Europe’s Leading Rabbi: Jews Must Begin Carrying Guns

[Vern Humphrey]

He was still stammering when I left.

 

[scaatylobo]

@ vern humphrey

PERFECT ,and thanks for that laugh

 

[Mitlov]

I once had an anti-gun type tell me, "Don't be ridiculous! If the Jews had resisted the Nazis, they'd have been killed."

I let him think for a moment about what he'd said, then said, "So it's your theory that by meekly submitting, they all survived?"

The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto resisted, hopelessly outgunned (a mix of handguns, rifles, hand grenades, and molotov cocktails against the best the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht had to offer), and they held 1.3 square miles for 27 days, killing 17 and wounding 93 in the process.

And yes, they all died. Many in the ghetto; many more in gas chambers. But just think how different WWII and the Holocaust would have been if everyone fought back like that. The point of civilian uprising is not to win, and candidly not even to survive, but instead to stretch the enemy so thin and keep them so distracted that they either decide it's a bloody quagmire and withdraw, or render them vulnerable to a counter-attack by an opposing military.

 

[JTHunter]

Considering the centuries of persecution many Jews have had to endure, esp. the Holocaust, it amazes and dumbfounds me that so many choose to NOT avail themselves of the means of their own protection.

And why do so many vote for those politicians that make it even harder for them to protect themselves? :banghead:

 

[Mitlov]

Considering the centuries of persecution many Jews have had to endure, esp. the Holocaust, it amazes and dumbfounds me that so many choose to NOT avail themselves of the means of their own protection.

And why do so many vote for those politicians that make it even harder for them to protect themselves? :banghead:

Most people aren't one-issue voters. Let's leave it at that so we don't get the thread locked (see post #21).

 

[Vern Humphrey]

The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto resisted, hopelessly outgunned (a mix of handguns, rifles, hand grenades, and molotov cocktails against the best the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht had to offer), and they held 1.3 square miles for 27 days, killing 17 and wounding 93 in the process.

And yes, they all died. Many in the ghetto; many more in gas chambers. But just think how different WWII and the Holocaust would have been if everyone fought back like that.

Even if they didn't win, they would have left a lot fewer Germans for the rest of us to deal with.

 

[Mitlov]

Even if they didn't win, they would have left a lot fewer Germans for the rest of us to deal with.

There'd be nearly as many Germans (casualties in the Warsaw Ghetto were well over 100-to-1, and deaths were nearly 800-to-1; these sorts of insurrections wouldn't have put a major dent in the Wehrmacht's numbers), but they would have been spread out and less able to mount an effective defense against Allied counter-attacks. Germany had 50,000 soldiers defending the beaches on D-Day. If they had had only 25,000 soldiers on the beaches and the other 25,000 soldiers spread out across France putting down Warsaw-Ghetto-style insurrections in every city, we still would have had to have fought all 50,000 before the war was over, but it would have been a much easier and faster fight for us.

And by winning the war earlier, we would have not just saved US soldiers' lives, but the lives of European Jewry despite the bloodshed of those insurrections. Shutting down the gas chambers six months earlier would have more than counterbalanced the bloodshed of the Warsaw-Ghetto-style uprisings.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

You are correct -- resistance by the Jews in other places on a scale like that of the Warsaw Ghetto would have had a multiplier effect.

The lesson is, when faced with certain death, fight. Because what do you have to lose?

 

[guyfromohio]

Gotta start somewhere.

 

[Snejdarek]

After the Charlie Hebdo attack, I was in discussion with a couple of French friends, mostly regarding the fact that people who were receiving daily death threats, were firebombed in past, had to move their newspaper to a secret location, were forbidden by their country's laws to carry firearms. One of the points I made was that the terrorist attacks are quite common in France (there were 3 only in December 2014 - committed by cars and knives), and that the public has not been moved for as long as it was Jews that were being killed.

