1948 Middle East's Muslim and Jew: Different Fates

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       

By 1948, there were 75,000 Jews living in Egypt
                               150,000 Jews living in Iraq
                                 20,000 Jews living in Lebanon
                                 30,000 Jews living in Syria
                               265,000 Jews living in Morocco
                               140,000 Jews living in Algeria
                               100,000 Jews living in Iran
                                 38,000 Jews living in Libya
                               105,000 Jews living in Tunisia
                                 55,000 Jews living in Yemen
                                         0  Jews living in Saudi Arabia , were living in tribes, many forced to convert by 1948 or leave
                                                                                                                                       

Jordan is not included because at the time of Jews residing in Arab lands, Jordan was part of Palestine. 

And they were all being treated as Dhimmis, people of 2nd class.  The Christians were also
considered as Dhimmis in these Muslim countries, for they had all been conquered when Mohammad had died in 632 and his leadership set off to conquer the world and convert them to Islam.  As Dhimmis, they were not allowed the same freedoms that the Muslims enjoyed.  

It is noted that the Dhimmis status was far better than the treatment Jews received in Europe at the same period.  Alexander III of Russia died in 1894, see below:  He more than encouraged Jews to leave .  It was an order.  
                                                     

1918 Pogrom during Ukranian-Poland wartime, drunk Cossacks
then attacking Jews.  "A pogrom is a violent riot aimed at the massacre or persecution of an ethnic or religious group, particularly one aimed at Jews."

The latest pogrom-1941 in Europe-WWII

 Whereas pogroms became the norm in such places as Poland and Russia, such attacks were rare in the Middle East.  The time for Muslim extremism had not yet occurred.  In fact, some Muslim countries treated Jews much better than other Muslim countries.   The dichotomy of life was that Jews were not allowed to leave Germany yet were persecuted, rounded up  and horribly murdered by its government which had set out to slaughter all Jews on the planet.  

More than 850,000 Jews fled rising persecution or were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands after the War of Independence in 1948.  Between 1949 and 1954, Jews became  homeless though they had lived in these lands for over 2,000 years.  Between 1948 and 2000, the Jewish population dropped from about 900,000 to less than 50,000.  

Israel was created for just such a change in the climate of the world towards Jews  and took in about 600,000 Jews from Arab lands.  As a new state, created on May  14, 1948 with 650,000 Jews, recovering from the devastation of the 1948 war, worked hard to absorb the new homeless Jews from Arab lands and the 300,000  European Jews of World War II.  

Within 3 years Israel's original population of 650,000 more than doubled a it fulfilled the mission of being a refuge for persecuted Jews.  It was the largest influx of population movement witnessed in modern times.  The world community supported the rebirth of the Jewish State, but there was no international aid agency assisting in the resettlement of homeless Jews.  Israeli Jews did it all by themselves with the help of donations from the western Jewish communities.   Israel, of course, has an open door policy in taking all Jews, as it is the ONLY Jewish country in the world, whereas there are about 48 Muslim majority countries for their large population.  We only have about 6 million in Israel, about 6 million in the USA and about 2 million in other parts of the world, a total of about 14 million Jews in the world.  We are about 0.02% of the world population.  One must remember that we lost 6 million in the Holocaust, so we have just now recouped that lost number.  Today we see that 2/3s of the Middle Eastern Jewry chose to live in dangerous Israel and their descendants make up over half of Israel's Jewish population.  

As of 2010, there were only 200 Jews living in Egypt
                                         100 Jews living in Iraq
                                         100 Jews living in Lebanon
                                         200 Jews living in Syria-or less
                                      5,800 Jews living in Morocco
                                         100 Jews living in Algeria
                         12,000-40,000 Jews living in Iran though my cousin fled as a
teenager on a camel with others to escape-now a doctor in USA.  
                                             0 Jews living in Libya
                                      1,500 Jews living in Tunisia
                                         200 Jews living in Yemen
                                             0 Jews living in Saudi Arabia
                                                
Between 672,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.  Most fled to the Territories of Gaza and Judea-Samaria (modern term of West Bank) or wait in neighboring Arab countries in refugee camps.  These countries do not take them in as new citizens.  Jordan has done this after the Palestinians tried to take Jordan for their own in the fight called BLACK SEPTEMBER,  was a conflict fought in Jordan between the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF), under the leadership of King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, primarily between 16 and 27 September 1970, with certain actions continuing until 17 July 1971.  
   To nullify the problem, the king of Jordan married a Palestinian girl.                          

