talkstohisself.....If you mean the article "Over 550 Rabbis, cantors, sign letter accusing Trump of abusing anti-semitism issue", I just read it. As a secular Jew and a Zionist, it's almost laughable. There are thousands of thousands of Rabbi's and Jewish leaders who support him. What you have is "self-loathing" Jews, usually lackys of the far left, who hate their Jewishness almost as much as they hate themselves. I can tell you that Trump may be the most popular President in Israels existence. I have family there. They tell me the majority of Israelis love him. What Trump has realized is that anti-semitism has been cultivated and nurtured by far left professors who never look at the issues from both sides. They have seeded impressionable young students with hate for not only Israel, but the United States. And since Freedom Of Speech is a protected right for American citizens, foreign born students with green cards, and special visa's are here as guests only. So it is ultimately up to the Sec. Of State to decide which "guest" stays and goes.
On the other hand, let’s discuss this opinion piece:
Any buyer’s remorse yet?
By SHAMMAI ENGELMAYER
May 15, 2025, 9:48 am
I have a question for all of you Donald Trump voters: Are you feeling any buyer’s remorse as yet?
If you are not regretting your vote last November 4th, you either have not been paying much attention to the news of late, or you are lying to yourselves.
On March 15, for example, Trump pledged that the Houthis in Yemen would be “completely annihilated” because of an intensive bombing campaign he had ordered. That campaign ended on Monday of last week. Just one day after a Houthi missile struck Ben-Gurion Airport, Trump revealed that a truce was now in place. Said he, “The Houthis have announced…, to us at least, that they don’t want to fight anymore… [and] we will take [them at] their word.” That “to us at least” is critical. The Houthis only agreed to stop attacking U.S. targets. The truce does not include attacks against Israel, as Houthi spokesmen gleefully assert, and the White House has not denied. The agreement also serves to grant the Houthis a legitimacy terrorists must never be granted.
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Amit Segal, an Israeli journalist and political commentator whose words in public often reflect what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says in private, said this on X: “Trump’s announcement…is a resounding message to the entire region: attack Israel, just leave us Americans alone.”
I welcome Edan Alexander’s release this past Monday, yet the timing of that release is suspect. It came moments before Trump boarded Air Force One for his trip to the Middle East. Also suspect was that Israel was excluded from those talks, and that the remaining 23 live hostages and the bodies of the 35 who Hamas murdered were not included in the deal. All this has led pundit after pundit to declare that Trump had given Hamas much the same legitimacy he gave the Houthis a week earlier.
They also say that by these actions and their timing, and by not including Israel on his trip this week, he was sending a message to the Arab states that Israel is not as important as they are. That message is underscored by Trump’s signing what he called “the largest defense cooperation agreement” in history. The agreement includes selling Saudi Arabia $142 billion worth of advanced missiles, radar systems, and transport aircraft, and involves more than a dozen U.S. defense contractors. By the time this column is published, he may also have announced an agreement to sell $2 billion worth of drones to Qatar. All of these potentially could be used against Israel.
Trump is still deliberately snubbing Israel during his visit to the region. Rather than dropping in to Israel for a photo-op visit with Edan Alexander, who was recovering in an Israeli hospital after spending 584 days as a Hamas hostage, the president asked the 21-year-old to meet with him in Qatar, Hamas’s bankroller. On Tuesday, Alexander declined the invitation. (He may visit Trump at the White House, however.)
Trump has repeatedly blindsided Israel — Netanyahu, especially — since January 20. Ominously, especially where Iran is concerned, this may not be the last time, judging by his firing of Mike Waltz as his national security adviser two weeks ago. He ostensibly did so because of Waltz’s use of the unsecured messaging app Signal. The real reason why Trump danced Waltz out of the White House door, however, was how Israel wants to deal with Iran. During Netanyahu’s April visit to Washington, Waltz “engaged in intense coordination” with Bibi “about military options against Iran,” as the Washington Post reported on May 3. Trump was displeased, the newspaper reported, although “displeased” may be too mild a characterization. According to the Times of Israel, Trump is “upset…over what he sees as an attempt to push the White House into military action against Iran’s nuclear program.”
Why does Trump feel so aggrieved? It is because he wants “a diplomatic solution,” not a military one, according to the Washington Post.
