MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-02-01 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] =?utf-8?q?The_lessons_of_Roosevelt=E2=80=99s_fail?=
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The lessons of Roosevelt’s failures
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-lessons-of-Roosevelts-failures-480065
Jerusalem Post Opinion
The lessons of Roosevelt’s failures
ByCaroline B. Glick
30 January 2017 21:50
The current media and left-wing uproar over the executive order US
President Donald Trump signed on Saturday is extraordinary on many levels.
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump speaks to reporters while signing executive
orders at the White House.
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump speaks to reporters while signing executive
orders at the White House on Tuesday.. (photo credit:KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)
Is US President Donald Trump the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Does his
immigration policy mimic Roosevelt’s by adopting a callous, bigoted
position on would-be asylum seekers from the Muslim world? At a press
conference on June 5, 1940, Roosevelt gave an unspeakably cynical
justification for his administration’s refusal to permit the desperate
Jews of Nazi Germany to enter the US.
In Roosevelt’s words, “Among the refugees [from Germany], there are some
spies... And not all of them are voluntary spies – it is rather a
horrible story but in some of the other countries that refugees out of
Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of
definitely proven spies.”
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The current media and left-wing uproar over the executive order US
President Donald Trump signed on Saturday which enacts a temporary ban
on entry to the US of nationals from seven Muslim majority countries is
extraordinary on many levels. But one that stands out is the fact that
opponents of Trump’s move insist that Trump is reenacting the bigoted
immigration policies the US maintained throughout the Holocaust.
The first thing that is important to understand about Trump’s order is
that it did not come out of nowhere. It is based on the policies of his
predecessor Barack Obama. Trump’s move is an attempt to correct the
strategic and moral deficiencies of Obama’s policies – deficiencies that
empower bigots and fascists while disenfranchising and imperiling their
victims.
Trump’s order is based on the 2015 Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. As
White House spokesman Sean Spicer noted in an interview with ABC News’
Martha Raddatz Sunday, the seven states targeted by Trump’s temporary
ban – Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia – were not
chosen by Trump.
They were identified as uniquely problematic and in need of specific,
harsher vetting policies for refugee applications by former US president
Barack Obama.
In Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, the recognized governments lack control
over large swaths of territory.
As a consequence, they are unable to conclude immigration vetting
protocols with the US. As others have noted, unlike these governments,
Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Egyptian officials have concluded and
implement severe and detailed visa vetting protocols with US immigration
officials.
Immigrants from Somalia have carried out terrorist attacks in the US.
Clearly there is a problem with vetting procedures in relation to that
jihad-plagued failed state.
Finally, the regimes in Sudan and Iran are state sponsors of terrorism.
As such, the regimes clearly cannot be trusted to properly report the
status of visa applicants.
In other words, the one thing that the seven states have in common is
that the US has no official counterpart in any of them as it seeks to
vet nationals from those states seeking to enter its territory. So the
US must adopt specific, unilateral vetting policies for each of them.
Now that we know the reason the Obama administration concluded that visa
applicants from these seven states require specific vetting, we arrive
at the question of whether Trump’s order will improve the outcome of
that vetting from both a strategic and moral perspective.
The new executive order requires the relevant federal agencies and
departments to review the current immigration practices in order to
ensure two things.
First, that immigrants from these and other states are not enemies of
the US. And second, to ensure that those that do enter the US are people
who need protection.
Trump’s order requires the secretary of state and the secretary of
homeland security to ensure that the new vetting processes “prioritize
refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based
persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority
in the individual’s country of nationality.”
Under the Obama administration, the opposite occurred. Christians and
Yazidis in Syria for instance, have been targeted specifically for
annihilation by Islamic State and related groups. And yet, they have
made up a tiny minority of visa recipients. According to Christian News
Service, during 2016, the number of refugees from Syria to the US
increased by 675%. But among the 13,210 Syrian refugees admitted to the
US, only 77, or 0.5% were Christians and only 24, or 0.18%, were Yazidis.
