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Liberal Jewish Democrats can't bring themselves to view Obama's Iran Deal as a knife pointed at both America and Israel's throat. Meanwhile, they continue to hate Trump. Tobin challenges them to open their eyes and minds if that is possible. (See 1 below.)
And
Prager gets to the meat of the deadlock between the Palestinians and Israelis when it comes to a resolution of what has proven to be an intractable issue. The Palestinians prefer dead Israelis and Israelis refuse to agree that this is a good solution. Presiding over your own funeral is not a sound basis for discussion unless you have a death wish. (See 1a below.)
Being Jewish, my sympathies lie with Israel because I just cannot accord with the Arab mentality that takes comfort in killing those with whom they are not in agreement so I have a rational reason backing my empathy.
Furthermore, being a rare politically conservative Jew, I find the ideology of liberal Jews hard to swallow. I understand the emotional side of being liberal but I cannot bring myself to logically embrace failing ideas that produce results counter to their espoused objective. If I were emotional about everything, I could readily find comfort in being liberal. If I did not mind believing everyone was entitled to everything they wanted, regardless of cost, I could easily find a home in liberal la la land.
I understand why people are turned off by Trump and find him unlikable. However, I do not carry my concerns to a level of hatred. I try to balance the mess he inherited, the resistance he gets from his adopted party, his quirky personality with his own handling of being president and, though, the jury is still out I also believe he will prove to be better than the anti-Trump haters think.
When it came to Obama, I never believed he was more than an empty suit but still reserved final judgement until such time as he began to prove my worst fears needed expanding.
I never cared for Clinton but recognized he was a political genius, thought Nixon was emotionally disturbed but brilliant, Carter was pathetic and Obama was despicable. Not a rousing endorsement for many of the presidents I lived through.
Truman was superbly down to earth, Eisenhower left me confused but my insight into him grows, Kennedy was charismatic but his life was cut short, Ford was dull but solid, Reagan made the top of the list, Bush 41 was a decent man but the mass media would not allow him to shake his background and he made his own contribution to this problem and his son, GW, will prove better than his detractors currently allow.
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Sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader and prefaced by this comment:
"Dick,
"Dick,
Pursuant to your blog today, the following was sent to me by R-- G----- and I think pretty much sums up what a lot of Americans think and feel today. We’re getting fed up with the manifest excesses of the far left, progressive, BLM, Antifa crowd and will eventually act to stop it. You’ve heard me say before that I think a real honest to goodness shooting war is not out of the question and this may be the start of one. Something has to be done to get their attention that what they’re doing is unacceptable by any norm of a civilized society. After all, as a farm boy I learned that sometimes you have to hit the mule upside the head with a two by four to get his attention.
Do you see this as a possibility (probability)?
E-" (See 2 below.)
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2017 is 5778 in the Jewish Calendar and this story tells it all.
Sent to me by a very dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 3 below.)
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The Iran Deal presents a particular problem for Trump because Europe wants to engage in commerce with Iran just as American scrap dealers did when they sold scrap to Japan which came back to bite us in a place called Pearl Harbour. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Liberal choice: honor Obama’s legacy or get tough with Iran?
By Jonathan S. Tobin/JNS.org
Is there anything that would entice liberal Jews to stand with President Donald Trump or to join with him in trashing former President Barack Obama’s legacy?
The obvious answer is nothing. In the wake of Charlottesville, disgust with Trump is at an all-time high with most voters, but especially liberal Jews who were already appalled with him. Moreover, the longer Trump is in office, the better his predecessor looks to many Americans, if only for his more presidential temperament if not his policies.
Yet a desire to defend Obama’s record has been very much in the news these days. One especially egregious instance took place at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. While it’s regarded as a communal treasure, a board that’s made up of both scholars and political appointees governs it. So it was little surprise that after eight years of being packed with loyal Jewish Democrats (following eight years of Jewish Republicans appointed by George W. Bush) it would commission a study about events in Syria that was essentially a whitewash of Obama’s dismal failure to act to prevent what is arguably one of the worst human rights disasters of the 21st century.
The report was a scandal that undermined the museum’s mission by exonerating Obama for his decision to let Syria and its people burn, even when chemical weapons were being used to kill innocents. The shock the study generated forced the museum to almost immediately withdraw the document.
The lesson here was not so much the chutzpah of those involved in this disgrace but the extent of the loyalty prominent Jewish Democrats still feel for Obama especially now that he’s been replaced by Trump.
