A couple of elderly Holocaust survivors assaulted in a genuine hate crime in the Netherlands:
Samuel (87) and Diana (86) Blug, two elderly Holocaust survivors, fell victim to a vicious and violent anti-Semitic attack at their home in Holland a month ago.
According to a Yedioth Ahronoth report on Sunday, the couple were only able to come forward now and recount what happened to them.
The Blugs say two men, who looked to be of Moroccan descent, knocked on the door to their apartment, claiming to be the police and demanding entrance.
As soon as Samuel opened the door, the nightmare began. Two men dressed in black barged into the apartment and started severely beating the couple.
The assailants threw the couple on the floor, kicked them repeatedly and shouted: “Dirty Jews – from now on your property is ours.”
After tying up the badly injured couple, the thieves ripped Diana’s jewelry off her body. At gunpoint, they forced the couple to tell them where the rest of the valuables in the apartment were located.
Samuel was blinded in the assault and suffered a broken femur. Both he and Diana, who were living independently before the attack, are now confined to wheelchairs at a rehabilitation center in Amsterdam.
“Those bastards have destroyed our lives,” Samuel said in tears to Yedioth Ahronoth. “I have severe pain. I’m completely broken inside,” Diana added.
Emmanuel, the couple’s son, has offered a prize of ten thousand euros to anyone who can provide information that will lead to the arrest of the assailants.
He also circulated pictures of the beaten Diana and Samuel, urging “the world to see what they did to my parents.”
Americans are a nation of migrants and, in many cases, refugees. We tend to be the most generous nation on earth. Most of us – and I include myself – would love to be able to help the refugees.
But the stories coming from Eastern and Central Europe are in all too many cases not the stories of people coming to free lands for fresh starts.
And before anyone says it – yep. American natives have said the same thing about pretty much every wave of immigration i American history. And they’ve been right, to an extent; each wave of immigration changed this country.
And it’s not as if every wave of immigrants came here with clean hands and no grudges; Scots and Irish came here with bones to pick with the Brits; French and Germans came here fresh from innumerable European battlefields; Russians, Poles and Jews – the pogrom thrower and the pogrom victim – all came here, as did the Armenians and the Turks. And somehow, after a generation or two, most of them pretty well fit in as Americans, and buried their squalid ancestral squabbles and hatreds, and got down to work.
The difference is, every previous wave of immigrants has, inside a generation of two, assimilated to American life.
But at the same time as our government has officially switched from emphasizing assimilation in favor of integration – they’re very different things – we are faced with a wave of refugees that, as their numbers crept well out of the 1-2% range in Europe, have shown no desire to assimilate, and who seek integration on their own terms, making their neighborhoods in London and Stockholm and Paris and Hamburg effectively off-limits to the rest of society.
All of them? Certainly not. But enough of them to where “assimilation” looks like a dim prospect, ever.
And with that in mind, I think it’d be just an outstanding idea if Minnesota’s congressional delegation slowly stepped back and thought for a moment; are they being compassionate, or giving into irrational, PC exuberance?
Canaries in the coal mine are dying. And read mark steyn on multiculturalism to grasp the enormity of the problem.
I confess to not being all that worldly-traveled, but I have to point out, I’d have trouble picking out someone as specific as “Moroccan descent.” Unless they came up to me and said “Hey, I’m from Morocco,” I would have no idea.
Any clarification about Moroccan identifying characteristics would be appreciated.
Given that Minnesota’s congressional delegation is overwhelmingly Team Blue, why would you expect them not to want to throw the gates open to a sympathetic electorate?
“did your middle school math teacher mention the difference between anecdote and data?”
EmeryTheAntisemiticSoci@list, are you implying assault did not happen? Are you saying this is another hasbara disinformation plot?
Yos, never mind that I can tell a difference (with a high degree of confidence) between a russki and a Ukrainian just by looking at them (I would venture a bet you will have a harder time telling were they came from), due to lack of assimilation and everybody keeping to their customs including dress, it would not be hard to tell whether you are dealing with someone of Moroccan decent or an Algerian, for example.
Not at all on point, Emery. The anecdote in question prompted Berg to muse about multiculturalism and non-assimilation of immigrants. I’m commenting on Berg, not the attack on the elderly couple.
My apologies, that quote from not directed at you. Is this story indicative of a trend? And if so, where is the data to support that claim?
OMG, I just found this AMAZING new internet search tool called Google and look, look what it brought up concerning Moroccan immigrants in Holland! Amazing!
