Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

The Iranian Threat

Posted on April 27, 2012 | 3 comments

Iran is a rogue state, an entity almost entirely devoted to spreading mayhem and hatred – i.e., its understanding of Islam – throughout the world. Its leaders explicitly threaten the destruction of the State of Israel, and deny the Nazi Holocaust while contemplating another extermination campaign against the Jewish people. Israel has spent the better part of two decades trying to awaken the world to the Iranian threat with mixed results. President Bush declared Iran part of the axis of evil, imposed sanctions, but was unable to directly confront Iran owing to America’s military obligations elsewhere. President Obama has accepted the enhanced sanctions decreed by Congress and has fired a barrage of rhetorical missiles against Iran – and soothing words for its people – but with little effect. Although Israel is Iran’s primary regional target, the instability that will be wrought by an Iranian nuclear weapon should alarm nations both near and far.

An Iranian nuclear capability, if achieved, would dramatically transform Israel’s military strategy. It would provide a security umbrella to evil elements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, as Israel would have to increase its threshold of acceptable missile attacks lest a “disproportionate” response provoke an Iranian nuclear strike. A land invasion of terrorist strongholds would become more difficult to contemplate or execute successfully. Iran, governed by an apocalyptic leadership that (at least verbally) prizes martyrdom, is not subject to the same balance of terror that enforced stability between the US and the USSR, who were both, at least, rational actors that expected mutual survival. Assuming the same rational conduct from Iran – knowing of their eschatological tendencies – is to project our values onto them, always a fatal error in statecraft and diplomacy.

The effect of an Iranian nuclear capability on the United States is not as often discussed but would devastate American interests throughout the world. Iran as the sole Muslim nuclear power in the region (Pakistan’s bomb targets India, and vice versa) would quickly become the regional hegemon. The US would either be forced to extend a nuclear umbrella to America’s regional allies like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and others, or tolerate – i.e., spearhead – the nuclear ambitions of those states. The Middle East would live – as long as it did live – on the brink of Armageddon.

In another scenario, Iran would impose its will on those other states before, or in the absence of, an American nuclear umbrella, and would dominate the flow, distribution and price of oil. The hegemony of Iran in the region would choke the free flow of oil, oil prices would rise precipitously, and the world (and the US) economy would deteriorate.

An Iranian bomb would allow a freer hand to Iran’s terrorist rogues throughout the world, including within the United States. The tepid reaction of the US authorities to Iran’s attempted assassination of a Saudi diplomat in Washington DC last year is case-in-point. If a non-nuclear Iran evaded punishment for hostile actions within America, how much easier would it be for Iran to export its evil to these shores and escape real consequences? The mere threat of a nuclear response would suppress any real action. And Iran’s tendency to work through surrogates – non-state actors – leaves open the real possibility of nuclear strikes throughout the world – actual or threatened – without Iranian fingerprints on them. An Iranian EMP attack – a nuclear weapon detonated 20,000 feet above American soil – would destroy the infrastructure of modern American life and, within a short time, kill millions of people.

As the balance of power in the Middle East shifts away from Israel and US allies to Iran, America’s influence in the region will diminish. Erstwhile American allies will strike diplomatic deals with Iran, and Israel itself will be forced to engage in riskier unilateral acts against its neighbors in order to guarantee its survival. The Arabian Peninsula will fall under Iranian dominance, Iraq and Jordan will reach out to the new sovereigns, and Egypt, Syria and Lebanon will join forces to forge a radical Islamic front. American forces in the region will be subjected to greater threats and attacks, will soon no longer be welcome and will be brought home. American influence will wane, until it disappears completely – like that of the British and the French. Feckless Europe will shift into the Iranian orbit, and the US will find itself isolated and alone in the world. In certain administrations, it might even make its peace with Iran and pay it an appropriate tribute – financially and diplomatically – in order to ensure momentary tranquility. Russia and China would likely join forces with Iran to impose its economic will on the globe. Anti-American neighbors like Venezuela and Cuba – Iranian allies – could find themselves in possession of Iranian nuclear devices that further threaten to erode American power and security.

In short, the notion that an Iranian nuclear weapon is just an Israeli problem is a convenient fiction used by those who are anti-Israel, anti-American, or who are incapable of defending American interests or projecting American power throughout the world.

