Selective Outrage

 

The luring to a trap, vicious murder and suspected dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has dominated the news cycles for over a week. Meanwhile, an American who holds an Israeli Identification Card and is a Palestinian Arab real estate agent acting on behalf of a local clan who sold land to Jews in eastern Jerusalem, has been taken by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and has remained detained at Ramallah in an interrogation facility. What is interesting about this second case is that despite Israeli officials detaining of Palestinian Authority Jerusalem District Governor Adnan Ghaith, along with Jihad Al-Faqeeh, regional director of the PA’s intelligence agency, the name of the kidnapped American has still not been released. We suspect that gag order on his name is the result of the State Department, as you really do not have much of a story if there is no name you can attach. Thankfully, as noted above, we now have two names, Adnan Ghaith and Jihad Al-Faqeeh, the Palestinian Officials pulled in, kidnapped if you believe the PA high level of screaming about the illegal questioning and were held overnight. This did get a loud and vehement response from the PA officialdom claiming that Israel had kidnapped their officials. Note that the PA kidnapped an American Israel of Palestinian Arab descent and it is a nonevent which cannot even have the individual’s name attached to the story but the two main PA officers who were in charge of the operation are arrested and taken for polite questioning, no thumb screws or other devices from the Spanish Inquisition and that is kidnapping. The selected references and innuendo are baffling but the main thing is the only reference thus far to a kidnapped American citizen by the PA has been in reference to the Israeli questioning of the PA officials suspected of involvement.

 

For simplicity, we will for the remainder of this article refer to the American who holds an Israeli Identification Card and is a Palestinian Arab real estate agent acting on behalf of a local clan who sold land to Jews in eastern Jerusalem as BOB in all caps, partly to draw attention to what has occurred, and because we do not desire having to refer to the victim as the victim or write a two line sentence just to refer to BOB. The Ramallah detention facility, on the other hand, often does have some resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition, or so it has been intimated on numerous occasions. Now, the sale of land by an Arab to a Jew within the PA carries a death sentence. That is automatic. The preferred alternative has become life in prison at hard labor, and they do mean hard labor which is designed to shorten life. Should the death sentence be imposed, it then requires Mahmoud Abbas to give his approval for it to be carried out. This is so it can be applied at a later point when nobody will be the wiser and all have already accepted that the person selling to a Jew will never be seen again. Often, the hard labor takes care of such specifics of the situation. We assume that the State Department knows what they are doing by not identifying BOB, as they likely figure that they can work far more efficiently behind the scenes as long as nobody, relatives in particular, especially those in the United States, do not know their loved one has been abducted and will likely never be seen again. Anyway, the State Department is loathe to ever accuse the PA of anything untoward or underhanded as they would not have butter melt in their mouths, the little darlings. But they sure have made a huge deal about Jamal Khashoggi and those horrible Saudis in the Turkish Consulate. There have been demands all over the news for the United States, President Donald Trump in particular, break all relations with the Saudi regime, cancel every arms deal already brokered, and everything just short of invade Saudi Arabia and question Mohammad bin Salman, the ruler of Saudi Arabia but not a peep about BOB hit the news until Israel started investigating the kidnapping of one of their citizens.

 

What has been interesting is that we have to call the abducted and likely already tortured for two weeks victim BOB but Israel is now being reported to have abducted or kidnapped two PA officials as that apparently is what police taking two people in for questioning has become called in PA official channels. The two have claimed complete ignorance, which is expected and that will remain their story, as they know Israel will be handcuffed in their investigation. What is the real problem is that the PA has absolutely no authority in Jerusalem, west or east, and thus their Security Forces even entering the city other than those assigned to guard officials is against the law. All of Jerusalem is outside any areas, either Area A or Area B, where they have security jurisdiction, thus any taking of an individual from Jerusalem is a kidnapping. But that is not even the most ridiculous response to this fiasco. This has reached the highest of PA levels as the PA cabinet on Wednesday condemned what it called settlers’ takeover of property in the area of the Al-Aqsa Mosque assisted by protection of Israeli military officials. PA officials have called on UNESCO and other international organizations to intervene to “prevent the occupation from taking over the original Arab cultural heritage in occupied Arab Jerusalem.” This is a residence and has not been declared as a cultural heritage by UNESCO. Well, that is unless you recognize that UNESCO recognized almost half of Jerusalem as not belonging to Israel and their ruling has been utilized to threaten to make the Western Wall forbidden for Jews to pray or assemble, as it is part of the UNESCO decision to grant all of the Old City as a PA heritage site. That would be similar to UNESCO declaring that the Mall in Washington D.C. as a Native American, in particular Iroquois, national heritage site and then the Iroquois demanding that no ‘pale faces’ be permitted to enter that zone including Congress, the President, most of the central United States government agencies and the Smithsonian Institute and many of their museums including the Aero-Space Museum. We know, do not give the United Nations crazies any further ideas.

