Holocaust or Bad Economy -- Is This a Choice?!

If you have been following the news lately, you could not have missed the pressure that the Obama administration has been applying lately on Israel not to attack Iran. 

Obama administration failed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, engaging in a direct war against the U.S. interests (the publicized assassination attempts in U.S.) and the Jewish people (bombing in Argentina), and spreading terror through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. Obama failed to capitalize on the opportunity to support the Iranian opposition to overthrow or severely weaken the Ayatollah regime. Clearly, the Obama concept of engagement with Iran (and the Muslim world in general) failed. 

Now they are putting pressure on Israel to abrogate its right and obligation to defend the Jewish state against what most experts believe is an existential risk to Israel and a grave danger to the entire free world – Iran armed with nuclear weapons. Iran already has rocket technology capable of delivering nuclear payloads as far as Europe, and they are rapidly improving their delivery systems to reach as far as United States. But the real danger is not even of Iran sending a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead in an act of Jihad against the non-believers. The real danger is that Iran, through its terror proxies, will place a nuclear device in New York, Washington, Paris, Berlin, or anywhere else in the free world. 9/11 will pale in comparison. 

Iranian leaders are not driven by calculated political interests and logical actions. They are driven by deep religious convictions of following Mohamed’s directions to kill the non-believers and spread Islam at any cost. They are driven by the belief that any carnage in the name of Jihad is justified, and that they will be rewarded by Allah for doing so. Hitler was motivated by ambition of world dominance and the superiority of the Aryan race – Hitler too was not taken seriously by the western powers first. Iran leaders’ religious based ideology is even more extreme than Hitler’s. 

So, Mr. Panetta, when you warn Israel that attacking Iran’s nuclear installation may bring down the world economy – do you consider the alternative – a catastrophe on the scale of a second world war or worse?! In retrospective, would you have claimed that a bad economy in the 1930s would be a worse outcome than stopping Hitler and preventing a Holocaust? These warnings are ridiculous given the lessons we all should have learned from history.

Dear friends, do not just read this message and get frustrated. Do something about it. What can you do? It is true that contacting the administration may seem fruitless, but it is worth a try – they need to hear more people express their opposition to their clueless foreign policy. Even more important is contacting your congress people and insisting on their support for actions against Iran and in support of Israel – especially contacting your Democratic congress people (since most Republicans already support this cause). Contact your Jewish organizations. Many Jewish organizations pay lip service to lobbying for actions against Iran, but their lobbying is too diplomatic and not aggressive enough. All Americans need to be concerned and demand action!

The Benefits of ERP Software for Small or Medium Size Businesses (SMB)

Finally, a posting related to my professional experience! I am particularly excited about the Open Source CRM and ERP software because it open new competitive possibilities for the small and medium size businesses. 

 

If you are a typical stakeholder of a small or medium size business, you probably prefer to invest in assets that contribute directly to the growth and revenue of your business (for example, tools for making your product, machines to expand capacity, people to design and sell your product, etc.). You know that information technology and business software is important, but you avoid spending capital in this area, as long as you can manage by using spreadsheets and other office software, and at most utilize the popular QuickBooks to manage your accounting, invoicing, and do very basic inventory management. 

 

You may have heard of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that large companies use to run their businesses, but you think that you cannot afford this software anyway, and you are not sure what would be the real benefits of such an investment. This article is going to dispel some of these myths – ERP software has a real value for your business and it does not have to be expansive at all!

 

First, I would like to quickly define what ERP software does and how it works. ERP software has been around for at least 20 years and it was developed from a previous class of software called MRP (Material Requirement Planning) that existed at least 20 years before the emergence of ERP. ERP software was developed to manage most of the business related processes of a typical enterprise. ERP can be customized to fit many industries including general manufacturing, retail, CPG, Life Sciences, Process, distribution, and service industries. 