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2624/moroccan-crime-netherlands
You should try it sometime.
“did your middle school math teacher mention the difference between anecdote and data?”
Sure. Anecdotes are used as evidence when they support your position. Data is demanded when the anecdotes support the other guy’s arguments.
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
Groucho Marx
You know what’s interesting? The Dutch apparently had lots of Turks and Moroccans immigrate in recent years, much as Minnesotans had lots of Hmong and Somali immigrants. The old guy who got beat up claimed his assailants were Moroccans and people sneering ask how he knows, as if that’s proof he’s lying or racisss or just plain wrong.
I could tell you if a perp was Asian or Somali. I might not be able to distinguish Vietnamese from Hmong at a glance, but I certainly can tell a recent Somali immigrant from a native-born descendant of South Carolina slaves (by the way he wears his pants, if nothing else). It is NOT true that “they all look alike,” not to me anyway, and evidently not to the victim.
Some Americans seem quick to assume nobody else in the world knows as much as we do. That’s a flaw that prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is, rather than as we imagine it to be.
JD: I must say, your links are always entertaining. ;^)
I wasn’t sneering. I just wanted to know how one identifies a “Moroccan”. Every comment does not need to be combative. Although I love that.
You don’t need any kind of a link to show that the kind of nation the progs are trying to create has no successful model and many unsuccessful models. The Soviets, and the Czars, and the Austrians, to give a few examples, were only able to hold polyglot nations together by creating a national government that was made up of members of supra-national ruling class.
I don’t think that our progressive friends would find that style of government to be objectionable.
I see plenty of sentiments expressed about cultural genocide, thieves and rapists, the inability of Muslims to live in a civilized society, etc. And these comments are on this website from time to time, not from Trump or Le Pen or Golden Dawn and their supporters. If you think the hostility being expressed is simply about whether people are observing the bureaucratic niceties, you’re kidding yourself.
I think a lot of people are kidding themselves, understandably so. Nativism can be pretty ugly; people want to like what they see when they look in the mirror.
“If you think the hostility being expressed is simply about whether people are observing the bureaucratic niceties, you’re kidding yourself.”
And that is where you are wrong, Emery.
These “bureaucratic niceties”, as you describe them, are the law as written by the representatives of American citizens. The people who want open borders — and you are one of them, I think — really don’t give a damn what the people of the United States think.
The law and the constitution are the only thing that separates us from a totalitarian state or a third world kleptocracy.
I came to this country as an economic immigrant with some skills (nothing special), cut some immigration corners, didn’t always fill out the correct tax form, and eventually became a citizen after seducing one of the natives. I have given far more to my new country than it will ever give back to me through socialist largess. I have a great deal of sympathy for immigrants, economic or otherwise. I find natives to be a self-satisfied bunch, overly impressed with themselves, their fellow tribesmen, and the uniqueness of their country and society. More than anything, I notice their lack of perspective.
No links will be coming from me – EmeryTheAntisemiticSoci@list. No matter what I may offer your very predictable response will be – HASBARA! I am not wasting time to get down to your level of idiocy. Even though Google may be a friend, your lying eyes won’t believe anything not adhering your hateful point of view. Because HASBARA!.
Emery seems confused. Maybe it’s time for clarity.
1. I speak for myself. Mitch allows me to post here, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with me. Mitch can speak for himself.
2. Humans have fought over every inch of this world since we left Eden. We fought over land because we needed it for food and shelter for ourselves, our mates and our children. Families banded together to resist others who wanted to take our food, our shelter, our land, our future. This innovation allowed specialization – some became farmers, herders, warriors, inventors and archivists – first remembering orally, then in writing – which gave later inventors a head start on even better inventions.
3. Human skills and abilities are distributed on a bell-shaped curve. Some people are smarter than others. Smart people tend to produce smart children. Smart people tend to be able to provide food and medical care for their children, so they grow to maturity rather than die of starvation, malnutrition or disease. Groups of smart people produce more smart children, some of whom become inventors, which leads to more food, better health, more wealth.
4. People in less successful groups see and desire the smart group results but can’t achieve them in their own groups so they attempt to acquire the results by force (war), by stealth (espionage), or by joining the smart group (immigrant).
