What Zionism Wrought

It is healthy and proper for us to periodically search out and examine the propaganda of our enemies. By so doing, we remind ourselves what we are fighting AGAINST. We remind ourselves what we are fighting FOR. And we remind ourselves of both the origins of our current predicament and the sources of weakness within our camp.

With this in mind, let us present the true face of evil. No, I will not take you to the pages of Hamas or Al Qaeda or any of the Nazi groups that multiply on the internet. Nor will I take you to the screeds published by the likes of the International Solidarity Movement. All these monsters are, frankly, banal. You know them well. Their noxious screeds will teach you little besides the obvious fact that any attempt to “engage” them is futile. The only kind of “engagement” open to us is the kind that involves one side pulling triggers and the other side dying.

You cannot negotiate with genocidal hatred, nor appease those who can only be appeased by the annihilation of the Jewish People. Peace with these creatures will only occur when the last of them is shoveled into a shallow grave. Until that fateful day, we can either lie down and die or we can accept the reality of war without end for us, and our children and our children’s children from now until the coming of Moshiach, may it be speedily in our days. And if we decide that dying is just not our cup of tea then we must resolve that not only will we fight but we will fight to WIN. And if we resolve to fight to win then we must likewise resolve to fight by any and all available means, rejecting no method because of squeamishness and false morality. If it is total war, then the lives of our enemies have negative value. If it is total war without end, then no distinction can be made regarding age or gender, nor can anyone in our camp who advocates “peace” be anything but a traitor to be executed immediately upon opening his mouth. If they seek to exterminate US, then the only possible answer is for us to exterminate THEM.

Thus it is written: “If a man plots to murder you, rise early and kill him first”. If the Oral Torah makes this statement regarding a single man, kal veChomer how much more true it is regarding the entirety of Am Yisrael! But you already know all this or you would not be reading this blog.

Instead, let me introduce you to the ultimate product of secular Zionism and humanist education. Here is a man who grew up in Israel and served in the IDF, a talented musician, composer, political commentator, comedian, Geffen Award nominated writer and… supreme advocate of the destruction of the State of Israel, elimination of the Jewish People and the abrogation of Judaism and Jewish identity. When asked to choose between the Jews and the “Palestinians” he not only proudly chooses the “Palestinians” but openly claims that that the Jew should not exist at all. He advocates the burning of synagogues before lecture halls full of college students. In a single breath he goes from condemnation of Zionism to condemnation of Judaism and hence to a call for assimilation. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Gilad Atzmon.

http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/thejewishexp.html

http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/tribaluniversal.htm

It is easy to dismiss this man as a “self-hating Jew” or “Jewish antisemite” or other some such label and go about our business. Yes, this man is, in fact, a Jewish antisemite. But labeling a thing is not sufficient. When confronted with an obvious threat, such as this person, we must ask ourselves how and why this threat exists. How is this man possible? He is not insane. He is obviously not stupid. What made Gilad Atzmon? How does one become a traitor to his own people?

Gilad Atzmon was brought up in a supposed Jewish State and educated in Israeli secular schools when they still, supposedly, taught Jewish pride, Israeli identity and all the rest of the buzzwords so beloved by the secular Zionist crowd. Don’t blame Yuli Tamir for him! So what went wrong? Why do we have the likes of Gilad Atzmon coming out of Israel in droves? Taking a brief glance around we have Oren Ben-Dor, Avi Shlaim, Yehuda Kupferman, Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe, Uri Ram, Shlomo Zand, Teddy Katz, Eyal Ben-Ari, Tali Fahima… Why is an alleged Jewish State producing such a bumper crop of traitors who openly call for the destruction of their own country and the extermination of their own people? How can a supposed Jewish State raise a whole generation of prominent intellectuals who gleefully collude with Hitler’s successors? Yes, we have their ilk in the Diaspora also, all those Norman Finkelsteins and Noam Chomskys, but these can be explained by the deleterious nature of the Galut, right? Or maybe not?

Perhaps they are out merely for personal gain? Maybe they just want the nice university chairs and the acceptance of goyim at fancy parties? Is that why they led and still lead the charge against the Jewish People and their own country? For hors d’ouvres and a few glasses of wine? How easy it is to dismiss them with this simple handwave, “traitors out for gain”! It is simple. But is it accurate? Yes, many of them have made quite a bit of gain. But others have not. Some have even been crushed by bulldozers. Yet still the question remains. How does a man just decide to wake up one fine morning and betray his country for some hors d’ouvres? What’s the underlying cause?

