As chaos,
confusion, and darkness descend upon the world, I occasionally reminisce about
the America of my youth. Sometimes I find comfort in recalling the privilege of
growing up in an optimistic time, post-World War II. Sadly, that America is
gone – replaced by an Orwellian, dystopian mess.
When I was young, we went to school
to learn to read, write, and become good citizens. Everyday we prayed to G-d,
recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag with our hand over our heart, and
sang the “Star Spangled Banner.” We loved our country, looked up to our heroes
in sports, in the movies, and on TV. (In those days, movies and TV weren’t
toxic because of strictly enforced “morality” standards.) We respected the
police and were in awe of the FBI. In those days, “heroes” meant good guys who
did good things, fought for worthy causes, and were role models for good
citizenship.
When I was growing up, “good,” “bad,”
“right,” and “wrong” were not matters of opinion. Facts were facts. Things were
clear. If it was illegal, immoral, or unethical, you were taught not to do it. Of course, that required
an objective understanding of morality and respect for the rights of others,
something ingrained in us from early childhood. These days, bigotry
masquerading as equity and inclusion has exposed major defects in the diversity
training, DEI programs at elite U.S. universities. Our universities have become
havens for ethically challenged, morally deficient individuals lacking critical
thinking skills. That includes faculty and students.
* * *
In the 1980s, Muammar Gaddafi of
Libya was one of the primary sponsors and supporters of Islamic terrorism. Iran
was only number two then. Gaddafi despised Israel and the United States and
sought their destruction. In the spring of 1986, Gaddafi had pushed Ronald
Reagan too far. Reagan responded by sending 100 fighter jets into Libya,
decisively bombing targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi barely escaped
death. A message was clearly delivered to Gaddafi – and the world – regarding
the resolve of the United States to fight terror and terrorists. Because of
Reagan’s “simple” and “clear” policies, which projected U.S. power and resolve,
the Soviet Union collapsed a little over two years after he left office. It is
noteworthy that the anti-missile defense system concepts proposed by Ronald
Reagan, which then-Senator Joe Biden vehemently opposed and ridiculed, are the
systems that are now being used by Israel and the U.S. for self-defense.
Contrast Reagan’s America with the
America of today, in which the Biden administration supplies our enemies with
the necessary funds to wage war against us and our allies, while allowing
direct attacks on our sailors and soldiers, with no consequences for the
attackers. Stunning! The U.S. has become a pathetic paper shell of what it once
was. We are no longer the defenders of democracy. And our enemies and allies
know it!
The post-racial America that elected
Barack Obama now has to deal with the racial grievances and divisions that he
nurtured, having been mentored by the renowned antisemite Jeremiah Wright and Louis
Farrakhan, as well as other grievance-based America haters, such as Bill Ayers.
Obama’s charm, along with and the desire of a nation to prove that race was no
longer a political issue, contributed largely to Obama’s victory – although it
is noteworthy that lifelong Democrat Joe Lieberman, a”h, who throughout his life was a civil rights warrior, backed and
campaigned for John McCain in 2008 because he understood that Obama was
unqualified to serve as president.
* * *
Several months ago, following the
embarrassing testimonies by the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania,
MIT, and Harvard, I was pleased that Liz Magill of Penn and Claudine Gay of
Harvard resigned. Sadly, their replacements are hardly better. I’m waiting for Sally
Kornbluth’s resignation. As expected, Claudine Gay blamed her resignation on
racists. No, Claudine; you were an unfit president, as was Liz Magill and as is
Sally Kornbluth, who is Jewish. Being called “racist” and “bigot” is the
standard woke method of intimidation used to shut down free speech and honest
dissent. I’m tired of hearing it. I pray that there is still a majority in this
country that has had enough of being intimidated and silenced by the woke DEI
protocols supported by the Left.
Just as Barack Obama preferred Iran
to Israel, he, like Joe Biden, allowed the totally corrupt UN to sanction
Israel. This time, the U.S. government did it in the middle of Israel fighting
a war for its very survival. So much for Joe Biden’s “rock solid” support. But,
given his history I am neither surprised nor amazed by Biden’s feckless
weakness and hypocrisy, especially since he is surrounded by former Obama
advisors who want to remake America by supporting and empowering its enemies.
The reality that we now have members of Congress supporting blatantly evil
terror organizations is chilling!
