By Larry Gordon
President Trump was right on target when he said that his encounter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that turned into a televised blowup in front of millions was “great TV.”
It certainly was.
The fact is that Ukraine is being battered to a pulp by Russia. And while Ukraine is putting up a good fight against their much-larger adversary, without U.S. aid and military support, it’s only a matter of time before Russia rolls through Ukraine and captures Kyiv, forcing Zelensky to flee into exile to someplace like Namibia with the $50-$100 billion he managed to pilfer.
In the interim, we need to take a step back and analyze who Zelensky and the Ukrainians are and what their real motives are. First of all, as President Trump repeatedly points out, between Russia and Ukraine, almost one million people have died in this conflict. However, neither Zelensky nor Russian President Putin seem to be bothered by the fact that vast numbers of families have been destroyed because fathers, sons, and brothers will never return from the battlefield. This is in addition to the thousands of civilians that have been killed. Zelensky made it illegal for any male over the age of 18 to leave the country so he can dispatch them to the frontlines at a moment’s notice. Some have even been picked up on the street.
Putin operates in roughly the same way. The Russian dictator is so short of manpower that he has imported soldiers from North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un, of which thousands have already been killed, with more on the way.
Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish. Briefly until mid-2019, the Prime Minister of Ukraine was Volodymyr Groysman, also Jewish. Today Groysman is a Ukrainian politician. At that time, apart from Israel and Panama, Ukraine was the only country that had a Jewish president or prime minister.
Not that it means much considering that Zelensky’s children have been baptized and his government, which is mostly him, is not much of a supporter of Israel. In fact, Ukraine votes against Israel at the UN more than fifty percent of the time.
Moreover, during WWII, more Jews were killed in Ukraine than any other country aside from Poland. That’s quite distinctive. In fact, the Ukrainians were such vicious anti-Semites that it’s been written that when the Nazis moved into Ukraine, even they were stunned by the level of brutality and viciousness that the average Ukrainians dispensed against their Jewish citizens.
Oddly enough, while it seems that Trump is anxious to see these deaths of thousands of young men come to a halt, they appear to mean little to men like Putin and Zelensky. Both dictators appear to see this war in geopolitical and historical terms. In true Stalinesque fashion, they follow the axiom that the death of one man is a tragedy while the death of millions is a statistic. And they view the accidental killing of women and children by errant missiles supplied by Biden, whether in Ukraine or Russia, as just “collateral damage.”
It is obviously politically charged that only the accidental killing of human shields in Gaza are cause for the UN Security Council to convene and condemn Israel. The fact that others die in a similar fashion around the world in senseless wars is simply cause to look the other way.
It now appears that Volodymyr Zelensky has been taking his cues from the Democrats in Washington, who apparently advised him last week to oppose anything that Donald Trump and his administration presented, including a ceasefire and a halting of the killing of so many people on both sides of this three-year face-off.
Just as the Trump-Zelensky debate is coming to a head, so is the situation with Hamas in Gaza about to reach a crescendo. As usual, the terrorists are toying with the international community as if they were yo-yos. The interesting thing that has been revealed is how generously Biden dealt with Zelensky, giving him whatever he wanted with nary a thought to what the U.S. would get in return for filling the Ukrainian coffers with $350 billion. Incidentally, Zelensky has revealed that $100 billion of that allocation is missing. Someone should follow the money to find out how much of that money is sitting in Zelensky’s and Biden’s bank accounts. Is it any wonder that Zelensky is not sure he wants to end the war, even as 3,000 of his men are killed each week?
On Tuesday, however, Zelensky did a 180-degree turn, saying he regretted how his meeting with the President and Vice President descended into a heated exchange that shocked many observers. There’s no doubt Zelensky is out of his league and way over his head.
But at the same time, Zelensky has been running his country like a dictatorship, cancelling last year’s elections and announcing that while he was committed to repaying the $100 billion that he owes Europe, he views the $350 billion he received from the U.S. as a “gift.”
And that assumption is not entirely his fault. That is what the Democrats led him to believe. Biden and Blinken supported Zelensky running a fake democracy as they continued to spread disinformation about Trump and Putin, which they hoped would assist them in getting Kamala Harris elected president. In the meantime, Zelensky’s Democratic confidants wanted to make sure that the Trump-Putin connection stayed percolating in the minds of Americans even though it was blatantly false. In other words, they were running an old-fashioned Democratic Party-political deception and disinformation campaign to deceive the American people.
