By Ted Belman
As readers of Israpundit know, I support far right groups that are taking up the battle against Islamization. Some of them have antisemitic members and roots. Others like Geert Wilders are extremely pro-Israel. Nevertheless they are all a strong voice in defence of the west.
Recently Dr Ariel Musikant, the President of the Jewish Communities of Austria came out against the Austrian far right party FPO. Shortly thereafter, Israel Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara visted Vienna and praised individuals in this party as well as their political program. As a result he wrote the following letter to PM Netanyahu.
Letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu
To which Rabbi Yeshayahu Hollander, Member of the Nascent Sanhedrin, Member of the Jerusalem Court for Issues of Non-Jews and Founding Member of Ne’emnei Eretz Israel, replied.
Open Letter to Dr Ariel Musikant
I’m with the Rabbi.
😛
Yamit, my short response to you is here.
Fighting the battles of Jews in the diaspora is a fight for the present for of of those who have no future. They have a logical alternative that they reject so I again say good riddance. Israel has been fighting Islam for the past hundred years and we don’t need to be reminded.
I find it providential that as Western democracies collapse and they are. Muslims are gaining in their militant destructive capacities.
A war between Muslim countries and the West is fairly likely. Muslims will certainly obtain nuclear weapons, and within several decades some leader will certainly use them. Striking America is a chance he might or might not take, but there is an option closer to home: Israel. When biblical prophets predicted that Armageddon battles would take place in Israel, they did not know that their country would be located on the border of two hostile civilizations. History confirmed their prophecies.
Israel is a tempting target for the Muslims. They sense that the West won’t avenge Jews, just as it did not avenge the Holocaust. Muslim nuclear arsenals, inadequate against the West, are superfluous against Israel. ABM’s won’t work well in Israel because S-400 in Syria can easily down our interceptor missiles; Israel is too small to defend with ABM.
For that we don’t need anyone’s help when we finally chose that inevitable option.
Interesting comments Shy I recognized some of the commentators. I added mine to the list just now. Here 🙂
Chevre,
In general I agree with Rabbi Hollander’s letter’s general idea. I also see that Rabbi Hollander’s letter was not the exact – paragraph by paragraph – reply to Dr. Ariel Musikant’s letter to Netanyahu.
Right now, Israel needs all the friends it can get to fight Islam, so does All Jews still living in Europe. We hope, that when Anti-Semites learn about us more, while on the same battle front line against Islam they will also, finally drop their anti-Semitic Sentiments. That was the idea of Rabbi Hollander, who was going a little too long. If the Moslems take over Europe, what the Nazis have done to the Jews in WWII will shadow what Anti-Semitic sentiments some “right” wing Europeans have in mind, if at all! At this time, Dr. Ariel Musikant is on the same side with these people who he objects to; all the same camp against Islam. If Musikant was smart, he would meet with the head of Austrian party FPÖ and make a plan to work TOGETHER with them against their mutual enemy – Islam and develop mutual understanding. At this time, for the Jews in Austria, the Austrian party FPÖ is “the enemy of my enemy, which I consider, with reservation and apprehension as my friend”. What Musikant is doing is putting himself in a secluded-ALONE position on the battlefield against Islamization in Europe. That will leave him no option but to take his bags and make alyia to Israel and fight Islam from there.
Last thought: Musikant was angry (why angry – enough disapprove) with MK Kara’s visit to his country; from what I read and understood, MK Kara, met with some people in the Austrian party FPÖ ranks who expressed full support for Israel, thus the devil is not that bad. The mistake made was the MK Kara did not arrange one meeting with members of the Austrian party FPÖ to which Dr. Ariel Musikant should have been invited.
I suggest for Dr. Ariel Musikant to arrange a meeting with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who is right wing-pro-Israel fighter against Islam and try work things with her and add the Austrian party FPÖ to the mix. The stronger the anti-Islam camp is the better it is for all Europeans, with, or without anti-Semitism sentiments, Jews and all other infidels.