Yet as dismaying as this episode was, we may witness a similar scenario being played out on a far greater stage, as Jewish Democrats are faced with a choice about how to react to Trump’s efforts to roll back the Iran nuclear deal.
The Iran deal was Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement. In order to prevent a dubious Congress from preventing its confirmation, Obama made it a litmus test of party loyalty and Democrats filibustered Republican efforts to vote it down.
One of the key episodes of that battle was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mistake in accepting a GOP invitation to address a joint session of Congress to persuade them to defeat the accord. Obama was able to pressure most Democrats to view this as a personal insult to him and that helped get the deal ratified by a back door strategy.
But another key test awaits Jewish Democrats.
With Trump intent on either renegotiating the deal with Iran or nullifying it, the Jewish community will be faced with what will be a difficult choice for many.
If this issue were removed from partisan politics and personalities, the debate would be one-sided.
Support for an effort to either improve or throw out an agreement that empowered and enriched the world’s leading state sponsor of terror that is still intent on destroying Israel would be a no-brainer. Instead of seizing, in Obama’s words, an opportunity to “get right with the world,” Iran has used the last two years to become even more aggressive. The ayatollahs’ military expedition in Syria has established what is, for all intents and purposes, a land bridge to its Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries in Lebanon. Along with their renewed alliance with the Palestinian terror group Hamas, this gives them the ability to launch a three-front war against Israel at any time of its choosing. Moreover, the terms that Obama negotiated do nothing to make the world safer since, at best, it merely puts off an Iranian bomb for a few years before they can proceed with impunity toward a weapon.
In other words, the pact is an indefensible swindle negotiated by an administration so determined to get a deal at any price that it abandoned every principle that it had going into the talks to defend. Were it not the personal project of Obama and the particular object of Trump’s enmity — a point emphasized during his address to the United Nations — it would be roundly denounced by every segment of responsible Jewish opinion.
Yet because many Jews see it as a political battle, rather than a genuine security threat, reactions to Trump’s effort are predictably partisan.
Perhaps it is too much to ask liberals to realize that even Trump can be right and Obama dead wrong about something so important. But if that is the only way they can view this issue, then the moral failure is theirs and not that of the president.
Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a Contributing Writer for National Review.
By Dennis Prager
Israel would like to exist and recognizes the right of the Palestinians to have a state; the Palestinians,however many other Muslims and Arabs, do not recognize the right of a Jewish state of Israel to exist.
Every poll among Palestinians shows that a majority of Palestinians want there to be no Jewish state of Israel — doesn't believe it should exist — or had any basis for being. And this has been true since 1948, when the British left and the U.N. established a division; Palestine would be cut in half — a Jewish half and an Arab half.
The Jews accepted it — the Arabs didn't accept it. And what happened? The moment it was announced, Arab armies — about seven Arab armies — attacked the Jewish state in order to destroy it.
To everybody's surprise, the little Jewish state survived, and that was pretty much it.
And then it happened again in 1967, when the dictator of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, said “We're now going to extinguish the Jewish state of Israel.” And Jordan joined him, and Syria joined him — but Israel attacked first, and so Israel survived.
And that is how Israel — and only that way — came to occupy what was called the “West Bank” of Jordan — where many Palestinians lived, because many Palestinians lived in that part of Jordan.
So, the war was over in '67 and what did the Arabs do? The Arab states all went to Khartoum, Sudan and announced “No recognition, no peace, and no negotiations,” the three famous “No's.” What was Israel supposed to do?
Then Israel made an agreement to give the entire Sinai Peninsula — an area of land bigger than Israel– with oil — back to Egypt because they said they would make peace with Israel. Israel gives territory back for peace, and it will always do that. But is there really a desire for peace on the part of Israel's enemies, which broadcast after broadcast on TV and radio, in the Palestinian areas, is about how Jews should be killed and how Allah wants Jews to be killed? That's the typical broadcast on Palestinian television.
And so, its not hard to explain the Middle-East dispute. One side wants the other dead. Do you know what the motto of Hamas is? The motto of Hamas is, “We love death as much as the Jews love life.” Now you tell me how Israel is suppose to make peace when people believe what Hamas believes.
Now, here is one of the most important things nobody talks about: Everybody talks about a Palestinian state — Why didn't anybody talk about a Palestinian state when the Palestinians lived under Jordanian rule? Because, the truth is, people started talking about a Palestinian state once the Palestinians were under Israeli rule, because it was always a way to destroy the Jewish state of Israel.