 

The main benefit of ERP software is that it integrates the flow of information between various business processes and integrates business transactions with company’s financial system in real time. ERP enables improved business decisions by making information from various parts of the business available to throughout your business operations in real-time. It posts relevant business transactions to company’s general ledger and other financial systems allowing management to see financial implications in real time. ERP typically covers all processes starting from sales order entry, shipping/delivery, product pricing, warehousing and inventory, procurement, production, invoicing (both A/P and A/R), service, financials, and many others.

 

For example, when entering a sales order, customer service person (or your web based client) can see the available inventory for this sales order in the various warehouse locations. If no inventory is available at the time of the order, ERP system can allocate planned production or planned purchases, or estimate when a make-to-order could be completed by your manufacturing operations. ERP can also apply the proper pricing for the applicable customer, sales tax, and shipping charges, and determine promised delivery date. Once the order is entered, the system reserves the inventory to fulfill this order. The system then automatically plans the required production orders to replenish the sold inventory and related external purchases of raw material (or finished goods depending on whether you make the product in-house or buy it from supplier). Please note that this is just one example of a typical ERP process – ERP transactions can be adapted to a large variety of industry and process requirements.

 

ERP contains critical master data for customers, vendors, products (some system refer to items or materials), bill of materials (BOMs), manufacturing work processes and routings, assets, and many other master records. Maintaining these master records would help your company to improve consistency and work from the same set of data.

 

Many small companies may be able to get by using office tools such as spreadsheets and simple accounting software (e.g., QuickBooks or Peachtree), while most of the work is done by company owners and the number of employees is small (although, some SMBs have complex business processes that require ERP almost from the start). However, as your revenue and employee grow, the lack of proper integrated business software will start impact your business results in real ways that impact your bottom line such as lost orders, poor planning, inventory shortages, missed shipments, missed invoicing, and general lack of control. 

 

ERP software have many real business benefits including –

•  Improved overall management visibility to business operations
• Improved visibility to company’s financial performance in real-time
• Improved sales performance 
• Improved inventory control and planning
• Consistent business policies and processes throughout your company improving customer service and profitability
• Improved on-time delivery
• Reduced procurement cost
• Reduced work-in-process inventory
• Reduced labor costs (for both office operations and manufacturing)
• Reduced overall waste

 

….and many more. ERP benefits should be identified and documented for your specific business.

 

The availability of user-friendly QuickBooks software provided a good stop-gap solution for many small businesses, but with all the advancement of QuickBooks functionality, it is still far from being integrated ERP software with proper controls, auditing, and scalability required to support end-to-end business operations. Features that make QuickBooks user friendly (such as ability to reverse transactions), make it a terrible software for controlling a growing business with growing number of employees. SMBs should consider upgrading QuickBooks to ERP as soon as they grow beyond five to ten employees and over $5 million in annual revenue (this is just a general rule of thumb). Many companies should consider implementing ERP light software from the start to avoid migration and re-training efforts.

 

SMBs have as complex business processes and need as large corporations. Large corporations invested millions in implementing state-of-the-art ERP software packages, but can SMBs afford ERP? It is clear that there are many business benefits to justify investment in this critical software, but as stated in the beginning of this article, SMBs are sensitive to cash outlays. The good news is that the emergence of Open Source ERP software substantially reduced the cost of ERP.

 

Open Source software existed for many years. Many have heard of the Open Source Linux operating system. Open Source software is developed by a community of developers that have no commercial interest in the software they develop. Therefore, in its pure form, Open Source software is free! In the case of Open Source ERP, however, it is not entirely free; because Open Source ERP ISVs (independent software vendors) typically have a basic free version and then offer a more capable version that contains close source code or charge required support and maintenance fees. However, the cost of Open Source ERP software license is still about 10 times lower than the cost of traditional close source ERP software. In recent years, Open Source ERP considerably advanced from a functional perspective becoming a viable alternative to traditional ERP software.

 

Leveraging Open Source ERP software, small and medium size businesses (SMBs) can now afford to implement enterprise class software that was available up until recently only to large corporations. They can scale and grow beyond QuickBooks and Peachtree at a very low investment cost, or implement from the start scalable ERP light solution. Since ERP is such an important enabler of business success, SMBs cannot afford to overlook this opportunity.

