Pearls of Young Wisdom
Aviva Frankenthal (Aliyah Journal), please do keep writing, especially in The Jewish Press. I am part of your fan club. You definitely can have a future in writing. I am very impressed with how you make everything come alive. I too live in Israel and know that very frightening feeling when rockets are falling. I am very proud that you do not wish for the seeming safety of returning to America.
I look forward to your next article.
Naomi Mauer
Co-Publisher, The Jewish Press
Israel
A Golden Place to Spend the Golden Years
I always enjoy Naomi Klass Mauer’s articles, and her most recent contribution was no exception (“One Year Later,” Jan. 16). How wonderful that older people in Israel have places like Beit Tovei HaIr (I know there are others as well) to spend their later years with fellow seniors in a stimulating, uplifting Jewish environment with all the care and amenities they may need right on site. Minyanim, lectures and shiurim, games and entertainment, meaningful friendships – these things surely add years to one’s life and life to one’s years. And the fact that grandchildren are welcomed is so important, because these places should not isolate seniors from their families or remove the impetus for the children to visit.
I wish Naomi only good health and enjoyment ad me’ah v’esrim.
Esther Weissberger
Monsey, N.Y.
Trump, The Jews, And the World
In its editorial of January 23, The Jewish Press was critical of Donald Trump for including Turkey on the Gaza Board of Peace. With this in mind, as Trump completes the first year of his current term, it may be a good time to assess his overall performance.
Trump is a very unorthodox politician, to say the least. His experience is more in business than in politics, and that is the source of his strength. His approach to problems and issues is “the art of the deal,” where he negotiates, blusters, bullies, charms, threatens, and tries to overwhelm his opponents. He does whatever it takes to get his deals done, usually in a carefully methodical process. Since he is personally wealthy and is head of the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world, he leads most negotiations from a position of strength. He is egotistical and doesn’t like to lose. Indeed, he is a sore loser. However, he is not averse to taking risks, even some with long odds. Thus, he tries many things and has achieved many victories, but also some defeats.
In the domestic arena, Trump is unabashedly pro-American and Jew-friendly, and has accomplished more than any other American president in recent history. He stopped the massive invasion of illegal aliens, tamed inflation, and is trying to clean up the violence in many cities. He almost singlehandedly has turned around America’s headlong dash into socialism, anarchy, Jew-hatred, and second-tier status.
In the global arena, Trump is up against other powerful countries and leaders, so he has a much harder task. But in spite of this, he has been reshaping the world order. In the European theater, he has awakened the decades-long sleep of NATO and has pressured them to start becoming active in their own defense. In the Mideast, Trump, who is the most pro-Israel president in American history, has expanded the Abraham Accords, brokered a ceasefire in the two-year-old Gaza war, and in cooperation with Israel, has severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program and methodically downgraded Iran and its terrorist proxies as major players, and today Iran is on the brink of total collapse. Even Iran’s allies, Russia and China, have not exhibited any public support for Iran, recognizing its impotence.
The greatest impediment to Trump’s agenda and vision is the Republican Party itself. The American electorate is roughly divided between Democrats and Republicans. While the Democrats consistently vote as a unified bloc against anything Trump is for, no matter what the issue, the Republicans are disorganized, disruptive, not always supportive, often join ranks with the Democrats, or are completely missing in action. This is what puts Trump at a disadvantage in some negotiations, not the issues themselves.
In summary, Trump has tried many different initiatives, and operating at his own pace, has had many great and surprising victories, along with some setbacks and disappointments. One of his strengths is that he is always willing to try new initiatives, many not easy or popular. But he continues to try.
My personal assessment of Trump is that I trust his instincts when it comes to American domestic and foreign policy and Jewish and Israeli issues. And even when I don’t always understand where he is going, I trust that he does, and give him the benefit of the doubt. And based on his overall accomplishments, I feel that he will prove to be right more often than not, even if it is not always 100% to everyone’s liking.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
Shapiro’s False Outrage
Josh Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew preparing to run for the presidency on the Democratic ticket, reveals that during the vetting process for the vice-president position in the 2024 race, he was asked by the Harris people if he was a spy for Israel. According to the article by Jonathan Tobin (“Can Josh Shapiro Rescue the Democratic Party from Left-Wing Antisemitism?” Jan. 23), Shapiro brings this out now to differentiate himself from the other candidates running for president in 2028. His goal is to save the soul of the Democratic Party. However, his belated action does not make him a hero but just shows that he is a Democratic Party loyalist before he is a Jew or committed to the people of this country. A real hero would have come out in 2020 and let the American people know, regardless of party, what has become of the Democratic Party. His silence speaks volumes of his lack of commitment to truth. Instead of taking a heroic position, he remained quiet in order to stay in the good graces of a party that exercises power over the country.
