HILLARY AND THE TRIUMPH OF MEDIOCRITY - OCTOBER 28, 2015

Once we had Abraham Lincoln...

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Published: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 3:57 PM

Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

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The most they could say was that she was adequate – and for that reason she deserves to become President of the United States.



Nobody in America asks for greatness anymore, adequacy is good, or good enough.


Moments after the Benghazi hearing, Liberals throughout the land breathed a tsunami sigh of relief.


Their girl Hillary did not stumble. She did not make a complete fool of herself. She was not shrill. Only once or twice did she laugh that cackling laugh.
That she was caught double-talking, even lying, nobody cares. She presented herself well and that counts as success.


She succeeded, according to the fawning experts throughout the dials, because she was “cool.” She was “calm.” She “gave as good as she got.”


That she was caught double-talking, even lying, nobody cares. She presented herself well and that counts as success.
“She stuck to her guns,” said one pundit. “Well prepared,” said another. “She proved that she could be tough,” qvelled the Times.


Did she prove that she could be brilliant? No. Inspirational? No. Amazing? No. Scholarly? No.

Truthful? No.


She did fine. She did okay. That’s plenty.


We’ll take okay.


We’ll take whatever she’s got to give because she is all we’ve got, so middling will have to do for We the Suckers.


Adequacy is the new triumph. Ordinariness is the new greatness.


So what if she left four Americans dead on her watch and that she has never shown true remorse or signs of true leadership, she is plain, she is common, she is average, and that suits us fine.
Average is the new terrific. Humdrum is the new wonderful. Was she dazzling, another Lincoln, another JFK, another Thatcher?


Not even close, and nobody expects this. No longer do we expect to be swayed by towering personalities.


Is she America’s Golda Meir, a woman whose gentle strength rallied a nation and illuminated the world?

Or from Hillary shall we settle for her trademark (“I don’t care if you don’t like me”) petulance?


Yes we can! 


Mediocre is good…as it was during the CNN Democratic “debate” a few weeks back when there was nobody to debate. Again Hillary won.


She won not because she displayed wit or wisdom, but because shesurvived. This too thrilled her
Liberal followers throughout the land.


Both times the backslapping and towel snapping could be heard from newsroom to newsroom.


The hypocrisy of her smile, the hunger for power in her eyes – never mind.


Our girl did not embarrass herself. That’s huge. That’s a win. She met our lowest expectations so it is good to be a Liberal.


Nowadays it is never about substance. It’s about performance and how well you can put it over. It’s about tricks and theatrics.


It’s about how craftily you can slip and slide…evade, confound and bewitch.


From Obama to Hillary, happy days are here again for the Left.


For the rest of us, beware what’s coming for America and our most faithful partner, Israel.

SUPPOSE JEWS START BEHAVING LIKE THEIR ENEMIES? - OCTOBER 18, 2015

Jews can also play "Days of Rage."

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Published: Sunday, October 18, 2015 6:27 AM

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

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So after my most recent column here in which I bewailed excessive Israeli compassion for its enemies, like the tendency to offer prompt medical attention for Arab terrorists, I heard back positively from many in my corner, but also from the emphatic naysayers – Jews afflicted by moral equivalency syndrome.

They say that being compassionate at all times begins in our Scriptures.  Yes, justice, justice shall you pursue. That’s our Torah.

But what about the other parts of justice – you know Moses and what he did to Egypt in retaliation for Egypt’s abuse of his people, the Hebrews?

They say that David was a man of peace. He sure was. But when attacked, David was a man of war. Read up on this. Read his Psalms. Try Psalm 59, for example, and find: “Rescue me from my foes, Dear Lord…rescue me from bloodthirsty men who surround me…Destroy them!”

Get the picture? (Never mind how times have not changed across 3,000 years.)

They say that compassion is woven in our character…agreed…and that compassion has served us well over the centuries. Baloney.

They say that if we do the measure for measure thing, why then, oh dear, we become like them; we stoop to their level and risk losing our humanity.

Well, humanity – there has not been much of that going around these days. As for the risk of becoming like them – here is what I say.

I say it is worth a shot.

Maybe if we behave (savagely) like them, if only once in a while, finally they will take the hint and leave us alone.