 

We would like to see BOB in the light of day and freed and also sanity returned to the situation. Where is the condemnation of the PA for making the sale of any property to a Jew sentenceable by death? Further, if you really wish to get down on the Saudis for their antiquated, Middle Ages centrist laws such as making it illegal for any but believers of the faith, Muslims, and preferably Sunni, to visit much of their land and forget owning a piece of vacation property in Riyadh, or better, in Mecca or Medina. It is interesting that Saudi Arabia can basically ban Jews and Christians and the PA areas will automatically carry out a death sentence on any Jew entering their sacred turf, and that is what this is in Israel, a turf war, and the United States is fine with that but should Israel install a couple of additional checkpoints in order to curb an uptick in terrorism, that becomes something which the United Nations condemns and the State Department demands that they be taken down immediately. This was exactly what occurred after Israel simply put up metal detectors to prevent further stabbings, shootings and other violence on the Temple Mount after two Israeli Security Police were shot and killed. The reasons given were varied and all mostly false. Already there were metal detectors at one entrance to the Temple Mount where non-Muslims were permitted entry. Jews went through a further check to assure that they carried no religiously offensive material which might contaminate this Islamic area and were always escorted by Islamic WAQF Security and should they even whisper, they would be arrested for praying and contaminating all Islam. So, apparently only non-Muslims are a risk for bringing weapons to such an Islamic holy area except that was not the case, was it. Muslims often brought steel rods, gathered rocks and pelted Israeli Security in attacks always coinciding with Israeli holidays such that the Temple Mount would be closed to Jews, then they would settle down. Where is the outrage that Jews can be so visibly humiliated by repeated degradations at the hands of the PA terror enforcement division, also known as riot at any reason when directed. The truth has been long known that the PA, and Hamas and the rest, all direct these riots, terror attacks, and reward those who commit them and provide incentives and training on the best means of assaulting and murdering Israelis and how to identify an Israeli as a Jew. The PA terrorists who committed the Jaffa terror attack where the victim was US Army vet, Vanderbilt student Taylor Force, age 29, and an American tourist but he was seen as a religious Jew despite not being a Jew at all. He had a beard, dark curls or waves of hair and for intents and purposes, to a PA terrorist that means Jew (his picture is below). His death was a tragedy, same as all the other terror deaths at the hands of mostly PA, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in Israel.

 

US Army Veteran West Point 2009 Graduate Taylor Force

 

At least Taylor Force’s loss finally woke America and Congress to take steps with the Taylor Force Act. We hope it will be enforced by Presidents and the State Department under all administrations regardless of party. The State Department has already shown their colors making every argument why aid must continue despite ‘Pay to Slay’ continuing because otherwise the most richly subsidized areas on earth might not have enough baby formula or whatever excuse they wish to use (see graph below). As is obvious, it is not even a close comparison and in second is Lebanon from which Hezballah is heavily financed by Iran. Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake where in response the Israelis were the first to have a fully functioning field hospital and the last to depart. Still, the Palestinian territorial regions are the most exorbitantly financed region in the world and has made billionaires out of most of those who have had positions of power or influence and the remainder are well into at least the tens of millions stashed away. Who claims that terrorism does not pay.

 

Graph of Aid Money to Palestinian Territories and other needful locations

 

So, in the meantime the United States has a problem with Saudi Arabia for their murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi at their Turkish Consulate while BOB remains completely unidentified and left in the Ramallah PA Detention Center and torture chamber without anybody showing the slightest of attention. The Saudi’s have been a steady ally through thick and thin but must be thrown to the wolves over the death of a Washington Post stringer reporter Jamal Khashoggi who is not an United States citizen but does have three American citizen children resulting from his long-term residence in the United States out of curtesy to a major American newspaper while BOB is left to rot in a PA horror chamber unidentified and with nobody demanding that the United States break off all relations with the PA terror masters whose main use for the United States is to pressure Israel and send more money. OK, take a breath and we apologize for the overly-long sentence. Let’s continue. We would prefer that both people would have at the very least similar attention in the media and from Washington officialdom. That is what would occur in a world where things make sense and people are treated as equals. The problem is Jamal Khashoggi being in the employ of the Washington Post has automatic high publicity and is going to be the darling cause of the left-leaning media. BOB is being held by the darlings of the left-leaning media, the PA, and as such must be kept quiet and out of the spotlight so as not to upset the American public and have the people force and demand action. BOB can be sacrificed all in the cause of the PA, those wonderful people who make life and existence difficult for Israel. The initial hush job is being performed by the State Department, a formidable silencer of bad news when it comes to the PA and an amplifier of any bad news for President Trump. Thusly, Jamal Khashoggi is the most important person to have ever been silenced by the Saudis while BOB is of no consequence. There actually is a thread which connects these two cases, they are both victims of Islamic hegemony and their belief that they write the rules and the world is their apple and must jump when they tell them to do so. The PA hierarchy and the Saudi hierarchy both believe that they cannot be held responsible for their actions as long as they are committing acts which they believe are correct. They both believe that as Muslims they are superior and stand at the top of civilized behavior. The world must bend to both the PA and the Saudis as they are the rulers of the world in the future and this is guaranteed by Allah and is written in the Quran, a perfect and holy book, the only real holy book which contains all the truths and information required. They both believe they are superior to all others and that the world is their oyster and they are the perfect pearl within. They believe that they are at the leading edge of the final conquest of the world by Islam and as such, they do not need to respond to or answer for any actions, especially the death of a minor individual of little importance and a threat to the crown. While Jamal Khashoggi was a threat to the Saudi rulers, BOB was a threat to Islam as he gave away precious and holy lands to a Jew, the absolute worst possible act according to the Islamic concept of the world. These similarities and their belief that they are completely guiltless and are righteous in everything they desire to do, choose to act, elect to believe and demand of others. They believe in their superiority in all things and that the United States and the non-Muslim world are all to be subservient, subjected to their every whim. But we wish BOB would receive at least some attention instead of being just one more person sacrificed to the PA hierarchy and their insistence that they are completely innocent of all wrongs.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Conflict is Just Getting to be Too Common

