Think None Can Protect You but Yourself, Think Again

 

 

The fact is that only each of us can protect ourselves and any around us in a time of crisis. No government, no police, no politician, no political party, no teacher, no Rabbi, only Hashem and the empowerment we receive from on High can protect us when that fateful moment where for being a Jew we are assailed. In that moment we are as alone as we can ever be yet we will pray that there be other Jews around who once we show that fighting is the answer will respond and fight alongside us. This is why a Jew is safer with other Jews rather than on their own alone. Even alone one is far safer if they fight back as such will be unexpected and such surprise will likely startle the attacker and then the assailant will become the assailed. Also, if you are in a group of people, Jews or gentile, the fact you are fighting back against your assailant will embolden those around you and potentially bring others to your aid. Even if the assailant runs, those around you will be more likely to accost and detain the terrorist if you have actively shown them unprepared to fight back if they are attacked. Lastly, if you fight back, others are more likely to come forward and offer immediate first aid in those critical initial few minutes where stopping any bleeding is vital. The reasons behind attacking one’s attacker in their own defense will be to their advantage even against the most aggressive assailant as even they will be set back and in that moment the advantage is yours. Should you not fight back then they are likely to finish their attack killing you and attacking another; so if nothing else, one can save additional lives at the very least by tying up their attacker preventing further victims. Thus your resistance answers all of Rabbi Hillel’s famous quotation from “Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14”

 

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am only for myself, who am I?
If not now, when?”

 

By reacting to such an attack with active resistance and engaging the attacker making them vulnerable to being prevented from further attacks and potentially subdued or eliminated; you will most definitely be acting for oneself, the first line of Rabbi Hillel’s directive, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Further, you have made it more advantageous for others to assist your efforts thus negating the threat to others availing the answer to the second query, “But if I am only for myself, who am I?” Lastly we will have heeded Rabbi Hillel’s final challenge of “If not now, when?”

 

Rabbi Hillel was far from the only Rabbi who believed in a strong Jewish response to those who would harm us. Rabbi Meir Kahane also made arguments for our own defense against those who would do us harm. He also warned us of those evils which would befall Israel if we did not excise those who were not part of the body who desired a healthy and strong Jewish body for Israel. He was far from the first to press for an Israel free of foreign invaders or interests. Jewish history is full of such including but far from limited to the Maccabees or Bar Kokhba. Both rose to defend the Jewishness and independence of Israel, even if it was then known as Judea as that was the predominant remaining tribe. The fact that the Jewish state was named Judea and that the term Jew is derived from Judea and was a shortened form of Judean, should tell us a lot about where we should stand today when the world is demanding that we surrender an area of Israel known throughout history as Judea as well as Samaria to a foreign, hostile and cancerous body who call Judea the West Bank and are not interested in just Judea but in the end of all Israel and the eradication of the entire world’s Jewry.

 

We are not fighting over land; as if that were the case, there would have been an agreement long ago. We are fighting over who had a right to live. The terror groups we are entertaining, or at least our governments be they left wing, right wing, nationalist, internationalist or whatever have all had one thing in common, they believe we can compromise with how much of the body of Israel, the body of Judaism, we can sacrifice today to have a short period of calm before the next demand for a sacrifice will be made. The enemy does not desire their own state; they demand the end of our state and then the end of us, all Jews. They declare this loudly and with pride knowing that every other nation supports their end goal of a world without those Jews. There are some who refuse to say that they desire the Jews gone, but they will be willing to say they think that the Jewish State should surrender a piece of its body to a mortal foe today to buy some quiet, some form of peace with a ravenous beast. Even their own kind refuse to allow them to enter their soil and those on their soil are barricaded and refused any rights as they apparently must never be allowed to roam freely as that would only end in disaster. We have seen this when Yasser Arafat and his merry band of cutthroats roamed in Jordan and attempted to overthrow the government and then was pushed into Lebanon where they again attempted to overthrow the government as the result was them banned and the head of the snake was cut from its body and ensconced in a gilded prison in Tunisia. That could have been the end of the story and Israel left to live in peace and even the Arab population would have rested and lived peaceably; but no, the viper had to be resurrected as its job was not completed.

