Racists Branded, Nazis Ignored

The use of the tactic had gotten so blatant that even commenters on his own side called him on it. “Jon the Anti-Zionist Jew”, a regular poster of the vilest anti-Israel diaries on Daily Kos, had the habit of calling “racist” anyone who disagreed with his opinions—anyone who showed the slightest hint of siding with Israel.

Jon was (or still is?) extreme in his employment of that ruse, hence even his komrades (sic) no longer being able to stand it, but that tactic, of using the stigmatizing term in order to brand perceived opponents as diabolical, has been a staple of the Marxists, and in the mode of operation prescribed by Antonio Gramsci, the word “racist” is the magic wand that anathematizes any desired target.

“Racist” is what Arab members of the Israeli parliament are now calling the law banning membership in it of any citizen of Israel who has visited enemy states. A sensible law, a law which would never have been contested in the past, is now being assaulted by that curse-word, that all-powerful, all-catching, damning whisper: “Racism”. The law specifically says, “Israelis”, not “Arabs”, yet the Arab Knesset Members know full well who would be on its receiving end—“The hat burns on the thief’s head”, as we say in Israel—and they know the best way of countering it: a blackmail tactic, a ploy that appeals not to reason but to the knee-jerk reaction today’s world displays upon the word, “racism”.

Today is also the 17th anniversary of the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, may HaShem avenge his blood. This man, the closest the nation of Israel has had to a prophet as could be after the destruction of the Temple (most of the events in Israel from 1993 to this day were foretold in his writings and speeches), was vilifed by the Israeli Left for… you guessed it: “Racism”. In 1988, when he was getting too powerful politically for comfort, the “Anti-Racist Law” was passed in order to bar him from Israeli politics. As regards world opinion, I don’t think this has helped much. Israel is now so basking in its anti-racist veneer, so much that our Dear World has given us a place of honor as the successor of South Africa. But there is something else notable about the Anti-Racist Law: it was passed by unanimous vote on part of both Left and Right in Israel. The Israeli Right was so anxious to be “with it”, so caring for its “moral purity”, that it joined hands with the Left to silence the one leader who had the only non-miraculous way of bringing lasting peace to the Jewish State. Five years later, we got the Oslo Accords, which brought to Israel the Jew-murderer Arafat and his gang from Tunis. In October 2000, we got a mini-redux of 1947 with the uprising of Arabs within our 1949 Armistice Line territories. And now, more and more of our towns are coming within rocket range. Ah, but we just had to be “Not Racists”!

Rabbi Kahane of blessed memory knew, from both the Torah and common sense, that there could be no peace for the Jewish nation in Israel if a rival nationalism were allowed to become a majority within it. The Torah says, in many places (Numbers 33:50–56 being the example I frequently quote), that the Israelites must not occupy another nation in their land, for that occupation would spell enduring trouble; but must, instead, drive out the other nations, expel anyone who does not agree with the idea that the Land of Israel is under Jewish sovereignty, under the rule of Jewish Law. The Beneš Decree, by which all the Germans of the Sudetenland were expelled in 1945, is a historical example of the necessity of insisting on national sovereignty: the region that served as the catalyst for World War II has not been on the news ever since the execution of that decree. But any discussion of expulsion or deportation gets you the boot not just from Daily Kos, but now even from ostensibly right-wing sites like Little Green Footballs and Hot Air. Because, as we all know, it’s (drum roll, please) “racist”.

And there is the word, “Nazi”, which is the same, just on steroids. The right-wing blogosphere is, in part, awash in Nazimania—in the craze of proving how the Counter-Jihad movement in Europe is being hijacked by Nazis. Yes, Nazis, as if this were still the 1930’s in a literal sense! You see, we’re now so done, so finished with the job of neutralizing the Leftists and repulsing the Muslims that we can now concentrate on the Next Big Thing™: ghosts from the past. The impulsive boss of LGF and his like-minded commenters (because the others have all been banned) did not stop to think whether the branding of certain European parties as “racist” and “white supremacist” and even “Nazi” might, just might, have something to do with the Left-Wing Spin Machine. You know, the same propaganda mill that brands LGF itself as a “fascist, racist, hate-mongering site”, and which is behind the move to criminalize all criticism of Islam as “racism”, “Western imperialism” and “Islamophobia”. So now the budding anti-Islamization movement in Europe, in the continent that is in a far worse state than the USA (and in many ways Israel too), has to contend not only with the concerted effort of the Gramscian Left and the Islamic colonialist enemy, but with smears from the American Right as well. Great, just great.

“Are there no Neo-Nazis? Are there still no Ku Klux Klan members? Are there no people in real life behind the screen names you see on Stormfront?” Yes to all, there are all those. But in this fiesta of finding Nazis everywhere, the sense of proportion has been lost: the preference of focusing on classical racists and Jew-haters rather than on the new imperialists and anti-Zionists may be compelling, especially when propped up by a treasonous media and academe managed entirely by people who have been brought up on the Marxist “dialectic”, but it is wrong. Plainly wrong. It’s about as wrong as worrying about “freedoms curtailed by wiretapping and other measures” while turning a blind eye to the real loss of freedom resultant of Politically Correct and pro-Islamic pressure and legislation (or put it this way: How many of those “brave, courageous” artists who’ve displayed unflattering depictions of Jesus are willing to do as Lars Vilks, of Modoggies fame, has done?). Yes, there are some of the scum from the 1930’s, or re-enactors of them, around, but the danger from them is by far eclipsed by the menace of today’s true heirs of the Nazis and their equally nefarious enablers: the Muslims and the Marxists, respectively.

You worry about the Jews of Europe? The Diaspora is on the way out. So our prophets foretold us. Even those of the USA are not guaranteed to stay there for long. In the meantime, there is a state full of Jews on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, surrounded by those who follow the same religion as Hitler’s ally, Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the religion founded by the one who ordered a mass grave dug and the Jews of the town murdered and thrown into it, thus predating the Einsatzgruppen by about 1,300 years. Hitler was on the march to the British-ruled Land of Israel; he was stopped at Al-Alamein, but no matter, the Muslims are perfectly intent on finishing what he failed to complete (God forbid). All aided and abetted, by the way, by the European Union.

The European Union. That part of the Caliphate-in-the-making, with its open borders and unrestricted immigration policies serving as an irresistible honey-pot for Muslims from all over the world. Marching, under the regime of Multiculturalism, to the abyss of Islamization, of full subsumption into the House of Islam, day after day. And do you know what would fall to the Muslims if Europe fell to them? Not just lands and culture, which would be a tragic loss in itself (remember the Bamiyan Buddhas? The treasures of Florence could meet the same fate), but also technology, and worse, weaponry. We are rightly worried about the prospect of Iran making nuclear weapons, but the threat of the whole European arsenal (or even the arsenal of just one European state is bad enough) falling into the Muslims’ hand like a ripe fruit has to take a back seat to ideological purity, to doing a search-and-destroy of Nazis within the Counter-Jihad Movement. Real smart, people.

Israel gained nothing for its “anti-racist” push to ostracize Rabbi Kahane. The non-Muslim resistance to the Islamic invasion can only stand to lose from taking the Leftist bait. One of our sages was once cursed by a witch, and then replied to her, “Go away; your words have no power over me, for to God alone is the power”. This magic word, “racism”, needs to be treated like the empty curse it is, not given such great consideration. As Baron Bodissey concludes, in the moral of a story:

Ladies and gentlemen, the handcuffs labeling you as “racists”, “Nazis”, and “Islamophobes” are simple to remove and discard.

The door of the PC Multicultural bus unlocks easily, and invites you to jump off and escape.

“In addition”, said Cato the Youngster, “I think the Muslims must be expelled”.

Non-Interventionism: A Litmus Test

Trawling lately between the Leftscum (the PC, dhimmi Marxists) and the Rightscum (the racialists; see previous post), I stumbled upon a post on Israellycool where the endorsement of paleoconservative Ron Paul (a phenomenon all its own; henceforth “Rompaul”, as I write his name out on LGF) on Stormfront is duly noted. The post attracted comments from a few Rompaulians. First:

FatDrunkAndStupid Says:

Stormfront is a National Socialist website. Ron Paul is a libertarian- about as far away from National Socialism as you can get. They support Paul because he believes in a non-interventionist foreign policy, and indirectly, that position has the effect of ending US subsidies to Israel (a key sticking point to the stormfront folks). But Ron also supports ending the handouts to Egypt, The House of Saud, and Jordan too. His position comes from principle, not hate. When Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in the early 80’s, Paul was one of the few US Congressmen who refused to denounce them. I suggest you look a little deeper in to Ron Paul’s positions before writing him off. Ending the War in Iraq, Ending the War on Drugs, Abolishing the Income Tax, Repealing he Patriot Act, Restoring Civil Liberties… are these idiotic positions? [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

And second:

DetainThis Says:

Indeed. The man’s principled voting, writing, and speaking records easily undercut the haters’ fraudulent smears. His positions regarding other Middle Eastern states and the Israel-Osirik vote are especially deflating for those who’d paint him anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, or even un-American.

I don’t know about “FatDrunkAndStupid”, but “DetainThis” doesn’t sound very convincing to me, once I have taken a peek at his blog, which features the worst of both New (Leftist, anti-Zionist) and Classical anti-Semitism in its sidebar links. Rompaul may or may not be just a simple libertarian, but the supporters he attracts are… well… you get the whole lovely spectrum from Stormfronters to 9/11 Troofers.

