….and he didn’t like Trump either.
Editor: First, let me be clear. Nothing in this post is meant in any way to suggest that we condone this horrific act of violence against innocent people. This was a vile act by someone whose hatred of Jews was so great that he had obviously abandoned all reason and we condemn it.
Here is Reuters:
UPDATE 1-Who is Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect?
Two hours before a gunman burst into the Tree of Life synagogue and opened fire during a Shabbat religious service, Bowers posted on chat site Gab.com about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a non-profit that helps Jewish refugees relocate to the United States.
“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” wrote Bowers, a heavy-set, white male.
[….]
Bowers, who is a registered voter with “no affiliation” in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, took aim in one post at U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a “globalist” who did nothing to stop the “infestation” of the United States by Jews.
“For the record, I did not vote for him nor have I owned, worn or even touched a MAGA hat,” he wrote.
Just so you know, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (rebranded as HIAS a few years ago), resettles very few Jews. As a federal resettlement contractor, it resettles refugees assigned to it by the US State Department from all of the usual hot spots around the world.
Curious to see how many Jewish people have been admitted to the US as refugees over the last ten years, I checked Wrapsnet.
In ten years the US admitted a total of 635,173 refugees representing a vast array of religions from all over the world.
Of that number only 1,893 (.3%) were of the Jewish faith with most of those coming from Iran(658) and Russia(545).
However….
HIAS has put itself out as the most politically active refugee resettlement agency making them not hard to miss on the internet!
Indeed, according to media reports (assuming they are accurate!), what drew the killer to a target was HIAS’s e-mail advertisement for their special services called National Refugee Shabbat held in hundreds of synagogues in the run-up to the November election.
As readers here know, there are nine federal resettlement contractors*** and based on my informal assessment going back several years, HIAS is the most politically active of the resettlement contractors and has been dogging Donald Trump unrelentingly since the 2016 Presidential campaign.
Not far behind as open borders political organizers and activists, I would put Church World Service and then the US Conference of Catholic Bishops/Catholic Charities.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is also very politically engaged.
Free speech!
They don’t just advocate for refugees!
I think we all agree everyone is entitled to free speech, and HIAS can demonstrate in the streets against the President and for open borders, they can sue the Administration, they can cheer on the migrant caravan and they can campaign against Republicans in the midterms, but what is so patently unfair to the average citizen who is learning about their community organizing activities (from alternative media) is that they receive millions and millions of taxpayer dollars each year while promoting a political agenda that many Americans vehemently disagree with.
If they were truly a private non-profit organization, they could pay big salaries and politically organize to their hearts content, but when they are a government partner, ostensibly to care for refugees, we expect them to be neutral on what is the greatest concern facing the country now—-immigration.
Where is Congress?
The mainstream media rarely tells the public about the source of the resettlement contractors’ funds, and Congress has never, in the ten years I’ve followed the US Refugee Admissions Program, ever done any oversight of the federal contracting system that these nine have monopolized, in some cases for over three decades.
Funding the Open Borders Left!
See just for starters this graph from the Capital Research Center showing the last ten years of taxpayer dollars subsidizing the nine VOLAGS.
Again, there is no excuse for violence, but there is great frustration out there that a serious effort to be more open and transparent with the public might begin to quell.
So, how about the mainstream media does its job and gives the public the facts about groups like HIAS so ‘conspiracy’ theories don’t develop, and then it would be refreshing if Congress took its role seriously, investigated where our tax dollars are going and what they are being used for, and thus give us confidence that our government cares about us—Americans first!
I’ll update this post as we get more information.
*** The nine major contractors (VOLAGS) that monopolize the US Refugee Admissions Program are these:
Church World Service (CWS)
Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (DFMS is its other name)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS)
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
World Relief Corporation (WR)