Married in 1993, Queen Rania and King Abdullah II of Jordan
Rania was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family and came to Jordan looking for work.  Though making a beautiful couple, the king remains
quite contrary towards Israel, especially when it comes to the TEMPLE MOUNT.

What it all comes down to is that as many Jews lost their homes in 1948 as Arabs did.  There was an exchange in populations.  Jews were reunited with their ancient land and taken in warmly as welcome citizens while the Arabs were used as pawns in a chess game, kept as refugees and never taken in as citizens in most cases.  Today after 70 years they find themselves still living in refugee camps living off the dole of the UN.  Many have become living ammunition by their own people who will not make peace with Israel's existence.  

 Resource: Alexander III of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_III_of_Russia
Israel 101, produced by StandWithUs, 2010.

                              

Hamas Threatens Israel, Thanks Iran For Their Help

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                         

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, born January 1, 1937,Palestinian imam and politician. He was a founder of Hamas,

Khaled Mashal was born May 28, 1956 in Silwad in Judea/Samaria area.  He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1971.  Khaled has a BS in Physics.
 He was expulsed from Jordan in August 1999.
He then has lived in Quatar and Damascus, Syria when Syria's
Civil War caused him to go back to Qatar.  

In what is called the West Bank, which is Judea and Samaria, and in Gaza, Hamas terrorists were founded in 1987 with leaders such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from 1987 to 2004, and Khaled Mashal from 2004 to 2017.  


                                                                                                                                               

Haniyeh in the middle of the newly formed
Palestine leadership

Ismail Haniyeh kissing Yahya Sinwar

Terrorists have come from a large network of armed Palestinian
groups.  Some are directly connected to the PLO, which remains
a force in the Palestinian Authority (PA).  Most PA officials belong to
the PLO or Hamas.  Some are radical Islamists, while others, like
the PFLP, are secular.  When Israel withdrew from Gaza in the fall of
2005, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah operatives created cells in Gaza.  

 

Yahya Sinwar, born 1962 in the refugee camp in Khan Yanis.
He has a BS in Arab studies from Gaza's Islamic U.  He became
head of Hamas by taking over from Ismail Haniyeh.

Hamas leadership has never gotten over Israel winning the last war

with the Middle East community since before 1948 in 1967's SIX DAY

WAR.  They met in Khartoum, Africa in August of 1967 and laid down 4 principles.  No peace with Israel

                No negotiations with Israel

                No recognition of Israel

                Rights of Palestinians in their own country.  (They have never had their own country.  There has never been a Palestine country.  There has been

a Palestine, land named as such by the Romans in 135 CE only!  This land was

Israel, who lost their land to the Romans in 70 CE with the destruction of their temple and land.  The Romans had occupied Judea and then destroyed Jerusalem.   The PA have created a false legend of their history that suits their present hunger to own the land their ancestors had either sold to Jews or had come upon to seek jobs.   

"Hamas leader threatens to pulverize Tel Aviv, praises Iran’s support
“if Israel attacks us, we are capable of turning any of its cities into a ghost town,” said Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader in a speech in Gaza on Monday, bragging that Hamas owned “thousands of self-produced anti-tank rockets and thousands of mortars hidden in hundreds of kilometers of tunnels.” The Palestinian terrorist chief turned to Kachol Lavan leader Benny Gantz’s comment that any government he may lead would not tolerate rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, and said: We are expecting you, if you do form a government, you will rue the day you were born, “ and threatened: “We will pulverize Tel Aviv day and night non-stop for six months.” The Hamas leader offered heartfelt thanks to the Islamic Republic of Iran for its support. “We would have got nowhere without Tehran’s money, weapons and knowhow.” (Debka file) 

                                                           

