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The post The Builders: Prewar Europe’s Youngest Rosh Yeshiva first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.
Before voting for Trump again, or welcoming his Orthodox Jewish advisors back with open arms, or even voting for Bibi again, their clumsy diplomacy should be held against them Donald Trump…is back in the news. This time, he is the star of a new book by former Haaretz reporter Barak Ravid. When Trump wanted to vent against Bibi, Barak Ravid turned a very sympathetic ear.
Trump lashed out at Bibi. According to Ravid, Trump’s senior advisors, including Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, also treated Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer rudely, showing him the door and telling Dermer that Trump doesn’t like Bibi so much anymore.
Ravid’s book is called: Trump's Peace. The subtitle is The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East.
There ought to be a second subtitle: Clumsy Diplomacy.
Let’s start with Trump. Trump was angry that Bibi congratulated Joe Biden instead of indulging his voter fraud fantasies. What did we learn from this? That Trump holds grudges? Nothing new there. Holding grudges and taking revenge is politics as usual. But Trump showed immaturity as a politician for demanding loyalty from Bibi. He’s not Bibi’s boss. In business, the CEO can demand loyalty. In geopolitics, every nation looks out for number one. Remember America First?
For Bibi, it’s Israel First. Trump can’t bully Bibi to sacrifice Israel’s national interests to soothe his wounded ego.
Really, though, all this personal stuff is a sideshow.
The major angle Ravid’s book explored was whether the Trump administration gave Israel a green light to annex Judea and Samaria, or if Bibi ran a red light and caused a major diplomatic accident.
I did some fact-checking on the events of January 28, 2020, the day Trump launched his long-awaited and much-ballyhooed Deal of the Century at the White House.
Here’s where the clumsy diplomacy hit a crescendo. Read Trump’s peace plan. That text places the Jordan Valley under Israeli sovereignty. Regarding Judea and Samaria, the language is different. It says Israel will “incorporate the vast majority of Israeli settlements into contiguous Israeli territory.”
Nothing about sovereignty or when any of this would happen.
Trump’s White House speech that day focused on the Palestinians. The US would invest $50 billion in the Palestinian territories. Trump said his map would more than double the existing Palestinian territory, giving them a capital in east Jerusalem where the US would open an embassy. Trump praised Israel for authorizing the release of his conceptual map illustrating the territorial compromises Israel was willing to make for peace. These are all direct quotes.
That’s Oslo, plus-minus. If my eyes were shut and I was reading closed captions, the same words could have come from the mouths of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
Trump mentioned sovereignty only once when he said the US would – quote -- “recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory that my vision provides to be part of the state of Israel.”
That’s pretty vague.
In his speech, Bibi stepped on the gas, complimenting Trump for becoming – quote – the first world leader to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over areas in Judea and Samaria that are vital to our security and central to our heritage.
Trump gulped. Now Bibi is very clever. There is a reason he lasted 14 years as prime minister. He knows how to play with words and right then, he started shifting gears. Bibi also mentioned sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and – listen carefully – “the other strategic areas of Judea and Samaria.” One sentence later, Bibi thanks Trump for reaffirming Israel’s legal claims in Judea and Samaria. Also pretty vague. There’s a lot of wiggle room here.
The news conference was in English, but nobody was speaking the same language, especially Bibi. Election Day was five weeks away and Bibi needed a big prize to take home to right-wing voters – and a message that wouldn’t scare away centrist voters.
Ravid’s book takes a deep dive into the confusion and dissension inside the Trump administration, where Ambassador David Friedman was pro-annexation and Jared Kushner said whoa, hold your horses!
Hey guys! Get your act together. Administration officials should synchronize their positions in advance! Allies like the US and Israel should coordinate their messages upfront. The entire world is watching and listening.
Clumsy Diplomacy. And after that night, the deal of the century was put on ice.
Okay, we did get the Abraham Accords six months later. But that was an afterthought. The UAE initiated that, offering diplomatic relations in exchange for annexation. The Trump team jumped on it and brokered the deal, but it was a diplomatic quirk of fate.
We will never know how all this would have progressed had Trump won a second term.
Or maybe we will find out in 2024.
But before voting for Trump again, or welcoming his Orthodox Jewish advisors back with open arms, or even voting for Bibi again, their clumsy diplomacy should be held against them.
We can’t afford to naively believe in any pronouncements from any politician.
One year ago, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in America was $2. As we approach the Memorial Day weekend – the unofficial start of the summer travel season – prices have risen to a nationwide average of $3 a gallon.
Who’s to blame for this?
According to Fox News, it’s all Joe Biden’s fault. Let me be clear. I’m not picking on Fox News. They do a lot of good and important work. But yesterday, I felt their tank was empty. I was watching a segment where host Steve Doocy was chatting with business reporter Stuart Varney about the price of gas. These are seasoned reporters who should know better. For five minutes, they rambled on that when Donald Trump was president, gas was cheap and plentiful and that somehow, Biden is to blame for the big jump in price.
When Harry Truman was president, he had a sign on his desk “the buck stops here.” So if the buck always stops at the president’s desk, Biden must be the guilty party, right?
I did some research. I scrolled through a list of President Biden’s executive orders. I didn’t find one with his signature ordering a dollar-a-gallon increase in gas. So I did some more homework and found a few reasons why gas has gone up.
Gasoline is made from oil. Oil is a commodity that trades on world markets 24 hours a day. Prices go up and down. Crude oil prices have doubled in the last 52-weeks. A year ago, most nation’s economies were shut down due to the coronavirus. Oil demand was slack. Now, the economies are opening up again, demand has risen, and so have prices. I don’t see a link to Biden here.
Another reason gas went up is that, in February, an artic freeze spread to Texas, knocking out the capacity of some 20% of America’s oil refineries. It took Texas almost a month to restore full service. That created shortages that pushed up prices. Now if the shutdowns occurred during a major heatwave, I would be the first to blame Biden for failing to deliver on his promise to curtail global warming. I can’t see blaming him for an arctic freeze.
