What about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ use the phrase“never again?” Should this term used in opposition to genocide be appropriated for opposition to other examples of inhumanity. Maybe not. Maybe Shmuley Boteach would have a point if he criticized her just for that.
We should also criticize the world for its reaction to genocide. Since WW II. In Cambodia. Perhaps two and a half million killed in the late 1970s, apart from the number killed in the war. In Rwanda. More than a million Tutsis killed in the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s.
The world did little to stop either. Shmuley Boteach criticized President Clinton for doing little. Bill Clinton has criticized himself. Almost all of us old enough to try to do something did too little to stop that genocide. Americans. Europeans, Africans. Israelis.
Shmuley Boteach was too young to oppose the Cambodians genocide. Not too young to oppose the genocide in Rwanda. Was among those trying to stop it? He was a young man in the 1990s. Older than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now. In the 1990s was he more focused on the Rwandan genocide than Bill Clinton or Susan Rice were?
These criticisms have become a rant against Shmuley Boteach. His advertisements are more offensive than the people he criticizes. Shmuley Boteach’s criticisms criticisms seem viscious, more political than moral. His friendship with Cory Booker ended when Booker supported the nuclear agreement with Iran. His criticisms began. His friendship with Michael Jackson did not end, though now he believes the Jackson accusers. His friendship with Paul Nagame continues, unmoved by Nagame’s shift toward dictatorship. If he is “America’s Rabbi” as is sometimes claimed, he’s not mine.