But this post is about the question of interventionism. The argument is often made that US citizens have the full right to question support of Israel because the US pays for that support, in both real and figurative cash (dollars in foreign aid in the former sense, “the hatred of the Arab and Muslim worlds” in the latter). The fact that Israel itself pays a heavy price for US aid after every time it gets it, in the form of pressure toward negotiations with and land concessions with the Pretendestinians, is rarely mentioned. For all the talk of “unrestrained Israeli aggression”, Israel’s hand has, beginning from 1956, been severely held down by Washington’s orders. So sometimes I just ask myself if non-interventionism might not be a good thing. But then I remember that, before I make a rushed statement, some testing against reality needs to be done. Which is the point of this post.

Non-interventionists must be asked how far they are willing to go in that. Far too many self-styled “non-interventionists” expose their dishonesty by limiting their talk to “stopping all aid to Israel”, while calling for pressing Israel to the negotiations table. In fact, such faux-non-interventionists call for cutting off US aid to Israel as a means of blackmail, as a way of forcing Israel to make concessions to that fictive nation behind which the total Islamic jihad against the very existence of the Jewish State is waged. Those are not non-interventionists by any stretch of imagination; they’re nothing but modern Chamberlains doing a Munich on Israel in order to secure their sitting organs, operating out of the erroneous conception that Islamic terrorism gets all or most of its fuel from the issue of “Palestine”. The future Sanhedrin will no doubt find some of the more high-profile of such “non-interventionists” to be ideal candidates for trial and execution. Speedily in our days, amen.

Now what the commenter “FatDrunkAndStupid” says, that Rompaul refused to denounce Israel’s bombing of Osirak, is more like it. But the blowing up of a nuclear reactor, however much it makes the news, isn’t stretching it as far as non-interventionism goes. The big money challenge should be the following:

In exchange for cutting on aid, would you be willing that the US turn a blind eye when the Jewish State expels all the Muslims within its Biblically-defined borders?

You wanted a litmus test for non-interventionism? Here is a real litmus test for you!

If the answer consists of just one word of the type, “That’d endanger US citizens and interests”, then the prospective non-interventionist has failed the test. Remember, the non-interventionist platform is about giving full focus to the situation at home. A non-interventionist can be as equally keen as an interventionist on tackling the problem of Islam and terrorism on US soil; non-interventionism just means he doesn’t propose any action abroad in order to improve the situation at home. That means no invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, and no aid to any Middle Eastern country—neither Israel nor Egypt nor oil-rich Saudi Arabia—but that also means no stepping into the regional war after it has broken out. It means, then, no calls upon Israel to agree to a UN-brokered ceasefire before Hizbullah has been eradicated, and no threats of sanctions on the Jewish State to prevent it from carrying out the only workable plan for permanent peace, namely the expulsion of all the Muslims from within it.

If the non-interventionist says, “I couldn’t care less what Israel does in its own playground”, then we have a real non-interventionist before us, who should be congratulated for the consistency of his views.

I don’t think Rompaul would ever be presented with that question, and he’s out of the race, anyhow. But this isn’t about Rompaul. It’s about the recurrent theme of Jewish existence today, which is: discerning between friend and foe. As I put it in another form before: To rally support for Israel is deluxe; we can be perfectly content with dissuading support for our enemies. May God and the future Sanhedrin take care soon of all those who oppose the ancient Jewish dream, whether they be the One-State exterminationists or the Two-State appeasers.

Crisis du mois

I’m at a loss for words. No, not really, only as a figure of speech.

What’s this all about? It’s about:

• The emasculation of LGF:

Comments that advocate violence will be cause for immediate banning with no appeal.

From the commenting rules, retrieved on October 21, 2007.

Charles Johnson has had to contend with visits from the FBI in the past. And it does not do his reputation any good that every comment on his site is automatically ascribed to his thoughts. That said, banning all calls for violence effectively means LGF is nothing but a news aggregator and “online get-together” (oxymoron, I know…) forum.

LGF is one of the best at what it does, if not the best, and Charles deserves all praise and support for his Herculean efforts. But as there is no operative solution to this world war that does not involve some measure of violence, this means I just lost one of the major venues for my ideas and suggestions. I got a comment deleted only once. It was a comment calling for expulsion of all the Muslims, typically. I thought, “If it doesn’t call for genocide then it’s OK”. Charles thought it could damage his reputation. He did as he saw fit, and I lost all the feeling of security I’d previously had posting on LGF. And now this new rule stamps the seal on the affair. I can’t use LGF as anything more than a dump for the Leftreasonous links I find.

• The coming of the Stormfronters:

I used to loudly shush defeatists who said, “Europe is doomed”. Now I think Europe is doomed myself—not because I think the Muslim colonialist invaders can’t be repulsed (which is what the defeatists think), but because it seems clearer and clearer to me every day that the only ones with the guts to stand up to them are the racialists, people for whom the fight against Islam is only part of the general battlefield over the “racial purity” of Europe. People who get their kicks out of bringing “scientific studies” showing how “blacks have a lower average IQ than whites”, which is just an intellectual-sounding, sophisticated way of saying, “N*****s are stoopid”.

You can see all the gory details on a Gates of Vienna thread I participated in. I got called “Politically Correct” and “part of the Left” for voicing my idea that race is a chimera, a red herring, a maintained illusion, and that culture has everything to do with it.

And very much related:

• Arguing for “innateness” by Jews as well:

See comment #353 on an LGF open thread for October 21, 2007. A succinct excerpt:

[…] In next week's portion in Genesis, Abraham sends his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. The rabbis ask why he did not take a wife for his son from the surrounding Cananite tribes. After all, the Cananites were idol worshipers and Abraham's cousins back in Haran were also idol worshipers. The rabbis answer that while both were idol worshipers, Abraham's family had an innate goodness that was not present in the Cananites and could not be taught.

I expressed my disgust in a later comment (#390), and Carl replied (#396). Thanks, Carl, though I find the reply unsatisfying. It’s nothing personal against Carl, who was just quoting others. It all has to do with the same problem I have with the Stormfronters: I consider policies derived from unchangeable, inborn traits to be anathema. As I said in my comment: If you didn’t exert an effort in it, then it’s worth nothing.

Let’s take it to science fiction for a slightly more neutral ground. Star Wars: the force-sensitives are so by genetics. If you weren’t born to the right parents, all the efforts at training in the use of the Force won’t be of any good. Let me put it bluntly: I detest, despite, loathe, abhor, revile (etc.) this idea.

“Looks like there’s still some of the old 1990’s hippie you were left in you.” “God didn’t make a politically correct world. Lodge your complaints with Him if you don’t like the way things are.” Yada yada, blah blah and so on ad nauseum. My soul is not for sale, folks. If this belief of mine, that unmerited traits should be disregarded as much as possible while merited achievements should be rewarded as richly as possible, has stayed a constant after all those years, then the verdict is final: it’s an inseparable part of me. I view everything through a cultural lens as much as is feasible, and nurture as the major player in all affairs. I hate the Muslims intensely, and call for the mass expulsion of them from within and near every non-Muslim state they reside, not because I think they’re inherently, unchangeably evil, but because they are nurtured by their religion to institute their rule over the whole world, blowing stuff and people (God forbid) up in the process.

I will not cave in to either extreme of multiculturalist Political Correctness or racialist misoxeny. As for Judaism, I already wrote that, far from the misconceived image of it as being a “racist ideology” (advanced so often by the “reverse”-racist Leftscum with their Khazaria Hypothesis, no less), Judaism was the first supraracial ideology in a world that, back then, was racialist to the core. So where is the crisis here? It is in the realization that, between the rock of multiculturalism and the hard place of racialism, my niche has been narrowed. I can expect more and more accusations of heterodoxy now.

Let Europe (Western Europe, anyway) be mired in the bifurcation fallacy of anti-white, “reverse”-racist multiculturalists vs. xenophobic, “scientific-study”-quoting racialists. Let Western Europe choose which of two putrid swamps—life under Islamic fascism, or life under the sway of decisions made around genetics, bodily fluids and kindred things—it wants to drown in. Maybe that’s God’s delicious way of bringing payback for the Holocaust. I don’t want any part in this. My wish and vision is that the Jewish nation (and HaShem willing, the American as well, for they are a malchut shel chesed, a kingdom of grace) will carry the torch of the good fight, the fight for culture, for the good lifestyle, for the elevation of man above both the stunting mindset of “Nothing can be said to be better than the other, not even by merit” and the unjust one of “My father was better than your father, therefore I’m better than you, and there’s no changing that”.

Above all, I call for honesty. When you want to say, “Jews control all world affairs”, say that, don’t write an intellectually-sounding book called The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. When you want to say, “N*****s are stoopid”, say so, don’t go citing “scientific studies showing how blacks have a lower IQ on average than whites”. We are all biased, therefore state your biases. State forthrightly your position, clearly what you believe in. Life is too short to treat it all like a poem to be analyzed, with hidden meanings to be figured out.

May HaShem be with all the righteous of the world until the end of days. Amen.

On Standing With Israel

“Why should I stand with Israel? I’m not Jewish, and it’s a faraway country that has as much significance to my life as Burundi.” In giving the answer, an answer which is probably not what the reader expects, I speak for myself only, though there may be many of my peers who think the same.

