Mass Shootings, an Intractable Dispute and McConnell's Imprint on Our Future

From a Los Angeles Times article on the killings in Northern California Tuesday: “I thought this only happens to places like L.A. or New York,” Jose Garcia, owner of La Fortune Convenience, told the Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-norcal-elementary-school-shooting-20171114-story.html).

Now, why would he say that? In the 16 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 1949, not one, not one!, occurred in either Los Angeles or New York City (http://cnn.it/1F5wWwy).

Sadly, mass shootings are part of Americana. They happen in schools, in churches, in McDonalds, in nightclubs, on military bases. But not in New York or Los Angeles. 

Numb. Week after week crazed men and the occasional woman perpetrate numbing acts of violence against innocents, many of whom are children. As a nation we are repulsed. But let’s put our reaction in historical perspective.

From our earliest days as colonists to European monarchs, to our formation as the United States of America, we have rarely done anything but accept, and even condone, mass killings, either on our soil or in foreign lands, by our citizens or other peoples. Consider our treatment of Native Americans. Or the death trips chained Africans endured crossing the Atlantic below decks aboard slave trading ships. Or the way we turned our backs on thousands of desperate souls fleeing Nazi Germany. Or how we mostly ignored the ethnic warfare in Rwanda and the Balkans? 

It is hard to find solace in our historical record. 

From a Sunday New York Times article on Trump administration efforts to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here’s a quote: “After 10 months of educating themselves on the complexities of the world’s most intractable dispute, White House officials said, Mr. Trump’s team of relative newcomers to Middle East peacemaking has moved into a new phase of its venture  …” (https://nyti.ms/2ji06GG).

Now, Jews for decades have been pleased to be recognized for outstanding feats. Entertainers, scientists, Nobel Prize winners, athletes and so on, including a remarkable victory in the Six Day War, they all evoke cultural pride among the “chosen.” But there is no joy in associating Israel with “the world’s most intractable dispute.” Israel, for one, would argue it has sought peaceful co-existence from day one of its statehood in 1948 and even before. But let’s not argue that point.

I’d rather focus on the highlighted phrase. Should we not consider the friction over Kashmir between Pakistan and India, two nuclear powers, an equally, if not more, intractable, and potentially more dangerous, dispute? What about Korea? What about the Kurds wanting their own country and stifled by Iraq, Turkey and Syria? 

I’m sure there are other hotspots around the globe that could share equal billing with the Israeli-Palestinian discord, so let’s not be so quick to label any dispute the most intractable.

As long as we’re talking Israeli-Palestinian issues, earlier this month, November 2, marked the 100th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration that stated the British government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”  

Rather than go into a dissertation on the history and pros and cons of the document, let me be personal about the Balfour Declaration. Several years ago, as part of my part-time work as a real estate agent, I had the extreme good fortune of seeing a draft of the Balfour Declaration, with handwritten notations and edits, hanging in the home of a client. That was a priceless moment.

He’s the One: Stephen Bannon wants him thrown out of office, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is arguably the politico most responsible for the rightward shift America will undergo for the next several decades.

McConnell’s unprecedented obstruction of judicial nominations during the last year or more of Barack Obama’s presidency has resulted in the appointment of conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and a slew of like-minded jurists to lower federal benches. These lifetime positions will set a reactionary tone for decades putting at risk hope for progressive, humane decisions that favor civil rights and individuals versus corporations and government (https://nyti.ms/2hqRzk3).

The Bannon trope against McConnell is a public relations fight that obscures what is really happening in Washington. Congress may be crawling along but the real deconstruction of government is happening at the cabinet department level where regulation after regulation is being rescinded or amended to eliminate or reduce safeguards intended to protect workers, the environment and consumers.

The avuncular McConnell is a tempting target, in appearance and legislative accomplishment, but keep in mind it was his strategy that made a vote for Trump synonymous with a choice for the next Supreme Court justice. 

Six Day War Memories 50 Years Later

Where were you 50 years ago today, June 5, 1967? 

A freshman at Brooklyn College, my normal routine was to drive from my parents’ home to school and plant myself at the Knight House table in the cafeteria in the basement of Boylan Hall. There I’d sit for the better part of the next six to eight hours, schmoozing with friends, only occasionally vacating my seat to attend class.

Around 10 that morning, word started to trickle in that war had broken out between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This was not the era of instant worldwide communications, of CNN or cell phones, of 24-hour news cycles. Israel controlled the dissemination of news from its territory. In those first, terrifying, stomach-churning hours, the only reports we heard were those coming from Egypt, communiqués about Arab troops advancing on Tel Aviv, of Zionists falling in a jihad of epic proportions.

The 1967 crisis in the Middle East had been building for months. Egypt expelled United Nations peacekeepers who guarded the Sinai border with Israel. It closed the Straits of Tiran to ships bound for Eilat. A blockade is considered an act of war. Arab countries vowed to drive Israelis into the sea, to dismember the Jewish state. 

Jews the world over feared another Holocaust. Anyone with relatives or friends in Israel were doubly worried. My sister, Lee, was in Israel, studying at Hebrew University.

