Obama Roasts Emanuel in 2005 + Abunimah Worried

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Obama - the Jewish and Kikish Views

Melanie Phillips brings a Jewish angle on Obama:

Barack Obama appears to sit on a nexus between Marxist revolutionary activists, unrepentant former terrorists, Black Power racists, Chicago mobsters – oh, and a Saudi who is trying to buy up America. If you were to turn up at US immigration control with a background of such associates, it’s a fair bet they wouldn’t let you off the air-bridge. Yet this man may well become President of the US!

This guy brings the Kikish angle:

I offered my young American friend an election scenario, in which the Jews overwhelmingly vote for McCain, and Obama is defeated by losing both Florida and New York. “It’s simple,” he said, “Many will blame this catastrophe on the Jews. Why? Because the Jews were the single most powerful voice against Obama.” “That is untrue,” I told him, “This is pure anti-Semitism.” “True,” said the bright young man, “but if they repeat it enough it will become the truth.” I believe that if Obama loses the election it will be because America is not ready to put its destiny in the hands of an inexperienced young man, whose challenge against the establishment frightened more potential voters than attracted them. I do not believe for a second that Jews in America will have any direct hand in his downfall. There is no Jewish conspiracy, no invisible hand pulling invisible strings, and no organized ethnic support against his candidacy. However, I do believe that the election of the next president might be a negative turning point for Jews in America.

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Is This Cool or is This Cool?

To vote "cool" please say "cool" in the comments.

To vote "cool" please do the same thing but say "cool".

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Leave Olmert Alone

The Israeli right has achieved very little in the 14 years that have passed since the Oslo disaster. Therefore, its ideologues and motivators must comport themselves with a little more modesty, and a lot more originality, than they currently seem to. Yet the opinion columns and the conference podium microphones all seem to be broadcasting the same tired old messages to us: don't give up this or that territory, don't give up this or that principle, let the IDF win, take back Gaza, bomb it from the air, don't give them guns, give them homes, free the girls, Olmert is a traitor.

As a consumer of messages, I find this fare dull and unsatisfying. And after 14 years of this menu, I would like something new please, waiter.

Here is what I find myself thinking lately: of course Olmert has no right to discuss giving up Jerusalem. Of course Israel is losing its last shreds of self-respect and deterrence in the way it is dealing with the Gazan bombardment of Sderot. Of course throwing money at Abbas and his "moderate" murderers is no solution to anything.

But maybe there is a reason for this loss of direction, and maybe just saying the current leaders have lost touch with Judaism and are an "erev rav" does them a certain degree of injustice.

Let's say we bomb Gaza into oblivion (a move I support, by the way. It is certainly better than sending our boys in there to get killed by the barbarian hordes). What then? Well, here is what happens then: the US administration disowns us, in a series of speeches by the President in which Israel is branded "a state overcome by fanaticism" and its government a "rogue leadership." The UN adopts a series of resolutions condemning Israel's genocide and the Hague court demands Israel extradite war criminals Olmert, Barak and Ashkenazi, for starters. No Israeli officer can expect to step on British, French, Russian or American soil any more, or anywhere else for that matter, without being arrested immediately. NATO begins training for bombing Tel Aviv. Iran develops and tests its bomb unimpeded.

What will Israel do then? Oh, I know – we will publish dozens and dozens of opinion columns in which our finest minds say "they are an erev rav!"… and at the same time, our hilltop youth will build another ramshackle hut somewhere and declare victory, even as the boots of the Border Guards are climbing the hill to tear everything back down.

Okay.

Now that everyone hates me, let me say this: I have the greatest respect for our heroes and heroines. I admit that do not have in me an ounce of the courage they seem to pack in tons in each of their Jewish hearts. I am no good at facing the police, I am no good at climbing the mountains, I do not have in me one percent of the bravery of the little girls who refused to identify themselves in court, not to mention the bravery of those who face the enemy every day as they drive about the roads of our beloved heartland, laughing in the face of the monsters of Ramallah, Shechem, Kalkilya, Jenin and Hevron. I was not even a very tough soldier in my army days (although I do have a green tank driver's license somewhere in my files).

Really, I have nothing in me that can compare to these people's courage and spirit.

But practically speaking (governments are, first and foremost, in charge of practical solutions) what do we want from the government? Think about it: a Yitzchak Shamir is not enough here. It is not enough to be able to stand fast and give up nothing. We can stand fast and give up nothing, but the Kassams will keep humiliating us. And the only way we can stop them is by creating mass carnage on the Arab side. Targeting the Hamas leadership won't do the job. They will just go underground. Besides, they grow heads back faster than skinks grow back tails, and the new ones are always just as ugly as the previous ones. I will say it again: practically speaking, only by creating mass carnage on the other side can we stop the Kassams for good.

