Dear Editor:
The news industry is a sensationalist one. Catchy headlines and clickbait are all the rage and bring in big business. But can we at least get some respite from the hyperbolic outrage while reading the Queens Jewish Link? A few weeks ago, a fellow letter writer compared Floral Park to Nazi Germany. Really?! I’m still unsure whether I was more outraged at the sheer ignorance of the comment or the fact that the editors allowed that into this otherwise wonderful publication. Then this past week, Warren Hecht compared Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy to a potential presidential run of open anti-Semite Rashida Tlaib.
I completely understand that Warren does not like Trump, to put it mildly, but in the immortal words of our late President, Joe Biden: “C’mon Man!” Comparing Trump, who with all his flaws, is still far and away the most sympathetic President to Jews and Israel to a member of Congress who this past week voted against banning October 7 terrorists from entering our country, is so absurd on its face, one would assume even an overtly partisan columnist with an eight-year-long case of Trump Derangement Syndrome would be ashamed to publish that under his name.
Avi Goldberg
Dear Editor:
Warren Hecht doesn’t want us to publicly mention the platform of Rabbi Kahane z”l, lest it justify Muslims accusing us of supporting ethnic cleansing.
I was surprised that Mr. Hecht, who now seems worried “about Jews who make the case for our enemies as to our intentions,” was not at all bothered when prominent Jewish Congressmen with prominent Jewish names, such as Schumer, Schiff, and Nadler, stood out with a public and vicious campaign against a sitting US president, to dispose him from office on bogus charges of Russian collusion. And neither did they apologize when he was vindicated.
How well does this exactly sit with the millions of Americans who voted for this president, and how this might, G-d forbid, fuel the anti-Semites amongst them, does not seem to concern Mr. Hecht one bit.
That the (false) accusation of Jews being disloyal and usurpers could now possibly enter the psyche of a broad swath of American society due to the unabashed actions of three powerful leftist “Jewish” Democrats should be more worrisome to us than someone quoting Rabbi Kahane’s opinion.
If Mr. Hecht indeed worries about what our adversaries might say, then he needs to reckon with millions of Trump supporters who are seething with anger towards these Jewish Democrats (amongst others) for hijacking and disabling over two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency by bogging him down with concocted and fake legal issues. Millions of conservatives in this country are also not very impressed when “Jewish” Democrats are soft on crime, illegal immigration, gender fluidity, and other woke garbage. This too can stir up anti-Jewish sentiment. But for some reason, Mr. Hecht isn’t fazed by any of this. And by the way, this, more than any Kahane quotes, could diminish support for Israel in Washington, as well. I should add that it makes little difference to the haters who seek opportunities to spread anti-Semitism that Torah-observant Jews are actually conservatives and vehemently oppose the shenanigans of the Jewish Democrats.
It certainly behooves Mr. Hecht and his ilk who cry wolf about White supremacy, extremism, and racism, to avoid unnecessarily stoking the flames of anti-Semitism in this country.
As has been mentioned by others, the current pro-Hamas rallies have nothing to do with what Rabbi Kahane said or wrote 30 years ago, or what is even repeated in his name today. The annihilation of the State of Israel, G-d forbid, was and remains their goal regardless.
Mr. Hecht’s fretting over what bullying “Palestinian Protesters can now argue, say or cite,” while ignoring the real damage being done by the Democrats he so adores, is unfortunately consistent with his anti-Trump obsession that blinds him from seeing the real “loose lips that sink ships.”
Moshe Lubart
Brooklyn New York
Dear Editor:
Warren Hecht frequently criticizes Donald Trump, accusing him of all sorts of terrible actions and motives. For now, it appears that Trump will be running for President against Joe Biden. Ergo, we can assume Mr. Hecht supports Biden. Throughout his pre-10/7 presidency, Biden did not actively push for a Palestinian state. In the current, post-10/7 landscape, after Hamas murdered 1,200 Jews, Biden is pushing hard for a Palestinian state as part of a so-called “two-state solution.” What does this tell us about Biden? That if you kill enough Jews, we will reward you with a state. Mr. Hecht uses his column week after week to muddy the waters and besmirch Trump, often with half-truths and outright lies. But actions speak louder than words, and Biden’s despicable actions re: Israel should not be supported by anyone with a conscience.
