Biblical Animals of Animals which Surprisingly Once Lived in Israel By Nosson Shulman and Auschwitz Survivor Eddie Jaku, ‘The Happiest Man on Earth,’ Dead at 101 By David Israel and Jews NEED to Opt Out of the ‘Woke Victim’ Competition By Jonathan S. Tobin and The Yom Kippur War’s ‘Miracle Of The Immense Planes’ By Jason Maoz
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Yom Kippur War's 'Miracle Of The Immense Planes' By Jason Maoz
Golda Meir with President Nixon in Washington, November 1, 1973.
Forty-eight years ago this week, Israel teetered on the brink of unthinkable disaster just days after Egypt and Syria launched a devastating attack on Yom Kippur (October 6 that year), making quick inroads in the North and South while inflicting heavy losses on Israeli troops and armaments.
This was also the week during which Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan increasingly recognized that Israel's fate might well rest on the shoulders of one man, thousands of miles away and embroiled in a burgeoning scandal that would ultimately consume him; a man widely perceived by Jews as indifferent to them at best and hostile at worst.
Indeed, judged solely by his White House tapes, Richard Nixon was obsessed with Jews, stewing in envy and resentment, never hesitating to refer to them in the crudest of terms. But if talk alone is the true measure of a man, then Harry Truman – who routinely made derogatory remarks about Jews (and whose wife, for good measure, kept the Truman home in Independence, Missouri, off-limits to Jewish visitors) – would have to be considered an anti-Semite of the first order. Human beings are complex creatures, and Nixon was an unusually complicated one.
William Safire, a Nixon speechwriter prior to embarking on a long career as a New York Times columnist, addressed the question of Nixon's feelings about Jews by noting that Nixon was a man "whose hero as a lawyer…was Louis Brandeis; whose model of a strict constructionist Supreme Court justice was Felix Frankfurter; whose favorite writer of fiction was Herman Wouk; who, upon becoming president, named a German Jewish immigrant named Henry Kissinger to be his foremost foreign policy adviser and an Austrian Jewish immigrant named Arthur Burns to be his chief domestic counselor; who later placed one Jew, Herbert Stein, at the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and another, Leonard Garment, at the head of his double-every-year commitment to the arts and humanities, and named another, Ed David, to be his chief science adviser…."
Nonetheless, Nixon never enjoyed anything remotely close to an amicable relationship with the American Jewish community, which he perceived as inordinately liberal and opposed to him on both personal and political grounds, and from which he received paltry backing in his various campaigns for office (his best showing being the 34 percent he received in his 1972 landslide reelection).
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Precise details of what transpired in Washington during that first week of the Yom Kippur War are hard to come by, due mainly to conflicting accounts given by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger regarding their respective roles in the drama.
But as I wrote some years ago in an online article for Commentary magazine that appeared concurrently as a Jewish Press column, what is clear, from the preponderance of information provided by those who were directly involved, is that Nixon – overriding inter-administration objections and bureaucratic inertia – implemented a breathtaking transfer of arms, code-named Operation Nickel Grass, during which, beginning on October 14 and continuing uninterrupted for more than four weeks, jumbo U.S. military aircraft touched down in Israel close to 600 times, delivering nearly 23,000 tons of military equipment. Separately, dozens of F-4 Phantom II fighter jets were flown to Israel by U.S. Air Force pilots and turned over to their Israeli counterparts.
This was accomplished, wrote Walter J. Boyne in the December 1998 issue of Air Force Magazine, while "Washington was in the throes of not only post-Vietnam moralizing on Capitol Hill but also the agony of Watergate, both of which impaired the leadership of Richard M. Nixon. Four days into the war, Washington was blindsided again by another political disaster – the forced resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew."
"Both Kissinger and Nixon wanted to do [the airlift]," said CIA deputy director Vernon Walters, "but Nixon gave it the greater sense of urgency. He said, 'You get the stuff to Israel, now. Now. Now.' "
Boyne, in his book The Two O'Clock War, describes a high-level White House meeting on October 9: "As preoccupied as he was with Watergate, Nixon came straight to the point, announcing that Israel must not lose the war. He ordered that the deliveries of supplies, including aircraft, be sped up and that Israel be told that it could freely expend all of its consumables – ammunition, spare parts, fuel, and so forth – in the certain knowledge that these would be completely replenished by the United States without any delay."
