How The Israel/Pan-Arabist Chess Game Plays Out Over Time

by Bruce L. Cohen • 19 November 2023

In chess, the skill of “thinking into the tree” is a core ability of master-quality players. Masters are not only playing “the moment” – they are playing the move of the moment after having thought into “the tree of” five to ten moves ahead and all their implications for position and tactics. Some genius-level players, like Bobby Fischer, were able to think ahead to the end of entire games.

What does the “tree” of possible future moves for a solution look like in the present Israel-Arab dispute over the future of The Land of Israel?

Here is an overview:

1. A “Two State” Solution, by its very nature, demands compromise between Jewish and Arab interests. In the UN’s 1947 “Plan For The Partition Of Palestine” (Resolution 181)– a genuine “Two State Solution” – neither side got all it wanted. We Jews agreed to it as a place to start our forward journey together, side by side. The Pan-Arabist and Pan-Islamist forces in the Arab world said no, and attacked from 5 countries with armies outnumbering Israel 10 to 1, with the intent of destroying Israel. They lost. Arab interests have been attacking and losing ever since. The Sinai War, The Six Day War, The Yom Kippur War, the Lebanon War – all have been attempts to “push the Jews into the sea.” All have failed. Some have resulted in losses of territory and resources, like the Sinai Peninsula and Judea-Samaria (“The West Bank [of The Jordan River]” in anti-Jewish parlance).

Pan-Arabist and Pan-Islamist group’s opposition to compromise allowing a Jewish State to exist is driven either by nationalist-ambition, or religion: so, their extremist, one-dimensional vision (as was was that of Hitler and his Nazis) is therefore reason-resistant and compromise-resistant. To achieve their extremist, non-compromisable views, these sides will commit terror against any peaceful momentum leading to acceptance of a compromise solution, and toxify any peace developing between any Arabs and any Jews – especially the Jewish State.

Hamas is a good example of the above truth: the Hamas charter states that nature itself hates the existence any Jews anywhere, and will actively help Muslims to find them and kill them, no matter where they are, or hide. They feel ideologically compelled to kill every Jew alive. They are genocidal movements. Hamas is a small faction among them. There are larger organizations like the Houthis, Hizballah and even whole nation-states like Iran having this commitment, and willingness to have their entire nations destroyed by Israeli nuclear counter-strikes in order to cause Islam to conquer the world and remove the Jews from existence. 

All “Two-State Solutions” proffered up to 2023 doom Israel to ongoing terror. As “the cost of doing business,” Israel faces the implicit demand of finding “acceptable” some annual number of Jewish lives destroyed by terrorism. No way has been found to meet Israel’s repeated necessary conditions to any “Two State Solution” – “security” and “secure borders” – and seems it cannot be met while there are Arab states and factions fomenting and supplying arms and military training to Arab and Islamic terrorism forces. Israel’s post-7 October Massacre position on Jewish victimhood for 2023 forward now sums up as this: the new acceptable number of annual Jewish and Israeli deaths and casualties from terrorism is now “zero.” Israel will after the events of 7 October 2023 do anything she must to bring the Zero Annual Victims standard into reality: and Hamas-type perpetrators of atrocities and war crimes, and their world of sympathizers can whine about it all they want: it won’t change this commitment now forward as it has in the past, as Israel has sought to appease an anti-Israel biased world.

2. A “One State Solution”

One State, democratic in operation, would be either (a) non-national and multi-nationally governed, or (b) entirely Jewish, or (c) entirely Arab. Here is how the One State “tree” plays out.

A. An all Jewish State (“Greater Israel”) absorbing the entirety of the Biblical land-grant to the Jewish people, would be condemned by the entire world as unjust territory seizure. The world in 1947 granted that Israel’s claims to the Land are just, but cannot be inflicted on the longterm Arab squatters without showing respect for their cultural memory developed among the long-term squatters in the land historically known to have been stolen from the Jewish people by Imperial Rome in 70 c.e. –  when Rome conquered it, re-named it with a non-Jewish Latin nonsense name (“Syria-Palestina” – the Syrians who live East of Israel, and Philistines who were Aegean colonialist conquerers on the western central coast of Israel, were deadly enemies with almost nothing in common); and threw out the Jewish population into world-wide exile.

