How I Was Cancelled

 

I know I am taking a risk publishing this article.  I am risking losing business, customers, and a potential job.  Despite these risks, I want to tell this story as I feel the need to fight back.

We all heard about people with conservative views that were “cancelled” -- censored on social media or even lost job opportunities for publishing their views.   Unfortunately, it is common for conservatives who express their opinion publicly to be impacted.  Many chose to keep their views private for fear of being cancelled.  The left succeeded to restrict conservatives from expressing their views for fear of retribution.  But when we keep quiet, they succeed, and Marxism wins over freedom.  The solution is to fight back and speak up!

It is even worse when the people who are doing the cancelling are the people who claim to be of the same political persuasion.  They are either cowards or fake conservatives. 

In June 2023 I was finalizing the sale of the business I built since 2015.  It was the conclusion of eight grueling years of building a successful multi-million-dollar high-tech automotive company.   I was considering other business ideas, but meanwhile to help with funding my next endeavor, I contacted my friend, Chuck Burns, who was one of the two partner owners of Clinton Rubin LLP – an IT consulting firm that primarily did staff augmentation in the Infor ERP space.  

Before I started RR Racing with my brother, I spent a career working in the consulting IT, ERP, business software, and data analytics space.  Several years before that I helped Clinton Rubin close some ERP data related projects.   Both Chuck and his partner Scott Smith seemed to appreciate my efforts then not only for the revenues that they badly needed at the time, but also because these projects gave them the qualification experience, they desperately needed to show that Clinton Rubin was more than just a staff augmentation firm.

I met Chuck at the start of my consulting career with KPMG Consulting.  He was just promoted to a senior manager position when we both were assigned to a lucrative ERP project at Boeing Wichita.  We ended up selecting SAP for the Boeing Wichita ERP system, and this was how I got into SAP consulting.  We had some good times together in Wichita including my bachelor’s party that Chuck organized at the local strip club.  The club was in the middle of Boeing’s Wichita plant and was forbidden to be visited by Boeing management and consultants.  Our team was nearly thrown off the project for that stint when Boeing Wichita President found out.   The Boeing Wichita ERP project was put on hold, and about two months later I left KPMG for a better position in another consulting company.  

Chuck was promoted to partner and eventually rose to position of KPMG Consulting Senior Vice President/CFO (which surprised me as he was a better salesman than finance manager).  Chuck and I were not close friends, but we were occasionally in touch.   In 2020 I introduced him to a conservative Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, Joe Gale, and he got excited to help with the campaign – he organized a campaign meeting with his friends and contacts and made some contributions to Gale’s campaign. 

After my initial conversation with Chuck in July 2023, several months passed with no action at Clinton Rubin.  Then Chuck’s partner Scott Smith contacted me and asked for my help developing a data analytics system for Ceridian – HR Management software company they started to work with.   I spent several calls with Chuck and Scott discussing the project with not much clarity.  I did some digging on my own and started to develop a plan how to get things moving in the right direction.  I sent an email to Scott about how I suggested to proceed but got a surprising reply that they may have decided to move in a different direction.  Something seemed odd and then I tried to get a hold of Chuck.

The next day, I got a call from Chuck that informed me that he had a “mutiny on his hands”, and that “his people” were concerned about my relationship with Clinton Rubin given a comment I posted on LinkedIn.  I was surprised to say the least that any of the views I expressed on social media were relevant to my work at Clinton Rubin.  He told me that he is a Republican but never posts anything for a fear of alienating his customers who are HR people and most of them are probably Democrat leftists.  Chuck repeated several times that he never posts anything on any social media.  I asked why he was afraid to stand for what he believed in?  He just kept repeating the same line that he does not post anything implying that I needed to conform to the same edict.  I told Chuck that I would never let anyone limit my free speech and limit where I can express my beliefs.  It may not be appropriate to bring up politics during a business meeting with customers, but customers do not have the right to “cancel” you for the opinions you express on-line or anywhere else not related to the business relationship with them. 

