All-Enforced Silence Covered Up Rape

 

What would have been the reaction of the world had the news of a cross-culture rape been kept silenced from the media in a deliberate cover-up of the horrific act in Tel Aviv. This megalopolis in Israel is home to many cultures with the two largest ethnic communities belonging to secular and religious Jews and secular and religious Arab Muslims and Christians. What will be the reaction now that the authorities quietly released the news with no attempt to notify the media or to bother the government beyond the fact that they know the victim was a mentally challenged twenty-year-old woman from Tel Aviv. The police have two of her rapists and are seeking the third. One of the rapists resides in Tel Aviv and the other two live beyond the Green Line in Judea and Samaria. As evidence the police have a video record of the entire event taken by one of the rapists. It appears the crime was committed two weeks earlier thus the release being delayed as the authorities insisted on a gag-order delaying the release until it was old news and more likely to be ignored. Perhaps they feared violent reaction had the news of this cross-culture rape by three men and on a mentally disadvantaged woman who not only suffered a gang-rape but was also berated throughout the entirety of the ordeal by nationalistic slurs and ethnic accusations and abuses. This crime had a dual nature which consisted of far more than the physical and sexual abuses but also taunting by racial and nationalistic slurs of a demeaning nature abusing her on every possible nature. This was a despicable and revolting act and the perpetrators cannot be sufficiently punished but that will be decided in a court of law and we can only pray that justice will be served in the most severe nature allowed under sentencing law as this was a truly horrifying abuse of a defenseless mentally-challenged individual.

 

There should also be questions as to why the gag-order was procured and the news of this crime was delayed sufficiently long enough to make it into not just yesterday’s news but so dated so as to minimize any feel of urgency to report on this racial and nationalistic taunt-filled rape of one of the most vulnerable, a mentally-challenged young woman, a woman who despite being twenty in years was far more innocent in her mind making what happened all the more horrific. Where was the coverage even after the report was allowed to be made public. One has to wonder what would have been the reaction had the positions been reversed and the woman and her rapists been opposites and the woman instead of being a Jewess had been an Arab woman and instead of three Arab men the rapists had been Jews? We will hopefully never know as it is highly unlikely that Jewish men would commit such a crime.

 

 

We know that the IDF soldiers are known for their lack of social crimes such as sexual abuse and rape charges are only noteworthy by their absence. This is considered such an anomaly in cases of military “occupations” as the United Nations had found to its disgrace. In virtually every place where troops from almost any nation are deployed in distressed situations such as famine from drought or peacekeeping that there have been forced sexual exploitations which had become so common that a convened investigatory inspectors found that virtually every deployment of United Nations forces resulted in rapes and forced sexual favors, even sex with children and food for sex in areas suffering from famine where the food provided to relieve distressed hunger the food is used to gain sexual favors. The investigation proved so distressful that the report was required to be made in a closed session. One report from another investigation from a deployment of United Nations troops in central Africa where the perpetrators were caught and held for trial in Africa and beyond and beyond (see videos below and please click through as the videos are revealing). As the BBC reported ten peacekeeping missions were subject to allegations of sexual misconduct in 2015.
 

 

 

 

The United Nations scandals prove that sexual abuse against natives by foreign troops is so universal and it matters little which nations’ troops are deployed or even where there are multiple nations involved in a deployment. It should be noted that IDF troops have never been deployed by the United Nations and in all the relief missions and other operations and throughout their deployments beyond the Green Line in Judea and Samaria have all been in order and without any suspicions of sexual misconduct. This good conduct has not gone unpunished by leftist accusations as was made obvious by a research paper which won a Hebrew University teachers’ committee prize. The paper written by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan was based on the theory that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose. In part the paper claims, “the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing political goals.” And goes on to point out that, “In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences – just as organized military rape would have done.” In simple terms the fact that the IDF does not rape Palestinian women is just as horrible as if they had raped Palestinian women, damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

 

