
Let me make this clear so that there be no doubt. As for me, if you are a Jew who eats pork and cheats at cards but you stand up for Israel, here’s what I do. I call you a friend. I won’t ask questions and don’t care what else you do.
In fact I prefer you over my landsmen who are upstanding and even kosher in all respects except when it counts.
As Israel is hurting they dither in their tents and see “both sides,” so don’t expect me to listen to the reasoning of your professors.
We keep hearing from Alan Dershowitz and other big thinkers who reasoned Israel out of Gaza at peace and into Gaza at war.
So much for the brilliance from “The Best and The Brightest” who still, incredibly enough, insist on a two-state delusion.
Are you nuts?
Give me the tough guys who don’t dance and sometimes reason with their fists. Yes, gangsters. Meyer Lansky, back in the early 1940s, reigned as one of America’s leading mobsters big on drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling, loan sharking and never mind what he did to people who crossed him.
The Jewish leadership around New York approached Lansky – what to do about anti-Semitic/Nazi rallies around town?
Nobody got killed, some skulls may have been cracked, but Lansky took care of business.
“We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.”
That was Lansky, the mobster, the man you would not introduce to your daughter, but in a brawl and when it counts, who ya gonna call?
Ditto Bugsy Siegel, who was in the same business. Let’s just say you would not want to get on his bad side. But…back in 1945 word reached him that Jews were rallying in then-Palestine to re-claim the Jewish State but were strapped for cash. “You mean Jews are fighting?” he said, and handed over $50,000.
I am only now getting around to Frank Sinatra. I trust that I am talking to my crowd so that I do not have to explain who Frank was as an entertainer (possibly the greatest), nor should I have to spell out his unwavering support for Israel. The list of his contributions is just too long and you should know this already.
We are fighting the Nazis again. This time they wear keffiyehs and burkas.But if only we had more Jews like that…like that Italian Catholic from Hoboken.
During the worst days of the Holocaust too many American Jews were silent.
Sinatra spoke up. His was a towering voice above the herd.
Now this rant comes courtesy of something I read in response to a particular column of mine along these pages. The responses I get here at home in New York, by the way, are almost entirely favorable, written by people who are grateful that we share the same views and share the same fight.
These have been a tough couple of months for our brothers and sisters in Israel and people from around the world want to hear and be heard.
We are fighting the Nazis again. This time they wear keffiyehs and burkas.
As I have written before, “The Koran has arrived and it has come to devour the Bible.” That goes for Jews, and now see how this is true for Christians as well. I wrote that line in 2005 for the novel “The Bathsheba Deadline” which is unavailable now so this is not a sales pitch, only proof that even a fool like me can still be a “holy fool.”
So far I have received about 200 letters expressing gratitude for my most recent columns and let me please gratitude you right back right here since I can’t answer every email. But the responses that appear under my columns at the online site…I only read the good ones, the ones who love me.
People who disagree with me are obviously wrong and not very bright, so I just skip over those. One did catch my attention, the one that knocked Sinatra.
That one mentioned Sinatra’s ties to the mob and his untidy life in all respects.
I agree. Sinatra was full of sins. But please, give me just one more Sinatra today, so sinful, and yet so loyal to the cause of Zion.
Let someone, anyone, warts and all, come along today to stand tall and “Cast A Giant Shadow.”
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, the anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Website: www.jackengelhard.com