“To Restore Jerusalem as the City of Truth”
By Prof Paul Eidelberg
Is Israel a Democratic State?
Virtually everyone persists in calling Israel a “democracy,” including critics of the peace process. Apart from such criticism, the critics do little more than lament this or that government’s “betrayal of democracy.” Heaven forbid they should candidly state that Israel is not and never has been a democracy.
- · Whoever heard of a democracy that not only lacks a Constitution (like England) but whose legislators (unlike England’s) represent political parties rather than constituents or citizens?
· Whoever heard of a democracy whose Prime Minister can disregard the law with impunity?
· Whoever heard of a democracy whose Government can make agreements with foreign entities—indeed, with terrorist organizations—without public or parliamentary debate, as occurred in Oslo, Wye, and Annapolis?
· Whoever heard of a democracy—or of a monarchy for that matter!—whose Prime Minister can sign away the land of his people, even to a criminal organization specified as such in the penal code of his country?
· Whoever heard of a democracy whose Government, under the facade of “administrative detention,” can incarcerate citizens for months at time without trial and without even informing them of the charges?
· Whoever heard of a democracy whose prime minister can release thousands of terrorists, including some convicted of murder? Thus: Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert.
Is Israel A Jewish State?
Can a “State” founded and long dominated by atheists be Jewish? Can a “State” be Jewish whose citizens and legislators need not be Jewish? (The Japanese would laugh at the idea.) Can a State be intrinsically Jewish when its President or Prime Minister may, by law, be a Muslim? Alternatively, can a State be intrinsically Jewish when its legislators reject a proposal that would limit such offices to Jews?
To be sure, 80 percent of Israel’s population is Jewish. Nevertheless, in this “Jewish” State (as a colleague of mine once pointed out) certain Knesset Members have made statements about Judaism and Jews that in Germany—in Germany!—would get them kicked out of parliament and perhaps into prison.
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· So Jewish is this Jewish State that the term “Judaism” has been erased from Soldiers Code of Ethics—thanks to Israel’s first native-born Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
· So Jewish is this Jewish State that his successor, Shimon Peres, applied for Israel’s membership in the Arab League.
· So Jewish is this Jewish State that the ultra-religious SHAS Party joined the 1992 ultra-secular Labor-Meretz Government and thereby made possible the Oslo Accords of 1993.
· So Jewish is this Jewish State that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abandoned Hebron, the burial place of the Patriarchs and surrendered 42% of Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat.
· So Jewish is this Jewish State that the Zionist National Religious Party supported a treaty with Jordan whereby Israel relinquished 330 sq. kilometers of Jewish land.
· So Jewish is this Jewish State that the ultra-religious United Torah Judaism Party joined the 2004 Sharon Government and thereby facilitated the expulsion of 8,000 Jews from Gaza.
· So Jewish is this Jewish State that the Degel HaTorah faction of United Torah Judaism would be willing to cede parts of Jerusalem for “peace.”
Judaism Versus “Democracy”
It seems that many Jews, including Orthodox Rabbis, can earn no honor or respect unless they show that Judaism is perfectly consistent with democracy. These apologists reduce Judaism to a juggler’s bag out of which anything can be produced on demand. Meanwhile, they gloss over the decayed state of democracy and its destructive consequences for Israel. We are confronted here by gross ignorance and complacency as well as by intellectual dishonesty and irresponsibility. Let us have the fresh air of truth.
As everyone knows, “democracy” literally means the “rule of the people” or popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty reduces to the rule of the majority, a principle that can be found in Judaism (Exodus 23:2) but subordinated to other principles such as the Ten Commandments. Suppose, however, Israel’s Muslim citizens were to become a majority of the country’s population. They could then dominate the Knesset and transform Israel into an Islamic state. This may be consistent with democracy, but hardly with Judaism.
To be sure, majority rule does not exhaust the principles of democracy. There is also the principle of freedom. Democratic freedom yields pluralism. Pluralism requires a broad-based agreement that democracy is not a body of substantive ends but a “process”—the “rules of the game”—by which individuals pursue their private interests and “lifestyles.” Hence, democracy does not entail any particular ethnic or religious character. This is why there are no ethnic or religious qualifications for voting or holding office in Western-styled democracies.
