CONFUSION AT THE KING DAVID HOTEL - MAY 25, 2016

Sometimes you really have to look at events in context to judge them.

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Published: Wednesday, May 25, 2016 2:46 PM

Jack Engelhard

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

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Ever have one of those days when everything that can go wrong does go wrong? Haim Shkedi had one of those days.


Nothing went right from the moment Shkedi, the general manager of the famed King David Hotel threw a party for his workers, most of them Arabs – and, parenthetically, what did I just say? I said most of them are Arabs, so there goes that BDS argument out the window, about Israel being so terribly “apartheid.”


Back to the question at hand, so what went wrong? Let me try to sort this out the best way I can.


If I get some facts wrong don’t come after me the way people have being going after Haim Shkedi – and for no good reason.


He can’t seem to hear the end of it, now that we live in a world where we’re mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.


So with Ramadan coming up (Christmas so soon?), Shkedi or members of his staff hired a band to entertain these Arab employees, figuring these musicians would be Arabs themselves to get the place rocking. Instead, behold -- Jews showed up and started to play.


What can we say but oy vey? They put it differently. A few (not all) of these Arab attendees complained, and it wasn’t about the music, but about the clothing. Some of these performers were wearing yarmulkes and tzitzis, and so it began when they were asked by management to remove such obviously Jewish apparel.


Once that got out, headlines began screaming that the King David Hotel, right in the heart of Jerusalem, was stifling Jewish expression.


Like everybody else, I jumped on board and blamed the hotel and its manager for everything that’s gone wrong in this world.


Jews can’t be Jewish even in Israel?



Did he bow to the king of Saudi Arabia? No, that was Obama.
But hold on. Shkedi explained that there had merely been a series of misunderstandings, and he appeared sincerely contrite and heartbroken, and from what I can tell, this is a good man, who along with his family, is true to Israel and its Jewish heritage.


What did he do to deserve such disapproval?


Did he bow to the king of Saudi Arabia? No, that was Obama. Did he force his staff or his guests to proclaim, “Allah is god?”

No, that happened in Maury County, Tennessee, where 7th graders were forced to write those words.


Did he make his guests sign the register and then urge them to announce, “Mohammed is the true messenger?”


No, that happened in Seminole County, Texas, where 10th graders were being taught to believe exactly that.


Did he remove the Israeli flag from the premises? No, Haaretz did that in New York to appease the PLO’s Saeb Erekat.


Did he remove Christians and Jews from the hotel to make room for Muslim migrants?


No, that’s what’s happening throughout Europe and coming to America.


So Haim Shkedi did nothing wrong.


Rather, he fell in step with the rest of the world that’s surrendering centuries of Judeo/Christian civilization to appease Islam.


About this capitulation to make the entire world Sharia Compliant, the story is big, much bigger than one man.

HOW BRUCE JENNER CHANGED THE LIFE OF EVERY AMERICAN - MAY 22, 2016

Obama meant it when he talked about changing the very foundation of this country -- meaning that no longer does this land belong to you and me.

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Published: Sunday, May 22, 2016 7:28 AM

Jack Engelhard

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

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Did I say Bruce? My mistake. That was last year. This year he’s Caitlyn, meaning that he’s transformed himself into a woman.


This does not happen every day, you know. Most people, in this country at least, stick to what they know.


A man knows he’s a man. A woman knows she’s a woman. This used to be so simple. Now we have to guess.


Thanks to Liberals and their Progressive agenda, no girl or woman is safe anywhere in America particularly at school.


Privacy is out. Modesty is forbidden. Big Brother is watching. From the moment the Obama Administration ordered all public schools to allow transgender people to use any shower or bathroom facility -- boys must be permitted to undress with girls and girls with boys -- Big Brother has got you covered everywhere you go.


Your life, your comings and goings belong to the Government in what amounts to a war on women under this new policy enacted by Liberals.


The washroom used to be a zone of safety for women, so when Jewish sophomore Eliana Kopley ran for her life when she was being pursued by SJP and BDS Jihadist brutes at UC-Irvine – where was she supposed to hide when any Islamist crazed goon has the same rights to access the same ladies’ room?


Obama meant it when he talked about changing the very foundation of this country -- meaning that no longer does this land belong to you and me.  It belongs to him and it belongs to Loretta Lynch, his attorney general, who came on TV to heatedly equate the transgender movement to the Civil Rights Movement.


Case closed.


So don’t you dare argue that your privacy rights come first. This makes you a bigot. Progressives will accuse you of this using hysteria rather than logic.


They need a cause. Without a cause, Progressives lose the means to hammer us with guilt and they lose their think tank foundations and all that money.