Doniel Behar
Dear Editor:
One of the great things about reading Warren Hecht’s weekly column is Mr. Hecht’s ability to take us on a journey to a parallel universe of candy canes and unicorns and a picturesque fantasyland where Democrats can do no wrong while everything Donald Trump does is wrong and terrible.
Case in point: In writing about the ridiculous $83 million judgment against Trump this past week, Mr. Hecht blames the verdict largely on Trump’s boorish behavior. Nowhere did Mr. Hecht mention that Trump’s accuser, E. Jean Carroll, waited 30+ years to bring this case. Nor was there any mention that the accuser lacked any tangible evidence of an attack. While she claimed to know the who, she could not identify the where, the what or the when with any specificity. It also would have been worth mentioning that the accuser is considered a “whack job” by most of those who know her. When asked what she would do with the $83 million the judge awarded her, unlike what I would imagine most victims of this type of assault would say, she proudly exclaimed she would get herself a new wardrobe. How refreshing! Carroll has also accused numerous other people of assaulting her through the years. Mr. Hecht also failed to note that billionaire and Democrat super-donor Reid Hoffman is footing the bill for all of Carroll’s legal bills related to the Trump trial.
Lastly, and most importantly, Mr. Hecht neglected to state that the trial was held in Manhattan, a county where Trump won a mere 12% (!) of the vote in 2020. Mr. Hecht credits the judge for not allowing Trump to turn the trial into a mockery or a political event. Outside of the fantasyland Mr. Hecht resides in, it is difficult to find anyone who thinks this Kangaroo Court trial was anything but a politically motivated sham and a complete mockery of the justice system.
Mr. Hecht cleverly reframes the open border issue, pitting the Biden administration vs. the State of Texas as one in which the State of Texas refuses to abide by a Supreme Court ruling regarding the barbed wire fence Texas has erected. Mr. Hecht completely ignores the far more relevant issue of whether the State of Texas can usurp federal jurisdiction over immigration and protect itself from the illegal invasion that is occurring due to Joe Biden’s absolute dereliction of his Constitutional duty to protect Americans from a foreign invasion.
Mr. Hecht’s accusing Trump of not supporting an immigration bill because it would help Biden in an election year is another misdirect and lawyerly sleight of hand. First, Biden tying an immigration bill to Ukraine funding is an extremely cynical political ploy. He knows not all Republicans are onboard with the endless funding of Ukraine for various reasons beyond the scope of this letter. So, Biden pretends he does not have the ability to close the border without Republicans signing off on Ukraine funding, and Mr. Hecht plays along with this game.
Second, Mr. Hecht’s accusation of Trump is gaslighting to the max, when one considers all the despicable actions Biden himself has engaged in, solely because it is an election year. Biden has pressured Israel to prematurely end their mission to destroy Hamas, and has been extremely conciliatory to Iran, just to please the left wing of his party and the Muslims in the swing state of Michigan. But wait, there’s more: A news report last week revealed that the Biden administration has been manipulating oil prices. The Federal Reserve has been secretly buying and selling oil futures to suppress the price during an election year, at a cost so far of over $1 trillion.
So, to recap, Biden is hampering US production for the climate vote, letting terrorists pump oil for us to buy and wasting over a trillion dollars to suppress oil prices and prop up the markets, all to help himself get re-elected.
It’s nice to live in a fantasy parallel universe, but the reality is Joe Biden’s failed policies have been a nightmare for Americans.
Jason Stark
Dear Editor:
This is a little late because of “Yeshivah Week,” but I just wanted to respond to Moshe Hill’s column from a couple of weeks ago dealing with the seemingly inevitable rematch between President Biden and former President Trump.
On the economy, it’s noticeable that Mr. Hill has shifted from insisting that it is terrible, to now saying that, well, it’s just pretty much what it was under Trump. Putting aside that by many metrics it is better (with another strong jobs report just coming out), was it a given that it would just snap back after the major shock from the pandemic? For a couple of years, it seemed that the experts were taking a recession as inevitable, and that was almost deemed necessary in order to bring inflation down. Instead, it’s looking like they are pulling off the “soft landing” of stopping inflation (that doesn’t mean prices have gone back down because that would be deflation, which is almost always bad news) while keeping jobs and wages strong. And that is all while most other countries have had a slower recovery. His comment dismissing one president’s economy as just being similar to his predecessor’s is much more accurate for Trump and Obama. I would say it’s more impressive to inherit a horrible economy and nurse it back to health, than to do what Trump did in taking the strong Obama economy and improving it marginally.
