Free Consultation
As I do every year at this time, I am offering a free telephone consultation to any parent whose child is not yet registered in a yeshiva/say school or Bais Yaakov.
Interested parents can call 718-758-9213 and leave a message. I will return your calls.
Dr. Joel S. Rosenshein
(Via e-Mail)
Editor’s Note: Dr. Rosenshein is a noted psychologist.
Meaningful Tisha B’Av Gathering
Kol hakovod to Jewish Press readers who braved heat-index temperatures above 100 degrees to join our most meaningful Tisha B’Av Minchah at the Isaiah Wall on behalf of Israel and Jews in danger worldwide.
The eloquent, pointed remarks by Shimon Mercer-Wood, the young dati spokesman for the Israeli Consulate, stirred our souls.
Glenn Richter
Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns
Presidential Politics (I)
I’m really getting tired of some of Donald Trump’s Jewish partisans continually referring to the Hillary Clinton/Suha Arafat embrace that occurred way back in 1999.
Clinton was listening to a translation of the speech on headphones. She said afterward that the translator did not convey Arafat’s claim that Israel was poisoning Palestinian wells, and that had she known Arafat made that accusation, she (Hillary) would have immediately condemned it.
Let’s remember the context: Hillary had just declared her candidacy for the U.S. Senate from New York. The last thing someone running for that office would do would be to embrace someone who had just made an awful, untrue claim about Israel. So there’s no reason not to believe her.
As first lady of the United States visiting Ramallah in 1999, Hillary had little choice but to give Suha a brief hug. Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu all shook Yasir Arafat’s bloodstained hands but people claim to have a problem with Hillary having given Arafat’s wife a brief hug?
After Hillary won a decisive victory in her Senate race (she would be reelected to a second term six years later in an even bigger landslide), she was universally praised for being one of Israel’s strongest defenders in Congress.
As for Hillary’s husband, poll after poll in Israel, during his presidency and in the years since, show him to be the most popular U.S. president of all time among Israelis.
Yerachmiel Gordon
Via E-Mail
Presidential Politics (II)
While reading Paul Kengor’s op-ed last week (“Trump’s Approach to Russia Is Weak and Dangerous”), I had one question throughout: Why does Dr. Kengor consider Russia a grave enemy of the United States? Why this obsession with Vladimir Putin?
Putin is no saint, but he is no Stalin either. Remember: the reason Russia was America’s enemy for 70 years is not because Russians are particularly evil people. It’s because Russia belonged to the Soviet Union, which was ideologically committed to exporting communism to the Western world. That commitment entailed undermining all capitalist countries – especially the United States, the symbol of the capitalist West.
The Cold War, though, ended in 1991. Putin may be a mini dictator, but he poses no threat to our country. Worst-case scenario is that he yearns to reign over a “Greater Russia” that includes all his country’s old territories (e.g., Latvia, Lithuania, etc.).
Even if that were true, though, that does not make him America’s enemy. Putin poses no threat to the United States or Western Europe, and its sheer lunacy to pretend otherwise.
If Dr. Kengor wasn’t so focused on criticizing Trump, perhaps he’d spend more time worrying about real threats to this country, such as radical Islam and China – threats Trump takes seriously but which our elected officials have ignored for far too long.
Dr. Kengor would then realize that Putin could actually be our ally in the fight against radical Islam, which threatens Russia as well. Indeed, if the radical jihadists lose in Syria, we will largely have Russia to thank for that.
Joshua Bernstein
(Via E-Mail)
Presidential Politics (III)
Donald Trump’s outright lie – which he repeated endlessly last week even after being told it was absolutely untrue – that President Obama founded ISIS was just the latest in the long series of misstatements, exaggerations, and falsehoods he’s told over the past year.
In fact, Obama organized a coalition of countries to fight ISIS and has launched more than 10,000 air strikes against ISIS targets. Does Trump even know that? Do his followers know that?
And do they know that in 2007, when George W. Bush was president, Trump actually supported a rapid withdrawal from Iraq – the very thing he’s now condemning Obama for doing several years later?
Back then, Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “You know how they get out? That’s how they get out. Declare victory and leave, because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down. They’re in a civil war over there, Wolf. There’s nothing that we’re going to be able to do with a civil war. They are in a major civil war.”
And yet Trump’s supporters insist he is an exemplar of honesty who “tells it like it is.” It would be funny if it weren’t so potentially dangerous for our country.
Yoel Geller
(Via E-Mail)
What Would You Do?
Questions for European leaders and our own John Kerry:
Would you meet with an adjacent neighbor if –
* they possessed many thousands missiles and their three major political parties had formal charters and a constitution calling for your destruction?
* their TV programs taught their people that the area of your country and their country are part of a “WAQF” which is a religious expression meaning it is a sacred area, and that not one grain of soil can belong to anyone else?
* they signed a prior agreement with you requiring them to annul clauses in their charter calling for your destruction in exchange for your conveyance of land to them – and while you did comply with your obligation, they in fact changed not one word of their charter?
* they honored as martyrs terrorists who murdered civilians of your country and almost daily incited their people against yours?
* they stated words of peace in your language and said exactly the opposite in their own language?
William K. Langfan
Palm Beach FL