By the way, the rise in commodity prices has been a major financial market story in the past year. Wheat is up 50%. Cotton and coffee are way up. I won’t even mention Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s crashed in the last couple of weeks, but it’s still tripled in the last 52 weeks. You don’t see anyone giving Biden credit for that, do you?
So here’s my point. Journalists do a major disservice by offering simplistic answers to complex questions to sell a certain political agenda. There are many more reasons than the ones I mentioned to explain higher gas prices. Joe Biden isn’t one of them. By the way, gas rose about 50 cents a gallon during Donald Trump’s first two years in office. No one blamed him for that.
The Israeli media also excels at the blame game. In another week, we will know whether the anti-Bibi forces were successful at forming a coalition to oust Netanyahu from office.
Until then, the media’s mantra is everything Bibi does is to save his skin. He can do no right. Nothing he does is ever for the benefit of the people.
So according to this logic, when Netanyahu made a deal with Pfizer to provide millions of doses of coronavirus vaccines, he did it only for himself, so he could win re-election – or maybe because he knew as prime minister, he would be entitled to the first vaccine. Don’t let the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is over in Israel, and the country is lifting all restrictions next week convince you otherwise. Bibi did it all for himself.
Earlier this month, when Bibi ordered the IDF into battle against Hamas, he didn’t do it to protect the Jews of Israel from rocket attacks. If you believe the media, Bibi launched the war a few days after he lost his mandate to form a coalition to distract everyone from his political problems and his trial on fraud and bribery charges.
If you ask me, Bibi has the toughest job in the world. He deserves to enjoy some free champagne, a good smoke and a positive article, at least once in a while.
I’m afraid we’re seeing a lot of the same agenda-driven reporting surrounding Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s two-day visit to the Middle East to take the temperature of all the parties involved in the latest Gaza war.
I keep reading how the Biden administration is anti-Israel. As proof, I keep reading this same 40-year old quote when Biden argued with Menachem Begin over settlements. If you can’t come up with something better than a 40-year old quote to support your argument, I would call that old news. No US president has supported settlements in Judea and Samaria. Even President Trump told Bibi to “go slow on settlements.” In his deal of the century, Trump only envisioned giving Israel 30% of that land.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN and the US told the Hebrew-language press today to chill. Erdan is worth listening to as he hopes to compete for the leadership of the Likud in the post-Netanyahu era, whenever that happens. Erdan admitted that the US and Israel disagree on the Palestinian issue, and certainly on Iran. Erdan’s main point was not to turn every policy disagreement into an artificial diplomatic crisis. The media loves doing this, especially if they can blame Bibi for ruining Israel’s relations with the US.
Israel has dealt with 14 different US presidents in 73 years of statehood. We’ve had ups and downs with all of them, including with Trump. For now, Biden has kept one promise to Israel – that he would keep any disagreements between him and Israel private. As long as he keeps his word, we should reciprocate.
That doesn’t mean we can’t critique the president, his administration, or the prime minister. We must. That’s our role as journalists. But we have to stick to the issues, come up with well-reasoned arguments, and present facts to support our case. Playing superficial blame games, with agenda-driven considerations to connect the dots of every event to the White House, or Balfour Street in Jerusalem is both petty, unprofessional and counterproductive.
What we know, what we don't know, and what could happen next in the Israel election saga We all know the baseball rule that if the runner and the ball arrive at the base simultaneously, the runner is called “safe” because of the axiom “a tie goes to the runner.”
The same does not necessarily hold true in politics.
The cheery exit polls reported for the Likud and Binyamin Netanyahu did not age well. As we post our final election update before taking a breather for Pesach, it looks as if the election ended in a tie.
Here’s what we know now as of Wednesday afternoon, Israel time: With some 87% of the vote counted, if these partial results were extrapolated to 100% of the vote count, the Likud would win 30 seats. With Shas winning 9, UTJ 7, and the Religious Zionists 6, the solid Netanyahu forces captured 52 seats.
Even if Naftali Bennett decides he’s back in Bibi’s camp, his expected seven seats would only lift the pro-Bibi bloc to 59 – two short of a majority.
The anti-Bibi bloc, led by Yair Lapid’s 17 seats, scored a total of 50 seats.
Two Arab parties are expected to win 6 and 5 seats, respectively. The Joint List, with 6 is as anti-Bibi as it gets. The Ra’am party is uncommitted. Ra’am favors civic engagement in Israeli politics as opposed to knee-jerk support for the Palestinian or pan-Arabic cause. Party leader Mansour Abbas conceptually owes a debt of gratitude to Netanyahu for urging him to split from the Joint List and run separately, although this is the Middle East, the deal you made yesterday does not have to resemble the deal you make tomorrow.
In a nutshell: As is stands today, neither Bibi, nor his bevy of opponents have a clear path to forming a 61-seat coalition. The political jockeying to win President Rivlin’s go-ahead to take a stab at forming a coalition will be intense and chaotic.
Here’s What We Don’t Know: Election officials say there are still an estimated 450,000 votes yet to be counted. Israel does not allow absentee, or mail-in ballots. You have to vote on site, somewhere. So the elections committee set up special voting sites to accommodate citizens who could not make it to their regular polling precincts near their homes.
These include diplomats stationed overseas, COVID-19 and other hospital patients and workers, voters still in quarantine, prisoners, and soldiers who couldn’t get a furlough from their base. Their votes are sometimes referred to as the “double envelopes.” Every Israeli places their paper ballot in a small, postcard size envelope before dropping it in a cardboard voting box, but because these ballots must be securely transported to the Knesset to be counted, they are placed in a second envelope before they are moved. (Too bad America didn’t think of this before November 2020!)
In a nutshell: These 450,000 votes could easily cause shifts of a seat or two in either direction for many of the parties. We just don’t know in which direction and which parties will be affected until they’re all counted. We should know for sure some time before Shabbos.