At the same time, while Trump continues to parry with Zelensky and the pundits are busy debating the impact of the new tariffs on Canada and Mexico, this new reality presents Israel with the unique opportunity to take action without any spotlight shining on them, so they can take care of business in Gaza with steely resolve.
President Trump and his foreign policy apparatus understand that Hamas has to be done away with. That does not mean turning them into diplomats or cops. It means they must be punished for October 7th and not merely neutralized. It means total elimination. The Trump administration will not lose any sleep over Hamas disappearing from the planet. The Israel Supreme Court and about a third of the Knesset may feel a little uncomfortable with this outcome. But over time, they will come around and get used to it and eventually won’t miss them for a moment.
It bothered me all Tuesday night and deep into Wednesday morning that so little mention was made to the October 7th massacre, the murder of Jews, and the cruel way the Hamas miscreants were holding onto hostages for more than 16 months.
I was certain that something had to be going on behind the scenes on this matter and I was confident that with President Trump in charge, the outcome would be good. The President was just too quiet, especially with Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy to the Middle East, sitting in the Congressional gallery with no apparent recognition or fanfare.
And then on early Wednesday morning, The Jerusalem Post reported that a U.S. envoy was meeting with Hamas directly in Doha, Qatar. The gist of the meetings is calling for the release of all the hostages immediately and their compliance would have significant impact on Phase 2 of the current agreement, which calls for the release of more hostages which can lead to a permanent ceasefire and ultimately the end of the war. The alternative, Hamas officials learned, was a continuation of the war with Israeli troops and tanks preparing to go back into Gaza.
An additional point on Trump’s Tuesday night speech were the multiple times he made reference to G-d and his faith in G-d. He wasn’t preaching, but he did say that he feels G-d saved his life in the July 13th shooting in Pennsylvania, so he could live in order to make America great again.
Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and X for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
B”H If one was pursuing writing about a dystopian American and world existence this week’s publisher’s column in our 5T achieves it. Parroting the lies we are too familiar coming from the 47th’s mouth —- labeling the Ukrainian president a dictator while casting aspersions on his country’s management of economic aid from the U.S. —- Larry Gordon retains the leadership as reliable MAGA advocate. Of course, his ignorance of history is obvious. For example, which leader, eventually acclaimed as man of the 20th century, suspended elections while his country fought a mortal enemy to overcome? Let me inform the ahistorical writer that it was the great British wartime premier Winston Churchill. It’s no accident that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is similarly acclaimed for the courage to withstand and repulse the unwarranted Russian invasion. Begun on 2/24/2022, it was designed to fulfill the warmonger and wanted for war crimes violator, bona fide dictator Vladimir Putin! There was a time when American foreign policy implemented with moral clarity our values as defenders of liberal democratic republics. For that purpose and to advance health, prosperity and global stability we established the U.S. Agency for International Development. That was until the current president and his lackey, the unelected co-resident Elon Musk, decided to eviscerate it, as they’re doing with other parts of the federal government. Not a word of criticism from this printed organ of abject propaganda, as they’re doing 47th can only dream of being steadfastly courageous, with high polls of popularity for his Ukrainian counterpart. Instead, our 47th wallows in his countrymen’s derision, incompetent in his task and repeatedly tasked by court decisions to execute them. This is a time for us to resist his outrageous outreach for his own concentration of a dictator’s power; beyond the one day he promised to exercise it, realizing his dream of emulating his favored autocrats (Erdogan, Kim, Orban, Putin, Xi to name a few). Our executive must be checked by a yet robust Congress, and our independent judiciary, as the latter does in curbing Israel’s incumbent premier —- himself also mired in scandals of abuse of power and with his wife in sordid corruption! Benjamin Franklin, alighting from the just completed Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1797 was asked by an active, concerned woman whether the framers gave us a monarch or a Republican. “It’s a republic, if you can keep it,” responded the great sage, Dr. Franklin. Now, it’s our job to keep, protect, defend and perpetuate it, for ourselves and a beacon to the world, including Ukraine. With fraternal affection, Asher 🙏🇺🇸🇺🇦😊🇮🇱