 

The first sign that something, anything be it wonderful or dreadful, has just become accepted by a society is when either it is no longer even reported upon or has ceased to ever make front-page news, especially above the fold. This has already happened in Europe and signs of it have crept within the news media in the United States, Israel and much of the developed world. They have familiarized these acts by using terms such as ‘lone wolf’ and ‘acted alone’ in such a way so as to make it appear that there is nothing left to do to prevent such events. We are, of course, speaking about Islam initiated violence within our societies. These acts of violence range from mass shootings at a person’s own workplace, rape gangs violating young girls across areas within Europe and virtually every terror attack in the United States and even in Israel. We had another earlier this week when an employee at one of the manufacturers which employ Palestinian Arabs from within the Palestinian Authority (PA) regions. One of the employed Palestinian Arabs brought a rifle to work and fatally shot two of their fellow employees and severely wounded a third who will recover after a stay in the hospital. There was the recent fatal stabbing of Ari Fuld in a shopping mall near his home and a Palestinian Arab village. As we recently reported, there are signs warning Israelis of the threat to their life and limb if they enter these regions (see image below), no such warning exists for the Arabs who enter into Israeli spaces. There are certain trends which are worth following, even if doing so changes nothing, these invectives must be shared.

 

Sign Warning Israelis it is Illegal to Enter Arab Region for Safety Reasons

 

There is some good news on the terror front within Israel and other news more disquieting and ignominious. The terrorism is mostly located within the disputed regions in the Shomron and in or around Jerusalem and specifically the Old City. There have been attacks in Tel Aviv and other major cities along the coast, but these are far less frequent. The central problem is that these are people stirred on not so much by religious fervor as by economic incentives. The PA spends much effort making their pay to slay program (see image below) well recognized by the Palestinians, specifically the youth where unemployment is rampant. All too often, we find the terrorists admitting that financial remunerations was an equal or greater reason for their attacks. Others have reportedly stated they committed the terror attack in order to be sentenced to Israeli prisons because life is easier, more pleasant and with better food than residing in the PA ruled regions. But the majority of terrorists claim they are fighting the good fight against the infidel, specifically the accursed Jew. This result is the logical conclusion to be expected when one reviews the PA textbooks and their education where terrorists are glorified and the description of the life awaiting a Shaheed filled with earthly pleasures both sexual and physical. What shocks many in the developed world is the reaction often shown by the mothers of the Shaheed which is extreme and profound joy that their child is a martyr for Allah. In reality, this rejoicing in the death of a child is simply the modern form for the child sacrifices to Ba’al and Moloch from the pre-Islamic gods. Having one’s child die in the commission of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic violence grants the mother rights and an elevated position within Palestinian society as well as in other regions in the Middle East.

 

Palestinian Authority Remunerations for Terrorists

 

Thusfar, we have only spoken to the areas in and around Jerusalem and the Shomron and the unceasing regularity of terrorism striking people’s lives there. Things around Gaza take on an entirely different and strikingly dangerous description. Along the Gaza border, terrorism is institutionalized by Hamas with assistance from Islamic Jihad and financing from Iran. Often the terrorism came from rockets fired from the region into Israel. More recently, the attacks have come from incendiary devices carried into Israel by Kites and balloons. Some of these devices have been strapped onto birds who were sent flying towards Israel being carried as far as the victimized animal could reach before being murdered by its payload. The results has been thousands upon thousands of crops burned and lives destroyed as a result. These protests are anything but grassroots movements as Hamas indoctrination provides them with the manpower they require to cause such damage and threaten such violence. The Israelis residing just outside the Gaza region have experienced these attacks against their lives on a near constant basis since the 2007 take-over of Gaza from the PA. Their claim is that they so love the lands which they claim were stolen from Arab rule, that they are willing to burn the country to the ground in order to show the extent of their love. Perhaps we missed something in their logical progression from which the result is burning the lands to the ground because of your deep love. Somehow, this just does not click into place easily. Add to that their claim to love death as the Israelis love life.

