Clinton emails show visceral hatred for Michael Oren
I've been arguing on social media for the last few days that we ought to be focusing on the contents of both Hillary Clinton's and the Democratic National Committee's emails, and not on how they came to light. At the end of the day, what's in the emails is far more important than Donald Trump trolling the Russians to release them (and he may well be correct that the Russians already have them).
In that light, I'd like to discuss some of what's come to light about Hillary Clinton's relationship with Israel as Secretary of State, and particularly about her relationship with Michael Oren, who was the Israeli ambassador to the United States during her tenure at the State Department.
In his book, Ally, Oren writes that during his first six months in Washington, he could not get a meeting with Clinton. It's perhaps indicative of that relationship that when I tried Googling "Clinton Oren" and "Hillary Clinton Michael Oren" in Google Images, the picture above was the only one I found that had the two of them in it together. There were several pictures of Oren with Barack Obama and of Prime Minister Netanyahu with Clinton, but only one of Oren and Clinton together.
This was not Oren's imagination, as Haaretz reported about a year ago from an earlier release of Clinton emails:
On December 10, 2009, about six months after Oren took up his position in Washington, Brian Greenspun sent an email to the private account of then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking her to check why her staff was not allowing the Israeli ambassador to meet her. It’s isn’t clear whether Oren was the one who asked Greenspun to intervene.
Greenspun is publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and was Bill Clinton’s old college roommate. He even raised money for him in Nevada when Clinton was president. According to various reports, in January 2001, a few weeks before the end of the president’s term, Greenspun also asked Clinton to grant a pardon to the founder of Israel Aerospace Industries, Al Schwimmer, for his role in smuggling U.S. planes to Israel in 1950.
“Hi Hillary,” writes Greenspun in the short message, parts of which were redacted before it was released for publication. Greenspun writes that rumor has it that the Israeli ambassador was unsuccessfully trying to arrange a meeting with the secretary of state.
He says he can’t imagine why her staff would keep Oren away from her and offered his help if there was any problem.
Why did Hillary keep Oren away? Rabbi Shmuely Boteach connects it to Oren's refusal to speak at the first J Street conference in 2009.
Furthermore, a flurry of email communications from July 2012 surrounded
Hannah Rosenthal, who served from 2009 to 2012 as special envoy to
monitor and combat anti-Semitism for the Obama administration. After
three years in this position, news broke that Rosenthal had accepted a
position as president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. However, she
faced harsh criticism from sectors of the Jewish community for her past
views toward Israel. The exchange in these released emails from Hilary’s
server showed that the administration was very concerned about this
opposition and planned on how best to counteract it, with long-time aide
Huma Abedin keeping Clinton apprised.
Rosenthal had previously
served on the board of directors of the anti-Israel J Street. She was
also on the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now – an
organization that advocates for a total BDS-style boycott of Judea and
Samaria and its settlements. Yes, this was the person hand-picked by the
White House with Clinton’s blessing to fight anti-Semitism.
The
protests of Rosenthal’s appointment to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation
post stemmed in part from her associations with these anti-Israel
groups.
We know that Rosenthal has been a major supporter of
Hillary Clinton for the past 20 years and was appointed and served under
the Bill Clinton administration in a top-level position in the
Department of Health and Human Services.
In a speech of July 13,
2010, Hillary Clinton praised Rosenthal’s appointment to combat
anti-Semitism, saying, “I have known Hannah for more than 20 years and
we have worked over those 20 years on issues that are near and dear to
both of us.” She went on to say, “We know we have a big challenge ahead
of us, but I was thrilled when Hannah agreed to take this position...”
Yet
just a few months earlier, Rosenthal’s first denunciation in her new
role was not against anti-Semitism but shockingly against ambassador
Michael Oren.
Oren had recently turned down the offer to be the
keynote speaker at J Street’s inaugural conference in December 2009,
saying that the policies and approaches of J Street toward Israel were
“fooling around with the lives of 7 million people.”
Rosenthal,
no doubt offended at the refusal, broke protocol in an uncharacteristic
attack on Oren, condemning his comments, and calling his approach to J
Street “most unfortunate,” saying that he “would have learned a lot” if
he had attended the conference.
Supporting J Street, boycotting Judea and Samaria, and condemning
Michael Oren. Was this the basis of Hillary’s support for Rosenthal?
Rosenthal faced criticism from a number of Jewish groups for her words.
Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations, summed up the unusual and inappropriate nature of
Rosenthal’s comments. “As an official of the United States government,
it is inappropriate for the anti-Semitism envoy to be expressing her
personal views on the positions ambassador Oren has taken, as well as on
the subject of who needs to be heard from in the Jewish community.”
The Israeli government released a statement that said in part, “We received Ms. Rosenthal’s statements as reported in Haaretz with astonishment and surprise.”
The Obama administration tried to reassure Israel that these comments did not represent State Department policy.
Unfortunately,
the truth is that based on everything we have seen in these email
dumps, this is precisely what the State Department’s policy was.
Drawing on Clinton's emails, Boteach describes some of the paranoia in the State Department's treatment of Oren.
In one email, [Sidney] Blumenthal sent an article from the notoriously
anti-Israel website Mondoweiss, which has long trolled me on the
Internet, and which duplicitously implied with empty insinuations that
Oren had planted a false story about a joint US-Israel Iran strike in a
plot to manipulate US policy.
On another occasion, Blumenthal sent two articles written by his
anti-Semitic son, the notorious Israel-hater Max Blumenthal, which
implied Oren was conspiring with Benjamin Netanyahu to derail the peace
process.
Sidney Blumenthal derisively emailed Hillary about
Oren’s untrustworthiness writing, “[T]he New Republic is a preferred
outlet for the highest level Likud/neocon propaganda. Michael Oren, a
channel for Israeli intel, was a frequent contributor in the past.”
He
also sent an email describing rumors from his journalist son Paul, who
claimed to have heard that “Oren raced around the West Wing searching
for Barack [Obama], opening doors and looking in rooms.
