THE FURTHER CORRESPONDENCES OF MARC SUSSELMAN PART 18
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22 January 2024
MS said:
Michael,
The Ben Shapiro video provides an excellent overview ot the history of the Jewish presence in Palestine, beginning in 1200 BCE, the Zionist movement and the establishment of the modern State of Israel. I have only three criticisms:: he speaks too fast for most people to follow him; his criticisms of the UN will alienate many of the people he is trying to convince; and it would have helped if he had concluded the presentation with a summary of the main points.
Still, thank you for posting it.
But Wolff and his anti-Israel acolytes, some of whom are also anti-Semitic, will reject it, because Ben Shapiro is a known right-wing Republican advocate, and due to his criticisms of the UN.
Best,
Marc
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MS said:
Zimmerman,
You should watch the Ben Shapiro video. You might learn something.
Yes, Shapiro is a right-wing Republican (with whom I disagree on domestic politics), but there is little of that in the video, aside from his criticism of the UN, which is not without basis.
You claim to be an academic, a philosopher, an open-minded person searching for the truth.. Yet you reject seeing something, and criticize it to Wolff's sycophantic audience, based simply on a political label. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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MS said:
We are living in an alternate universe.
"https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/politics/new-hampshire-trump-voters/index.html"
If Hitler were alive today, could he get elected President? I am not sure that the answer is a definitive, “No.” After all, they say he got the trains to run on time.
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MS said:
Wonderful, now we have Rapko comparing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a comic routine by a British comic, pretending to criticize immigration policies in Britain, which Rapko suggests could be transformed into a catchy Turner Swift song.. You will note, the comic doesn’t mention the Norman invasion of 1066, which the native Anglo-Saxons vigorously defended against, and lost.
Am I mistaken, but is there no difference between immigrants coming to a country seeking employment and offering to use their skills to improve the host nation’s economy, and immigrants, i.e., terrorists, aka as Hamas supporters, invading a country and slaughtering its civilian population, raping its women, and beheading its children – or am I daft? I know, I know, I just do not have a sense of humor.
Is Rapko’s comment the best example of intellect which Wolff’s blog attracts?
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MS said:
23 January 2024
So now Eric responds to my accusation that he is anti-Semitic by telling us that he is a physician, and that many of his mentors were Jewish, mentors whom he did not choose, but who were chosen to be his mentors by the medical school he attended. He has treated Jewish patients, some bearing the tattoos of the Nazi death camps, as part of his responsibility as a physician. Many of his co-workers, whom he did not choose to be his co-workers, are Jewish. And he cries when he sees movies about the Holocaust, and quotes about Israel from the writings of Jewish authors. This is convincing evidence, he claims, that he is not anti-Semitic.
It is not. I evaluate whether he is anti-Semitic by what he writes about the Israelis, who, it must be admitted, are mostly Jewish, and the Palestinians. And at every turn, when it comes to determining who is telling the truth about events which Eric did not himself witness, he chooses to believe the Palestinians, and rejects that the statements of the Israelis. This is the typical trademark of the anti-Semite – the Israelis – the Jews – must be lying, because, well, they are Jews. It is this anti-Semitic mind-set which led the French military to accuse Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly as it turned out, of being a spy for the Germans, despite his adamant denials. Eric is willing to jump to conclusions, before all the evidence is in, that any loss of life attributed to the IDF must be true, because, well the Palestinians say so, like the alleged bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza which the Palestinians claimed was bombed by the IDF, when it turned out was a misfired rocket by Islamic Jihad.
When Anonymous compared the killing of Nazis by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto – Jews who were being deported to death camps to be gassed and incinerated – to the Hamas massacre on October 7, a blasphemous, hideous comparison, did Eric say to Anonymous, no, that it is grotesque comparison and unacceptable? No, he did not, he let it slide and was silent, and by his silence, by his willingness to accept this grotesque and blasphemous comparison, he marked himself as an anti-Semite. Silence is complicity. (To his credit, LFC, and only LFC, out of all of the erudite commenters on Wolff’s blog, criticized the comparison. Not even wallerstein, who claims to be a Jew, had the fortitude and self-respect to denounce the comparison.)
Eric writes:
“To be clear, the allegations of mass rape have come from the Israeli regime, not women. This is where accountability is crucial. The compelling question here is if, indeed, women do come forward, and there is evidence to make a case for systematic rape, does this then justify genocide? To put it more clearly, does sexual violence against a particular group of women ever justify the systematic annihilation of another group to whom the alleged perpetrators belong?”
Here again, Eric questions the word of the Israelis. But women have come forward. During his opening statement before the International Court of Justice, Dr. Tal Becker provided the court with an eyewitness statement of one of the music festival attendees of seeing another attendee being gang raped by a group of Hamas terrorists, who, as they raped her, cut off her breast and tossed it around like a toy, and then one of the rapists shot her in the head as he was penetrating her. But this is not enough evidence for Eric. Aside from the rapes, he ignores the evidence of mutilated bodies, with arms, legs, and heads cut off = see the video link below reported by an Indian journalist, of parts of mutilated bodies being stored at an Israeli military base converted into a morgue:
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlH7NK1yyg"
But, Eric says, the reports of rape are unconfirmed, so who cares about the mutilated bodies.
And what about the claim of genocide? Israel has never stated that it intends to annihilate the Palestinian people. It has stated it intends to destroy Hamas, in its entirety. Would killing all of the members of the Nazi party during WWII have constituted a genocide? Netanyahu’s biblical reference to Amalek clearly referred to killing Hamas and its terrorists members, not to the Palestinian people themselves. And a sign of Eric’s anti-Semitism is his willingness to twist and distort this statement in order to suit his anti-Semitic program. If Israel wanted to commit genocide against the Palestinian people, it could have done so years ago, after all, as Israel’s critics are quit to point out, its military might is unequaled in the Middle East. In point of fact, however, the population of the Palestinian people has been increasing year after year.
Eric resorts to the ubiquitous defense of the anti-Semite that criticism of Israel does not equate to anti-Semitism, quoting the statement to that effect by Jewish British Labour leader Naomi Winborne-Idrissi. I agree. I have frequently criticized Israel’s policies over the years, particularly its expansion of the settlements in the West Bank. But we are not talking about criticizing Israel’s policies here. We are talking about Eric’s repeated, persistent crediting statements of the Palestinians, and discrediting the statements of Israel. That’s anti-Semitism. And what does he base his willingness to believe the Hamas terrorists over Israel’s spokespeople? That, based on his limited knowledge of Islam, it would be sacrilegious for the terrorists to have done what Israel has accused them of. But he ignores the following statement by Fathi Hammad, Interior Minister of Hamas, who stated, on the record, in 2019:
“We are sharpening the knives. … If we die it will be when we are killing you [Jews], and we will cut off your heads, Allah willing. … We must attack every Jew on the planet – slaughter and kill. .. I will die as I blow up and cut – what? The throats of the Jews and their legs. We will tear them to shreds, Allah willing.”