 

In both cases, Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the Shomron, the Arabs have regions which they control absolutely and free of Israeli interference and in neither case has an economically viable situation even been close to being achieved. Everything from the education of the children to the media blasted to the captive audience has a single message, ‘Israel bad and Israelis, specifically the Jews are an evil which Islam demands be brought to obey their proper masters, the Muslim Arabs. The position of superiority is that of Arabs but only if, they follow Islam, and as such, the final state of the world is promised by the Quran to be populated solely by these exemplary peoples. For the average Israeli who is either Christian, Jewish, Bahá’í or any other non-Islamic faith, the message is clear, we do not care one whit about our world or our wasted opportunities where we could have reached peace and shared these lands but refused, all we care about is the eradication or subjugation of every one every where starting right here. This prevalent attitude spreads all across the regions where Islam borders the rest of the world and is currently making inroads in Europe, the United States and the rest of the developed world. This spread has brought the effects of Jihad to the rest of the world and now they can share in the problems faced by Israel.

 

The lack of credible reporting and the whitewashing of terrorism and all of its ties to Islam has increased to the point where it has endangered their societal structure in order to accommodate Islam. Almost to becoming policy has been the rush to assure everyone that every attack is not caused by terrorists. Every mass shooting, bombing or other attacks, almost immediately the FBI will issue the statement that this attack is not being investigated as to its relation to Islam. The mantra started by President George W. Bush has been, “Islam is a religion of peace.” This was the message given after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center Towers which murdered close to three-thousand innocent Americans. This was the phrase most heard in the speeches after the Charlie Hebdo killings. When the culprit of some heinous act which resulted in the murder of numerous innocents is caught and he makes claims that his actions were a form of Jihad and that he was performing in service of Allah, we are told that this was a lone wolf and that there is no possibility of another attack. Often it feels less reassuring and more as if they are saying for us to move along and take no notice of these events. The real hurt is when you finally realize that their actual target is to immunize one into accepting Islamic Mosques and Civic Centers because these locations are where the average Muslim goes to in order to learn about the Quran and then go forth and make their statement. These statements are all too often not peaceful. Yes, we realize that there are thousands upon thousands of peaceful Muslims, peaceful followers of Islam. These are the minority of the over one and a half billion and approaching two billion Muslims living here amongst the world’s population.

 

Islamic Tolerance on Display

 

We have been told that the Muslims generally are peaceful and do not support violence. Even were we to accept that a mere ten percent of the followers of Islam are prone to commit violence, that would still be almost two-hundred-thousand Muslim extremists. Now imagine if that number was off and the reality was more like one out of four Muslims have violent tendencies. This would result in close to half a billion possible Jihadists. We believe you can see where this is going, but allow us one last set of numbers. According to a poll taken worldwide by the Pew Research Group, they asked if the Muslims believed that Sharia was the word of Allah or a human invention (see table below) where we agreed with the accompanying article that by a comfortable margin, over half of Muslims believe it was given by Allah, we figured it was between seventy percent and eighty percent believe that Sharia is the exact works spoken to Muhammad by Allah. This means that three quarters of Muslims fully support Jihad as revealed through the Quran. This means that almost one and a half-billion Muslims believe in Jihadist activities. That is a number which should be frightening.

 

Do Muslims believed that Sharia was the word of Allah

 

Unbelievably, there actually is a means of changing these equations such that Islam can and will exist beside the other religions and those who believe in Secular Humanism and claim they have no religion because religions take things on faith and they believe and trust science where things are proven using basic axioms which if taken to their very roots, are based on assumptions which are taken as true on faith because there does not appear to be any concept more basic. What the Secular Humanists do not understand is that everything, including science, have some basic understandings which must be agreed upon and taken on faith as being true and on whose truth all else stands. In Islam, this truth is the Quran which is a very interesting piece of reading. Should you pick up a standard Quran and start reading, you will become confused very quickly until you realize that it is not compiled in chronological order. The standard Quran is set up in such a way as to make it easier for children to memorize starting with the shortest verse and ending in the longest verses. Once you find a copy of the Quran which is compiled in chronological order, then you will also need to know where the switching point is located. This is the point where the writings go from the Meccan verse to the Medina verses. You have to understand that there are basically two Qurans which are very contradictory. For more on this we have a very short introduction explaining these differences and how they are applied in modern Islam in this article Which Quran, Mecca or Medina? 

 

Once you have received that basic information, the remainder of this article will make far more sense. We understand that many already have a familiarity with the Quran, so here goes. Currently, the Islamic powers that be became very frightened at how easily a few British, French or other European troops and especially American forces, though heavily outnumbered in numerous battles, were able with the use of advanced war technologies, mainly the machinegun, able to defeat the Islamic forces, even those on horses or camels. Then when the early tanks were introduced, the Muslims realized that they had fallen far behind the Western powers. After World War I they set to try and find a solution and they did something actually very logical but also very wrong. They decided to look into their history and find where it was they had the greatest advantage over the Western forces and the world. This was when facing the crumbling Byzantine Empire despite their needing almost forever to breach the walls of Constantinople. This was also immediately after the death of Muhammad and the time they expanded throughout the Middle East defeating the remnants of the Persian Empire and took the Holy Lands from the Byzantines and conquered Northern Africa from numerous tribes and well before they faced a problem called the Mongols. This led them to adopt the exclusionary and warlike verses of the Medina Quran and return to the concept of abrogation which took the later verses as being the truth and overruling any earlier verses which might contradict the Medina verses. This completely removed the Meccan Quranic concepts from Islam and made Islam a purely empire, conquest, world domination, exclusionary and superceding religion. This placed Islam on a path of world conquest, just not quite immediately. They realized there was some problem when they lost face while facing the United States twice in the Barbary Wars. But in World War I, they were decimated by the modern armies of the Western World and in the ensuing decades the distance between the two worlds only increase exponentially. But in warfare, one is not required to invent everything as they can simple buy the latest technologies. This is easily seen just by counting the AK-47’s in use by terrorists worldwide.