B. An All Arab State would, of course, mean the end of Israel’s existence, and Jewish acceptance of return to a life of exile among the nations, with no national homeland, and again being at the mercy of the “host nations” which always, at some point, turned toxic on them with pogroms and Holocaust-like events. There is no way the Jews will accept this fate propelling from the original Roman seizure of the Jewish homeland, and condemning us to live from pogrom-to-next-pogrom, and Holocaust to next-Holocaust. “Never again.”

C. A One-State With Two Peoples Solution (either self-governed or multi-nationallly governed) would lead inexorably to the death of the Jewish State and its people for the following reasons:

i. In the One State with Two Peoples, the Arab nations would call on Arabs from all over the Arab world to flood Israel in as many numbers as possible; and those Arabs in the land to reproduce at a frenetic rate, so as to change the demographics of the One State by creation of a VAST ARAB MAJORITY. 

ii. This majority would then be cited as the “democratic” justification for the Arab presence in the land to pass laws “democratically” that entirely ARABIZE the one state: its name would “democratically” be changed to Palestine. Jerusalem would “democratically” be renamed Al-Quds and given to the Arab world. The names of Jewish cities would “democratically” be changed to Arab names. Laws diminishing Jewish rights and existence would “democratically” be passed. Eventually, the Jewish homeland would  democratically” be entirely Arabized, and laws would surely further be “democratically” passed that eliminate Jewish citizenship across time.

And if Jews objected to the above “ethnic cleansing” process, the Arab world would say to the rest of humankind, “it’s a democratic country, and these are laws and conditions created by democracy. How can you object? You believe in democracy, don’t you?”

The nations of the world have displayed a consistent propensity for Jew-hatred and anti-Israel bias. Thus, a multinationally governed Two-Peoples state would most likely result in a cascade of “democratic” legislation manifestly and increasingly anti-Israel/Jewish in nature.

So – the road for total peace from now forward is pocked with serious pot-holes.

Zealotry-based groups like Hamas –  whether religious or nationalistic in their zeal – will always look for a way to become “a poison pill” to any momentum between Arabs and Jews leading to peaceful co-existence.

Jewish existence itself, and the Jewish State make the Quran clearly inaccurate and meritless – basically, an arabic Mein Kampf – and thus, Islamo-zealotry cannot rest until Israel is entirely Arab “from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea.”

As for Arab national pride – having the Jews in a state next door, outdoing Arabs in every area of human endeavor 1000 to 1 … is intolerable.

As the son of one Hamas founded stated – “The west cannot understand: Hamas is still stuck in the Arabian desert in its thinking: it sees itself as a tribe, and the Jews as a tribe. In desert banditry-based culture, you attack other tribes to take from them what you need. Either their tribe dies or your tribe dies: there is almost never “enough” in the desert for both tribes to co-exist.”

A positive closing note for those who believe the Two Testaments of Scripture – there is a prophetically-foretold time coming when a solution will be found: the borders between Israel and her neighbors will eventually be so peaceful, there will be no need for checkpoints or defenses or bars or gates. 

Ezekiel 38:11 describes Israel at a future time as …

“… the land of unwalled villages – those who are at rest, that live securely, all of them living without walls and having no bars or gates.”

The contention between our cousins and us will, at some point, come to an end to the extent that no borders or protective barriers between us will be necessary. What a glorious vision!

May it be soon, even in the days of some who are alive right now.

Kadima – forward (into history) we go.

Bruce L. Cohen

New York City • 19 Nov 2023

P.S. – the workbook (cover pictured above) “Israel, Arabs, and the Middle East” is available for purchase at this link. > PURCHASE

By Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen, of Congregation Beth El of Manhattan ©2022

Former Principal of Chalutzim Day School 1984 to 1988

Former Teacher in Chalutzim Day School 1980 to 1988

In 1986, Chalutzim Day School of Philadelphia – the first and largest full time “Messianic Jewish” private school in the world, was going to graduate its first high school class out into college. 

The school had started in 1977 in two basement rooms in Overbrook Park, a western suburban Philadelphia neighborhood right next door to “The Main Line.” By 1986, it had over fifty students, five full time faculty, and a dozen part time faculty, including cooperative programs with local accredited high schools, and a Principal: me. One of our first two graduates had been admitted to an honors program at a prestigious local university: the next year, our one lone graduate would be admitted to an Ivy League college. 

It was an occasion. As I was the main high school teacher and chief onsite administrator of the school, and I had come from a prep school background, it seemed de rigueur that our School’s first graduating Senior Class have a graduation class ring. So, I designed one and had it executed by ArtCarved: “the” graduation ring company at the time.

