Iran must leave Syria

Israel's insistence to both the USA and Russia that any Syrian peace agreement cannot include a permanent Iranian presence anywhere in Syria is no different than John F. Kennedy's giving Russia an ultimatum to withdraw their troops and missiles from Cuba. In 1962, after threats and warnings from the USA, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle all Russian nuclear missiles based in Cuba and ship them back to the Soviet Union. Israel is correct to insist that Iran, a country that has repeatedly threatened Israel with annihilation, remove all their troops, as well as Hezbollah - and all other associated armed tribes fighting on their behalf in Syria.


The war drums are beating with Saudi Arabia and her Sunni allies lining up against Iran and her allies in what looks like a repeat of the Iran/Iraq war which was also Sunni VS. Shiite. The UN is totally ineffective and unable/unwilling to bring the parties to the table, and only the USA and Russia are capable of a real peace agreement - not one that guarantees that Israel will have a threat on their Northern border, which will push Israel to join Saudi Arabia in defeating Iran. Once that war gets rolling, there will be tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding Europe, and Lebanon will also become entwined in this regional quagmire.


Both the USA and Russia, as anchor powers supporting opposite sides of this upcoming conflict, need to resolve this conflict peacefully by forcing Iran to leave Syria - or dig in for the long haul supporting their respective allies/surrogates with arms, weapons and ammunition for the foreseeable future. That area of the world does not need another conflagration, and Israel especially does not want to be drawn into a war between the Sunni and Shiites Muslims. With that said, Israel will not have a choice in the matter once missiles start falling in Tel Aviv.

Fixing one piece of Memphis’s Economic Malaise

Fixing Memphis’s economic malaise is daunting, to say the least, but with a 27.6% poverty rate, I expect our Memphis leadership to address the inequities that plague our tax base – inequities that are as clear as day: 165,679 (42.3%) of the Memphis workforce are non-residents working in the city out of a total of 391,232 workers in our city. This means 225,553 (57.7%) of working Memphis residents are paying property taxes and supporting the city. Non-resident Memphis workers use Memphis streets, parks, sewers, museums and other amenities…. but leave the city in order to avoid paying Memphis taxes (AND flee the high cost of private schools).

It is my understanding that the City of Memphis does not have the legal right, according to state law, to create a payroll tax for our “working non-residents” - even though non-resident income tax laws have been on many states' books for decades. 

 I would suggest that the City do what Comcast/Xfinity does…create a payroll FEE to equalize this loophole destroying Memphis.

On first blush, one could say this would be a disincentive for Memphis businesses. On the contrary, it would incentivize workers to move to Memphis. In addition, the city could use these fees to give better incentives to businesses to move to Memphis.

This doesn’t address the failure of local school systems and the NEED for good, safe public schools, which I believe has equal weighting with taxes when a family with 2 kids decides to move to Collierville.

I applaud the Strickland administration for it’s strict, frugal, economic policies to date, but fundamental “outside the box” ideas are needed to address the obvious weaknesses in our city.

The Kurds Deserve a Country, and the USA Should Help Them

The Kurdish vote for independence on September 25^th, 2017 is one of the most important events to take place in the Mideast since Israel declared it’s independence 70 years ago. There are 35 million Kurds living within the same border areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. While they are a large minority in these 4 countries, their host countries have victimized them for centuries. The British created artificial borders for most Mideast countries in the early 1900s without regard to the tribal or cultural ties that really binds the many diverse populations. The glue that binds the Mideast isn’t an artificial border. It’s ethnic and religious tribal loyalties.

The Kurds of Iraq are at the center of this revolution for independence and they have certainly displayed a level of responsibility and dependability in developing the institutions required to create a sophisticated country. They have Western schools, a capable police force, and a military that is dependable and capable. Universities have sprouted up, and the Kurdish area of Iraq is considered a “safe zone” where anyone can walk freely and without fear.

