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Fighting the Juggernaut

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“In those dark hours [for the French in World War I], that vision of France as a generous nation, of France as a project, of France promoting universal values, was the exact opposite of the egotism of a people who look after only their interests, because patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism:  nationalism is a betrayal of it.” —    President Macron of France, flatulating on Armistice Day, November 11, 2018

“The beginning of any society is never charming or gentle.” — Franca Bettoia, as Ruth Collins, in The Last Man on Earth, 1964

The Last Man on Earth was a Vincent Price movie made in 1964.  The year before the beginning of the end.  In 1965, all of our restrictive immigration laws were dismantled, in accordance with ushering in a new era of civil rights, and, in many ways, I personally date all subsequent historical events using that milestone.  Even in 1965, as a child, I understood that this was a watershed moment, and one ominous in its implications.

Few others had the same forebodings.  America, people reasoned, was strong, invincible, and confident.  With promises from politicians that the demographics and politics of the U.S. would remain unaltered, our nation’s gates were flung open to the world.

They lied, as the evidence of our own eyes verifies, and, forty years later, I entered the lobby of a local library and encountered an ancient woman diligently yanking down public notices from a bulletin board.  When I asked what she was doing, she smiled, and said, in accented English, “These notices are written in ten different languages, translations paid for with my tax dollars.  If someone had the right to put them up on a public board, I have the same right to pull them down.  Let them learn English, as I did.”  As I pondered the woman’s response, she trundled out the door and down the street, away from the scene of her mischief. Read more

A Very Worthy Cause: Support Glen Allen’s Lawsuit against the SPLC

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Mark Potok, defendant

Glen Allen, an attorney from Baltimore, is doing what I wish I had been able to do a long time ago: sue the SPLC. His case is much stronger and much more sympathy-inducing than mine would have been. Basically, the SPLC got Allen fired from his job with the city of Baltimore where he was in charge of writing appeals in cases where Baltimore lost in the lower courts (“Lawsuit Claims SPLC Abetted Theft, Spread Lies to Destroy Lawyer for ‘Thought Crime’”). All it took was a simple phone call alleging that he has ideas that are unacceptable to the powers that be. In particular, he is accused of having supported William Pierce’s National Alliance in the past. As the notorious Heidi Beirich (a defendant in the case) stated in an interview, she “watched Allen ‘like a hawk’ because he had ‘the worst ideas ever created.'”

Presumably this refers to ideas like identifying with your racial or ethnic group and doing what one can to further its interests, as well as calling attention to groups that are antithetical to ideas of White identity and White interests. It goes without saying that such ideas are perfectly acceptable for every other racial and ethnic group in the U.S except Whites.

Allen’s complaint (here) is a brilliant, exhaustive account of the facts relevant to the case. I strongly recommend delving into it — it’s user friendly, even for a non-attorney. At the outset is a ringing defense of free speech and the First Amendment:

Providence has endowed humanity with the ability to grow and change. Indeed, we have a moral obligation to grow and change as we learn new aspects of reality. At the pinnacle of the means by which we grow and change should be robust dialogue, open debate, an aversion to taboos, and genuine conversation. This is the theory of our remarkable American traditions of free expression, as embodied, among other ways, in the First Amendment. But there are also other approaches to inevitable human discord. One is to draw lines of political or cultural orthodoxy, develop massive surveillance networks and extensive dossiers, and severely punish perceived transgressors who cross those lines, seem to cross them, or even seem to think about crossing them.

Beirich, Potok, and the SPLC, defendants in this case, have chosen this latter approach. Motivated by lucrative fundraising aims and employing fundraising techniques decried across the political spectrum as deceptive, the SPLC’s avowed goal, under the leadership of Beirich, Potok, and others, is to destroy, through public shaming, loss of employment, loss of reputation, and other severe harms, groups and persons the SPLC broadly defines as its political enemies.