All day my friends and I held small transistor radios to our ears. It was not until well into the afternoon or early evening that the true picture of the day’s events became known. The startling revelation of Israel’s air power superiority, coupled with its armored division successes, exceeded even the most optimistic expectations of the 19-year-old country’s supporters. 

I tapped into Lee’s memory bank earlier today, asking her to recall the period before and during the Six Day War. Weeks before June 5, Israel called up military reservists including her boyfriend, Hanan, a fellow student at Hebrew U. in Jerusalem, who asked her to take good notes so he would be up to speed with classwork once he returned from service. Instead of hundreds attending a political science class, just 30 or so students, mostly Americans or other foreign born, Arabs and those physically unable to serve in the military, showed up in the  lecture hall. 

One student, Lee remembered, asked the professor what would happen if Israeli troops were able to succeed in capturing Cairo. His response—they should get out as quickly as possible for it would be difficult if not impossible to rule over any area where Israelis would be a minority.

About two weeks before war began the university closed down. Lee went with Nava,  an Israeli roommate, to her home in Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv. They worked in her father’s Matzot Aviv factory packing k-rations, hard crackers Lee said were harder than bullets. They joked they could be used to throw at an enemy if hand to hand combat were necessary.

Going out for a walk at night Lee observed how empty the streets were of youths. All the young men and girls had been called up for military reserves duty.

Just as in America, Israelis were in the dark as to the progress of the war when it began. Lee could hear the constant roar of jets. She could not understand why so many planes were flying overhead with no shooting or bombing, not knowing at the time that Israel’s air force had achieved air supremacy in the first hours of the war.  

To relieve her tension, Nava’s mother cleaned, re-cleaned and cleaned again her refrigerator, inside and out. When the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem started on the third day of the war, Nava’s mother kept up a steady lament (“Oh how many boys we lost”) for the soldiers who died in the battle to take Jerusalem during the War of Independence in 1948.

Proficient in Hebrew, Lee could follow radio broadcasts once news of Israel’s successes became known. But when descriptions of battles in the Galil, where she thought Hanan was stationed, were transmitted, she inexplicably could not comprehend what she heard. Panic had muted her comprehension. It was only after he returned from the war that she learned he was in the Sinai, not the Galil, during the fighting.

By June 7, some normalcy had returned. People went shopping in Tel Aviv. Lee bought her first bikini that day. As memorable was a scene she witnessed on the bus ride from Ramat Gan. A horse drawn cart was by stopped on the side of the road, the horse injured. It would have to be put down. Amid all the trauma of war, passengers on the bus expressed their grief and pathos that a creature not involved in the existential war that surrounded their prayers and hopes would lose its life. 

Sometimes it is hard for contemporary observers to fully appreciate the fragility of Israel’s existence in 1967. From being considered a David facing the Arab Goliath in 1967, the roles have been reversed in the ensuing 50 years. Yet even today a visitor to Israel cannot be anything but wary when hostile borders surround the state, which is but a speck of green in an otherwise sandy expanse. Artillery fire could easily reach Israel’s population centers back in 1967. As it can today. It’s too much to expect friendly neighbors. Secure, peaceful borders, however, are legitimate demands. 

Regret Is Not An Apology

I’m starting to get really, really worried. Donald Trump and I seem to share an increasing number of traits and experiences. Like Trump, I evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by flunking my military physical in 1970 and receiving a 1-Y deferment. My draft lottery number of 139 was high enough, like Trump’s, not to be called in subsequent years.

Fast forward to 2016. We both have a tendency to spout the wrong things when agitated. But where I have always apologized for my indiscretions, The Donald never ever backtracked, never ever apologized. Thursday, in Charlotte, NC, Trump looked like he was eating crow, admitting that sometimes his mouth runs a little faster than his brain.

“Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it.

“And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues,” Trump told a rally of his supporters.

But wait. My apologies always cite my specific transgressions. Trump was vague. He never delineated what exactly he regretted. Was it his slur of a Gold Star family? Was it his deprecation of prisoners of war and specifically John McCain for getting captured? Was it his demeaning Mexico and its people? Was it his undermining of the legitimate election of Barack Obama with his advocacy of the birther movement? Was it his scary, unprecedented request for Russia to hack the emails of his opponent? Was it his veiled invitation to second amendment advocates to take out Hillary Clinton before she could take away their guns, which, by the way, as president she would not have the power to do but which Trump riles up his audience with the suggestion she does? Was it his consistent fabrication of the truth, be it his alleging Obama and Clinton founded ISIS, or they wanted to engage in nation building in the Middle East, or that he never supported the invasion of Iraq, or any number of other deliberate misstatements of the truth? Was it his heartless ridicule of a physically handicapped reporter?

Funny, Trump blamed the heat of the moment during debates for his foul mouth disease. But all those apology worthy examples cited above came out during speeches or tweets or interviews when he had ample time to consider what he was saying.

We just don’t know what he regrets because Trump hasn’t told us specifically what he regrets. It is like his plans to end terrorism or improve the economy or solve the racial divide in the country. We just have to trust him that he will do a fabulous job and do it quickly.

