Ending DACA Would Make Us A Land of Broken Dreams.

Congress must act to prevent punishment of those who committed no crime.

By: Eli Verschleiser

We are in the process of a rigorous national debate on immigration in this country, and that is a positive, healthy process.

With notable exceptions in some corners who have sadly become very strident lately, most Americans recognize that open doors to new Americans, with new skills and ideas is a bedrock of our democracy.

At the same time, we can’t turn a blind eye to those who break the law by violating our borders. It’s unfair to legal immigrants, costly to states and municipalities and does not allow us to identify criminals, terrorists, the contagiously ill or fugitives from trouble in other countries. Some reform of legal immigration, including the refugee process, is also necessary.

I’m confident that a fair comprehensive reform will emerge from this debate that will keep our borders guarded but open and allow enforcement agents to concentrate where they are most needed: stopping or deporting dangerous people.

That’s one of the purposes of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Trump, faced with lawsuits from states on both sides of the issue, has discontinued, calling on Congress to enact a similar law as part of a reform package.

DACA’s pending refusal of new applications puts some 800,000 eligible young people ages 15-36 in danger of deportation. 

While President Barack Obama’s process for putting this policy in place via executive action was flawed (and in the eyes of many a blatant effort to shore up his political base for the 2102 election), the motive and reasoning behind it is solid.

For one thing, children who had no say in illegally entering or remaining in this country, and who have known no other place to live and may not even speak the language of their homeland, are at no fault of their own and should be allowed to stay, not suffer for their parents’ crime.

Especially not when they are living productively, getting an education, working and paying taxes, or serving in the military. The protection does not apply, obviously to “people convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety,” as stated in the guidelines. It also does not apply to people in the process of deportation proceedings.

Further, deporting DACA eligible young people, an estimated 90 percent of whom  are employed, will cost us as much as $2 billion in lost taxes, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. That’s in addition to court and other costs for unnecessary enforcement and deportation proceedings, estimated at $10 billion, while tying up agents who could and should be breaking up terror cells, violent gangs or drug smuggling rings.

DACA does not automatically provide a citizenship stamp or even a green card: Just protection that must be renewed every two years.

According to the New York Times, President Trump said he was acting on behalf of “the millions of Americans victimized by this unfair system.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the program had “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”

As far as the jobs argument is concerned, unemployment is at a record low, and we shouldn’t assume the 4.4 percent who remain unaffected by job growth, of mixed ages, have been denied because of these immigrants, and that they will have the training and other capabilities to take those jobs opened by deportation.

Some say DACA provides an incentive for people to come here illegally with children. That may be true if permanently implemented, but under the current program it only applies to people who have been continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007, not future arrivals.

Speaking to CNN on Sunday (9/10), Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona called for a “comprehensive” immigration reform that gives priority to keeping those engaged in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) careers, while keeping borders secure. He said it is not “conscionable to tell young people who came here as children that they have to go back to a country that they don't know,” in particular the estimated 900 DACA-eligible members of the armed forces.

Hopefully a majority of his colleagues in Congress will agree, but with numerous debates looming over tax reform and the budget and federal relief for storm damages taking priority it will be an uphill battle to make any progress on immigration before March, when the program effectively ends.

We have adopted some backward policies and laws, creating years of non-sensible red tape. Immigration needs to be reformed from the ground up. But kicking these Dreamers out goes against the core of who we are as Americans. Their only “fault” is that their parents wanted to achieve a better life, a better hope, and a better future for them, and that’s why they have been labeled “Dreamers” -- they embody the ideal of the American Dream.

They are not so different from my grandparents who immigrated to America from Europe pursuing dreams of their own, namely the dream of thriving without the threat of religious persecution. America has always been a beacon for such people.

But deporting dreamers will dim that beacon.  As the Wall Street Journal observed, rescinding DACA betrays those who, encouraged by the government, provided personal identification and records to apply for the program. “These young immigrants have committed no crime and trusted the federal government to protect them.”

At a time when we are struggling with our international image, the last thing we need is to become known as a land of broken promises, and broken dreams.

About the author:

Eli Verschleiser is a financier, real estate developer, and investor in commercial real estate. In his Philanthropy, Mr. Verschleiser is on the board of Trustees for the American Jewish Congress, Co-Founder of Magenu.org, & President of OurPlace, a non-profit organization that provides support, shelter, and counseling for troubled Jewish youth.

Mr. Verschleiser is a frequent commentator on political and social services matters.

Follow on Twitter: @E_Verschleiser

Left wing protests only strengthen the Right

By: Eli Verschleiser

Our country seems more sharply divided today than it has been for generations.

With a new president in the White House, only 14 percent of Democrats approve of his performance, compared with 90 percent of Republicans. The Pew Research Center has found that Americans of both parties are increasingly disapproving of a president of the opposite party, and that at the height of the election campaign 81 percent of Donald Trump supporters viewed life in America today as worse than it was 50 years ago, compared with just 11 percent who said it is better.



Among Hillary Clinton supporters’ 19 percent said life is worse, compared with nearly six-in-ten (59 percent) who said it is better.

