Truth In Politics
I can sum up your letters and your editorials for the past nine years: Trump good, Republicans good, Hillary bad, Biden bad, Harris bad, Democrats bad. The only problem with this is, in Hashem’s Torah, it is just the opposite.
In his talk “On Idolatry,” Rabbi Manis Friedman says putting your trust in someone that is untrustworthy – putting your faith in someone not deserving your faith – is idolatry. It says in Shemot 23:7, “Distance yourself from falsehoods.” Rashi’s commentary on making a fence on your roof to prevent someone from falling tells us that “good things come about through the agency of good men; bad things come about through the agency of bad men.”
If Trump’s nose grew for every lie he told, it would have reached the moon and beyond. To call Trump a good man is to call Rabbi Deri, a leader of Shas and a two-time convicted criminal, a pillar of virtue. I guess if a convicted criminal can be the leader of an Israeli charedi “religious” party, then the President of the United States of America can be a convicted felon, if he is a Republican.
Ivan Schiff
Via E-mail
The Islamists Are Coming For Everyone
Jonathan Tobin’s article, “Liberal Media Mainstreams A Blood Libel About Israeli ‘Apathy,’” last week (January 10) was spot on, which made its content all the more disturbing to digest due to what it brought to light.
Institutional antisemitism against Israel and the Jews is quite disconcerting and dangerous. Imagine – Israel and the Jews are vile and apathetic for not feeling the pain of the “Palestinians.” (I put Palestinians in quotes, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
Were the Europeans and Americans unfeeling and hateful countries and people for fighting and killing Nazis during World War II? Of course not! Jonathan Tobin is so right that the global community and mainstream media are apoplectic over the Jews being capable of defending themselves and not walking into ovens meekly once again, G-d forbid. How could the Jews and Israel not empathize with the Arab neighbors that sought to kill, maim, rape, burn, behead, and kidnap as many Israelis that they could?
Is this premise’s absurdity not obvious to every sane person? All ignorant Hamas and terrorist sympathizers forget a crucial overarching tenet that Islamists adhere to:
Infidels must be conquered and killed should they refuse to convert to Islam, and all non-believers who aren’t killed must be subjugated to the will of Allah. Israel and Jews are the Baby Satan. They are also the canary in the coal mine; terrorist attacks involving vehicular rammings first manifested in Israel. Those who think it is merely Israel that the bloodthirsty terrorists target are sorely mistaken, as evidenced by the recent carnage in New Orleans and Germany. All who continue to ignore the perils of Islamic terror and brutality will eventually fall victim to it.
The bottom line is that the indoctrinated supporters of Hamas and other terrorist groups must give their heads a shake and dispel the absurdities they have been force-fed. That includes the media, academia, and all other institutions that have rotted to the core.
It is important to remember that absurdities are followed by atrocities. I understand that Hashem runs the show, and am hopeful for positive changes that may come under the new administration going forward.
May Hashem keep us all safe and protect our brave soldiers who are laying their precious lives on the line every day, G-d rest the valiant souls of those who have perished and care for their surviving families. Am Yisrael Chai.
George Weiss
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Biden’s Pathetic Legacy
Regarding your recent articles about the legacy of Jimmy Carter, the former president spent nearly 45 years building a solid legacy following four years of an okay one-term presidency. Joe Biden is trying to cram his legacy redo into 45 days.
While it’s not quite true that Biden has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at shaping his legacy in the 11th hour, he has scheduled a ban on most gas-fired heaters that send hot water to the kitchen sink. He also put forth a ban on oil and gas leasing in about 625 million acres of offshore waters surrounding the U.S.
In addition to George Soros and Anna Wintour, Biden last week gave the Medal of Freedom to Robert F. Kennedy, who died in 1968, and Lionel Messi, an Argentine citizen who has played soccer in the U.S. for a little over a year. To his credit, Messi declined to show up for the absurdity.
Every presidency is a combination of tough calls, good outcomes, and defeats. A legacy, though, is how history chooses to remember a president or, more cynically, it is what’s going to be in the first paragraph of your obituary.
Every Biden first paragraph will include his abrupt decision to end his bid for re-election. Then the heartless legacy writers will note the messy details of Biden’s final year in office, culminating in his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump. They will catalog the increasing concerns of Democratic Party professionals about Biden’s mental state, his withdrawal, and the party’s defaulted nomination of Vice-President Kamala Harris whose tossed-together campaign of joy ended in ignominy for Democrats.
