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.

WHY TRUMP? BECAUSE HE'S AMERICAN - NOVEMBER 23, 2015

This week was the anniversary of JFK's murder. Would JFK have ignored an American's murder overseas until prodded?

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Published: Monday, November 23, 2015 11:13 PM

Jack Engelhard

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

►More from this writer

A glorious American Ezra Schwartz is murdered in Israel at the hands of Islamic terrorists and no word of condemnation from the White House.
Repeat – an American!

Monday Night Football, in the game between Buffalo and New England, has set aside a moment’s silence in reverence for Ezra Schwartz – thanks to the valiant owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft. But from the government, near silence.

The State Department finally came around for a few words – but reluctantly and only after days of arm-twisting and cajoling.



Who celebrates ourselves as Whitman once did? Not this White House.
“I’d bomb the hell out of them.” Trump’s response to Islamic terrorists everywhere. (Hell of a world when al-Qaeda is now “moderate Islam.”)
New sheriff coming to town. It’s High Noon… Gary Cooper taking care of business.

Love him or hate him, Trump is an American – walks, talks, thinks like an American. The brashness, the swagger, the Reagan tall-in-the saddle – Trump.

“I want to make America great again.”

Poetry. Music to the ears of millions who miss those days when it was okay to be straight-talking, right-thinking a bit cocky and altogether heroic.
People wonder why he’s become so popular (even if he is not first choice to you or me).

“I will never apologize for America.” That’s why.

He’d never bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia. Not Trump. Too outspoken? Probably. Outrageously opinionated? Yes. But he’s no sneak.

Reuters Survey (thanks Breitbart) says a majority of Americans “feel like strangers in their own country.” No surprise.

Someone in this country makes a video somewhat uncomplimentary to their prophet and is imprisoned.
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Our leader says this. Not Trump.

Not for Trump the overthrow of Judeo/Christian principles in favor of Islamic doctrines.

Not for JFK. President John F. Kennedy was an American, like this: “It may be different elsewhere. But Democrat society, in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves the nation.”

Exactly 52 years ago on this day when I write this, Nov. 22, JFK was assassinated and nobody remembers except here. Shameless amnesia.

We have forgotten that once we were confident and proud of ourselves. We were on the side of G-d and righteousness when we sacrificed ourselves to rid the world of Nazi and Soviet tyrannies and as we buried our dead in distant lands nobody told us that we ought to be ashamed of our past. No apology tour for Trump.


He’d never bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia. Not Trump.
Months ago Islamic terrorists lost a multi-million-dollar court battle in Manhattan Federal Court brought by 11 American families citing damages for murder inflicted by the PA and the PLO. The Obama administration, arguing mercy for the terrorists, intervened to bring the cost down to a pittance. The killers got off nearly scot-free.

Shared values – with Islamic terrorists? That, as the man says, “is who we are.” But listen to an American.

JFK: “America will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Those were the days. JFK gave us a chance to dream. Took us to the moon.
Survey says a majority of Americans “don’t identify with what America has become.”

Under today’s leadership, which tastes and smells entirely too foreign, Americans feel lost, abandoned, strangers in a strange land. Jews, Christians, cops, Israel, Republicans, getting pushed around, shouted down and English fast becoming a second language.

Lopsided priorities now render foreigners first; citizens second. Who celebrates ourselves as Whitman once did?

Not this White House.

Next president, Trump or anybody else, it’s time we get it right, time we get an American. Is that asking too much?

OBAMA'S IRAN DEAL: WHO'S BUYING THIS WRECK? - JULY 26, 2015

Credit King Solomon once again for his wisdom: “A twisted thing cannot be made straight.”

This takes us directly to John Kerry and his pitch before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he tried to explain away his perfectly awful Iran Deal.

The Senators, mainly Republicans Bob Corker, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson and Democrat Bob Menendez, saw the lemon for what it is. They were not buying Kerry’s central argument that if Iran’s mullahs fail to behave properly, well, we’ll just go back in and teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.

We’ll take it all back. We’ll re-impose sanctions. We’ll have them reimburse all the money and force them to unhook all their missiles.

Why – in a snap we’ll simply undo everything.

You betcha.

Dream on, we said, those of us who watched the proceedings via C-Span. The cable news networks, including Fox, did not carry the hearing, except for a voice-cut here and there, and this was a mistake. They had a chance to provide a crucial public service. Instead, they chose regular programming and the usual commercials.

Then again, for Kerry, this was a commercial, selling this crooked deal – which cannot be made straight.

As Kerry shared his dreams with the Committee, we thought back to another dreamer, Shimon Peres.

We recalled his high hopes when, as Yitzhak Rabin’s foreign minister, he gladly and enthusiastically signed the Oslo Accords, of which he was partly its architect. The Left had its Big Win. Never mind that Israel had fully legitimized a terror group, the PLO, as its equal. Equal footing for a gang of misfits.

Peres dreamed of a “New Middle East,” which is “new” all right, but in all the wrong places.

