Category Archives: Israel

At the beginning of Parshat Vayigash, Yehuda mounted a spirited defense of his youngest brother Binyamin, accused by the mercurial monarch of Egypt of stealing the royal goblet. Yehuda, certainly, assumed Binyamin’s innocence and that the stolen merchandise had been planted in Binyamin’s sack, but could not know for sure. Indeed, other brothers, in the language of the Midrash (Breisheet Raba 92:8), castigated Binyamin as “a thief the son of a thief,” for he was the youngest child of Rachel who had stolen her father’s idols. Apparently, Yehuda felt that even a potential thief, with a pedigree of crime, deserved a defense and the proper administration of justice.

These are dark days in the land of Israel, and not just because the daily spate of Arab terror against Jews – stabbings, ramming, with the occasional shootings – shows no signs of abating. The government has settled in to its typical response of defensive measures, more barriers, more speeches, and calling for vigilance and perseverance by the population, and, of course, insisting that the rule of law be maintained. Yes, the rule of law.

It is painful to write what follows, and for some they will violate the unwritten rule that support for the State of Israel, whatever it does, must be instinctive, complete and unwavering. Perhaps it is the attorney in me that feels the need to raise awareness of these matters.

The recent allegations that the Shabak has engaged in torture against Jewish suspects in order to extract from them confessions are disgraceful, humiliating, a desecration of G-d’s Name and an embarrassment to the State of Israel. It must be conceded that they are only allegations, but so are accusations of criminal conduct. Four attorneys representing the accused – but deprived access to them for several weeks – last week detailed the alleged abuse: physical torture, beatings, burning and prodding of various parts of the body (including sensitive and private areas), sleep deprivation (in one case, three days), sexual abuse and other forms of debasement. True, even these are just allegations, but allegations grounded in physical evidence and first-person reports. The one adult arrested, released after three weeks of such maltreatment, returned to his yishuv after his interrogators admitted they had no evidence against him. His rabbi reported that he returned a broken man, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and dysfunctional. The parents of a minor (most of those in custody are minors) were interviewed on Israeli television on Monday and claimed that their child – after three weeks of enduring such brutality – tried to commit suicide. He showed his parents the slash marks on his wrists, which weighs slightly more than the Shabak’s denial of the attempted suicide.

The predicate for these arrests was the arson-murder of an Arab family – parents and an infant child – in the village of Duma last summer. The crime, whoever committed it, Jew or Arab, was heinous, horrific, unthinkable and deserves to be prosecuted. The guilty should be arrested, tried, convicted, and incarcerated. But “Justice, justice, you shall pursue” (Devarim 16:20) – justice must be pursued but only through means that are also just.

The secular Israeli civil and human rights groups have been noticeably silent, along with American Jewish organizations (including some Orthodox ones) who are quick to condemn Israel for any mistreatment of Arabs. Of course, those civil and human rights organizations are less interested in civil and human rights than they are in defaming Israel on the world stage and bringing about its speedy demise. The suffering of Jews – whether at the hands of the Arab terrorists they coddle and defend or at the hands of the Shabak – is less interesting to them.

PM Netanyahu, and others in government, have denied the allegations of torture, decried the attacks on the Shabak, and asserted that the interrogations have been “lawful.”

That is not the most encouraging statement, if only because “lawful” in Israel is not identical to what is “lawful” in, say, the United States. Israel routinely, and the United States, sporadically, have used “enhanced interrogation techniques” on any number of Arab terrorist suspects over the years. But fair-minded, reasonable people should be able to distinguish between physical force used to extract information from terrorists about imminent or pending terrorist threats – and physical force used to extract confessions. The former saves lives. The latter? The latter ruins lives and debases the society that engages in those medieval practices.

As one of the Israeli attorneys put it last week, and notwithstanding the protestations of government officials, Israel has allegedly crossed the line that separates civilized countries from countries (he put it mildly) “that we would never want to be.”

Soon after the attack on the Arab family in Duma, Defense Minister Yaalon claimed that “we know who did it, we just don’t yet have the evidence.” That statement alone is jarring, as the only way the authorities could know who did it is with “evidence,” even the testimony provided by informants, either Jewish or Arab, or DNA evidence, or sightings of the criminals on the ubiquitous cameras in Israel. That, too, is evidence; whispered suspicions are not. And despite some indications that the crime might not have been committed by Jews – and it very well might have – the accusations against Jews do fit the narrative that sees right-wing settlers as homicidal, racist maniacs and Israel as an enlightened society that prosecutes its own when there is wrongdoing and is not reluctant to release convicted Arab terrorists to flaunt its “morality.”