We must remember that the Islamists are the worst kind of anti Semites and again, what they will do to the Jews will be a repetition of the Nazi atrocities, only that they do not have millions of Jews living in Europe to eliminate so their job will be much easier, which is to finish the “work” their predecessors began, make Europe Judenrein-ethnically cleansed of Jews; THEY ARE ALMOST THERE! Isn’t is what the PalArabs want? Ethnically cleansed of Jews “Palestine”?
We must put all the puzzle’s pieces in the right perspective; the rest, as we says, is claptrap!
I think I know what you mean. Have a look at the sequence of comments here.
SG, thanks for the extended quote from the great Rav Meir Kahane. Not for nothing did I spend much of my time over four years (1986-1990) until his assassination, writing and publishing his English-language newsletters, then, after his assassination by an early al-Qaida crew, doing my small bit to help to keep the Kach movement united under a successor management until it all drifted loose.
The rav’s murder and the break-up of Kach induced by the hate-filled liberals of Israel were two of the sadder events of my life, because subsequent events in Israel proved the rav’s contentions and predictions. I am not by nature much of a reflective person. But I regret I had not been prepared earlier in life to be a better-schooled member of the Jewish nation as he would have defined that. An engraving of him reading an unspecified Jewish religious volume has stayed with me and my wife, both as an artistic display and as a reminder of that which all the Jewish nation should have done but did not do.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Jew, I have no problem with multi-tasking. 🙂
#9 Shalom Shy (or Guy)!
Fact is that all these strategies with the enemies of our enemies ended up as illusions. Rather to built on predictable deceptions, we should urge our nation to become as rightous as Yosef. As much as Yosef was punished by relying on unworthy allies, so are we, too.
Yamit, this is become habitual:
I too am curious:
What Torah principles would those be?
Arnold,
I understand “nation” in contrast to tribe or ethnicity, the latter being more primitive forms or “organic” community. A nation is defined by having both a high culture and its own language (and hence it is engaged in its own particular kind of conversation about what is univerally human); and as such a nation transcends place; it is not simply the people and culture who live in a particular place and whose myths and rituals can only be understood in situ. A nation is what can survive even in exile. THus, for example, one can study the works of the French nation and understand French culture without ever going to France; but, to understand a regional or ethnic culture in France, like Breton, one has to go and live there. Similarly, one can only know the culture of a tribe by living among it. That’s because their myth or ritual is not yet freed from this-worldly concerns by consideration of a universal Being that is absolutely transcendent.
There are imperial high cultures, but a national high culture has been something particulary Western or Judeo-Christian. CHina, for example, is not so much a nation (though it is moving in this direction) as an imperial high culture with many regional identities that compete for influence in the high courts of the empire. Israel was forged in exodus from the centre of imperial power; the Christian nations were forged by translating the BIble into the local vernaculars and thus creating a basis for new kinds of high culture in what became the national languages of Europe.
Thus, to my mind, the question of the appropriateness of fascism for the nation is a specifically Western question. To call “fascist” any and all societies that are led by some kind of big man is to my mind to render “fascist” into a meaningless term, either by implying it is some kind of universal human attribute (but without providing the anthropological explanation for this) or by ignoring the specific cultural milieu of 20th Century Europe where fascism proper emerged. And to imply that most states run by big men are “nations” because they are, in your terms, “fascist”, is similarly confounding. Most states in the world are not united by the kind of national identity that has defined Western states in most of the 20th century. Most states are small or big empires – i.e. multicultural agglomerations -ruled by men who play one tribe or sect off against another.
As I say, I don’t think fascism, properly speaking, is the most prevalent form of government in the world. I don’t find the Wikipedia definition at all useful as it is trying to define the concept in purely abstract terms that could apply widely, and makes no reference to the particular facts of European history that gave rise to historical fascism. Fascism arose as a response to modernity and to its impact on Christianity; fascism presumed to be at once both a kind of revolutionary movement and a redeemer of something ancient or primal in the nation. It was a way of trying to unite past and future and it failed for its road from past to future was far too narrow because premised on one special truth that everyone just had to share, no questions; indeed, more generally, it was a Gnostic movement that was simply at war existential reality.
