Religious Zionism is Alive and Flourishing

 

Religious Zionism was claimed to be on its death bed according to Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz. His article is somewhat disingenuous as he makes it sound like he was born and still resides in Eretz Yisroel with his being younger man living in Efrat and having joined his brothers and sisters to create a human chain stretching from Jerusalem to Gaza. It is not until late in the article he mentions that he has left Eretz Yisroel and now is an Open Orthodox Rabbi living in the United States. His claims about the problems with the Religious Zionists in Eretz Yisroel are actually easily understood by any Olim who resided in the United States and because of their intense Zionism came to Eretz Yisroel to live. He has adapted to his new home and this has caused him to have clouded vision. Please allow us to explain using our experiences after having come here to our little nest in Eretz Yisroel. It is a story about having gone in the opposite direction from Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz.

 

The first confession we need to explain is that despite being Zionist, we had little connection to Judaism despite having been born into a Jewish home. This home went from Orthodox to Reform Judaism before we had reached Bar Mitzvah age. Our connection to Judaism was restarted due to a death in the family. Still, our return was to a Conservative Synagogue as that Synagogue’s Rabbi was a better fit from the Reform Synagogue. The odd thing is the Conservative Synagogue services were very similar to the Reform we knew in our teens. It was coming to Eretz Yisroel where we were actually introduced to Orthodox, a Traditional Sephardi Orthodox Synagogue. This Synagogue has a mix of every form of Judaism in the congregants from Ashkenazim to Sephardim to Jews from India and throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and North America with the main numbers from Romania. Needless to say, we found a flourishing and very colorful mix of Judaism and Jews and we are all friends and as a family. We still have much to learn about Judaism and Torah and the other major writings from the Rabbis over the ages. This experience has strengthened our Zionism and we have joined a political party which supports religious Zionism and every form of Zionism is practiced by the party members, again a mixture of every kind of Jew from every corner of the globe. For one of us it feels so much like home as their mother was an Iraqi Jew raised in Bombay, India and father was a British Jew from London, England with Ukrainian and Prussian ancestry. Yes, we have a rich mixture there as well.

 

May the Temple be Rebuilt Speedily in Our Days

 

Where our making Aliyah was due solely to Zionism, the religious part of our beliefs has truly begun since arriving in Eretz Yisroel. Can we yet claim to be Religious Zionists, well, probably not yet. Are we working in that direction, yes. But Rabbi Yanklowitz makes complaints with which we are very familiar. His complaints are purely leftist American centric complaints. His complaints center around the central tenets of the far left of the Democrat Party. This is to be expected from one who practices Open Orthodoxy which is actually another way of saying Reform Judaism, as their beliefs are very much similar. These Jews follow the socialist wealth redistribution and the minority rights over everybody else’s rights. They believe that borders are not real lines between nations and sacred as they want anybody crossing any border to have full rights in their new nation. This was exemplified by his problem with Israel’s desire to deport the illegal immigrants from Africa who only came to Israel for economic reasons. But as Israel is a wealthy nation, Rabbi Yanklowitz believes that anyone who arrives from a poor nation has an economic right to the better life in the wealthier country no matter the problems and threats to their presumed new nation they may pose. The only thing we would like to tell the good Rabbi is, if you desire the leftist utopia which you envision and likely find the United States currently lacking with President Trump, perhaps you would be best to live in a real socialist utopia like Cuba, Venezuela or North Korea.

 

But you probably are too attached to your wealthy life in the United States where you can criticize Israel of not being that socialist utopia you envision will ultimately save the world. We know the crime Israel has committed is choosing to move from its socialist roots to a capitalist economic model and make it work. Let us set your mind at rest on one subject, the people of Israel give more to the needy than can be measured as most of this assistance is given by one Israeli to another without any need for the government to enact welfare and other forced charity. The charity in Israel is beyond measure because there is no need for the government to take from one Israeli and give to another because the Israelis are perfectly capable of performing this deed on their own. Until you decide to leave your comfortable palaces in the United States, and we realize here in Israel our homes are necessarily smaller and we adapted, and return to Eretz Yisroel, then work to make the United States that perfect land as you have stated that the Diaspora should be the great place for the Jewish People. We disagree and we further promise not to tell the United States how to run their business and you can promise not to attempt to foist your politics upon us. And what we realize from your other writings is that you do not view the Temple as a positive thing while we see the building of the Third Temple as probably the greatest event we have yet to undertake. As our text translates in our morning prayers, “May it be the will before you, Hashem, our G0d and the G0d of our forefathers, that rebuilt shall the Holy Temple be speedily in our days.” We would like to thankyou for your impatience.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Merkel and a Plethora of Passionate Pacifists Against Trump

