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Isn’t it cruel to reject refugees seeking asylum?
It is if there was a low probability of terrorism
Additionally there is a Gemara that if one has compassion where he’s supposed to be cruel he will be cruel where he’s supposed to have compassion
There are people suffering in countries all over the world. I said this before, why doesn’t the US simply open its borders and let people from all countries come in as many as they choose. Europe let in lots of arabs and they elevated the quality of life for people in all the countries they moved into right?
SCD
It is. And we of all people should now that.
The rhetoric being used should make us veeeery uncomfortable. Ive heard commentators saying not to take in people who arent willing to assimilate. Donald Trump suggestd a database of all Muslims.
I’m not saying we should just open the borders. Put the call should be towards taking in as many as possible/safe with some exceptions not the reverse.
Terrorists who mass murdered in Paris entered Europe as Syrian refugees.
America doesn’t have the ability to check Syrian police or government files on applicants to determine if they are radicalized.
Joseph
So come up with a way
At the very least how about the children?
Also would you accept that excuse in the 30’s? Granted it isnt quite the same. But did the US governemt have the ability to make sure there were now Nazi spies among the >900 people on the St. Louis? Could they make sure non of them would join the very active Jewish Mob at the time? Could they make sure none were communists?
Go to Yad vashem there is a whole exhibit dedicated to the plight of the St. Louis and the calous indiference of the world at the time. As there should be.
i have a very hard time listening to people draw a parallel between the refugees in the 30’s or the syrian refugees today.
it has been declared that the influx of refugees will be a trojan horse to bring in some of the most ruthless terrorists we have in existence. does that mean that no syrian’s should come in? No, but it means you cannot compare their immigration to anything in our history.
and dont kid yourself, the same people who say you cannot close the door on refugees just because known ISIS members are among them, will also tell you you cannot monitor them, background check them, put surveilance on them etc because then we are discriminating and profiling.
I do not hold these beliefs regarding regular refugee-immigration issues, but to stick to liberal platforms and wave the “Jews were immigrants too” flag is beyond propeganda.
Tell me which one of those lice infested Jews coming without suitcases, money, or resources was a known physical threat to the community he moved into?
The idea that Jews in the 30s were in any serious way or numbers involved in violence is a clear canard. The idea that Syrians today have a clear and serious radicalized element engaged in mass terrorism is clear. And we actually experienced mass terrorist murder by people entering as Syrian refugees.
There is no way for America to do a real background check on Syrian applicants.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of something I heard on the radio, but here it is. The Syrian refugees who are being considered for asylum in the U.S. are not the ones rushing the border in Eastern Europe. They have been in refugee camps for a couple of years and have been vetted extensively.
syag
“and dont kid yourself, the same people who say you cannot close the door on refugees just because known ISIS members are among them, will also tell you you cannot monitor them, background check them, put surveilance on them etc because then we are discriminating and profiling.”
So be different!
“Tell me which one of those lice infested Jews coming without suitcases, money, or resources was a known physical threat to the community he moved into? “
None where known! If they were they should have been banned from coming but not all Jews because of the few gangsters and communists.
joseph
“The idea that Jews in the 30s were in any serious way or numbers involved in violence is a clear canard.”
Many were communists, several were gangsters. I’m sure there was a nazi spy or two sent along with refugees to infiltrate other groups.
“There is no way for America to do a real background check on Syrian applicants. “
How about children? (you ignored that question like you usually do. so yes i am repeating myself)
Here is the OU statment on the subject do you agree with it
“The heinous attacks in Paris this week demonstrate that ISIS, and other similar militant Islamic terrorist groups, have both the desire and means to strike terror in the capitals of the Western world. Clearly, this must impact the manner in which the United States considers the acceptance of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries in the Middle East. While most of those refugees are innocent bystanders whose lives have been wrecked by ISIS and similar groups, security concerns are real and serious. We cannot be naive in our assessment of the determination of terrorists to exploit the refugee crisis. And we should limit immigration to those individuals who share our American ideals and aspirations.
“
so, Joseph, what you meant to say was that I had a good point and that you agree with me?
ubiq – How about children?
by children do you mean, like, cute little innocent ten year olds? You know, like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was when he came?
Ubiquitin, is it feasible to take in the children without their parents?