So as I have it figured, one fine day, a slow day, they sat around in search of something suitable to ruin the country…a new cause.


The old causes were not doing so well. The healthcare thing? Obamacare? Not good. It’s been a bust. Global warming? Also getting old and tiresome. Immigration and open borders? Americans were starting to resist, especially with Trump reminding us that the wrong people were getting in.


The attempts to diminish Israel and to humiliate its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – these too were missteps that backfired.


As one specialist explained, in a typical school of 2,000 kids, two will likely be transgender. Two!
Then, to top it off, Obama’s most trusted advisor, Ben Rhodes, confirmed what we always suspected, that the Iran Nuke Deal was a farce from the word go.


Yes we were tricked.


So they had to find something else to bamboozle us, something fresh, and along came Bruce Jenner making headlines for becoming a woman.


Now here was a minority in search of a Progressive cause. Were there more like him – or her? Yes, the most acceptable figure is 700,000.


That’s how many people there are in America who move from gender to gender and if that sounds like a fraction of the country – well it is.


The rest of us number 320 million, so to appease less than one percent of the population, all us have to relinquish our rights to privacy.


But a cause is a cause and without a cause Progressives have no reason to go on living.

As one specialist explained, in a typical school of 2,000 kids, two will likely be transgender. Two!


So if that’s your daughter in the public washroom or shower and you see a man about to enter, you have no right to stop him.


The law is on his side. All he has to say is, “Today, I am a woman.”


So we are all in this together, every single American. It began with Bruce Jenner and ends with an

Obama legacy leading us all down the same toilet.


New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the international classic “Indecent Proposal” now followed by the prophetic newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

TRUMP VERSUS THE MUSLIM MAYOR OF LONDON - MAY 13, 2016

The new London mayor seems to think he can interfere in the US elections.

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Published: Friday, May 13, 2016 6:44 AM

Jack Engelhard

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

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First the good news about Sadiq Khan. In his first act as London’s newly elected Muslim mayor he attended a Holocaust memorial service.


Terrific.


Next we hear that he plans a trip to Israel. This is still good. But after that, and even before that, the news is not so good.


He says that if Trump is elected he won’t come to the United States. (Ain’t that a shame.)


Then he says that if Muslims will be prevented, or limited, from entering the United States there will be consequences.

Expect Islamic violence.


If other words, we’re asking for it if we don’t elect someone entirely favorable to the Muslim world. This, of course, excludes Trump and favors Hillary.


But this…


We get Muslim violence regardless who is president, don’t we? We got 9/11 while George W. Bush was in office. Trump was nowhere in sight.


We got Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino and other acts of Muslim violence while Obama was in office and no one’s been more favorable to the Muslim cause than Obama – except maybe LBJ. Back in 1965, LBJ signed into law the (Hart-Celler) Immigration and Naturalization Act that opened America’s doors wide open for Muslims.


Trump was nowhere to be seen when a Muslim Palestinian Arab, Sirhan Sirhan murdered Robert Kennedy in 1968.


LBJ was president and we already know that LBJ’s heart was in the right place for Islam.


So why Trump, when it’s Mayor Khan who should be in the hot seat. The day after he was declared the winner, buses in London were driving along with signs declaring “Glory to Allah” and we imagine that Hamas were handing out candy in Gaza and likewise the PA in Ramallah.


Where – Trump might ask Mayor Khan – yes where is the Jewish mayor of Islamabad?


Or where is the Christian mayor anywhere in Pakistan, Mayor Khan’s ancestral home?


Let me answer – that’ll be the day.


So while the West celebrates itself for being so elaborately diverse, don’t even dream about diversity anywhere along the world’s 57 Islamic states.


Don’t plan on “Glory to Tolerance” buses running through the Maelbeek neighborhood of Brussels.

Only Western Democracies, like Britain, like the United States, like Israel, are expected to extend hospitality and equality – and we do.


In Israel, the Muslim population numbers more than one and a half million and these Palestinian Arab citizens enjoy full and equal rights.


The number for London alone is about 600,000 – “Glory to Allah.” Except that here’s another question from Trump to Khan.


What about the rape epidemic that’s been sweeping parts of London throughout the years?

Khan needs to answer for his Pakistani countrymen who are alleged to be the dominant assailants against thousands of British women and girls.


No wonder, then, that Trump keeps calling for a pause on migrating Syrian refugees.

Altogether, Trump says, we need to think twice about a Muslim influx. He’s appointing Mayor Rudy Giuliani to study the situation.


Mayor Khan may turn out to be an okay guy.

