Are There Any Zionists in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet?

 

The shock after Naftali Bennett boldly proclaimed that the Jewish Home Party he heads was going to go forward with the proposed annexation of Maaleh Adumim, a city of 40,000 residents just east of Jerusalem, unless Prime Minister gave him personal assurances and a detailed plan for the annexation of Judea and Samaria and security progress going forward; was that he once again fell for merely making a plea to Bibi to stroke him with kind words and warm promises which will freeze to death in the hard realities of world politics and expediency. If Minister of the Knesset Bennett received such a plan, could he at least inform the members of his party of such a plan or is the plan so secret that the Prime Minister made him promise not to say a word or even hint at the grand and wondrous plan which he must have had laid out for him as the Security Cabinet voted unanimously to delay discussion on any law annexing Maaleh Adumim. Not a single dissenting vote was cast and the agreement was to push any further discussion until some point after Prime Minister meets with President Trump some time in February. That is February allowing a month of opportunity to pass by and these opportunities will never be regained. I actually know people in the Jewish Home Party and when I asked them what they knew it turned out they knew exactly what I know or less. None had heard of any grand plan to annex any part of Judea and Samaria. Everyone from any political party and my fellow Zionists and the members of the two Synagogues I attend daily all have not heard of any grand plan and many had heard that Bibi was still stuck with pushing the Two State Solution.

 

Their impressions were that Bibi was so invested and so many of his advisors are afraid that if they attempt to annex any part of Judea and Samaria that Mahmoud Abbas might pack up and drop the entire mess into our hands while Hamas and Islamic Jihad, aided by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), attempt to also take control of Judea and Samaria. The best of their knowledge was that despite the massive shift and change in Washington D.C., the political elite in Israel still are fearful that they will be barred from visiting European nations or traveling places for vacation should they take definitive steps to annex any part of Judea and Samaria. They fear that they will no longer be able to shop in Paris, party along the French and Italian Riviera, attend conferences of inter-religious relations in Rome, ride the world’s tallest ferris wheel in London while visiting with the Queen, be able to ski the Swiss Alps, attend those elite cocktail and wine parties along rive gauche, those penthouse shindigs in Hollywood and Los Angeles and San Fran as well as the all-important New York, be able to talk before the General Assembly each fall at the opening ceremonies, be thrown out of the United Nations along with all the other organizations or simply no longer be amongst the beautiful people of our elitist world full of snobbish, secretive anti-Semites who deny Israel the rights granted under International Law because the Jews should not have their own nations as they are supposed to serve their betters around the globe and be thrown from the nation blamed for any ills absolving the leadership or any responsibility. The fact that Jews defend their own lands allowing them to act as if they are the equals of other nations thus making their own laws and running their own society actually offends these elites. They are the pretty people who have friends who are Jewish thus cannot be anti-Semites. They do not mention that their Jewish friends are polite Jews who know their place and act as they are expected and would never support Israel annexing Judea and Samaria. These good Jews do not support the Netanyahu government as he is so reactionary, right wing, conservative and possibly Zionist. They will lower themselves to allow some of these Israeli politicians and the elite of Israel society to visit and attend their parties as long as Israel behaves as they believe it should. Are these the people who are now influencing Israeli political decisions along with those loving Europeans who are joining BDS Movement one after the other but still will allow those certain Israelis to enter their country to visit as long as they behave properly and not do anything too offensive such as annex any parts of Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem. Somebody forgot to tell them that Israel already annexed East Jerusalem, so that bridge was crossed and will not be uncrossed despite European and other efforts to undo the annexation and award East Jerusalem to the Arab Palestinian terrorists despite knowing what will result. One can only believe that it is their desire to remove the Jews from their holy sites and make large areas of Jerusalem back into war zones. This reasoning also explains the UNESCO ruling that the Temple Mount and Kotel are Islamic with no history or relevance to Judaism or Christianity. It is the entirety of Judeo-Christian ethos and history which is under assault by the Western secular socialist elites who are embarrassed with their roots and historic past and are willing to tear down Western civilization and side with the barbarians promoting the most base cruelties which pervade Islamo-Facist Extremism.