Now, i can understand why people think Israel’s present political system is dysfunctional. I think proportional representation systems are a bad idea for a number of reasons. It is possible however to have elected governments that exercise power in a way where responsibility and effective and legitimate authority are more clearly defined. Of course we should not think of political theory as the search for some ideal, but be content with the least bad choice. I would not define the least bad system primarily in terms of “democracy” which can be an attribute of many different kinds of societies, but rather in terms of constitutionalism or republicanism, another word for which is covenantalism, i.e. precisely that which the Jewish religion is about. A people who understand their sovereign to be a God who has made a covenant with them are a people who will need a government that can represent that covenant. Fascism, to my mind, is not covenantal because, to put it all too simply, it is founded as a Gnostic revolutionary movement that is at war with the historical reality by which a people may come to discover a shared covenant. One attribute of a covenant, for example, is that anyone of us can represent it, if we have the courage to step up to the plate when circumstances put us in the place and time where it is up to us to act as guarantor of the nation’s freedom. IN fascism, there is a deference to some mystical elect who are deemed to have the special insight that alone can redeem the nation. A nation that has to wait for the great man leader to define its military strategy and even daily tactical decisions – like when to send the Panzer divisions into battle – is only going to prove that fascism is a failure in comparison to less bad systems where authority is shared and negotiated.
Fascism, to my mind, is not at all Jewish. It is heretical in terms of our religious understanding. So, if one holds this view, one cannot seriously propose it as a solution to Israel’s political dilemmas. If Jews are going to survive of course it has to be as Jews with a Jewish constitution. I think Israel would be better served with an English or American type of constitution than the present PR shystem. But if you study the history of English-speaking constitutionalism you will see how indebted it was to the Biblical model. One needs a head of state who can represent the covenant effectively; that’s the key it seems to me. Fascism can’t provide that; it has no respect for prophets who aren’t political leaders.
What Torah principles would those be?
Democracy? It’s an adjective, not a noun. It’s descriptive of a nation that is actually in general conformity with Torah principles. There isn’t a country with “democracy” as part of its name that is truly democratic. Any organization or institution usurping the word is most assuredly not democratic. If Israel is to become democratic there are a great many changes to be made starting with the electoral system. But to proclaim Israel a democracy at this time is erroneous and counterproductive.
Truepeers, I really do not trust democracy to save from extinction a small country with limited resources facing a combination of larger enemies competing with each other in issuance of existential threats, met mostly by dead silence on the part of a largely uncaring or semi-hostile league of mostly democratic states.
But first, let me define my frames of reference.
“Nation” to my means members of a common culture whose children are accustomed from early childhood to communicate and think in a common language; who will freely intermarry with one another; who will provide military service or its equivalent to their commonwealth in time of need; and who will settle on the land to develop or geographically defined roots. Other than in their religious observances, which took the place of a real commonwealth on its piece of the earth’s land area, the Jewish nation had lost all these attributes over some 19 centuries of complete exile. Now, early into the 21st century, that nation — our Jewish nation — has clawed its way back into existence on its own soil. As we contemplate all this, the early and misguided dreams of socialism and universal democracy are properly being shucked off and discarded by perhaps a majority of Jews in Aretz-Yisrael, in great contrast to most Jews abroad, whose ways of life are strange to those of Israel, and vice versa. Jews are reaching out to nationalism above all other values. They are finding authentic Jewish nationalism in their authentic Jewish religious observances, in their archaeology, their poetry, their common experiences in national service in Israel’s tanks, fighter-bombers, artillery, infantry, coastal patrols, and in creation of some of the deadliest weaponry ever devised by human beings. The very earth of Israel and the seas around it are yielding evidence of untold and untapped wealth that for the first time stand to make other nations dependent on Israel and not the other way around. I heard musical and poetic evidence of their moods and deepest feelings in 1967, in the beautiful voice of a young girl singing “Yerushalaim shel zahav” — Jerusalem of Gold — with its hinted and soon to be redeemed promise to liberate Israel’s capital from the alien Arabs by armed force. Nationalism threatened by an outsider is a power that cannot be stopped except by a greater force with the same motivation. There are times that even a non-observant Jew such as I am can envision Shomron, Yehuda, all re-united Jerusalem, Golan and even lands given up in recent decades such as Sinai and Gaza, being repopulated not only by Jewish builders of apartment blocks for Jewish families, but the spirits of 60 or more generations of Jews descending on the land to salute the flag, the symbols of state and the armies of Israel. That is nationalism as I understand it.
