Author Archives: Rabbi

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Are we getting rolled? Again?

Israel has a wretched history of winning wars and losing the negotiations after. The territorial gains of the Sinai Campaign and the Yom Kippur War were reversed within months and those of the Six Day War have been largely dissipated in the nearly six decades since. It is why we keep fighting over the same land, repeatedly, such as Gaza, recently for the seventh but obviously not the last time. Such diplomatic malpractice is a result of an utter lack of strategic thinking, an inability or unwillingness to articulate our strategic goals and to insist on them in any negotiations. It is also a consequence – for decades now – of PM Netanyahu’s strengths as a conflict manager but his weaknesses as a conflict solver. He never acts decisively until he is compelled to by events and always stops short of any measures that can produce victory, much less total victory. He is a master at kicking the can down the road and then eloquently and convincingly explaining how that secures our future.

Israel’s strategic interests currently include destroying Hamas, asserting sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, relocating the hostile population of Gaza, neutralizing Iran, and monitoring our unfriendly neighbors to the north (Syria and Lebanon) and the south (Egypt). It does not mean we can achieve all of them, but we are presently negotiating ourselves into a situation in which none of that will be possible. Since President Trump has declared “peace in our time,” he is less than concerned that Iran might be rebuilding its nuclear program or Hezbollah and Hamas are already rearming. Peace is already here. He is enamored with the thugs who seized power in Syria and is a sucker for flattery, the more extravagant the better.

To use a Trumpian expression, “everyone knows this.” When Putin said, “I never would have attacked Ukraine if Trump were president” (literally, a Trump campaign line,) it was music to Trump’s ears and enables him to condone Putin’s brutality and disregard for Trump’s wishes. Every foreign visitor to the White House must pay homage to Trump as peacemaker, even if the reality is otherwise. Of the eight or nine campaigns he claims to have ended and brought peace, most of us were even unaware that those countries were at war. These were skirmishes that – of course – will continue but gain little attention because, after all, they made peace.

Did Trump prevent us from finishing the job in Gaza? Only in the minds of those who love averting responsibility for our leaders’ own failures. He – and, truth be told, our government – succumbed to the notion that the main purpose of the war was freedom for our hostages, which was literally the status quo on October 6, 2023. On October 6, Hamas was in power and held no living Israeli hostages. Hamas today is weakened, but still in power, growing in popularity, and planning its next moves against us. For Trump, the hostage release was the highlight, and he deserves acclaim for accomplishing it. We, of course, will pay the price in dead Jews, G-d forbid, murdered by some of the thousands of terrorists released from prison, in kidnapped Jews because the tactic works, and in the premature end to the latest war in Gaza. Already, the tide is shifting against us.

The original deal called for the disarming of Hamas before the rehabilitation of Gaza begins, but it now seems that the resolve to disarm Hamas is already waning. It takes a special kind of gullibility to assume that a third-party will forcibly seize Hamas’ weapons and emasculate it as a ruling force. Who will do it – the Egyptians who sealed their border to Gazan refugees who wished to flee, and who have dispatched thousands of drones carrying deadly weapons to nefarious entities in the south of Israel? Turkey – whose dictator calls our prime minister Hitler and thinks Israel has no right to exist? Qatar – one of the world’s leading funders of terror, long Hamas’ host and sponsor, and which already underwrites several anti-Israel organizations operating openly (our government turns a blind eye) in Yerushalayim? Indonesia – which has said that it will send peacekeeping forces once Hamas is disarmed?

For how long will be play this game, delaying and delaying the disarmament of Hamas until it is too late, the world’s attention has been diverted elsewhere, and this version of “peace” is applauded?

It must be stated that, indeed, Donald Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. He has done things on our behalf that are unimaginable for any other president. Undoubtedly, a President Harris would have recognized a spurious Palestinian state several months ago, as did France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. (By the way, whatever happened to the punitive actions Israel was to take against those countries – closing their consulates in Yerushalayim, rethinking our ties with them, recalling our ambassadors, tongue-lashing theirs? These threats were made both by PM Netanyahu and FM Saar, and their execution? Empty as always.) A President Harris would have embargoed arms to Israel and retracted US support at the United Nations. We would be in a far worse position.

Nevertheless, it is important to realize that Trump is the US President, not Israel’s prime minister, and he rightly acts in what he perceives to be the interests of the United States, not the interests of Israel. Because he says the right things and has been so helpful in many ways, we are lulled into thinking that whatever he does must be good for us and whatever he is planning for us is necessarily beneficial. That is a mistake.