 

Eretz Yisroel the Israel Solution to Problems is One State Solution with Citizenship for Anybody Who Desires Living in Peace with Equal Rights Responsibilities and Worshiping as One Pleases

 

What is disheartening about this Security Cabinet vote is it once again has proven the this “most right wing government in Israeli history,” as John Kerry and President Obama often referred to the Netanyahu headed coalitions as was a favorite description used by the mainstream media, has once again proven that it is the most craven government with the backbone of a jellyfish and just as toxic with its stinging rebuke of the very Zionism they claim to uphold. Rather than actually represent the religious Zionists which they are often accused of doing, this government led by Netanyahu has again stabbed the religious Zionists in their heart and their back by claiming the time is not right for any definitive actions such as annexing even the smallest of areas as it will inflame the world. Look around at the cities and areas across Europe rushing to boycott Israeli goods and perhaps you will realize the world is already inflamed with Israel even existing, they cannot be made any more inflamed and there is actually nothing to lose. As long as we are to be hated and the world will attempt to destroy us when we show weakness and fear, why not try boldness and firm reliance on our rights to the lands Hashem promised us, the Promised Lands, remember them? If we are going to go down in flames while being accused of being imperialist colonizers, can we at least act like one? These are our lands by every agreement made since we conquered these lands before London and Paris were more than small towns with dirt streets.

 

If we are to be hated, let it be for the right reason, let it be for religious by following Torah and inhabiting the lands, let it be for being Zionists and developing the lands, let it be that we stand proud and claim we are home to stay and are not the sniveling cowards hiding from every mean-spirited word or accusation. As trying to acquiesce to every demand and making every sacrifice demanded of us has led us to this juncture where we face looming isolation with our industries boycotted and demands for our extinction following one after the other, how about throwing out the playbook that we have been using for the past twenty or thirty years and try a different playbook. Here is an idea, let us use Torah as our guide on how to make friends and influence people. It tells us to walk boldly and confident in our lands and to guard the gifts that Hashem gave us with all our might. We are told to be proud and lead the world by example and not to hunker down until the time is right, the time will never be more right than it is right now. This is the right time. The new United States Administration, their new President, Donald Trump, and everything that they have done and shown has been a green light for Israel to end the sabotage which was laid upon our necks with the intended result to be the death of our state and the subjugation or murder of every Jews living in the world. What does our esteemed leadership think would happen to every Jew in Europe if there were no Israel today? If your picture is of a wonderful blooming of Jewish society accepted throughout Europe and the world if only we had never demanded and taken back our ancestral homeland, then you are sorely mistaken. If not for Israel the Europeans would be torn between forcing us from one town to the next always in a panic with a packed suitcase always by the door or simply herding us again to finish what was started by the Inquisitions, the Purifications and the Reformations all of which cast the Jew as the bane of society and a contaminant to be exterminated as vermin. That option no longer exists because at the first hint of such the Jews would flee to Israel and simply make Israel stronger. That is why their target is Israel; they cannot exterminate the Jews as long as they have a place of safe refuge. Do not perform this evil for those who would cast us into pits and bury us alive just to hear the muffled screams fade into silence and then rejoice. Annex all of Judea and Samaria now, cast the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and every last terror related individual from within our shores and begin to give the Arabs who have been victims of the terror masters we allow to curse their daily lives a chance to experience life and not death. Let our being a light unto the nations start by being the beacon we must be for our own people. Act now and we are willing to bet that the nations of the world will sit up and take notice and will condemn us and make every threat available to them because they will be filled with fear and will attempt to push us back into that shrinking border they have envisioned for our eventual elimination. Once they realize they have lost that fight, then they will start to find some way of existing with the eventuality that Israel, her people and their leadership mean to remain a full member and equal amongst states in this world and that we are no longer those Jews who flee when a car backfired or a truck hits a large pothole because we are fearful of any loud noise. We must make the loud noise if we are to remain a viable and respected member amongst the nations. Read Torah and the rest of our Bible and it becomes obvious, the only times we were allowed to reside here in peace was when we were strong and the nations feared to anger us. When we were weak of will they conquered and enslaved and even attempted to exterminate us. Choose life. Choose strength. Choose to be the true saviors of Eretz Yisroel and make the full map of Israel that pictured above, anything less is a capitulation to anti-Semitism and agreement with the argument that Israel is a false state with no rights to exist. Either we have the rights to every millimeter of land west of the Jordan River or we have no right to any of the lands west of the Jordan River, there is no compromise. Acquiescing to allow another division of our lands is tantamount to agreeing that any claim to any lands are subject to the acceptance by our enemies and we are so afraid of our enemies who are so many and so strong that we will cower and take whatever morsel we are permitted by those enemies. Believe us when we inform you that our enemies do not plan on allowing us any land whatsoever. If we are to have any lands here in our ancestral homelands, then we will have to stand up for ourselves and proudly proclaim, “Am Yisroel Chai,” and with that ringing in our ears as well as those of our enemies, we must then proceed to claim what is rightfully ours. Weakness is how Jordanian-occupied Jewish lands became Arab lands for a new Arab State simply because when we offered to return the occupied lands to Jordan we signaled we were not interested in reclaiming our own land and that by inference we would not stand and defend any of our land, make us and the world realize that was then and this is now and now we are claiming every inch of our holy and precious lands and the world can go spit in the ocean if this unsettles them.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The West Which Cannot See Cannot Avoid this Future