This article makes the same point in a much more sophisticated way, so I'd like to share it here: http://tabletmag.com/scroll/188387/hypocrisy-after-the-paris-terror-attacks

"European Jews have been under attack for more than a decade. But there were no marches after Halimi’s death, the Brussels murders, and numerous other incidents. There were some protests after Toulouse, most likely due to the general horror at a killer deliberately targeting children, but nothing on the scale of this past week. Many French Jews felt that those protests were quite muted, given the horror of the event. More troubling, nowhere have I heard an acknowledgement that Europeans have failed to take seriously these attacks on Jews."

 

[Snejdarek]

European Jewish leaders speak against being armed

"It is unfortunate, and indeed potentially dangerous to the welfare of our communities, that such comments were widely reported in the press last week in the wake of the terror attacks in France, a period when our community organisations were in constant contact with our governments and security agencies to protect our members and their families.

Mr. Margolin’s association of irrelevant and unrepresentative self-created groups does not in any way convey upon him a role as a spokesman or representative of our communities. He has never been chosen nor elected to any such role."

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news...-jews-to-carry-guns.html#sthash.gKpdzVGt.dpuf

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Man, some people NEVER learn!

 

[Mitlov]

Asking for the right to self-defense is "potentially dangerous to the welfare of our communities"?

Come on. Being deliberately defenseless so that maybe people want to pick on you didn't work against pogroms in 19th-century Russia (which my ancestors fled when they came to the US), didn't work during the Holocaust, and isn't ever going to work.

 

[Mitlov]

I once had an anti-gun type tell me, "Don't be ridiculous! If the Jews had resisted the Nazis, they'd have been killed."

I let him think for a moment about what he'd said, then said, "So it's your theory that by meekly submitting, they all survived?"

You'll have to forgive me for presuming this might have been hyperbole when I first read it, but I myself just ran into someone who genuinely argued that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto shouldn't have violently resisted because it resulted in 10,000 deaths during the course of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

(For those not familiar, the 265,000 Warsaw Ghetto Jews who didn't die during the uprising were shipped off to Treblinka for extermination...not exactly a better situation).

 

[22-rimfire]

I can't see them allowing legal carry of a handgun. I would guess that it will be up to the individual to make that decision.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

You'll have to forgive me for presuming this might have been hyperbole when I first read

it, but I myself just ran into someone who genuinely argued that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto shouldn't have violently resisted because it resulted in 10,000 deaths during the course of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

(For those not familiar, the 265,000 Warsaw Ghetto Jews who didn't die during the uprising were shipped off to Treblinka for extermination...not exactly a better situation).

As I said, if you're going to die anyway, you might as well die fighting, because what do you have to lose?

 

[Snejdarek]

And it gets worse. From the initial pro gun message, we are getting to curbing free speech.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ers-europe-legislation-outlawing-antisemitism

The proposal would outlaw antisemitism as well as criminalising a host of other activities deemed to be violating fundamental rights on specious religious, cultural, ethnic and gender grounds.

These would include banning the burqa, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, polygamy, denial of the Holocaust and genocide generally, criminalising xenophobia, and creating a new crime of “group libel” – public defamation of ethnic, cultural or religious groups. Women’s and gay rights would also be covered.

 

[Aragon]

You'd think after Hitler the Jew's would already be wise to the fact that the government protects its interests (those of the people running the government) not yours. Fact is, most of my Jewish friends are anti-gun and vote Democrat for reasons I'll never fathom.

Most Americans of Jewish extraction live in large cities and large cities tend to be populated with people who aren't brought up around guns -- people who tend to acquire anti-gun views.

While many are financially prosperous, they are also not part of the established ruling class -- they're not WASPs. They (quite rightly) embrace progressive politics, especially social justice and much of the stuff that come with it.

I also don't fathom how Europeans seeing the rise and fall of Hitler would think that disarming and trusting the government for protection was a good thing. I guess they never had a self-defense tradition after centuries of wars and conquests, but with the invention of carpet bombing and terrorism there are no more "civilians" who can stay our of the fight and its consequences.

Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945 -- almost 70 years ago. That's ancient (and forgettable) history for millions of people. WWII also branded the brains of Europeans in a far different way then it did Americans. Generations of Europeans find the potential of having to bear arms as something horrific.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

First of all, name another country which has an actual RKBA in their laws, as we know it to be here in the United States. Especially one in Europe.