Science teaches us to look for similarities. When unlike systems exhibit similar behavior, we look for similarity among them in order to identify the common causes of the behavior. People are complex systems. They too are subject to scientific analysis.

Note the similarities between all these people. They are all relatively intelligent. They are reasonably well educated in secular humanist terms. And virtually every one of them started off as a secular Zionist.

So what is going on? Well, frankly, it is quite simple. Zionism produced these people. Secular Zionism is a racist, fascist ideology that uses pseudo-Jewish symbols in order to justify things that are morally unjustifiable to any good secular humanist. When examined in the prism of secular humanism, Zionism immediately falls apart. As a result, any adherent of Zionism who is also a secular humanist and has even a modicum of intellectual honesty is bound to not only reject the entire ideology but to turn violently against it. Let us examine the claims of secular Zionism in detail.

To start with, Zionism alleges itself to be a “Jewish Nationalism”. As such it claims that Jews are an ethnic group, like Russians or Albanians. It therefore follows that, as an ethnic group, Jews have a right to self-determination in their historic homeland. Since the ancestors of the Jews lived in the Holy Land, the Holy Land must be handed to the Jews in order to establish therein an ethnically Jewish national entity.

But this Zionist claim is farcical on its face. Jews are often ethnically different from their neighbors, but we are certainly not an ethnic group! How do a black Falasha, an Indian son of the Bnei Menashe, a milk-white Ashkenazi from Russia and a swarthy Sephardi form Morocco belong to the same ethnic group? And don’t forget, there are also Jews in China who look Chinese and Jews in Japan whose ancestors proudly wore Samurai swords and Jews in Finland who love huge knives, vodka and silence. In fact it is fair to say that if there were little green men on Mars, there would be little green Jews on Mars, too!

So if the Jews are not a single ethnic group, how can they have a right of self-determination? How can they, for that matter, have a single ancestral homeland? And if they do not have a single ancestral homeland and they do not have the right of self-determination, then to any self-respecting secular humanist, the entire Zionist enterprise is nothing more than an exercise in brutal colonialism, robbery and land-grabbing!

But wait, says secular Zionism, Jews were once a single ethnic group! It is merely that the original pure Jewish race was diluted by converts over 2000 years of exile. Therefore, the original, ethnically “pure” Jews must have a homeland!

Now, this argument is more than ludicrous, it is reprehensible. First of all, how do you prove that any one Jew is “pure”? How does any Jew “prove” that he is the true descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and, finally Judah? Because let’s not forget that if you define the Jews racially, then you must define the Jew as the son of the tribe of Judah!

And leaving aside the question of “proof” are we not looking at simple racism? What is a “pure” race? After 2000 years of exile, how can you even claim to have a “pure” race? And anyway, what about the Arab inhabitants of the Holy Land? Their ancestors have lived there for nigh-on a millennium! Why does some random person from Russia or America or India for that matter have any better claim on the Land than they? What kind of argument is it that, by virtue of your race, you have the right to dispossess people who have lived somewhere for over a thousand years, take the land they inhabit and erect upon it a country that belongs exclusively to your ethnic group? Indeed we can find this argument in history! This is the argument made by Hitler on behalf of das Deutsche Herrenvolk! It is also the argument made by apartheid South Africa!

When you wonder where our home-grown Jewish antisemites get their claims of “apartheid”, look no further than their secular Zionist textbooks! When they use analogies between Zionism and Nazism to justify Islamic conquest of the Holy Land and a Second Holocaust, don’t ask where they got them! They were taught them in school!

But secular Zionism advances yet another claim. The Jews have faced persecution throughout history, says secular Zionism, therefore the Jews require a State of their own in order to protect their rights and escape persecution.

Really? What about the Gypsies? Have they not been persecuted throughout history? Do they also need a state of their own? And what about the Mormons? They too have been persecuted. Should they have an independent state? And homosexuals have faced persecution for millennia. Do they not deserve a state?

