Why the World Refuses to Believe Israel

 

It does not often matter what statement, claim or observation comes from Israel, the world will turn everything inside-out, upside-down, twist and torture, spindle and mutilate and then complain that everything is unintelligible. Shakespeare’s sonnets could not survive such treatment without coming back sounding like something from Chaucer. If Israel were to claim that daytime is bright and sunny and the nights dark and mysterious, the UN and EU would get together, work with the Arab League and appoint a committee to study the Israeli commentary. Their assignment would not be to verify its veracity but to find some ulterior motive hidden inside with which to reject the entire commentary. When Israel argued that the Temple Mount rules were being altered and Jews were being denied rights to go upon one of their holy sites, the UN through UNESCO decided that the Temple Mount had no connection to Judaism and threw in the rest of Jerusalem for good measure and then stated they only belonged and were attached to Islam. This probably came as a bit of a shock to the world’s Christians because if the Temple Mount was never in the hands of the Jewish People, then Jesus would not have had any moneychangers’ tables to overturn amongst numerous other items. This was the same thing concerning Rachel’s Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs along with Shiloh and Hevron. Currently the EU is building cities and communities across Area C, the region supposedly under complete Israeli control, placing EU emblems and Palestinian Arab deeds of ownership. These communities are being positioned such that they cut off all of the Shomron from Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. One can only predict that eventually the EU, along with whomever they can wrestle up, will build structures for the Palestinian Arabs around the Tel Aviv city limits so they can claim even Tel Aviv.

 

Illegal European Union structures bearing obvious EU Identification signs

 

But the world will not listen as they do not see how any of this relates to their problems. This is where it starts to get stranger than weird. Israelis have been telling the world that the Arabs do not desire an actual state for the Palestinian Arabs, they want Israel destroyed by the Palestinian Arabs. The entire idea is to terrorize and attack Jews until they get tired of the difficulties and leave. There are a few holes in their theory. First and foremost, we Jews do not desire to leave and are not the slightest way interested in departing our ancestral lands. The world thinks that means we are packing and will be leaving soon if only they continue to apply pressure. We warn the world that the Arabs main goal is not building anything but the tearing down of Israel destroying everything and either driving the Jews into the Sea or murdering them on the land. To this we are told we are overreacting and need to calm down. Even when translated documents and videos are displayed where they are caught saying these exact things in Arabic, the world becomes too frozen in ignorance to translate these for themselves while dismissing every translation as pro-Israel no matter what researchers provide. It often appears as if the intent of the world’s actions are intended to remove the Jewish State no matter the cost to humanity. Such is the foolishness Zionists face when attempting to explain the Jewish People’s love for their Jerusalem and all of Eretz Yisroel, all of Eretz Yisroel.

 

Israel primarily is the one place on the planet where a Jew is accepted and taken at face value and granted safety. The safety is not yet perfect, but neither is the world, and that is something which requires additional efforts. Jews have not had a singular place which they could call home with complete certainty. After the Roman Dispersion, the Jews never had assured safety whether they resided in Europe, Africa or the Middle East. Things were not necessarily improved with the discovery of the new world, the Americas. Even the presumed security Jews felt with the United States has developed some serious flaws. Synagogue shootings, attacks on streets even in New York City area, hate on many college campuses, academia turning against Israel and that is becoming simply anti-Semitism. Even the halls of Congress have been breached and contaminated with anti-Semitism. Europe is not any better with a distinct possibility that an anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic candidate will be elected as Prime Minister of Britain in the coming elections. Should Jeremy Corbyn become the next Prime Minister, will there remain anything which the Jews could claim as a reason for remaining within Britain? Many believe that the answer is a definitive, no. Other nations within Europe have outlawed shechita and some have outlawed circumcision claiming any variation of reasons for these actions. Some of the reasons include gaining the child’s permission, humanitarian reasons, kindness for animals and anything other than making Jews unwelcome. These actions are historic in their precedence and have been used with the same excuses to drive Jews from nations since the beginning of history and even before. The Greeks, Babylonians, Persians and Romans all forbade circumcision and many forbade reading of Torah or saying the Shema, all in the aim of wiping out Judaism and the practice thereof. There is nothing new under the sun, if we may quote King Solomon.