 

Granted, President Donald J. Trump presented a strong and definitive speech which outlined precisely where the world sits and what the future potentially holds. Chancellor Angela Merkel was really put out by what she determined that President Trump has threatened to eradicate the twenty-five million plus North Koreans in order to remove Kim Jong-un from threatening, well, according to Ms. Merkel, virtually nobody as he simply was acting slightly inappropriately and sanctions should suffice. There are a few slight problems, distortions and misunderstandings within Chancellor Merkel’s objections. President Trump did not threaten to annihilate the population of North Korea simply to kill their man-deity leader Kim Jong-un. To clear the air, allow us to present the exact words from President Trump’s speech to the United Nations, which can be viewed and read here.

No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the wellbeing of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more.
We were all witness to the regime’s deadly abuse when an innocent American college student, Otto Warmbier, was returned to America only to die a few days later. We saw it in the assassination of the dictator’s brother using banned nerve agents in an international airport. We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea’s spies.
If this is not twisted enough, now North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life.
It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime, but would arm, supply, and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict. No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles.
The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That’s what the United Nations is all about; that’s what the United Nations is for. Let’s see how they do.
It is time for North Korea to realize that the denuclearization is its only acceptable future. The United Nations Security Council recently held two unanimous 15-0 votes adopting hard-hitting resolutions against North Korea, and I want to thank China and Russia for joining the vote to impose sanctions, along with all of the other members of the Security Council. Thank you to all involved.
But we must do much more. It is time for all nations to work together to isolate the Kim regime until it ceases its hostile behavior.

 

President Trump only stated that if the United States were forced to defend itself, any of the United States allies, actually attacked or otherwise placed with no other alternative, then the United States is capable and potentially willing and have “no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” There was a long line of prerequisites before President Trump would, theoretically, be tempted to take such desperate and drastic action. What President Trump actually stated was a threat to the rest of the world, Chancellor Merkel in particular, to take the threats, nuclear tests and missile firings of Kim Jong-un seriously and take some actions to bring an end to Kim Jong-un and the very real threat he poses to the remainder of the world. President Trump also included on his list the Mullahs in Iran, President for life Maduro of Venezuela and, as a side comment, Cuba, that their socialist governments and the threats posed to their people and the world as a whole are, as President Obama would say, on the wrong side of history. The threat was more to those nations who would turn their other cheek to companies trading with North Korea and these other threats to the free world. President Trump was ringing the alarm bell and he did not do so any too early. This alarm has actually been ringing for a very long time and administration after administration simply kicked the can down the road hoping to outlast the problem having it explode in somebody else’s face, just not their face. President Trump has decided not to risk kicking the can down the road and has instead rested his foot over the can and asked the world to help before he has to stomp down and crush that can. Now we just have to see if the world will act to contain the problem or instead act like Chancellor Merkel and blame the messenger.

 

Chancellor Merkel

 

President Trump has put his faith, for now, in the United Nations, the Free World, the allies of the United States and the rest of the world to act in good faith and do the right thing. He has asked a bunch of people suffering from avoidance of reality with a propensity to push off responsibility for their actions and ignoring any sign that might require their actually taking action to address the actual, real threats of our world which they would rather smooth over with words and blather usually using meaningless phrases such that all mean that they do not have to actually decide and act in any significant way. President Trump was making a cry for help, a last ditch final plea for the world to act before there are no other options other than an actual strike on North Korea exactly as described in the speech. This was not a threat sent to Kim Jong-un, though he is the one person who could heed the warning and save the world relying on a group of unfortunately weak-willed leadership from across Europe and beyond to actually do something righteous. The entire parts of Trump’s speech relating to Kim Jong-un, North Korea and the failures of socialism were warnings that many who believe in socialism who are ready to do everything necessary to undercut and destroy Western Judeo-Christian based civilization will need to be opposed meaningfully before they are permitted to succeed. We have written extensively about the war against Judeo-Christianity and how it is succeeding simply because those who have been tasked to defend the Western World and Judeo-Christianity have been asleep at the wheel for far too long. Chancellor Merkel will never understand that she herself was one of the major contributors to a possible end of Europe as a hospitable home for Judeo-Christianity. Her policies have placed the future of European culture in jeopardy just as much as the leftist ideology which has led to the abortion of the necessary children to continue European culture into the future. Instead, most of Western (Old) Europe has joined the parts of the world which have negative growth reproductive rates. Other nations with negative growth rates include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Croatia, Slovakia, Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Yemen, Venezuela, United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and a host of others. Most of them are Western nations where abortion is legal, socialist nations and dictatorships. The one name noticeable by its absence is North Korea, that is a frightening thought.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Time to Prevent a New Holocaust is Now!