Mario Puzo figured that out while writing “The Godfather.” Get the rival “families” before they get you…and make the rest of them “fear you.”

Settling scores, it’s called.

Suppose, therefore, that Bibi gets a message out with these words: “Murdering Arabs is a national duty.”

Does that make you squirm? Me, too.

That is not Bibi, of course. That’s Abbas: “Murdering Jews is a national duty.” Yes Abbas said that and nobody cringed, nobody in the entire world.

Nobody squirmed.

Suppose Bibi announces that he does not want “filthy Arab feet” stomping holy Jewish ground.

Bibi never says this. Abbas did about “filthy Jewish feet.”  The world shrugs.

Suppose Israelis declare days of rage because Arabs stole Jewish land?

No days of rage from the Jews. Only from the Palestinian Arabs.

Suppose Israelis begin stabbing, stoning and shooting Arabs helter-skelter.

That is totally against Jewish practice.

But when the Palestinians practice it, CNN and the BBC and The New York Times will find words and pictures to justify Palestinian murderous behavior.

If the shoe were on the other foot, would the Israelis get the same generosity? Or is murdering Jews a Palestinian Arab entitlement?

John Kerry justified Palestinian rage on the settlements, the Jewish settlements.

Arabs, Mr. Secretary, are in a rage everywhere, about everything.

Naturally none of my recommendations has a chance and truly it is against my nature to desire such brutishness on the part of my people.

Besides, what would the neighbors say?

But I must say to my Liberal friends, those who asked, “Jack Engelhard, where is your heart” – did you ask John Kerry the same question?

Did you ask him why he equated Arab killers with Israeli victims, and why was he not OUTRAGED when he heard Abbas saying what he did?

Saying, “Murdering Jews is a national duty.”

Nobody squirmed? That’s right. Nobody squirmed. Nobody cringed.

Did you ask Mrs. Sun at the EU and Mr. Moon at the UN – where was their condemnation for that remark and for the Arab bloodlust that followed?

Take it from someone who knows.

Worry less about Jewish humanity. It is still in place. Worry more about their humanity, whatever there is of it.

ARAB KILLING SPREE AND THE ABSURDITY OF ISRAELI COMPASSION - OCTOBER 15, 2015

Do you hear them laughing?

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Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

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I get it that we are a compassionate people – but this is ridiculous.

Today we read here that in Israeli hospitals it’s first come first served.

So during this killing spree, Arabs wounding and murdering Israelis at will by the day, by the hour, Jewish doctors make no distinction between the Arab terrorist and the Jewish victim. They get the same treatment, and if the killer gets to the emergency room ahead of time, he or she gets the benefit of immediate quality care.

The Jews must wait their turn.

That is not compassion. That is stupidity.

It is that kind of approach, this kind of mercy for the wicked, that gives the enemy the upper hand, knowing how easy it is to play on Jewish emotions…and play they do into this specific Jewish weakness. They play the Israelis for patsies, and rightly so.

Do you hear laughter?

As we stitch up their wounds do you think they’re saying, “These Israelis, these Jews, praise Allah, what a wonderful people!”

No, they’re saying, “What idiots, what suckers, these Israelis, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

Over the past few years, while Hamas was sending rockets across the Jewish State, we thought it strange – at least in America we thought it strange -- that during all that, Israelis dashing for the shelters, Hamas leaders kept sending their wives and daughters into the arms of Jewish doctors and nurses for medical help – and sure enough the killers we offered the finest healing that pity can buy.

We shrugged and said, “That’s odd. But what the hell. That’s Arabs being Arabs and Jews being Jews.”

All things considered, this is farcical and today it is a pure case of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

In some countries this is treason.

Don’t blame the doctors. Blame Israel’s cockeyed policies and forgetfulness as to what and who comes first.

Blame the government for failure to communicate friend from foe.

Does Israel get points from the UN, does Israel get a smile from the EU for the Jewish spirit of offering both cheeks to get slapped around?

I hear nothing about this from the BBC or The New York Times. They continue to portray Israel as the aggressor, for shooting back.

There is nothing there, no gratitude for Jewish tender loving care for its enemies.

