Barak’s Democratic Union Opposes Judaism and Jewish History

 

Right up front we feel it necessary to mention that most of our staff belong to Jewish Home and this writer is quite fond of Brigadier General (ret.) Rabbi Rafi Peretz. My support for Rabbi Peretz was greatly enhanced after meeting with him both before and after a Central Committee meeting where all told we probably spoke for at least thirty minutes. In the time I was able to watch him, he never rushed anyone and patiently spoke to all who wished his attention. Many of the other candidates on our Knesset list were far less approachable and most hurried from the meeting as if the building caught fire, exactly what we have come to expect from politicians who unfortunately believe they are more important than the rest of us. Perhaps this, in the end, served him well when he permitted Ayelet Shaked to take his spot at the head of the ticket seeing that polls depict her leading to greater acceptance and more mandates. It was quite interesting that the day after Ms. Shaked took the top spot, the poll showed her receiving four less mandates than predicted when she was not leading the ticket. The earlier polls, in our opinion, were designed to force Rabbi Peretz to step aside while knowing full well that the difference was a mere two to three seats between the two and we figure that it would make a negligible difference in the actual elections. Now, back to our regularly scheduled article.

 

Ehud Barak heads the Democratic Party and invested great efforts to find another party to ally with so as to assure his making the next Knesset should one ever be formed. The Blue White Party declined his requests, the Labor Party declined his offer, and he finally found one which agreed to accept a merger, and that party was Meretz. Together they will use the moniker of the Democratic Union. A spokesperson for the party released their statement stating, “The education minister this morning is moving a system meant to educate our system another step towards a system devoted to brainwashing,” So, what could possibly have been introduced by Education Minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz that brought such an extreme reaction from our friends at the far left? For that we will quote Rabbi Peretz, the Education Minister, directly. He explained, “The connection to our heritage and history is the bedrock of our existence and is the glue that connects us as a society. We have the duty of education to safeguard it.” Additionally, Minister Peretz added as he spoke to Galai Tzahal on Army Radio, “Judaism is an ocean of wisdom. Students will be exposed to many values, morals and love. These values will help us establish a more values and moral society here.” What could possibly be so sinister in such a curriculum as to be considered brainwashing?

 

The first item which has to be considered is that both parties in the Democratic Union are a fair distance from supporting the religious world. The majority of their members are either purely atheist or secular humanist with merely the slightest belief in Hashem. They view religion in general and Judaism particularly as threatening to their beliefs and supported lifestyles. Torah morality does not support the many diverse and often indistinguishable genders as proposed by the leftists. Their usual depiction that Torah is hateful is the ban on sodomy. Of course, they never couch what Torah states as considering sodomy as a sin but claim that Torah teaches hatred of all gay people. That is so far from the truth. Torah teaches us to love and accept all, particularly all Jews, and to accept and treat all strangers with respect and acceptance asking only that they obey the Noahic Code and live under our rule respectfully. The teaching that sodomy is a sin is not and never was targeting the gay community as it also applies to heterosexual couples, or simply put, it is indiscriminate to sexuality as it bans all forms of sodomy. There is no law or even commentary that we are aware of which teaches Jews to reject gay people and especially no call for their hatred. If only the far left were as kind to the religious our society would be far more homogeneous and caring for each other.

 