Glen Allen, plaintiff in this case, is one of Beirich’s, Potok’s, and the SPLC’s victims. The cause of free expression itself is another, for the SPLC has become one of the most effective forces in the country for stifling honest and robust debate on controversial issues. Beirich, Potok, and the SPLC are entitled to espouse their outlook forcefully. They are not entitled, however, to the following actions, all alleged and supported in this complaint: to receive, pay for, and use stolen documents, including confidential documents and  documents protected by attorney client privilege, to tortiously interfere with Allen’s prospective advantage in employment; to defame him by publishing false statements that he was “infiltrating” the City of Baltimore’s Law Department; or to masquerade as a 501c3 public interest law firm dedicated to a tax exempt educational mission, when in reality the SPLC fails the basic requirements for this favored status because of its illegal actions (including numerous instances of mail and wire fraud), multiple violations of canons of professional ethics (including improper disclosure of confidential and privileged documents and failure to train its nonlawyer employees), orchestration of violations of the constitutional rights of the organizations and individuals it targets, and sensationalist supermarket tabloid style one-sided depictions of its victims.

The reality is that Beirich, Potok, and the SPLC have perfected what the scholar Laird Wilcox, speaking of the SPLC, called “ritual defamation”: “a way of harming and isolating people by denying their humanity and trying to convert them into something that deserves to be hated and eliminated. They accuse others of this but utilize their enormous resources to practice it on a mass scale themselves.

Beirich, Potok, et al. don’t even pretend to engage in honest debate and the free flow of ideas. Atty. Allen quotes Potok: “We see this [as a] political struggle, right? … I mean, we’re not trying to change anybody’s mind. We’re trying to wreck the groups, and we are very clear in our head, … we are trying to destroy them.” And in this case, the attempt to destroy Allen goes far beyond ethical and legal norms — not surprising given the SPLC’a sordid history of using smear tactics and hypocrisy (Section 31) as well as their dedication to fund-raising far beyond what they actually use to further their causes (Section 27).

Of course the attempt “to destroy” people and groups with ideas they don’t like has now spread far beyond the SPLC, including financial firms refusing credit card services, de-platforming on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and banning from crowd-funding sites like Patreon. As noted here several times, TOQ and TOO have been subjected to these forms of de-platforming.

At present there is an ever-escalating war against the dissident right. This war is not based on developing clearly articulated arguments designed to persuade reasonable, intelligent people. Instead, our new elite rely on wall-to-wall propaganda spread throughout the media and educational system — propaganda designed to make the traditional White majority accept its fate as a declining, soon-to-be impotent minority. Our new elite is terrified that White people be exposed to these ideas. Terrified that they will stop being ashamed to proudly identify as White and do what they can to prevent a the impending disaster to White America. They are terrified because they realize that, beneath all the propaganda raining down from the media and the educational system, the emperor has no clothes — pseudoscience like: there is no biological basis for racial classifications, no biologically based race differences, and no intellectual basis for Whites having legitimate interests in creating a safe and prosperous future for themselves and their progeny. Read more

Efface the Facts: White Supremacism in the Jewish Community

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Who remembers Isaiah Young-Sam? His family and friends certainly do, but Britain’s liberal elite certainly don’t. That’s puzzling, because he was a young Black man murdered at the age of 23 in a particularly shocking way: “stabbed through the heart as he fled a baying gang wielding chains, baseball bats and knives, who hunted him down simply because he was black.”

Savages still at large

Isaiah Young-Sam was a devout Christian, a gentle, law-abiding young man who worked for Birmingham City Council in the English Midlands. And he was brutally murdered “simply because he was black.” Why have the liberal elite forgotten him? And why are the liberal elite not outraged that his racist killers are still at large? Since his murder in 2005, the authorities have tried and failed to bring those racists to justice. Three men were jailed in 2006, but their convictions were overturned on appeal and Isaiah Young-Sam’s family still don’t have what liberals call “closure.”

Worse still, his family live in fear of the racists: when an uncle discussed the case in 2012, the uncle “asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.” Given all this, you would expect Isaiah Young-Sam to have a martyr-cult like the one that surrounds Stephen Lawrence, the young man murdered in London in 1993 “simply for being black.” A Jewish “anti-racist” called Dr Richard Stone has been the High Priest in the Lawrence martyr-cult, supplying the high intelligence and ease with officialdom lacked by the martyr’s mother Doreen Lawrence. But Dr Stone and other Jewish activists have shown no such interest in Isaiah Young-Sam. This is puzzling when you consider that the two racist murders were very similar, except that Isaiah Young-Sam’s murder was worse. Stephen Lawrence was stabbed in a chance encounter and might easily have survived. Isaiah Young-Sam was “hunted down” by a “baying gang” who were fully intent on killing any Black they could catch.

