The Political Me and Bibi's Congress Speech

 

Some of my favorite "buttons" from the past

I don't like it when people think they can label me or presume they know my opinions. I'm not that easy to label. I don't take orders from anyone. I make my own decisions. And sometimes my opinions are like no one else's. 

Here's something I wrote recently on facebook.

I have never been loyal to a particular political party in any country. I look only at policies, even more than leaders.

Over the decades I've seen too many politicians and political parties desert principles.

I'm a purist. I don't trust anyone. If something stinks, then it goes... that includes politicians and political parties.

Speeches and oratory aren't policies and facts on the ground. Promises are promises...

I know that not everyone understands this. Too many people say that they only, or have always vote for a particular party; they're loyal to it. They make their decisions, decide their opinions according to party leaders. They trust their party and its leaders. I'm not like that. Sorry.

When I started demonstrating for Soviet Jewry, demanding that the leaders of the USSR release Soviet Jews from their prison-like country. One of the signs we held up showed the number of synagogues that had been in various cities that became part of the Soviet Union in 1917. Those numbers were compared with the number of synagogues in the same cities in 1965. Yes, there were far fewer. The message was very clear. Communism doesn't allow people religious freedom in addition to not allowing them to leave the country. 

"Enlightened" sic Americans were still enthralled with the idea of communism and socialism. Not me. I didn't go to the same demonstrations my peers attended "religiously." You could say that I chose a "different religion." My determined observance of Torah Laws certainly separated me from fellow Jewish students. Then I discovered Zionism, the mitzvah, religious requirement, to live in our Holy Land. That's why I live here in the holy city of Shiloh, the same place written about in the Bible, where the Ancient Tabernacle had stood for almost four hundred 400 years. 

I go straight to the source and I abhor double-talk, which is a reason I don't trust Prime Minister Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu. I've been listening to him and observing his policies for many years. He has been conning the Israeli public and people all over the world pretending to be a strong Right patriot, but his policies are something else entirely. So are his speeches. The important thing is to listen to the end. I caught onto that many, many years ago. 

Netanyahu's recent Congress speech was the same pattern/structure as what I heard in August, 2008. He hypnotizes people in the first part of his speeches, and then when most people are no longer listening to the details he tells the truth. By then most people aren't paying attention to the details; he has captured them. When I heard Bibi at the First International Jewish Bloggers Convention he announced that he'd return to office as Prime Minister as a "centrist." I heard him clearly, but it doesn't seem like others had paid attention.

The first three quarters 3/4 or so of Netanyahu's Congress address was wonderful. Yes, of course, Binyamin Netanyahu is certainly one of the world's greatest orators. He's responsible for his speeches, not hired writers. You can see it clearly when it's off the cuff. His knowledge of world and Jewish history qualifies him to teach in universities like his father had. But that doesn't mean that his policies, especially military/security are what the State of Israel needs.

Soon after Netanyahu voiced the slogan #neveragainisNOW which is one even I use on X, Instagram and Facebook, he took a different turn. He pledged that Israelis wouldn't return to live in Gaza, and from there it went downhill. That was a slap in the face to our brave soldiers who had fought so hard to destroy the terrorists and return to Gush Katif. It's so obvious to many of us that there can never be true peace if we're just policing Gaza and not living there.

After that Bibi sounded like 1960's druggy Leftist when he said that he "envisioned" peaceful Gazans ruling themselves. Duh? There's nothing pragmatic, realistic, intelligent about that...

If that wasn't enough, Netanyahu began bragging about Israel having "the most moral army" ever. Honestly, I don't think it's moral to endanger your own soldiers to protect the enemy. Over twenty years ago, local Shiloh soldier Avihu Keinan, HaY"D was killed in such an army action. Instead of destroying a building, which was believed to be in enemy hands, Avihu was sent in the inspect it, and then he was killed. His father organized various marches and demonstrations against the policy, and I attended and wrote about them. I remember Moshe Keinan asking "Why is Ahmad's life more important than my son's?" That's why I get very upset every time the Prime Minister and other government officials claim this policy is so wonderful, worth bragging about. It's so obvious that the Hamas terrorists will never surrender when we feed them and provide medicines. 

I call it suicidal. I'm a realist. And remember that terrorists don't wear uniforms. Photos publicized by the terrorists of October 7th, show clearly that CIVILIANS of ALL AGES were the rapists, murderers and arsonists. So why are we protecting Gazans as if they hadn't been involved? There's that famous recording of a phone call between a young Gazan terrorist and his parents bragging about murdering ten Israelis. His parents praised him.