* *
*
I met Melanie Phillips in London in
2004 at a lunch-and-learn where I was speaking. It was a privilege to get to
know her. Two years later, in 2006, she published a prophetic book entitled Londonistan: How Britain Is Creating a
Terror State Within. Melanie, a long-time respected British journalist is
despised by the woke liberal Left. They call her a far-right extremist. I know
her; she is not! She refers to herself as “a liberal who has been mugged by
reality.” She is a recipient of (believe it or not) the Orwell Prize for
Journalism. Recently, Melanie wrote an excellent column, entitled “The American
Betrayal of Israel.” I felt it was important to share the view of a journalist
living overseas and observing America from afar.
* * *
The American Betrayal of Israel
by Melanie
Phillips
The suggestion that Israel is no
better than Hamas is a pernicious lie spread by those who want Israel gone. As
some of us have long feared and that has now become undeniable, Israel is
fighting not one but two wars of defense against a malevolent foe.
The first is
against the axis of Iran and its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis of
Yemen. The second is against America.
The Biden
administration is planning to construct a pier off the Gaza shore to (in their
words) facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. Israeli TV’s Channel 14
reported that, astoundingly, the Americans have handed over the financing and
management of this pier to Qatar, the founder, funder, and protector of Hamas
and therefore the godfather of the Oct. 7 pogrom.
Channel 14 said
the Qataris demanded that the new pier be built by a Gaza company named Al
Hissi, which is controlled by Hamas. Giving Qatar control of this pier would
ensure Hamas continues to exist, enrich itself, and attack Israel with an open
route into Gaza. As Yigal Carmon, the founder of MEMRI, has written in horror: “The
U.S. has flipped sides, from Israel to Qatar.”
America could end
this war tomorrow by telling the Qataris that unless they instruct Hamas to
surrender and release the hostages, Qatar will forfeit its preferential
treatment by the United States and will henceforth be treated instead as an
international pariah. Instead, America is feeding Israel into the Qatari jaws.
The outcome, writes Carmon, will be escalation into a total regional war by
Iran not only against Israel but America as well. America’s action is so
preposterous it’s hard to believe. Yet in any event, the Biden administration
has already pivoted from supporting the destruction of Hamas to working for its
ultimate victory.
The administration
has been relentlessly pressuring Israel to admit more and more aid into Gaza,
accusing it falsely of stopping the trucks and ignoring the fact that most of
this aid is being stolen by Hamas to enable it to survive at the expense of the
needy civilian population.
The United States
is determined to impose rule in post-war Gaza by the Palestinian Authority,
despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party, Fatah, has
exulted at the Oct. 7 pogrom and declared that it will continue such attacks. The
administration is determined to impose upon Israel a Palestine state, even
though this would become another “Hamastan” and place central Israel in grave
danger of Oct. 7-style attacks on steroids. And with Israel now attacking the
last redoubt of Hamas in Rafah, which is key to the defeat of this genocidal
enemy, America is subjecting Israel to intense pressure to abandon this final
front of the war. Biden intervened to hold up already approved, and needed,
arms shipments to Israel.
A common
explanation for this shocking American reversal is that, in this election year,
President Joe Biden has to play to the anti-Israel gallery in the Democratic
Party. Maybe so; but rather more significant is the endemic hostility to Israel
within his administration and, above all, its pathological hatred of Israel’s
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the administration is astonishingly
trying to push out.
New York Magazine has reported an Israeli expert
frequently consulted by U.S. officials saying, “I have been asked by a serious
administration figure what it is that will force the Netanyahu coalition to
collapse. They were interested in the mechanics, specifically what can the U.S.
demand which will collapse his coalition.”
This is not only
an outrageous attempt to oust the democratically elected leader of a sovereign
country. It’s also based on a fundamental error.
The Biden
administration doesn’t understand that, despite widespread opposition to
Netanyahu over his domestic record, Israel is united in support of going into
Rafah to defeat Hamas. It’s also united, post-Oct. 7, in opposition to a
Palestinian state. But having invested Netanyahu with diabolical qualities, the
American Left believes that if only he could be removed, Israel would meekly
fall into line with U.S. demands. This was illustrated by the Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer. In a shocking statement, he called for an Israeli
election “once the war starts to wind down” to oust Netanyahu.
Far worse,
Schumer parroted the blood libels being used to demonize Israel by its enemies.
Claiming to be one of the Jews who “love Israel in our bones,” he stated in the
next breath, “I’m anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many
innocent Palestinians. I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel the same
anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children and destroyed
homes.” Every civilian death in wartime is tragic. But “so many innocents” is
based on Hamas casualty figures that inflate the numbers and totally omit the
Hamas forces they include.
Even more
nauseatingly, Schumer smeared Israel still further by intoning, “We must be
better than our enemies, lest we become them.” The suggestion that Israel is no
better than Hamas is a pernicious lie spread by those who want Israel gone. In
fact, Israel’s ratio of civilians to combatants killed is fewer than 1.5
civilians for every one combatant, far better than any other country’s army has
ever achieved.
