American Delegation Visits Israel About Embassy

 

United States delegation led by Congressman Ron DeSantis (R-FL) visited Israel this past Saturday and Sunday and has studied the possibility of placing the United States Embassy in Jerusalem. In the past, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders have warned moving the embassy could spark violence in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Middle East region as a whole. We posit the question of how one would be able to find this any different than the current situation. Obviously there would be little if any noticeable effect on Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Sinai or even Turkey which has had a number of large terrorist bombings in the past few months. In Israel and the Palestinian Authority ruled areas it runs hot and cold on the levels of terror all depending on the signals they get from the ruling media. When Abbas takes to the airwaves and claims that he cannot control the uprising which is solely the expression of the desperation of the people oppressed by Israel, they know that this means it is time to rise up and try to kill Israelis by any means available. Then whatever means they find, stabbings or ramming with vehicles become the name for that Intifada which was how the last Intifada was called the Stabbing Intifada. The Palestinians decided by personalizing their uprisings instead of numbering them they would not be drawing attention to their nearly constant level of violence. Though Israeli defensive measures brought the level of stabbings down measurably, we still have the vehicular assaults as proven by the recent truck attack in Jerusalem. The reality is that the threat of added violence is exactly that, a threat. There will be no change in the levels of violence, especially in Jordan where their militarized law enforcement will not tolerate even peaceful demonstrations, let along any violence. Should Mahmoud Abbas decide to elevate the levels of violence and terrorism against Israel, then Israel will find the solution and implement one as rapidly as possible. That would be an Israeli problem and should have little effect upon the American decision to locate their embassy in the Israeli Capital City of Jerusalem. Israel promises that your embassy will be safe and guarded equally in Jerusalem as it has been in Tel Aviv and those guarding it will feel a small measure of greater pride guarding it in Jerusalem, trust us.

 

United States Embassy Tel Aviv, Israel

 

But it will cost the United States status in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as the Arab and Muslim worlds react to the move. Well, allow us here in Israel to give you a little insight. You already lost that little edge you are so afraid of losing just by bringing up the subject for debate. Further, the level of loss will continue to increase for as long as the debate continues. Now there are two means of ending the sliding effect of the United States in the MENA world’s view, either by moving the embassy or declining to move the embassy and announcing that you are fearful of moving the embassy. Oh, you claim that fear would not be the reason; it would be so as to respect the feelings of the nations who have stated their opposition. Really, you think that works? Here is the reality, should you decide not to move the embassy then whatever amount of respect you believe you had lost in the MENA world would instantly be surpassed immeasurably. By not moving the embassy you signal now that you can be bullied by the nations of MENA simply claiming that your intended act would hurt their feelings and you have no stomach for any disagreement, let alone an actual fight. You claim you really want to not lose any respect from the MENA nations by moving the embassy but the truth is to regain everything that they claim you are and will be losing by moving the embassy and gain measurable amounts of extra credit for making the correct choice, then simply move the embassy because ignoring threats and saying what you believe and then acting on it counts for everything in the MENA world.

 

What you need to learn if you do not yet understand the MENA world is that everything is a threat and every threat is a bluff. The only thing which gains you respect is calling everyone else’s bluff. When you call their bluff, then they need to decide whether going through with their threats is worth what it may cost in the future and if they back down, how they can mitigate their timidity. Their reaction to your not moving the embassy is pocketing the knowledge that if their world threatens violence then the American back down. This will only serve to make their actions towards the United States as cowardly and able to be scared by threats of violence. Once you decide to move the embassy, the ones who threatened you will influence others from their world to join in making greater threats hoping to still make the United States back down. The announcement that you will move the embassy threatens their image of the United States as a nation which can be backed down with simply threats as that has happened ever since the first announcement for moving the embassy in the 1990’s. These threats will continue and grow or lessen according to the believed potential for the United States to move the embassy. Remember that a certain level of violence equal to the ability of the terrorist organizations to penetrate the security and intelligence of the United States exists at all times. Their efforts increase whenever the United States either acts against the terror interests or when the United States announces plans that those controlling the terror interests wish to prevent.