 

Giulio Meotti’s article Another 9/11 is on the horizon was unfortunately as likely as prescient as was the George Bernard Shaw 1903 quote he used which postulated a future where the survival of Western Society would come into doubt due to the insipid and foolish value system which would have replaced faith in Hashem and placing pleasure above family. George Bernard Shaw had written the following:

The day is coming when great nations will find their numbers dwindling from census to census; when the six-roomed villa will rise in price above the family mansion; when the viciously reckless poor and the stupidly pious rich will delay the extinction of the race only by degrading it; whilst the boldly prudent, the thriftily selfish and ambitious, the imaginative and poetic, the lovers of money and solid comfort, the worshippers of success, of art, and of love, will all oppose to the Force of Life the device of sterility.

Those who have read, or especially followed, BTC have read many an article on similar predictions, observations and desperate calls for our societies to awaken to their destructive practices and to turn towards the now seeming ludicrous ideals and cherished ideas of our forefathers from simply two or at most three generations back when family was the measure of a man and the dedication of both men and women. We referenced to such yesterday; so we will endeavor to take a different approach and tack and simply request you read the article from yesterday if you wish a different angle. Of course George Bernard Shaw knew well from what he spoke as he was alive during the peak of the Eugenics Movement, the perfection of the human race through selective breeding. Such a concept would in and of itself lead to a vast and hurried decrease in the size of society as with those determined to be genetically deficient, which would mean the poor, minorities, Jews, and all who would be determined by an elite group not to be as elite or perfect as the few selected to reproduce as they had the superior genetic makeup. These were the same as the envisioned Nazi supermen of the SS who chose males at least six feet tall (two meters), females of an attractive figure and above average height, all with clear blue eyes, blonde hair and an adequate mind and they would be required to reproduce prodigiously and required to change partners after each successful pregnancy so as to maximize genetic diversity with what would be obviously a smaller than optimum population to provide such diversity. Reducing the acceptable qualifying genetic properties by selecting only blonde hair and blue eyed specimen, the gene pool was already intentionally reduced drastically, as both are recessive traits requiring both genes to have that trait be the result, thus those genes will be repeated in all offspring. Further, by espousing eugenic principles one is determining who is permitted to have children and thus will necessarily reduce the population.

 

