Sanders and Trump: Magic Sells: Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2016 — The New Hampshire results have solidified the reigning cliche that the 2016 campaign is an anti-establishment revolt of both the left and the right.
The Many Contradictions of Hillary Clinton: Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, Jan. 21, 2016— Hillary Clinton recently said she would go after offshore tax “schemes” in the Caribbean.
Sanders May Play Down Judaism, But he Played Big Role in Hannukah Case: Danielle Ziri, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 10, 2016— Jewish presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders doesn’t talk much about his Jewish background…
‘Operation Thunderbolt,’ by Saul David: Alan Furst, New York Times, Jan. 22, 2016 — On June 27, 1976, an Air France plane took off from Ben-Gurion International Airport in Lod, Israel…
The 2016 Election: Jews and Their Politics: Dr. Steven Windmueller, JCPA, Feb. 1, 2016
Trump, Sanders and the American Rebellion: Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 11, 2016
Hillary E-mail Caught & Paste: Paul Sperry, New York Post, Jan. 24, 2016
This May be the ‘Mystery Kibbutz’ Visited by Bernie Sanders in the 1960s: William Booth & Frances Stead Sellers, Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2015
SANDERS AND TRUMP: MAGIC SELLS
Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2016
The New Hampshire results have solidified the reigning cliche that the 2016 campaign is an anti-establishment revolt of both the left and the right. Largely overlooked, however, is the role played in setting the national mood by the seven-year legacy of the Obama presidency. Yes, you hear constant denunciations of institutions, parties, leaders, donors, lobbyists, influence peddlers. But the starting point of the bipartisan critique is the social, economic and geopolitical wreckage all around us. Bernie Sanders is careful never to blame President Obama directly, but his description of the America Obama leaves behind is devastating — a wasteland of stagnant wages, rising inequality, a sinking middle class, young people crushed by debt, the American Dream dying.
Take away the Brooklyn accent and the Larry David mannerisms and you would have thought you were listening to a Republican candidate. After all, who’s been in charge for the last seven years? Donald Trump is even more colorful in describing the current “mess” and more direct in attributing it to the country’s leadership — most pungently, its stupidity and incompetence. Both candidates are not just anti-establishment but anti-status quo. The revolt is as much about the Obama legacy as it is about institutions.
Look at New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton had made a strategic decision, as highlighted in the debates, to wrap herself in the mantle of the Obama presidency. She lost New Hampshire by three touchdowns. Beyond railing against the wreckage, the other commonality between the two big New Hampshire winners is in the nature of the cure they offer. Let the others propose carefully budgeted five-point plans. Sanders and Trump offer magic.
Take Sanders’ New Hampshire victory speech. It promised the moon: college education, free; universal health care, free; world peace, also free because we won’t be “the policeman of the world” (mythical Sunni armies will presumably be doing that for us). Plus a guaranteed $15 minimum wage. All to be achieved by taxing the rich. Who can be against a “speculation” tax (whatever that means)?
So with Trump. Leave it to him. Jobs will flow back in a rush from China, from Japan, from Mexico, from everywhere. Universal health care, with Obamacare replaced by “something terrific.” Veterans finally taken care of. Drugs stopped cold at the border. Indeed, an end to drug addiction itself. Victory upon victory of every kind.
How? That question never comes up anymore. No one expects an answer. His will be done, on Earth if not yet in heaven. Yes, people love Trump’s contempt for the “establishment” — which as far as I can tell means anything not Trump — but what is truly thrilling is the promise of a near-biblical restoration. As painless as Sanders’. In truth, Trump and Sanders are soaring not just by defying the establishment, but by defying logic and history. Sanders’ magic potion is socialism; Trump’s is Trump.
The young Democrats swooning for Sanders appear unfamiliar with socialism’s century-long career, a dismal tale of ruination from Russia to Cuba to Venezuela. Indeed, are they even aware that China’s greatest reduction in poverty in human history correlates precisely with the degree to which it has given up socialism? Trump’s magic is toughness — toughness in a world of losers. The power and will of the caudillo will make everything right.
Apart from the fact that strongman rule contradicts the American constitutional tradition of limited and constrained government, caudillo populism simply doesn’t work. For example, it accounts in large part for the relative backwardness of Africa and Latin America. In 1900, Argentina had a per capita income fully 70 percent of ours. After a 20th century wallowing in Peronism and its imitators, Argentina is a basket case, its per capita income now 23 percent of ours.
There certainly is a crisis of confidence in our country’s institutions. But that’s hardly new. The current run of endemic distrust began with Vietnam and Watergate. Yet not in our lifetimes have the left and right populism of the Sanders and Trump variety enjoyed such massive support.