 

 

There is but one means to remove the threat level over moving the embassy to Jerusalem once and for all, move the embassy. Do not even announce the move, simply in secret in concert with the least number of Israeli departments and individuals as the less number of people knowing of the plans, the less the possibility for any leaking of the plan. It should be possible for the United States to build an embassy building using security approved construction personnel from the United States who can hold to a cover story. Make the building being constructed be referred to as a new office building from where a series of headquarters of American companies will be operating. This would qualify for why a building is being built by American workers in the center of the modern downtown of central west Jerusalem. Then once the building is completed and everything is readied for operations, the grand opening can reveal the new name which will appear on the outside of the building which has been covered since it was first mounted. The cover comes off and it states “United States Embassy” and then be ready for about ten to twelve weeks of screaming and shoe throwing. Place additional Marines around every MENA embassy and meet the reaction head on. Once the MENA nations and groups have vented sufficiently to make their chest beating need be satisfied they will quiet back to normal, which is not all that quiet as the NSA, CIA, Military Intelligence and other data gathering agencies can tell you and back it with evidence in spades. Then everything can return to its nominal level, not its normal level as nothing about the MENA nations of the world can be deemed normal, so nominal will have to suffice.

 

Imagined New Style for United States Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel

 

Further, the embassy will be in Jerusalem, West Jerusalem but still Jerusalem, and that will set a precedent for other nations and it will remove the claims from some out of the MENA world who claim that all of Jerusalem belongs to Islam and that neither the Jews nor the Christians have any rights, claims or history to or from Jerusalem and that neither Jews or Christians ever held Jerusalem because before Islam conquered Jerusalem it had no previous history because everything in Islam begins and ends with Islam and no other existence holds even the level of fancy as far as the Muslims are concerned. Moses, not a Jew, Noah, well, he really was not a Jew, Abraham, not a Jew, Isaak was never taken for sacrifice on Mount Moriah because that was Ishmael just as the Koran says and the Hebrew Bible is a misrepresentation because Judaism made up everything because only the Quran is true and the Christian Bible is also just a pack of lies and misrepresentations also because only the Quran tells truths and Jesus was an Islamic prophet, nothing more. Jesus will play a role in the end times according to the Quran. Jesus will return as a prophet readying the world for the return of the true final prophet of Allah, Jesus will return and make the world suitable for Muhammad who will come and lead the world into the age of perfection Islamic style. With this as the prescription for our future according to the Quran and Islam, what possibly could be the terrible consequence for moving an embassy to the Israeli capital city? Face it, there is nothing to fear but prolonging the agony by continuing the debate as the law declared the embassy move into law and all any President can do is prolong the agony so why not go for the ecstasy and just move the embassy to Jerusalem and get ‘er done!.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Republican Distress Self-Inflicted

 

The Republicans appear to be in disarray and acting as if they are completely unaware of the fact that they control both houses of Congress and the White House and are in the catbird seat exactly as the Democrats were the first two years of President Obama’s two terms. They are capable of setting the rules in the Senate such that they would have sufficient votes to ensure cloture by requiring a mere fifty-two votes ending any filibuster. The Democrat use of the so-called nuclear option set the precedent for adjusting cloture to fit your needs when you have the majority in the Senate. Yes, doing so would allow for the Democrats to do similarly when they gain fifty-one seats in the Senate and who does not believe they would do exactly as such anyway. The Republicans instead are fighting with the White House declaring the President’s budget dead on arrival. This is a party in need of better leadership as currently they are wasting their first and possibly only opportunity to prove they are the better option by acting as a whole to enact their vision for the United States.