Trump is a secular materialist. He sincerely believes that money runs the world and that people who have money downgrade and dismiss their values and principles. That is false, as proved by, among many others, Osama bin Laden, a billionaire. In this part of the world, religion is the prime mover. Ideology is supreme. The secular materialist mind cannot understand the suicide bomber – or even today’s Gazans, among whom once again Hamas has majority support despite the devastation wreaked upon them. The secular materialist mind cannot fathom how and why restaurants are springing up across the Arab world – including in Jordan, a country with whom we are at peace – called “October 7” in celebration of the great massacre of Jews that took place on that day. It simply does not comprehend the hold of religion in the Middle East and how it can produce such virulent ideas and actions. What then does the secular materialist mind do? It wishes religion away, pretends it doesn’t exist, and declares peace because peace will make everyone wealthy.

Trump is a friend, but let’s face it. If a Democratic president sponsored and endorsed a UN Security Council resolution providing for a “pathway to a Palestinian state,” most wise and sane Jews would be outraged. If a Democratic president proposed selling America’s most advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia and Turkey – thereby eroding much of Israel’s qualitative edge – most wise and sane Jews would be horrified. If a Democratic president precipitately ended Israel’s war on terms that were favorable to the enemy who has vowed to exterminate us, most wise and sane Jews would be apoplectic. And yet, Trump is doing all of this, and has placated many of us, probably because he means well, and he means well despite his complete ignorance about the true nature of the hostility against Israel. Just because he is not Harris does not mean that everything he does is in our interest, and we must be mature enough to recognize that, and object when necessary – even saying a firm “no” and acting in our national interest without US support.

The reality is that much of Trump world is a chimera. Extortion, bluster, boasts, volatility, effervescence, and caprice are all part of the act. At his core, he is a huckster, a bluffer, a fulminator prone to outlandish claims and tempestuous threats (yes, I voted for him three times!). All this served him relatively well in the real estate and the entertainment industries, built as they are on such bravado, and in this unusual era, made him an incredibly and wildly successful politician.

Those traits are less helpful in effective governance. Thus, despite the braggadocio, the US dollar is its weakest in years, the deficit is skyrocketing, inflation is persistent, the on-again-off-again tariffs have not produced much in revenue and have confounded merchants, suppliers, and consumers, the health care system is a mess, the government is dysfunctional, cities are tinderboxes, China is ascendant, and little that Trump accomplishes will survive him, especially if he is succeeded by a Democrat. Thus, his favorite expressions are “we’ll have to see what happens,” “the best ever,” or “there’s a great chance of…” whatever happening, which of course never happens. He is not held to his word or his claims because they can shift tomorrow, and sometimes even that same day. Most administrations have always operated with a “message of the day,” something they want the media to cover and report; the Trump administration offers several messages an hour, occasionally conflicting, and quite often stimulating, amusing, or distracting.

But like the emperor’s new clothes, we cannot allow Trump to force us into a reality that we know is not so. The real world in which we live is warning us that peace is not coming here anytime soon. Hamas will not merely lay down its weapons, Hezbollah is not surrendering and the Lebanese government is not anxious to provoke a civil war. An Iran even thirsting for water still prioritizes its fantasies of destroying us. We can be hopeful of the path of Syria’s new president – but also quite skeptical. Even the Abraham Accords should be put in perspective. The original countries that joined represented a real breakthrough – an agreement between nations, including ours, of equals. But now? We have a peace treaty with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for more than thirty years already. What is added by them joining the Abraham Accords, other than access to American money if they seek it?

Is it worth it to us to have Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords if the price is that we effectively renounce sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, pave the road – even rhetorically – to a Palestinian state, allow Hamas to survive, and arm the Saudis to the teeth? Not as I see it.

In a perfect world, an American military base in Israel has value, especially when seeing how the large US airbase in Qatar ingratiated the Qataris to the Americans. But a base that supervises Gaza should be located… in Gaza. As “peace” now reigns, there should be no fear of having a base in Gaza. An American base in Israel is undesirable because it will more inhibit us than it will pressure Hamas. Worse, if an American soldier is killed by a Hamas rocket, Israel will be blamed, and Jew haters in the US, already inflamed, will now add “Americans are being killed because of Israel!” to their growing list of calumnies. And foreign troops invited to a country tend never to leave. It is bad optics, unnecessary, and dangerous for them and for us, and it nullifies the traditional Israeli assertion that we do not ask any other country to defend our soil. We can still say “no, thank you.”

As Trump arms the Muslim world and finds the right words about a Palestinian state to appease the Saudis, we should be concerned. We must plan for a future in which one of these well-armed Arab fiefdoms overthrown by radicals, in which the PA’s Abbas dies and is replaced by a smooth-talking, Western-educated Jew hater, who also wants to annihilate us but knows how to speak the slick, facile, and unctuous language of the West, in which the American president is someone – Democrat or Republican – who has little sympathy for Israel, cares nothing about the Jewish vote, and is now armed with a Security Council resolution in which the world endorsed a Palestinian state.