The added factor is the Obama effect, the depressed and anxious mood of a nation experiencing its worst economic recovery since World War II and watching its power and influence abroad decline amid a willed global retreat. The result is a politics of high fantasy. Things can’t get any worse, we hear, so why not shake things to their foundation? Anyone who thinks things can’t get any worse knows nothing. And risks everything.
THE MANY CONTRADICTIONS OF HILLARY CLINTON
Victor Davis Hanson
National Review, Jan. 21, 2016
Hillary Clinton recently said she would go after offshore tax “schemes” in the Caribbean. That is a worthy endeavor, given the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. tax revenue. Yet her husband, Bill Clinton, reportedly made $10 million as an advisor and an occasional partner in the Yucaipa Global Partnership, a fund registered in the Cayman Islands. Is Ms. Clinton’s implicit argument that she knows offshore tax dodging is unethical because her family has benefited from it? Does she plan to return millions of dollars of her family’s offshore-generated income?
Clinton is calling for “huge campaign-finance reform,” apparently to end the excessive and often pernicious role of big money in politics. But no candidate, Republican or Democrat, raised more than the $112 million that Clinton collected in 2015 for her primary campaign. In 2013, Clinton earned nearly $1.6 million in speaking fees from Wall Street banks. She raked in $675,000 from Goldman Sachs, and $225,000 apiece from Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Wealth Management. Did that profiteering finally make Clinton sour on Wall Street’s pay-for-play ethics?
Clinton has also vowed to raise taxes on hedge-fund managers. Is that a way of expressing displeasure with her son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky, who operates a $400 million hedge fund? For that matter, how did Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, who worked for a consulting firm and a hedge fund despite having no background in finance — reportedly become worth an estimated $15 million?
Hillary Clinton recently proposed a new $350 billion government plan to make college more affordable. Certainly, universities spike tuition costs, and student-loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion. Colleges spend money indiscriminately, mostly because they know that the federal government will always back student loans. Yet, since she left office, Clinton routinely has charged universities $200,000 or more for her brief 30-minute chats. Her half-hour fee is roughly equal to the annual public-university tuition cost for eight students.
It’s been said that Clinton is trying to rekindle President Obama’s 2012 allegations of a Republican “war on women.” That charge and the war against the “1 percent” helped deliver key states to Obama. Renewing that theme, Clinton recently declared on Twitter, “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.” Does Clinton’s spirited advocacy of “every” survivor include the array of women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct? In other words, does Hillary now trust the testimonies of survivors such as Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones, whose allegations must be “believed and supported?”
Ms. Clinton has also called for more financial transparency and greater accountability in general — something needed after scandals at government agencies such as the IRS, VA, and GSA. But Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server probably violated several federal laws. Her laxity with confidential communications was arguably more egregious than that of General David Petraeus, a national icon who pleaded guilty to mishandling classified materials.
The financial antics of the Clinton Foundation don’t past muster amid populist anger at the global profiteering of billionaires. Perhaps Clinton assumes that the electorate is still in the ethical world of the 1990s. Back then, it was somewhat easier to dampen scandals — at least the ones that didn’t involve sex in the White House. But in the age of social media, 24-hour cable TV, instantaneous blogging, and a different public attitude toward political corruption and sexual assault, Hillary Clinton now appears to be caught in the wrong century.
Womanizing and sexual coercion can no longer be so easily dismissed. The financial antics of the Clinton Foundation don’t pass muster amid populist anger at the global profiteering of billionaires. In an age of instant Google searches, railing against big money no longer squares with making and enjoying it. Ms. Clinton at times tries to offset scandals by pointing to her record as secretary of state. But few believe that her handling of Russia, Iran, China, Benghazi, or Islamic terrorism made the world calmer or America more secure. In debates, Clinton points to her support of Obama’s agenda. But the president currently has an approval rating of 46 percent. If the country is in dire need of Clinton’s suggested remedies, were the past eight years too short a time to see similar reforms enacted under Obama? All this confusion raises the question of whether Hillary Clinton is running to complete Bill Clinton’s third term, running to cement Barack Obama’s legacy — or running against her prior self.
SANDERS MAY PLAY DOWN JUDAISM,
BUT HE PLAYED BIG ROLE IN HANNUKAH CASE
Danielle Ziri
Jerusalem Post, Feb. 10, 2016
Jewish presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders doesn’t talk much about his Jewish background, but his involvement in a Vermont case may have had a significant role in the 1989 US Supreme Court decision to allow Hanukka menorahs to be displayed on public property across the US, research conducted recently by Chabad- Lubavitch reveals.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries introducing public menorah displays faced opponents claiming that the Jewish displays violated the US Constitution’s separation of church and state clause. Defenders argued that the menorahs were protected as a matter of freedom of speech and freedom to practice one’s religion. The cases were taken to court.