Where does it stop? If every persecuted minority, whether national or religious or ethnic or cultural, is entitled to a state of its own, then every square block of every city in the world can be made into an independent state! Everyone can claim persecution and, on this basis, demand a state. Why even consider such ridiculous “solutions”? Instead, we can simply build democratic secular states that guarantee the civil rights of minorities. The argument again does not stand. But it gets worse!

Does the fact that one is persecuted entitle one to persecute others? If one’s home is demolished, does it entitle one to demolish someone else’s home? If the Jews have been persecuted by Europeans, for example, how does this justify setting up a Jewish State in the Middle East? And even if the Jews have been persecuted by some Moslems, does this give the Jews an automatic right to persecute other, completely different Moslems? Does having your synagogue demolished in Berlin justify your demolition of a mosque in Ramallah? Since when do two wrongs make a right?

But wait, says secular Zionism, the Jews have faced unique persecution. The suffering of the Jews is unique and special. There were pogroms and inquisitions and a Holocaust. There were rivers of Jewish blood spilled. Certainly this is a justification for the establishment of a Jewish State in “Palestine”! Or is it?

Half a million Gypsies perished in the Holocaust. They were hunted and exterminated because the Nazis considered them to be an inferior race of parasites. Altogether, ten million non-Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps. All of them were murdered with the same callous disregard for humanity. All were considered by the Nazis to be racially inferior, somehow depraved or “race-traitors”. Was their suffering irrelevant?

Who gave the Jews a monopoly on suffering? Why is the Holocaust unique? How is it different from Stalin’s collectivization of the Ukraine or from the genocide in Rwanda or from the current horror in Darfur? All these things are testimony of man’s inhumanity to man. Why should the Jews be special? The Rwanda genocide was just as brutal as any pogrom. More people died in Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The American Indians, hunted, murdered and driven onto reservations to die of starvation, suffered just as horribly as Jews murdered in the pogroms.

So if Jewish suffering is not unique, how is it special? And if it is not special, how can it be used to justify inflicting suffering upon others? Are not all people equal to the good secular humanist? Do they not all have equal rights? So why do the Jews get to march into the Holy Land after 2000 years, expel and dispossess the current inhabitants, establish a state that preferentially favors them and maintain this state by the continuous application of naked force? Certainly this is racism, colonialism, fascism, militarism. No one can justify such behavior from the point of view of secular humanism.

No, wait, claims secular Zionism, the Jews are a single people because of their Jewish culture!

Really? There is a single Jewish culture? Where is it? The secular Zionist cannot point to the Torah, the Talmud, the collected works of our Sages. These things are alien to him. All his life he has been taught that they are fairy tales. The new secular Zionist superman is freed of the shackles of the ghetto, with its ridiculous religious laws. He is a new, modern man. He doesn’t believe in such things as pillars of fire and parting seas and voices from Heaven dictating an eternal Law to assembled multitudes of redeemed slaves.

So what is the secular Zionist left with? Gefilte fish? Bagels with lox and cream cheese? Hummus and pita? Falafel and shish kebob on Yom HaAtzmaut? This is the unique and single Jewish culture?

First of all, what is single about it? Do Sephardim eat bagels with lox? Will you find gefilte fish in Ethiopia? Obviously not! Each Jewish community has its own customs and traditions, its own mode of dress, its own signature foods. In the secular humanist definition of “culture”, there is no single Jewish culture at all.

Secondly, what is so valuable and unique about bagels with lox? What, because bagels and lox must be preserved at all cost the Jews have a right to invade “Palestine” and establish therein a Jewish State? We can send tanks into Ramallah in the name of hummus and falafel and kebob on Yom HaAtzmaut? Not only is there no single “Jewish culture” to begin with, but it is also not worth keeping!

But wait, secular Zionism cries out, the Jews are special! The Jews are a chosen people. They are entitled to the Holy Land because they are chosen!

But how can the secular Zionist claim such a thing? Chosen by whom? For what? What makes the Jew “chosen”? He is not biologically different from anyone else. He has no superior culture, even if there were such a thing as a superior culture, which there isn’t. He certainly cannot claim a uniquely elevated morality. There are Jewish crooks and liars and murderers just like there are non-Jewish crooks and liars and murderers. There are humane and honest Jews, but there are also humane and honest non-Jews.

