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    Speak Your Vues

    AMAZING NEW APP

    Dear Editor:
    I’m all excited about the new OU All Daf app. I’m just worried that
    it’s going to be hard for me to use. I’m not the best when it comes to
    computers but everything I read about as far as this new app is
    concerned makes me very excited. Right now I use torahanytime.com and
    it’s very hard for me to navigate.
    Eli Gordon/Flatbush

    Editor’s Note: I have downloaded the Apple version of the App. So far
    it is very easy and has two shiurim on it: Rabbis Rosner and Elefant.
    There is also other stuff on the App. It is very easy to navigate. I
    understand that there is more coming.

    OIL ON CHANUKAH

    Dear Editor:

    What’s the purpose of having latkes without oil? Organic Circle on Ave
    M is advertising that they are selling latkes without oil. You’re
    supposed to have oily food on Chanukah.
    Yoel Steinhurst/Boro Park

    Editor’s Note: Maybe it is the new Lezecher oil doughnut or latka. Was
    my response last week and I am sticking with it.

    SIYUM HASHAS TICKETS

    Dear Editor:

    I really wanted to go to Met Life stadium for the Siyum Hashas, but I
    can’t afford $200 a ticket. Any suggestions?

    Boruch K

    Editor’s Note: I am sure there are cheaper tickets left. There are
    people who bought tickets at Barclays who are trying to get rid of
    their Met life Tickets. Someone should start a G’mach for this.

    ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS

    Dear Editor:

    After reading an editorial harshly criticizing Secretary of State
    Pompeo for his statement on the legality of Israeli settlements in the
    Washington Jewish Week newspaper I wrote a letter to the editor. That
    letter led to brief exchange of emails with David Holzel, the paper’s
    managing editor. Mr. Holzel responded to my letter thus “Thank you for
    the letter. Your points are well taken. I was wondering if you would
    propose your alternative to the two-state solution.” During our email
    dialogue I was offered a 600 word op-ed space to provide the Herut
    answer on this. The op-ed was published earlier this month. These are
    the original lines that I was responding to: “the Trump
    administration’s still-secret Middle East peace plan will not promote
    a two-state solution. Official recognition of Israeli control over
    territory that includes land anticipated to become part of a
    Palestinian state is viewed by two-state proponents as another
    ill-considered step by the Trump administration.” This knee-jerk
    assumption that two-states are a good plan or the only idea is what I
    oppose. The very conception that every problem has a “solution” is in
    my mind simply not realistic. This may be doubly true in the Middle
    East.

    The op-ed is below:

    “The “two-state solution” would endanger Israel’s safety. The “one
    state solution” may endanger Israel’s Jewish identity. So what’s the
    alternative?

    The “two-state solution” would create an independent Palestinian Arab
    state approximately along the pre-1967 lines. It would occupy all, or
    almost all, of Judea-Samaria and be linked to Gaza.

    So Israel would be just nine miles wide—virtually indefensible.
    Israel’s major cities and Ben Gurion Airport would be within easy
    range of a Palestinian terrorist army—an unprecedented danger. Also,
    there would be a mass expulsion of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds
    of thousands, of Jews from existing settlement towns—which would be
    utterly immoral.

    Two-state advocates say the only alternative to their plan is a “one
    state solution.” Which, they say, means granting Israeli citizenship
    to the Palestinian Arabs and turning them into a majority; or
    depriving them of citizenship and having an apartheid-like regime. But
    that’s just a hypothetical issue that they use as a talking point. In
    reality, not a single mainstream Israeli party calls for either making
    those Arabs citizens of Israel or having an apartheid system.

    The real choice is not between two states and one state. It’s actually
    a choice between two states; the status quo; and a third way, which my
    movement, Herut, advocates.

    The status quo refers to the existing situation: the Palestinian
    Authority (PA) rules about 40% of Judea-Samaria, 100% of Gaza, and all
    the major cities where Palestinian Arabs live in the PA. Under the
    status quo, the Palestinian Arabs do not pose a demographic threat to
    Israel, because they’re not Israeli citizens and never will be.