The most ludicrous argument was that the IDF soldiers are not raping the Arab women such that this lack dehumanizes the Arab women and reinforces the cultural and ethnic differences which are all part of the Israeli plan to make the Arabs into lesser entities and less human. What is amazing is that it never occurred to Tal Nitzan that the IDF soldiers do not rape or sexually harass Arab women might be due to the low incidence of rape in the Israeli and Jewish culture at large. Simply stated, Jews, especially religious Jews, tend not to be rapists and their culture makes being so perverted as so abhorrent that such acts are outside consideration. The reason that IDF soldiers do not rape Arab women is the same reason that IDF soldiers do not rape Jewish and Arab and other women inside Israel and the same social reverence for human beings such that they honor and respect each individual thus rape and sexual misconduct simply never enters into the thought patterns thus is not a possibility. Only in the wildest hallucinations of leftist elites is the fact that there are no incidents of IDF rape is due to a social disgust and racial revulsion because it is not possible for the IDF, the symbol of fascist imperial colonialism superiority complex, to be refraining from sexual misconduct including but not limited to rape because the IDF soldier is simply honorable and moral and would no sooner rape an Arab woman or a Haitian woman, or a Philippine woman or a Nepalese woman or Japanese woman, or an Armenian woman, or an Argentine woman, or a Rwandan woman, or a Turkish woman, or Greek woman, or a Kosovar woman, or an Indian woman or a Kenyan woman, or Egyptian woman, or any woman anywhere the IDF soldiers have operated.
 

 

 

IDF Around the World
And Through the Years

 

We can only guess that both the teachers who gave the award and its author, Tal Nitzan, went a little overboard in their efforts to find fault with the IDF despite their actually finding, what for too many other nations an anomaly, that the IDF soldier is moral, self-disciplined, follows orders as well as rules of conduct, and had a stellar record because the soldiers themselves are outstanding individuals who are well trained and operate with the reminder that they represent Israel, an outstanding nation which holds them as their soldiers to a very high standard of excellence. It is really sad that the researcher and the teachers judging the paper were so blinded by their presupposed position that the IDF had to be imperfect and they placed their own overheated suppositions instead of cold observations with reasoned interpretation of fact. The same is true for the vast majority of Israelis as well which is why the victim was demeaned and dehumanized by her assailants. The real question was who were the authorities protecting by withholding the information of this crime until it became old news and would be ignored by the media.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A Few Things on My Mind

 

We may as well get the easy part before making some upset. Talking about making people upset, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon appears to have decided better to upset the Zionists than the Arabs and Muslims after all there are a mere fourteen to fifteen million Jews and half of them are not Zionists and a fair number of that non-Zionist group are ardently anti-Israel themselves and there are well over a hundred times as many Muslims of which probably seventy to eighty percent would love to see Israel gone and the Jews along with them. Well, perhaps United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon should take a stroll over to CCNY’s History Department and ask them about some of the other peoples whose leaders decided to side against the Jews and Israel and how they fared as there were almost always under twenty-five million Jews in the world thanks to our dedication to raising moderate size families and seeking quality in our children over sheer numbers and it has worked well. Just to assist him since the only one empire that once almost persecuted the Jews, but that failed as the Queen was a Jew and the King really loved his Queen so when Esther demanded that if Haman wished to murder every Jew in the Persian Empire on the morrow, then he should start with her. This did not work well for Haman and his assistants, his sons, as they hung on the gallows they had prepared and Jews celebrate Queen Esther and her Uncle Mordechai who raised her on Torah. But alas, Persia changed their name to Iran and apparently do not remember their own history. This is proven as they are allowing Cyrus the Great’s tomb to be submerged under the waters of a dam rather than take the care to move it to higher ground; their reasoning is he ruled long before Islam so he does not matter. Iran will pay the same price as Haman if they remain blind to their past and that Cyrus was the Great because of his conquests over the Babylonians and that he feared Hashem and granted the Jews to return to their homelands and rebuild their Temple to Hashem and to make the daily sacrifices as spelled out in Torah and to remember his fair treatment.