The wrong kind of racist

But Britain’s liberal elite forgot Isaiah Young-Sam long ago. They’ve never added his name to their Big Book of Minority Martyrs and, unlike Stephen Lawrence, he hasn’t been the subject of an endless stream of books, articles, TV programmes and radio broadcasts. Why so? It’s simple. Isaiah Young-Sam has not been turned into a minority martyr because he was murdered by the wrong kind of racist. His killers were brown-skinned Pakistani Muslims. Therefore his murder is useless to the liberal elite. It can’t be used for promoting the lie that ordinary Whites are an ominous and ever-present threat to the lives and well-being of gentle, vulnerable non-Whites.

Isaiah Young-Sam, a victim of hate ignored by the liberal elite

In other words, the liberal elite don’t really care about “racism” or about the welfare of non-Whites. They care about attacking Whites in order to expand and strengthen their own power. That’s why they efface the facts whenever the facts contradict their lies. And so Stephen Lawrence has an official martyr-cult and Isaiah Young-Sam has nothing. You can see the same agenda at work in British towns and cities like Rotherham, where the philo-Semitic Labour MP Denis MacShane worked tirelessly for Jewish interests but did nothing to help the “at least 1,400” White girls who were being raped, prostituted, beaten and sometimes murdered by brown-skinned Pakistani Muslims. Read more

Another Moral Panic about Race: James Watson Again Excoriated for His Belief in a Genetic Basis for Race Differences in IQ

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Editor’s note: I have posted two articles on the controversies surrounding Nicholas Wade and James Watson, both from 2014. Watson is in the news once again because he reaffirmed his belief in the genetic basis of Black-White IQ differences, resulting (of course) in a scathing article in the New York Times by one Amy Harmon. The article notes that despite apologizing “publicly” and “unreservedly,” Watson was forced to retire from his research position, resulting in a drastic loss of income. Since then, he “has been largely absent from the public eye. His speaking invitations evaporated. In 2014, he became the first living Nobelist to sell his medal, citing a depleted income from having been designated a “nonperson.’’

The latest NYTimes moral panic about Watson includes a comment that Watson’s views have been “supported” by “white supremacists,” with links to someone whose anonymous Twitter handle is Neo (with a grand total of 820 followers — Ms Harmon was clearly at great pains to find such a person ) and to videoblogger Stephan Molyneux, respectively. Here’s a recent tweet by Molyneux that reflects a race realist view on IQ but clearly denies that these differences have anything to do with “White supremacy.” Just the opposite. 

The problem with ruling out a genetic basis for race differences is that, as reflected in Molyneux’s tweet, the result is to invoke environmental explanations of Black and Latino academic failure, and of course this leads the hegemonic academic and media left to blame White “racism” for any failure of Blacks or Latinos — despite a complete lack of scientific evidence and while ignoring the success of some non-White minorities in historically White societies. If Whites are racist, surely they would have prevented upward mobility by Jews and East Asians. As noted below in a section on J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen, environmental explanations have a long history of failure to explain the difference.

Once again, we see the power of the left to censor inconvenient truths. James Watson must remain a non-person, his reputation forever destroyed:

Eric Lander, the director of the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, elicited an outcry last spring with a toast he made to Dr. Watson’s involvement in the early days of the Human Genome Project. Dr. Lander quickly apologized.

“I reject his views as despicable,” Dr. Lander wrote to Broad scientists. “They have no place in science, which must welcome everyone. I was wrong to toast, and I’m sorry.’’

Science must welcome everyone? There is zero evidence that academic science has excluded people because of their race. On the other hand, Asians, especially East Asians, are ubiquitous in research in the hard sciences. No one is being un-welcomed because of their race. Blacks who can perform at the level needed to be a research scientist (probably IQ>140) would be welcomed with open arms.  