To excuse his predilection to criticize Israel, Eric asserts that, well, we all have biases by virtue of the society in which we grow up. I do not know if that is true for everyone or not, but it certainly does not minimize Eric’s persistent, repeated, reflexive willingness to believe the lies perpetrated by Hamas, over the statements of the Israelis, who, after all, being Jewish, must be lying.
So, no, Eric, your protestations that as a physician you know and have worked for and with Jews does not acquit you of the undeniable evidence of your anti-Semitism. You are an anti-Semite.
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25 January 2024
MS said:
wallerstein’s most recent comments on Wolff’s blog demonstrate what a sick, warped, and frankly anti-Semitic mind he has. Nothing he wrote is theologically or historically accurate. He knows nothing about the Jewish religion and its precepts, nor about Jewish history.
He writes:
“The Jews see themselves as the eternal victims, from being slaves of the Pharoah in Egypt to the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests to the Romans to the Crusades to the Inquisition to the pogroms in Russia to the Dreyfus case up to the Nazis. Everybody has done what they could to persecute them in spite of their pure innocence. That's what they teach their children: I speak from personal experience and I've talked this over with many Jewish friends on the left.”
“The Jews see themselves as the eternal victims,” as if none of what he writes ever really happened to them, they are a bunch of paranoid hypochondriacs.
“Given this level of hypocrisy and outright blindness about who they are and what they are up after over 55 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian land and a system widely described as apartheid, it seems "poetically just" that people will begin to compare them to Nazis.”
This again demonstrates wallerstein’s utter ignorance regarding the founding of Israel and the ensuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He ignores the fact that the Palestinians and Arabs rejected the UN partition plan to share Palestine and instead attacked Israel with the goal of “driving the Jews into the sea.” The “occupied territory” was acquired after in 1967 the Arabs once again attacked Israel with the goal of driving the Jews into the sea. They failed. Yet Wallerstein, in his sick, perverted mind claims that therefore comparing the Israelis to the Nazis, who gassed and incinerated 6,000,000 Jews, is apt. I see why he did not object to Anonymous’s slanderous comparison of the Warsaw ghetto uprising to Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
“Yes, I'm familiar with Yom Kippur and given the character of the Jewish god, it's impossible to live up to his expectations.
So faced with their god, the Jews are constantly falling short of his demands and laws, but if you look at the Jewish history, as narrated to a child (me) in the 1950's, in a reform synagagogue [sic], "we" (the Jews) were the eternal victims of their intolerance and persecution, persecuted mainly because "we" strived to be faithful to god's commandments. Thus, "we" were not only the victims, but victimized because we were god-fearing and god-loving.
In my Jewish mis-education they never brought up the case of Spinoza, persecuted by the same Jews for thinking too much. I myself simply refused to have a bar mitzvah.”
This demonstrates wallerstein’s utter ignorance regarding Judaism. His statement “given the character of the Jewish god, it’s impossible to live up to his expectations” was the rationale for Paul’s invention of Christianity, that the 613 mitzvot (good deeds) which Jews were expected to adhere to in order to find salvation, this was an impossible and unattainable objective, and therefore Jews could reject all of the mitzvot, and instead find grace by accepting Jesus as their savior, which dispensed with the need to perform the mitzvot, including circumcision and the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher), because Jesus had already died for their sins. This made it much easier for people to accept Christianity, because it lifted the burden of individual responsibility for one’s conduct.
He writes as if there is nothing admirable in the Jewish religion. He ignores entirely Judaism’s emphasis on individual responsibility for one’s actions, both good and bad, the latter of which one must express atonement for. The Yom Kippur liturgy asserts that the sins one has committed against God, for example, failing to keep the Sabbath, God can forgive; but God does not forgive the sins that Jews commit to their fellow human beings, both Jewish and non-Jewish. For those the individual must seek forgiveness from the individual whom s/he has wronged.
wallerstein keeps claiming that I will wrongly accuse him of being a self-hating Jew. His own recent comments demonstrate that he is, beyond question, a self-hating Jew.
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26 January 2024
MS said:
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42nMkSNmCzM"
How does he, who spoke up against every evil, feel about the silence of the Trump supporters, who keep their mouths shut about his transgressions in the hopes of staying in his favor? True, there is no evidence that Trump has ordered the hit on any of his opponents, but are his attacks on our democracy any less evil, his perpetual lying and insulting of others any less worthy of condemnation? And is not Jesus present when he sees the silence of his Republican acolytes?
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MS said:
Hallelujah!
"https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/netanyahu-letter-israel-national-security-intl/index.html"
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27 January 2024
MS said:
Everyone - particularly Wolff's sycophantic, anti-Israel, anti-Semtic acolytes -should read Ruth Marcus's searing condemnation of the ICJ's conclusion that Israel has committed acts of genocide in its self-defense invasion of Gaza.
"https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/26/un-international-court-justice-israel-gaza-south-africa/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_mo"
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MS said:
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89qqsGmrSP0"
This is the rambling, lying, sexual-harassing, fascist buffoon whom the Republicans want to be our next President. America’s reincarnation of Hitler.
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MS said:
Ultra-nationalism and fascistic tendencies have deep roots in American society, going back to the 1920s and 1930s. Trump is just its most recent, and unfortunately most successful, version.
Watch:
"https://www.pbs.org/video/nazi-town-usa-y4vqkt/"
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28 January 2024
MS said:
First, let me say that the comment that Ruth Marcus’s opinion suffers from the deficit that it is “one-sided” is meaningless. Everyone’s opinion about anything tends to be one-sided – it is that person’s opinion. That does not automatically mean that it is irredeemably biased to such an extent that it lacks validity. The question is, regarding any particular topic, whose one-sided opinion is the most accurate, the most valid.
Ms. Polgreen’s Opinion Piece is so permeated with specious, ahistorical and irrelevant assertions that, in comparison to Marcus’s opinion piece, it is nonsense. And she laces her analysis with references to Israel’s wealth, resurrecting the centuries-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the world through their ill-gotten material assets.
The very title of the article, that rules have to apply to Israel, just like to everyone else, is grossly misleading and circular. Further in the article, Polgreen states:
“The court was not asked to rule on whether Israel had in fact committed genocide, a matter that is likely to take years to adjudicate. Whatever the eventual outcome of the case, it sets up an epic battle over the meaning and values of the so-called rules-based order. If these rules don’t apply when powerful countries don’t want them to, are they rules at all?”