No matter how many executive orders Biden throws against the wall before January 20, his legacy won’t be pleasant reading. But let us agree: The Biden legacy didn’t have to end with the 2024 debacle. There was an alternative to this unhappy fate, one he himself suggested. Several times during the 2020 campaign, he described himself as a “transitional candidate” or a “bridge,” citing “an entire generation of leaders” behind him. Had Biden kept to this initial inclination and opened the party to a competitive primary, liberal historians would have treated his presidency very well. His embarrassing personal frailties would have become a footnote. The open-border migrant flow would be explained away as political gridlock. They would credit him with restoring economic growth.
Ultimately, they would have ranked Biden highly among Democratic presidents because his domestic policy aligned perfectly with the progressive holy grails of our era. With congressional Democrats, he produced trillions of spending to drive hundreds of climate and industrial projects deep into the U.S. economy. Democratic memorialists would have sainted him for that spending alone.
Instead, history will mark him down for exposing his party to a humiliating defeat that put Trump back in the White House. Add to this Biden’s lame-duck decision to issue an overly expansive pardon for his son Hunter after many false promises not to.
Biden’s decision to stay past his time, explainable in part by a lifetime of blind ambition, was surely abetted by Jill Biden and his inner circle of aides. This delusional attempt to rewrite the past year’s politics is rich, considering the realities of Biden’s ascent to the presidency. It was the Democratic establishment that selected this Beltway lifer during the party’s 2020 presidential primaries and ran him as a “moderate” promising to restore normalcy.
In office, he essentially held open the door to let the party’s left-wing activists and lawyers push through a wish list of policies and rulemaking. Their idea of a normalized America included the unprecedented initiation of lawfare against former President Trump. That politicized litigation contributed to a second Trump term and will remain part of the Biden legacy.
It may have been unrealistic to expect that after more than 50 years in Washington, the 46th president would willingly slide back down the greasy pole to make way for the next generation of his party’s climbers. But the spectacle of him trying to hold on will be unforgettable.
Brian Goldenfeld
Thousand Oaks, CA
Echoing Kahane’s Foresight
The January 3 edition of The Jewish Press featured a “Perspectives” piece by Israeli analyst Yaakov Lappin. His main observation is that when Israeli forces vacated areas of “conquered” Gaza, upon their return eight months later they “faced newly entrenched Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad networks, exposing the consequences of prolonged inactivity in the region…. Hamas and PIJ took full advantage of the IDF’s absence to reestablish their infrastructure for recruitment, training, and operational planning.”
Several months ago (Sept. 27, 2024), The Jewish Press highlighted Ambassador David Friedman’s new book, One Jewish State. Addressing the consequences of the unfortunate postponement of the obligation for Jewish settlement and annexation of Judea and Samaria, Friedman comments, “G-d seems to be asking us over and over again, ‘What more do you need to be convinced not to give away the land that I have given to the Jewish people?’” Later in his book, he links this same analysis to Gaza: “Gaza is…part of Biblical Israel…The long-term path for Gaza must be the same as for Judea and Samaria. This is G-d’s land given to the Jewish people… Israel has no other choice but to reclaim its biblical territory and return one day to the Gaza Strip in a manner that brings peace.” Friedman’s analysis was written months before Lappin’s current assessment. It would seem that Friedman’s plan for the future of Gaza needs to be jumpstarted.
Fifty years ago, Rabbi Meir Kahane spoke and wrote about what would happen to the vacuum created whenever Israel liberates parts of Eretz Yisrael but then fails to settle and annex the land. He also warned about the impending antisemitism and the imperatives for Jewish defense and for making aliyah.
As a result of the wars being fought in Gaza and Lebanon, and the fall of government in Syria, for the first time in 2,700 years Jewish military control has been extended to cover the lands of ten of the twelve tribes of Israel. These lands need to be annexed and settled. This opinion resonates with halacha, military strategy, and national security, and with the opinion of Rabbi Kahane, longtime Jewish Press columnist and Member of Knesset, who, almost without exception, has been on the correct side of history.
David Ferster
Great Neck, N.Y.
