There were 937 of them.
Some 937 souls fleeing their native country - fleeing for their lives. They made it across an ocean and were refused - by Cuba. Next, they sailed to the Unites States. So close were they to the shores of Florida that it was said they could see the lights of Miami. Desperately, a cable was sent to the President of the United States. He never responded. Instead, what these terrified human beings received was an answering cable from the US State Department. The passengers, the cable warned sternly, must:
“….await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States."
And so it was that the German transatlantic ocean liner St. Louis, which had sailed on May 13, 1939 from Hamburg, Germany, was sent on the rest of the way of what later became known as The Voyage of the Damned. The passengers? They were, of course, Jewish. The St. Louis returned eventually to Europe (it was also turned away from both Cuba and Canada), where the passengers were dispersed - outside of Germany. To countries that would shortly be invaded by Germany. Almost a third of the St. Louis passengers would now die in the Holocaust.
There was not a single word in the story that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had never responded to the desperate cable from the Jews on board. There was - last sentence - a nod to the fact that the quotas for their respective German and Austrian nationalities had been filled. Quotas filled? They couldn’t come in to America. Period.
So much for Jewish refugees and the media.
And now? Now the flood of illegals from south of the border is everywhere. And what is the liberal media saying?
Here’s the New York Daily News headline:
Undocumented immigrants in New York could become 'state citizens' under new bill
At the Los Angeles Times the liberal paper has announced that it “will no longer refer to individuals as "illegal immigrants" or "undocumented immigrants”.
The New York Times of today is urging the President to “go big” on immigration.” The Times editorial board, tellingly also avoiding the word “illegal”, demands that the US government must be “giving millions of immigrants permission to stay, to work and to live without fear.”
So let’s see. What’s the difference between the response to 937 Jews in 1939 - literally fleeing for the lives from Adolph Hitler - and millions of illegals flooding the US southern border because their own governments can’t get their act together?
In a word? Race.
Let’s be blunt, shall we? What if this flood of illegals at the southern border were not brown-skinned kids from Central America - aka Latinos? What if the chaos unfolding in the Middle East - and the Obama administration’s distaste for Israel that has been likened to “Jew hatred” by Ben Shapiro over at Townhall -- resulted in a modern version of the Holocaust? Sending thousands of Israeli Jews flocking to the US seeking everything the illegals from Mexico and Central America are seeking?
Or? Or what if a nation like Nigeria -- whose population is apparently supportive of it’s government which in turn is famously anti-gay -- fell to the Islamic radicals in Boko Haram? The group that has kidnapped all those young girls. Suppose thousands of Nigerians - anti-gay sympathies intact - were boarding airliners by the thousands to come to the US and demand the same things as the illegals south of the border?
Or? What if North Korea and its unstable rulers turned on South Korea again - sending thousands of South Koreans onto evacuating planes destined for the US?
What would the media be saying then?
Here’s The Washington Post, furious about Nigeria.
Nigeria’s anti-gay law demands a response from the West
The Post was so angry at the Nigerian government - which represents the Nigerian people - for passing a new anti-gay law the Post described as follows:
“It mandates a 14-year prison sentence for anyone entering a same-sex union and a 10-year term for “a person or group of persons who supports the registration, operation and sustenance of gay clubs, societies, organizations, processions or meetings.” Public displays of affection by gay men and lesbians are also criminalized.”
The liberal paper demanded of the Obama administration that it tell Nigeria that its “government will be unwelcome in Washington.” In other words, if Nigeria doesn’t adopt the liberal American view of gay relationships - Nigeria should not be recognized by the US government. They should fold up their US Embassy in Washington and get out. Now…and period.
So. How exactly do you think a flood of Nigerian immigrants suddenly coming to America -- presumably most of them black -- would be greeted by the Washington Post? Nigerians bringing, as likely, the same anti-gay sentiments they have expressed in Nigeria?
And a flood of modern Jewish refugees? Are you kidding? Recall that moment at the 2012 Democratic National Convention when the news dawned that Democrats had dropped language from their platform recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Not to mention dropped a reference to “God”? When Michigan’s Congressman Sander Levin, who is Jewish, moved to restore the language on Jerusalem the Convention of leftists erupted in boos. It took a personal plea from Levin to Obama aides - and a blatant ignoring of repeated voice votes by the Convention’s chairman - to put back both Jerusalem and God.
There's a reason Ben Shapiro is talking about "Jew hatred."
On Monday, three Jewish boys were found dead, murdered by the terrorist group Hamas: Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, 16. Frenkel was an American citizen. The three were kidnapped while hitchhiking some three weeks ago. In the interim, President Barack Obama said nothing about them publicly. His wife issued no hashtags. His State Department maintained that $400 million in American taxpayer cash would continue to the Palestinian unity government, which includes Hamas.
Presumably Frenkel did not look enough like Barack Obama's imaginary son for him to give a damn. Or perhaps Frenkel hadn't deserted his duty in the American military, and therefore his parents didn't deserve a White House press conference. Maybe Michelle Obama was too busy worrying about children's fat thighs to spend a moment tweeting out a selfie to raise awareness.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Obama administration didn't care about Frenkel because he was a Jew.
With that, and much more, in mind? Can you imagine the uproar from the left if suddenly hundreds of thousands of fleeing Israeli Jews were to be treated as the the left wishes to treat all those Latinos from south of the border? Let on airliners en masse with no ID? Sent to cities all over America - with amnesty lying ahead? There would be hell to pay.
Can you imagine the liberal media reaction if, say, Harlem or the heavily black wards of Washington, DC, - not to mention other liberal enclaves across the country - were suddenly flooded with Asians fleeing left-wing Communist regimes. Determined to pursue a capitalist paradise?
Well, yes. If the American left awoke tomorrow to discover America was being flooded with anti-gay black Nigerians, anti-Palestinian Israeli Jews and seriously pro-capitalist Asians? That, as Breitbart reports here, the TSA was letting them onto airliners without ID? And the push was on to give them all amnesty -- and make them American citizens?
The Left, beginning with its media outlets, would go ballistic.
Which brings us to the not-so-dirty secret in all of these immigrants-flood-the-border stories. The indignant reaction from the leftist media that has them refusing to use the term illegal immigrants in their pages, or demanding President Obama “go big” on immigration or the celebration of a New York bill to give all manner of rights to illegals.
The reason for all this is the Politics of Race. Simply put, all these Latinos flooding the border are seen as potential votes for the Left. So the play is to race. These particular immigrants are of just the right race, from the right part of the world, at the right time. But if they happened to be Nigerian blacks? Israeli Jews? Koreans or another group of Asians?
Every last one of those prospective immigrants would be headed for the modern equivalent of those frightened and desperate Jews on the long ago St. Louis. They would be told in so many words to just go away. They would be too anti-gay, too Asian or - as in 1939 - simply too Jewish.
In a twist that on the old warnings of a century ago that warned off Irish applicants for jobs, the real message from the American leftist media on immigration and amnesty is very simple:
Only Latinos need apply. And they better not be homophobes, either.