Here’s What Could Happen Next: Let’s say the final count gives the pro-Bibi forces 60 or 61 seats, including Bennett. President Rivlin would probably give Netanyahu the nod and the hard bargaining would begin. Netanyahu would try and pry away a rebel from another party to get to 61. One option would be to lure back Zev Elkin or Sharren Haskel who jumped ship to join Gideon Saar’s party. With Saar’s poor showing of just six seats, one of them could be tempted to jump back into the Likud fold. But that’s still a longshot because they all stubbornly insisted they have divorced Bibi for good.
Netanyahu’s second option would be to crack a deal with the Arab Ra’am party to support his coalition from the outside. This is a less desirable scenario. On one hand, Ra’am respects the way chareidi parties have dealt themselves in, gaining budgets for their constituents while steering clear of controversial foreign policy issues. Ra’am supports the Abraham Accords and would be happy to reach an internal Abraham Accord with the Likud.
However, it’s hard to see Ra’am and the Religious Zionists sitting around the same table, even informally. The Religious Zionist’s include Itamar Ben-Gvir – known for the portrait of Baruch Goldstein [who killed 29 Arabs at the Meoras Machpelah in 1994] hanging over his “fireplace.” In addition, it could handcuff Israel’s foreign policy options. As much as Ra’am says it supports the Abraham Accords, that’s fine as long as Bibi’s making peace with Arabs, but what if has to make war?
Should Bibi fail, or lack any good options, President Rivlin could task Yair Lapid to lead the anti-Bibi forces with coalition building. However, this would be a real uphill climb. The anti-Bibi forces would need every MK from both Arab parties to join in their coalition, or at least support them the outside. That would never fly with Gideon Saar’s party, who aside from promising never to sit with Netanyahu, vowed not to partner with, or join a coalition that includes the Arab Joint List. If they stick to their guns, then the chances of an anti-Bibi coalition are dead on arrival.
In a nutshell: The pro-Netanyahu forces must hope and pray the final vote tally lifts them to 61. If not, Netanyahu will need all of his political wiles to pry one or two MKs away, or somehow induce Saar to break his campaign vow and return to the Likud. And if none of the above happens then – gulp – get ready for a fifth election at the end of August or early September.
Will this fourth election get us out of the political mess we’ve gotten into? And how did we get into it in the first place?
Decades ago, a comedy team named Laurel and Hardy coined the famous line: “that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”
I can’t think of a more appropriate line for next week’s Israeli election – the 4th in two years.
This begs a couple of questions. Will this fourth election get us out of the political mess we’ve gotten into? And how did we get into it in the first place?
I’ll answer the second question first.
The root of the recent political instability began a year and a half before the first election held in April 2019.
In September 2017, the Supreme Court overturned the draft law that gave chareidim preferential treatment for deferments and exemptions from IDF service. This issue is actually less controversial than it used to be. Most secular Israelis are more concerned with getting chareidim into the workforce than the IDF, but the High Court had other ideas. It gave the Knesset a one-year deadline to pass a new draft law that would pass their muster.
That deadline came and went and the Knesset was deadlocked on the language for a new law. Even though Prime Minister Netanyahu enjoyed a comfortable 67-seat coalition, 10 of those seats belonged to Moshe Kahlon, a Likud rebel who split from the Likud to form his own party. The chareidi parties claim Kahlon reneged on a promise he made to them to recertify the old draft law in the event that the Supreme Court overturned it. Kahlon denied he ever made such a deal.
As calendar year 2018 drew to a close, the Knesset voted to disband and hold elections in April 2019.
We’ll call this election number 1.
Election number 1 featured the rise of Benny Gantz as a serious challenger to Netanyahu’s rule. Gantz was a former IDF chief of staff – a position known to be a stepping-stone to the prime minister’s residence. Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak both made that leap. Gantz figured he was in good company.
Election number one ended in a tie between Gantz’s Blue and White party and Netanyahu’s Likud. Each won 35 seats. Moshe Kahlon got cut down to size, winning only four seats. President Rivlin tasked Bibi with forming the coalition, however, Netanyahu soon found himself in another mess.
The only way he could form a 61-seat coalition was with the help of Avigdor Lieberman’s five seats. Lieberman was one of the authors of the new, tough draft bill that had failed to pass the Knesset. He made it perfectly clear there was no room for compromise.
Coalition negotiations raged for more than 40 days and 40 nights. Chareidi parties insisted on some modifications as a prerequisite for joining a coalition, but to Lieberman, the language he wrote was his version of Torah mi-Sinai. Every word was holy to him.
Without Lieberman, Netanyahu failed to form a coalition. The Knesset disbanded once again. Election Number 2 was called for September 2019.
This time, Gantz got one more seat than Netanyahu. 33 to 32. But the biggest spoke in the wheels was the rise of the Joint List – a coalition of Arab parties who won 13 seats, becoming the Knesset’s third-largest party.
Gantz built his career fighting the Arabs. He wasn’t going to sit with them in a coalition even if that’s only another form of warfare. Without the Arabs, Gantz couldn’t get to 61. So Netanyahu got a second chance, only to find himself beholden to Avigdor Lieberman once again. Lieberman played the obstinate Russian role to the hilt. He wasn’t budging.
So as the saying goes, if at twice you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.
Election number 3 was scheduled for March 2nd, 2020.
There’s another pithy saying that goes “Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results.” It’s sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein.
Fact-checkers contend Einstein never said that, but it is a fact that in 1952, Einstein was offered the position as president of Israel. He turned it down. Perhaps if he had accepted, he could have applied his genius to helping Israel develop a saner system of government. But that’s speculation on my part.
Back to Election number 3 – the one we’re still trying to get over. This time, Netanyahu won 36 seats. Gantz won only 33. But the Arab party got even stronger – winning 15 and Netanyahu’s natural right-wing coalition partners shrunk to 58 – three short of a majority.
By this time, the coronavirus pandemic was raging. Israel was in a state of emergency. Both major parties agreed to form a national unity government to tackle COVID-19.