Douglas Balin
Brooklyn, N.Y.
U.S. Must Act Against Iran
Re: “From Betraying the Shah to Bankrolling the Mullahs: How Democratic Administrations Empowered Evil in Iran” by Jonathan Braun (Jan 16): President Trump drew a red line on January 2, warning that if Iran’s rulers answered mass protests with mass murder, the United States would respond militarily. Since then, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Trump’s bluff. The regime’s security forces have cracked down, killing thousands and detaining many more.
That leaves Trump with a decision that matters beyond Tehran. If the U.S. allows a dictator to murder civilians after a direct presidential warning, as President Obama did after drawing a red line in Syria, America will lose its ability to deter. American presidential warnings will be seen as empty noise. In the Middle East, weakness is not interpreted as caution but as permission.
A full war to change the Iranian regime would be folly and is doubtless not being contemplated. But Trump must take measured military action and soon.
Sanctions alone will not cut it. Iran is already heavily sanctioned. The Islamic Republic has spent decades learning how to shift pain onto ordinary people while keeping the regime’s enforcers paid and armed. Regime members and their families are currently exporting billions of dollars to where they hope the money will be safe and waiting for them if the mullahs are toppled. That money shows that sanctions do not hurt the tyrants.
A cyberattack is useful, but cyberspace alone will not stop bullets. And negotiations while the regime is mowing down civilians would be a lifeline for Khamenei’s thugs, not an inducement to stop.
The key is for the American military strike to be smart. It should target specific regime figures and assets tied directly to the crackdown, such as internal security headquarters, commanders, and the logistical nodes that sustain repression. Done properly, such strikes incapacitate those perpetrating the crackdown and send a simple message: The regime can defeat its people, or it can keep its infrastructure and leadership intact, but it cannot do both.
Trump could go further. He could include precision attacks on facilities used to organize and sustain the crackdown, paired with cyber operations that disrupt communications and command-and-control. The aim is not directly to topple the regime, although that would be a happy consequence. If it did happen, it would still be a bottom-up popular rebellion, not an American-instigated war that achieved it. The aim is to raise the cost of killing civilians, degrade the regime’s capacity to do so, and force Tehran to choose between de-escalation and the steady destruction of its coercive machinery.
This is the right approach because it is strong without being reckless. It punishes brutality without assuming a fantasy outcome.
The alternative, a major air campaign aimed at “fundamentally weakening” the regime, is not a strategy. It is a gamble. It would invite serious retaliation: missile salvos, terrorist strikes against U.S. interests and allies, cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, and efforts to disrupt global energy shipping. Worst of all, it might not help the protesters. Revolutions usually succeed when security forces fracture, not when the U.S. bombs from the sky and hopes the political puzzle solves itself.
Major strikes could also corner Khamenei into irrational escalation. A paranoid theocrat who believes his “divine mission” is collapsing is not the kind of leader America should assume will act with restraint. If he thinks the regime is facing extinction, he may do something drastic simply because he has nothing left to lose.
The deterrence logic is simple. Begin with limited strikes that are unmistakable but controlled. Deliver an ultimatum privately and publicly. If the killings continue, expand the target set. If Iran retaliates in the region, hit harder. But do not begin with the most extreme option and pretend escalation risk does not exist.
This is not just about Iran. It is about credibility. Trump has political capital right now because he has demonstrated his willingness to act. He has cultivated the perception, rare in modern American foreign policy, that his warnings are not empty. That perception has value. It restrains adversaries before the first shot is fired.
If Trump backs down after issuing a clear threat, Khamenei will not be the only one taking notes. Every hostile regime with an interest in testing American resolve will learn the same lesson: Wait out the headlines, absorb the statements, and keep moving.
Measured military action is not war. It is enforcement. Trump set the line. Iran crossed it. Now the only question is whether the American president intends to be taken seriously.
Brian Goldenfeld
Thousand Oaks, Calif.