As for Mr. Hill’s contention that inflation is “100%” on Biden, I don’t know how he can say that with a straight face. Does he not remember the supply chain and demand issues caused by the pandemic? And inflation was and is a global problem, so was that all caused by Biden? Even economists who do argue that Biden contributed to the degree of inflation by the amount of cash he inserted into the economy, don’t say that it was primarily due to him. (Mr. Hill seems to simultaneously accuse Biden of pumping the brakes on the recovery and also of spending too much in a way that led to inflation – it’s somewhat contradictory.) And being that the US has slowed inflation at a greater rate and had the aforementioned stronger recovery than most, there is a strong argument that Biden’s policies were a net positive. And would Trump have done better? That’s hard to say when his economic agenda for a potential second term seems to be to just do the same inflationary things that he did as President, such as tariffs and tax cuts for the wealthy. That was fine (inflation-wise – a recent nonpartisan report concludes that the tariffs ultimately hurt the economy) when interest rates were low, but he seems to have no clue that adjustments might need to be made for a radically different post-Covid environment.
Mr. Hill also engages in some light election denialism, maintaining that there were voting illegalities in 2020. That would be news to the many courts that have ruled differently. He apparently is referring to the fringe independent-state-legislature theory that conservatives claim made many of the Covid-driven changes to voting procedures illegal. However, it wasn’t the law of the land in 2020, and the conservative Supreme Court has subsequently rejected it. Mr. Hill’s claim of the “Democratic machine in large cities” harvesting ballots in huge numbers is another popular far-right accusation that they have failed to back up. Is the proof just what he says about many more Democrats voting by mail? He must be aware that Trump spent months telling his supporters only to vote in person. (And then they acted like it was a scandal when the mail-in votes, which Republicans in many swing states required by law to be tabulated on election day, were all of a sudden added to the count – it’s almost like that was the point.) And in his rant, asking why wouldn’t the Democrats cheat in 2024 after the way they’ve acted in the past, he shows that he buys into many of the conspiracy theories that are popular in right-wing circles. Mr. Hill recently bragged about how better informed those on the right are compared to the left, but it was Fox News that had to settle a defamation suit for $787 million because, as internal communications showed, they felt they had to tell their audience what they wanted to hear, rather than the truth, out of fear that they would otherwise be abandoned for their even crazier competitors. It’s pretty clear by now that many on the Right, spurred on by their undisputed leader, are just going to go on believing what they want to believe, untethered from the facts, and nothing is going to make them change their mind.
Regards,
Yaakov Ribner
Those Were the Days
Dear Editor:
“Those were the days” – I’m referring to the theme song of the beloved, albeit racist, Archie Bunker in All in the Family. It seems we have nostalgia for the “good old days.” Remember when it snowed and ten kids would ring your doorbell offering to shovel your sidewalk? Maybe you recall your shoveling the snow and not worrying about your knees or back. Wasn’t it fun to walk or even run in the snow to get to your destination? Now it takes an hour to schlep the five blocks to Chase Manhattan as you are grabbing on for dear life to fences and cars, praying that you won’t slip on the ice.
Do you recall getting Coca-Cola as a treat and not worrying about the sugar and calories? How about enjoying your cholent without paying regard to the fat on the meat or whatever was in the kishke. (I’m not referring to the Tam Tam kishke with assorted vegetables; I’m talking about the real greasy, fatty kishke.) How about the Ring Dings that you had for school lunch while you threw the accompanying apple and American cheese sandwich into the garbage?
Then, there’s the article in The Wall Street Journal about a woman who was arrested for stealing trendy Stanley cups. Yes, that’s right – not shoes, pocketbooks, or jewelry, but insulated cups! Is it me? (really “I,” but that’s for a future article about grammar.) Some of these tumblers, depending on color, can go for as much as $200 each. Excuse me, but what’s the problem with a five-cent paper cup with a lid? I’m assuming your nail polish must also match your cup. I guess I’m out of sorts about prices, because I just recovered from the shock of my oil bill. Anyway, enjoy your water in your special cup and L’Chayim!
Debbie Horowitz
An Open Letter to Mr. Hecht
Mr. Hecht, I was told a long time ago, “everyone’s a potential customer.” You are privileged to be given a weekly space to publicly share your opinions. While some readers do not necessarily agree with those opinions, they could at some point need an attorney. So, the analogy you wrote a couple of weeks back about Blacks in the South and BLM was beyond the pale, and some who lean conservative might think otherwise about your services for a comment like that.