Now for Fascism.
“Fascism”, as defined by Wikipedia: Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. They claim that culture is created by the collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus they reject individualism. Viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they see pluralism as a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.
I find it difficult to dispute any of this from the standpoint of Tora Judaism, other than that the latter always treats ha-shem as the ultimate leader of the Jewish commonwealth. And based on my own observations, I cannot avoid maintaining that all of the above will be a fit description of the Jewish nation as the wars with the Arabs grind on, and as the Jewish nation discovers the necessity of defending themselves by conquering greater land spaces from the enemy as both a defensive and offensive strategy, made more feasible as the international order weakens in the face of the inevitable coming of world peak oil and the colassal effects of its aftermath.
If the label “Fascism” seems distateful, despite the evidence that it is the most prevaleunt form of rulership of most of the world’s states today, than by all means create a more pleasant euphemism. But I nevertheless maintain that nationalism is the most vital need of the Jewish nation in this century, that nationalism above all will characterize the future of Israel as the bitter memories of 19 centuries of exile and degradation are forgotten, and that the nation itself will determine its own governance, rather than the government determining dictating to the nation.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
p.s. don’t forget the old army joke about using your fingers to apply the toothpaste: necessity is the basis of freedom; those who respond to an unquestionable necessity by asserting an unquestionable solution don’t fare too well historically.
email rec’d
Arnold Harris:
I don’t think so, unless you understand nationalism in a rather narrow sense. The nation is a specifically Jewish or Hebrew invention and where is the evidence for Jewish fascism in the history of Israel? England is the oldest and historically most successful nation in Europe – where is its fascist history (yes it may be tending in that direction now, but at the same time it is losing national identity)? Where is the fascist history in the other successful nations of the English-speaking world?
Fascism is not merely the ultimate uniting of civil and religious authority (which, in their way, is characteristic of Biblical and English constitutionalism that are ordered so that the civil authority has the ultimate say in all matters: power is centralized, when necessary, but is constrained by convention and the citzenry not to abuse its supremacy by becoming a religious dictatorship).
Fascism is not merely centralized authority but a narrowing of historical possibilities by a totalitarian project: it is the assertion of a crime or humiliation or failure in the nation’s past that must be redressed and redeemed by following the uniquely correct plan of the leader. This is what makes it anti-freedom, and thus, sooner or later, self-destructive. That fascism was, historically, such a failure should really lead one to question wheter it can be anyone’s salvation. Even if the Nazis had won the war, can we imagine their Reich lasting a thousand years? Surely not – the entire project was parasitical on German industry and creativity and had no qualms about sacrificing German youth, and not just Jews, to redeem the nation.
Ted,
It is debatable if Geert Wilders is “far right”.
This is how he is branded by the leftist useful idiots. However his social policies are moderate center right. The only reason they call him “far right” is his opposition to Islamisation.
I feel overjoyed reading the Rabbi’s letter.
Yes, the far right used to be our enemy 2 and 3 generations ago. But today the left is our enemy. Someone who used to be an antisemite and is no longer, can be our ally. Of course I am not talking about the Nazi butchers, the actual criminals. Fortunately there are not too many of them still left alive.