There is a difference between laws which allow people to have firearms and an actual enumerated RIGHT to the same.


Second, the Jewish community is fighting for these laws with respect to the Jewish people. They can't be be expected to "fight the good fight" for the whole of everybody, especially in entire nations which have strict laws across the board. Pick the battles they can fight and have a reasonable chance of winning.

From there, if they win, a toe-hold has been established for others to fight for the same thing...and for the Jewish community to support it.

The Jewish people have a very powerful history behind this particular request. Quite frankly, if you're familiar at all with the holocaust, several million OTHER people have the very same powerful history and they'd be stupid not to use it in their own push.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Second, the Jewish community is fighting for these laws with respect to the Jewish people. They can't be be expected to "fight the good fight" for the whole of everybody, especially in entire nations which have strict laws across the board. Pick the battles they can fight and have a reasonable chance of winning.

Why not? Our Founding Fathers fought the good fight for everybody, didn't they?

After all, we are all humans, and Human Rights is the business of everyone.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Why not? Our Founding Fathers fought the good fight for everybody, didn't they?

After all, we are all humans, and Human Rights is the business of everyone.

Indeed, human rights are the business of everybody.

But our Founding Fathers had quite the different situation. And no, they didn't fight the good fight for everybody because a rather significant fraction of the population in the colonies did not agree with them. You might look up "Tory" or "Loyalist" with respect to the American Revolution and the Texas Revolution, for example.

These people most assuredly did not appreciate the acts of the "rebels" and many were quite outspoken against them.

Also, the colonies were physically separated from Europe by an ocean 3,000 miles wide which could only be traversed by ships of sail that required three months to do...and virtually no communications that wasn't effectively 6 months out of date by the time a reply came back. This is quite a different battleground than a people firmly entrenched within the very nations they are in dispute with, such as the Jewish people in European countries.


And if you follow the actions of the Continental Congress during the formation of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union and later the Constitutional Convention under which our federal government was formed, you'll see that "everybody" was not included. We saw the fallout from this over the next 200-plus years, most vividly with respect to the Native Americans and black people, though there are quite a number of other peoples as well.

What we have today evolved out of those roots, to be sure...but make no mistake: transplant any number of us from today back to those times and you'll find quite a number of differences. If you were a woman, for example, you had no political rights or say. If you weren't a white, male, land owner, you had no political say. If you weren't educated, you had no political say.

From the toe-hold our Founding Fathers established grew all the other things we take for granted with respect to "human rights". It didn't happen over night, as it were, with the Revolutionary War.

 

[Gun Master]

The Right of Jewish People to Keep and Bear Arms

Of course they have the right, as all people do (singular, plural & collective, USA, foreign, etc. - ALL) to keep and bear arms.

The coy and intelligent thing to do is, publicly appear non-aggressive, and within the circle say, "Get every gun you can, learn how to shoot it (them), and don't tell anyone."

The Jewish people should do the above, quickly and with relish.

God bless and protect them !

 

[Vern Humphrey]

All Europeans should do that -- they're going to need guns.

 

[Snejdarek]

First of all, name another country which has an actual RKBA in their laws, as we know it to be here in the United States. Especially one in Europe.

If I were to move to NY or California, how exactly would RKBA be helpful to me being able to obtain and carry firearms?

Because if you moved to my country, you would be able to get the license and guns in quite a straightforward process (provided that you would be able to learn the language to pass a written exam). Hell, you might be able to get a full auto on collector's license here.

The only advantage US has that I see is that it would take two thirds of law makers to change the second amendment. It would take a simple majority to change our firearm law. So yes, we do need to push further to get gun rights in to the Czech constitution & Charter of fundamental rights and freedoms, but otherwise US is not that far ahead.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

The issue you bring up about coming to the United States in ANY state (not necessarily NY or CA) is an important one, Snejdarek.

As for the rest, you are exactly on point with respect to US law. It is extremely difficult for the government (governments, when you consider the various states and such as well) to completely outlaw firearms in the United States...and it gives us a very strong basis in which to fight incremental gun control laws.