We are back home and this memo contains articles, Editorials and Op Ed's I missed posting while away/ Some are outdated most are still worth reading from a time standpoint.
It will take me several days to get back in the saddle.
Had a great week. Read 2 books on the 3rd,, napped, sunned, thought and wrote. Great to be with old friends. 34th year.
I failed to send Mother's Day Greeting's to all my dear girl friends. Hope your was spectacular and you have many deserved more.
Jihad Joe
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I never doubted we would come to this. I just was very early and never knew the circumstances that would trigger the return of anti-Semitism to engulf our shores.
I never doubted we would come to this. I just was very early and never knew the circumstances that would trigger the return of anti-Semitism to engulf our shores.
Also, I always knew it would be because of the betrayal by an American President. It began with Obama and concluded with Biden.
Israel has no choice but to go it alone. They will pay a high price as will the Palestinians because of the decisions by Biden and his pusillanimous actions.
Opinion
Biden is betraying American interests as well as Israel
By Jonathan S. Tobin
The Cleveland Jewish News does not make endorsements of political candidates and/or political or other ballot issues on any level. Letters, commentaries, opinions, advertisements and online posts appearing in the Cleveland Jewish News, on cjn.org or our social media pages reflect the views and thoughts of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company, its board, officers or staff or any other organization unless explicitly stated.
This isn’t the first dispute between the governments of the United States and Israel. Nor is it the first time that Washington has used the supply of arms to try to pressure the Jewish state to bend to its will. But there is no precedent for what President Joe Biden has just done.
By declaring that he will stop supplying weapons to Israel, including high-tech heavy bombs and artillery shells, if it seeks to enter Rafah and eliminate Hamas’ last remaining stronghold in Gaza, the president was making a clear declaration that the United States was mandating an end to the war that the terrorist group began with the massacre of men, women and children on Oct. 7.
Should Israel bow to Biden’s diktat, then it would mean that a genocidal terrorist group wouldn’t merely survive to live and fight again, and thereby make good on its promise to commit more Oct. 7 horrors in the future. Such a development would also mean that Hamas would be seen as the victor in the conflict. That is something that would have far-reaching consequences not just for Israel and its security, but for regional Arab allies of the United States. It would also be a signal triumph for Hamas’ main backer Iran and its terrorist auxiliaries.
This shocking betrayal of Israel was made all the more bitter by the president’s duplicitous decision to hold off the announcement until after he gave a speech to commemorate the Holocaust at the U.S. Capitol on May 7 – exactly seven months to the day of the atrocities – during which he expressed not just steadfast support for Israel, but a stinging rebuke of Hamas and a promise not to forget what it did on Oct. 7. At the time, given the fact that threats of an arms cutoff were already in the air, there was good reason to believe that the otherwise exemplary speech was part of a double game that the administration was playing, in which it sought to continue to speak out of both sides of its mouth on the war against Hamas.
The administration’s maneuverings had already removed any incentive that the Islamist group had to return the estimated 130 hostages it still holds - though no one knows how many are still alive - or give up its quest to get back control of Gaza it lost as a result of the Israeli counter-offensive. Biden’s team has been relentlessly pressuring Israel to make obscene concessions to the terrorists in the hostage negotiations. Unsurprisingly, no matter what Israel concedes, it’s never enough for Hamas. Since its leaders believe Biden won’t let them be defeated, they can continue to say “no” without any consequences.
The announcement of the arms cutoff will only make that more certain. Despite continuing to pay lip service to the quest for a hostage deal, Biden’s threats to Israel have basically sealed the fate of the hostages, including the five Americans still being held by Hamas, presumably somewhere in the tunnels underneath Rafah.
Biden’s Jewish apologists can point to disputes between past Israeli governments and the Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Obama administrations, when Washington sought to use its leverage over Israel to force it to do its bidding. But never before has an American president done so in the midst of a war with a terrorist group with whom no peace deal is even theoretically possible.
It was one thing for Henry Kissinger to stop Israel from achieving a decisive victory over Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the hope that this would lead – as it did a few years later – to an end to the conflict between those two nations. It’s quite another for Biden to save a genocidal group like Hamas from being destroyed and therefore make it the dominant voice of Palestinian nationalism for the foreseeable future.