My obligation is to a Jewish State, governed by Jewish law, in the borders promised by HaShem. I cannot compromise on that, especially not now that I have seen past compromises lead to only more bloodshed. I believe that the Land of Israel is Jewish land, as affirmed in Jewish sources throughout, and that none of it should be conceded to a fictitious nation that was concocted for the sole purpose of usurping our rightful claim to it.

On the one hand, I aspire to hold to the Jewish doctrine that only HaShem is to be trusted, not human beings. Therefore I reject putting all our trust even in a malchut shel chesed (kingdom of grace) like the United States of America. Those Jews who say, “America will save us from our enemies” or “If the USA doesn’t do something about Iran, we’re doomed”, are in the wrong; if the USA turns its back on us one of the coming years, it will be because of that way of thinking, for HaShem wishes us to trust in Him and not in mere men.

On the other hand, Zionism is regarded (by Religious Zionists like me) as the beginning of our salvation because it marks our return to history. For 2,000 years of exile, we were in the sidelines of history, except in the many conspiracy theories that were hatched about us. Now we are back to taking a real (and central, thanks in no small part to our enemies) part in world events. We are not isolated from world events; we are one of the eyes of the storm, of the current global conflict between Islamic imperialism and the non-Muslim world.

That, the balance between the Jewish particular dream (Zionism, Jewish sovereignty on the Land of Israel) and our return to world history (Israel as one of many non-Muslim states under attack by Islam), prepares the way for an answer:

If you support Israel out of belief in HaShem’s word, His Torah, as the Noahides and the Christian Zionists do, then may HaShem bless you abundantly. This Jew, if not many others, bears you his deep gratitude.

If you support Israel out of a pragmatic motive, such as a Hindu having realized that Israel and India are facing the same enemy, or an atheist reasoning that a small Jewish theocracy on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean is preferable to a worldwide Islamic one, just as I stand with Thailand because of my view of the Southern Thailand “ethnic Malay separatism” as being of the same nature as the “Palestinian national struggle” in Israel (that is, a cover for the local branch of Islamic imperialism), then may HaShem bless you also. HaShem desires the act first, for whatever motive, while the righteous motive can come later.

And now to the stance of which I said that it could sound surprising: if you say, “Israel does not concern me, neither for good nor for bad; I harbor neither like nor dislike toward it, my feelings toward it are neutral; let the two sides there sort things out on their own, and I have no desire to intervene for either side, neither militarily nor diplomatically”—if you say that, then that too is good! As I said, I trust in HaShem for help, therefore the neutral stance toward the Israel/“Palestine” conflict is no skin off my nose, in fact it is quite good in comparison to those stances whose holders I consider to be our enemies. Which are:

If you say, “Israel is endangering us and world peace, and support for it brings hatred and terror threats upon us, therefore we must pressure Israel to sign a negotiated, conceded peace treaty with the Palestinians”, then you are no longer neutral. You wish to appease the Muslims on Israel’s expense, and that makes you opposed to the imperative of Zionism, namely Jewish sovereignty on the Land of Israel. If you insist on believing in the Two-State Solution, despite all the evidence given that the Muslims (not “Palestinians”—there is no such nation) have no intention whatever of stopping at the territories taken in the 1967 War, because you think the interests of appeasement should take precedence over the harsh reality, then you are at war with Israel, even if only on the ideological level.

And yet, that position is next to nothing in comparison to the following:

If you are a doctrinaire believer in the wrongness, ab initio, of the Jewish State of Israel, talking of the “original sin” of its birth in 1947–9, calling for the application of the “Palestinian Right of Return”, and for the dissolution of the Jewish State into a binational Jewish/Arab state, then you are a sworn enemy of Israel, of Zionism and of the Jews in general. If you believe the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is a wrong, and that that existence is the major cause of the current worldwide conflict, and that the key to solving this conflict is the abolition of Zionism, and that every suicide attack and Kassam rocket (God forbid) on Israeli Jewish women and children is “blowback” or “resistance”, then I regard you as a modern-day Nazi-sympathizer (the modern-day Nazis being the Muslims), and I want you dead. By that, I do not mean assassination as the Muslims do in their lawless way, but I will pray for the rise of the Sanhedrin that will carry that out, at least on the more high-profile among those who are opposed to the Jewish State. We read in Pirkei Avot that Rabbi Hillel once walked along a river and saw a skull floating on it and said, “Because you drowned [a man], you were drowned; and those who drowned you will end up being drowned”. Why will those who drowned him end up being drowned, and how can such a chain ever end? The commentary says: they will be drowned because they took it upon themselves to drown him, instead of bringing him before the court to carry out justice. Enjoy, then, all you enemies of Israel, the period of grace you have until HaShem raises our Sanhedrin again (speedily in our days, amen).

In summary: I for one do not ask that you support Israel, only that you not stand against it. If you support it, for whatever motive, then may HaShem bless you. If you are neutral with regard to Israel, then there is peace between us. It is only if you wish to gain peace from the Muslims at our expense that you become our enemy. And if you are ideologically opposed to the very existence of the Jewish State, then we are openly at war, to the bitter end.

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they prosper that love thee.” (Psalms 122:6)

A Brief Commentary on l’Affaire ADL

By now, probably everyone has heard about the disgrace wherein the Anti-Defamation League, in order to stay in good terms with Turkish officials, refused to condemn the Armenian Holocaust of 1915–8. The topic, particularly its moral implications, has been covered to the utmost in the Jewish blogosphere, and is one of the very rare occasions where I can agree with the diaries at Daily Kos (though the piggybacking of some of the commenters there in order to score their usual anti-Israel points remains as despicable as always). All I can add from the moral point of view is an analogy: it would be as if I were to cozy up to Stormfront just because of the prospect of them being allies in the resistance to Islam. (In practice, the Stormfronters are more likely to be allied with the Muslims, for the same reason Hitler was: their hatred of the Jews is stronger than their hatred of non-“Aryans”; but I had to bring up the Stormfront example, because their being the scum of the earth is a pretty wide concensus.) I hate Islam intensely, but no so much as to sell my soul.

On August 21 the ADL issued a statement, an feeble attempt at damage control. The closing paragraph of the statement reveals the thought-pattern behind the whole disgraceful affair:

Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

It was upon reading this that I felt the need to write this post. I cannot add much to the slew of criticisms from the moral point of view, but this pragmatic standpoint is right in my ballpark. The ADL’s pragmatic case for supporting Armenian Holocaust Denial is totally lacking.

I will say it forthright: Turkey is a “staff of bruised reed” (Hebrew mish’enet kaneh ratzutz, which the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel called Egypt, in whom the Judeans trusted to save them from Babylon), as is any other Muslim-majority country. Yes, there may be a large portion of secularists loyal to Kemal Atatürk’s original vision, but the recent electoral victory of Islamic theocrats there did not appear from thin air, there had to be an even larger portion of people who are opposed to that vision. Yes, the military can reverse the rise of an Islamic government by a coup, as happened already in the past, but if a military coup is all that stands between a secular, pro-Western regime and a shariah-ruled, jihad-supporting one, then the state cannot be said to be a reliable ally, let alone worthy of making such soul-sacrifices to as the ADL just did.

The transformation of Iran from pro-Western to jihad-supporting in 1979 should be the most instructive example: wherever there is a Muslim majority, there is a push for the implementation of shariah and for making the state a base for the global jihad. Pro-Western puppets like Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Abu Mazen of the “Palestinian Authority” (oxymoron) are no good in countering that, for they are both hated by the Muslim populace for their collaboration with the non-Muslims, and, in an attempt to reduce that hatred, compromise on their aid to their non-Muslim benefactors (witness Musharraf’s gift of Waziristan to the jihadis a few months ago). No Muslim-majority state can ever be relied on for help against “radical Islam”, for the enemy is Islam itself, of which the jihadis are not an aberrant strain but the mainstream (active jihadis may number very few, but their supporters make up the majority of Muslims worldwide).

If it is pragmatic benefits we are discussing, then the best course of action, pragmatic as well as idealistic, is to support the expansion of non-Islamic states and steps toward de-Islamification of new territories taken by them, whether it be mass expulsion or an aggressively maintained system of incentives for leaving Islam and obstacles in the way of practicing it. It is far better pragmatically to support Greece and its retaking of former Greek lands in present-day Turkey, and from the other side, to support Armenia and its expansion. To support Turkey, even if it now seems Turkey can still hold on to Kemalian secularism, is to commit a long-term folly, just as it was Clinton’s folly to intervene in favor of a Muslim state in the Balkans (Bosnia), and the current Bush’s folly to try to democratize Iraq instead of de-Islamifying it. Throughout all the world, it is not in the interests of non-Muslims to support Muslim-majority states. Islam is the enemy, and politically incorrect and culturally imperialistic models are required in order to repulse the threat of subjugation to shariah law.

But don’t expect the ADL to alight upon these truths. The ADL is basking in former glory; it is now irrelevant, or nearly so, because it is trapped in the old view of anti-Semitism, in fighting the same enemies as it did decades ago. The ADL devotes precious little effort to shedding light on (let alone combating) the New Anti-Semitism, Jew-hatred in the form of anti-Zionism, of the Left, and the Left/Islam alliance that is working in tandem to make a repeat of the Holocaust (God forbid). Furthermore, the ADL’s mode of operation is now widely copied, by the enemies of the Jews in particular and of Western civilization in general, one of the most prominent examples being the Council for American–Islamic Relations (CAIR). This is a different age with different realities than when the ADL came to be, and the task of fighting for freedom and against Jew-hatred must be entrusted to those who are cognizant of the present situation. The ADL Affair serves as a demonstration of that truth.

