Author Archives: Rabbi

(First published yesterday at Israelnationalnews.com)

President Joe Biden laid down the gauntlet and I accept. In his State of the Union address (what Sen. Marco Rubio indelicately called a “proof of life speech”), he declared: “I say this as a lifelong supporter of Israel, my entire career. No one has a stronger record with Israel than I do. I challenge any of you here. I’m the only American president to visit Israel in wartime.”

I accept the challenge. Indeed, Biden was the first president to visit Israel in wartime, a brief visit in which he expressed support, said some positive things, and promised to aid Israel’s war effort. The flow of weapons has been critical to the success of the war. It is also true that Biden’s repeated references to being “the only American president to visit Israel in wartime” bears some similarity to his visit to the United States’ porous southern border: he visited the southern border so that he could say he visited the southern border, and he visited Israel in wartime so that he could say he visited Israel in wartime.

It is also true that his interactions with Israel since the first week of the war have been schizophrenic. He helps with his right hand and harms with his left. He praises and castigates. He smiles and he scowls. He provides weapons to Israel and demands that we feed and fuel our enemy, something that is unprecedented in wartime. He may have helped to thwart a Hezbollah attack from the north back in October – but they attack every day now. He supports our war effort – as long as we don’t win. He has financially penalized Israeli citizens without charge or trial. He backed our war against Hamas – but then has attempted to place so many restrictions on our conduct of the war that he has prolonged it and impaired our effort to liberate our hostages. (It is odd that he noted the presence of hostage families at the address but then did not mention their names or introduce them to the audience, the traditional custom in that venue.)

He “demands” an end to civilian casualties in Gaza and massive provision of aid to the enemy population – and then kills five of them by clunking them in the head with airdropped American aid. And then he says we “must” find a different way to defeat our enemy who invaded, murdered, raped, marauded, and seized our citizens as hostages. But he does not suggest another way – so he evidently prefers stalemate and the survival of Hamas.

Is Biden the reason for the delayed invasion of Rafiach? Note that because of Biden, Israel telegraphs every move to the enemy. They knew exactly when we would enter Gaza City and Khan Yunis. They knew when we would search Al Shifa Hospital and when we would uncover the Hamas headquarters underneath. It should be no surprise then that wherever our soldiers go they do not find hostages and the Hamas leadership. What are the odds that there are still hostages or Sinwar in Rafiach? Slim, and that is no way to win a war. For that we can blame Biden – and blame our leaders for going along with it.

Biden is at least consistent. He distinguishes between Hamas and the people of Gaza, even though those same people voted for Hamas and cheered – and some even joined – the massacre on October 7. Similarly, Biden now distinguishes between the Netanyahu government and the people of Israel – the same people that elected the Netanyahu government to power and overwhelmingly support the war objectives of the government. Perhaps he doesn’t understand how democracy works or accept its results unless they accord with his own preferences. But elections have consequences, as do invasions.

Biden’s failure to realize that, as well as his gross and unacceptable interference in Israel’s domestic affairs, undermines whatever good will he gained by his visit. He may not like the electoral choices of the Israeli people but it is the essence of hypocrisy even for a politician to try to manipulate Israel’s elections and then complain (falsely, as it turned out) that Vladimir Putin interfered in America’s elections. Is sauce for the goose not also sauce for the gander? Alas, we break no new ground here by using “hypocrisy” and “politician” in the same sentence.

Are his contentions accurate? Has he been a “lifelong supporter” of Israel? Is there no one in the Senate or in the US government, past or present, who does not have a “stronger record”? Can Biden’s challenge be met? Of course.

Biden’s support for Israel paralleled that of traditional Democrats when he began serving in the Senate in 1973. Back when support for Israel was overwhelmingly bipartisan (unlike today), Biden showed his support mainly by voting for the annual foreign aid budget for Israel and a host of other countries. That was normal, nothing exceptional. Back then, Democrats always voted to give money away – some to Israel and other countries but mostly to their own favored projects (it is true today, as well). It is the simplest thing to do; it is not their money, it is the people’s money, and yet the politicians including Biden reap the reward of directing other people’s money to the favored causes.

Is it true that “no one has a stronger record with Israel” than Biden? Hardly. I lived in New York for more than two decades while Biden first served in the Senate. My Senators were Jacob Javits, Daniel Patrick Moynahan, and Al D’Amato. All three were far more supportive of Israel than was Joe Biden. They never tried to dictate policy to Israel and they never threatened Israel as did Joe Biden.

In one well known Biden outburst in 1982, he hectored then Prime Minister Menachem Begin about Jewish settlements in, of all places, Judea, and threatened to halt all aid to Israel unless Begin froze construction. Begin famously responded: “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.” And when Biden lost his temper and banged on the table, Begin added: “This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats.”