 

I hear people demanding what we would propose if we think we have the answer. Well, perhaps they could actually get everybody on the same page instead of having a different set of priorities for every twenty or thirty Republicans. They need to have the Senate choose ten Senators and the House of Representatives choose twenty-five or thirty Representatives and have these people meet with the President and each Cabinet member in a series of meetings taking a week out of their schedules. Initially the President on the first day along with his preferred advisors should meet with the delegations and set a general structure for the ensuing week or even two and have the President and everyone else at the meeting express their preferences and ideas and have them discussed in a general sense setting up a framework. Then they should have meetings with cabinet members and the President each morning and then return and meet with the Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate each with their own chosen delegates such that everybody has some input and in the end they reach a consensus which is acceptable to the President and his Cabinet and advisors. Once this framework has been set, then the House of Representatives and the Senate can begin to work on the enactment of these ideas putting them into action. These agreed upon initiatives should be enacted through the House of Representatives and the Senate in quick order and signed by the President getting a basic set of accomplishments enacted and presented to the public as actual accomplishments in the next election cycle. If their ideas actually capture the minds and match the ideas of the population in the majority of the nation, then the Republicans can reap the rewards and press forward with even more action and accomplish what they promised in the first place.

 

President Trump National Security Advisor McMaster
Speaker of the House of Representatives Ryan
President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate Hatch

 

The first thing they need do is revamp healthcare. An idea we would like to suggest is to keep the choice parts of the current system adjusted to make them include competition between the many insurance companies. Much of healthcare need be taken from the employers and returned to the people such that their demand for the most and best options and the insurance companies need meet their hopes at an acceptable price, this will bring healthcare costs back down within reason. Further, the government need remove most of the regulations, reporting requirements and other unnecessary paperwork which has completely destroyed the concept of a single doctor working from their home in the neighborhood where their patients reside as had been the case before the government needlessly intervened and destroyed affordable healthcare. The government should only require that insurance policies cover major medical allowing people to decide to pay for any minor care out of their own pockets. The one idea which the government should make illegal would be controversial but in the long run would produce lower medical costs, and that is to make group policies illegal such that companies, unions, and other groups such as retirement groups or social groups from offering insurance to their workers or members. Make individual policies the sole type of health insurance allowed and only require minimal coverages. We suggest only what used to be considered major medical which would include emergency rooms treatment with a deductible, surgical procedures, any hospital or clinical procedures again with a deductible, and hospital stays with a deductible. The deductibles would depend on the cost of the coverage with the less expensive coverage having a higher deductible while there could be specialty additional coverages which would cover these deductibles but this should be banned from health insurers offering. Such a system would produce insurance affordable at any level such that younger and healthier people could take the risk of higher deductibles and with people paying for most of their own healthcare we would see prices become lower for most standard healthcare needs. The main way to cut healthcare costs would be to put a cap on rewards for malpractice suits and make one vital change, the lawyers losing any malpractice suit would be responsible for both sides’ court costs and lawyers’ fees within set limits. This would lead to fewer malpractice suits as lawyers would be very careful to only take such cases which they felt quite sure of their case and winning the case, period.

 

There are probably many other means for lowering court costs which we have not included which the Congress could enact. Removing regulations and paperwork would be one of the greatest means to relieve the burden on physicians who have had to form groups to defray the clerical costs imposed by both government and insurance companies who often are demanding additional paperwork simply because the government demands they file paperwork. Government is once again the greatest contributor to the costs of a commodity which they also demand everybody purchase. This is simply something the people’s need should have to accommodate and not employers or government as that is the current system which the people declared broken and becoming overly expensive with far too many forms. The government should never have the power to add costs beyond reason to an industry and then require the people purchase said product. As happened with car insurance, whenever the government demands people to purchase a commodity the price of such commodity will naturally skyrocket reaching the limit of what the people are capable to pay, not the actual required cost of the commodity. Simply ask yourself what would you charge for widgets if the government required every person to purchase one widget every month? You would price them set the highest price the market would bear rather than a competitive price because every other widget salesperson would be doing the same. The highest probability is all widget salespersons would agree to set an inflated price where all would become wealthy beyond what any normal competition would prevail had the government not required people to purchase your product. That is simple reality of life and not rocket science, or advanced economics. The proof of this theory has been the cost of health insurance since Obamacare hit the market. This is why competition must be returned to the health insurance markets and as much government involvement must be removed back to bare bones or less. No government involvement would be the most preferred state of healthcare. But first the Republicans need to unify and find some leadership which can work well with President Trump, both by leading when necessary and following when Trump is leading constructively. We can only hope.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Jewish Divide Over Trump Very Telling