If the first contention is false and disgraceful, the second is embarrassingly naïve if the motivation behind it is an attempt to win favorable plaudits from the “world community.” That is part of Israel’s persistent and futile effort to score world “public relations” points by mollifying Arabs and, in this case, persecuting Jews. But the only thing the “world” actually cares less about than Jews killing Arabs is Arabs killing Jews, and the effort to placate world opinion by finding Jews to scapegoat , by extracting confessions through torture, or by easing restrictions on Arab movements that have facilitated the most recent wave of terror is a fools’ errand and unworthy of a civilized society.

MK Betzalel Smotrich (Bayit Hayehudi) caused a stir last week, and was repudiated by his party leader, when he asserted that Jews in the current context cannot be “terrorists.” It’s a subtle, nuanced point that has much to commend it. Jews, r”l, can be murderers, thieves, and scoundrels but not “terrorists,” because terror transcends the immediate act and aims to engender fear – terror – among all potential victims. Thus, we must ask ourselves basic questions: are Arabs terrorized in the State of Israel? Are Arabs living in fear that their homes will be burnt or invaded and their families killed, or that their cars will be shot at on the roads? Are Arabs afraid to hire Jewish workers, lest their employees suddenly turn on them one fine day and try to murder them? Are Arabs afraid to walk the streets of Israel lest a random Jew stab them in the neck? Are Arabs afraid to stand at a bus stop or street corner lest a Jew ram them with his car?

The answer is “no,” to all of the above. Let’s get real: in the land of Israel today, only Jews are terrorized, not Arabs. The only fear Arabs have is that they will be killed trying to murder Jews, and I’m not even sure they fear that.

Those who have claimed that persecuting and then prosecuting the Duma suspects will save lives because otherwise Arab terror will be emboldened are… well, they are not really paying attention to current events. Anyone who believes that Arab terror – in Israel or anywhere in the world – can be “provoked” should not be allowed anywhere near the reins of power or influence. It is a risible notion.

Even worse, this case could be pronounced “solved” as a result of confessions allegedly extracted under torture. This is exactly what happened to Jews during the Middle Ages and thereafter, in the Inquisition and during other dark periods of our history: Jews forced to confess to crimes to which they did not commit. No confession extracted through torture should have any credibility, and every civilized judicial system deems those confessions inadmissible. No civilized society should extract confessions or otherwise fabricate evidence even to convict the guilty. It should be noted that Jewish law bars the use of any confession, period.  And the ignominy is exacerbated by the reality that the suspects allegedly tortured were primarily minors – children, teenagers.

Despite all the protestations, this episode has tarnished Israel’s image, and the brutality alleged has been so shocking that it has stunned most Jews into an embarrassed silence. That too is shameful.

If indeed Jews are responsible, r”l, then it is a low point in modern Jewish history, and highlights, among other things, the detrimental consequences of growing up in an environment in which terrorist attacks, sudden death, and grievous injury are daily realities. That is not normal, and a failure of successive governments. Of course, even if that were true, the Torah still prohibits acting upon those aggressive impulses, and nothing excuses the wanton murder of innocent people. It cannot be emphasized enough that the murder in Duma was a dastardly crime, and whoever committed it should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and punished accordingly, Jew or Arab.

But prosecutions require evidence lawfully obtained, and the epitome of tainted evidence is the forced confession. The preservation of a civilized society depends on the execution of civilized laws, and on judges who will enforce those civilized laws, not judges who will whitewash the alleged criminal misbehavior of the authorities and turned a blind eye to alleged abuse of minors.

And here’s something that we all know. As sad as it is for the victims, and as frustrating as it is for the society of good and decent people, sometimes the guilty get away with their crimes. Famously, OJ Simpson beat two murder raps; certainly LAPD would have built an even stronger case had he “confessed.” Sometimes murderers are not caught. It happens more often than people think. Sometimes those who are guilty as sin are acquitted by juries. Nazis by and large got away with the unspeakable atrocities they committed against the Jewish people. And, sometimes murderers are caught and then – is it really possible? – released in a prisoner exchange to taunt the families of their victims and plot new terrorist acts.