In contrast, Judaism is a religious nationality, an all-embracing way of life. In addition to endogamous marriage laws and ethical precepts, Judaism has its own holy days, its own system of education, its own literature. And because Judaism is a religious nationality, only Jews can hold public office in an authentic Jewish polity. All this is quite foreign to Western democratic thought and practice.
The “Peace Process”
There is no point in burdening the reader on this issue: only fools and scoundrels dither about the “peace process.” Accordingly, to restore Jerusalem as the City of Truth, Israel will need
Authentic Jewish Leadership
Authentic Jewish leadership requires Jews who have received a Torah education. Unlike a merely religious education, a Torah education entails the unity of thought and action. Moreover, and as Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon understood, knowledge of the Torah is incomplete if not supplemented by veridical secular knowledge, especially in the sciences.
A Torah-educated Prime Minister fortified by veridical secular knowledge would obviously be far superior to his secular predecessors, none of whom has had the wisdom and courage to safeguard the Jewish People, let alone restore their dignity, which resides in the depth and breadth of their heritage.
First, such a Prime Minister would be guided by the Halachic principle that no government may impose any new law or official on the People of Israel without their consent. (See Berachot 55a.)
Second, a Torah-educated Prime Minister schooled in veridical secular knowledge would have a potentially larger constituency than his secular counterpart. Studies indicate that 50 percent of the Jews in Israel believe in the divine origin of the Torah, a percentage that will increase given recent scientific studies on the subject. Approximately 25 percent are observant and another 40-45 percent are more or less traditional. In addition, Jews with strong Jewish roots are well represented in the Israel Defense Forces, the country’s academic institutions, the professional sectors of the economy, and in the settlement of the Land; and these Jews have family relations and influential friends in the Diaspora. With this supportive background of talent and sense of Jewish awareness, conditions are now ripe for the assumption of national leadership by an authentic Torah statesman.
Third, such a statesman would never commit the criminal folly of arming 40,000 Arab terrorists—an act that utterly violates Halacha.
Fourth, a Torah statesman, unlike many secular politicians and intellectuals, would not be tainted and emasculated by moral egalitarianism, a doctrine that undermine wholehearted dedication to Israel’s cause vis-à-vis the Arab-Islamic world. Because Torah Jews regard their Patriarchs, Prophets and Sages as exemplars of wisdom and righteousness, they are more apt to disdain Arab or Islamic despots and be the more disinclined than secularists to appease them.
Fifth, a Torah-animated Prime Minister would be far more honored in the White House. Indeed, whereas Israel’s secular Prime Ministers invariably use the bogeyman of American pressure as an excuse for their own timidity and ineptitude, a Torah statesman would be more fearful of God than of Washington.
Finally, Israel needs an authentic Jewish leader to spearhead a Jewish Constitution (such as I have elsewhere drafted). With such a Constitution, Israel would have a structure of laws and institutions that would foster the solidarity of the Jewish People and contribute to the rejuvenation of their noble heritage. Israel, confident in the justice of its cause and guided by its world-historical purpose, would overawe its enemies and again become the light of mankind. Jerusalem would be restored as the City of Truth.
Felix: Israel has no real friends, never had a real friend and never will in all probability have in the Future any real friend.
Yamit
It is quite possible we just have a simple misunderstanding here
1. Israel and the Jews must not become isolated from real friends, you need real friends, the US and EU elites are your enemy. You must be independent in every way from your enemies who pose as friends in order to break you.
Felix it almost doesent matter who the leader or leaders are. As long as we feel dependent on America no leader will do the right thing at the right time with the right policy. In 67 Israel was alone and knew it and being alone with your backs up against it is real freedom and brings out the best in us and qualities we never realized we had come to the fore.. It is all Psychological and Democracy which allows to to chose from in most cases the lowest common denominator.I believe Alone we are stronger and more likely to do the right thing than dependence on Washington/. Its a whole different mindset, different calculations, different pressures and different interests.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy5L3GPy7JQ&feature=related
What kind of a leadership can be built inside Israel which can defend Israel in the face of serious attacks, the most serious is the deal being plotted between the Israeil ruling government, the EU, America and Islam, to effect a Palestinian state, status undetermined, right at the heart of Israel. When serious sections of the Israeli leaders are for this, and certainly sections of the Israeli leaders in the Diaspora. Can such a leadership be built to oppose this? Where will it emerge from? Can Eltad do the job? Can Professor Eidelberg? Is Likud still relevant in this respect? What about Netanyahu?
