We are living in a maelstrom of hatred, ignorance, and virtue-signaling that is breathtaking to observe.  Jewish organizations and synagogues are marching in support of Black Lives Matter.  White people are prostrating themselves like slaves "bowing before black people and asking for forgiveness for their 'white privilege' and the 'structural racism' in the deplorable, irredeemable United States of America."

Anyone who is appalled at these actions is beginning to wonder about the sanity of this country.

 Of particular concern is the apparent all-in capitulation by American Jewry as they engage in this feel-good liberal response.

An open letter calls on Jewish organizations to endorse Black Lives Matter.

The letter asks Jewish organizations, federations ... to commit to fulfilling seven actions within three years.  They are endorsing Black Lives Matter; establishing racial justice as an organizational pillar; having a fifth of staff, senior leadership and board seats be filled by people of color; participating in anti-racist education; investing a fifth of all grants in organizations led by people of color; creating racial justice requirements for grant organizations, including 'a commitment to replacing contracts with police departments with alternative structures of community safety'; and developing a five-year, $1.5 million 'communal accountability' initiative.

The letter was organized by Lindsey Newman, director of community engagement at the Jewish diversity organization Be'chol Lashon; Aaron Samuels, co-founder and COO of the black media company Blavity; and Rachel Sumekh, the founder and CEO of the hunger relief organization Swipe Out Hunger.  'We chose these proposals because we believe they are achievable and if put into practice would make significant inroads toward making the Jewish community anti-racist[.]'

Frankly, a burglar intent on doing well in property appropriation couldn't ask for a better list of demands!

Am I the only individual who sees through this self-serving cloth of fabrication and misleading statements?  "Make the Jewish community anti-racist."  What world are these people living in?

Unfortunately, many naïve Jews think they are hearkening back to the days when genuine reform was needed to rid the country of legalized discrimination against blacks.  Those days are gone.  There are no "whites only" fountains.  Blacks have entered American political and economic life in ways that could only be imagined in the past.  Yet, because so many Americans are historically illiterate, they do not comprehend the enormous strides America has made.  That is what makes them perfect bait for the race grievance industry.

From the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Jews have been at the forefront of fighting for equal treatment under the law for fellow American blacks.  In fact, "statistically Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement.  Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans ... as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era.  Jews made up roughly half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s."  Moreover, "[t]he murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, also known as the Freedom Summer murders ... involved three activists who were abducted and murdered in Mississippi in June 1964."  Two of the three were Jews.

On a global scale, Israel was instrumental in saving the lives of black Jews from Ethiopia.  Operation Moses refers to the covert evacuation of black Ethiopian Jews from Sudan during a civil war that caused a famine in 1984.  Israel has aided Africa and Haiti when natural disasters strike.  Developing African nations depend on Israeli technological, humanitarian, medical, ecological, and agricultural advances in virtually every aspect of life.

Let's peel back the alleged racial justice demands.  Racial justice and other buzzwords such as "equity" pepper the progressive left movement.  They are used to camouflage the real motives of social justice programs — i.e., "taking money from the haves and giving it to the have-nots.  But what it's really about is power.  Its advocates want the power to do what they want, and if they say it's for social justice, that's supposed to make it OK."

What exactly is "anti-racist education"?  America is the least racist country in the world.  We have more people from around the globe than any other country.  One million immigrants are let in to this country each year.  Accommodations are made for them in the way of monetary assistance, language training, and scholarships.  But when young people marinate in anti-American indoctrination, and they keep hearing the drumbeat that America is evil because we once had slavery, what do you expect they will parrot back?  There is a complete dearth of knowledge about the greatness of this country.  Moreover, American Jewry long ago embraced social justice and liberalism over Jewish tenets and Judaic values.  It is what makes them such a captive audience for BLM and its ilk.  In their ignorance, Jews will be like the fly to the spider.

Currently, schools and businesses are mandating that "people of color" fill the seats of power.  At no time is excellence the bar, only the melanin level of an individual.  This smacks of the One Drop Rule that the Nazis used in the past.  It now rears its ugly head in a nicer packaging called diversity and multiculturalism.  It is still patently racist.  It is language meant to ensnare those who do not use genuine critical thinking skills.

Then there is the constant meme of increased police brutality against black Americans.  Yet the figures consistently disprove this libel.  In fact, "Black Lives Matter as a political movement — as distinct from, say, thinking that black lives matter, which most Americans do because they aren't racist — isn't interested at all in ameliorating the state of black America, or fighting actual racism, or expanding liberty and justice for all under our constitutional system.  This isn't an evolutionary movement but a revolutionary one."

As Caroline Glick points out, "[f]or American Jews, the violent riots constitute a challenge on several levels.  First, there is the challenge of squaring their political identity with their Jewish identity.  As the 2014 Pew survey of American Jews showed, around half of American Jews identify as progressives.  As progressives, many American Jews share the views of their non-Jewish progressive counterparts regarding the need to prioritize the interests of minority communities over their own interests."

But how can Jews support Black Lives Matter when it is an anti-Semitic organization?  In fact, "BLM was formed in 2014 as a merger of activists from the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, the anti-Semitic Black Panthers and Dream Catchers.  In 2016, BLM published a platform that has since been removed from its website.  The platform accused Israel of committing 'genocide' and referred to the Jewish state as an 'apartheid' state."

Furthermore, "[t]he platform also officially joined BLM with the anti-Semitic BDS campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.  BDS campaign leader Omar Barghouti acknowledges that the goal of the BDS movement is to destroy Israel."  Moreover, "BDS campaigns on US campuses are characterized by bigotry and discrimination directed against Jewish students."

And so, unsuspecting Jews "believe they must fight America's 'structural racism'" even if by doing so they will put their own civil rights at grave risk.  This Minneapolis rabbi actually asserts that he will ignore the anti-Semitism of BLM when he states that "[w]e can argue and joust and cry about Israel another day [emphasis mine].  Today, we have a categorical moral imperative to hear the pain of our black brothers and sisters.  And I know in my heart of hearts that I have to stand with them.  And so now and evermore we must all say Black Lives Matter.  And it is high time for the world to wake up to that reality, welcome it and assimilate it."

Under the idea of "tikkun olam" or saving the world, Jewish progressives have twisted Judaic ideas to suit their radical progressive ideas.  As Rabbi Aryeh Spiro explains, liberal Jewish groups are "manipulating Tikkun Olam to conform to their a priori devotion to liberalism and provide themselves license to socially engineer society" into a socialist welfare state.

Moreover, progressives have always been hostile to Israel.  Jews, uncertain and often ignorant of their own rich heritage, are choosing those who they believe are less privileged, yet it appears to have escaped their notice that this could result in the cost of their own identity and safety.

Add this to the fact that "[b]etween BLM's establishment in 2014 and the publication of its platform in 2016, anti-Israel activists went to great lengths to create an utterly false conceptual linkage between the Palestinians and African Americans.  Today, anti-Israel activists in the US have stepped up their efforts to capitalize on the riots. Anti-Israel activists in Bethlehem painted a picture of George Floyd wearing a khaffiyeh and draped in a Palestinian flag on the separation barrier."

A clear cut distinction needs to be made to support groups with legitimate grievances as opposed to those groups with ulterior and evil intentions wrapped up in good-sounding verbiage.  Such ideological blackmail and pandering will not end well for Jews, because they will be eaten alive by the behemoth of anti-white racism and prejudice and the overt and covert anti-Semitism that BLM, Antifa, and other such groups applaud.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.