Those divisions have been on sharp display since Trump won the election, with mass protests across the country. While mistakes have been made by the president and his staff during the breaking-in period (we can’t exactly call it a honeymoon) there have been calls for his impeachment, or worse. The media pounce on his every word and mistake.

“Not my president,” the protesters declare, while the Democrats in Congress, with their minority numbers in both houses tried feebly to block the appointment of the new Cabinet members.

Clearly, despite the loss of Congress and the White House, the Democrats have failed to learn the lessons from the populist victory of 2016. In different areas of the country, there were localized concerns but a few things united citizens in the 37 states in which a majority voted against Hillary Clinton.

Millions of Americans want to feel good about their country and want government to stay out of their lives except to provide a strong economy, protect their rights and defend them from harm. They also want borders that mean something and a prevailing sense of law and order, not condemnation of the cops and excuses for criminals.

As much as some moderate Democrats might like to take this into consideration and steer the party at least to the middle, the party is in the process of moving even further left. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 22, the Bernie Sanders wing of the party “has engaged in an intramural fight to remake the party in a more populist, liberal mold.” The goal of Sanders’ Our Revolution movement of five million, forged from Sanders surprisingly powerful presidential bid is “making party officials and elected Democrats more accountable to activists, and replacing them if they aren’t.”

That means the crowds that often take to the streets berating the police, waving Palestinian flags, supporting illegal immigration and occasionally turning violent will be steering the ship.

Will Tom Perez as newly minted leader of the party have a better clue to why so many voters find this abhorrent than his predecessor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)?

Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal said after the Democrats chose their new leader that the selection of Perez shows the party isn’t ready to do any “soul searching about what happened in 2016,” but rather wants to “bring the Sanders people and their energy into the party.”

The difference between Perez and runner-up Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) in that race, Gigot said, was not ideological but rather a choice of “insider vs. outsider,” since Perez was an Obama Cabinet member. Ellison, with his troubling history on Israel and past support of Louis Farrakhan, is now the deputy party chairman.

Trump critics say they’re outraged over rising anti-Semitism, yet they have no problem raising the banner of hate against the Jewish state by calling for either its outright destruction or its severe weakening via economic sanctions and boycotts they think will pressure Israel into relinquishing territory to the Palestinians. The same voices never seemed as perturbed when anti-Semitism rose during the Obama years.

“Where are the liberal leaders when Jewish cemeteries are desecrated and campuses are painted with swastikas and racial slurs?” asked Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat, in a statement. “How are the leaders of the Democrats communicating with and reining in their followers when these crimes are committed? It’s simple. They’re not. Instead they’ve found an easy answer: Blame Trump.

“Should the President of the United States do more to stop these crimes? Absolutely. But to blame these anti-Semitic incidents on the Trump presidency is absurd. Anti-Semitic crimes were up 9 percent from 2014 to 2015. Does former President Obama own that?”

The continued protests weeks after the inauguration are appalling, at best. Are there that many people without jobs that have so much free time on their hands?

The president should be given a chance to articulate his agenda, set the country on a new path.

So President Trump is a reality TV star, yes we knew that. But I find myself less outraged at him and his policies than I am at the relentless critics who did not want to see Barack Obama go and wanted to continue socialist policies by electing Senator Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton.

It has been nearly 30 years since a president handed the White House over to someone of the same party.

We only get one president at a time, and so the protesters should step back and acknowledge that people like me are more likely to look at what they are doing and move further to the right, not the direction they advocate.

Originally Published: The Hill

No ‘Understanding’ For Cop Killers

By: Eli Verschleiser

On the morning of July 7, Sgt. Michael Smith of the Dallas Police Department kissed his 9-year-old daughter Caroline goodbye as he headed off to his shift, and a terrible thought struck him.

“What if this is the last time you ever kiss me or hug me?” he asked, according to Caroline’s later account to CBS News. It was the result of some ominous intuition because, as we know all too well, it was indeed the last time. Michael and 13 other cops were gunned down on the streets of Dallas that day while keeping order and managing traffic at a protest rally. Michael was one of five who would never come home from the ambush.

We would barely have time to process the horror when it happened again: Three more would die just 10 days later in Baton Rogue, La. at the hands of another crazed gunman, with three more injured. Both shootings were ostensibly tied to anger over recent police killings of unarmed black men that are under investigation.

President Obama rightly declared that the murders were “cowardly and reprehensible”, while then declaring that there is “no justification” for the killing of cops. “They right no wrongs. They advance no causes.”

Why even present the other side of an argument that should not exist in the first place? Who believes this was justified or part of a cause? That there is some shred of logic and purpose to a war on police?

Few people, as far as public statements. But you could hear many interviewed in the streets, and many commentators walking a rhetorical tightrope, with words to the effect of “I don’t support the shootings” – wait for it – “But…”

In a July 19 USA Today column, Tavis Smiley urges us to “listen to the Baton Rouge killer.” He writes “How many more disaffected black men have to self-radicalize before we take their claims seriously? … We can call them lone wolves, deranged, cowardly and reprehensible until we’re blue in the face. But you know what I call them and many others in their generation? Discontented. Demonized. Disavowed.”