 

 

Cyrus the Great’s Tomb

 

 

He perhaps had heard of the amazing event which drove Nebuchadnezzar II to understand where true power resides as he had three of the Jews; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to bow before him or his idol nor worship his gods, to be incinerated in the fiery furnace. During their trial they answered the charges in their defense stating, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Daniel 3:15-18). They were thrown into the furnace atop the timbers and flames which consumed them and only their prayers were heard and as the flames burned their brightest they walked from within the flames without even a singed strand on the ropes which held their robes and with an angel of the L0rd some said could be seen behind them as they emerged before it faded and vanished.

 

But Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is a hard and stubborn man who has perhaps too much faith in the presumed power of his position. He is also likely smitten by the spreading virus infecting too many so-called people of discernment, this virus is known as the BDS Movement which demands that Israel and her people be cast low through economic measures of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and also demands during protests that companies which do business with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) or any companies which are located in contested areas or who do business with such companies or whose workers live in these areas (translated simply anything Israeli as such terms are easily broadened as these have grown at times from a far more limited boycott which started against Caterpillar for selling Israel some heavy bulldozers which had been used to take down terrorist houses and for clearing a zone near a border fence, the same area that Egypt had since taken over and widened to almost a kilometer in places as they grew tired of being shot upon).
This BDS virus bears a uncanny resemblance to another virus named anti-Semitism. As these BDS Movement proponents have no such campaign against China over Tibet, occupied since 1951 after being overrun in 1950, with China setting up a puppet government which then surrendered Tibet to the Chinese. As such, the Chinese claim they did not conquer Tibet. Tibet petitioned to become a province though the Dali Lama, the one born in Tibet, not the one China appointed in his stead, has a wholly different point of view on this history despite its imaginative manner to conquer a nation.

 

 

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
Probably Denouncing Israel Once Again as
His Mouth is Moving and He is Behind the
Sign of the Bane of All that is Holy
the United Nations Emblem of Shame

 

 

Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon really should check with the Philistines, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Byzantines or any of the others who have persecuted the Jews throughout history, but then they are all destroyed, vanquished from the face of the earth and only spoken of in the past tense. As for Israel’s current enemies and nations or organizations which call for the chopping of Israel into pieces to be fed to her enemies in the hopes that will quench their blood lust and libels as excuses for terror and demands for the world, an all too willing world, to denounce and allow the destruction of the Jewish State, the time is fast approaching. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, let our warning be taken in heed and not interpreted as a threat in any form for I am far from able to speak for Hashem, but Hashem will speak and will protect His prize, Jerusalem and all Israel, repeat, all Israel from those who would dice and cut up the gift Hashem promise Abraham, Isaak, Jacob for their children to the last generation.

 

In case you think that gave you and the other haters who desire to undo what was their small part in Hashem’s promise that Eretz Yisroel would be born in one day as it will go from nothing to a nation in the setting of the sun and in the next morning a nation would stand, the nation you know as Israel, a member nation of that club off Turtle Bay called the United Nations which means that the other members are forbid to attack her by the rules of the United Nations but the times they have assailed her borders there was no hue and cry of halt until it became obvious they had lost, then you demanded Israel stop and return most, and now all if not more, of the lands gained in a defensive war. Apparently you are unable to read the rules of Lawfare which allows the retention of such lands as payment for such a breach of the peace and all Israel has demanded is defensible borders which is why the Golan Heights were annexed, the Sinai Peninsula is supposed to be largely demilitarized and Egypt has worked with Israel within the treaty limitations and consideration considered and variances permitted, and Israel has been deemed by almost every military analysis seen to need the banks of the Jordan River and the high grounds overlooking the Jordan River Valley and the passes through those heights as a necessity for tactical depth and control of obvious attack routes. And now, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon takes yet another swipe at Israel the next day after all but condoning the Arab terrorists but not quite reaching the now infamous Abbas blessing of their holy blood he seems ready to at the least outmatch the United Nations Human Right Committee which condemns Israel as if it were their opening prayer.