Without Torah-true Judaism, the concept of chosenness becomes nothing more than another tawdry reiteration of a ridiculous master race concept, discredited by history and actively disgusting to every unbiased secular humanist observer.

So, given secular Zionism and secular humanism as guideposts, why should a Jewish Zionist State exist in the Holy Land? It dispossesses a population that has lived there for centuries in favor of an imported population of foreigners from all over the world. These foreigners claim that 2000 years ago some semi-mythical ancestors lived there, but they themselves speak dozens of languages, come from dozens of countries and are virtually indistinguishable from the inhabitants of those countries. They have nothing in common with one another, except for some incoherent babble about suffering, some kind of pseudo-culture based around random food items and some racist philosophy about being a chosen race.

Manifestly, they are not a race, not chosen by anyone for anything, not superior to anyone in any way and certainly not entitled to any land. Therefore, the Zionist state is, by definition, a fascist colonialist enterprise born out of a reprehensible, racist ideology. Neither the Zionist state nor its ideology have any right to exist. To any self-respecting secular humanist it is self-evident that the State of Israel must be dismantled forthwith, the Land handed back to the “Palestinians” who are its rightful owners and the Jews who inhabit it either shipped off to their original countries or else forced to accept the rule of the “indigenous Palestinian people”.

But it gets worse! Given secular Zionism and secular humanism, why should the Jews even exist? They are not a nation. They have no single or unique culture. They claim suffering, but that is neither justification for having a state nor an excuse for their actions. They have invaded other people’s land, manipulated nations into doing their bidding and established a racist, fascist, militarist regime whose existence cannot be justified on any grounds. Therefore, since the Jews have been a source of constant vexation for centuries and since they are neither unique nor valuable, they should simply disappear! To put an end to the entire racist ideology of Zionism, the Jew must disappear along with his State! THAT is where secular Zionism ends up.

Are you surprised now at the likes of Gilad Atzmon? He is what his secular Zionist, humanist teachers have made him. He is nothing more than intellectually honest within the belief system inculcated into him from birth. The simple logical application of secular humanism to secular Zionism turned him from Zionist to anti-Zionist to murderous antisemite who gleefully colludes with the spiritual heirs to Hitler. Every intellectually honest person raised within the noxious belief system of secular Zionism is bound to end up exactly where he ended up.

Those who are less intellectually honest simply refuse to admit to themselves the contradiction between secular Zionism and humanism. Therefore, they embrace simple hedonism. If thinking is painful and leads to painful results, then let’s not think! Instead, let’s enjoy life. Let’s turn off the news and pretend that everything is “beSeder”. Better yet, let’s go to London or New York or some other nice place far away from all these problems and just enjoy life! Why fight and die in the Holy Land when you can lie stoned out of your skull on a beach in Goa?

Given secular Zionism and secular humanism, is it any wonder that the average Israeli is escapist? It is any wonder that he will vote at the drop of a hat for anyone who promises him any respite, however ephemeral, from his current predicament? Is it any wonder that he anticipates his own destruction? Is it any wonder that he dreams not of settling the Land but of the magical Green Card, not of Jewish women but of blond shiksas, not of proud self-defense but of some futile, impossible “peace”? He is what secular Zionism and secular humanism have made him – a rootless, godless, faithless, hedonistic, escapist, macho coward! Is it therefore any wonder that he is great at beating Jewish girls with clubs, but can’t do anything against the Moslem warrior of Hezbollah?

The Moslem warrior is willing to fight and die for his beliefs. He goes into battle obedient to the Word of Allah. He risks life and limb gladly for the honor of the Moslem ummah. Confident in Allah’s Eternal Reward to the Shaheed, he goes to his death without hesitation, even eagerly, with a laugh and the cry of “Allahu Akbar!” Nothing stands between him and the highest level of Allah’s Paradise except to be killed by the enemies of Allah, fighting for the cause of Allah. His prophet said so. It is written so in his Koran, again and again and again. There are over thirty Hadith that testify it is so. Therefore, what cause does he have to fear death? He does not truly die but goes to life eternal!

What does the Israeli have to fight for? What is he willing to die for? Pita and hummus and kebob on Yom HaAtzmaut? The Israeli has no belief in any god, no confidence in life eternal. He sees nothing beyond himself. His secular humanist Zionist teachers have liberated him from all these primitive medieval prejudices. They have made him free to pursue his “human potential”, to search for “personal fulfillment” unfettered by ancient superstitions.