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Sinwar

From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters

Facts About Israel from Minitr for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem

ISRAEL 101 produced by StandWithUs, informative magazine

France's Forgotten Jewish Kingdom of Septimania

Nadene Goldfoot                             

Septimania encompassed this area, the region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that was under the control of the Visigoths in 462. It was roughly the same region of Languedoc-Roussillon.  Languedoc was a former southern French province where Jews lived from the early centuries CE.  They were later persecuted by the Visigoths in the 6th and 7th centuries, but protected by the nobles and later joined the Christians in the fight against Arab invasion.  These Jews were farmers, but also engaged in tax gatherers, bailiffs, etc.  Toulouse, Narbonne, Lunel, Beziers, Posquieres, Nimes and Montpelier were center of Talmudic study.    The land went to the Emirate of Cordoba in the 8th century then was conquered by the Franks, who called it Gothia or the Gothic March at the end of the 9th century.  

It was in about 1979 that Professor Arthur J. Zuckerman did some research into medieval documents  written in French, German, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin and then wrote a book about these findings, published by Columbia University Press.  With much advertizing, the book was forgotten about and became just another book written by an academic, not an exciting sexy novel.  It was just a story of the kingdom of Septimania, a kingdom of retired Roman soldiers that was full of Jews.

The story actually was started by "Makhir ben Yehudah Zakkai of Narbonne (725-765 c.e.) who was a Babylonian-Jewish scholar and later, the supposed leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne in a region which at that time was called Septimania at the end of the eighth century. His descendants, according to certain scholars, were for many generations the nasi or leaders of that important community.  Nasi means "Prince" in Hebrew.  It's a Talmudic term for the president of the Sanhedrin, and who was also the spiritual head and later, the political representative of the Jewish people.  

From the 2nd century on, the Nasi was always a descendant of Hillel, and was recognized by the Roman authorities as the Patriarch of the Jews.  Later, the title was also used in some centers like Spain, to designate the lay leader of the Jewish community, and so it became his surname.  
                                                

Narbonne is a southern French town.  Many Jews lived there from at least the 5th century, but were expelled in the 7th by the Visigoth king, Wamba.  Later on in the Middle Ages, the community was headed by a "Jewish King" by virtue of privileges said to have been granted in the 8th century by Charlemagne himself!  It remained prominent until the expulsion from France in 1306.  

Narbonne was the seat of a noted academy and many leading scholars lived there.   All this is known history in our Jewish encyclopedia.
                                                   

Pepin III, father of Charlemagne, alias King Charles

 Here is what our scholar, Professor Arthur J. Zuckerman had discovered.  Not all of it has been accepted by other scholars.  
                                                     

Moors in Seville, Spain 

 In the West Moslem progress was checked at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 by Charles Martel.

The king of the Franks was Pepin III (714-768 ) who  needed to drive the Moors out of Southern France and Spain, but couldn't get past the walls of Narbonne after 7 years of trying with a siege.  He had no navy and this was a seaport town, so the Moors couldn't be starved out.  He offered the Jews of the city 50,000 marks with they would open the gates of the city for a few minutes so they could storm in, but they refused, with good reason.  Failure in this act would mean the Moors would massacre the Jews.  So Pippin made a 2nd offer of giving the Jews the land of Septimania as an independent Jewish kingdom with its own king and army-all Jewish, just for opening the gates.

  It worked.                                   

In creating Septimania,  Pepin put a condition on the deal that the Jewish king had to be a descendant of King David of Israel.  That was fine with the Jews of Narbonne, but none of the males had this lineage.  They decided to send to Babylonia for a man to be their king who was a descendant and it was Natronai ben Zabinai, with a Persian name.  He was a renowned scholar, elected Exilarch when in his 20's, already a king in exile, so to speak.  He spoke 8 languages fluently, and had an eidetic memory so great that he had memorized the whole Babylonian Talmud.  He was so amazing that the Nabonne community of Jews thought he was the Messiah and called him that.  

Why?  It had been 700  years since the Temple in Jerusalem had fallen to the Romans, and prophecies said that the Messiah would arrive to establish G-d's kingdom on earth.  