But he’s no Mayor Rudy, who can still smell the burning flesh from what they came and did to us on 9/11.

BRITAIN'S LABOUR PARTY AND THE SUNNY SIDE OF ADOLPH HITLER - MAY 6, 2016

This period of Holocaust remembrance is not the best time to keep a stiff upper lip on British anti-Semitism.

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Published: Friday, May 06, 2016 7:30 AM

Jack Engelhard

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

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Suddenly, Hitler is back in the picture, and quite popular too.


If you’ve been following the news trending from Britain’s Labour Party, you know that’s where anti-Semitism has been making a comeback with a vengeance, if it ever left, and where some 50 Labour members have been suspended and others have been censured for tasteless remarks against Jews and/or the Jewish State.


All that, but they can’t seem to suspend anti-Semitism.


Several of these rascals have been named, including the lady who forcefully suggested that Israel ought to be cleansed of Jews and moved to the United States. Quite a few of these names sound foreign and nothing like what we’ve been used to over the centuries, like Winston, Clive and Ken.


Instead, Mohammed ranks near the top for names given to newborns in the UK.


Yet the biggest headline comes from the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who’s been quoted as saying that Hitler was a Zionist.


Dare we call that anti-Semitism – that, plus the resurfaced obsession with Jews in the first place? Well, anti-Semites come in a variety of sizes.


But, as we see, one word fits all.


From my findings I have concluded that there are people who are full-time anti-Semites, they go to bed and wake up like that -- and people who are part-time anti-Semites, I call them weekend anti-Semites, acting on the impulse when it’s slow around town and there’s nothing better to do than hate Jews.


That’s when people like Ken Livingstone awaken themselves to the sunny side of Adolph Hitler.

We have them here, too, in the United States, like author Michael Chabon who gets double credits; he is Jewish and a full-time anti-Semite. Impressive!



“I know it when I see it,” and that is precisely how it works for me when I am asked to pin it down on anti-Semitism.
Back to Britain, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, himself with shaky credentials as a Zionist, says, who me?


He claims that there’s no anti-Semitism going on in his back room worthy of the label.
 

He wants it defined. Let me try. True, there is no such thing as an official anti-Semite. We trust our instincts when we come across one.


Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart explained it like this when he was asked to rule on pornography, “I know it when I see it,” and that is precisely how it works for me when I am asked to pin it down on anti-Semitism. We know who you are, period, and if that sounds too harsh, imagine how we feel when out of the blue we are Topic A all over again.


For what reason? Who knows? Anti-Semites, they know.


Truths is, I never liked using the term and have avoided it as much as possible in my books and columns, first because it is shopworn, overused, too simple, and it is the ultimate putdown. So here, however, is the problem. There is no substitute. An anti-Semite is an anti-Semite and no synonym will do.


I checked the Thesaurus and nothing doing; it keeps sending me back to anti-Semitism, and back to Britain and the rest of Europe.


If I sound touchy about the anti-Semitism roiling Labour this very day, well we’re in a period of remembrance for the Holocaust that wiped out more than half my family, so now is not the best time for keeping a stiff upper lip, which anti-Semites seldom do anyway, being ever so quick to speak freely about their intolerance.


For me, as a novelist, Israel is the perfect love story – the Romance of a Land and its people.


At the moment when Britain’s left – and who knows about the right? – is so busy with the Jews, thank God we have this blessed Land.


We know what anti-Semites can do once they get their hands on us – but now it’s not so easy, is it?


New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the international classic “Indecent Proposal” now followed by the prophetic newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

OBAMA'S IRAN DEAL AS SOLD THROUGH FICTION VIA BEN RHODES - MAY 9, 2016

Our lives are being orchestrated by a failed writer of fiction. You can't make this up.

74

Published: Monday, May 09, 2016 10:17 PM

Jack Engelhard

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

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Well now we know what we always knew, that the fix was in from the start – but the fixer? Him we did not know.


Ben who? Ben Rhodes, that’s who, and it was Ben Rhodes who bamboozled America, Israel and the entire world to get Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal a green light. Rhodes did it through the art of fiction. Thanks to The New York Times (never thought I’d say that!) we learn that 1, Rhodes is an aspiring novelist, and 2, he serves as Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor.


Rhodes was the point man assigned the task of selling the deal through falsehoods, like assuring us that the mullahs were reasonable people.


Yes, first came the guarantee that Iran would abide. Next came the threat aimed at dissenters. We would be accused of war mongering.



So next time you read about “Israeli occupation” or “Israeli apartheid,” recognize that you are being fooled by people making it up.
This entire bill of goods was manufactured by a man who wants to try his hand in the game of fiction, and so here we are, living in a world of pretend as hours ago, in the real world, Iran set off yet another test missile aimed at anywhere, but first Israel.