One of these disagreements occurred in Burlington, Vermont, during Sanders’s term as mayor from 1981 to 1989. In December 1983, Chabad emissaries to Vermont Rabbis Yitzchak and Zeesy Raskin, approached Sanders’s office and requested permission to light an 8-foot-high menorah on the steps of city hall. Raskin then invited Sanders to light the menorah, which he accepted, the research conducted by Chabad.org’s associate editor Dovid Margolin found. Three years later, the Chabad emissaries asked permission to allow a 16-foot-tall menorah to be erected annually in Burlington’s City Hall Park during all eight days of Hanukka.
The Sanders administration welcomed these requests, and granted full permission, but was immediately confronted by the American Civil Liberties Union that complained the menorah in a public space violated the Establishment Clause of the US Consitutuion, which prohibits placing religious symbols on public property if it results in promoting religion.
Sanders asked then-city attorney Joseph McNeil to review the issue. McNeil responded to Sanders on December 5, 1986, attaching a legal opinion written by attorney Art Cernosia who wrote: “… Based on the [US Court of Appeals for the] Second Circuit case, it is my opinion that there is no legal bar for the City of Burlington to allow a menorah to be erected in the city’s park. I would recommend that the city require a prominent disclaimer sign to be posted by the display.” The ACLU was not pleased and threatened to file suit against the City of Burlington.
The New York Times, in an article, dated December 20, 1987, quotes the executive director of the ACLU’s Vermont chapter, saying that “such religious symbols should not be displayed in front of public buildings, because they give the impression of government endorsement of religion.” McNeil is quoted explaining that city hall had received “some unfortunate calls suggesting that, because the governor [Madeleine Kunin] and the mayor [Sanders] are both Jewish, we might be more inclined to allow a menorah than a creche. “It is not because the governor and the mayor are Jewish that the menorah is in the park,” McNeil said.
ACLU and activists decided to go through with filing a suit against the city in June 1988. Sanders and his administration chose to vigorously defend their position in court despite much opposition. In correspondence retrieved by Chabad.org, Rev. Paul Bortz urged Bernie Sanders to drop the case. Bortz wrote: “Come on mayor Sanders, let’s drop the idea of any religious symbol being displayed on any government property. The whole idea is an extraordinary waste of taxpayers’ money. Or are you billing Lubavitch of Vermont for legal fees?” But days before Hanukka 1988, US District Judge Franklin S. Billings Jr. ruled in favor of the Burlington menorah, the Times reported.
Sanders and his administration’s involvement in the case contributed to opening the path for the US Supreme Court decision in the Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union case in which the court considered the constitutionality of two recurring holiday displays located on public property.
The Chabad-Lubavitch research showed Sanders had expressed, back in the 1980s, strong admiration for Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, who died in 1994. Sanders joined the national Education Day held annually on Schneerson’s Hebrew birthday, and proclaimed Education Day in Burlington in honor of the rabbi’s 81st birthday in 1983 and 83rd birthday in 1985. Schneerson wrote a letter, retrieved by Chabad.org, to thank Sanders for the decision.
In the letter, addressed to “The Honorable Bernard Sanders,” the rabbi wrote: “I sincerely appreciate your thoughtfulness in designating this Education Day in honor of my birthday. I trust that your action will stimulate greater awareness of the vital importance of education, not only among all your worthy citizens, but also in the State of Vermont.” Sanders became the first Jew to win a US presidential contest on Tuesday night, as he obtained the majority of the votes in the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
‘OPERATION THUNDERBOLT,’ BY SAUL DAVID
Alan Furst
New York Times, Jan. 22, 2016
On June 27, 1976, an Air France plane took off from Ben-Gurion International Airport in Lod, Israel, heading for Paris with a stopover in Athens, carrying 228 passengers of Israeli, French and various other nationalities. Security at the Lod airport was famously tight — but in Athens, where security was lax, four hijackers boarded the Airbus carrying large black bags that held guns and hand grenades, took over the plane and forced the pilot to divert to Entebbe Airport, on the shore of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Six days later, a team of Israeli Special Forces personnel attacked the airport in a daring and ingenious raid, named Operation Thunderbolt, and freed the hostages.
That raid is the subject of Saul David’s new book, “Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History.” This is a minute-by-minute narrative of that week by a scrupulous and thorough historian, who has written what will most likely be the definitive work on the subject and produced a tense and riveting account of what has come to be known as the Entebbe raid. By means of extraordinarily deep research, David essentially lets the characters speak for themselves.
