By Roger L Simon
Last week Donald Trump created a bit of a brouhaha—doesn’t he always?—when he spoke to the Israeli-American Council in Washington regarding the Jewish vote.
The former president made two statements I question to some degree but I heartily agree with his overall conclusion, as excessive as it may seem to some, that Jews that do no vote for him are crazy.
Perhaps it would be better put in the mother tongue and say they are meshugga.
My qualification, such as it is, for saying that is I am Jewish and eighty years old, so have been a Jewish voter now for nearly sixty years. For forty or so of those years I voted for the Democratic Party candidate no matter who he or she was. I have to admit I did this blindly. It was a habit, not all that distant from smoking, which I was able to avoid more easily.
In this century I have voted for Republicans, not because I have become a Republican. I find orthodox party politics noxious, frequently duplicitous and subject to change. Nevertheless, by the start of this century and even more with the candidacy of Barack Obama, it became clear to me that the Democratic Party was no longer what it was, but had become a rallying ground not just, obviously, for anti-Israel/antisemitic propaganda, but also for anti-American and even anti-Western Civilization thinking and policies.
I will get back to this in more detail but first the statements I question lightly. With Mr. Trump it’s usually a question of rhetoric. His policies are most always spot on. In this case he alleges that if he loses in 2024, it will be, at least in part, because of the Jewish vote of which, according to a poll he cited, he currently has 40%, up from 29% in 2020 and 25% in 2016.
He believes he deserves a much higher percentage because of all he has done for Israel—the Abraham Accords, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights and, most of all, imposing sanctions on Iran while pulling out of the senseless nuclear deal. He also mentioned that he has Jewish children and grandchildren.
He makes a good case that he has been the most pro-Israel president ever, with the possible exception of Harry Truman who recognized the state.
But whether his percentage all adds up to the Jews being the lynchpin of the election, as he claims, is unknowable at this point and possibly ever, although it seems it could be important particularly in Pennsylvania. I give him a pass on this one.
But another statement Trump made I found to be hyperbolic. He claimed that if he lost and Kamala Harris became president Israel would be gone in two years.
That makes little sense. At this moment, Israel has practically obliterated Gaza (due to the insane actions of Hamas one of whose billionaire leaders was just blown up by Israel inside what is supposedly the most secure district in Tehran) and is making things incredibly difficult for the equally insane Hezbollah that just lost the use of roughly 3000 of its key fighters who have been maimed or killed in the pager incident, not to mention destroying the leadership of their Radwan Force.
Moreover, it’s worth remembering—I’m sure the mullahs do—that Israel has been a nuclear power for decades with a healthy supply of its own home made ICBMs that can reach their country with ease. Depending on the source, Israel has a many as 400 nuclear weapons (more than France and the UK), many targeted on Tehran. Some say they had rigged a system to put an atom bomb on Moscow as early as the 1960s as a warning to the Soviets.
Would they use these armaments if threatened existentially? Why wouldn’t they?
The IDF, the IAF, the Mossad and the Israeli people themselves are not going to let their country disappear in two years.
But despite the conventional shrieking of the MSM and the so-called “influencers”, Trump does have a point buried not far in his hyperbole. Israel will have a much more difficult time, to put it mildly, fending off its enemies if Ms. Harris is elected. She will undoubtedly behave like President Biden, withholding weapons and playing games with Israeli leadership while demanding ceasefires that would preserve Hamas, Hezbollah and, of course, Iran, ultimately playing to their benefit.
The war will be prolonged and many more people will die on both sides. Israel will have a miserable time and Lebanon will have a worse one. Gaza is already decimated. Who knows what will happen to Yemen and Iran? You could even make an argument that down the line the Jewish state could be extinguished, but not in two years, if the malign policies of the Obama and Biden administrations (really the same thing) are continued through eight years of Kamala Harris.
The reasons for this are so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to have to explain them once again. But it all began during the administration of Barack H. Obama, the man who ignored the brave freedom demonstrators in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities in favor of negotiating a useless nuclear deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obama, as an inducement, lifted sanctions on Iran, even added a small fortune—$400 million— under the radar in cash. Two days later he sweetened the deal with another $1.3 billion.
The mullahs were supposed to use this money to help their impoverished people. Obama, who is not an idiot, could not have possibly believed that, but for reasons too depressing to write about went ahead.
Fortunately, Trump was elected in 2016 and reimposed sanctions on Iran and pulled out of the nuclear deal. We all know what happened. No war in the Middle East. Four years of peace. (No Ukraine War either.).