 

Here’s a news flash that the media thus far has refused to mention, there are many Jews who support President Donald Trump. The media has been quite vocal of those Jews who are vehemently protesting the Trump Presidency. Probably the most telling example has been the Senate hearings to approve his Ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman. We will gladly grant the media that President Trump’s choice for Ambassador to Israel of David M. Friedman is a novel appointment when compared to previous appointments made by all the previous Presidents throughout Israeli history. There have been Ambassadors, Middle East Special Councils, Palestinian Israeli Peace Ambassadors and all sorts of other appointments made concerning Israel and her Arab neighbors plus the fact that American Ambassadors to the United Nations often have to interdict in matters concerning Israel, especially in United Nations sanctions against Israel often brought by Arab and European nations at the behest of the PLO or Palestinian Authority (PA) which have more often than not been vetoed by the United States Ambassador.

 

All of these past officials have more often than not been career Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) with the remainder have been political appointees. There have been more than a few of the most recent Israeli Ambassadors and Special Appointees who have been Jewish and thus touted as being most obviously as pro-Israeli. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Some in particular, Thomas R. Pickering, Martin Indyk and Denis Ross have been some of the most antagonistic to the Israeli cause. Both Martin Indyk and Denis Ross were said to be very much favorable to Israel because of their being Jewish which is like claiming that someone had to be favorable to illegal immigration across the southern border because they were Hispanic, an insult and very likely false. Indyk and Ross attempted to force Israel to make concessions in exchange for empty promises which had been given by the PA before and never acted upon or immediately broken often with an in-your-face attitude. David M. Friedman is a different Jew, he is also a Zionist. This is a first for an Ambassador to Israel and many Israelis are expecting great things if only our leaders can be bold, even brash for a change. Some here in Israel have placed David M. Friedman as being to the right and more Zionist than Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or most of the other Ministers of the Knesset. Additionally, Israelis have begun to believe that President Trump will be good for Israel providing Israel acts good for Israel.

 

Additionally, Orthodox Jews mostly voted for President Trump over Hillary Clinton while Democrat Jews voted almost universally for Hillary Clinton and are extremely upset by her loss and screaming mad over President Trump. During the hearings for Ambassador David M. Friedman there were Jews disrupting the hearings blowing Shofars. Traditionally the sounding of the Shofar other than as part of religious observance has been used as a warning sign often used as an alarm that enemies were advancing or other calamity. Sounding the Shofar at the hearings for the new Israeli Ambassador they were meaning that a calamity was occurring threatening Jewish lives. Their actions were over the top as no lives were being endangered and no emergency was coming for Jews and if anything this appointment was going to be good for Israel, a new page in appointments of advisors to Israel.

 

This brings us to what for us is one of the saddest things we will ever discuss, Israel and the American Jewish left. Often at demonstrations denouncing Israel some of the most virulent demonstrators will come from leftist, liberal Jews. These Jews are more attached to their leftist principles than they are to Torah and Israel. These are Jews who will never consider making Aliyah and were the members of our Synagogue who when we made Aliyah asked us why in the world we would want to go live in Israel of all places. They were stunned that somebody they knew would do something which was such an anathema to them. These were the same members of the Synagogue who had to get past the horror that we might actually be Republicans as we had admitted. Many initially thought we were joking and trying to be funny and some when they realized we actually were Republicans never spoke with us again. Israel has actually become a divisive issue in the American Jewish community.