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[UPDATE, August 23, 2007] Seppuku-committing Jew Philip Weiss suggests that the reason for ADL’s stance was to stall the coming into awareness of the expulsion of the “Palestinians” in 1947–9, in the course of Israel’s War of Independence. A grain of salt with everything such people say, but assuming for the sake of argument: genocide and expulsion are not equivalent. Advocating mass expulsion, as I do incessantly, is nothing to be ashamed of when such an enemy is concerned—it wasn’t immoral to expel all the Sudeten Germans in 1945, and it’s not immoral now to expel all the Muslims from within and near non-Muslim states over all the world.

I have no problem with what happened in 1947–9. If anything, the only flaw was it wasn’t done thoroughly enough, and not at all when we took more of the Land of Israel in 1967. HaShem willing, we’ll do it right next time.

And to the Leftards: it’s either mass expulsion of the Muslims or “I for one welcome our new scimitar-wielding overlords”. You may think there are other options, but you’ll find out there aren’t any.

Spreading the Word: Julia Gorin’s Article

Blogger 1389, on the Serbian front of the resistance to Islamic imperialism, has requested a blog swarm to turn people to read Julia Gorin’s article, Ending the Balkan Quagmire at American Thinker. This is very important, because if writers staffing a neoconservative American blog like AT can get it wrong about what’s happened in the Balkans, there’s about the chance of a snowball in hell that any Mainstream Media (or should that be Dinosaur Media) outlet could give the public the correct view.

Please read and spread the word. Non-Muslims under attack by Muslims in all the world should know that there is no cause for those attacks other than the basic, inherent imperialism of Islam. Don’t let opinion-shapers anywhere get out their “Our action X made them do it” punditry unchecked.

May HaShem bless all those who resist Islamic fascistic imperialism.

P.S. From Gorin’s article:

Poole’s spelling and pronunciation Kosova impugns him as well. “Kosova” is the nationalist/Islamist/Fascist and dhimmi pronunciation. “Kosovo” means “of blackbirds” in Serbian. “Kosova” has no meaning in Albanian. The intent of inventing the word “Kosova” was to de-Serbify the name of the land. […] [Link original. –ZY]

ZY comments: There’s something very familiar about this…

Between Golus and Joluth

I explained (in my post from last Passover, Out of the Galut) how the Jewish concept of galut comprised the state of spiritual exile from HaShem, a state which may be accompanied by the physical state of being in the golah, i.e. outside the Land of Israel. Golus is the Ashkenazi way of pronouncing it, while joluth is the Yemenite way. But whichever way one pronounces it, the reality behind it is the same, whether the Jew lives in Poland or in Yemen—or even in the Land of Israel, for that matter. The denial of the sameness of this reality everywhere is one of the staples of the anti-Zionists today.

The argument, in concise form: “Throughout history, Muslims have treated Jews far better than Christians did; the present enmity between Jews and Muslims started with Zionism, and is wholly a reaction for stealing the Palestinians’ lands”. A powerful argument, killing two birds with one stone: it both urges Jews to make a negotiated peace with the Muslims in the Land of Israel, and exhorts them to turn their backs on their Christian Zionist supporters. Appealing to historical experience, those who make the argument say the Jews are much better off trusting in a peace treaty with the Muslims, who are (they say) free or nearly free of any anti-Semitic history, while the historically Jew-hating Christians are not a good horse at all to bet on.

An appeal to history is normally a good move; but in order for it to be sound, first the historical facts need to be straight, and then the comparison has to be on target. The latter is the problem with the Leftists’ comparison of today’s conflict (the War Against Islam) with 1972 (the Vietnam era). The former is the problem with the argument here: the difference between golus and joluth that the anti-Zionists are presenting is not true to reality.

The view of Jewish history between Orient and Occident is slanted from the outset: many have heard of the Golden Age of the Jews of Muslim Spain, but few have heard of the Golden Age of the Jews of Christian Poland; conversely, many know of the disruption of the Jewish communities of Poland by the Cossack invasion of 1648–9, but few know of the disruption of the Jewish communities of Spain by the Almohad invasion of the 12th century, from which one of the most famous refugees was Maimonides, in 1148. Sheer ignorance enables the painting of a false picture in which an Occidental Jewry in constant misery is contrasted with an Oriental Jewry in constant comfort.

When the Almohads, fanatical (today one would call them, “radical”) Muslim invaders from Morocco, persecuted Maimonides’ family, they fled to Egypt, where they found a better life. Now the Almohad kings and Saladin of Egypt were both Muslims; it can be pointed out rightly, then, that the experience of Jews in Muslim lands was not uniform. But the same is true of the experience of Jews in Christian lands as well! Jews dispersed throughout Europe for the same reason that Maimonides got from Spain from Egypt: fleeing the land of a Jew-hating ruler for the land of a tolerant one. Thus it was that Jews from Western Europe, during years of persecution and pogroms, from the end of the 11th century to the 15th, moved to Eastern Europe, to Poland, to the invitation of the kings Boleslav III and Boleslav V, who granted them edicts of tolerance in exchange for developing the economy of their kingdom. Jewish autonomy in Christian Poland, epitomized by the Council of Four Lands, was the counterpart of the famed Jewish autonomy in Muslim Spain. All that was while the Jews of Western Europe were being hounded out of the states (England in 1290; France in 1306 and 1394; Christian Spain in 1492). Examples of Jew-hatred and tolerance can be found for the Occidental Diaspora just as for the Oriental one; the dichotomous view of a tranquil Jewry in Islamic states versus a troubled one in Christian states has nothing to stand on.

Indeed, most of the well-known ways and methods of persecution of Jews in Christian countries can be found historically in Islamic countries as well. Dress-codes for Jews in Christian lands, such as pointed hats and the yellow star, are famous; less remembered is that the Jews of Islamic lands, by virtue of the dhimmi laws (which applied to Christians there as well), were subject to similar rules. Unless a tolerant or pragmatic Muslim ruler defended the Jews by personal decree, Islamic law left Jews under a constant protection racket, which, even when adhered to (that is, the poll-tax paid), did not provide any guarantee of protection. (An aside: those who laud the status of dhimmitude as “protected” should know that, in our day, we usually refer to such a status with the word, “apartheid”.) They did not stand a chance in court against a Muslim, because their pleas would not be taken over those of the Muslims; therefore, the danger of false accusation hung over them like the Sword of Damocles. If a synagogue fell into disrepair or was destroyed, they could not rebuild it except with a special dispensation from the ruler. The ghetto, walling off Jews from the Christians in Europe, had its counterpart in the malah in the Islamic world; in both diasporas, its purpose was the physical protection of the Jews from pogroms by the non-Jewish population.

The word, “pogrom” itself is a symbol of the bias: it is a Russian word, therefore cementing the idea that pogroms on Jews were a feature of the Christian world only, from which the Jews of the Islamic world were free. Nothing could be further from the truth: there were pogroms on Jews by Muslims long before the first inkling of the “Palestinian” question, and as in Christian Europe, many were state-sanctioned. In both the 12th and 17th century, fanatical kings of Yemen ordered pogroms, expulsions and obstruction of Jewish religious life in order to force the Jews of Yemen to convert to Islam. In the latter case, king Ahmed Ibn Hassan Al-Mahdi commanded the destruction of all the synagogues in Yemen, and expelled all the Jews of Yemen to the lowlands of Mawza for two years, where many of them died.

Another episode of European Jewry is that of the anusim, crypto-Jews, Jews who observed the Jewish religion in secret for fear of persecution. In Christian Spain until 1492, Jews were forced to convert to Christianity and renounce all Jewish practices under the threat of the Inquisition, so they either had to leave to a more tolerant country, whether Christian or Islamic, or to attempt to keep their Jewish observance secret. This too is well-known, in contrast to the similar episode of the anusim of the Jews of Persia, Shi’a Muslim Persia, from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Jews of Meshed accepted conversion to Islam under duress and continued observing Judaism in secret. Around the same time, the Jews of Tabriz chose a different route, much as did some Jews in Christian Spain: they refused to convert. This was followed by the massacre of the entire Jewry of Tabriz. Here is an answer to those who cite lack of precedence when they argue Muslims would never do a repeat of the Holocaust.

In summary, the state of Jewish exile is the same whether pronounced golus or joluth; whether in Poland or in Yemen; whether within a Christian population or within a Muslim one. Jews of the Diaspora, everywhere, have had an existence between the ups of tolerance and moderation and the downs of persecution and fanaticism. The fickle existence that led Herzl and Pinsker of blessed memory to desire to get out of it all by going back to Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was by no means strange to Jews of Islamic countries. Therefore, the anti-Zionist charge that Zionism is at its heart a “European, Ashkenazi, white colonial settler movement” is nothing but a libel, an outright falsehood concocted for the purpose of recasting Jewish nationalism in the mold of post-colonial discourse, for denying the Jews’ right to have sovereignty over their land and inhabit it without restriction.