The Obama administration has been duplicitous, coy or clever in its dealings with this issue. One contention is that its pro-Muslim sympathies engender words that soothe the American and Israeli publics but no actual deeds that will reverse the current trends and force a permanent halt to the Iranian nuclear program. The repeated cliché favored by Hillary Clinton, a remarkably unsuccessful Secretary of State, that “there is still time for diplomacy to work” is true but not very helpful or comforting; there is always “time,” until the very moment when there is “no time.” Unfortunately the gap between “time” and “no time” is seconds, not days, weeks or months. Technically, until the system is on-line and producing radioactivity, weapons, etc., there is “time.” But that window of “time” will close in an instant, and despite its assertions, it is not impossible that an Obama administration will come to terms with an Iranian bomb and then boast about how it kept the US out of war.

Disturbing rumors persist – that the US Administration is more interested in preventing an Israeli pre-emptive attack than in thwarting an Iranian bomb; that it purposely leaked Israeli negotiations with Azerbaijan over airfields and flyover rights that would greatly reduce the risks and flight time of any Israeli air strike against the Iranian facilities; that it has denied – like the Bush Administration before it – Israeli access to American weaponry and bases that could facilitate such a strike.

Much, naturally, remains obscure. Hope springs eternal that the Obama administration’s overt hostility to Israel’s statecraft is a clever attempt to lure the enemy into a false sense of confidence, to deflect its attentions from the real source of military activity that will permanently obstruct Iran’s nuclear ambitions and effect a change in that malevolent regime. Perhaps the Azerbaijan leak was a feint, a deception? Perhaps Israel will operate jointly with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – sworn enemies of Iran – in black operations that will shield the Arab countries from the public “shame” of working with Jews against fellow Muslims? Perhaps the current American government has a broader and more traditional view of American power in the world and is waiting for the right moment to act from its current bases in the Middle East?

One can only hope.

But we should not assume that only Israel will be impacted by a nuclear Iran. The influence will be felt in Israel, in the United States and across the world, and the world itself will no longer be the same. The question remains whether the Obama administration is up to the task, and whether the American people understand and internalize the dangers – before it is too late.

3 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

Enough Already

Posted on April 20, 2012 | 4 comments

The manufactured outrage of the week came with the LA Times’ publication of photographs of US soldiers in Afghanistan smiling and holding the blown-off legs of a Muslim suicide bomber (wait, is there any other?). This alleged “desecration” of the remains of a human being that took place over two years ago is supposed to indicate the depths to which American soldiers have fallen in the Middle Eastern wars of the past decade, and elicited a stream of condemnations of the soldiers from the White House, Pentagon, State Department, etc.

News flash: I couldn’t care less. Clearly, the LA Times’ hiding behind newsworthiness is typical hypocrisy; the LA Times has been holding on to a video speech of Barack Obama from 2003 praising his friend, Arab anti-Israel activist Prof. Rashid Khalidi, and containing – allegedly –Obama’s inflammatory statements about Israel, but such is not deemed newsworthy by the LA Times. But that is an ancillary issue.

While respect for human remains should be universal, I would not lose any sleep over the scorn heaped on the charred body parts of suicide bombers. You can only “desecrate” something that has sanctity. Suicide bombers have forfeited the right to be treated like human beings. They are not human beings as we currently understand the term. They have no respect for their own bodies, and therefore should not expect others to show respect to their bodies. In fact, as they happily use their bodies as weapons, their body parts are essentially no different than other weapons of war – guns, rifles, knives, tomahawks, etc. – that victorious soldiers have removed from the remains of the vanquished from time immemorial.

If it would help deter the scourge of the suicide bombers, as such rumors persist, I would wrap their remains in pig skin, pork rinds or any other Muslim taboo. They deserve no respect at all.

What troubles even more is the reflexive criticism of the military that accompanies such laments, especially by those who have never experienced the horrors of war or been placed in the unnatural position of being permitted (even ordered) to kill or be killed. That license itself portends a different set of values that are not necessarily comprehensible to civilians or readily translatable into civilian values. Hence the preoccupation since World War II with the “rights” of the enemy – even an evil enemy – and its use as a double standard club against Israel, among other nations. It is bizarre, and stems from a reluctance and failure to define today’s enemy – radical Islam – as evil incarnate but rather perceive it as just another group with a grievance that has to be assuaged, in a conflict in which guilt is found on all sides, and which morality is relative if its exists at all.