    Herut’s approach takes the status quo and builds on it in three important ways.

    First, the Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria would live under
    Israeli law, just as the Palestinian Arab communities live under PA
    law. This would not create a demographic problem for Israel, since it
    would not impose Israeli citizenship on the Arabs living in the
    Israeli-ruled sections of Judea-Samaria. (The number of such Arabs is
    very small, anyway.)

    Second, Jews would be free to live anywhere in the Land of Israel.
    This is not a “right-wing” position, but rather a sacred Zionist
    principle that has been at the center of the Zionist movement since
    its inception.

    There’s no reason to fear that such Jewish communities would obstruct
    peace. If the Palestinian Arabs genuinely want peace, they should have
    no objection to Jewish neighbors, just as Israeli Jews live side by
    side with nearly two million Arab citizens of Israel.

    Third, Herut’s plan proposes to focus Palestinian Arab aspirations on
    Jordan. That’s the country that is in an area historically called
    Eastern Palestine, until the British decided in 1922 to unilaterally
    change its name to Transjordan and later to Jordan. But changing a
    name doesn’t change the identity of its citizens. The vast majority of
    Jordanians are Palestinian Arabs; Jordan is already the independent
    state for Palestinians that everyone is demanding. The only obstacle
    to Palestinian statehood is the dictator king of Jordan.

    If the Palestinian Arabs ever decide they actually want a state—rather
    than the destruction of Israel—then 78% of historic Palestine awaits
    them, just a few miles east.

    Until then, Israel must be guided by the principle of
    steadfastness—what Herut’s ideological forefather, the legendary
    Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), called “the Iron Wall.”
    We know that Israel’s enemies will never love the Jewish State. But
    they can be forced to respect Israel—by remaining steadfast in the
    both the defense of Jewish rights and in the integrity of the Land of
    Israel.”

    With a limit of 600 words I was not able to go into so many of the
    other issues that are interconnected to the mistaken premise that a
    Palestinian Arab state encompassing Judea-Samaria is what has been
    lacking in the challenge to build a real peace between Israel and the
    Arab states. Such things as the deep historical and religious
    connections the Jewish People have to Judea-Samaria were unfortunately
    left unexplored and must remain so here too. In closing here’s one
    more practical reason to oppose a potential Palestinian state: Gaza
    and its rockets has become the most graphic illustration of why
    relinquishing Judea and Samaria to the perennially hostile and
    extremely corrupt Palestinian Authority is a flat-out dangerous idea.

    Moshe Phillips

    Editor’s Note: You went too easy with your answer. There are many
    other reasons why a two state solution cannot work.

    DONUTS WITHOUT OIL

    Dear Editor:

    Anyone who lives in New York and is not a registered Democrat is a
    fool. The primaries are the real elections.

    Yankel D

    Editor’s Note: You are right, but ad mosai?

    LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICAN AGENDA

    Dear Editor:

    I am going to enjoy being a new “liberal/progressive” Republican. The
    Party needs to appeal more to groups that it has little appeal to now,
    and it needs to care more about these groups especially at the
    national level.
    I will fight for the national Republican Party to do more to help the
    lower and middle classes, the poor, the near-poor, and senior
    citizens.
    I will fight for the national Republican Party to NOT be in favor of
    making cuts to federal government social programs such is Social
    Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, College Student Loans, and
    Unemployment Insurance Benefits. I will fight for the national
    Republican Party NOT to have so many Republican Party members of
    Congress who want to abolish these programs. Recent research indicates
    that most Americans who are Republicans are much less conservative on
    these issues than are the Republican members of Congress. So, I
    believe I will have an audience for what I will be fighting for. And,
    I will fight for the national Republican Party to stand against
    white-nationalism and sexism. I will also fight for the national
    Republican Party to stand in favor of equality for women, including
    being for equal pay for equal work for women, and being in favor of
    heavily-fining people (mostly men) who commit harassment and all forms
    of assaults as well as imprisoning some of these predators. I was told
    in the 1970s that I was the first male Sociology Ph.D. student in all
    of Canada to take and pass the Ph.D. comprehensive area specialization
    examination in “Women’s Studies” in the 1970s. I did this even though
    the examining committee did not want a man to take this examination. I
    am still certified and qualified to teach college courses in “Women’s
    Studies.” But, apparently this was not good enough for some women in
    the national Democratic Party. Some literally laughed at me for having
    done it and also dismissed it as being insignificant.  It took me 11
    months to complete the exam, which required me to submit over 200
    typed pages of responses to questions while the women who took the
    exam were required to submit 40 pages. Lastly, I will fight for the
    passage of a federal government national health insurance plan/program
    that is the same one that Ontario, Canada has, but not
    “Medicare-For-All.” I look forward to trying to make the national
    Republican Party more humane and compassionate.
    Best,
    Stewart B. E

