https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/23/20928429/trump-ukraine-aid-quid-pro-quo-impeachment
President Donald Trump’s latest defense against the impeachment inquiry is that while congressionally approved military aid may have been withheld to pressure Ukrainian leaders to investigate Joe Biden and his son, withholding that money was not wrong, because Ukraine didn’t know it was happening. However, not only is that defense thin, it also not supported by sworn testimony or recent reporting.
The president endorsed this defense, made by Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) on Fox & Friends Wednesday, in a tweet quoting the Congress member. “Neither [Bill Taylor] or any other witness has provided testimony that the Ukrainians were aware the military aid was being withheld,” Ratcliffe said on the show. “You can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo.”
This defense does not make much sense. The fact Ukrainian officials weren’t initially sure why the security assistance had been delayed does not mean it wasn’t withheld. Trump himself has said it was held back, and has cited corruption as the reason. Notably, he did not use his latest tweet to deny that he held up the aid, and it’s clear he privately and publicly called for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
On his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump responded to a Ukrainian request for weapons by asking for a “favor” — an investigation into Democrats, and later on the call an investigation into the Bidens.
Here is a snapshot of Ukraine 100 years ago:
ReplyDelete"The Kiev pogroms of 1919 proved the first of many such events.[4] There were a total of 1,326 pogroms across Ukraine around that time, in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred. The pogroms were marked by utmost cruelty and face-to-face brutality. Thousands of women were raped. Hundreds of shtetlekh were pillaged, and Jewish neighborhoods were left in ruins. According to some estimates, overall, in the pogroms of 1918-1921, half a million Jews were left homeless."
This was before the holocaust, and in the"mesora" of khilmnecki, yemach shmam.
So. Berel, in Halacha, it's pikuch nefesh that overrides everything.