Hopes for a two-state solution to the conflict were always a product of magical Western thinking that ignored the fact that neither Hamas nor the supposedly more moderate Fatah Party and the Palestinian Authority that it leads were equally unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders could be drawn. But allowing Hamas to hold onto control of any part of Gaza and to treat its preservation as an American foreign-policy priority that supersedes the alliance with Israel will ensure that the Islamists’ influence over Palestinian politics and culture will only increase.
Had the United States not prevented Israel from quickly and decisively defeating and eliminating every vestige of Hamas from Gaza, there could have been a chance for the Palestinians to understand that they needed to change their political culture, and genuinely embrace peace and coexistence with Israel. Much like the Germans who drew the only possible conclusion from the defeat of their country and the reduction of its cities to rubble in 1945, the Palestinians could have been forced to change. This was their opportunity to accept a shift in their sense of national identity, which, up until now, has been inextricably linked to their war to destroy Israel. But thanks to the international movement that arose to defend Hamas in the wake of Oct. 7 and the surge in antisemitism associated with it, the Palestinians remain still convinced that their fantasy of a world in which Israel is erased is possible. And by bowing to pressure from those who think this way, Biden has ensured that the slaughter will continue. That will help Hamas strengthen its presence in Judea and Samaria, and raise the possibility of a return to more Second Intifada-style terrorism.
It also means that even if Israel does do what it must and cleans out Rafah, the terrorist group will be encouraged to regroup and resume the fight as soon as it can. An Israel abandoned by the United States in this manner – and an arms cutoff will be just the start – will be subjected to American retaliation against the Jewish state for disobeying its superpower ally. The next step would be for Washington to go along with all sorts of U.N. sanctions or recognition of Palestinian statehood that will make Israel a pariah state.
No matter who is leading the Jewish state, Israel will not meekly surrender to this kind of pressure. Netanyahu pointed out that the 1948 War of Independence was won without U.S. arms. Indeed, as few people now seem to remember, America didn’t begin to treat Israel as an ally, rather an annoyance and obstacle to good relations with hostile Arab states, until after it won the 1967 Six-Day War – again, largely without any real help from the Americans.
But the rupture of the alliance diminishes Israel’s strategic position in ways that are incalculable. If Hamas is still standing at the end of this war or if Israel is censured for eliminating the terror group, the threats against its security will swiftly escalate along with its international isolation. That will make the situation in the north – where Iran’s Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries have made the border communities uninhabitable – only worse. It will also embolden Iran to use its control of Syria and its Houthis allies in Yemen to further tighten the noose around a beleaguered Jewish state.
But this isn’t only bad news for Israel.
Much as the Biden administration may still hold onto their hopes of a rapprochement with Iran, that is something that Tehran has never been interested in. They believe themselves to be at war with the West and America, even if many in the foreign-policy establishment here and in Europe wish to ignore this fact.
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Biden has opened a Pandora’s box - opinion
By Doug Altabef
Ironically, Biden's decision has freed Israel’s leadership of some of their reluctance to counter American dictates. Oh, and its also helping Trump's campaign.
In his never-ending attempt to cultivate the “Where would they go anyway?” Arab vote in Michigan and other possible swing states, US President Joe Biden has opened a Pandora’s box that he is likely to regret.
I suggest that he has just succeeded in creating for himself a “four-bag error,” one with potentially decisive significance, by refusing to arm Israel with kits to be used for providing greater precision for missiles and shells in attacking Gaza.
Biden's blunders
Specifically, Biden’s blunders are the following: First, he has demeaned America both as an ally and as a great power protecting the free world. He has sent a terrible message to current and would-be allies as to the risks and costs of siding with the United States.
Secondly, and ironically, he has freed Israel’s leadership of some of their reluctance to counter American dictates. He has just hit Israel with, if not his best shot, then something close to it. Israel will not stop as a result of this. Ironically, they might thereby be forced to use less precise weaponry, thus defeating the stated American goal of minimizing harm to civilians.
Thirdly, the American people will see this embarrassment for what it is: “fair-weather friending” a close ally and clearly showing a preference for its terrorist enemies.
And lastly, he has handed his opponent, former president Donald Trump, on a silver platter no less, an issue that Trump has already railed at, and which likely will become an integral part of his campaign.
Those observers who have been wondering where Trump stands on the situation in the Middle East will not be wondering much longer. Trump has been presented with a galvanizing series of American betrayals of its friendship with Israel; despite his often-expressed disillusionment with and dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is certain to use these actions to create a glaring contrast.