In the light of all this, this historical parity between Jewish Diaspora existence everywhere, the concessionist arguments need to be repudiated. The yardstick of friendship toward us should be, instead: the belief in our right to the Land of Israel, meaning also Gaza, Judea and Samaria and not just the territories within the 1949 Armistice Line. He who believes so is our friend; he who makes a distinction between the 1949 and 1967 territories, saying the former is legal while the latter is illegal, is most probably just naïve; and he who believes that all of Israel, including the 1949 territories, is illegitimate, that the “Palestinian Right of Return” is a prerequisite to peace, that Zionism is a colonial enterprise and that Israel as a Jewish state is as unacceptable as Apartheid South Africa—that is our enemy and should be treated as such. For Zionist Jews, that, and not historical misconceptions such as an idyllic Jewish–Muslim relationship until the advent of Zionism, should be the measure of friend and foe.

Viva Thailestina!

From the River to the Sea,
From the River to the Sea,
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

From the Mekong River
To the Andaman Sea,
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

We are fighting for our freedom
From oppressive colonizers.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

We have been here in this land
For as long as we can remember.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

The indigenous people
Of Thailestine are rising.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

The aggressive Buddhist state
Fights our self-determination, but
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

We are being brutalized
By a strong military.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

All we have is our bodies,
To strap resistance belts on.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

We are weak and oppressed,
So resist by any means.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

Every Buddhist farmer, and his wife and children too
Are enemy combatants, worthy of beheading [G-d forbid. —ZY], so that
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

We will press on with our struggle
’Til the Bangkok regime bends.
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

From the Mekong River
To the Andaman Sea,
Thailestine– Will– Be– Free!

Viva, viva Thailestina!
Viva, viva Thailestina!
Thailestine–
Will–
Be–
Free!

And now that we are finished
With addressing Western dupes,
Let us give the real message to ours:

From the ocean to the ocean,
And from pole to freezing pole,
Muslim, the world belongs to thee!

Putting the Cart in the Right Place

For the truth, reverse the directions. (Click image to view full size)

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a Latin phrase meaning, “After that, therefore because of that”. It refers to the logical fallacy of concluding, without further probation, causality on the basis of temporality—that is, concluding that if event Y happened after event X, then X is the cause of Y. Investigation must be made to determine whether this is true. If false, then it can be likened to putting the cart before the horse.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is the fallacy we can see in those who assert that the Israel/“Palestine” conflict, or more specifically “the USA’s one-sided support for Israel over the Palestinians”, is the cause of or at least fuel for Islamic terrorism today. The evidence is against this, for Islamic terrorism is a menace in places where not even post-colonial “grievances”, let alone “one-sided support for Israel”, are to be found: Southern Thailand is the most prominent example of this. Also damning is the fact that there is no need for political issues in order for Muslims to be inflamed: a novel, a few cartoons, a medieval quote by the Pope and the knighting of the writer of the aforementioned novel is enough for achieving that effect.

The reason Israel was among the first to bear the continuous brunt of Islamic suicide terrorism is its being a non-Muslim state situated in the heartland of Islam. Therefore, to blame the now global threat of Islamic terrorism on Israel is precisely a case of putting the cart before the horse. Israel had acted as a lightning rod for Islamic imperialism for at least 40 years since its foundation; the fact that the Muslims now feel the time is right for implementing Ayatollah Khomeini’s (long may he roast in hell) exhortation from 1942, for every able-bodied Muslim to do jihad in all infidel lands once the conditions are suitable, is something Israel never had control over.

The Jews of Israel reject, even if their leaders out of sheer stupidity or venality do not, the idea that Islamic terrorism can be appeased by giving the Muslims tracts of Jewish land. The Jews call upon the world to realize that the only way to real, permanent peace is by repulsing the imperialist enemy, in Israel, in the USA, in the United Kingdom, in Serbia, in Ethiopia, in India, in Thailand—everywhere.

My Own “So Sorry”

Awareness of one’s wrongful actions is a Biblical tenet, and it’s the first step toward being righteous in G-d’s sight. Judaism also has it that the forgiveness for wrongdoing must be asked of the one wronged, so that the recognition and regret of one’s misdeeds toward his fellow human being have to be followed by asking forgiveness of that human being, not of G-d—HaShem forgives only transgressions toward Him (for example, eating non-kosher food). This heritage has, unfortunately, like most moral precepts of the Bible, been carried to the extreme and twisted by the moonbats. So last March there was a “day of repentance” in the West for the sin of slavery, which was abolished long ago and in which more groups beside Westerners took part (who sold the Africans to Europe and America in the first place? Among others, Africans themselves and Muslims. But that doesn’t make for a good anti-Occidental narrative).

Confessing the sins of (and even that’s not for sure) his fathers. From A Western Heart.

And now we have American Dhimmicommies proposing that the US taxpayer shell out money to pay reparations for… the World War II victims of Japanese atrocities in Guam! That’s beyond belief, but nothing is out of bounds for those who have deep, pathological self-hatred and misplaced guilt-feelings to match.

The saying goes, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. I don’t always follow it, but now I’m going to, on the suitable occasion of the foiled (thanks be to G-d) Fort Dix jihad plot. This plot is noteworthy because it was hatched by Albanians from Kosovo—Muslims who were saved in the 1990’s by the intervention of NATO, by Bill Clinton’s order to bomb Serbia. It serves, then, together with Kuwaitis who curse America at the Hajj (Kuwait was freed from Saddam’s yoke by Bush I in 1991), as a stellar example of Muslim gratitude.

I’m not an American or European citizen, so I had nothing to do with the NATO offensive against Serbia. But I believed the MSM’s portrayal of the whole conflict back then, just as almost everyone did, and I rooted for the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs. Today, having seen, last summer in Lebanon, what lies the Muslims are capable of, and having read of such blatantly demonic portrayals of Ariel Sharon by the outside media, I have little faith in the innocence of the Bosnian Muslims those years, and I’m very skeptical about Milošević (I haven’t researched it enough yet, so my jury is still out on him, but I can say this: I’m not taking anything from the Western Leftist TreasonMedia without a big chunk of salt).

It is on this note that I, even though I had nothing active to do with the betrayal and devastation of Serbia in the years 1992–5, express regret for those events. I regret having swallowed the MSM spin uncritically, but, most of all, I regret having rooted for the intervention in favor of Muslims in Europe against non-Muslims. A strong Christian Balkan Peninsula, and the lack of any Islamic presence there, is in the interests of all the free-loving world. Therefore:

I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for my mental part, and for America’s and Europe’s physical part, in the Balkans debacle of the 1990’s, which ended in the establishment of a permanent, West-hating Islamic presence there. I’m sorry, and I look forward to a future of wiser policies, policies of aid to real friends rather than to undeserving, perpetual enemies.

And if it’s historical events we’re talking about, here’s something worth remembering about the Bosnian Muslims:

Hajj Amin El-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, inspects Muslim Waffen SS recruits from Bosnia. Apparently, some Semites were better (or more useful) than others in Hitler’s eyes.

And the G-d of Justice will repay, speedily in our days, amen.

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A must-read link I just can’t pass by: The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism, by the great and valiant Steven Plaut. Excerpt I consider the most important:

[…] The greatest irony is that even if the entire Khazar theory of Ashkenazi Jews were correct—and virtually none of it is correct—it would be entirely irrelevant. Judaism has never defined Jews on racial grounds. […] [Emphasis original. —ZY]

Read it all.

Hanan, Almost There

On April 24, 2007, the Arab (“Palestinian”) Christian woman speaker Hanan Ashrawi gave a speech in Washington, DC, an adaptation of which appears as an article on CounterPunch, from April 28, 2007. The bulk of the article is vacuous, the claptrap of diplo-speak, but toward the end I found something worthy of comment:

[…] To me, the real question is what is the nature of Palestinian society? This is something that people ignore. What kind of society are we going to build? Are we going to build an open, pluralistic, tolerant society or are we going to go back into a closed ideological system? This is what we want to know. Is there a deal being made between Hamas and Fateh at the expense of the people? Now, I must say in all candor that Palestinians have always been quite protective and possessive of our fundamental rights and basic freedoms. And we will not condone—and I will say this again—we will not condone the destruction of books or folk tales. And we will not condone the banning of the dabkeh or music as being immoral. And we will not condone the blowing up of internet cafes or beating up of young women because of the dress code in Gaza or burning of schools. They just burned the American school in Gaza.

So what we need to do, which is what civil society is doing, is stand up to any attempts at capturing Palestinian society and transforming it by force into a closed regressive unenlightened ideological system. That’s why we are calling, as another mechanism, the national council for culture, education and the arts. These are the legacies of the future generations. We cannot leave them at the mercy of one party or the other or the narrow concerns or petty ideologies of one party or the other. That council will be in charge of the curriculum rather than each party manipulating the curriculum to suit its ends. And for social justice, we need a women’s commission and the information council.

So after decades of “resistance” (read: terrorism), Ashrawi thinks it’s time for thinking about building the society, its culture and the future generation. Better late than never, I say… But my sarcasm aside, there is no better than this whole quote, from a Christian and woman no less, to show how the nationalistic or pan-Arabist narrative has duped not only the opposing side in Israel and the USA, but also some of the staunch supporters, people who consider themselves insiders, part of “the group”.

