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For the past ten years, I have brought the present-day National Security Adviser John Bolton to the Israel Day Concert in Central Park for the express purpose of warning the world of the dangers of a nuclear Iran. Ambassador Bolton will tell you that he has been warning America and the world about Iran’s nuclear ambitions for a lot longer – more than 20 years. He has spent the latter half of his life devoted to getting rid of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Yes, he believes regime change would be best, but everything is on the table.

Because of the big election news here in New York this year, you would not be blamed for missing out on the major news out of Baltimore this past Election Day, which could be quite embarrassing for the Jewish community. Without going into too much detail, it seems there were two candidates for the Baltimore City Council: one a Jewish candidate and one the incumbent, who was not Jewish. The source of the rift was that the Jewish candidate was apparently not sufficiently pro-Israel, a stance that tends not to matter in local politics. However, it seems that this divide caused a rift in the Jewish community, which made up about 20% of the electorate, and ended up swinging the election for the incumbent, who tapped into the pro-Israel side and got enough of the Jewish vote to keep him in office.

National Security Adviser John Bolton was wont to point out that the BDS movement was just a continuation of the United Nations resolution equating “Zionism with racism.” One of John Bolton’s greatest achievements was striking down that despicable and blatantly anti-Semitic canard that had lasted 19 years before Bolton came to town. We are still waiting for the day that the BDS movement is finally laid to rest. I know Bolton and the president are doing everything they can to make that happen. Unfortunately, there are universities and colleges like Swarthmore that keep propping it up. In March, the Swarthmore College student leaders voted to support the BDS movement. A pro-BDS dean was almost chosen at Dartmouth.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, support for the BLM movement was at an all-time high. People started to believe that police were mowing down Black people with reckless abandon, that applicants with Black-sounding names were far less likely to get a job, and that we were one election away from a return to Jim Crow. However, as time went on, we learned that many of these assumptions were wrong. In fact, there was a tremendous backlash to the BLM movement, spurred on by the rise in crime that resulted from many of the policies put forward by its champions, including defunding the police. At a certain point, the general public became bored with constantly being told about the victimization of Black people, and they moved on.

It is an honor and a privilege to write about great individuals, especially those who’ve tremendously impacted my own life and politics. Joe Mermelstein was one such individual. It is not a coincidence that his third yahrtzeit takes place on the very same day that his friend, his colleague, and his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is up for re-election on April 9. Joe, if he were still alive, would be the first to pay for 747s to fly Israeli citizens living in America to Israel to make sure to vote in the election (of course, he would not tell them who to vote for, but they would know). He was a man of action. He was not a talker. He was a doer. He made me president of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, and for that I am forever grateful. His life spanned most of the 20th century and was devoted to the Jewish people, his family, and his business. His story is truly an impressive history lesson.

These days, we hear a lot about privilege: white privilege, pretty privilege, skinny privilege. However, there is one actual class of privilege that exists in society that we all benefit from: the privilege of the present.