Jewish War Veterans Accidentally Reveals the Truth about (the Lack of) Jewish Service in the US Military

The Cleveland Jewish News recently published an article by Ron Kampeas that was syndicated to them through JTA. (1) It deals with the subject of jewish military service in the United States and as with many such pieces. It seeks both to kvell (= boast) and kvetch (= complain) about the relationship between jews and the military of the United States at the same time.

As such it serves as an interesting study about how desperate jews are to promote falsehoods among themselves and to others, while also at the same time complaining about the real situation. A situation that smacks of a demonstrable level of chutzpah of which Alan Dershowitz himself would surely be proud.

Kampeas begins by setting the scene about the crisis afflicting the Jewish War Veterans association (hereafter JWV):

‘Like a lot of other Jewish dilemmas, what’s old for Jews who serve in the U.S. military is new again, and the organization established in 1896 to dismantle myths and anxieties about Jews in uniform is still confronting them.

Jewish War Veterans, a group that advocates for Jews in the military and for the military in the Jewish community, set aside a Shabbat at its annual conference this month to discuss strategies to remind Americans (and Jewish Americans particularly) that there is a proud tradition of Jewish service.’

Notice the tension between the two positions, because on the one hand JWV was set up. In order to demonstrate that evil anti-Semites like my august self are wrong about the uniquely lacklustre history of jewish service in non-jewish military forces throughout the centuries, but yet JWV are having a membership crisis.

In other words: there simply aren’t enough jewish veterans out there for the organisation to maintain its numbers, which rather blows a hole in the idea that widespread jewish military service in the United States has been the rule not the exception that JWV are promoting.

However what we read next is the height of chutzpah:

‘One of the reasons for the conference theme was simply organizational survival: JWV officials say they have about 20,000members, many of them veterans of long past wars, although there are likely hundreds of thousands of living Jewish veterans eligible to join its ranks.

“Jewish War Veterans is slowly dying,” said Sheldon Goldberg, a docent at the JWV museum in Washington, D.C.’

In other words; JWV is suffering an existential crisis, because there is a lack of new members and all the current ones are dying left, right and centre. Yet there are apparently ‘hundreds of thousands of living jewish veterans’ according to JWV’s own estimates.

This is likely a complete fabrication, because jews were grossly under-represented among those Americans serving in the Vietnam War even with conscription in place. (2)

Nor has this changed in more recent times with jews chronically under-represented in the United States’ military forces to this day as well as among the casualties in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq according to both the official figures and jewish communal sources.

In fact there are significantly more jews serving as volunteer soldiers in the Israeli military than in that of the United States!

Thus one is more than justified to question just where these ‘hundreds of thousands of living jewish veterans’ are, because they aren’t in either the casualties or the official statistics.

JWV’s scheme to promote the lie of large scale jewish military service in the United States’ military forces comes out in the open when Kampeas quotes their spokesman as follows:

‘Three obstacles to spreading the word emerged during the conference from speakers and participants, who represented the breadth of the U.S. armed forces: the persistent stereotype that Jews are underrepresented in the military; the ongoing reluctance of Jewish families to send their sons and daughters to the military; and a military culture that encourages the repression of any expression of identity unrelated to the military.’

So in essence while they aren’t in the official statistics – even the ones about non-religious members of the military wouldn’t account for this discrepancy either – or the casualty lists. They are there, but they feel ‘oppressed’ and don’t want to talk about their jewishness to anyone including JWV.

Yet apparently:

‘“There is an undertone in Jewish society that Jewish service is undesirable,” Goldenberg said. “One of the most important groups we should be talking to is other Jewish Americans — they have become less and less tied to our service.”’

Then we read the hilarious and baseless assertion that:

‘An irritant is the perception that Jews underserve. At the JWV conference, the consensus was that there are 30,000 Jews currently serving — more than half a percent of the estimated 5.5 million Jews in the United States, and outpacing the 0.4 percent of the U.S. population currently in uniform. If the count is correct, and taking into account demographics — the Jewish population is older on average, so a smaller portion would be eligible to serve — Jews, as they have in the past, have a higher representation in the U.S. armed forces.’

So according to the JWV; jewish Americans are more patriotic than non-jewish non-Americans, they serve in the US military at greater rates than non-jews, but they are also deeply afraid of talking about their jewishness.

So they don’t appear in the official statistics – yet forgetting that also don’t appear in the casualty statistics in their alleged ‘true number’ either – because of... well... ‘anti-Semitism’ and yet JWV cannot seem to find any of these ‘hundreds of thousands of living jewish veterans’ - in order to recruit them - either leading to a widespread membership crisis in the organisation.

How strange!

It couldn’t be because the JWV’s ‘statistics’ are literally invented and the ‘hundreds of thousands of living jewish veterans’ don't in fact exist.

Of course not!

References

(1) https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/jta/jewish-war-veterans-want-the-young-warriors-to-tell-their/article_9a5d8640-e552-5ba9-92f5-3f207fc7169c.html

(2) Michael Lind, 1999, ‘Vietnam: The Necessary War’, 1st Edition, The Free Press: New York, pp. 107-110;