There are others who are also calling for a reintroduction of a form of eugenics and a limit on the numbers of offspring permitted in their society and would apply their restriction worldwide given half an opportunity. These people are not so much calling for an improved human race though they add that as long as the reduced population growth was being controlled to allow a merely ecologically sustainable population which would have sufficiently slight demand on the planet, this would permit the planet to heal and remain pure instead of blighted by the expansive destruction of human society with such wasteful things as highways, cities, populations centers and a planet dedicated to people over nature. To these fanatics, the human society is a disease to be wiped clean or reduced to a sustainable level so small as to have little if any detrimental destructive effects. The least strident of these are the Zero Population Growth (ZPG) who believe that the numbers of human beings on planet, or should we say starship, Earth must be frozen if not decreased over time but must never ever be allowed to grow. As this movement has existed since the 1950s and perhaps before, who knows how far before as there were likely such people believing such back in ancient Greece as this unfounded fear that the humans have used up all the space on the planet is a result of people residing their entire lives in cities where people are stacked ten deep or more. There is a reason the main ZPG movement existence is the San Diego to San Francisco California area and the Washington D.C. through Boston corridor along the East Coast and none exist in central Nebraska, well, almost nothing exists in central Nebraska other than a half dozen families on their farms. Perhaps these excitable ZPG movement members should be granted a free trip east to west and back again across Nebraska allowing them to feel comfortable at the start and finish in Omaha, a fair sized city, as there is nothing even close across the rest of the state of Nebraska, trust us.

 

The numbers of different groups over the long history of missing predictions, probably the most overestimated problem has been population of the entire planet. Thus far every last attempt to mitigate the dire predictions with real and implemented solutions have simply proven far more destructive and disastrous than the predicted problems would have caused. One of the most problematic and unfortunate results of any population control experiment would have to be the recently terminated China one child policy. This policy had exactly the result any sane person could have pointed out, the over propensity to have that one child be a male, which was the exact result. China now finds themselves with a massive imbalance between young male and female population. The obvious old school and historic means for resolving such an imbalance had always been to have a large scale and prolonged war until the imbalance was mitigated through casualties. This may have been one of the factors in the near continuous wars throughout history between the separate Chinese provinces or, after the unification of China, between India and China. Granted that most wars have far more earthly motivating factors such as desires for the neighboring tribes’ women, cattle, fire starter, cave or other valuable item from times so distant that we could never discern their motivations any more than they could have understood our working for pieces of worthless paper which only have value because everybody agrees to honor the worthless pieces of paper, well, cloth actually.

 

The Crusades were a response to the loss of Jerusalem and the Holy Lands to the expansive colonialist armies surging out from the Arabian Peninsula initially centered around Medina and Mecca after its conquest. This surging of the young religion of Islam in its initial two centuries eventually spread forth across all of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) finally tuned back at Tours, France as they continued forth from Spain and again at the opposite end at Vienna which withstood a siege which was lifted by the combined armies of Poland, Hungary and the Holy Roman Army over a century later. Christianity’s loss of Jerusalem was a bitter and challenging reality which resulted in numerous Crusades, military expeditions, to retake Jerusalem and the Holy Lands with their all meeting with varied levels of success or failure. Eventually the Christian world had to necessarily eventually accept this loss until their retaking the areas from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Those soldiers who liberated the Holy Land and took Jerusalem did not necessarily have any reaction that these lands were at all special as religious values of the lands; even Jerusalem was at best a secondary thought, as the Great War was a brutal and all-encompassing horror that has dragged for years and introduced carnage beyond any previous war, a carnage which had been intimated by the horrors half a century earlier in the American Civil War. World War I is difficult to understand by the nations of Europe as the assassination of a leader would be treated largely as a criminal event than an act sparking a world conflict. The Crusades would be even more difficult for modern Europeans to understand as religion has become but a puff of smoke wafting away on the winds of time and of as little concern in the world today as they were the motivating factor of all of society those few centuries ago when the many Crusades had gripped a pair of continents.

 

Crusader Routes I through IV spanning 1095 through 1289

 

Those on the other side of the Crusades have not progressed as has Europe, and the lands of Islam still hold the lands of MENA as they had during the times of the Crusades. The Byzantine Empire was the Islamic Caliphate at the onset of World War I and had sided with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and Germany much due to their fears and challenges of Russia to their north who were their mortal enemy at the onset of the war. After World War I the Allied powers made a decision to return rule to the peoples residing within the lands taking caretaking positions under the League of Nations approved Mandate systems. Nations were set with borders which either had carelessly ignored tribal boundaries or intentionally set the borders to prevent the nations from uniting behind a leader and once again forming the Caliphate which they blamed for their entry into World War I against the Allied powers. That system known as Sykes-Picot also redrew the lines of borders in Eastern Europe dividing up the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and shrank German borders in an effort to prevent another empire forming in the east and threatening France and Britain in the future. Obviously both presumptions are proving to have been erroneous. Germany partly due to restrictions and punishing debt leveled against Germany partly led to World War II and the disintegration across the nations of MENA and the rise of groups attempting to unify the people under their banner exclaiming their claims to be the new Caliphate.