Our two graduates received their rings, and I got one for myself to mark the occasion. Our first high school graduation. 

My ring was stolen from my rented room in Yohanna Chernoff’s home a few years later, it turns out, by a fellow member of my Philly congregation who had a gambling problem; and I found out later, he had hocked the 18 karat gold ring for gambling money. On my 40th birthday in 1995, my wife, Debi, arranged to have an identical ring made for me as a gift. I have been wearing the reissued ring ever since. 

Chalutzim School in which I served for eight years as a teacher and the last four years concurrently as its Principal – and its host congregation Beth Yeshua in which I served for nearly fifteen years as a musician, teacher, and group leader: have both totally erased me from all memory and mention. So much so, that when Chalutzim Academy had its 30th anniversary celebration, my name was not mentioned even once. I know this from appalled former students who attended the event. A parent of one of the students, when visiting the school during the early 2000s, remarked to me, “You pretty much built that school, and there is nothing in the building to show you ever existed.”

Why?

My wife and I became “whistleblowers.”

We discovered one of the synagogue’s elders – Joe Finkelstein, who is now living in Arad, Israel   had been embezzling music ministry funds from albums in which I was a major investor and co owner, and he had also been committing a malicious and horrific slander spree against me and my wife to cover for his thieving, and for whatever other sick things were going on in his soul. 

Finkelstein had been caught “red handed.” He did not come honorably forward: he had initially mocked the very idea he could be held accountable, and was dragged to accountability, trying to lie his way out the whole way. If he had the “King David” reaction to Nathan proclaiming, “You are the criminal in this story!”    there would be a glimmer of redemptive hope to Finkelstein; but all he did was try to lie and blame shift, and when it became apparent there was no way to succeed at doing so, he folded and just asked how to get free of the situation.

There was copious documentation and were multiple witnesses to all Finkelstein’s criminal and anti ethical deeds. He tried to lie his way out for several hours, but could not. He even tried one very heinous “set up” to make me, as his victim, look bad: but it backfired on him, as members of Kol Simcha came forward and testified to Finkelstein’s full awareness of his own evildoing as demonstrated to them moments before he committed his act of emotional torture on the Cohens: Finkelstein’s crime of literal “sadism.” This act of Finkelstein was a direct abuse of office and abuse of the trusts of Kol Simcha as its director, and of the main stage of the annual international MJAA “Messiah Conference” as a tool for his own sick act of harm: it defiled the holiest of sites in the entire Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) and Beth Yeshua religious calendar year: the main stage at “The Conference” during a worship service with around a thousand or more Believers gathered from all over the world. It was this act of sadism, and all the false witness Finkelstein committed to achieve it, that most fully demonstrated how truly sick Finkelstein was in mind, soul, and spirit. 

As part of a very gracious deal offered to him so he could go on after such a moral morass, Finkelstein wrote out a full confession, signed in attestation as truthful and accurate by the his fellow elder Joel Chernoff, brother of the rabbi of Beth Yeshua, David Chernoff. [See link here for Confession Document]

Finkelstein’s confession not only detailed his misdeeds, but stated directly I had done nothing wrong to deserve such treatment by the obviously deeply unhealthy Finkelstein. It affirmed my standing as a rabbi – the highest ethical standard in the Scriptures – and that I “certainly served nobly and well” my entire 13 year tenure in the music group Kol Simcha that Finkelstein had led, and I had been to Finkelstein, “above all, a faithful friend.”

Finkelstein’s several year crime spree came to light at exactly the same time his rabbi, David Chernoff, had been telling the whole world that “God’s Spirit just keeps on affirming” Joe Finkelstein should be the next assistant rabbi in Beth Yeshua.

David Chernoff was now “out there” in public with his array of statements about God’s Spirit confirming Finkelstein for elevation into the rabbinate (1Tim 3 level “overseer” standing) … when the Scriptures say a man who has been on a 5 year spree of thefts, slanders (harmful untruths) and breaches of fidelity to his lower office should NOT under ANY circumstances be raised into the highest echelon of spiritual ratification: the rabbinate.

David Chernoff’s solution to the above embarrassing dilemma was not, as it should have been, to thank God for revealing an unqualified candidate before he was installed.