[Then-US national security adviser Thomas] Donilon heard about
Oren’s frantic snooping and raced after him, catching him, and escorted
him out. Apocryphal? True?” Hillary responds to the email, “Doubt that
it happened, but, these days, who knows???”
In the entire forced dump of her emails, you will be hard-pressed to
find a single note that is sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any
of the people she trusted. The negative, poisonous approach Ms. Clinton
established demonstrates that a huge segment of her close advisers and
confidants were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Netanyahu,
and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria
at all costs.
This was occurring in the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza
withdrawal, which led to the takeover of the Strip by Hamas. There is
almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in
withdrawing, as Ms. Clinton and the Obama Administration did everything
they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.
Read some of the emails cited by Boteach in that article. Appalling.
One doesn't need much imagination to conclude that a Clinton administration's relationship with Israel would be no better than the Obama administration's relationship with Israel over the last eight years, especially so long as Binyamin Netanyahu is Prime Minister.
That's one lesson we should all be learning from the Clinton emails.
Timing of Schumer announcement shocked White House, Senate colleagues now not sure an Obama veto would be sustained
In case you missed it earlier this week, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has serious doubts that the Senate has the votes to override an inevitable veto of a resolution disapproving President Hussein Obama's nuclear sellout to Iran. McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader and as such should be the guy leading the fight to override that veto. Forgive me for saying this but if the Senate fails to override the veto, McConnell should be removed as Senate Majority Leader.
It seems that the Senate Democrats and the White House are in a panic over Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) announcing his opposition to the sellout. It's not that they didn't expect it - they did. It's the timing that got to them. And the announcement that Schumer will vote to override the Presidential veto. And the hints that Schumer will - despite his calling it a vote of conscience - work to convince his Senate colleagues to vote against Obama.
But the White House and some of Schumer’s Democratic colleagues strongly
urged him not to announce his opposition until late August or early
September. Republican leaders have set a vote in mid-September on a
resolution to disapprove of the deal. Should that resolution pass, Obama
has vowed to veto it. In a move that also surprised his colleagues,
Schumer said that he would vote to override Obama’s veto as well. As
another Senate staff member told me, “It is protocol, if you’re a member
of the leadership who is going to oppose your President on a major
issue like this, that you not do so in a way that is going to undercut
the President and give the President’s opponents fodder to use against
him.” Matt House, a spokesman for Schumer, responded in an e-mail,
“Senator Schumer was pressed both on the right and the left on the
timing of his decision, but said from the very beginning that after
careful deliberation, when he made up his mind, he would announce his
decision publicly and explain the reasoning. He finished deliberating on
that Wednesday afternoon, wrote his statement that evening, and
published it soon after.”
...
After Gillibrand’s announcement, pro-deal forces were ebullient. The tide was strong. Some enjoyed imagining a panic at AIPAC.
According to several Senate aides, they believed they were close to
having enough votes to block Republicans on the resolution of
disapproval itself, so that it would never reach the President and he
wouldn’t have to exercise his veto. But hours later Schumer posted his
decision online, in the form of a sixteen-hundred-word essay. “What
Schumer has done now, unfortunately, is that he has made what was within
realistic reach super-difficult,” the first Senate aide said. “By
coming out so early, before recess, it’s been really detrimental to the
cause of the President and other Senate Democrats who want to be in
favor of this deal, because now he’s given a lot of time for senators on
the fence to be hit with political attacks like, ‘Why aren’t you where
Schumer is? He’s leading; why are you so weak?’ ” The aide continued,
“If he wanted to be helpful, as future leader of the caucus, he could
have waited. He personally would have had to withstand pressure back
home, in exchange for helping out his colleagues. Instead, he said, I’m
going to take the pressure off myself and put the pressure on my
colleagues.”
On Saturday, that dynamic played out in a full-page ad in the Times—the
first, but surely not the last. Featuring side-by-side images of
Schumer and Senator Cory Booker, the ad demanded, “Senator Cory Booker:
Will you join Senator Schumer and reject the catastrophic Iran deal?” It
implored Booker to do so “before Iranian nukes kill millions of
Americans.” Among those who funded the ad was the World Values Network,
whose executive director, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, is a longtime close
friend of Booker but, evidently, not loath to exert intense public
pressure. Booker is viewed as undecided.
As of
today, twenty Democratic senators have come out in favor of the deal; a
total of thirty-four are needed to sustain the President’s veto. “It’s
still very much an open question whether we can sustain a veto,” a third
Senate aide said. “It will depend on how hard the deal is whipped
against within the caucus.” Schumer, by nature an aggressive whip, known
for his “full Chuck Schumer” style, is working against Durbin, who
chose not to try to contest Reid’s endorsement of Schumer for leader.
Schumer’s statements on the subject of his whipping, or not, have been
ambiguous. A relentless phone canvasser, he has acknowledged he is
making calls to members. “I will certainly share my view and try to
persuade them that the vote to disapprove is the right one,” he said, in
what might constitute a definition of whipping, but he added that, in
the Senate, members make up their own minds—“especially in matters of
conscience and great consequence, like this.”
And in case you missed it, no great surprise here but on Tuesday Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the co-sponsor of all the sanctions legislation, came out against the sellout.
AIPAC's incredibly foolish 'designated incumbents' policy: Is it designed to benefit Democrats?
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who was the Republican candidate for my old Congressional district in New Jersey, takes AIPAC to task for the manner in which they determine their 'designated incumbents' policy.
I am a huge AIPAC fan. There is no more
important American Jewish organization. Well beyond the Jewish community
AIPAC is a model of professionalism lobbying for an unqualified good.
In 20 years I have barely missed an AIPAC policy conference, such is the
ardor of my support. I publicly introduced my friend Mayor Cory Booker,
now running for the United States senate, at an AIPAC summit in Chicago
and we have jointly addressed AIPAC groups around the country.
But with 10,000 activists about to gather in
DC next week for AIPAC’s annual policy conference, the organization’s
definition of friendly incumbents being based solely on a lawmaker’s
voting record on Israel must undergo serious review.