This past week, you go back to taking shots at your and my favorite President. The E. Jean Carroll case was bizarre. On May 24, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) into law, which created a special one-year look-back window, allowing survivors whose case or claim had expired outside the statute of limitations, and who were 18 or older when they were assaulted in New York State, to file a lawsuit against the person who harmed them. So, this woman goes after President Trump. It’s not a criminal case. There’s no evidence he did anything to her. No rape kit. His DNA was not found on her. Simply because New York votes overwhelmingly Democratic, the jury is slanted to begin with. After Trump loses, he screams bloody murder that this whole thing is preposterous, she sues him again, this time for slander. Mr. Hecht, this isn’t something worth the space in the paper.
Here is something that deserves highlighting. There is a special election taking place in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, pitting Mazi Pilip against Tom Suozzi. Mr. Suozzi was a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi’s agenda the last time he was in office, and he will continue to be one for Joe Biden’s open borders among the other radical left agenda items. Now, this week, did you know both Grace Meng and Gregory Meeks voted in favor of illegal aliens over the citizens of this country and specifically, of New York City? I would encourage those in their district to call their offices, immediately. They both joined the minority and voted against bills that would deport illegals who commit Social Security Fraud or are caught with a DUI. Meanwhile, the QJL puts a picture of them on the cover smack in the middle of the page! If the VHQ wants to honor them, so be it. Put it on page 52 in the corner. Anyone who puts illegals over citizens should not be celebrated, even if they deserve hakaras ha’tov for something else.
Sincerely,
Shalom Markowitz
Dear Editor:
First, we have a group of migrant asylum seekers assault two police officers (one a lieutenant) in Times Square. They took turns kicking their heads and torso. After being arrested, they were released within hours without bail. Upon leaving the Manhattan Criminal Court after arraignment, one gave the middle finger. Neither the District Attorney nor the judge requested bail. More than one migrant already had a previous arrest record.
Second, NYPD has been tracking another larger group of migrants who are roaming Manhattan as pick-pockets. What’s next, carjacking? The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be allowed to immediately deport any migrant assaulting law enforcement officials or committing crimes against citizens. Being in America is a privilege earned by going through the legal process of becoming a citizen, not an automatic right upon your first steps on our sovereign soil. Migrants should obey the same laws we do, and suffer the same consequences for any crimes committed.
Sincerely,
Larry Penner
Great Neck, New York
Dear Editor:
The frum community here in Queens finds itself in a situation with our local elected officials, prompting a need for serious reflection. Once again, we observe the disheartening reality of another so-called “Moderate Democrat,” promoted by certain people in our community, betraying our trust. This time, City Councilman Jim Gennaro’s vote to override Mayor Adams’ veto of progressive anti-police legislation has left us questioning his allegiance to our community over his progressive allies.
Gennaro, touted as a moderate, has consistently aligned himself with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, raising doubts about his commitment to our community’s interests. His voting pattern, aligning with DSA members on the Council – nine out of ten times – challenges the notion of true moderation.
We have seen a pattern of purported moderates prioritizing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party over our community. They seem to view the far-Left Labor Unions that fund their elections as their true bosses, rather than the voters they represent. While there are genuine moderate Democrats, such as Bob Holden, Gennaro’s voting record does not reflect that.
In the aftermath of Gennaro’s decision, Democratic Party surrogates in our community are urging not to speak out and discouraging protest. This is something they have done in the past with other Progressives masquerading as moderates, a proverbial political wolf in sheep’s clothing. However, our community cannot afford to stay silent. I encourage everyone to express their concerns by calling Gennaro’s office, visiting in person, or both, and making their voices heard. Only by vocalizing our outrage can we compel Gennaro to put the voters first, not his political allies. To ensure accountability, we must be vocal, letting our elected officials know that they represent us first.
As we approach the 2024 local elections, candidates for State Senate, Assembly, and Congress must publicly denounce Gennaro’s vote and stand strong for our community. Our collective voice will serve as a powerful reminder that supporting the community’s interests is non-negotiable.
In conclusion, let us stand united, make our voices heard, and insist that our elected representatives prioritize the safety and well-being of our community. And those who do not prioritize the community over party, we will vote out of office.
Rabbi Dovid (David) Hirsch