We could use a few more such “proud Jews” in our government today. Biden is currently trying to destabilize the Netanyahu government and force new elections. He wants now to come to Israel and address the Knesset to try to browbeat Israel into accepting the two-state illusion and the delusional diplomatic gambit that partitioning the land of Israel again and giving it to our enemies will save us, not destroy us. Proud Jews should inform him that, no, thank you, such a visit is unnecessary now and will not be necessary in the future until proper respect is shown to our elected government and all of its ministers.

Biden in his State of the Union speech then proclaimed: “I challenge any of you here” to show a “stronger record” on Israel. That would have been a good time for some heckling because every present Republican member of the Senate (except maybe for Rand Paul) is far more supportive of Israel than Joe Biden ever was – Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Jim Risch, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, even the underdressed Democratic Senator John Fetterman, and a host of others. This was just another empty Biden boast that is deflated on faint reflection.

What is it then? How can the same person harbor such inconsistencies – friendship and hostility, generous and menacing words? How can Biden proclaim – as he does repeatedly to Jewish audiences in his stock speeches – that he is a Zionist?

The answer is that Biden is a certain type of Zionist. He is the type who believes that Jewish history began in 1948, maybe 1933, but not before 1897. To Biden, Israel’s sole purpose is as “refuge from a Holocaust.” Such a refuge need not be strong, should not be aggressive, should always be accommodating to its enemies, and should certainly not settle the entirety of the land of Israel.

Biden is not a “Zionist” who has any knowledge of or interest in Jewish destiny, in the grand return to Israel after millennia of exile as foretold in the Bible, or in the great mission of the Jewish people. That is why he is so solicitous of our enemies, stipulating that we feed and fuel them, release their murderers from our jails, and consistently construes our land as their land.

What exacerbates his myopia and makes it especially grating is an ignorance of American history. He touts his Scranton roots, oblivious to the fact that Scranton was built on the land of the Lenape Indians who were killed or driven off. He then moved to Delaware, which was also Lenape territory. Biden grew up on occupied lands and still lives there, proudly, unabashedly – and yet lectures us about Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland of Israel.

He also doesn’t seem to realize that Americans marching west to fulfill their “manifest destiny” was entirely based on the concept that “might makes right,” and nothing more elegant than that. But Israel is the only nation on earth that has a real “manifest destiny,” recorded again and again in the Bible that Joe Biden purports to covet, that connects us to this land – G-d’s land – like no other nation is connected to any other land on earth (see Keepgodsland.com). Moreover, again to quote Menachem Begin, our residence in the land of Israel is based on “right makes might.” The “right” came first and with the blessings of Divine Providence our generation was rewarded with the might to conquer the land and retain all those areas that we have not foolishly surrendered to our enemies.

Joe Biden is a “refuge” Zionist – not a “destiny” Zionist or a Biblical Zionist. That is why he can endorse whatever little Israel needs to do to retain the “refuge” but nothing more than that. But the age of those Zionists is long gone and can only hinder our destiny going forward. Thus, he sees no inconsistency in demanding a cease fire, in halting our march to victory, or in courting the radical Arab vote in America. It should be alarming to American Jews that Biden’s recent turn against Israel is motivated, many say, by a desire not to lose the “Arab vote” in the fall election. Apparently, he does not fear losing the Jewish vote! Will American Jews see the writing on the wall? It is there, in neon lights.

We should realize that for all his support – and it has been needed and welcome – Biden is ultimately contemptuous towards Israel’s government and, by extension, the people that voted for that government. He is a “lifelong supporter” of a certain type of Israel – docile, concessionary, secular, and deferential to American interests, however flawed, misguided, or fanciful those interests are.

In the Rabbinic axiom, “kabdehu v’chashdehu,” we should respect him and suspect him. He has done some good things and some terrible things – but his geo-strategic vision is so limited that it endangers our future. In his own mind, he has a strong record of support for Israel, and he will not be convinced otherwise. We should keep him at arm’s length.

(First published today at Israelnationalnews.com)

Is there anything more preposterous than abruptly halting Israel’s war against Hamas in order to allow Muslims to observe Ramadan? Well, rewarding our invaders with an independent state so as to facilitate another massacre leaps to mind as equally absurd, but still. The assumption is that our enemies will use Ramadan as intended, as a month of fasting, charity, prayer, contrition, and reflection. For sure, many pious Muslims do, but it is equally true that Ramadan has frequently been celebrated with an upsurge in violence.