    Editor’s Note; You sound like you are running for political office. We
    all know what happens to campaign promises They get broken. Let’s see
    if your promises will be kept.

    ANTI-ISRAELI RHETORIC

    Dear Editor:

    The official journal of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    has published an article depicting the Jewish National Fund as a
    colonialist exploiter of the Palestinian Arabs. Is this an appropriate
    way for a federally funded museum that is mandated to teach about the
    Nazi genocide against the Jewish people to be using taxpayers’
    dollars?

    Amy Weiss, a young Holocaust scholar from New Jersey, authored the
    article. It appears in the latest issue (Fall 2019) of Holocaust and
    Genocide Studies, the museum’s official journal, which is edited by
    Richard D. Breitman.

    Weiss accuses the JNF of secretly plotting in the 1930s to plant more
    pine trees, and fewer olive trees, in its forests, thereby “alter[ing]
    a Palestinian landscape to resemble a European one more familiar to
    Jewish pioneers and Holocaust survivors.”

    According to Weiss, the JNF continued this European-colonialist
    conspiracy after the 1948 war. “Erecting JNF forests where Palestinian
    villages and olive groves once stood promised to erase the connection
    to that land of the former resides who had fled or been expelled.”

    The hook for Weiss’s article is an obscure episode from the 1940s in
    which some American Christians planted a small forest in Israel to
    commemorate child victims of the Holocaust. But the story of that
    forest is not what Weiss wanted to bring attention to; Weiss
    concentrates her firepower on depicting the JNF and its forestry work
    in as negative a light as possible.

    Weiss mocks the JNF’s claim that its work was reviving the Land of
    Israel. She calls it “the myth of ‘making the desert bloom’,” and
    dismisses the centuries of Arab neglect of the land as the “purported
    languishing” of the land under Arab rule. According to Weiss, Zionist
    leaders concocted this “environmental degradation narrative” in order
    to “justify” the JNF’s land-grab policy.

    “While publicly speaking of environmental improvement and jobs, in
    actuality [the JNF] strove for Jewish colonization,” Weiss asserts,
    suggesting the JNF was disingenuously advancing a secret and sinister
    agenda.

    After the 1948 war, the JNF’s colonialist conspiracy continued,
    according to Weiss: “JNF pine trees figured in the planting over of
    ‘abandoned’ Arab villages…”

    Notice the quotation marks that she put around “abandoned.” Weiss
    clearly doesn’t believe they were abandoned. In fact, when she refers
    to Palestinian Arabs who emigrated during the war, she calls them
    “700,000 people [who] either had been forcibly driven from their homes
    or voluntarily fled.” Weiss’ wording is apparently intended to create
    the impression that the number who were expelled and the number who
    fled was roughly equal.

    Yet even Benny Morris—the king of the so-called “New Israeli
    Historians” that bash Israel’s founding fathers—has acknowledged that
    the large majority of the Palestinian Arabs chose to flee in order to
    get out of the way of battle areas. Only a tiny number were expelled,
    and even those cases were because of specific local wartime
    emergencies, not as part of any Zionist plot to get rid of the Arabs.

    For Amy Weiss, however, the work of the JNF is clothed in sin. It was
    carrying out what she has described in her lectures as a “politicized
    land reclamation project to secure land” for the Zionist movement and
    Israel. It was trying to “erase” Arab villages and replace them with a
    “European” model. And she alleges that the JNF caused “devastating
    damage” to the environment, to boot.

