Last week I posted an essay by a friend, a liberal Jewish New Yorker who is voting for Bush. You can read it here. My friend has more to say.
-- Judith Weiss

“Never again.”

As Jews, we teach these sacred words to our children.

We raise millions of dollars and build Holocaust museums throughout the country to spread the message.

We form committees, spearhead educational initiatives, and aggressively reach out to the non-Jewish world to lecture them about their moral responsibility to fight anti-Semitism.

Do we then turn around and vote for the candidate who’s allied with forces intent on Jewish destruction?

Yasser Arafat has endorsed John Kerry.

So has Mahathir Mohamed, the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia. You remember him. Last year, he hosted the Organization of the Islamic Conference, where he said, “Today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” and “1.3 billion Muslims can not be defeated by a few million Jews.” He urged his audience of Arab leaders “to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack,” and they leapt to their feet in an ecstatic standing ovation.

These endorsements by Jew-haters and Jew-murderers are not meaningless background noise, as some would you have believe.

They are the logical outgrowth of John Kerry’s avowed foreign policy.

John Kerry says American actions must pass “a global test”, a test which Israel conspicuously fails.

He believes the central organ of our foreign policy must be the United Nations, whose General Assembly voted that “Zionism is racism”, and which in 2003, passed eighteen resolutions condemning Israel for human rights violations, and only four resolutions condemning other countries. Of the ten emergency special sessions convened by the General Assembly, six have focused on accusing Israel. And in the vast U.N. bureaucracy, Israel is the only country subject to permanent monitoring for human rights abuses.

Kerry feels the most important foreign power we must please is France, whose Ambassador called Israel “that sh-tty little country” and which this year successfully marshaled all twenty-five European Union members into voting against Israel’s life-saving security fence in the United Nations.

Martin Peretz writes “I’ve searched to find one time when Kerry - even candidate Kerry - criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I’ve come up empty. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union’s continuous hectoring.”

Of the 5,156 words, John Kerry spoke at his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, exactly 0 was about Israel.

He may try to duck this inconvenient topic, secure in his belief that American Jews vote Democratic, no matter how much the result may go against their own interests.

But we cannot duck it, for this is no ordinary time.

The next four years may well determine whether Israel survives or perishes in a nuclear holocaust.

The mad mullahs of Iran are hotly pursuing nuclear weapons, even as the United Nations issues half-hearted statements of “concern” and sends ineffectual inspectors. Experts say Iran will rapidly achieve the capability of reaching Israel, probably within the next year.

John Kerry has already allied himself with Iran’s current regime. His campaign sent an email to Iran’s official news agency, Mehr News, stating his plan to “repair the damage done” by President Bush’s policies and to “build new friendships and overcome tensions.”

So as the mullahs stage giant military parades of Shihab-3 ballistic missiles festooned with banners reading “We shall crush America under our feet” and “Israel must be wiped off the map”, Kerry proposes to provide Iran with lightly-enriched uranium to “test” whether the mullahs were “actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.” And if the mullahs fail his global test? Kerry suggests….(drum roll please)… a summit.

Ah yes. The delegates will gather in a lovely chateau outside of Paris, dining on fine wines and cheese, debating exactly how to word this week’s expression of “grave concern”, as the nuclear bomb hits Jerusalem. Shaking their heads, these bureaucratic pooh-bahs will sigh at the Jews’ historic propensity to attract trouble, and then philosophically return to their brie.

Too extreme? You don’t believe Kerry really sides with the mullahs? Then listen to The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, a brave group of student activists working inside and outside of Iran. On October 8, they issued a statement condemning Kerry, noting that “John Kerry is proving himself to be an ally of those seeking to impede internal revolution which would draw to a close the era of Islamo-Fascist mullahcracy.”

These students believe that Kerry’s pro-mullah policy is influenced by three of his top fund-raisers, Hussun Nemazee, Faraj Aalaei, and Susan Akbarpour, all Iranian-Americans with close ties to the current regime. Nemazee has actively tried to destroy the student group, launching a ten million dollar suit against them in the hope of shutting it down.

But perhaps Kerry is more influenced by love than money: His wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, has publicly scolded President Bush for his stern warnings to Teheran. Specifically in regard to Iran, she said, “The way we live in peace in a family, in a marriage, in the world is not by threatening, not by showing off your muscles. It’s by listening, by giving a hand sometimes, by being intelligent and being open, and setting high standards.”

So there you have it.

Kerry is endorsed by Yasser Arafat, whose hands are dripping with Jewish blood, including that of New Jersey’s own beautiful daughters, Sara Duker and Alisa Flatow.

Kerry is endorsed by Mahathir Mohamed, who spreads classic Jew-hatred from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in hopes of rousing Arab leaders to even greater destructive fury.

Kerry is endorsed by leading supporters of the mullahs of Iran, who even as we speak, are putting the finishing touches on their nuclear weapons and pointing them at Jerusalem.

Despite all this evidence, you may continue to say, “Well, Kerry would be good for Israel. Bush is bad for the Jews because now everyone hates us.”

Then let me ask you to consider the opinion of those most vulnerable to the results of your vote: our six million brothers and sisters in Israel. Their families are dying in pizza parlors, school busses and seder tables. Their sons are marching off to war. Their children are suffering in hospitals, in burn units, in rehab wards.

Israelis support President Bush 3 to 1. In that fractious, divided, argumentative society, there is as close to universal agreement as you will ever find: Kerry is the wrong candidate. In a horrifically dangerous time, President Bush is the one to protect them.

So if you wish, go ahead and vote for Senator Kerry. But if you do, I have one request:

Please do not send in your check to your local Holocaust Museum or Tolerance Center.

Abandon writing your ground-breaking curriculum on Lessons of the Holocaust.

Do not write incensed letters to the editor about the rise of Holocaust denial.

Stay home on Yom Ha’Shoah and catch up with your laundry or pay your bills.

Our six million dead are silent in the grave, with no need of your indignation and tears.

Our six million brothers and sisters in Israel - and vulnerable Jewish communities everywhere, including here - are alive, alone, and desperate for you to hear their cry:

Never again.

Never again.

Never again.

UPDATE: Judith here. I just want to add this scenario by Charles Krauthammer.