Howard Epstein

HOWARD EPSTEIN: TRUMP’S BREATH OF FRESH AIR

By Howard Epstein

Posted on January 17, 2018

Kenneth Roth “Human Rights Watch”

HOWARD EPSTEIN: TRUMP’S BREATH OF FRESH AIR

President Trump just reduced financial assistance to the Palestinians by around 50% ($60M), in a fit of realism not indulged in by an American president for many a long year. The decision was not universally well-received. Human Rights Watch director, Kenneth Roth, claimed:

“It is vindictive for the US government to deprive the UN of money to feed and educate Palestinian children in order to blackmail the Palestinian Authority into rejoining Trump administration-led peace negotiations.”

implying, bizarrely, that there is no vindictiveness in Hamas misdirecting funds under its control away from the education and feeding of Palestinian children to their greater purposes. For them, building attack and kidnap tunnels, developing attack and destroy missile systems and pursuing all the other nihilistic endeavours of the Gaza-entrenched organisation that is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the USA, the UK, the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Japan – and Israel, of course – comes before the welfare of their children. Human Rights Watch appears to have some issues with what it is prepared to see.

Who is Kenneth Roth? you ask. He is an American attorney who has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993. He does not allow his Jewish roots (through his paternal grandfather) to get in the way of his anti-Israel bias. NGO Monitor claims to have catalogued more than 400 Ken Roth tweets about Israel between July 5 and September 2, 2014, said to constitute a quarter of his feed, rising to 50-60% at times.

Roth’s tweets are said (by NGO Monitor) to include:

“significant levels of sarcasm, vitriol, and deep-seated hostility. The content consists almost entirely of condemnations and attacks against Israel. Many involve retweeting of hostile articles and false or unverified claims, based on rumours, from fringe sources. Common themes include labelling Israel’s actions in Gaza as “war crimes,” “indiscriminate,” “unlawful,” and “collective punishment”; denying Hamas human shielding and other fundamental violations; sarcastic comments solely towards Israeli leadership; promotion of Hamas propaganda while attacking Israeli PR efforts; silence on the rise in global antisemitism and denigration of those speaking out against it; and obsessive attacks on critics as “Israel partisans” and part of the “Hasbarah crowd.”

With co-religionists and human-rights activists like Roth, you could forgive President Trump all his misdemeanours: where the lives of Israelis (and the welfare of the young of Gaza) are concerned, boorishness, bombast and buffoonery fade into insignificance.

In a telling opening to his most recent weekly column in the Sunday Times (of London), renowned historian, Niall Ferguson exposed abject bad-temper, bullying and ignorant behaviour in the West Wing by quoting from an insider’s book – on womaniser Bill Clinton. (See “The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House”, Bob Woodward, 1994.)

It seems that what is morally unacceptable on the part of show-biz personalities, captains of industry and politicians is well and truly whitewashed if the perpetrator is the leader of the left-leaning world. That Clinton survived myriad allegations of impropriety – including using his greater (not to say almost absolute) power to have his way with an intern and Cuban cigars – including a full-blown sexual harassment legal action (by Paula Jones who “settled” for a full pay-out of her claim) – says much about the hypocrisy of the Left.

The resentment of Trump is no greater than that suffered by Churchill at the hands of just about the whole of the British establishment and the ruling class in Britain (mostly on the Right in his case) at every point up to, and beyond, his being called upon to be prime minister in May 1940. Examined somewhat vividly in the movie now on general release: Darkest Hour (a titular perversion of “Finest Hour”, volume VI of the official biography of Churchill by the greatly-missed Sir Martin Gilbert), the animus towards Churchill is shocking to all those who know of him only as the man who saved Britain, the Empire and arguably the USA. (The definitive account of the events of the movie is given in “Five Days in London; May 1940” by historian John Lukacs.)

This last claim is not fanciful. Had Britain surrendered to Hitler, which is what was urged by all those politicians who were not called Winston S Churchill, there would have been no Manhattan Project, and Werner Heisenberg may well, in the fullness of time, have created the one and only atomic bomb – the Nazi one.

