Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? According to the TimesofIsrael.com, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, American Kompromat. quoting a former KGB spy, Yuri Shvets, who worked for the KGB in Washington DC for years in the 1980s, former president Donald Trump was a KGB asset dating back to that period.
True or false? “Go figure.” quipped an observer. Shvets says Trump was recruited by the KGB who also provided him with laundered money to prop up his business. The TOI article stated “...Trump’s attitude toward Russia throughout his presidency often raised eyebrows. He appeared loath to criticize Moscow on multiple occasions and repeatedly and openly cozied up to Putin.”
However, the article also says that the Trump administration took serious action against Russia, like supplying weapons to Russia’s foe the Ukraine, expelling Russian diplomats and closing Russian missions. One pundit wondered “Were these red herrings to throw off the scent of those investigating Trump?” Perhaps. But the article still raises the issue of Trumps sometimes inexplicable permissiveness when it came to Russia. Another pundit asks, “What would Trump’s right-wing nationalist supporters think of this revelation should it turn out to be true?”
Special counsel Robert Mueller investigated the Russian involvement in the 2016 election and concluded the Russians had indeed meddled in the election but charges were never brought against Trump.
Meanwhile, President Biden has been quite active in rolling back a number of Trump initiatives. Among them freezing the $23 Billion sale of F-35 airplanes to the Gulf states, a sale that Israel had never been happy about. President Biden has also been conspicuously avoiding any contact with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. Some observers put this down to an old enmity that began when Biden was Obama’s vice president. During that period Netanyahu flaunted his contacts and popularity with the Senate and spoke there without first contacting then President Obama, or even paying a courtesy call.
Whatever the reasons, Netanyahu, who is facing a new election in March, cannot use his close contacts with the US president in his present election campaign. During the last election billboards showed a photo with Netanyahu and Trump together, shaking hands and smiling at the camera. Netanyahu is having trouble this time around. The ultra-Orthodox community has been violently rioting in the streets, resisting the police trying to enforce the regulations that kept the ultra-Orthodox schools closed. This, in the face of a spike in Covid-19 across the country, especially in the ultra-Orthodox community.
Israel’s infection rate in over 9% of those tested, with 631,226 infections, at 68,629 per million, with 4,671 deaths, at 508 per million, with 321 on ventilators, 1,135 in critical condition, and 74,566 active cases. Israel is #27 in the world in infections. The world has 102,137,721 infections with 2,203,114 deaths. The USA is still #1 with 26,338,607 infections, and 443,769 deaths.
Israel is still in a lockdown. Borders closed. Airport closed. Israel’s vaccination campaign is going full bore. According to Ynetnews, “Israel began what has become the world's fastest per capita distribution of vaccines against the new coronavirus on Dec. 19, using the shot developed by the American firm Pfizer Inc. and Germany's BioNTech.
On Tuesday, the government said the inoculations were proving to be highly effective, with Israel not seeing a single serious case of COVID-19 among the more than 6% of the population who have received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine.” Earlier, the media reported that only 20 out of 128,000 people vaccinated showed symptoms but only one case was serious.
Health Ministry official Prof. Sharon Elroy-Price told Army radio on Thursday that the efficacy of the vaccine against the new mutations is now being tested but results will take another week or so. In Israel, the British variant, that is much more infectious, is the major problem today.
Prof. Elroy-Price also said that the good news was that the RNA formula used in the vaccine can easily be modified to deal with any variant. The bad news was that a third vaccine may be on the horizon if the tests show the current vaccine was not effective enough against the British or other mutations being studied. So far, the Pfizer drug has been proven to be 95% effective after the second dose against the “common” strain of the virus.
Co-incidently, Pfizer CEO Prof. Albert Bourla, appeared in the III Annual Congressional
Holocaust Commemoration hosted by the Sephardi Heritage International, of Washington D.C. Prof. Bourla, originally from the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, Greece, and the child of Holocaust survivors, related how his mother was saved as she was loaded on a truck for transport to the Auschwitz death camp, by her gentile uncle, a German and the husband of her mother’s sister, who had connections with the head of the unit in charge of the prisoners.