The Democratic Union also complained that Rafi Peretz is ignoring such problems as class size, improve the status of teachers and that Rafi Peretz “introduced the racist Nationality Law into the high school curriculum.” The Nationality Law was passed this last session by the Knesset and as such, the teaching of the law and what it contains and does not contain is of importance as it is amongst the Basic Laws which define Israeli society and governance. The Basic Laws which define Israel are hopefully all taught and discussed by our high school students. Or does the Democratic Union believe that the Basic Laws should be kept a secret. We are willing to bet that students are taught about the number of seats make up the Knesset; how a Prime Minister is chosen; the duties of the President, Prime Minister, Knesset Members and the Ministerial positions with their duties. Further, Torah and the Bible are histories of the Jewish People and their Nationhood. The remaining history of the Jewish People after the Roman dispersion is equally important and deserves a place in the classroom. This is the idea behind the Edmund Burke quote, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Perhaps the Democratic Union is in favor of making the same mistakes over and over again. Their insistence that the education of our children should be bereft of Torah and Bible which represent almost two thousand years of early Jewish history reaching back to Abraham, Isaak, and Jacob along with Moses the lawgiver and on to Kings Saul, David, Solomon and beyond, the Prophets and Judges and so much more as well as covering the Zionist Movement’s history from before the Balfour Declaration through the British Mandate to independence and the 1948 war to annihilate the Jews and their nascent state and everything since is as ridiculous as it sounds at face value. The Jewish People have near to four-thousand-years of history which would take more than one class to cover. Without the history and all the trial and tribulations we went through and the perils which have struck the Jewish People in the past, how can the next generation avoid these same mistakes without a solid understanding from whence our people came, how we were defined and what ideas and ideals we hold dear? The simple answer is that such would be impossible.

 

The Secular Humanist idea is to not teach history as it actually happened but to redefine events to fit closely with their brave new world. Their syllabus for most history classes is formulated to highlight minority contributions while ignoring much of the people who formed governments and principles in the lesson plans. I witnessed such with my children in school in the United States in a quite progressive (read far left) area where the Secular Humanist agenda was the mainstay of their curriculum. Her year of American history did not include a single lesson where George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin or any other Caucasian from American history other than Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and very little reference to the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers or anything written by Ben Franklin including Poor Richard’s Almanac. There was not a course in world history even offered. We will not even get into the mess which is the result of the newest math except to say that none of it made sense and I majored in math. They were told in algebra to guess until they found the answer, which works great if your answer is a whole number but not so well if the answer is the square root of -9 (which is 3i). Needless to say, we spent a fair amount of time teaching math and additional lessons in American and world history much to their chagrin. There is nothing wrong with teaching additional classes in the history of the Jewish People, both recent and Biblical and from all areas of the Diaspora with the greatest amount of straight honesty as possible (see maps of historic Israel below). This writer stands strongly against softening the history of our people for whatever reason is presented, be it to protect the student’s impressionable mind, to make everything less traumatic, or the real reason, to deny the students the standing to understand from whence they came and their long and impressive history so as to make the student more easily accepting to their newest ideas and concepts as well as believing that Secular Humanism is the most advanced societal philosophy and that Judaism, Torah and the Bible are nothing more than folk tales of little to no importance. Having seen how well such an approach to education in the United States and the products from their institutions of higher learning such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; we would prefer our youth have a better grasp on history and how to shape the future.

 

Israel Through the Ages

 