And I say “Jewish State” because that is what it is. There are many, many Arab states but there is only one Jewish state. It is about the size of New Jersey. In fact, El Salvador is larger than Israel. El Salvador!
And yet, if a Martian came to the earth and they visited the United Nations, or they read the world's newspapers, or watched world television, they would believe that biggest problem on Earth is a state the size of New Jersey and El Salvador. This state of Israel, this preoccupation with this little democratic, humane state is absolutely irrational.
And here's another question to be asked: If Israel, tomorrow, put down its arms and said “We will fight no more,” what would happen? If the Arab countries around Israel said “We will fight no more, we will put down our arms” what would happen?
In the first case there would be an immediate destruction of the State of Israel with the mass murder of the Jews of Israel. In the second scenario I presented, where the Arabs put down their arms and said, “We just want peace,” there would be peace the next Wednesday.
The fact is, as I said at the outset, it is a very simple problem to describe: One side wants the other dead — and if they didn't there would be peace.
Please remember this — there has never been, never in the history of the world, a state in that area, in what is called geographically Palestine, that was not Jewish. Israel is the third Jewish autonomous Jewish state to exist in that area. There was never an autonomous Arab state. There was never an autonomous Muslim state. There was not an autonomous “any-other” state. That's the issue: Why can't a little state the size of El Salvador, that calls itself Israel, be allowed to exist? That, in a nutshell, is the Middle-East problem.
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2)From a Marine:
"If you are paid $25.00 an hour to show up to a rally to "counter" the other party using physical force and violence, you are not a "counter protestor." You are a mercenary.
There is no need for further debate on this. You were paid to attack someone you don't know for reasons that you couldn't care enough about to go there for free. You did your "job" and collected your check and your reimbursement of expenses. You're a mercenary.
Not a Patriot. Not a Social Justice Warrior. Not a Defender of Freedom or Liberty. Not an upholder of Truth or Justice. None of those things you claim to be. You are a mercenary.
And mercenaries are not lawful combatants and deserve whatever comes their way at the hands of the people they are attacking.
You have no 1st Amendment rights when you're a mercenary.
Doesn't matter what side you're on. Doesn't matter what cause you're showing up to disrupt. If you can't express yourself peacefully through diplomatic means, then you better be prepared to meet your maker at the hands of someone who is only barely keeping their own violent tendencies at bay through a massive exercise of self-control.
I know it sounds romantic to attend these rallies and get s--- started with the other side. And when you're young and passionate, it's really easy to get whipped up into a frenzy of raw emotions. There is a reason why young people are preferred when it comes to warfare. They are easy to manipulate and control and set off.
But I'm telling you all this right now. You've got no idea what road you are starting down. Romance and idealism wears off really fast when you're laying in a pool of your own blood trying to stuff your intestines back into your torn abdomen.
I've been lucky enough to go forty-two years without having to put the skills I learned in the Marines to use. I continue to train and keep those skills up to date because I see the madness that is happening all across this country. I don't train to attack others like you do. I train to defend others FROM you. I'm not alone either.
There are thousands of men and women in this country who have seen war and death and don't want any more to do with it. They want to live in peace. They want to forget the things they've had to do in the service of their country. They want to raise their kids and have family BBQs and build tree houses and soap box derby cars and have tea parties
They don't want this s--- that you're selling.
You have the extremist left and the extremist right that are doing their best to get something started. To force us into a Civil War. Even in the 1860's, the violence between the North and South was nowhere near what we see today. Nowhere. Even. Close.
And yet we still had a war of ideology that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives
All you young and naive kids on both sides of this equation who think that having a Civil War will advance your agenda or restore your vision of what you think is America, just remember this. . Those of us older generations aren't having any of this s---. And if you jump off, you better be prepared to deal with US. We don't care what color you're wearing or what sign you're holding if you come after us, our friends, our family, our co-workers, our neighbors, etc., WE will kill you.
So remember that when you're thinking that it's just Left vs Right, or Liberal vs Conservative, or Commie vs. Fascist. We are the variable you're not considering.
That "Silent Majority" that you pretend does not exist is getting really sick and tired of your bulls---.
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3) How did a Tulsa tailor survive two concentration camps? 'I was lucky. I had a trade.'
A 13-year-old Szasa Rako made a life-saving decision when his family was rounded up by the Nazis and placed in a boxcar packed with 100 Jews.
“I jumped from the train,” said Sherman Ray, who Americanized his name and immigrated to the United States after World War II. “I never saw my family again.
“My mother and father told us that God would take care of us. But I knew they were going to kill us. So I told them I would rather be killed by a bullet than to die in the gas chambers. I jumped.”
