Beth Chayim Chadashim Progressive Synagogue in Los Angeles hosted Peter Beinart who gave what has been termed a provocative, anti-Zionist speech on Wednesday, November 4, 2015. One quote from his presentation encapsulated the tenor of his entire presentation which repeated much of his leftist, borderline J-Street, refutable tripe where he claimed, “While we condemn Palestinian violence, we must recognize this painful truth: that Israeli policy has encouraged it. Israel has encouraged it by penalizing Palestinian nonviolence, by responding to that nonviolence by deportations, teargas, imprisonment, and the confiscation of Palestinian lands. Hard as it is to say, the Israeli government is reaping what it has sowed.” Some of the largest holes in his arguments are his definitions of nonviolence which he maintains the Israeli government overreacts was the weekly riots in the village of Bil’in, which involves such provocations as striking IDF soldiers, yelling curses in their faces, spitting on the soldiers, attempts to steal their weapons, pulling on arms, tearing at their uniforms, yanking on their equipment and other edgy but technically non-violent acts which take a well-disciplined, well-trained and well-ordered units of soldiers to take with only the mildest of self-defense and conservatively measured responses which does not include any of the reactions stated by Mr. Beinart. To rise to the level of simple response of teargas, and possibly detainment but not leading to any charges but simply detainment for a period until the riots are disbanded, these riots regularly rise to stone throwing which sometimes included rather large stones as in the second picture below and these rocks are more accurately described as small boulders. I would love to see Mr. Beinart placed within one of these IDF units and see his reaction to the kinds of provocations commonly utilized at this particular site as these provocations are most often orchestrated and led by the Bilal Tamini family who seek violent reactions and often will continue their provocations for hours in an attempt to provoke any video which can be used to claim IDF overreaction and often leave without film. Bilal Tamini have been known to use false videos which use Arabs dressed in IDF styled uniforms for some of his claims which have been debunked but are still shown as if they were accurate displays of IDF violent actions against innocent Arabs. Perhaps these are that which Mr. Beinart keeps referring to as they reinforce his perception of Zionist Israelis as all Nationalists in his views and are automatically violence prone fascists. Sorry that Mr. Beinart has a pacifist filter he uses when judging Arab actions making their antagonistic violence as respectable acts as they are the oppressed fighting against imperial colonialists which is likely his picture of Israelis, as if they were real Jews with proper values, they would live in the United States instead of stolen lands of the Middle East as if the United States was founded entirely in virgin lands free of prior habitation.
Peter Beinart Gave What has been Termed
Provocative Anti-Zionist Speech on
Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at
Beth Chayim Chadashim Progressive
Synagogue in Los Angeles
Rocks, These are not Rocks,
These are more Accurately Described
as Small, Medium to Large Boulders
Fully Capable of Murdering Somebody
if Thrown Through a Windshield of an
Automobile Going at Speed or if Launched
from Above onto an Unsuspecting Crowd
as not Unlike Thrown from the Temple Mount
Down into the Kotel on Such a Day as when
the Priestly Blessings are Given and the
Plaza is Front to Back Completely Packed
with Jewish Worshippers.
We will not bother to dispute Mr. Beinart’s speech line-by-line or even concept-by-concept, as such had been done on many occasions elsewhere, but instead a discussion of the situation in Israel which makes virtually all the criticisms by Beinart, J-Street and the other faux-peace, faux-pro-Israel, faux-pro-Zionist faux-pro-Jewish NGOs supported by the New Israel Fund points mute. Neither will we go item-by-item on the many European donors and governments which spend almost all their efforts criticizing Israel and forgiving any and all provocations and even terror attacks claiming that any Jews residing in Israel are guilty of heinous crimes against the Arabs and deserve whatever happens including being murdered by terrorist acts. Having lived across the United States, we have experienced leftist Jews who cannot find it in their heart to care for Israel unless Israelis are able to live up to some perfection beyond even the most righteous of prophets from Biblical eras. They set an unattainable expectation and then support any acts against Israel for not meeting their unhinged expectations. We have met Jews who question fellow Jews who are making Aliyah and simply state that such Jews are not mentally stable as they are leaving the real promised land which they define as anywhere where liberal policies are enforced by law and public expectations as peer pressure. Their view is the United States is the enlightened Nirvana which should be considered to be the new Promised Land while Israel should be a vacation resort like a holy land version of Disneyland. If they were to visit Israel they would likely stay in Tel Aviv, a city which can be favorably compared with New York or Los Angeles in the United States with malls, five star hotels, and a political leftist liberal progressive the American Jews understand and can maintain their comfort zone. Us, we reside in what is referred to as the periphery and loving it. What distresses the leftists is that Israel is turning back to our religion and the religious and the Jabotinsky Zionists are both sectors of Israeli society which are growing. The interesting reality is that the Jews making Aliyah when they arrive in Israel, most become more Zionist and nationalist and the majority begins to make a slow, or even a sudden sharp turn towards keeping the commandments and becoming more religious.