When I ran for Congress last year against
Congressman Bill Pascrell [a Democrat. CiJ], AIPAC designated him a friendly incumbent
based on his voting record for Israel aid and in favor of Iran
sanctions. The problem was that Pascrell had also signed the infamous
Gaza 54 letter which falsely condemned Israel for collective punishment
against the Palestinians rather than soundly laying the blame at the
Hamas terrorists who have turned Gaza into a launching pad to kill
Israelis.
Now, I completely understand AIPAC’s policy of friendly incumbents. Why
would any politician feel loyalty to AIPAC if someone who is considered
more pro-Israel comes along and immediately gets their support? But my
candidacy was an opportunity for AIPAC to approach Pascrell and pressure
him to repudiate past statements. Israel’s battle today is not just one
against bullets and bombs but against a ferocious attempt to
delegitimize the Jewish state. It is a war of words and pictures and
what political figures say matters.
Indeed.
But the real message of Boteach's article is to take AIPAC to task for its silence on the Hagel nomination - and to contrast it with AIPAC's activism when George H.W. Bush tried to withhold loan guarantees from the Shamir government in 1991.
Now, what a lone congressman opines is far
less serious than the contemptible comments coming out of an incoming
secretary of defense. Hagel’s broadsides against Israel are shameful and
he must be called on it. American Jewry gave President Obama seventy
percent of their vote. Is Hagel the reward?
In 1991 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
requested $10 billion in loan guarantees to help settle Russian Jewish
immigrants. President George H. W. Bush said Israel could only have the
guarantees if it froze all settlement building and guaranteed that no
Russian Jews would be resettled in the West Bank. Shamir demurred and
called on the American Jewish community to mobilize in support of the
loan guarantees. AIPAC drafted a letter that was signed by more than 240
members of the House and 77 senators supporting the loan guarantees. On
September 12, 1991, Jewish lobbyists from all over the country
descended in huge numbers on Washington. President Bush famously
responded with a televised press conference in which he complained that
“1000 Jewish lobbyists are on Capitol Hill against little old me.”
Then, on the very next day in a speech I will
never forget and at which I was present, Tom Dine, AIPAC’s Executive
Director, declared that
September 12, 1991 is a day that
will live in infamy” as an American President had had the chutzpah to
criticize the constitutionally guaranteed right to lobby our government,
found in the very first amendment.
It was high theater and I had chills
down my spine as Dine directly challenged a sitting American president.
We all know the rest of the story. Months later, the loan guarantees
were approved. Bush would later receive only 12 percent of the Jewish
vote and was trounced by Bill Clinton. President Bush’s son would eight
years later become President of the United States and would take a
completely different posture toward Israel, becoming its greatest ally
ever to occupy the White House.
I also remember how, the following day, Ron
Brown, Chairman of the National Democratic Committee, stood up and said
that this November we had to send President Bush packing from the White
House. The crowd erupted with huge applause. There was no attempt to
disguise the hostility to a President whose policies were simply unfair
to Israel.
Maybe the difference is that Bush I was a Republican and Obama is a Democrat. Could it be that AIPAC - like nearly every other mainstream Jewish organization in the United States - is in the pocket of the Democratic party?
Full text of shocking Pascrell letter in support of anti-Semite released
You will recall that Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) first supported and then 'retracted' his support for naming a park in Clifton, New Jersey after anti-Semite Chester Grabowski. Pascrell claimed that
"the implication of my character and
integrity I find appalling. I have never ever entertained any sort of
anti-Semitism ever.
“That was not the Chester Grabowski I knew. That is why I withdrew my
support at that time” from a proposal to name a Clifton park after him.
Anti-Semitism has no place anywhere, here or over the sea.
Now, Rabbi Shmuely Boteach, the Republican candidate for Pascrell's Congressional seat, has released the full letter that was originally sent by Pascrell in support of naming the park after Grabowski. It's appalling (Hat Tip: Debbie R).
Sounds like Mr. Grabowski got thrown under the bus at the last minutes, doesn't it?
“Congressman Pascrell knowingly misled the media and the public at our recent debate when he said he did not know about Chester Grabowksi’s anti-Semitism. We now have the full text of a recent letter written by Pascrell proving that he knew Grabowski for decades and considered him a close friend. Grabowski has been widely known for his vicious racism – his hateful comments against Jews and outright denial of the holocaust have been widely documented, as well as his decision to run for Congress in 1990 under the Populist Party that had supported former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during his presidential run in 1988. Grabowski’s Congressional bid came at the same time that Pascrell was Mayor of Paterson, the largest city in the district. It’s impossible not to have known about his very public anti-Semitism and racism, and this putrid letter demonstrates that Pascrell was not telling the truth.”
“Pascrell has had numerous opportunities to familiarize himself with the hateful beliefs of Chester Grabowksi, and for him to say that he was unaware of them is not credible. Everyone knew of Grabowski’s hate-mongering and anti-Semitism, yet Pascrell insults the intelligence of the district’s citizens by claiming he was not aware. Not only is that not true, but it is contemptuous of his constituents.”
The anti-Israel, pro-'Palestinian' 'Jewish' (with Saudi support) J Street tweeted proudly on Tuesday that Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) is still proud of signing the Gaza 54 letter. Pascrell finally showed up to debate his opponent, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, on Sunday.
Pascrell defended his support for Imam Mohammed Qatanani (whom Pascrell
mistakenly referred to as “rabbi” a couple of times), saying he had been
assured by the FBI that it has no evidence that Qatanani was anything
other than “a good American.”
...
“Congressman Pascrell, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” said
Boteach, whose campaign had released four videos attacking the
congressman for not campaigning actively against him.
“This is a momentous election where America is facing seemingly
insurmountable problems,” Boteach continued. The problems confronting us
“are not the result of an economic collapse — they are truly the result
of a values corrosion.
“There’s no dignity for any of us to be the wards of the state, or to
lose our financial self-reliance through an entitlement-addled society.