Chernoff appeared to have decided that if he used the singular influence he had inherited from his late father, Marty Chernoff, to kill off Finkelstein’s victims’ social and vocational standing in Beth Yeshua and the MJAA/IAMCS, then everyone Chernoff really cared about could go their merry way once Bruce and Debi Cohen were socially and vocationally dead in Chernoff’s sphere.

So, David Chernoff’s solution to Finkelstein’s crime spree was create a new, fantasy version of the Finkelstein Affair in which Finkelstein (the witnessed, on paper self confessed perp) was somehow the good guy, and Finkelstein’s victims (me and my wife) were the villains. 

Chernoff had the evil or insanity or both to tell me to my face in August 1998 in regard to the Finkelstein Affair, “You want to know ‘the truth,’ Bruce? You did it all to yourself.” So, Joe Finkelstein having for several years stolen, lied, lied more, slandered, broke contracts, and even done acts of what could only be called “sadism” – while I was accused of nothing, and affirmed as “above all, a faithful friend” who had “certainly served nobly and well …” –– that all distilled down for David Chernoff  into me having somehow done it all to myself.

Cue music from Hitchcock’s Psycho.

I mean truly, a psychopathological situation. What is that old saying?

“Sociopaths are never, in their own view, the villain in any scenario: they are always either the hero, the victim, or both.”

Most alarmingly, as if to say to the whole world, “Joe did nothing seriously wrong,” David Chernoff not only went right ahead and ordained Joe Finkelstein into an office for which he was Biblically directly disqualified; Chernoff instantly made Finkelstein, a recently discovered financial criminal, the Finance Officer of the MJAA’s rabbinical association, the I.A.M.C.S. The evil and madness of this situation hardly needs explanation. Who would make a recently caught and convicted rapist the dean of a girl’s boarding school? I mean – really, folks.

So – why do I keep wearing my Chalutzim ring?

Isn’t it a symbol of terrible betrayal and abandonment?

Well   yes, it is.

But it symbolizes other, more important things as well.

Firstly, it symbolizes my eight years in the school as a teacher and administrator. I don’t want to allow a liar and apparent sociopath like David Chernoff deprive me of the beautiful array of memories and relationship experiences I had during my eight years in Chalutzim Day School: now named,  “Chalutzim Academy.” Several of my students stayed in touch across the years and even tapped me for counsel into their adult years: I performed the wedding of one of my students after I had become a Rabbi, and officiated at her daughter’s naming ceremony in Jerusalem. I am still in relationship with former students to the present day, and I’ll be damned if I am going to let a pathological liar like David Chernoff take that away, just to preserve his own ego about his mistake elevating Finkelstein (whom Chernoff knew to be a disastrous failure as a father and  leader before he chose him to be a reliable “yes man” in his congregation and in the MJAA/IAMCS as soon as Chernoff could place him in the Exec Committees of those associations).

Secondly, my wife devoted great energy and love into finding the jeweler in Philadelphia who had manufactured my original design for the Chalutzim ring, and got him to reproduce it exactly from my original sketch and spec sheet, which he still had on file when she found him. Her devoted act of love in recovering my stolen treasure for me is as much a part of what I cherish as the school history the ring betokens.

Thirdly – this ring is the only remaining, consistently viewed evidence of the blood, sweat, and tears of my first post-college decade of work: the fruit of not only my own labors in my education, but the three generations of Cohens/Canareks and Garfields/Garfinkels who preceded me. I’ll be damned if I am going to let a low-life like David Chernoff or his crew erase four Jewish generations of dedicated efforts by my forebears to allow me the education and opportunities they afforded me.

So, I wear it still.

For my wife, Debi. For  my students Rachel, Marika, Keri, Ari, Oona, Jamie, Jeremy, Erik, Rachel, Becca, Karen and all the lower grades I didn’t teach directly, but supervised; and for my fellow faculty Linda, Dinky, Sharon, Caren, Cathy, Lynn, my assistant teachers Candy, Mindy, and Kathy and the many others who served during my tenure. 

To paraphrase Forest Gump: “Low life is as low life does.”

From David Chernoff, not honorable acceptance of a mistake which God graciously warned him about in time to prevent: no, instead a heinous cover up by raining harm upon innocent victims: a whistleblower attack, just like the lowest of criminals do to witnesses for the prosecution.

Kill the witness(es), and (accountability for) the crime evaporates.