Never would we want to have any member of a ruling coalition putting forth the mistaken belief that Israel was a present given to the Jews by the European powers as an apology for the Holocaust when the reality is that it was part of the returning of lands to their indigenous peoples. Two of such promises caused the greatest amount of pushback from the Arab world; Israel and Kurdistan, both of which were also opposed by the British who were responsible for establishing both nations. Kurdistan fell when they discovered oil in Mosul and the Iraqi leader promised the British that J. Paul Getty could have the drilling rights. The British did much to mollify Arab opposition but Zionism won out and Israel did not suffer an identical result. Students need to know what lands were promised Israel which are the lands west of the Jordan River, what lands were promised us in the Bible, what lands we controlled at the various stages from the conquests under Joshua to the Greater Israel of Kings David and Solomon and that the term Greater Israel applies to that era of our history and has no meaning to modern Israel. These are some of the vital statistics and facts which our leaders of the future need to know in order to properly lead this precious nation. There are so many other facts which could be listed here, but they can also be found in numerous of our articles. We want future Israelis to have a solid knowledge of their roots both modern and Biblical and the philosophy of and what it means to be a Jew. Judaism is so much more than a religion as it is also a people and a family. Zionism is something to be proud about despite what many leftists claim as they do not believe in nationhood and desire a one world government under the auspices of such as the European Union or United Nations. They desire open borders and an end to the belief in Hashem and all religion for their concept of the perfect future. The future they envision has been attempted on a national scale before and has always resulted in a dictatorial governance and more often than not in mass killings to cull the populations and we will give you one guess who were considered unnecessary in such governance. Yes, we were most often amongst those targeted as it has always been easy to target the Jews as they were often few in number and never had political power under these systems. Atheism is the antipathy of Judaism and it is easy to tell those who believe in Hashem and those who believe that the human beings are the highest power in the universe (until the promised ET’s arrive) and we have seen these types before as they were the Hellenists from Greek culture during the times of Alexander the Great. They worshiped the human form and believed it to be supreme over all else while Judaism also values every human being but believe that every Jew can only be good if they practice being a good and religious people and act accordingly following Torah. We must also teach our children how Judaism and Torah formed much of the basis for civilization and the guiding principles of our Bible were the referenced liberally by Founding Fathers of the United States in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and numerous other principles incorporated in the founding of America. Why anyone would desire to have such knowledge denied to our children is confounding and implies some ulterior motive which often will end regrettably. Knowledge is the aim of education and our history and the founding writings of Torah, Bible, Talmud and the many other writings have a deep level of knowledge and provide a framework for making good and solid decisions. We ask again, why would we wish to deny such to our children?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Secularist False Charge of Education System Teaching Religionization

 

When we first read about this claim coming from the usual sources against the Ministry of Educations, and particularly Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, that they are using the Israeli public education system and regulations which cover all education in Israel to indoctrinate the youth forcing religious teachings upon them, we simply laughed. We should have taken this more seriously as it has become a valid claim and there are signs that it will be echoed by those who wish to dilute religious leanings within Israel from abroad. This accusation of religionization is about as spurious as is possible. The basis of the claim comes to one simple reality; the Israeli education system teaches Jewish history all the way back to just over four-thousand years ago. This claim would be similar if people found out that a history course was covering the Crusades and claiming they were attempting to indoctrinate Christian Religionization. It would be the same as claiming that teaching about the Arab conquest of MENA as being the teaching of Islamic Religionization. The same would be teaching the history of China as Buddhist Religionization or the history of India as Hindu Religionization or lessons on Greek and Roman Empires as Idolatrous Religionization. All history had some religious slant existing in the cloth from which it has been cut but teaching the history does not mean the students are being indoctrinated with religious brainwashing. If the teaching was straight from the Bible and impressing the commandments repeatedly over and over pressing the students to memorize these texts, that would be religionization. Nothing even approaching such is what is taught in the Israeli school system. Is such taught in the Yeshivas? Of course, but these are private schools most often serving a specific community who demand that their children be taught such an education as their society is stridently religious. The new education requirements have inserted STEM course requirements as well as other normative educational requirements to prepare the Yeshiva students in order that they will have the skills to enter the normative society and find adequate employment should they wish to seek such.

 

The reality is that there have been attempts to equalize the education system introducing more Torah history of the Jewish People, as their history is the reason for modern day Israel. These lessons are taught as history with only sufficient religious slant to put everything in contrast. How does one teach about King David and King Solomon and not also include some tracts from Psalms and Proverbs. One cannot teach about Abraham, Izaak, Jacob and Joseph on to Moses and the Exodus without mentioning the start of monotheism for the Israelis who received the Ten Commandments, witnessed the splitting of the Sea and the ten plagues over Egypt. These points are not teaching religion, it is history. Teaching that there was a period where ancient Israel had judges, prophets and eventually kings, that the nation split in two and that the northern kingdom of Israel became the Ten Lost Tribes and that the remaining two tribes were named Judah after the larger tribe and over time Judean was shortened by the Greeks and Romans to simply Jew and that is where the name of Jew originates. Such lessons are not teaching religion, they are our common history. Covering the Crusades and the adverse effects they had on the Jewish population in Europe or the effects of the Caliphate Rule over the Jews under Islam, is not teaching Judaism any more than it is teaching Christianity or Islam. These are the realities but this has nothing to do with their complaints, they have an entirely different target, Naftali Bennett.

