Our President at AIPAC

     ב"ה            

     LONG ISLAND LODGE No. 1353, B'NAI B'RITH

                                P.O. BOX 51, WOODMERE, NY 11598-0051

                             516-374-2958                               Mobile: 369-5799

                             www.bnaibrith.org                    AsherJmat@Aol.com

22 Iyar 5771                                                                                                  May 22, 2011

                         

                        President's Support for Israel Permanent and Unshaken

                 

                Our country is abuzz endlessly discussing President Barack H. Obama's address on the Middle East at the State Department on Thursday, May 19. The much-anticipated remarks came before the now-heralded response by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected to be delivered in the U.S. Congress Tuesday, May 24.

  

          In forthright cadences, the President put emphases on American commitment to Israel: maintaining its Jewish character; meeting security needs that will perpetuate its national sovereignty; and dramatically linked the ongoing regional upheavals, dubbed as Arab Spring, toppling several autocrats, the democratic bulwark that will connect nascent liberal movements to Israel, implying a new era of economic and social progress.

            The single, most-provocative reference to the need for border adjustments, with the pre-Six Day War, 1967, lines as discussion starters, drew most public attention, some of it vehemently negative. Such reaction should have been expected, and to the extent that the President's comprehensive speech is faulted, it is for not making his suggestion to the Israeli leader in private.

However, our President found it troubling that Hamas, the murderous and unyielding terrorist organization calling, a la Iran's Ahmadinejad, for Israel to be wiped off the map, has composed its differences with Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. More, the planned unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state during the fall's General Assembly session of the United Nations is premature --- even though,  and ironically, such a two-state solution was offered and roundly rejected by the Arabs in the Partition Plan for Mandate Palestine on November 27, 1947!

The ensuing War of Independence, following Israel's Yom HaAtzmaut, May 14, 1948, has become Nakba, catastrophe, for the Palestinians, a day to mourn, and nurse the ethnic hatred that has exploded in subsequent wars, Intifadas, and periodic suicide-bombings. A negotiated solution would remove this psychic hurt, and permit a neighboring de-militarized entity to come into existence, and without the dreaded return of Arab refugees that would demographically compromise Israel's Jewish nature. Palestine might welcome some back within its borders, arriving from enforced refugee camps in nearby Arab nations, even as the overlooked one million Jews contemplate their own systematic persecution, and expulsion from those Arab countries, compelling the victims to leave without their wealth or compensation!

On this Lag B'Omer Day, and having survived Judgment Day, the determined prognostication of religious fundamentalists, let us take heart that Israel lives, thrives, and has admirers and supporters the world over, including the current occupant of the premises at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. Our Lodge is happy to associate with our Order's expressed sentiments of President Obama's presentation www.bnaibrithorg. On Sunday, June 5, 11 AM-4 PM, let us descend on New York's

Fifth Avenue

to see and be seen as we demonstrate our love for Israel! Am Yisrael Chai, at 63, and forever!

Sincerely, and with fraternal affection,

            Asher

Prof. Asher J. Matathias, Lodge President

*Dear Asher: Congratulations on the all the good news that I read from your e-mails to your Lodge and Congregation in Long Island, New York and the good celebrations of all the news of your family. I appreciate your write up and mentioning how more than 800,000 Jews from Arab countries were expelled and their properties confiscated without any fault of their own and became refugees. Yet Israel absorbed most of them in spite of the small country Israel with negligible resources during that period. But there is one error in your write up. President Obama and his administration did tell the Israelis about his plan to mention the 1967 flop that he made on Friday BEFORE Netanyahu left Israel. The President was advised NOT to make such a statement both by Israel who objected violently and by some of his Jewish advisors. His advisor, Dennis Ross, was strongly against it. Yet, Obama decided to go ahead and stick it in the eye of all the Jews of the world. What the truth about all the deliberations on his 1967 fiasco statement has been well documented today in several news clips on the TV in US stations today!   I hope you would modify that inaccuracy. So whatever President Abeam has said is mostly to the detriment of Israel. Whatever else he subsequently said at AIPAC today to "clarify" his words during Netanyahu's visit the previous day cannot be trusted and is only a whitewash. Best regards, Ed (Dr. N.), Manalapan, NJ

P.S. 

As our native country descends into barbarism, here is the latest assault on civil discourse; the coarse, threatening, slogans (knowledge of Greek unnecessary) --- Jews you will die --- plastered in the Volos synagogue --- the place Anna and I were married on August 29, 1970 --- denoting a heightened level of anti-Semitism, and a clear and present danger to minorities, especially Greek Jews. Please join us, the few remaining Greek Jews, to again denounce such abhorrent sentiments, embarrassing and shaming Greece and Greeks everywhere; more, please voice your concern for, and solidarity with, us by contacting the Greek Consul-General in New York (and other venues), as well the Greek Embassy in Washington, D.C. Finally, please send me copies of your messages, the better to forward them to our beleaguered brethren in Greece, and the world over ... With fraternal affection, Asher