 

You ask Israelis who our greatest friend and benefactor is in the world and invariably the answer is ‘America’ virtually every time. You walk around Israel and their love for the United States is broadcast far and wide. Manufactured goods are packaged in fancy emblems in red, white and blue, not simply the blue and white which would indicate Israel. They often have a blue field with five and occasionally six pointed stars. Many packages are emblazoned with red and white stripes and all too many have both and claim American made parts inside. Many an Israeli talks about America as would have a European of fifty to a hundred or more years ago as if the United States too was a promised land. What they never speak of is the fact that there was a definite United States hand along with European hands so encouraging and helpful Israeli hands of Shimon Peres, Dr. Yossi Beilin, Professor Yair Hirschfeld and Dr. Ron Pundak with Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin brought in to the picture in the final stages forming the monstrosity which still haunts and threatens Israel’s existence to this day. The final status was forged through United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s Middle East negotiator, Daniel Kurtzer, who shuttled tirelessly between Tunis and Arafat to Jerusalem with Beilin and Peres, seeking to narrow and then close any final gaps between the PLO and the Israelis closing those parts of the deal not settled in Oslo under the tutelage of Director of the Fafo institute Terje Rod Larson, a Norwegian diplomat. Without the agreement and actual aiding of the clandestine secretive negotiations at the pivotal and vital final stages there would have been no Oslo Accord, no triumphant return of Yasser Arafat from his lavish Tunisian cell and most unfortunate and important item, no Nobel Peace Prize for Simon Peres along with Yasser Arafat, the worst Peace Prizes ever awarded in the Twentieth Century. Perhaps Terje Rod Larson, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Daniel Kurtzer should have also been so honored for without all their efforts none of this would have been possible.

 

 

Nobel Peace Prize 1994 was awarded jointly to
Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin
for their Heroic Efforts in Resurrection of the
PLO Terror Menace and Threatening Israel
Which are Known as the Oslo Accords

 

 

Still, nothing the United States could ever do to harm Israeli interests and survival could ever sway all too many Israelis from their idealistic views of the United States, or more accurately America as the Israelis are capable of something even Americans are incapable of managing, realizing that the ideal and shining principles which make up the ideal America can be viewed in their original and perceived perfect beginnings and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its Bill of Rights from the United States which is mired in the two plus centuries removed from that America; or perhaps there is some other reason for so many Israelis starry-eyed view of America, as more often than not they use the term America and not the United States as that may provide the clue. Perhaps this view is upheld by the average heartland American to even some suburban and urban city-dwellers whose view of Israel and the Jewish State have their loving idealized view of Israel as the logical and perfect restoration of the lands of the Tribes of Israel and the Kingdoms of David and Solomon and the perfect revival and the symbol of Jewish survival which if only Israel was. Instead there are the realities and limitations of men and the governments they form and that leaves us with the problems and confusions which cloud what should be crystal clear to even the slightly idealized dreamers. Israel is the land of, by, for and forged by the Jewish People and it is their home to which the remnants of a decimated Jewish European Jewish population first tread and then was invigorated with near to a million more Jewish refugees who were disinvited and spat out the remnants of years of purges and forced conversions from the Arab and Muslim lands from the Middle East across Northern Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. Then the State of Israel sought to discern and find those remains of the Ten Lost Tribes which brought in far flung Jews from places such as Ethiopia and the Menashe from India and others from places equally as surprising and made all into a nation that shines as a light unto the nations of the world. This tiny nation whose representatives and the best of their best are found amongst if not the first to virtually every disaster scene across the globe no matter how far from Haiti to Nepal to Japan and the Philippines, no place is too remote nor person is considered insignificant as a dancer named George (see video below and marvel at miracles) can attest. Israel is amongst the sole nations who have offered to provide and actually provided aid to the citizens of the United States when she was struck by nature’s furies.

