There is fantasy and there is reality, and reality is not a bad thing, but it is a challenge, and I always say otherwise we would be bored! Unresolved issues, learning and growing is what life is about. We all come from a different point of view and passion, and I love being strong in my roots, but I also love to keep expanding my horizons, to have no ceiling. My father is the best example that you can always learn something new. When he brought his family to America, he was an engineer with no English. Nothing stopped him from asking questions, because he felt even if he sounded foolish, he walked away with more knowledge. I never hesitate to ask questions, to confront, to communicate, and to open doors.
Here is how I feel about today’s political climate:
A few days ago Elie Wiesel passed away, a Nobel Laureate, a person who stood for truth, and used his voice to spread awareness and light. President Obama said he was “one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world.” Hillary is silent, and some people have the audacity to trample on his memory. Elie Wiesel inspired the whole world to speak up, communicate, and and keep having faith.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
In March of this year, outside of the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., I was attacked by a deranged Max Blumenthal together with a rabble-rousing group of Israel haters. The video of the assault, captured by my children who were also targets, immediately went viral.http://observer.com/…/max-blumenthal-attacked-me-outside-o…/
This past Saturday night, as I joined the world in mourning the passing of Elie Wiesel, I began to receive scores of messages from friends that the repugnant Blumenthal had actually celebrated the death of the world’s most famous holocaust survivor and human rights legend.
I have waited a few days to respond to the vile, stomach-turning, repellant attack by Max Blumenthal against the memory of Elie Wiesel. I have done so because I did not wish to cause pain to his widow Marion or his son Elisha. I did not wish to steep so low as to respond to the filthy assault by one of America’s premiere Jew-haters – who regularly compares Israel to Nazis and the IDF to the SS – while we are all mourning Professor Wiesel’s loss.
Normally a nobody like Max Blumenthal would not even rate. Compared to a moral giant like Elie Wiesel he is nothing but a racist pigmy, deserving of being ignored and cast to the oblivion he already inhabits. His anti-Semitic refuse is read only by his far-left fellow travelers.
But what makes Max Blumenthal a game changer is his proximity to Hillary Clinton, a woman who may be President, and his role as informal advisor to her on Israel and the Middle East.
Readers of my columns (http://observer.com/…/hillarys-email-trail-of-troubling-an…/) are familiar with how Sidney Blumenthal, arguably the Clinton’s closest advisor of 25 years, regularly sent his son’s hate-filled diatribes against Israel to Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. In light of Blumenthal’s bile against the Jewish State, Hillary’s responses to Max Blumenthal’s missives are puzzling, including the following from Hillary’s emails as released by the State Department:
7/6/2010 – “Pls print 5 copies but w/out heading from Sid.”
8/17/2010 – “Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”
11/18/2010- “A very smart piece as usual.”
4/7/2011 – “Will Max’s piece be published anywhere else? It is powerful and touching.”
12/23/2011 – “Max strikes again!”
1/21/2012 – “Interesting reading.”
9/13/2012 “Your Max is a mitzvah!”
12/7/2012 – “Good stuff. Where is he now?”
But whatever hatred and anti-Semitism Max Blumenthal had shown earlier, he hit a new low with his attack on Wiesel. When the news of the death of the Nobel Peace Laureate hit, Blumenthal tweeted:
Elie Wiesel is dead. He spent his last years inciting hatred, defending apartheid & palling around with fascists.
He then added:
Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a supporter of those who commit them. He did more harm than good and should not be honored.
The Obama Administration blocked the hiring of Sidney Blumenthal at the State Department when Hillary became Secretary of State and Hillary was forced to pay him instead out of the Clinton Foundation. The Administration’s repudiation of Blumenthal seemed prescient. While President Obama was, to his great credit, lauding Elie Wiesel as “one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world,” Blumenthal’s hateful son was assailing his memory.
Hillary’s response to Blumenthal’s evil attack against the foremost Jewish personality of our time has been a deafening silence.
Now, I know that Hillary Clinton greatly admired Elie Wiesel. I personally witnessed the beautiful tribute she gave Elie at the 92nd St. Y in November, 2014. So you would think that as the Jewish people and the world mourn the loss of their greatest son Hillary would move quickly to condemn her informal advisor.
That she has not done so is shocking, mystifying, and deeply disappointing.
As Elie Wiesel put it, with his customary eloquence, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
Hillary, rise to the occasion and repudiate the haters in your midst.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous rabbi in America” is the founder of The World Values Network and is the international best-selling author of 30 books, including his just-published, “The Israel Warrior: Fighting Back for the Jewish State from Campus to Street Corner.” Follow him on Twitter Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
I want to finish with this beautiful story of how the National Anthem for the United States of America was born.
I love this country,
Coach Yulia