Yesterday my mother found an undated poem written by my grandmother, Chana bas Yisrael Aryeh. She taught herself English on the boat to America by reading a dictionary from the beginning like we would read a novel. She became a very talented writer of poems and letters.
It seems I inherited the creative writing gene from her. Although she didn’t live to see it blossom, she was one of my biggest fans. She passed away approximately 27 years ago. I wish I could have known her as an adult.
This newly discovered poem from Baba is very sobering in these times of trouble. People often lash out at God when bad things happen and wonder why He didn’t prevent them from happening. Perhaps a more appropriate and productive reaction would be to wonder why He should, and to give Him more of a reason to do so.
After all, for all the many things we want from God, we should not lose sight of the fact that He wants some things from us, too. Like all relationships, it’s a two-way street. We don’t get to dictate to God both what we want from Him AND what he should expect from us.
I’m honored to share this poem with you in my Baba’s merit.
Chananya
If G-d should go on strike
How good it is that G-d above has never gone on strike,
because He was not treated fair in things He didnt like.
If only once He’d given up and said “Thats it, i’m thru!”
I’ve had enough of those on Earth, so this is what I’ll do:
I’ll give my orders to the sun – and cut off the heat supply!
and to the moon – give no more light, and run the oceans dry!
Then just to make things really tough and put the pressure on,
turn off the vital oxygen till every breath is gone!
You know, He would be justified if fairness were the game
for no one has been more abused or met with more disdain.
than G-d, and yet He carries on, supplying you and me
The dominant view of World War II is that it was the “good war.” Hitler bears exclusive responsibility for the onset of war, because he aimed to conquer Europe, if not the entire world. The United States tried to avoid entering the war but was forced into the fight by the surprise Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The authors on this list dissent. For them, Responsibility for the war was mixed, and Roosevelt provoked Japan’s attack. Allied conduct of the war, furthermore, was characterized by grave ethical misconduct.
Alperovitz, Gar. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb Comprehensive study that shows dropping the atomic bombs was not needed to bring about Japanese surrender.
Baker, Nicholson Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization Stresses the violations of the norms of civilized war in World War II, with full attention to the role of Winston Churchill.
Barnes, Harry Elmer, ed. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace A collection of essays by leading revisionist historians, concentrating on Franklin Roosevelt’s policies.
Beard, Charles A. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 Beard, one of the foremost twentieth-century American historians, argues that Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Buchanan, Patrick J.Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. Argues that the British guarantee to Poland in March 1939 was a mistake, because there was no feasible means of fulfilling it.
Chamberlin, William H., America’s Second Crusade A highly critical account of American policy during World War I. America failed to learn the lesson of intervention in World War I.
תניא היה רבי מאיר אומר גדולה תשובה שבשביל יחיד שעשה תשובה מוחלין לכל העולם כולו, שנאמר “ארפא משובתם, אוהבם נדבה, כי שב אפי ממנו”, מהם לא נאמר אלא ממנו.
It was taught: R Meir used to say, Great is repentance. for on account of an individual who repents, the sins of all the world are forgiven, as it is said: I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him. ‘From them’ it is not said, but ‘from him’.
As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the worst incident of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history, we now know for certain that our government’s public account and explanation of circumstances surrounding that heinous crime was bogus. The truth lies in a suppressed version of events, one which was described by President Bill Clinton’s General Counsel Abner Mikva as “not information that should be on paper.” (Emphasis added.)
This article will for the first time present key elements of that suppressed information, on paper for the public.
For such an order to be issued by Mikva, the Oklahoma City bombing must have posed what can only be described as a mortal threat to Clinton’s political future, and to the reputation of many federal agencies involved.
During my Marine Corps career with nearly five years with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, I have seen our nuclear war-fighting plans as well as our most sensitive intelligence reports – both were “on paper.”
The account offered here is the result of 24 years of research on my part, including 11 years of working closely with the legendary McCurtain Daily Gazette reporter, J.D. Cash, and collaborating with dozens of other professional and citizen journalists committed to uncovering the full truth behind the Oklahoma City bombing and its aftermath.