 

These points must not be threatened from behind by an aggressor which is exactly what the Arab Palestinians would become according to their own promises we call threats using their assorted elements all numbering in the thousands if not tens of thousands and as near as we could ascertain the total approached two-hundred-fifty-thousand fighting force, an extreme threat to leave at your rear when facing untold numbers before your front, especially when the world body which should be preventing or protecting you from such an obvious aggression is sitting silently, or worse, debating on what sanctions to level against Israel should she respond to the troops massed on her borders managing another defeat. Now, one more time, as we doubt it will be the last, check United Nations Security Council Resolution which is a Chapter VI resolution making it an advisory and not militarily enforceable as they had the wisdom and foreknowledge to understand and that the wording would confuse people despite their taking near to six months working on an exacting set of words presumably to avoid such, but when one disregards the entire resolution and decides to simply condemn Israel because, well, because it’s the Jewish State and that must not be permitted as per United Nations preoccupation and obsession with the destruction of Israel by any means.

 

The time is coming when the Arabs who demand to be called Palestinians will have escalated the now daily assaults, rock throwing, vehicular rammings, knifings, shootings and rioting with an ever increasing numbers of Israelis being murdered. Palestinian was a name which meant Jews before 1950s and not appropriated until the mid-1960s when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was fashioned by Yasser Arafat with an enabling assistance from the Soviet KGB. This became one of the world’s most universally recognized terrorist groups. The PLO can be credited with giving the world the hijacking of aircraft, the suicide human homicidal bomb, and the car bomb. The PLO provided training for other terror groups the world over. Eventually the world had no idea what to do with them so they worked with some Israeli politicians and other “worldly” entities and personalities, or so they viewed themselves, and transformed the PLO into a peace partner. They were even awarded semiautonomous regions with the terror master Yasser Arafat as the president and his trusty sidekick from the very start, Mahmoud Abbas the financier, accountant and manager of the Munich Olympics terrorist strike, as his vice president. You cannot make such insanity up and sell it to Hollywood as the plot for some misadventure movie.

 

What is preventing the Israeli government from acting to protect their citizens is beyond understanding and then for you, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, to have the gall of calling Israelis an impediment for peace. Where can you justify such when Israel tore apart the lives of almost ten thousand of their citizens to give the Arabs an opportunity for self-rule and left them millions of dollars’ worth of operating greenhouses.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) forces, actually Hamas and Islamic Jihad, immediately took to dismantling these very same greenhouses and used their pipes to fashion rockets. Soon thereafter Hamas took over as the highly trained forces of the Palestinian Authority, trained by the United States under General Dayton, wilted before vastly inferior numbers, yes, lesser numbers, and did so with blinding speed in Gaza.
Israel is still paying for in ruined lives and other traumas for that sacrifice which has gained the world another dysfunctional terror state and the PA is still claiming that they must be given the opportunity to rule themselves. Really? What did they call Gaza? We call it Hamastan and the source of rockets and other offences against our citizens in communities within rocket range of Hamastan with distance meaning the rockets are larger and their explosions more potentially dangerous to property and lives. And you have the gall to talk to us and call our cities in Area C illegal settlements, though we are permitted to build in Area C and the Arabs are not. Talk to them about their building settlements in area C. You want to call our people settlers then show us where in Area A or even Area B that we have built any structures. You claim we are not honoring the agreement but are silent as they destroy repeatedly Joseph’s Tomb and refuse Jews and Christians from praying and often even visiting the Temple Mount despite all holy sites given special mention and permission for easy and total access but there are no recriminations against their violence and destructions. Settlers, really? And exactly what term would you use to describe the European funded land grabs in Area C by the Arabs and their constructing shanty homes being constructed encircling the Cave of the Patriarchs so as to close it from Jewish access for prayer or any other reason. What is the name for actual illegal construction by the Arabs or is it you know they would not give you the time of day, let alone stop their illegal building and would laugh in your face for good measure.

 