 

Education Minister Naftali Bennett with Kippah

 

Our chosen picture of Education Minister Naftali Bennett was not selected as the best picture we could find but rather to display his wearing of a Kippah. Naftali Bennett is the current leader of the Jewish Home Party which is based originally in religious Zionism. It is considered, obviously, as a right wing party. Honest disclosure is that many here belong to the Jewish Home, or Bayit Yehudi in Hebrew, and are active in party politics. That aside, Naftali Bennett has only returned the teaching of the ancient history of the Jewish People and the Israelites which had been removed over the years by secular left-leaning governments. These governments attempted to remove all traces of Judaism from the society and intended, by their own declarations, to change Israel into a multi-ethnic democracy where Judaism played absolutely no part in the government, educations system, politics and society. They were attempting to mold a new Israel based on the United States except more socialist. Their desires and interpretation of the direction our society should take has been rejected at the polls with successive right-leaning governments being elected. As Jewish Home is likely to be the second or third largest right-leaning party after the next election, those opposed to our politics are getting a running start on their attacks to try and minimize any right wing representation. Another reason they have decided on challenging Jewish Home is because of the growing popularity both within and from outside our party for the number two person who is serving as Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked (pictured below). Her transformation of the Justice system over her term thus far in the office of Justice Minister has been nothing short of historic. Her appointment of judges who believe that their position entitles them to apply the law as written and not strike down laws they dislike, make up laws they regret that the Knesset does not have their ability of true vision or even countermand orders given to the IDF by the General Staff or other command officers has restrained the judicial system to an equal branch of government and not the unopposed rulers. Ayelet Shaked has turned the dictatorial justice system into a legal adjudicating body which does not rule as a second and superior government of the State of Israel. This too has infuriated the left-leaning efforts to have liberal judges rule the nation after their ideas and striking down the elected government when they actually write legislation demanded by the people, after all, in former times it was that Judges knew better what the people need and the people were just sheep for the shearing.

 

Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked

 

What we are hearing through multiple attacks is that the left demands that they be permitted to run the affairs of Israel despite what the electorate desires. They demand to be permitted this privilege because of their superior morality which places them on a higher plane than those knuckle-dragging regressives on the right. They have the “real truth” and that should supercede the popularist opinions which the electorate placed in power. This has been behind much of the attacks and investigations of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We felt ashamed as we know the people in Europe and especially the United States had to be falling over one another laughing at the charges that the Prime Minister received gifts from people who were invited to dinner at the Prime Minister’s residence, fine cigars and expensive champagne. This was the investigation of the Prime Minister, that multi-millionaires and even multi-billionaires actually brought gifts of fine cigars and expensive champagne for the Prime Minister and not, as we put it once, a Ronco Veg-O-Matic and Pocket Fisherman. That is honestly how silly and insane the mechanisms on the left have become in seeking any reason, even not signaling a lane change, to try and bring down the Prime Minister. When they actually brought charges against Netanyahu for these “bribes” received, as they could not be gifts, they then followed that with demands that he step down and allow new elections. Of course, Netanyahu would be barred from being the head of his party, Likud, as he was under charges and further investigations. This was all an attempt to topple the elected government, bring the leaders of right-leaning parties under investigations as they were also investigating Bennett and demanding he step down and also Shaked, the number two also step aside, just for good measure, and then have an election. Thus, they desired an election where every right-leaning party was required to run as their candidate for Prime Minister somebody who held no ministerial position and thus nobody outside the party power structure had heard anything about while the left-leaning parties could run people whose names were well known. Yea, that’ll work real good, NOT!

