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Jewish Press

The Jewish Press likes to boast that it has substantially improved in recent years, so I decided to check out a few opinion columns on its website.

First was an article by Irwin N. Graulich, who is stated to be "a well-known motivational speaker" in New York. Graulich begins by insisting that a new Israeli prime minister is neeed and that Israel should "either draft Donald Rumsfeld with a $20 million signing bonus from the UJA, or get a nice Jewish boy who grew up on the 'wild and crazy' streets of Brooklyn." Of course, Graulich is right that a PM from Flatbush, preferably named either Irwin, Irving or Yanky, would be ideal rather than somebody who has served in the IDF.

Indeed, Graulich wants to jail non-Brooklyn war heroes such as Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak: "Any Israeli government official who presently parrots the immoral term 'no military solution' should be impeached and jailed. Listen up Arik," he writes. While Graulich calls for pursuit of a peace process, he would insist on "land from Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, along with the right of return and compensation for Jews who were physically forced to leave Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Morocco and other Arab/Muslim countries from 1948 on." Nice irony from the motivational speaker, though perhaps encouraging Sephardim to move back to Arab lands would not help Israel's demographic situation.

Next, I found a piece by Isaac Kohn. After expressing his refusal to address Prime Minister Sharon as "Prime Minister," Kohn writes of his "fear that generations to come will vilify the very mention of your name." Pretty strong words from the man who was severely wounded in the 1948 War of Independence and saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War... oops, that was Prime Minister Sharon, not Mr. Kohn, who is apparently in the health care industry, and lives in Brooklyn. Something tells me that the next Israeli elections will feature a close race between Rumsfeld, Graulich, Netanyahu and Kohn.

Finally, Steven Plaut expresses his concern at the mass unemployment and ensuing poverty in Israel by writing that Israel's budget is "earmarked for helping out all those who would like a handout, and only when there are absolutely no cases of people unhappy with their material comforts and standards of living will we check if there is any cash left over in the till that can be used for national defense. As a result of leftist agitprop, Israel has practically disarmed itself over the past decade, what with the Oslo Accords being so successful and all. Real spending on defense as a portion of GDP is less than half of what it was before Oslo." Plaut's concern for Israelis going through tough financial times is touching, but surprisingly, Plaut may be a bit off with his mathematical calculations, as the recently approved budget cut 10 billion shekels from Israel's budget, with only 5% (500 million shekels) coming from defense and the large majority coming from social spending.

Impressive stuff. Too bad the Jewish Press doesn't merge with the Jewish Week. Op-eds by Kohn, reporting by Debra Nussbaum Cohen, editorials by Gary Rosenblatt, motivational speaking by Graulich and financial analysis by Plaut would be unbeatable.
posted on 6/25/2003