 

 

 

Additional CNN reporting from Haiti six days after the earthquake largely from one of the Haitian Hospitals where they are desperate for better facilities to save so many that they are unable to treat with their facilities and the one place they could turn.

 

 

But all the altruistic aid to foreign countries and all the taking in of Jews in distress no matter how lengthy their travels from ancient Israel to the modern day may have stretched, the world will never now, as in ancient times, accept and permit a Jewish State to stand unchallenged. In the past those who designed to eradicate the world from the Jew were Ancient Egypt, Philistines, Amalek, Amorites, Midian, Canaanites, Assyrians, Persians, Greek, Roman, Nazis, much of the Arab world in 1948, Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967, Syria and Egypt almost succeeded in 1973 and ever since the Arab Palestinians (with the support of the Arab League member states, Iran and the Soviet Union over the years). Yet somehow Israel still stands. Our peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt stand shivering in their stark coldness of an icy cooperation which can never change the hearts of beating hatred within their populace, but stand they do. Syria is no longer, but new threats are born on her still quivering, if prematurely stated, grave. Lebanon leaves stand with the nurturing assistance of a United Nations blind eye the menace of Hezballah currently slightly distracted but soon to leave the Syrian debacle freshly hunting a victory to declare despite any realities, and they will engage Israel to provide said claim. Israel will survive them all as it is not those threats which are aimed menacingly at her heart. Those threats come from the European Union, the United States Department of State, campuses of colleges and universities across the Western World where the future leaders of massive armies and nuclear arms stacked to the skies that are the biggest threats on the future horizons, not so much the Iranian nuclear threat which was loosed by an American President who challenges the reasons he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Perhaps he will challenge the winners of hypocrisy from the Twentieth Century.

 

But Israel remains and will through it all and the reason why is doubted despite the Jew surviving the perils of centuries past and doing so in the century of the present age. Hashem has many other names to reference and define but as Israel and the Guardian of the Jews will remain to define Hashem as miracles are performed though seldom recognized outside of Israel. There are those amongst our enemies who have recognized the Hand of Hashem deflecting rockets, defusing explosives, giving a guard that second sense which saves he and his unit by halting them just for that instant. Hashem works his miracles large and small both perceived and to be revealed later when a soul steps to the throne and asks, remember when and before another word is spoken Hashem looks to the soul and says I remember them all both large and small and yours was one of a million that instant and smiles returning to the million miracles Hashem will perform that day. You ask why Israel survives and there are a million reasons, a million personal stories, thousands are those who beat the odds, hundreds who recognize their miracle and the select few whose miracles astound, amaze and inspire us all, but there is only one answer, Hashem. The day will arrive when that is made so evident that none shall doubt Hashem’s hand working in the world and that will be the day when the Jews will finally face threats and foes no more. Until then we work hard in a world that is often cold and cruel pretending we depend on ourselves which we do only as far as needed and Hashem takes care of the rest. We may not even know or recognize as they occur but in that quiet moment when a whisper utters within our brains, then we know we are not alone and Hashem stands astride all and cares for His creations one and all, large and small. And that is why Israel stands and will continue to stand, for she is a miracle herself.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel Versus the Universe; Almost

 

When one researches the various campaigns against Israel, violent attacks against Israelis, political assaults on Israel, hearings over offensive acts by Israel, and court filings of wrong-doings by Israel are sufficient in quantity that it certainly feels like it is not just Earth, our solar system, the Milky Way are against Israel but actually as if the entire universe, the entirety of the results from the Big Bang (represented below because we like this picture) lining up against Israel such that almost nothing takes the side of Israel except the One that counts for more than everything else, Hashem who works in mysterious and unknown ways which sometimes can be frustrating for Israel and Israelis. One article is completely beyond our ability to research in under a decade and more than anybody would care to read through on their lunch break or wherever our friends read BTC. So we will look at some of the reactions from around the planet concerning the current Third Intifada and the near constant violence being perpetrated against innocent civilians mostly with the few rare attacks on police, IDF and Border Police. The reactions from around the world have been nothing if not a preposterous exercise in blaming the victims and demands on victims to be more passive in their own defenses. Perhaps some examples from the recent past are in order.