It turned out that someone at Clinton Rubin did not like my comment on LinkedIn to this post from Lehigh University:

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:7080257554420756481

My comment was this -- 

Simon Raban Comment to Lehigh Post

I graduated from Lehigh with my master’s degree in manufacturing systems engineering.  I am grateful to Lehigh for the excellent education I received.   In 2018, however, I noticed a concerning trend of Lehigh becoming dependent on Chinese students and money from China (which means dependent on the Chinese Communist Party).  When I expressed interest on behalf of RR Racing to sponsor engineering projects at Lehigh, I was surprised to receive a very lukewarm reply.  The then head of Lehigh Industrial Engineering department told me that Lehigh was more interested in us sponsoring graduate students like the support they got from Chinese companies.   In 2023 I also noticed based on Lehigh’s publications that Lehigh, as many other higher education institutions in US, moved to the left and supports many leftists causes.  The post above was one such example.  Lehigh University President basically stated that Lehigh would find a way to circumvent the US Supreme Court decision not allowing to discriminate based on race in college admissions.  I felt this was inappropriate and commented on their LinkedIn post (especially, given Lehigh's recent history of cozying up to Chinese).

After my last conversation with Chuck, I have not heard from him nor Clinton Rubin.  I have never found out who at Clinton Rubin read my LinkedIn comment and objected to my business relationship with Clinton Rubin.  I suspected Scott Smith’s daughter who worked at the firm or their sleazy salesman John, but I have never found out for sure.  I wonder if I posted a comment supporting a leftist’s cause, would they still cancel me – probably not.

Is this what US business has come to?  US business lost its compass and its roots in the Judea-Christian values that founded this great nation.  If someone dares to express opinions not supported by the current regime, they will be cancelled because profits and money are more important than principles and freedom.  I hope that we will wake up before it is too late, and we lose our freedoms to the forces of the modern American Marxism. 

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I will keep updating this blog based on feedback and reactions.  

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It was interesting for me to find out the different reactions to this blog.  Most people who read it were supportive. Some could not understand what motivated me to write it.  This was especially the reaction from people who are successful in business.  From their perspective, why write something that gives me little personal benefit while taking a risk of ruining relationship that may still benefit me or taking a risk of legal action.  To these people I said, this was exactly why I wrote this blog article.  

I believe it is important to expose when someone is doing something wrong regardless of personal benefit.  This cancel culture has been plaguing our society for many years.  It is unfortunate that business people think that personal gain is more important than standing for what is right and for your rights.  By exposing the wrong, I take a small step to eradicate it.  If everyone of us does it, then people will realize it is not an acceptable approach in our society.  I hope that you would agree.

Heroic Story from October 7, 2023 (brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel)

 

This is translation from a Hebrew X (Tweeter) post about the heroic October 7^th story of the Cohen family from Kibbutz Nir Oz titled “The Fight for Our Lives!”

We realized that we were next in line.  We heard them destroying our neighbor’s house, and we realized that at any minute they were coming for us.  Our stomachs were turning inside out.  And then at 11:00am they got to us.  We told our kids that no matter what happens, keep quiet. 

We heard them breaking into our house.  They came to our safe room [many Israeli houses in the south have bomb shelters to protect against Hamas rocket attacks] and knocked on the door, and then they tried to open the door with force.  This was a 40 minute battle over the door handle between Yakir [my husband] and the terrorists.  Then we heard automatic weapon fire.  Mika, our dog, started weeping from pain and ran from side to side of the safe room while bleeding.  We realized that a bullet penetrated through the safe room steel door and hit our dog. 

And then the terrorists started to try to open the steel window.  Yakir jumped to the window and was holding it.  We did not think of locking the steel window!  Then they approached the door, again.  Yakir jumped to hold the door handle, and I was holding the window.  Suddenly, there was a crazy explosion and I ceased to hear anything.  They threw a grenade at the window, but I continued to hold the window with all my might.  Then I realized that Yakir was wounded and kept quiet about his injury.  He took a dipper and our daughter’s hair band and tied his bleeding hip.

All this time our neighbor was holding the baby in her hands and our three kids were close to her under the bed.  At this point the terrorists gave up penetrating our safe room and started to break everything in the house.  They looted and broke everything they could.  Then one of the terrorists screamed in Hebrew: “today you will not live past this afternoon.”

After a few minutes we started to smell smoke, and we realized that they wanted to burn us alive.  There was a very strong smoke that penetrated the safe room.  Our throats were burning.   The walls of the safe room got very hot as if we were being fried live in an oven on high heat.  Kids started to throw out and we felt helpless.