Here I post two previous comments, both dealing with the controversy surrounding James Watson. However, because Nicolas Wade’s book A Troublesome Inheritance came out around the same time as the Watson controversy, they also deal with some of the controversy surrounding Wade.  

Policing Race: Nicholas Wade and James Watson

Jared Taylor has a great interview of Nicholas Wade on his book, A Troublesome Inheritance.  

JARED TAYLOR: Would it not be correct to say that . . . when it comes to the biological basis of population differences — or even individual differences — that the Western mind is relatively closed? . . .

NICHOLAS WADE: “I think this is a parochial problem of the academic left . . . They’re very fearful of each other . . . So if you step out of line just a little — particularly on this subject — if you write anything that doesn’t accord with the current dogma about the nature of race — you’ll be branded as a ‘scientific racist’ . . . you’ll be set upon as a racist and you’re career will be destroyed.

“So the whole of the academic left is sort of hoist on its own petard.  It’s sort of captured by this monster it’s created . . . which cannot brook criticism or dissenting thought.  It’s very sad . . . It has to change some day . . . the sooner the better.”

Well, it certainly hasn’t changed yet. Just recently James Watson was reduced to selling his Nobel Prize medal because he has been ostracized for publicly airing his views on race and IQ (“James Watson selling Nobel prize ‘because no-one wants to admit I exist‘”).

Mr Watson said his income had plummeted following his controversial remarks in 2007, which forced him to retire from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York. He still holds the position of chancellor emeritus there.

“Because I was an ‘unperson’ I was fired from the boards of companies, so I have no income, apart from my academic income,” he said.

Sadly, Watson appears to apologize for his gaffe and wants to be welcomed back to public life and the academic lecture circuit, saying it was all a misunderstanding. It must be really difficult to go from being an academic superstar to a non-person overnight.

Mr Watson – who insisted he was “not a racist in a conventional way” – said it had been “stupid” of him to not realise that his comments on the intelligence of African people would end up in an article.

“I apologise . . . [the journalist] somehow wrote that I worried about the people in Africa because of their low IQ – and you’re not supposed to say that.”

In 2007, the Sunday Times ran an interview with Dr Watson in which he said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

He told the newspaper people wanted to believe that everyone was born with equal intelligence but that those “who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

Mr Watson said he hoped the publicity surrounding the sale of the medal would provide an opportunity for him to “re-enter public life”. Since the furore in 2007 he has not delivered any public lectures.

“I’ve had a unique life that’s allowed me to do things. I was set back. It was stupid on my part. All you can do is nothing, except hope that people actually know what you are,” he said.

The race and IQ issue is non-negotiable for our hostile elites. Frank discussion of race, IQ and other psychological traits related to success in the contemporary world be disastrous for the entire multicultural project and the displacement of Whites and their culture. Imagine discussions of Ferguson in the mainstream media if race realism was presented as a legitimate point of view. And imagine how discussion of immigration would change if the discussion included the ethnic interests of Whites.

Perhaps Prof. Watson’s apology will be enough to get him back on the academic gravy train, but I doubt it. Some things just can’t be forgiven or forgotten.

Political correctness in reviews of Nicholas Wade’s “A Troublesome Inheritance”

There are a wide range of reviews of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance, but some difficult implications are downplayed.  

1. With few exceptions (e.g., Jared Taylor, “Nicholas Wade takes on the regime” and Bo and Ben Winegard, “Darwin’s dual with Descartes“), a common tactic is to acknowledge that race exists but then claim that evidence for a genetic basis for race differences is completely speculative. Despite the central importance of race differences, Wade deemphasizes IQ research where most of the research has centered.

A good example of this tendency is evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne who agrees with Wade that races do exist and claims that “except for politically motivated denialists,” we have known that for a long time. (Actually, the idea that race is real is big news to pretty much the entire faculty in the social sciences and the humanities these days, but of course it is not at all far-fetched to label them “politically motivated denialists.”)

So, if for no other  reason, Wade’s book is most welcome. However the next move is to claim that there is absolutely no evidence for genetic differences between races. Coyne:

Wade’s main thesis, and where the book goes wrong, is to insist that differences between human societies, including differences that arose in the last few centuries, are based on genetic differences—produced by natural selection— in the behavior of individuals within those societies.  In other words, societal differences largely reflect their differential evolution.

For this Wade offers virtually no evidence, because there is none. We know virtually nothing about the genetic differences (if there are any) in cognition and behavior between human populations.

This is simply false.   J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen list ten categories of evidence based on their previous reviews of the literature:

The worldwide distribution of test scores; the g factor of mental ability; heritability differences; brain size differences; trans-racial adoption studies; racial admixture studies; regression-to-the-mean effects; related life-history traits; human origins research; and the poverty of predictions from culture-only explanations. The preponderance of evidence demonstrates that in intelligence, brain size, and other life-history variables, East Asians average a higher IQ and larger brain than Europeans who average a higher IQ and larger brain than Africans [a recent study indicates average African IQ of 75]. Further, these group differences are 50–80% heritable. These are facts, not opinions and science must be governed by data. There is no place for the ‘‘moralistic fallacy’’ that reality must conform to our social, political, or ethical desires.  (“James Watson’s most inconvenient truth: Race realism and the moralistic fallacy“)

These data cannot be wished away any more than one can wish away the data showing the existence of race. Read more

‘Tis the Season

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It’s time once again for our annual fundraising drive. Things have been steadily improving since the deplatforming of a couple years ago. We have 10–15 people who have stepped up for monthly donations through their bank’s bill-paying feature. This is a convenient way to contribute and is totally under the radar—I haven’t heard from anyone who’s had a problem. Obviously things could be better. After paying for writers and other services we are just about breaking even, even though we lost a major donor who got worried that her foundation would come under scrutiny from the feds if a donation to TOO was on the books.

Such is life in America in 2019. It will likely get worse in the future, and much worse if the left manages to win back the presidency and the Senate. One or two more liberal-left Supreme Court judges would certainly gut the First Amendment, and then, in addition to corporate America, we’d have jail sentences and heavy fines for “hate speech.” Truth and scholarly integrity would be no defense.

But we’ll continue to carry on until that happens. We’ve had lots of great articles, and this will continue. Andrew Joyce’s recent article, “Jews, White Guilt, and the Death of the Church of England,” points out that academic writing on anti-Semitism by activist Jews is a major part of the problem.

I argue that total Jewish dominance in the academic production of histories of the Jews and anti-Semitism has played a major role in shifting opinion in philosemitic directions—amplified by Jewish activity in so-called “interfaith” dialogue, which has been ongoing internationally for over a century and has served Jewish interests exclusively while undermining Christian theology, especially those elements that made Christianity beneficial to Europeans in the past.

This is why TOO is so important. We are really the only outlet that deals with Jewish issues from an authoritative academic viewpoint. We are pushing back against this “total Jewish dominance,” appealing to open-minded people unafraid to deal with the reality of the historical record.

The following gives the information contained on our Donation page. Note that we have crypto-currency addresses for donations. It seems to me that the great asset about crypto-currency is that they are much more anonymo9us. Great way to go if you are into crypto.

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Using your bank’s bill pay.

Because we are not a recognized vendor, you would have to add TOO as a payee manually to your bank’s bill-paying feature with this information:

The Occidental Observer
1750 Delta Waters Rd Suite 102, #374
Medford, OR 97504

If you would like a tax deduction, you could put that in the payee information using an address line or add it to the payee line: Occidental Observer–tax deduction. This is the Charles Martel Society federal tax ID number: 36-4397594.

For non-recurrent donations, you can send a check or a money order to the same address, specifying if you want a tax deduction or not.

The Occidental Observer
1750 Delta Waters Rd Suite 102, #374
Medford, OR 97504

Note: If you send a check or money order to the above address and do not wish to be anonymous, we would like to acknowledge your contribution. The easiest way to do this is by email. Please include an email address with your donation if you would like us to acknowledge it personally. Thanks!

Bitcoin address: 1GT1vz7r6M7chwKBMjA6Ja4yFhXFdaPS2C

Monero: 82wiYzDYbusKXKyARveSxE1nGMzYywLt2JJnaR1V3jX1Weq9vBJFpJGeDn3RvPzCeTRwAgh1D6oj41MU8RKTk5FYJPGk1C4

Z-Cash: t1PX1N1A7BUPLxYed3zz9WzPmyYRikCKtdX

DASH: Xm6fGaGrX64yyGYNf1tGd2BoshRXdUvFcV

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Your support is important for many of our writers, and we are trying our best to be competitive with other websites in paying them. Donations of all amounts are welcome. As always, the financial base for projects like TOO is dwarfed by the financial resources of our enemies. This is basically a one-person show in terms of editing and posting articles.  Writers are not making a living by writing for TOO, but your support is a huge psychological boost for many.

This is an exciting time. As we have pointed out many times, politics throughout the West is becoming ever more racialized. White people are increasingly concerned about the changes they see all around them, and Whites are definitely worried about becoming a minority. We know that politicians are forced to toe the establishment line when it comes to issues like immigration, multiculturalism, and Jewish power and influence. However, the presence of intelligent, well-written commentary on contemporary issues may well seep into their consciousness even though they can’t discuss issues the way we do. We are the conscience of White America in an age when there are vast temptations to give in to the system.

As these changes continue to accelerate, White people will increasingly identify as White and support causes that advance the interests of Whites. It is therefore critical to maintain an intellectually honest critique of the current regime. TOO is one of the few websites that deals explicitly with all of the enemies of our people and does so in a fact-based, rational manner.

– Kevin MacDonald, Editor

Why support the Occidental Observer?

  1. There are political reasons to support TOO:
    • Survival: Western societies, including the USA, are rapidly dissolving under the twin attacks of mass Third World immigration and domestic ethnic competition (“multiculturalism”, “political correctness”, “affirmative action”, “equal opportunity”).
    • Pride: Whites have been kicked around for too long. It’s time to stop white flight and to reclaim our cities, our schools, and our jobs.
    • Truth and Justice: There are also matters of principle. In a liberal democracy good policies result from the truth being told. Lies are not only a vexation to the spirit, they result in the sort of bad governance that is dragging down America.
  2. There are also operational reasons:
    • Euro-Americans need to build activist organizations able to rival the large minority agencies such as the American Jewish Committee, the ADL, the NAACP, and La Raza. We also need to challenge the academic orthodoxy that has smothered White concerns for generations. TOO is your champion. We are willing to step forward on your behalf. But the website can only be as strong as you allow it to be.
    • TOO needs to professionalize. We have set up TOO on a shoe-string budget. We are determined to do much more, with new departments and in-depth analysis of the issues that concern white Americans. There are skilled and knowledge professionals willing to join the TOO team. But volunteer labor can only go so far.
    • Small donations make a difference when multiplied hundreds of times. Donations are more effective when made regularly because this allows us to forecast revenue and plan new projects accordingly. That is why an automatic  bank payment  of $10 per month is more valuable to us than a lump-sum payment of $120 per year. (However, we will accept lump sums . . .)
    • Ultimately we want White majority organizations to be so strong that politicians feel that they have no choice but to listen to their concerns. The results of the 2014 election show that Whites are increasingly voting on the basis of their racial identity. This will continue as Whites feel threatened by the rising tide of non-Whites imported by our hostile elites. Even when we are excluded from the mainstream media, we give confidence to politicians who oppose the present regime.

Jewish Involvement in Contemporary Refugee and Migrant Organizations — Part Two

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Editor’s note: Andrew Joyce has been permanently banned from Twitter for posting some of these names—just the names, no comments. He was also paid a visit by the UK thought police as a result of those posts. Because of new software, he has been unable to start an account even other pseudonyms. 

Go to Part 1.

Jewish Representation in Secular Contemporary Refugee and Migrant Organizations.

In contrast to the modest overrepresentation of Jews in anti-immigration groups (around 5%), Jews are nothing short of prolific in influential senior roles in contemporary refugee, asylum, and pro-migration organizations. Significantly, Jews occupy the leadership of all four of the largest and most influential (and nominally secular) organizations active in America today, the International Rescue Committee (President and CEO David Miliband), Refugees International (President Eric P. Schwartz, formerly of HIAS), International Refugee Assistance Project (Director Becca Heller), and Human Rights Watch (Executive Director Kenneth Roth, and Deputy Directors Iain Levine and Fred Abrahams).

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one of the most significant organizations bringing migrants to the United States. In their countries of origin, refugees and their families are assisted by the IRC to prepare their cases to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), compiling personal data and background information for security clearance. Once their cases are approved, refugees are usually greeted at the airport by case workers from the IRC. The IRC then provides these migrants with a home, furnishings, food, and any other assistance that might be required. The IRC operates 27 offices across the United States, each offering food, housing, educational, and medical assistance. It also works closely with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Division of Refugee Assistance, which was reported in August 2018 as quietly removing its staff directory page. Consultations with the Internet Wayback Machine revealed the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to be one Carl Rubenstein, an alumnus of Tel Aviv Law School. In 2017, the IRC, in conjunction with Rubenstein’s ORR, resettled more than 51,000 migrants to the United States, and is currently a staunch lobbyist against current restrictions imposed by President Trump.

(Clockwise) Eric P. Schwartz, David Miliband, Iain Levine, Becca Heller, Kenneth Roth, Fred Abrahams)

Jews are very prominent in the leadership of the IRC. In addition to President and CEO David Miliband, there are at least 30 Jews in senior positions within the organization including Morton I. Abramowitz (Overseer), Madeleine Albright (Overseer), Laurent Alpert (Board Member), Clifford Asness (Board Member), Betsy Blumenthal (Overseer), Alan Batkin (Chairman Emeritus and Board Member), Michael W. Blumenthal (Overseer), Susan Dentzer (Board Member), Evan G. Greenberg (Overseer), Morton I. Hamburg (Overseer), Leila Heckman (Overseer), Karen Hein (Overseer), Marvin Josephson (Overseer),Alton Kastner (Overseer and former Deputy Director), Henry Kissinger (Overseer), David A. Levine (Board Member), Reynold Levy (Overseer), Robert E. Marks (Overseer), Sara Moss (Overseer), Thomas Nides (Board Member), Susan Petricof (Overseer), Gideon Rose (Overseer), Thomas Schick (Chairman Emeritus and Board Member), James Strickler (Overseer), Sally Susman (Board Member), Mona Sutphen (Board Member), Merryl Tisch (Board Member), Maureen White (Board Member), Jonathan Wiesner (Chairman Emeritus and Board Member), William Winters (Overseer), and James D. Wolfensohn (Overseer). Read more

Jewish Involvement in Contemporary Refugee and Migrant Organizations — Part One

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“The Tree of Life Synagogue victims died so that refugees could live.”
Rob Eshman, Jewish Journal

“We seek advantage through our dead. We make our dead your problem. The meaning we find in our deceased we find as a courtesy to you, to help you, to change your societies for the “better.””
David Cole, Takimag —

Introduction.

Refugee and asylum legislation is now a key policy area for many major immigrant-receiving countries. The UN Refugee Agency estimates there are currently 28.5 million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide, with most originating in South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria. The world’s largest refugee hosting countries are located near the epicenters of those countries experiencing difficulties, and include Turkey (3.5 million), Uganda (1.4 million), Pakistan (1.4 million), Lebanon (1 million), and the Islamic Republic of Iran (979,400). More incongruous, however, is the fact refugee and asylum populations from these same troubled areas have exploded in the West, in countries both geographically and culturally very distant from exporting nations. Since 1990, the new refugee population of Austria has climbed from 34,948 to 115,197; in Belgium from 25,911 to 42,128; in Finland from 2,348 to 20,713; in France from 193,000 to 337,143; in Germany from 816,000 to 970,302; in Ireland from 360 to 6,324; in Italy from 10,840 to 167,260; in Luxembourg from 687 to 1,995; in the Netherlands from 17,337 to 103,818; in Norway from 19,581 to 59,160; in Sweden from 109,663 to 240,889; in Switzerland from 40,943 to 92,995; and in the United Kingdom from 43,632 to 121,766. Increased lobbying on behalf of refugees, and increased quotas for refugee admissions, are now a very significant part of the West’s overall approach to migration. The only significant current exceptions to these trends are Hungary, where the number of new refugees has dropped from 45,123 to 5,641, and the United States and Canada, both of which were home in 2017 to roughly half the number of new refugees they hosted in 1990. Read more