We join in the outrage over the vandalism at two churches

 

Other items in today’s column include
*Political bytes
*Gomez’s anti-wealthy campaign
*Let’s judge Amy Coney Barrett on her merits

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — On behalf of San Diego Jewish World, I would like to offer sincere sympathy to the parishioners and clergy of  St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Church in Rancho San Diego and Our Mother of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in El Cajon, on whose houses of worship swastikas and hateful slogans were discovered on Saturday morning.

The Jewish community is well aware what it feels like when houses of worship  are targeted by haters.  The daubing of swastikas and hateful slogans on our synagogues make us uneasy, even deeply worried, about our safety when we gather for holidays such as Yom Kippur, which we observe tonight (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday), in most cases via Internet programming, instead of in person, because of Covid19.  We know that haters don’t stop with swastikas and slogans, and don’t confine their hate to one group or religion.  Not long before a gunman opened fire in April 2019 on the Chabad of Poway, killing one congregant and wounding three other persons, a man believed to be the same assailant  attempted to set fire to the Islamic Center of Escondido.

Since then, the Jewish community has redoubled its efforts to provide for its physical security.  Gates to our synagogue and communal properties are locked, with congregants needing electronic passes to open them.  Security guards, many of them off-duty police officers, inspect bags and packages that anyone, congregant or visitor, intends to carry inside.  It is not the welcoming atmosphere any of us want at our houses of worship, but it is a reflection of the counter-measures one must take against hate.

When these attacks occurred, our neighbors — Christian, Muslim, and representatives of other religious and secular groups — stood with us to say that hatred against any of us is hatred against all of us. Indeed, that is the way that we feel today when reading about the vandalism at the two Catholic churches.  We very sincerely express our condolences.

Chaldeans — who are Christians from Iraq — and Jews share a common biblical heritage.  Our patriarch Abraham set on his journey to Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees, meaning that if we trace our genealogies back far enough we are cousins.  Our community is proud that Jewish Family Service has been the agency that helped many Chaldeans settle in San Diego County.  Today, as we see more and more Chaldeans operating successful businesses, running for public office, sending their children off to college, and exercising their roles as American voters, we think back proudly to our own integration into the United States.   In you, we see ourselves, and our heartfelt wish is for your community and ours both to prosper.

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Gomez’s Anti-Wealthy Campaign

*More and more, Georgette Gomez, running for Congress in the 53rd Congressional District, is relying on the tropes of class warfare to carry her campaigns against her fellow Democratic opponent, Sara Jacobs.

Here, for example, is the Gomez campaign’s attack on Jacobs: “Sara Jacobs’ support for Trump corporate tax cuts stands in opposition to how a majority of Americans feel about Trump’s tax giveaway to the wealthy and large corporations that abuse the tax code to avoid paying their fair share. But Jacobs’ support is not surprising, given that Trump’s corporate tax giveaways benefit the hundreds of corporations in her multimillion dollar stock portfolio, including corporations such as Amazon that pay little or not tax already. The bill was bitterly opposed by progressive organizations and Democratic leaders, and was the largest single reduction in corporate taxes in U.S. history.”

Yet, Jacobs’ view, as expressed in a recent San Diego Union-Tribune interview, is just the opposite of what the Gomez campaign says it is. Jacobs told the U-T: “One of our first priorities should be reversing the 2017 Republican tax giveaways that gave huge breaks to billionaires and international corporations while leaving the middle class behind, that put Social Security and Medicare at risk, and that added trillions to our deficit without growing the economy. We need to increase the highest marginal tax rate and ensure capital gains rates match that, close loopholes in our tax code, and make sure everyone, including corporations, pays their fair share.”

As many of us know, Jacobs is the granddaughter of Irwin Jacobs, the cofounder of Qualcomm, a company which is a major employer in San Diego and which has helped to revolutionize the communications industry. She has been gifted with a portion of the money that her philanthropic family earned by being pioneers of wireless technology. I doubt that Gomez or members of her campaign staff eschew the use of cellphones or wireless laptop computers, but nevertheless they begrudge the Jacobs family the proceeds from their successful entrepreneurial enterprises. I also don’t recall hearing Gomez or other progressive complain when the Jacobs family contributed $120 million to the San Diego Symphony, or when they underwrote and continue to contribute to other important civic causes in San Diego.

No, the Gomez campaign continues to try to stir up resentment against Sara Jacobs because she and her family are wealthy. In this type of thinking, if someone is rich — even if it was because of the family’s ingenuity and entrepreneurship — that person nevertheless is suspect. Conversely, according to this kind of thinking, if someone is poor, that person must have been exploited.

I don’t agree. I believe in the American civic dream that opportunities in this country are unlimited for people who get an education, work hard, and offer new ideas or unique products to further improve American life.

*
Let’s judge Amy Coney Barrett on her merits
Even before we have heard one word of testimony from Amy Coney Barrett as a nominee to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court, partisan forces on the right and the left have taken sides for and against her nomination.

Former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota), who serves as the national chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, notes that Barrett was previously approved by the Senate on a 55-43 vote to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals.  Now, he says, the Senate should act swiftly to confirm her to the higher lifetime position.

Additionally, he says, “Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a gifted and eminently qualified nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States. She is a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and her views on the role of judges and on the respect due to legal text are in line with those that Justice Scalia expounded. She is widely acknowledged as a brilliant legal mind, and her students and colleagues have praised her integrity, her respect for others, and her commitment to the law. She is exactly the kind of principled and high-minded individual that we need on the Supreme Court of our day.”

Contrast Coleman’s viewpoint with that of the progressive group, Indivisible, which wrote: ” We’re not exaggerating when we say having her on the bench would put lives in danger: she openly opposes the Affordable Care Act (while we’re in the midst of an unchecked pandemic), she’s critical of Roe v. Wade, and she’s a major threat to recent progress toward LGBTQ equality. We can’t let Trump build a decades-long ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court. So now we have two urgent tasks ahead of us: (1) Stop the Senate from confirming Amy Coney Barrett. (2) Elect a president and senators who will appoint justices committed to defending our rights.

Personally, I wish Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) had been consistent in demanding that with so little of the current term of the President remaining that the next President be permitted to make his choice.  That was why McConnell refused to allow confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland during the last year of President Obama’s term.  I believe the same standard should apply now — even if the next President turns out to be a Democrat and not President Trump, who is McConnell’s fellow Republican.

Nevertheless, President Trump is within his rights to nominate a Supreme Court Justice, and that being the case, a comprehensive hearing into Barrett’s qualifications and judicial views is in order.  Senators — on both sides of the aisle –ought to withhold their judgments until the hearings can be held and all the fact made known to the public.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com