Benny Elon's plan for voluntary Arab evacuation and compensation is nice for parlor talk. Hamas will only understand a "plan" like the one wreaked upon the Arabs by the combined forces of Haganah, Palmach, Etzel and Lechi in 1948. We all know this in our heart of hearts. So do we do to Gaza – and possibly Hevron, Ramallah and Shechem, what we did to Tzfat and Lod three score years ago? Yes or no?

Right.

This is the stage at which people say – "okay, smart-aleck, we get what you are saying. But what do YOU suggest?".

I will not fall into that trap. Not just yet. Let's see how this article goes down before we proceed to Stage Two. What do you think about this, dear readers? Practically speaking, how does Israel deal with the aftermath of a Gaza operation that costs thousands of Arab lives, half of them women and children? Please use the talkback function to express yourselves.

Speak, and spell out a long term practical policy, please – or leave Olmert (or "mert", or "Olmerde," as he is affectionately known in these parts) alone, because you don't have a better idea of what to do than he does.

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Message to HappyJoel - When You Make Aliyah You Will Sing a Different Tune

I saw half of your video (see warning below), man, and I hope you are having fun blowing smoke up the Christian folks', ummm, toes.

Maybe I should have seen the light side of it, but to me it looked like you just want to get on the good side of the folks in power at the expense of your home team. Which is really the essence of being a galut Jew.

Notice: contains obscenities. And like I said, I only watched half, so be careful.

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The Pink and Red Flag

The pink and red flags are both Jewish to a large extent (I guarantee you a large proportion of the activists you see in the above clip from a demo in Washington, DC last weekend are Jewish). They are also representative of a sick, sick ideology, that served us well when we were stateless, but are only harmful to us as Jewish redemption approaches.

If fascism is dictatorship by the strong, marxism is dictatorship by the weak. We want leadership of the strong - the Jewish nation. It is not fascism but it sure as heck isn't marxism either.

I believe redemption will come when these red/pink Jewish flags are furled (is that a word?) and the Israeli flag is waved high. Or maybe we should have a new flag, with the colors of the parochet that hung at the Temple, which actually combined two shades of red, white and blue -

"Tchelet veargaman vetolaat shani veshesh mishzar."

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Media Analysis for Rosh Hashana

Mama said knock you out!

Class, let us look at this piece in Ynet B'Ivrit, shall we?

The headline says - Soldier's Mother: "I'm Calm, the Kid Isn't Going Back to Zikim"

You see, this item and the talkbacks to it actually encapsulate much of Israel's pacifist problem, and its solution.

As we learned in the first semester of this course, the Left in Israel has been using a Cindy Sheehan "Mother" type approach very successfuly over the past 20 years. The discourse is 50% radical post-marxist feminism, 50% Yiddishe-mameh castrative.

The article's heading and the use of of the word "child/children" with regard to the soldiers doing basic training in Zikim are classic Yiddishe-feminist-pacifist defeatism. The Middle East's toughest army, the IDF, is not being bombed by terrorist scum, the subtext says. Jewish children are being bombed and their mothers/parents will save them by evacuating them from Zikim. There is no masculine army defending us, it says. There are only children who long for their mothers' comforting hug.

Sub-subtext: WE ARE DOOMED.

As of 8:15 Wednesday, the item is top story in Ynet. The lowdown on the attack on Syria is (pardon me) lower down, despite being much more significant militarily and more recent. Taking it a step further - the headline actually tries to answer the criticism that the editor (probably one of the feminist-pacifists who abound behind the scenes in Ynet) knows is coming: no, the mother says, I'm not being hysterical. "I'm calm." But my child is staying home, i.e. refusing to serve. Because the big bad men of Gaza shot a rocket at him.

Those of us old and wise enough to know how this kind of discourse took over our lives during Shelly Yechimovich's years in Voice of Israel, and how it featured in the "Four Mothers" campaign, and how IDF bases have been taken over by mothers (and fathers) with the help of Yechimovich sidekick Carmela Menashe, and how sick and weak this made the army - know what the danger is.

What I am happy about is the talkbacks. If you want to enjoy them, you'd better learn you some Ivrit.

Shana Tova - this bodes well.

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Pre-Kingdom Blues

Well I'm sittin' here waiting

In the Leftist State

Sittin here waiting

in this Leftist state

My brain's been washed and I can't recall the date.

So who's the enemy?

Why should I even fight?

Why be violent?

What gives me the right?

Watch Zehava and Ahmed go off into the night.


I got the Pre Kingdom

The Pre-Kingdom Blues

I got the Pre-Kingdom

Pre-Kingdom Blues

Hope I'm still here when the Big King rule the Jews.