Celebrate Israel and American Values Parade

This Sunday June 5^th my family and I had the pleasure to attend the Celebrate Israel Parade in New York.  It was another important opportunity for us to express our love for both Israel and United States for this parade did not only celebrate Israel as the only homeland of the Jewish people, but also the common American-Israeli values as based on Judeo-Christian traditions and are the foundation of the American constitution as well as Israel founding principles. It was great to see the New York's Fifth Avenue and the Central Park area awash in the blue and white.

Even our loyal Giant Schnauzer dog, Mansi, joined us as our security escort (he was also an attraction for the kids).  Fortunately, we did not need to use Mansi’s services – the New York police department did an excellent job of securing the area.  Mansi did growl at a group of Palestinian and Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jews who are against the state of Israel) demonstrators, who decided to quickly clear the way for us to pass.

The parade used to be known as the “Salute to Israel” parade, but this year, the name was changed to Celebrate Israel to focus on celebrating Israel’s diversity and strengths.  Parade organizers estimated 30K participants with about one million watching the parade along its route.  This annual parade, which started in 1964, is the largest in the world celebrating the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.  The thousands of marchers who stepped off at 57th Street late Sunday morning included New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, followed later by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.  Yuli Yoel Edelstein, Israel's minister of information and diaspora, was the grand marshal of the parade.

In addition to the many Jewish groups carrying Israeli flags and pro-Israel signs, this was a typical American parade with many wonderful high school bands (not necessary Jewish) and all kinds of floats.

At the head there was an impressive display of New York mounted police, NY police band as well as NY Fire department display of antique and modern fire trucks followed by NY Fire department orchestra.



American war veterans marched ahead of the American veterans of the Israeli 1948 war (Israeli war of independence).

This parade can be described as Blue and White Apple Pie – In addition to celebrating Israel, this parade’s hundreds of thousands participants and observers celebrated the common American-Israeli values of freedom and democracy based on our Judeo-Christian roots. 

This was also a fusion of Jewish Americans from the left and the right all sharing the love and appreciation for Israel.  Even those on the left who still believe that President Obama’s actions are driven by his desire to help Israel came to demonstrate their unwavering support for the Jewish state.  They may naively believe that Israel should be more accommodating to the current administration appeasing the Palestinians in order to bring them to the negotiating table, but most of them also believe that Israel should determine its own faith and not be pushed into a forced agreement.

As was the display of 30 standing ovations at the U.S. congress for Prime Minister Netanyahu, Celebrate Israel Parade was a display of a united American support for Israel.  No other country in the world could have drawn such unparallel celebration.  This is because most Americans understand that Israel represents their core values.  The display of this unshakable bond is a strong message to Israel’s enemies, as well as a message of support to its leaders to stand strong against their enemies by keep emphasizing the truth and resisting the pressures for capitulation.     

This blog was published simultaneously on the Teaching Israel blog, published at teachingisrael.wordpress.com

The Old/New Reality of Never Again

This week Israelis commemorated Yom Ha’Shoah (The Holocaust Remembrance Day).  Israel commemorates Holocaust on the day of Warsaw uprising between Passover and the Israeli Independence day – a very symbolic timing between a holiday that celebrates the first time the Jewish people were saved from slavery to win their freedom and the establishment of the state of Israel in the Jewish historical homeland after Jews suffered untold atrocities of the Holocaust.

During his speech at the Israeli Holocaust ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “And let the world know, that when the People of Israel, and the IDF say "never again" – we mean it.”  