In stating this, she acknowledges that concluding whether Israel was, in fact, guilty of genocide had not been determined. Only “years” of investigation could determine this, with any validity. But, as a provisional, cautionary measure, the ICJ was justified in concluding that Israel had committed genocide, and should stop doing so. This is reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts’ announcement, “Sentence first; verdict afterwards.” Would we accept a ruling by a court regarding the guilt of a man accused of rape, “We have not yet determined if you actually committed the rape you are accused of, just stop doing it.” This is akin to the lawyer asking the defendant, “Have you stopped beating your wife.”
Yes, rules should apply to Israel, and to every country, even-handedly. But first it must be determined if the rule has been broken. To say, “We do not know if you have actually broken the rule yet, but it appears that you may have, and therefore we are warning you not to do it again” is nonsense. It assumes what it is supposed to prove – the classical circular argument. She states, “The International Court of Justice is not some kangaroo court.” A court which would engage in issuing a sentence without having first determined a definitive finding of guilt sure sounds like a kangaroo court to me.
Polgreen proceeds to seek to buttress her position by noting that Russia was condemned by the ICJ for its ruthless invasion of Ukraine, and Myanmar for its massacre of the Rohingya. This inapt comparison obscures a salient difference – Ukrainians did not attack Russia, calling for a self-defense retaliation by Russia; the the Rohingya did not commit a massacre of the Myanmar people, calling for actions by Myanmar self-defense. This fatuous comparison does in fact elide and ignore that Israel’s self-defense invasion was triggered by Hamas’s brutal, barbaric massacre of Israeli women, men and children; the rape of Israeli women; and the beheading of Israeli children. This is not to say that these deliberately genocidal acts by Hamas would justify retaliatory genocidal acts by Israel, but as Polgreen admits, whether Israel has actually engaged in genocide – the deliberate program to annihilate a population based on its ethnicity and/or religion – has not been determined. That Hamas’s acts were deliberate is not in question.
She continues to make this inapt comparison by referring to Syria’s destruction of Aleppo and Russia’s devastation of Mariupol, ignoring the fact that the populace of Aleppo did not commit a massacre of Syrians, nor did the populace of Mariupol massacre Russians. Again, Hamas’s massacre of Israelis is not justification for counter-genocidal acts by Israel, but again, whether a genocide has occurred is a question of intent, which cannot be proved by circumstantial evidence of collateral damage. There is no question of Hamas’s intention, whose leaders have stated they are committed to the annihilation of Israel and the extermination of all the Jews living there, and that they will repeat the massacre of October 7 given the chance.
Polgreen laces her analysis with references to Israel’s wealth, resurrecting the centuries-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the world through their ill-gotten material assets.
She graciously acknowledges that Hamas, “in this instance struck first, on Oct.7,” but then attempts to minimize this fact, stating, “But two can play the game of who started it and who is to blame, rolling back the clock to biblical times to try to fix ultimate responsibility for the catastrophe of Israel and Palestine. No history lesson will salve the present agony.” What is this reference to “biblical times” supposed to mean? No Palestinians, no Muslims existed during the kingdom of King David, and the Israelis have not made any argument attributing the ensuing Diaspora under the Romans to Palestinians. What is her point?
She proceeds to make the ahistorical statement: “”[Is] there no venue in the international system to which the stateless people of Palestine and their allies and friends can go to seek redress amid the slaughter in Gaza? And if not, what are they to do? For the cause of Palestinian statehood, every alternative to violence has been virtually snuffed out, in part because Israel’s allies have helped to discredit them.” This assertion is a warped distortion of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Violence is not, and has not been, the Palestinians’ only recourse in order to obtain their own state. They have repeatedly, starting with their rejection of the 1948 partition plan proposed by the UN, which the Jews accepted, rejected every good-faith effort by the Israelis to reach a peace settlement with them, which would have resulted in their having their own nation. They have instead resorted to repeated wars against Israel and suicide bombings.
Despite Israel’s numerous efforts to give the West bank back to the Palestinians, they have time after time refused to sign a peace treaty, insisting that Israel accept as a condition of peace the right of return of the so-called “refugees” who fled their homes in 1948 – many at the urging of the invading Arabs with the promise that they could return once the Jews were driven into the sea – a condition which is nonnegotiable for Israel if it is to remain the only nation on Earth with a Jewish majority. For 75 years, these “refugees” have refused to emigrate to another of the 47 nations in which Muslims are a majority. Israel’s Arab neighbors have refused to take their fellow Muslim “refugees” in as citizens. They prefer to let them stagnate in the West bank in order to capitalize on their anti-Israel propaganda value, claiming that their children and grand-children are also “refugees.” Are the thousands of Jews who survived the Holocaust and made new lives for themselves by emigrating to the United States, to Israel, to Britain, to Argentina, to South Africa, are they too still refugees? Are their children and grand-children refugees?
During the 2000 Camp David accords, hosted by President Clinton between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, in order to settle the dispute over the status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, Barak dropped Israel’s opposition to the division of Jerusalem, accepted future Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and asked that the Palestinians only recognize that the site was also sacred to the Jews, to which Arafat stunningly responded that no Jewish Temple ever existed on the Temple Mount, only an obelisk. To counter Arafat’s demand for the right of return, Barak offered to set up an international fund to which Israel would contribute in order to compensate for the property which the refugees had abandoned. He offered to allow 100,000 refugees to return on the basis of humanitarian and other considerations. The remainder of the refugees could live in the new Palestinians state, or in third-party countries, with Israel contributing $30 billion to pay for their resettlement. And still, Arafat rejected the proposal. When the talks fell through with no agreement, Arafat complimented President Clinton as “a great man,” to which Clinton responded. “The hell I am. I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.”
After the Hamas massacre, prospects for a two-state solution are likely defunct, for at least a generation. But this is not the fault of the Israelis. It is the fault of the Palestinians and their leadership’s intransigence and refusal to compromise – as the Israelis have been willing to do. They have reaped what they have sown.