That contrast was already seen recently with his walking back of support for a two-state solution. Now, on social media (Where else?) Trump quickly responded to Biden’s withholding of weaponry: “Crooked Joe Biden, whether he knows it or not, just said he will withhold weapons from Israel as they fight to eradicate Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“Hamas murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including babies, and are still holding Americans hostage, if the hostages are still alive. Yet Crooked Joe is taking the side of these terrorists... Remember, this war in Israel... would have NEVER have started if I was in the White House... But very soon, we will be back, and once again demanding PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” (Emphases are Trump’s).
So, Trump has been handed several gauntlets, all of which he has gleefully thrown down. He drew the connection between the withholding of weapons and the damaging of Israel’s pursuit of its mission to “eradicate” Hamas. He clearly blames and excoriates Hamas, and is astonished at the idea that Biden is giving them aid and comfort.
He then reminds us that had he been reelected none of this would have happened, and perhaps most tellingly, forecasts the way things will be – peace through strength – once he returns to office.
Now, of course, presidential elections are all about each of the candidates demonizing the other guy. But here, the issue at hand is one that will resonate with a huge swath of the American people. Polls consistently show that most Americans support Israel, and indeed support the goal of eliminating Hamas.
It is one thing to lobby for care and concern in how the IDF pursues Hamas (a care and concern that the IDF has respected to an unprecedented degree in the history of warfare) but to arrogantly assert that if Israel does not do what we want, we won’t respect our commitments to arm them is something else, entirely.
In one fell swoop, Biden has unintentionally reversed the prevailing progressive David and Goliath narrative. Now it is the Left’s Goliath, Israel, that is being told to use rocks and slings because they won’t be given proper missiles and shells.
Biden vs Trump
One can be reasonably certain that Trump will be invoking something similar on the campaign trail. He doesn’t have to swoon over Israel, he just has to repeat his hatred of Hamas, something that he will likely do often, while always reminding Americans that Hamas is being assisted and protected by Joe Biden.
Assuming that this raising of the issue by Trump is in fact what happens, it has the potential to be a great boon for Israel. Trump is likely to increasingly put Biden on the defensive on a subject that he should be on the defensive about. While Biden can and might double down on his condemnation of the war effort by Israel in all its manifestations, it is at least as likely that he starts walking some of the antipathy back.
One does not have to be a Trump supporter to support what he is doing and is likely to continue to do, in highlighting how counterproductive and yes, how un-American Biden’s vilification of Israel is.
The American people are not stupid and the vast majority of them have finely honed moral sensibilities. These should and will be brought to bear in assessing how it is that their nation is unwilling to stand with Israel in fighting a scourge that threatens not just Israel, but also the entire West.
The author is the chairman of the board of Im Tirtzu and a director of the Israel Independence Fund.
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Where is he now when we need him? He was the best of the best and the radicals hated him because he saw through them.
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Even their own don't want them. I wonder why?
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Tom Sowell:
The radicals hate him also because he too sees through them.
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He's still alive at 93 (Born. Jun 30, 1930 in Gastonia, NC), but retired.
Sowell grew up Harlem, served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, Masters from Columbia, PhD Economics University of Chicago, economist, social theorist, philosopher, author, Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, Stanford University, National Humanities Medal, and Francis Boyer award.
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The 223rd Day of War in Israel
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant kicked off a political storm during a press conference on Wednesday evening, publicly criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s indecision on the question of who will govern Gaza after Hamas is defeated. The press conference was Gallant’s first in months, and it was the sharpest criticism from a member of Israel’s war cabinet since the war began on October 7. It erupted after months of tension between the two and after reports emerged earlier this week that senior IDF officers believed that the lack of a governing alternative to Hamas had forced the IDF to return and fight in areas that had already been cleared out. Gallant argued that “indecision is, in essence, a decision” that would lead to one of two bad results: Continued Hamas rule, or IDF control over Gaza's civilian population.
“I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip, and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be raised immediately,” Gallant said.
He then added, “We must make tough decisions for the future of our country, favoring national priorities above all other possible considerations, even with the possibility of personal or political costs.” Netanyahu responded later that evening in a defiant statement saying Israel will remain in Gaza until it achieves its objectives.
