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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - II

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  Commercial banks are the oldest and most powerful financial institutions in the world. Siggi was warned that no industry in the country   has more consistently and cruelly rejected Jews from positions of power and influence, than commercial banking. There was nothing Siggi liked more than to defy preconceived beliefs. While surveying the newspapers for likely candidates, his interest focused on   a medium level bank: The Trust Company of New Jersey (TCNJ). Like Wilshire, it was run by an old-school board lacking vision. It would take years for Siggi to acquire enough TCNJ stock to combine the two   companies but it became his number one priority. Most of the TCNJ stock was held by approximately a dozen people. The majority of the directors on the board were old Nazi types, tall German WASPS, none of them under 70 years old, totally close- knit. Siggi picked up little bits of stock whenever they came on the market. When the largest shareholder died his son, Don Brenner, inheri
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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - I

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                                                                                               After an intense study of the stock market, Siggi  Wilzig  began his extraordinary career by buying five shares at a time in the Wilshire Oil and Gas Co. This was a small   company whose stocks sold at an affordable price. Siggi had become a close friend of a fellow Jew, Sol Diamond, who was a very successful, well-known entrepreneur. Diamond had also invested in the Wilshire Co. and was concerned over Wilshire’s failure to realize its potential. The company was in trouble and needed fresh energy and a charismatic leader. Since Diamond was too old to take on fresh challenges (almost eighty) he promised Siggy that he would back him financially - if he would take up the challenge of overturning the present President of Wilshire. This meant purchasing large amounts of stock. Siggi never refused a challenge. With no money of his own to do so, he enrolled everyone he could think of,   to purch
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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM

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I am indebted to Joshua M. Greene on whose fascinating biography of a “superman” called “ Unstoppable ”, I based the following blogs:                                                                                                       The story of Siggy Wilzig is incredible. He arrived in America with no resources or credentials. He spoke with a thick German accent, had only an elementary school education, stood five feet five and a half inches short, and years of torture and starvation were still fresh in his mind. However, he made three promises to himself: never to go hungry again; marry a Jewish woman, have children, and help rebuild the Jewish people; preserve Holocaust memory and speak up whenever he witnessed injustice. Siggy was the only survivor in his family, of Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Mathausen. He came to America poor and uneducated, and rose from cleaning sweatshop toilets to becoming CEO of a New York Stock Exchange; a listed oil company; and a multi
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A WORLD IN DENIAL

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  It is inconceivable   that   the Arab media, which disseminates Israeli “atrocities” throughout the world, is blindly accepted by millions of people who have no knowledge of the true facts. Most news concerning Israel is biased, invariably falsified, distorted and not even properly verified by supposedly reputable sources, such as the B.B.C., CNN, REUTERS, the Guardian, etc. Currently, the world is concentrating on the war in Gaza, and the accusation by the Palestinians in Gaza of ethnic cleansing by Israel. Israel is a Jewish state. Its minorities are Muslim, Christian and Druze Arabs. Their numbers have grown steadily, along with the country’s overall population.  The Arabic    population in Israel in 1948 was 56,000. Today there are 2,178,000 Arabs living in Israel.   In areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, everyone is Arab. Christian Arabs are a dwindling minority that fears for its security. The percentage of Christians has been declining rapidly, from 12
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SUPER-HEROES

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  The brothers Elchanan and Menachem Klemanson, and their nephew Itiels’ entry into the carnage at Kibbutz Be’eri began on   Saturday, October 7, when news began to spread that a major security incident was underway in southern Israel. As more details emerged, it became clear that large numbers of Hamas and other Gazan terrorists had entered Israel from Gaza and were attacking nearby communities. The three Reservists, at the initiative of Elchanan, (a captain in the Israeli army),   left their homes to help save the lives of Gaza border residents. Equipped with bulletproof vests and M16 rifles, they rescued dozens of kibbutz Be’eri residents from the hands of Hamas terrorists, before Elhanan was killed. “With extraordinary courage they saved   entire families”.                                                                                                The Klemansons are from Otniel, a religious, politically right-wing settlement in the Judean mountains, 50 kilometers east of k
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THE SANCTITY OF LIFE

Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer, who has more experience in war and terrorism than almost anybody stated:   “The only reason Israel goes to war is to defend itself. And it has to defend itself because it is surrounded by countries, and armed groups, that want to destroy it”. The IDF is an army of defense because the primary tenet of Judaism is the sanctity of life. The Jews are not wired to be killers or avengers. That is why, even when facing an implacable enemy, we make every effort to minimize the killing of civilians One of the most outstanding Jews who exemplified the sanctity of life was  Rabbi Yekusiel Halberstam, whose wife and eleven children were murdered in Auschwitz.    A fellow inmate of the brutal concentration camp recounted the discussion the Rabbi  had with a German officer.The officer told him, “Every morning you Jews bless G-d for not making you gentiles. Now look who’s more important – you or me?” The Rabbi explained to him that we Jews
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GRANDMA'S ARMY AT WAR - II

  My youngest son, Yoni, has five sons, three of whom are triplets. Their oldest son is studying abroad, but the other four were all called up at the beginning of the war. Ido functioned as a team commander in a Reserves corps whose role was to guard and navigate logistics for farmers in the settlements surrounding Gaza. Farmers, who returned to work in areas adjacent to the fence that were threatened, until recently, by terrorists. The corps were also guarding against terrorist infiltration in the area. Aviad, the oldest of the triplets (by five minutes) wrote: “I have been serving until now in the Alexandroni Reserve’s brigade of the Golani regiment. On Simchat Torah we were sent up north to guard the border in case Hezbollah, like Hamas, would try to infiltrate into Israel. Our brigade was situated on a border kibbutz. We prepared ourselves, not only against infiltration but also against missile attacks. The settlements are in constant danger from anti-tank missiles that the H
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