Jews who are clinging to the left and opposing the right, are like the Jews in Poland who thought of Germans as a civilized nation, friendly to the Jews. Yes, a generations before the Holocaust Germans were indeed civilized and friendly. And Jews in Germany in the end of 19th century were the most assimilated, just like American Jews are today. But that was the past, and they failed to account for at the present and died in the gas.
Idiot(s) at the helm
Arnold, you got that right! I’m inspired by Isaiah’s instructions to Ahaz and Hezekiah: Do not look to your allies. I’m led to understand that Hezekiah’s compliance with that instruction resulted in the only historically verifiable miracle, the sudden death during the night of over 85-thousand Assyrian soldiers. The advice is still valid today: rely only on the Jewish people and the God of Israel.
Plainly speaking, I’m on the side of Europe’s rising Fascists for as long as I think they are willing to harass and ultimately expel Europe’s Moslems while treating the Jewish nation as allies. And I think the time will come, that in order for Israel to preserve and protect the control of the entirety of Aretz-Yisrael from its enemies, the people of Israel will turn to a Fascist form of government. And don’t let your jaws drop in amazement over that statement. Nationalism and Fascism have a symbiosis as natural as toothpaste and the brushes needed to apply it. If you want to be Jewish nationalists, you will just have to learn to live with the form of government it ultimately implies.
I am both an American nationalist and a Jewish nationalist. And when I use the term “nation”, I do so in the European sense of usage. In other words, there is a Walloon nation and a Flemische nation living together in the same country, Belgium. But there is no “Belgian” nation. Nor is there any “United States nation, and the United Nations Organization (UNO) in reality is a league of states, at least in terms of my strict standards.
I never have made any pretense about either American or Jewish democracy, and in any case, the form of government we have had here, right from the get-go, has been that of a constitutional republic. America is, and should remain, a mostly Protestant Christian society; for precisely the same reason, Israel is, and should remain a Jewish society. And it’s not too hard to discern that, had this country been founded primarily by Roman Catholics, the Jews would never have achieved the unprecedented level of equality we have enjoyed in this country. Nor would the ecomomic well-being of America have been achieved by any cultural attitude other than that of the Protestant work ethic.
Now back to the questions of relationships among nations. No nation, without exception, has permanent allies or permanent enemies; only permanent interests. And that truism applies to the Jewish nation as much as it does to the German nation, the Italian nation, the Croatian nation, the Russian nation, and so forth.
The entirety of the reasoning behind Theodore Herzl’s switch from cosmopolitan Europeanism to Zionism 117 years ago, was the fact that he was working as a journalist in France in 1894, the year in which Captain Alfred Dreyfus, falsely convicted of treason by a conspiracy of the French Army general staff, was ceremoniously degraded from his rank and privileges and shipped off to the infamous penal colony in French Guiana. That, plus crowds of Parisians chanting “Death to the Jews!” changed his life and moved him to write “Der Judenstadt” in 1896, from which stemmed the Zionist movement that culminated in the State of Israel 52 years later.
For the 19 centuries preceding the independence of the modern Jewish state, the Jewish nation depended on bonds sustained solely by a common religion. That situation has fundamentally changed. The Jewish nation now has a country of its own to defend, to expand as opportunies arise, and this almost always requires allies, of whom one can expect little more than that they will serve their own national interests as does the Jewish nation. An excellent example of a similar situation was in World War II. Josef Stalin, one of the most sinister but successful leaders of a great empire, had been attacked by the armed might of our common enemy, Adolf Hitler backed by the German Nazi Wehrmacht. Do any of you seriously think that Americans or Britons during 1941-1945 really gave a damn how many Ukrainians Josef Stalin’s policies starved or how many anti-Soviet Polish officers his secret police murdered in the forests outside Smolensk? The thing that Roosevelt and Churchill cared about — the only thing — was how many infantry and tank divisions the Red Army could put on the front lines and how many Germans, Hungarians, Romanians and Italians they could either kill outright or isolate in the frozen wastelands to freeze or starve to death. So we should not give a damn today about the attitudes of our allies except as they affect our own national interests. Because war itself is implacable. Those who seek to win wars must be as totally focused and as ruthless as the Stalins of history. Defeat for a country such as Israel can spell the end of the country.