"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/opinion/israel-genocide-south-africa.html"
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30 January 2024
MS said:
As I expect Zimmerman will bring to my attention, retired conservative federal judge Michael Luttig has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to affirm the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court disqualifying Trump from appearing on the Colorado primary ballot, based on the language of Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment. See:
"https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/29/politics/luttig-conway-supreme-court-trump-insurrection/index.html"
It is not a secret that I despise Trump and fervently believe that he presents a serious threat to our democracy, that he has no respect for its values, and that I oppose his election. Notwithstanding, I believe that Judge Luttig’s argument is flawed and will, correctly, be rejected by the Supreme Court. He analogizes Trump’s incitement of the January 6 insurrection to South Carolina’s secession, triggering the Civil War, and argues that given that the 14th Amendment and Sec. 3 were ratified in the context of that war, Sec. 3 should be self-executing and enforceable by any court, including a state court, without Congressional legislation implementing Sec. 3.
The argument is flawed, in several respects. First, generally the Supreme Court, and particularly this conservative Supreme Court, does not rely on historical context in interpreting the language of the Constitution. It relies first and foremost on the language of the Constitution itself, and the 14th Amendment includes specific language in Sec. 5 that authorizes Congress to enact legislation in order to enforce the Amendment. Congress has never enacted any statute setting forth the parameters for implementing Sec. 3, unlike its enactment of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to enforce Sec. 1 of the Amendment.
Second, his analogy does not hold water. It was President Lincoln who declared war upon South Carolina’s secession, not a court. Granted, the 14th Amendment did not exist when Lincoln declared war, but the Amendment includes its own enforcement language in Sec. 5, which Congress has not utilized. Moreover, South Carolina’s secession was not just speech, but a deliberate legislative action that left no doubt as to its intent. Trump’s verbal incitement of the January 6 insurrection was not an act of insurrection itself, but speech, arguably protected under the 1st Amendment. Moreover, not even Jack Smith has indicted Trump for inciting an unlawful insurrection. He avoided making such a charge, which I believe was a serious omission. The causal connection between Trump’s speech and the ensuing assault on the Capitol is less clear than South Carolina’s unambiguous legislative act seceding from the union. It is not the prerogative of the Colorado Supreme Court to assert that causal connection without an evidentiary trial – a trial to which Trump, as much as I despise him, is entitled to, and which Jack Smith, by failing to include such a charge in his indictment, has avoided.
I expect the Supreme Court to reject Judge Luttig’s argument, and the arguments of others urging for affirmance of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, and, correctly in my view, reverse its decision.
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MS said:
Because I know that I am right and they are wrong.
Below is my response to Mr. Boule's article, which I have just submitted to the NYT.
One can perhaps forgive Jamelle Boule, since he is neither an attorney nor purports to be a constitutional scholar, for his pseudo legalistic opinion that since it is obvious, to him, that Trump engaged in the incitement of an insurrection on January 6 that Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment was intended to be self-executing, and that, therefore, the Supreme Court essentially has no choice but to affirm the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court disqualifying Trump from appearing on its primary ballot. His opinion demonstrates the pitfalls of an amateur, arm-chair historian cum legal analyst offering opinions regarding what the Constitution says and means.
Contrary to Mr. Boule’s historical analysis of what the drafters of the 14th Amendment intended, buttressed by the opinions of several supposedly eminent legal scholars, to the Supreme Court, the specific words of the Constitution matter, more than an analysis of the historical background in which the Constitutional provision was adopted, or in which the amendment was ratified. Let’s take, for example, the issue of whether the President of the United States qualifies as an “officer” under Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment. The individuals who qualify as “officers” of the United States are identified in the Appointments Clause of Article II, Sec. 2, which states that the President, “shall appoint Ambassadors … and all other Officers of the United States … .” The President does not appoint himself; he is elected, and therefore does not qualify as an “officer” of the United States under Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment. Moreover, while Sec. 1 of Article II, in articulating the President’s Oath of Office refers to “the Office of President,” the word “Office” begins with the capitalization of its first letter, differentiating the Office of President from all other offices. By contrast, in Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, none of the references to “officer” are capitalized, and therefore do not refer to the President. Some may think this is a small quibble, but in interpreting the Constitution, particularly to this Supreme Court, how words are used, in what order they are used, and how they are spelled is significant.
But the most glaring fallacy in Mr. Boule’s analysis, and in that of the eminent scholars whose amicus briefs he relies on, is the claim that Sec. 3 is self-executing. It is true that some provisions of the Constitution, and some amendments are “self-executing,” i.e., do not require legislation by Congress to authorize a court to enforce the Constitutional provision. The establishment clause, free exercise clause, free speech clause, etc., of the 1st Amendment are self-executing. A litigant can file a lawsuit in federal or state court claiming that some government action has infringed on the litigant’s 1st Amendment rights, and the court can rule on the claim without Congress having enacted legislation stating the parameters of those rights. The 1st Amendment is accordingly “self-executing.” This is not true of Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, which specifically states in Sec. 5, “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Mr. Boule’s claim, and that of the eminent legal scholars on whom he relies, that Sec. 3 is self-executing would ignore the specific language of Sec. 5, rendering it, in the words of a multitude of Supreme Court decisions, superfluous, nugatory and a nullity. And the Supreme Court – not just this Supreme Court – rejects an interpretation of the Constitution which will render some of its language superfluous, nugatory and a nullity. But Congress has never enacted any legislation implementing Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, unlike legislation which it has enacted in order to implement Sec. 1 of the 14th Amendment. Without such legislation, no state court, no state Secretary of State, and no federal court, not even the Supreme Court, has jurisdiction to apply Sec. 3 to bar any candidate from running for President, not even Donald Trump.
So, the Supreme Court is likely to reject the arguments advanced by Mr. Boule and the numerous amici and reverse the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, and it will be correct in doing so – not to avoid any untoward political consequences, as Mr. Boule suggests, but because that is what the language of the Constitution dictates.
"https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/opinion/trump-insurrection-supreme-court.html"
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MS said:
At your urging, I have reviewed both the news article regarding Willis’s hiring of Wade, and the more detailed summary of the investigation upon which it is based. None of the information reported dispels the questions regarding Willis’s lack of integrity and the suspicion that she has benefited financially from her unorthodox hiring of her lover to work on a major RICO prosecution involving the former President of the United States.
David, you apparently do not recognize a smoke screen when you see one. Let’s start with the allegations regarding Wade’s compensation. The report seeks to rebut the allegation by pointing out that Wade’s hourly rate is the same as the other prosecutors on the team. To begin with, as the summary indicates, this is false. Wade was hired at $250 per hour, when another prosecutor, Floyd, who is regarded as an expert on RICO crime cases, was only paid $150-$200 per hour. But the hourly rate is not the issue. The issue is the number of hours that Wade has billed at his rate, regardless whether it is the same or less than his colleagues. He has been billing an exorbitant number of not humanly possible hours, including one bill in which he claimed to work 24 hours straight. I am a dedicated, tenacious attorney – but I have never worked 24 hours straight. The authors of the investigation justify this by pointing out that Wade’s contract allowed him to work more hours than his colleagues. But that avoids the question as why his contract was different in that respect, unless Willis was favoring him. Moreover, Wade billed Fulton County $650,000 over 3 years, over $215,000 per year. Note, he did this while simultaneously working at his private law firm, where he specializes in family law and civil litigation. His colleagues on the prosecution team earned $73,000 for two years (approximately $37,000 per year), and $91,000 for two years (over $45,000 per year). This data does not exonerate Wade, or Willis, but in fact incriminates them.