Given that the Germans’ V2 missile was the first object to travel into space, the Germans, unopposed by Britain, would have been given full rein to build a nuclear-armed ICBM; and there is no reason not to believe that the USA would not have been at Hitler’s mercy, and that of Japan, by or before 1944. Not only would pacifist America, taken by surprise by the Japanese whom they were suffocating in the Pacific, have been preoccupied there, but also there would have been no British springboard from which to mount an attack on Nazi-controlled Europe. Experience in 1944/5 showed that the rain of V1 and V2 missiles on London was stopped only when the missile launch-sites were overrun, literally, by boots – and tanks – on the ground. (Having subdued Britain, Hitler may have had the freedom and strength to have been more successful than was the case against Stalin’s Russia.)

Churchill’s story – that of the lone voice who spelled out the doom that the Nazi threat meant for all Europe – is instructive not merely because, had he been heeded, the Germans would have been stopped in their tracks when they entered the Rhineland in 1936 and Czechoslovakia would not have been sacrificed to them in 1938, but also, following the British Bulldog’s message about never giving in to dictators, North Korea would have been stopped before it was capable of threatening only Hawaii (as opposed to Washington DC now), the JCPOA would never have been signed with Iran and Hezbollah would never have been allowed (by Israel) to build up a missile force reputedly 160,000 rockets strong.

The first hit is the cheapest, as it would have been way before September 3, 1939, December 7, 1941, and whenever the West may emerge from its pacifist and appeasement slumbers over threats from Iran, North Korea and Russia.

Trump’s sense of realism over the PLO should, therefore, be a wake-up call over all the other burning issues. It is refreshing that he has lived up to his electoral promises to reduce taxes, recognise Jerusalem for what it has always been – the capital of Israel – and to face down terrorism. Now the USA needs to reverse some more of the bad policies of the Obama era and show real support for other natural allies cast off by Obama, such as the Kurds, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who resist Iranian and Turkish aggression.

How bizarre is it that the sophisticate, Obama, showed so little understanding of realpolitik when the oafish Trump does so with great facility?

All those who condemn Trump’s withholding of funds that underwrite Palestinian nihilism should consider how badly served are the Palestinians by their political masters. When the touchy-feely (and anti-Israeli) West shows the compassion for the ordinary men, women and children of Palestine that their own leaders plainly do not feel, even more progress can be made towards “Peace” (whatever that may mean).

We thus arrive at the conclusion, unpalatable to the point of nausea for many, that Trump is as far from being an appeaser as was Churchill, so that, instead of trying to tear down Trump at every turn, those who oppose aggression, misogyny and homophobia should encourage him to follow his instincts. After all, realism in lieu of hypocrisy, is always like a breath of fresh air.

© Howard Epstein – January 2018

The author’s book, Israel at Seventy: In Weizmann’s Image is available now from Amazon in paperback or as a Kindle e-book

As Israel reaches its seventieth birthday, it is timely to consider the story of its indispensable founder, Chaim Weizmann. Statesman and scientist, it was Weizmann who saved the British Empire from defeat in World War I, kindled the hope for the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland, after an absence of 2,000 years, and was then instrumental in securing what was needed to establish the State of Israel and its future as a technological powerhouse. Weizmann may be said to be the world’s first 20th century – even 21st century – man. If any aspects of modern life became supremely important last century, and remain so in this, they are science & technology and networking. Weizmann’s chemistry, both in the laboratory and with a wide-range of key people, led to his four great political coups, each essential to the emergence of the State of Israel. In addition, he pulled off three crucial educational feats that secured Israel’s future and ensured its success – in his image. In the case of the political achievements, only Weizmann could have wrought them. In the case of the others, only he did. Despite these signature successes, today little is known of him and what he achieved. Why this should be so is revealed in a tale of rivalry between two political giants: Weizmann, the greater talent, but the older, and his nemesis, David Ben-Gurion.

Amazon USA – Paperback