None of what I have written here sounds pretty or even pleasant. But I believe in nothing other than coldly objective thinking that is focused on a given purpose. Anything else is either a waste of time, or still worse, defeats one’s purpose.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Simplistically siding with Rabbi Hollander’s response to Dr. Ariel Musikant’s open letter to PM Netanyahu, fails to recognize that Musikant and Hollander are talking about two very different things.
Musikant, President of the Jewish Communities of Austria has expressed specific concerns with the extreme right wing Austrian party FPO. Muskiant cites facts pertaining to FPO’s Nazi and anti-semitic past that continues to the present whereby FPO in October, 2010 distributed anti-semitic and anti-Israel posters in Vienna and organized meetings of anti-semitic neo-Nazai European parties.
It was in relation to these specific concerns, Musikant has taken PM Netanyahu to task for his Deputy Minister of Development of the Negev and Galil Ayoob Kara’s vist to Vienna at the invitation of FPO, wherein Kara heaped praise on individuals in this party as well as FPO’s political program.
Musikant as President of The Jewish Communities of Austria knows far more of what he speaks when it comes to Austrian politics, the politics of FPO and the situation Austrian Jews find themselves in than Rabbi Hollander, who lives in Israel.
Hollander does not address Muskiant’s specific concerns with FPO at all.
Instead, Hollander speaks of the EU right wing, including right wing parties standing against Islamofacism that is threatening to transform the EU into Eurabia. Hollander also speaks out against the liberal-left for either turning a blind eye to this threat or worse still, their facilitating or actively supporting the Islamification of the EU.
Hollander says:
Hollander makes a compelling case that if the EU becomes Eurabia, anti-semitism will be the order of the day and Jews in the EU will be imperiled. It is a warning that many others have raised.
It is clear however, that Hollander, in speaking of the need to support some parties on the political right in their stance against the Islamification of the EU, is ignoring the fact that some such right wing parties, like the FPO are also anti-semitic.
Nothing in Musikant’s open letter to PM Netanyahu disagrees with Hollander’s general statement on where the EU is headed, that many on the liberal-left are doing nothing to thwart the Islamification of the EU and that some right wing groups and parties are taking a stand against that threat.
In fact, Musikant has not even addressed that issue as he is focussed on his displeasure with Israel as a result of Israel’s Deputy Minister Kara’s tacit and express support for the FPO that has distinguished itself as both anti-Islamist and anti-semitic.
There are many right wing organizations and political parties in the EU and in North America that are anti-Islamist. Some of them however, are also anti-semitic and as anti-semitic as many on the left are.
Surely there are enough right wing advocates/organizations and political parties that are anti-Islamist and pro-Israel for Jews and Israel to praise and throw their support behind and not lower themselves to also support an anti-Islamist right wing group or political party that also is antisemitic.
Because Rabbi Hollander ignores Musikant’s views of the FPO and Musikant, not Hollander, is in the best position to know what makes the FPO tick, I disagree with Rabbi Hollander’s attack on Musikant’s letter to PM Netanyahu wherein Hollander completely ignores what Musikant says and instead launches into his own polemic on an issue that Musikant did not touch on.
I doubt Musikant would disagree with what Hollander says, save to the extent that Hollander is not addressing Musikant’s concerns.
Hollander has twisted the expression, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” to “my enemy that is also the enemy of my enemy is still my friend”.
There is something very wrong with Hollander’s thinking in that regard.
Jew,
1. And enemy of my enemy can still be a temporary friend. As for trusting in Hashem, if only we – the entire nation – were all on the level of Yosef Hatzadik! Sadly we are not. So when Hashem gives you a gift, recognize it, say thank you and make proper use of it.