 

Islamic Expansion

 

The Western World and especially Europeans have strayed so far from their dedication to religious underpinnings in their societies that they are absolutely clueless to the reasoning and motivations behind many Islamic forces and the violence against them. The fact that there has also been many violent terrorist strikes in the Islamic World just as there has in the Western World has only increased the misunderstanding of the motivations in the increasingly violent actions between the two very different regions of today’s world. The inviting into Europe, Canada, the United States and the remainder of the Western World of “Syrian refugees” when Saudi Arabia refuses to accept a single refugee, the Gulf States with all their oil wealth refuse to take a single refugee, Jordan holds the refugees in hastily constructed camps refusing to permit a single refugee to resettle in Jordan and Turkey has a very similar policy as Jordan is confusing beyond normative reasoning. One would reason that as these refugees are Arabs and mostly Muslims that Arab and Muslim nations would be granting them entrance to assist these troubled individuals who have the same religion and similar if not near identical histories. Obviously there is something amiss about these refugees and the complete refusal of the entirety of the Arab and Islamic worlds for permitting even family unification or any reason no matter how seemingly rational is the strongest reason that the nations accepting these “refugees” should probably take greater precautions. One has to think at some point that the Arab Islamic World knows something that the Western and formerly Christian World does not know but should be concerned and figure out what the big secret must be. Their survival may just depend on figuring out why their own people refuse to assist them just as they refuse to ever assist or permit a single Palestinian “refugee” to leave their camps and reside in their lands, even in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority areas where Hamas and Fatah rule over the Arab Islamic communities have refugee camps of fellow “Palestinian” Arab refugees where members of the same family reside within and just outside the fences around the camp and they refuse to allow unification. Why is it once an Arab Muslim becomes a refugee is it incumbent on Western nations to take them in and the Islamic and Arab worlds refuse any responsibility for their brothers and sisters. Apparently Islam has little compassion for their own people, their own brothers and sisters suffering and take no responsibility to alleviate such suffering while Christian nations plus Jewish Israel have allowed some of these refugees to live a normal life and even take them in even when there are questions about their actual motives and why the vast majority are military age men without anywhere near a concomitant female populations and children also joining them.

 

This coming at a time when the Western World has all but lost their ties to religion is even more ominous as there could be a religious underpinning to this possible invasion and with religion all but dead in the Western World which makes the coming times if there should be difficulties and societal trauma, the next generation will look to anybody offering a different path, a new approach as they will see their parent’s methods as the reason and incapable of addressing the problems it is claimed they were causing and these children will become very open to Islam should it be presented as welcoming, open and liberating religion, just the picture that many Imams are selling. Sharia is not being brought into the relations attempting to convert Western liberal liberated youth who feel empty and lost and have no faith in Christianity which their parents have at best observed as an empty set of actions without meaning or any faith in Hashem. This will push their children to seek out those who honestly believe and believe deeply and such holding to faith will be attractive to the children being raised now in the Western World, especially if there are financial crises and political upheavals with collapse of the currencies and the society will be primed to be taken afield by Islam which will blame Christianity for letting the people down and not only allowing but contributing to these calamities. They will point to every fallen Priest, Rabbi, Minister or Christian religious or other leaders from the faith as the reason that Christianity has become a dead religion which has been replaced and that Allah is the one true god, the new face of the singular deity and that Islam is the replacement of Christianity just as Christianity replaced Judaism and that Muhammad was the final prophet who brought the new deity, Allah who is the last name, Allah who is the deity of Jesus, the same Jesus who will now be the messiah in a new manner of coming to ready the world for the return of Muhammad and who will serve as Muhammad’s servant and dedicated follower.

