Jewish handwringing
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Jewish handwringing

At only 7 years old in 1945, living on my father’s Air Force base, I got to see early, uncut newsreels of the Holocaust which seared into my consciousness feelings at that impressionable age of the horrific (and still present) reality of Jew-hatred. 

Apropos, Gabe Kahn’s Garden State of Mind “The gun problem’s plain to see” (March 15) leads me to wonder about the state of mind of those with a supposed Jewish consciousness and memory of history.

The present reality is that Jews continue to be, even in the United States, the most prevalent targets of hate-fomented violence. Yet, the most prevalent Jewish response seems to be the usual pacifistic handwringing and “denunciations” of hate together with a (typically Jewish) reflexive abhorrence of firearms.

Ironic that Jews who should be most afraid of totalitarian governments that persecute and disarm them, and who have historically not been protected by their fellow citizens, should not be able or willing to grasp that most elemental principle of survival: self-defense. 

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, Ben Franklin, and Noah Webster were among founding fathers who understood and spoke on the foundational principle of having an armed populace, coming from “the whole body of the people” which exists separate from federal authority and whose basic organizing and training unit was the “people’s” militia.

To quote “Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book,” “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an
armed man.” 

Yet Jews today remain prominent among those demonizing responsible gun ownership. And it’s not just about guns. The recent Jewish victims of “anti-Zionist” campus bullying seem merely to whine instead of mounting appropriately muscular demonstrations of Jewish pride and self-respect. How sad to witness the latest manifestations of the emasculated American Jew.

Philip H. Wolfson
Tinton Falls

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