Jay Michaelson writes:

After the 9/11 attacks, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that countries now had to choose between fighting terror and abetting it, that there was no neutral ground. In his metaphor, you were either sitting in the smoking section, or the no-smoking section.

In the wake of the worst attack on Jews in American history, all of us, but especially American Jews like me, face a similar decision. We either support Donald Trump and the movement of hate he has unleashed, or we oppose it. There is no neutral ground, no justification that the benefits outweigh the costs. You’re in the smoking section, or the no-smoking section.

For American Jews in particular, this is a moment of reckoning. In the Jewish community, support for Trump is lower than it has been for most Republican presidents, but it’s still around 21 percent. The majority of Jewish Trump supporters are either Orthodox or right-wing on Israel—in most cases, both. Among Orthodox Jews—who comprise about one-fifth of American Jews—support for Trump runs as high as 90 percent.

For two years, Jewish Trump supporters have said that the anti-Semitic alt-right isn’t Trump’s fault; that the president is not personally anti-Semitic (after all, his daughter and son-in-law are Jewish); and, most importantly, he has been a staunch supporter for Israel.

This, they say, outweighs whatever reservations we may have about Trump and the bigotry of his most ardent supporters.

As of October 27, 2018, that jig is up.

No amount of pro-Israel policies—no embassy in Jerusalem, no encouragement of settlements, no increased aid—outweighs the existential danger to Jews of the Trump movement’s coddling, or even overt encouragement, of anti-Semitism, racism, and nativism. Even those Jews not motivated by solidarity with Muslims, Mexicans, the media, and others singled out by Trump for opprobrium must now recognize that we Jews, ourselves, are at risk. [Continue reading…]

Masha Gessen writes:

A couple of hours before opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, Robert Bowers, the suspected gunman, posted on the social network Gab, “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.” HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and Bowers had posted about it at least once before. Two and a half weeks earlier, he had linked to a HIAS project called National Refugee Shabbat and written, “Why hello there hias! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?” Another post that most likely referred to HIAS read, “Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy evil jews Bringing the Filthy evil Muslims into the Country!!”

Bowers isn’t the only person apparently obsessed with HIAS. The extreme right has been vilifying the organization for some time. The anti-Semitic right has accused HIAS of bringing immigrants to the United States in a scheme that is somehow designed to benefit Jews. On the Jewish far right, the Zionist Organization of America has attacked hias and other Jewish organizations for lobbying to admit Syrian refugees to the U.S. and has accused HIAS of doing so for profit.

I am unlike most Americans—but like many, if not most, people who came here as refugees or asylum seekers—in that I was familiar with the HIAS acronym before the Pittsburgh shooting. I heard “He-ahs,” as it was pronounced in Russian, when I was fourteen and my family was about to leave the Soviet Union. I suspect no one in my family knew what the acronym stood for, but we had somehow learned that HIAS would take care of us once we crossed the border. Back then, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee would help the newly stateless Jewish émigrés from the U.S.S.R. to pay for housing and expenses while they stayed in Italy on their way to the United States. HIAS would process the paperwork, obtaining visas that eventually allowed my family and tens of thousands of others to enter the United States as refugees.

The year my family came to the United States, HIAS turned a hundred years old. It was founded in 1881 to help Jews fleeing the pogroms in the Russian Empire. In the second half of the twentieth century, it also aided Jews leaving Hungary, Cuba, Iran, and Ethiopia, and non-Jews from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In the two-thousands, HIAS reshaped its work to help displaced people all over the world. [Continue reading…]

On August 18,1790, during his second year in office as America’s first president, George Washington wrote:

If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

As America has become an insult to the vision of its founders, it’s time to remember the bedrock of this country’s foundation: that all people, irrespective of religion, race, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation, are created equal with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Somewhere along the way, the pursuit of happiness got displaced by the pursuit of personal wealth — a desire sustained by the fiction that happiness can be found in isolation and exclusion.

And yet Washington was clear in his hope that this would become the land of a happy people, recognizing that by its nature happiness is something that must be shared.

We either become a happy people embracing our diversity and caring for each other, or the fissures already fragmenting this society will continue to widen until there is no society at all.