If you say it does not matter. We are Jews and this is what we do. I still say that there is a limit to everything, even to compassion.

At some point compassion becomes absurd – and this is that point.

Not that we are dealing with anything new. I had my own experience when I got wounded in Israel and half the beds were occupied by Arabs and found myself facing a perfect case of mixed emotions. On the one hand, what a glorious people we are!

On the other hand, are we idiots?

No, nothing new about this at all, even here in America, where during the High Holy Day services, here came the hat being passed around for Israel Bonds.

How nice!

But to win our support, some rabbis appealed to our sympathies for the Syrian migrants.

Our hearts, they said, should go out to that Syrian boy who allegedly washed up dead in Turkey.

We don’t have enough Israeli kids to grieve over?

Obviously we Jews are the same all over, bright, loving, merciful, and stupid.
 

HEMINGWAY'S SEARCH FOR THE TRUE SENTENCE (LISTEN UP BBC AND NYT) - OCTOBER 8, 2015

Taking special care to avoid telling the truth.

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Published: Thursday, October 08, 2015 9:58 AM

Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

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I still teach journalism and creative writing occasionally and I teach these rules: Keep it straight. Keep it simple. Keep it true.



I am not entirely original on this approach. On such basics, Ernest Hemingway, a newspaper reporter, and a fine one, before he became a great novelist, put it like this: “All you have to do is write one true sentence [at a time]. Write the truest sentence that you know.”


He added that sometimes it takes him an entire morning to find that one true sentence…but that it is always there if you search hard enough.

Imagine, then, how much more difficult it is to find or to create a truly convoluted sentence, crooked prose.


Imagine, in other words, the troublesome task confronting The New York Times and the BBC when faced with the truth, but now, due to prejudice and bigotry and to hell with fairness and objectivity, they must find the words to express exactly their prejudice and bigotry.


This must take more than a single morning, but after searching hard enough, the editors do find the means to twist the truth into a soft pretzel.


After all, there are deadlines to meet and lies to tell.


Over the past couple of weeks Arabs throughout Israel have been murdering Jews. That is a fact.

That is a fact that ought to be simple enough to communicate by print and by air by use of the most straightforward language.


Instead, to pick just one incident, the murder by Arabs of an Israeli couple driving with their children (who are orphaned in an instant), the Times and 
Like this from the BBC: “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.” It was not Arabs who murdered two Israelis in cold blood... – rather it was Jerusalem.
the BBC chose a mix of perverted language and passive prose to cloud, to confound, and even to incite their readers and listeners against the Jews, the victims.


Like this from the BBC: “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two.”


Therefore we are informed that it was not Arabs who murdered two Israelis in cold blood – rather it was Jerusalem.


Followed by like minded absurdity from the Times: ”Fear of new intifada accompany surge in Mideast violence.”


Tough to beat either of those for discombobulated writing. That’s an F-minus in any writing class, after the class stops laughing at such gobbledygook.


There is nothing funny, however, when such bad writing reaches the level of insanity and constitutes a crime against grammar.


What the Times is trying to say but refuses to say is: “Palestinians murder an Israeli couple sparking fears of a new intifada.”


But that would be a true sentence and a true sentence might be harmful…might let the truth out of the bag and in today’s journalism the truth must never be told, certainly not when it’s about Israel. The Arabs must never be offended and the Jews must never get the benefit of the doubt according to the rules that govern today’s Style Books ever since telling it straight went out of style.


Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac: “That’s not writing. That’s typing.”


Here, after all, is the crux, that we cannot begin to talk about the disservice being done to Israel until we understand the disservice being done to plain English. We know it from history that brutalizing the language is a first step toward brutalizing the people.


That’s where we find ourselves today and the sin is against both; the sin is against the Jewish State and the sin is against the etiquette of proper journalism. For the harrowing sinfulness about how this is done, I recommend the superb piece that was posted here yesterday by Arutz Sheva’s Ari Soffer.

Is there no shame at the BBC? Is there no decency at The New York Times?


What an insult to the craft that was done so well by Edward R. Murrow, Ben Hecht and Chicago’s Mike Royko. Each word meant something. They would be appalled at what’s happening to their honored trade. What a crime against the art practiced so beautifully by Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Salinger.


