Anything Less Than MiG-29s Contributes to the Coming Massacres - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Anything Less Than MiG-29s Contributes to the Coming Massacres
by

1. A Metaphorical Scenario

Johnson calls Goldstein and tells him he is coming to his house to kill him. Goldstein lives there with Cohen and Levy. Levy owns a 9-millimeter pistol. Cohen borrows the pistol from Levy and now is holding it.

Through a peephole, the three in the house see Johnson approaching on the front walkway. In one hand he holds a machete; in the other a sword. Johnson pauses to make another call: he iterates that in moments he will be at the front door and will finish off Goldstein. Goldstein asks Cohen for the gun. Cohen explains apologetically that he may not share it without Levy’s permission. Levy adamantly says no and tells Goldstein there are other utensils in the house for defending against Johnson’s machete and sword. For example, there are scissors. Also sharpened pencils. Also some thick, heavy textbooks to throw or smash on Johnson’s head. But no dice on the pistol.

Johnson enters. Goldstein reaches for a heavy book and some sharpened pencils. Johnson kills Goldstein.

 2. Facts on the Ground

We all have been watching the human tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and for their sovereignty. Putin now has moved his invasion to its second phase: an all-out attack on the southeastern Donbas region. We have seen what Putin has done to Mariupol. He now has sent eight-mile-long convoys to bring weapons and personnel to stage the assault. He has bombed a movie theater, killing some 300 Ukrainian civilians. He has bombed a train station where many civilians actually were trying to get out. We have seen what has been unearthed in Bucha. We know exactly what is coming next.

Zeleny has made clear that his armies are not fleeing. They are digging in to fight, even to the death. With all of NATO and the White House administration — and both political parties, in an all-too-rare alliance of common purpose — mouthing words of support, Zelensky begs them for military supplies, particularly old Soviet-made MiG-29 aircraft that Poland and others have and are quite willing to transfer to Ukraine, but they may not do so unless Biden permits them. And Biden, in between handshakes with ghosts, continually has said no for more than six weeks.

3. A World That Watched Hitler and Eichmann Murder Six Million Jews

I was born in the early 1950s, grew up in the ’60s, came of age in the ’70s and ’80s. As I emerged, I became deeply engrossed in learning more about and understanding the Holocaust. My focus and inquiry never were about data in Europe but about the world’s apparent silence as six million died. Hitler was moving huge populations into ghettoes like the one in Warsaw, then evacuating them in whole for transport to death camps like Dachau and Majdanek and Auschwitz, then forcing them into slave labor or gassing and cremating them. And “the world” remained silent.

How to understand such silence?

In time, I learned many things. The average American rightly and understandably was consumed with a World War that threatened our own freedoms. Families were rent asunder as our boys were drafted to fight in Hürtgen Forest, North Africa, Peleliu, Ardennes Forest, Normandy, Okinawa, and so many other G-d-awful battle fields. My dad, for example, served in the U.S. Air Force. He knew what Hitler was and intended for Jews. But he did not know what so many would learn only after the war.

Remarkably, this is one of the rare issues for which there is overwhelming bipartisan support: give them the darn aircraft. The only obstacle is Joe Biden.

Eisenhower’s troops liberated the Ohrdurf death camp in April 1945. In all, American forces liberated concentration camps including Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. As our troops entered those camps, they were shocked by what they saw. They had no idea. Many vomited or broke down in tears. Indeed, it is believed that most Americans still had never seen concentration camp footage until film director Stanley Kramer opted to include a brief segment in his 1961 Spencer Tracy–Burt Lancaster movie about the Nazi War Crimes trial, Judgment at Nuremberg.

Most people simply did not know.

But the Franklin Roosevelt administration knew. One of the most influential of Holocaust research historians, Dr. Rafael Medoff, has documented in many books and scholarly articles the shocking depths to which FDR sank in his personal anti-Semitism. Surprising though it may sound, Roosevelt despised Jews, even though he had a few in his cabinet and inner circles and rose to national prominence from a political career in New York, where he enjoyed widespread Jewish support.

And yet there were moments when everyone knew something of enormous horror was afoot, as when the SS St. Louis sailed in May 1939 to Havana from Hamburg, Germany with nearly a thousand Jewish refugees, among the last who got out. When Cuba reneged on its promises to provide haven and refuge, the passengers’ and crew members’ desperate eyes turned to nearby Florida. FDR dispatched our Coast Guard to keep the ship out of American waters. At the last moment, England agreed to accept 254 of the the passengers, France another 224, Belgium 214, and Holland 181. Thirty percent of the passengers on this “Voyage of the Damned” ultimately died at the hands of Hitler, as his Nazis overran each of those countries except England.