    In Weiss’s distorted version of history, the Jews are alien,
    land-grabbing, desecrators of the ecology, while the Palestinian Arabs
    are the noble indigenous planters of olive trees. “The planting of
    olive trees consequently became a symbol of struggle for
    Palestinians,” Weiss asserts. That’s an ironic statement, considering
    how often Palestinian Arab terrorists set fire to the land for which
    they are “struggling”; just the November 2016 arson wave alone
    destroyed nearly 5,000 acres of forests, brush, and open land
    throughout Israel.

    Why did Richard Breitman, the editor of the museum’s Holocaust
    journal, decide to publish Weiss’s harsh attack on a venerable and
    respected Jewish institution as JNF? Why did he permit a journal that
    is supposed to showcase legitimate Holocaust research to be used to
    present such a twisted version of history?

    Do the leaders of the Holocaust Museum endorse Breitman’s action? And
    if the Museum leaders do not agree with what Breitman did, what are
    they going to do about it? The public—which funds the Museum through
    its tax dollars—has a right to some answers.

    Moshe Phillips

    Editor’s Note: Hate is always easier to publish. It makes more waves.

    PC VS. MAC

    Dear Editor:

    You said that you generally prefer a PC over a Mac. I just want you to
    know that I heard from a reputable source that every time you use
    Windows or Mac OS instead of Linux, a kitten dies.

    Shelly S

    Editor’s Note: Please don’t say that. Soon we will have all the animal
    lovers descending on our homes and removing all computers.

    TEXT SOME NACHAS

    Dear Editor:

    I saw this on Matzav.com and I thought I would share it with you.

    Eli Solomon recently shared the following with me:

    There was once a Yid who spent a Shabbos with several strangers at a
    family simcha. He had the opportunity to observe several Yeshivah
    bochrim over that Shabbos. He truthfully felt that several of the boys
    made very good impressions in terms of their middos and the like. He
    had the opportunity to speak to several of them but one in particular
    more than the others. He asked who the boy was and realized that he
    knew who his father was, but never met the father in person. It didn’t
    take him long to make an immediate “texting connection.” This meant
    that the Yid immediately thought of someone that he knew who would
    know the father and he texted him for the father’s number. He then
    texted the father. “We don’t know each other, but I had the pleasure
    of spending time with your son over Shabbos. He is a great boy, lots
    of nachas.”

    That was all it took.

    There’s nothing wrong with texting someone in today’s day and age that
    you don’t know, have never met, may not meet for years to come, just
    to send him a nachas report.

    We don’t only have to report to the people we know. Imagine if this
    was 1984, and you wanted to reach someone random person in another
    city or State to tell him that his son behaved well over Shabbos. No
    one would have bothered back then. It’s too difficult, and too
    confrontational over the phone. Texting is the easiest way to make the
    connection.

    T.

    Editor’s Note: Wow I love it. We get inundated with so many texts, why
    should we not receive nachas through texts.

    NOT SURE ABOUT DATING

    Dear Editor:

    I’ve been dating this girl for around 3 months. She’s everything I’m
    looking for and more. I always have a good time when I’m with her and
    there hasn’t been a bad date. Everything has been going well; zero red
    flags. However, between dates I’ll sometimes miss her and sometimes
    not. I’m not sure if this is a sign of nervousness/emotional
    detachment on my end or if it’s a sign that it isn’t right. I’ve never
    questioned my feelings or felt uncertain on our dates, it’s only when
    I’m not with her that I get nervous and I’m not sure why. What should
    I be feeling?

    Sosha B

    Editor’s Note: Too much analysis. Just jump in the pool and get
    married. Remember: after marriage there will be times you don’t miss
    her either.

    PORTABLE MIKVEH

    Dear Editor:

    Has anyone heard of the concept of a portable mikveh that can be used
    in a person’s garage/ back yard? If so could you provide details?

    Thanks

    Moshe

    Editor’s Note: That would be very difficult since a Mikva has to be
    attached to the ground.