David Chernoff’s and Joe Finkelstein’s and every other accomplice in their Watergate/Dreyfus style coverup is this: “All liars go into the lake of fire prepared for God’s Adversary and his minions.” (Revelation 21:8)

All means all.

My Chalutzim ring, stolen and then recovered, reminds me of the truth of these matters, as established in due process, documented  and confessed by the criminal himself, witnessed in attestation by David Chernoff’s brother, Joel.

So   I wear it still.

As for “The Perps” in these matters? The Chernoffs, Finkelstein, Jamie Cowen, Russ Resnick, Elliot Klayman, Judah Hungerman, Bob Cohen, and all the perps in this matter face burning through all eternity, unless they truly repent.

May God visit them all with “the repentance that leads to life.”

But that would require that they (a) confess, (b) commit never to repeat their sins (c) pay the price in restitution of harms done, and punitive/community protective steps (like stepping down or out of office).

I don’t know of anyone who believes the Chernoffs and other perps in this matter possess either the genuine spirituality or the humility to take the steps that would lead them to eternal life.

So   in late 2022, as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote in Cats Cradle, “and so it goes.”

The photograph of my hand with my Chalutzim ring on it was taken today, 14 October 2022: the same day I wrote this blog entry. I wear my Chalutzim ring still – even today.

Bruce L. Cohen

New York City • Sukkot 2022/5783

Fear Of Public Shame-Bombing Is Allowing Interest-Group Politics to Ruin Our Democratic Processes

With all discussion, past and present, of Judge Ketanji Jackson’s nomination for the US Supreme Court, it seems to me the real main point of the matter is being entirely overlooked in public discourse. 

Presidential-Candidate Joe Biden’s campaign promise “My first nominee to the Supreme Court will be a Black woman,” and his delivery of that campaign promise when actually President, both literally broke the law; as follows:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

United States Code Vol. 42 §2000e Pub. L. 88-352 SEC. 2000e-2. [Section 703]

(a) Employer practices

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer –

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

White and Asian (and Indian and First-American and Inuit and Philippine, and Polynesian)  are “colors” and/or “national origins.”

Male is a sex (gender).

Those colors and that gender were excluded from hiring consideration, purely on the basis of their color and gender. Candidate, then President Biden, directly stated so when promising, and when nominating.

President Biden broke the law when making this nomination: Jackson’s candidacy is now too tainted with illegality and political interests to be healthy going forward. She is vulnerable to disruption of her service or disenfranchisement of her SCOTUS opinions by direct attacks on the validity of her position as a Justice.

For any interest-group: racial, religious, or otherwise to break the law so as to get one of their own into highest office in the legal profession is simply not a dynamic the our Republic can survive.

Imagine the furor that would have ensued if Candidate Biden had said:

“We need to change the endless cycle of only Black and White Christians and Jews on the US Supreme Court: my next nominee will be either a Muslim, or a Trans-gender Hindu or Sikh.”

The sky would have fallen in.

However, Candidate Biden needed the African-American vote: so he guaranteed that voting bloc that if they voted for him, one of their own would be put on The Court in the next opening. He got their vote: he got the Presidency. He then broke the law and violated his Presidential oath so as to keep his promise; and his candidate for the US Supreme Court accepted an illegal appointment. Let that sentence sink in:

Biden’s nominee for the US Supreme Court, the highest Constitutional legal office in the country, accepted an illegal appointment to the post.

She had been pre-selected because of her sex and race – and all other genders and races had been excluded, limited, segregated, classified OUT of the position – because of their gender and races.

It is a textbook, direct violation of Title VII.

The main reason no one in law or government will say so in public now appears to be because of fear of being “cancelled” – meaning, shame-bombed in public outside due process by cries of “racism” which were hurled nearly instantly at anyone merely probing the appropriateness of the nominee –  which is the specific job of Congress in regard to such appointments. Anyone questioning or opposing for any reason was publicly reviled as racist.

Breaking the law to place one of the highest Law officials in the Government is madness.

The group-interest-driven madness needs to stop.

Criticizing certain Islamic actions and ideas must cease being instantly labeled, “Islamophobia.”

Criticizing certain Jewish or Israeli actions and ideas must cease being instantly labeled, “Antisemitism.”

Criticizing certain Gender-Group actions and ideas must cease being instantly labeled, “misogyny, misanthropy, homophobia, or transphobia.”

Criticizing certain race-group actions and ideas must cease being instantly labeled, “racism.”