White House chief of staff Alexander Haig concurred: "As soon as the scope and pattern of Israeli battle losses emerged, Nixon ordered that all destroyed equipment be made up out of U.S. stockpiles, using the very best weapons America possessed…. Whatever it takes, he told Kissinger…save Israel."
"It was Nixon who did it," recalled Leonard Garment. "As [bureaucratic bickering between the State and Defense departments] was going back and forth, Nixon said, This is insane…. He just ordered Kissinger, Get your [expletive] out of here and tell those people to move."
When Schlesinger wanted to send just three transports because he feared anything more would alarm the Arabs and the Soviets, Nixon snapped: "We are going to get blamed just as much for three as for 300…. Get them in the air, now."
Haig, in his memoir Inner Circles, reported that Nixon, frustrated with the initial delays in implementing the airlift and aware that the Soviets had begun airlifting supplies to Egypt and Syria, summoned Kissinger and Schlesinger to the Oval Office on October 12 and "banished all excuses."
The president asked Kissinger for a precise accounting of Israel's military needs, and Kissinger proceeded to read aloud from an itemized list. "Double it," Nixon ordered. "Now get the hell out of here and get the job done."
Later, informed of yet another delay – this one because of disagreements in the Pentagon over the type of planes to be used for the airlift – an incensed Nixon shouted at Kissinger, "[Expletive] it, use every one we have. Tell them to send everything that can fly."
Nixon acted despite threats of reprisal by Arab oil producers – the day after he asked Congress for an emergency appropriation of $2.2 billion for Israel, Saudi Arabia's King Faisal announced an embargo of oil to the U.S. – and in the face of overwhelming European opposition to aiding Israel.
Israeli leaders were stunned by the sheer size and scale of Operation Nickel Grass. Mordechai Gazit, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office, called it something "beyond our imagination."
To the end of her life Golda Meir would refer to Nixon as "my president," telling a group of Jewish leaders in Washington shortly after the war: "For generations to come, all will be told of the miracle of the immense planes from the United States bringing in the materiel that meant life to our people."
In June 1974, two months before he resigned the presidency, Nixon became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Israel. He told the assembled dignitaries upon his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport: "I can only say that the friendship that we have for this nation, the respect and the admiration we have for the people of this nation, their courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds…makes us proud to stand with Israel…"
Nixon biographer Stephen E. Ambrose perhaps summed it up best:
"Those were momentous events in world history. Had Nixon not acted so decisively, who can say what would have happened? The Arabs probably would have recovered at least some of the territory they had lost in 1967, perhaps all of it. They might have even destroyed Israel. But whatever the might-have-beens, there is no doubt that Nixon…made it possible for Israel to win, at some risk to his own reputation and at great risk to the American economy. He knew that his enemies…would never give him credit for saving Israel. He did it anyway."
Jews NEED to Opt Out of the 'Woke Victim' Competition
Maybe the problem is that we should stop paying so much attention to what comedians say. Too much of our national discourse has become the function of what writers for late-night comedy shows say it is. Those shows aren't so funny anymore, yet they do set the parameters for what is considered acceptable opinion in mainstream liberal society.
The same can be said for the once-hilarious Saturday Night Live after four years running dull polemical skits illustrating conspiracy theories aimed at demonizing Donald Trump and glorifying his opponents. Like the others, its cast poses as courageous truth-tellers but, much like the court jesters of medieval monarchies, they are actually in the business of telling their audience only what it wants to hear.
It's hardly surprising that in an era when political correctness is the coin of the realm, and trigger warnings and worries about hurting the feelings of those too sensitive to either take a joke or laugh at themselves are omnipresent, that humor as an art form is in serious decline. Yet somehow, a lot of Jews are still taking Sarah Silverman's utterances seriously.
Silverman rose to notoriety by doing what cutting-edge comedians have always done: being outrageous, offensive and vulgar. Now, however, she mainly gets our attention by acting like so many others in her field: making political statements.
