Anti-Semitism and the USS Liberty

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ANTISEMITISM is expressed as hostility toward or discrimination of Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.

This American’s experiences with anti-Semites were one catalyst for publishing “USS Liberty LOVE Story” as a FREE Download to coincide with Memorial Day 2019.

By Eileen Fleming

On Sunday The Editorial Board at The New York Times published “The Old Scourge of Anti-Semitism Rises Anew in Europe” citing:

In the United States, attacks on synagogues by white-supremacist gunmen have led the growing list of assaults on Jews. The Anti-Defamation League reported that these attacks more than doubled from 2017 to 2018, to 39, part of a total of 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents. There has also been a marked rise in the political weaponization of anti-Semitism by both left and right, often played out in debates on criticizing or supporting Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not helped matters by finding common cause with nationalist leaders like the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or President Trump so long as they do not support a Palestinian state.

A CNN poll last November on the state of anti-Semitism in Europe found that a third of respondents said they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust…

A 2015 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 51 percent of Germans believed it was “probably true” that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.”

After polling more than 16,000 Jews in 12 European countries at the end of last year, the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights concluded that anti-Semitic hate speech, harassment and fear of being recognized as Jews were becoming the new normal. Eighty-five percent of the respondents thought anti-Semitism was the biggest social and political problem in their countries…

As appalling as these statistics should be to every European, they should also ring a loud alarm for every American leader of conscience. Speak up, now, when you glimpse evidence of anti-Semitism, particularly within your own ranks, or risk enabling the spread of this deadly virus. [end NYT]

This American of conscience has been speaking out and writing about the ‘Made in the USA’ strain of anti-Semitism; not just because I have Jewish DNA but as a matter of CONSCIENCE.

Conscience is understood to be that inner feeling or voice that acts as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.

Through my years of speaking up against antisemitsim I learned that anti-Semites are either willfully ignorant or pitifully unable to recognize our shared humanity and thus they lack compassion.

Compassion literally means, “to suffer with.”

Compassion springs from the recognition that we are all ‘just human’ and a loving heart will be broken.

A broken heart is the way to a holy heart and a heart filled life.

My second screenplay: USS Liberty Love Story was published as a FREE Download as an act of compassion in honor of Memorial Day.

On the first page of the script I state:

This American knew nothing about USA Middle East policies, the CIA, Israel’s weapons of mass destruction, the 303 Committee, the hellacious coverup of the attack on the USS Liberty, James Jesus Angelton and the roots of the Deep State; until the events of September 11 2001 compelled me to research, and that led to traveling and interviewing more than a few of the very few American survivors of The Six Day War.

I came to love the veterans I met and the ones I have not, especially the thirty-four men who were killed on board the USS Liberty on June 8 1967 during the Six Day War. I need to tell Americans this true story because for over fifty years these veterans have been afflicted with post traumatic stress that cannot be healed because of the ongoing cover-up instituted by President Lyndon Baines Johnson that every president and congress since has colluded by virtue of their silence. I also learned that one cannot speak honestly about the USS Liberty without also addressing the issue of Anti-Semitism.

INSERT definition Anti-semitism:

ANTISEMITISM is EXPRESSED AS HOSTILITY TOWARD OR DISCRIMINATION OF JEWS AS A RELIGIOUS, ETHNIC, OR RACIAL GROUP.

CUT TO:

HISTORIC IMAGES OF THE HOLOCAUST INTERSPERSED WITH RECENT IMAGES FROM GAZA AND THE WEST BANK AS NARRATOR SPEAKS:

NARRATOR [VOICE OVER]

I grew up in a Catholic home as a granddaughter of a German Jew, who died before I could learn how many of my relatives, might have been gassed or fried by the Third Reich. September 11 2001 was the catalyst for my eight investigative journeys to both sides of The Wall in the Holy Land, which began in 2005; which is also when I began to live my childhood dream of being a reporter…

READ more HERE