In doing so, he ascribes some blame for the violence to society, rather than hold the killers entirely liable for their actions.

Comedian and HBO host Bill Maher went even further, saying that he does not condone the shootings, “but I do understand it … How many videos can you see? How many years can go by when this is going on when black people are brutally assaulted? … I’m surprised somebody did not fire back sooner.”

It is gracious of Mr. Maher not to support the wanton murder of a human being simply by virtue of his or her occupation and uniform. It would be difficult, after all, to rationalize that this is any better than accepting the murder of a person based on race, religion, national origin or some other trait.

But shooting “back” means returning fire while under fire. Hours later, in cold blood, in another city, with uninvolved people is not revenge or retaliation or rebellion.

It is not a phase in a cycle of violence, no more than killing office workers in San Bernardino or night club patrons in Orlando or joggers in the Boston marathon is “retaliation” for any government-sponsored violence by troops or jet planes or drone strikes or American policy in another part of the world. It’s just murder. Period.

I understand the anger caused by incidents of questionable or blatantly unacceptable conduct by police, and the tendency of officers in such cases to get off scot free. Successful prosecutions seem to be rare, leading to a heated debate.

But if the shooter in Dallas (I will not mention the killers’ names as they deserve no publicity) was so concerned about the misdeeds of cops in St. Paul, Minn., and Baton Rouge, La., why did he attack cops in Dallas who were protecting the rights of protesters?

And why did the shooter in Baton Rogue target a black cop, Montrell Jackson? None of the 19 cops involved had any connection to the incidents that touched off the protests.

Rational people around the world address grievances through peaceful activism, sometimes civil disobedience, and this has moved governments to action, toppled walls and dictators and forced the passage of just laws. Indiscriminate assassination and ambush cannot lead to anything constructive.

The killers of these cops each had a history of dysfunction and erratic behavior that predates the incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota. If society is at all to blame, it is for the notoriety we give mass shooters in the media — and sometimes excessive analysis of their motives — coupled with ridiculously easy access to guns. Their acts were nothing more than wanton murder by unstable people seeking to link their homicidal urges to a cause in order to be celebrated as a hero.

Let’s not elevate them by using their crimes and the words “justifiable” in the same sentence.

Originally Published: The Huffington Post

Burning Question: Is a Torah Less Holy Than a Koran?

By: Eli Verschleiser

If you had to list the reasons why Israel should exist as a haven for the Jewish people, freedom from the burning of holy Torah scrolls would have to rank pretty high on the list.

This act of hate is closely associated with the Holocaust, when the psychotic Nazis would relish the destruction of the Jews’ book of inspiration and knowledge. On occasion, we’ve seen it happen elsewhere, such as in New York shuls desecrated by hateful vandals or in modern-day Europe at the hands of neo-Nazis.

Torah scrolls under Israeli control should theoretically be safe. But last month vandals believed to be Palestinian entered a synagogue in the Jewish community of Karmei Tsur, piled the Torah scrolls together and set them afire. If you missed the international condemnation of that vengeful act of hate, it’s not because you weren’t paying attention. It was nonexistent.

Media coverage wasn’t very heavy, either. From what I can find there was only an AP dispatch and some Jewish media coverage. The Times covered Jewish attacks in the area on Arabs, but didn’t notice the burning Torahs.

Yes, I know. In the eyes of most of the world Jews don’t belong in the territory they call the west bank (and in the eyes of some, anywhere in the Middle East), and so, whatever happens to them, they had it coming. Let them count their blessings that no person was hurt in this particular incident (even as countless stabbings and other murders terrorize Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel.)

It would be encouraging to hear statements along the lines of, regardless of how you feel about the politics of Israel’s control of territory, violent attacks and desecration of holy places are somewhat polarizing and must be stopped and condemned in the highest levels of the Palestinian government.

Israeli leaders never seem to have a problem condemning the bad behavior of right-wing Jews. On January 31, a group defaced some property, including a mosque in the village of Hawara. It was removed by Israeli authorities. Two weeks earlier, when vandals set fire to a mosque in Der Istya an IDF spokesman called it “deplorable on every level.”

And yet we’ve heard little on the Torah burning aside from the outrage of the Anti-Defamation League and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow that he find the perpetrators. “I expect the international community to condemn the desecration of a synagogue, an act that is the result of incessant Palestinian incitement,” Netanyahu wrote in a Facebook post.

Compare the silence to President Barack Obama’s denunciation in April, 2011 when a U.S. pastor burned the Koran. “The destruction of any holy text including the Koran is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry,” the president said then, according to CNN. He called the display by the Dove World Outreach Center an event that could help al Qaeda recruitment.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom declared that the act of burning the Koran is “disrespectful, wrong and will be widely condemned by people of all faiths and none.”

And the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, notoriously nonchalant about attacks on Jews said burning the Koran “contradict[s] the efforts of the United Nations and others to promote tolerance, intercultural understanding and mutual respect between cultures and religions.”

