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Ulysses S. Grant’s redemption – from a scourge of Jews to a great friend

by Mojambo ( 90 Comments › )
Filed under Anti-semitism, History at December 10th, 2012 - 8:00 pm

I always love stories about redemption and this is a great one. Grant’s initial actions show us the dangers of acting in haste, anger, and without reflection – yet he was able to make atonement for it later on. Abraham Lincoln comes out looking heroic and wise in the story as well.

by Jeff Jacoby

In the American experience, anti-Semitic decrees have been virtually unthinkable. Religious liberty is enshrined in the Constitution, and early in his presidency, George Washington went out of his way to assure the young nation’s Jews that “the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” During the long centuries of Jewish exile, powerful officials had often promulgated sweeping edicts depriving Jews of their rights or driving them from their homes. In America, that could never happen.

But 150 years ago this month, it did.

In December 1862, with the Civil War raging, the Union Army’s efforts to control the movement of Southern cotton was bedeviled by illegal speculation and black marketeers. Like many of his contemporaries, Major General Ulysses S. Grant — then commanding a vast geographic swath called the Department of the Tennessee — shared a crude stereotype of all Jews as avaricious, corner-cutting swindlers. That ugly prejudice boiled over in General Orders No. 11, the most infamous anti-Semitic injunction in American history: “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from this department within 24 hours.”

The region commanded by Grant was home to several thousand Jews (including men in uniform serving under him). Fortunately, General Orders No. 11 had little direct impact on most of them. Jews were driven out of Paducah, Ky., and some towns in Mississippi and Tennessee, and there were accounts of Jewish travelers being imprisoned and roughed up. But a breakdown in military communications slowed the spread of Grant’s directive, and at least some officers had qualms about enforcing it. Brigadier General Jeremiah C. Sullivan, the Union commander of Jackson, Tenn., commented tartly that “he thought he was an officer of the Army and not of a church.”

What stopped the expulsion order cold, however, was the commander-in-chief. When word of Grant’s edict reached President Lincoln on Jan. 3, 1863, he immediately countermanded it. “To condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad,” the president declared. “I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”

[…….]

As historian Jonathan Sarna relates in a recent book, “When General Grant Expelled the Jews,” Grant’s order did his military career no harm. Within a few years he was commander of all Union armies and the Confederate surrender at Appomattox made him a national hero. He was elected president in 1868, and reelected four years later.

Yet for the rest of his life, Grant was ashamed of having attempted to evict “Jews as a class” for offenses most of them had never committed. “What his wife, Julia, called ‘that obnoxious order’ continued to haunt Grant up to his death,” Sarna writes. “The sense that in expelling them he had failed to live up to his own high standards of behavior, and to the Constitution that he had sworn to uphold, gnawed at him. He apologized for the order publicly and repented of it privately.”

Not surprisingly, Grant’s order got a good deal of attention in the 1868 presidential campaign — the first time a “Jewish issue” played a role in presidential politics. Grant didn’t deny that General Orders No. 11 had grossly violated core American values. “I do not sustain that order,” he wrote humbly. “It would never have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment it was penned, and without reflection.”

But it was as president that the full extent of Grant’s regret became clear. He opposed a movement to make the United States an explicitly Christian state through a constitutional amendment designating Jesus as “ruler among the nations.” He named more Jews to government office than any of his predecessors — including to positions, such as governor of the Washington Territory, previously considered too lofty for a Jewish nominee.

Grant became the first American president to openly speak out against the persecution of Jews abroad. In response to anti-Jewish pogroms in Romania, he took the unprecedented step of sending a Jewish consul-general to Bucharest to “work for the benefit of the people who are laboring under severe oppression.” All in all, the eight years of Grant’s presidency proved to be a “golden age” in US Jewish history. When he died in 1885, he was mourned in synagogues nationwide.

It was a remarkable saga of atonement. From scourge of the Jews to their great friend in Washington; from the general who trampled Jewish liberty to the president who made protection of their rights a priority. [……..]

Read the rest – Ulysses S. Grant’s greatest regret

Tags: Civil War, Jeff Jacoby, Ulysses S. Grant
Posted in Anti-semitism, History | 90 Comments »

A wintry ‘spring’ for Arab Christians

by Mojambo ( 49 Comments › )
Filed under Christianity, Egypt, Islamic Supremacism, Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia (Islamic Law), Turkey at December 9th, 2011 - 11:30 am

How ironic is it that Iraqi Christians were probably safer under Saddam then they are now under the “democracy” we helped install in Baghdad? Now even Turkey’s Christians are threatened by the Islamists.

by Jeff Jacoby

IN THE FIRST ROUND of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, the hardline Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 36.6 percent of the vote — a plurality — and the even harder-line Salafist party, Al-Nour, won 24.4 percent. The Egyptian Bloc — a coalition of liberal, social-democratic, and secular parties — drew only 13.4 percent. So now we know what the “Spirit of Tahrir Square” looks like when it’s put to a vote: In the world’s largest Arab nation, the forces of sharia and jihad are winning in a landslide.