Next, let’s look at his qualifications. The authors of the investigation point out that for a number of years Wade worked as a criminal defense attorney on felonies, defending 75 criminal cases in state and federal court, and for some time worked as an appointed judge. The latter tenure is meaningless, because judges do not investigate prosecutions, and do not try them. They preside over them. Regarding Wade’s experience as a criminal lawyer, he had never prosecuted a case, and, more importantly, had never defended a RICO case, a very complicated area of the law, requiring expertise that your ordinary criminal defense attorney does not have. I have defended criminal cases, but I would not be qualified to prosecute a RICO case, and certainly not at $250 per hour. More importantly, Wade was being paid more per hour than Floyd, who was specially hired because of his recognized expertise in RICO cases. And this was not your ordinary RICO prosecution – it involved prosecuting the former President of the United States, along with a slew (yes, that is the right spelling) of numerous other defendants, involving charges of election fraud not just in Georgia, but in Michigan and Arizona. Wade was clearly not qualified to prosecute this case, and certainly not qualified to be named the lead prosecutor.
Finally, let’s look at the evidence regarding the money which Wade spent on vacations with Willis, to Napa Valley, Florida and the Caribbean. The investigators note that the expenditures in question total “only” $13,000, and that Willis “may” have paid Wade back. Assuming she paid him back (hypothetical), when did she pay him back – before, or after, the story broke. Moreover, a prosecutor prosecuting the former President of the United States, and numerous members of the Republican party, for alleged election fraud is expected, as the saying goes, more virtuous than Caesar's wife.
Yes, David, I am keeping an open mind, and the evidence in the investigation summary makes them both look guilty as sin.
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MS said:
[In response to DZ about a case.]
It is an effort to vacate a judgment in federal court which was obtained in a Michigan state court - in the Washtenaw Circuit Court located in Ann Arbor, to be exact.
I am arguing that the judge who presided over the trial violated my client's constitutional rights because he proceeded to hold a jury trial, even though her attorney failed to show up at the trial. (I was not her attorney at the time.) I maintain that the principal witness for the plaintiff indisputably committed perjury, suborned (i.e., assisted) by his attorney, and therefore committed a fraud on the court, which can be a basis for having a judgment overturned. This is very difficult to accomplish in a federal court. It is one of the worst cases of a miscarriage of justice in a civil case I have ever seen in my 45 years of practicing law.
I will probably file it before midnight, and will email you a copy tomorrow. You do not have to read all of it (it numbers 36 pp; petitions are limited to 9,000 words, and this petition totals 8,964 words), but I would recommend that you read the Conclusion, which is only 3 pp. long. I have referred to the case, and have included part of the Conclusion in comments which I posted on Wolff's blog in the past.
********
3 February 2024
MS said:
David,
Have you seen the below video with a law professor from the Georgia State U.?
"https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/02/03/smr-did-fani-willis-do-anything-wrong.cnn"
As I have said, Willis is toast.
********
5 February 2024
MS said:
Joni Mitchell’s poignant performance at the Grammys last night.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awyl_RLlNl8"
Aging affects all of us.
********
MS said:
The oral argument before the Supreme Court on the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court barring Trump from appearing on its primary ballot occurs on Thursday, Feb. 8. Although the public will not be able to hear it live, the Court will post the audio on its website later that day. You can download and listen to it by going to the Supreme Court website and open oral arguments conducted that day.
********
MS said:
In her closing argument last week, the attorney defending Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of Ethan Crumbley, who shot and killed four of his class-mates, using a handgun which his parents had given to him as a Christman present, adapted the lyrics of a Taylor Swift song, stating, "Band-Aids don't stop bullet holes," referring to Swift's lyric, "Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes."
I think this was absolutely stupid, and is likely to alienate the jurors. The band-aids in this case were not buying your teen-age son a hand-gun, to begin with. In addition, failing to tell the school administrators that they had purchased a gun for their son, after they had been shown a disturbing drawing Ethan had drawn in class fantasizing about killing people with a gun.
The closing argument probably hurt her client, and she is going to be convicted of manslaughter – and deservedly so.
********
MS said:
Regarding the oral argument this week before the S. Ct. regarding Trump’s right to appear on the Colorado ballot, last week there was a lot of hoopla about a comment which J. Scalia had once made in a concurrence in a case involving President Obama’s recess appointment of three NLRB commissioners when Congress was not in session. The significance of J. Scalia’s comment is being blown all out of proportion – which those who are raising it claim shows that J. Scalia believed the President was an “officer” subject to application of Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment. First, the comment does not directly state, or entail, that the President does qualify as an “officer.” Even if it does, it was stated in a concurrence, not in the majority opinion. Such off-hand comments are generally viewed as “dicta” – comments not necessary for the ruling ultimately being made, and therefore not binding precedent. The Court generally ignores dicta. There is a story that J. Black once lost his temper at an attorney who argued that a comment in a decision was dicta, by reprovingly stating, “We said it, didn’t we?!” But in that case the statement in question had appeared in the majority opinion, not in a concurrence.
********
MS said:
Watch Bob Dylan struggling to sing his contribution to We Are The World.
"https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/579600/bob-dylan-we-are-the-world-greatest-night-in-pop-netflix/?utm_source=The+Forward+Association&utm_campaign=a06775a7a7-AfternoonEditionNL_%2A%7CDATE%3AYmd%7C%2A_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-878b15fee9-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D"
********
MS said:
And here’s Bob Dylan’s (s. wallerstein’s favorite song-writer singer) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLLEY87mQSg"
********
MS said:
Over the week-end, I had the opportunity to review the most recent comments on Wolff’s blog which I had not seen while I was pre-occupied finalizing the filing of my petition for certiorari in the United States Supreme Court.
In a series of comments, MAD (whoever s/he is) launched a flurry of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments which are not supported by the historical record, and which display his/her Jew-hatred and his/her ignorance. The pseudonym is well suited, both with respect to his mental psychosis, and his blind hatred. To their credit, LFC, Mulvaney, and to some extent, s. wallerstein, gave MAD some push-back on his absurd comments.