Well they're raping and a pillaging

but we are in a dream

Yeah they're raping our daughters

and we're all in a dream

Do we ever wake up or will we all get creamed?


I'm sittin on a tree stump

in the Judean Hills

Feeling like a stupid chump

As the enemy kills

Boy I'm ready but Messiah still ain't here.


I got the Pre Kingdom

The Pre-Kingdom Blues

I got the Pre-Kingdom

Pre-Kingdom Blues

Hope I'm still here when the Big King rule the Jews.


I got the Pre Kingdom

The Pre-Kingdom Blues

I got the Pre-Kingdom

Pre-Kingdom Blues

Hope I'm still here when everybody gets their dues.

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Imagine... (a post for Kumah's neo-Marxist readers)

Atomised domestic life is part of the misery of capitalism


ATTENTION: if you are not a neo-Marxist, this post is NOT for you. Move on, nothing to see here.

Imagine...

Imagine, fellow travelers, a world in which our Great Leaders, Dr. Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilych Lenin are triumphant!

Imagine that we are able to use our powers of subversion, honed so perfectly when we attempted to turn the USA Communist, on a new demographic. Not workers, but women. Comrade Engels lay the foundations for this great venture 120 years ago, in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State". Lenin would later describe it as "one of the fundamental works of modern socialism."

Comrade Sally Campbell explains:

Under primitive communism there was a division of labour between men and women, but this did not confer privilege to men. Women, who tended to be the main gatherers, were often given authority over men - because their work provided the main source of nutrition for the group.

The development of more advanced agriculture was the turning point. The invention of the plough meant the ability to produce more than was immediately needed by the group. It led to the development of elites who were able to control the 'surplus'. It also fundamentally changed the role of women in society.

In hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies women were able to fulfil their role as producers as well as playing their role in reproduction. Heavy ploughing and the use of domesticated animals changed this. A pregnant woman or one with small children couldn't easily carry out these tasks and they increasingly fell under the remit of men. Agriculture also demanded labourers. Where hunter-gatherer societies had tended to limit the number of children so as not to deplete resources, agriculture could be more productive with more children needed to help in the fields. So as men became exclusively responsible for production, women saw their primary role shift to that of child-bearer.

Greater productivity benefited every member of the group. But once the surplus fell into the control of a minority, inequalities and classes began to form. The division into 'public' and 'private' spheres of society appeared - with women operating mainly in the “private” sphere. The private family became the mechanism by which private wealth could be passed on from one generation to the next. This entailed a final degradation of women's influence. Men, because of their economic role, became heads of the household, passing their wealth on to their sons.

As Engels wrote: 'The overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also. The woman was degraded and reduced to servitude.'

from The Socialist Worker Online

Now, imagine that we are able to successfully employ this mass ideology to take over the Western world. We can finally realize our dreams of domination! What was denied to our Red Communist fathers and mothers by Senator McCarthy and his ilk, we will achieve fourfold through the Pink Sisterhood.

The way to operate is this:

- infiltrate the academy and propaganda machinery ("media")
- rewrite the history of mankind as a history of subjugation of Woman by Man and present the nuclear family as a tool of oppression
- reach every single woman out there and build up a rage against "the Patriarchy" (we can use the same terms as we did in the original movement, just substitute "chauvinist pig" for "capitalist pig")
- by thus manipulating women, infiltrate the power structures (army, police, judiciary) and the political system
- wreak havoc on every possible level: create a pro-divorce cultural discourse; give financial incentives for women to break up their families; use empty phrases regarding "equality" to demoralize the army's fighting units; make brutal use of media-created sex scandals to terrorize and tame the State's and the military's leadership, humiliate the State internally and externally and bring down the symbols of power; cooperate with the enemy to the maximum degree, creating a protective shield around its agents while viciously prosecuting the State's police and military when it attempts to assert itself.

This will have a devastating effect on the entire West, and nowehere will it be more potent than Israel.

The Jews dream of rebuilding the Temple? Dream on, Yids! In a matter of one generation or two we can bring the House down. Their ideological leadership is not savvy enough to even begin to comprehend what we are doing. We even have many of their finest women on our side, convinced that they are operating in the service of justice, freedom and equality. The men are afraid that opposing us is a sign of "chauvinism" (we've implanted that guilt trip well inside everyone's minds) and are convinced that Judaism's "patriarchal" nature makes it inherently unjust. They will never dare mess with us: they will forever be cursing Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, weaving their pathetic conspiracy theories but remaining blind to what is happening under their noses, grabbing this hilltop or another, espousing their pet causes (Temple, Aliyah, Pollard), expending all of their energies on their naive love for legends, while we bring their whole House down and eventually finish them off, every last one of them, with a shot to the head.