Let us get down to basics and look at a condensed series of quotes from Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s address condemning Israel and specifically condemned any plans by Israel to zone lands near Jericho as state lands which is among the acts Israel has not permitted as there has been a freeze on all building beyond the Green Line since 2012, but there has been increasing terrorism both in quantity and lethality. But first your quote strung together. “Progress towards peace requires a freeze of Israel’s settlement enterprise.” And, “These provocative acts are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tension and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead.” Plus “The parties must act – and act now – to prevent the two-state solution from slipping away forever.” In contrast, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appeared to excuse Palestinian terror attacks and on the same day as an Israeli woman died of injuries she sustained in a brutal stabbing attack the day before. He referred to “Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.” Thus, Ban Ki-Moon continued blaming “the occupation” for causing “hatred and extremism.” And we’ll use this as a closer where Ban Ki-Moon protested that, “As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.” So Arabs stabbing twenty-two year old mother right in front of her children is their just expressing their frustration and a Jew praying upon the Temple Mount was the reason for Arab rioting and what were those Jews expecting; equality, compassion, understanding and respect but as long as the Arabs object to any action committed by Jews then the Jews must cease and desist immediately from any such action or land ownership and if they end up with no state and are treading water three miles out in the Mediterranean, if that is what it will take to satisfy the Arabs and maybe end terrorism, then it must be given them without any thinking or discussion as long as it only inconveniences or results in dead Jews, then what’s the harm, right Ban Ki? Well, it seems Ban Ki-Moon is still stuck handing over the lands settled by the settlers today, and likely Jerusalem next week and then Tel Aviv by year’s end, with the rest saved for next year with the final declaration of a Jew free Palestine from the River to the Sea and all in vain as it will not save a single soul, but we Jews will survive and return to Jerusalem as that is our final goal just as it has been for millennia, given the chance, Jews return to this their home, their treasured and ancient home where there is proof in almost every corner, you just need to dig a little further.

 

This is merely our history of longing for our return to Jerusalem, because that is what we do, and will always return to our homes fulfilling Torah. The problem I have is after the struggle to force the British to leave and end their occupation of our lands one would think that we would have written our own laws and constitution already but instead we retained some of the worst of the British laws. Probably the most liberty obstructing law has to be administrative detention which the British used to place those Jews who they believed would cause any disruption whenever an important group was scheduled. They also placed Jews into prison but on occasion they would place these Jews in a special location where they could get a confession which they would then use to round up the rest of the usual suspects and this time they had a confession implicating these leaders of the communities with some being Rabbis with congregations. Right now there is a man, the grandson of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Meir Ettinger, is in his sixth month of administrative detention where after three months there had to be a hearing to determine whether or not it was in the State’s interest such that it overwhelmed the legal rights of the individual. With only the evidence of a posting which expressed unpopular views in a blog he wrote on the Hebrew website “Hakol Hayehudi” they have been holding Meir Ettinger for almost six months and knowing what we have ascertained about the vengefulness of Yaalon, Meir is likely going to receive additional extensions for as long as Netanyahu and Yaalon control his fate.

 

 

Rabbi Meir Kahane with Son
Rabbi Binyamin Kahane and Wife Talia

 

 

Simply put, the powers-that-be don’t like the way he thinks. Defense Minister Yaalon prefers that this grandson of Rabbi Meir Kahane be held without charges potentially indefinitely. We will know soon enough as Mr. Ettinger will have a hearing to decide whether he will walk away or be incarcerated for potentially another six months without a trial or even an indictment. This is a holdover from the days of British occupation. We were glad to be rid of the British as they used underhanded laws such as this holding without charge and then letting them go well after any action was passed. These British left-over laws with such arbitrary and excessive power was the kind of rule one finds with Kings and Queens, Barons and Countesses, Lords and Ladies and a ruling elite and the peasants at the bottom and the royals could do as they pleased to the peasants. That is not the governance Israel has and the people of Israel should not tolerate such legal shenanigans and demand that such laws be stricken from the books along with anything remotely like administrative detention. The Kahane Family has seen the murder of the Rabbi Kahane right as he left the hall after giving a speech and taking questions which were just as likely to be directed at his mastery in Torah as they would the land of Eretz Yisroel. I can remember my shock and sorrow when the Rabbi was shot dead in New York City. One of his sons and his wife, Binyamin and Talia Kahane were also gunned down right in the middle of the day in Israel as they drove and this news brought back memories from Rabbi Meir Kahane’s assassination and tears were again shed and thoughts felt insignificant in expressing the sorrow.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Family that is Israel

 