This was Israel’s 4th national unity government in its 72 years of statehood. Two of them worked out pretty well. Two didn’t. This latest one was one of the two that didn’t.
As Shimon Peres once quipped: “In politics, suspicion is stronger than trust.”
Oh yes it is.
Gantz and Netanyahu were a lousy shidduch – even though they both saw pictures of each other before the match was made.
Bibi’s on trial now for breach of trust and bribery and Gantz never stopped reminding people that Bibi’s sole motivation was to extricate himself from the noose the prosecution set for him. For his part, Netanyahu did everything he could to keep Gantz under his thumb and out of the loop.
The two couldn’t agree on anything. Not on coronavirus, not on pushing forward with the Trump deal of the century, and not on a new budget either.
The government fell automatically when the Knesset failed to pass a budget in mid-December and now we’re facing Election number 4 – next Tuesday.
So now you’re up to date. We know when the mess we got into began. We know some of the guilty parties.
What we don’t know yet is whether election number 4 will be decisive.
This election, once again, is a referendum on Binyamin Netanyahu. Almost all the polls show an even match between parties that support Bibi and parties that support anyone but Bibi.
The final polls will be published Friday morning. The pollsters continue working right up to election day, but election laws prohibit them from updating the polls 72 hours before an election.
If you put the proverbial gun to my head, my prediction is Netanyahu will prevail.
Benny Gantz has been a tough opponent in Elections 1, 2 and 3 but polls show he might not even make it into the Knesset this time. No other opponent will even come close to the numbers that Gantz won. If Bibi almost made it to the top facing a strong opponent, he should be able to win when his opposition is splintered and weaker.
But that will only happen if Likud voters turn out in big numbers. Even if they do, the Likud will need help from their natural partners – the chareidim and the religious Zionists.
Netanyahu will also have to convince Naftali Bennett to play ball with him.
Bibi doesn’t make too many political mistakes, but I wrote a few months ago, after election number 3, that Bibi blundered when he cut Bennett out of his last government. In doing so, Bibi empowered and embittered a rival who’s gaining popularity. Polls show Bennett headed for his best showing since he first entered the Knesset in 2013 when he won 12 seats.
By the same token, if the ball does fall into Bennett’s court, and he becomes the new kingmaker, he will have to learn from the mistakes of his predecessors, Kahlon and Lieberman, who stubbornly stuck to their positions even when it was obvious it was getting them nowhere. If he doesn’t, chances are that election number 5 will be an even bigger mess than the one we’re already in.
LISTEN: The Republican Party has a major decision to make. Do they break from Donald Trump? Or do they reconcile with Trump, or at least keep him on their good side
Politics has become more unpredictable than ever, but there is one prediction I’m willing to make.
Donald Trump will not be impeached again.
House Democrats swung and missed twice.
Now the Republicans are at the plate, pinch-hitting for the Democrats. Will they swing and miss for a third strike?
What do I mean by all this?
It’s very simple. The Republican Party has a major decision to make. Do they break from Donald Trump? Like the Republican 7 that voted Trump guilty of insurrection in the senate?
Like Nikki Haley and Mitch McConnell who have put distance between themselves and Trump by criticizing his actions on the day of Wednesday, January 6, 2021?
Or do Republicans make up with Trump, or at least keep him on their good side
It’s a huuuuge question with huuugee implications for the future of the party, the country, Trump himself and anyone else yearning to be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.
But there’s one even more important date to keep in mind before we get to 2024.
2022.
November 2022 is the date for the midterm Congressional elections. The most important goal for the Republicans is to retake the House of Representatives. And it’s achievable. The Republicans might have lost both the White House and the senate this past November, but they actually gained seats in the House. They cut the Democrat’s lead to single digits. During the course of 2021, states will be redistricting based on changes in population. This is a political exercise that takes place every 10 years after the Census to make sure that representation in Washington remains fairly apportioned among the states. Since Republicans hold a majority over Democrats on the state level, they will take every possible legal advantage of the process to redraw congressional districts to favor Republican candidates.
With Republicans poised to recapture the House, it would be political suicide to launch a full, frontal attack on Donald Trump. This is true whether you’re pro-Trump or anti-Trump.
Republicans would be much wiser to stay in Trump’s good graces. That way, he is more likely to throw his support behind their effort rather than launch a third party, or target Republicans in the 2022 primaries who he feels were disloyal to him.
Once we get past 2022, then we can start looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election.
Let Trump throw his red MAGA hat in the ring. Let Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton …and that list will grow .. let them announce their candidacy as well. Let’s have a battle of ideas. The party will benefit from competitive primaries.
But declaring Trump a persona non grata, or passing a law to bar him from running for public office again will only backfire.
More than 74 million Americans voted for Trump. I would venture a guess that most of them voted for Trump because they liked Trump and not because he ran as a Republican. Polls indicate that at least 1/3 to ½ of Trump’s voters are still loyal to Trump.
Republicans can’t afford to antagonize 25-35 million voters – and they certainly can’t afford to split into two parties in advance of a midterm election where they’re the favorites.
And its not like his political enemies are faring so well. The so called Lincoln Project – a group of anti-Trump Republicans – has disintegrated in a scandal. Not one name among the Republican 7 who voted Trump guilty in the senate trial will find themselves anywhere near the top of the party ticket in 2024. Well, Mitt Romney might try again, but after his uninspiring second place finish to Obama in 2016, why would the GOP take another flier on him?
2024 needs to be a fair fight. The Republicans can’t sit back and hand the nomination to Trump, even if he wants it again, and even if he still insists he was cheated out of the presidency. Frankly, the president ought to drop that line of attack. He needs to look ahead, not back. He needs to show the same confidence – and humility – that he displayed at his farewell speech at Andrews Air Force Base on January 20th when he flew off from frigid Washington to sunny Florida. Trump deserves a chance to prove that he has learned from his mistakes.
And if he hasn’t, or he doesn’t? Then you can make a clear case that it’s time to move on.