The United States is welcome to be the Nirvana the leftist Jews believe it to be, but it will never be the Promised Land as that title resides in Eretz Yisroel. There are things about Israel which if you tell people who are unknowing, they will at best laugh and at worse scorn, never speaking with you ever again as they will have permanently judged you as suffering some form of dementia or other mental disorder. Allow me to relate a story I once read about which tells a truth which any of the myriad of empires who tried to get the lands to produce and failed so miserably that many sent only their most cursed to assignments here as a form of punishment yet, as modern Israel had proven as did our forefathers proved long ago, Eretz Yisroel gives up her treasures and produce, her fruit and benefits, her grazing lands and fills her wells for the Jews and denies these gifts to others.
This story involves a family farm where the father comes in from tending their small farm and comments that the rains have been ample and they have a great crop coming in this year. He claims that Allah has been kind. His elderly grandfather clears his throat and starts to almost whisper in a hoarse throaty voice which comes from years of smoking kief mixed with tobacco. He starts telling about the years of the skies holding on to their rains refusing to feed the parched lands. He tells how his childhood they are the most poor quality grains and how his family, like all those who came before, were barely able to produce sufficient for their own consumption but then the rains began to return. But the rains fell mostly on the Galilee and it took a while before the rains fell in the Gaza. Finally, around the turn of the century the rains returned to the Gaza and the fields began to produce. The rain was reason enough to accept and believe that the old writings were true, this was the land of the Jews and would only produce for the Jews and those who befriend them. This was the take the old man told his grandson and he advised he too love the Jews or the rains would once again fail.
One wonders how the rains are on the family farm now under Hamas, but that does not matter as Israel provides enough water for the fields and cities of Gaza and does so without receiving payment. The same goes for two-thirds of the electricity in the Gaza. Perhaps it matters little as Israel allows for tons of food and medical stores and supplies to enter Gaza every day and even did so last summer the entire time of the offensive against Hamas. Where else does any nation provide food, medical provisions and other materials including construction materials while engaging in a fight for the safety of the entirety of the nation providing these goods to basically their enemy. Only Israel bothers and takes such care to differentiate between the people and the terror masters who rule over the people and intentionally endanger these same people by their tactics of firing their rockets often from immediately next to their safe buildings. One might expect the world or at least the Europeans would be able to observe that the Israelis and the IDF in particular, go to extremes to preserve life, both their own and that of the Arab foes, especially noncombatants. This truth was most brought to the foreground by the The Turkel Commission which included Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, Vice–President of the Europa–Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt sitting as a member of the commission which found the IDF not only met standards of the International Rules of Warfare but went to such lengths to avoid collateral deaths and to limit damages when engaging targets such as using multiple methods to warn of coming military assaults such that Hamas and the other enemy force actually had time to prepare for the IDF assault knowing where they would be attacking, from what direction the attack would originate, the time the attack would commence and whether there would be any artillery or other softening of the target area before the assault. This has also been quoted by numerous other studies and actual formal complaints from separate western nations complaining that their militaries would be unable to meet the standards set forth by the IDF and that the use of IDF standards were counterproductive to their militaries as they might also be held to such standards. Despite such feigned praise, the United Nations and collected organizations still found reasons to claim that the IDF caused far too much damage, used collective punishment, and used disproportional force as well as there was an unhealthy divergence in casualties between the Arab combatants and civilians compared to those suffered by the Israelis which was largely, if not absolutely, the result of the use of shelters and the unbelievable accuracy and kill percentage of the Iron Dome anti-missile system and also, in at least one case, the hand of Hashem.