“What happened to the cry of a great Democratic president, John F.
Kennedy, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do
for your country’? Where is the great cry of dignity through
self-reliance and self-sufficiency?” he asked. Then he addressed
Pascrell directly.
“With all due respect, you accused me on television of running a
negative campaign twice this week. As a marriage counselor, I know that
the ultimate form of disrespect is not where a husband and wife fight —
because I can save those marriages — but where the husband and wife
choose to ignore each other.
“Congressman, you have yet to say my name once during this election.
You have decided not to even campaign. You decided to rely on the
structural advantages of being a Democrat to win.
“These people deserve to hear the issues. They deserve a vote,” he said.
In the end — spoiler alert — Pascrell would address Boteach by name —
but not until he received more jabs on the topic from Boteach.
...
The moderator then raised the question of Israel.
“Israel is America’s foremost ally, its most dependable ally, most
reliable ally, and the only functioning democracy in the world’s most
volatile region,” Boteach said; earlier, he had noted that his daughter
is serving in the Israeli army. “Its security is absolutely essential to
America’s security and vice versa.
“President Obama has unfortunately been an unreliable steward of that
relationship. I need not go into some things that are well known,” he
said, referring to the president’s March 2011 address “that turned out
to be a speech about returning to the suicidal 1967 borders with land
swaps,” and the president seemingly blaming Israeli settlement policies
“for absolutely everything” in the stalled peace process.
Boteach praised Pascrell’s “good voting record” on assistance to
Israel. “God bless you and thank you,” he said. But he criticized the
congressman for having signed “one of the most vicious attacks on
Israel, the Gaza 54 letter, which falsely accused Israel of denying
food and essential medical supplies to Gaza. It accused Israel falsely
and fraudulently of collective punishment against the Palestinians.
“Hamas is the reason that Palestinians suffer. Hamas is the terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction.
“And when I wrote the most polite public letter to Congressman
Pascrell to repudiate that in the Jewish Standard, he repeated the
slander and said that essential supplies were not getting in to Gaza.”
Boteach also attacked Pascrell for refusing “to either repudiate or
object to” Qatanani, the Passaic religious leader whom Boteach called “a
confessed and admitted member of Hamas, who continues to give speeches
saying that the creation of the State of Israel was the darkest day in
human history, an imam who tells his followers they should be reading
the speeches of Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi of Cairo, who called Hitler a
blessing to the world.
“Congressman Pascrell said he would do everything in his power to
keep Imam Qatanani in this country against the efforts of INS, the FBI,
the Department of Homeland Security to deport him,” Boteach said.
Pascrell responded: “I will never, ever indulge in character
assassination. My record on Israel is clear. In fact, some have called
it perfect. So now we have to reach out to extraneous events.
“I have condemned Hamas. I have condemned Hezbollah. That’s what my record is.
“I met the imam several years ago. He helped in the community after
9/11 to make sure we were respectful, that everyone was respectful of
human dignity. That’s what he did. He was a help. The FBI said he was a
big help.
“I was on the homeland security committee. I was on there for 10
years; I helped start the committee. I had briefings with the FBI. I
asked several times, I said we have heard stories, I wanted to confirm.
“The FBI said, ‘We have nothing, Congressman, that would indicate
this individual is anything other than a good American. The FBI, the
U.S. Attorney of New Jersey, even the leader of your party in this
state” — Governor Chris Christie — supports Rabbi Qatanani, Imam
Qatanani.
“But I will tell you this: You don’t have the proof that what you say
is correct, and I am not going to renounce anyone, anyone, on hearsay.
There’s going to be a trial for that. One judge said, let’s set this
aside; he should become a citizen here.
“I can assure you, if the rabbi [sic] had any essential connections
with Hamas or Hezbollah or any of them, I would not in any way or shape
or form be a friend of his,” Pascrell said.
“About the other issue — the question is who will be supportive of
Israel. You have my record, what I attempted to do when I was on
Homeland Security. There is not one scintilla of doubt of where my
allegiance lies.
“I believe in a secure Israel. I believe in a two-state solution. I
believe we need to work toward that, and the United States should not
impose a peace.
“I’ve spoken for tough sanctions against Iran. That was a year and a half ago.
“The letter — I’m proud of it and I’ll tell you why. The 54 of us
were not opposing Israel; Israel has every right to defend itself, every
right to make itself and its people secure. I’ve said that time and
time again. But to deny some humanitarian aid to people who have nothing
to do with it, to me that does not make sense.
“Isn’t it interesting that the prime minister feels exactly as I do,
because a month later that was the policy? And I support that policy. [That's a lie. CiJ]
“We can be strong on Israel — my record speaks for itself — but we’re
still going to back to the principle you and I agreed on, that every
person has dignity,” Pascrell said, concluding with “God bless America.”
Boteach fired back. “There is zero truth to the charge, Congressman
Pascrell, that Israel denied food, medicine, humanitarian supplies to
the people of Gaza. The only person saying that is you. The U.N. said
the blockade was completely legal under international law. You have no
proof other than that vicious letter. I regret you repeated that slander
in a synagogue to a Jewish audience.
“Israel, my friends, is a nation of the highest morality. Israel is a nation of the highest humanitarian principles.
“Hamas and those who target women and children for murder have erased
the countenance of God from their visage. They have no dignity. The
Taliban who fought a 14-year-old girl in Pakistan have no dignity.
“You say you will not renounce anybody. You just renounced Chester
Grabowski,” the Clifton newspaper publisher, “when you found out he was a
classic Holocaust-denying anti-Semite.”
Boteach recalled telling Qatanani that “I will personally become an
even bigger supporter of yours to remain here in the U.S., under one
condition: simply get up and call Hamas an abomination to Islam, which
is a nation of peace.”
Instead, “Qatanani continues to give speeches to this day saying that
Israel is the worst thing ever to happen to the world. He says we
should renounce our First Amendment and people should be criminalized
for criticizing Islam. That’s not what America needs!”