 

The world desires not to believe that the Jewish People have begun to return to their ancestral homelands fulfilling prophesy. This stands in direct opposition to the modernist secular humanist view of the world. Secular humanism refutes the existence of a supreme being and places everything as under some discipline of science, either physics, mathematics, biology, philosophy and the rest of the hard and soft sciences. There are no mysteries, only things not yet discovered. This is strange as many a physicist and other practical scientific discipline are starting to believe that the universe could not have occurred by accident. This has led some to believe there was a creator while others believe there are infinite universes and this one just happened to turn out just right which explains our existence. The one problem with secular humanism is that it gives life no meaning beyond the physical aspects of life which leads one to believe that there are no universal rules or ultimate entity and thus ultimate goodness or evilness. Life becomes but a series of acts without any meaning beyond what the person felt. This leads quickly to the, if it feels good-do it, philosophy of life. Should the Jews really establish Israel, then the Bible is again validated and thus there are actual principles and reality has good and evil and they have definitions. Life is meant to pursue goodness and to improve oneself and thus make the world a better place. The Jews reestablishing their ancestral homelands just as put forth in scripture fulfills that prophecy which told of the redemption in some future where Jerusalem and the Jewish homelands became the central location for these events. Just as the people found the means through which they were returning to their former lifestyle where there was only the morality of the moment and nothing had any real meaning beyond that which one assigned it. Gender was variable, not defined biologically. Pleasure was the ultimate goal, not virtue. Now the return of Israel means that there is a Supreme Being and thus a moral code meant for mankind. If one believes in Israel, then they believe in Hashem and thus there exists morality and self-discipline becomes expected of every human being. This is the same fight the Jews have faced since the days when their opposition was Baal and the evil was child sacrifice. Today that same fight is facing Planned Parenthood and the remainder of the meat market which is the abortion industry. The new priests wear the garb of a physician but is no different than the priests of Baal.

 

Israel is equated to mean the Jews. The Jews are equated with morality, self-control, limitations upon actions, kindness between one another and the golden rule. The one item people have which is a misconception is that the Jews demand that the world live by their strict standards. That is not true. The only thing we expect is for anyone living within Israel to follow at a minimum the Noahic Code, the Seven Noahide Laws. The commandments of the Torah and other Jewish doctrines are for the Jews and are not expected of non-Jews. What we hope is through our following Torah we will have an enviable life which will cause others to act more nobly, more kindly and attempt to attain a righteous life emulating the success of the Jews. We hope our actions and interactions lead people to find our ways pleasing and inviting and thus people will improve but only if we, as Jews, get our act together and follow the life dictated in Torah. Have the Jewish People yet attained such a standard? Unfortunately, not yet but many are trying and with any success their actions will lead to others also improving themselves and living a more righteous life. This is why so many want Israel to disappear, to fail, to be destroyed once and for all and the Jewish People with it such that the Torah and the Bible can be said to be false. It is the morality which accompanies Judaism and the humane laws of the Torah which the refounding of Israel affirms and this means that the Biblical morality is real, Hashem is real and secular humanism is simply another blind alley leading mankind nowhere positive. Israel reaffirms the Jews and everything which that entails. Conscience is a Jewish invention was once stated by one of the most hateful towards the Jews and responsible for the murder of over six-million Jews and of an equal number of Roma, Polish, Russians and others Hitler found undesirable. That is the end which godlessness leads to and it has with every godless society ever established by mankind.