The night he jumped from that train, headed toward Treblinka extermination camp in Poland where an estimated 900,000 Jews were killed, changed the course of his life.
There would be more challenges. More escapes.
He survived.
“What they have done I can never get over,” he said. “I can never forget. I can never forgive.”
At age 96, Ray happily spends his days doing what he has done for 75 years. He is a tailor, a trade passed down to him as a child from his grandfather and father.
Ray is one of a dwindling number of holocaust survivors still alive in Tulsa.
“I never thought I would come out of that alive,” he said.
He owns and operates Sherman Ray Tailor Shop at 3107 S. Jamestown Ave. Everyone is greeted with a smile.
“This is what I do,” he said, showing off some of the suits, pants and coats he has tailored for Tulsans. “It is good. I was lucky. I had a trade.”
It is a trade he’s been successfully doing in the 67 years since he emigrated from Germany, where he had settled after World War II.
“I wanted to leave,” he said. “The ground in Germany had been saturated with the blood of the Jews.”
He often talks of his family. On the night he jumped from the train, he left behind two sisters (Malka, 9, and Itaka, 6), one brother (Moses, 5) and his parents, Rafael and Freadia. They were, just as feared, killed at the Treblinka extermination camp.
“I looked for my family for a very long time,” he said.
His escape was just the beginning of an unlikely story of survival for Ray.
He got a job working on a farm and hid from the Nazis in a small underground hole he dug underneath the farmer’s house. “We slept on hay,” he said.
Eventually, he was found by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He faced almost certain death.
His concentration camp identification number, B2526, was tattooed on his arm.
But the trade that he was taught by his father and grandfather saved him.
“If you were a tailor, bootmaker or bricklayer, you were not killed,” he said. “You were put to work mending uniforms for the SS troops and making shoes for the German army. Others were used to build brick buildings.”
He said an orchestra often played at Auschwitz-Birkenau to cover “the screams of those going to the gas chambers.”
His life at the concentration camp was “slave labor,” Ray said. “We worked very, very hard. We got no food. We knew when it was Christmas because they would give us a small bowl of pea soup.”
Near the end of the war, in hopes of covering up their atrocities, the Germans were marching Jewish prisoners and workers to new locations. For three days, Ray and many others were marched by Germans from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Dachau during a late spring snowstorm. Many died on the forced march.
Dachau concentration camp was liberated by U.S. troops on May 1, 1945.
One day later, as he slept on the ground near Dachau, Ray awoke to find that all of the Germans guarding them were gone.
He was free.
“It was unbelievable,” said Ray. “It was over. I always remember May 2.”
Ray weighed 75 pounds when he was rescued.
“I had no strength,” he said. “I was very sick.”
So he stayed in Munich and started rebuilding his life. First, he started to exercise and eat healthy foods, two habits that he practices to this day.
“You have to stay active,” he said.
Ray started working once again as a tailor making “European-style suits.”
But he no longer wanted to be in Germany. So, after he recovered, he started to apply to be an immigrant. He was either going to Australia or the United States.
He had met a man who knew somebody in Brooklyn.
He got his papers in order and came across the ocean to a totally foreign land.
“I could speak German, Russian, Polish and very little English when I arrived in New York City,” he said. “But I was excited to come.”
His connection in Brooklyn lined him up a job working for a clothing plant in Oklahoma City.
“I knew nothing about Oklahoma,” said Ray. “I was told the only people in Oklahoma were Indians. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t even know where it was.”
He landed in Oklahoma City in 1949 after several days on trains and began work. He got a tattoo to cover up his concentration camp number. “People see my tattoo and always ask if I was in the Navy,” Ray said.
About a year after moving to Oklahoma, a job offer came from Tulsa at Greenberg’s Department Store.
“It was for more money,” he said. “So I went down to the bus station and bought a ticket for Tulsa.”
He stayed at Greenberg’s for 18 years before opening his own shop. He’s been making suits, pants, shirts and mending clothes that need alterations ever since.
“I had a lot of great customers,” said Ray. “I had to learn how to make the American suits. I was still making suits in the European style.
“But I was a good tailor. I made suits for many of the oilmen here in Tulsa. They were very loyal to me for many, many years.”
Many still are loyal to him. He has a small but dedicated group of customers at his shop.
“I don’t do dresses, so I send them to another shop,” he said.
Even at 96, he rarely misses a day of work.
“I like being here,” he said. “I like my work. I like to talk with people.”