2. I have no pity on Europe. But I have no well-wishes for Muslim barbarians. Let Hashem sort it out.
I am not sure that the Rabbi is correct.
1. Israel had a lot of allies in her short history and ALL of them sooner or later turned against her:
the British, the Russians, the Serbs, the French, the Americans, the Iranians, the Turks, the Germans
and so will eventually also the christian Zionists and the European Right.
I do not think neither that we need allies at all… if we trust in the G-d of Israel Who is the King of all kings of kings.
2. I am not sure neither that Europe deserves to survive. They have to pay the price for what they did in history and continue to do, especially to the Jewish people. Islam is the punishment of Europe. Let it devore it as soon as possible.
Europe is neither imploding nor dying. The very presence of rapidly growing nationalist political parties, in my judgement and according to my own political standards, are signs that the majority of the native populations of these ancient societies are becoming culturally sound once again, and that the modern diseased version of liberalism is dying in Europe as it is in the United States. The Jews of Europe have nothing to fear from these nationalist fronts. The leaders of these groups openly salute the Jewish nationalists who are on the front lines of confrontation against what will be seen as the most dangerous invasion of Europe since the age of the massive Mongol invasions in the first half of the 13th century. This time, the Germans, Russians, Scandinavians, French, Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, Dutch and the various peoples of the Balkans all will be allies of the Jewish nation.
Meantime, war is surely approaching in the form to a struggle of titanic proportions between the Sun’a and Shi’a, a split in Islam that was born the day their great prophet Muhammad died in June 632, and the successors fell to permanent squabbling over the leadership of the Arab national inheritance. That is one of greatest built-in weaknesses. And in war, you must always exploit any weakness shown by an enemy, the better to destroy him.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I have long thought of it as a Spiritual Cancer – of course, that carries over into the physical realm
My unpolitically correct view as well
Unfortunately, we have a dog in almost every fight. But when you count the enemies of the Jews, yes, the Nazis were savages and their sins against the Jews must never be forgiven but were they the worst? In terms of tortuous atrocities they are in a tight competition with the Catholic church, the Turks and how can we forget the British who sold us out for oil (along with the French). I consider the British crime against the Jews just as heinous as the Germans because it was betrayal. They knew what they had to do and didn’t do it but, instead, broke their own laws to try to kill the nascent Jewish state. The Nazis never claimed to be our friends but the British suckered us. One of my most moving experiences was visiting the Museum of the Underground in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem and seeing the execution chamber with the scaffold and noose still in place. Times change and maybe the enemy has changed, too. Islam is a far more formidable enemy than any before. Any foe who believes death is survivable and death is a state of existence with magnificent rewards cannot be fought in traditional ways. Islam must be seen not as a military force but a cancer that must be excised.
Europe is gone and if they aren’t they had better prove it in real and tangible way.
Europe has been using the Arabs as their proxies for effecting our destruction since the establishment of the State of Israel. My gut tells me to rejoice at their destruction even if it is largely bloodless by internal subversion. Whether Europe survives as an entity with the so called civilized West for us is of little consequence. The Eu is due to implode on it’s own avarice and cowardliness. Their economies are in worse condition than is Americas. Civil unrest that should erupt soon which should put the long overdue final nail in their coffin.
The Jews don’t have a dog in that fight and who ever we back will turn out bad for us.
I could not agree more strongly with Rav Hollander’s expressed position in support of the growing right-wing parties of Europe against the Islamic cancers growing in their midst. In fact, I think this rav has done a better job of defining the important issues of Islam’s existential threat both to the West and to the Jewish nation. It is about time that the Jews of the world start finding common cause with any individual, group, or country that actively wants to save themselves, their freedoms and their civilizations against militant Islam. As for the timid Jews who think that victorious Islam would leave them in peace, we have all seen this type of thinking before, and the tragedies it brought upon the Jewish nation. Let us never again repeat those errors.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI