and liberal society. They all despise Trump. A not so small contingent of deniers’ were among the orthodox who actually saw something positive in the current situation. They believe that religious Jews will be less inclined to assimilate and that it will strengthen the cohesiveness of the orthodox community maintaining a greater affiliation of those within the ranks.
The largest group of Jews that I met, and those that evoked the greatest empathy were those that were experiencing bewilderment. They are up to date and consuming news from Israel and from the domestic front equally. They are aware that the Muslim mobs on the campuses and the streets act and express the same sense of righteous power as the Hitler Youth of the 1930’s. They admit and are aware of these Muslim mobs who freely vent their rage against the Jews, Israel, and anyone else who stands in their way. They have come to the realization that as Jews they will never be left alone to live in peace. They understand that they will never have quiet, even if they make all the changes to their way of life so that they no longer offend these mobs overrunning the campuses and the streets of their declining city. They express an overwhelming helplessness being unable to protect their families, their homes, and their community. They have lost their sense of personal security and of America being a safe haven. More and more are taking out gun permits to protect themselves. Many see the coming Presidential elections as a watershed event, which will motivate Jews to vote unlike their voting patterns in recent years. Making Aliyah was never brought up as an option, at least for now.
These bewildered Jews evoke memories of Ronald Reagan, the former republican President, following Trump's landmark rally in the South Bronx this past Thursday, where thousands turned out to support the 2024 presidential candidate. In the summer of 1980, Ronald Reagan visited the South Bronx. That visit preceded Reagan's narrow victory in New York by nearly 3 percentage points in the 1980 general election. Since Reagan's victories, no Republican president has won this traditionally Democratic stronghold during a general election.
It is fair to say that American Jewry is in the midst of a collective crisis. The good news is that crisis can also be an opportunity for change or making decisions that otherwise would not seem applicable. With today’s anti-Semites popping up in two distinct forms; the first is your classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “Hitler was right” neo-fascist Americans. The second is the kind who buys every lie coming out of Al Jazeera and the rabidly anti-Semitic Arab press and is associated with Muslim Americans and their supporters. The problem with both kinds of Jew hatred is that they have become socially acceptable and are repeated freely without legal or enforcement consequences on campuses, on social media, and on the broadcasted/printed media. Maybe, this is where it should begin for all American Jews, making it not “cool” to express Jew hatred and demanding accountability for those that abuse their first amendment rights.
President Joe Biden’s “Chauncey Gardener Syndrome”
Since his election as President, Joe Biden has been presented to the general public as a man of good breeding, intelligent, knowledgeable, and competent. Biden’s simplicity is mistaken for profoundness, his years at the Senate as proof of his experience, and his befriending of billionaires and foreign nations as nothing more than political astuteness. Yet when Biden utters a word, it become virtually impossible to understand and follow what he is saying; the 400% increase in anti-Semitic attacks on American Jews, the Muslim take-over of campuses, the war in Gaza against the terror organization Hamas, the International Criminal Court in the Hague and their recent decision to seek arrest warrants against the Prime Minister of Israel, the American economy and spiraling cost of living, the open borders allowing unrestricted and illegal entry to the United States, are all happening under his watch and yet no one has a clue as to what he really thinks and what he really understands, and lastly what he plans to do about it.
Whenever I see, hear, and listen to Joe Biden as he attempts with great effort to be coherent, understandable, and believable; I am always reminded of the character “Chauncey Gardener” from the movie “Being There”.
In the film “Being There”, Chance introduces himself as "Chance . . . the gardener,'' and is misunderstood as having said "Chauncey Gardener.'' Chauncey can best be described as a simple and unassuming man at peace with himself. As the movie unfolds, we learn that Chauncey has lived all of his sheltered life inside the townhouse and walled garden of a rich recluse. He knows what he needs to know for his daily routine: Where his bedroom and bathroom are, and how to tend the plants of the garden. His meals are produced by Louise, the cook. The movie provides no diagnosis of his condition. He is able to respond to given cues, and can, within limits, adapt and learn. Chauncey has mastered the art of sound bites from incessantly watching TV commercials. Sound familiar?