5. Immigrants, being the descendants of less-smart groups, tend on average to be less smart than people in the smart group, so on average immigrants tend to be incapable of filling the smartest jobs but instead fill the menial jobs that smart people don’t want to do. Those who immigrate but can’t do even those menial jobs must starve or depend on the kindness of strangers to survive. This means they live in the successful society but can’t acquire the material signs of success, which breeds resentment but doesn’t stop them breeding more children, who have the same problems as their parents.
6. A successful group of smart people has only so many menial jobs and can support only so many charity cases. At some point, the smart group must limit general immigration to preserve the group. A smart group that fails to limit immigration will collapse or be conquered.
7. Limiting general immigration does not mean ending all immigration. The bell-shaped curve distribution of human talent means some people in the less-smart groups will be as smart as average people in the smart group. If the smart group cherry-picks the smartest from every group of immigration applicants, the overall smart group integrity is preserved.
8. Some smart groups may allow charity immigration, not because it improves the smart group but for emotional reasons, such as war-zone refugees. Others, seeing refugees allowed to join smart groups, claim refugee status, too. The father of the dead kid on the beach was not a war-zone refugee but had been living in Turkey for three years until his parents in Canada sent him money so he could sneak into Europe to get his teeth fixed free and live on welfare, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. He’s a human trafficker whose boat was overloaded and ill equipped when he capsized it, killing his own family. Three-quarters of the immigrants storming Europe are moving to gain material benefits, not fleeing violence. They bring no skills or intelligence to improve the smart group. The smart group’s experience with such immigrants shows they tend not to assimilate and tend to cause crime and social disorder. Smart groups in Europeans are building walls to keep out such immigrants, to preserve the smart group’s existence.
9. European smart-groups eventually will decide they need to purge themselves of the useless, destructive elements in their groups, to save the groups themselves.
10. Human social behavior is well understood, copiously documented, endlessly repeated, and vigorously denied. Calling me names won’t change it.
Emery, I posted the above before I read your post about being an immigrant. My response was not spurred by your immigrant status, but by your earlier comments.
Although I must say, I’m pleased to see that your life experience confirms my analysis: smart people from other groups immigrate here and add to our society. That’s good: we want more smart people and should be expediting their applications. It’s trainloads of generalized mass immigration that we don’t need, and neither does Europe.
Wow that was longer than the average DG post
JD: I have a co–worker who loves to make up stories. A favorite anecdote is someone asking him, “Why are you telling people this crap,” to which the co–worker replied, “Hey, man, they know I’m lying.”
All of which is to say, you might be overthinking the proposal.
Regardless of how anyone personally feels about immigration levels, I would hope that everyone would agree that immigration policy should be set by congress, and not by the president. This country is a republic, after all.
It’s stupid to say that we need to secure the border before we talk about amnesty. We are a sovereign nation. Securing the border should be unconditional. A secure border is one of the attributes of a sovereign nation. If that means that people like Emery have to remain in the hellhole that spawned them, so be it. We Americans will muddle along somehow.
The free movement of capital.
The free movement of goods and services.
The free movement of ideas and media.
The free movement of people.
The protection of private property.
I’m not a starry-eyed idealist, but I like to think that there is a liberal ideal that we should keep our eyes on, not necessarily as a realistic objective for today, but as a goal to strive for. Within many countries, we’re pretty close to that ideal. In some of them, I think we’ve had it for so long that people forget the value of that ideal, how hard it was to achieve, and how many people in the world do not have it. Just as there is a great value in that liberal ideal within countries, there is great value in the liberal ideal being practiced between countries. So let’s keep the tone civilized, and do the best we can under difficult circumstances without a lot of nasty rhetoric that betrays liberal values.
Should we have frictionless open borders? No, that’s not only politically impossible, but not really in anyone’s best interest. Rapid change is disruptive to any country, so just as some friction for moving otherwise free capital and goods over borders is prudent, friction for moving people is appropriate too. But let’s not go overboard under the pressures of the moment. Yes, we need to restrict the flow of refugees and economic migrants, and we should. But let’s be compassionate, act with restraint, and treat migrants with dignity. And let’s remember that if we aren’t moving towards the liberal ideal, we are necessarily moving away from it. That has a long-term cost for rich and poor countries alike.
You are just blathering at this point, Emery.
People who are not capable of presenting a sound argument resort to blathering.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Blathering is what EmeryTheAntisemiticSoci@list does best. He is pining for NWO to take over because it will work that much better! Nevermind that an experiment called the USA accomplished more in 250 years than all other civilization combined in the past 3000 to advance the human condition. I, for one, refuse to be forced to live back in stone age.