Pascrell responded that “the implication of my character and
integrity I find appalling. I have never ever entertained any sort of
anti-Semitism ever.
“That was not the Chester Grabowski I knew. That is why I withdrew my
support at that time” from a proposal to name a Clifton park after him.
Anti-Semitism has no place anywhere, here or over the sea.
For the record, reader Debbie R. reports that the City of Clifton has decided not to name the park after Grabowski.
Creepy Pascrell threatens Boteach, Adelsons with 'suffering'
The NJ-9 Congressional race just got even uglier than it was already. Incumbent Democrat Bill Pascrell has threatened Republican challenger Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and his main benefactor Sheldon Adelson, with 'suffering' for having the nerve to challenge him (Hat Tip: Jack W).
Bill Pascrell, Democratic incumbent Congressman from New Jersey’s 9th district, has threatened his Republican opponent, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, with “suffering.” Referring to Boteach, Pascrell blustered: “He’ll have to suffer with the people who he’s getting the money from."
Pascrell didn’t stop there. He attacked Boteach’s major-donors,
mega-philanthropists Sheldon and Miriam Adelson: “We know their record.
We know they’re being investigated. If he wants to take money from them,
fine.”
Pascrell is a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, which has power over all taxation, tariffs, and
other revenue-raising actions. Pascrell is obviously threatening to use
his influence to destroy Boteach and the Adelsons, simply to advance
his own career.
Boteach responded:
I find it bone-chilling that a sitting
Congressman would threaten his opponent for simply engaging in the
democratic process. It is one thing for Bill Pascrell to try and
intimidate me and my supporters. It is completely another to threaten
unspecified retaliation in the form of ‘suffering’ for simply exercising
First Amendment rights. We expect harassment of political opponents in
Iran and the former Soviet Union. We certainly don’t expect an elected
official in New Jersey to act in this manner. The Adelsons are the
foremost Jewish philanthropists in America. It is particularly troubling
that a sitting Congressman would threaten people who have done so much
good in the world. I find it rich that Pascrell, who spent $2.5 million
to defeat Steve Rothman just three months ago, is suddenly whining about
money and politics.
But this is now common practice for the Democrats, using the
Department of Justice to punish their opponents, especially the
Adelsons. The Obama Administration has been after Adelson since 2010,
knowing that he was likely to back the Republican nominee.
Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, among the top donors to the Republican machine this election, is also now the top giver – along with his wife – to the New Jersey congressional race of the reality-TV rabbi, Shmuley Boteach.
Mr. Adelson, who runs the Las Vegas Sands international gaming empire, and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, who runs the Adelson drug clinic, have each given $250,000, or $500,000 total, to a new independent super PAC called the Patriot Prosperity PAC, according to people close to the Adelsons and the PAC.
Patriot Prosperity is supporting Mr. Boteach, who is running as a Republican, against eight-term Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. in a newly redrawn district in northern New Jersey.
...
“I treasure the Adelsons’ support. They are among the most generous and sophisticated political donors in the country,” said Mr. Boteach in a statement through his spokesman. The Adelsons previously have given directly to Mr. Boteach’s campaign. The $500,000 donation to the new super PAC “is a game-changer, and I suspect there will be many more like it,” said Mr. Boteach.
I sure hope there are more donations like it, but I plan to vote for Boteach either way (that's the district in which I vote).
Here's an interesting profile of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the Republican candidate for Congress in the reconstituted NJ-9 district.
Victory for Boteach, however, is a long way off. Nearly 50,000 people voted in the Democratic primary, compared with 9,000 on the Republican side. The district includes parts of Bergen, Hudson, and Passaic Counties. Patrick Murray, the director of the Polling Institute of Monmouth University, describes it as diverse, with urban ethnic minorities in Hudson County and both blue-collar white voters and affluent Jewish voters in Bergen County. Murray says his organization will not conduct any polls of the district, since he views it as “extremely likely Democratic” and does not think the national GOP will help fund Boteach’s campaign. His low name recognition in the district will only add to the natural Democratic advantage, according to Murray.
Prager contends that a Boteach victory would be a political earthquake that would reverberate nationally. That might be a good line to energize the crowd, but it also underscores how slim Boteach’s chances to defeat Pascrell really are.
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What are his positions on the issues?
Boteach believes that people do not actually want free things provided by the government. “Nothing is as comfortable as your own bed,” he explains, so sleeping in the bed that you bought with your hard-earned money allows you to “acquire and maintain your dignity.” All people, Boteach believes, desire the kind of dignity that can exist only when government is limited.
The biggest issue of this race, he believes, will be the economy, but not simply because growth is down and unemployment is up. Rather, he argues, liberal economic policies deny us true happiness. He cites God’s message to Adam in Genesis 3:19 — “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat.” That was a blessing to man, not a curse, says Boteach. And the cradle-to-grave welfare state denies people the happiness that comes from their controlling their own lives.
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As unconventional a congressional candidate as Boteach is, his opponent is a conventional liberal Democrat with few notable accomplishments to his name. New Jersey voters, it seems, routinely submit to such bland congressmen as a form of political self-flagellation. Boteach is anything but bland. He’s a captivating and thought-provoking speaker, a serious thinker, and a true political outsider.
In other words, just what Congress needs, but almost certainly won’t get.
@RabbiShmuley challenges Pascrell to renounce Gaza 54 letter
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the Republican candidate for Congress in New Jersey's 9th Congressional district, has challenged his Democratic rival, Bill Pascrell, to renounce his signature on the 'Gaza 54' letter that sought to bring American pressure on Israel to end Israel's legal blockade of Gaza. This is from the first link.
My objection to your stance on Israel lies, rather, in other actions with which you have been associated that are extremely troubling to the pro-Israel community. Most notably, you signed the infamous Gaza 54 letter, condemning Israel for “collective punishment” against Palestinians in the Gaza blockade. While this may not have been your intention, your participation in this cruel attack on Israel is highly injurious to the Jewish State’s ability to defend itself.