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To Lead is to Love

Harav Kook was no kook. He said that just as the Temple was torn down because of sin'at chinam - pointless hatred between brothers - so it shall be rebuilt thanks to ahavat chinam - brotherly love for love's sake.

Now that may sound like one of those meaningless syllogisms Shimon Peres loves to make up ("better a peaceful valley without terror than a terrorist pissing in the valley", that kind of tripe) but Harav Kook was no Shimon Peres. He meant what he said.

There is a certain stream among the religious Zionists that thinks Harav was kidding. People from this stream look for Jews to hate and make a vocation out of hating them. This is the erev rav, they say, this is the leftist scum that controls Israel. We are good, they are bad, they say. They feel good like that. They vilify the government and the army and most of Israeli society, and are content to be the "pure camp" in all of this filth.

This is a dangerous trend, imho. I agree that the Zionist dati camp is the best camp in Israel, if only in terms of its sane lifestyle and its strong family and community values. I envy you, to the point of wanting to join you. But by living inside this worldview I just outlined as many of you (us) do, you are missing the chance to lead. And make no mistake - the window of opportunity for an emuni leadership is there, it has begun to open up and it will open up more and more in the coming years, beckoning us to leap through it. But do we dare? Leading involves loving. You cannot lead someone you despise. You cannot lead someone whom you see as inferior to you.

The majority of Israelis are what Naomi Shemer called anashim tovim be'emtza haderech - "good people in the middle of the road." This includes much of what we call "the elites." Please, stop looking at "the elites" as a cohesive body, they are anything but that. Look for the cracks, look for the blocs we can woo to our side.

Israeli society was formed by secular socialist Zionists, with the emphasis on "Zionists." Its core values could be summed up in two words: "build" and "fight!". It was the country where, for the first time in millennia, Jews built a Jewish infrastructure for a Jewish land and fought like men to defend it.

Over time, socialism withered and died. Into the ideological vacuum stepped a very radical leftist ideology, a form of pacifistic gender-marxism which was the opposite of what Zionism was all about. The result has been a period of shameful behavior by Israel, an abandonment of its manly core values for belief in withdrawals and surrenders, which was coupled with a hedonistic obsession for sexual license and scandal and gossip-mongering, as it often has been in history.

I believe we are coming out of that dark period now. There are signs all around us that this is happening. The media is full of articles blasting pacifistic draft dodgers like Aviv Geffen and Ivri Lider - people who have been this society's pop icons. Heroism is being talked about more and more. This is oxygen for the Zionist soul. Without deep love and respect for our military, we are dead men and women, and our children, G-d forbid, are dead.

The heart of the people is good. Jews who fight for their homeland are good. We can work with them. And we don't necessarily have to follow them. We can lead them, too.

Everyone knows the Redemption involves (a) a great leadership and (b) the Temple being rebuilt and (c) military victories and (d) everyone making tshuva. But what order do these things occur in? I think it's a, c, b, d (though I'm not convinced everyone will ever make tshuva - there are some advantages to having a non-religious minority to keep everyone on their toes. Also, they can make good rock'n'roll...).

I think the first thing the leadership should lead to is military victory. As a result of military victory, it will be possible to rebuild the Temple. The Temple cannot be rebuilt when Israel is only fully sovereign and in demographic control of the land to the west of it!

Our enemy is the Muslim-Arab bloc in the Middle East. It is not necessarily all of Islam (see third graf here). If and when we defeat the enemy - which has reached the point of begging us to defeat it, if you think about it - then we can go about rebuilding the Temple. Tshuva will come naturally in that situation, but not just secular-to-religious tshuva, also hareidi-to-Zionist tshuva. When emuni Zionism is a winning brand, people will join it. We will see thousands of those pale Me'a Shearim types joining the Paratroopers, believe me we will. But right now, with a tiny measly state in the middle of a frothing sea of (frothing) Muslims, it's not so clear that we are winners.

To make all of this happen, we need to lead. And like I said, leading involves loving and respecting, not separation and despisal. We need to look for the good things in the mainstream Israelis, the "good people in the middle of the road." We need to see them as part of our camp, and ourselves as part of their camp. We need to come up with pragmatic plans and with down-to-earth reasons why these plans should be followed. "Because Hashem said so" does not fall into that category for these people. So it cannot be used. Modern techniques of PR need to be used. A Knesset lobby needs to be created. And it can't all be about Yesha. Saying Yesha over and over again does not solve anything. I'm sorry to say so, but climbing and reclimbing hills in Yesha - while important in and of itself - does not cut it anymore either. Are we goats or leaders? Do we have geopolitical vision or are we just self-content parakeets?

