People think that things are impossible. Upstairs, there is no such word.
One of my favorite stories from the Talmud involves an old man planting date seeds. I had never eaten a date as a child, but on my first trip to Israel in 1989, I had Medjool dates near the Dead Sea, and I was hooked. As the fellow was planting his seeds, a Roman officer came and chided him for his efforts: “Old man, you will never enjoy the fruits of those trees you plant. Why waste your time?” The old Jew smiled and said that if God wishes, he will also eat from the fruit of the trees. Years passed, and an even older man came to Rome to see Caesar. He brought with him a hat filled with dates. “Do you remember me?” he asked the Roman emperor. It took the latter a second, but then he recalled their first meeting so many years earlier. He spilled the dates on the floor and ordered that his hat be filled with gold. “If his God honors him, then I shall do no less.”
I previously wrote that the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York gave a highly technical opinion that effectively returned a $655.5 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and PLO and in favor of the Bauers and nine other American families harmed during the second intifada. The original announcement by the court was like a wife telling her husband that she is pregnant and he didn’t catch it. Then, 10 minutes later, he finally understands and reacts accordingly. On Monday, the story made it to the Israeli news, both in English and Hebrew. The story was identical in both languages, and I was identified as a biologist instead of a biochemist, and my feelings are still hurt. The articles explained that after 11 years, our original victory in district court was affirmed by the appellate court.
The general response of people to the present state of affairs is that it’s nice, but that we, the American families, will never collect. Even in 2015, a week after the original judgment/verdict, a local Israeli journalist ended our interview with the statement that we’ll never see a dime. My answer to her then is the same as the answer to those today: If God wills, we will receive everything up to the last penny. I can say two things at this time. I cannot promise that we will get paid, though I do believe that we will. Secondly, our lawyers do have a plan on how to actualize the financial part of the jury verdict.
I can understand the thinking of those who immediately say that we and the other families will not get paid. And their view might be final if the only players in this drama were the American terror victims and the bad guys, namely the Palestinian Authority and PLO. But God is in the mix, and the final outcome is fully up to Him. The PA has both U.S. real estate assets as well as VAT monies that Israel collects, measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars monthly. The latter money has been used to pay Israeli judgments for local terror victims families. So our getting paid does not necessitate God printing money in heaven and sending it down our chimney, though I have no complaint if that’s how we get paid. The reality is that there are assets and there is money, and we plan to use a final ruling to go after those things that can fulfill the kosher jury verdict.
There are many people with verdicts against Iran, from Israeli terror victims to U.S. Marines to those taken hostage in 1979. A building in New York that belongs to Iran is to be sold in order to provide a portion of the outstanding judgments against the Islamic Republic. That people’s first response is that something is impossible is quite typical today, because they look at human capabilities and a little bit of physics and say that something can’t be done. There were those—notably the French—who said that inventing an airstrip in Iran was impossible, until the Americans did it this week—because they had to in order to get their flier back. There was a story in Israel years ago of a pregnant woman who was told by her doctors that her baby showed significant mental retardation and that an abortion was in order. She was a religious woman and asked a very big rabbi of the day what to do. He told her to have the child and that everything would be okay. The doctors laughed at her simple faith and told her that she was a fool and that she would have a challenging child to bring up. When she gave birth, a completely normal and healthy child popped out. The doctors were obviously too proud to admit they were wrong or that they didn’t know everything. But as with those commenting on our case, the default is that it’s impossible, no chance, it's symbolic.
When we actually joined the lawsuit in 2004, I asked our rabbi his thoughts on the proposed case. “Are you trying to prove that they did the attack or take money away from them?” I told him the latter. In that case, he said, we should join the case and do our part to put them out of business. He was not interested in an “I was right!” lawsuit that proved that the PLO was behind our attack, which was as revolutionary as saying that the sun came up today in the east. The purpose of the U.S. Antiterror Act and its treble damages is to make attacking U.S. citizens so financially crippling that the terrorists will go into knitting and curling and give up blowing up people on buses and in cafes. Had the jury found the PA and PLO guilty and awarded us $1, the case would have been a failure. As my lawyer said in regards to our particular attack, “their fingerprints” were all over the case, to the point of paying for the driving lessons for the woman who brought the suicide bomber to downtown Jerusalem.
So again, I cannot promise that we will get paid. That’s solely in the hands of God. There are assets and resources that we can attempt to seize to realize the judgment. The larger point is for us to stop saying that things are impossible. Remember when The New York Times had Hillary Clinton at 96 percent for winning the presidency just prior to Election Day? Do you remember when they kept telling us that “the walls were closing in on Donald Trump,” and today he is president again? We often limit our possibilities far more than God limits them because we don’t believe in our talents or in His ability to deliver “the impossible.”
If you look at nominally successful people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and say, Ronaldo, the one feature you see in them is that they don’t understand the simple word “no.” Musk has created highly successful companies in quite disparate fields because he believed that he could. Donald Trump came down that escalator and people laughed at the reality TV star thinking that he could be president. But he believed that he could and addressed issues like out-of-control immigration and job losses to China and Mexico. Ronaldo willed victories when people said that he was too old or that he didn’t have the skills he once had.
God has ultimate veto power, but He also has every resource in the world under His control. Will we get paid? I certainly hope so. But as they said on TV, stay tuned.