The hero (Chauncey) survives a series of challenges he doesn't understand, using words that are both universal and meaningless, soon is being interviewed on television, where his seemingly profound insights which are nothing more than sound bites that Chauncey remembers from watching years of TV commercials. Chauncey manages to avoid being pinned down to anything specific by simply avoiding what he doesn’t comprehend. Chauncey’s use of slogans reveal how superficial public utterances can be and because he is middle-aged, well-groomed, dressed in tailored suits, he is automatically presumed to be a person of substance. The movie argues that if you look right, sound right, speak in platitudes and have powerful friends, you can go far in our society. This has Joe Biden written all over it.
Joe Biden's mental state and proneness to verbal gaffes, mispronunciations, forgetfulness, and outright confusion continue to be ignored by the progressive media when it comes to reporting on Joe Biden. The broadcasted and printed media have entirely avoided the issue of Joe Biden’s mental capacity and that’s despite the media’s obsessive reporting on Donald Trump in which the same media question Donald Trump’s sanity, mental deficiencies, and overall behavior. Much has been reported about Trump’s “fitness” to serve, yet when it comes to Joe Biden, his mental capacity is off the board and a non-starter with all the major media outlets.
The danger of continuing to ignore Joe Biden’s diminishing mental capacity and his ability to truly comprehend consequences of his decisions cannot be understated as the November Presidential elections are just around the corner. The question that we should be asking ourselves is whether the free and Democratic nations of the world can survive another four years of Joe Biden. On the domestic front, it seems that Biden’s one success has been to convince a large part of the American public to accept as normal and get used to the rampant anti-Semitism, the runaway crime and the breakdown of enforcement forces, the revolving door of the judiciary, the transformation of urban streets to encampments for the homeless and illegal immigrants, the blocking of roads, bridges, and tunnels by Muslims who have no understanding of what “freedom of speech means”, and to empower the progressive Democratic Party with another four years to completely transform the Unites States.
The danger and implications of Biden’s foreign policies, are equally worrying. Wither we examine the inaction on the part of the United States in deterring or repelling Russian aggression against the State of Ukraine, an ally of the United States or holding Israel back from completely destroying the capabilities of the terror organization of Hamas after attacking on Oct 7 the State of Israel, also an American ally; we can only wonder if Biden truly understands the consequences of his inaction to support American allies. Will Taiwan be the next victim in line, also an American ally?
Chauncey Gardiner” is the epitome of what can happen when a person lives only the moment with no real understanding of context and meaning. Chauncey was limited in the ways of the world, yet made vague comments that others, in high places, interpreted as insightful with hidden meanings. In reality they were just musings of a semi-literate person. President Joe Biden seems to inhabit a life full of blissful ignorance and for this he is being embraced by the liberal and progressive forces. As this charade reaches its climax on Election Day this November, more and more of the American people see through Joe Biden’s empty words. “Chauncey Gardiner” and Joe Biden as two sides of the same coin. Sometimes art imitates life and sometimes its life that is imitating art.
What starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews
The very first plane hijacked by Palestinian terrorists was an El Al passenger flight 426 on July 23, 1968. Researchers and military historians of terrorism have characterized this hijacking as a historical milestone in the advent of modern international air terrorism. Palestinian terror organizations practically invented airplane hijacking. As a result, and in response to this threat; today, at every airport in every country in the world, we all line up, Jews as well as non-Jews, for security checks. This is the global danger of dismissing the axis of Jew-hatred demanding the annihilation of the State of Israel that has taken over the streets and campuses of America and Western European nations. The first amendment has been hijacked to justify, normalize and legalize anti-Semitic “free speech” that promotes violence and disregard for law and order. This a threat not only to the Jewish people but to Western civilization as a whole. Jews have historically been the “canaries in the coal mine”. When applied to Jews, the phrase can be taken to signify threats to Jewish life and simultaneously a warning signal to society at large. It is imperative that we do our fellow citizens a big favor and identify clearly and boldly, without hesitation, the current sources of cultural and political poison being spewed by these anti-Jew, anti-Israel, and anti-American demonstrators before it’s too late.