Harav Kook, so I once read, had a picture of Herzl on the wall in his office. We need to reach a point where a new Herzl has a picture of Harav Kook on his office. Then we will be on the road to making it, big time.

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Family Values - Not Just an American Issue

MK Rabbi Chaim Amsellem

Mazal tov! A new subcommittee has been formed in the Knesset: the Subcommittee for the Examination of Claims of Legal Severity Against Men in the Areas of Welfare and Family. The subcommittee is expected to change its name to the Subcommittee for the Family.

It is headed by MK Rabbi Chaim Amsellem of Shas, and its members include MKs Rabbi Avraham Ravitz (UTJ), Moshe Cachlon (Likud), Marina Solodkin (Kadima) and Nadia Hilou (Labor).

If you look very carefully at the names of the people present in the July 4th session of the Knesset's Labor, Welfare, and Health Committee, in which Committee Chairman Moshe Sharoni announced the formation of the subcommittee, you may see some familiar ones.

Why is this subcommittee important?

It is important because family is the basic building block of society, and of Jewish society in particular. And it is precisely this basic cell of our national tissue that has come under violent attack by marxist-based ideologies in the past 30-40 years. These ideologies pose as chivalrous defenders of the rights of women, just as their predecessors, the socialist and communist movements, posed as defenders of workers' rights. But the leaders of these movements care about women just as much as Stalin cared about Russian peasants.

The subcommittee will try to understand why the divorce rate among secular Israelis has reached 50%, and whether this truly is a necessary evil of modern times. It will examine whether government policies are designed to encourage divorce. It will find out who profits from the divorce industry and try to understand the logic behind a plethora of laws and regulations, written and unwritten, which have taken away basic rights - such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right to love and raise your children and the right to be loved and raised by both parents, the right to live in your home, the right to freedom, the right to live free of unjustified financial persecution - from countless men, women and children of both sexes in our generation.

If anyone has a good idea as to how to convince dati-leumi leaders that this is an important issue, please let me hear it.

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Why the World Needs Jewish Princes

Click on pic for a seriously funny story

Europe. Think about it. All that wealth. All those castles and villas and fine cars and where does it all go? Into a culture of empty hedonism and post-colonial guilt. And the USA is just a more hardworking version of that.

The world needs Jewish princes. We need some Lord Shmuliks, some Count Kobis, some Lady Yaelis. I'm telling you, we need a decent-sized piece of real estate with some holes in the ground that ooze oil, and the world will be transformed. The location (location, location) we already have. But size matters too, what can you do. What we now call Israel is in truth just the northwestern province of our promised country.

Our princes won't galivant around the globe posing for pictures with hungry African kids. Our princes will be serious workers for Hashem, doing what needs to be done, taking care of business, in much the same way that the British colonial administrators of Victorian times, culled from the cream of the Oxford and Cambridge crop, took care of matters of empire. Only better, of course. And with less pomp and circumstance. One by one we will take down the dictators. The slaveholders. The drug lords.

We will come up with a system of mass transportation that does not involve .01% of the population dying in accidents every year and implement it worldwide. We will advise countries on the best system of governance for their nation. We will mediate between nations from a position of strength. We will hold interventions on an international level. We will lead by example. We will make good music. We will inject the world with Jewish energy and simchat chaim.

Mind you, when I say "princes" I don't necessarily mean the hereditary type. I just mean, think of a world in which Israel possesses true physical strength and wealth, on par with today's Germany and Japan, or maybe even the two combined. PLUS our other advantages: our brainpower, our creativity, our vitality, etc.. THAT - combined with a moral and just leadership - is a world nearing tikkun.

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Melting Pot Calling the Kettle "Kike"

So I'm wondering - what do our contributors / readers make of this?

The Jewish Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

Are some of the points he is making valid?

Is it not getting less and less easy to be both Jewish and American?

Isn't there a lot of similarity between the role of Jews in the US and the role of the Left in Israel, and doesn't it actually make sense that a country created, by and large, by a movement of Diaspora Jews would, in its initial incarnation, be overwhelmingly leftist? Does it not therefore make sense that nationalistic, belief-suffused American Jewish intellectuals could be a key group in shifting the nation onto the Right tracks?

Food for thought on a fast day.

PS: Caroline Glick says the Jewish Agency is out to take down Nefesh B'Nefesh. Apparently someone doesn't want religious olim.

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Eretz Yisrael - Where the Wild Things Are

Those of you making aliyah need to know something: Israel is not like any other place in the world, and not necessarily in a good sense.