 

 

Visualize the Big Bang Represented in the Center
and the Galaxies of 13.7 Billion Years Later
as the Universe is Today Resplendent in All
the Glories of Creation Baruch Hashem

 

 

One of the most insidious of attacks has come from a tag team effort with the Arab Palestinian Authority with their facilitators at UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). It was not enough for UNESCO to recognize a state of Palestine granting it statehood despite being unable to define the boundaries and against the very charter which defines what is necessary for UNESCO to recognize a state, but they did not wish to be left out of the rush last year’s race by NGOs and other organizations to recognize a state of Palestine in whatever borders it eventually will be defined with, what a deal. They honestly recognized an amorphous entity with no defines or permanent border or even to have a singular defined government over both the areas under the PA and the only place which is defined with a border is Gaza ruled by Hamas, so which one did UNESCO recognize? This year the PA was backed by the six Arab members; Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, which initially attempted to include the entirety of the Old City of Jerusalem including so specifically that it was actually stated, the Western Wall and the Kotel Plaza which the PA claimed Israel was working to destroy the wall in order to assault the Temple Mount and destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. At least this demand was turned down by UNESCO with their Director-General Irina Bokova who berated the PA representatives directing them to remove this preposterous claim of the Western Wall and Kotel to be a Muslim Holy Site as absurd. Still, UNESCO did decide in a vote of twenty-six in favor, six voted against, and twenty-five abstentions where United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Estonia being the only nations resisting this Islamic assault on Jewish historic and ancient holy sites which predate Islam by not just a mere few centuries but by a thousand years plus, but why should a millennium plus stand in the way of allowing another usurping of other religious holy sites by the usurpers and destroyers of all things holy to other religions and especially those far more ancient than Islam itself. We all remember the Taliban and the desecrations and destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan (pictured below).

 

 

Buddhas of Bamiyan before pictured on the left and
being destroyed with explosives by Taliban forces on the right

 

 

This is not the first time around the mulberry bush and making inventive and preposterous claims permitted by UNESCO for the PA as they have made such decisions before. As we see in this video below, where Mahmoud Abbas made the claim that not only was the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount an Islamic holy site but that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also an Islamic holy site, and the PA has already made requests with the backing from Jordan to make the Church of the Nativity also as an Islamic holy site under their management and protection. Islam has had a history of conversions of other religious holy sites and making them instead Islamic holy sites with the most famous the defiling of the Hagia Sophia being converted into a Mosque after the fall of Constantinople (pictured below). This will become a standard practice across Europe as churches and especially cathedrals are sold to Islamic groups who will convert them into mosques.

 

 

 

 

Hagia Sophia Mosque as transformed
by Islamic Conquerors was once the
Greatest of Cathedrals in the World
Until Constantinople fell to Islamic forces

 

 

But UNESCO was not the only United Nations sanctioned action taken concerning Israel this past week. Showing great consternation and sympathy for the victims of the violence which has shaken Israel for the past few months and continuing to escalate each week worse than the previous to the point that each day is not measurably worse than the previous day and soon it may be said of each hour as Hamas has called for their operatives and forces in Judea and Samaria and anywhere else there are those who support their struggle against the Jew to strike the Jew and conduct suicidal homicide bombings across all of Israel and into the settlements and Hamas also challenged the forces from Fatah and the PA to also take up this challenge. On a mission to curb the escalating violence, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made a surprise visit to discuss the situation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and also spoke with opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog who echoed much of the message of the Prime Minister, then visited PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and after discussed the situation and possible ways to disarm the situation before it spiraled out of control. Before continuing further on Ban Ki-moon’s surprise visit, allow us to congratulate his denunciation of the PA violence and desecration committed against Joseph’s Tomb last Friday where he commented, This “reprehensible act is yet another example of the escalating violence in the region, threatening to further inflame sensitivities owing to the religious significance of Joseph’s Tomb.”