 

Now the Arab nations have bought some of the most advanced fighting equipment including tanks, aircraft, personal weaponry and missiles systems. But even with all the technological advanced equipment, one still needs people trained in their full implementation and tactical usages. The lack of this skill became evident in the Second Gulf War where Saddam Hussein had dug his tanks into berms making them immobile artillery pieces which were destroyed easily. Still, the Imams decided that what Islam was required to do was find a subversive means for taking control of the Western nations. The weakness they saw was that the people appeared to sleep through elections unless stirred up, such as why there is a President Trump. This made them vulnerable to electoral conquest by slowly getting their people into power and then taking over and ending democracy replacing the laws, Constitutions and everything with Sharia. This is already in progress across much of Europe where there are Islamic enclaves which are run under Sharia and are independent of the national government and police enforcement. But there is a path which Islam could decide to take which would be more along the ideas they pursued during the Golden Age of Islam. During these times, they applied the Meccan Quran and were open to science and math and learning about the world, the human anatomy and other sciences and led the world in many of these areas. They fell behind more due to economic problems than their attitude and direction in dealing with the outside world. A return to pluralism could bring an injection of new scientific studies as the oil wealth could be utilized to build the best and most modern laboratories for the advance research in numerous fields from physics to medicine, mathematics to chemistry, biology to archeology. What all of this would require is for Islam to purge their holy books of the idea they must conquer the world and all must adopt Islam or die. This will lead eventually to intertribal wars as eventually such purification will inevitably lead to the most basic of Arab beliefs. The belief that my belief is pure and all who do not adopt my beliefs are therefore apostates leads to the proverb of, “My Brother and I against My Cousin; My Cousin and I against the Stranger.” In the end there can be, as stated so eloquently in Highlander, there can be only one simply because nobody else is as pure as the one who Allah chose above all the others who lost.

 

In the End there Can Be Only One

 

The solution is the original texts as placed in the Mecca Quran, the actual verses which mostly described Islam during its Golden Age, as described above. This would also solve numerous problems Islam appears to present on its borders throughout Northern Africa in the African Transition Zone plus the border between Pakistan and India where they divided up the former nation of Kashmir as well as the ongoing historic conflict between Turkey and Greece. There are more recent areas where this conflict between Islam and everything else is being waged which include Russia, China, the Philippines and coming to Europe and North America much of which can be detected on this interactive map. Were Islam to decide to settle for the large tracts of land they control from Morocco to Malaysia and for having a fair percentage of the world population and instead of terrorism and further exploits of conquest through everything from subversion to outright violence and work on education and the advancement of their society, they could not only join the modern world, but within a couple of generations become a hub of enterprise and a jewel of world advancement. The first step would be reversing their concept of abrogation and instead of having the later verses of the Medina Quran be considered superior, they could just as easily decide that the Mecca verses as being those given quietly in a cave where Muhammad was alone when hearing the words as being of a more pure nature, then Islam could become married to the world instead of attempting to subjugate the world. They could become a beacon of the powers of acceptance.

 

This is a path which has some support amongst some of the most moderate amongst Islam who are being shunned simply because theirs is a calm message which promises a future which though more rewarding in the finality of things requires dedication and education which are items which demand sacrifice and intense study to be learned sufficiently well to further knowledge. Those screaming for Jihad claiming that Islam can just walk forth and take the world which is ready to collapse before them do make the loudest of sounds, but their path is equally boisterous and adventurous, its ways are violence which only begets violence and in the end, their results are swaths of destruction and great despair and sorrow. With the modern forms of complete warfare including biological agents who care not which side whose lives they take, chemical weapons which leave bodies twisted and broken having died an agonizing death and the final warfare weapon being atomic weapons which can be utilized as EMP devices destroying all technology, neutron bombs which remove all lifeforms but leave the infrastructure intact and the simple thermonuclear device which wipes the land clean of life and structures leaving behind a wasteland. These last results are what will be the remains of our age of technology and weaponry and by the time it reaches a final battle, Armageddon if you please, we may have built a small number of anti-matter warheads which just require dropping and allowing their cores of anti-matter to mix with whatever they find and the resultant explosion will make Hiroshima be as if it were a firecracker by comparison. There are those who claim that mankind has reached this nuclear age and been on the verge of greatness and exploding out into space only to have destroyed all in a series of wars which basically bombed humanity back to the Stone Age. Perhaps this time we might avoid that end result and not destroy everything just to start all over from square one. What do you think?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Big Question Most Heard

 

