A Different Disney Perspective
It was very good timing that your columnist Saul Jay Singer chose to write about songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman on the week when many yeshiva families are on break (“Richard And Robert Sherman And The Arguable Antisemitism Of P.L. Travers,” Jan. 17).
This year, my family wanted to visit Walt Disney World and I felt anxious about the cost, lines, weather (it was chilly), and the flight.
Sitting in that boat ride as robots danced to “It’s a Small World After All” now felt very Jewish having read Singer’s column on my flight to Orlando, knowing that it was written by two talented brothers whose talent was recognized by Walt Disney. Moreover, they helped defeat the Nazis, liberate our brethren, and support Jewish causes.
In a time when there is erasure of Israel and Jewish contributions to society, it was also refreshing to see a model of a frum couple under a chuppah as part of the cultural diversity display in that Magic Kingdom ride.
Sergey Kadinsky
West Hempstead, N.Y.
Irrational Trump-Smearing
While watching President Trump’s inauguration ceremonies, as described in your cover story of January 24, my mind drifted back to the latter stages of the election campaign. The Democrats, in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to salvage a campaign going badly off the rails, tried to smear Trump as acting like Hitler.
First I thought of Trump’s first term in office, when he did more for Israel than any other U.S. president. And now I was looking at Trump standing in the middle of the stage for all the world to see, personally greeting freed Israeli hostages and families. I was thinking that if only Hitler had been more like Trump, there would have been six million more Jewish men, women, and children alive in Europe.
To try to equate Trump with Hitler is plumbing the depths of political irrationality.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
A Pro-Israel Administration? Not So Fast
Apparently, during his four-year hiatus from the White House, Donald Trump learned how Washington, D.C. operates, as evidenced by the Israel-Hamas hostage “deal” (“Both Friends And Foes Should Lower Their Expectations For Trump 2.0,” by Jonathan S. Tobin, Jan. 25).
Following current procedure, he sent his golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, who has business ties with Hamas’ principal patron, Qatar, to force Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept the Biden plan introduced last May, which emeritus Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has labeled a crime, not a deal. To make matters worse, Witkoff, acting with the disrespect that only a Jew would dare to show a fellow Jew, demanded that the Prime Minister meet him on Shabbos to surrender.
I say this because after losing more than 800 soldiers, all Israel gets, aside from the genuine benefit of executive orders removing the hold on weapons already purchased and rescinding the Biden sanctions on residents of Judea and Samaria, is the return of hostages in dribs and drabs as Hamas sees fit, in return for releasing up to 3,000 terrorists, many of them murderers, without achieving its other war objectives.
Hamas, on the other hand, has all its objectives fulfilled. When Israel withdraws from the Netzarim corridor, hundreds of thousands of civilians will stream back to northern Gaza, rendering it impossible for Israel to neutralize the remaining Hamas cells operating there. When Israel withdraws from the Philadelphi Corridor in the next phase, Hamas can rearm to the teeth with supplies sent in from Egypt, which now sides with Turkey against Israel. And when Israel withdraws completely from Gaza, Hamas will be back where it was on October 6, still in power, bolstered by both the returning terrorists and thousands of new recruits, able to launch more October 7-style attacks as it has promised.
Meanwhile, even with Herzi Halevi resigning as chief of staff, the IDF is crawling back into its defensive turtle shell, building a wall around Sderot.
Trump, whose flaws include being boastful and continually engaging in self-promotion, positioned himself to have his plan finalized before his pro-Israel Cabinet nominees, who might object, could be confirmed. He can now take credit for matching President Reagan’s obtaining return of the hostages from Iran upon taking office, although Reagan obtained all the hostages at the same time, without making concessions that endangered our national security, though he did suffer the embarrassment of having to withdraw the Marines from Beirut after a Hezbollah bomb killed 241 of them.
At the same time, the President has sent, perhaps unwittingly, a disturbing signal by appointing as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East Michael DiMino, a former CIA analyst who, according to Jewish Insider, “brings a record on Iran, the Houthis, and the region that is alarming pro-Israel conservatives, having described Iran’s missile attack on Israel as ‘fairly moderate’ and urged the U.S. against bombing the Houthis, instead calling for American pressure on Israel.”
He has also asserted that the United States has no critical interests in the Middle East and should reduce our military presence there, that there is “no credible solution” to the crisis the Houthis have created in the Red Sea, and that we should prevent an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah that might compel the U.S. to actively defend Israel. Another new Pentagon official, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby, who may have been responsible for hiring DiMino, opposes direct military action against Iran in favor of “containing a nuclear Iran.”
Taking all the foregoing into consideration makes it appear as if President Trump has outsourced his Middle East policy to Qatar.
As ZOA president Mort Klein has reminded us, Jews cannot depend on any humans, only on G-d.
Richard Kronenfeld
Phoenix, Ariz.