There is nothing wrong with fiction so long as it’s kept within a novel, but now see how we’ve been manipulated eyes wide open.


This aspiring novelist, Rhodes, is he ashamed, is he apologetic for placing us all teetering on the brink of nuclear disaster?


Not at all. He is positively boastful about how he got it over. Simply, he used the simpleminded news media to do the job for him – for himself, for Kerry and for Obama, and there was nothing to it but to do it, and why was it so simple? Listen to the frustrated novelist in his own words:


“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years-old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.”


He added: “They literally know nothing.”


Well, darn it, I could have told you so myself, which in fact I did in my own novel right here, about reporters being ignorant and deceitful whether covering the White House or the Middle East and how these reporters rearrange the facts to fit perfectly into a preconceived narrative – amounting to fiction.


So next time you read about “Israeli occupation” or “Israeli apartheid,” recognize that you are being fooled by people making it up. Full-time novelists like Michael Chabon and half-baked novelists like Ben Rhodes are playing you for patsies and laughing if you take a single word for theirs seriously.


Listen to Rhodes laughing: “We created an echo chamber. They [the media] were saying things that validated what we have given them to say.”


Plainly, this administration has no respect for the news media. This is logical. But it likewise has no respect and only contempt for the rest us.


That’s frightening when we consider how are lives are being orchestrated.


Rhodes, it appears, also maneuvers Obama’s schedule as to the best time for him to appear on television.


Everything is calculated by the book, books this man Rhodes can’t seem to get down on paper – but what a Plan B! 


A man who can’t write well enough to get published, gets to run our world.


Well then, he’s good for something.


These are the Liberals we elected, Ladies and Gentlemen.


It’s their world and we’re just living in it as uninvited guests.


New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the international classic “Indecent Proposal” now followed by the prophetic newsroom thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

SHOCKING! OBAMA PRAISES USA OVERSEAS--WELL, SORT OF - MAY 3, 2016

You can count the number of times Obama has praised the USA abroad on the fingers of one hand - and you will have some fingers to spare.

27

Published: Tuesday, May 03, 2016 4:22 PM

Jack Engelhard

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

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Who knows? Maybe after he leaves office, Obama will tour the United States -- and apologize to us.


Meantime, in London several days ago, Obama sat for a news conference, along with Prime Minister David Cameron, and took a moment to praise North Carolina, saying the people over there were “wonderful.” He assured sensitive British tourists, those terrified that the state was not transgender-compliant, that they would be treated with “extraordinary hospitality.”


The word “extraordinary” does come to mind when we hear this President say a few kind words about the United States.


Three by my count over eight years.


He spent away his career damning America every time he stepped foot in another country. We miss those days when we had Presidents who actually love us. Perhaps this one, in his final months, has come around to conclude that we are not so bad after all. We deserve a pat on the back.


From this President, however, it comes with a slap across the face, because as Obama made clear to his European audience, he disagrees with the law enacted by North Carolina that keeps in place something we all used to take for granted – men go here and women go there when it comes to using public washroom facilities.


Across the country, this is not so simple anymore. While you were sleeping, Liberals were busy creating an entirely new grievance industry.


Yesterday it was global warming. Today it’s gender politics, and it’s got the country in an uproar about what to do for people who’ve changed genders, like Caitlyn Jenner who used to be Bruce, and it gets even stickier when it comes to individuals the Left calls “non-conforming.”


Those are people (if I’ve got this right) who can decide on the spur of the moment if they are male or female and thus use any public facility they want. Not everybody is happy about this – not thrilled when in those moments of extreme privacy and modesty the person walking in could be, well, anybody.


The marches for transgender civil liberties have begun and we await the BDS and SJP goons to soon join in, waving their ‘Palestine’ flags.


For some men, if it’s Tuesday, they could decide they’re women.


The marches for transgender civil liberties have begun and we await the BDS and SJP goons to soon join in, waving their ‘Palestine’ flags.


They show up for everything else, don’t they.


I asked a friend in Israel if the Israelis are as obsessed as we are about the transgender wars.


“Frankly,” Moishe said, “we’ve got other problems.”


Our own Camille Paglia, openly gay and a feminist intellectual who has no patience for political correctness, says this:


“While we’re navel-gazing about gender identity, ISIS is beheading people.”


Never mind, says Mayor de Blasio. So New York City, along with 19 other big cities, is now transgender-friendly. This includes the “non-conformers.”


It’s the law that they can use almost any public facility they want, even the man who suddenly feels an attack of femaleness coming on.