The Kurds, by the way, are deserving of a country – as opposed to the Palestinians. The Kurds have their own language, their own culture, and have been inhabiting the same area for millennium, while the Palestinians are really immigrants (for the most part) from various Arab countries who came to Jewish Palestine (yes, the Palestinian flag had a Jewish star on it) to find work as Jews developed Israel over the past 70 years. Palestinians have no unique culture, no unique language, and their history is largely a myth perpetuated by the Arab/Muslim echo chamber – assisted by the U.N – and a lot of oil money.

The U.N., of course, will not lift a finger to aid the development of a Kurdish state. The Kurds, after all, do not have a voice at the U.N. Even the Palestinians, who claim to be the flag bearers of righteous self-rule, have openly opposed the Kurdish quest for their own country because they don’t want to anger their fellow Muslim/Arabs in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Of course, their desire for self-rule is going to be opposed by Iran, Iran, Turkey and Syria – and given the Mideast’s propensity for violence, it can be expected that this will eventually become a war for independence. I hope that the USA has the moral clarity to assist the Kurds in their endeavor for their own country.  After all, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria are all “in bed” together and have a well-developed hatred for the USA. The USA, on the other hand, could use another ally in the Mideast besides Israel - and Kurdistan would fit the role nicely.

Poems by David Fargotstein (01/03/1982 - 06/05/2017

Midnight Sentry

~David Martin Fargotstein

I came across a midnight sentry

Perched along a shore

A peculiar kind of creature

I’d never seen before

A mass of feathers, deepest blue

No wings that I could see

No arms or legs or anything

Upon this mystery

I, becoming careless

Due to curiosity

Let slip a stone, it rattled down

And brought its gaze to me

Its feathers ruffled as it turned

In its attempt to see

The interloper, hiding close

Who broke its reverie

Two giant eyes of shining gold

Above a narrow beak

Scanned the rocks to find the sound

And trained themselves on me

It didn’t seem disturbed at all

It didn’t try to flee

It simply fixed its eyes on me

With curiosity

I met its gaze, devoid of fear

And was surprised to see

The creature had begun to move

Slowly towards me

It perched itself upon a rock

And nestled into place

Then it turned its head again

And aimed it at my face

Through a connection made of gazes

I began to fall

Descend into those giant eyes

Without a fear at all

It happened almost instantly

A story being told

In feelings, poured into my mind

Through those eyes of gold

As story of this creature’s past

From egg to what I see

Born aside its lifelong mate

By natural destiny

A life of love, devotion true

With nothing in between

A vision of paradise, in motion

Shown to me

Suddenly, and without warning

Explosions of despair

The sea had risen up and taken

The other of the pair

As quickly as the story started

My wits returned to me

I touched the cyan feathered mass

Its gaze upon the sea

It turned its face to me again

And it was plain as day

This little creature’s joy in life

Had surely gone away

It hopped from perch onto the sand

And moved away from me

To join the lover that it lost

In the waves, beneath the sea

The Ascent

The Ascent

~David Martin Fargotstein

Single cells begin to split

And life the way we know begins

Forming tools to touch the world

Bodies form and limbs uncurl

Swimming now, in primal sea

Metabolize, begin to feed

The weakest ones will perish first

To satiate the stronger’s thirst

True selection has begun

To wash away the weaker ones

More and more complex they grow

Fins and limbs begin to show

Teeth and claws and eyes and skin

Gills and scales and dorsal fin

Starting now, this divine plan

And so begins the ascent of man

Fins to limbs we start to see

Creatures crawing from the sea

Amphibious and glistening

Limbs then legs then feet then wings

Sea and earth and sky, now home

Nurtures these creatures to grow

Some as giants, some just small

Some you cannot see at all

A few of these, we’ve come to see

Took to living in the trees

Covered with hair, forelimbs strong

Carrying their young along

This beginning, as we see

Of intelligence and memory

A tiny spark begins to light

As neurotransmitters ignite

Arboreal, understand,

Is the precursor to Man

Down the road, a funny thing

We shed our hair, learn to sing

Discover fire, never cold

Discover ways to save the old

Invent the wheel to save our backs

Invent the club to prevent attacks

With spear and arrow now we hunt

