RUTHFULLY YOURS

After President Obama moved on his own to normalize relations with Cuba, White House officials told reporters they were confident that the thaw between the countries would result in positive change in Cuba. How’s that working out?

Not well. Political dissidents were rounded up before and after Obama’s visit last month. The Columbia Journalism Review noted that last week’s Communist Party Congress was “a particularly opaque affair, even by Cuban standards. Raúl Castro emphatically rejected new reforms during the opening speech.” “Julie Martinez,” a Havana secretary who asked that her real name not be used, told the Financial Times: “The same [80-year old] leaders and the same [lack of] reforms. . . . Am I supposed to wait till I’m their age to see some real change?”

Castro supporters are crowing that the Cuban regime has gained new credibility and legitimacy without having to make more than surface concessions to openness. Indeed, the evidence is that the U.S. policy on Cuban dissidents has, if anything, gotten worse since Obama’s opening. “Obama said his policies would help change Cuba, but instead the evidence is that Cuba is changing America more,” concludes Thor Halvorssen, founder of the Human Rights Foundation, an internationally respected organization fighting authoritarian and totalitarian rule of both the Right and the Left.

Consider the following three examples of U.S. interests’ kowtowing to the Cuban regime, and discriminating against Cuban Americans, in just the last month.

Paquito D’Rivera, a Cuban-American jazz musician who has won 14 Grammys, had already played at White House events. He was invited to perform there again, on April 29, by the renowned Thelonious Monk Institute — but was then told by the White House that he wouldn’t be attending, because he was “not passing the vetting process.”

D’Rivera quickly smelled a Castro rat, and expressed his belief that Cuban officials had intervened and tried to have him banned. In February, he had told the Miami New Times that Obama’s openness to Cuba would result only in “cosmetic” changes, mostly improvements in the Cuban elite’s access to the West: “Maybe now, some people, some elites, have the chance to go play with American musicians, like Wynton Marsalis going and playing there . . . but that doesn’t change much.”

President Obama came into office in 2009 promising “transformation” and he has delivered on that promise. Over the past 7 1/2 years we’ve witnessed billion dollar deficits and the establishment of a highly politicized and inexorably failing health care system (“Obamacare”); the “weaponization” of government agencies (think, IRS, EPA, DOJ) to intimidate and attack his political opponents; the calculated and feckless decline of American power and influence throughout the world; relentless redistributionist policies; and the president’s support (often with a wink and a nod) of thuggish (and sometimes violent) radical groups like “Occupy Wall Street” and “Black Lives Matter.” As a result, America is “on edge” — socially, racially, economically — as it hasn’t been for decades. Indeed, many have reached the sobering insight that America’s best days may now be behind her.

Overlooked by most in Obama’s relentless efforts to “remake” America has been his ongoing and dangerous transformation of our military. Here I am not going address the dozens of weapon systems cut, or the tens of thousands of troops given their “pink slips.” What I want to speak to is his administration’s systematic destruction of the 200+ year-old culture of the U.S. military. This “multicultural makeover,” happening right before our eyes, threatens to undermine the very fabric of our armed forces. The forced acceptance of open homosexuality and the burgeoning hostility toward Christianity; the gratuitous degradation of our troops (e.g., forcing ROTC cadets to march in red high heels to experience what it’s like to be a woman; making male soldiers wear simulated lactation devices, or lecturing them on “white privilege,” dare I go on?); the “full-court press” to make our forces more diverse, most alarmingly by opening up combat positions (even special forces) to female soldiers; and the relentless purging from the ranks of dozens of fine general officers whose only “offense” was their failure to “get with the program” — all of this, like some nightmarish “progressive” Blitzkrieg, is now wreaking havoc with our reluctant service members, the objective being that of a complete and irreversible cultural transformation. What’s next, I wonder — weaponized hair and nail salons on wheels?

The 28 pages of a Congressional report detailing where the 9/11 hijackers got their financing have been classified for years, but what they contain is an open secret. Former Senator Bob Graham explained: “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.” So why keep this information secret? Because the Saudis wield undue influence in Washington, among both parties – an influence that has deformed our response to the global jihad threat, and continues to do so.

Responding to a bill that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue governments linked to terror attacks inside the U.S., the Saudis have acted like neither an ally nor an innocent party: they’ve threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. asserts, vividly demonstrating why their influence in Washington is so detrimental.

Nonetheless, they still have a friend in Barack Obama, a man who has never hesitated to reach out in friendship to those who threaten the United States. Obama is trying to get Congress to reject the bill, and his solicitude for the Saudis is drawing criticism even from members of his own party. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called on him to release the 28 pages: “If the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and the royal family, they think it would be appropriate that this document be released before the president makes that trip, so that they can talk about whatever issues are in that document.”

The New York Daily News, normally a reliable Democratic Party organ, fumed: “If the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at him by the extended family of September 11.”

Of course, all too many Republicans are just as much in the tank for the Saudis as the Democrats. CBS News reported on September 30, 2001, on George W. Bush’s watch, that “two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.” If Hitler had had twenty-four relatives on U.S. soil on December 8, 1941, would FDR have urgently evacuated them to Berlin?

In February 2015, President Obama hosted a three-day summit on “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) that featured a roll-out of three local programs in Boston, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. This culminated CVE efforts by the Obama administration going back to 2011.