As a reminder of the atrocities of Holocaust, I suggest watching the following short video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0td-vyJAC0

This week brought another notable event when President Obama announced the killing of the al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden by the hands of the American Navy SEALs.  The question is whether Obama’s willingness to kill Bin Laden makes him an ally in assuring the “Never Again” pledge that was stated so eloquently by PM Netanyahu on May 1, 2011?
Despite the Obama’s administration determined actions to eliminate Bin Laden, there is still strong evidence that his administration has not changed their Islamic appeasement policies.  First of all, they bothered with the absurdity of burying Bin Laden at sea accordance to Islamic law – they washed the body, wrapped it in a white shroud according to Islamic tradition, and conducted a 45 minutes Islamic funeral in Arabic.  As stated by John Brennan at a White House briefing: "We early on made provisions for that type of burial and we wanted to make sure that it was going to be done, again, in strictest conformance."  Then there was the concern with Arab/Muslim sensitivity for showing the post killing Bin Laden photos.


Of course, the administration and President Obama need to be congratulated for aggressively pursuing and assassinating (yes, let’s call it for what it was – a targeted assassination) the public enemy number one!  However, the bigger question for Israel and the Jews is why our ally isn’t as eager to pursue the leaders of Hamas or Hezbollah?  They are also responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent people.  Why are the Europeans and U.S. not outraged by so called unification between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas?  Instead, there have been only muted comments that the unified PA leadership should recognize Israel’s right to exist and abandon terrorism.  Could that be, perhaps, because Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah have been targeting mainly Jews?

Above all, we must consider that in addition to Hezbollah and the Palestinian/Arab terrorists, the main threat against the Jews today was not Usama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.  The main threat to our existence is the rise of the Muslim-fascists state of Iran with its mad dash to acquire nuclear weapons.  Iran has repeatedly declared its intention to wipe Israel off the map.  Unfortunately, here again, there is no indication that the Obama administration has not changed its policy of “engagement”.  Obama will not be as aggressive in dealing with the Iranian threat as dealing with Bin Laden.  Was the assassination of Bin Laden just a façade to distracting us from dealing with the greatest Evil in the world today – Iran?!

The post Holocaust pledge of “Never Again” must be the main objective of every Jew and free minded person in the world.  We must remember that keeping Israel strong is the best chance for continued survival of the Jewish people wherever they are so that “Never Again” is assured for generations to come!

Wolfs in Sheep Clothing and Truth Matters

Last Wednesday (April 6, 2011) while driving I happened to turn on the radio and while my radio was scanning through the channels; my ear caught a discussion involving Israel. Naturally I stopped the scan to listen. The program was Marti Moscowayne’s Radio Times on the local NPR WHYY station.

I typically do not listen to political programs on NPR/WHYY, because most of the time they have a left leaning bias, and as many misinformed liberals, they are typically anti-Israel – i.e., they are for Israel to self destruct itself through continuing appeasement of the Arabs. The challenge with their approach, however, is that they are not openly anti-Israeli. Their discussions seem to be reasonable and logical to unsuspecting listeners who are not familiar with the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They do not bring guests who represent the center or center right Israeli views, but they make it seem this way by bringing someone who is on the extreme left and someone else who is on the less extreme left.

April 6th program was titled “Grieving Palestinians & Israelis work for peace” and the guests were from the organization called Parents Circle Families Forum. According to WHYY, this is an “organization of bereaved families on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle who are becoming a powerful force for peace there” (note the word “struggle” instead of conflict). The two guests representing this novel and peaceful organization were Ali Abu Awwad and Yuval Rahamim.

When I dialed into this program, Ali was in the process of explaining to the radio audience that Israelis must understand the Palestinian perspective of the Naqba (meaning the catastrophe – the term Arabs gave the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948). In order to get true peace, Israelis must understand how it felt to the Palestinians to be expelled from their homeland to live for years in refugee camps where they have not had equal rights – he gave an example that Palestinians in Lebanon do not have the right to live outside of the designated refugee camps and do not have the equal rights of the other Lebanese because they are refugees from Palestine (as if lack of these rights was the fault of the Jews and not of Lebanon). Ali repeated the Arab claim that 5 million Palestinian refugees live this way.