Friday was a special day as we had family come and visit us making the long trek from southern Israel almost to the northern border where the train tracks end and go no further. We had a slow lunch enjoying good company and pleasant conversation enabled by somewhat relaxed service as the place was crowded and the kitchen was probably a place of ordered confusion. But the leisurely service mostly passed notice as we were lost in conversation with my cousin playing the role of translator since she is fluent in a number of languages, or at least in Hebrew and English, which was all that was required. We also took a strolling paced walk to the shuk and they got some fruits and such for their Shabbat and then had to make the trip home so as to arrive before sunset. This visit made me all the more aware of family and the warmth and closeness one can feel when in their company. There is a serenity mixed with enthusiasm and excitement making for a cacophony of emotions which blend making even diametric opposite coexist in a smooth and yielding blend satisfying the soul. This completeness felt from the all too short, as such pleasantries are always too short, time we were enjoying being together also leaves a lingering warmth and joy that makes one aware of other such relations some of which opens one’s eyes to things which otherwise are missed or simply taken for granted.

 

The next Morning, Shabbat morning, I started my trip, a short walk for most but a strenuous traversal which requires a few rest stops at spots now memorized as suitable, to attend services at the synagogue where my Torah Shiur Rabbi presides and leads the Shabbat service after the initial prayers have been chanted and leading to and performing the reading of the Torah and Haftorah. As my wanderings take me past a few other synagogues and there are other worshippers whose paths cross, we often wish one another a polite, and oft friendly, “Shabbat Shalom” and almost always dotted with a warm smile and a brightened countenance from the exchange. But this was but my initial realization that my view may have changed and become brighter, more optimistic and hopeful. The realization and recognition of this transition came upon my arrival slightly before services were to start as I require that I leave some extra time just in case my strolling pace is less efficient than normal, not to imply my walking speed approaches normal. This cemented the realization that in Israel we really are a family just as Torah teaches.

 

The Synagogue I attend may be graced with a Rabbi who speaks both Hebrew and English but for the large part the congregation speaks only Hebrew. Still, despite our language differences the other congregants treat me with warmth and friendship which came home more today as I was sensitized to see and realize the acceptance which has greeted me honestly from the first service I did partake of a Shabbat morning services there. This got me to thinking and realizing the many people who have become like friends at the various stores where we shop. In every store there are those who have taken the initiative to befriend us and make our lives so much easier and, better yet, warmer. Without these friends our lives would be more difficult, not impossible, but more difficult and far more cold. The difficulty would be overcome with technology, cellphone translation software and the fact that money honestly makes people desire to understand you and for more so in a town with mostly smaller family run stores. But even technology has its limits and life would be far less enjoyable without these wonderful people. Yes, there have been exceptions but even some, if not most, of these more difficult people have come around with time and their realization that we have made Aliyah and truly are here to stay. These people have become our extended family. These people we meet in our weekly ritual of shopping are but one family but there are others.

 

There have been developed groups within the Anglo communities which provide social, religious and study groups which add much to enrich the lives of us from the Anglosphere who have made Aliyah to our little corner of Israel. There are Torah study groups, social events around the Jewish holidays, expeditions to the near countless historic and religious sites which exist throughout Israel and other events which are simply for entertainment such as game nights. Much of this is possible as there are a fair number of Anglos who are retired or work via telecommuting thus giving them the time to shift work around events. But the reality is that despite many of us coming from many completely different backgrounds, completely disparate locations both within the separate nations as well as around the globe as the tentacles of the British Empire reaches into the farthest corners of the planet. The camaraderie is unlike anything I have ever experienced even in other Jewish communities. Probably the closest to the trust, cooperation, acceptance and mutual respect I have found in Israel was the camaraderie in my infantry platoon in the military and even there it was not as universal nor was it as close as the feelings and friendships I have found here. The mutual relations amongst our Anglo community are, as one might expect, made all the more obvious by the brightening of each other’s faces when we run into one another in unexpected meetings during our daily travels. The same bright eyed and extra bounce in their step is evident with those who have befriended my wife and I in the locations where we stop and despite the claim that most Israelis do not know how to treat people, customers, the many people we have met have gone to great extents to provide any and all assistance we have ever needed. But it goes further as even when we run into a problem in a store while shopping and there is no one we know to assist, often out of the blue a customer steps up, often a stranger and other times somebody we barely know, such as somebody we have interacted with during other completely unconnected matters, will step forward and take as long as required to make sure that every and anything required has been done to take care of whatever the problem or requirement you needed. Sometimes this even has the effect of the store or wherever you are, going the extra step and finding what it is you requested even after initially believing they had none in stock, a very surprising but not actually all that unusual case, just was not the reputation of the particular instance we recently experienced.