Is it any wonder that the Moslem warrior is winning? Is it any wonder that the Israeli seeks only to surrender, escape, run away and assimilate into the great unwashed of the American goldene medina? Is it any wonder that even when he fights, he is ultimately self-destructive? In his heart of hearts he believes himself to be in the wrong because that is what he has been taught! He WANTS to die. He WANTS his country to be destroyed. This is what Zionism has wrought when it rejected Torah in order to build a secular ideology and a liberated, secular Zionist “new man”.

Zionism is bankrupt. It is over. It’s time to admit, once and for all, that the Zionist enterprise has failed and that it never had any chance of success to begin with. The seeds of its destruction were implanted within it at its creation. Now these seeds have blossomed into the poisonous flowers of antisemitism and defeatism. Secular Zionism inevitably leads to Jewish national suicide.

So what are we to do? Should we now lie down and die because some addled idiots’ secular pipe dream has vanished into smoke? Or should we, perhaps, find an intellectually honest alternative to Zionism? Where can we find a philosophy that does not lead to self-destruction? What makes us Jews? Is it really as shallow as bagels with lox?

Here is a novel idea! Let’s return to JUDAISM. For 2000 years we have yearned for the Land. We were born yearning for the Land, we lived yearning for the Land, we died yearning for the Land. We did so not because our ancestors lived there, nor because of our suffering in the galut, but because HASHEM, creator of all and master of the universe, has commanded us to yearn for the Land. HASHEM promised the Land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their children and their children’s children for all eternity. It is ours because He says so. We need no other justification.

The Torah is our culture. We need no other and we have no other. The rest is all meaningless, valueless drek, pretty accoutrements we picked up casually while wandering about among the nations and can discard at any time.

We are neither an ethnic group nor some cockamamie “religion”. We are a PEOPLE. We have a Law. This Law tells us who is part of our People and who can become part of our People and under what circumstances. It tells us everything we need to know about where to establish our State, how to structure it, how to defend it, how to govern it, how to conduct all aspects of policy, foreign and domestic, economic, political and military. Indeed, the Law tells us how to live every aspect of our lives. It tells us how to eat, how to sleep, how to dress, how to marry, how to do business and everything else we need to know about conducting our daily affairs from cradle to grave.

HASHEM gave us the Law and chose us to serve Him by carrying out His Law here on Earth. We are chosen not because of any inherent quality on our part, but because HASHEM says so. Among our service to HASHEM is His commandment to possess the Land He promised us, drive out from this Land any inhabitants who oppose our rule and establish therein a State that lives by the Law of HASHEM.

The Law of HASHEM is not subject to value judgments on the basis of secular humanism or any other man-made philosophy. It is above such philosophy. What man has the right to judge HASHEM?

HASHEM, the supreme ruler and creator of Heaven and Earth, defines what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral. He who goes against these definitions goes against HASHEM.

THIS is clarity. THIS is morality. THIS is worth fighting for. THIS is worth dying for. THIS is worth living for. We need not chase after the ephemera of Zionism and humanism any longer. In fact, we never needed to do so in the first place. Everything we need to define ourselves and everything we need to justify our actions in our own eyes is found within the Jewish triangle of Torah Yisrael — Am Yisrael — Eretz Yisrael. At the apex of this triangle is HASHEM himself.

Therefore let us topple the filthy idol of Zionism once and for all. Let us adopt Judaism. Let us crown HASHEM king. We need no other. Let us obey HASHEM’s Law. We should heed no other. Let us be His People. We can be no other. And let us build His State. There can be no other. The alternative to Medinat Yehudah is national suicide. There is no other way.

26 Av 5768

Parshah Eikev: Everything That is Wrong in Today’s Holy Land

This week’s Torah portion neatly summarizes everything that is wrong in the Holy Land today. All the root causes and symptoms of all the problems being experienced by the State of Israel and those trapped within it can be found simply by carefully reading the parshah.