Of course, in his heart breaking appeal for Israeli recognition of the significance of the Naqba, Ali omitted some of the important historical facts – such as that Jews in 1948 agreed to a much smaller partition of the land of Israel than what was promised to them in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine for the sake of living in peace with the Arabs. The Arab villages that lived in peace and friendship with their Jewish neighbors before 1948 came under pressure by the Arab political and religious leaders (such as the Mufti of Jerusalem) to join the murderous terror activities against the Jewish population. Those Arabs that resisted the call to murder their Jewish neighbors were treated harshly by the Mufti militia and many were brutally executed.

Despite the many atrocities committed by the local Palestinians Arabs and despite being attacked from all sides by the Arab armies, once the Jews repelled these attacks and prevailed, they pleaded with their Arab neighbors to stay in their homes in Israel, and many of those Arabs stayed and became equal citizens of Israel – erroneously, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs enjoy equal rights and democracy. Many Arabs, however, were influenced by the Arab propaganda and social political pressure and chose to leave. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine estimated about 472 thousand Arab refugees resulted from the events of creation of the state of Israel in 1948. This number included thousands of wealthy Arabs leaving Israel voluntary for economic reasons and hundreds of thousands leaving to the areas now known as the West Bank and Gaza (only few miles away). Objective analysts estimated only between 200 to 300 thousands refugees leaving outside of the area allocated to the Jewish state under the League of Nations Mandate (you can refer to the following detailed explanation and history of the Arab refugees from Israel: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html).

Why do Arabs and UNWRA report 5 million Palestinian refugees? Since Arabs were not able to destroy Israel by force, they looked for other means to delegitimize Israel by creating the “Palestinian problem”. They forced real refugees, those who left Israel on their own will (who should not had been considered refugees at all), and those who belonged to tribes with “Palestinian” affiliation (tribes that at one time or another lived between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea) to refugee camps. They did not let them integrate into Arab societies in any of the Arab countries including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, etc. They used fraudulent counts to misrepresent the true numbers of this population (for example, the census counts of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza were proven to be grossly inaccurate by factors of 2 and 3!). In addition to all of this, Arabs have instituted the unprecedented practice of refugees inheriting their refugee status – i.e., expanding the count to include the spouses and off-springs of refugees.

The other Radio Times program participant, Yuval, made a seemingly reasonable point that only a negotiated solution will bring peace, and that Israeli leaders must be willing to enter into a sincere peace negotiating process. He said this as if the only impediment to peace is the willingness of Israeli leaders to enter into peace negotiations – ignoring the facts that repeated Israeli gestures and unilateral territorial withdraws only brought increased terrorism. Yuval ignored the fact that many Israeli governments starting with Yitzhak Rabin through Olmert made unprecedented offers for concessions without any willingness and ability by the Palestinian leadership to abrogate their continuing effort to destroy the State of Israel.

This small segment on the Radio Times that I happened to catch is a great example of how Arab propagandists and their Jewish liberal allies mislead and misinform the American general public and delegitimize Israel. Yuval may truly believe in peace for Israel, but his actions only hurt his state and erroneously the prospects of peace. The liberal American media is happy to play along and help these sheep in wolf clothing in their murderous propaganda against the Jewish state.

Listening to Radio Time, I had to take a stand. I knew that if I stated my true question to the NPR screener, I would not had a chance to get on the air (I already tried many times in the past). This time I tried another approach – I told the phone screener that my question to Ali and Yuval was how the Israeli settlements were impacting their movement – my intuition was right – I was put right through. When I got on the air, I directed a question to Yuval – As an Israeli and a Jew, why are you allowing yourself to be used as a propaganda instrument by the Arabs; Why you did not speak up when Ali described the establishment of Israel as a Naqba, and why you did not tell the truth about 1948 when a handful of Jews willing to partition Israel in order to live in peace with their Arab neighbors were butchered for just being Jews?!

Yuval’s response was predictable – “you can go back in history and find many excuses for any current situation, but I am taking it to the future, I am looking for the future of my kids and I am patriotic. I think that for the best of Israel and the best of my kids’ future, we should reconcile with Palestinians.” This is a typical Israeli leftists’ response. It would be novel and practical if not for the reality that many Israeli leaders have tried and failed, if not for the reality that Arabs intentions since 1948 have been the destruction of the Jews in Israel.

