1903: the jewish takeover of the Statue of Liberty

[yankeedoodle]

Liberty and Lazarus     

We're likely to hear pro-migration advocates continue to evoke the Statue of Liberty and recite portions of Emma Lazarus' poem on its pedestal as evidence of America's open-door immigration philosophy. This is a false representation and manipulation by the usual suspects.

The statue, which was a joint project commissioned between the U.S. and France in 1865, was a gift to the American people in celebration of 100 years of independence. During the American Revolutionary War, the French offered the United States military support in its fight for liberation from Great Britain. It was called the Treaty of Alliance. For these reasons, Lady Liberty holds a tablet inscribed with the date July 4, 1776. The broken chain that lays at her feet represents the abolition of slavery in 1865. But the statue was more than symbolic. It also served as a light house for boats in New York Harbor. In sum, it had NOTHING to do with migration.

The Statue of Liberty's association with open-door migration is due entirely to its inscription. Enter poet and socialite Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), the Sephardi Jewish daughter of a large New York family who amassed a fortune through sugar refining.

The story goes that Americans were asked to fund a pedestal for the statue, but funding support for the project was weak. Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), the Hungarian-born Jewish publisher of New York World, started a drive for donations in 1882. As part of the effort, Lazarus was asked to donate an original work for auction. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue, according to Wikipedia. (Apparently the story of America didn't inspire her.)

During that time — the time of the Russian pogroms — her attention was devoted to aiding thousands of indigent and destitute Ashkenazi Jews trying to emigrate from Russia to New York. According to Wiki, she helped establish for them the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York and, in 1883, founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. She was "an important forerunner of the Zionist movement" and "argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland 13 years before Theodor Herzl began to use the term 'Zionism.'"

Lazarus discovered Americans weren't keen on the idea of ushering in thousands of Russian Jews. By 1883, she decided to use the opportunity to write a poem about "the statue" as a way to promote her cause. Thus, she wrote "The New Colossus." It reads:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"   

Pulitzer's New York World and The New York Times published Lazarus' poem in 1885. She died in 1887 and her "Mother of Exiles" poem was largely forgotten until 1901, when her friend Georgina Schuyler began an effort to memorialize the poet and poem. By 1903, a bronze plaque with a portion of the poem was mounted on the inner wall of the pedestal.

Lazarus' poem transformed — no, co-opted — the meaning of the Statue of Liberty from a national symbol of American liberation to a global symbol of America as a doormat for the world. Today, it's being presented to an ignorant public as a modern-day Trojan horse during a battle for American sovereignty.  http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/04/exploiting-the-statue-of-liberty-to-support-open-borders/

Lazarus' poem did not capture the zeitgeist of America. Rather, it was the special interest project of a handful of elite New York Jews who wanted to populate the U.S. with fellow members of their tribe. In fact, immigration laws were far more strict in Lazarus' time than they are today. This is why Lazarus had to advocate for destitute Russian-Jewish immigrants. [See "Jewish Immigration to America: Three Waves" https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-immigration-to-america-three-waves/  ]

The foregoing is excerpted from this larger article:
Liberty, Lazarus and One Colossal Omission     
https://www.winterwatch.net/2023/08/liberty-lazarus-and-one-colossal-omission/