 

Islam defines itself as the final replacement religion of Abraham. There is a problem with their story for the discerning and true believer will realize the difference immediately. Where Hashem, the deity of the Judeo-Christian religious family, Hashem is of Abraham along with Isaak, and Jacob; Allah is the god of Abram, before Hashem made his covenant and altered his name to Abraham and making his name now holy, Ishmael, and Muhammad. Different lineage even including Abram rather than Abraham and instead of the gentle Isaak and the most noble and nearly free of sin Jacob we have Ishmael and finally Muhammad. Ishmael was prophesized in Torah in the verse of Genesis 16:12 by the words,

וְהוּא יִהְיֶה פֶּרֶא אָדָם יָדוֹ בַכֹּל וְיַד כֹּל בּוֹ וְעַל פְּנֵי כָל אֶחָיו יִשְׁכֹּן  

“And he will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be upon all, and everyone’s hand upon him, and before all his brothers he will dwell.”

 

Hashem and Allah are not the same and this makes the religions very different and not honestly all Abrahamic religions as Islam is an Abramic religion before Abram was renamed by Hashem into Abraham as a sign of their covenant and Abraham becoming the truth of Hashem. Abram became an entirely different person after making his covenant with Hashem and receiving his altered name adding new letters becoming Abraham and thus now being the individual capable of generating a just religion which would lead to the Messiah. These facts will not be explained nor are they even understood or known to the majority of wayward Jews and Christians who have lost their path walking with their religion. Many of these families may remember a few stories and quaint remembrances but other than a casual smattering of truths they know nothing. They know not the Bible, Torah, Proverbs, Psalms or the New Testament or that the United States was based on many biblical writings as well as common law, the Magna Carta and the most liberal political writings of their times. With a world failing and in utter confusion can we blame our children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren if they take to the seeming caressing arms of Islam if it be proffered as the salvation they seek rejecting that which they believe had forsaken their parents, grandparents and back as it had obviously failed when it had not failed, we had failed. Is there time to repair the damages and return and rebuild our society and give back to life meaning beyond carnal pleasures. Carnal pleasure is a poor base for a society and even less of a base for an entire society, let alone the world. Carnal pleasures will not long remain the basis for Western society and unless something is offered before Islam takes a foothold deeper than it has already established as we discussed yesterday, then our future youth will not be capable of refusing their sirens’ swan song as the Imams call them five times a day and they bow to Allah forsaking Hashem, then where will things go. We know the answer and we must see to it that they are steered to a religion which raises the soul and not darkens life.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Why I Accept Most Inequality

 

Inequality is part of existence and no matter how hard those who believe all inequality must be eradicated, inequality is a part of the human existence. Accepting inequality does not mean that you accept all inequality as there are certain areas where inequality must not be tolerated. The foremost of these is justice and treatment under the law and in access to services and other areas where inequality is an anathema. We must have equal application of the law, equal access to legal defense when charged with a crime and equality in all applications of the powers of government. But even in this there are limits which we must address and decide whether these areas of unequal treatment are acceptable. We can easily give an example where even the most adamant proselyte of equality likely will confess to their acceptance of an inequality. The tax code and such support programs such as food stamps, unemployment insurance payments and welfare payments are all areas where society has agreed to not only allow inequality but to strictly enforce and apply these inequalities in perpetuity. There will be candidates running for office in the United States this fall who will base much of their campaign on the application of inequalities in how the government treats members of the American public. They will favor supportive programs which apply largely to their electorate and against any supportive programs which are not applicable to their electorate. An obvious example would be any candidate running for office in the areas around Washington D.C. will support increased wages for Federal Government employees while somebody running for office in central Nebraska or central Montana would call for limiting or even freezing government workers’ salaries. Somebody running in an area where there are a majority of union employees would favor pro-union legislation and programs and probably also the raising of the minimum wage to $15.00/hr. as many union salary scales are figured using the minimum wage as a scaling point.

 

Inequality is a fact of life and the sooner people understand that, equality in all things can never be accomplished. What one should not accept is inequality which is unnatural or selective in manners other than those inequalities which are a result of natural abilities or differing efforts or difficulties of task. Obviously the greeters at the neighborhood box store and a brain surgeon will not receive equal income. Though the greeter interacts with and potentially can make a positive influence on more people; if you or a friend or relative needed brain surgery, the greeter would not likely have the necessary expertise. The brain surgeon invested a large part of their life and developed a specific and vital skill which may only have an effect on a smaller number of lives. The inequality of skill levels and number of people mastering the skills of the brain surgeon is a much smaller and more elite group of people. Of course there will always be the equality in all things who will make the claim that had the greeter had similar opportunities and training they too could have become the brain surgeon. Where that could be accurate, there would be no means of discerning the reality because, believe it or not, life itself is not equal; but if we are lucky, it is fair.