As you know, Bill, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. I can tell you personally how painful that withdrawal was, since I visited the flourishing Jewish communities of Gush Katif in Gaza many times. Brave Jewish residents – nearly all of whom had family members or close friends killed by terrorists in Gaza – made the desert bloom, growing fruits and vegetables of the highest quality out of the desert sands, literally. They offered the hope that Gaza might be turned into a land of agricultural excellence, exporting produce to the entire world and benefiting Jew and Arab alike.
I contrast this civilized landscape with the unspeakable poverty and misery that I witnessed in Palestinian-controlled Gaza City. Not long after the 9/11 attacks, Reverend Al Sharpton came to Israel for a trip of reconciliation with the Jewish community, jointly hosted by me and Shimon Peres, Israel’s then foreign minister, to whom President Obama has just given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. While in Israel, Rev. Sharpton insisted on visiting Yasser Arafat, and though I refused to meet the man who had the blood of my people on his hands and who had stolen billions of dollars from impoverished Palestinians, I did accompany Sharpton to Gaza and witnessed the squalor that reigned in the Palestinian Authority-controlled cities, despite billions of dollars in foreign aid. The New York Times reported in 2004 that “the Palestinians are already the world’s largest per capita recipients of international aid.” But I did not witness this trickeling down to average citizens.
Regardless, Israel uprooted the Jewish communities of Gaza – including my wife’s cousins who years later are still confined to a trailer – and evacuated from Gaza completely. Their reward? Thousands of rockets from Hamas on Israeli nurseries, homes for the elderly, and buses.
Hamas, as you well know, Bill, is sworn to Israel’s destruction and to attacking Jews wherever they may be found. Its covenant is deeply racist and contains vicious genocidal aspirations, such as the following: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized.”
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Now, given these facts, I am mystified as why you broke with close to 90 percent of Congress, voting to condemn Israel for imposing a blockade on Gaza. Surely you do not want to see Israeli children with their extremities blown off. Surely you do not want to see Hamas possessing the military capability to execute suspected Palestinian “collaborators” without trial. But without Israel stopping war materials from entering Gaza, more innocent Israelis and Palestinians will be murdered in the most gruesome way. That’s the purpose of a blockade – to stop terrorists from getting guns and bombs.
And why would you have compounded this error, Bill, by blaming Israel for collective punishment against the Palestinians? Is Israel responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians, or Hamas, which has chosen to use all of Gaza as a launching pad for a war of annihilation against Jews?
Would you really blame the victim, Bill?
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The new ninth district, whose Congressman you seek to become, is different from your old tenth district. There you had a large Arab population, which continues in Paterson. No doubt you feel obligated to represent their interests, which I can completely understand. Arabs are my brothers, equal children under the one G-d. As a rabbi, I salute your constituents’ commitment to their Islamic faith. But how does supporting Hamas and condemning Israel help Arabs? On the contrary, Hamas is poison to the Palestinian cause. Palestinians need a government that will utilize the vast foreign aid flowing in to Gaza to build hospitals, roads, and universities to benefit the citizenry, not to buy rockets to kill Israelis. It is not helpful to any Arab to live under a terrorist entity that suppresses its rights. But in addition to your Arab constituents, your new district also contains very large neighborhoods of committed Jews who are deeply puzzled by your being one of the Gaza 54. You owe it to them to either explain your signature or repudiate it.
Israel is not the reason Arabs are suffering the Middle East. Rather, it is the Mubaraks, Kaddafis, Assads, and woman-hating House of Saud that are the scourge of the Arab world, as the Arab Spring has finally made clear.
I respectfully request of you, Bill, to either explain your signature on the Gaza 54 Letter, or, if it was a mistake to sign it, as I suspect you now believe, to please repudiate it. Likewise, I believe you when you tell me that Imam Qatanani is a man of peace. But that claim must be backed up by the public action of his repudiation of any ties to Hamas and his denunciation of Hamas as a terrorist group whose murderous actions are inimical to a peace-loving Islam.
I can't wait to see how Pascrell answers this one.... Heh.
In my old Congressional district in New Jersey, which has been reconstituted due to redistricting, anti-Israel Bill Pascrell defeated fellow Congressman Steve Rothman, in a campaign marked by Muslim anti-Semitism. Making the choice starker, in the general election, Pascrell will face Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
Will the district's Jews be able to bring themselves to vote for a Republican?
Say it ain't so: Shmuely Boteach calls Samantha Power one of his heroes
Oy vey.... I knew I wasn't going to like this article when in the second paragraph, Orthodox Rabbi Shmuely Boteach described the Irish-born shikse married to a JINO (Jew in Name Only) as 'one of my heroes.' It gets worse from there. It sounds like Boteach was overly impressed with the fact that she invited him to meet with her at the White House.
The principal comments attributed to her come from an interview she granted in 2002, when she was asked to respond to a “thought experiment” regarding what she would advise an American president if it seemed that either party in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were moving toward genocide. Power, fresh on the national scene, was baited and answered that preventing such a genocide could entail being prepared to alienate a powerful constituency – by which she meant the American-Jewish community – and sending in a protective force. From these comments – putting Israel and the possibility of genocide in a single sentence – Power has been conflated with other enemies of Israel.
In our conversation, she rejected utterly the notion she had any animus toward Israel and acknowledged that she had erred in offering hypothetical comments. She said opponents of Obama had unfairly taken her disorganized comments further and characterized them as “invade Israel” talk. She said that if she really believed Israel could even be remotely accused of genocide, then the correct forum for that view would have been in the 664 pages of her book, wherein she details all the genocides of the 20th century.
They're not the only comments - we'll come back to the others - but although I have shown it before, let's once again go to the videotape of that infamous 2002 interview.
Does that sound like a friend of Israel?
Rabbi Boteach goes on to cite another point in Power's favor.
In addition, some leading members of the American Jewish establishment told me that Power was instrumental in having America decline attendance at Durban II in April 2009, otherwise known as the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, which promised to be, like Durban I in 2001, a UNsponsored Israel hate-fest.