 

 

Ban Ki-moon pictured at his New York, Turtle Bay, United Nations
high podium which must make him feel almost omnipotent instead of
as the inept stooge of Mahmoud Abbas Hamas Iran and other terrorists

 

 

But when it comes to the third Intifada which has been afflicting Israelis across all of Israel with stabbings, shootings, car attacks running down Jews, rock throwing, firebombing and gang assaults; all the Secretary General could manage was to demand that both sides step back from the abyss and refrain from taking the violence even further and taking the situation beyond the cusp and into a full scale war. His blame was carefully aimed at both sides making sure not to place blame on either side and using the pretense of equal culpability. His warnings will fall on deaf ears on the PA and Fatah side of the equation possibly because the violence has come close to taking on a life of its own and with the slightest further escalation may become something beyond the ability for Chairman Abbas to curtail and bring to an end. Meanwhile, on the Israeli side the only meaning we could take from the demand that Israel and Israelis need to be less vigilant at warding off these attacks on persons and be more understanding and simply allow such attacks to take place without any consequence or resistance or use of force for protection and just take it and thus end the cycle of violence. Having been through any number of Arab conflagrations we have realized that taking such a passive approach will only be taken as a sign of weakness and thus encourage even greater carnage and the only response which has any potential to end the onslaught is the use of overt force, the use of disproportional force as force, overwhelming force is the only thing which will deter further attacks by the PA and their terror proxies. But we do not expect Ban Ki-moon to understand such things despite how he may feel, as he is such a man of peace and experience and so all-knowing. We can only hope his feelings, assuming he has such, will not be bruised by our not heeding his sagely advice.

 

Finally we get to the pensive one, to United States Secretary of State John F (for nothing) Kerry who also had some bordering on ridiculous advice for Israel and her citizens. Perhaps the best way to describe Secretary Kerry’s sagely advice would be to allow his words to stand on their own merit or lack thereof. Kerry stated, “We continue to urge everybody to exercise restraint and restrain from any kind of self-help in terms of the violence, and Israel has every right in the world to protect its citizens, as it has been, from random acts of violence. But in my conversations with the prime minister, as well as with King Abdullah and the foreign minister of Jordan, they have expressed the desire to try to see this process be able to find a way of making certain that everybody is clear about what is happening with respect to the Temple Mount.” Additionally, Secretary Kerry spoke of desires with these words, “Israel has made it clear to me that they do not intend to and have not changed the status quo, and I think it’s important for me to meet with the prime minister and talk about the road ahead.” But wait, there’s more, “Security and diplomacy go hand in hand. There is not a time for one and then the other; really there is an importance to both. We want to see calm restored and we want to see the violence stop. And I think everybody in Israel and in the region would like to see both of those things happen.” And there were more words of unimaginable wisdom such as “We have to stop the incitement; we have to stop the violence. I believe people want this to de-escalate.” And the fun just does not stop as John Kerry went onward with claims that the conversations he was having would be “very important to settle on the steps that can be taken beyond the condemnation and beyond the rhetoric” and I bet he was implying ending the violence which he claimed both sides for fomenting and escalating and demanding that both sides stop with the incitement and that both sides needed to exercise calm and not allow the actions of the other side drive further violence on either side. We all hope that the United States Secretary of State does not mean as other State Department spokespeople have inferred that the violence needs to be addressed by the Israeli government who needs to break the cycle of violence and take the initiative for ending the violence. This has been the State Department swan song whenever violence breaks out between terrorists and Israeli civilians on the streets and in restaurants and even rabbis at morning prayers being shot and hacked to death and it is always Israel must take the onus for ending the violence. They are demanding that the Jew return to being the passive Jew that they so loved before the founding of Israel and the surprising survival of the tiny land nestled in the midst of a nice little neighborhood where the rest of the world around Israel wishes us dead.