But just over a year from Obama’s White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, the programs are now admittedly a complete failure — and publicly rejected by elements of the very communities they intend to serve.

Even at the time of the summit, the CVE programs had already been deemed a failure.

These programs are also a practical failure in preventing violent extremism. Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported on one Somali youth leader in Minneapolis associated with government-funded CVE programs who later attempted to join the Islamic State.

Remarkably, as the Obama CVE programs are in complete meltdown, Republican leaders such as Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation are openly embracing Obama’s CVE agenda — and even calling for its expansion.

Kicking off their CVE programs in December 2011, the administration issued the “White House Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism,” which articulated its goals:

To support our overarching goal of preventing violent extremists and their supporters from inspiring, radicalizing, financing, or recruiting individuals or groups in the United States to commit acts of violence, the Federal Government is focused on three core areas of activity: (1) enhancing engagement with and support to local communities that may be targeted by violent extremists; (2) building government and law enforcement expertise for preventing violent extremism; and (3) countering violent extremist propaganda while promoting our ideals. (pp. 1-2)

So Obama’s own stated goals fall into three areas: 1) engagement; 2) training; and 3) counter-propaganda. In each of these areas, Obama’s CVE programs have been a complete failure.

1. Engagement

Obama’s CVE policies were developed in 2011 specifically at the demand of U.S. Muslim groups. Now, the very same Islamic groups that demanded CVE are some of its loudest opponents. They claim that the administration is promoting “Islamophobia” through their programs.

Just a few months after the February 2015 White House Summit, Islamic groups in Boston — one of the cities selected for funding local CVE programs — were openly attacking those policies:

Islamic and civil rights groups in Boston and two other cities spoke out Thursday against a federal government initiative to counter violent extremism, saying it unfairly targets the nation’s Muslim communities.

“There’s no evidence programs like this are effective,” said Liza Behrendt, organizing consultant for Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-discrimination group. “It’s a federal program that singles out Muslim communities and reinforces false notions of the link between Islam and terrorism.”

BREAD OF AFFLICTION though it may be, to me, matzo has always been a treat. Of course, finding the right delivery system for this admittedly austere cracker—preferably one involving lots of butter—helps. I’m talking about matzo brei (“fried matzo” in Hebrew), a satisfying scramble of eggs and crumbled matzo that’s a favorite among Jews forgoing leavened bread during the Passover holiday (not to mention plenty of non-Jews who have passed through my kitchen). Traditionally breakfast fare, this hybrid of French toast and scrambled eggs makes an equally comforting lunch or supper.

There are those who insist that Jews fleeing Egypt invented fried matzo the minute they hit the Sinai, but in fact the dish only became popular around the turn of the last century, when automated production made matzo more affordable and therefore ripe for riffing. The preparation method varies from family to family. One version, probably Sephardic in origin, serves up the brei like a frittata, cut into wedges. Some cooks add vanilla, cinnamon and sugar to the egg mixture before cooking. Others take things in a savory direction by adding spices or fridge leftovers. Schmaltz lovers fry in chicken fat instead of butter, and those who prefer a softer brei use more water.

I like my matzo brei scrambled and eat it unadorned. My kids like theirs with maple syrup, and various relatives go in for a garnish of jam, or a sprinkling of sugar, or generous dollops of applesauce and sour cream. With so many options available, you can see why I keep a box of matzo in the cupboard year-round. CONTINUE AT SITE

On Monday, millions of children will ask their parents: Why is tonight different from all other nights of the year?

Children asking this question in Jewish homes around the world will be told that the Passover festival commemorates the liberation of their people from enslavement in Egypt and celebrates the civilization that emerged from that breakout into independence. Families gathered at an orchestrated meal—the Seder—will begin the story by tasting the bitterness of subjection, make their way through debates over interpretations of the event, and culminate in joyful and occasionally (after the designated four cups of wine) raucous song.

Nor will the ironies of liberation be lost on households that have laboriously prepared for its re-enactment: No one who observes the exacting requirements of Passover can doubt the disciplining challenges involved in attaining freedom.

Our family celebrates Passover with personal as well as historical freight. In the summer of 1940, my parents executed our flight from a fate worse than slavery at the hands of the Soviets and the Nazis who took turns subjugating the Romanian city we escaped, Czernowitz. Every successful getaway like ours was studded with improbabilities that some call miracles.

In his recital of the Passover Haggadah (the text that guides the Seder meal), my father put special emphasis on the phrase: “And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt—not by the hands of an angel, and not by the hands of a seraph, and not by the hands of a messenger, but the Holy One, blessed be he, himself, in his own glory and in his own person.” My father said we should likewise carry out life’s toughest tasks ourselves rather than entrust them to agents. He may have had in mind his own rescue of us and his failure to save members of his family who were murdered.

We were never to forget that our timely exit from Europe coincided with the loss of several million others like us. Every year, we include in our family reading of the Haggadah a postwar insert circulated by the Canadian Jewish Congress honoring both those who perished at the hands of the Nazis and those who went down fighting:

“On the first day of Passover the remnants in the Ghetto of Warsaw rose up against the adversary, even as in the days of Judah the Maccabee. ‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided’ [2 Samuel 1:23], and they brought redemption to the name of Israel through all the world.”

This tribute concludes with one of Maimonides’s 13 principles of faith: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the messiah—and though he tarry, yet I believe.” Participants in our Seder traditionally differ in how deeply they linger over the tarrying and how fervently over the belief.