Why is Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bragging to the world about protecting, feeding and and sending medical care to terrorists?

Think about it...

HIDDEN HEROES- Book Review

Here's Pamela Braun Cohen at the book launch
 talking about her book. Next to her is
Ilan Greenfield of Gefen Publishing House.

Hidden Heroes: One Woman's Story of Resistance and Rescue in the Soviet Union by Pamela Braun Cohen, Gefen Publishing House is an amazing and inspiring story. Pamela Braun Cohen had been an ordinary suburban Jewish wife and mother in 1970 when by chance she heard a newscast about Soviet Jews unsuccessfully trying to escape the USSR...

For Cohen this news was lifechanging. Blessed with a supportive husband, Pamela Braun Cohen became more than just a Soviet Jewry activist. She visited the USSR meeting the refuseniks, becoming their friends and supplying them with everything from jeans to be sold on the black market to the support of US President Ronald Reagan and other powerful American politicians.

Natan Sharansky

Before long she was National President of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews UCSJ, and by the time she was ready to retire from that position, decades later, she and her family had become Torah observant (Orthodox) Jews. In HIDDEN HEROES Cohen tells how the Soviet Jews' interest in Torah brought it also to her and her family. Also following the the aliyah to Israel of many former refuseniks,  Pamela and her husband Lenny now live in Jerusalem.

My husband and I at the 
book launch

It's no secret that my husband and I met for the first time at a SSSJ Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry demonstration. We were activists until our wedding and subsequent aliyah that same summer of 1970 when Pamela Cohen first got involved. So, obviously, I felt very connected to her story.

HIDDEN HEROES is a real eye-opener, even for me who had been following the struggle of Soviet Jews from the middle 1960s and then welcomed those who made it to Israel, especially Shiloh, over two decades later. I had no firsthand knowledge of the multitude of issues Cohen and her fellow activists dealt with. She and her fellow workers/volunteers/activists were busy on three fronts simultaneously, not just the totalitarian antisemitic USSR but the governments of the United States and Israel, too.

The best I can do is to wholeheartedly recommend HIDDEN HEROES. Buy it. Read it. Give it as gifts to everyone, from teens to retirees.

Dozens of people attended the book launch, so it had to be held outdoors.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gefen Publishing House (July 18, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 965702336X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9657023365

Castle of Concrete, Book Review

Castle of Concrete by Katia Raina is an amazing and well-written novel about life in the late twentieth 20th century during the fall of the USSR and how it affected a Jewish teenage girl and her family. To be honest, I think it's a mistake to market it as Young Adult fiction. The genre of Castle of Concrete is really much broader.

I'm far from a young teenager in age, and I found Castle of Concrete fascinating. During that very same era, we had hosted and "adopted" a number of Soviet Jewish immigrants to Israel, not that much older than the characters depicted in the book. The young men who spent a lot of time with our family had finished military service in the USSR, and some had even begun university studies before making their homes in Israel. Not all were happy about their family's decision, but staying alone in the deteriorating and collapsing Soviet Union wasn't an option. I could see similarities with Sonya, Katia Raina's main character.

We meet Sonya as she reconnects with her rebellious mother, after spending most of her childhood in the care of her Jewish grandmother in Siberia. Sonya has to make a new life for herself, and in the process she tries to reinvent herself from the quiet nerdy, always good girl, to a daring, rebellious attention-grabbing teenager. Sonya is Jewish from her mother, though she inherited her non-Jewish father's looks. Soon she'll have the option of choosing which nationality to put on her identity card.

Castle of Concrete follows Sonya as she experiments with different identities and behaviors in her new life in Moscow with her mother. Instead of being the conscientious student, Sonya begins to rebel and get interested in boys. She has to decide whether or not to identify as a Jew, especially since her boyfriend is a Russian nationalist and antisemitic. In the background to the usual teenage angst we are made aware that her mother is hoping to be able to move with Sonya to New York, where they can have a better life.

I enjoyed reading Castle of Concrete, which is very nicely written and sincerely hope that Raina's writing a sequel in which we'll follow Sonya and her mother in their next new life, this time in New York.

• Publisher: Young Europe Books (June 11, 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0999541633
• ISBN-13: 978-0999541630