“Abhorrent and simply wrong,” said Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Is not the desecration of Torahs an equally intolerant and bigoted act, abhorrent, antithetical to tolerance with the potential to inspire more extremist violence? It doesn’t seem to take much at all to do that.

It’s important for world leaders to take a more consistent position when it comes to public statements on the Mideast. Just because Israel is the more powerful side of the dispute with the Palestinians does not mean it is always wrong and that hateful acts, contrary to Ban Ki-Moon’s recent justifications, are understandable, if not inevitable.

Acts of hatred call out for condemnation because silence implies consent.

Take a close look at the act of burning the Torah in an Israeli synagogue. It reveals a mindset. Vandalism of construction equipment or power lines or other infrastructure might suggest a protest against the building of settlements on land the Palestinians claim as their own (despite never having had sovereign control over it, and Jordan losing it in a war).

The burning of a Torah is something different entirely — an attack on Judaism itself, and what makes the Jews a people and the very document that attaches us to the land. It is the steadfast refusal of Palestinians for over a century (not just since 1967) to acknowledge the ancestral Jewish claim to the holy land of Israel that is the biggest stumbling block to peace.

Progress will come only when responsible leaders assert not only that Israel has a generic “right to exist” but that it is the land of the Torah, and deserves to be protected as such. This would go a long way toward encouraging its enemies to give up their dream of chasing us away.

Originally Published by: The Times of Israel 

North Korea and Iran: Brothers in Nuclear Terror

By: Eli Verschleiser

North Korea hadn’t been in the news much lately. The world was fixated on the economic woes in China, strife between Iran and Saudi Arabia and ongoing efforts to contain and defeat Isis. Then came the literally earthshaking news, and that card-carrying member of the Axis of Evil was back on our radar, having tested a hydrogen bomb believed to be about 1,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb (opinions vary).

Wasn’t North Korea supposed be giving up its nuclear bomb program, you ask? Didn’t it sign a treaty with the United States to suspend construction of nuclear weapons reactors in 1994? And after it backed out of that agreement, didn’t it once again declare in 2007 that it was shutting down its main nuclear reactor as a result of multinational talks, ushering in new relations with the US? That one lasted until 2009, when the North Koreans began testing missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.

As recently as 2012, we were still dancing with Pyongyang, hoping for a deal to suspend uranium enrichment in return for much needed food aid (uranium isn’t very edible) and more normalized relations. More long-range missile tests put an end to that dance. And this week’s underground test shows that Kim Jong-un is unabashedly determined to play with nuclear toys.

A couple of takeaways here: Crazy regimes who have the ability to develop nuclear weapons won’t stop until they do. And deals and understandings to thwart them are worth less than the paper they are printed on.

Analysts are beginning to assess what this means for our newly inked agreement with Iran. The Obama administration said for years that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” but then proceeded to accept one anyway. The Iran deal released tons of frozen assets and opened the door for Russia to flood the Middle East with more weapons now that sanctions are lifted while Iran is largely allowed to self-monitor its dubious promise to keep uranium enrichment to levels used only for nuclear energy, not for weapons.

It didn’t take long for a test of the framework. Iran has been shooting off long range missiles, including one that came dangerously close to a U.S. aircraft carrier. The White House was prepared to slap some sanctions on Tehran but, quickly changed course under the apparent pretense that damaging President Hassan Rouhani wasn’t in our best interest when worse hardliners are sniping at his heels.

The problem for the U.S. is our lack of credibility when it comes to standing up and enforcing our stated interests, epitomized by President Obama’s pathetic “red line” warning against Syrian chemical weapons, a transgression now going into its third unpunished year. The coalition that reached the Iran deal has no real interest in enforcing red lines or re-imposing sanctions if inspectors somehow manage to stumble across a violation of the nuclear deal, and Tehran has to be very closely studying how the U.S., the U.N. and NATO react to North Korea’s openly flaunting its nuclear weapons. Admittedly, options are limited.

It may fall to Russia’s Putin to make a difference. Vladimir Putin has visited North Korea and in November sent a military delegation to conduct high-ranking talks about mutual interest. In 2012 Putin forgave billions in North Korean debt in order to foster better ties. But the possible H bomb is a game changer.

Russian officials have expressed grave concern. "Such actions are fraught with further aggravation of the situation on the Korean peninsula, which is anyway marked by very high potential of military and political confrontation," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, according to the Moscow Times.

If Russia has a chance to play the good guy here, it can do so for its own interest, exerting global influence, upstaging the U.S. and perhaps diverting attention from its role supporting Bashar Assad in Syria and its bullying of Ukraine. Polls have reportedly shown that Russian citizens have a largely unfavorable view of North Korea, believing that its nuclear ambitions are a menace. Maybe Putin can come up with the leverage needed to talk some sense into Kim Jong-Un.

Then we’ll still have to worry about Iran. Analysts are concerned that ties between Tehran and Pyongyang, and the presence of Iranian scientists at past North Korean tests and their sharing of missile technology. Iran would not have to conduct its own tests if it could gain easy access to North Korea’s data. Doing so may not even be a violation of the vague terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with Iran, Thomas Moore, a former non-proliferation expert for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Business Insider.