It is the home of the Jewish people, and it is the home of the soul of the Jewish people. It where the Jewish people has reassembled after 77 generations of wandering the globe, after centuries of wearing peaked caps and yellow garb and having to walk in the gutter when a gentile walks by... of having a nickel rolled by them to see if they'll turn around, of being used by princes for controlling the rabble and being murdered - along with the princes - by the rabble when it revolted.

Some communities were small, some big, but any diaspora community is an incomplete unit, a lone cell or group of cells, not an organ, certainly not a complete body. Jews got used to being self-contained: for 1,800 or 1,900 years they had no king, no president, no one from their own community whom they had to defer to on temporal matters, except for the rabbi. Yes, they had to defer to the state, but that state was gentile, and any respect they had for it was always mixed with contempt.

Their habits, their traditions, their cultures, their identities, their ways of thinking, their music, their clothes, even the color of their skins changed over the generations, with each community going its separate way. You see this in our synagogues, where olive skinned, dark eyed Yemenites pray alongside pink-skinned, blond Ashkenazim, where the sons of Moroccan Jews wear dark European suits and the sons of German Jews wear oriental style needlework skullcaps.

A large part of the nation rebelled against the rabinnical authority and went its own separate way, discarding their parents' religion in favor of a new religion, invented by a Jew named Karl Marx. These Jews became the prophets of modern Leftism, whether in its pure Marxist-Leninist form or in the watered down version called socialism. It was davka this group that had the gumption, the daring, the political/organizational skills and the revolutionary spirit needed for a return to Eretz Yisrael and the refashioning of the fighting, farming Jew.

All of these streams came together against the backdrop of the worst instance of state-sponsored sadistic mass slaughter ever, the Holocaust. It was as if the remnant of the Jews had escaped Europe just before the door came down, Indiana Jones style, leaving all those who were not nimble enough to die agonizingly in the snake pit. And they, too, the remnant, were thrust directly into a bloody, never ending war with the savage Saracens of the East.

So the result is not just a melting pot. It is a somewhat crazy place, where streams that diverged hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago meet again, mix again, collide and clash until one is found to be stronger and the other takes a back seat, or until they mix and are no longer distinguishable. Leftism is clashing with Judaism. Middle Eastern ways are clashing with European manners. Classical symphonies with the crying, rhythmic chords of Arab music. Some Ethiopian Jews strut about in dreadlocks while others sport peyos.

People have to get used to obeying a common Jewish authority. They have to get used to having a temporal leader who is a Jew just like them. We can't all be our own prime ministers any more! We can't just get up and move to the next shtetl when the goyim get restless. We have to get used to having power - this is more difficult than one may think! We also have to get used to not blaming ourselves for everything, and not being able to "play the Jew" when things get rough. No amount of walking in the sewer will make the Arabs let go of their hatred for us!

Relations between men and women have to be refashioned. The Diaspora created a Woddy Allenish nebbish-Jew. Eretz Yisrael calls for a new type of Jewish man, and as a corollary, a new woman. But this is more easily said than done. The socialist farmer-fighters did well for a couple of generations, but they are rapidly becoming extinct. That generation turns out to be a problematic one, and it has left us with leaders who are fat, corrupt, and soul-less, or weaselly, fake-smiled, pseudocultured bureaucrats. Reinventing ourselves is painful, but necessary - again.

The world's attention is on us. People from Irkusk to Argentina, from Namibia to Nepal, know the names of our political parties and are familiar with the layouts and histories of tiny communities on both sides of our disputed "Green Line". They either worship our ancestors or blame us for the great upheavals the world is undergoing, or both. People here believe in God to the degree that they will go unarmed to pray at a tzaddik's grave in a city crawling with terrorist snakes, or they will hate those same unarmed praying Jews with a burning heart and see them as the source of all suffering and pestilence.

If you come out here, that is where you are coming to. If the world is but a stage, we are center stage, the lights are on us, the top critics are all there in the front row, all the channels are feeding the picture live, and we have to give a great biblical show that we haven't properly rehearsed for several thousand years, or have done nothing but rehearse for several thousand years. If you come here, know that you are entering the cauldron, that you are becoming an actor in the greatest drama of all. It won't be easy. You will find yourself screaming, crying, cursing and asking yourself what possessed you to join this insane asylum... and at the same time you will know - this is mine, it is my place, my language, my earth I am treading upon, for good, for bad, for ever.

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Anti-Semitism as Aliyah Tool?

The rest of the UK Channel 4 program on the rise of anti-Semitism Britain can be viewed here.

I always ask myself if in the end, anti-Semitism isn't the best pro-Aliyah tool out there. It's what brought the FSU's Jews here if I am not mistaken, and it certainly must be creating fertile ground for Kumah-type activities in Britain.