I wish to supplement their rebuttals.
MAD said...
@Michael Llenos
Some questions:
Claim of land should be based on archeological records from 2000 years ago?
Who are supposed to be the claimants, genetic descendants or religious ones?
If I convert to Judaism can I take a piece of land from a Palestinian with a title? What if some Palestinians' ancestors were Jewish but they are currently Muslim?
If I find pottery from my ancestors under your basement or near it can I come with a shotgun and kick you out of your house?
How far do we have to go back?
Europeans who lived for more than 1000 years in Europe have more right than people already living there for more than 1000 years?
Is not your proposal really just a bad justification for European colonialism?
Let’s start with MAD’s ignorant claim that contemporary Jews have no connection with the Hebrews who he claims “purportedly” once lived in the geographic area which the Romans designated as Palestrina. There have been numerous genetic studies that demonstrate that the DNA of contemporary Jews living in Israel and elsewhere has a common origin in the Middle East:
“Several genetic studies demonstrated that approximately half of the genetic lineage of Ashkenazi Jews may be traced to the ancient Middle East and the other half to Europe, proving proximity to both ancient and present Middle Eastern and European groups. …
“In 2000, M. Hammer, et al. conducted a study on 1,371 men and definitively established that part of the paternal gene pool of Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa and Middle East came from a common Middle East ancestral population. They suggested that most Jewish communities in the Diaspora remained relatively isolated and endogamous compared to non-Jewish neighbor populations.”
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews#:~:text=Several%20genetic%20studies%20demonstrated%20that,Middle%20Eastern%20and%20European%20groups"
“If I find pottery from my ancestors under your basement or near it can I come with a shotgun and kick you out of your house?” Utter nonsense. Jews did not suddenly appear in Palestine after the Balfour Declaration and start expelling Arabs from their homes using shotguns. First, Jews had a continuance presence in the territory starting in at least 1000 B.C., during the kingdom of David, which has been confirmed by archeological evidence, including documents written in Hebrew which contemporary Jews can still read. They continued to live in the territory even after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple – 500 years before there any Muslims existed. Moreover, not all Jews were expelled. There existed a Jewish yeshiva in Jabne for centuries thereafter, a Jewish academy founded by Rabbi ben Zakkai as a result of an exchange between ben Zakkai and the general Vespasian, in which ben Zakkai predicted that Vespasian would become emperor. Jews continued to exist in Palestrina continuously from the Roman defeat of ben Kochba, through the Middle Ages; through the Crusades; through the conquest of Palestrina, all of North Africa, and southern Spain by the invading Arab Muslims. (And, by the way, the invading Arabs were not given the land they conquered as a gift – the Arabs took the land at the point of the sword, killing thousands upon thousands, and forced conversions. Yes, I know, Islam is a religion of peace.) The Jews continued to live in the former Palestrina (which, by the way, never existed as a purported country, until Arafat created the Palestinian Authority in 1994) throughout the existence of the Ottoman Empire.
MAD’s claim that the Jews stole the land belonging to the Palestinians at the point of a shotgun and kicking in the doors of their homes is more of his ignorant ahisotorical fictionizing. The Jews who answered Theodor Herzel’s call for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine did not take any land at the point of any weapons – unlike their predecessor Arab conquerors. They settled arid land which the Arabs did not want, and left fallow. The Jews drained the swamps and planted orange groves. They literally made the desert bloom, on land that the Arabs did not want. When the Arabs saw how successful the Jews were, they became resentful, and started riots against them, killing hundreds of Jewish settlers in Haifa. This is not fiction; it is documented fact. It was the Arabs who threw the first punch. The British, tired of mediating the fighting between the resentful Arabs and the industrious Jews, threw their hands up and left. It was the Arabs who rejected the UN partition, which the Jews accepted, and then successfully defeated 4 Arab nations sworn to driving the Jews into the sea.
Thereafter the so-called Palestinians rejected every peace plan proposed by the Israelis. During the 2000 Camp David accords, hosted by President Clinton between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, in order to settle the dispute over the status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, Barak dropped Israel’s opposition to the division of Jerusalem, accepted future Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and asked that the Palestinians only recognize that the site was also sacred to the Jews, to which Arafat stunningly responded that no Jewish Temple ever existed on the Temple Mount, only an obelisk. To counter Arafat’s demand for the right of return, Barak offered to set up an international fund to which Israel would contribute in order to compensate for the property which the refugees had abandoned. He offered to allow 100,000 refugees to return on the basis of humanitarian and other considerations. The remainder of the refugees could live in the new Palestinians state, or in third-party countries, with Israel contributing $30 billion to pay for their resettlement. And still, Arafat rejected the proposal. When the talks fell through with no agreement, Arafat complimented President Clinton as “a great man,” to which Clinton responded. “The hell I am. I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.”
MAD is not satisfied with distorting history with his lies. He stoops to asserting the most despicable anti-Semitic slur, claiming that the treatment of the Palestinians by the Jews was equivalent to the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews prior to the Final Solution, another of his lies. As if the only difference between what the Israelis have done and what the Nazis did is that the Israelis have not resorted to gassing Palestinians and incinerating their bodies in ovens.
One final observation. Wolff expelled me from his blog because he was offended by what he, and others, regarded as my intemperate language in responding to the numerous specious arguments which his idolizing commenters made. Yet he says nothing about the blatant anti-Semitism expressed by MAD. Anti-Semitism expressed on his blog he is willing to accept; intemperate language which offends his sensibilities, he is not. His hypocrisy – especially hypocrisy on the part of an academic supposedly searching for the truth – is deplorable. As they say, silence constitutes complicity.
********
6 February 2024
MS said:
Sunday night, at the Grammy's, Miley Cyrus's cong "Flowers" won best song, which she performed in a scanty "dress" strategically concealing the erogenous zones.
Below is my male response to her critique of females dealing with men.
TV Dinners
(Sung to the tune of Flowers,
wearing only an athletic supporter.)
I can buy myself TV dinners
Look at the pictures in Playboy
Watch football games for hours
Have fantasies you wouldn’t understand.
I can take myself golfing
And I can hold my own member
Yeah, I can love me better than you can.
Can love me better, I can love me
Better, honey
Can love me better, I can love me
Better, honey
I can clean shave my own face
Match your cooking omelets
No remorse, no regrets
I never heard anything you said
Ooh, I didn’t want to ignore you, honey,
I didn’t want to kick you out
Started to regret it, but then remembered
I can buy myself TV dinners
Look at the pictures in Playboy
Watch football games for hours
Have fantasies you wouldn’t understand.