A Hezbollah drone struck an IDF air force base in the North on Wednesday, according to the military spokesperson. The exact nature of the harm was still being reviewed, and additional aspects are under gag order. The IDF succeeded in shooting down a second attack drone launched by Hezbollah and was probing how it could avoid similar future incidents, with a number of recent incidents where drones have avoided IDF defenses more than Hezbollah rockets. Already on Wednesday, Lebanese and Israeli media had said that up to dozens of rockets as well as some anti-tank missiles were fired at the Western Galilee, including the Mount Meron area where the IDF has an air force base. There were no reported injuries. Additional barrages today did cause property damage in the north, 18km south of the border, the deepest penetration into Israel by Hezbollah armaments since the start of the war with Hamas.
The US’ Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, stated on Tuesday that US President Joe Biden would veto H.R. 8369, the Israel Security Assistance Support Act, if it came across his desk. The bill, which was scheduled for a House vote on Wednesday and which has a companion Senate version as of now, condemns the Biden administration’s decision to pause an arms shipment to Israel and would withhold funds from the Pentagon and US State Department unless that and future shipments are approved.
The White House “strongly opposes” the bill, “which seeks to limit the president’s discretion to ensure that the delivery of certain defense articles and services aligns with U.S. foreign policy objectives,” it stated. “The bill would undermine the president’s ability to execute an effective foreign policy,” the White House added. “This bill could raise serious concerns about infringement on the president’s authorities under Article II of the Constitution, including his duties as commander-in-chief and chief executive and his power to conduct foreign relations.” The White House added that the legislation is “a misguided reaction to a deliberate distortion of the administration’s approach to Israel.”
“The president has been clear: We will always ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself,” the White House stated. “Our commitment to Israel is ironclad.”
So another week ends here, the war continues, people continue to die, five yesterday because of that terrible term “friendly fire”, no end in sight and even the objectives are subsumed under a catch phrase “We have to destroy Hamas.” The only thing that is not clear is how to do so and what that even means. I have no doubt we will prevail but the cost is, and will continue to be, high. May we who remain be worthy of those who lost their lives in our defense.
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The 222nd Day of War in Israel
By Sherwin Pomerantz
A report in today’s New York Times indicated that the Biden administration has told Congress that it intends to move forward with a plan for the United States to sell more than $1 billion in new weapons to Israel, according to three congressional aides familiar with the deal. The notification of the sale, which would include new tactical vehicles and ammunition, comes as President Biden has withheld a shipment of bombs to Israel, hoping to prevent US made weapons from being used in a potential invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Last week, Mr. Biden said he would block the delivery of weapons such as bombs and missiles that could be fired into the densely populated area where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering.
Regarding the seeming flip/flop in how the US has approached Israel since October 7th, Dr. David Wurmser, an American foreign-policy specialist whom I had the honor of meeting in Washington some years ago, is a Fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy. He served as Middle East adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. In an article on line at JNS (Jewish News Service) he wrote that it is well known that the State Department is more “Arabist” than pro-Israel. But over the last several decades, State Department officials’ real motivation has been to exercise control. Proud, powerful nations like Japan and India often complain about this, as do many other countries.
The State Department’s desire for control is not very ideological. It is largely based on two factors. First, the US foreign service has looked up to the British Foreign Office, which traditionally put a premium on maintaining control over the British Empire, for over a century. Second, the Cold War and the U.S.’s global policy of containment demanded alliance discipline.
Thus, all State Department polices offer a “grand bargain” to US allies, including Israel: Surrender some or most of your defense sovereignty and freedom of maneuver in exchange for US protection. The promise of superpower backing is difficult for any nation to dismiss. So, the “grand bargain” became the hegemonic modus operandi for the State Department’s relationships with US allies. How does this explain the US shift from overwhelmingly friendly to Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7 to overtly hostile?
To a State Department official, losing control over US foreign policy and the policies of foreign governments is the most unnerving prospect imaginable. A State Department officer will often seek to maintain or reassert control by championing a policy or nation he himself does not like so that control, usually through drafting the resulting policy, falls to him.
Wurmser claims to have seen this in action first hand. Whenever the NSC’s Principals Committee—composed of the relevant cabinet-level officials minus the president—displayed a strong policy preference, State Department officials would rapidly adopt policies they abhorred in order to be tasked with drafting the policy. They could then slowly manipulate the policy back to their preferred position.
For example, in a 2003 Rose Garden speech, then President George W. Bush clearly stated that the United States could not deal with any Palestinian leadership tainted by terror or corruption. By 2004 to 2005, this had become the “Roadmap for Peace,” a plan to build a Palestinian state around the corrupt PLO and Mahmoud Abbas.