So I guess I’m not really like him. I apologize in specific detail. With a promise not to do it again. Trump offers no such assurance of future behavior, especially since the one on one debates with Clinton are more than a month away from starting and just days ago he double-downed on his behavior by vowing to act the same way he has throughout the primary season and general election campaign.

I regret when I say something untoward. I regret that my incendiary words elicit offense, hurt, pain and any number of other reactions. And, I regret the loss of stature in the eyes of those I’ve offended and those who heard me. I regret my embarrassment. I regret that I have to apologize for my actions.

No doubt, Trump regrets the drop in his poll numbers from his insults and diatribes. 

But regret does not encompass or substitute for an apology. Donald Trump needs to specifically apologize to those he has demeaned and to the American public for dragging the political campaign for the highest office in the land down to the lowest depth of any modern day candidate.

Trump Channels Nation's Founders

A recent article by Politico’s national editor Michael Hirsh argued that far from being a boorish yahoo with extreme un-American views Donald Trump really is channeling the thoughts of the nation’s founders and some of its greatest presidents in their advocacy of few if any foreign entanglements (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/founding-fathers-2016-donald-trump-america-first-foreign-policy-isolationist-213873). 

It’s a piece replete with citations quoting Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Adams and John Quincy Adams to buttress the idea that foreign ventures would ensnare the country in affairs best left to people on the other side of the Atlantic, the Pacific, of course, being no point of reference to their late 18th and early 19th century minds.

Since the start of World War II, however, the United States has been globally engaged, first fighting the Axis Powers, then confronting Communist Soviet Union, China and Cuba in a Cold War, followed by a patchwork of alliances and adventures in the Middle East, the most recent being our tragic years-upon-years involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and our arms-length position vis-a-vis Syria.  

“But it is fair to ask, as Trump is, why we are simply continuing, through inertia and with little change, a system that was built up to thwart a set of threats that no longer exist,” wrote Hirsh. “Maybe this vast, expensive global order was necessary against Hitler, and later Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev—the very real threats of tyranny, totalitarianism and international communism in the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s—but is Putin’s Russia, or Xi Jinping's China, really enough of a threat to justify the same expense and effort? It’s also fair to ask—as Trump does, in his blunt way—whether U.S. allies have grown a bit spoiled and barely notice any longer who’s holding that defense umbrella over their heads, allowing them to continue massive spending on their welfare states.”

Trump’s advocacy of a reimagined United States relationship with our allies, and by extension our adversaries, has tapped a reservoir of innate American isolationism made all the more potent by a failed war in Vietnam (though the feared Domino Effect never transpired) and the twin disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

In the end, though, it should come down not to the electorate’s knowledge of historical admonitions but rather to the confidence Americans have in the knowledge, leadership and diplomatic skills they want in their next president. Trump has displayed little of those skills as he has rampaged through the Republican primary process, flipping positions as quickly as one changes gears in a sports car. He is not thought highly of in most foreign capitals. If he’s elected, heads of state will have to deal with him but they might never be confident his word would be his bond.

The closest we have to a Republican head of state is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the second in line to be president should tragedy strike the chief executive and the vice president. Ryan has yet to endorse the presumptive nominee of his party, but with each passing day Republican office holders appear to be swallowing their scruples and lining up, however reluctantly, behind Trump. It’s only a matter of time before Ryan caves, and without extracting any implementable concessions.

It seems they are all more interested in winning than in protecting the principles of the republic and their party. Their professed animosity toward Hillary Clinton trumps (pun intended) the reality that The Donald is unfit to be president of the mightiest country in the world, a country that has been a symbol of equality and decency throughout the world but under Trump would be willing to discriminate against Muslims and would sanction torture. The damage to American prestige would be incalculable.

No criticism is more pointed than from within one’s family, so here’s an excerpt from Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist of The New York Times, describing the factionalism of the Republican party that led to Trump’s rise and his own failure to foresee his appeal: 

“So to catalog my wrongness: I overestimated the real commitment of both factions’ leaders to their stated principles and favored policies. (Even though I didn’t agree with many of those policies myself, I assumed from the party’s longstanding resistance to change that someone did!) I overestimated their ability to put those principles ahead of personal resentments. And yes, since to acquiesce to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is to gamble recklessly with the party’s responsibilities to the republic, I overestimated their basic sense of honor.” (http://nyti.ms/1rZxgcB)

The Bride of Frankenstein Is Back

The bride of Frankenstein is back on the hustings to haunt us.

Not content to have been chosen as her party’s 2008 nominee to be a heartbeat away from the presidency—but thankfully not elected—Sarah Palin now wants to influence the choice of the next Republican standard bearer. She’s thrown her support behind Donald Trump, a classic example of the blind leading the blind.

As populist speakers Trump and Palin are the mouths that roared. They can fire up an audience. But they lack depth, the ability to put together comprehensive programs based on a complex and nuanced understanding of an issue. Trump’s idea to solve the illegal immigration problem—build a wall paid for by Mexico and throw all 11 million illegals out—is a soundbite solution that fails to consider the legal status of children, the disruption of families, the economic impact of reduced labor in many industries where Americans do not want to work, such as on farms or meat/poultry processing plants, not to mention the absurdity of audaciously expecting Mexico to pay for a wall. But hey, it sounds good on the stump.