 

Scales of Life in the Balance

 

Equality is one of the important qualities we should use as the basis in how we treat one another. We should not accept biased treatment in our societies, from our judicial system, by law enforcement, in service in public areas such as restaurants, in residential opportunities and numerous places all of which have some relation to interpersonal interactions or opportunities. Even when a society achieves equality in all of these areas, there will still be inequalities for which any solution would require the force of government and would in and of themselves be a form of unequal treatment. Where equal pay for equal work can be a sticky area, equal pay for all people is not actually equality, it’s communism. The problem with full equality for all incomes is that many people will choose the easiest work rather than work harder at a more difficult profession and not receive greater remuneration. What would be the reason to work at some taxing job requiring great exertion of physical energy or years of training and constant continuing education to learn the most recent developments or techniques rather than seek easier employment such as the greeter’s job we spoke of earlier? Granted there are those driven few who seek the challenge but there would be far too many capable people who would not work to their fullest if there were to be no opportunity for additional remuneration. Enforcing universal equal pay would result in losing one of the main incentives which drives many to achieve greater achievement. Without inequality in pay scales there would be little incentive to attempt to advance or perform at a higher level than your fellow employees. Across the board equal pay no matter the level, difficulty or dedication of an employee in their choice and enthusiasm and commitment is the quickest path to across the board disinterested and lazy employees who have little drive or will to exceed or even succeed.

 

Most of the inequality we find in our day to day world has a direct relation to effort, level of education, difficulty of vocation or physical requirements. The one inequality we most often hear people complain over are the huge salaries paid to professional athletes. Every time the same point needs to be driven home. The discussion usually starts off asking if the top salespeople working on commission making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling top products such as real estate, high end jewelry or other high end items deserve what they earn. The answer is always a definitive affirmative. Then we ask about the top medical physicians who perform the most difficult procedures such as heart surgery deserve their high paychecks? Again we hear the answer stating of course. We then mention CEOs and the other heads of industry. Then we point out that all these people have one thing in common, they are in the top five to ten percent in what they do and so are professional athletes. People at the top of their professions, and especially in the top of high money making professions such as sports, make the large salaries in proportion to the money flowing in their line of work. Are ticket prices ridiculous, yes but on the other side the average person can have a better than front row seat with slow motion replay and professional commentary watching the same game or event on television. Pay for view being one of the most expensive television viewing protocols still is often no greater than one hundred dollars and if you have a party with nine friends then it costs only ten dollars each and you get a front seat and reasonably priced refreshments with a wider range of foods from which to choose, and you’re watching it with your closest friends, what could be better.

 

Equality is something which is a target which we aim to satisfy as best as we are able. Will we ever attain complete equality in those areas where it serves society? Very likely not but that allows for improvement which gives us a reason to try that much harder. We need to fall short from time to time such that we have reason to improve and find new and better means to achieve equality. The one caution we need to remember is that equality in all things should never be the goal. Equality in measure to difficulty, level of performance, importance to society and other considerations will always provide inequality in payments to individuals who satisfy the most demanding needs of the society. Sometimes the inequalities may not be apparent to all people but as long as there is a segment of society willing to put out the money, there will be those who will find the means to satisfy those demands. The good side is that as long as there are these opportunities which offer unequal pay scales, there are opportunities for anybody to find such a niche and make some of those higher paychecks for yourself. Most of us will not take the high risk route and settle for a more equal salary which is guaranteed steady and less risky, which is our choice to make. Sometimes we can make inequality work for us but the one thing we need watch is that we deal with greater equality with the people whose paths we cross. As long as we deal with care and equality we can expect similar treatment ourselves and if we have quality friends and business associates, then we can consider ourselves fortunate and thank Hashem for such goodness in our lives. As a last note, we are all equal before Hashem and Hashem alone judges our goodness.

 

Beyond the Cusp