Israel is not
just fighting to defend itself against genocide. It is on the front line of the
West’s defense against its enemies and the defense of civilization against
barbarism. Western Leftist liberals can’t acknowledge this because they can’t
allow their unchallengeable orthodoxies of Palestinian powerlessness, “peace
processes,” and Western iniquity to be destroyed. So they have turned on the
Jews. Jewish suffering has to be erased because it gets in the way of the
narrative. That’s why the eruption of Palestinianism throughout the West is so
shattering. People wonder why the forests of Palestinian flags at the
incendiary anti-Israel demonstrations are in themselves so intimidating. It’s
because the Palestine cause is not two states side by side. Palestinian
identity consists entirely of the intention to eradicate Israel by the hijacking
and appropriation of Jewish history. Palestinianism stands for the erasure of
Jewish national identity and wiping the Jewish people out of their own historic
homeland.
That’s why
anti-Israel thugs have ripped apart a painting in Cambridge University of
Arthur Balfour, the British prime minister who gave his name to the 1917
declaration of British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It’s why
people across the West have been ripping down the posters of the Israeli
hostages. They are all trying to rip Israel and the Jews out of their headspace
and their world altogether. That’s why the betrayal by Schumer and American
Jews who still support the Democratic Party’s Israel-bashing agenda is so
devastating.
Schumer claims
that his name derives from the Hebrew shomer,
or “guardian”; and so he boasts to be the shomer
of Jewish values. “What horrifies so many Jews especially,” he said, “is our
sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly Jewish values
that we hold so dear.”
How dare he! He
is not a shomer. What has horrified
so many is that Schumer and other Leftist American Jews who are taking aim at
Israel are using “Jewish values” as a shield behind which they are betraying
Israel and the Jewish people and delivering them to their enemies. Along with
the shills for Israel’s surrender in the Biden administration, they present an
obscene and disgusting spectacle.
“In every
generation,” said the Jews at Passover, “they rise up against us.” To the
enemies of the Jewish people today, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, we must add the
Biden administration, Chuck Schumer, and the Jewish fifth column.
* * *
Unfortunately, just as Melanie
Phillips has been “mugged by reality,” so have I. The problem for me and, I
dare say, most reasonable Americans is that we would like a non-narcissistic,
non-egomaniac, non-geriatric, stable, sane, honest, and capable person to vote
for in November. In a recent article I quoted former Attorney General William
Barr, who said, “Voting for Donald Trump is playing Russian roulette with the
country, but voting for Joe Biden is outright suicide.”
How tragic it is that this is the
current reality of a once-great nation now in steep decline. American weakness
overseas, especially our choice of enemies over allies, our non-existent
borders – welcoming in many millions of illegals, of whom a significant number
are criminals and terrorists – is problematic for many Americans. Our
ridiculous energy policies, our DEI thought police, the corruption of the FBI
and CIA, together with the outrageous and unpunished violent crimes in our
cities, may very well cause an angry, ignored, and frustrated electorate to
choose Russian Roulette over suicide. If that is our choice, I’ll choose
Russian Roulette.
* * *
In my column right after the October
massacre, I shared the plight of the Perez family of Yad Binyamin. One son had
been taken hostage, the other seriously wounded. At the time, I asked that we
keep Doniel Shimon ben Sharon in our tefillos.
Sadly, Doniel Shimon was declared dead on the seventh of Adar 2. The funeral
was extremely emotional. Doniel’s mother Shelley is like a daughter to us, and
his dad, Doron, like a son. Rabbi Doron is the head of World Mizrachi.
Having had years of experience
dealing with bereavement, nothing prepared me for the unique circumstances of
this situation. When Shelley and Doron called very late on Motzei Shabbos
(Sunday morning, March 17, in Israel) we cried together. The shiva was terribly difficult because so
many of those coming to be menachem avel needed
comfort themselves.
Doniel Perez was a 22-year-old
Captain in the IDF (yes, a captain at 22). On October 7th, he fought
valiantly against overwhelming odds at the Gaza border. His tank crews were
credited with eliminating over 220 terrorists and saving many Jewish lives.
After running out of fuel and ammunition, his tank was overrun by terrorists,
and he was killed. Doniel’s lifeless body was dragged back to Gaza. It was only
after the assault on the Shifra Hospital (Hamas headquarters) that a video
confirming Doniel’s death was discovered. May Hashem comfort the Perez family,
and may Doniel Shimon ben Doron’s neshama
have a complete aliyah.