We can thank, ruefully, John McCain for saddling us with Palin, perhaps the least qualified person ever to grace a national election ticket. Even the discombobulated retired admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s vice presidential choice in 1992, sounded erudite compared to her.

Palin gave birth to the no-nothing Tea Party which only wants to tear down government, or, in her case, find excuses for behavior and commentary beyond the pale. She was such a good family role model that her daughter not once but twice had a child out of wedlock. And after her son was recently arrested for assaulting a woman she blamed his behavior on President Obama’s alleged indifference to the trauma American servicemen, including her son, suffered during their deployment in the Middle East. 

But here’s the problem with Trump and Palin: Too many of our fellow citizens are willing to give them a pass. They are willing to gamble our country’s future because they feel left out of its present. They forget that without Obama’s stewardship our economy would have tanked from mismanagement under Republicans; they forget that Obama has been president during one of the largest job creation periods in our history; they forget that the stock market has more than doubled under Obama (even with the recent downturn) and with that the value of their retirement plans; they forget that the car industry would have all but vanished without Obama; they forget that 17 million more Americans are now covered by health insurance (yes, Obamacare is imperfect but it is better than no insurance); they forget that Obama has championed alternative energy sources and that our country is now less dependent on imported oil; they forget that fewer illegal immigrants are crossing the Mexican border. 

Do they really want another land war in the desert? Do they really want the wealthy to get richer, with more and more influence? Do they really think in a global economy manufacturing jobs will return to our shores? Do they really think that investment in education and physical infrastructure can be postponed? Do they really think there is an armed forces anywhere in the world equal to ours, that we need to invest in new, costly armaments to fight 20th century wars while our true enemies take aim at real vulnerabilities in our power grid, our Internet and communications networks, our ports of entry, our water supplies? 

All they want to do is focus on a bogus claim that Obama wants to take guns away from individuals; or the misguided belief that ISIS can be carpet-bombed into oblivion; that nuking Iran is an option; that their lives would be better if the federal government stopped watching out for product and worker safety, that worker conditions would be improved if only unions would go away, that bosses would benevolently offer adequate raises and health care benefits. 

I don’t know about you, but it depresses me to write these things. Does it depress you to read them, depressing because you realize I am not making this up? 

A Dialogue on Freedom and Peace

(Editor’s Note: This is a realllllly long entry as I have chosen to reproduce two blogs from Rabbi Barry Konovitch who I knew as head of the waterfront in Camp Columbia back in the early 1960s. Barry is the rabbi of Temple Anshei Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Delray Beach, FL. For more background on him, click on this link: http://www.templeansheishalom.org/abouttherabbi.html. His blogs are reproduced in italics. My thoughts follow his.)

President Obama’s Legacy

The world is in crisis because the United States has relinquished its traditional leadership position as the most powerful democratic nation on earth. Free people everywhere have always looked to America for inspiration, guidance, and when needed, military intervention to support and protect basic human freedoms and rights. It has been a heavy and sobering responsibility but we have risen to the task each time we were called. We supported our friends unequivocally and unhesitatingly; and we punished the enemies of freedom decisively and unsparingly. For the better part of the 20th century we imposed a Pax Americana that encouraged the spread of democracy and improved the daily lives of all people under our umbrella.

Now our leadership role is being relinquished as we retreat from global challenges instead of facing them head-on. The enemies of democracy are emboldened by our indecisiveness and wavering in the face of serious challenges. The murder of our ambassador in Benghazi and his compatriots produced “what difference does it make” from the Secretary of State. The Russian invasion of the Crimea and Ukraine and the concomitant, threats to the Eastern European NATO countries resulted from the ‘reset of our relationship” with the Russian government. The Iranian program to produce a nuclear warhead with which to threaten the Middle East and the Western world with the avowed promise to “wipe Israel off the face of the map” has produced a sham agreement that will allow the Ayatollahs to move with alacrity toward their nuclear goal. Our red lines threat to attack Syria’s Assad regime if they used gas weapons, evaporated as the gas floated over Aleppo. Our friends are appalled by the American paper tiger and our enemies are emboldened. Islamic terrorists arise in every corner of the globe where we have retreated. Nature abhors a vacuum and so does geopolitics. Everywhere American troops are “drawn down” (a euphemism for ignominious retreat) Islamic terrorists arrive to take their place. They terrorize the local populations into fearful submission and they dare to challenge the might of the American military. When the Boko Haram Islamic terrorists murder men women and children in Nigeria, and they blatantly kidnap several hundred young girls from their villages, we are led in a protest to “bring our girls home” by none other than Mrs. Obama. The protests and the interest from the public lasted no more than a week before it no longer captured our interest, much less our concern, or heaven forfend, any real attempt both politically and militarily to “help our girls”.