Forage for food under the sun

Spread our species far and wide

Leave the other ones behind

Hunt and gather, fish and wander

Gaze into the sky and ponder

Discovery of farming, crude

Allows us to create our food

From camps to towns to cities, nations

Adobe huts to tollbooth stations

Glistening spires of stone and steel

High fructose and processed meals

Sleds and horses to speeding cars

Discover America, explore Mars

Every change along the way

That made us what we are today

Was ruled by CHANCE and not by FATE

Not by CHOICE and not by TASTE

The universal dice, now cast

Produced the human race at last

The likelihood of all you see

A molecule against the sea

This cosmic coincidence of chance

Delivered us into this dance

Mankind alone is privy to

This mingling which I share with you

Alone in all the universe

No other creature knows the hurt

Or Joy that’s characteristic of

The HUMAN CONDITION known as

LOVE

Jews aren't as Democratic as you are led to believe.....

As the founder of the Memphis Jewish Republican Coalition – and as a Reform Jew – I would like to respond to the (JTA) Hebrew Watchman article entitled “80 per cent of Reform rabbis are Democrats; That’s Higher than any other clergy” written by Ben Sales. This article quoted the results of a Yale study that covered the spectrum of religions, polling over 130,000 clergy – including only 2,700 rabbis and no Jewish congregants. While the statistics of the political views of Jewish rabbis may very well be accurate, the assumptions and conclusions regarding where the various congregations are on the political spectrum is intentionally flawed and misleading. The study attempted to define the political disposition of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations without any input from the congregants themselves. It’s not like the technology isn’t out there to poll the congregants. They don’t poll the congregants because they know the results, if taken honestly, will not fit the narrative that Jews are 70% Democratic, 30% Republican. It’s far more complex than it may seem.

If an honest poll we taken across the spectrum of Jewish congregants, you would find that a large majority are socially liberal and conservative on financial and foreign policy - and neither political party fits in this mold.  As for Mark Pelavin, who heads up political policy and outreach for the URJ in Washington D.C., he would like to continue too suppress this reality, but Jewish voting trends don’t lie. Bush and Obama got 24 and 22% of the Jewish vote. Romney got 30%, and Trump got 25% (but many think it was really in the 37% range) according to various polls.  The trend among Jewish voters – across all congregations – is towards political conservatism.

With that said, the article was right about one thing: The majority of Rabbis ARE Democrats and they do “push their political beliefs” on a congregations where 25-35% (and growing) don’t agree with them - and are offended that their house of worship has become another MSNBC or CNN, with all it’s political biases. The clergy “over-reach” into pulpit politics is alienating and disrespectful to a growing minority of their congregants. It is mildly irritating when there is overt outreach to Syrian refugees when there is no attempt to reach out to the Jewish conservatives in the congregation.

It isn’t easy being a political minority at my local synagogue, Temple Israel in Memphis. It isn't easy at ANY typical reform synagogue. Conservative voices are ignored, and political discussions and panels are one-sided. “The tyranny of the majority” (Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville) that the founders of America articulated are playing out in our synagogues. But there is hope. Jewish voting trend lines are expected to continue to lean even more Republican as the Democratic Party moves further to the left. I don’t go to synagogue for political indoctrination. I don’t go to Friday night services looking for serenity and instead get a lecture on gun control. What could be more alienating?

The whole purpose of the Memphis Jewish Republican Coalition is give voice to those Jews who feel alienated and alone in their synagogues. Over 350 individuals have joined and identified as Jewish Conservatives. There are thousands more in Memphis who sympathize but are intimidated to identify as Republican. It’s interesting that those Jews who identify with the MJRC are decidedly more liberal on social issues like abortion and gay rights among other social issues, but are less likely to advocate for open borders, weak international relations and bad financial policy. Even then, we don’t always agree and we respect differences of opinion. I wish that were true of our synagogues.