This is Binyamin Rose for Mishpacha.com
The pecking order for priority in receiving the new coronavirus vaccine began with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Rivlin.
I never expected to cut the line and get ahead of them, but thanks to my advanced age – I’m over 60 and considered to at high risk – I was among the first average citizens eligible. I got the first dose of my vaccine this morning. I had already decided I was going to get this over with as fast as I could.
I understand why people are worried about the vaccine. I was too. The medical technology behind it is relatively new. The development timetable was rushed. Can we trust the science? Can we trust the politicians urging us to get vaccinated?
These are fair questions. I asked them too. Here’s where my training as a journalist is so valuable. I was always taught to conduct my own independent research and come to my own conclusions, rather than taking someone else’s word for it. So I read up on the science. I also read what the detractors had to say. I even read through the conspiracy theories.
Most importantly, I consulted my family doctor and one specialist who knows our family medical history. They both strongly recommended it. And in recent days, I’ve also paid heed to the long and growing list of rebbeim who are advocating for the vaccine. So I felt confident that I touched all my bases.
If I may, I’m going to share a bit of my personal medical background. As a little boy, growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the only vaccines we had were for smallpox and polio. I contracted virtually every childhood disease from ages 6-8. I missed more than 150 days of school from first to third grade.
I watched my son grow up in an era where we have vaccines for almost everything. He didn’t have to suffer like I did and neither do his children. I thank Hashem for that. Again, I understand everyone has their own experience and opinions. I’m just sharing mine.
I’m also not into bashing Big Pharma. I spent 13 years of my career as a stockbroker and money manager. Pharmaceutical companies were always a mainstay of my clients’ portfolios. Yes, drug prices should be lower and I applaud government efforts to pressure them to keep prices affordable. Yet I learned that developing a new drug or vaccine is a risky, high-stakes business. It can take many failures and billions of dollars lost until a pharmaceutical company hits the jackpot on one. When they do, I’m enough of a capitalist to think they deserve to make a healthy profit. Again, I understand everyone has their own experience and opinions. I’m just sharing mine.
My turn for the vaccine arrived this morning at 9:10 AM at the Meuchedet on Haturim Street in the center of Jerusalem. There’s exactly one legal parking spot next to building and it was vacant. Thank you again, Hashem. It’s a good thing I got there early, too. A line had formed and only five people were being admitted at a time. Finally, a guard came by and took my temperature. It couldn’t have been too high after waiting out in the cold for ten minutes. Once inside, I took the elevator to the 5th floor lobby where they verified my appointment.
The room where they administer the vaccinations resembled a voting precinct. Maybe it’s because elections are on my mind after another government fell the night before, but sometimes, looks are not deceiving. There were seven or eight different booths, separated by cardboard walls, for some semblance of privacy. About 20 other people were waiting for their shots, all sitting socially-distanced, in plastic, orange-colored chairs. I noticed a large freezer in one corner of the room with a temperature gauge set to -56. The vaccine loses effectiveness unless it’s kept at arctic temperatures.
The nurses inside the booths were hustling. The background noise you’re about to hear is not the sound of children unwrapping candy. It’s the sound of nurses removing syringes and needles from plastic wrappers. Finally, I was directed to one of the booths. My nurse introduced herself as Rena. To try and break the tension – mine, that is – we chatted a bit.
I rolled up my sleeve, but now it was Rena’s turn to ask questions.
Without further ado, Rena asked me to raise my left arm and fold it over my chest.
There’s nothing like Eretz Yisrael where the nurse says Amen to your brachah. Rena asked me to sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes to ensure I had no adverse reaction and to make an appointment for the booster vaccine in three weeks. While I was waiting, I opened up my Meuchedet App and saw that an appointment had already been booked for me in three weeks.
The miracles of modern science and sophisticated, modern technology all rolled into one.
Several hours have now passed since the vaccine. Baruch Hashem, I feel perfectly fine.
I don’t get the impression that Bill Gates is tracking me either. When I arrived home, my son jokingly put his phone next to my arm and said, you’re still on 4G not 5G. I’ll check again in another three weeks after my second shot.
If the truth must be known, I was never convinced that I’m so important that Bill Gates, or any combination of global, conspiratorial agencies are interested in me and my whereabouts.
Having said that, I do have one word for Mr. Gates. If you’re really concerned about my health and welfare, please transfer some of shares of Microsoft into my account.
My portfolio could use a booster shot too.
Exclusive to Mishpacha.com
Listen: I’d like to see a return to political normalcy as well. I’m willing to take a chance on another election. I saw a headline in the Jerusalem Post today asking: “Who’s at fault for Israel’s third coronavirus wave?”
I’m not sure we ever really got over the first wave. To me a more pertinent question is “who’s at fault for Israel’s fourth election in two years?”
I’m not going to answer that directly because I don’t like playing the blame game. Politics is complicated. Personal and political rivalries, some of them petty, always get in the way of the common good.
We need to make it clear that nothing’s final yet. The Knesset can still pull back from the brink. Wednesday’s vote to dissolve itself is procedural. It still needs approval from two committees. The Knesset members themselves must vote on it three more times. But if all goes according to the script that’s being written, by this time next week, we should have a date for new elections, probably sometime between Purim and Pesach.
Closer to Purim would be more apropos, considering how most of our elected leaders have spent the last nine months in a dress rehearsal for the upcoming election.
Let’s be upfront about this.
Nobody in the current government wanted the coalition we got stuck with. The only reason Likud and Blue and White joined forces was due to the unfortunate election math following the March 2020 election. Neither of the two big parties could cobble together a coalition of 61 votes. Likud and Blue and White was never a shidduch. It was a marriage destined for divorce. One party is center right and other is center-left. The leaders of each party have worked with other in the past and have learned to dislike and distrust each other. There’s no common ground. They can’t pass a budget. They never wanted to because it was always something they could weaponize to use against the other party. They can’t face up to the fact that the lockdown policy to battle the coronavirus is an utter failure and causes more harm than good.