Then, Joe Biden comes in, lifts the sanctions, the mullahs make untold billions on oil and ship the spoils to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and all those ever-changing terror outfits scattered across Iraq and Syria and we have years of carnage with rapes, kidnappings, endless deaths with no end in sight.
Does that sound too simple, even stupid?
That’s because it is.
What’s not simple is why our administration actually gave the Iranians the money to do this.
For that matter, why did we, the Europeans and a world of NGOs, not to mention the UN almost most of all, ship billions to Hamas so they could build the Gaza Metro under the homes, schools and hospitals of their impoverished citizens in order to destroy Israel and kill all Jews as required in their original charter?
But leave all that alone for the moment. Why do so-called “liberal” Jews still vote for this nonsense? To me, and I hate to say this, there is something wrong with many of them. They are not liberal in the slightest as that word was once defined. They are living in a time warp. They are conformists following a tradition that most were born into for generations without thinking for themselves in any depth about the issues before them.
One explanation is that many of them are no longer really Jews. Israel is an embarrassment to them and they would prefer to assimilate into American society without being blamed for the activities, pro and con, of a nation far away. That’s one way to live, I suppose, but the most cursory knowledge of World War II tells us the Nazis made no distinction between atheist communists, bourgeois businessmen and devout Hasidim when they pushed the Jews on the cattle cars to Auschwitz.
The same attitude is being replicated on our college campuses today. No one is immune.
Meanwhile, many Jewish families are split as never before. Nearly everyone has relatives that hate Trump. What’s fascinating is that when you ask them what policies of the 45th president they dislike, you rarely get a concrete answer. Well some, mainly women, shout abortion (!), but when queried are uniformly unaware of Trump’s moderate stance on the subject that basically replicates that of the European Union. Mostly, they just can’t stand him personally, his mean tweets and so forth. When I ask what they dislike other than his personality, I get blank stares.
Many of these people are cowards, afraid to alienate friends and family or lose jobs and status. Others have personality disorders as do people in all faiths. Still others—largely in the academy, entertainment or media—have adopted the latest avatar of marxism, from Frankfurt School to woke, in the juvenile belief that finally one of these approaches will work and allow them to live a life free of moral strictures. But Abbie Hoffman is dead. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago lives on.
Above all, for a great many of these people, the Democratic Party long ago became a religion replacement. And when you confuse a political party with a religion, you’re in trouble. So is your country.
I would say to these people that there is no time like the present to grow up, but the truth is bleaker. According to the great medieval Talmudic scholar Rashi, only twenty percent of the Jews left Egypt during the Exodus. The rest preferred to live in the slavery they knew. This tells us something not only about Jews but about all human nature. Most people abhor change, even if it means remaining in slavery of whatever sort. This makes it hard to be optimistic.
Apropos, pollster Nate Silver is warning his liberal allies to prepare themselves psychologically for a Trump victory in what is currently a 50-50 election. We on the other side should do the reverse. (That doesn’t mean you should give up. Some will vote Trump and keep it a secret forever.)
First published in American Refugees
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One Response
“But another statement Trump made I found to be hyperbolic. He claimed that if he lost and Kamala Harris became president Israel would be gone in two years.”
I think what Trump means is that a Harris administration – Obama’s fourth – will allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If that is the case, Iran’s IRGC general’s have said Israel is a “one bomb country.” Let’s make it two bomb country for argument’s sake: Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They are now obliterated. Then Israel somehow obliterates Iran. That is too late.
The IDF General Staff is totally Woke as is the Media, educational institutions, media with a few exceptions, the Judiciary and virtually every other institution in Israel. They totally bungled October 7th by totally ignoring months of warnings from their own “tatzpitaniyot” – the IDF’s front line observers of Gaza. What is to say when confronted with Iran having nukes that they wait instead of obliterating Iran. That is also too late.
The Harris administration would likely try to prevent any attack by Israel that tried to take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But Israel has to keep in mind Sanhedrin 72a-b:
“In fact, one important rule taught by the Talmud is ha-ba le-horgekha, hashkem le-horgo – if someone comes planning to kill you, you should hurry to kill him first.”
If you were to say, “but Iran will suffer and be destroyed.” Just remember that in the 1945 to 1992 period the USSR and the US had mutually assured destruction. Then remember what
Bernard Lewis said about Iran having nukes – Wall Street Journal – August 8, 2006
“A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. “I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.”
“In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead — hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.”
If you think that Israel has not thought of this scenario or something similar then read this book: “The Last Israelis: an Apocalyptic Military Thriller about an Israeli Submarine and a Nuclear Iran Paperback – May 6, 2013”
Great article by Roger Simon. I pray for his version – and not my musings concerning Israel’s predicament and Iran’s evil suicidal intentions – is the correct one.