If the world continues its tepid reaction to North Korea’s test, it will send a strong message to an Iran that is likely already biding its time to go nuclear, either in secret violation of the agreement or when its term is over.

Quite a frightening scenario to consider. It’s hard enough to put one nuclear genie back in the bottle. What are the chances we’ll be able to do it twice?

Originally Published by: The Hill

All Lives Matter

By: Eli Verschleiser

It’s heartbreaking to see a movement in 2015 based on the slogan Black Lives Matter. It seems a throwback to the days of the civil rights struggle in the 60s. Fundamental truths should never have to be asserted through slogans.

It’s equally alarming when the president of the United States feels compelled to say, as Barack Obama did last week, that “Targeting police officers is completely unacceptable — an affront to civilized society.” Does any rational person believe otherwise?

Modern America is an overwhelmingly tolerant and sensitive society, with better rights and protections for all than any other country, but we still somehow manage to seem like a balkanized, deeply divided place.

The most disturbing phenomenon of all is what seems like a back-and-forth between Black Lives Matter and Police Lives Matter camps. This takes on a more volatile tone after a white cop in Texas was shot by a black suspect, possibly having been targeted just because of his uniform. He leaves behind a wife and two small children. A similar incident happened in New York City late last year, leaving two victims.

There have, of course, been numerous incidents in the past year or so involving black suspects or detainees who have died at the hands of police, some resulting in charges against the officers, others bringing no action and some still under investigation. I will not delve into any of these highly emotionally charged cases, several involving video extensively aired before the public.

I will only say that it’s important to study each case individually – the circumstances, the people involved on both sides of the altercation, the timing and every conceivable detail. They should not automatically fall into a narrative that cops view any life as less precious because of race.

It’s important to consider that police officers simply do not inhabit the same world and think the same as civilians who are never called upon to risk their lives. It’s easy to expect them to always calmly and rationally make decisions in a split second as if they had hours to contemplate their response and consult with others, as most of us generally have the luxury of doing in matters of far less consequence. People in dangerous situations can sometimes act in ways completely inconsistent with their usual character, including cops when they perceive their lives to be in danger.

What may not appear to be a life threatening situation in the calm viewing of a video appears completely different to the officer who carries a photo of his family, or a prayer, inside his hat and leaves the house every day fearful that he or she will not make it back.

This, of course, is not a blanket excuse for the behavior of all cops. Stress and danger come with the territory. But just as it would be wrong to assume all cops involved violent encounters with black suspects, detainees or innocent bystanders are inherently racist, it would be just as foolish to assume that this is never the case.

There are people who become cops for the wrong reason – drawn to power and authority for its own sake, not as a means to an altruistic end. There are good cops influenced by bad superiors or peers. And there are cops who grow up with bad perceptions of minorities -- influenced to some extent by selective news coverage, pop culture and lack of personal experience -- who never shake off their biases. It’s also important to recognize that bad cops aren’t inherently white, as black officers have recently been charged in violence against black suspects, notably in the Baltimore Freddy Gray case.

Better training and increasingly diverse police forces may, in the long term, address some of the biases and public scrutiny will inevitably force cops to be more conscious of street confrontations, how they respond to them and which ones may be unnecessary in the first place. (Do untaxed cigarettes really warrant an armed task force?)

Body cameras, already being phased in in Dallas and Los Angeles, will likely one day be standard issue along with the gun and badge. I worry that this technology, while it stands to benefit cops by vindicating their actions in some situations, can have a detrimental effect in causing hesitation to get involved in avoidable situations for fear of making a bad call and having it immortalized.

Technology can make a better contribution: Non-lethal weapons -- which can range from Tasers (already widely in use) to blunt-force projectile guns, chemical agents and even flashing, disorienting light -- have the power to immobilize a civilian and put a quick end to a confrontation without the mortal consequences.

Cops should still carry conventional guns to match force with force when needed, but the non-lethal option could greatly reduce the number of police-related fatalities while still getting criminals off the street and into custody. And, there’s a margin of error that can result in lawsuits, but not funerals.

At the end of the day, it’s important for us all to avoid being dragged into opposing camps, but instead stand behind the single most timely slogan: All Lives Matter.

Israel and its Sunni Partners - Should Israel and its Arab neighbors form an alliance ?

By: Eli Verschleiser

Could a nuclear deal with Iran accomplish more than decades of diplomacy in the Middle East and, rather ironically, create new alliances between Israel and Arab neighbors?

That’s a key question as we gear up for the battle on Capitol Hill over President Barack Obama’s controversial pact with Tehran to limit uranium enrichment in return for lifting of sanctions. Critics say the agreement paves the way for a double reward of Tehran— a huge influx of cash and an eventual, unfettered path toward nuclear arms.

Neither the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, nor the United Arab Emirates or for that matter any of the other Persian Gulf states are too excited about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. The role of Iran in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and the rise of Islamic State terror and the Muslim Brotherhood, have become a much bigger problem for Arab leaders than the tired conflict with Israel. Those countries have a Sunni majority, while Persian Iran is led by rival Shia Muslims.