Bourla, a scientist, apparently saw the value is using Israel as a test case for the efficacy of the vaccine, considering Israel’s sophisticated delivery system and the high-level of Israel’s scientists. Several Israelis have won the Nobel Prize. Still, one observer, a historian, wondered if Bourla’s involvement with Israel wouldn’t be misconstrued and used to foster anti-Semitism, rather than taken as a wise chose by a scientist to test a vaccine in the best way possible.
Meanwhile, Israel’s hospitals are full to the breaking point. Hospital staff is exhausted. Israel TV showed scenes Thursday night of ambulances, with patients inside the vans, lined up outside the emergency room entrances of several hospitals because the hospitals had no place to put the new arrivals. Some patients waited for hours before they were allowed in for treatment. Elective surgery has been postponed.
Private hospitals, like Hadassah in Jerusalem, are also short of cash. The government has not approved a budget in over two years because of the elections, three so far in that period. However, Minister of Finance Yisrael Katz did grant Hadassah a special sum to tide the hospital over. But this only after a strike by workers was waged outside of Katz’s office. These seemingly endless elections are taking a toll on the entire country. For what each election costs the government they could hire more staff and pay hospital workers what they’re owed. PM Netanyahu, facing corruption charges, has not agreed to step aside and allow a government to form without him. And so far he has not been able to gain enough seats to form a stable coalition. Netanyahu also hopes to stay in power and form a strong enough coalition that would pass a law keeping him from continuing his trial or convicting him.
Now, with the ultra-Orthodox rioting in the streets, and threatening not to join a Netanyahu coalition, if he enforces strict rules against the ultra-Orthodox. According to pundits, the riots will continue and Netanyahu will stand by and watch or lose the ultra-Orthodox support when he tries to form a new coalition.
“But are these ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who lead the community that doesn’t move without rabbinical approval, really representative of what Judaism is supposed to be?” asks one Orthodox observer. One commentator pointed to the 1921 US immigration law that provided an exception to the strict visa quota in place at that time. The exemption provided in the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, allowed for academics and ministers to come into the USA. The Jewish mass immigration was between 1903-1914 when 115,000 Jews immigrated annually. Then came the quota so that from 1925-1934 only 9,000 a year were allowed in. But the Emergency Quota act allowed in a plethora of now famous rabbis under the exception. Rabbis like Rav Moshe Feinstein, (1937) Moshe Solovechek (1929) Joseph Solovechek (1932) Ahron Kotler (1940) and Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson (1940) and his son-in-law Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1941) the 7th Lubavich Rebbe. Some were radical fundamentalists, rare even in Eastern Europe where they came from.
Ordinary Jews weren’t allowed in, so the numbers of Orthodox rabbis grew to unheard of proportions. After the war many emigrated to Israel. The result was, according to Professor Jonathan Sarna and Zev Eleff, in their paper “The Immigration Clause that Transformed Orthodox Judaism in the United States,” a provision that reshaped “the trajectory of American Orthodoxy.” Also, why the “American rabbinate remained disproportionately foreign-born so much longer than most other professions did, and why, in the case of Orthodox Judaism, the image of the rabbi as a bearded, accented, immigrant newcomer endured in popular culture well into contemporary times.” “...these rabbis changed the face of Orthodox Judaism in America...transforming its institutional structure, opposing compromises with modernity, banning alliances with non-Orthodox Jews, and (with few exceptions) battling against Zionism… Absent these immigrant rabbis, Orthodox Judaism in America would be far weaker than it is today….and the entire course of its postwar history would have been different.”
While some of these ultra-Orthodox rabbis were relatively moderate, many were the modern equivalent of religious fundamentalists. These are the rabbis who changed the course of history we see today, not only in the USA and Israel, but around the world, according to analysts. Had these zealots not steered the course of Jewish history, we would not be seeing the flagrant disregard for common sense, like wearing masks, and getting vaccinations, that are prevalent in the ultra-Orthodox community today. But, said one pundit, you can’t rewind history and start again. You can only look at what there is today, find a goal to strive for in the future, and try to figure out a way to get there. No matter if the subject is health, politics, or religion.