We must recover the skill of having non-demonizing discussions with those who disagree with us.

The sole legally-permissible qualification-set for appointment to the US Supreme Court is a supremely excellent record as a jurist, accompanied by a supremely excellent and persistent level of demonstrated character and wisdom in keeping with the legal profession’s standards. Gender and race are simply disallowed as qualifiers or disqualifiers from consideration for office.

Ironically, it was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said on the Capitol steps not far from The US Supreme Court: “I have a dream that one day my children will live in a country where they are judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Judge Ketanji Jackson missed a golden opportunity to go down in history.

She should have declined Biden’s appointment by saying something like this:

“Mr. President, I am honored beyond expression to be a nominee to The Supreme Court; however, this time around, as an attorney and officer of the court, I must respectfully decline the nomination because you directly cited my gender and race as reasons for my appointment. These criteria are entirely and directly illegal, per Title VII of the US Code. I gratefully here note that the next time a seat becomes open, I would be honored to be nominated, provided no reference is made to my gender or race in any way related to my nomination. I further say, this kind of strict adherence by me to the ethics of the legal profession will be what you can expect from me in the exercise of my duties, and ongoing effort to be an example of meticulous adherence to legal and Constitutional ethics and law above group interests or pressures of any kind. Thank you.”

If Ketanji Jackson had made this speech, she would be quoted and studied in every Constitutional Law class in every American law school for the next hundreds of years.

Instead, we have an example of a candidate for President cynically politically “playing” an interest group for votes, and a legal professional from that group violating her every oath to “defend and uphold the Constitution and Laws of the United States” in order to gain the high office.

I expect to be called “a racist” for writing this.

I was asked not long ago by one African American interests-advocate, “Why can’t you just be happy for us, that we got one of our own onto the highest seat in the profession?”

My reply was based on “The Golden Rule” – what if it was some other interest group that managed to “get one of their own” into the highest court in the land by breaking the law? Would you “just be glad” for them?

The Republic comes first.

So offers this one citizen to my fellow citizens for consideration.

May The Republic endure.

BLC

Written April 2022, revised December 2023

i24News Israeli Network Shows Unbiased Journalism Is Still Possible. Their motto: “Stories without commentary or arguments, presented expertly by excellent journalists.”

The American journalism profession seems to be in ruins.

There is very little reportage now: there is event-exploitation to advance a political faction’s agenda; and journalists who have dubbed themselves “experts” speak individually or on panels, tell viewers immediately what the news means, and what they should think or feel. Journalists freely tell the viewers what they – the reporters – think.

What a reporter thinks has never been, in journalism, something an audience should hear, except in carefully-labeled editorial segments, offered in extremely limited quantity. Albert Brook’s brilliant 1980s satire, Broadcast News, about the oncoming showbiz-driven news industry replacing classic reporting, shows a new “spokesmodel-type” News Anchor (a great-looking, great-sounding guy who barely understands the news he is reporting) telling an audience while forced momentarily to ad lib during a crisis, “I think we’re all ok.” Hearing this, the Chief Editor in the production booth mutters to himself, “Who the #$%& cares what you think?”

However – now in America, we are living in a 50/50 divided nation.
The Left tunes into CNN for their news; and The Right goes to Fox.
Their call-letters may as well be WDNC and WRNC.
There is no more news: there is faction-support and agenda advancement. News events are carefully spun to advantage the agenda of “The Side.”

The Left says the Right (mostly not-of-color Majority Supported) Wing is alleged to be greedy and evil, and only wants to preserve undeserved wealth and “white privilege” at the expense of equally-deserving people who have not as much – even if those people are illegally in The United States. At the bedrock of these politics is simple desire for enough stuff for oneself and one’s loved ones or “crew.” The desire is understandable, which is why among the “inalienable rights” the US Declaration of Independence assigns to citizens is “the pursuit of happiness.” Not happiness, itself – but an even-playing field for pursuit of (effort to obtain) happiness. Many minorities are unhappy with the size of their slice of the financial pie at present, which they allege is conspiratorially maintained unjustly small in contrast to the size others have: they called the possessions others than themselves have, “privilege.” This “white privilege” must be erased, and be replaced with an even distribution. This is deemed a righteous crusade.