Silverman has well-established ties to Israel in the form of an older sister who lives in the Jewish state with her family. So when Silverman recently pointed out that those progressives who oppose funding for the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system were guilty of antisemitism because they were deliberately exposing them to the harm caused by terrorist rockets, some of her fans on the left didn't like it. Echoing a theme explored in depth by a far more incisive Jewish commentator – novelist Dara Horn, whose most recent book is titled People Love Dead Jews – Silverman noted that "people only really like Jews when they are suffering."
Despite possessing the insight that comes from having loved ones in Israel, Silverman has also been doing her best to retain her own progressive credentials, without which survival in the woke world of popular entertainment is unlikely. That's why she's also been supportive of both the pro-BDS left-wing congressional "Squad" and of the BDS movement because she is "against the occupation." But as even the comedian's sister, Rabbi Susan Silverman, who leans left with respect to most issues in Israeli politics, pointed out, "BDS is not about the occupation. It's not about 1967. It's about 1948. It's about ending the Jewish state."
But Silverman appears to have generated even more notice with a recent podcast in which she raised the issue of "Jew face," a term she uses to describe when "a non-Jew portrays a Jew with the Jewishness front and center, often with makeup or changing of features, big fake nose, all the New York-y or Yiddish-y inflection." This is significant, she claims, because "in a time when the importance of representation is seen as so essential and so front and center, why does ours constantly get breached even today in the thick of it?"
The immediate cause of this complaint was the casting of actress Kathryn Hahn, who is Catholic, as the very Jewish comedian Joan Rivers in an upcoming mini-series. Other prominent examples of this sort of thing are non-Jews like Rachel Brosnahan starring as the uber-Jewish Midge in the hit comedy "Mrs. Maisel," or the WASPy Felicity Jones playing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 2018 biopic "On the Basis of Sex."
Some of this may be sour grapes on the part of those who think that they should be getting roles that are being given to less deserving or at least less Jewish actors. And anything that comes out of Silverman's mouth should always be taken with a shovelful of salt since her primary motivation has always been to put herself in the spotlight. After all, she once falsely claimed to have been raped by Joe Franklin, a New York television institution, as part of a documentary about a dirty joke. It was so absurd and outrageous that it was deemed a comic genius by some. Franklin, who sued, understandably didn't think it was funny.
But Silverman's latest kvetch relates to controversies that go deeper than her perpetual search for notoriety.
The idea of "representation" and "cultural appropriation" is at the heart not only of issues roiling the arts but society in general. Woke ideologues have been doing their best to police casting in the entertainment industry in order to root out historical injustices done to marginalized communities. The days when the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States like actor Sam Jaffe could play other ethnicities (like the Indian title character of the Hollywood classic "Gunga Din" or a Tibetan High Lama in "Lost Horizon") are over.
There is something to be said for this, not least in opening up opportunities for actors who are black, Hispanic, Asian, Indian or some other ethnicity to get roles for which they are obviously best suited instead of handing them to whites.
Since this is primarily motivated by notions about "equity" rather than equality of opportunity, the hubbub about cultural appropriation only works in one direction. When blacks are cast in roles that are clearly associated with another race, we are rightly told that acting talent matters more than skin color or fidelity to the spirit of the piece but not when it is the other way around.
Even worse, even the showing of films of the past in which whites appeared in roles now deemed inappropriate for them has become impossible. For example, Bright Sheng, a professor of music at the University of Michigan, was forced to step down from teaching a course after his decision to screen a 1965 film of Shakespeare's "Othello" starring the very white English acting legend Laurence Olivier as a very black version of the Moor of Venice for a class. One can argue that the portrayal of the role by Olivier – one of the greatest Shakespearians of his or any other time – was over the top, and it wouldn't pass muster today.
The woke, however, are eager to not just condemn the past, but to erase it and to cancel anyone who disagrees. The fact that Sheng's family was persecuted by the Communist Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution is an irony that is lost on those championing these new standards in the name of social justice.
In such an environment, perhaps it's understandable that Jews want to get in on the act and demand their own version of "equity."