Bruce Reidel, the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East at the time, had given the task of drafting this policy to none other than Bill Burns, who was then the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and his team. Wurmser saw this same phenomenon take place on Iran policy in 2003 to 2004, though he cannot write about this in detail because it remains classified. So, what happened regarding Israel?
Basically, the consensus in Israel that the US government was emotionally, materially and, most importantly, conceptually on Israel’s side after Oct. 7 is wrong, according to Wurmser. In fact, he believes that the Biden administration never abandoned any of its Oct. 6 delusions. Quite the opposite: It saw the possibility that Israel would demolish the paradigms on which US policy’s house of cards is built as a major threat. The administration was terrified that Israel would take actions that demolish the “two-state solution” paradigm that involves a PLO-run Palestinian state. It also feared that potential Israeli escalation against Hezbollah and then the Houthis would threaten the paradigm that holds that the United States must reach a regional strategic condominium with Iran.
At the same time, the Biden administration understood that Israel had been deeply wounded and thus was likely to lash out, preempt and act decisively and uncontrollably. As a result, the administration’s immediate policy imperative became how to re-establish control over Israel’s actions. True to State Department tradition, it decided to co-opt Israel—to act more pro-Israel than Israel. Wurmser says this was intended to win confidence and establish influence over Israeli actions, and then, over time, slowly bend Israel back into the paradigm.
Wurmser concludes by saying that a reasonable argument can be made that President Joe Biden himself acted out of friendship. In fact, he probably did. But, he says, those living in Washington have seen for years that conclusions cannot be drawn from any presidential statement under this administration until one sees how the State Department and NSC spokesmen clarify it as real policy. Often, they do so in direct contradiction to what the president said.
Indeed, former White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki once famously said that one should wait for the administration’s spokesperson to tell you what official policy is rather than rely on what the president says. In other words, Biden is not the prime shaper of operational policy.
Unfortunately, in Wurmser’s view, we here in Israel—both left and right—never appreciated that the administration’s initial embrace was never genuine. It was designed to place a warm blanket over Israel so we would calm down, pause and return to controllable strategic dependency. Could be that this is the most logical explanation to what has confused so many of us about the US position in this war.
On the northern front, one person was killed and five more injured in northern Israel Tuesday after Hezbollah terrorists operating out of southern Lebanon fired an anti-tank missile across the border, hitting Kibbutz Adamit in the Western Galilee. A civilian was fatally injured in the attack. Initially listed as being critically injured, the civilian victim later succumbed to his injuries. Five IDF soldiers were injured in the missile attack as well with, one listed in moderate condition and the remaining four in light condition. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, saying that an IDF “spy balloon” and the control center used to operate it in Adamit were targeted. The terror group later released photographs and video purportedly showing the downed IDF observation balloon, which Hezbollah said had crashed on the Lebanese side of the border after being shot down.
Regarding the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt, a recent article in UK publication The Guardian states that “A network of brokers, based in Cairo, helping Palestinians leave Gaza has operated around the Rafah border for years. But prices have surged since the start of the war, from the original $500 for each person.” The Guardian interviewed a number of Palestinians who have been told they would have to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 each to leave the Gaza Strip, with some launching crowdfunding campaigns to raise the money. A Palestinian living in the UK was quoted as sayinga: “People are making money off the misery of others. They’re desperate to get out to save their lives and instead of helping they’re trying to make money. If there’s a way to get people out, then why not just help?”
A company owned by an influential Egyptian businessman and ally of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was making about $2 million a day from Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip, according to the Middle East Eye (MEE), a UK-based news website, in an article published on May 1, 2024. “Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, a firm owned by Sinai tribal leader and business tycoon Ibrahim al-Organi, has been charging Palestinians crossing from Gaza’s Rafah to Egypt at least $5,000 per adult and $2,500 for children under 16. It has a monopoly on providing transfer services at the Rafah crossing, the only Gaza exit not bordered with Israel and the single route out of the coastal enclave for Palestinians.” In the past three months alone, the company is estimated to have made a minimum of $118 million from desperate Palestinians trying to leave the Gaza Strip, according to MEE. So much for the Arab world’s concern for the Palestinians.
So the war continues amid the hope that we will be able to achieve our objectives and see the remaining hostages released as well. May it be soon.
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