 

We just commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day and there were special services where a special Kaddish may have been recited and the names of the relatives of Congregants’ families are read. If the town or city has a Holocaust Memorial, then a flower lying may also be held. There are numerous and varied commemorative activities as there are congregations and memorials. There are also many contribution drives correlated with Holocaust Remembrance Day hoping to work on people’s consciences and memories to loosen their grip on their wallets. We figure these drives are more successful than similar such attempted during other weeks of the year as their supposition is likely correct. But all these services, prayers, flower lying, listing of names and all the other means of attempting to give relevance in our time to the memory of the Holocaust such that we can prevent a reoccurrence are less likely to serve that purpose as would taking an active role in strengthening Israel and rebuking the false Arab claims of an independent peoples who are owed over twenty percent of the lands which were left for Israel. The world ignores the fact that Jordan occupies over three-fourths, which is over seventy-five percent, of the original British Mandate which was originally meant to be reserved for the Jewish State. The Arabs are currently targeting to make claims to over ninety percent of the original British Mandate in order to place the Jews in an indefensible box sitting underneath the Judean Heights where they could rain rockets down using line of sight and destroy the Jews while the world commemorates the last Holocaust and ignoring the Holocaust about to be perpetrated right before their eyes. The saddest part is that they will choose another date and have a Second Holocaust Remembrance Day complete with services, prayers, flower lying, listing of names and all the other means of attempting to give relevance and to console their souls for their lack of action when it was required.

 

Often we have called for people to awaken their fellow human beings and bring to them the reality of what the entire set of actions against Israel are all about, the removal of the Jewish State and the burying of the millions of Israeli Jews in one mass unmarked grave. All those accepting the “Two State Solution as the final closure of Arab claims, are naïve. The memories of the demands by the Arabs in the 1920’s are long forgotten and people’s knowledge of the history is shaky at best. It was the demand for an Arab state as well as any Jewish State which brought on the not so fair solution of dividing the British Mandate along the Jordan River giving the 78% east of the Jordan River to the Arabs and the 22% west of the Jordan River for the Jewish State. The Arab League represented by King Faisal accepted this compromise and all was well until time came in 1947 to declare the Jewish State. The Arabs demanded that the Jews be granted the right to reside under Arab rule in the remaining 22% of the British Mandate promising they would care for the Jews and grant them all the rights given to the Muslims. Fortunately, the Zionist Congress refused this offer knowing that what was intended was they would give the Jews exactly the rights to be Muslims, not to be Jewish. Finally, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution, which adopted the plan for the partition of Palestine dividing the remaining 22% of land evenly between the Arabs and the Jews because the Arabs demanded this land because they had not received their lands. This does beg the question of what does one call Jordan if not Arab Land? Well, they divided the land equally in amount and “completely fairly” as far as desert and arable lands (you be the judge with the map below). The Zionist Congress and the Provisional Israeli government accepted the partition and the Arab League refused the partition claiming that they could not accept any Jewish State demanding that all the land be under Arab rule as explained above. The patrician included making Jerusalem an International Zone protected and run by a United Nations Security Force. With Jerusalem entirely surrounded and in the center of Arab controlled lands and all access roadways completely under Arab control, anyone care to guess how long that United Nations Security Force would remain on station? We guessed maybe forty-eight hours before slipping out in the dead of night praying to get away, and the Arabs would allow them to leave and never return and Jerusalem would be under Muslim Rule and no other religion permitted any rights unlike today under Israeli rule where everyone including Christians, Jews, Muslims (Shia and Sunni) anyone else is permitted rights in Jerusalem with Jews the most restricted, but that is a different argument. Also on the map it can be noted is that nearly two-thirds of the lands reserved for the Jews are in the Negev Desert and much of the remainder of the lands are underneath Arab guns with the Arabs holding all the heights, the Judean Hills, the Golan Heights and the Galilee Ridge. Even the eastern ridge of the Galilee sits beneath and well in range of artillery or sniper fire from the Golan Heights as Jewish farmers in the Northern Galilee found out the hard way until the Six Day War where Israel took control of the Golan Heights from Syria. The reason the Arabs refused this offer became obvious on the morning of May 15, 1948, the first hours of the existence of Israel when six Arab armies from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt with additional assists from forces sent by Yemen and the Sudan plus the Palestinian Brigades under the Mufti of Jerusalem and other militias and irregulars. During this war there were orders intercepted which were determined to have come from military officers who had fought in World War II on both sides assisting the Arab forces from behind the lines. That was then, back to now.

 

November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly
partition of Palestine dividing the remaining 22%
of land evenly between the Arabs and the Jews

 

These Arabs demanding a Two State Solution are the same Arabs who fought with the Palestinian Brigades under the Mufti of Jerusalem, the man who assisted the Nazis during World War II spending most of the war in Berlin meeting with the high brass of the Nazi command and some credit with pressing for the final solution to the “Jewish problem” and pleading that the Nazis carry out the same when they would take control of the Middle East and beyond. Their leaders have stated that the Two State Solution is not the end; it is but one-step towards their attaining their final solution. Their use of those words is no accident of language as they have explained numerous times. Their efforts and claims will never end until there is no Jewish State and no Jew permitted to live on Palestinian Arab lands. All the lands are Palestinian Arab Lands according to the Arab leadership and must be cleansed as they take what they claim is theirs and a place where no Jew has ever lived. They discount the existence of the First Temple, the Second Temple and all of Jewish history and the history of the Bible claiming that the people of the Bible were Arab Palestinians who have lived here anywhere from five to nine thousand years. A little trip back to reality and we realize that during the British Mandate the Palestinians were the Jews according to the British and when they referred to the Jews they used the world Palestinians while when referring to the Arabs they called them Arabs. The idea of Palestinians actually meaning Arabs was actually in 1964 when Yasser Arafat initiated the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), with the assistance of the KGB in Moscow, and they declared their intent to liberate all of the rest of the Palestinian lands. As Judea and Samaria, the areas the Arab Palestinians currently claim, were illegally occupied by Jordan as they held half of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the PLO made no claims to these lands whatsoever. Their claim was they would drive the Jews from the remainder of Arab lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, as noted in Article 24 of the PLO Charter before it was altered after the Six Day War to include Gaza and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). Their target then was Israel and their intent was that once they had driven the Jews from the lands, they would then turn these lands over to Jordan and then all would be happy. This declaration had nothing to do with the “Occupation” or “Settlers” as this was June 2, 1964, three years and three days before the start of the Six Day War when during the days of June 5-10, 1967, the Israelis responded initially to an imminent threatened attack by Syria and Egypt and then an actual unprovoked assault out of Judea and Samaria and across the entirety of Jerusalem by Jordan; Israel repulsed these attacks and liberated Gaza, Judea and Samaria and took the areas that included the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. So the basis for the whole idea of the Two State Solution is to simply finish negating the safety Israel took in measure by taking the remainder of lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, in simpler worlds, retook and liberated the lands which were originally denoted as belonging to the Jews to build their homeland according to all solutions as determined at San Remo Conference and numerous following conferences, treaties and agreements. Does anyone believe after the initial determination at the founding of the PLO, the precursor for the Palestinian Authority (PA) and every other Arab Palestinian effort including the Gaza independence and coup by Hamas which allows Gaza to fire rockets into Israel while the PA claims innocence as if an unrelated group, that once they are granted their demanded state that will be the end and there is no means by which the PLO will return to their original declaration of driving the Jews from the remainder of Arab lands? The next important map is below which we ask that you take close note of the shaded area in the center of map inside the trapezoid and then understand that along the Green Line the heights above sea level rise from less than five hundred feet to well over a thousand feet (noted in the cutaway below with the rise actually being more dramatic than shown).