Perhaps our leaders have planned for the day after. We can only pray that it is so for it never seems like it. What is comforting is that as we approach the era of complete redemption, our few allies will fade away, one by one, as our unique destiny takes center stage, and, as promised by the ancients prophets who spoke of our national return as well, G-d’s kingdom on earth will be manifest through us. May that day come soon with minimum of suffering and hardship, heralding a world of true peace and brotherhood.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

How in the world did a Jew-hating Muslim who considers Israel and its supporters illegitimate become the Mayor-elect of New York City? And what are its implications for the Jewish future in America and for the State of Israel?

First, a basic rule of politics is that you can’t beat somethin’ with nothin’. There is much to say about incoming NYC Mayor Mamdani, and little of it positive, but the reality is that his opponents were not serious and not competitive. Incumbent Eric Adams, who dropped out a few months ago after flopping in the Democratic primary, was compromised by his bribery indictment and perceived connection to Donald Trump. Andrew Cuomo was despised by much of the electorate, both because of his moral failings and his catastrophic Coronavirus policies that literally killed thousands of people. It is a mystery why he thought his failures as New York state governor qualified him to be New York City’s mayor. And Curtis Sliwa, game and colorful as always, was as credible a candidate as the Republicans are a functioning political party in New York, which is to say not at all. How these characters were the nominees is itself an indictment of American society. 

Second, there has always been a strain of Jew hatred in American political life but it has been a long time since it was so mainstreamed in one political party (the Democrats) and a rising force in the other party (the Republicans). Mamdani and others have been allowed to get away with the subterfuge that they love Jews but hate Israel. Really? Imagine if someone said that he loves Muslims but finds it offensive and racist that Muslims believe that Mohammed was a prophet. Or, imagine if someone said that she loves Christians but resents any Christian who worships the cross because such is exclusivist and thus abhorrent to the modern mind. 

The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is so integral to the Torah that, as we see in the Torah readings this time of year, G-d repeated this promise to each of our forefathers. These rights, along with the Torah, are the two pillars of the covenant between G-d and Israel. Anyone who repudiates that and declares that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is repudiating the Torah, the covenant, and an essential definition of Jewishness. Such a person is a Jew hater, period, and not just – as the whitewashed euphemism would have it – someone who has a grudge against Semites.

It is quite astonishing that Mamdani launched and sustained his career through animus against the one Jewish state in the world but finds nothing troubling about the more than the fifty Muslim states that dot the globe. It becomes even more reprehensible when one considers that most of those Muslim states came into existence around the same time Israel did, give or take a few decades, and in the same manner – through world powers carving up the Middle East into different countries. Nonetheless, he only takes issue with Israel where Arabs have more freedoms than in any Arab country, many of which even deny admission and certainly residence to Jews. 

Yet, Mamdani is entitled to his rabid Jew hatred and his denials of same, one price of living in a free society. What should trouble New York Jews even more is this. More than a million of their fellow New Yorkers – their neighbors and co-workers, their co-strap hangers on the subway and people they see in the streets – overlooked (if indeed they did) Mamdani’s anti-Jewish and anti-Israel obsessions and overwhelmingly voted him into office. These are the people among whom you live, ready to protest any criticism of any ethnic group and their creed and values, except if you are a Jew. That should be hard to swallow. 

Worse, Mamdani apparently received close to a third of the Jewish vote. To be sure, Jews are not always the most sagacious voters; it has been widely reported for ninety years that Adolf Hitler in 1933 received about 5% of the Jewish vote, from those Jews who assumed that Hitler’s Jew hatred was a phase that he would have to abandon once he took power. (That itself is eeriely similar to the claims of almost two decades ago that Hamas in Gaza would also have to moderate since they would now be forced to pick up the trash and pay teachers’ salaries. Sure.) And imagine how many more Jewish votes Hitler would have received had he run as a Democrat! This fascination of Jews with the Democratic Party is itself worthy of analysis. Suffice it to say, as the outcome and Jewish voting pattens make clear, being a Democrat is more consequential to the identity of liberal Jews than is being a Jew, and in any conflict between the positions of the Democratic Party and the tenets of Judaism, Judaism will be jettisoned or at least redefined.

This is the inevitable consequence of assimilation and intermarriage but it is more than that. Sure, so many American Jews have intermarried Gentiles that there are hundreds of thousands of halachic Gentiles who begin their critiques with “as a Jew,” but, more tellingly, they have primarily intermarried a culture, a value system, and a world view that is not theirs. I am actually surprised that only 33% of NY Jews voted for Mamdani! Perhaps the percentage was reduced because of the huge Haredi turnout for Cuomo.