One longs not only for the moral clarity of World War II but also the ease with which the enemy was defined as evil and treated as evil. On Yom HaShoah past, we screened Steven Spielberg’s 1998 Oscar-winning documentary “The Last Days” about five survivors of the Holocaust. One interviewee was a Dr. Paul Parks, a black US Army physician who was among the liberators of Dachau. He described how he sat down to interrogate a Nazi Colonel, who rather than answer his questions decided to spit in his face. Terrible decision.

Dr. Parks calmly pulled out his pistol and shot the Nazi Colonel in the head. Dead.

He didn’t seem to have any regrets about it, either.
The Wall Street Journal last year featured an article by the military historian Warren Kozak, who related how his own father’s unit in World War II captured a group of Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge, and unable to hold them or certainly release them, just killed them all. No one thought of war crimes, prosecutions, trials or arcane Conventions; there was simply no other option.

That is wartime. And at least the Nazis were soldiers under traditional definitions, fighting for a (depraved) country in an army on the battlefield – unlike the modern Muslim suicide bomber who does not wear a uniform and attacks mainly civilians, and who is himself a civilian up to the very moment he kills himself and others.

The squeamishness that now attaches to the morals of war has succeeded in doing nothing but inhibiting the successful conduct of such wars, and given the enemy inestimable power over the morale of the fighting forces of the good and the virtuous. Israel especially suffers from this phenomenon, and the recent treatment of Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner, caught on camera smashing his rifle into the face of a Jew-hating foreign “activist” who had – off camera, of course, because the enemy controls the camera –just broken two of Eisner’s fingers – is a sorry case in point. The enemy realizes the power of its images, and its capacity to undermine the effectiveness of its adversary by abusing Western doctrines. But they themselves have no such inhibitions. They will chop off the heads of innocent civilians – Daniel Pearl, for one – and triumphantly wave the bloody head aloft, and then moan about the treatment the body parts of their suicide bombers receive?

Give me a break.

Granted that military discipline is important and can even encompass such notions as the treatment of enemy remains. But violations of such should be handled internally, and a gentle reprimand would seem to suffice in the recent Afghani kerfuffle – rather than the artificial concoction of a cause célèbre. We should care more for the innocent victims of the murderers than for the murderers themselves, for whom we should care not at all. That is moral.

Of course, the impression lingers that “we are not like our enemies,” implying that our morality is superior (it is, even if in any other context such a declaration would be repudiated), or that we hold ourselves to a greater moral standard, or that these indecencies give the enemy a pretext to kill. All true, but not at all relevant, especially the latter. The enemy consists of people who have perpetual and unassuageable grievances. Everything and nothing are “pretexts” to murder. If it’s not this, it’s something else. If it’s not something else, then it is nothing at all.

The greatest evil is not identifying true evil and calling it by its name. No one gave a second thought to how Nazis were treated during World War II, and for good reason. They had forfeited the right to be treated as human beings by abandoning human form and character. The mistake the West continues to make – and at its peril – is failing to classify the radical Islamic evil as we did the Nazi evil. They are somewhat different but almost identical in what is most important: their contemptuous attitudes towards life, civilization, justice and human rights.

We should treat them accordingly, and leave our soldiers – American and Israeli – alone to fight this devil to victory.

4 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events

Guard Your Thoughts

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 2 comments

“Not everything that is thought should be said, not everything that is said should be written, and not everything that is written should be published.” Those sentiments, alternately attributed to Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (the Beit HaLevi) or Rav Yisrael Salanter (the founder of the Mussar movement), are powerful reminders to exercise proper safeguards in publishing, writing, speaking – and especially thinking.

Exhibit One was President Obama’s whining about the possibility that the US Supreme Court will overturn his signature takeover of the health care industry in the United States. “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

There are serial untruths in this statement. First, Obama cannot be “confident” at all, or he would not have made such a bizarre, heavy-handed and false declaration. While many have dismissed this brazen attempt at influencing the Court’s decision (make that, Justice Kennedy’s opinion) as nothing of the sort, it has actually been tried before, successfully, and under quite similar circumstances. The New Deal also sought to assert government control over much of the economy, even going so far as having the federal government order kosher butchers to sell only chickens of defined quality to their customers, the famous Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935) in which the Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional the National Industrial Recovery Act, the linchpin of FDR’s New Deal. Justice Brandeis to FDR aides: “This is the end of this business of centralization, and I want you to go back and tell the president that we’re not going to let this government centralize everything.” That argument should strike a familiar chord today.