To this day, I am bemused by the silence in America as Roosevelt acted publicly to bar these refugees from saving their lives. On May 31, 1939, the New York Times published this story on page 16:

HAVANA, May 31 (AP).–Captain Gustav Shroeder of the Hamburg American liner Saint Louis informed the Cuban authorities today that he feared a “collective suicide pact” among his 917 German Jewish refugee passengers, who are scheduled to sail back to Hamburg with him tomorrow, Cuba having refused to admit them.

People knew. They felt bad. They did and said nothing. On June 24, the Times published this:

HAVANA, June 23.–Fifty-two Jewish refugees who have been held at the Tiscornia immigration station since their arrival May 15 on the Hamburg-American liner Iberia will be returned to Germany on the Orinoco of the same line, which is scheduled to sail from Havana July 4.

I have always felt that the term “Never Again” cannot mean that it is in our hands to ensure that another Holocaust will not happen. Rather, that is primarily in G-d’s hands, with humans merely situated to act as they should. But it should mean that such situations never again will be met with silence and indifference.

4. Zelensky, Putin, Biden, and MiG-29s

We are witness to the virtual extermination of Mariupol and its residents. Putin now prepares to replicate that eradication throughout the entire Donbas region. We have seen the pictures from Bucha. Zelensky is not asking for American or any other foreign soldiers, even as Putin now is employing Chechen and other mercenaries. All Zelensky seeks is the materiel with which to protect his homeland.

It is impossible to stave off massive aggression by engaging merely in defensive measures. This is true in sports, in everyday life, and in war. Even with America and NATO countries supplying Ukraine with javelin anti-tank weapons, S-300 SAM anti-aircraft missiles, switchblade drones, howitzers, armored personnel carriers, and some Soviet-era tanks, the Ukrainians need a fair chance to contest Putin’s unchallenged air dominance. Without some contesting weapons, Ukraine and its civilian population are “sitting ducks” for Putin to bomb away.

We are watching, and we know. Not only all Republicans in Congress but also a fair number of Democrats support allowing Poland to supply Ukraine with its stock of old MiG-29s. Remarkably, this is one of the rare issues for which there is overwhelming bipartisan support: give them the darn aircraft. The only obstacle is Joe Biden. Either he or his wife Dr. Jill — who tells him when to wave and when to speak and when to sit and presumably when to eat and when to sleep — or the ghost with whom he shakes hands. (READ MORE from Dov Fischer: It Would Have Been Enough: The Biden-Pelosi-AOC Legacy of Destruction)

Biden rapidly has charted a presidency that may be recorded as the worst America ever has known — worse than Jimmy Carter, Obama, and the trio immediately before Lincoln who steered us into Civil War. He has destroyed a robust economy, set us off into runaway inflation, created and increased chaos at our southern border, reversed us from a net energy exporter to a supplicant begging despotic Arab Muslim oil sheikhs and communist dictator Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to please sell us the natural energy resources he will not allow America’s companies to produce in ANWR and in other sites he has closed to exploration. His party’s policies on policing have led to a 32 percent increase in the number of Blacks murdered each year, now approaching 10,000 annually. Their Woke agenda now would shove transgender and same-sex “education” at public school children.

But, of all Biden’s crimes of omission and commission — not to mention financial crimes perpetrated by the Biden family — his refusal to allow Ukraine those MiG-29s may be his most evil. We all see what is transpiring. The problem is not a matter of public silence and indifference. Rather, it is one corrupt politician who, for whatever reason, is subjecting a nation to mass slaughter.

It really is horrible.

Read Dov Fischer every Monday and Thursday in The American Spectator and follow him on Twitter at @DovFischerRabbi.

To attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 90-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to shulstuff@yioc.org. (Please note that Rav Fischer’s classes will be on hiatus during March and April.)

Dov Fischer
Follow Their Stories:
View More
Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., is Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values (comprising over 2,000 Orthodox rabbis), was adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools for nearly 20 years, and is Rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit before practicing complex civil litigation for a decade at three of America’s most prominent law firms: Jones Day, Akin Gump, and Baker & Hostetler. He likewise has held leadership roles in several national Jewish organizations, including Zionist Organization of America, Rabbinical Council of America, and regional boards of the American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation. His writings have appeared in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Federalist, National Review, the Jerusalem Post, and Israel Hayom. A winner of an American Jurisprudence Award in Professional Legal Ethics, Rabbi Fischer also is the author of two books, including General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine, which covered the Israeli General’s 1980s landmark libel suit. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com.
Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!