(So far Trump is okay with this. Instinct says he’ll change his mind.)


Research (from CBS and ABC broadcasting) reveals that about 25,000 transgender people live in this town of eight and a half million. Got that? Someone else will have to do the math, but it seems crazy that an entire city should be turned upside down to accommodate a fraction of the population.


On the national scale, we learn that there some 700,000 transgender people throughout the United States, where there are 320 million of us who have other problems. So therefore, if Liberals have their way, the entire country will have to be inconvenienced for the convenience of a few.


No doubt persons with gender identification issues need our concern and attention.


But to require us to change our most intimate habits for such lopsided numbers – is that not absurd?


To frame it sharply, this from ABC News: “If you're in a high school of 2,000 kids, you're probably going to have somewhere between two and four trans kids in that school at any one time,” says Dr. Norman Spack, the co-director of the gender management clinic at Boston Children's Hospital.


So for four kids, 2,000 will be required to change their normal ways. Does this make sense?

North Carolina says no. Obama says yes. But he still thinks the people there are “wonderful.”


No big deal, you say? Too little, too late?


I say take any kindness from a President who never appreciated us and spent his best years profaning us throughout the world. 

MICHAEL CHABON AND WHY THE WICKED HAVE ALL THE LUCK - MAY 1, 2016

That’s what kept King David up at nights (besides Torah study) – asking why in Heaven’s Name the wicked keep prospering.

Published: Sunday, May 01, 2016 6:47 AM

Jack Engelhard

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

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Out there in his bios it says Michael Chabon writes on “issues of Jewish identity. ” Nu, he has his Jewish identity and I have mine.


I do not think you should ever bring us together in the same room. There would be blood.


Something happens when you live in a French town and watch Hitler’s troops storm in. This changes you and you will never see the world the same way again. You will never see the world as others do, others like Michael Chabon and the Breaking the Silence crowd who have no concept of what it means to have a Jewish state.


About the Jewish state, this is what Chabon told The Forward: “It’s the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.”


He had much more to say about the “occupation,” every word of it sickening, and coming from someone knocked silly from too much American indulgence, him along with his wife, herself something to behold…no wait, she was born in Israel. Her excuse – who knows?


Chabon toured Israel with the Breaking the Silence clowns, so you know how that came to an end. It ended with Chabon positively obsessed with trashing Israel and moving on with other writers, a confederacy of them busy putting together a book where each writer gets a chance to clobber Israel in the most marvelous Pulitzer-winning prose. Some have even won Pulitzers. Chabon did.



Pulitzer winners like Michael Chabon use wonderful American prose when writing about Israel and how best to destroy the people and the Land.
That’s what kept King David up at nights (besides Torah study) – asking why in Heaven’s Name the wicked keep prospering. His son, King Solomon, answered that we should not wonder about it when we find the wicked having all the luck. His wisdom led him to conclude that God “put an ENIGMA” into our minds that is not for us to figure out.

Enigma, you bet.


Israel is the only country in the region with democracy and justice for all…the only country in the world that faces enemies on all sides


It faces a particular enemy, Palestinian Arabs who keep wallowing with so many billions from around the world that they don’t know what to do with all that money except build more terror tunnels, and statues for their men, women and children who murder the most Jews – and get loving from American Jews like Michael Chabon.


There is no enigma as to why The Forward printed this garbage and why a furiously anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss  picked through the dreck, did a dance, and found it so charming. Jane Eisner runs that so-called Jewish newspaper, The Forward. Don’t get me started on this.


I was having a pretty good day before I knew all that about Michael Chabon. Thanks, Orit, for bringing it my attention and giving me heartburn.


Only kidding. Orit Arfa did bring it to my attention and I am nuts about this fabulous Israeli friend and writer, and as I mentioned in an earlier column, her book, “The Settler” – well come on, people, what are you waiting for? “The Settler” is an eye-opener and the final word about what happened at Gush Katif, when overnight 10,000 Israelis were sent packing from Gaza to make room for Hamas.

Chabon and his ilk won’t tell you about all those Israeli concessions to appease the Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic terrorism that results.


That eviction (truly Sharon’s pogrom) did terrible damage to the Israeli psyche, all described elaborately by Orit, and I do hate that ostentatious word psyche but it’s a word Pulitzer winners use. Pulitzer winners like Michael Chabon use wonderful American prose when writing about Israel and how best to destroy the people and the Land.


They will never tell you how precious it is that after 2,000 years the Jewish people have a place they can call home, again, a land blessed from the start.


But nothing except curses do we get from people, many of them Jews themselves, and that is an unforgivable disgrace.