How's that for a vague description? Who were these 'leading members of the American Jewish establishment'? Will they come to Power's defense too? If not, why not?
Actually, it 's worse than just vague. Recall that by the time the US pulled out of Durban II, it was too late to torpedo the conference. In fact, Power did everything she could to turn the conference into something that the US would feel it could attend. She is also an admirer of Durban II Secretary General Mary Robinson, who received a President's medal along with the Jew-hating South African Bishop Desmond Tutu - probably both on Power's recommendation.
And then Boteach really goes off the deep end.
THERE HAVE been other comments by Power that have been interpreted as hostile to Israel, but the interpretations rely on the presumption, generated in 2002, that she is anti- Israel. Based on Power’s clarification – and much more importantly, her actions – I believe this perception to be without merit.
Huh? Let's look at some of Power's comments that were hostile to Israel other than that original video and see whether they stand in their own right.
In a lengthy article on President Obama's on President Obama's foreign policy advisers during the 2008 campaign, Ed Lasky had a lot to say about Samantha Power. Here are some highlights that have nothing to do with that 2002 video.
Power also showed her animus toward Israel in another instance, appearing to argue with the New York Times for more negative coverage of Israel in the paper. As Noah Pollak writes:
"Martin Kramer points us to an interesting quote from the 2003 book Ethnic Violence and Justice, in which Samantha Power, one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers, asks a question of David Rohde, a reporter who covered the intifada for the New York Times. The quote is as follows:
Samantha Power: I have a question for David about working for the New York Times. I was struck by a headline that accompanied a news story on the publication of the Human Rights Watch report. The headline was, I believe: "Human Rights Report Finds Massacre Did Not Occur in Jenin." The second paragraph said, "Oh, but lots of war crimes did." Why wouldn't they make the war crimes the headline and the non-massacre the second paragraph?
(The article to which Power refers is here, and its headline is: "MIDEAST TURMOIL: INQUIRY; Rights Group Doubts Mass Deaths in Jenin, but Sees Signs of War Crimes." Obviously, Power has misremembered the headline.)
Here we have another window into the thinking of Power: Israel is accused in sensational press reports of a massacre in Jenin, and is subjected to severe international condemnation; Human Rights Watch finally gets out a report and says there was no massacre; the NYT reports this as its headline; and Power thinks the headline still should have been: Israel guilty of war crimes!"
Revelations regarding Power's views of Israel can be found in her new book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World, a biography of the UN official killed in Baghdad in a 2003 terrorist bombing. A series of terrorist attacks emanating from the mini-terror state created in Southern Lebanon by the PLO had led to an Israeli occupation of the southern portion of Lebanon. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon had been inserted to quell the conflict, but was proving ineffectual. Israeli forces remained in place.
Power wrote:
" Israeli forces refused to comply with the spirit of international demands to withdraw and the major powers on the Security Council were not prepared to deal with the gnarly issues that had sparked the Israelis invasion in the first place: dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity".
The "spirit of international demands" to withdraw? Aside from wondering what that means and the enforceability of such a spirit, how about that phrase "dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity"? The dispossessed Palestinians had left Palestine mostly at the behest of calls by their Arab brethren to step out of the way as armed forces invaded Israel upon its founding. They and their descendants were denied rights by Lebanon and were unable to assimilate -- unlike the 600,000 Jews who were stripped of their possessions in Arab lands and whom Israel welcomed. The term "Israeli insecurity" makes it seem as if the Israelis were suffering from an emotional or psychological condition. In fact, it was not insecurity, per se, that the Israelis suffered from. It was Palestinian terrorism that the Lebanese government refused to prevent.
There is more from Ms. Power. Israel warned UNIFIL of its upcoming move into Southern Lebanon. Power talked of this move as a "ploy" and then wrote of "humiliation" that was to come as Israel ignored UN efforts to stop them. She wrote:
"Israel had thumbed its nose at the Security Council resolutions that demanded that Israel stay out of Lebanon, and in the course of invading a neighbor, its forces had trampled on the UN peacekeepers in its way".
She quotes the subject of her book -- really a hagiography -- calling the Israelis "bastards". She writes that the degradations suffered by UNIFIL before the Israeli invasion was felt far worse after the Israelis came into Lebanon. She writes that the Israeli authorities "threatened the peacekeepers and denigrated them".
She sat down for an interview with England's New Statesman magazine and what she said may surprise many Americans. During the interview, she stated that President Obama would engage with President Ahmadinejad, North Korea, and Syria. Then she is asked, "...is there anyone he wouldn't talk to"?
She responded that there was no one among "elected heads of state. He won't talk to Hamas, but he would talk to Abbas". The interviewer points out that inconsistency inherent in her answer by informing the Harvard foreign policy expert that Hamas was a democratically-elected government and that Abbas' Fatah party lost the last popular vote.
Professor Power backtracked and then said that Barack Obama would talk to "heads of state" and swiftly veered off into a discussion about how America has supported dictatorships in the past. This seems to cut both ways. Would President Obama talk to Hamas? Is Hamas a dictatorship, democratically elected?
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Even the interviewer doubts Power's sincerity at that point, titling the next section " The Odd Fib" and indicating that he did not believe she's convinced by what she is saying and that dissembling does not come easy to her (for confirmation of this, see her defensive interview with Shmuel Rosner and the critique of the same by Paul Mirengoff of Powerline.)
The interviewer notes (presumably because America is in the heat of the primary season)
"...it is politically impossible for Obama to talk to Hamas, even if he wants to. She can't say that, though" because of what he depicts as internet smears. The interviewer characterizes these criticisms as allegations that she is anti-Semitic. So far as I have seen, nobody has ever made this allegation. The focus has been on her policy principles.
Then, in the money quote, Power plaintively complains:
"So much of it is about: 'Is he going to be good for the Jews?'"