The credo of the Muslim Brotherhoodis explicitly illiberal and theocratic: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, a Salafist sheik and Nour Party candidate, demands a society in which “sharia is obligatory” — an Egypt, as he explained in a public debate, with “citizenship restricted by Islamic sharia, freedom restricted by Islamic sharia, equality restricted by Islamic sharia.”

Sad to say, these are the fundamentalist blooms of the Arab Spring. The Islamist ascendancy – in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt this year, as in Gaza and (non-Arab) Turkey previously — bodes ill for the region’s moderate and tolerant Muslims. Whistling past the graveyard, the editor of The Daily Star in Beirut exhorts the world to “Celebrate the Democratic Arab Moment,” and declares that the commitment of Arab societies to democratic openness and pluralism “now seems firmly affirmed.” Indeed, he says, it “was never in doubt, except perhaps in the minds of lingering colonialists and racists.” The anti-Islamist liberals getting wiped out in Egypt’s elections might beg to differ.

Even more ominous are the prospects for the Arab world’s Christians, who have been undergoing not a springtime of toleration but an increasingly frightful winter of suffering and persecution. Since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s Coptic minority has been repeatedly victimized – churches have been destroyed, homes have been vandalized, and jihadist mobs have rampaged through Christian neighborhoods. In October, Egyptian troops in Cairo’s Maspero district slaughtered Christians as they protested the burning of churches in Upper Egypt. Even before the Maspero pogrom, Christians by the tens of thousands had beenfleeing post-Mubarak Egypt. You don’t have to be a “lingering colonialist and racist” to fear there may be even worse to come.

[…]

Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, The Wall Street Journal noted on Monday, “at least 54 Iraqi churches have been bombed and at least 905 Christians killed in various acts of violence. . . . Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled.” The archbishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Kirkuk and Sulimaniya calls the emigration a “hemorrhage,” warning that “Iraq could be emptied of Christians.” In Syria, meanwhile, Catholic and Orthodox communities are terrified of what awaits them if the current regime is overthrown. According to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, the country’s archbishops were summoned to the presidential palace soon after the uprising against Bashar al-Assad began, and bluntly warned: “Either support me, or your churches will burn.”

[…]

It takes more than voting to sustain decent democratic values. Totalitarians from Hitler to Hamas, after all, have come to power via the ballot. Revolts and demonstrations may topple Arab dictators, and their replacements may be chosen in elections. But there will be no Arab Spring worthy of the name without pluralism, freedom, and tolerance.

“Such tolerance is particularly important when it comes to religion,” Obama declared last May – so important that America would defend it with “all of the diplomatic, economic, and strategic tools at our disposal.” Fine words. But with Islamists sweeping to power around them and human-rights activists warning of genocide, thebeleaguered Christians of the Middle East need more than words.

Read the rest: For Arab Christians a ‘wintry’ spring

Tags: Jeff Jacoby
Posted in Christianity, Egypt, Islamic Supremacism, Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia (Islamic Law), Turkey | 49 Comments »

Say goodbye to the nastiest man in congress

by Mojambo ( 100 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Politics, Progressives at December 5th, 2011 - 8:30 am

Actually I would put Pete Stark and Maurice Hinchey (and even Alan Grayson had he not been defeated) as being even nastier then Barney Frank.

by Jeff Jacoby

BARNEY FRANK may be the only member of Congress who has ever made headlines for not acting like a jerk.

When the longtime Massachusetts representative found himself last year facing — for the first time in decades — a surprisingly strong Republican challenge, journalists noticed something strange: He wasn’t being as nasty as usual. He wasn’t responding to questions with his trademark put-downs. He wasn’t condescending to critics with quite as much sneering contempt.

“Barney Frank reinvents himself as a nice guy,” wrote Jonathan Strong in a story for The Daily Caller. The Boston Herald’s Margery Eagan, “bracing to get hammered” when she asked Frank some questions, was amazed when, instead of insulting or berating her, he answered her questions “almost diplomatically.”

But Frank’s unwonted restraint vanished on election night. In what may have been the most graceless victory speech in US congressional history, he savaged the Herald, accused Republicans of engaging in “vituperation [and] anonymous smears,” and proclaimed his re-election “a victory for a concept of government which eschews anger and vitriol.”

Which was quite a proclamation, coming from someone who is as renowned for his invective and browbeating as for his liberalism and smarts. When Frank eventually goes to his eternal reward – and I wish him many more years of activity and good health – it’s safe to assume that the words “He eschewed anger and vitriol” will not be engraved on his monument.

