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| Kamala Harris delivering her acceptance speech last night (NBC) |
(The Yiddish word Mentch is hard to translate into English. Closest thing I can think of is the word honorable.)
I listened to Harris’s acceptance speech last night. There was very little that I could disagree with. She said all the right things, It was upbeat and patriotic. She expressed a pride of country, dedication to all Americans regardless of their political affiliation. And a commitment to keep America the strongest and most lethal military power in the world.
The problem with Harris is not her Mentchlichkeit. It is with policy. Or more correctly the lack of having any. Other than some generalizations, she hasn’t articulated any details about the issues facing America and the world today. The closest thing she came to that was her promise to fight price gouging at the grocery store. Which she blames for high prices. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of that.
High prices at the grocery store are due to supply chain shortages during the height of the pandemic. And that 3 and a half years of the Biden-Harris policies did nothing stop it. If anything some of their polices increased the cost of energy. And that affects the cost of transporting those goods from the supplier to the grocery store. A cost that was passed on to the consumer.
But her generalizations hinted at what her polices might be. One of which is a subject that is very dear to my heart as it is to anyone that cares about the Jewish state. As noted on NBC, here is what she said:
"Let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,"
But that was flowed by this:
"At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking."
Which was the followed by this:
Harris said she and Biden are working to end the war in Gaza so that "Israel is secure" and the hostages are released and that "the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination."
Obviously, I wholeheartedly agree with her first statement. And in a vacuum who could disagree with her second? But her third statement was troubling. Not because there is anything wrong with it in theory. I have said pretty much the same thing many times and as recently as Yesterday.
To reiterate my view, I agree that the Palestinian people have a right to dignity, security, and freedom. The problem is with her use of the term ‘self determination’. That is a code word for the 2 state solution In theory I would even agree with that as I have said many times. But at the same time to suggest anything remotely like giving Palestinians their own state now is the height of folly.
As things stand now a Palestinian state on the West Bank would soon be overrun by Jihadists that would be just as determined as Hamas was in Gaza to massacre the entirety of the Jewish people if that is what it took to get ‘their’ land back. Only now it would not only be the Gaza strip from which those attacks would take place. It would be from the entirety of the West Bank. Unless the US is willing to put boots on the ground in the West Bank, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind about that.
So Harris’s support of Palestinian ‘self determination’ surely neans that this will be a policy agenda of the Harris presidency. And she will do whatever it takes to make that happen – short of hurting Israel’s security.
That cannot be allowed to happen. So with all the Mentchlichkeit a Harris presidency would bring to the Oval Office, the price may just be too high.
On the other hand, I do not want to see someone with low moral character and lack of ethics in the Oval Office again, either Trump has the morals of an alley cat and the business Ethics of a crook. And acts like a 12th grader calling his enemies disgusting nick names. I could go on. And on. And on!
But his policies favored those of us who lean conservative. Starting domestically with his choices for the Supreme Court. His energy policy. His border policy. And with respect to foreign policy his decision to boycott Iran, and his far better for the world (and especially Israel) than were the Iran groveling policies of Biden-Harris.
With respect to Israel, Trump discarded the failed 2 state solution policy of the past, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel's sovereignty over the strategic Golan Heights and for the first time in the history of the Middle 4 Arab nations: United Arab Emirates, Baharain, Morocco, and Sudan signed a normalization treaty with Israel. And Saudi Arabia had become a serious prospect for that in the not too distant future.
So I am completely torn about a woman who will maintain the dignity of the Oval Office but whose progressive policies I generally do not agree with. A policy signaling a harder line on Israel that could threaten its very existence if carried to its conclusion... And a man who has promised to return to the despicable behavior of his first term.
So will it be the frying pan or the fire? I don’t know which is worse.