To understand what has happened to us, American citizens, we need to be reminded of the presidential agenda clearly set forth for us right at the beginning of the political campaign and underscored, reinforced and elaborated upon in such “democratic” venues as Cairo and Riyadh. We would do well to remember Pres. Obama’s words and, yea his promise to bring the troops home, to disengage ourselves from all wars and conflicts and leave a much smaller American footprint on the world. We will contract into ourselves and concentrate on improving our internal economic and political lives. Conveniently forgotten is the basic lesson of the 21st century; the world is connected, for better or worse, and no nation lives in an isolated vacuum, and no ocean or mountain chain will protect us from our enemies.

“Yes, Virginia,” we have enemies around the world who seek to destroy us, and are just waiting for the chance to take advantage of any perceived American weakness or hesitation. Pres. Obama has projected American weakness and indecisiveness to the world and our enemies are on the move.

No one should be surprised. We elected a president who by virtue of being the first black man to attain our highest office, was immediately granted the Nobel peace prize, for doing absolutely nothing to advance world peace. The award was a sham and an embarrassment to all responsible citizens. This was the president who spent 20 years sitting in a church pew listening to the right Rev. Wright spewing anti-American and anti-Semitic hatred to his parishioners. And the future president sat quietly and without protest and absorbed the lessons of black revolutionary theology. This is the President who apologizes to the Muslim world for the American anti-Islamic transgressions and bows low to despotic Arab potentates. This is a president who promised the president of France that he will “deal” with the Prime Minister of Israel who dares to disagree with his utopian plan for the Middle East. After all, this is the president who was raised in the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, and was sent to school to absorb the lessons of Islam at a young age. A man who accepts the name “Hussein” is clearly trying to tell us something about his mindset.

Our friends around the world feel abandoned and our enemies are emboldened. And we sit quietly waiting for the next 9/11, which is certain to come.

The Ongoing War on Islamic Terrorism

 The latest war against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza has come to an end, but by no means to a satisfactory conclusion. The Negev communities are still susceptible to mortar fire and the major Israeli cities are still within rocket range. The Army has not packed up the Iron Dome and the reserves remain on alert. The ominous quiet is merely a precursor to the next round of attacks and the Israeli public remains uneasy if not downright angry and disgusted. People tread lightly in the streets of Ashdod and Tel Aviv, anticipating the next air raid sirens announcing the start of yet another terrifying round of terrorist attacks. The question is asked in the streets: Why hasn’t the Army finished the job? Why does the government hesitate to give the orders: destroy the Hamas terrorist once and for all? Why should the deaths of the Gaza so-called “civilians” concern us or at least prevent us from doing the job which is protecting Israeli citizens?  The world clearly sees, but as yet refuses to understand, that Hamas terrorists use their neighbors as human shields in the hope that they will be martyred and sacrificed on the altar of public relations. There is absolutely no interest in and condemnation of the tens of thousands of people massacred by Islamic terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Lebanon, Mali, and a host of other countries. Only Israel is singled out for vilification which clearly is the 21st century is manifestation of anti-Semitism.

The civilian population of World War II Germany and Italy and Japan were “enemy populations”, subjected to indiscriminate carpet bombing by the US and British air forces until these enemy governments surrendered unconditionally. There was no hand wringing and mea culpas in the White House or in Whitehall. Clear eyed Western leaders understood that destroying the Nazis and fascists and militarists was the moral thing to do.

The Islamic Jihadists are the 21st century version of the Nazis; they have the same brutal intentions. These barbarians are at the gates of Western civilization, all across Europe and even in our United States. How many warnings do we need before we truly awake and take action? What we have witnessed on 9/11 and at the Boston Marathon is only the beginning of a spreading cancer that will destroy our civilization if we don’t act decisively and unhesitatingly. I fail to understand how known Islamic radicals, or even suspected terrorists are not stopped at our borders, removed from our airplanes and deprived of their visas and passports. How do we tolerate Muslim preachers who exploit their thousands of followers and hundreds of mosques across America, to murder all infidels in the name of Allah?  Infidels, of course, mean all of us; Jews, Christians, Mormons alike and anyone who doesn’t accept Islam.

This is not the time to hide behind political correctness or cultural liberal ideas of personal freedoms. Our first order of business must be self preservation and the preservation of our Western democratic way of life, and if it means giving up some of our personal freedoms to accomplish it, then I for one say so be it.

How refreshing to hear the British Prime Minister layout a detailed and thoughtful program for immediately taking up the challenge of worldwide Islamic terrorism. Would that are own president would follow suit instead of “leading from behind”. The people of Israel are on the front lines of the war against Islamic terrorism. The  names may change across the world but make no mistake about it, they are all the same with the same tactics and the same goals: kill the infidels, destroy western corrupt civilization, impose Islam on the World. Isis, Nusra, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Aqsa Brigade, these are all manifestations of the same barbarians, who wish to erase  thousand of years of Western enlightened civilization and return us to the savage evil caliphate fulfilling the call of the Koran “convert or die by the sword”. How many beheadings do we have to watch, how many exploded bodies do we have to see, how many genocidal massacres do we have to witness before we are galvanized into self-defensive action? The Israeli public continues to feel vulnerable. The Hamas terrorists have not been eradicated; they will resupply, rearm and continue to attack. The Israeli government can surely finish the job, but at what expense? 100 more young soldiers would die in the alleyways of Gaza before every Hamas terrorist would be dead. Israeli parents would be up in arms; it is too costly a proposition. So the terrorists nurse their wounds and make their plans. And Israel waits and prepares for the next round. And so should we, because it is coming to a “theater near you”.