I can take myself golfing
And I can hold my own member
Yeah, I can love me better,
I can love me better,
I can love me better than you can.
********
MS said:
LFC states:
“About the issue of justification.
I think it's useful to distinguish between two questions:
1) Does anything -- any sequence of actions by Hamas -- morally justify the kind of response that the IDF has carried out in Gaza? The answer to that question, in my view, is: No. The IDF response cannot be justified, period, because it is too destructive, too indiscriminate, too cruel, and, in the old language of customary international law, it shocks the conscience of mankind. … “
I would agree with LFC that the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, regardless whether women were brutally raped, or, if so, how many; how many Israelis were killed, bodies mutilated; how many, if any, babies were beheaded – a grotesque list which Pillette correctly states is too macabre to even contemplate and debate over – could not justify all possible responses by the IDF. However, I disagree that, “The IDF response cannot be justified, period, because it is too destructive, too indiscriminate, too cruel, and in the old language of customary international law, it shocks the conscience of mankind.”
This summary of international law is erroneous and overly simplistic, and LFC does not have sufficient information to make his categorical judgment that the IDF response violates international law and cannot be justified, period. In point of fact, LFC and other commentators have drawn their conclusion based on a misunderstanding of what constitutes “proportionality” under international law. Proportionality, or the lack thereof, is not determined by simply counting the number of civilian fatalities and comparing it to the number of terrorists who have been killed. It is much more complicated than that. Under international law, there are two different tests which can be used to determine proportionality – the “tit-for-tat” test, which LFC and many commentators have been using; and the more preferred test, the “means-end test.” In utilizing the latter test, in order to determine whether a retaliatory action has been justified by proportionality it is not sufficient to just count up the number of dead bodies on each side. Rather, the calculus must include an evaluation of the effect destruction of the target of the retaliation had on preventing future casualties – a large number of casualties caused by the attack may be justified if the attack prevents even greater casualties from occurring in the future. In this regard, the fact that Hamas has been housing its munitions and rockets – munitions and rockets which Hamas could use in the future to kill more Israelis – is a critical factor which must be evaluated in order to determine whether proportionality has been exceeded. See “The Inherent Right to Self-Defence and Proportionality in Jus Ad Bellum”:
"https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/24/1/235/438278"
LFC does not have sufficient information – information which only the IDF has which LFC is not privy to – to make his categorical judgment that the IDF’s military actions cannot be justified, period.
********
MS said:
wallerstein:
“Biden isn't a decent person in my book. His support of genocide in Gaza rules that out completely. He's a hawk, an imperialist.”
What an ***hole.
********
8 February 2024
MS said:
The Supreme Court oral argument regarding Trump's right to appear on the Colorado primary ballot can be heard at the link below, starting at 10:00 A.M.
"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/listen-live-supreme-court-hears-case-to-decide-if-trump-is-eligible-to-run-for-president"
********
MS said:
For those who listened the Supreme Court oral argument on the application of Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, which ran over 2.5 hrs., it is quite obvious that the Court, likely unanimously, is going to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision barring Trump from being on the ballot. The justices pilloried the two attorneys speaking in favor of affirmance. And I was correct that the two main issues are whether Trump qualifies as an “officer” under Sec. 3 (he does not), and whether a state, rather than Congress under Sec. 5, has the authority to enforce Sec. 3 (it does not).
Which goes to prove that Judge Luttig does not know what the hell he was talking about.
********
MS said:
I was pleasantly surprised to see John Pillette’s comment criticizing former President Gay for her ignorance/stupidity in not appreciating the genocidal implications of the chant being shouted by Harvard students, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Thank you, Mr. Pillette.
********
MS said:
“John Pillette: Is it reasonable to infer genocidal intent from the use of an irredentist slogan?
No, it is not reasonable to infer that, and that is the answer Gay and the other univ. presidents should have given.
Stefanik is beneath contempt, imo.”
LFC, in his typical liberal knee-jerk reaction, criticizes Pillette for his ability to think for himself and reject the group-think on Wolff’s blog. Bravo to him for that. Is the slogan, “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” a call for the annihilation of the State of Israel and the death, or removal, of all of its Jewish inhabitants a genocidal message? Obviously, and LFC’s rejection of that reasonable inference displays his liberal bias. And this has nothing to do with Stefanik’s right-wing leanings, which I also reject. It has to do with analyzing what the words say.
********
9 February 2024
MS said:
Those of you who listened to the S. Ct. oral argument on Feb. 8 would have heard numerous mentions of the Griffin Case, a decision by the Virginia Circuit Court of Appeal (not the S. Ct.) by then Justice Salmon Chase. (Not to be confused with Justice Samuel Chase (1741-1811), the only S. Ct. justice to be impeached; he was acquitted.) The Griffin Case is the only federal decision interpreting the application of Sec. 3 of the 14th Amendment, and is central to Trump’s argument that Sec. 3 is not self-executing and that the S. Ct. of Colorado did not have the authority to unilaterally bar him from running for President on the Colorado primary ballot.
Salmon Chase was a fascinating political and judicial figure. He was a staunch abolitionist and one of the founders of the Republican party. As an attorney, he worked in Cincinnati (he grew up in New Hampshire and graduated from Dartmouth College), where a good part of his practice was defending fugitive slaves opposing the application of the Fugitive Slave Act. He ran for the Republican nomination for President, but lost to Lincoln. Lincoln then asked him to serve as the Sec. of the Treasury for the Union, and is credited with keeping the Union afloat during the Civil War. Upon the death of Roger Taney (author of the notorious Dred Scott decision), Lincoln nominated Chase to be Chief Justice of the S. Ct. He presided over the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.
At that time, S. Ct. justices sat both on the S. Ct. and lower federal court. In the Griffin case, Caesar Griffin (referred to as a “negro” or “colored man” in the decision) had been charged with an assault with an intent to kill. He had been convicted in a trial before a Virginia judge, H. W. Sheffey. After his conviction, he sought a writ of habeas corpus in the federal court of Virginia, arguing that under Sec. 3 of the newly ratified 14th Amendment, J. Sheffey was barred from serving as a state court judge because he had sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. In his decision (1869), J. Chase wrote: “Griffin is a colored man; but there was no allegation that the trial was not fairly conducted, or that any discrimination was made against him, either in indictment, trial, or sentence, on account of color. … Nor was it alleged that H. W. Sheffey, the judge who presided at the trial, and pronounced the sentence [two years imprisonment] did not conduct the trial with fairness and uprightness.” (It should be noted as a preliminary that Justice Chase, having been a staunch abolitionist, an opponent of the Fugitive Slave Act, and a member of Lincoln’s cabinet, he held no sympathy for the Civil War insurrectionists.)
