Op-Ed: Women Who Change History: EMET’s Sarah Stern

Mark Langfan

Israel National News

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick; you will go far” – Teddy Roosevelt, 1901. “Speak softly, and carry the truth; you will, with G-d’s help, survive” – Mark Langfan, 2013.

If ever you want to see true Jewish grit, and someone who “speaks softly, and carries the truth,” it’s Sarah Stern, and her Washington, DC-based educational organization EMET: Endowment for Middle East Truth.

Suffice to say, it is no coincidence that “EMET” means “truth” in Hebrew. Standing 5’2” with a face of an angel, Sarah looks like a regular, standard Yiddishe Mammala. “Looks”, that is, until you hear her stand up 7’ feet tall, and make the case for Israel in the halls of the United StatesCongress.

What’s more, Sarah, by rubbing a couple of shekels together, has created a small Zionist cadre of devoted and caring people who are fighting the good fight in our nation’s Capitol. And Sarah doesn’t “just talk the talk” for Israel and the Jewish people, Sarah has a daughter and son-in-law who have made Aliyah and who “walk the walk” and are fighting for Israel on the front-lines of the IDF, and are committing their lives to the security and defense of the Jewish state.

Sarah’s love of Israel is not news to me. I’ve known Sarah as a real true pro-Israel activist for close to 20 years. I first met her in the 90’s when we both fought against Americadeploying US Troops to the Golan Heights as part of the then-Israeli government’s “Rube Goldberg” insane ‘piece’ plan with Assad Sr. (Please read my 1995 “US Troops on Golan.Quicksand” article)

Just imagine today, if Assad Jr. (and his Iranian puppeteers) could have kidnapped or blown up the Golan US Troops on the spidery roads of the topographically challenging Golan! But as insane as that 1995 Golan ‘piece’ plan was for Israel, (and most specifically for America), all the mainstream Jewish American organizations came out strongly in favor of deploying the US troops to the Golan.

Sarah was among a small handful of Jews who saw the then-Israeli Government’s Golan-US Troop plan as an irreversible catastrophe in the making not only for Israel, but also most especially for America. (Imagine how American Jews would have been pilloried by Americans if a single American soldier on the Golan had come back in a body bag.)

And the 1995 Golan/US Troop fight is urgent today because it will soon morph into a 2013 “West Bank”/US Troop fight. For, Obama is now trying, under the radar, to pull off an even more insane “US/NATO troops for the ‘West Bank’” plan. Obama knows the only way he can drug-induce Israel into committing a suicidal Judea and Samaria ‘piece’ retreat is to put US “piece-keepers” there.

That is, until the Palestinian Salafists or Iranian al Quds kidnap a bunch of US Soldiers, and/or lob a few Katyushas into Tel Aviv. Then Obama’s US Troops won’t be “peacekeepers,” they will morph into Palestinian Arab defenders keeping Israel from returning to Judea and Samaria. Or, at best, they will just skip out as did all the Gaza International border-inspectors when Hamas started shooting up their watch-posts.

And I can promise everyone reading this essay that the same exact Jewish-American “mainstream” organizations that are going to support Israel’s 2014 retreat from Judea and Samaria for US Troops are going to be the exact same Jewish-American organizations that supported the Israeli 1995 Golan retreat for US Troops.

And I can also promise you, Sarah’s EMET is going to be one of the only American Jewish organizations fighting such a catastrophically and ludicrously dangerous plan.

And for true disclosure, I must report that Sarah Stern and EMET has twice in the past two years hosted me on Capitol Hill to give briefings for congressional staffers, and I am proudly on EMET’s Board of Director’s. Both of my Hill “Helicopter Briefings without the Helicopter” were standing-room-only, and had close to 80-90 Hill staffers, and even some congressmen attending. In short, Sarah’s EMET is the only organization that wants the United States Congress to understand the unalloyed truth that the “Land for Peace” process is nothing but a “Land for Pieces” process.

Sarah doesn’t run a fancy-beautiful-office-type organization that gets millions from left-wing American Jews who want their Israel problem to “just disappear.” Sarah runs her outfit as cost-effectively as humanly possible to maximize the bang for the buck. Right-of-center American Jewish organizations don’t have the cachet and access to the politically-correct beautiful-people crowd that Americans for Peace Now have.  But, Sarah slogs on, and succeeds.

EMET’s upcoming June 19th Rays of light Dinner in Washington DC is going to feature many true pro-Israel luminaries. Reza Kahlili is being honored as the ‘Ray of Light’ awardee. Why Reza Kahlili? Who is Reza Kahlili? Kahlili was recruited by the CIA to work undercover in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards for several years in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Reza realized Iran was, and is, on a path of world-wide destruction and he personally had to do something to try to stop it.

You must take a minute to understand how important Reza Kahlili is to the world. If in 1935, a member of Hitler’s Waffen SS (Hitler’s Schtuzstaffel, or “Protective Squadron”, in essence his Pretorian guards, or murderers) had risked his own life and spied for the OSS (the predecessor to today’s CIA), and then defected to try and tell the world what Hitler was soon to become, that Waffen SS 1935 defector would have been the most righteous person the world has ever seen. Consequently, Kahlili’s CIA spying, and subsequent defection, and attempt to warn the current world of the new “Hitler” threat of Iran and its 12th Iman religious crazies is, perhaps, the most righteous “Ray of Light” that exists in the world today.

And, it is no surprise that Sarah and EMET are virtually the only American Jews taking the non-politically-correct stand, and openly honoring Kahlili with the Ray of Light Award. It is a tragedy that virtually no other American Jewish organizations believe it is vital to elevate a modern-day hero like Kahlili so as to warn others of the waxing danger of yet another possible Jewish catastrophe.

In addition to Kahlili, Bret Stephens, the renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning, Wall Street Journal editor; Sen. Ted Cruz, the pro-Israel Texas Senator; and Rep. Jeff Duncan, the Israel-loving South Carolina Congressman, are going to be the speakers. And as for truly full disclosure, I, yours truly, will be giving a short briefing with my 3d Israel map, and my latest, and greatest, Israel-Strategic Value 4-page flyer.

If there is one common thread among all the EMET people , it is that America sees Israel as a democratic and indispensable American ally, a lonely beacon of freedom in a violent sea of Islamist tyranny in the Middle East.