He’s never been back to Europe.
“Too many memories,” he said. “For about 10 years, I had nightmares. I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been to Israel but not Poland or Germany.
“You’ve got to go on and live your life.”
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4) What are Trump and Netanyahu’s options to ‘fix or nix’ the Iran nuclear deal?
As a presidential candidate, Trump vowed to “rip up” the “disastrous” deal. Yet his administration has not taken any concrete steps to either renegotiate or pull the U.S. out. However, a key deadline looms in mid-October that has led to a flurry of speculation whether the Trump administration may make a major shift in strategy regarding the deal.
“The Iran deal is one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the U.S. has ever entered into to,” Trump declared to the international body filled with world leaders. “Frankly, that deal was an embarrassment to the U.S.”
The president took Iran to task for its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East, saying that Tehran “speaks openly of mass murder, death to America and the destruction of Israel,” while also exporting “violence, bloodshed and chaos” throughout the region.
Drawing on Trump’s muscular speech, in his own address to the world body, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has derided the agreement for years, said the Islamic Republic could become the next North Korea if the nuclear deal isn’t “fixed or nixed.”
"There are those who still defend the dangerous [Iranian nuclear] deal, arguing that it will block Iran's path to the bomb. That's exactly what they said about the nuclear deal with North Korea, and we all know how that turned out. If nothing changes, this deal with turn out exactly the same way," Netanyahu warned.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS.org that Netanyahu “laid out the situation on Iran pretty well for his call to ‘fix it or nix it.’”
“There is a way to fix the Iran deal, and the way to do it is actually use the U.N. system and use Iran’s track record of bad behavior under the deal,” he said. “It’s the track record of being a maligned player in the region, which Trump and Netanyahu both referred to, to get this leverage with the Europeans to renegotiate it.”
Trump administration strategy
Last week, the Trump administration extended sanctions relief for Iran, but left open the possibility that it may not certify Iran’s compliance with the deal at the mid-October deadline.
However, administration officials, and even Trump on Twitter, has discussed the decertification of the Iran nuclear deal as an option. Under U.S. law, the president must certify to Congress every 90 days that Iran is in compliance with the deal. If the president does not certify their compliance, Congress could reimpose sanctions that were originally lifted, effectively ending the U.S.’s participation in the agreement.
Ben Taleblu said there has been a remarkable amount of consistency within the administration on not telegraphing its options on Iran.
“Despite all the talk about decertification and the October deadline, they have also done a good job at cultivating the ambiguity and uncertainty of what actually will happen,” he said.
Ben Taleblu believes the Trump administration should leverage the uncertainty over what will happen in October to get European allies on board with their future policy, while also preventing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani from driving a wedge between the U.S. and Europe on the nuclear deal.
“Europe is already eager to engage with Iran on the business front. The Trump administration needs to prevent Europe from being wooed by Iran and reject the charm offensive by Rouhani,” he said.
The Trump administration, according to Ben Taleblu, needs to “prevent the transatlantic community from being split, and working within the confines of international forums like the U.N., to develop a unified interpretation of the deal, with all its problems and pitfalls, and use that to vigorously enforce the deal and eventually set a predicate to renegotiate the deal.”
‘Sunset clauses’ in the Iran deal
In an interview following Trump’s speech, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Fox News that the so-called sunset clauses, which allow for key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to expire over time, were of particular concern.
"If we're going to stick with the Iran deal there has to be changes made to it. The sunset provisions simply is not a sensible way forward," Tillerson said. "It's just simply ... kicking the can down the road again for someone in the future to have to deal with."
Tillerson’s comments echoed that of Netanyahu’s, who slammed the sunset clauses in the nuclear deal in his U.N. speech.
Netanyahu told the world body that "when that sunset comes, a dark shadow will be cast over the entire Middle East and the world, because Iran will then be free to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons."
In his address, Trump did not mention the sunset clause, but suggested concern over it.
Despite forcefully urging the U.S. to stay in the Iran deal, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed some concern over aspects of the agreement in his U.N. speech.
"Let's be stricter, but let's not unravel agreements that have already brought security,” Macron told the U.N. Tuesday.
Notably, Macron pointed out a few flaws of the deal, including the sunset clauses, which “could be an opportunity for the Trump administration to build a bridge to Europe and develop a coherent policy around those issues,” Ben Taleblu said.
“Even though Europe has been against renegotiating the deal, some comments from European leaders, such as Macron, give me some cautious optimism for the Trump administration to go about creative ways in fixing the nuclear deal.”
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