That question coming from Sabras (Native Israelis), Russians, Europeans and the other sundry Jews from the world over is, why don’t the American Jews move to Israel or make Aliyah. The answer often given is that they will come in good time. Unfortunately, that is probably the truth and the shame is that for the American Jews this will prove to be unfortunate. This may prove to be the most difficult article to write while not making many people very upset with what we write. Some may want to get upset and scream that this is not me; I want to live in Israel, but with my work and my home and everything, in time it will become easier. That is not really true as we waited until we were retired and it was still difficult choosing what to keep, what to sell and what, despite our attachment, to simply throw out. We were fortunate and sold our entire beer brewing system and bar equipment and limited our stuff needing a moving company to at most one container. Whatever the reason, this is a great time to make Aliyah as the building of apartments and residences have been being built at a fairly rapid pace which had lowered prices. That is as much of the advice we can offer.

 

Akko is the Oldest City in Israel Seen Overlooking Mediterranean Port Wall

 

How to answer why most American Jews are not making Aliyah and also answering the other main questions is difficult for one to be able to explain while remaining positive. This gets particularly difficult when the added question is to explain the reasoning behind the antics and demands of the Open Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and other branches in American Judaism for accepting new definitions for Halachic Law. Not every Jew is overly observant and even fewer attend all three services each day, but a large share of the population we have met are religious and attend services on some form of regular basis. They attend for yahrzeits, almost every holiday, and try to make Shabbat morning prayers every week. From what we remember, we probably have more people attending our Synagogue daily morning prayers than we often had on Shabbat morning prayers in the Synagogue we last attended in the United States. But very few question the definitions of Halachic Law. The Torah says exactly what it says and cannot be twisted to say otherwise. The Written traditions in Talmud and other commentaries are also quite definitive in their final decisions. On the necessity for adopting a new Oral Tradition to partly replace Talmud is accepted as something of a work in progress, but it is in progress by going through Talmudic principles and adding or questioning ideas and concepts within the structure which already exists. Very few desire throwing the entire system into the trashcan and defining all to fit every whim and societal idiosyncrasy existing today in European or American society. Judaism is supposed to offer alternatives from a tried and true history guided by Torah and our history, not a cult turning on every whim and being redefined to fit some leftist ideology. This has been the case of the demands by Rabbis from the ranks of Open Orthodoxy. We found an article which explains the problem likely better than we ever could in probably one of the most liberal media sources in Israel in Haaretz. Will some of the changes made in America eventually become accepted in Israeli Orthodox, probably. They are already accepted in many of the Conservative and Reform communities in Israel and these do exist but are a lesser offshoot than the more traditional Orthodox, which also have their flavors from Hassidic to Religious Zionist and everything inbetween, but all are governed by the Rabbinate.

 

The truth as most see it from many of the Americans already having made Aliyah is not as pretty as most might prefer. They see things differently than many in the United States see things, and perhaps that comes partly from the fact that being religious in Israel is far more readily attainable than it is in the United States. If one could only afford to reside over ten miles from the Synagogue in their city, they could not be expected to walk to Shabbat Services as at some distances one would need almost a full day to walk both directions. Such would not be resting on the Sabbath. But the problems go deeper than that. Many American Jews have replaced Halachic Law with the standards and positions of their leftist political positions. Such things then become “traditionally Jewish” as same sex marriage, inter-faith marriage, women rabbis, mixed seating for prayer (though this may change over time) and other modernisms. There is another problem in that many Americanized Jews no longer believe that the Torah is historically accurate and that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Queen Esther and the others from Biblical history and most of the Torah and Old Testament are fables to reveal a code of law whose people are imagined and never lived. Come and see the history for real here in Israel where discoveries, especially in the area known to have been the City of David and Cave of Machpelah and these people are very real and the history of Torah and Bible are also found to be accurate and as described. There is a reason why the Waqf has carried away truck loads of crushed rock from their “digging to replace old water pipes and to modernize the facilities” on the Temple Mount always digging in places which are described well in the Bible. Below is a montage of a few of the rubble piles and shown at the lower end are the efforts by the Israeli Antiquities Institute which took up with assisting the efforts when proof of their viability for actually producing artifacts, though dating them has posed a challenge as it is often difficult to discern at what depth and period some artifacts represent. Many Israelis offer their time to assist with this painstaking labors of love and dedication to preserving whatever historical remains can be found. These siftings have produced a small collection of the pomegranate-shaped bells that the Levites and Kohanim wore on their priestly robes (pictured below montage). Unfortunately, there have been far less large objects for after finding an intact column block the Waqf began their crushing of all larger stones to assure nothing of consequence might be found.