Naftali Bennett may have resorted to some hyperbole in his Knesset speech before the vote to disband the Knesset, but as political rhetoric, it’s the first shot fired in the upcoming campaign:
Bennett says the state of Israel has turned from the start-up nation to a nation torn with dissension. We’ve gone from a state of innovation to a state of lockdowns. Oh, there’s one thing Israel can take pride in. We’re now number one in the world when it comes to elections.
Well not exactly. Four elections in two years is abnormal, but overall, in 72 years of statehood, Israel has had only 23 Knesset elections. That’s about one every three years. America has a presidential election every four years and Congressional midterms every two years. They’re considered a model of stability. Israel also has a long way to go to catch up with Italy, and its 61 governments since World War II.
But Bennett has been nipping at Bibi Netanyahu’s Achilles heel for a long time now. Netanyahu gets all the credit for being the craftiest politician in Israel, and he is, but even the best of us make mistakes.
Bibi made a major blunder sidelining Naftali Bennett from his coalition after the March election. He’s now paying the price. Bennett’s party is running a close second to the Likud in all of the polls. Yamina’s one-two-three punch of Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and Bezalel Smotrich are increasingly seen as a collection of young, dynamic MKs compared to the Likud, whose old guard looks increasingly tired and unimaginative, while insisting that no one knows better than them how to run the country.
Having said that, never count Binyamin Netanyahu out.
While he may have goofed on Bennett, he has scored a TKO of Benny Gantz, boxing him into a corner that even Muhammad Ali couldn’t have punched his way out of.
Let’s be upfront about the following, even if Binyamin Netanyahu won’t admit the truth.
Bibi wants new elections more than anyone.
All the polls show that the right wing, which hasn’t been able to count past 60 ever since Avigdor Lieberman left the fold, could surpass that number, easily now, without Lieberman.
A majority right-wing government could potentially shield Netanyahu from his corruption trial. A right-wing government, if it got gutsy enough, could curb the veto power of the Supreme Court to cancel duly-passed Knesset laws that don’t suit their worldview. A solid right-wing coalition could show more backbone to Joe Biden’s version of America, who’s chomping at the bit for January 20, 2021 so he can start appeasing Iran and the Palestinian Authority.
But Netanyahu can’t come out and say all that.
Right now, he is campaigning for an Academy Award as Best Actor. And he would win, hands down for insisting he wants no part of new elections while making sure that Benny Gantz gets all the blame for it.
Netanyahu is saying: “Benny Gantz needs to step on the brakes. He has to stop the downward spiral to elections and restrain himself from launching personal attacks. We can’t afford new elections when we have to focus on the battle against corona, protect the health of our people and save lives, and nurse everyone’s parnassa back to good health.”
I’ll go one giant step further. Israelis want their lives back. Enough of the lockdowns that don’t work. In that respect, Bennett is correct. Just today, Professor Moti Gerlic an immunologist at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine told Arutz 7 what just about every thinking Israeli has known for months. The number of people testing positive for coronavirus has no relation to how many people are actually getting sick from it. Professor Gerlic says we know more about the virus every day and the treatments are getting better. He even complimented the chareidi sector for reopening schools and conducting life as close to normally as possible without the dire consequences that everyone predicted. He contends 15-18% of the population is at risk of complications from the coronavirus and that the remaining 80-85% percent should be allowed to conduct their lives normally too.
I’d like to see a return to political normalcy as well. I’m willing to take a chance on another election. It’s too early to tell if the polls are correct and that Bibi and Bennett would win about 50 seats between them. Even if they do, there is no telling that Bibi and Bennett will be able to bury their personal animosity and join forces to lead a government. If they can, they will enjoy the support of the chareidi parties, Shas and UTJ, giving the government a solid majority of 65 to 70.
It’s worth a try. What we have now is a government by stalemate. Israelis are tired of the stalemate. They’re frustrated with sitting home, having nowhere to go, and not enough money in their pockets go anywhere and do anything even if everything was open. Let’s try one more election to see if we can break the deadlock.
Exclusive to Mishpacha.com
LISTEN: Every presidential election is basically a choice between the lesser of two evils, not between two tzadikkim, or one tzaddik and one rasha Two months ago, a colleague of mine, Laura Adkins, the opinion editor for the JTA news service asked me to write an op-ed explaining why Orthodox Jews support President Trump and why they are voting for him again.
I accepted the assignment. Not that my goal was to convince people who oppose Trump to vote for him.
My objective was to simply illuminate to a wider Jewish readership why some 80% of Orthodox Jews voted for Trump in 2016 and why at least 83% of them will vote for him this year as well, at least according to a poll recently commissioned by our media colleagues at Ami Magazine.
My op-ed went viral, as the saying goes. JTA provides news and opinion to about 70 media outlets around the world. Most of them picked up my piece. That includes the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel, a slew of local Jewish newspapers in various US cities, and even on the Real Clear Politics website tab that covers religion.
I’m not going to do a chazara on the points I made. There’s a link in the written text that accompanies this podcast, so if you never saw the article, please give it look.
What I will talk about today is some of the reaction to my article, what I began to ponder in the wake of that feedback, and what relevance it has now five days before the election.
The main critique – and there was plenty of it – came from Orthodox Jews who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and wouldn’t dream of voting for him now.
I won’t belabor their points either. Suffice it to say, my critics reminded me that Trump has been dishonest in business, unfaithful to his wives, and often untruthful to the public on major issues. My interlocutors asked me how a Torah Jew can overlook these major flaws, in some cases, violations of the 10 commandments, and support a man of such low moral fiber.
This is a legitimate question. It’s easy to ask. It’s harder to answer.
Let me begin with a story from the early part of Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. Mishpacha’s editorial board met on a conference call with our rabbinical advisors to discuss how to cover Trump’s candidacy.
There was some sentiment expressed that Trump was a person of base character, we shouldn’t take his candidacy seriously, and perhaps – we shouldn’t even mention his name.