It is immensely frustrating, but that is when the “rule of law” as a concept and value – not as a hackneyed cliché – must be actualized. To state that “we know who did it but we have no evidence,” so we will then go about and fabricate evidence, is the stock-in-trade of third world dictatorships and totalitarian societies. To beat confessions out of people (allegedly) is vigilante justice, not real justice.

Fortunately, there is a G-d, and that G-d finds ways to punish those who commit crimes without witnesses or evidence. So we are taught. That principle applies to alleged criminals as much as to those who allegedly torture people they suspect are criminals.

May G-d have mercy that no innocent people have to suffer because of the dishonorable conduct of the few. I hope the allegations against the incarcerated are untrue and the allegations against the Shabak are untrue. And may we merit living in an era in which the security forces of Israel fight their real enemies, that those enemies are finally subdued, and that all Jews return to service of G-d, love of Torah, fulfillment of mitzvot, and love of Am Yisrael.

Generally, there are two types of pass defense coverage used in football (read on; this is not about sports). The more common one was man-to-man coverage in which each defender is assigned to a particular offensive player. Over the years, defenses have often shifted into zone coverage, in which defenders are assigned to a specific territory on the field (of course, unknown in advance to the offensive team). In the latter circumstance, the task of the quarterback is to beat the zone by exploiting the “seam” – those areas on the fringes of the coverage, usually between two defenders.

Muslim terrorists have become masters at exploiting the “seam” in the culture, legal system and values of the Western world, and certainly in the United States and Israel. They know how to exploit the immigration system in order to gain entry to their target countries, and they know how to manipulate the social system to receive government benefits as they settle in and plan their attacks. This has become an especially acute problem in Europe. They know exactly how to take advantage of the constitutional protections that are guaranteed to honest and decent citizens to enhance their lives, and they utilize those protections in order to preserve their interests, conceal their plans and execute their terror. This has become an increasingly grave problem in the United States.

They know when to claim the First Amendment privileges of the free exercise of religion to inhibit surveillance of their mosques that preach radical Islam and call for jihad against the infidel, when to assert the freedom of speech to defend their calls for the imposition of Sharia law and the dissemination of the most extreme interpretations of the Koran, and they know when to complain about intrusions on the freedom of association. They know, quite well, how to conceal their communications, and how the American value of individual privacy – taken to an extreme – facilitates their capacity to commit acts of terror. They know how to exploit the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, and how the Fifth Amendment affords them the right against self-incrimination.

Those who are citizens enjoy an abundance of rights that make early detection of their nefarious schemes very difficult and make pre-emption and effective prosecution almost impossible – even as the sophistication and dedication of law enforcement makes their eventual capture almost a certainty. Israel struggles with this as well; the tools at their disposal to deal with Arabs who are Israeli citizens are much more limited than the tools they can deploy against Arabs who are not citizens.

And here’s the largest “seam” – the opening in the defense coverage that is the easiest to abuse: the recognition that most Americans, and especially the elitist establishment, would rather protect the core values, rights and privileges for all – including terrorists – even if it comes at the expense of innocent Americans, murdered by radical Islamic terrorists. It is easier – and somehow more comforting, I suppose – to mourn, grieve, light candles, pray for the souls of the victims and an end to evil than it is to amend the Constitution, certainly, but even to restrict somewhat the rights of non-citizens. Maintaining those values provides a reassuring sense that the world as we know it can endure, even if that becomes less and less likely. When Obama says that we can fight the war on terror while maintaining our values – and when that sentiment is echoed by his usual liberal acolytes including Jewish groups – he is partly correct but misses the larger point: some things have to change because the constitutional protections afforded our enemies have given them the upper hand. Only the blindest followers of Obama believe that San Bernardino will be the last of the attacks on innocent Americans.

So, too, Israeli leaders often mouth the same platitudes, even if they have fewer restrictions on government conduct, but rather than take the strong action that can change the dynamic and successfully prosecute to victory a war on Arab terror, it is content to indulge 2-4 terrorist attacks per

day on its civilian population. That is not to say the government wants it to happen; it is just that the costs of waging such a campaign currently exceed the benefits of waging it.