[…]

Politics and passion have always gone together, and all other things being equal, a quick-witted congressman with strong views and the ability to defend them is preferable to a colorless drudge. No one has ever doubted Frank’s intelligence or wit, and it isn’t only liberals who could appreciate his gift for wry retorts. (“My colleagues on the other side have decided to adopt a Marxist idea,” he said during one House debate. “The Marx in question, of course, is Chico.”)

But it’s one thing to be a quotable curmudgeon. It’s something quite different to be a bully.

Frank has long been “one of the most notorious bullies” on Capitol Hill, remarked Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. The Massachusetts Democrat will be remembered not just for his left-wing politics or as the first openly gay member of Congress, but also for his “gratuitous nastiness,” as Milbank put it – the public tongue-lashings, the spiteful mockery, the caustic abuse of aides, the almost routine willingness to tell people how stupid they are. This isn’t just impatience; Frank plainly takes a certain pleasure in publicly humiliating his victims. It isn’t hard to find stories of Frank berating someone to the point of tears. But I have never heard of him apologizing for it afterward.

Ironically – or maybe it’s just human nature – Barney Frank has no trouble excoriating in others the ugly behavior to which he so often resorts. He has been unsparing toward Newt Gingrich, for example, describing him as having “made a career out of attacking people around here and trying to rip them apart.” I have heard him caution his allies on the left about the importance of “showing a bit of respect for cultural values with which you disagree,” and admonishing them not to “call people bigots and fools just because you disagree with them.”

But when Frank – who often condemns the sour tone in Washington and Congress — was politely asked on NBC’s “Today” show last week whether he might have contributed to the bitterness in the Capitol, his answer was no. Instead, he nastily scolded the anchor for her “negative approach.”

[…]

Read the rest: Frank’s sneering insults wont be missed

Tags: Barney Frank, Jeff Jacoby
Posted in Democratic Party, Politics, Progressives | 100 Comments »

The evil still remains

by Mojambo ( 50 Comments › )
Filed under Anti-semitism, History, Holocaust, Israel, World War II at May 1st, 2011 - 4:30 pm

Sixty-six years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, anti Semitism and genocide still lives!. It is no surprise that the post World War II genocides occur where Communists or Muslims rule.

by Jeff Jacoby

ON JANUARY 30, 1945, shortly after Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz death camp, a Polish doctor from nearby Oswiecim entered the vast Nazi complex to help care for the survivors. In his chronicle of what he saw that day, Dr. Tadeusz Chowaniec described his first view of Block 11, one of the 28 barracks that comprised the oldest part of the camp:

“We walked down the cement stairs to the cellar. The stairs were slippery, and splattered with blood and mud. Strips of underclothing, soiled with excrement, lay everywhere. The corpses of men and women filled the corridor, which was almost 40 meters long. The corpses were naked, and their rib cages and hip bones jutted out. The skin, which was all that held the bones together, was thin, greenish, and pale. . . . We looked on, stupefied.’’

The Germans slaughtered 1.3 million human beings in Auschwitz, of whom 1.1 million were Jews. Six of those Jews were my father’s parents, David and Leah Jakubovic, and their children Franceska, Zoltan, Yrvin, and Alice. Gassed to death in 1944, they represent 1 one-millionth — 0.000001 — of the 6 million European Jews annihilated in the Holocaust.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, it hardly needs to be said that mass murder didn’t end with the defeat of the Third Reich. In the decades since 1945, innocent men, women, and children beyond number have been massacred — in Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, in the Soviet gulag and North Korean slave camps, in Rwanda and Bosnia, Sudan and Syria, Congo and Uganda. Yet even in an epoch that has shattered every record for bloodiness and barbarity, the Holocaust is unique. What sets it apart from other campaigns of butchery is not its body count or its brutality or its genocidal nature. Nor is it the rapidity with which it was carried out, or the international indifference against which it unfolded.

[…]

To accomplish that destruction, one of the most advanced nations on Earth committed astonishing financial, industrial, and human resources. Murdering Jews was of a higher priority even than winning the war against the Allies. In 1944, with Germany’s military position growing desperate, military personnel and freight trains urgently needed on the battlefront were diverted to deport half a million Jews from Hungary and eastern Slovakia to the extermination camps. My father and his family were on one of those trains.

Hitler has been dead for 66 years, but in the ongoing campaign against the Jewish state, Hitlerism thrives. “Its geographic center of gravity has moved to the Middle East,’’ writes Robert Wistrich, the foremost modern scholar of anti-Semitism, “but the tone and content of the rhetoric, along with the manifest will to exterminate the Jews, are virtually identical to German Nazism. . . . Radical Islamists of every stripe openly proclaim at every opportunity that the eradication of Israel is a divine commandment, the will of God, and a necessary prologue to the liberation of mankind.’’

[…]