Third, as in many areas, President Trump’s bluster and bravado are not always rooted in reality. He is a polarizing figure, such that his influence is greater in Republican primaries than in general elections. In other words, a Republican cannot win if Trump opposes him but a Trump endorsement is anything but a harbinger of victory in a general election. The endorsement probably turns off more voters than are turned on. And even though the major elections which Democrats won this week were in Democratic states and thus not necessarily indicative of a lasting trend, it does say something. The Trump era may come to an earlier end than people think, and we in Israel should be prepared for the day after.

What does Mamdani-rule mean for Jews? The class warfare embraced and popularized by Democrats for years now does not bode well for American Jews. Democrats have for years popularized the perception that society is in the midst of an ongoing conflict between haves and have-nots. Jews are seen as the “haves” who are exploiting the “have-nots” – in housing, education, jobs, money, etc. The reality is almost immaterial. It is a classically Marxist view, which can only be implemented by humbling the “haves” and making them, as the perennially-undefined and unquantified cliche goes, pay their “fair share.” The rosy promises of “free stuff” is a sweetener eagerly swallowed by the young, the gullible, and probably those who know how they will force the wealthy to pay for the “free stuff.”

Jews will not be attacked in the streets in a Mamdani tenure, any more than they are assaulted now. But what might happen is that the police will be redeployed. The have-nots will be allowed to vent (as in Minneapolis, Portland, and elsewhere) marauding, looting, rioting, and burning, without arrest or prosecution. (Note that an incompetent like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was reflected with almost 75% of the vote.) What will be the reaction to a “smash and grab” invasion of 47th Street or to renewed harassment of Jews on college campuses? I fear we may find out and we might not like what we find. 

It would not be surprising if the Israel Day Parade was canceled on “security” grounds, or charged an additional fee to pay for security, or have it supplemented with a “Salute to Palestine” parade. Mamdani would of course march in the latter, not the former. Life for Jews in New York will not end but it will become more unpleasant, more discomfiting, more disconcerting. Where Jews were once cultural icons and pillars of respect, they might now find themselves ideological second-class citizens, possessing unwelcome views and archaic and repugnant attitudes, especially concerning Israel.  Some Jews – it has happened to many already – will seek to protect themselves by blaming Netanyahu, disassociating from Israel, and currying favor with the progressive left whose hatred for Israel is as pathological as it groundless. Eventually, though, the bell will toll for them as well, as has occurred numerous times in history when Jews sought to ingratiate themselves to their enemy, who soon after devoured them anyway. 

The golden age of American Jewry has passed. It does not mean that the end is coterminous with a Mamdani administration. It does mean that it will come and that it is unavoidable. The two inexorable rules of Jewish history are that every exile comes to an end, and that Jews are always too late to realize that and overstay their welcome until catastrophe overwhelms most of them. I have hope but no expectation that this mindset will change in this case. It is certainly not helpful when a distinguished rabbinic colleague, living in the United States, pleads with his former British compatriots to leave a dangerous United Kingdom and come to … America, as if we are living in the 19th century and not the 21st. Why has the Lord returned us to the land of Israel – and enabled a thriving Jewish state despite all the problems – if not to impress upon all Jews that it is time to come home? 

The Jewish moment in America is over. Hollywood no longer reckons with us. Open and unabashed Jew hatred exists in both political parties, only one of which is even concerned about it. Fewer and fewer Jews are among the great business tycoons in America. The Jewish state is no longer widely admired as a plucky little country defending itself against countless and evil enemies but vilified as the aggressor and the greatest threat to world peace in accordance with the absurd Progressive doctrine that the victim is always moral and always right. (We earned the world’s sympathy for a few days after the Hamas massacre of October 7 but lost that when we went to war and transformed our attackers into “victims.”Yes, it is illogical, but such is Progressivism.) The world’s current mania with the creation of another Palestinian state (in addition to Jordan) is just another symptom of the malady. A Jew can only purchase standing in American society by declaring his embarrassment by the State of Israel.

If history has taught us anything, it is that Jews will twist themselves into pretzels trying to harmonize their views with the zeitgeist and to remain on good terms with their enemies who are their political fellow travelers. Instead of defending ourselves, we will trip over our own feet trying to rationalize our enemies’ hatred. We will blame ourselves for our enemies’ animosity. We will fail to recognize the changing attitudes of American citizens and the ascendancy of Islam in the US which has already been previewed for us in Europe. We will not react with sufficient strength and resolve when we see that Jew haters in politics, the media, and the culture pay no price for their malevolence and, instead, find their careers boosted and their popularity enhanced. 

King Shlomo taught us (Kohelet 2:14) that “the wise man’s eyes are in his head,” meaning,  as Rashi comments, “at the beginning of the matter, he contemplates what the end will be.” Yet, again, we are provided an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that we are, indeed, “a wise and discerning people” (Devarim 4:6). The signs are there, the clouds are gathering. We can say as Jews often have, “this too shall pass.” Or we can draw conclusions, seize our destiny, and hasten the redemption.