 

Cutaway View of Tactical Advantage and Necessity
of the Jordan Valley and Judean Hills for Defending
Coastal Plains and Israel Alongside the Mediterranean Sea

 

 

The Real Truth About Israel in Stark Relief and Graphically Displayed

 

The drive to defeat the Jews and remove them from what the Muslim and Arab worlds consider their lands given them through conquest by Allah will not end as long as Israel exists. The Arabs in Lebanon under Hezballah are claiming the Galilee as presumably their sacred trust which Israel has stolen and to which the Jews have no rightful claim. We should not feel alone in this as the Arabs and Muslims still claim that the Christians illegally removed the rightful Islamic forces from all of Andalusia and they will reconquer these stolen lands in time. Oh, you have never heard of Andalusia? Well let us draw you a map of Andalusia next to another map you might find easier to recognize (see map below). There are claims to be made in Eastern Europe one of which you might recall which was a conflict where Kosovo was decided by NATO forces not to be a part of Croatia or Slovakia but its own nation and was to be Islamic so its name was changed and is now Kosova. If you had to look back, don’t feel bad as you likely had company, as the change was not quite as shocking or drastic as one might have expected, but then it might say something about the original claim of Kosovo not being actually part of any Christian nation. There are areas in India and Pakistan and India currently are clashing and have been for decades over who gets what parts of what was formerly Kashmir (I think I had a sweater from there once). Then there is the fighting in the Philippines where the Island of Mindanao is claimed by Islamic forces which carry out strikes in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, as well as on the island of Mindanao itself. There are the Boko Haram terror forces (yellow area in referenced map further below) who are claiming more and more lands in central Nigeria and along with forces from the Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia are striking into the entirety of areas often referred to as the African Transition Zone (shaded area in referenced map further below). And there are the wars being fought currently against Israel. Many people believe mistakenly that Israel has only the Palestinian Arabs as a problem and that is limited to the PA and Hamas (read on please).

 

Andalusia Compared to Portugal and Spain

 

 

African Transition Zone

 

Well, partnering with Hamas there is also Islamic Jihad, and some IRGC forces sent by Iran as well as various other groups, small bands and clan forces all of which contribute to the war out of Gaza and provide Hamas with other entities who they can claim launched unapproved rocket or sniper attacks despite nothing actually happening in Gaza (aka Hamastan) which they have not allowed even if through passivity. Then there are units from al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State and smaller groups throughout the PA semi-autonomous regions. Many of these, especially Hamas, desire taking over from the PA and know if they removed Mahmoud Abbas from power forcing elections that Hamas would likely win handily. It is this threat which has Mahmoud Abbas allowing the IDF to operate within Area A, despite it being against the Oslo Accords, because their operations prevent numerous Hamas and other entities strikes both against Israel, which would force him to explain and possibly actually act, as well as against his person and other PA resources which saves his risking his security forces starting a revolution fighting against Hamas. Imagine his having to explain why PA Security Forces were shooting other Arabs. Abbas would have a revolt demanding his head on a pole and that would cause inter-Arab fighting on a scale which might have the world demanding that Israel step in and protect Abbas and assist the PA Security Forces. Imagine what a mess would result from such. Also, Israel has that little problem in Lebanon called Hezballah. Here there is another little secret. Hezballah now also commands the Lebanese Army which means all the weapons given to the Lebanese Army by the Russians and the Americans (Article covering this problem with inclusive list of American hardware and weapons systems), including Abrams Main Battle Tanks and various aircraft, are now available to Hezballah should they press for another war with Israel. This would mean any Hezballah war with Israel has now become a Lebanese war with Israel. This would not be much of a stretch as Israel and Lebanon currently are at war with a shaky armistice which any Hezballah incursion would easily cause that armistice to be considered broken. Israel is also still at war with a few other Arab nations stemming from the Arab League declaring war on Israel in May of 1948. These nations include but may not be considered a complete list; Syria (what’s left of it), Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, Libya (also what’s left of it), Yemen, Pakistan, Morocco and Cuba (yes, Cuba). Iran also has declared a war on Israel but thus far, attacks have yet to be detected. Also there are numerous smaller groups supporting Hezballah such as Amal and Jammoul plus whatever aid in armaments and personnel including trainers and strategists which are provided from Iran often coming through Damascus, Syria, another Iranian ally relying heavily on Iran as well as Russia to survive. Iran has provided Hezballah with over one-hundred-fifty-thousand rockets and missiles of various sizes, ranges and warhead capabilities many of which are capable of striking anywhere in Israel and possibly into Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. This is the entirety of the Arab-Israeli conflict which the world tends to ignore but which Israel must remain vigilant and prepared for any and all possible contingencies.

 

Beyond the Cusp