Our Messiah, Natronai, had many other pressing thoughts on hand to deal with besides the claim of Messiah, however.  As soon as he had arrived he was swamped with other demands, laws, levying taxes, establishing courts, raising an army, all the things needed to govern.  

He was hit with a message from King Charles, the son of Pepin III.   Natronai, who cast his  Persian name aside and took the Hebrew name of Machir, had to give oaths of allegiance to this King of the Franks.  King Charles also made an other request of him.  He was to marry Charles's Aunt Alda.  This was a command, of course.  

King Charles, son of Pepin III, had his father's wishes up his own sleeve.  All this planning was for a reason.  Pepin had usurped the throne of the Franks from the MEROVINGIANS.  There was no royal blood in their veins.  Pepin had just used the title and no one had checked up on his pedigree!  Charles needed to establish a legitimacy of their dynasty.  This marriage of Alda to Machir, the direct descendant of King David, gave them royal blood for their descendants, they felt.

There's always a catch to the best of plans and this one was the fact that Aunt Alda was Catholic and Machir was Jewish.  Priests and rabbis would not perform such a mixed marriage.   They did it anyway somehow and managed to have a legitimate son making Jewish blood intermingle with the Carolingian kings of France.  Now this is speulative.  We have no idea how they managed to pull this off, if in fact they did.  "Charlemagne was the eldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, born before their canonical marriage."

Bertrada was born sometime between 710 and 727 in Laon, in today's Aisne, France, to Count Charibert of Laon. Charibert's father might have been related to Hugobertides. Charibert's mother was Bertrada of Prüm, who founded Prüm Abbey along with Charibert. Bertrada of Prüm was possibly the daughter of Theuderic III.

Bertrada Broadfoot of Laon, at Versailles

Marriage and children

Bertrada married Pepin the Short, the son of Charles Martel, the Frankish "Mayor of the Palace", in 741. However, Pepin and Bertrada were too closely related for their marriage to be legal at that time; the union was not canonically sanctioned until 749, after the birth of Charlemagne.

According to French historian Léon Levillain, Bertrada was Pepin's first and only wife. Other sources suggest that Pepin had previously married a "Leutberga" or "Leutbergie", with whom Pepin would have had five children.

Bertrada and Pepin are known to have had seven children: three sons and four daughters. Of these, Charlemagne (c. 742 – 814), Carloman (751–771)and Gisela (757–811) survived to adulthood. Pepin, born in 756, died in his infancy in 762. Bertrada and Pepin also had Berthe, Adelaide, and Rothaide. Gisela became a nun at Chelles Abbey.

Queen of the Franks[edit]

A statue of Bertrada of Laon by Eugène Oudiné, one of the twenty Reines de France et Femmes illustres in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris.

In 751, Pepin and Bertrada became King and Queen of the Franks, following Pepin's successful coup against the Frankish Merovingian monarchs. Pepin was crowned in June 

At any rate, this closeness caused King Charles to ask Machir to work with him in his great campaign to drive the Moors from northern Spain.  It could be that Charlemagne had a Jewish uncle and the Jewish kings of Septimania were related by blood to the Carolingian kings of France.  Those of us into DNA studies know that they shared very tiny segments of DNA, if at all.  

By 793, Machir fell in battle, with his men carrying his Lion of Judah banner from victory to victory.  

According to Jewish history, Natronai was the Gaon of Pumbedita ( a Babylonian city on the Euphrates, seat of a famous academy founded by Judah ben Ezekiel in the middle of the 3rd century) in the early part of the 8th century, known as Rav Yenuka.  He was most severe with the  scholars of the academy, many of whom left for Sura, Persia.  The Gaon of Sura was known from 853-6.  He wrote many responsa, the top one being an arrangement of the daily 100 blessings prepared at the request of the community of Lucena, Spain.  These and others of his served as the 1st complete Order of Prayer prepared later by Amram Gaon.  He took a strong stand against the Karaites and their liturgy.  His responsa include notes of tractates of the Talmud.  