Overnight, through a handshake, Rabin to Arafat, a new government was created, a government of scoundrels that now has a seat at the UN.

Promises were made. Israel agrees to numerous concessions, principally a judenrein Gaza and partly the 'West Bank'. Plus, more concessions to come.

But, people said – if the PLO misbehaves, all bets are off. We’re taking it all back, in a snap.

Two intifadas later and Hamas terrorists ensconced in Gaza, nothing’s been taken back – a twisted thing cannot be made straight.

The Senators asked Kerry if he expected Iran to become a regional power. Kerry said no. But, they said, Obama said yes. So yes it is!

So yes is the answer for Obama’s “New Middle East,” just as Peres dreamed of a “New Middle East,” which is “new” all right, but in all the wrong places. Practically every country that surrounds Israel is in hellish, murderous turmoil. Not quite the sweet dreams that Peres had in mind. Or Obama. Or Kerry.

This was difficult television. Kerry squirmed throughout his testimony. Would Israel be able to react against Iran when necessary?

So Kerry danced around that and he waltzed around the question as to why the Administration went straight to the UN before going to Congress.

The Senators had him trapped.

But in the end, they will do nothing, which is what they usually do – nothing. Lois Lerner is still on the loose.

Hillary is still not in jail for Benghazi and her email scandal. Our borders are still wide open.

Much huffing and puffing from the Congress, but nothing much happens.

That is why Trump is still up in the polls. We the People, the little people, we agree with him that our politicians are 90-pound weaklings.

Trump will not win the nomination, but he can dream can’t he? So far his dreams have done no harm.

Can’t say the same for the rest of the dreamers who keep sticking us with nightmares.

Chuck Schumer – where are you?

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a newsroom thriller ripped from the headlines. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

BERNIE SANDERS FACES NPR McCARTHYISM - JUNE 12, 2015

NPR’s 20 million weekly listeners got a taste of what McCarthyism must have been like back in the 1950s.

That’s when people were ruined by insinuation and if that wasn’t enough, it was demanded of them to “name names.”

In other words, they were expected to bring down friends and family members as well.

Some may remember this type of bloodcurdling language from the Wisconsin Senator: “I have here in my hand a list…”

The “list” (of allegedly “known communists”) was meant to terrify people, and it did.

Those tactics came back in style a few days ago when WAMU radio host Diane Rehm used a tone that sounded like a Joe McCarthy witch-hunt.

In an interview with Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders she stated as fact, “Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.”

Sanders, the junior Senator from Vermont, Jewish and politically Independent, was asked a question that never came up for Obama at NPR.

Rehm’s program begins at WAMU and is broadcast throughout NPR’s 900 affiliate stations. In his Village Voice confessional, “Why I Am No Longer A Brain-Dead Liberal,” playwright David Mamet scored National Public Radio's “National Palestinian Radio.”

Sanders, therefore, should not have been totally amazed at finding an interview turned into an inquisition.

 “Well no,” Sanders protested. “I’m an American.”

Sanders is a self-described Democratic Socialist. He is running for the White House as a Democrat and is expected to have no chance against Hillary Clinton for the nomination. On Israel, Sanders snubbed 

Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli Prime Minister addressed Congress. 

His platform, it’s been said, would cut aid to Israel. He’s on record as saying Israel “overreacted” to the 30,000 rocket attacks that came from Gaza.

Still, he gets no favors or soft-pedaling from the PLO-favoring Left. Proof that even anti-Israel Jews are still Jewish no matter what side they take.  

But as a young man, Sanders, now 73, spent a few months on a kibbutz.

Was she asking Sanders to “name names?” Was she asking him to denounce “fellow travelers?”
Is that what got him flagged by NPR? Or, forNPR, is friendship with Israel a bridge too far?

Sanders appeared stunned by Rehm’s faulty information. Rehm explained that she found him on a “list.”

Shades of McCarthy? Or did the “list” fall into the hands of Diane Rehm from the new and improved McCarthyism.

"That's some of the nonsense that goes on in the Internet,” Sanders replied, obviously irritated at being ambushed by BDS rumormongering.

Rehm apologized several times during the interview and even after the interview for presenting as fact erroneous material.

But it gets worse.

Rehm persisted, asking Sanders if there are other members of Congress who may have dual citizenship, or is it “part of the fable.” 

Fables linked, no doubt, to the BDS business of spreading falsehoods throughout Social Media…and whatever works to scandalize and oppress.

Was she asking Sanders to “name names?”  Was she asking him to denounce “fellow travelers?”

This does stink of McCarthyism.

“I honestly don’t know [about others],” Sanders hotly replied during his cross-examination.

The experience may have taught Mr. Sanders that being on “their side” is no safe harbor. He should not have been caught by surprise.

But it can work both ways.

As a successful journalist and as a proud Arab-American, Diane Rehm ought to know better than to touch her very own third rail.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. The new thriller from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a heroic editor’s singlehanded war on terror and against media bias. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com