 

 

The return of Israel has far deeper implications and mankind can only hope that they all come to fruition so that the human race can advance around a moral core. Israel can be the hope of mankind and a source of inspiration as well as a spring which whets one’s appetite to work for mutual advancement bringing people together harmoniously. Morality leads to love while immorality feeds one’s lusts leaving them lacking any real or honest emotions. That is the difference of living to meet a standard set high so aspiring to fulfill these expectations make one grow swelling with a sense of purposeful accomplishment. Judaism, the child nestled as Israel, is a cradle filled with potential and a granted set of guidelines through which to develop a sentient and compassionate person who is capable of imparting a message of Torah as their guiding light even in a world of darkness. Torah is what kept the Jews during their prolonged dispersion which spanned two millennia and is only now in the past century and a half started coming to an end. The spreading anti-Semitism will only act as an accelerant in bringing the Jewish People back home. Sure, there will be Jews who never do return and may even refute their Jewishness. We have lost family such as these before and will lose others as the future unfolds, but we retain a central core which demands we remain true to the original words from Hashem to Moses. Those words Moses taught the Israelites to be their Torah, their law, is the same as the Torah found in any synagogue. These are the unaltered words spoken at Mount Sinai during the Exodus to the best of any recollections. This is what all the fuming and fussing is over, who has the proper definition for the world to follow. The Jews do not demand or even request that others need follow Torah and its six-hundred-thirteen Commandments, or even the Seven Noahide Laws as outside of Israel is your world and you can do with it as you please. We only demand or expect certain actions for our fellow Jews and for those who choose to reside amongst us. If anyone desires to be free of living with the Jews, just avoid Jerusalem and the rest of Israel and then do as you wish, we only wish to serve as an example of one more meaningful way to live. Our aim is to inspire and encourage, and the world finds that to be annoying to such a level as to desire the destruction of all things Jewish beginning with Israel. It should be obvious that one refuses to believe those they desire to destroy.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Lessons Israel can Teach the World

 

The Western World of the past century, and more recently the main centers of the globe, has adopted the philosophy of Secular Humanism allowing it to replace its former reliance on Christianity to provide its moral underpinnings. The theory was that mankind can define for itself the morality required to produce a just, ethical, decent and just societal framework. They mostly forgave the concept of a Creator and replaced this Creator with their presumed best of the best, the most progressive and socialist elites. The philosophers and secularists from the ivory towers of academia were the ones sought out to set the moral tone for the society. These were the people along with all too many self-appointed political leaders believed themselves fully capable of providing all the leadership that their world could ever require and the concept of a higher source providing the laws under which the society was to live was simply foolish. Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher from the second half of the nineteenth century, was famous for an outtake of one of his quotes where people simply used the first few words which read, “G0d is dead.” (the entire quote is at the end of the article) But Nietzsche went much further in his questioning the existence of the Almighty in numerous quotes, we decided to share this one in the article, “Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?” Needless to say, Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the gospels of our modern Western society even if many are not aware of this fact.

 

There may be another little factoid, OK, a major factoid of which many are not aware. This idea of humanity as the ultimate source of wisdom and morality where it is man against the elements and all other forces with man the main reason in basing the society has been attempted before. Yes, there was a difference in that this society had their gods but they saw them as capricious, immoral in their habits and an interference in human society more than anything else. The societies which tried this before were the Greeks followed immediately thereafter by the Romans. Defining mankind as the definers of all that was acceptable and what was not inevitably led to raucous debauchery. Along with such came a society which was self-serving which brought on the exact thing which plagues Europe currently, the lack of childbearing leading to a declining population which was unable of providing for its own defense. In the case of Rome, this led to their hiring mercenaries from the Germanic tribes on their borders who, surprisingly, allowed their tribes to attack Rome along its borders contributing to their downfall.