All of which leads to the Donald Trump phenomenon, even if we can concede that the attacks on him and his plans (and I have my own) serve the political establishment’s need to divert attention from its failure to stem the growth of radical Islamic terror and just change the subject to something it finds, together with the media, much more pleasing: screaming at someone and creating a different bogeyman instead of the obvious one. It is easier to have a public enemy to revile and hate than it is to have to deal with a public enemy that lurks in the shadows and could be your next door neighbor.

Hence the predictable objections to Trump’s plan – if you can call it that – to bar all Muslim non-citizens from the US until the political class “can figure out what’s going on.” True to form, Trump’s plan is brazen, bombastic, lacking in any detail and completely unfeasible. Would he ban IDF Bedouin soldiers from visiting America, for example?  How would customs officials ascertain who is a Muslim – ask each person?? (Would they tell the truth?) Does the United States wish to ban visits by Filipino Muslim tourists? Obviously, he doesn’t really mean all Muslims, but there is a segment in the society of the simple that persists in interpreting generalizations as if they were categorical and universal principles. If you haven’t yet noticed, Trump can be a little, say, imprecise, when he talks.

On the other hand, Trump’s plan is unassailable when the M&M Test that someone recently suggested is applied: If you have 100 M&M’s in a bowl, and two (or ten) are poison, would you eat M&M’s from that bowl? I assume most people would not take the risk. In other words, however this matter is approached, and notwithstanding all the sanctimony, phony piety and promises of stringent vetting, isn’t it likely that some – 1%, 10% or some other percentage of new arrivals on these shores –  will be radical Muslims dispatched by ISIS to murder innocent people? Of course, especially since that is ISIS’s stated intention. We should at least be willing to concede that even if some Americans would prefer to enact Draconian measures to preclude that eventuality, most do not, and there will be a price paid for that in the real world, not the fantasy world in which blame for the future terror will be ascribed to gun control, climate change, Republicans or something else.

The Trump card has an Israeli parallel as well – the popular slogan “Ain Aravim, Ain pigu’im” (No Arabs, No Terror) – an equation that is true per se but also unworkable and unsustainable. For every person in Israel who would want such a program implemented, there are probably 10-15 who do not, and that is also a conscious choice made by the citizenry.

To propose policies that sound great but have no realistic chance of implementation (“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” or “health care for all that will bring down costs and improve quality”) is sheer demagoguery and many politicians do it. The response to Trump has also been demagogic, and primarily an effort not to encase the responders in the sugary goo of faux morality but to deflect attention from their own failures. To date, the response to the most recent act of radical Islamic terror has been Congressional legislation, enacted on a bi-partisan basis to great fanfare, to tighten a visa waiver program that would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Add to that the claim by several talking heads that a ban on immigration for a certain religion is unconstitutional. Such a claim – “the Constitution bans religious tests!” – is laughable on its face. The Constitution, in Article VI, paragraph 3, states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” i.e., there can be no religious test mandated to qualify to held federal elective office. What does that have to do with immigration? Nothing! But don’t spoil the fun for the demagogues on the left. Certainly, at least, restrictions on immigration from certain countries would seem to be common sense.

Demagogues know well how to exploit people’s fears, insecurities and general ignorance. In the United States in recent times, it has been critical to winning elections. Trump’s popularity such as it is (bear in mind that 70% of the Republican electorate does not want him as nominee, according to the ubiquitous polls) owes to his status as the anti-politician, the one whose every word is not poll-tested or focus-grouped in advanced. He sounds real, like a human being with emotions if not always the clearest thoughts. Many modern politicians (Hillary Clinton is at the top of that list) come across as plastic, artificial, scripted and, frankly, utterly boring. Personally, I don’t think that Trump has a chance at becoming the Republican nominee, much less the next president, but I never thought Obama could win one, much less two, elections. All the shibboleths of American politics have been refuted – if the economy is this, if terror is that, if you can’t win Ohio, etc. All these mean nothing because the electorate is so volatile, and relatively few people actually vote.

What I do know is the “seam” of freedom that Muslim terrorists exploit will exacerbate the decline of Western society unless it is reversed. One American value – the reluctance to single out a group or religion by name – has led to the Obama and liberal media tap dance that shuns the use of accurate labels in favor of euphemisms and dissembling. That includes the height of absurdity: calling radical Somali Muslim terrorists living in Minnesota “Minnesotans,” as in “Three Minnesotans Arrested for Terror Plot.” Hey – the problem is not Minnesota, the land of the nice, but people who have come from abroad to take advantage of Minnesota Nice to wreak havoc on America.