Netanyahu, of course, had no way of knowing that before he flew to Washington in April for the express purpose of “seeking Trump’s backing for military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” as Reuters reported on May 2. Bibi was “shocked” to learn “that U.S. talks with Iran were starting within days,” Reuters reported.
A “diplomatic solution”? Negotiations with Iran? Is that not what Trump and others on the right have attacked ever since the Obama administration announced its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise infamously known as the Iran nuclear deal? Is blindsiding Bibi what you expected him to be doing?
What makes it even worse is Trump’s telling Netanyahu that the United States would not assist it in any way If it attacked Iran, presumably including by withholding weapons stocks Israel might need.
Also on May 8, the Times of Israel and Reuters jointly reported that Trump “is no longer demanding [that] Saudi Arabia normalize ties with Israel as a condition for progress on civil nuclear cooperation talks.” This, the article stated, was “a major concession by Washington.” Under former U.S. President Joe Biden, not recognizing Israel was a deal-breaker.
If anyone in Netanyahu’s circle was shocked by that decision, however, he or she did not take seriously the hints U.S. officials were dropping earlier last week. On May 6, for example, a senior U.S. official warned that if “Israel doesn’t come to its senses, the price of missing out will be higher than ever before.” In a meeting with hostage families, the unnamed official added this: “The ceasefire agreement with the Houthis is just a prelude, and if Israel doesn’t wake up, the ‘Deal of the Millennium’ will also be finalized without it.”
It is no wonder that ever since the Houthi truce was announced, Netanyahu and senior ministers have been muttering to themselves and to everyone within hearing range that Israel “can defend itself by itself,” as various Israeli media have reported.
We who live in the United States must see all of this as just the latest in a string of Trump “friend of the Jews” moves that should be of concern to us all, you Trump-thumpers included.
Topping that list is his phony war against antisemitism on campus, which could create a huge backlash that will only increase Jew-hatred here.
Trump and his administration have cynically weaponized our legitimate fears about antisemitism in general and its explosion on college campuses in particular. His true goal has little or nothing to do with Jewish safety. He is using it as an excuse to attack academic institutions, control curricula, suppress dissent, target immigrants, and advance a broader conservative political agenda.
How Trump worded his January 29th anti-Semitism executive order is a dead giveaway about what he is really aiming at. It calls for investigating “anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” Calling Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and so many others “leftist, anti-American colleges and universities” tells us all we need to know. It is not about the Jews. It is about the fact that those institutions of higher learning dare to teach their students to think critically about subjects that are anathema to the far right in this country — the for the most part antisemitic far right. Trump made that clear that same day when he named those anathemized subjects in another executive order he signed. It threatened to cut off federal funding to K-12 schools that taught such things as “critical race theory” and “radical gender ideology.”
It never was about Jew-hatred. It is about controlling what students from kindergarten through college are to be taught and how they are to be taught it. It is straight out of fascism’s playbook, which emphasizes obedience, conformity, and loyalty, and discourages independent inquiry or critical analysis. “Believe, obey, fight!,” for example, was the slogan in Italian schools during Benito Mussolini’s reign. Nazi Germany required its schools to teach students Adolph Hitler’s own unique version of “critical race theory,” and to promote the idolization of Der Führer.
Thousands of people have been taking to the streets throughout this country protesting Trump’s actions in so many areas, and these protests are growing by the week. If colleges and universities cave to Trump’s very substantive and financially persuasive pressure tactics and/or if K-12 schools do, these protesters surely will blame the Jews, on whose behalf Trump claims to be acting.
Is this really what you voted for? Are you prepared to endure the consequences because Trump is “proud to be the best friend that Israel has ever had,” as he has said so many times?
Emboldening the Houthis and Hamas, firing Mike Waltz because he discussed the possibility of a joint Israel-U.S. attack on Iran, blindsiding Netanyahu by opening negotiations with Iran, threatening to cut off aid to Israel if it attacks Iran, avoiding a visit to Israel even though he was in the neighborhood, dropping the demand that the Saudis had to recognize Israel if it wants a nuclear deal with the United States these also are not the actions of Israel’s “best friend.”
Weaponizing campus antisemitism to advance an assault on the democratic values we should cherish is not the action of a “friend of the Jews.”
If you who voted for Trump do not yet have buyer’s regret, what more will it take for you to be convinced that you made a horrible mistake in November?
Shammai Engelmayer is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is
www.shammai.org.