Sorry, Rabbi, I Respectfully Disagree

As head of the waterfront of Camp Columbia, Barry Konovitch saved my life when I, a non swimmer, slipped under the deep water during an ill-fated intermediate swimming course training exercise. But, as a respected rabbi and blogger, Barry Konovitch is misguided in his analysis of America’s place in the world and what should be our response to the increasing rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the terror it has engendered.

Foremost among his missteps is his willingness to give up some of our cherished liberties if it meant more protection from terrorism, as if we would be able to control this downward slope on our freedoms. It is the same compact with the devil Jews, intellectuals and businessmen made with Hitler in the hope he would restore order to Germany and they would be able to control him. Once liberties are ceded to government officials they rarely, if ever, are reinstated. Scapegoats throughout history, Jews should never, ever, be on the side of restrictions.

Yes, we are appalled at the evil that Islam has fostered. But as a country we cannot hope to be the police force to 1.6 billion world-wide adherents to the Koran. We cannot go back in history and become a colonial power.

The world is suffering because of decisions made 100 years ago by the then colonial powers to create countries with borders that made little sense to the indigenous peoples they contained. This divide-and-conquer strategy has come back to bite western civilization. After World War II, America’s corporate and military industrial complex layered on another form of oppression on people who wanted nothing more than we had—a life of freedom to pursue happiness in peace and prosperity. But we supported dictators who strong-armed their subjects while they enriched themselves. 

Militant Islam is found throughout Europe. In France. In Great Britain. In Germany. In Holland. In Denmark. Is America to blame? I think not. 

Barry Konovitch laments the United States no longer is the beacon it once was to the rest of the world, that it “has relinquished its traditional leadership position as the most powerful democratic nation on earth. Free people everywhere have always looked to America for inspiration, guidance, and when needed, military intervention to support and protect basic human freedoms and right.”

Last I checked the United States was still the country most people aspired to enter, both legally and illegally. The U.S. still was the country people called out to for military relief.

Barry is wrong to say we encouraged democracies. Truth is, we repeatedly overthrew or undermined governments when we disapproved of the leaders voted in by their respective electorates. We supported feudal leaders throughout Arabia. Under four Republican presidents we negated the success of the Suez War of 1956 (Eisenhower), abandoned Lebanon after 241 Marines were killed in Beirut (Reagan), illegally sold arms to Iran and illegally supported the Contras in Nicaragua (Reagan), let Assad I gas thousands in Hama (Reagan again), let Saddam Hussein wreak revenge on Shiites after the first Gulf War (Bush I) and started a war in Iraq under false pretenses while ignoring the real enemy in Afghanistan (Bush II). 

Yes, Barack Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace prize. But it is a canard to accuse him of bowing to Arab despots. Did Barry criticize Bush II for walking hand in hand with the Saudi king, the same king who has supported and funded the extreme Wahhabi form of Islam that is the root for much of the fundamentalism now spreading throughout the Muslim world?

I, too, would have liked Israel to wipe out Hamas. But it would have required a re-occupation of Gaza, with no end in sight for a withdrawal, not to mention the numerous casualties, civilian and military, both sides would have incurred. 

It is most unfortunate that technology has overtaken diplomacy. The means of inflicting destruction and death have outpaced any sincere effort in finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli question. Perhaps, if Israeli leaders had been more imaginative and accommodating (yes, accommodating) in decades past, they would have achieved a solution that would have lifted Palestinians out of the poverty so easily exploited by Islamic jihadists. When your family has few or no jobs, little to eat, no dignity, insufficient housing, sanitation, medical care and education, there is too little to keep youth from committing to the tantalizing dream of the jihadist. 

Palestinian and Arab leaders have repeatedly rejected Israel’s presence. They are more culpable because they rejected offers of peace. And the Arab Street was silent in asking for peace. The latest war in Gaza, however, has demonstrably shown that creativity must be employed to secure a lasting peace because, surely, destructive minds are hard at work creating new means of terror, above and below ground. 

Slapping Down a Jester, a King, a Crowley

I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows. But someone needs to tell him that hosting The Daily Show on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, was unseemly. Though he’s not religiously observant, Stewart often refers to his Jewish heritage. Indeed, on his Thursday night show he bantered with Amar’e Stoudemire of the NY Knicks about fasting on Yom Kippur (Stoudemire has traced some Jewish roots). But to the casual viewer, seeing Stewart appear on his Tuesday and Wednesday night shows, both taped during the Day of Atonement observance period, was a discordant signal. Stewart should have emulated Sandy Koufax, and other professional athletes, who chose not to perform on Yom Kippur, even when it meant missing a World Series game. 