Justice Robert Jackson, famed Nuremberg prosecutor, once wrote that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” In times of war and danger, there have always been provisions that have been suspended temporarily with the recognition that society would revert to the norms once the dangers passed. The backlash against Trump would seem to indicate that America wishes to gamble the security of its citizenry in order to retain the unity of the Constitution, while the backlash against the backlash means that not everyone is as keen on that compromise as the elites feel the rest of the nation should be.

In the meantime, Trump’s unrealistic suggestions are a diversion from the sad reality that the US has already been infiltrated by radical Muslims, America’s borders remain porous and accessible to all intruders, the seam is still exploited by Muslims who are quick to claim victimhood whenever Muslims attack the innocent and the government hasn’t a coherent plan or even a clue how to avert the next incident, except reliance on luck or Providence.

Good luck with that, G-d bless, and Happy Chanukah.

By now, it should be obvious that the real Junior Varsity team is not ISIS but instead occupies prime real estate in the White House. It is Obama and company who have been outsmarted, outmaneuvered and (willingly) been rendered irrelevant by Islamic terrorists across the globe when they otherwise haven’t been aiding and abetting Islamic terror, as in Iran. It has been more than a century since the United States has been perceived as so feckless and useless on the world stage, its leaders specializing in increasingly vacuous speeches that portray an alternate reality to the murder and mayhem that is sweeping the planet.

Nothing more typifies that alternate reality than memories of the Nobel Peace Prize bizarrely awarded Obama in 2009 for reasons yet unknown and in retrospect are quite risible. Can one recollect a winner of the Peace Prize who then presided over so much war, destruction, loss of innocent life, proliferation of evil and triumph of evildoers? Perhaps the Peace Price awarded in 1973 to Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho for the Paris Peace Accords, for their role in “Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.” At least then something had been negotiated – and at least Le Duc Tho had the integrity to refuse the award, perhaps anticipating that 18 months thereafter, South Vietnam would be defeated and would cease to exist.

The Jayvee team in the White House has made the world a much more dangerous place, with radical  Islamic terror spreading and with a complete inability and unwillingness on Obama’s part to even name the enemy, much less confront it (and this does not refer to climate change). Perhaps he would be wise to take to heart this news report that depicts the future of Belgium, Europe and is soon coming to a theater near us.

Frankly, there is an abundance of amateurish leadership around the globe, and Israel is no exception. Make no mistake: the Jewish victims of Arab terror in Israel are clear and bloody signs of Netanyahu’s failed leadership. Every day – every day – there are stabbings and shootings, dead and wounded, and every day there are powerful, evocative, emotional and heartfelt speeches about what will be done, speeches that invoke the strength and resilience of the Israeli people and their steadfastness in the face of the terror onslaught.

But speeches which praise the Israeli people’s vigilance and call on them to protect themselves against the guns and knives of the Arab enemy underscore the abject failure of this Israeli government in the primary function of government: to protect their citizens from harm. Everyone knows there are measures that can be taken that keep hostile Arabs away from their favorite crime scenes, and everyone knows that there are measures that can be employed to deter these wanton attacks on Jews. Everyone knows what they are and most – except for the loony left – would recognize and support these wartime measures as prudent and necessary.

Pre-emption is insufficient when the attacks require nothing more than a child with a knife or an adult with a gun or a car. That the effective deterrence is not undertaken leads to the inevitable conclusion that – as happens too often – too many official Jews are comfortable being in the position of victims than they are doing the difficult and sometimes nasty work of defeating the enemy. Israel suffers, like the rest of the world, in not having real, transformative leadership – individuals who wish to change a bad dynamic by being proactive and prescient. PM Netanyahu – who, we are told, naturally deserves support at this critical time, to rally around the flag, etc. – has benefited from that pattern. He is a classic run-out-the-clock politician, keeping the seat warm while ensuring that no one else – whom

he considers worse than and therefore unfit to lead – takes the position from him.

He might be right about that (he also might be wrong) but one cannot recall a single measure that he has utilized that has dramatically changed anything in Israel’s favor since he has been prime minister for almost seven years. Everything is defensive, everything is always on hold (including building in Judea and Samaria), everything is designed to ensure the survivability of his coalition just a little longer. Everything is designed to just kick the can down the road a little further. There is no long range plan, just the short-term attrition of Jewish life – more dead, more wounded, more terrorized, more empty streets and stores and the eager expectation of the next eloquent speech.