Whatever Mikva ordered not to be put “on paper,” was seen as more threatening to his client, the president, than the compromise of any other information in the entire U.S. government. But, as is the case of any federal government cover up, information was spread far too widely among various agencies for Mikva’s edict to be completely effective.
Over the past 25 years records have been released, often in seemingly unrelated cases, which have provided key elements of this mosaic – enough for us now to piece together the core of the damaging information of such concern to the president’s senior legal adviser.
OKBOMB, as the FBI titled the case, was the result of a federal law enforcement operation that went terribly wrong for reasons still unknown.
Suppressing information about this ugly truth was Mikva’s objective when he issued his extraordinary order to go off paper. Released as a memorandum on letterhead marked, “EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,” the date was May 25, 1995, five weeks after the bombing and after the case had supposedly been solved.
This date was exactly three weeks after this newspaper published J.D. Cash’s first story on OKBOMB. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were in jail awaiting trial. Bombing conspirator and white nationalist Michael Fortier had agreed to be the star prosecution witness against his former Army buddies.
Mikva’s order confirming the mortal threat to the Clinton presidency was released by the Clinton Presidential Library in 2016 as one of the 1500 pages characterized as pertinent to President Barack Obama’s nomination of federal judge Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Garland arrived in Oklahoma City just two days after the bombing and was the senior on-site Justice Department lawyer in charge of the investigation. After four weeks, he returned to Washington where he continued to supervise both the investigation and preparing the government’s prosecution for McVeigh’s and Nichols’ federal court trials.
A memorandum between two White House attorneys recorded Mikva’s unprecedented order and was intended for Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, with this subject line: “Terrorism note for H”.
These first two sentences offer a candid disclosure of what will be referred to as the suppressed “Mikva version”:
The Justice Department has stopped working on the terrorism question. They say this is because Ab [Abner Mikva] instructed them that this is not information that should be on paper. (Emphasis added.)
Please read this historic statement again.
To put it in context, at the very time the president’s General Counsel issued his extraordinary suppression order, there was much ongoing work on “terrorism” questions that was on paper. Oklahoma City bombing documents publicly accessible at the Clinton Presidential Library show hundreds of pages of legal, policy and political questions regarding terrorism being examined by lawyers both inside and outside of the federal government.
Any question about whether Mikva’s edict dealt with OKBOMB, was answered three years later in a media interview. No longer in the White House, Mikva was interviewed about a dispute concerning congressional oversight between the Department of Justice and the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The Chicago Tribune reporter wrote of Mikva’s admission:
Abner Mikva, a former White House counsel, federal judge, and Chicago congressman said Congress must move cautiously. [The Department of] Justice handles sensitive investigations, from terrorism to organized crime, and many techniques must remain secret, Mikva said.
“If Chairman Hyde starts asking about all the dollars they spent in Oklahoma City, that can compromise some very, very delicate information,” added Mikva, a Democrat. “How much of that does he really want to get into?” (Emphasis added.)
Mikva belatedly attempted damage control, having blurted out some sensitive words of his own about the suppressed truth, but it was too late. His claim that this matter was a budget issue is ludicrous. The Justice Department and the FBI had previously boasted about the 82 million dollars spent on OKBOMB, presenting this figure as yet another indicator, albeit a phony one, of the thoroughness of the investigation, and assurance that all perpetrators had been identified and convicted. (Mikva died in 2016 without public comment on his “not-on-paper’ order.)
Adding to the critical importance assigned this suppression effort are other White House records showing that Garland met during this period with Mikva’s Deputy General Counsel, Elena Kagan, who now serves on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This document from the Executive Office of the President confirms what had been obvious to J.D. Cash and others who observed this unprecedented suppression of evidence and obstruction of justice in a federal criminal case.
More importantly, we now know why OKBOMB federal prosecutors suppressed evidence on such a massive level: it incriminated more than a dozen additional perpetrators who either directly participated in the bombing, or provided support to the wider conspiracy that murdered 168 of our fellow citizens.
The version crafted by Garland and presented in the federal trials of McVeigh and Nichols was a bogus one whose purpose was to conceal the identity of federal informants who were members of the wider bombing conspiracy.
