I'm watching President Biden's speech at the United Nations. Right now he's supposedly "defending democracy," which is his way of reciting Democratic Party talking points against his domestic opposition. But I'm more interested in his remarks about Russia, which are strident but don't seem open to diplomacy.
This is the United Nations -- the very forum in which nations were meant to work out their differences so that conflict could be avoided. Biden is saying a lot of good things about the need to deter aggression, to protect smaller nations, and so on, but he's not using the forum to call for talks to stop war in Ukraine.
Not only is this the right place, but it would also be the right time. Ukraine has regained leverage with a successful counteroffensive in the Donbas, and Russia is about to escalate the conflict with a mobilization of its civilian population in the war effort. Now is the time to talk: it is an urgent yet advantageous point.
Yet I hear nothing about talks from Biden: "It's Russia's war, and only Russia can end it." So the U.S. policy is not, as Biden declared when he took office that "diplomacy is back," but rather to isolate, punish, and threaten Russia in the hope it will give up, or that there will be internal political change. Is that wise?
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
Tune in: SiriusXM Patriot 125, 7-10 p.m. ET / 4-7 p.m. PT
Call: 866-957-2874
This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