Clarity, above all clarity is what they pursued. Keep it straight. Keep it simple. Keep it true.

Isaac Babel wrote: “No steel can pierce the human heart so chillingly as a period at the right moment.”

You don’t have to be Jewish. None of us is safe when journalism, the profession we rely upon to illuminate, chooses to obscure. Chilling.

ISRAEL'S LONESOME FIGHT TO PROTECT AMERICA - OCTOBER 6, 2015

If you care about the safety, prosperity, liberty and security of the United States of America, it is your patriotic duty to support Israel.

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Published: Tuesday, October 06, 2015 2:22 PM

Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

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We think it is far away. But it is closer than we think. Every stabbing, every firebombing, every gun shot from Palestinian Arabs against Israelis in and around Jerusalem, now happening day after day, is meant for us here in the United States, Jew and Christian alike.



The jihad, the nakba, the intifada, call it what you will, it is fever, it is intoxication, it is a war of terrorism from which no one can hide.


Those Palestinian knives and bullets are meant for us as we comfort ourselves thinking we are protected by geography. They don’t know geography.


They only know how to kill. They create nothing. They produce nothing. They invent nothing. They contribute nothing. They have no heart and they choose the best, the most beautiful among us to do the most harm and spill the most blood. They laugh and rejoice at their own deeds of depravity.


It is difficult to think of them as human. There are no signs of it.


Then they call us Islamophobic. But as we ask in these pages – “Can you be blamed for being a bigot if by their barbaric actions they turn you into one?”


The jihadist Palestinian murderers – they make no distinction among man, woman or child. Borders mean nothing to them. Watch them as they swarm one country after another. These same men intoxicated by jihad in Israel have their crazed eyes set on America. They have already taken Europe.

What happens in Israel does not stay in Israel.


It would be intelligent to consider ourselves warned.


On 9/11 we were warned, but still we think it is Israel that has a problem. Not our business, we say.

No, we have the same problem and it is very much our business if we care about the well
being of the United States.


Their debauched customs are nothing new in Israel and are becoming familiar within our own country of open borders. Schools in America now try to drop allegiance to the American flag for fear that it may offend or “exclude” others. Case in point, Jackson Hole Wyoming. Elsewhere in the Heartland kids are being taught the charms of Sharia. Schoolgirls are being told to wear the Islamic veil.



The FBI tells us that there are jihadist terror cells in every state.
The FBI tells us that there are jihadist terror cells in every state. Is this enough? No, 200,000 more of them are being brought in.


Are they harmless? But even if only one causes us harm our government has failed its sworn duty to preserve and protect.


Let’s be clear about this: If you love Israel for the sake of Israel, that is beautiful, but it is a personal choice, certainly my choice. But it is not required.


If you love Israel for the sake of America, this is required. If you care about the safety, prosperity, liberty and security of the United States of America, it is your patriotic duty to support Israel with all your heart, your soul and your might. Israel and only Israel stands at our frontier to fight our fight, which it does every day.


It is a lonesome fight because our leaders in politics have chosen to isolate the Jewish State because it is a Jewish State. We know this. We knew it when Mr. Obama enriched the mullahs of Iran with cash and bombs and when he instructed envoy Samantha Power to snub Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke at the UN.


The same bigotry infests the news media from New York to London. The BBC was troubled about the “inconvenience” facing the Palestinian Arabs after Israel restricted their access to the Temple Mount for two days. There would be trouble, warned the BBC, and the trouble would be Israel’s fault.


The BBC was not troubled by Jewish blood running through the streets of Jerusalem. Nor was the BBC troubled by Jewish tears throughout the Land.


Those images were not shown – only sullen and inconvenienced Arabs were on display.


The EU is troubled. Those ministers never miss a chance to blame “both sides” when it is only one side that does the killing.


In fact nearly the entire gutless world keeps shaking hands with Fanatical Islamic Terrorism in order to pretend that nothing is happening, and if it is, let someone else, let Israel – let the Jewish State stand and fight for us so that we can sit back and worry about Palestinian Arabs being so terribly
inconvenienced.