 

The resonating response to this argument is that people today are far more advanced and more intelligent and this time they will get it right. This is the identical argument given by leaders in nation after nation for becoming a more caring, kinder, gentler society which takes care of all its members, namely socialism. The unfortunate reality is that this time their efforts may be able to last longer, but the inevitable end will be another human tragedy ending in disaster. The trend in the Western civilizations is towards this human based system where mankind is fully capable of forming a just society where human whims end up becoming the morality of the times. One of the best examples of where this is leading comes from a combination of the statistics proving that the population has become unsustainable due to a lack of childbearing and the fact that the difference between reaching a balance where the population is sustainable and the current crash can be defined by looking at the number of abortions. The unfortunate reality is that man is not a suitable replacement for a divinely ordered set of morals which are beyond being changed and altered to fit the most recent concepts of the ideal civilization. The unvarnished truth is that people are incapable of setting a moral code and not playing with their set morals making them more adapted to their best feelings of the moment. Once we set ourselves as the arbiters of morality, the morality will be subject to being molded to fit those acts and activities which we desire instead of a set and unchangeable code set by a Supreme Being.

 

Most of the current and historical arguments against the definite definitions such as are relayed in the Bible are not arguments so much that the codes by which we live are wrong but that the sciences have proven that there is no Supreme Being who designed the cosmos and thus even the Biblical moral code was just some manmade morality. What this argument misses is that even were it a human made morality, the fact is it is not immutable nor resistant to the whims and desires of mere mortals. The idea and morals of Secular Humanism were originally very close, if not identical, to the morality of Judeo-Christian ethics. Despite the atheists claim that these rules were independently arrived at, the reality is that the starting point for Secular Humanism was the acceptance of the prevailing moral ethics as defined under Judeo-Christianity. They even kept to these moral codes for over a decade or two and then slowly but inevitably they began to alter them to permit things which were claimed their time had come to be accepted. Contrary to accusations that, as an example, the LGBTQ individuals were scorned and despised by the morals of Judeo-Christianity, the truth is they were to be accepted and loved just as anybody else. The difficulty was not as much the person as it was the practice of acts which were considered immoral. We could argue this point for years and we would get nowhere for one simple reason, both sides believe they have the correct system and are not about to change camps. What is important is which group makes up the majority of the culture.

 

There are those who argue that progress can only be made in modernity under a system which is not mired in millennia old mores and insisting on the standards and societal standards as put forth in the Bible. That is strange as Israel is moving towards being a more religious society under those exact moral codes and also one of the leading nations making new discoveries and inventions and even garnered the nickname, “The Startup Nation.” One sector of this high tech environment consists of religious women who have found their niches in this modern environment. Another fact is that Israel is the only Western nation which has a positive replacement rate of reproduction thus having sufficient numbers of children, comfortably, such that the population grows. Replacement rate is considered, due to modern medicine and high survivability of infants to adulthood, to be just over two children per married women. We found a graph which depicts the average of OECD nations including Israel which we have included below which tracks live births per woman from 1970 through 2015. The reality is that births in Israel are on the rise largely due to increasing fertility rates amongst the religious Jews which has outpaced the declining birth rate amongst Israeli Arab women. Here is a link to a map of fertility rates the world over in case you are curious. As we referenced earlier, one of the contributing factors to the Roman Empire collapse was a falling fertility rate along with fewer Roman citizens entering into the Roman military. We are witnessing a similar set of circumstances throughout the Western World everywhere except Israel where birth rates remain steadily above replacement rate and many experts expect the rate to slowly climb with religious Jews leading the increase making up for the lower rate by other than Jewish women and the non-religious Jewish women who, just as the rest of the population, are just below replacement rates.

 

Graph OECD Births per Woman compared with Israel

 