 

The ultimate test of a society is how they react when a person appears distressed, especially somebody they do not know and likely may not have even ever crossed paths. Suffering, as I do from a disability which often limits my ability to walk distances which are embarrassingly short on my worst days that I often end up sitting on low walls or the benches at bus stops and around town, of which there are numerous as this is a resort location, and I am usually breathing rather hard and sweat rather profusely partially from physical exertion and additionally likely due to the cocktail mix of medications physicians assure us are required for our betterment as they will place our blood tests and other medical tests within their preferred ranges. Needless to say, I make quite a site at times when I am out and around and more often than I may be completely comfortable though I am very appreciative and would probably be more ill at ease if things were the opposite and everybody just passed a person in distress by without any concerns sufficient to stop and offer to help. These good citizens will even seek the assist from another to work as a translator just to make sure you are not in need of medical or other assistance. This would have been a real rarity before I made Aliyah as my limitations are far from something new and I had sufficient opportunities to test the situation before reaching Israel.

 

Many of you are probably wondering if I have lost my mind or is there something towards which I am working and you would be correct. As many of us have been reading here there has been a steadily increasing levels of violence with stabbings, vehicular assaults, rock attacks, Temple Mount rioting replete with assaults on the police and some shootings as well. Further, there have been calls from Hamas for Arabs to start using poison on their knives as well as to start utilizing homicidal suicide bombings. The idea behind the terror assaults, the rocket attacks and every other form of attacks against Israeli citizens and the IDF are intended to accomplish two things, first to chase the Jews out and destroy Israel or second to murder every Jews thus destroying Israel. There is absolutely no desire to actually form an Arab nation called Palestine unless it replaces Israel after which Fatah and Hamas allied with Islamic Jihad will fight to see who gets to rule on their state founded on the corpses of the six-million plus Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Interestingly enough it often appears that the Europeans and the United States State Department and others from all over the globe, as indicated when the General Assembly voted to accord an Arab state of Palestine non-Member Observer State status in the United Nations with one-hundred-thirty-eight in favor and nine against which were Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, Palau, United States and with forty-one nations abstaining. One-hundred-thirty-eight nations decided to recognize an Arab state which has refused to accept any offer for a state from the initial offer in 1948 to have the lands divided evenly between Israel and an Arab state, and again including a series of times during the last weeks of the Clinton Administration while President Willian Jefferson Clinton worked with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert offering over ninety percent of Judea and Samaria with the remainder covered through land swaps as well as all of Eastern Jerusalem including all of the Old City and the Temple Mount even to include the Western Wall and the plaza before it where Jews currently pray as close as possible to the location of the Holy First and Second Temples on the Temple Mount. Then there was the nineteen years when the lands were occupied by Jordan in Judea and Samaria and Egypt in Gaza when there was no desires, claims, votes at the United Nations or calls about occupation over the presence of Jordan and Egypt in the lands now being recognized by the United Nations as an independent nation with overwhelming accordance.

 

The reason which will stop the aims of Fatah, PA, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PLO plus additionally Iran and the Islamic State who have also expressed their desire to destroy the Jewish State of Israel, or the Zionist Entity if one listens to their propaganda, is this family feelings between the majority of Israelis and particularly within the religious Zionist community which has been and continues to gain new adherents every day. Even in Israel there are those in the political classes who are attempting to take whatever they can to prevent the eventual surge in the religious Zionist camp from coming to the forefront and take control of the Knesset and the office of Prime Minister. What has been holding these groups back have been efforts to subvert their rising power in the right wing parties, a conflict here in Israel which might come close to the same resurgence in the United States of religious right in the Republican Party. It is just with the political zoo of parties in Israel such subversion is sometimes accomplished by some being driven by the old party power structures while others are lost through the foolish rivalries within this community which in too many cases are due to differences too insignificant for many to even understand. But politics are the same across the world and often make little sense to the average person but apparently are humongous in the political realms. Politics aside, in the real world within Israel, as best as I have been able to discern, there is an attitude which bodes well for the future and the taking on the challenges no matter what the world might try to throw our way. It took close to two-thousand years for the Jewish People to return to our ancient homeland making Israel the first nation to return into existence from exile twice (thrice if the four-hundred years of slavery in Egypt) and one of the few peoples to keep their original language and genetic integrity while in such an extended existence spread over as many differing nations as was the case of the Jewish People. This was extremely well worded in a recent article we read where it was simply stated,