 

Those in Europe probably do not fully understand this but Americans are experiencing the most rabid version of this currently. What is interesting is that President Trump actually intentionally feeds the rabid anti-Trump people who are at a constant scream on how Trump must be impeached. The most dire amongst these Americans demand that Trump and Pence both be impeached and Hillary Clinton appointed to replace them with her choosing her own Vice President except for others who demand that Bernie Sanders was the actual and true winner of the Democrat primary elections and should replace Trump and company. President Trump will almost thrice-daily Tweet something that serves as grist for those rabid anti-Trumpers. He definitely performs this service willingly and intentionally. We fear he is addicted to rousing up the opposition and we believe we know why. As long as the anti-Trumpers continue at their shrill and excruciating consistent crescendo of critical complaints, then the Republican base which elected President Trump will remain encouraged to vote in coming elections and this will assist him in accomplishing his agendas. So, the truth is if the anti-Trumpers really desired to get rid of President Trump in the 2020 elections, their best path would be to simply stop their wall-to-wall screeching and allow everyone to be lulled back to sleep. But this is not about to happen because Trump is a fascist, horrible, racist, elitist, misogynist, homophobic, reactionary and mean capitalist who will make America great again. Confused? So are many of the anti-Trump Facebook, Twitter and other social media posters who react to every provocation, of which Trump provides an ample supply.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Erasing the Western World Through Education

 

What if one day they just decided that the history of the Western World was too white, too colonialist, too male dominated? What if they decided that Western Literature was menial, was substandard, was subordinate to African, Asian and, well, all other literature? What happens when the Western elite decide that the Western ways are an anathema to them and ordered the destruction of their own culture through the educations system, through unenforced borders, through forced assimilation to every other culture, through the media degrading the Judeo-Christian Western culture and every means necessary? What if the leaders became so guilt ridden to their past and denounced their former colonialism despite it bringing enlightenment to much of the globe and denounced their slaving past despite leading the world in abolitionist movement enforcing equality and freedom for everyone within their society finally living up to the teachings of their prophets and leaving human sacrifice and the brutality of the past leading to the brink of a new age only to have the elite decide that the future was too frightening as they would lose their privilege so they decided to destroy everything in the hopes of surviving to stand atop the ruins? What if we told you that is exactly where the leftists were leading the United States and are still taking Europe? Their plan was derailed when those they considered to be their inferiors in what they saw as ignorant and uneducated flyover-country decided they loved their world and their country and their way of life and decided to elect an egotistical megalomaniac with delusions of intelligence who pontificated about closing the border, repealing Obamacare and taking the nation back to some semblance which these people would recognize.

 

Allow us to give you a few select peeks at how far the insanity has spread and the deepness of the sickness infesting the elites in the ivory towers of academia. First let us look at academia and some of the ridiculous ideas and even one particularly troubling assignment. An article by Giulio Meotti who appears to have assigned himself two particularly thankless assignments for the bulk of his writings; covering the decline and agonizing death of Europe and with it Judeo-Christian ethics for the continent and defending Israel from unfair and anti-Semitic criticisms which appear to run rampant across much of our world. He informs us that South Africa is preparing to eliminate the study of William Shakespeare from the school curriculum. Their plan is to replace him with African poets. Education Minister Angie Motshekga told the parliament, “The consideration of the works of Shakespeare is one aspect of the overall process of review of the literature.” In a recent New York Times editorial by two philosophers, they called for removal of the teaching of Shakespeare. Additionally, a group of the student body at Yale University has petitioned for the elimination of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. But the rampage against Western culture is not limited to the literature department, oh no. When students petitioned to have Stanford include in the curriculum a course on “Western Culture,” the administration turned them down flat. Out of the fifty-two leading universities in the United States, a course on the Bard, Shakespeare, appears in a rousing four of them. Not to be outdone, Oxford University has decided that a “review” of their curriculum is in order with the aim of increasing “diversity.” An article in the website of the Oxford editions by Gary Taylor stated some pretty radical ideas including asking, “Was Shakespeare racist?” He called for taking “Canterbury Tales” off the reading lists. Giulio Meotti suggested this was possibly done to make room for the Zulu poetry.

