Rabbi Marc Schneier
Gov. Mike Huckabee
Rep. Carolyn Maloney
By Larry Gordon
Over this summer, no fewer than six candidates for the Republican nomination for president of the United States have appeared at and spoken from the pulpit of the Westhampton Synagogue of Rabbi Marc Schneier.
Those who made such an appearance run the gamut from leading contenders like Jeb Bush to those not faring so well in the early polls like Senator Lindsey Graham.
So why do they appear here? Is it because the shul’s pews are occupied by movers and shakers of the New York Jewish community and beyond? Or is it because this small area, like other summertime Hampton hamlets, is where the money is, and in these political races money translates to popularity, and being popular and visible transforms itself into much-needed votes that win and lose elections?
These events are a testament to what Rabbi Schneier has built here, as his shul is considered the place to be if one is to appear on the map of the Jewish world.
This past Shabbos, we traveled to Westhampton with our friends Joe and Karen Frager in order to accompany Governor Mike Huckabee to the shul, where he was a dinner guest on Friday night and then following the seudah spoke to a jam-packed crowd.
Dr. Joe Frager—whose column appears in these pages from time to time—is a levelheaded political activist seeking to assist candidates like Huckabee. As he explains it, “It is a matter of hakarasha’tov.”
If you have attended other Huckabee events or heard him speak on his Fox News talk show, which he had to leave in order to run for president, then you know there is no formidable candidate running for America’s top office who cares more deeply about Israel than this former governor of Arkansas.
Unlike other candidates, who either have made or will make compulsory, perfunctory visits to Israel in order to be seen with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Mr. Huckabee has been in Israel annually and sometimes several times a year for the last three decades. Governor Huckabee brings to the table an intimate appreciation of the U.S.–Israel relationship that is more than a way to attract Jewish votes or to say what needs to be said in order to curry favor with the American Jewish community.
And Governor Huckabee reiterated and made it clear that the Iran deal about to be passed into law by Congress is one of the greatest foreign-policy blunders this country has ever made.
The next day—on Shabbos—we heard from Manhattan Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who had the courage and fortitude last week to take a stand and announce that she would vote against the Iran deal when it comes up for a vote—which it may or may not over the next week or so.
Maloney said that she had studied the deal and had attended confidential briefings and concluded that this was a bad deal for the U.S. and our allies in the Middle East. She said she thought that the inspection mechanism was severely flawed and that large sums of money—with which the Iranians have said they will continue to support terror in troubled spots of the world, including places like Lebanon and Gaza—are freed up too easily.
Which brings us to this question: How can people like Carolyn Maloney and our Nassau County Congresswoman Kathleen Rice study the exact same material and attend the same high-level briefings and draw completely opposite conclusions from those arrived at recently by New York Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Gregory Meeks?
It is mind-boggling that these two men can announce that they feel that the deal is not a good one but is the best one out there, which in and of itself is a ridiculous assertion. There is something rotten here when Nadler and Meeks can say they know that upwards of $100 billion will be freed up for Iran to use at its discretion—which the Iranians themselves say means continuing to support terror groups—but then go ahead and announce that they will cast their votes for the deal anyway.
It’s odd, but these two officials and others who share their views are for strict gun-control legislation, especially of late, in view of the spate of shootings and murders in mostly minority communities. They insist that guns are too easily available and stricter laws must implement a more rigorous process for those buying a gun. At the other end of the spectrum, in mostly Republican circles, the position is that it is not guns that kill but rather it is either bad or mentally unbalanced people—and that is the issue that needs to be addressed. Those harboring this opinion feel that people bent on committing a crime or indulging in evil will somehow figure out how to get their hands on a gun illegally.
The funny thing here is that when it comes to Iran, the Obama and Democratic position is to allow the Iranians to continue to develop nuclear weapons and over the next few years allow them to build a conventional-weapons arsenal as well. The thought process at play here is that allowing them to have guns and other advanced weaponry will win over some good faith from the rogue and terrorist mullahs that call for the destruction of Israel.
It has already been long demonstrated that supplying weapons to terrorists will result only in facilitating more terror. Case in point was Israel’s 1993 Oslo Accords, where logic was turned on its head when the government led by Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres decided to furnish the Palestinian Authority with weapons—mostly guns—that they previously had no legal access to. Then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat distributed the guns amongst the terrorist factions in Judea and Samaria and rebranded the terrorists as policemen.
Those same guns and other weaponry killed hundreds of Jews over the next two decades. How can we expect a different or more innovative outcome by applying the same formula with Iran? Giving munitions to terrorists does not change who they are or how they operate.
So how can the different politicians receive the same information and draw diametrically opposite conclusions? At times like this, when you reach a dead end in the logic department, follow the money trail if you want to make any sense of a situation.
All the talk about nuclear arsenals, spinning centrifuges, and intercontinental ballistic missiles has obscured the central component of the deal with Iran. According to a source in government in Washington who cannot be directly quoted because of the relationship with senators and congressmen, this deal and which way the votes broke were mostly about money.
According to our government source, the U.S. is the largest supplier of wheat to both Russia and Iran. Because of the effectiveness of the sanctions and the drop in oil prices, Iran now owes the U.S. over $100 billion. They owe additional billions to the Russians for weaponry, both from past shipments and on order for future delivery. Then there are Iranian entities and institutions which, with a little research, show up as groups donating to election campaigns of various congressmen and senators. Even a small fraction of $100 billion can go a long way in an election campaign.
Consummating the deal with Iran is only the beginning of some tough times for elected officials who defied conventional logic by saying that they were in favor of the deal and if need be would vote for it.
We owe a debt of gratitude to those who stood their ground against intense political pressure and economic threats. It is an American tragedy that seasoned elected representatives can take into consideration ancillary factors other than the danger posed to the world by a nuclear Iran.
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.