It's not as if Jews are unfamiliar with being victims. A rising tide of antisemitism has swept across the globe as traditional Jew-hatred has joined forces with Islamist hate and anti-Zionist invective masquerading as human-rights advocacy. Advocacy for critical race theory and intersectionality has given a permission slip to the left to target Jews as possessors of "white privilege" and to falsely label Israel as an "apartheid state." That has served to enable both the silencing of Jews as well as to foment violence against them.
But rather than seeking to get their share of equity, Jews need to realize that they have thrived because America is a place where you were judged as an individual, not solely as a member of a group – be it privileged or unprivileged – the way critical race theory categorizes everyone. Aligning with the woke frame of reference about casting may give a few more juicy Jewish roles to Jewish actors, yet doing so would mire us further into the morass of entitlement and moral panic about race that is antithetical to the best of the Jews as well as everyone else.
Nothing could be further from that goal than Silverman's attempt to push for more "representation" of them. On the contrary, those who care about Jewish rights should be at the forefront of the effort to fight back against all aspects of critical race theory. The religion or ethnicity of the actress who will play Joan Rivers or any other Jewish character matters less than championing values in which each person or actor will be judged solely on their own merits rather than as a member of a group, be it privileged or not.
Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku who survived the Auschwitz extermination camp and became famous for his book and lectures in which he called himself "the happiest man on earth," died in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, at the age of 101. He is survived by his wife of 75 years, his sons Andre and Michael, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Jaku was born in 1920 as Avraham Jakubowiez in Leipzig, to a family that saw itself as German first and Jewish second. The rise of the Nazis in the 1930's changed the young boy's mind, especially after he had been severely beaten during Kristallnacht in November 1938 and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
He managed to escape with his family to Belgium and France, but they were captured and transferred to Auschwitz. On the way, Jaku, his parents, and his sister managed to escape and his in Belgium. In October 1943, the family was captured again and sent to Auschwitz, where the parents were murdered. Jaku escaped during the 1945 Death March from Auschwitz to Dachau in Germany and hid in the woods until Allied soldiers rescued him.
In 1950 Jaku moved to Australia with his wife Flora and the two had two children. He ran a service station and a real estate agency. In 1992, he was one of the founders of the Jewish Museum of Sydney, where he volunteered for years, using his personal story to convey messages of peace, tolerance, and forgiveness.
Jaku said he had pledged to smile every day, and in 2019 he appeared in a TED talk entitled "The Happiest Man on Earth" and gained international acclaim.
In a speech in Sydney in 2019, Jaku said: "I do not hate anyone. Hate is a disease which may destroy your enemy, but will also destroy you. Happiness does not fall from the sky. It's in your hands. I'm doing everything I can to make this world a better place for everyone."
Biblical Animals of Animals which Surprisingly Once Lived in Israel
The (Nubian) Ibex can still be seen in Israel's wild Deuteronomy (14:5)
For almost any genre of tourism, Israel offers a unique experience paralleled by few. Whether one is a history buff, looking for a spiritual/religious experience, lover of fine cuisine, wine connoisseur, hiker, enjoys relaxing on the beach, driving an ATV or are a medical tourist, Israel is the answer to all of your travel needs! However, other than birdwatching (where Israel is one of the premier locales) when discussing the great wildlife destinations of the world, Israel is seldom mentioned. Nonetheless, for thousands of years from Biblical times until fairly recently, Israel has hosted some of the most exotic animals in the world, worthy of any safari!
Camels are still the main form of transportation in some Bedouin communities (see Genesis 24:10). Photo Credit: "camels convoy"by amira_ais licensed under CC BY 2.0
While many animals have gone extinct (within Israel) it is surprising that many of these incredible animals can still be seen. Some of the animals were successfully reintroduced into the wild (Israel has a law that any animal, with a few exceptions, which once existed here should be re-introduced). Others never went away.
The Asiatic Wild Ass went extinct in Israel in the 1920s. They were successfully reintroduced into the wild in the 1970s, using specimens provided by the Shah of Iran. Today, hundreds live in the Michtash Ramon area (see Job 39:5). Photo Credit: "LRK-Asiatic-Wild-Ass-Group"by GimpRideris licensed under CC BY 2.0
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The following is a list of five animals mentioned in the Bible which were once found in Israel (for Part 2, you will be shown 5 exotic animals which surprisingly still live in Israel's wild):
1) Lion– "Then Sampson went down to Timna… and behold, a young lion was roaring towards him! The spirit of G-d came over him and he tore it apart(Judges 14:5-6)"
While Israel may not be the first country that comes to mind when one thinks of lions, throughout most of history, the opposite was true. In fact, the Hebrew Bible has several exciting stories involving lions. David (before he was King) would shepherd his sheep in the outskirts of Bethlehem, and often had to fend off hungry lions (1 Samuel 17:36).
