We called it. After he had had some time to rest, possibly sleep off his temper tantrum, Isaac “Ike” Fisher, a Jewish Miami Federation and AIPAC bigwig, told The Times of Israel on Sunday that he didn’t mean any of the angry threats he had made against Israel, the Netanyahu government, and anybody else who wouldn’t ask how high when he ordered them to jump.
Ike Fisher was very angry last week. “It’s not a matter of Reform and Conservative,” he told Yedioth Ahronoth. “A grave act has been committed here, of contempt for the rabbis and leaders of our communities. They (Netanyahu and the Haredim) say to them, ‘You don’t matter,’ for our women – they say to them, ‘Your Judaism is not Judaism.’ It’s intolerable, and it is our duty to put an end to it.”
And so, Ike announced for all the world to hear: “I want to inform you that my support is suspended until the government of Israel changes its decision regarding the Western Wall and conversion. Enough is enough.”
Ike was going to ask for his money back on the Israel Bonds he had just purchased, and was going to stop attending those Federation and AIPAC meetings. He was going to suspend his grants (named after his late mother) to Israeli students, and take back the budgets of two boys’ clubs in development towns, as well as a soccer club for Ethiopian kids.
Of course he didn’t. He was just very angry and he lashed out, the way rich folks do.
Not the Adelsons, by the way. When they discovered they had been thrown under the bus by their fair-haired boy, Bibi, who offered to mess with the daily newspaper they had established just for him in favor of its competition – they went and picked a new fair-haired boy, Naftali Bennett.
On his climb down from the tree, Ike Fisher told anyone who would listen that he was only going to suspend all those nice things he was doing, but to anyone reading the papers last week it sure sounded like there was a heavy ultimatum hanging at the end of that suspension.
Also, as we have mentioned, taking his money out of his ten-day Israel Bond would have cost him plenty. Ike may be angry but he’s not a fool.
Fisher was actually sweet when he told the TOI he had spent his “whole life committed to Israel and the Jewish people” and he was “not cutting himself off” from it now. “My heart is with Israel and the larger Jewish people,” he said.
Good enough, matter closed. And, as we noted last week, it’s actually a good thing for a rich man to discover there are limits to what his money can buy. He should be able to recover from his temper tantrum, or he could make Aliyah and run for the Knesset, a move we would all applaud. Sounds like on normal days he’s both a smart and a generous guy.