Similar percentages held in previous years.
On the second issue, of blocking potential terrorists from entering the
US, Trump’s order calls for measures to be taken to ensure that those
who ascribe to creeds that would endanger the lives of US citizens are
barred from entering.
Specifically, the order states, “The United States cannot, and should
not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would
place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United
States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred
(including ‘honor’ killings, other forms of violence against women, or
the persecution of those who practice religions different from their
own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual
orientation.”
Whether or not the Obama administration’s failure to give top priority
to Christian and Yazidi refugees being targeted for genocide,
enslavement and rape was driven by political considerations, the fact is
that the current US refugee system makes it all but impossible for US
officials to give priority to vulnerable minorities.
As Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious
Freedom pointed out in an article in National Review in November 2015,
the US has relied on the UN High Commissioner on Refugees to vet
potential immigrants from these countries. The UNHCR accepts
applications for resettlement primarily from people who reside in its
refugee camps. Members of the Christian and Yazidi avoid UN camps
because UN officials do not protect them.
As Shea noted, human rights groups and media reports have shown that at
UN camps, “ISIS, militias and gangs traffic in women and threaten men
who refuse to swear allegiance to the caliphate.”
The situation repeats itself in European refugee centers. Shea noted
that in Germany, for instance, due to Muslim persecution of non-Muslim
refugees at refugee centers, “the German police union recommended
separate shelters for Christian and Muslim groups.”
The UNHCR itself has not been an innocent bystander in all of this. To
the contrary. It appears that the institution colludes with jihadists to
keep persecuted Christians and other minorities out of the UN refugee
system, thus dooming them to remain in areas were they are subjected to
forms of persecution unseen since the Holocaust.
Questioned by Shea, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees António
Guterres said that he opposes the resettlement of persecuted Christians
from Syria. Despite the fact that in 2011 Pope Francis acknowledged that
Syrian Christians were being targeted for genocide, Guterres told Shea
that he doesn’t want Christians to leave Syria, because they are part of
the “DNA of the Middle East.” He added that Lebanon’s former president
asked him not to resettle the Christians.
Invoking the Holocaust, in recent days US Jews have been among the most
outspoken critics of Trump’s executive order. Speaking to Britain’s
Independent, for instance, Mark Hetfield, the executive director of
HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, slammed Trump’s executive order
as the “lowest point we’ve seen since the 1920s.”
Forward editor Jane Eisner wrote that Trump’s move is immoral and
un-American and that all Jewish organizations are morally required to
stand up to his “anti-Muslim” policies.
Writing at Vox.com, Dara Lind drew a direct connection between Trump’s
executive order and the Roosevelt administration’s refusal to permit the
Jews of Europe to flee to the US to escape annihilation in the Holocaust.
This then brings us back to Roosevelt’s immoral policies toward the Jews
of Europe and to the question of who has learned the lessons of his bigotry.
The American Jewish uproar at Trump’s actions shows first and foremost
the cynicism of the leftist Jewish leadership.
It isn’t simply that left-wing activists like Hetfield and Eisner
cynically ignore that Trump’s order is based on Obama’s policies, which
they didn’t oppose.
It is that in their expressed concerned for would-be Muslim refugees to
the US they refuse to recognize that the plight of Muslims as Muslims in
places like Syria and Iraq is not the same as the plight of Christians
and Yazidis as Christians and Yazidis in these lands.
The “Jews” in the present circumstances are not the Muslims, who are
nowhere targeted for genocide.
The “Jews” in the present circumstances are the Christians and Yazidis
and other religious minorities, whom Trump’s impassioned Jewish
opponents and Obama’s impassioned Jewish champions fail to defend.
Trump’s executive order is far from perfect. But in making the
distinction between the hunters and the hunted and siding with the
latter against the former, Trump is showing that he is not a bigot.
Unlike his critics, he has learned the lessons of Roosevelt’s moral
failure and is working to ensure that the US acts differently today.
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--
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