Biden’s Dangerous Failures
On Oct. 7, the world witnessed the brutal, savage attack on the people of Israel by a terrorist organization fueled with hate and funded by Iran. Eyewitness accounts of the inhumane slaughter of babies, children, women, seniors and innocent bystanders have filled our media airways. We watched the atrocious crimes against humanity that were perpetrated by the Hamas terrorists.
Israel must neutralize Hamas. Their army of terror that kidnaps and massacres civilians must be destroyed swiftly to send a strong message to their puppet master, Iran. This is a war for humanity and the safety and security of the Israeli people. It is also an opportunity for the freedom-loving world to send a clear message to Hamas and to all of the terrorist organizations supported by Iran that we recognize the danger the Iranian regime and its proxies present and will not be intimidated by it.
Today, Iran’s target is the people of Israel; tomorrow, the world. If Israel doesn’t act, the Iranian-backed organization, Hamas, will become more dangerous, entrenched, and emboldened to commit worse acts of terror. Make no mistake: As long as Iran empowers its proxies to commit barbaric attacks such as the ones we saw unfold on Oct. 7, the entire free world is a target and in danger. This is why Americans need to care. While the ugliness of war echoes through our media over the coming weeks and months, America must stand tall for humanity and stand beside the people of Israel.
Hamas only knows one language: death and destruction. These monsters hide weapons in schools and hospitals and use women and children as human shields. They continue to fire hundreds of missiles at innocent Israeli civilians, knowing that many will misfire and kill their own people.
The United States and its president, the leader of the free world, have an obligation not just to condemn Hamas’s attacks, which have claimed the lives of at least 32 Americans, but to point out how the attacks were made possible in the first place. Multiple reports confirm Iran’s involvement in the attack, including one that revealed Hamas’s terrorists to have been trained in Iran in the weeks leading up to Oct. 7. Yet President Joe Biden has yet to name Iran directly.
Biden has also failed to give the public hope that we will get our hostages out of Gaza. Nor has he clearly defined his priorities as to how to address the evil that Hamas unleashed on American citizens in the region.
President Dwight Eisenhower and President Ronald Reagan gave us “peace through strength,” but Joe Biden continues to give us wars through weakness.
Iran has played Joe Biden like a cheap fiddle. As it watches to see the American response, Biden has shown no leadership. He has remained silent on Iran’s aggression with minimalistic reaction to the attacks on American troops in the region and to a large extent turning a blind eye to the “head of the snake” and its religious war on the free world.
Worse, his policies have enabled and even encouraged Iran’s aggression. Besides enabling the development of Iran’s nuclear weapon program, his policies have allowed Iranian reserves to grow from $6 billion to $60 billion and the sale of Iranian oil to climb to $1 billion a week. Under the Biden administration, Iran believes it has no red lines, and I am afraid they may be right.
Biden rightly continues to say he supports Israel. But it is impossible unequivocally to support our ally while also empowering the regime determined to destroy it. We cannot be apathetic toward a nation that screams death to Israel and death to America.
Without a clear message to Iran and its puppets, they will escalate their attacks on Israel and all humankind. Very clearly, Biden must communicate to Iran and its marionettes our policy, our priorities, and our mission. America stands beside Israel unequivocally and supports its efforts to eliminate Hamas. We demand the safe return of all American hostages now. And the administration must immediately reemploy and enforce harsh sanctions on Iran, cutting off its revenue streams and holding it responsible for any of its proxies’ actions.
We cannot fail. The future, not only of Israel but of the free world, is at stake.
Brian Goldenfeld
Oak Park, Calif.
Radical Indoctrination to Blame
The horrendous savagery of the massacre committed by the barbaric Hamas monsters exposed for all to see the psychopathic Judeophobia that has been lying dormant for decades.
Hamas’s slaughter was the spark that brought this ugly Jew-hatred to the surface. Some ominous and disturbing trends that have been evident over the last 50 years have reached a critical mass, and now we are witnessing an explosion.
The Muslim population in the West, including the United States, has vastly increased by immigration, and many of them are virulently antisemitic. According to columnist Don Feder, “Now the West is allowing mass migration from the Muslim world. And the terrorists who committed unspeakable atrocities in Israel are infiltrating our borders.”
Radical Islam and the radical Left have formed a very dangerous unholy alliance against the Jewish people. This unholy alliance has wormed its way into Western culture, the news media, the unions, the legal profession, Hollywood, and especially our education institutions. Over the past few decades, America’s children and young adults have been brainwashed and indoctrinated, beginning with the colleges and universities but now penetrating into the K-12 levels of our educational system. The widespread protests and demonstrations we are now witnessing against Israel and the Jews are a manifestation of this indoctrination.
I believe that maximum political, economic and moral pressure must be brought to bear on our government leaders and on leaders of various institutions. Our educational institutions must be purged of this anti-Israel and Judeophobic rot before it is too late. For self-protection, the Jewish community must become gun owners and train well in the use of firearms. In the fight against antisemitism and anti-Israel hatred, anything and everything is fair. This is not a time for piccolos. This is a time for trumpets!
Jerry Zolton
Hermitage, Pa.
More Clarity, Please
In the October 13 issue of The Jewish Press, the article, “Is It Proper…?” discusses whether children must always listen to his/her parents. Most of the responses from the rabbis were spot on, but I feel they could have been clearer and more specific in their responses.
Rabbi Klass mentions a discussion in Gemara (Kiddushin 32a) where honoring your parents would conflict with other mitzvot. Is Rabbi Klass saying that children should not listen to their parents if they tell the children to violate Shabbat or Yom Tov or to eat traif?
Rabbi Shafier mentions “that there are certain situations where halacha allows a child not to abide by a parent’s decisions.” But those circumstances should be examined on a case-by-case basis. Rabbi Shafier could have elaborated further as to what he meant by that statement. Instead, he wrote generally about how society in general has lost respect for our elders. Rabbi Shafier seems to say that if the relationships between parents, children and authority figures aren’t beneficial for the children, then the children should get away from those “toxic” relationships.
I wish the rabbis had clearly stated when a child can respectfully not do what a parent says and when the child should listen to his/her parents.
Harold Rose
Via Email
True Foundation of Civilized Life
At the end of September, Gerald Baker wrote in a Wall Street Journal article titled The New Moral Order is Already Crumbling: “Over the past 30 years, the values of the Judeo-Christian belief(s) that had inspired and sustained Western civilization and culture for centuries have been steadily replaced in a ‘moral,’ cultural and political revolution of the postmodern ascendancy.”
Baker says that the new edifice has been built around three principal pillars, in brief: Globalism, climate-change alarmism and cultural self-annihilation. All have all come under serious challenges.
In contrast, the foundation of Judeo-Christian values was set over 3,000 years ago when the Torah was given to our people: 613 eternal commandments, of which about 66 are relevant to the moral functioning of a civilized world.
Our Rabbis in the first chapter of Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avos) instructed three pillars of civilization: “On three principles the world maintains its existence: on the study of the Torah; the fulfillment of its commandments including cultivating the land and construction; and the practice of kind acts.”
Further, “On three principals the world is maintained: On justice, truth and peace…’”
Both Rabbis comment that the world exists on three foundations. However, (Meiri) comments that the first three relate to the very existence of the world, while the latter on daily moral equanimity, without which chaos (G-d forbid) would prevail.
The Founding Fathers of America left Europe to establish a country bound by strict moral standards. G-d left us with His Guidebook. It’s our duty to maintain its laws.
Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Tanny
Montreal, Canada