Perhaps Stewart’s guest list was limited Tuesday night because of the start of Yom Kippur, but I found it serendipitous to see King Abdullah II of Jordan sitting across his interview desk. Given Jordan’s strategic, or unfortunate, global position situated as it is on the borders of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the West Bank and Israel, and just a missile’s lob from Iran, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, King Abdullah could be expected to provide an insider’s perspective on the various conflicts in the region. He is considered a moderate among the Arab and Muslim community.

Yet, I was more than alarmed to hear him describe the root cause of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear program as a response to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. “The reason why they have a nuclear program is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and the future of Jerusalem,” he said. He asserted if the Israelis and the Arabs solve their problems “then there’s no raison d'être for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” 

One problem with this reasoning is Iran is not an Arab state. Persians live there, Persians who have fought Arabs for some 3,000 years, including the recent 10-year war with Iraq. The Iranians have no love for Arabs. Now, the king might have couched Iran’s support for the Palestinians as one Muslim supporting another. But here again there is historical reason to question that argument: Iran is Shia; most Palestinians are Sunni. Those two sects don’t like each other. They keep blowing up each other, in their respective mosques, at funerals, in marketplaces. Anywhere. 

Furthermore, by King Abdullah’s reasoning, we would expect not just Iran but also other Muslim countries to want to nuke up their armaments to leverage a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Are we prepared for a nuclear Indonesia? Or Bangladesh? Or Albania? Or any of the other 45 majority Muslim countries of the world? 

Sorry, King Abdullah, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions have little if anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By implying they do, King Abdullah is following the example of dictators throughout the Middle East who have used the conflict as a pretext to keep their own people suppressed, economically and politically. King Abdullah might be considered a moderate, his British-educated accent pleasant to the ear, but his type of reasoning is what has kept tensions in the Middle East at the simmering point ever since Jews started reclaiming the land of their heritage.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days about the state of education in the United States. Apparently our educational standards have a long history of laxity. To wit, here’s what one of our Ph.D.s, with a degree earned from Columbia University, no less, recently wrote the day after our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked and four American foreign service officers, including our ambassador, were killed: 

“The Middle East is aflame, much of which is a result of Obama’s policies of helping to dislodge allies like Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Qaddafi and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. He may use the orchestrated violence as a pretext to act in order to get Americans’ attention off the economy.  I don’t know.  But in any case, Obama must be defeated on November 6 if we’re to have any hope of surviving as a serious world power. Maybe surviving, period.”

Could be I was sleeping through these last 30 years or so, but when did Qaddafi become an ally of ours, much less a “key ally,” as Monica Crowley further elaborated on her written comments during a sit-down with Sean Hannity of Fox News September 12. During the Bush II years America championed the idea of democracy in the Middle East. Now that a democratically elected leader (not to her liking) is seated in Mubarak’s old chair, Crowley is all agog, yearning for those good old days of tyranny and torture, all for the good of the U.S. of A, mind you. Let’s not pretend to care what the Egyptians get out of this change of circumstance.

I also didn’t know America was in jeopardy of losing its status as a serious world power. Can you think of any other country people around the world are clamoring to enter, legally or not? Can you think of any other country even remotely as powerful as we are? Yes, our economy is still in the doldrums, but so is almost every other country’s. Even China is in flux. 

Every time a Democrat is president or running for the office conservatives raise the specter of our own annihilation. Yet they remained silent when the Neocons dragged us into two wars (and ran up the deficit by not funding them on the books). I am despondent to think the viewers of Fox News don’t recognize the absurdities they hear from that channel. Here’s another example: recently Fox News polled its audience to ascertain their election choices. Guess what? 90% favored Romney, 10% Obama. Duh!

If Someone Comes to Kill You ...

Most Tuesday mornings from October through early June I participate in a Bible study class at our temple. We’re making our way through Exodus this year. Part of today’s lesson from chapter 22 of Exodus dealt with the concept of self-defense. If a home invasion happens when it is light, it is not permissible to kill the intruder as it is presumed he would flee or surrender if discovered. However, if a thief enters a home at night, a resident may kill the intruder with impunity as it may be presumed the criminal would have had murderous intent if confronted. 

This reasoning led to a long-accepted rabbinic maxim, “He who comes to kill you, kill him first.” 

Today, June 5, was a most appropriate time to consider this precept. It is the 45th anniversary of the Six Day War, Israel’s pre-emptive strike on Egypt and Syria. (Interestingly and coincidentally, today the United States confirmed Al-Qaeda’s second in command had been killed Monday, presumably in a drone attack inside Pakistan.)

The 1967 crisis in the Middle East had been building for months. Egypt expelled United Nations peacekeepers who guarded the Sinai border with Israel. It closed the Straits of Tiran to ships bound for Eilat. A blockade is considered an act of war. Arab countries vowed to drive Israelis into the sea, to dismember the Jewish state. 

Jews the world over feared another Holocaust. Anyone with relatives or friends in Israel were doubly worried. My sister, Lee, was in Israel, studying at Hebrew University. For the last few weeks she had been packing crackers for army rations. 

