Muslim countries should welcome their own refugees
The Feb. 2 issue of The Chronicle is filled with column after column decrying President Trump’s executive order banning refugee immigration from several Muslim countries.
A little common sense is in order here, and many questions need answering.
First, what are they doing here? Why do they come 6,000 miles, at our expense, when they could literally walk into Middle Eastern Muslim countries, where that would be safe, and among co-religionists who share their culture and language? They could go to Turkey, Jordan and Egypt very easily, and with a little help into Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Why don’t these Muslim countries welcome their own? And if they won’t, why should we?
When Jews were expelled from the Muslim Middle East, and Jews were allowed to emigrate from Russia, Israel took them in, nearly a million of them. Israel was poor, had no natural resources, and an enormous military burden. Yet it took all of them. Muslim countries, many oil rich, turn their people away.
The same thing happened in Bosnia. When the Serbs were massacring the Muslims, the West, including America, rushed in with military force and huge expenditures to protect them. What did the Muslim countries do? Nothing. Nada. Bubbkas. Squat. Obviously, Muslim countries know that the West will, naively, shoulder the burden. The consequences of this lunacy are painfully visible in France, Germany and England, where the very culture of these countries is being irretrievably subverted by these refugees. They now, too late, are building walls.
Some allude to the plight of Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930s, and America’s refusal to let them in. There is absolutely no parallel. Let’s examine a hypothetical situation. Suppose at that time all the countries bordering Germany were overwhelmingly Jewish — France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, even England. If these Jewish countries refused to admit the Jewish refugees, would America then have had any moral obligation to do so? These Muslim refugees have plenty of Muslim countries they could go to. Yet their own countries won’t even pay the costs of transporting or settling them elsewhere. Instead, we are told it is our burden, economically and culturally, not even mentioning the very real security risk involved.
Let us examine this on the local level. There is a significant Muslim community in Greater Kansas City. Why do they not take responsibility for these refugees upon themselves? Why does Jewish Vocational Services spend money on them? Humanitarianism is a noble impulse, but in this situation, sadly misplaced. Every single Jewish dollar expended upon them is a dollar stolen from needy Jews here, of which there are far too many.
One more question. If these refugees were Jewish, is there one single person who truly believes that the local Muslim community would lift a finger to help them? I don’t think so. On top of that, these Syrian Arabs are taught from childhood to hate Jews and to want them dead, yet we are exhorted to welcome them. As a few have told me, ‘not all of them feel that way.’ Wonderful. Only most of them. And none of this even begins to address the problem that they are unvettable.
I would sincerely like to see answers to my questions. Direct answers, not pejoratives.