Avigdor Lieberman, the Deal Breaker

 

Introduction of Issues
As leader of the Yisrael Beitenu Party, Avigdor Lieberman has decided to use the leadership position to mount attacks upon the Haredi and religious Israelis. His complaint revolves around a set of complaints including that public transport be allowed to operate on the Sabbath; the recruitment law which requires every citizen, including all Haredi, serve in the IDF; and for all Yeshivot students and other Torah and religious oriented education students be required to attend regular general state education system which allows for their Torah and religious specific education on their own time. One can only but imagine what his next demand might be at some future critical points such as, well, cutting all public subsidizing of religious oriented schools which are not licensed as having certified general education systems and then Synagogues and on and on. Perhaps he would call for expanding on the court order demanding co-ed seating at a religious concert where the vast majority preferred separate seating and most others might feel some disappointment but worthwhile to hear the concert in Synagogues, the Western Wall and everywhere else where this practice of separation is currently enforced.

 

Avigdor Lieberman

 

 

Dear Avigdor Lieberman

 

Avigdor Lieberman, you have been moving inexorably leftward to such an extent that these claims of being conservative is starting to ring hollow. We understand that you support the IDF and this is commendable. But your rubbing elbows with the Blue White Party, a group which has stated their support for the Two State Solution paradigm with surrendering lands to provide the Palestinian Arabs their own state up to the, as Gantz stated very early in the campaign, Separation Barrier. You entered into vote sharing with the Blue White Party which completes cementing your leftward drift reaching a point well past center. Your claims, just as those of the four generals and Yair Lapid, that you support the right-wing and the Israelis living in the Shomron appear as valid as the claims of the average apparatchik spreading disinformation. Your demands of Netanyahu for your support in the April elections was not made with any degree of honesty. You knew that those demands would force the Haredi Parties out of the coalition leaving Bibi with about the same situation we are facing once more, the only government available would be a unity government with Blue White which would break-up the Likud Party with many of the religious and honest conservatives fleeing to the other right wing parties which stand stronger on these issues. Your antics will eventually lead to Jewish Home, National Union–Tkuma and New Right gaining in strength where they will be able to control the discussions and sooner or later take over some future, sooner rather than later, coalition. These are your positions and the items upon which you have decided to take your stand. One of your main complaints is that the secular population and non-Jews not be forced to lead a religious life by the state. Allow us to discuss this point even if it is but the smallest part of your crusade.

 

Your demands go far beyond freeing those who would rather not be put out by religious laws and be free to desecrate the Sabbath with the blessings of the law and the State. Instead, you would instead force by the law to reside in a secular state which would force their allowing vehicle traffic on their streets on Shabbat and that Torah education be pushed into the region of an elective such as after school clubs except with a heavy study load. You have left no room, by your own admission, and refused to allow for any compromise or middle ground. Maybe there can be some middle ground such as allowing each city, township, community and neighborhood be permitted to decide such laws concerning Shabbat and whether they preferred to observe the Sabbath. Also, perhaps a certain amount of secular education could be considered to be met by any Yeshivot and other Torah or religious oriented education, in order to receiver accreditation or certification which could make them more attractive to those who desire a balanced education. The schools which fail to meet the standards would not be shuttered and those which choose to remain with their current education system be permitted to do so. People could decide for themselves which educational opportunity they wish for their children. All that is needed is for more free choice and as broad a selection be allowed to be presented to the public. There has to be some happy medium by which both communities, religious and secular, be allowed to choose for themselves. As far as the draft issue, a real sticking-point for the past few governments, could be set allowing for a percentage of the Yeshivot and other Torah or religious oriented education systems be permitted deferments. The enlistment from the Haredi and religious communities has been rising over the past decade and is predicted to continue as their communities have been slowly moving towards what you would call normalization. Your stance that it is unfair that the secular public is forced to obey religious laws and your solution is for the religious community to live under secular laws, which often makes their lives impossible as they would prefer to live them. You are simply demanding that everything be done under your preference and who cares about those who have different views and desires.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

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

 

Freedom of Speech and Religion

 

Bezalel Smotrich started a firestorm after he spoke with a receptive audience, “We all want the State of Israel to follow the law of the Torah,” Let’s be honest, if this had been the entirety of his statement, it still should not have elicited any rebuke nor should it have started what can only be decried as sheer panic while instigating what we can only describe as a vile and venomous hatred. His audience was largely, if not totally, in favor and accepting of what Bezalel Smotrich had stated before he added a little caveat, which, we are willing to bet, was seldom reported with anything near the hyperventilating hysteria as the introductory statement. The remainder of the critical section reads, “we just can’t because there are people who think differently and we need to get along with them.” Now that sounds like adding the honest assessment where the opposition to such a move is currently too strong and opposed to such a state. All Smotrich had consciously stated was his desire and the reason that such a desire need be checked before one enters the halls of power, the Knesset, simply because Israel, as she is currently populated with almost half the Jews not being particularly religious or not at all religious and along with the mainstream media make a loud cry of lament and agony merely at the mention of the Torah becoming the law of the land, are not to this point in their slowly evolving evolution moving inexorably towards a more religious nation. But Bezalel Smotrich did not claim that he was planning on introducing something which not only called for Torah observance but recognized that there exists far too much resistance to such an idea for such legislation to pass becoming law. But Smotrich could have stated something so benign such as, ‘the Torah has lessons from which we could all take benefit.’ There would have been those who would have yelled and screamed to an even higher level with the media making sure to use all their stored and ready hyperbole to drive the hysteria.

