HIAS Claims Victory Amidst Stunning Jewish Communal Abstention

There’s a great joke in a relatively weak Woody Allen movie, “Scoop,” where the protagonist quips,

“Even at the faintest hint of anti-semitism, the Jews start writing letters.”

It isn’t all that hard to find Jews to mobilize on an issue they agree with. They write letters, they send checks, they circulate op-eds. Even our enemies backhandedly compliment the Jewish community on its willingness and ability to react and, well, lobby.

Progress By Pesach, which secured the backing of major Jewish organizations, requested only that people sign their petition. 10,000 out of millions. What a joke for a program claiming to speak on behalf of American Jewry.

And still, the Jewish community refused to give it to them.

The Liberal Jewish masses (the mainline Orthodox never supported this initiative) ignored the Jewish communal leadership.

The JTA reports, in an almost Orwellian titled article, “Progress reported by ‘Progress by Pesach,” at the very bottom of the story that,

After the press conference, participants in the “Progress by Pesach” coalition — which includes 13 national and another dozen local groups — met with Tina Tchen, director of the public liaison office, to deliver petitions signed by more than 3,500 individuals.

But Progress By Pesach had set 10,000 as their goal. How hard should that have been? How hard was it to find 10,000 U.S. Jews to just e-sign something backed by the major Jewish organizations? PBP had “articles” of support written as press releases in the Jewish newspapers, appeals by this group and that one, communal appeals disguised as “panel discussions.”

There was so little official communal dissent. And still the Jewish masses refused to sign on.

Let this be clear. The Jewish community does not perceive amnesty and an end to raids as “progress” at all. They could not vote no, there was no such forum, so instead, the people voted with overwhelming silence, despite endless prodding and cheerleading for this foolish initiative. It is imperative that major Jewish communal organizations take note, and shift their policies in accordance to those their constituency approve of.

This was an important battle. HIAS held all the cards. They crafted their own test, they monitored its implementation, and they graded their own paper. And they still received a miserable 35%.

That’s an F.

HIAS’s Progress By Pesach was repudiated even by their own risible metric standards that they themselves set.