To start with, what is wrong with Israel’s ruling elite and its godless majority? We can pile upon words words until Moshiach comes, but, in the end, we can summarize it all with this simple injunction from the parshah:

…Take care lest you forget HASHEM your G-d by not observing his mizvot, mishpatim and chukim, which I commanded you today, lest you eat and be satisfied and build good houses and settle, and your cattle and sheep and goats will increase, and you increase silver and gold for yourselves, and everything that you have will increase – and your heart will grow haughty and you will forget HASHEM your G-d… …And you will say in your heart “My strength and the might of my hand made me all this wealth!”…

Does this sound familiar? When you hear arrogant Israeli prattle about the might of the IDF and their great “pioneering spirit”, are you not reminded of this verse? In light of this simple verse, is the chillul Hashem that Medinat Israel is and always has been not explicable? They honestly believe that their might comes from their tanks and their planes and their deals with filthy goyim in Washington, and from the dollars they get peddling techno-toys and cute tricks. Only an idiot could think that the miracles of 1948, 1967 and 1973 can be explained by simple skill or training or brilliant generalship. Only an idiot could think that the continued survival and well-being of the Jews of the Holy Land depends in any way on Teva’s balance sheet or on the alacrity with which the rulers of the shanda called “the State of Israel” run to kiss the boots of goyshe animals in Washington. But the godless monsters who run the State of Israel and the addled horde of heretics who keep them in power honestly DO believe this!

So what is the consequence? Well, it is quite simple. Hashem will take from them all the things that these people think matter. Their power, their wealth, their security, their prosperity, their favor in Washington… It is all evaporating before our very eyes!

When was the last time the IDF actually won a battle, much less a war? One need only to look at the disgrace of the Second Lebanon War to see the worth of today’s IDF. Tens of thousands of glorified gendarmes with tanks and planes they had no idea how to use invaded Lebanon and were decisively crushed by 1500 Moslem light infantrymen. They can thump their chests all they want and claim that their enemies “hid like rats in bunkers”, but the fact of the matter is, they accomplished not a single one of the military and political objectives they set out for themselves. Hiding in bunkers, moving through tunnels, striking and rapidly withdrawing… These are the things the light infantryman does to defeat a mechanized opponent. This is how the light infantry defends ground. This is how it breaks heavy forces. It’s not cowardice. It’s DOCTRINE.

At every turn the Israelis were outmaneuvered. Man to man, one Hezbollah infantryman was worth 20 IDF kapos. Israeli commanders had no idea what to do. They would not move a block without calling higher for permission. Initiative was nonexistent. Creative thinking was entirely absent. Israeli soldiers sat around in vulnerable buildings and their tanks played pop-up target for Hezbollah ATGM squads. The level of indecisiveness and sheer incompetence displayed by the IDF at every level from the individual private up to the chief of staff has not been seen since the Italians invaded Abyssinia.

Today’s IDF does not qualify as an army at all. A simple glance at their gear, much less their performance on the battlefield, can tell this to any observer. Take any picture and look at the SWAT gear and the useless toy rifles. It becomes apparent immediately that what you are looking at is a glorified police force. After 40 years of abusing the IDF to play idiotic police games in Yesha and Gaza, the results Israel has achieved speak for themselves. Israel’s so-called “soldiers” couldn’t do a thing against Hezbollah. But they were great at beating and raping Jewish children at Amona and boy did they make short work of Gush Katif! And don’t worry, this is just the beginning!

Do you think that there might be a reason why Washington has begun making ridiculous demands upon the State of Israel? Is it a coincidence that this happened right after the IDF disgraced itself in the Second Lebanon War? Do you think that the Americans perceive a nation that inspires genocidal hatred within all its neighbors yet has a worthless military as a useful ally? Or do they perceive Israel now as an albatross around America’s neck? And as Israel trades terrorists for corpses and releases captive Moslem fighters for no good reason whatsoever, do you think Israel’s esteem rises higher in the eyes of those who make policy in Washington? The dominoes are falling one by one. As the rockets fall on Sderot and as Hezbollah builds up its arsenal, how long do you think it will be before the next war? And do you really think that America will stand by Israel when rockets fall not just on Sderot but on Lod, Haifa and Tel Aviv as well? If you do, I would like to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn!