 

For Jewish Democrats it is a serious problem. There are still a goodly number of friends to Israel remaining in the Democrat Party but their numbers are diminishing and some have actually needed to go underground in their support. Pro-Israel Jews in Reform Synagogues have to act like the Marranos during the Inquisition where they practice their Judaism silently and with little visible evidence at home and were good Catholics in public even to going to church daily and every action including rosaries and confession to avoid the Inquisition and the tortures and death sentences which would be their punishment if their being a Jew was ever rooted out. These new Marranos support Israel but must do so while in conversations in Synagogue or at Temple functions, as most Reform Synagogues refer to themselves as Temples; something less Jewish in its identity, these Jews either remain silent on issues Israel or denounce those sensitive issues such as Bibi Netanyahu, the greatest force of evil in the Middle East.

 

 

For far too many American Liberal Leftist Jews, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has been the reason why President Obama was unable to make peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis and had Netanyahu simply followed the instruction, the orders from on high at the Oval Office, then Israel would have peace. There are no arguments which they would ever accept and they honestly believe that the Arabs would be happy if only Israel would surrender everything to the Green Line and half of Jerusalem and all the terrorism and demands would end. Never mind that Mahmoud Abbas refuses to even say, let alone guarantee, that the terror and violence would end with such an agreement, he has instead stated that any agreement would be but the initial step to the removal of the Zionist entity and that all resistance, that would be terrorism, would continue until the Zionist entity has been eradicated and the Jews defeated completely. Never mind that in Gaza there is Hamas which has promised to murder every Jew on Earth which includes these American Leftist Jews who happily claim that Hamas can be reasoned with. One would think with the history of the Jewish People, especially their recent history, specifically since the last century, that when some group of extremists claim they have designs for the complete annihilation of the Jewish People they would take things like that very seriously.

 

That Israel, and even additionally President Trump to the point of violence and lost friendships, have become the two most divisive issues in the Jewish community is the saddest commentary one could imagine. Israel, the hope and the prayers of Jews for thousands of years now a matter for derision and splitting the community is beyond sadness. Israel and Jerusalem, the final desire of every Seder is, “Next year in Jerusalem” and Psalms 137, Song of Babylon, which demands that as a member of the Jewish People, Jerusalem must be our first love and, allow me to quote, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill (strength). (And) May my tongue cling to my palate, if I do not remember you, if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my (chief and most important) joy.” Yet somehow Israel, and even the surrender of the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrendering of the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives Cemetery, has become a sticking point, an issue for debate and for too many simply something too trivial to be bothered with when supporting those for whom Israel is a bother is the real issue. How can Jews unfriend other Jews or shun them in the Synagogue because they support Israel. They demand, ‘how can one support Israel’ which is simply just for those other Jews, those religious Jews, those Jews who are just too Jewish and the ones the anti-Semites hate. They believe that because they support the right causes and they rub elbows with the right people that should the anti-Semites ever get their dream again and Jews are hunted down that they will be granted exceptions because they are those good Jews. They do not realize that to an anti-Semite the only good Jew is a dead Jew. But these Jews would gladly sacrifice those Zionist crazies if it would advance their standing at the club, or even sadly their Synagogue. We hold some truths to be very troubling and beyond our ability to accept. How can there be an ingathering when so many Jews refuse to even accept the concept of a Jewish State, a Jewish People or of Hashem and instead view their Synagogue as just another social club. This makes one remember that a minority of slaves left Egypt with Moses and a similarly percentage returned after they were liberated from Babylonia by Cyrus the Great and the majority either remained in Babylon or migrated to the major cities of Persia.

 

Beyond the Cusp