With his signature achievement tottering by this and other reversals, FDR after his re-election proposed to pack the Court by adding more justices to the Court, up to a maximum of 15, all of whom would be sympathetic to his causes. What thwarted FDR’s plans was not only the fierce objections of the Democratic Congress, but a change in the vote of one justice – Owen Roberts – and then the retirement of another, allowing FDR to replenish the Court with his ideological compatriots. The line of the day was “A switch in time saves nine,” i.e., the switch in one man’s vote saved the Supreme Court as a bench of nine, and that new Court began embracing extensive government regulation of the private sector.

Second untruth: the “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law…” Granted, Obama was only an adjunct professor of Constitutional Law and never published anything of note, but even he must know that the Supreme Court has overturned legislation in excess of 150 times since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Indeed, one of the primary functions of the Supreme Court is to review the constitutionality of both state and federal legislation. “Unprecedented”? “Extraordinary”? Hardly.

Third: “overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

This legislation that purports to give the federal government control over 1/6 of the economy was passed with a bare majority – several votes in the House, and one vote in the Senate – and rushed through with back-room procedural maneuvering because by the time the House voted, the votes in the Senate were lacking. Indeed, there has never been such controversial legislation enacted with smaller majorities.

Add to that the obvious and strange definition of “a democratically elected Congress,” only so Obama could characterize the Supreme Court as “unelected.” Well, yes, the Justices are intentionally unelected so as to free themselves from political pressures. Can Obama’s tactic work? Can Justice Kennedy be swayed? Apparently, he has changed his vote in the past from the initial conference when he voted one way to the final decision – when his changed vote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) saved Roe v. Wade by one – his – vote.

It might happen. And if it does happen, the relationship of the American citizen to his government will fundamentally change. If the government can order people to purchase a private product – health insurance – on the dubious grounds that it is thereby regulating commerce for the good of the public than the government can not only order restaurants to feed the hungry but order the average citizen to help subsidize those restaurants by eating out at least once a week.

The analogy to car insurance fails because only those who drive require auto insurance. The apt analogy would requiring every person – drivers and non-drivers – to pay an automobile insurance fee in order to cover the costs to society of those who drive without insurance.

Was Obama’s challenge to the Court an example of an unguarded thought that passed through the lips without due diligence or a calculated tactic to try to influence the Court after receiving preliminary notice from insiders that he had lost the initial conference vote 5-4? We shall see.

Exhibit Two was the taunt of Democratic operative and veteran liberal Hillary Rosen to Ann Romney that this gallant mother of five “has actually never worked a day in her life.” Ouch. There are few paying jobs that compete with motherhood in the “hard work” department. Even male troglodytes know that. And Rosen followed that arrow with the mealy-mouthed retraction to those (including Mrs. Romney) who were “offended.” In other words, the sentiments remain – it’s the offense caused (not to mention the political fallout) that mandates the apology. A genuine apology would follow the lines of “that was a dumb remark which somehow escaped my lips. I do not believe it, I do not know why I said it, and I am embarrassed for having said it. Obviously, Ann Romney has worked very hard every day of her life, as do all mothers, and their accomplishments in raising well-grounded and decent children is the greatest and most important job in the world. I apologize for stating that “motherhood” is not work.”

Look for the campaign and the Dems to ditch her as soon as it is feasible.

As above, the Baalei Musar even going back to the Talmud noted the slipperiness of words, and how unchecked and unguarded thoughts can cause untold damage. The Sages maintained that we could control our thoughts, and not just our words and our actions. It just takes work and commitment, and practice. Therein lies one of the true measures of perfection.

2 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought

The Ten Lessons

Posted on April 5, 2012 | Comments Off

THE TEN LESSONS

Numerous people have requested that I re-print part of my Shabbat HaGadol Drasha that dealt with “Pesach and Children,” and especially the ten parenting lessons that we can derive from the seder. A fuller exposition is in preparation (long, slow preparation), but I offer this extract in order, I hope, to enhance the seder, the experience of Pesach and the bonds of generations.