In my capacity as news editor, I objected strenuously to this approach. Number one, I said we need to take Trump’s candidacy very, very seriously. He was ahead in almost all of the polls versus his Republican Party rivals. We may not understand why the GOP would choose a total neophyte to be their presidential nominee, but I said our job is to cover the campaign exactly as it unfolds. We had to be prepared that Trump would win the nomination and you know what else? He might even become the next president!
Number two, I reminded my colleagues that the vote for president of the United States was not an election to the Moetzes Gedolei Yisroel, nor an endorsement that the candidate of our choice is one of the Lamed-Vav tzadikim. Politics is a grimy profession. The days of the public servant are long since gone. One of the prerequisites of running for office today is that you need a huge ego. You have to be cutthroat enough to steamroll the competition. And if you’re fortunate enough to win, you need nerves of steel and a ruthless streak in you when you’re sitting face to face with some of dictators and strongmen who run the other major world powers. Do we really want a nice guy for president who gives planeloads of cash to the Ayatollahs in Iran, or someone who knows how to squeeze them and apply US power to make the other guy cave in?
After further discussion, the editorial board and our rabbinical advisors accepted my view. The rest is history. Trump is president, he is running for re-election and although he’s still trailing in the polls, it wouldn’t be a big shock if he wins.
I relate this story because to me, that’s really the key to how I answered the tough questions readers posed after my JTA piece.
On the character issue, as it relates to his own personal and business dealings, Trump is a failure. He is not a role model for us. I would argue, in his favor, that most everything he is accused of happened before he became president. There is no evidence he has repeated the same sins in the Oval Office. Unlike some other former presidents whose personal misconduct has been documented for posterity. Yes, Trump is vulgar. He is a bully. He is a name-caller. Like any politician, he lies. On the other hand, think about the following for just one minute. Imagine if you came to work every day, and your bosses and colleagues berated you constantly. No matter what you did, it was never good enough. They never gave you credit for any accomplishments. They blamed you personally for everything that went wrong. How would you react? Would you just say, aw shucks, I’m mediocre, I quit? Or would you lash out? I’m not Trump’s psychologist, and I don’t know if he’s playing offense or defense with his nasty Tweets and comments, but I just can’t imagine how a person goes to work every day while being subjected to constant abuse.
But LBJ and Nixon were also foulmouthed louts. They didn’t have Twitter, but we do have the Nixon tapes. We know how boorish he sounded. And there’s enough testimony about LBJ that’s filled several volumes in his biography.
What I’m looking for in a president is competence. Trump is competent, crass as he may be. Six presidents have tried and failed to make peace in the Middle East. Trump is succeeding. Three Muslim nations have made peace with Israel in the last month. There’s more to come. Mishpacha is already advertising trips to Dubai for Thanksgiving. What more proof do you need?
Every president since Clinton sold American manufacturing down the river when making deals with our closest trading partners, Mexico and Canada. Trump renegotiated those deals. They’re not one-sided in our favor, but they’re better deals than what we had before.
As Orthodox Jews, we care about family values as much as we care about anything else. President Trump appointed three conservatives to the Supreme Court, ensuring a conservative majority for the foreseeable future who will vote to preserve religious freedoms, and maybe even some tuition relief for parochial school parents. Can we imagine who Hillary Clinton would have appointed to the Supreme Court? Or who a President Biden or a President Harris might pick?
I already said I won’t belabor the point and I’m starting to, so I’ll close with this final idea.
Trump is a sign of the times. Let’s not kid ourselves. Anyone with a big enough mouth, a pocketful of cash, and a good PR apparatus can run for public office.
America has a two-party system. Every presidential election is basically a choice between the lesser of two evils, not between two tzadikkim, or one tzaddik and one rasha.
We have to vote for one of the two people that the major political parties nominated. If the parties wanted someone else to be their nominees, they would have chosen them. We’re stuck with who they gave us.
In 2016 it was Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. This year, it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden. The lesser of the two evils is in the eye of the beholder.
(Exclusive to Mishpacha.com)
LISTEN: Even if Trump is re-elected, the Palestinians will never give up on their core demands
It’s no secret that the Palestinians are rooting for Joe Biden to defeat President Trump in next week’s presidential election.
A Biden victory would bury Trump’s Middle East deal of the century in which the Palestinians feel they have been dealt out.
The Palestinians wear their dislike for Donald Trump on their sleeves. I heard it for myself yesterday on a conference call for the foreign press in Jerusalem. The interview subject was Munther Dajani, a professor of political science and Diplomatic Studies at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. Dajani once served as director-General of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Economy and Trade. Dajani is no longer affiliated with the PA, but he understands their mentality well and he doesn’t mince words when it comes to critiquing his former bosses. However, Dajani reserved most of his diatribe for Trump, who he says misunderstands and underestimates the resolve of the Palestinians, who he says will never concede their national aspirations.
Dajani suggested that the Trump administration is misguided if it thinks that by waving a few dollars – and maybe F-35s in the air – that the Arab street will warm up to Israel as certain Arab rulers have. Dajani says relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, have been ongoing for ten years, and he’s not sure why this took the Palestinians by surprise.
While Dajani made it abundantly clear that Israel has the upper hand, he contends that you can’t keep the Palestinians down forever. Even if Trump is re-elected, the Palestinians will never give up on their core demands.
And that includes Donald Trump.
LISTEN: What will happen to Israel-Arab relations, and the Iran Nuclear Deal, post-elections? Former Ambassador Michael Oren says the stakes are very high
The first time I ever heard Michael Oren speak was at a conference at Bar Ilan University in June 2008, eleven months before Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed him to be Israel’s ambassador to the United States. At the time, the US was still mired in the War on Terror that followed 9/11. Oren, who is also an historian, noted this wasn’t the first time Americans were engaged in battle against Muslims in the Middle East.