Monday morning, June 5, 1967, I drove from our parents’ home to Brooklyn College, taking up my usual position at the Knight House “fraternity” table in the Boylan Hall cafeteria. Around 10, word started to trickle in that war had broken out. This was not the era of instant worldwide communications, of CNN or cell phones, of 24-hour news cycles. Israel controlled the dissemination of news from its territory. In those first, terrifying, stomach-churning hours, the only reports we heard were those coming from Egypt, communiqués about Arab troops advancing on Tel Aviv, of Zionists falling in a jihad of epic proportions.

It was not until well into the afternoon or early evening that the true picture of the day’s events became known. The startling revelation of Israel’s air power superiority, coupled with its armored division successes, exceeded even the most optimistic expectations of the 19-year-old country’s supporters. 

Sometimes it is hard for contemporary observers to fully comprehend the fragility of Israel’s existence. From being considered a David facing the Arab Goliath in 1967, the roles have been reversed in the ensuing 45 years. Yet even today a visitor to Israel cannot be anything but wary when hostile borders surround the state, which is but a speck of green in an otherwise sandy expanse. Artillery fire could easily reach Israel’s population centers back in 1967. As it can today. It’s too much to expect friendly neighbors. Secure, peaceful borders, however, are legitimate demands. But if one side is still determined to annihilate you, rising up early to kill them is not just a biblical injunction, it’s a present day imperative. 

Living in an Artless World

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

That statement, attributed to H.L. Mencken, is as applicable today as it was in the first half of the 20th century when Mencken reigned as one of our premier journalists. The cultural definition of the comment is as follows: People can easily be persuaded to accept the most inferior ideas or useless products.

Consider American tap water vs. bottled water. Our tap water is about the best water to be found anywhere in the world, not only in taste but also in purity. Yet we spend billions of dollars each year, about $10 billion at wholesale prices, on bottled water, usually spring water. At least one brand, Coca-Cola’s Dasani, rakes in more than $1 billion selling us ordinary tap water it has processed through another purification treatment.

It would be smarter to just fill up a jug of tap water, but like the man said, you won’t go broke underestimating our intelligence.

Last Thursday we were treated to the delusional rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a speech at the United Nations, the Iranian president presented a theory that “some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the (Sept. 11) attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grip on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime.”

It is not shocking he made that assertion, as many rank and file Muslims believe it to be true. Sadly, while 33 delegations, including those of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica and the 27 members of the European Union, walked out of his speech, apparently not one Arab or Muslim state, or any of our other supposed allies in South America, Asia or Africa, chose to express their rejection of this lunatic’s diatribe. We send billions of dollars in aid and our most precious resources—our young men and women in uniform—to defend and prop up Muslim countries. How is it that they do not automatically distance themselves from such statements? How is it that their leaders have not expressed abhorrence of these remarks?

Of course, we shouldn’t just look overseas for idiocy and revolting behavior, not when polls show 18% of the U.S. public believes President Obama is a Muslim (up from 11% in March 2009) and a discordant number believe he wasn’t born in the United States and therefore was not eligible to be elected president. Here’s how a Republican congressional candidate in Michigan (a former U.S. Representative seeking to win back his seat) handled the religion and citizenship questions during a radio talk show interview last Thursday: "I don't know, I really don't know," Tim Walberg said. "We don't have enough information about this president. He was never given a job interview that was complete. But that's not the issue now. He is president. Right now we need to make sure he doesn't remain as president, whether he's American, a Muslim, a Christian, you name it."

Seeking to oust a president and a Congress is acceptable. Undermining the legitimacy of our elected president is not. When our own countrymen play loose and goosy with the truth, why should we expect more from our enemies?

Tea Party candidates, and their siren leader Sarah Palin, are daffy. No need to go on a witch hunt to expose behaviors that would scare most thinking people away from their candidacies. But these are tough economic times and too often our electorate has shown a tendency to blame incumbents, even throw them out of office, in favor of demagogues and otherwise incompetent alternatives.

Lower taxes and fewer government programs are platform planks for the Tea Party and Republicans. We can have a serious debate on the wisdom of these ideas, but only if memory is included. Do people not remember that these ideas were part and parcel of the Bush years and that they resulted in huge deficits and the atmosphere of regulatory indifference that led to the banking and financial services fiascos that sucked the air out of the economy?

No doubt there’s a lot of waste, even abuses, within many if not all government programs. Heck, within the companies you work for there no doubt are inefficient, wasteful purchasing practices and people who fudge expense accounts. The ideal is to clean up these messes. But do we want to do away with government programs meant to protect us? Hasn’t the latest health scandal surrounding egg production shown us we need better coordinated consumer protection, not less?

It disturbs me that our political discourse has been reduced to sound bites. It disturbs me that too many voters pick candidates seemingly the same way a naïve bettor chooses a horse at the track, based on their name or the colors of their racing gear, rather than their track record. It disturbs me that we have entered an age of non-compromise. Politics used to be known as the art of compromise. Sadly, I believe we increasingly are living in an artless world.