Iran, of course, is also a major oil rival for the Gulf States and became more powerful following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The Saudis have been publicly moderate on the deal but said to be privately angry over it. Epitomizing the old Middle East adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Saudis were reported to have offered Israel the ability to use their airspace to strike at Iran. This is a crucial step in keeping a military option on the table as it would save time and fuel if such a strike were necessary. “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” a European official was quoted as saying in an Israeli TV report.

Clearly momentum for alignment with Israel in some form is building.

“To all those who think the Persian state, and the regime of the Rule of the Imprudent… the dictatorial fascist Persian regime which controls it, is a friendly country, whereas Israel is an enemy country, I say that a prudent enemy is better than an imprudent one.”

Those words were written by Abdallah Al-Hadlaq in the official newspaper of Kuwait, Al-Watan.

It is not the first time the author has expressed support for ties with Israel. As far back as 2009 he called on his government and other Gulf states to put aside their differences with Jerusalem and forge an alliance against Iran.

But the fact that his column was published in a government daily in a country without full press freedom speaks volumes.

“The state of Israel and its various governments have waged more than five wars with the Arabs, yet never in the course of these wars did Israel think to use its nuclear weapons against its Arab enemies,” Al-Hadlaq wrote. “Conversely, if the Persian state, with its stupid, rash and fascist regime that hides behind a religious guise, ever develops nuclear weapons, it will not hesitate to use nuclear bombs against the Arab Gulf states in the first conflict that arises.”

Were the Saudis to show leadership in rallying other Sunni-led states against Iran it could have a significant impact on a new order in the Middle East.

Furthermore the new coalition could collectively work wonders to get rid of ISIS, as Jordan’s King Abdullah recently declared in a CNN interview that the war against ISIS ‘is our war’. The Iranian nuclear threat and the ISIS threat can top the agenda in this new coalition.

“Iran does have enough politico-military and economic potential to counter-balance Saudi led “Sunni” states in the Middle East and beyond,” wrote Salman Rafi Sheikh in an essay for the magazine Eastern Outlook last March. “It is precisely for this very reason that Saudi Arabia’s anxiety about an agreement has fueled a flurry of intense diplomacy in recent days to bolster unity among “Sunni” states in the Middle East in the face of “shared threats”, especially those emanating from Iran.”

Rafi Sheikh, a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, noted that “this deal is most likely to send political jolts across the entire Middle Eastern political landscape, with Saudi Arabia and Israel standing as the most sensitive areas to bear its shocks; and as such, are most likely to clutch their hands into an alliance against Iran, and by default, against the US ambitions as well.”

There is great potential for Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to rally Gulf states as well as Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to stand up to an Iran that will only become more emboldened with the huge influx of post-sanctions billions and new political bona-fides that will make Tehran bolder.

Increased security cooperation as Iran bides its time for an eventual bomb --after the agreement period, or in the worst-case scenario, in violation of the agreement -- may eventually lead to more nuclear proliferation in the region.

Will that mean a nuclear pact between Israel and its former enemies? That will be a fascinating development that could never have been imagined even a decade ago.

And it will truly be a sad irony if, after nearly 70 years of a solid relationship between the United States and Israel, the Jewish state had to turn to despotic regimes with little or no human rights to solidify its security position, feeling far less than confident that Washington has its back than it has in the past.

However this may simply be the beginning of an Arabic Israeli accord where both groups can begin to understand and accept each other.

Originally Published: The Hill

Recognizing terror in its many forms

By: Eli Verschleiser

There’s a plague of fear spreading across the globe. The news greets us nearly every day like a blast of cold air. Acts of evil intended to influence the behavior of others.

The attack on Sony by North Korea may have been bloodless, but it’s an act of terrorism no less, undertaken by a dictator desperate to exert his influence in a world in which he feels insecure. This time it was the hacking of email accounts and other information from a major international corporation. Next time the hackers could target power grids or an airport, and the results could be actual loss of life. The entire fragile US economy could be thrown into chaos by a maniac with sophisticated cyber-terrorists on his leash.

As in any case, the US can strike back, as it appears to have done by somehow shutting down Internet access in North Korea (the White House won’t confirm or deny). But the effects of cyber-terror are already felt.

Kim Jong-un

Theater chains across North America declined to show a lowbrow comedy starring Seth Rogen that accomplished its mission of poking the bear, in the form of Kim Jong-un. Fearing liability, they caved in to vague threats by hackers that they would somehow punish audiences who saw The Interview. The media were Kim’s accomplices, not only rushing to publicize the hacked Sony emails and causing severe corporate mayhem, but also, in the case of CNN, referencing the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting and even 9-11 in its coverage as feasible outcomes of screening the movie.

Americans nearly universally groaned at this capitulation – it’s not like us to hide from bullies – but there were defenders, too.

“They’ll never be able to protect [audiences],” said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of The New York Daily News and US News and World Report on the McLaughlin Group last week. Fortunately some 300 small theaters agreed to show the movie in time for the release date and Sony Pictures wisely made it available online at the same time.