I am very skeptical about the US having the “creativity and compassion” to allow in the innocent without significantly compromising security.
There were no serious number of Jewish gangsters in Europe. And the less than handful that might have been around did what, pickpockets? And even some civilians were sympathetic to communism they rarely to never engaged in violence. You’re talking about an infinitesimally small number of anyone who was a serious threat and you’re being completely disingenuous. There certainly was no real threat of mass murder or terrorism by those refugees.
i am also not sure that they came in that way. it is possible that some of the immigrants looked toward dishonest means to support themselves once they got here but they certainly did not come here with hundreds of thousands of dollars available to them to fund their endevours here. Nor were they part of networks.
Syag
“by children do you mean, like, cute little innocent ten year olds? You know, like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was when he came? “
Yes. Muchj Like not all JEws should have be banned banned because of ALfred Rosenberg, MEyer lansky Bugsy Seigel, Micky choen, Arnold Rothstein, dutch Shultz
“Ubiquitin, is it feasible to take in the children without their parents?”
Yes!!! that is how my wife is here today her grandmother was sent off on her own and the English at the time wwere more compassionate than some people today.
jospeh
There were gangsters in America. The Americans were the ones banning. Their were nazis in Europe. there was no way to make sure that there was no nazi spy on the St. Louis.
“And the less than handful that might have been around did what, pickpockets? “
um no. Halevai
America had an aversion to communism violence or not. And I have news for you even among those sympathetic to islmaic extremism they also rarely engage in violence.
(and i cant help but notice that you still havent addressed the issue of children…)
Can we agree on the OU statment above. ITs not concrete its kind of vague and obviously meaningless but at least as an attitute.
If not. which part do you object to?
ubiquitin – you brought up children as innocent bystanders and then you support me in proving they aren’t. ????.
secondly – if you can keep paralleling jews in the 30s to terrorists who come in already part of a multi-million-dollar in-place plot with advanced training and networking behind them then I will bow out. in order to compare two issues, there has to be two issues. i can’t debate the evils of warships vs. rubber dinghies.
BTW
i’m sorry if I’m not being clear. I’m not saying we should let them all (or even any) in. I am just talking about attitude we should have having been in a similar (though not the same by any means) boat a few decades ago
What do gangsters in America have to do with European Jews where there virtually were no gangsters? More disengenuity. Islamic extremists engage in mass murder and terrorism.
Joseph: And there is no evidence that a serious number of Syrian refugees/people masquerading as serious refugees are terrorists.
So if I told you that I feel really bad about the innocent people who will suffer, but that we unfortunately can’t take in refugees because it is too dangerous, would you be satisfied?
i do have that attitude…toward the innocent syrians. but that still has nothing to do with the issue at hand. you cannot confuse attitude with action here. feeling a strong desire to allow innocent syrians in because we were in the same situation cannot blind you to opening the door without discretion.
i have NO idea what the right thing is to do, but you appear to be discussing attitude with people who are discussing action.
Syag
Just because you can point to one child who grew up to do bad things doesnt mean we should ban all children.
I can point to several jews who grew up to do bad things. IT would be wrong to ban all Jews becasue of that.
More to my point. In the 30’s those who banned my ancestors from arriving and left them to their deaths could have said let in “JEwish children like Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel etc “
What would you have told them?
I would ahve said YES! and I hold them accontable for turning back the st/ Louis, and today many are doing the same.
If you say The US was right to tur away Jews then because of those “non-innocent bystanters” Then I disagree but at least you are being consitent
“secondly – if you can keep paralleling jews in the 30s to terrorists who come in already part of a multi-million-dollar in-place plot with advanced training and networking behind them then I will bow out.”
I am not at all. chas Veshalom!
I am comparing the innocent Jews then to the innocent Muslims today. and if you say there are no innocent muslims today then join Trump in his forming a muslim database. MAybe we can have all Muslims wear a Yellow (or green?) cresecent.
Turning away refugees is wrong in my opinion.
Bringing in terrorists is also wrong.
Blindly believing that no terrorists could infiltrate along with the masses and making up laws that weaken the USA’s border policy is wrong.
just to clarify – it was ISIS who stated they will insert their terrorists among the syrian refugees.
Joseph
“What do gangsters in America have to do with European Jews”
Many of those gangsters where once European Jews themselves.
