[Peace-discuss] Bend the Arc articles & my letter

[David Green]

The News-Gazette recently published an article about *Bend the Arc vs.
"white nationalism:*
https://www.news-gazette.com/news/chicago-teacher-nazi-expert-to-lead-bend-the-arc-event/article_5772a027-b6cf-574c-b078-83919e382c7d.html

*This morning the News-Gazette published this: *

ANTI-SEMITISM

Jewish group pushes Davis to condemn Trump

By PAUL WOOD

pwood at news-gazette.com

CHAMPAIGN — A progressive Jewish organization rallied outside U.S. Rep.
Rodney Davis’s office Friday to demand that the Taylorville Republican
speak out about the president’s statement that Jews who vote for Democrats
are disloyal to the country. Later, Davis did, through a spokesman.

Main speaker Diane Ore of Champaign said the group Bend the Arc asked Davis
to denounce Donald Trump for the statement that says such voting “shows
either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

Please see GROUP, B-3

Linda Yoakum, congressional aide to U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, left, speaks
with Marci Adelston-Schafer of Bend the Arc outside the Taylorville
Republican’s Champaign office Friday.

Paul Wood/The News-Gazette


------------------------------

GROUP

Continued from B-*1*

“Well, I’m a proud Jew and here’s what I know,” said Ore, the chairwoman of
Bend The Arc CU. “Claiming Jews are disloyal — that we are not full
Americans — is a centuries-old anti-Semitic trope designed to isolate and
endanger Jewish people.”

Hours later, Davis’ spokeswoman Ashley Phelps responded to the protesters.

“Congressman Davis has urged the president to tone down the rhetoric, tweet
less and govern more,” she said.

“At the same time, this is the same group who organized a protest outside
our Open Government Night, where one person had a sign that mocked the
congressman being shot at, and inside many shouted that they agree with
Bernie Sanders that Republican policies kill people. Congressman Davis
continues to encourage both sides to tone down the rhetoric.”

A dozen demonstrators were at the noon rally speaking out at the president’s
 words. “In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being very disloyal
to Jewish people, and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” Trump told
reporters in a different statement Wednesday, “and only weak people would
say anything other than that.”

Ore said she’s concerned

that repeating such comments motivates mass shootings.

“Beginning with Charlottesville, when Donald Trump said there were very
fine people on both sides, Rodney Davis kept silent,” she said.

She said Davis should speak out about Trump, “not for his tweeting
practice, but for making our democratic home feel more like Nazi Germany
than the United States of America, to which we have always pledged and will
always pledge our allegiance, regardless of its leadership.”

“We demand that you support common sense gun laws that will remove the
murder weapons from the hands of our assailants,” she added.

She said that Jews in his district deserve all the rights of his
constituents.

Bend The Arc member Terry Maher agreed with Ore that white nationalists are
a particular concern.

Anti-Semitism “has been going on since Biblical times. White nationalists
are part of this history, and the danger is all over the country, including
here.”

As an example, she referred to an outdoors menorah statue on the University
of Illinois campus that was vandalized three times in 10 months in recent
years.

“This isn’t hijinks,” Maher said


*Below is my submitted response to the first article, but could include the
second article as well:*


This responds to the recent article regarding the local chapter of the
Jewish “progressive” group Bend the Arc, which claims, in its efforts to
support migrants, to be opposing alleged “white nationalism” in our
community.

Regrettably, I find Bend the Arc, at national and local levels, politically
repellent on any number of counts that go beyond self-righteous
proclamations claiming to represent the moral legacy of Judaism and Jews.
At a general level, they wash their hands of concerns about U.S.
imperialism, which represents the basis for the migrant crisis they claim
to address.

They pointedly avoid addressing the convolutedly perverse relationships
among “white nationalism” and Jewish nationalism (Zionism), the racist
manifestations of which have pervaded Jewish-American institutions (and
academia) for over a half-century. Concretely, they demonize Donald Trump
while avoiding criticism of his (and their own) rabid support for Israeli
occupation and apartheid, support shared by the leadership of both parties.

Indeed, they are unaware that the notion of a “great replacement” of white
people is partly rooted in the Islamophobic views of a Jewish-European
woman, Bat Ye’or: a fake historian, rabid conspiracy theorist, and author
of *Eurabia *(2005). They are unaware that her views are rooted in her
previous Zionist propaganda regarding the historical status of Jews in the
Arab and Muslim worlds, propaganda weaponized to retroactively justify the
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The transparent agenda of Bend the Arc is to support whomever the
Democratic Party nominates, however Zionist, militarist, or imperialist. As
“progress,” that simply won’t do.

David Green
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