Those with long memories will remember that Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur 1973 – during the month of Ramadan. In many circles, it is still called the “Ramadan War.” Somehow the prayer, contrition, and reflection did not inhibit that sneak attack that ultimately claimed about 2700 Jewish lives. Neither did the fasting; as I recall from the period, apparently Muslim soldiers are exempt from fasting during Ramadan because, presumably, they are engaged in the religious duty of killing the infidels.

Those with short term memories – which excludes many individuals in the Biden White House and State Department – can easily ascertain that our enemies have long used Ramadan in order to murder Jews. In 2016, Hamas gleefully labeled the murderous attack on the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv the “Ramadan Operation” and celebrated the “First Attack of Ramadan.” Other terrorist attacks on Jews soon followed, making that Ramadan a particularly bloody month in Israel. It is not even limited to Jews. In 2016 and 2017, ISIS twice bombed a popular street in Baghdad during Ramadan, killing hundreds of Muslims. During that same 2016 Ramadan, a radical Muslim attacked the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, murdering 49 people. These are not isolated examples. Arabs have historically fought vicious wars against each other during Ramadan.

Several years ago, the Institute for National Security Studies titled a report: “With Ramadan Approaching, the Fear of Escalation,” referring to increased terrorist attacks in Israel before and during Ramadan. Even our current Defense Minister pays too much deference to Ramadan. Thus, for years, we have been routinely warned to be extra cautious during Ramadan because Muslim emotions are very sensitive during that month, they are even more prone to violence, and that nothing should be done to provoke them.

Obviously, to a Jew, such sentiments sound bizarre, because they are bizarre. I do not recall ever becoming so agitated on Rosh Hashana or the Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah or Yom Kippur that I felt the urge to run out and attack innocent Gentiles, or even guilty ones. Nor have I ever heard of that passion afflicting any Jew. For that matter, it is inconceivable to any Jew – or any normal, moral, right-thinking person – to yell “G-d is great” as a prelude to murdering, raping, marauding, beheading, exploding, stabbing, shooting innocent people, for whatever reason. Perhaps good Muslims should use this Ramadan for soul searching and how best to uproot this savage evil from their midst. The problem is that in the parts of the world where this soul searching would be most needed, many Muslims live in fear, petrified that these radicals will turn on them, as has happened across the globe.

Nevertheless, in George W. Bush’s felicitous phrase, it is “the soft bigotry of low expectations” that so-called security experts, politicians, diplomats, and statesmen nod their heads and say, “well, of course, tensions always run high during Ramadan, and as such Jews should keep a low profile, because Muslim violence must be anticipated.” Such a sentiment insults the majority of the world’s Muslims, as well as our intelligence. It is the very definition of surrendering to bullies rather than confronting them and vanquishing them.

As such, it is hard to take seriously Biden’s demands for a “Ramadan” cease fire. It is tantamount to acquiescing to Hamas’ survival and what for it would be a victory in this conflict. Hamas would be getting away with murder. No person who genuinely wants to see the destruction of Hamas and the eradication of the evil that it represents could be pressing today for a cease fire. It is important to note that nothing inherently connects a hostage deal and a cease fire. Israel could agree – foolishly and dangerously, as many believe – to exchange innocent Jewish hostages for murderous, bloodthirsty convicted Arab terrorists, but such need not be accompanied by a cease fire that lasts any longer than the few hours it takes to make the exchange.

The pressure has only one goal, and it is not to allow all to celebrate Ramadan in peace. It is to deprive Israel of victory and preserve Hamas. That is the opposite of common sense, decency, morality, and stability.

Some will plead that the poor Gazan civilians deserve to observe Ramadan in dignity. One problem is that many Gazan civilians are indistinguishable from members of Hamas because quite often they are members of Hamas. Most Hamas terrorists do not wear uniforms (in gross violation of the much-heralded international law that is designed to only inhibit us) and thus look like civilians. When they are smoked out of their tunnels, caves, and ratholes and killed, they die in their civilian garb, allowing our enemy to claim they are civilians. It is certainly a clever scam that has worked on Biden and others but, more egregiously, on our government, which repeatedly fails to underscore the parity of Hamas terrorists and many of the civilians on whom is constantly bestowed what is called humanitarian aid. It is a mistake for which we are paying a terrible price and must be rectified immediately. The innocent Gazan civilians are not all so innocent. Our hearts need not bleed for them. Their newfound opposition to Hamas has evolved not because they are suddenly horrified by Hamas’ massacre of Jews but because they are horrified by the consequences to them of Hamas’ massacre of Jews.