In America it’s getting dangerous and it’s getting late but we still have choices. Israel is the only choice if decency still means anything.


[Additional and personal note: To the readers of my books who asked me to write something literary once in a while, get back to my novelistic roots, especially now on the eve of the Nobel Prizes, I did so as requested in an essay called “Why We Write.” I very much enjoyed writing the piece by popular demand. It was set to be published here but then the jihadist barbarians got busy and in an instant nothing made sense, at least nothing civilized, like literature. Perhaps another day when the fever passes, if even for a short while.) 

MAHMOUD ABBAS - YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT - OCTOBER 1, 2015

Get over yourself, Mahmoud.

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Published: Thursday, October 01, 2015 6:39 AM

Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal,...

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The Holocaust-denier who runs the confederacy of terrorists known as the PA (Palestinian Authority) tried a new trick. He is scrapping his end of the Oslo Accords -- as if anybody around here really gives a damn. But he needs the attention, poor guy.



Whatever works to get him a headline – he’s in.


He came to America just when football season is getting heated and Americans are in the mood for not much else – maybe the baseball playoffs.


So nobody really cared why he came here and the only headline he got was at The New York Times, naturally.


Nobody cares, Mahmoud.
Nobody else gave him the coverage he craves.

Nobody cares, Mahmoud.


He got no ticker-tape parade down Broadway and even Mayor de Blasio was too busy – too busy feting Clock Boy.


At the UN he got the usual applause that tyrants always get and then came the speech, remarks straight from the Third Reich songbook that runs “Palestine uber alles.” Far as I know, television didn’t care. “Dancing with the Stars” didn’t preempt itself for his blood-libel blather and nonsense. We have heard this before.


You are not that important, Mahmoud.


It is true that all the other world leaders mentioned the conflict, but that is an automatic insert, the blaming of Israel for everything.


Trouble is, they didn’t really mean it, not with the world tumbling out of control.

The constant kvetching from Abbas has become so tiresome; has become a sideshow of a sideshow.


Get over yourself, Mahmoud.


Bad timing, that’s for sure.


Overnight Putin elbowed Obama out of Syria, or at least we have American and Russian planes zooming across the same sky.


What can possibly go wrong?


Plenty, of course…so while we wait for the inevitable collision, and WAR, who cares about Mahmoud Abbas and his list of fake grievances?


What we’ve got here is fake grievances about a fake conflict. Israel never asked for this.

Meanwhile, here’s REAL CONFLICT – Syria again. Hundreds of thousands of dead and dying, and millions of them devouring Europe.


Here we’ve got Arabs against Arabs. The Jews don’t even figure as an afterthought. This is not their fight.


Those are the headlines and those are the worries. Nobody is worried about a tin-horn dictator and his phony beef.


Abbas is not even a legitimate leader. His term as “president” ran out years ago, which renders him a fake president of a fake people.


There never was a Palestinian state and the only Palestinian people, before 1948, were the Jews.


No big loss, Mahmoud.


Guess what?


The Oslo Accords were never a bargain for Israel or the world. What a relief to get that albatross off our necks. The deal legitimized the PLO, created the PA, enriched both Yasser Arafat and Mahoud Abbas, triggered Arab bloodshed against Israelis, and made kosher the very people, the very cannibals that are terrifying and terrorizing the entire world.


The entire world is arming itself against Radical Islam, and it was to support Radical Islam that Mahmoud Abbas came to the United Nations.



The Oslo Accords were never a bargain for Israel or the world. What a relief to get that albatross off our necks.
The PLO is the grandfather, the originator of Radical Islam.

No wonder you could hear a pin drop.


We understand the Benjamin Netanyahu will soon be addressing the same General Assembly. He is to refute Abbas point for point.


We don’t need this, either, Bibi. Nobody cares. Nobody in America cares and in Israel… in Israel people care too much.


Why give yourself a headline, which only lengthens the argument and puts the spotlight back on this fraud who never was a partner.


Stop treating these bums as your equal. That was Oslo’s big flaw from the start.


Let it go. Stay home and take care of family business. Your people are hurting. Kristallnacht has come to Jerusalem.


Make this stop, for only that is your job.