When the Assyrians exiled the Northern tribes of Israel, in their place, they brought idol worshippers from modern day Iraq. The transplanted idol worshippers to Israel were immediately attacked by lions (2 Kings: 17:25-26). Less than a 10-minute drive from my home, is the actual location where Samson (the world's strongest man) ripped apart a lion with his bare hands.
How were the abovementioned stories possible? This is because Israel was filled with lions until about 800 years ago, during the Crusader period. The local species, the Asiatic Lion, were found in parts of the Middle East as late as the early 20th century. Today, India is the only country where this endangered species lives in the wild.
2) Hippopotamus– "Look atBehemoth (i.e. Hippo), which I made just as I made you, it eats grass like an ox. Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly (Job 40:15-16). "
The femur of a Hippo which once lived in Israel
Today, hippos are found in only 2 places in the world: Africa and, since the 1990s, the Magdalena River in Colombia. The hippos in Colombia got there by escaping from the private zoo of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar. However, for thousands of years, Israel had its own hippos who lived in the Swampy coastal region (the swamps were dried in the early 20th century by Zionist pioneers) and archaeologists have the bones to prove this. For example, in the Yarkon River (today in northern Tel Aviv) hippo bones were found from the time of the Judges (more than 3000 years ago).
It is believed that Hippos continued to live in Israel until the 2nd century BCE.
3)Cheetah – Can… leopards (in Biblical times, the word "Leopard" probably meant any spotted feline including Cheetahs) change their spots? (Jeremiah 13:23)"
Being able to run from 0 to 60 miles per hour within a three second span, Cheetahs are the world's fastest land animals. They too lived in Israel from Biblical times, until after the State of Israel declared independence. The last known confirmed sighting of a cheetah was in 1959 in the Arava region of Southern Israel. None are believed to exist today in the Holy Land.
4) Crocodile– "Thus said Lord Hashem: Behold, I am against you Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great crocodiles that crouches within its rivers (Ezekiel 29:3)"
Nachal Taninim (literally "Crocodile River"), just south of Haifa was home to mighty Nile Crocodiles. The last one was killed by an Arab hunter in 1912. Photo Credit: Udi Steinwell. Licensed under CC BY 2.5
It will surprise many to learn that the Nile Crocodile, certainly one of the most dangerous animals in the world, used to live in Israel. In fact, one of the rivers near Caesarea, a popular tourist site, is called "Crocodile River". The last Crocodile was killed by an Arab hunter in 1912.
Why was the crocodile killed? In Europe, taxidermy (the art of stuffing animals) from animals of the Holy Land was in high demand. Father Schmitz, a German priest, had a business that hired local Arabs to hunt animals, paying them very generously for their work. The animals would then be stuffed and shipped to Europe where they would then be sold to Museums and private collections. Unfortunately, this caused other animals to become extinct in Israel as well.
What happened to the last Crocodile in Israel? It can be seen today on display at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv.
Interestingly, Israel does have two Crocodile breeding farms where tourists can learn about and touch real crocodiles (which should only ever be attempted in the presence and assistance of a trained professional).
5) Syrian Brown Bear– "He (Elisha) turned around and saw them, and cursed them in the name of Hashem. Two bears then came out of the forest (2 Kings 2:24)"
Until 1918, many Syrian Brown Bears called Israel their home. Photo Credit: Ursus arctos syriacus. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
The last known sighting of the Syrian Brown Bear in Israel was in 1918. It is now believed to be extinct in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, though small numbers live in Iran, Iraq and Turkey where they are endangered.
In 2017, for the first time in 60 years, a brown bear was spotted and filmed in Lebanon, raising the unlikely possibility that the Brown bear will re-appear in Israel.
