When I pulled into the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
this past Thursday to check in for the weekend, a delightful
Brazilian girl named Fabiana asked what brings me to town. “I’m
here for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference,” I
replied, and she began to cry.
Oh, my, I thought, what have I done?
“I just broke up with my fiancée after four years,” she said.
“And that was the reason why — no faith and no freedom!” That was
the most clever line I heard over the next several days, but
several others came close.
The event was absolutely fabulous and very edifying, for me
doubly so. On top of the regular scheduling, an Orthodox Jewish
Sabbath service was conducted in one of the meeting rooms, with
festive kosher meals catered by a company which trucked all the
supplies up from Lawrence, New York. All this was organized by the
head of Jewish Outreach for the Coalition, Bush-Cheney campaign
veteran Jeff Ballabon, in conjunction with David Millstein and his
dynamic organization, Young Jewish Conservatives.
The meals were staggered to allow the Jewish group full
participation in the regular conference sessions. In addition to
hearing all the regular speakers, we were treated to separate
presentations delivered to us over dinner from an array of
interesting Jewish personalities. My Spectator colleague,
John Fund, joined me in enjoying both parts of the experience.
Rather than go on to describe the general atmosphere of the
gathering, let me share some vignettes I found both fascinating and
edifying.
SENATOR RAND PAUL spoke about the doubts he has struggled with
in his own faith over his years practicing medicine. Seeing the
lives of the young and the innocent taken from the world challenges
his sense of Divine order.
He decided that he cannot accept a form of ministry that
addresses only the spirituality within the individual without
engaging in the battle to elevate society and culture. In fact, he
left a particular denomination that disappointed him in this
regard.
He shared a powerful story from his father’s memoir. His father,
Congressman Ron Paul, is also a physician. In his book he tells of
walking into one room in the hospital where an abortion had been
performed. The aborted baby was still breathing his last gasps on
the table untended. In the next room, he encountered a difficult
childbirth where a team of doctors were laboring feverishly to save
a struggling newborn. How confused have we become as a society?
PROFESSOR DANIEL PIPES, always in the alarmist camp about the
dangers of Islamic terrorism, told the Jewish group that he thought
things were quiet between Israel and the Palestinians, and that
there were no great storms on the immediate horizon.
Most in the audience were shocked by that assessment. They had a
strong expectation that if reelected, President Obama would very
aggressively assert himself into the situation, likely to the
detriment of Israel.
In a session to the general audience, Pipes argued that the
United States was mistaken in its policy of denial about Moslem
terror. Such instances as the Fort Hood massacre are ascribed to
disgruntled employees, troubled marriages, and a bad reaction to
the acne drug, Accutane. He got a good laugh when he asserted that
perhaps Major Hassan suffered from Pre-Traumatic Stress
Disorder.
IT SEEMED TO ME that legendary CBS Radio newsman Dan Raviv had
been running that network’s Tel Aviv bureau throughout my entire
childhood. When he turned up at our dinner Friday night, I was
amazed how young he looked. To my surprise, he told me that he had
only run the Israel bureau from 1978 to 1980. All the other times
we had heard his reports came when the network dispatched him from
London back to Israel to report on a crisis.
In recent years, Raviv has emerged as an expert on Israeli
intelligence. For whatever reason, long-time Mossad agents found
him particularly trustworthy and afforded him an intimate glance
into their innermost operations. His first book on the subject is
Every Spy a Prince and he has a new one on the way.
I asked him if his sources confirm that all 26 individuals in
the pictures publicized by the government of the United Arab
Emirates were actually Mossad agents who had collaborated in the
assassination of a top Hamas official in a Dubai hotel. He said
that most were and in fact he is using those photos in his new
book, because they afford a rare display of active practitioners of
espionage.
Officials assured him that most of the people in those shots
actually look different from the photographs in real life. They use
subtle disguises by changing hair colors and altering the shapes of
their jaws to thwart the facial recognition software.
THE SPEECH MITT ROMNEY delivered by video hookup from his bus
tour in Western Pennsylvania was solidly conservative, stressing
themes of faith and family while promising to roll back Obamacare
and overreaching regulation to free the economic engines of the
country.
The question-and-answer session that followed did not consist of
folks raising hands and voices. Instead people handed slips of
paper to Ralph Reed and he chose the three he liked best. Jews in
attendance were pleasantly surprised when the third inquired how
Romney would differ from Obama’s policies toward Israel.
Romney began: “Well, the first thing I would do is take whatever
he is doing and do the exact opposite!” This drew thunderous
applause.
Then he added this pithy line: “Sometimes I think Obama is more
afraid of Israel attacking Iran than of Iran acquiring a nuclear
weapon.” The crowd responded even more loudly to that one.
OKAY, LET ME grab the last word for myself. After hearing all
the speakers promise to make Obama into a one-term President, I
said this line to Callista Gingrich.
“Obama is a one-term President… but it is not a term I
would use in front of a lady!”