Can you garantee that none of the St. Louis refugees were going to join the Jewish Mob? (odds are some would have given the hardship at finding a job and the extensive network of Jewish crime existing at the time)
Can you garantee there were no Nazi spies hidden on the boat?
Can you garantee none were communists?
More to the point. Was there a way for the US to gaurantee that at the time?
Speaking of disengenuity care to address my main point:
Can we agree on the OU statment above. ITs not concrete its kind of vague and obviously meaningless but at least as an attitute.
If not. which part do you object to?
Sam, even a small number of mass murdering terrorists is horrendous.
DY
Yes! though partly
My next question is if you support a way of SAFELY letting in refugees
Thats all Im saying. None of us are actually making policy (sorry if you thought otherwise)
Syag
“but that still has nothing to do with the issue at hand.”
My issue is attitude
“you cannot confuse attitude with action here. feeling a strong desire to allow innocent syrians in because we were in the same situation cannot blind you to opening the door without discretion.
i have NO idea what the right thing is to do, but you appear to be discussing attitude with people who are discussing action.”
Lol the state department doesnt check the coffee room for policy ideas.
See the OU stament above.
1. The vast majority of the refugees are non-Muslims or secular Muslims, i.e., the losers of the civil war which is now being fought between Assad and ISIS. The bulk of refuguees are on “our” side.
2. The same problem was posed in the 1930s, with the danger of German spies posing as anti-Nazi refuguees. It was not hard to check people out.
Joseph: True. And keeping hundreds of thousands of people in horrible conditions who are starving in that condition is also a terrible tragedy.
We should most definitely let them in — to Germany, France and perhaps England.
Sam, We must place our need for safety from mass murdering terrorists before their need for refuge.
Do you invite random homeless people you encounter sleeping on the streets to move into your guest room across from your children? They too need shelter and food.
I’m sorry,
Comparing refugees that aren’t known killers with refugees that are known killers is wrong!
Being Jewish wasn’t associated with being in the mafia today being Muslim is being associated with being a terrorist
You can’t compare one group of people where the minority was bad to another group where a strong minority is bad (key word here is strong)
CA
I was confused by your post at first. i understood your first line “Comparing refugees that aren’t known killers with refugees that are known killers is wrong!” As supporting the refugees since after all we shouldnt compare most of those refugees who “aren’t known killers” with the few that are.
“being Jewish wasn’t associated with being in the mafia today being Muslim is being associated with being a terrorist”
Of course it was. People in the 30’s didnt (always) say we are a bunch of xenophobes and antisemites and dont want to take Jews even children on our shores. They had all sorts of excuses including mafia, communism, nazi spies etc etc.
Bottom line Here is the OU stament again:
“”The heinous attacks in Paris this week demonstrate that ISIS, and other similar militant Islamic terrorist groups, have both the desire and means to strike terror in the capitals of the Western world. Clearly, this must impact the manner in which the United States considers the acceptance of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries in the Middle East. While most of those refugees are innocent bystanders whose lives have been wrecked by ISIS and similar groups, security concerns are real and serious. We cannot be naive in our assessment of the determination of terrorists to exploit the refugee crisis. And we should limit immigration to those individuals who share our American ideals and aspirations.
does anybody here disagree with it? whihc part?
Sam: we can work at alleviating their conditions in camps etc. without letting them in to the U.S. Those that the US wants to let in are no longer in danger in Syria, although they face many hardships especially in the wintertime.
So if we want to compare it’s more like the survivors in DP camps after WW2, not during the Holocaust itself.
And if we really want to help the Syrians in comparison to the Holocaust, we have to bomb strategic targets of ISIS and Assad (I don’t know what they are) just like we needed to bomb Auschwitz and the railroad tracks. It boils down to a tough president, that we don’t have now, and of course – money.
whihc part? Already posted.
It’s different after there was already an attack by such people.
Joseph: If I could vet them as safe? Absolutely.
Mammele: That’s fair. Bringing them to America is probably the easiest way to do that, though.
Sam 2 -“Mammele: That’s fair. Bringing them to America is probably the easiest way to do that, though”
They shouldn’t let them in! What is happening/happened in Europe will happen here. Even Trump is a liberal. What the Western World should do is to get rid of the problem in Syria & Iraq. No more pussyfooting around! Then they could go home.