 

Temple Mount Destructive Arab Waqf
Excavation Dumping Site and Reclamation
Sifting Inspecting Seeking Remains of Artifacts
not Completely Destroyed as Intended

 

 

Collection of Pomegranate Shaped Bells from Biblical Priestly Robes

 

The story of why American Jews are not arriving in Israel with the urgency some European Jews have shown is simple, they are not being targeted as Jews as of yet. The American Jews are not going to be that far different from other populations. The Ethiopian Jews were brought here after they became persecuted and required saving. The Arab countries expelled their Jews who were refused entrance in most nations other than Israel, so theirs was a case of limited options. The first mass Aliyah of European Jews is well remembered as they had been brutally persecuted and slaughtered across Europe. The Russian Jews were escaping Communism and persecution. The Jews in America live lives which are mostly free of any anti-Semitism and only hear of such in the news and they realize how insulated and safe their lives are. They live an almost fairytale existence lacking want or acceptance. They are not the Jews of Babylon, of ancient Egypt building their cities, of ancient Greece where circumcision was punished by death and teaching Torah treated the same, of the Roman Empire where they were dispersed throughout the Empire and some past the Empires borders in order to make them as extinct as the Carthaginians became, or even of Persia where they loved in relative peace until they were targeted by Hamas and their salvation was the Queen, Esther, whose uncle Mordechai gave her the task of intervening with the king to save her people, or the Jews of any other period as none until the United States the Jews have felt persecution, and even the United States is not perfect as General Grant’s General Order No. 11 of 1862 which displaced the Jews in Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi before President Lincoln could countermand the order and return to General Grant with a turnaround of almost two months. But history is not a guarantee of the future as the Jews in Germany found out when they went from assimilated to hunted in a matter of under a decade. The other thing that history teaches is that no society is immune from drastic change when the wrong people take power.

 

The American Jews are largely in two communities, the very Orthodox and the varied but mostly assimilated. The main communities of the very Orthodox are found around New York City and a few other major cities and are largely closed communities who look out for one another and can be considered to be insular. The assimilated also seem to live largely in the suburbs or in high-end areas in some cities in communities such as Georgetown within Washington D.C. The assimilated have jobs in virtually every form of employment with the majority in professions which require advanced degrees. They also hold high positions within the government and political office. They are represented at far higher percentage then their percentage of the population in such professions as physicians, lawyers, engineering and college professors. This has made some fringe groups incited over this fact claiming that the Jews are attempting to control the society through these positions. Most of these people are largely ignored and make up an infinitesimal percentage of the population. The real challenge to the Jews in the United States comes from another direction, and they are largely blind to this coming threat.

 

This threat comes from the secular far left who see religion of any kind as threatening and rather than be agnostic or atheist they are secular humanist who believe that their natural and superior enlightenment means that they should dictate future politics and manage all legal and social regulations. Their real threat is that they have risen to numerous controlling positions in many, if not a majority, of the departments of the government. These are the people who control the machinations of the “Deep State” and thus influence regulations. These are the people who in the too near future will be producing legal systems which will make religious observance regulated to such a point that much of Torah and the Bible will have become legally prosecutable. Reading from numerous Bible passages would be considered to be a violation as hate speech. Some similar prosecutions have occurred in Canada as preaching the Bible has run up against legal regulations there. With the Constitutional guarantees, specifically the Bill of Rights, coming under attack from numerous NGOs and other organizations and political lobbying groups, who knows how long the religious protections in the First Amendment will survive. The Second Amendment is under extreme distress and the Tenth Amendment is all but dead as are much of the Eighth and Ninth Amendments. Once the Second Amendment falls, expect the First and then Fifth followed by the Fourth to follow within a decade.

 

What is coming in the near future in the United States will be considered shocking to the older generations but the youth have been indoctrinated to such an extent instead of instructed such that they no longer believe free speech cannot be abridged and any speech which is offensive to their peer groups should be illegal. They find that the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights to be too old to have meaning in our modern society and that the rules need to be changed to reflect their programming they received from their teachers and then their professors and believe that taxes must be raised and equaling income is a necessity. They also do not accept the concept of a Supreme Being and many believe that religion is a concept which is evil and the Bible is just some old book which is basically worthless. What is frightening is that many American Jews appear to believe the same things as the youth as they have joined the leftists and are members of the Secular Humanists. They have a completely new form of Judaism and demand that the Israelis adopt their interpretation of Torah. The difference between Israel with the acceptance of the Torah, Bible, Gomorra and Talmud as real and applicable as written and that the final two can be adapted, but only in reference to Torah and slowly and methodically while the American Jews (non-Traditional Orthodox) have adapted Torah to fit their beliefs completely throwing out the old commentaries as irrelevant to their modern society and in their stead placing the preachings of their new wave Rabbis whose ideas are more suitable to teaching a college philosophy class than to Torah commentary.

 

The immediate reply will most likely be that we have no idea about what we are speaking. Allow us to speak of the Rosh HaShana sermon given by our Rabbi of a Conservative Synagogue, a loveable and kind Rabbi who was a good person and likely his sermon was adapted in order to please the congregants, especially those who only come to the synagogue three or four times per year but also make very large and generous donations to make up for their lack of making it to Shabbat morning services. His sermon was about a same sex marriage he had recently officiated at our Synagogue and how beautiful the service and the loving couple were and the greatness that we, as a congregation, allowed such a celebration to be held and how our acceptance was indicative of our religious faith. This wedding was a great stride in healing the world from old prejudices and the making of a rich, new world filled of acceptances of all varieties of people and making inroads into wedding our faith with the other faiths proven by the inter-faith marriage he officiated at a church with the minister and the wonderful loving couple and how their children would be so rich having both religious beliefs. The sermon went on for close to thirty to forty-five minutes, maybe more; one of us kept nodding off for some wishful bliss. We have found out that our Synagogue was far from an exception of the new definition of Judaism and stretching of Torah to include the leftist ideologies where all forms of coupling are accepted and where sin has become a relative term with no absolutes beyond unacceptance of this new secular humanist theology. Yes, secular humanism is a religion complete with a dogma and its own sins, many of which are political in nature and any of the keeping of the old ways is one of the greatest of sins and now all religions must adopt the secular humanist diktats.