But let’s get back to our parshah:

…Do not say in your heart, when HASHEM pushes them away before you, saying “Because of my righteousness did HASHEM bring me to possess this Land…”…

Does THIS sound familiar? When the Jews of the Holy Land arrogantly carry on about the unequivocal superiority of those who have made the great aliyah “sacrifice”, when they misquote the Talmud to call all those who do not immediately drop everything and rush off to their shanda of a State “idolaters”, when they treat the Jews of the Diaspora with contempt while simultaneously demanding our money, are you not reminded of this verse? When you hear arrogant assertions of the alleged indestructibility of the State of Israel, do you not hear these words? When you hear Talmud quoted out of context to “prove” that sitting limply on your hands in Israel as the Second Holocaust draws nearer and nearer is somehow “equivalent to all the mizvot in the Torah”, does it not ring in your mind? As those who speak the Truth and sound the bell of warning are vilified for their trouble, labeled as “spies” and censored, do you not hear in the self-righteous trumpeting of the Lemmings of the Holy Land: “Because of our righteousness we are given the Land!”

And as the rockets explode and the bulldozers rampage, as the terror multiplies and the expulsions continue, do you not see the terrible punishment? Do you not pray that the Jewish lemmings of the Holy Land wake up and see the doom before them? But Hashem has blinded their eyes and closed their ears and addled their minds because, even as the Evil Decree draws near and the Divine punishments multiply, still the lemmings arrogantly trumpet “Because of our righteousness we are given the Land!”

And they will stay deaf and blind and stupid. And they will continue to march mindlessly to the slaughter, to the Holocaust of hatchets and knives, rejecting all appeals to reason and sanity as long as they continue to arrogantly trumpet with their squeaky lemming voices “Because of our righteousness we are given the Land!”

And let us return to the parshah yet again:

…It shall be that if you forget HASHEM your G-d and go after the gods of others, and worship them and prostrate yourself to them – I testify against you today that you will surely perish, like the nations that HASHEM causes to perish before you, so will you perish because you will not have hearkened to the voice of HASHEM your G-d…

As you hear blasphemous assertions of the supposed holiness of a State that beats Jewish girls within an inch of their lives, destroys Jewish homes, desecrates schuls, hands pieces of Hashem’s Holy Land to Moslem adherents of Amalek and facilitates the murder of Jews in their thousands, are you not reminded of this verse? Are you surprised that the segment of Israel’s population that loudly and arrogantly called the State of Israel “holy” and proclaimed its corrupt rulers to have the halachic authority of Davidic kings was the first set of Jews to be viciously attacked by the forces of that very State? Their own idol has turned against them! They who have forsaken Hashem and come to worship a man-made THING, who have erected an unholy goyish altar of nationalism upon which to sacrifice their children to their Molech are the first to be beaten with clubs, raped, murdered, expelled and left to drift aimlessly through the Land as paupers!

None were as loyal to the idea of the “holy” State of Israel as the Jews of Gush Katif. None worshipped the State with as great a devotion. None ran to do its bidding with greater alacrity. And so it was upon them FIRST that the sword of retribution fell. Even as the Israeli pogromschiks gathered around them, the Jews of Gush Katif still had time to repent. If they had sent their women and children to safety in Yesha; if they had driven spade into the ground to dig tunnel and plant IED; if they had taken to their settlements with rifle and mortar and rocket and RPG and suicide vest; if they had earnestly prepared to soak the holy ground of Gush Katif with their own blood and the blood of Israeli kapos; if they had readied themselves to splatter the streets of Tel Aviv with the guts of the little Eichmanns who gorged themselves on sushi in Sheinkin as they eagerly applauded the coming humiliation of the hated mitnakhalim; the decree of pogrom and expulsion might yet have been averted. But instead the Cowards of Gush Katif chose to surrender their weapons and go meekly to the buses sent by their “holy” Molech of a State. They cried like women for what they would not defend like men.

Today as you see the meaningless running to and fro to build useless outposts, as you see the continued refusal to take up arms against the monstrous State of Israel and its psychotic rulers, as you continue to hear assertions of the holiness of the “first flower of geula”, remember this verse. The punishment is coming to those who will not repent. The promise of death and destruction is both individual and collective. Only those who reject the idolatrous worship of Medinat Israel and struggle for the birth of Medinat Yehudah have a chance at salvation. All the rest shall perish.