How much comfort can pro-Israel voters take in a candidate whose possible Secretary of State feels free to characterize legitimate concerns and questions as revolving around the issue of "is it good for the Jews"? Ms. Power might be unaware that support for our ally Israel is widespread across America and cuts across all religious and ethnic groups.
This is what Boteach calls a 'friend of Israel'?
In this article from February 2010, Power was also critical of Israel's handling of the Goldstone Report:
Heading the Israeli delegation was the Foreign Ministry's deputy director for international organizations, Eviatar Manor. The delegation met with officials including the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, Michael Posner, and President Barack Obama's adviser on human rights, Samantha Power.
The Americans were interested to hear whether Israel had decided on whether to set up a committee to investigate Operation Cast Lead. Power asked about Israeli public opinion on this issue.
Power did not hide her criticism of Israel's handling of the Goldstone report; she asked whether Israel's thinking on the issue was "strategic or tactical."
"Is the correct strategy fighting Goldstone on all fronts?" she asked.
A main message of the U.S. officials was that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was directly linked to the ability of Israel's critics to push the Goldstone report forward and the ability to block the report's consequences.
Translation: Power to Israel: 'You brought Goldstone on yourselves, and we're not going to help you out of it unless you ease up on Hamas.' A pro-Israel attitude, Shmuely?
I searched in vain for quotes from Samantha Power decrying Muslim hatred or Islamic terrorism. I didn't find any. I did, however, find this from the New Statesman interview cited above:
All we talk about is 'Islamic terrorism'. If the two words are associated for long enough it's obviously going to have an effect on how people think about Muslims. But I think Obama's going to do wonders for closing those chasms. Even just opening up a conversation is going to get us some of the way. And it's not insignificant that he spent time in a Muslim country, that he is half Kenyan - a lot of barriers have been bust through.
She's likely one of the architects of the Obama administration's newspeak in which 'Islam' and 'terrorism' are never used together (and 'terrorism' isn't used at all).
Rabbi Boteach seems enamored with Power. He has fallen completely for the spin that will try to present her as a fitting choice for Secretary of State if God forbid Obama should be re-elected. Whether Boteach was impressed by the visit to the White House, or by Power's opposition to his next door neighbor, Muammar Gadhafi (which may have resulted in the US supporting al-Qaeda-backed rebels at Power's behest), Boteach seems to have fallen for Power lock, stock and barrel. We should not make the same mistake.
I've stayed out of the argument over whether Sarah Palin's use of the term 'blood libel' was justified with respect to the accusations against her and other conservatives of being the cause of the mass murder and attempted assassination in Tucson last Saturday. It's not directly an Israel-related topic.
But I think that Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has got it right in Friday's Wall Street Journal (Hat Tip: Memeorandum) and that Sarah Palin was entitled to use the term.
Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.
The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.
Jews did not kill Jesus. As the Roman historian Tacitus makes clear, he was murdered by Pontius Pilate, whose reign of terror in ancient Judea was so excessive, even by Roman standards, that (according to the Roman-Jewish chronicler Josephus) Rome recalled him in the year 36 due to his sadistic practices. King Herod Agrippa I, writing to the Emperor Caligula, noted Pilate's "acts of violence, plunderings . . . and continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, endless, and unbelievable cruelties, gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity."
Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Indeed, the belief that the concept of blood libel applies only to Jews is itself a form of reverse discrimination that should be dismissed.
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder, as the Hebrew Bible condemns accusations of collective guilt against Jew and non-Jew alike. "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (Ezekiel 18).
How unfortunate that some have chosen to compound a national tragedy by politicizing the murder of six innocent lives and the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.
We Jews don't have a monopoly on being smeared with blood libels. But many of us can empathize with what Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives have gone through this past week.
Using a bereaved husband's reaction to the death sentence handed earlier this week to the man who raped and murdered the husband's wife and daughters, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach passes on an important lesson that many of us have forgotten: As it says in Ecclesiastes (Koheleth), there's a time to hate.
Over the past few years many of us have lost our moral bearings on the subject of evil and human suffering. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters take Jesus' teachings about forgiving our enemies completely out of context. Jesus said to forgive your enemies. Your enemy is the guy who steals your parking space. But God's enemies are men who can rape and slaughter two young women and their mother and torture them before doing so. In Ecclesiastes King Solomon famously says "there is a time to love and a time to hate." This is that time. We must love the Petit family and hate their murderers. Yes, hatred is a valid emotion when directed at the truly evil.
No, I do not believe in revenge. I believe in justice. But only a true hatred of evil compels us to fight wickedness with every legitimate means at our disposal.
When I lived in England during some of the worst years of the Northern Ireland troubles I once heard a man whose father was killed by the IRA for no reason other than he was a Protestant immediately say that as a Christian he is compelled to love his father's murderers. He said he forgave them for killing his father. But no human being, even the man's son, can confer such forgiveness. The act of taking a human life is a crime against God who created life and endowed it with infinite worth. And such acts of misguided magnanimity and forgiveness make a mockery of human love and a shambles of human justice. Murder in cold blood dare not be forgiven. Murderers who have erased the image of God from their countenance through savage acts of brutality have removed themselves from the human family. They are not our brothers and we are under no obligation to love them. Indeed, any love we have in our hearts must be directed at the victims of violence rather than at their culprits.
Yes, Jesus said 'turn the other cheek.' But is anyone so morally lost as to suggest that he meant if someone rapes your wife, give him your daughter to rape as well? Of course, what Jesus meant was to forgive the petty slights that people enact against you. If a friend pretends not to notice you at a party, forgive them. If your husband loses his temper and yells, yes he must apologize. But be quick to forgive. But Jesus never meant that we should not dedicate ourselves to fighting evil.
Psalm 97 makes it clear. "Let those who love the Lord hate evil." It's repeated again in Proverbs Chap 8: "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Yes, hatred has its place, but only under a single condition that was met in the terrible Petit murders: the human confrontation with extreme evil.
I believe there's an important lesson here for Israelis and how we relate to 'Palestinian' terror. There's nothing wrong with hating the terrorists and those who support them. They are extreme evil.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