A Gaon is an intellectual leader, often with considerable temporal power, of the Babylonian Jewish community from the 6th to 11th centuries.  They headed the 2 leading academies, SURA and PUMBEDITA, and their influence extended for the greater part of this period over all Jews.  
                                                        

Charlemagne  or Charles the Great(2 April 742 – 28 January 814), numbered Charles I, was king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774, and emperor of the Romans from 800. During the Early Middle Ages, he united the majority of western and central Europe. He was the first recognised emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state that Charlemagne founded is called the Carolingian Empire. He was later canonized by Antipope Paschal III. 

Who were the Franks?  "The Franks were a group of Germanic peoples, whose name was first mentioned in 3rd century Roman sources, associated with tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine, on the edge of the Roman Empire. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They then imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples, and still later Frankish rulers were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire.
Resource:  THE JEWISH KINGDOM OF SEPTIMANIA NATRONAI BEN ZABINAI,MACHIR THEODORIC; MAY 14, 2015; MARCH 9, 2016 ISRAEL,RELIGION, THE TRUTH.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhir_of_Narbonne
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrada_of_Laon
http://www.midi-france.info/1011_moors.htm

Rabbi Dov Fischer's Essay on Donald Trump

Essay by Rabbi Dov Fischer                                                       

This is one I want to keep.  I've just said some of these very facts to the wife of the gentleman who sent it to me.  From an Orthodox rabbi who writes a wonderful essay.  Thanks, Victor. 

                                                                     

                        The Greatness of Donald Trump

                                   By Dov Fischer

Posted By Ruth King on October 12th, 2019

His demeanor makes some of us wince. His language makes many of us uncomfortable. Presidents in democracies reflect something about the people who elect them. In some cases, as with the aptly named House of Representatives, people sometimes even vote to be reflected by an assortment of lowlifes. Ilhan Omar reflects her district, as does Rashida Tlaib, as does [O-] Cortez. Hillary lost because even Democrats were revulsed by the thought that she reflects them.

Trump, too, reflects his electorate: we who put him there. In balancing all that he comprises, we focused in November 2016 on greatness. Eight years of Obama — incompetence, weakness, economic malaise, societal decay — left us focused on restoring greatness. Thus, even Christian pastors, devout Catholic theologians, and Orthodox rabbis vigorously support Donald Trump. The free world’s last great hope is America, and she was in peril.

What about his language, some of his dishonorable private deeds, flaws in his character?

Yes, excellence of personal character is desirable. A Mike Huckabee, a Mike Pence might offer an interesting successor model in 2024 after the Democrats manage to impeach Trump into an impeccable second full term. Yet we will look back on Trump’s presidency wistfully decades hence as we today look back on the Ronald Reagan years. The man, whatever his flaws, has proven to be a great president of historic dimensions.

                                                       

Young Trump 

Those who complain about Trump’s character invariably are the same “deplorables” who voted for the lying, cheating, false-faced Hillary. They had no problem with an ethical deviant who had committed felonious spoliation of evidence, lied about her emails (yoga and wedding dresses?), lied about Benghazi (an incoherent YouTube video with few views?), lied about her very name (named for a guy who became famous only after she was born?), lied about her trips abroad (landing amid gunfire in Bosnia, when in fact she was greeted by schoolgirls presenting her flowers), lying about and defaming the women whom her husband sexually assaulted, even lying and joking in a fake Southern drawl (back when her husband was Arkansas governor) about successfully defending a guy who raped a 12-year-old girl. They likewise had no compunction voting for her better half despite his raping Juanita Broaddrick, assaulting Kathleen Willey, exposing himself to Paula Corbin Jones, manipulating a gullible Monica Lewinsky — later explaining, “because I could.”

John Kennedy in fact was an unabashed serial cheater in the White House. Lyndon Johnson was an egomaniacal narcissist who expected staff to have meetings with him while he sat on a toilet. Franklin Roosevelt was a racist and the incredibly intense Woodrow Wilson was perhaps the worst of all racists ever elected to high office. The Left has no problem with their characters or whether or not they were “presidential” — because they were leftist, “progressive” Democrats.

Even now, as the “deplorables” select their candidate to lose to Trump in 2020, do they weigh character?