Speaking following shiva, Rav Doron said, “After 163 heart-wrenching
days of angst, anxiety, prayers, and mitzvos in Doniel’s merit, we now know
that he died on Shabbat Simchat Torah. So many people prayed for him over the
last five months – and some are asking if those prayers were in vain.” Rav
Doron continued, “Nothing could be further from the truth for two reasons.
Although we didn’t receive the result we had hoped for, we have solace in
knowing that Doniel didn’t suffer at the hands of Hamas. To us, that is a
tremendous relief. His loss is very painful, but because of your prayers, we
finally have closure. Also, we all davened for not only Doniel, but for all of the hostages. Therefore, it was
never only about our son. Our prayers were not in vain.”
Rabbi Perez continued, “We as a
family have been in a terrible state of limbo for five months. Now we are able
to properly mourn for our son and concentrate on the wonderful years we had
with him.” Rav Doron said, “Prayer is something which changes us first and
foremost. Prayer is not only about impacting the world; it’s about impacting
ourselves also. Once we change ourselves, we can help change the world. We have
witnessed that firsthand. As barriers between Jews have come down, as Am Yisrael became one through acts of chesed, challah bakes, mitzvot, and
charity, we have all changed and become closer to one another and to Hashem.”
* * *
Here in America, we are struggling
to deal with the antisemitism, which is now being not only tolerated but
encouraged globally by corrupt, immoral campus officials, governments,
politicians, the United Nations, and (so-called) journalists, most of whom are
morally bankrupt. For them, integrity and ethics are either nonexistent or
flexible. Jews have been accused of “running the world.” The fact is that Jews do,
in fact, run the world – but not in the way the antisemites think! It really is
all about us. Our behavior as Jews – our faithfulness to our Torah values –
influences the world for better or worse.
In 1948, Israel was isolated and
alone. The world (including the U.S. State Department) was just fine if the new
Jewish state would have been demolished in its infancy by Arab armies. But,
with G-d’s direct intervention, miracles occurred, and much to the amazement of
the world, an overwhelmingly outnumbered and outgunned Israel defeated the well
equipped enemy armies.
As we celebrated Pesach, we were
reminded that as the heart of Pharaoh continued to harden, the miracles became
greater, culminating in the crossing of the sea. It is also important to
remember that the purpose of the Exodus was to come to Sinai to receive the
Torah in order to serve G-d and perform mitzvos. The more we focus our energies
on observing G-d’s commandments, the more we join together as we did at Sinai (Ish echad b’lev echad – as a nation
bound together with one heart), the more Hashem will reveal Himself. After Iran
fired over 300 assorted missiles at Israel and 99% were intercepted, only a
faithless person would not see the miraculous hand of G-d.
On May 8th, Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin was called to testify before the Senate concerning Biden’s
decision (or the decision made for him by his handlers) to withhold critical
arms and ammunition for Israel, which had been approved by Congress. Senator
Lindsey Graham demolished Biden’s Defense Secretary and the generals flanking
him. This is a small part of their exchange:
Graham
to Austin: “Do you think that Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah want to destroy the
Jews?”
Austin:
“Yes.”
Graham:
“So how do you impose restrictions on Israel’s ability to defend itself? What
an absolute absurdity. Give Israel what it needs to conduct the war, which it
cannot afford to lose.”
It’s worth listening to the entire
interview which is online.
Thank G-d that there are senators
who have guts and moral clarity. Sadly, our Executive Branch has embraced the
Neville Chamberlain doctrine of appeasement. It didn’t work then, and it’s not
working now. “Appeasement,” as Hugo Gurdon, editor of the Washington Examiner, wrote, “encourages more of the same. It has
done so repeatedly since the 2020 riots following George Floyd’s death.
Trespass, intimidation, violence, theft, and vandalism have been legitimized as
political dissent.”
As far as Iran is concerned
appeasement means exactly what it meant to the Nazis – weakness!
I do not know what G-d has in store
for His children. But I do know that we will not be forsaken. Maybe those of us
living here in the USA needed a reminder that we are indeed in galus (exile). Maybe Jews in Israel and
around the world needed to stop our internal arguing and nurture our better
selves. Maybe we need to improve on our mitzvah observance, our davening, and
the way we relate to others.
We can desire nothing better than
what is expressed in our beloved prayer “Acheinu
Kol Beis Yisrael”: “Our brothers,
the entire house of Israel, who are in distress and captivity, whether on the
sea or dry land – May Almighty G-d have mercy upon them and remove them from
distress, from darkness to light, from salvation to redemption, now, speedily and soon.”