Jews DID have a bad rap in the 1930s. In addition to having a lot of identifiable Organized Crime figures in our numbers (Wikipedia lists over a hundred) there was a disproportionate number of anarchists and communists in our Tribe. And people seriously argued that letting refugees from Europe into the US would allow the Nazis to sneak people in who claimed to be refugees.
Meanwhile, most of the 11/13 terrorists in France were EU citizens from Visa Waiver Program countries who could have traveled to the US at any time with no vetting. All the hullabaloo about Syrian refugees is just fanning the flames of bigotry while doing nothing whatsoever to keep dangerous people out of the country.
Sam, would it make a difference if he was Jewish or not?
I haven’t read most of the replies, but a number of them refer to (and refute) the presence of gangsters among Jewish refugees. The argument against the Jewish refugees wasn’t that they were criminals, it was that they were communists,
yehudayona
none refute the presence of gangsters among Jewish refugees. Though i am not saying there WERE gangsters, just that that could have been used as an excuse to send them back to their deaths.
“The argument against the Jewish refugees wasn’t that they were criminals, it was that they were communists,”
The argument could have been anything! It was wrong. and is prominently exhibited as an example of the world in general and the Us in particular ignoring our people’s suffering.
DY
“which part? Already posted.”
i’m sorry, mind pointing it out please. (do you mean the comparison Jewish refugees?)
Joseph
care to reply to any of my questions?
You often claim you do…
And hypothetically if a few Jewish refugees had been commies the threat was a decade later when they become voting citizens they might tilt the election towards the victory of the candidate of the Communist Party USA for President of the United States?
The threat of a few commie sympathizers is equivalent today of mass murdering terrorists entering the country?
Joseph, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, communism was considered as big a threat as terrorism is today. The fear wasn’t that they would take over by electing a communist president, but that they would foment revolution.
Joseph: It probably would make a difference but it probably shouldn’t. It would be the right thing to do either way.
Ubiquitin, it wasn’t only me, it’s been posted several times, I’m not sure how you could miss it.
America doesn’t have the ability to check Syrian police or government files on applicants to determine if they are radicalized.
There is no way for America to do a real background check on Syrian applicants.
I am very skeptical about the US having the “creativity and compassion” to allow in the innocent without significantly compromising security.
and dont kid yourself, the same people who say you cannot close the door on refugees just because known ISIS members are among them, will also tell you you cannot monitor them, background check them, put surveilance on them etc because then we are discriminating and profiling.
Blindly believing that no terrorists could infiltrate along with the masses and making up laws that weaken the USA’s border policy is wrong.
just to clarify – it was ISIS who stated they will insert their terrorists among the syrian refugees.
DY, according to what I read the vetting process is very extensive. Moreover, if America will go that way it will also have to ban all Moslem students and tourists (don’t forget, tourists sometimes overstay their visas). This would be blatantly unconstitutional. Regarding the attitude towards Jewish refugees (and immigrants in general) there were, in fact, not a few revolutionaries among them. Trotsky, in fact, lived in the Bronx for a number of years after fleeing the Czarist authorities. Emma Goldman also comes to mind. There were also Sacco and Vanzetti.
However, just as there were home-grown radicals (e.g. the IWW or “Wobblies”) then there are home-grown terrorists now. Some of the worst, do not come from Moslem backgrounds at all but have embraced an extremist world-view for personal psychological reasons (the Guardian has an article about this phenomenon along with a caveat). Western countries must be vigilant and use all of the intelligence means available to them but not repeat the tragic mistake of WW2 when Japanese-Americans were interned even though not one had been suspected as an individual of plotting an actual crime (interestingly, the only government official who opposed their internment was J. Edgar Hoover).
BTW, on this general subject there is a book called “Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America”, which discusses non-welcomes that were given to huddled masses. Benjamin Franklin, for example, warned about German immigrants writing “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”
ubiquitin – you were asking which part of the OU statement do we disagree with, if any. Correct?
i agree with it because it states what i was saying, that we can be sensitive to the plight of refugees, but we cannot become idealistic and agenda-istic and ignore the fact that there may be some very dangerous people among them. sure we should be “getting to yes”, but that doesn’t mean we will ever get to yes. i hear the OU stating that we want to take them, but not without good security/screening measures in place.
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