And finally let us return to the parsha again, not for a message of admonition but for a message of hope:

…You shall love the ger, for gerim you were in the land of Egypt…

This verse is always mistranslated. Some foolishly or maliciously render “ger” as “stranger”, coming up with the idiotic Christian assertion “Love the stranger, for strangers you were in the land of Egypt”. Does the Torah really tell us to unconditionally love every stranger? Every goy? What if he is an idolater? A murderer? A child molester? A Nazi? If he tries to kill us, are we still to love him? If he murders our children before our very eyes are we still to kiss him with love? Does Hashem really demand behavior that is not only idiotic but ultimately suicidal? Does Hashem demand insanity? Is He insane, chas ve sholom? Of course not! This is nonsense! The verse does not and cannot mean anything of the sort. “Ger” does not mean “stranger”. “Ger” means “convert” or “proselyte” if you want to be old-fashioned and fancy in your choice of words. But what does it really mean to render “ger” as “proselyte”?

Those who are unwilling to face the truth of Torah play silly games, rendering the verse “Love the proselyte, for strangers you were in the land of Egypt”. Strange, isn’t it, how the same word means two completely different things in the same sentence? Let’s render the verse the way it is meant to be rendered:

…You shall love the PROSELYTE, for PROSELYTES you were in the land of Egypt…

Why are so many afraid of the meaning of this verse? Why does this verse convey such enormous hope? The answer is, of course, before our very eyes.

Among the great mysteries of Torah is the amazing fact that the Jews entered Egypt with 70 people and left with millions. The force that invaded Canaan counted over 600,000 fighting men. Given the typical proportion of able-bodied adult males fit for military service in a human population, this gives us over 6,000,000 Jews! All kinds of foolish notions have been advanced to explain this seeming contradiction. The most popular is the assertion that every Jewish woman in Egypt has dozens and dozens of children for generations on end. In some kind of ongoing miracle, none were barren, none miscarried, none died in childbirth and every one of the children survived to breed! Amazing, isn’t it? The Jews of the Egyptian exile, descended to the 49^th level of impurity, sunk in wickedness and oppressed with brutal slavery for their assorted sins, somehow merited such a miracle for centuries on end! Really? Do you, dear reader, believe this? The Lubavicher Rebbe, one of the greatest tzadikkim in history, died without issue. Yet every last Jewish slave in Egypt had 30 children? The child mortality of antiquity was suspended? Epidemic diseases had no effect on the Jews? Women given the medical care of ancient Egypt, consisting mostly of incantations, incense and mixtures of animal dung, did not die in childbirth? If you are THIS gullible, I really DO have a bridge in Brooklyn. A million dollars and it’s yours!

The real answer, the answer that scares the racist snobs of Meah Shearim and Boro Park half to death, is right before their faces. They read it every year but, in an amazing feat of willful blindness, choose to ignore it. The vast majority of the Jews who left Egypt were CONVERTS AND THE CHILDREN OF CONVERTS.

Is it really this surprising? Go to any schul. Take a look around. Who shows up to every minyan? The convert! Who abides by every last obscure detail of every last mizvah? The convert! Who is the most diligent in Torah study? The convert! The righteous converts put us born-Jews to shame! If we all had a tenth of the emunah of the average ger, Moshiach would come this instant on a chariot of fire amid a choir of angels to miraculously transport us to the Holy Land and institute the Kingdom of God on Earth with a single snap of his fingers! The Jewish people will never be this righteous. Our lot is ultimately the struggle for redemption “in its time”. But it’s a nice vision, isn’t it?

Why is this verse a message of hope? Because at the end of the day, when the idiots who throw up barrier after barrier before those who seek to embrace the Covenant of Abraham are long gone, it will be the converts who will come from every corner of the human-populated universe to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy:

For thus said my Lord HASHEM/ELOHIM: Behold! I will raise My hand toward the nations and to the peoples I will hoist my banner, and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulder…

Whatever happens in the Holy Land, however terrible Hashem’s judgment against those who have embraced the idolatry of Zionist state-worship, however many tribulations the Jewish People are yet destined to see as retribution for our sins, at the end of the day Am Yisrael is immortal. As long as but a single Jew survives with but a single copy of the Torah in his backpack, we will be reborn. For we will heed the mizvah to love the righteous ger.

23 Av 5768