 

 

Fogel Family Members Murdered in Terrorist Assault
by Two Arab Cousins from Neighboring Village

 

 

Their message is not even craftily hidden as it is obvious that the State department has one aim whenever Jews are being victimized. They desire a return to when the Jew lived scattered throughout Europe, North Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and were at the mercy of the rulers as they had no homeland of their own. They lived at peace only by the desires and whims of their protectors, protectors who invariably turned on their Jews when the need changed or there was any reason to find the perfect scapegoats. Be it the Spanish Inquisition, the Purification of France, the plague across Europe which did not kill as many Jews due to Jewish laws of cleanliness making them less susceptible, the whims of Caliphs and Imams, the ridding of the British Isles of the Jew scourge, the purifying of Germany of their Catholics when Martin Luther began the Protestant reformation which also called for removing the Jews by whatever means was convenient which did not exclude murdering them, the Czarist Pogroms followed soon thereafter by the Communists pogroms where the Jews were defined as an unwanted blight on the worker’s revolution despite many having been communists themselves who fought and died for the communists during the revolution just as they had died elsewhere no matter how accepted they had thought they were or how safe they had felt. Even one of the leaders, Trotsky, was a Jew and despite his being one of the most high party officials, this only got him an ax in his head when he was assassinated in his hiding place in Mexico plus any number of events of which the most horrid of them all were the wars over the Holy Lands and, in particular, Jerusalem where when the Crusaders swept through they murdered the Muslims and often the Jews for good measure and when the Islamic forces swept through next, they murdered the Christians and often the Jews for good measure. The Jews were never eradicated and often had disappeared as the scenario became well understood; both sides were none too pleased with a Jewish presence. These were the good old days when Jews were weak and without any power and were vulnerable to any change in the way the political winds blew. There have been claims that in order to escape the Spanish Inquisition a Jew stowed away on one of Columbus’s ships and when the time came to send somebody to talk with the natives, this Jewish stowaway was sent as he was considered the most expendable and the rest is history, not the part where the first member of the Columbus crew to step on the new lands was a Jewish stowaway as that has been placed in amongst the other trivial realities which history preferred to rewrite with a more bold and favorable light shining on their heroic figures who often were more prudent than heroic. We will not return to being the timid Jew as that did not serve us well and we do learn from history and we also know our Bible which has told of this return which was revealed to Moses, to Abraham, to Isaiah and has now come full circle and we are home and we will protect our beloved land from every and anyone who dares to attempt to take it from us or us from our lands. The official words from Prime Minister Netanyahu may tell of sharing our land with those who would murder us in our beds as they did the Fogel family, in our vehicles as was Alexander Levlovitz erev Rosh Hashanah, at our workplace as was Netanel Arami whose Arab co-workers cut his safety lines on the construction site they all worked and in the streets as they are currently doing in what has been identified as the Third Intifada and we will continue to protect ourselves be it by preventing further harm when in the midst of an attack to preferable before any harm is done between the drawing of the weapon, the aiming of a careening vehicle into a bus stop, charging a crowded area with a knife or cleaver or any other assault with intent to do harm and murder of any Israeli as we are not Dhimmi and never will we be Dhimmi nor will we ever bow before Allah or Muhammad as we worship Hashem, the G0d of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and not the god of Abraham Ishmael and Muhammad who took a wrong turn somewhere between the patriarch and the generations which followed.

 

Beyond the Cusp