None of this really matters as the truth has become malleable in this age and people can introduce their own delusions as facts and if they match and support some groups feelings, whether warranted or not, then those delusions will take on the weight of truth. One need not look any further than the BDS movement which desires to economically cripple Israel, not help the Arabs living amongst the Jews largely in peace even beyond the Green Line. Their attempts to boycott all goods coming from Israeli owned companies beyond the Green Line in order to punish Jews for living and working beyond what these self-appointed harbingers of all that is righteous and lawful are actually robbing the Arabs they claim to be supporting as the Israeli companies they are boycotting employ large percentages of their staff from the Arab villages near their locations and the supermarkets serve the Arabs as well as Jews with some locations of these markets within Arab communities. These employers also pay at a far higher rate than do the Arab employers and provide better benefit packages, but why should the truth ever enter into the argument. These businesses actually are examples of what the likes of Roger waters claim to desire, Jews and Arabs working side by side as equals with both Arabs and Jews in management positions and such are awarded according to merit and not at all as Mr. Waters protests. Needless to say, Mr. Waters has never come to Israel and toured these companies to see the truth because he, like much of his ilk even to include the self-loathing Jews who protest right there with the other leftist extremists against Israel, do not care about the truth, they are haters of one of two of the greatest evils leftists have always hated, the Jews and religious people of any Judeo-Christian faith. That is the truth that so many refuse to state as doing so labels you as a hater which in this case means that it is permissible to hate one who holds such beliefs, it says nothing about that person, it says volumes about those making the accusations.
Maybe this would be a good time to explore the real reason that so much of the world is attempting to throw off the perceived yoke with which they view the Judeo-Christian ethic. Hitler stated his basis for hatred of the Jews and disdain for Christianity, the later he mollified later as the Christians were to become a necessary group if he was to achieve his ultimate goals, something which took the inhuman struggle and sacrifices to prevent his madness from eclipsing the entire globe. Others throughout History have also taken on the struggle to end the Jews and always for the same reason, morality. The introduction of Judaism, which gave the world the Ten Commandments and a code of laws which formed the basis for Western Civilization and its morality and was the impetus to end idolatry and the sexual perversions, child and human sacrifice, established the basis for economic transactions including the requirements which formed the prerequisite for selling and establishing deeds for the purchase of lands and residences which are still used to this day. The Jews also set up the required steps for business transactions and many other economic codes, requirements, documentation and financing manners. Further, as for much of their existence after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire in the year 73 and their eventual dispersion across the face of the Roman Empire and subsequently further dispersed by the Mongols and the Caliphate then by the European colonialists, the Jews though small in numbers, never acquired a population which exceeded one percent of the world’s population and managed to reside in every continent and in almost every nation throughout history. This gave the Jewish people two important items which both were important at some time during our history. The first was whenever the Jews were expelled from a nation as resulted from the Spanish Inquisition, the purging of the Jews by the British Isles, the pogroms of Russia and several exiles by different Islamic leaders over subsets of the Ottoman Empire at one time or another, there were always some Jews wherever they ended being able to rest their feet and resettle. It also gave the Jews different sets of knowledge and a broad understanding which resulted from these various cultures and their ability to take the different strengths while knowing which weaknesses and ill-advised paths to avoid allowing for Jews to succeed and flourish wherever they ended up residing. This success also helped the nation in which they resided as the Jews always seemed to find a way for increasing the wealth of their host nation while also enriching their own community which had the unfortunate result of jealousy and eventual expulsion or worse, violence against them during which their wealth was redistributed, to put it politely.
Ten Commandments
Arranged in Hebrew
Reading from Right to Left
with English Translations
Underneath the Hebrew
This effect of the Jews was also true of the early Christians and later for many Christians living outside the Western world. There were wars in the Western world fought between the different forms of Christianity but these eventually became less likely once the concept of separation between religion and the powers of the state became the norm. For the approximately first twelve to fifteen centuries when Judaism was the sole religion which believed in Hashem, an invisible and sole force which was the explanation for all creation and everything which preceded, currently was and ever would be and beyond even the end as Hashem was before the beginning, Hashem was the force behind all the triumphs and seeming invincibility of the Hebrews for as long as their lives kept the covenant and they followed the commandments laid out for them at Mount Sinai and taught them through Torah. Other nations feared that the Hebrews would war against them and this was one reason they were attacked but as the Hebrews would stray from their laws and the path of the straight and narrow, most often by engaging in idolatrous devotions and practices and the debauchery which often accompanied such observances which brought punishment of Hashem down upon them. Eventually, after the tribes split into the northern ten tribes known as Israel and the remaining two tribes and their priest class of Judea (which included the tribe of Benyamin), the Assyrians conquered the northern tribe of Israel around 740 to 733 BCE which became lost until recent times as they have been discovered residing in many numerous and disparate places on the globe and rejoined into the modern Jewish State of Israel. What spurred many to desire to destroy the Hebrews, and later the Jews as the remaining Hebrews became known, as the majority was from the tribe of Judah, was a desire to prove that their idols, reason, knowledge, codes or whatever they held sacred and based their civilization upon was superior to Hashem. Since there was no manner of attack which could be mounted against Hashem, the next best thing would be to destroy utterly his people, the Hebrews or Jews ending their covenant with Hashem and by destroying the people of Hashem, it would be proven that Hashem was false and belief in Hashem did not protect the Jews.