The Right says the Left Wing (having adopted a role as Of-Color Minorities Advocate), is coming for instant affluence (happiness itself, in the form of affluence, without the “pursuit” obtain it), which they say they deserve right now, Those who “have it” now (often as the result of multiple generations of work starting from the bottom up) should be compelled by taxation to give away to them serious percentages of the fruits of often multigenerational labor, to be redistributed by the government to people who have not worked across generations, as previous waves of immigrants did to earn what they have. BLM Co-Founder Patrice Cullers said it overtly on CNN a few years back, when asked by a Caucasian reporter what the solution is to the race problem in America. She replied instantly, “You all gotta give away some of what you’ve got to us.”  This is, to the Right, a typical “transfer of wealth” socialism that has historically been typically accompanied by the heads of affluent people being marched through the streets held aloft on pitchforks. The Right is afraid, and calls what they are doing, protecting American values.

Each side seems to hate the other.
Each side’s news organ seems bent on convincing their viewers The Other Side is pure evil.

And on “The News” in America – these tropes are nearly all you hear all day and all night.

Then – i24News surfaces with the motto, “Stories without commentary or arguments, presented expertly by excellent journalists.”

Watching i24News is like drinking purified water after years of being forced to drink water polluted with bitter-tasting Red or Blue dye.

For the first time in years, I felt like I was again watching Walter Cronkite, or Huntley/Brinkley. News being reported by journalists; not political indoctrination or Jerry Springer-style cockfighting with people shouting each other down in mid-speech.

I say again, the self-appointed New Priesthood of journalists, who present themselves as “experts” rather than interviewing genuine advance degree-holding or highly-experienced experts as they used to do, is using their bully pulpit to enfranchise themselves into niches of influence, advance their agendas, and subdue their adversaries, proffering as support their own opinions or those of fellow-journalists, who they introduce to audiences as “joining us to provide expert commentary.”

Social Media giants are joining the fray with editing/suppression of stories all the way to-cancel-culture removals of people, and even whole platforms, not aligned with their agendas.

The Left, fresh from electoral victories and President Trump’s massive January 6th miscalculation, is alleging 70 million Rightists who voted for Trump are as directly connected to the mere dozens to hundreds who abandoned an entirely peaceful protest by 10,000s in Washington, to invade the Capitol building and start The Capitol Riot. There seems to be a serious effort in progress to entirely disenfranchise the Right as having any remaining legitimacy in any corner of the political world.  Statements from Left influencers like Prep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) demanding “lists be made of anyone who ever supported Donald Trump” are not helping quell Right nightmares about political purges headed the Right’s way.

The Right, still sore over the Left Press’s total suppression of any reportage of the FBI’s in-progress Hunter Biden investigation for influence-peddling in collusion with his father Joe and other partners until after the election, is crying out, “Censorship! Leftist-Socialist jihad coming our way! Time to suit up! Socialists are coming for us and our stuff!”

Civility seems gone.

The Right says the Left has gone entitlement-absolutist and insane.

The Left says the Right has gone totally greed-protective and evil.

And on “The News” – these tropes are nearly all you hear all day and all night.

Then, there is i24News is leading the way by example.
They are peacefully showing genuine journalism is still possible.

The Newspeople are not “the story.” The story is the story. The Newspeople are to report news: not teach the masses their own opinions. The words, “I think” and “I feel” – now business-as-usual for telejournalists – words unspoken by Murrow or Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley or Peter Jennings, except in brief, non-routine editorials for extreme circumstances – are not spoken during i24News.

As I’ve been typing an edit of this article, I have had i24News playing in the background, and in the 45 minutes I have been listening, I have not once heard a single reporter say even once, “I think” in any form, nor have there been any dueling commentators shouting each other down and hurling their talking points at each other to score with the audience. Just news stories. Think of it! Just news – and occasionally, genuine experts or involved leaders being interviewed when their output is relevant. My soul is going, ahhhhh with relief.

The reporter is not the story: only the story is the story. The reporters are not telling you what they think: they are reporting what they have seen, or heard, or have confirmed through an eye-witness or interviewed expert happened.

Hallelujah – a word from the language of the nation hosting i24News
Here is Israel being a true “light to the nations.”

Here is hoping the American nation’s journalism profession sees the light, and comes out of agenda-propulsion mode, to recover the holy, necessary, and profoundly ethics-bound vocation of properly functioning journalism.

As the old prayer goes, “May it be speedily, and in our days.”

Bruce Louis Cohen
13 January 2021