The Ramadan cease fire request is just another ploy to thwart our war aims, restore the status quo ante, and again leave us vulnerable. A good deal of Muslim soul searching and an abrupt change of behavior and values will be necessary before such proposals are taken seriously.

Indeed, we should show as much concern for Ramadan as our enemies showed for our Simchat Torah this year or, for that matter, our Yom Kippur of 1973. It is a ruse and it should be treated, and dismissed, as such.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Any evaluation of Joe Biden’s meandering musings on current events in Israel and the Middle East must begin with former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ observation about Joe Biden in 2014: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” If even a broken clock is right twice a day, Biden’s consistent record of failure is a stupendous achievement for which he should receive acknowledgment for his longevity, less so his perspicacity. But from that standpoint, his wavering support for Israel, continued flirtation with Iran, and yearning to establish a Palestinian state, only add to his flawless run of diplomatic fiascos.

It is unfair and inaccurate to state that Biden and his minions “support” Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group, but it is fair and accurate to deduce from his recent statements and actions that Biden does not want Hamas to lose. If one of Israel’s war aims is the elimination of Hamas’ terror capability and any political control in Gaza, then clearly Biden is at odds with Israel, and we should recognize that and, politely, disavow his strategy and oppose it vigorously. Biden still perceives Hamas as a player in Middle East geo-politics, and even a partner in negotiations with Israel. He wants a stalemate. If so, he is guilty of “October 6” thinking – a failure to internalize and draw ramifications from Hamas’ genocidal, inhuman, savage attack on Israel and its continued incarceration of innocent Israeli civilians. And in his relentless desire to carve up the land of Israel and create an irredentist Palestinian state, he not only defies the will of the Israeli government and the overwhelming majority of our people. He is also guilty of “4 Iyar 1948” thinking – trying to turn back the clock almost 74 years to the day before Israel became an independent nation.

How can one man be so wrong, so frequently? A full answer is beyond my analysis – it perplexed Bob Gates as well – but there is one fundamental misconception under which Biden and his diplomats operate that Israelis often prefer to ignore and that we must begin to assert without hesitation or equivocation before once again, we win the war and lose the diplomacy.

When I first visited Israel as a child in the late 1960’s, I was warned not to pick up anything from the street. Back then, Arab terrorists would conceal bombs in coins, empty boxes, appliances, backpacks, and the like. In the 1970’s, Arab terrorists graduated to airplane hijackings, then assaults on schools and homes and public buses, and missiles and rockets from Lebanon. In the 1980’s, vehicle stoning and bombing became more popular, not that the previous methods of murdering Jews were abandoned. The 1990’s saw an intensification of the stoning and bombing, then accelerated into suicide bombings of buses and commercial establishments that became a staple of Israeli life in the 2000’s until Operation Defensive Shield.

After the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005, the era began of rockets and missiles on the communities surrounding Gaza, the Negev, and parts of the coastal plain and the heartland, which prompted several brief forays into Gaza that ameliorated the situation but briefly and ineffectively. In the 2010’s, the Arabs popularized shooting at passengers in Jewish vehicles, stabbing random Jews on Israel’s streets, and vehicular ramming of pedestrians standing on street corners. We forget how prevalent that was in the last several years only because of the horrific invasion of Israel on Shemini Atzeret and its aftermath, which has snuffed out more than 1400 Jewish lives to date.

The inexorable conclusion that we tend to overlook is that we reside on this holy land adjacent to many people who wish to murder us in every which way they can conceive and whose lives are dedicated, it seems, to contriving new ways to murder Jews. They will never reconcile themselves to Israel’s existence, something that was discounted by the pointless purveyors of peace processes as well as the Oslo and Gaza Expulsions delusionists.

I cannot say that they all want to destroy us – the Arabs of the land of Israel and the Arab countries surrounding Israel – and certainly not all are working towards our demise. But it seems a reasonable conclusion that few would mourn our disappearance. That is the real problem facing Israeli society, even once the hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon conclude on what we hope is a victorious note. The real problem is that we will still be living with people – young and old, male and female – who dream of planting bombs on the roadside, shooting into Jewish homes and cars, stabbing shoppers, and ramming pedestrians – and getting handsomely rewarded for it by the very entity to which Joe Biden wants to award statehood. This is the real conundrum to which we will have to activate our creative minds in order to solve.

The sad reality is that the Arabs do not want us here. Period. A state will not satisfy their ambitions; it will only stoke their desire to destroy us completely and will be used accordingly, much like Hamas took the billions of dollars in foreign aid from Europe, the US, Qatar, and others, and used it largely to build a massive and diabolical underground terror network.