We waited for the terrorists to leave, and then Yakir opened the window little bit.  He checked to make sure that no terrorists were around and then opened some more to let every one of us to take a breath of fresh air. 

We were not able to stay in the safe room anymore.  We decided to exit through the window.  It was 12:45. Yakir jumped first and checked that there were no terrorists around.  Then we got the kids and our neighbor one by one, and I tried to get out last.  The smoke was so bad that I was not able to jump out.  Yakir had to pull me out from the window.

We stood 3 seconds next to the safe room’s window, and then Yakir decided to run to the safe house that was behind the Kibbutz play-set about 100 meters behind our house.  We were running quietly praying that the terrorists would not hear and catch us.  We were lucky that our kids had their cell phones with them, and we were able to make contact and let people know that we were inside the safe house. 

The stay in the safe house was very stressful as we heard sounds of weapons firing and explosions.  We were scared that the terrorists would find us again.  Yakir stood in the opening suffering from the immense pain from his injuries.  He was praying that someone would come to save us.  The kids were crying quietly.  My son, Amit, whispered that he hoped that his friends were OK.  In about four hours IDF soldiers came to rescue us.

 

The Truth Matters

To my friends, family, and business associates:

As you know, my home country was savagely attacked on Saturday, October 7, 2023.  The horror and inhumanity of the terrorists that attacked the peaceful people of Israel is just starting to come out.   Comparing these terrorists to barbarians is an insult to the Barbarian people – these people were humanitarians compared to what the Hamas terrorists perpetrated to the children, women, and elderly in south Israel. 

The purpose of this blog is not to rehash what media has been reporting.   The purpose of my message is to deal with the clear causes of why this evil happened and ask for your help to prevent this from happening here in the US and again in Israel.

This was not only a tactical failure in Israel, but also a failure of concept and doctrine in Israel and the US.  What happened was also a result of weak and misguided Biden administration’s actions in the past three years.  I will not deal here with failures in Israel.  I am interested in dealing with failures and causes in the US.

But first, Israel needs your help!  Even if you are not Jewish, helping Israel is helping US security, it is helping humanity, it is supporting the Judeo-Christian values that we all share.  I am glad of the unconditional support coming from Biden’s administration for Israel. However, will this support stay when Israel will do what is necessary and civilian casualties will mount on the Arab side?  We are already seeing false narratives in the form of statements from some politicians and pro-Palestinian demonstrations. 

The world loves dead Jews.  Many were outraged by the Holocaust, and many were outraged by the evil behavior of Hamas on October 7^th.  The world, however, does not like when Jews defend themselves.  When Israel will start doing what it must by eliminating jihadists in Gaza, the world will start crying foul and comparing the collateral killing of civilians in Gaza with the slaughtered Israelis.  We all MUST fight this phenomenon.

The narrative that the so-called Palestinians were oppressed by Israelis, and this caused this attack.  This is a disgusting narrative whose supporters must be shunned by our society! This narrative is also false from factual and historical perspectives.  Supporting lies lead us to this massacre.  We must stop these lies.   

Many say that this is a complicated conflict.  It is not.  The facts are fairly simple.  The historical land of Israel was not populated for thousands of years.  Many Jews were expelled from their homeland by various conqueror empires (from the Romans through the Turkish Ottoman empire). 

The land of Israel (later termed as Palestine by the British) was scarcely populated and poor.  There were few native Arabs living on this land.  When Jews started to come back to their land after the Holocaust as part of the Zionist movement, many Arabs from the neighboring states (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt) started to immigrate to Israel looking for work.  There had never been a nation called Palestine – this is an invented nation first by the British and later by the Arabs. 

When Israel was founded, the neighboring Islamic Arab nations did not want to have a non-Islamic non-Arab state in the middle east.   They supported the Palestinian victim narrative to justify them trying to expel and kill the Jews who settled back on their homeland. 

Of course, this is a brief summary -- I omitted some details about how the British took control of Israel, of the various international resolutions that gave the Jews the right to settle their homeland, the various wars that Arabs fought against the Jews, etc.  But in essence the previous two paragraphs summarize accurately and factually the lie of the “Palestinian People”.  The Palestinians call the Jews as “settlers” and illegal occupiers of their land.  History and facts, however, are exactly the opposite. 