From at least the days of Hitler’s Mufti, Hajj Amin El-Husseini, this conflict has been an Islamic jihad. The phrase, “Zionist Crusaders”, so astonishing in the light of that history (the Crusaders butchered the Jews of Jerusalem in 1099), can only be understood in the framework of the Islamic view of history. The present borders of the state of Israel are similar to those of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and from the start, Zionism looked to the Muslims like a repeat of that history, in that people from Europe (not only—there were many Jewish immigrants from the Islamic lands, already in the late 19th century, but that is ignored by the race-baiting Muslims and their Marxist allies) established a non-Muslim domain on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. That is their narrative; I reject it completely, but I hear and understand, as it is crucial for knowing the enemy. The nationalistic and religious framings of this conflict have competed with each other from the beginning to this very day, but the Muslims can never be trusted to relinquish the religious reflex. Sooner or later the nationalistic party line is going to give way to the latent, ever-lurking substrate of religious education, as indeed Andrew Bostom makes clear with his 1916 quotes of Snouck Hurgronje.

And the time is now. Hanan Ashrawi’s words are proof (one among many) of that. After all the diplomatic hot air, which I frankly value only for its soporific properties, the quoted passages sound like a sincere call of distress. She, like the treasonous Azmi Bisharah (nominally Christian, in reality a Communist—much is thus explained), had stuck to the pan-Arab and nationalistic dream: the Arab state of “Palestine”, home of Arabs, base of Arab culture, serving Muslims, Christians and Druzes equally.

“Are we going to build an open, pluralistic, tolerant society or are we going to go back into a closed ideological system?” She had eyes but could not see that her Muslim “compatriots” never had any such plans for her. For her, the plan was dhimmi status, with the extra of the hijab and silence under it. Bisharah would be accorded either dhimmi status (if deemed a Christian) or the option between conversion and death (if deemed an atheist, which Khomeini did to the Iranian Communists).

“And we will not condone—and I will say this again—we will not condone the destruction of books or folk tales.” You will not condone, but the Muslims are going to do this anyway, for thus they have done for immeasurably long to all non-Islamic cultural artifacts.

“And we will not condone the banning of the dabkeh or music as being immoral.” You may not condone, but you are not performing the really effective task of showing them that sticking to the traditional interpretations of the Islamic canon doesn’t pay. Where were you when the cult of the suicide bomber was nurtured in the “Palestinian” territories? Why didn’t you tell the EU-UN-uchs to stop sending aid to a government supporting that cult since 1993? You have only yourself to blame.

“And we will not condone the blowing up of internet cafes or beating up of young women because of the dress code in Gaza or burning of schools.” You will not condone, but, in all probability, your only recourse in the near future will be to flee it all. Those who have seen an American Christian woman, Nancy Pelosi, wear a hijab of her own accord—do you really think the message of it is lost upon them? Can you not see how elated they are in the success of the Islamic ideology, for it has won them dividends of which their fathers just 30 years ago could only dream? What have you done to make them think it isn’t the way to go? Nothing. Not you, nor any other of the sympathizers of the “Palestinian” cause in the West. Your catering to their narrative has only emboldened them. You now reap the fruits.

“They just burned the American school in Gaza.” How can you now get them to see the burning of an American school in Gaza as something immoral, when they have been conditioned, by nearly 15 years of burning buses in Israel, to see such things as entirely justified? You praised the latter as, “legitimate resistance of the occupier”; they do the same, the only difference being that they see every non-Muslim as an occupier. What have you to offer to counter their narrative?

“So what we need to do, which is what civil society is doing, is stand up to any attempts at capturing Palestinian society and transforming it by force into a closed regressive unenlightened ideological system.” That’s cultural imperialism, Hanan. You’d better be very, very careful with such statements.

“That’s why we are calling, as another mechanism, the national council for culture, education and the arts.” Institutions we “evil Zionists” had right from the beginning of the 20th century, long before gaining independence. Culture, education and the arts thrived even under the unsympathetic hands of the British Mandatory Government in the 1930’s and 40’s, and even in the shadow of outbreaks of Islamic jihad (1929, 1936, to recount just two prominent ones). But your society is so consumed by hatred of the other side that it invests all its energies on destroying—turning greenery into a desert.

“These are the legacies of the future generations.” You have decided that it is finally time to think of the future generations. Well and good. I look forward to your constant and vocal denunciation of the practice of raising children to be suicide bombers. And I also hope you have a security plan when the fatwa arrives shortly after that.

“And for social justice, we need a women’s commission and the information council.” If, in the near future, Hamas permit your face to be shown (hijab, as opposed to the niqab or burka), consider yourself very lucky. And their idea of “social justice” is quite different from the Marxist one, as the Iranian Communists found out in the end. You know what dissident Iranians say about the ayatollahs: they got the better deal, because, while the Shah’s men could line their pockets with loot, they can line their turbans with the same.

These non-Muslim “Palestinian nationalists” and “pan-Arabists” have been of great service to their Muslim “friends”; but let there be no mistake: the ideology of Islam, as indoctrinated from a young age, has no other plan but to dominate and not to be dominated, with Christians like Hanan Ashrawi in their proper place as jizya-payers.

The two states in which Christian Arabs are not thus humiliated are Israel and Lebanon. In Lebanon the situation is already changing for the worse, with the demographic catastrophe there (high Muslim birthrates, especially among the Shi’a, coupled with mass emigration of the Christians—Europe, take a look at Lebanon, because that’s where you’re headed unless you change course now). Israel is a safe haven—and everyone knows it, for even reporters from the Backstabbing Brutus Corporation run away to Israel when their “Palestinian” allies prove a little too… Islamic—as long as it exists. In all Islamic countries, non-Muslims can live tolerably only under a strongman who thinks it to be in the best of his interests to protect them; as Iraq and Turkey show, the lack of such a strongman spells unending misery for them.

Let all the non-Muslim supporters of the “Palestinian” narrative realize on which side their bread is buttered, and make the right choice.

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I just wish to close with a small passage by Phyllis Bennis and Robert Jensen, also from CounterPunch, that I couldn’t resist commenting on:

We need a new foreign policy based on justice, relying on international law and the United Nations, rather than the assertion of might-makes-right.

You can have a foreign policy based on justice, or you can have a foreign policy relying on international law and the United Nations. The corrupt United Nations, with its involvement in such scandals as “Oil For Food”, and with its preference for focusing on easy targets (Israel most of all) and ignoring the real and worthy ones (Rwanda last decade, Darfur now), and the myopic international law, with its total lack of foresight as to the utterly immoral enemy we now face, cannot by any stretch of creative imagination be the basis for a foreign policy based on justice.

And as for “Might Makes Right”, the answer is this: goodness without power is no goodness at all. Think about it the next time your precious United Nations reacts to a genocide (G-d forbid) with a “strongly-worded resolution”.

Out of the Galut

This is my post for Chag Sheni (the second Festival of Passover), in which the date of the Exodus is commemorated, with the future expectation of being brought out of our current galut.

Regarding the state of being away from the homeland, we Jews have two terms: the one is golah, translated as “Diaspora”, and the other is galut (or galuth or golus or joluth, depending on the Hebrew reading tradition), which can be translated as “Exile”, but goes far beyond the simple meaning of that English word. Golah and galut are not interchangeable: the former is merely a place, meaning anywhere in the world outside the Land of Israel, our only true physical homeland (so those on the Left who are thinking of solving the Israel/“Palestine” conflict by relocating the Jews of Israel to some other place had better think again), while the latter is much more than that, it is a spiritual state as well. I am out of the golah, praise be to HaShem, but I am—all of us Jews are—still in the galut, for the Temple is still in ruins, therefore the sight of the spirit of G-d is away from us. We are still exiled from our Father in heaven, although He is with us even from afar.

Galut is also a whole state of being, of mentality. Secular Zionism had not only the goal of getting the Jews out of the Diaspora, but also transforming the Jews, pulling away from two millennia of exilic mentality. Many of the ideas of the Secular Zionist founders as to “exilic mentality” were based on their times, for example they regarded intellectualism as something of the Exile, and advocated manual labor and self-reliant strength as an antidote. In fact, they regarded the Jewish religion itself as a feature of Diaspora existence. Secular Zionism was marked by a flight of many Orthodox Jews from religion; but since they accompanied it by the observance of the mitzvah of inhabiting the Land of Israel, instead of being assimilating Jews as in Germany, G-d gave them His blessing.

Of the features of the galut mentality that the founders of Zionism decried, reliance on the non-Jewish host (usually the landowner, the paritz) for protection stands high on the list. Leon Pinsker of blessed memory became a Zionist because of the sight of pogroms in southern Russia, and Herzl of blessed memory likewise, following the words of Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna, and the Dreyfus Affair in oh-so enlightened France. They became convinced that the Jews needed a state of their own in which to be able to defend themselves, not needing the protection, the favors, of any non-Jewish superior.

So, when looking at things today, it appears that the leaders of the state of Israel, the official heirs of Herzl and Pinsker, are fully intent on undoing their whole enterprise of shedding the galut mentality away. Olmert had a brief bout of the original Secular Zionism in July 2006, when he retaliated to the abduction of the three soldiers (who are still in captivity! That is, if they are alive at all, HaShem guard us) with a full-scale attack on Hizbullah, but backed down in August in the face of world pressure, and consigned the protection of the northern border of Israel to the corrupt, Jew-hating organization known as the United Nations.

