“We are at war with these people.” That is how Elan Carr, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, described President Donald Trump’s approach to antisemitic hate groups as he addressed mourners at the Poway, California, synagogue on Monday afternoon during funeral services for Lori Gilbert Kaye.
Kaye, 60, died last Saturday after diving between the gunman and Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was wounded and lost an index finger in the confrontation.
Two others — ironically, visiting from an Israeli community targeted by rockets from Palestinian terrorists — were wounded before congregants were able to drive the shooter away.
One of those, Iraq War combat veteran Oscar Stewart, frightened the gunman by shouting at him. The other, off-duty Border Patrol officer Jonathan Morales, was given a handgun by a congregant and chased the gunman, returning fire and noting the details of the suspect’s vehicle, which helped law enforcement arrest him quickly.
Carr, a former gang prosecutor from Los Angeles and Republican congressional candidate who was appointed to his post earlier this year, stressed Kaye’s example of courage and self-sacrifice, praising her for living “a life devoted to embracing the last generation and building a better world for the next.”
He connected Kaye’s sacrifice to broader events: “Only a few days ago, Lori and her family — together with Jews throughout the world — sat at the seder table for Passover, and uttered the following words: ‘In every generation they rise up to destroy us’,” Carr said. “And only a few days from now, this Thursday, the world will stop, on Yom Hashoah [Holocaust Memorial Day], to commemorate the murder of six million Jews who died because of who they were.”
Noting the recent spate of attacks on Jews, including the murder of eleven Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue exactly six months before, and the rise of hate speech on campuses, Carr declared: “These hate-filled movements have no place on earth, and no place in the United States of America.”
“America was built on freedom and redemption — just like Passover is the holiday of freedom and redemption,” he noted.
Carr added, forcefully: “And so I am here to say: we are at war with these people. We are at war with the antisemites who don’t conceal the antisemitism — the unvarnished, naked antisemitism of the supremacists — and we are at war also with the hidden, concealed antisemitism of those who hate the State of Israel and dress up their antisemitism under the fig leaf of anti-Zionism.”
At that point, Carr was interrupted by applause.
He continued: “We will in every city in the United States, we will fight it on every campus, and we will fight it in every capital of the world throughout the world. Because it is the policy of the United States to combat this ‘vile poison,’ as President Trump so correctly called it.”
After more applause, Carr continued, quoting the Psalm: “May God grants strength to His people; may God bless His people with peace.”
He noted that without strength, there could be no peace.
“First we must ask for courage and strength and might, because only then do we have peace.”
He vowed to do “everything in our power to confront and fight and vanquish evil from our midst.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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