Robert O’Rourke (“Man, I was born for this”) is a Scottish-Irish child of White Privilege, a hit-and-run driver who was part of a computer-hacking crowd, who masquerades as Beto the Hispanic, sort of a skateboarding Zorro.

Elizabeth Warren lied baldly for years about her lineage just to take advantage of the “affirmative action” rules that got her a job at Harvard at the expense of an authentic minority candidate. Native Americans should sioux her and without reservations. And more Elizabeth Warren biographical lies emerge every day.

Joe Biden, even if he were not a despicable crook who leveraged his vice presidency to get his son and himself personally wealthy overnight, already had staked out a long and extinguished reputation for plagiarizing speeches, fabricating stories of pseudo-heroism amid wartime peril, and just making things up.  And if the measure of the man is character and whether he comports himself as “Presidential,” have we forgotten Biden’s puerile and maniacal laughing display during the Vice Presidential debate with Paul Ryan in 2012?

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, who now finally is finished as aorta be, endorsed Communist Russia and its bread lines that forced millions to stand for hours for a loaf of bread, and he himself probably would be home-ridden or dead now if he had his socialized medicine.

Kamala Harris slept her way shamelessly into public life as the very public consort of Willie Brown, even as Brown’s wife Blanche publicly told the media, “Listen, she may have him at the moment, but come inauguration day and he’s up there on the platform being sworn in, I’ll be the b***h holding the Bible.”

So that’s how important character is to the “deplorables.”

What makes Trump a man of historic greatness is that he wakes up every morning and continues doing his job with strength in the face of the worst character assassination imaginable, led by the Corrupt Journalist Corps. He still booms the economy. He still dares and stares down China on tariffs and trade. He still shows North Korea that he will not be hoodwinked as Bill Clinton and Obama were by promises devoid of results.

He stares down the Iranian Ayatollahs and tightens the vise, despite their bombastic threats and tactical efforts to get the weak-kneed, yellow-livered, gutless and cowardly Europeans to beg Trump to lay off. He stares down those Europeans, insisting mercilessly that they cough up the money those cheap and lazy skinflints never before would pay to support NATO.

So, unlike Obama and Arafat, no Nobel Prize for him. On Trump’s watch, Vladimir Putin no longer extends Russian hegemony into other countries. On his watch, Abu Mazen (Arafat’s henchman, Mahmoud Abbas) finally got cut off for allocating 7 percent of his annual budget — as much as $300 million, coming from monies sent by America and Europe — to support families of terrorists and to make convicted terrorists among the highest-income earners in “Palestine” under their “Pay to Slay” program.

Trump faces 24/7/365 lies, slander, and libel, and he just keeps going. He continues advancing novel approaches to solving the southern border mess that generations of Republicans, including Reagan, failed no less than did Democrats to address. With a porous border, deadly opioids have swamped us for years, brutal criminal animals like MS-13 have slithered in, and the most despicable of villains have smuggled in women and children for sex slavery. Yet, until Trump, no one took tough steps to secure the border. Then, faced with Obama judges in states of the federal appellate Ninth Circuit who routinely strike down his every lawful initiative, he has taken to filling not only two Supreme Court vacancies but also dozens of open federal appellate seats and even more federal district court benches with judges committed to the rule of law and the primacy of the Constitution.

Trump has done all this in the face of the most unbearable personal onslaught. He has had to deal with House Democrats trying to catch him on Russian collusion, Ukrainian collusion, taxes from decades earlier when he was a private citizen in the fields of casino and hotel construction and development. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, turned out to be a criminal who secretly taped clients like him. Trump gave Omarosa a chance to rehabilitate her reputation, and she betrayed that trust. He demonstrated personal loyalty by trying to repay Jeff Sessions for having been the first senator to endorse his presidential candidacy by naming him attorney general, and that loyalty backfired.

The service, brilliance, and true grit of William Barr demonstrates what that job entails in this unfortunate era of personal destruction, and Sen. Sessions was ill-suited for that role. Trump allowed Paul Ryan to gain his misplaced trust on how and when to push for funding a southern border wall. He initially deferred to Republican insiders by appointing Reince Priebus his chief of staff and Sean Spicer his spokesperson until he gained the experience to make better choices.

