{"id":62404,"date":"2018-07-11T17:05:26","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T15:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=62404"},"modified":"2018-07-06T06:00:03","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T04:00:03","slug":"06-05-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=62404","title":{"rendered":"STANDING BY OUR VALUES"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>STANDING BY OUR VALUES<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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US PRESIDENT Donald Trump<\/strong>. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Since Trump took office, it has been difficult for me to be an American-Israeli. Watching fellow Israelis and American-Israelis cheer for a man who has no moral compass or capacity for empathy has been chilling. Moreover, the realization that so many members of my tribe care more about soulless buildings \u2013 like, say, an embassy \u2013 than they do about real people\u2019s lives has been crushing.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, though, as I observe the American government putting children into special toddler-prisons at the American border, these sentiments took perhaps the darkest turn yet. I realized, listening to all the rhetoric surrounding this cruel and inhumane treatment of families, that it\u2019s quite possible that the Trump administration is taking notes from the Netanyahu administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Specifically, when US Homeland Security Department Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was asked last week about the policy at the National Sheriffs Association annual conference in New Orleans, she said, \u201cWe will not apologize.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sound familiar? \u201cNever apologize\u201d was the campaign slogan of Education Minister Naftali Bennett. His party did extremely well thanks to that slogan. After all, what a relief, you know, to be able to live life without ever having to apologize. Do what you want to whomever you want and never look back. What power! It worked for Bennett and now the Americans are trying it out.<\/span><\/p>\n

This unyielding, detached, heartless bravado that the Israeli government has perfected and that the Americans are currently employing with children at the border has been echoed throughout this catastrophe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not caring about other people is the actual policy. For instance, Anne Chandler, who runs the Children\u2019s Border Project, was asked about this by Texas Monthly: \u201cSo I make sure I understand: the parents come in and say, \u2018We\u2019re persecuted\u2019, and then their child or children are taken away and they\u2019re in lockup for at least six weeks away from the kids and often don\u2019t know where the kids are. Is that what\u2019s happening under zero tolerance?\u201d She responded unequivocally, \u201cWe don\u2019t care why you\u2019re afraid.<\/span><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t care if it\u2019s religion, political, gangs, anything. For all asylum seekers, you are going to be put in jail, in a detention center, and you\u2019re going to have your children taken away from you. That\u2019s the policy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The policy of \u201cwe don\u2019t care why you\u2019re afraid\u201d is directly connected to \u201cwe will not apologize.\u201d It is a process of giving oneself permission to shut off care and compassion for another human being. It is very convenient, and it allows for \u201cpolicies\u201d that are divorced from people\u2019s real lives. It allows decision-makers to officially dehumanize and thus delegitimize the other, and instead to stand behind cold, calculated \u201cpolicy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jews should be particularly concerned about this. Even though it seems that at least one Jew is directly at the center of the creation of this policy \u2013 the violently anti-immigrant member of the tribe Stephen Miller who, along with Jeff Sessions, crafted the April 8, 2018 memo that created the current \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy \u2013 that doesn\u2019t mean that this is the Jewish way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the Bennetts and Millers of the world who make Judaism seem like a callous, heartless culture, Jews actually have deep historical, religious, and ethical reasons to protest these terrible actions.<\/span><\/p>\n

These ideas and practices violate our history. Jews know all too well about immigration, asylum-seeking, and the trauma of families being separated.<\/span><\/p>\n

It may sound extreme, but comparisons between Trump and Hitler abound. Sue Fendrick, whose mother survived the Holocaust after being separated from her parents \u2013 like so many others \u2013 wrote on Facebook that, \u201cI am here, my cousins are here, and my mother is alive, because people with far fewer resources and education than I have, said, \u2018Hell no, these people are not going to die on my watch,\u2019\u201d adding, that \u201cDo not tell me that Trump is not Hitler \u2013 the most pathetic damning with faint praise, or faint defense, imaginable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t not tell me that the people in his circle are not actual Nazis (some of them actually are).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump policy of separating out and incarcerating children violates our Jewish collective memory.<\/span><\/p>\n

The protest against dehumanization is also engraved into our religion.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are told 36 times in the Torah to be kind to strangers because we were strangers in Egypt. This is how our religion was founded \u2013 on the idea that even the most marginalized members of the human race deserve to live life with dignity and freedom. We were there, and the Torah tells us to remember that.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is more than our own religion, though. Compassion is at the core of all religions, according to Professor Karen Armstrong. The idea that we are all human and all equally deserve to be treated with basic respect is what Prof Armstrong calls \u201cthe golden rule\u201d, and she says that if you look deeply, all religions have this at their base. Except, perhaps, whatever religion Trump is currently practicing \u2013 which, by all calculations, may be none.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been tormenting to watch as Jews fawn all over Trump as if he is the Messiah. It is heartbreaking that so many of my landsmen and landswomen act as if the embassy location is more important than anything else \u2013 more important than how human beings are treated, more important than how the most vulnerable children in the world are being treated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jews and Israelis need to protest with all our might against the incarceration of innocent children and against the dehumanization of all or any human beings. And we need to push back with full force against the encroaching idea that we are allowed to never apologize and we are allowed to not care why other people are afraid. We need to do this not only to alleviate the suffering of others, but also to ensure that we don\u2019t completely lose our own humanity.
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The author is the vice chair of Media and Policy of Democrats Abroad-Israel<\/strong> and a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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STANDING BY OUR VALUES ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN US PRESIDENT Donald Trump. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons) Since Trump took office, it has been difficult for me to be an American-Israeli. Watching fellow Israelis and American-Israelis cheer for a man who has no moral compass or capacity for empathy has been chilling. Moreover, the realization that so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62404"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62429,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62404\/revisions\/62429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}