It is the very essence of terrorism to upset a society’s way of life, economic and cultural, via violent intimidation, whether the threat is real or just perceived.

It’s not surprising that terrorism is gaining an upper hand in a world that gives a free pass to groups that embody it. Last month the European Union court ordered Hamas removed from the EU terrorist list for “procedural reasons.”

Never mind that US courts have found that in fact Hamas has been responsible for the murder of innocent people, or that it has turned Gaza into a rocket base to attack Israel from the moment it gained independence. International donors have raised $5.4 billion to rebuild the area from Israeli retaliation strikes last summer, and schools across the United Kingdom are joining a five-mile walkathon next week to raise money for rebuilding schools in Gaza.

One wonders how much will be ponied up for the rebuilding effort by the international Hamas supporters who paid for the rockets that soared into Israel and ignited the conflict.

Does the fact that the EU court is located in Belgium, now known as one of the most anti-Semitic locations in the EU, contribute to this “procedural reasoning” or is this part of an attempt to encourage inclusion of Hamas in the coming debate over a Palestinian state, along with the more reasonable Fatah wing of the Palestinian Authority? It was in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU, that shouts of “Death to the Jews!” and “Gas the Jews!” were heard at pro-Palestinian rallies. As The New York Times reported, “ugly threats were surpassed by uglier violence” as a new wave of Antisemitism sweeps across Europe even as anti-Israel fervor grows. Recently, there was a deadly attack on a Jewish Museum in Brussels, a Jewish-owned pharmacy in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles was destroyed and a synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany was firebombed.

The plague of physical and economic terrorism will only worsen until we find a way to take a tough stand against its practitioners rather than kowtow to them or capitulate to their demands.

Evidently the world can’t even wait for the generation of Nazi victims to pass before moving on to the next wave of hate against the Jews. While world leaders gathered in Berlin last month for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s 10th annual conference on Antisemitism, some participants noted that it was largely a gathering of governments who either pay lip service to the issue, or are fully committed but simply lack the wherewithal to have a serious impact on the problem, as in the case of France.

The more “sophisticated” Jew haters at least make an attempt to mask their hate as political activism, utterly fixated on the policies and actions of the Jewish state (while yawning at the daily bloodshed in Syria and elsewhere). Their form of terrorism is also cloaked in faux respectability: a boycott campaign against Israeli academic institutions and companies. Never mind that one of the targeted companies, Sodastream, is a major source of stable unemployment for Palestinians, and Israeli universities are full of professors harshly critical of their own government.

The plague of physical and economic terrorism will only worsen until we find a way to take a tough stand against its practitioners rather than kowtow to them, whitewash them or capitulate to their demands.

I will leave it to experts to decide a strategy that is effective for deterrence. But the first step is easy. Call it what it is.

Originally Published: The Hill

Tough talk on ISIS is not enough

By: Eli Verschleiser

In late 1998, national security officials under President Bill Clinton mulled a strike deep into Afghanistan that may have taken out Osama bin Laden. In the end, Clinton decided the potential cost of hundreds of innocent lives was too high.

No one can be sure that such a strike would have eliminated the al Qaeda terror chief, let alone forestalled the 9/11 terror attack three years later that cost the lives of 2,977 people, most of them Americans.

But Clinton and his military chiefs at the time, some of whom warned that holding back was a mistake, will always have to wonder, as will we all.

Will we face the same kind of hindsight in the future if, God forbid, the savages of ISIS (or ISIL, as the US calls the radical terror group) are able to infiltrate our borders and carry out a large-scale attack here?

As we mark the 13th anniversary of the worst attack on America in history, Americans are worried about new carnage, with a recent NBC News poll finding that nearly half (47 percent) of respondents saying we are less safe now than before Sept. 11, 2001, up substantially from 28 percent last year and, amazingly, up from 20 percent just a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Another poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal founds 61 percent of Americans, nearly two out of three, support increased military action against the Isis militants. No doubt they have been affected by videos showing mass executions in Syria, including children and the be-headings of American captives, and news of missing Libyan passenger jets likely commandeered by militants.

President Obama has an opportunity, and an obligation to reassure Americans. In his speech from the White House on Sept. 10, the president seemed to deviate between trivializing ISIS and beating the war drums. First he de-legitimized its religious roots, noting that it has harmed mostly other Muslims and emphasizing that ‘Islamic state’ is recognized by no government.

Then, sounding more like the Republican predecessor that invaded Iraq and Afghanistan than the domestic-minded Democrat who vowed to wind down those wars, Obama vowed that “America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat” and warned that those who attempt to harm Americans “will find no safe haven.” This is an echo of the Bush doctrine that America will not distinguish between terrorists and the governments that harbor them.

Ultimately the speech showed the president at his most determined, promising to “degrade and destroy” the capability of the militants and recognizing that “small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm.”

But are 475 new soldiers in Iraq on a non-combat mission, increased air strikes in Syria and more aid to the rebels fighting ISIS enough to accomplish those goals?