His first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, seemed to him uniquely suited to deal with Putin, but Mike Pompeo’s tenure as Tillerson’s successor shows the difference between the early mistake of a newcomer to the game and the lessons Trump has learned on the job.

Most of all, Trump has survived and remained unbowed. Kathy the CNN comedienne thought it would be a laugh to hold a bloodied decapitated head depicted like the president’s. Madonna spoke publicly about blowing up the White House. A public Shakespeare Festival in Manhattan staged a suggestive assassination. Yet he goes on, even stronger.

The Democrats try to tie up his entire administration with one bogus investigation after another, subpoenaing family, friends, and government officials trying to get work done. And yet he goes on.

He recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moves the American embassy there from Tel Aviv, recognizes Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, throws the PLO out of Washington, pulls the U.S. out of the phony UN “Human Rights Council,” pulls the U.S. out of the disastrous Iran Deal, pulls the U.S. out of the self-destructive “Paris Climate Accords,” stops the nonsensical Trans-Pacific Partnership, brings jobs back to America, secures the nation’s aluminum and steel industries, reduces unemployment to its lowest in 50 years at 3.5 percent and likewise reduces Black and Hispanic unemployment to their all-time lows.

He opened new vistas in hydraulic fracturing in Alaska and expanded energy production in other ways that transmogrified America into so great a net exporter of energy that our economy is not impacted when half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production is closed down. He fights Democrat initiatives to extend abortion into the ninth month and even their policies to make newly born babies “comfortable” while mother and doctor decide whether or not to kill the newborn.

Nothing breaks him. Not libel and not slander. Not accusations by the likes of John Brennan, who voted for communist Gus Hall to be president, that this most patriotic of Americans is a traitor. Not endless state initiatives to keep him off ballots. Not attacks on his wife, his daughter, even the public mocking of his youngest boy. He wakes up every day and does his job with determination and gusto. At press conferences with world leaders, as the Corrupt Journalist Corps strike at him with embarrassing questions while his foreign visitors look on awkwardly, he stands his ground. He does not give an inch. He hits back twice as hard as they do.

Most of us never have had a job in which the personal attacks, the daily venom, create a pervasive and severely toxic atmosphere. But some of us have. Some people in those situations are driven to suicide. Others sustain breakdowns or get so flummoxed daily that they make severe mistakes or burn out. Others are driven to resign. But Donald Trump feeds off it and responds by campaigning vigorously and energetically for reelection.

The great irony is that because he is such a lifelong dealmaker, odds are that, if the Democrats had treated him with a modicum of civility instead of “Resistance,” he would have made “deals” with them that would have infuriated the ideological conservatives among us who were sick and tired of one Bush betrayal after another. He might have appointed his sister to the U.S. Supreme Court. He might have made a deal with Planned Parenthood. But they would not let him. They announced The Resistance from day one, thinking that a bunch of political degenerates like Pelosi, Schumer, [O-] Cortez, Tlaib, Nadler, Omar, Schiff, and Maxine Waters could break him.

They underestimated what history will declare: that Donald Trump actually was one of our greatest presidents, one who achieved more during his two terms than did most who preceded him, including Ronald Reagan.                             

 Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., a high-stakes litigation attorney of more than twenty-five years and an adjunct professor of law of more than fifteen years, is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California. His legal career has included serving as Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerking for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and then litigating at three of America’s most prominent law firms: JonesDay, Akin Gump, and Baker & Hostetler. In his rabbinical career, Rabbi Fischer has served several terms on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America, is Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, has been Vice President of Zionist Organization of America, and has served on regional boards of the American Jewish Committee, B’nai Brith Hillel, and several others. His writings on contemporary political issues have appeared over the years in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Jerusalem Post, National Review, American Greatness, The Weekly Standard, and in Jewish media in American and in Israel. A winner of an American Jurisprudence Award in Professional Legal Ethics, Rabbi Fischer also is the author of two books, including General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine, which covered the Israeli General’s 1980s landmark libel suit.

Resource:  https://rabbidov.com/