Of course, some Jews flee to Florida.

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Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick

US aircraft carrier Enterprise headed out to the Persian Gulf Tuesday where it was set join the fleet currently located next to Iran.


Be'ezrat Hashem this will work out. Otherwise, Tel Aviv may be in for missiles again. Even then, let's hope things will work out.

One thing I've noticed about the Middle East: for good and bad, the things that everyone expects to happen rarely happen.

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Israel is Not Israel

1906, Zionist Congress. Pic is clickable.

When you think about making aliyah, bear in mind that Israel is not Israel.

Let me explain.

Israel is not a Middle Eastern country you land in when you reach Ben Gurion Airport. It is not the country you read about in the Jerusalem Post, where people use shekels as money and evacuate Jews from hilltop communities. It is not the country from which Yishai and Alex broadcast to you and inform you that Shimon Peres may be elected president tomorrow, or where Arutz7 tells you that terrorists are lobbing rockets at civilians on a daily basis. It is not even where your brother lives and dines at Cafe Hillel.

So if you are thinking of making aliyah because we need you in the army or at a hilltop community or at a demonstration or as part of our economy, my very personal take is that you are thinking wrong, and may my esteemed Kumah colleagues forgive me.

I was 17, and had finished high school in the US, when I decided to return to Israel, where I was born and raised until age 7. I did this for different reasons, but one of them was definitely this: I want to change the world. I believe the world can be fixed. It's difficult but doable.

In order to fix the world what you need is a strong, large, economically well-off Israel in the middle of it. And that Israel needs to be respected, and it needs to have enlightened leaders who love and fear Hashem. The rest will come naturally: the cures to diseases, the end of African famine, the solution to the depressing boredom of living in Greenland - you name it - there's nothing a 60 million strong Jewish nation can't fix. And maintain over generations.

However, in order for this to happen, a good group of Jews, the right group of Jews, needs to lead Israel. And this is doable. Why? Precisely because this is a small country. Because this is a small country, a small group of people can really make a difference. It is very easy to become famous in Israel. And when you become famous in Israel, you can become famous worldwide. Because this is the country with the most camera lenses and microphones trained on it at any given time, in the entire world.

Let me give an example of what I mean, and forgive the telegraphic and somewhat mysterious nature of some of my posts - it's just that Kumah actually deducts from our pay if we write posts that are too long.

I decided at a certain point in my life to fight against an ideology which I thought was harming our nation. I started with a local pamphlet which I distributed in my community. Then I started bombarding the websites with talkback items. Then I wrote in Arutz7. Then I wrote in Maariv. Then I wrote in NRG and then in Ynet. Then I started appearing in TV shows. In the end I wound up semi-famous. Maybe even notorious, which is kind of better than famous in some ways. But most important: I made a difference. I influenced people. I had something to say, I said it and people heard. And things changed: a ministerial-level committee was formed to discuss one of the main issues I raised, an issue which had been taboo before. The op-ed sections of Maariv and Ynet changed, in ways I won't go into. Subjects were raised in the Knesset and a new committee may even be formed.

I am not saying this to say how great a guy I am. I am saying this because I want you to know that Israel is small enough, that one person can make a difference. And it's not just the size: it is a country full of Jews. The Yids are a stiff-necked race and when they are bad they are very bad, but they are ideological folks. When an ideology sweeps them up off their feet, and it matters not in this respect if the ideology says "Techezena eineinu beshuvcha letzion berachamim" or "workers of the world, unite!" or even "let's create a movie town and call it Hollywood" - there is no limit to what they (the Hebes) can do. This is a proven fact, and only a fool would dispute it.

Also, Jews are probably the world's most communicative and hyperactive people. If you have a better explanation of why there are twice as many active cellphones as people in Israel, please let me know. This creates an atmosphere that is very conducive to ideological change. People listen to you. Of course, after they listen to you, some of them call the police, but still - at least they have listened, and they have listened with Jewish ears. The ones you have convinced will process what you told them in a Jewish way and then disseminate it further, and/or act upon it.

So what I'm saying is this: think of Israel, not as a country, but as a Zionist Congress. This is the 107th Zionist Congress, folks. You come here, you become a delegate. Think of the delegates in the original Zionist congresses, voting on the Uganda plan. Does anyone doubt that every single delegate made a difference? If it weren't for the enthusiasm of the Russian delegates for the original Zion, so I once read, the Congress would probably have voted in favor of Uganda as our homeland. And the world would be a different place now.

As an Israeli, you can change Israel. And Israel can - and will, I believe - change the world.

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Recognize A Family Member?

Ynet in cooperation with Bitmuna publishes a weekly dive into Israel's past with sepia photographs from a long time ago.

