In support of Israel

 Dear Friends and Family,

The rally for Israel was canceled today out of safety considerations.

These are remarks I would have like to have heard at the rally.

Today is Simchat Torah, the celebration of the completion of the reading of the Torah, and the start of reading the Torah again, from the beginning. This circularity of time, the hallmark of Judaism.

It is fitting that we are gathered hear to today in solidarity with Israel. The Torah reminds us that hatred towards Jews, and the cruel and wonton murder of Jews is as old as biblical times. The Torah teaches that in each generation, amalekites will arise, to cowardly attack from behind, in order to slaughter the most vulnerable, defenseless Jews – the young, the infirm, and the elderly. From Haman, to Hitler to Hamas, the pattern repeats.

So far, 700 innocent civilian souls have been slaughtered by Hamas, and an untold number of civilians and soldiers in captivity, undoubtedly undergoing the most inhumane, brutal torture. Right now, because of the unprovoked and unprecedented murder of innocents, the civilized world stands in solidarity with Israel.

Yet if past is prologue, voices will soon ring out, condemning Israel, for the loss of Palestinian lives, cruelly used by Hamas as human shields, for propaganda purposes. Some in the media are already laying the groundwork for anti-Israel sentiment. Some are no longer reporting the loss of human lives in Israel, but instead are reporting the combined loss of lives of Israelis and Palestinians. This morning, on CNN, Thomas Freidman, a reporter for the New York Times, blamed Israel, not Hamas, for the current conflict. Mr Freidman proclaimed that the number one person he would indict for the war between Israel and Hamas is a member of the right wing Israeli government.

What Mr. Freidman does not understand or accept is that anti-Semites do not murder Jews because of some provocation. Anti-Semites murder Jews, because they are Jews, because they hate Jews.

This will be a long battle. It will be violent and bloody. Undoubtedly the images coming from this war will be disturbing. This time the Jewish community around the world must speak with one voice in support of Israel to give it the time needed to fully accomplish its mission.

In biblical times it was God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm that defeated the enemies of Israel. This time it will be Israel’s mighty hand and outstretched arm that will rid the world of the scourge of Hamas, relegating it to the dustbin of history alongside Haman, Hitler, and all others who sought the destruction of the Jewish people.

Am Yisrael Chai. Israel lives, and it will always be so.

                                What To Do About Trump

Sadly, our country is once again bitterly divided.  This time because of felony charges brought against former President Trump.  The most serious of which are willful retention of national security documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Democrat leaders and Republican leaders have competing narratives in framing the significance of the charges. Democrats state, no one is above the law. Republicans state, targeted prosecution. There are facts supporting each narrative, and no leader has come forward to provide guidance on a wise and reasonable way forward.

Unlike in other instances where allegations, or investigations, or charges were brought against Trump, the current charges are serious, and substantiated by a wealth of concrete evidence. Eye witnesses, and recordings of Trump himself, verify that former President Trump knowingly kept the country’s most important State secrets, and deceptively avoided returning these documents when subpoenaed by the DOJ. These top secret, classified documents, in the hands of our adversaries could imperil the lives of our service members and put the nation at risk.

And no, despite the former President’s assertions, the Presidential Records Act (PRA) does not give ownership of the highly classified Department of Defense documents to the former President. The PRA relates to those documents created by the former President during his time in office, not to documents created nation’s government agencies.

On the other hand, there is good reason for die-hard Trump supporters to be suspicious of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the intelligence agencies, because of past efforts to undermine his presidency in his first term in office, and his candidacy for a second term in office.  The first half of his presidency was dogged by allegations of Russian collusion.  Ultimately Special Counsel Mueller vindicated Trump of this allegation. The Mueller investigation found no evidence of communication between anyone and Russian officials to undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. The Steele dossier which formed the basis for the FBI’s investigation of the Russian collusion theory was discredited as bogus opposition research, paid for by the Clinton campaign to frame the Trump campaign.

The intelligence community nefariously tipped the scales in favor of the 2020 Biden campaign.  Three weeks before the 2020 election day, the New York Post published a devastating front page story about emails from a Hunter Biden laptop, which implicated a pay for play corruption scheme involving Joe Biden when he was Vice-President.  Shortly thereafter 50 members of the intelligence community signed a letter stating that the NY Post article had all the markings of a Russian disinformation scheme.  Later, after the election was over, various news outlets verified the authenticity of the laptop and its emails.

Every prosecutor has discretion regarding investigating and charging a crime. Without debating the comparability of the ways in which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump mishandled classified information, there are glaring ways in which the norms of an FBI investigation were not followed when it came to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was never placed under oath when interviewed by the FBI, notes were not taken during the interview, Clinton deleted thousands, of what she deemed personal emails, without FBI oversight, and was allowed to get away with destroying potential evidence from her work blackberry, before the FBI had an opportunity to examine it.

Yes, what Trump did was egregious and outrageous and worthy of prosecution. Yet in the court of public opinion there are many who think that there is a double standard when it comes to Trump, and that, well, the charges are trumped up. The country is already divided and this will only add to the divisiveness.

A wise Attorney General would have considered the effect on the country of the prosecution, particularly in view of the past misconduct on the part of the DOJ and FBI towards Trump, and the devious manipulation by the intelligence community to defuse a damning allegation against Biden in the 2020 election.

A wise course would have been for the special counsel to release a report, with documentation, on all the facts of Trump's outrageous and dangerous behavior. Then, leave it to the public decide if such a man is worthy of being elected President. Particularly since, despite Trump’s reckless behavior, no harm came to the US. None of the top secret documents were ever disseminated, let alone fell into the hands of the nation’s enemies.

Lincoln understood the importance of healing steps when the country was even more torn apart than today. There were many in his party that called for punitive action against the secessionist states. His second inaugural address was his vision of how to put the country back together after the North defeated the South. Here is the last paragraph of that address. They are such wise words:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."