I grew up on Secular Zionism, and was brought upon the heritage of shlilat ha-golah, the negation of the Diaspora. More than any other, the Ultra-Orthodox (Charedim), with their black suits and hats, were given to me as the example of galutiyim, exilic people, people who are still in exile. But now I am a Religious Zionist, even though not Ultra-Orthodox, because it has become clear to me that much of Secular Zionism has turned exilic itself, there being today, ironically, many Ultra-Orthodox Jews who are of a more rooted, Eretz Yisrael mentality than the Secular Zionists of today. When people give their children names that are designed to facilitate emigration to other countries, such as Tom (an actual Hebrew word meaning, “simpleness”, “completeness”, derived from “tam”, the same “tam” of the Four Sons of the Passover Haggadah, but let no-one be fooled: it’s for making life easier in an English-speaking country), you know something has gone wrong. When Jews put their trust in treaties with the “cousins”, the Ishmaelites, instead of internalizing that yearly recited lesson of the Holocaust, the train is clearly revealed to have stepped off the track.

The Israeli army, the IDF, is being used for pulling Jews out of their own homes in their own Land of Israel, in the name of honoring treaties. This is a crying shame! A desecration of the IDF, of the state of Israel, of Zionism entirely! This is our one and only land, the one, single land in which we are sovereign, and what do our clueless leaders do? They act as if we are still in the golah! Our leaders are the ones who deserve to be called galutiyim, exilic. What ever did we set up the state of Israel for? What was all the toil, the self-sacrifice of the Zionist settlers, from the late 19th century (when the land was a desolate wasteland, as depicted by the travelers of that period, including Mark Twain) to our day, for, if we seek the protection of the non-Jewish paritz again? We came here to get back into history, and instead, our greedy and ignorant leaders are doing everything to make us the lowly serfs of history, of the nations, once again. That is a scandal.

We await our Messiah. All the sane world, the world that recognizes the gathering storm for what it is, awaits the Messiah. “Where is our Churchill?”, say some. “If only Thatcher were in charge, she’d deal with Iran just like she did with Argentina in 1982”, say the others. The crisis of leadership is one of the gravest, in the whole non-Muslim world in general, and in the Jewish state in particular. All the right-thinking people are lifting their eyes in expectation of salvation, in the hope of being pulled away from this deep and dark pit that is our age. The seventh day of Passover, in short.

There were throwbacks to the exilic mentality in the midst of the Exodus—even right after the giving of the Torah. Our forefathers had all of a sudden forgotten the grueling work in Egypt, and longed to get back there, to the imagined rich and varied menu given there. We are back in our land, after two millennia of being away—praise be to HaShem! But the hardship of our age is causing some to long for the Diaspora again. This is from yetzer ha-ra, from the evil passion that puts men against their Creator. The cure for all our woes is not to go back to the Diaspora, nor to do the things we did in the Diaspora, such as trusting in agreements and negotiations and alliances and treaties. The cure is to believe that all this land is ours, and to defend our right to inhabit it all, no matter what the nations say. If we trust in the nations instead of trusting in HaShem, neither HaShem will help us nor will the nations protect us; if we trust in HaShem and disregard what the nations say, HaShem will lead us to victory, and those among the nations who are G-d-fearing will rally to our cause.

This day we lay aside the leaven of the old mentality, of the unbelieving trust in human movements, and cling to the unleavened, unvarnished truth of being under G-d’s appointment. This is the way out of the Egypt of slavery to the forces of history, and on to eternal freedom.

Chag Sameach!

Some Choice…

Take a look and consider. No ideology here whatsoever, just cold, hard pragmatism.

The difference between Zionist nationalism and Islamic imperialism illustrated. Click to view full size.

If only all our choices in life were that tough.

Same Road, Different Vehicles

Among Jews who call themselves progressives, there is one trait that stands out in irony to their self-description. They may argue that their pacifism is progressive (while war is primitive), that their recognition of the “Palestinian” grievances are progressive (while daring to assert that all of the land, including Judea and Samaria, is actually ours is a result of “the primitive attachment to material things like land as opposed to spiritual things like books and works of philosophy and ideas of universal morality”—very Gnostic, that), and that their elevation of Judaism’s moral imperatives (including the imperative to help those who want to destroy you, even though that’s not a Jewish imperative) above “the ancient, outdated laws like kashrut, which were good for their time” is the natural outgrowth of being progressive, of being with the times. In all those arguments, there is nothing that cannot be refuted, but at least they have their initial credibility before the refutation begins.

The one trait, however, of Jewish Leftists that does not have any initial credibility, for it stands contrary to progressivism and therefore refutes itself when coming from them, is their view with regard to anti-Semitism. In that, the so-called progressives are stuck in the days immediately after the Holocaust. On sites like Jewschool and Tikun Olam (of Richard Silverstein, of whom I have written quite a lot on my blog), the obliviousness toward the mortal threat (G-d forbid) made on us by the Muslims and their fictional narrative of the “Palestinian people” is matched only by the paranoia they display about Holocaust Deniers, racists like David Duke and—yes, they do lump the following with the preceding—Evangelical Christians (Christian Zionists). They adhere to old characteristics of non-Jews in order to decide who is our friend and who is our foe. This leads them to hit a false positive (the Christian Zionists) and, on the other hand, some false negatives (the “Palestinians” and useful idiots of theirs like Carter).

What are their criteria? David Duke and his type are like the Nazis, haters of Jews on a racist basis (I agree with that—that’s a true positive). As for the Christian Zionists, say the Jewish Leftists, they’re firm believers in their End Times scenario, in the necessity of furthering the second coming of Jesus, like the Crusaders, and anyone who’s just a little versed in Jewish history knows what the Crusaders did to the Jews on the way to the Holy Land. So it is that Jewish Progressives, when reporting a parade in Jerusalem of Christian Zionists in support of Israel, pepper their reports with comments as to their being wolves in sheep’s clothing.

This attitude is old, as in 1946 rather than 2006, and yet it is not the traditional Jewish view of anti-Semitism. If any Jewish Leftist claims that his mistrust and contempt for the Christian Zionists is rooted in Jewish tradition throughout the ages, then he, and all those who listen to him, must be told that that is not the truth. The traditional Jewish view does not adhere to their idea of, “once an anti-Semitic group, always an anti-Semitic group”. In fact, quite the opposite: the traditional Jewish view has it that Jew-hatred is independent of any particular group of people; that it is a self-sustaining, or more accurately G-d-sustained, ideology capable of latching itself into any group (and even leaving it sometime) and, more importantly, changing to fit the times.

Hatred of the Children of Israel is a divine institution, decreed by G-d, and capable of being ended only by G-d (speedily in our days, amen). Why has G-d, who loves us, set up such an institution? For keeping His people an eternal people. To quote Spengler of Asia Times, quoting theologian Franz Rosenzweig, “The love of the gentiles for their own ethnicity is sweet and pregnant with the presentiment of death”. Or in other words: all nations are destined to fall to oblivion after their meteoric rise. The success of a nation brings it prosperity, but that causes it to “wax fat and kick” (Deuteronomy 32:15). It ceases to be powered by its animating ideology, and then implodes—it is either riven by infighting or, as in the case of Europe today, emptied through the lack of will to make the next generation. In both cases, Arnold Toynbee’s dictum holds that, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”. Actually, the common case is for a nation to be so weakened by internal hemorrhaging that the outside enemy’s work is cut short—or as our sages said about Nebuchadnezzar, “You have destroyed a ruined building”, meaning that the First Temple had already been ruined (spiritually, by the Israelites’ transgressions) before the Babylonian king destroyed it (physically).

But the sages say, En mazal l’Yisrael, meaning, literally, “Israel has no sign of the zodiac” (that is the original meaning of the word, “mazal”; the meaning, “luck” as in the well-known “mazel tov” is secondary). It means the Jewish people, in contrast to any other nation in the world, is not subject to the laws of nature, the laws that have each nation rise and shine for a time and then fade into the history books at best. Many Jews over the ages—the Progressive Jews are only the latest in this line—have desired to become a normal nation, a nation like all the others. Israeli Leftist writer A. B. Yehoshua even wrote a whole article in that view, titled In Advocacy of Normality (Hebrew: Bi-Zchut Ha-Normaliyut). But there is what people want, and there is what G-d wants. And G-d said, through His prophet Ezekiel (20:32–33:

“And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all; in that ye say: We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone. As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, will I be king over you.”

That “fury poured out” need not be that of G-d directly; in fact, it usually turns out that G-d rules over His people, when they are wayward, by means of the fury of the other nations, those same nations to which the Jews so want to be like. And that is Jew-hatred, Judeophobia, anti-Semitism. Every other nation that achieves prosperity is allowed to follow the regular course of fattening and self-skepticism at the end of which is its death; not so the Jewish people. Whenever the Jewish people abandoned their belief in their chosenness, G-d sent them signs from the non-Jews to dissuade them from that belief. Anti-Semitism, and that is not to deny its painfulness, is G-d’s way of keeping His people His people. Thus, after in the 1990’s a lot of Israeli Jews think permanent peace is just around the corner and pronounce Zionism dead and rush to pursue each his own selfish goals, G-d fills the next decade with hostilities from outside—from the Muslims physically and from the Leftists mentally—to persuade them to unite and renew themselves. I am among those whom He has thus converted, praised be His name forever.

Since anti-Semitism is an instrument of G-d and not an inborn trait of any human being, it can afflict any group of humans and take any form. For centuries, Jew-hatred had been most found in the Christian world, and had a Christian character, being based on the “Christ-killer” accusation. It was in that form that havoc was visited upon the Jewish communities of Germany during the First Crusade (1096–9). Nor is this form of Jew-hatred completely dead yet, as the case of Mel Gibson shows. Yet it is not the dominant form it once was.