Obviously, the essential mitzvah of the night – relating the events of the Exodus from Egypt 3334 years – focuses on our redemption from that house of bondage through G-d’s miracles and wonders, our designation as the Chosen People that led us to receive His Torah at Sinai and to residence in His holy land of Israel. That is primary; beyond that, there are ten lessons for us to ponder as this awesome holiday arrives.

1) The seder is about roles, and life has roles. The roles need not be absolutely fixed, but they need to exist and we blur them at our peril: mother, father, husband, wife, grandfather, grandmother, child, grandchild, guest, friend, the “master of the seder,” the questioner, etc. There is a hierarchy in life, and that hierarchy is apparent at the seder, and when we attempt to transpose the roles in society, we cause damage to the framework. To understand roles is important, because without roles there can be no role models.

2) The seder, with its dialogue, discussion, bridging of generations and the shared experience of holiness can be life-transforming – because parents are there, present and accounted for. That is not always true in many families today, in which children often see a foreign caretaker more than their parents. On Pesach, there is no Abba shel Shabbat or Ima shel Shabbat. The benefits of parents and children eating together are inestimable. Even the average Shabbat has become so busy that it is no longer a day of rest. The seder reminds us of that obligation, and that paradise.

3) The Jewish home is magically transformed on Pesach – everything is new or different, and the home itself glows. It has a majesty that is hard to muster the rest of the year. For all the joys of the hotel, for a child never to experience a Pesach at home is deprivation. On Pesach, our homes are more insulated from outside influences that at any other time during the year. W should appreciate that.

4) At the beginning of the seder, we announce “all who are hungry, let them come and eat.” We may be in our castle, but to truly experience G-d’s blessings we must see beyond ourselves.

5) Every child needs a teacher, and the primary teachers in a child’s life are his/her parents. Education generally must be more than merely memorizing certain facts and rituals, and parents are indispensable in transmitting not necessarily facts but certainly experiences, memories, passion, enthusiasm, depth, and substance. However much we spend on education – and we spend a lot – we can never move too far afield from having primary responsibility for educating our children so they speak of lofty things in the home and on the road, day and night.

6) Each child is different and unique, and so no child should be forced into a mold. There are four models of children in the passage of the “Four Children,” but as the variant texts in the Hagada, the Mechilta and the Yerushalmi – and the very verses in the Torah – all make clear, there is no rigid formula for parenting. The same answer cannot be given to every child, if only because no two children ever ask the same question. The Torah offers us guidelines – but never inflexible formulas. Therefore the dialogue of parent and child must be spontaneous, not formulaic; natural, not contrived. And the most important point that a parent can convey to a Jewish child is that he is a prince and she is a princess, members of a royal people who are expected to behave like royalty (at least the way we like to assume that royalty of old behaved).

7) Life is all about details, and so the seder is therefore filled with details. Knowing one’s child means accumulating an incredible number of minute details and assembling a portrait of where he/she is in life, what his/her needs are, and how best he/she can be directed to the goal. If we don’t make the effort, then we run the risk of treating every child the same, which as sensible as putting every child in the same size suit regardless of their individual dimensions.

8) Our aspirations in life are not – should not be – material acquisitions, honor or social standing. Our aspirations in life should be character, integrity, values, ideals, redemption, and the pursuit of Torah and Mitzvot.

9) The seder is all about delayed gratification (we wait… for the meal, for the Afikoman, etc.), and the demand for instant gratification is destroying children, families, society, and American life as we know it. There is no greater metric of successful parenting than how much children have developed self-control. Pesach, and especially the seder, teach us self-control, about learning how to wait, and about how to enjoy life while waiting.

10) Redemption, too, is a lesson in patience, like the morning star that is briefly seen over the horizon and then fades, only to soon appear in all its glory. The Jewish people live in the present, but we are never weighed down by the present. We are never weighed down by the present because we are a people of history – of eternity – and because we are future-oriented. We have a deep and abiding faith, nurtured by the seder and the historic reality of “in every generation they rise against us to destroy us” that the future will progress as prophesied, and all the complications and obstacles that we fear will dissipate, that “the Holy One, Blessed be He, will save us from their hands,” from Iran’s bombs, from the rising Jew hatred across the globe, and even from “friends” who would love us to death.

We are an eternally hopeful people, and our children are the very foundation of that hope.

There is much more that was said and that could be said. For now, may we fully grasp the divine trust of children that has been given to us and raise them for the glory of G-d and the sublime destiny of the Jewish people. And together may we soon walk as families and ascend