In the shorter term, because of our hopes and prayers for peace, we have failed to convey to Biden and company the daily hazards we face in living next to people who want to kill us and eliminate our national home. Antony Blinken can solemnly intone that the new Palestinian state will be “demilitarized” but all that means is either he is a fool or that he takes us for fools. After all, the Oslo Accords promised us a “demilitarized” Palestinian Authority, and then during the 2005 Expulsion, we were promised a “demilitarized” Gaza that would not dare to attack us (rockets, missiles, etc.) or it would pay a devastating price. Well, they are paying a devastating price, but so did we, because of our naïveté, gullibility, wishful thinking, and the ascription to our enemies of our own values and dreams.

They do not share those values and dreams. Contrary to Blinken’s pollyannish ramblings, Gazan mothers and fathers are not like us, and not like Americans. We do not incarcerate innocent hostages in our homes, do not allow our living room floors to conceal openings to tunnels, and do not use our cupboards to store bombs, bullets, rockets, and missiles. Gazan mothers and fathers do not want to build homes; they want to take our homes. Gazan parents send their children to schools where they learn to hate Jews, where they learn that murdering a Jew is admirable and a religious and national imperative. They are not like us. They voted for Hamas.

No friend of Israel could sensibly suggest that an independent Palestinian state is good for Israel and will benefit Israel’s security and the well being of our citizens. It will make us more unsafe and give an unimaginable boost to Iran, supporters of terror, and haters of Israel everywhere. It must be opposed regardless of what the US or UN scheme against us.

There is another reason a Palestinian state is perverse. We are a unique country to be sure – we are rated the fourth happiest country in the world, after all, even now! – but we do not have to constantly prove our uniqueness, especially not in irrational and destructive ways. This is the third time in recent history that we have fought and conquered Gaza. How many times must our soldiers die fighting over the same land? How many times must we be invaded from one territory, repel that invasion, conquer the land of the aggressors, and then be told we cannot keep the land from which we were attacked? That is literally an insane proposition and I am unable to find any historical precedent for such lunacy.

Certainly, the diplomats and striped pants set make much of the vaunted international legal principle declaring the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war or force,” a feature of UN Security Council Resolution 242. Surely that excludes territory acquired in a defensive war but, more pointedly, this proposition seems to apply only to Israel, and no other country, most of whom were directly created or expanded via “the acquisition of territory by war or force.”

The American example is illustrative. One of the fifty United States is the State of New Mexico, whose name should ring a bell. “New” Mexico, meaning that it was part of Mexico, but was ceded by Mexico to the United States after Mexico lost the Mexican American War in 1848. That is literally “the acquisition of territory by war or force,” with the utterly shameless addendum that New Mexico, in its very name, reflects what we are now told is a violation of international law. Nothing changes by adding the moniker “New.” And by most accounts, the Mexican American War was not even a defensive war but a bellicose invasion of Mexico by a US that wanted to expand its land mass and fulfill its “manifest destiny.” Yet, ironically, the only nation with an explicitly, manifest destiny emanating from the Bible is the nation of Israel dwelling on the land of Israel in the land that G-d gave us (Keepgodsland.com).

Almost every nation on earth was founded by “the acquisition of territory by war.” No nation on earth or in history (except for Israel) has repeatedly been attacked from the same territory, conquered it, and then returned it to the invaders to plant the seeds for the next invasion. The United States still retains troops and maintains army bases in Germany and Japan, eighty years after the end of World War II. It still retains New Mexico (and California) and territory it seized from Canada. Russia still retains land it seized after World War II, not to mention its recent adventures in Ukraine. France, Britain, China – all possess territory it conquered in war. And those are just the five members of the UN Security Council. There has to be a limit even to blatant, brazen hypocrisy; at the very least, we should take these claims less seriously than we do our own interests and rights, and talk the language of faith. Maybe it would help if we just renamed Gaza “New Gaza” and annexed it; call it the American way.

For all of the above, we must mount a forceful, uncompromising diplomatic drive rejecting any discussion of a Palestinian state. The incessant chatter in the United States about the dire need for such an entity, and now, not only rewards the terror of October 7 but also paves the way for even more ruinous terror in the future. It must be resisted at all costs.

We should bear in mind that regarding Joe Biden, it is far from certain that he will still be president in six months, much less a year from now. He is again wrong and misguided on yet another foreign policy issue. But we have returned to the land of our fathers, the land that G-d gave us, forever. The near united opposition in Israel today to creating a new terror entity within Israel reflects the steely determination of an eternal people not to be bamboozled again by the vain promises of temporal politicians but to embrace our destiny with enthusiasm and obvious self-sacrifice. We should base our statecraft on certainties, not on doubts, and plan for a long, prosperous, and redemptive future.