This week they are featuring photos of the dedication and construction of Hadassah hospital on Har Hatzofim (Mount Scopus).

The above photo shows Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, future PM David Ben Gurion, journalist / Zionist activist Nachum Sokolov (I think he is the second one to the right of BG, clasping his hands) and future president Yitzchak Ben Tzvi (my guess - smiling lanky guy on the left) in 1936. The other people's identities are not known and the Bitmuna folks are asking the public to help identify them.

This is a photograph of two of the builders - identified only as 'sons of Jerusalem.' I imagine they are Jews.

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BREAKING: Elders Hold News Conference

Pandemonium around the podium

A spokesman for the Elders of Zion, Mr. Larry Elder, is holding a news conference in which he is stating the Elders' recommended course of action in Sderot. I am liveblogging, here goes:

LE: ... the Elders recommend the following:

a) we get a normal Prime Minister instead of this meshugener shaygetz.

b) the new PM gets the IDF to build The Gazanator.

c) the new PM holds a news conference in Sderot in which he unveils The Gazanator.

d) The Gazanator is a computer connected to some Howitzers on one end and the Color Red incoming rocket alert system on the other. Basically, what it does is confirm that there is an incoming rocket and have a Howitzer fire a shell into a randomly selected point in Gaza's populated areas.

e) The PM then proceeds to load the Howitzers with shells himself, so as to make clear the responsibility for any "war crime" is his and his alone. He explains that once the Gazanator is turned on, the only thing that will make it fire shells are incoming rockets from Gaza, and the only thing that will make it stop firing shells is a cessation of incoming fire from Gaza.

f) PM turns on The Gazanator. End of story.

(silence, then commotion)

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Exclusive: Meeting of the Elders, 10/05/07

the Elders when they were a bit younger

The Elders have met again. This took place last Thursday in the vicinity of the Temple Institute. Sorry it took me this long to get the info, but you're not going to get this anywhere else so just be grateful!

Anyhow, this meeting was devoted to a Stages Plan and to updates regarding the tunnel work currently being painstakingly carried out under the Temple Mount. When I say painstaking, I am understating to the maximum degree: the digs are performed by teams that include archaeologists and explosive experts - this is not just your ordinary tunnel. Plus there are acoustic issues - it's important that the people praying in the mosques don't hear the guys chiseling away. Sipur mehahaftara as we say!

So the tunnel part is confidential, I was not even allowed to look at the protocol dealing with that.

As for the Stages Plan, here is the relevant section:

Reb Moishe ben Duvid: Hey, why do Jews have big noses?

Reb Itamar ben Fishel: Because the air is for free, yes we know that one! Go on if you want to present your plan!

Reb Moishe ben Duvid: OK OK. So here is the plan I suggest. I have been speaking with Reb Effie [Eitam] about this by the way, he is leaking the plan in bits and pieces so the public can get used to it.

Stage A as you see in this chart is to make the public discourse in Israel a bit more aggressive and violent, get the pacifists in the media to gradually shut their yaps. This is progressing nicely. The tone is less sissyish and more violent, and this is good. I am seeing graffiti that says 'Kahana Tzadak' and it is not getting wiped away as fast as it used to.

Stage B is to get 'the cocktail' in government. I say cocktail because while we do not have a leader who can cure us from our AIDS, we can, through a combination of leaders, hold off the Arabs for quite a while. The cocktail looks like it will include Netanyahu and Eitam.

Stage C is to whack the Israeli Arab population over the head as we say. This we will accomplish by staging a provocation and then getting the 'cocktail' to declare martial law throughout the major Arab concentrations, from the Galilee to the Negev. There will be a curfew for at least a year, probably much longer, and it will be strictly and harshly enforced.

Stage D will be to convince the government to start bombing the Arabs in Yehuda Shomron and Aza, and show the world that we can be as mean, crazy and underhanded as the worst of them if need be. We don't play by the rules when the other side doesn't.

Stage E will involve a 1948-style expulsion of 90% of the Yesha Arabs.

Stage F will involve resettling 2-3 million Jews who will stream here, mostly from the USA, as a result of the massive anti-Semitic wave stage E will engender.

Stage G will involve getting some serious allies with us as we prepare for Stage H, the showdown with the Mohammedans. This means Zionist Christians but also countries like India and possibly Africa [I must say I agree with him: some sub-saharan African countries were the only ones who did not boycott the Jerusalem Day event! They have a simple, true belief, they love us and we need to be less racist and accept their love - G.R.].

Stage H will be the showdown! If we lose we die. If we win - we get tons and tons of oil and we die laughing!

(general laughter)

END OF PROTOCOL

That's all I have for now.

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