 

Map of the Developed Western World

 

Then there are some disturbing assignments equally as challenging. Iowa State University Professor James Strohman assigned his students in their international studies course to, “Write a paper that gives a historical account of 911 from the perspective of the terrorist network. In other words, how might Al-Qaeda or a non-Western historian describe what happened.” Just in case anyone might think that such an assignment might upset students where they might object to having to take such view of the events from that day, he added, “Don’t worry about the fact you don’t agree with the terrorists, the point of the exercise is to consider completely different perspectives.” When asked by the College Fix a spokesperson stated the assignment was not to take away from the “tragic events” of that day. The assignment did give some further advice stating, “Let’s focus on the 911 terrorist attack and how it might be interpreted differently by different people around the world. For this exercise, you have to ‘get out of the box’ of our thinking about what happened on 911 and view it from a completely different perspective.” Such preposterous of a story needs some validations so we have included the actual assignment as presented below.

 

Write a Paper About 911 From the Perspective of the Terrorists

 

These are just the tip of an iceberg and Western Civilizations and Judeo-Christian Ethics is the Titanic on her maiden voyage and it is approaching the midnight of April 15, 1912. The open borders which were proposed by President Obama (despite his having set immigration bans from suspected Middle East nations where terrorism was rampant) and would have been accelerated by a hint over five-hundred percent, that was according to Ms. Hillary herself. It was on Face the Nations where Hillary Clinton told CBS, “I would like to see us move from what is a good start with ten-thousand to sixty-five-thousand and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in.” Well, at least there would be vetting probably very similar to that used under President Obama. If we remember correctly, as long as Iran vouched for you, then you must be perfectly fine, or something equally wonderful.

 

Further, Angela Merkel has announced she will run for a fourth term as German chancellor in a crucial national election next September without any reservations to her past performance and the refugee situation. She did claim it had been a difficult decision as there exist complex challenges which she will face and there is the “absurd” expectation for Germany to take a world leadership role since Barack Obama leaves office. Listing some of these challenges Ms. Merkel stated, “The European Union is currently under great strain, with the euro crisis, with the refugee question, and following the decision of the United Kingdom to want to leave the EU, and with a situation in the world which, to put it delicately, needs to focus itself anew following the elections in America and also regarding the relationship to Russia.” As far as the situation in the world and the expectations that she have answers for everything, especially due to the election of President Donald Trump in the United States, she added, “especially after the elections in America, that I’m expected to deal with, it’s very grounding, but I feel it very strongly as grotesque and downright absurd.” She has made some statements of late expressing reservations for Germany carrying the bulk of the refugee problem and believes that Germany still has her role to play in this problem. Angela Merkel still speaks of Germany taking refugees but has walked the unconditional acceptance of nearly unlimited numbers back from her original eight-hundred-thousand per year to a more vague and limited expectation without placing an actual number limit. One might think she would have learned from the horrors Germany has suffered in response to her policies thus far. Still, Chancellor Merkel can expect rave reviews and stellar write-ups in the German and European media with full backing of every leftist news source.

 

The backing that the leftist European candidates receive from the vast majority of their media is quite similar to that across the pond in the United States. This means that across Europe the citizens can no better rely on the poll numbers or the reporting, especially things reported about nationalist candidates. Another warning to our European friends is that within the six weeks before your elections you can expect the leftist candidates to take steps and announce programs they will support which will never come to be. These are feints to lead the people to believe that they are moderate except they will continue to act in the same manner as they have on the past. Leftists are pretty much incapable of changing their stripes. In closing, there are a few items you may wish to have your candidates reply about where they stand on Judeo-Christian ethics, Western Civilization, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Kant, Freud and, oddly enough, whether they support Israel or the Palestinians, and they can only choose one.

 

Beyond the Cusp