The one term we often hear when referring to trends in Israel which appear to run counter to the rest of the world, specifically the developed world, is that Israel is an outlier. Well, if Israel is an outlier, then we are glad to be residing in a place which bucks current trends as in our best estimate, the current trends away from Judeo-Christianity and the Biblical religious observance as the mainstay of the population at large is the road to ruin and eventually to perdition. Israel has many areas where she has difficulties which require addressing, but name a nation which does not. Further, Israel lives in one of the more volatile and dangerous regions of the world, but this piece of land has always been fought over explaining much of Jewish early history. But from all we can discern, she has struck a balance between the technological future and the Biblical roots of the faith. Both are valued and treasured and both are finding a form of comfort with one another. But throughout Jewish history, specifically the years of Israel united during the early years after the Exodus through Kings David and Solomon, Israel has been an unusual place. When the Jews resided here, and especially when we ruled ourselves, the land was productive and the people flourished along with the land and when the Jews were absent, the land became barren and refused to give up her bounty. Since the return of the Jews to our homelands, the land has bloomed, but so have the people which is evidenced by the fact that most of the leading tech companies have opened R&D centers here in Israel as well as our Start-up Nation status. All of this is without surrendering to the temptation of taking morality into human hands and following the trend towards Secular Humanism and a socialist governance. Israel had a socialist governance and economy for the first thirty years and then started slowly but inexorably faster towards a capitalist governance and economy. That too makes Israel an outlier as the trend in the developed world has been to drift into socialism, declining birth rates, and an inevitable collapse staring many of these nations in the face. But this should not be depressing as the developing world and even the third world are all suffering collapsing birth rates which will soon also fall below replacement rates. This has proven true even for many Islamic nations such as Iran where their reproductive rate per woman in 2018 was a mere 1.61 children per woman as the fertility rate of Iran has fallen gradually from 1.69 children per woman in 2015 to where it is today. We better come up with those robotic units which are supposed to replace people in many tedious, repetitive, dangerous and other undesired positions as well as service industry positions as we will soon not have sufficient people to support the aging populations, well, except here in Israel, or as we like to call her, a bit of Heaven on Earth.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?”    Friedrich Nietzsche

 

The Hole in the Whole Society

 

Friedrich Nietzsche gave us the terms, causes, cures and repairs required when dealing with Nihilism. Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism, the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning, were important in the effect that they had on Martin Heidegger, philosopher and Nazi-backer extraordinaire. Heidegger took the idea of nothing, of emptiness, of the null set and produced the framework upon which postmodernism was built. Postmodernism took the nothing from Nietzsche and applied it to every concept and made everything irrelevant, worthless and simply nothing. The followers of postmodernism believe that G0d is dead or never had existed. This takes the postulation that the universe came out of nothing and thus everything within the universe is nothing. The premise behind postmodernist is that there exist no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truths. Simply put, everything is relative and open to each individual’s personal definition and no definition is wrong because to claim there is a wrong definition would be to define what something was not. There is no reality other than what you personally believe reality to be but your reality exists no further than your existence. If you do not like your definition which describes your reality, you are free to redefine your reality and there are no limits to how many times you may redefine your reality as it is your reality and does not have any effect on everyone else’s definition of reality. Postmodernism, by its own definitions, removes any basis for religions because religions are all based on certain absolutes, defined morals, specific laws and other items which are defined specifically and as nothing can be absolute and definitions are all relative and must remain undefined, religion has lost its basis. Politics likewise has no real existence nor does nationalism or any other form of organization because any organization would have, by definition, rules which postmodernism portends that there can be no absolutes, no definitions and no rules. Postmodernism has one very dangerous and destructive conclusion, namely, life has no intrinsic value and is thus worthless making whatever one does of no real value, as there can be no real value.

 

This lack of meaning and lack of any intrinsic value of life and the emptiness of society with no rules and nothing such as right and wrong as we define such terms for ourselves has become the basis for what teachers teach in the public schools and throughout most colleges. They tell children that everything is of no worth and value is a figment of each individual’s mind and these values extend no further than their own thoughts. Then they take all of this a step further and teach that laws have no actual meaning and each of us can make up our own laws by which to live under. The laws of our societies are simple contrivances invented to control us and other than control, they are valueless. There is no morality about the societal laws because we each define our own morality and it does not require that it be restrained by the laws. What they leave out of these lessons is that breaking the societal laws has consequences, breaking the moral codes has consequences, breaking the traditions has consequences. The main consequence is that if your definitions, which they are taught are just as righteous and valid as anyone else’s and they need not care about what the rest of the world thinks, vary too broadly from what the majority accept, you will become an outcast with few if any friends and will very soon find your life empty and without other human sharing or contact. When a person with slightly deviant tendencies develops their own set of rules defining their social beliefs and structures and it is also deviant such that the person becomes ostracized, this is a recipe for a destructive personality to develop. These individuals are amongst the most likely to become a mass shooter, including a school shooter. These individuals who end up outside of the norms of the societal norms and has been counseled that there is nothing wrong with their deciding to be outside of the norms in no way makes them wrong and they should not face any real consequence for their beliefs.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger

 

The problem is there are consequences for having such deviations from norms and telling such a person that they do not need to adjust to attempt to return within societal norms, sets them up for some very rough and hurtful rejection by their peers. Even in postmodernist thought, we know that rejection has effects and they are real. We know that rejection, if left untreated has some very nasty results. Consistently telling a person that the rejection is not their fault nor really the result of their different value system and wayward actions, but it is actually the problem of the rest of their peer group because they are being judgmental, something which is inherently wrong, about the only thing which is defined as wrong. So, the person being rejected will begin to blame their peers for their rejection because their wayward actions and differing beliefs have been validated by the counselors and teachers because of their belief in the absoluteness of their postmodern beliefs. Then, when the rejected person acts on their blaming their peers for acting scornfully against them and decides to punish them for their rejection and wrong and hurtful actions, when the counselors and teachers are asked about the shooter who also usually commits suicide, they claim they saw no reason as he was a quiet and well behaved, there is no such thing as wrongful behavior to these counselors and teachers, and they saw no real problem or any signals that such violence was imminent. They might note that the individual spent a greater amount of time alone off to the side but there was nothing wrong with this situation, despite this was not being a voluntary isolation but caused by peer rejection as this youth did not fit in nor did they act in a way which was acceptable as normal by their peers.

 

What does this tell us about these mass shooters? Well, it tells us that they are a direct product of our postmodern standard which is being foisted on the society by in large by the education systems throughout our society. Postmodernism has even crept into some of our religious institutions who have taken up the popular beliefs of our no rules societies and rejected their own teachings in their texts such as the New Testament, Old Testament, Torah, teaching of Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Taoism, Shinto and virtually every religion. This has led to the more Orthodox and traditional institutions central to these religions finding themselves in a war with the more liberated branches of their religions who through postmodernism have decided that the rules need be changed, loosened, liberated and even simply lost. Postmodernism has brought on problems which were probably never anticipated by those who originally took the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche and applied the expanding of his concepts by Martin Heidegger and the other postmodernist philosophers. Teaching the youth that there are no absolutes have proven dangerous despite many refusing to blame the consequences found on their philosophy. Postmodernism, the way it has been used in many classrooms and universities has led to replacement of religion and traditional societal standards which had served Judeo-Christian and Far Eastern societies for centuries if not millennia with free wheeling variable rules subject to whatever feels good or seems appropriate at the time. These concepts have had consequences which are, more often than not, covered over and explained away often simply because those best qualified to see these results are also those most sold on the validity of postmodernism. They believe that postmodernism is a proven system under which a society will operate with maximum freedoms for every individual as long as each individual takes personal responsibility. This is where the system has not functioned, as the students do not have stressed that they take personal responsibility for their actions, instead they are stressed that each person can develop their own rules and structures in life but not that they need to structure them with some regard for the norms of the societal norms of their group. This is something that most adults understand, as they must cooperate in order to keep their employment, live in their neighborhoods, live with their groups, clubs and other organizations and groupings. Youths have not developed these structures nor do they understand the complications of social interaction and when they hit puberty, they face the strains that their changing physiology places on them and without definite rules and social structures, they can easily develop psychological problems with unfortunate deadly results. What is the repair for this is likely beyond our pay grade. Our only advice is that vulnerable youth require rules, standards of behavior, consistent expectations and structure in their lives upon which they can build purposeful and meaningful lives. Teachers, parents and counselors need to work together as a team to provide these and these requirements leave little room for such an advanced and adult philosophy as postmodernism. But what do we know?

 

Beyond the Cusp