JRV1303

I incorporate three public persons’ statements in my New Year’s Resolution tonight: President Trump’s that we U.S. Jews should manifest pride in who we are; House Speaker Mike Johnson’s that “two-states” opposition’s bottom line is “Judea and Samaria belong to Israel”; and ZOA’s Mort Klein’s recognition that many American Jews who believe in “a two-state solution” are well-intentioned and believe they’re pro-Israel, from which I believe we should approach dissuading such Jews through persuasion, not calling them names.

It doesn’t matter what you personally think of President Trump. His advice to us U.S. Jews last week in the wake of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration shootings is exactly what we need to be doing: “Celebrate Hanukkah proudly,” he told us.  “Be proud of who you are.”

So that’s my New Year’s Resolution for 2026 – unequivocally, openly but not ostentatiously, manifest pride in being a grassroots U.S. Jew Here & Now.

Let’s start with “Here & Now.”  Years ago there was a sign in a shop on Atlantic City’s boardwalk quoting Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes that a person “should share in the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”  Charles Krauthammer put his finger on our people’s homeland’s “miraculous” rebirth after 1,800 years as the key event for us of our time.  Ben-Gurion included in his proclamation of that rebirth: “Our call goes out to the Jewish people all over the world to rally to our side in the tasks of immigration and development, and to stand by us in the struggle for fulfillment of the Dream of Generations for Israel’s redemption.”  I was eight years old when he said this, and was somewhat older before I recognized he was speaking to me, that looking over my shoulder was the soul of every Jew who’d ever died in a Holocaust, an Inquisition, a pogrom in others’ lands, in what we euphemistically call “al kiddush HaShem.” 

And so in January 2001, when I was chair of Brith Sholom’s “Israel committee,” I started a weekly email, of which this week’s is #1303. I started to rant against the mainstream media referencing “the right of return” of “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants” from “Israel’s creation” or “war that followed Israel’s creation” [never mind that Israel absorbed more Middle-eastern Jews displaced from vast Arab and other Muslim lands than Arabs left tiny Israel.]  Media bias remains and we continue to avert our eyes from it.

And even worse, we ourselves unthinkingly, sometimes knowingly, mouth the media’s, world forums’ and common speech’s loaded lexicon of Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejoratives – “West Bank … East Jerusalem … settlers and settlements … 1967 borders … occupation … annexation … apartheid ….” expressly coined to poison public perceptions against our people’s homeland and us. 

Fighting our own usage of these Dirty Words became (and remains) my obsession, including taking on Good Guys. I had an agreed published run-in with CAMERA over its acceptance of the media saying “West Bank.”  “Saying ‘Judea and Samaria’ is historically justified,” CAMERA told me, “but is used by only a minute fraction of the world’s population, and if we demanded the media use it, our correction calls would just end up in the editor’s trash.”  “That ‘very minute fraction of the world’s population’ saying ‘Judea and Samaria’ is us,” I responded, “and the more an historically justified place name that we use differs in meaning from that which the world uses, the more important it is that we use it.” 

And so my New Year’s Resolution this New Year’s Eve is to continue my obsession at getting us grassroots American Jews to manifest pride, as President Trump just put it, in who we are.  And this year, I have a new weapon, the website “for my book” that’s part of my publishing deal, that I’ve expanded to title “confrontingjewishissues.com,” and include a “Grassroots American Jewish Street.” 

 How am I doing so far?  Not so good.  The plea that I make is that we grassroots U.S. Jews live, all of us, on that grassroots American Jewish street and that we should show pride in our living there.  So the Street includes a place for us to show photos and text of our celebrating Jewish holidays, life events and Jewish-themed vacations.  In recent weekly emails, I’ve asked you to email me photos and text to post in your names of your doing these things.  So far I have one candle-lit Hanukkah menorah (mine), two bar mitzvahs (my sons’) and one set of vacation shots (mine).

Independent of the policies and positions of our American Jewish organizations, I’ve pleaded with you to blog on our Street, on any side of issues confronting us. I hope to generate comment threads (moderated by me not for viewpoint but abuse.) So far I have my weekly email and a debate between me and a journalist friend who sees inevitability of “two-states.”

The parrot and I have a private library of over a thousand non-fiction Israel books. Our Street has a whole section of cover shots and brief descriptions of gripping inspiring ones (you can get them on Abe and Amazon).  These books are vitamins for us pro-Israel advocates and blood infusions for our fellows who aren’t.  Check ‘em out.

Each week in my email I append a link to the article’s page on the site, with the invitation “click this and comment away.”

Beyond Trump, there are two other by me Wise Men whose advice I hope to heed in my New Year’s Resolution.  One is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson who succinctly stated the essence of our opposition to “a two-state solution”: “Judea and Samaria belong to Israel.”  This is the bottom line we must make to the American public. Lamenting that “two states along the 1967 lines with agreed swaps” would be militarily fatal, which it would, leaves open “Well, if the Palestinians [as even we foolishly call them] are entitled to western [in addition to eastern] Palestinian statehood, that’s just too bad for the Jews.”

The other Wise Man, by me, is ZOA President Morton Klein.  I quoted him last week that “I understand that someone who wants a Palestinian state may be well-intentioned or believe that he is pro-Israel, in fact promoting a Palestinian Arab state is not a pro-Israel position.”  In facing the reality that such are the beliefs of so many grassroots American Jews, the attitude we must take in trying to disillusion them should be persuasive and not name-calling confrontational.  I push this to the extent of inviting two-states-believing grassroots American Jews to blog on my site, our Street, defending it, and let us civilly debate in comment threads.  Takers?