Over the past decade, Qatar based foundations have spent upwards of 1.5 billion dollars to finance teaching initiatives in Universities across the United States, including Ivy leagues schools that have been at the forefront of violent demonstrations seen on the news. The objective of this massive influx of funding of academicians has been to form what at the time seem to be a strange alliance between the American radical left and representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that espouses radical Islamism and is banned in most Arab nations of the Middle East. At its epi-center lies an unnatural and unholy alliance of Muslim demonstrators who are at the forefront of the anti-Jew and anti-Israel protests, and the progressive elites of academia, the media, politicians, and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s). The inevitable result of this emerging alliance which is consistently growing, is that they act as if they have every right to trample on Democratic principles using whatever form of violence they choose to employ, to express their hatred of Jews, of Israel, and of America.
In recent weeks, the word “unacceptable” has been widely used by University heads and even law enforcement officials to describe the behavior of violent Muslim demonstrators and their supporters. However, the term has been rendered useless as Jewish students across the campuses of America are unable to leave their dorms or apartments and walk freely in safety to their classes without being physically accosted, publically ridiculed, and prohibited from responding despite their first amendment right to “free speech”. Jews are prohibited from counter demonstrating and have been ordered by law enforcement officials to leave and vacate their presence while the Muslim mobs and their supporters who are openly and defiantly violating campus rules, regulations, and the law are permitted to continue demonstrating. Pamphlets and literature found among the debris at numerous illegal campus encampments have explicitly called for “Death to America”. Denying the clear and present danger lurking behind the Keffiyehs worn by many of the demonstrators will not alter the real threat to the larger American and European societies.
These modern day Nazi inspired demonstrators have replaced their brown shirts with Keffiyehs. They have become a threat not only to Jews but to everyone who acts swiftly and decisively against the breakdown of law and order and demands accountability, without caving into the false and manipulative threat of being accused of Islamophobia. The current struggle on the campuses and streets is a preview for everyone, Jews as well as non-Jews. We are getting a glimpse of the developing and dramatic demographic and cultural changes taking place in Western nations, with the influx of millions of Muslim immigrants over the past decade and a half. The lack of border control on the Southern of the United States largely due to progressive border policies and the Democratic Party’s insistence on condoning unrestricted immigration, alongside years of progressive multi-culturalism that allowed and even facilitated the immigration of millions of Muslim into the European Union; have been the main culprits empowering a new generation of Muslims who rather than adopt values of their new Democratic home, and integrate into a diverse and Democratic communal order, are behaving as if Islam is the ruling religion with privileges, and all others should quietly accept their inferior status.
It’s never really been about the Jews or Israel. Pro-Palestinian intelligentsia have over the years never raised their opposition to Stalin, Mao, and Khomeini. They never uttered a word about Muslim voices and organizations that reject the LGBTQ community’s right to exist. They kept silent as President Assad of Syria butchered over a half million of his own countrymen including Palestinians and forced over five million refugees to flee for their lives. Not one demonstration was held on any campus when the Houthis restored slavery in Yemen. The Yazidi genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State (Sunni Muslims) during the years 2014-2017 characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, sexual slavery and forced conversions to Islam was nothing more than an hindrance, a blip on the radar, soon ignored and forgotten. No one in Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, or any Ivy League held massive protests for the victims in Yemen, Syria, and Sudan. Not one.
The Jews are a convenient stepping stone on the way to destroying Democratic liberalism and Democratic values. You have been warned: What starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews.