Free Republic

Today it is more clear than ever why Niles doubted FDR genuinely supported Zionism. President Barack Obama has spoken of his deep admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his desire to emulate FDR’s leadership style. But in the wake of the discovery of new documents detailing FDR’s behind-the-scenes coldness regarding the creation of a Jewish state, many Israelis will be hoping that sentiment does not extend to Roosevelt’s views on Zionism.

Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed the overwhelming support of American Jews during his presidency, and the reasons are clear. In his three-plus terms from 1933 to 1945, he led the war against Hitler, supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine... Starting in the 1960s, a flood of books appeared with self-evident titles like “No Haven for the Oppressed” and “While Six Million Died.” But the most influential account by far was David S. Wyman’s “Abandonment of the Jews,” published in 1984. Wyman considered numerous parties responsible for America’s tepid response to the Holocaust, including a badly divided Jewish community, a nest of virulent...

On April 12, 1945, my grandfather approached me as I played outside and asked where my mother was. He looked stricken, and so I quickly followed him inside and heard him say words that made my mother burst into tears: President Roosevelt had died. My mother’s grief and panic were so palpable — her brother was fighting in the Pacific, her brother-in-law was fighting in Europe — that it scared me. In our house, FDR was not merely the President. He was a god. He is a god no more. His New Deal is no longer solely credited with ending...

Historian Rafael Medoff says Franklin Delano Roosevelt failed to take relatively simple measures that would have saved significant numbers of Jews during the Holocaust, because his vision for America only encompassed having a small number of Jews. “In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society,” Medoff told The Daily Caller in an email about his new book, “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith.” “This prejudice helped shape his overall vision of what America should look...

Today's attack at the Holocaust Museum was the work of one single Antisemitic nut-job but`make no mistake about it, even in the United States America, hatred of Jews is becoming a widely accepted`bigotry. Sometimes the Antisemitism is in its purest form, like today's killer, but more often the hatred of Jews takes form of Israel hatred. Not that all people who oppose Israel are Jew haters, but make no mistake, when you hear terms like, "the Israel lobby" it is nothing but a polite way of repeating that old stereotype that Jews control the world. Today the left-wing blogisphere came...