 

“Israel, rooted in the Jewish people as an Abrahamic people, is a prototypical First Nation or aboriginal people, just as the Jewish religion is a prototypical aboriginal religion, the first of the Abrahamic religions. In a word, the Jewish people is the only people that still inhabits the same land, embraces the same religion, studies the same Torah, hearkens to the same prophets, speaks the same aboriginal language – Hebrew – and bears the same aboriginal name, Israel, as it did 3,500 years ago.”

 

The central congealing, central, and treasured truth which held these numerous communities was Torah. Torah cemented our history. Torah preserved our language (even if many of us have yet to remaster our ancient language, the language from where the first two letters, Aleph and Bet gave the English language the word ‘alphabet’). Torah retained our laws. Torah safeguarded our covenant with Hashem reminding us of our special responsibility to work the lands of Eretz Yisroel. Torah gave us hope during the darkest hours. Torah also challenged us through the ages to be better people despite the events which were often collapsing around us. Torah taught us the importance of reading and study. And Torah steeled us to remember our roots in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Exodus with Moses and the entirety of our history and some of the wisest and most sagely rules and advice on life, relations and virtually any situation we might encounter in life. It was the Ten Commandments and the rules establishing moral codes establishing the basis for Judeo-Christian society and the teachings of Psalms and Proverbs which filled out the basis for conscience and morality when most of the world still worshipped idols sacrificing children and others before great stone edifices.

 

 

Ten Commandments
Arranged in Hebrew
Reading from Right to Left
with English Translations
Underneath the Hebrew

 

Much of the basis for a just society was everything opposed by the Nazis as evidenced in this song sung by the Hitler Youth;

“We are the joyous Hitler youth
We do not need any Christian virtue
Our leader is our savior
The Pope and Rabbi shall be gone
We want to be pagans once again.”

That about says it all and many in the Arab Palestinian leadership and the leaders in Iran and other Arab and Muslim nations, terror groups, Islamic religious organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Semites, anti-Israel and anti-Zionists such as the leaders and members of the Islamic State all share an admiration for Hitler’s and the Nazis’ stand on exterminating the Jews with a special note for perhaps one of the main influences to inculcate these thoughts and concepts into Islamic and especially Arab Palestinian thought was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Hussein, the man who mentored Yasser Arafat and had a great deal of influence on Mahmoud Abbas who all dream of causing another Shoah, another Holocaust while a number which includes some of the Iranian leaders, other Arab and Muslim leaders both political and religious, as well as some like Mahmoud Abbas whose doctoral thesis revolved around a version of Holocaust denial. A few final thoughts which need telling, the Arab Palestinians are being fed lies about their state being denied them by the Jews in Israel as it is their leadership which will only accept replacing a destroyed Israel and placing their nation on the corpses of six-million plus Jews and the people, especially those being forced to remain in refugee camps are all being denied basic human rights by the Arabs who refuse to assist their brethren as they would hurt and impose hardship on generation after generation in the hope these refugees descendants will be permitted to flood Israel and vote their subjugation of all the Israeli Jews when they elect the leader who will surrender the lands to the Arab Palestinian state ending any two state solution making all the land between the Jordan River and the Sea one Arab nation and the Jews in Israel stand ready to enforce their idea which is summed up in a single concept, “Never Again!” As we actually are a family whose tree dates back to Abraham and Sarah over four thousand years ago, and yes such things matter and they matter to our family greatly.

 

Beyond the Cusp