Despite having the legal and righteous claim to the land of Israel, Israeli Jews have been trying for over 75 years settle the dispute with the Arabs through land-for-peace agreement.  Which means that Jews would give Arabs some Jewish land, and Arabs will live in peace with the Jews.  This has never worked because the Palestinian Arabs are not after co-existence with the Jews.  They want the entire land of Israel for themselves and to kill the Jews.

In 2005 the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a traitorous move decided to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza.  The thought was that if Israel unilaterally retreats from Gaza, it will not have to spend resources on controlling the Arab population in Gaza, and by administering themselves, they will live in peace.  Soon after the Israeli withdraw, Hamas overthrow the elected Fatah administration (which was another terrorists movement, but with different tactics) and took control.   Immediately, Hamas began with terrorist acts, which culminated on October 7^th massacre of the Jews in southern Israel.

So, the statements that Palestinian supporters and the left media throws around that Gazans had no chance because they were locked in a small piece of land like animals is false given the historical facts.  They were locked up because they behaved like animals.  Also, the statements that the civilians in Gaza are also victims of Hamas are not completely true.  Multiple public surveys showed that Hamas has enjoyed very high popular support in Gaza.  Most people in Gaza support the inhumane acts against the Jews not only in Israel, but also around the world.

This is not only an effort by Hamas to expel the Jews from the middle east.  The reason they are cooperating with Iran, is that this is a broader effort by Islam in their war against the other religions and the west.  Hamas is another tool in the global Jihad (Holy War) against all of us.  This is a war between good and evil, and all of you are part of it whether you want it or not!

Now back to the United States of America.  It is not a coincidence that this happened during the Biden administration.  It was also not a coincidence that there were several terror attacks in US and Israel during the Obama administration.  False narratives and false policies caused these types of events.   By exhibiting weakness, trying to appease Iran, weakening the sanctions on Iran, the failed withdraw from Afghanistan, their war on American energy production, intentional open borders, their focus on woke causes such as climate change and so called “right-wing extremism” at home – all this were a direct cause to this disaster.  No amount of Israel support should exonerate Biden for his responsibility.  As we were told many times, elections have consequences.  This event showed us that elections can have deadly consequences. 

The main doctrines in both Israel and United States that guided various center-left politicians for many years completely collapsed.  The belief that Hamas can be “managed” if Israel provides them with economic incentives collapsed.  Hamas, as they have stated many times in their charter has one goal – the goal to annihilate Jews in Israel and everywhere.  Their goal is the same as ISIS goal and of other Islamist and Iran – the genocidal ideology of global Jihad to kill the non-believers all around the world.

The doctrine of the two-state-solution has collapsed as well.  The other “Palestinian” organizations such as Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have the same goals.  We will make another mistake if we believe that the other organizations are moderate.  They are driven by the same Islamic ideology, and they are rooted in the same lies.  We must learn the painful lesson from this horrible event.

This war is between good and evil, and you are in it (as everyone in the western world) whether you want it or not!

So, what can you do?  First, you can help fight the lies that are spread around the world and in much of the western corporate media.  It is important for as many people as possible to be aware of the truth as outlined in this blog. 

Second, Israel needs your help.  Israel is a modern and economically successful country, but this attack and its aftermath strain its institutions.  For example, the Wolfson Medical Center is required to assist the southern Israeli hospital in treating trauma victims.  They urgently need more funds to support their operations and to upgrade their imaging systems (if you are interested in donating, please contact Simon Raban for details).  You can also donate the Israel Rescue (https://israelrescue.org/) and Magen David Adom (https://www.mdais.org/en), as well as the Israeli Defense Forces (https://www.fidf.org/).

Third, you must vote in the US for people who stand for truth and for common sense policies.  Unfortunately, in today’s politics it leaves only the Republican Party as the Democrats, with exception of Robert Kennedy, Jr. (who is no longer running as part of the Democratic party) have lost their collective value compass.

Please subscribe for the Jewish News Syndicate (https://www.jns.org/) and to Caroline Glick (https://carolineglick.com/) for the most accurate updates and analysis of Israel.

Thank you for reading this, and God bless United States of America and Israel!

 Here is an update from Caroline Glick from October 17, 2023 that makes my point:

https://www.jns.org/the-real-and-awful-reason-biden-is-coming-to-israel/