 

This difference has become a serious problem between Israeli Jews and American Jews. Now there are quite a few Israeli Jews who believe in the secular humanist philosophy and probably would not be too deterred should Israel become more akin to American Jewish thought, the non-Orthodox variety. But in Israel, they accept that the majority are religious and orthodox following Torah. The Rabbinate is a fact which in Israel the only change some wish to make is for there to be only one Chief Rabbi, not two. The big change coming in Israel, which will take far longer probably, not allowing us alive today to witness without assistance from Hashem, will be the unifying of the several sects into a single Judaism. There will inevitably come a merging of the Chabad, Hasidic, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Bnei Menashe, Sabras and numerous smaller sects and there will be a single Judaism finally in Israel, that is our most immediate task. Much of this will take place simply by the most natural means, intermarriage. Whenever we see a mixed couple of Jews, we get a smile and feel that day approaching just that little bit faster. As far as Israel adopting the Secular Humanist views, that is highly unlikely and there are other differences which live in the political arena.

 

The political difference is also fairly stark. The assimilated, secular humanist, non-Orthodox, American Jews are sold on the idea of the Two State Solution because it has that fairness and equality theme they believe the world naturally uses to resolve differences, in their world that is. Even many of the most liberal Jews have surrendered the idea of the Two State Solution as impossible and as having been destroyed by Mahmoud Abbas. The American Jews looked at the recent Gaza border riots as a peaceful demonstration against the Israeli occupation and embargo and there were a small few who hijacked parts of the demonstration using violence and that it is time for Israel to loosen their embargo and end the occupation of Gaza. Israelis know that Israel finished their disengagement from Gaza that was enacted back in August 2005. Israelis also realize that any loosening of the embargo which is established simply to prevent Hamas and Islamic Jihad importing heavy weaponry is not workable and that the vast majority of goods are allowed in, especially aid goods, mostly passed on for Hamas to distribute the same day or the next day. Israelis know that Hamas uses the vast majority of these goods to raise funds charging the Gazans for the aid while keeping any building materials for the construction of underground bunkers for Hamas and Islamic Jihad members to be secured within along with interconnecting tunnels or to build infiltration tunnels into Israel in order to carry out attacks or to attempt kidnapping of Israelis. Many American Jews believe that Israel has no option and that the original idea was to make both an Arab and a Jewish state west of the Jordan River.

 

Israelis know that was simply one idea suggested by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 181 which was negated as soon as the Arab League voted to reject that idea as they refused to permit any Jewish State. The reality instead returned to the San Remo Conference and the related British Mandate agreements. These all made for an Arab State today known as Jordan and everything west of the Jordan River was reserved for the Jewish State. Israeli Jews realize that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority all agree that their goal is for no Jewish State to exist. They disagree on who gets to rule and Hamas also declares that they are to destroy Israel and then continue to kill Jews everywhere while they conquer the world for them to rule. Israeli Jews realize that the recent Gaza rioting had as its intent exactly what Sinwar, Hamas leader, stated, to break down the border fence, murder Jews tearing out their hearts and eating their livers as we have already reported repeatedly, and to replace Israel with a state ruled by Hamas. Had they succeeded, then it would have been not only the end of Israel, but the end of the Palestinian Authority as they would be the next target, as Hamas believes them to be apostates deserving of death. The world might have mourned the dead six and a half million Jews, but we would not expect many would honestly care and the few who did would mourn quietly after the initial solemn announcements which would end as quickly as possible as it would be a bother.

 

We could continue to list the ways Israeli Jews, in general, are different and separate from American Jews, in general. There is no reason to continue, as there are numerous articles written on the subject for those interested. Many are written from the American point of view but there are those from the Israeli view with many simply responses to those other articles. The two groups have taken very different paths and it will take something traumatic for them to forge a single people. As the two societies are, there can be no immediate merging of the American Jews with the Israeli Jews. We know this, as we were not an acceptable fit in our last congregation but once here in Israel found our fit was transformational, as finally we had found a Jewish group of communities where we fit in naturally. There were some in that last congregation with whom we fit and some requested we keep such our secret as they had hid their conservative beliefs and reached general acceptance and they did not desire their work to be undone. As we have told before, many in that Synagogue responded to our announcement of moving to Israel with almost the same words which were, “Why would you want to move to a place like that, they are so backwards.” Well, I guess we like backwards, though we believe that Torah and the Bible are eternal and the proper guide for life, and certain realities which measure the health of a society are proving this to be a valid statement.

 

Beyond the Cusp