 

The insinuation that should Israel decide as an overwhelming majority that the time has arrived to prepare and work to establish the Messianic Age and hopefully make Israel prepared and deserving of the Messiach, that Israel would become a theocracy similar in its visions as Iran and is actually more preposterous than if one would claim that Israel, due to her relatively sizable population who favor socialism are taking Israel towards becoming an Atheist Communist nation similar to the USSR. What is amazing about most of the media in Israel is that were somebody to announce their desire to make Israel a socialist nation where the rich are burdened with exorbitant taxation in order to eliminate poverty, they would treat this news as an inspirational vision for the Israeli future and a step towards their desired goal. The media had a similar outbreak of hyperventilation when retired General Rafi Peretz made a favorable statement favoring religious Zionism when speaking to a Yeshiva. The leftist media is so vehemently against any and everything which has even the slightest taint of religiosity as if it is bringing on the End of Days. Their view of religion is that it no longer has any place in this modern world. What is beyond irony is that their Secular Humanist-Socialist world view is so solidly entrenched in their minds that religion is treated as an ancient set of rituals which have absolutely no place in their views of the modern world. What makes their anti-religious attitude is that even many physicists are approaching the view of whether or not there was (is) a creator is leading them to believe that there had to be an intelligence behind the evolution of the universe. Some physicists have found one means of proving that a creator is unnecessary by claiming that the reality is a Multiverse where every possible combination of properties possible all exist in at least one of the infinite universes which exist. This allows them to claim that we exist in this universe simply because the right formulae exist describing the forces and dimensions necessary to support our kind of life-form. They would need to accept that there exist infinite universes where life itself, as we know it, even including Tardigrades, is completely impossible. That implies a great waste of dimensions as in their models the vast majority of universes collapse in upon themselves or simply fly apart expanding faster than matter can be permitted to form still becoming a wisp of nothingness. Their model claims that our universe is special in that it has permitted not only life, but intelligent life, assuming that Homo Sapien is actually intelligent. All this theory is, is a means of eliminating the need for a creator and some intelligence behind the formation of our place in our universe. By the way, the media love these physicists as they give erudite backing to their idea that there is no Supreme Being or intelligence behind the formation of our universe. They, and the physicists who back them, will take any theory which removes Hashem from the equation. One could always postulate that Hashem created all of the universes of the Multiverse simply as a means to forming one which was special, our universe.

 

Is the Multiverse Real

 

This brings us to the crux of the situation in which we reside. Academia and the mainstream media along with most of the entertainment media and much of the society have decided that religion is something which was possibly necessary thousands of years ago, but in this modern and so sophisticated society, the most primary intelligence and the control of what is to come in our future comes from the efforts of man himself. They believe that humans are the supreme intelligence and are the means of all which is to come. They are adamantly entrenched in Secular Humanism and insist that socialist governance is the greatest means by which everybody receives that which they might need. When anybody suggests that capitalism or religion have a place in our future, the media and academia unite in denouncing the person who made the offending comments. The media will castigate anyone who deviates one iota from their ideas of a perfect world where mankind is the driving force and there is no higher entity and religion is simply a set of rituals from an era from which humanity has progressed beyond. These beliefs actually have a place out of history. The Hellenistic Greeks also believed that mankind was at the absolute pinnacle of evolution and there could be nothing more advanced or perfect than the human being. They worshiped the human form and believed that upon birth a person was deemed to be the coming of perfection. In ancient Greek society, were a child born with any defect physically, such a child was permitted the graces of death as they were not the perfect human form, the ultimate form in all of creation. This idea that humans are the ultimate form of creation and there is nothing beyond the human being is far from a new idea as the Greeks expounded such a belief and the Romans were close behind. Yes, sure they had their gods, as we are merely human and despite the almost unlimited abilities any human might have where they were considered almost equal to the gods, they still knew that a human was not omnipotent. The Jews at that time also believed that the human being was at the pinnacle of creation. The difference is that in Judaism there is a creator, Hashem, and we are but his chosen creation and everything around us is credited to Hashem. The Greeks and Romans had their gods for everything from fire to lightning to the sustenance they consumed but their gods were more human than noble. Judaism is different in that people, unless chosen as were the prophets, are nowhere near the level of Hashem, the creator of all that is. The Greeks, in particular, believed that many of the best amongst them were on such a level as to argue with their gods where in Judaism, with the possible exception of Moses during the Exodus, nobody was of sufficient power or ability to argue with Hashem. In Judaism, we look to Hashem to provide when we are unable and pray that we are worthy of his favor. Hashem reacted to the Jewish people in a manner directly connected to the ability and actual enactment of following Hashem’s commandments as expounded in Torah.