We have grown accustomed to the pervasive Western reluctance, and perhaps fear, of naming the enemy we are facing. Obama and his acolytes are masters at this obfuscation, labeling the enemy “violent extremism,” which might be a tactic of the enemy but is assuredly not the enemy itself. (Proof? I tried to research this “enemy” on Wikipedia, source of all modern knowledge. Strangely, it has no entry for “violent extremism.” So how is one supposed to fight an enemy that hasn’t even been identified on Wikipedia??)

Just like Obama is nebulous and euphemistic when it comes to identifying the enemy of civilization, PM Netanyahu also falls back on euphemisms and clichés. By every reasonable account, by his statements and his actions, Mahmoud Abbas is an enemy of Israel and a fomenter of terror against Jews. But Israel’s prime minister will never use that language, as it serves his purposes to prop up that preposterous evildoer.  That may serve Netanyahu’s purposes, but it doesn’t serve Israel’s purposes.

Henry David Thoreau said very insightfully (quote found at  www.thelandofisrael.com, a wonderful website) that “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” The world today is hacking at the branches of evil – focusing on capturing this terrorist or thwarting that act of terrorism – but studiously ignoring the root that continues to grow and spread and dominate.

The fear of giving evil its name did reach its farcical limits Monday night before the NFL football game. Robert Kraft, Patriots owner and proud supporter of Israel, was asked and agreed to have a moment of silence before the game in memory of young Ezra Schwartz Hy”d, the American yeshiva student gunned down in cold blood by an Arab terrorist last week at the Gush Etzion junction. And the moment of silence took place on national television.

It left me – forgive the Patriot pun – somewhat deflated. There was no mention that Ezra was Jewish, that he was murdered in Israel, or that he was murdered by Muslim-Arab terrorists. None of that. He was killed, like too many others, by terrorists, while “studying abroad,” the announcer said. The average American viewer must have thought he was murdered in Paris, or Mali, or some other place on the globe where last week Muslims killed innocent people.

Does it matter? Of course it matters. Netanyahu’s effort to link terror against Israelis to terror against Frenchmen and others has failed. The world doesn’t buy it, Obama/Kerry don’t buy it – not because it isn’t true but because they have convinced themselves, and Israel has failed to refute it well enough, that terror against Israel is justified – because of whatever – occupation, settlements, Temple Mount, Israel’s existence, etc. Terror in Paris, Mali, London, Madrid, New York and anywhere else is the unnamed evil against the purely innocent. In Israel, they would claim, both sides are wrong and engender not the murder of innocents but a “cycle of violence.”

It would have sent a powerful statement to announce the moment of silence “in memory of Ezra Schwartz who was murdered by Arab terrorists al Kiddush Hashem, Ha’am, v’ha’aretz,” but that would never happen. But why could it not be mentioned that he was murdered in Israel? This is where  trepidation mixed with political correctness renders good people incapable of confronting Islamic terror.

I can almost hear the discussions in Patriot land, from the lawyers and the PR people: “You can’t mention Muslims or Arabs for obvious reasons. You can’t mention that the victim was Jewish – too parochial. You can’t mention that the murder happened in Israel, because Gush Etzion is in disputed territory and the world doesn’t recognize it as Israel. You can’t say it happened in Palestine because…well, there is no such thing as Palestine and that would anyway tick off most Jews. So we will just say he died in a terrorist attack ‘abroad.’ ‘Abroad’ covers it. The Jews will be happy because they will read into it what they wish, and few else will know what the announcer is talking about, except that we are all against terror especially if we keep the source of terror conveniently amorphous.”

I assume that Kraft’s heart was in the right place and his intentions were noble, and suppose that even mentioning the word “terrorism” was the great breakthrough; nor should Kraft himself be criticized at all for the bland execution.  This is the world we live in, with even accurate sentiments diluted and sifted to eliminate the slightest offense to even the most evil of human beings.  This is the world that is the legacy of the Jayvee team in the White House that flies around the globe dispensing empty rhetoric, promoting a retreat from leadership, an acquiescence to terror, hollow displays of force and exhibiting sheer petulance when challenged. Perhaps in the rhetoric vs. action department, Obama and Netanyahu despise each other so much because they are so similar. Good people deserve better.

Meanwhile, the good people await today’s body count, and tomorrow’s, r”l.