This concept of destroying the Jews to prove that Hashem was false may seem like an insane idea today yet the idea is as valid today as it ever has been. One of the promises made by Hitler was to free the German people from the conscience which was invented by the Jew and living a life guided by Christian morality as he would restore their individual rights where their sole loyalty was to the State and there was no higher entity than the State itself. Further, the Nazis promised a return to a more carefree society where hedonism would no longer be considered a sin and people would be freed from the Jewish presumably false concept of conscience and also from the Christian structured morality. The Nazis never relinquished their disdain for Christian morality but ceased emphasizing it as openly as this was not as well received as was the assailing everything Jewish including especially the Jews. Once again we witness the attempt to destroy Hashem but this time by the destruction of the Jews and the abandonment of Christian faith which would have solely been eradicated as well had the Nazis succeeded in their lust for world conquest. There was also over fifteen-hundred plus years where the Catholic, and subsequently the other Christian sects such as Protestantism, also attempted to eradicate the Jewish faith and people. They practiced forced conversions or pogroms, burning at the stake, drowning, witch trials, and a plethora of other manners of shaming, murdering or making an outcast of the Jew. The claim was often that one did not hate the Jews generally as they all had dealings with or a friend who was Jewish, it was the faith of the Jew which had to be eradicated and the Jew forced to accept Jesus that was all that was necessary for their lives to be spared. Then there was Communism which again, like Nazism, desired to murder Hashem so they forbid Judaism and Christianity, both the Orthodox Church and Catholicism along with the other Christian sects and any other religion as once again the state had to rule supreme and thus could not accept any person or deity to supercede the authority of the State. Once again we have an attempt to destroy Hashem that ended in failure.
The final chapter brings us to the challenge of the Twenty-First-Century where once again there are those plotting to destroy the faith in Hashem. This one may be the most insidious of all the attempts to end the rule of Hashem over the planet and beyond into the universe. We the believers in Hashem, the Jews and Christians, are the current targets and we are both in the same boat. What makes this latest attempt to destroy those whose faith is in Hashem is that the destroyers are selling a lie that they too believe in Hashem as their supreme being despite the obvious fallacy of their claims. Some of their fellow believers might honestly believe that they are worshipping the same deity as Jews and Christians but their true recipient of their prayers and supplications is not Hashem. Their deity is named Allah and is not simply another name for Hashem but rather an entirely different entity. This can be seen as Hashem is the Holy One of Abraham, Isaac and Yaakov while Allah is the deity derived from Abraham but not of Isaac or of Yaakov but rather Ishmael and Muhammad, an entirely different lineage. This is further proven by the desire of Muslims, the followers of Islam declaring their war towards the destruction of all Jews and Christians as well as their holy sites which will either be destroyed or repurposed solely for the use of Islam. The final strike is from the Torah, which Muslims believe the Quran replaced, not added to or even amended but replaced, and repeated in the Passover Haggadah where it says, “In each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. And the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands.” While it is written in a similar text, Exodus 17:16 it states, “They have raised their fist against the LORD’s throne, so now the LORD will be at war with Amalek generation after generation.” Such it must be and if any group deserves to be the next incarnation of Amalek after the Nazis and have the all-fired hatred of that which is Holy in Torah, that title easily belongs to the most fanatical Islamists. Where we would not use a broad brush and color every member of Islam automatically guilty of such unbridled hatred against the Jews, and in this case also the Christians, and against the Bible, be it Old Testament or the New Testament or both together, and demand that all within has been bastardized over time, such is an assault on the word of Hashem and the direct assault on His peoples, the Jews. This is the fight which Israel must realize is the seminal struggle for the existence of the Jewish People and our renewed nation of Israel and if we love our land, brothers, sisters and the rest of the generations of our heritage and family, then we need to fight this like the struggle for survival that it is. Granted, not all Muslims are evil and desire us dead, but until they stand up and take their religion back and renew what they claim is an nonviolent religion and that the Quran teaches about Islam being the religion of peace, until then it must be assumed that Allah and Hashem are as different as their religious adherents actions and desires for the world make them out to be and that those not speaking out and retaking their religion must be taken as agreeing with the most ardent Islamist and treated as such. Should the presumed silent majority take that first step towards reconciliation, then the rest of the world can step up and give them all the assistance required, but until then their silence speaks all we need to know, and that is the sorriest thing of all.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 