Oren talked about the Barbary Wars, which began shortly after America declared its independence from Britain. Pirates from Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and the Algiers attacked American merchant ships in the Mediterranean, holding their sailors for ransom. This posed a major threat to the economy of the fledgling country. If you think we have strong differences of opinion today in how to deal with state sponsors of terror, it was no different back then.
John Adams, America’s second president, recommended paying ransom to the pirates to release the American ships. His vice president, Thomas Jefferson advocated going to war, which is exactly what Jefferson did when he became president, after Adams.
More than 200 years later, today’s presidential candidates are also battling over how to deal with the leading sponsor of global terror, Iran.
This debate often falls along the conservative versus liberal political divide. Joe Biden has promised to renew the nuclear deal with Iran that President Trump trashed. We don’t know exactly what Trump might do, but Oren says it remains challenging to this day to explain to both liberal American Jews and US politicians exactly why Iran is such a menace to Israel.
MO: I travel even among policymakers in Washington and I find almost none of them understand the strategic and human ramifications of the hundred and thirty thousand rockets, which Iran has given to Hezbollah, and which Hezbollah has now placed under 200 Lebanese villages in the South, and will use the residents of those villages as human shields should we tried to destroy those weapons. And that increasing numbers of these rockets are cruise missiles that can be guided to take out our essential infrastructure. And that's just in Lebanon. Those doesn't include the Irani back rockets in Gaza, in Iraq, even in Yemen, that can reach us. And that the Iranians are very very intelligent. That creates a situation where they'll wait out the Iran nuclear deal, they'll wait for the Sunset Clauses to expire, then they will break out and create a nuclear arsenal, and when we try to stop the breakout, we will be deterred by tens and tens of thousands of rockets being fired at our homes and our cities. That's the Iranian plan. And the great thing about the Iranian nuclear program, is it facilitated it all, because it also gave them the money to buy the rockets. It gave them the influence to take over Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Great deal the Iran nuclear deal. Now, I have to be able to explain that to American Jews. You can explain it. It's not difficult. It's difficult to get them to understand it. But that is our reality. And when, you know, politicians say they want to renew that deal, this is what we are talking about. We're talking about putting us on to a path of a war that could be every bit as destructive, if not more so, than the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Michael Oren also said Israel cannot become complacent even if Trump wins re-election. The president, and his top aides, have set a goal of bringing Iran back to the negotiating table. Which means Israel will eventually have to make its red lines clear and transparent to the US.
MO: Irrespective of who wins on November 3rd, Israel must not repeat the mistake that it made in 2015 by not publishing and detailing what would be our interest in any Iranian nuclear deal. We never did it, and enabled the Obama administration, in it's time, to say that no deal would ever be acceptable to the Israelis — it wasn't true — we knew what a good deal would look like and for all sorts of strategic reasons we didn't publish it. We can't revisit that mistake. We have to publish what would be our interests and how they can be safeguarded in any future, re-negotiated deal between the United States and Iran.
Today, Oren keeps busy consulting with the different parties to Trump’s peace process, including Arab nations. So coming at this from a counterintuitive direction, I asked Oren if it was possible that a Biden victory next week would spur other Arab nations who are currently sitting on the fence, mainly Saudi Arabia, to strike a deal with Israel in Trump’s final days.
BR: Michael this Binyamin Rose from Mishpacha Magazine, how are you today?
MO: I've been doing alright.
BR: My question is what happens if Trump loses do we see perhaps a rush all of a sudden from several remaining Arab countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, to try to close deals with Israel before Trump leaves power, knowing that Biden is going to come in and change everything back?
MO: Is it very important question I'm grappling with pretty much on a daily basis because a Biden victory can cut two ways. And by the way, it could cost also both ways. One is as I've said before it's quite natural for an incoming Administration to adopt the AB position — which is 'anything but.' So when Obama came in was 'anything but Bush' and when Trump can it was 'anything but Obama.' So Biden would come in, and be 'anything but Trump' and since Trump was seen as The Godfather to will, the sponsor of these peace agreements, then it would be natural for a Biden administration to pull back, that this was his doing we're not going to have anything to do with that. And so the next administration, if it was a Democratic Administration, would not be willing to invest as heavily in building and strengthening these ties. And I can think of a number of initiatives which are now being discussed business initiatives economic exchanges, which I cannot with any certainty say would actually take place under a Biden administration.
BR: But does a Biden victory make some of these countries jump, like Saudi Arabia in particular?
MO: But here's how it cuts the other way. If the Biden Administration is going to move to renew the Iran nuclear deal at a time when America is withdrawing from the area and leaving a vacuum, then the only country that is really capable of standing up to Iran and defending this region effectively is the State of Israel. And it's only by bonding together can Israel and our Newfound Arab allies withstand Iran, especially Iran that's going to be greatly enriched and legitimized by Iran nuclear deal. The only other alternative for these country would be to go basically on their knees go back to Tehran. It is certainly not a savory option, but it may not be a viable and realistic option, either.
Oren said he has worked closely with both Biden and Harris. Out of all the candidates who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, he says they were the most pro-Israel, with perhaps the exception of Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, and that both Biden and Harris vowed never to use American aid to Israel as a lever to pressure Israel. What about the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, who will enjoy outsized influence in a Biden administration?
MO: There's a wellspring of progressive thought there — I encountered it 10 years ago, by the way, it's not new, it's just expanded — which doesn't necessarily see Israel as an ally, in some cases they like to cut off aid. They are very concerned with the Palestinian issue above beyond all other issues. They actually can view this Peace Arrangements between Israel, Bahrain, Sudan as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, and did not agree with the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's Capital, of the Golan Heights as part of Israeli Sovereign territory. Did not agree with America's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal — it's a long list. We have to proceed on the assumption that this growing Progressive wing of the Democratic party will have at least some influence over this Administration and we're going to have to deal with it
Oren says for now, we are in a holding pattern awaiting what happens after the election. Will the US remain invested in these new bilateral relations, under Trump, or will the emphasis revert to the Palestinian issue, under Biden?
Exclusive to Mishpacha.com