We need to develop a new strategy of defending Israel in the court of public opinion – one that is based on countering the Arab propaganda with truths about the Jewish rights in their historical homeland under the international law, truth about history and Arab intents. We need to face and explain implications of establishing another terrorist Arab state within the small territory between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. Yes, truth matters, and truth wins in America!

Recent Terror Attacks on Israel Are a Direct Result of West's Support for Palestinians

Murder of the Jewish family, daily shootings of rockets into southern Israel from Gaza, and on March 23rd a bomb package exploding in Jerusalem killing one woman and injuring many others. All of these terrible events are part of the renewed growing Palestinian/Arab terror activity. The question is given the support the Palestinians enjoy in the West, what is the reason for this escalation, and what are the causes?

Some Israeli officials recently pointed out that there is evidence that Iran instructed its proxies in Gaza and West Bank to escalate the activity against Israel. This is the result of the growing Iran’s influence in the region. Many experts believe that Iran is the main beneficiary of the pro-democracy developments in the Arab world. In Egypt the Moslem Brotherhood – a close Iranian ally – are the best organized to take advantage of the fall of Mubarak. They were already the beneficiaries of the hastily organized constitutional referendum. In Bahrain the Iranians became the main element behind the Shias’ attempt to revolt – that was why the Saudis hastily sent military support to the Bahraini ruler. In Libya no one seem to know who are the rebels that are fighting Kaddafi, but many experts remind us that eastern Libya was traditionally a hot bed for Al Qaida supporters and recruits.

So the embolden Iran is trying to divert attention from its nuclear weapons program and have its proxies attack Israel. Although the Palestinian authority (PA) condemned the killings in the western press, it did nothing to prevent them and condemn them in the Palestinian press. In fact, it continued their practice of honoring Palestinian terrorists, and there was no evidence that PA has stopped its incitement against Israel in its controlled media and its schools. PA is happy to have Hamas and even its Fatah affiliates launch new terror attacks against Israel, while it enjoys unprecedented support from the West including the U.S. Obama administration. PA knows that sooner or later Israel will have to respond to attacks in order to prevent other attacks, and that the world will then automatically condemn Israel for use of force (this already happened when four civilians were killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli attack on a terrorist rocket launching unit that was hiding behind civilians that included children).

Obama’s apologetic style and constant pressure on Israel to compromise weakened the American position in the Middle East and strengthened Iran and its allies. The new Obama administration policies encouraged the already anti-Israeli Europeans to follow suite and increase their pressure on Israel. PA had no reason to return to the negotiating table with Israel when it could rip larger accomplishments through the support of the U.S. and Europe. Therefore, these failed Obama administration policies resulted not only in weakening Israel politically on the world stage, but now in renewed killing of Jews in Israel.

Israel is capable of defending itself, but what it to do when it is pressured by United Nations, Europeans and the Obama administration not to use force in self defense? Since we learned in the last two years that nothing Israel does to defend its interests and security would satisfy the Obama administration, and that it would only be pressured to do more to appease the Arabs, Israel should stop trying to accommodate the Obama administration, and follow the wishes of the majority of the Israeli public that elected the current government.

Israel must also launch an unprecedented campaign in the U.S. to explain the truth to Americans starting from the basics -- telling the American public about the very beginnings of the conflict with the Arabs, about how the world powers promised the land of Israel to the Jews in 1920s, and how the British failed to deliver this promise by dividing the land. Israel must remind the Americans that Palestinian nation and national ambitions did not exist before 1967, and that Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, and so on are part of the same Arab nation that comprises 21 countries and cover a vast geographic area.

I strongly believe that most Americans will understand and support the truth and will support Israel despite Obama.


You can read more in-depth analysis of Palestinian terror in the following articles:

Terrorism Flourishes Because It Brings Public Relations' and Political Gains by Barry Rubin http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=6524

Column One: Understanding the 3rd terror war by Caroline Glick http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=213747