And what characters they are. The hijackers were led by two German left-wing terrorists, a man and a woman with connections to the Baader-Meinhof gang, supported by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They were opposed and ultimately defeated by the leading political and military personalities of Israel. Some 40 years later, many of the names associated with the hijacking are still remembered: the Palestinian terrorist Wadie Haddad and the Israelis Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Menachem Begin (with a brief appearance by Moshe Dayan). The leader of the raid, killed in combat at the airport, was Yoni Netanyahu, the brother of the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In some ways at the center of the narrative is Idi Amin Dada, “Uganda’s eccentric, flamboyant and ruthless dictator who, just two days earlier, had been declared ‘president for life’ by the Ugandan Parliament.”
These characters and a vast assortment of others — hostages, diplomats, aircrew members and soldiers — are all described in great detail and, through the use of diaries, articles, books and private papers, heard as well, as they attempt to deal with the inevitable conflicts arising in a crisis. David is a military historian; his previous books include “The Indian Mutiny,” “Military Blunders” and “Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879,” and he is especially adept at explaining the decision-making process that takes place as a complex military operation is considered, planned and executed.
The gravely difficult choice facing the Israelis was this: Do we give in to the hijackers’ demands and, in exchange for the hostages, free terrorists captured in previous attacks, even those who have Jewish “blood on their hands”? Or do we initiate a rapidly planned and daring operation that may turn out to be a disastrous failure? Both options are explored in depth, with the defense minister, Shimon Peres, supporting the military operation and the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, undecided as the 48-hour deadline set by the terrorists approaches. David’s exploration of the various conflicts generates a high level of drama and tension for the reader, even though the outcome is known. This is the achievement of a masterly, first-rate historian.
He is also a master at detailing the chaotic action of combat: “With his team strung out behind him, Giora Zussman” — one of the Israeli commandos — “made a solo entry into the small hall that had held the Israeli hostages. He could see several empty mattresses with sheets, a number of suitcases and a table piled with passports; but no hostages or terrorists. Just in case, he sprayed the hall and the gap in the wall of boxes with bullets from his Kalashnikov until his clip was empty. As he ducked back out of the hall to reload, the two missing members of his team moved past him and into the hall, firing as they went. Reaching a room at the far end that had been used as a kitchen, they found and killed two Ugandan soldiers.”
The great value of a work like “Operation Thunderbolt” is that it relights the dim corners of past events. For the Israelis, meeting in a secure bunker known as the Pit, the problem was not so much murderous enemies as it was the role played by Idi Amin. As Peres told his staff, a hijacking had never had the “explicit support of any president, army or state.” If this was now the case, the game had changed, and the Israelis would have to send sufficient troops to fight Ugandan soldiers guarding the airport.
Amin himself kept visiting Entebbe, making speeches to the hostages with basically two themes: We must hope that your home governments are sensible about your predicament and will accede to the hijackers’ demands; and we want to make sure that you, though hostages, are as comfortable as possible in a concrete airport building. Mattresses and food were provided from local tourist hotels. Then there was the response of the victims. Michel Cojot, a leader of the hostages and David’s principal character among them, spoke to the airport director, saying, “It is not easy to receive 257 persons unexpectedly.” The airport director looked perplexed: “But I expected you.” Amin had, in fact, been in on the hijacking from the beginning.
Recalling that week in 1976, the fight against terrorists may seem like a fairly standard procedure — the Israelis did it so courageously and well that the event became famous, and will remain so. But in these times of ISIS and its brutality, the terrorists of 1976 look like political idealists. In a way, that’s the scariest part of “Operation Thunderbolt.”
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
The 2016 Election: Jews and Their Politics: Dr. Steven Windmueller, JCPA, Feb. 1, 2016—Every four years America goes through a civic ritual, the election of a President. Jews have become active participants in this political encounter as Jonathan Woocher observed, “Politics is the civil religion of American Jewry.”
Trump, Sanders and the American Rebellion: Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 11, 2016—What is happening in American politics? We’re in the midst of a rebellion.
Hillary E-mail Caught & Paste: Paul Sperry, New York Post, Jan. 24, 2016—THE FBI is investigating whether members of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle “cut and pasted” material from the government’s classified network so that it could be sent to her private email address, former State Department security officials say.
This May be the ‘Mystery Kibbutz’ Visited by Bernie Sanders in the 1960s: William Booth & Frances Stead Sellers, Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2015—The residents of this crunchy Israeli farming commune, with its milk cows and solar panels and lefty vibe, were both pleased and surprised to hear their home may be the “mystery kibbutz” where presidential contender Bernie Sanders spent a few formative months in the 1960s.