The Jewish Progressives loathe the Christian Zionists because they think traditional, scripture-believing Christianity is inherently anti-Semitic. If that were so, then anti-Semitism would have had to be in constant decline in Europe from the 18th century (beginning of the period called the Enlightenment, or skepticism of religion) onward, and then be totally absent today, in a Europe that is near-totally secular. Yet, as we all know, anti-Semitism was more virulent in Europe in the 20th century than in any other period, and it is now in vogue also, with British papers like The Guardian hosting shamelessly the view that the state of Israel is responsible for all hatred of the West emanating from the Muslim world and that all criticism of that idea is being suppressed by the Israel Lobby.

No, anti-Semitism is not inherent in Christianity; not in Islam or Leftism either. It is latent by G-d’s decree, and He uses a different vehicle for it every time, to fit the circumstances. So from the 18th century to the middle of the 20th, when religion was on the wane and the “Christ-killers” argument sounded just too old-fashioned, Jew-hatred, instead of dying out as one would expect, assumed a new form: the racism-based one. For an age that had replaced religious, supernatural narratives with scientific, natural ones, hating the Jews came to be based on racial theories regarding them, instead of the former Christian-based accusation. It was in that period that the term, “anti-Semitism” was coined, by Jewish convert and self-hater Wilhelm Marr (the Noam Chomsky of his day). That term, now clearly a misnomer (as in, “I’m an Arab, and Arabs are Semites, so how can I be called an anti-Semite?”), symbolizes the protean nature of Jew-hatred, changing with the times. That new form of anti-Semitism ended in the Holocaust, the victims of which were many Jews who had converted to Christianity and renounced all ties to Judaism.

After the Holocaust, racism was out, decried by all, with the result that the likes of David Duke, once considered to be normal people, are now considered to be the refuse of society. Surely anti-Semitism should have died out then? Maybe “anti-Semitism” in Wilhelm Marr’s original sense, but Jew-hatred most certainly didn’t. It changed once again, and to the form acceptable to the times again. Since the “Christ-killers” accusation is long outmoded, and since saying the Jews are by nature inferior people is racism, the acceptable form of Jew-hatred today is the inversion that has it that the Jews are doing to others what was recently done to them. Describe the state of Israel as “a colonial outpost stealing the lands of an indigenous people”, and you make it acceptable to say the Jews deserve to die at the hands of Muslim suicide-terrorists (G-d forbid). Describe the self-defense actions of the state of Israel as “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing”, “genocide” and kindred charged terms, and everyone will nod his head in agreement when you say the only Jewish state in the world should be dismantled (G-d forbid). Say all efforts to curb “Israel’s attempts to obstruct world peace” are being obstructed by AIPAC or the Israel Lobby, and people call you a “courageous man of peace speaking truth to power”. Say 9/11 was the end-result of the USA’s support of Israel, as is all “Islamist” terrorism, no matter that totally unrelated states like Thailand and Ethiopia have been on the receiving end of the same kind of terrorism for years, and no matter that we have all seen it takes just a few cartoons to ignite the Muslims everywhere, and people commend you for your “reality-based approach”.

There is no denying it: anti-Zionism is the form of Jew-hatred of our day, just as surely as raced-based anti-Semitism and the the “Christ-killers” accusation was in ages past. Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl of blessed memory, otherwise so perceptive, made his greatest mistake in that regard. He astutely observed the change of religion-based anti-Semitism to the racism-based one, both on part of the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, and in “enlightened, enlightened” France during the Dreyfus Affair, and realized there was no safe future for the Jews among the other nations. But he predicted the exodus of all Jews from their host countries and into a state of their own would solve the problem of Jew-hatred once and for all. There he was spectacularly wrong, as he could not help being, for he was a non-religious Jew (but, in contrast to many other non-religious Jews both in his time and today, full of love and sorrow for his people); it takes belief in the religious Jewish worldview to know that the problem of Jew-hatred does not have any human solution. Jew-hatred has been transfered from their historical guilt (“Christ-killers”) and from their inborn degeneracy (race-based anti-Semitism) to their world politics, to the state of Israel and all who support it.

And the hatred of the Jews on the part of the Muslims is also a relative innovation. Mohammad hated the Jews in a Luther-like way, outraged at his failure to convert them to his new religion, hence the passages against the Jews in the later parts of the Koran. However, the full cream of Nazi-like, genocidal Jew-hatred is a recent phenomenon, and an import from Europe at that. The Koran says there was a group of Jews whom Allah turned to apes and pigs because they did not keep the Sabbath; that story, while perverse, is not so much an incitement toward Jew-hatred as it is an exhortation for people to obey Allah. But Muslims today call Jews, all Jews, “sons of apes and pigs”. The blood libel of Jews baking matzos using the blood of non-Jewish children is without any shred of doubt an import of a Christian European libel going all the way back to 11th-century England. The imports started in the 19th century, in European colonies in Islamic countries, and culminated in the cooperation, ideological as well as physical, between Hitler and Mufti Hajj Amin El-Husseini of Jerusalem. The genocidal Hamas charter is a lineal descendant of that cooperation, as is the education toward Jew-hatred given to “Palestinian” children each day.

This is the landscape of Jew-hatred today: Muslims eaten with genocidal hatred toward the Jews as a result of sticking European imports onto their homegrown base of jihad ideology, and Leftists justifying the Muslims by equating Zionism with racism, colonialism, apartheid and Nazism, and by blaming the conflict between Islam and the West on the Israel/“Palestine” conflict. This Jew-hatred is no less real and no less dangerous than all the previous forms, and the fact that it cloaks itself as anti-Zionism and “criticism of Israel’s policies” (not Jew-hatred per se, but it is when it flows from an anti-Zionist viewpoint) makes no difference.

On the other hand, Bible-believing Christians are among the best, truest friends of Israel and the Jewish people today. They believe in the New Testament, but they themselves have answered Gibson by saying, “It was not the Jews who crucified Jesus, it was each and every one of us, by our sins”. See, there is a way to counter Jew-hatred even when based on scripture. The Catholic Church too has repudiated the Christian accusation of the Jews, with a series of declarations, many of them formulated by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). They are the only non-Jews who fully believe Israel has rights to all the lands promised by G-d in the Torah, and who see the “Palestinian” fakery for what it really is, a disguising of the Islamic jihad against the Jewish state as a nationalistic struggle. Bible-believing America is the safest among non-Jewish states for Jews today, while secular, Leftoxicated, dhimmified, Islam-infested Europe is now a place where Jews relive the feeling of impending doom they had in the 1930’s. Jewish Leftists can talk of Carter being a friend of Israel (with friends like these…) and of Israel/“Palestine” being solvable through hip-hop get-togethers between members of the two sides, but those eyes, those lying eyes of mine, can see well who is the true friend, who is the well-meaning but misguided friend, who is the true foe who wishes all Jews dead (G-d forbid), and who is the deceptive foe who disguises his Jew-hatred under the mask of “solidarity with the struggle of the indigenous Palestinians against colonialist oppression”.

“Happy Holidays” in a true, non-PC sense from Infidels Bloggers Alliance, Kislev 5767 / December 2006.

It is important for us Jews to discern between good and evil, between right and wrong, between friends and foes. We have been given the best tool for that by G-d Himself, the Torah. Many, perhaps even most, non-Jews hate us, but many are those who truly love us and support us, and although we trust in HaShem for the salvation of the Jewish people (speedily in our days, amen!) and not in any human being, it is G-dlike to repay those who love us with gratitude. We should regard as our friend anyone who believes our existence and our return to our land is all fair and not foul, whether he be a Christian, an atheist or a polytheist. But the Christian Zionists are the truest non-Jewish friends of ours, for their belief in the rightness of Israel and Zionism is rooted in their belief in G-d’s promises in His Torah. And whoever of the non-Jews thinks any or all of the state of Israel is “stolen land”—that is an enemy of the Jewish people.

The road to the End of Days, when HaShem will save the Jewish people from their would-be destroyers and put an end not just to the physical but also to the spiritual exile of His people, is replete with enticements for the Jewish people to take wrong turns. For any other nation, G-d leaves them to run their course, to wither away in the sands of history. For us, who are His people, each wrong turn is promptly answered with a police vehicle telling us to retrace our steps to the original path. It need not be the same form of vehicle, but it is always the same phenomenon inwardly: Jew-hatred, the hatred of the truth G-d brought to the world at Sinai, the truth that He will one day establish His kingdom on earth, as in the quote from the prophet Zechariah (14:9) at the end of each daily prayer: “And the LORD shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the LORD be One, and His name one”. The return of the Jewish people to their land, a watershed event in the fulfillment of HaShem’s prophecies, means that Jew-hatred, now in its form of opposition to the state of Israel, can only intensify more and more, until Israel is left a sheep surrounded by seventy wolves, and then there will be only one Shepherd for her to turn to. Let us keep that in mind and not try to win the hearts of those who hate us. Those who love us will love us even more when we behave as Jews are expected to behave, in the Hashmonean way of physical fortitude standing on a base of spiritual confidence; and those who hate us will always hate us, no matter how hard we try to minimize the number of civilian casualties on the other side or how much land we concede. The highest of our considerations should be what HaShem thinks.