The president’s ability to take executive action as commander in chief is limited, and he needs strong support from both houses of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, to fully prosecute the mission of neutralizing Isis and its allies.

It’s not at all clear that he’ll get it from a war-weary and deeply partisan Congress. Many members will have to be convinced that arming rebels and minority groups resisting Isis – which is so extreme that al Qaeda distances itself -- is in our interest; others will fixate on blaming the president for failing to leave a sufficient interim force in Iraq, which could have stemmed the Isis tide, or failing to back the rebels in Syria in toppling Bashir Assad.

Others will simply urge sitting on our hands. Voters will be influenced by commentators who note that as bad as doing nothing sounds, acting ineffectively, or counter-productively, is worse.

“Maybe it’s time for America to stop taking the bait,” says Fox News host and commentator John Stossel. “Islamic militants do monstrous things all over the world. We cannot stop it all. Why do we assume that government doing something is always an improvement over government doing nothing?”

Stossel noted that Clinton launched Tomahawk missiles at Osama Bin Laden, missed and was mocked as a paper tiger.

But the problem with inaction vs. action is that the result in the former case is almost guaranteed: Isis will rise in popularity, adherents from all over the world, including the U.S., will continue traveling to the Middle East to join the fight or form terror cells in the West. The more we shirk away from our role as the world’s leading policeman against terror, the likelier the possibility we will live to regret it.

Originally Published: The Hill

Does Obama 'have the back' of our children, too?

By: Eli Verschleiser

President Barack Obama deserves credit for making the war against sexual assault on college campuses a top priority of his administration. In January, he created a task force of senior officials to coordinate federal enforcement efforts. And this month he created a government-run web site, notalone.gov, which will provide resources for students, help for victims and help track enforcement efforts.

Photo: D2L

“Perhaps most important, we need to keep saying to anyone out there that has ever been assaulted: you are not alone,” said President Obama. “We have your back. I’ve got your back."

It’s time for the White House to show it also has the back of children who undergo the horror of sexual abuse, by taking real action.

The White House Council on Women and Girls was created in response to members of Congress repeatedly sounding appropriate alarms about sexual assaults, mostly against women, in the military and on college campuses, leading to the president’s stronger posture.

What grassroots group is applying similar pressure to stamp out the scourge of children who are abused by relatives, teachers, authority figures and others to whom they have difficulty saying no, or reporting to their parents or police after they are victimized?

Consider the following:

• 1 in four girls and 1 in six boys under the age of are sexually violated before age 18.

• Every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving more than 6 million children.

• The United States has one of the worst records among industrialized nations – losing on average between four and seven children every day to child abuse and neglect.

• More than 90 percent of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way. 

I know the president takes these matters very seriously. He declared April National Child Abuse Prevention Month, vowing that “We all have a role to play in preventing child abuse and neglect and in helping young victims recover,” and encouraging Americans to look for warning signs such as changes in behavior and performance, untreated physical or medical issues, lack of adult supervision, and constant alertness.

Resources are also available on the Administration for Children and Families’ web site.

But just as it was important to up the ante against date rape or assaults in the military, it’s past time for tougher action, on both the federal and state level against the abuse of the weakest segment of our society. The president could start by calling on states to take a tougher stand and meet established federal benchmarks in fighting abuse.

The White House could hold state governments accountable by tying federal education funding to their efforts, commitment to and progress toward anti-abuse awareness programs.

The federal government could also mandate education both for teachers and students in abuse awareness and prevention, the same way they do to establish standards in math, science and other disciplines.

Another measure that could be implemented on the federal level would be mandating that “sexual predator” is stamped on the driver’s licenses of convicted offenders via the REAL ID act, similar to a recent provision in the state of Florida. Florida’s bundle of exemplary new laws make it the harshest in the country for sexual predators.

According to the Sun-Sentinel in south Florida -- which conducted an investigation by mining records in state databases, police reports and court documents -- nearly one quarter of sex offenders attacked again within six months of being released.

And these numbers do not include people living in Florida convicted in other states or federal court and those arrested but still awaiting trial for new sex crimes. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS,) in a study released in 2003 claims that compared to non-sex offenders released from state prisons, released sex offenders were four times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime.

“One person re-offending when you have innocent victims is too many,’’ said Lauren Book, founder of Lauren's Kids, which advocates for victims of childhood sexual abuse and is an ardent supporter of Florida’s civil commitment efforts.

"These are children. And so I fight every day to make it so that these monsters, these sexually deviant behaving individuals are as far away from our children as humanly possible,” she said.

Isn’t the ability to quickly identify unsafe situations, loudly and clearly say “No!” to a potential abuser and/or quickly tell a trusted adult about the abuse of equal importance to our children’s future as the mastery of scholastic skills? Even more so, when we consider that children who suffer abuse will often not only fall behind academically but are more prone to dysfunctional or even criminal behavior as adults, including the abuse of others.

I hope Obama will go beyond awareness months and speeches and begin to treat sexual and other forms or abuse against children as the public health hazard that it is.

Originally Published: The Hill