 

The Torah has been the foundation stone for the Jewish People for over three thousand years. But that is far from the end of the story of the Torah and that which it teaches. All of Judeo-Christianity is based entirely upon the commandments written in the Torah and upon many of the teachings of the prophets. Modern Western society had been based on the Judeo-Christian ethos for much of the last few thousand years. It remains the cornerstone of all that is the developed modern world. The problem which much of the developed world is currently facing is the lack of planning for the future. Those who have developed the concepts and defining ethos of the latest human belief system, Secular Humanism, is that the one, themselves, are the center and most important set of desires which need to be fulfilled. This egocentric set of values has had some serious consequences. The concept of the individual being the most important individual and that they should serve their own needs, desires and wants before they worry about other items. This view has the consequence in that there are no concerns, regards or obligations for the forming of the next generation. As a matter of fact, they see children as something unwanted and an undesirable imposition which would deny them of using all of their efforts and resources for their own pleasures and betterment. This has led to the situation where the people residing in these developed societies and whom are very often well-off not having any children. This is evidenced by the evidence of the swelling numbers of women having abortions. Between 1970 and 2015, the Center for Disease Control reports nearly 45.7 million legal induced abortions decreasing the numbers of births per woman to fall well below the required amount for replacement levels. This has led to the depopulating of Europe to such an extent that they are willing to import any and every potential immigrant as they require far more workers than they have produced through reproduction in order to support the otherwise aging population. This will be the epithet for Secular Humanity as a healthy option for a society proceeding into the future.

 

Offspring and a dedication to the following generations being a central pillar of Judeo-Christian society made for a far healthier society where the future was guaranteed. Some people have equated abortion with the idolatrous sacrifice of their children, often newborns, to Baal. That may be slightly overt but the reference is well understood. Certainly, late term abortions could easily be equated as such. One of the misconceptions when it comes to Judaism is that all abortions are forbidden. This is not true as Judaism does permit abortive procedures when the life of the mother is endangered. This makes sense when one remembers that half of the children birthed did not survive to age five, thus an adult woman was far more viable than any unborn fetus and thus the life of main concern. This is definitive threat to the life of the mother, not her mental health believing that a child would be an imposition to their life of seeking pleasure for themselves as is often the health condition used in the developed world. That is the main difference between modern atheist Secular Humanism and the traditional religions of Judeo-Christian religions where in Judeo-Christian beliefs are the desires, needs and requirements that children and future generations have the utmost importance while in Secular Humanism children are seen as an imposition interfering with the social lives of those who would otherwise be responsible for the establishing of the next generations. Secular Humanism is based on the now while Judeo-Christian belief is more focused on the future generations as well as a high standard of expectation on the individual to work to assist in the establishing of future generations.

 

In this little fact is the solution which is inevitable. Leftist Secular Humanism, and likely all forms of Secular Humanism regardless of their underpinnings, has one serious problem, they are dependent upon individuals who are disgruntled with religious life to repopulate their ranks as their reproductive rates across the Secular Humanist societies of less than one and a half children per woman, well below the necessary two to two and a quarter children per woman. On the other hand, the religious populations have reproductive rates well above necessary rates and thus they have growing populations. In time, the Secular Humanist population will dwindle while the religious population continues to increase. This sets the framing for the future in that religious populations and societies are at an advantage over those choosing the latest fads, namely Secular Humanism. In the interim, there will be a secular media and academia, but with time these too will be corrected and slowly become more religious and open to the religious dogma. For Europe this means that they will slowly fall under the influence of Islamic doctrine as the religious Muslims will reproduce while the indigenous European population which has largely adopted the Secular Humanist attitude and are not reproducing will be overrun by Islam as the Muslims reproduce at a far higher rate. The United States will fall to the Hispanic populations coming across the southern borders who are religious and have healthy reproductive rates while the former population which had fallen prey to Secular Humanism and lost their religious underpinnings and left the idea that having children is a healthy and necessary requirement of any society behind when they decided to follow the new age Secular Humanist philosophy and stopped having children. The religious, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim or virtually any similar religion will become the fore of future societies while the new ideas which place the individual as the foremost individual whom one is to serve slowly become extinct. As Torah taught, the main responsibility for one to live a complete and proper life takes more than their obedience to Torah but also their responsibility to the society and its health is reproduction and the care of those youths born as they are your future and the continuation of the principles of the faith. Once again, this is a problem which will be self-repairing with religious thought continuing into the future as it has since years gone by while Secular Humanist self-centered viewpoint will lead to the end of their numbers over time. In the end, Bezalel Smotrich will be able to witness that Torah observant Israel providing he lives long enough for the future to unfold before him, as will the rest of us who are part of the religious Zionist movements.

 

Beyond the Cusp