The argument was made on behalf of Griffin, as the attorneys for Colorado and the plaintiff in the Colorado case, argued yesterday, that Sec. 3 is self-executing. Justice Chase rejected this interpretation, stating:
“The object of the amendment is to exclude from certain offices a certain class of persons. Now, it is obviously impossible to do this by a simple declaration, whether in the constitution or in an act of congress, that all persons included within a particular description shall not hold office. For, in the very nature of things, it must be ascertained what particular individuals are embraced by the definition, before any sentence of exclusion can be made to operate. To accomplish this ascertainment and ensure effective results, proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcements of decisions, more or less formal, are indispensable; and these can only be provided by congress.
Now, the necessity of this is recognized by the amendment itself, in its fifth and final section, which declares that “congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this article.” (Emphasis added.)
This is what I have argued repeatedly in my comments and emails - an argument that the eminent Judge Luttig rejected. But it was obvious in the questioning during the Court’s oral argument that the majority of the justices, and likely all of the justices, agreed with this assessment.
It should also be noted that several justices pointed out that Congress has indeed passed a statute for the implementation of Sec. 3 – the criminal statute which authorizes the prosecution of any person, regardless of the office they hold or have held, who has engaged in treason. In none of the criminal cases pending against Trump has he been charged under that statute, not even by Jack Smith – which I regard as a huge mistake on his part. Conviction under that statute would have prevented Trump from running for President, or any other federal or state office. Yet Smith declined to charge Trump under the statute because he had concerns – not valid concerns, in my view – that he could not prove that Trump incited the Jan. 6 insurrection beyond a reasonable doubt. I believe this was an egregious mistake, because he could have obtained the testimony of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection who have already testified in court that they showed up on Jan. 6 because they were answering Trump’s call to action. And if Smith fails to get a conviction in the far less provable charges he included in his indictment, he may have insured Trump’s election – and heaven help -us if that occurs.
********
MS said:
An interesting commentary on how the left is hurting our democracy by buying into the right’s claim that the left is not neutral, and to prove they are neutral, engage in inaccurate criticisms of Biden and the Democrats.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3vFubEX3_w"
********
10 February 2024
MS said:
Marc M. Susselman, J.D., M.P.H.
43834 Brandywyne Rd.,
Canton, Michigan 48187
marcsusselman@gmail.com
February 10, 2024
Via Email
Morton Klein
President of the ZOA
633 Third Avenue, Suite 31-B
New York, NY 10017
Mr. Klein,
I am a staunch supporter of Israel and its right to self-defense against Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations which call for the annihilation of the State of Israel. I support the IDF’s military actions in Gaza in response to the barbaric massacre which Hamas committed against Israelis on October 7. I reject false equivalencies which accuse Israel of committing a genocide of the Palestinian people; I condemn the protesters, in the United States and elsewhere, who chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” an anti-Semitic catch-phrase which calls for the annihilation of Israel as a Jewish state, and the extermination or forced removal of the Jewish citizens residing there.
I receive emails from you and the ZOA on a daily basis, many of which I agree with, some of which I find too strident for my taste. In none of the emails, however, have I seen you or the ZOA condemn the documented lethal assaults by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank – Palestinians who have not been engaged in any protests against Israel; Palestinians who have simply been going about their daily business in an effort to survive under very harsh circumstances. Recently, it was documented that a group of Israeli settlers shot and killed a 16-year old Palestinian-American who was driving with some friends to attend a barbecue. The pleas for justice by his distraught father are heart-wrenching.
See
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbWLq2qzGqM"
Nothing in the Torah; nothing in the Talmud; nothing in Jewish history, or in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, justifies the murder of innocent, non-aggressive individuals, regardless their nationality, race, ethnicity, or political persuasion.
Yesterday, I received an email from the ZOA, under your name, criticizing President Biden for what you claimed was a one-sided condemnation of Israeli settlers who have been, and are, engaging in such atrocities, accusing President Biden of failing to condemn the Hamas terrorists with equal force. This charge is demonstrably false. President Biden has forcefully, and in no uncertain terms, condemned the Hamas massacre on October 7, and has continued to support Israel’s right to self-defense. Such fallacious accusations make me question your and the ZOA’s motives.
I am hereby calling upon you to use whatever contacts and influence you have in the Netanyahu administration to put a stop to the Israeli settlers’ attacks on innocent Palestinians; to apprehend and prosecute to the full extent of the law Israeli settlers who engage in such attacks, and of IDF soldiers who idly stand by while these atrocities occur – attacks which are not condoned by Jewish precepts and which are a repudiation of those precepts. If you fail to do so, and fail to document that you have done so, then I will have no choice but to conclude that you and your organization are nothing more than right-wing ideologues who do not deserve my support, political or financial, and I will start deleting every email the ZOA sends me, unsubscribe from your organization, and publicly criticize the ZOA to my family, friends and business associates.
I would appreciate a response to this email.
Shabbat Shalom,
Marc Susselman, J.D., M.P.H.
cc: Stuart Israel, Esq.
*******
MS said:
In my prior email about the Griffin’s Case and Chief Justice Salmon Chase, I distinguished between Justice Salmon Chase and Justice Samuel Chase, the only Supreme Court justice to ever be impeached. Samuel Chase was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He served in the Maryland General Assembly. George Washington appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1796. The Wikipedia article about him states:
“In 1766, he became embroiled in a war of words with a number of loyalist members of the Maryland political establishment. In an open letter dated July 18, 1766, Chase attacked Walter Dulany, George Steuart (1700-1784), John Grice (1705-1766), and others for publishing an article in the Maryland Gazette Extraordinary of June 19, 1766, in which Chase was accused of being: ‘a busy, reckless incendiary, a ringleader of mobs, a foul-mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction, a common disturber of the public tranquility’. In his response, Chase accused Steuart and the others of ‘vanity … pride and arrogance’, and of begin brought to power by ‘proprietary influence, court favour, and the wealth and influence of the tools and favourites who infest this city.”
I think that were we contemporaries, he and I would get along very well.
*******
MS said:
As I have said, Fanni Willis is toast. There is new evidence that she lied, under oath, regarding when she and Wade began their sexual relationship - that it was before, not after, the election fraud prosecution commenced. She’s done.
"https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-co-defendant-says-nathan-wade-associate-will-refute-timeline-of-fani-willis-relationship-5584560?utm_source=rtnewsnoe&src_src=rtnewsnoe&utm_campaign=rtbreaking-2024-02-10-1&src_cmp=rtbreaking-2024-02"
*******
The End.