Are the Israeli people expected to fight against this without leadership? If that is the thought then it does not understand how ideology is transmitted into the mass of the people by a determined ruling class. Is this Israeli ruling class planning a brutal dictatorship in order to effect the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Judea, Samaria and the Golan.
Naturally they are discussing this in the deep inners of the Israeli state machine. Much is kept from the people. Am example is how Livni has hidden the photographic evidence of the Egyptians assisting the smuggling of weapons to Hamas.
Meanwhile on the outside who is going to fight for this perspective, in Ireland, in Britain, in Germany, in Australia, in America.
In my opinion there is little can be done about the capitalist and imperialist world. The capitalist nations all run on oil, and they have decided that one way or another Israel must be cut down to size, possibly even destroyed, in order to assuage those who own the oil in the Middle East.
Oil and the power that it induces is the main factor.
Considerations that they have to take into account are these
1. Is Israel going to roll over abd see itself destroyed. They fear will Israel use the nuclear bomb to defend itself. But such a thought places Israel at a terrible disadvantage. In any case Olmert and Livni are huge political liabilities.
2. Will the strong American public and its support for Israel stop the American Imperialists in their tracks? In this regard Israel is not the same as Yugoslavia. But the American ruling class have managed to sell the Palestinian state idea very successfully.
From this I feel that the centre of the question lies in leadership. We need a party in the world which will campaign specifically on this issue of leadership.
I ask the question is Israpundit fulfilling this need of leadership. What is the position of all the US Jewish movements on the issue of this Palestinian state. I honestly do not know and/because it is not covered systematically by Israpundit. This is down to how Israpundit sees this issue of leadership.
I think the question of atheism etc is a red herring. Note I did not raise it. Eidelberg did. We need a leadership which will campaign on certain vital principles.
The elaboration of these principles is of the utmost importance.
They centre on the right of the Jewish people to a Homeland
The right of the Jewish people in that Homeland not to be molested by any kind of antisemitism, whether this comes from Arabs, others or Jews themselves and there are quite a number of the latter.
The action to take to defend Jews in Israel, which must involve expelling anybody who promotes antisemitism
Yamit and Alex
Very interesting material you have both put forward and thank you.
Politically there is not that much difference between us, in one sense probably none at all.
I am with you in everything you say about the Jews and Judaism, not because I have the same opinions, obviously I do not, but because you say them, and they are your opinions as Jewish people.
All I seek is that there is a place on earth where you are able to hold these views without any kind of molestation or interference.
A nirvana where there is complete freedom. Id that possible? Well it seems a dream but in actual fact it is a political practical necessity and is what this discussion is all about.
Such a place for Jews would obviously entail the freedom for a Jew who is a materialist to hold his or her views also. That is what I meant about the Inquisition. My understanding of the Talmud is that there is space for many many interpretations of Life.
It will take time to digest above.
But Alex dialectical materialism is NOT a religion.
It rests on a scientific approach to phenomena. Marx and Engels paid close attention to the scientific work of Darwin and saw his work as flowing along side their own.
I am NOT a “Trotskyist”, I reject the term, with connotations of her worship and that religio pseudo type of thing.
The difference is on the point above made by South. These historical phenomena, such as the Cromwellian events, are not just marks on civilation, they are all we have got as sentient beings.
Otherwise you have relativism.
I will switch tack but this is connected.
The Guardian is a promoter of antisemitism.
They have been hosting a discussion on an article by a Seamus Milne, a Stalinist and associated with the Communist Party in Britain.
I read soem of the answers, much excised and moderated by the Guardian, which is resisted by progressives there, and as one does I wrote something, but obviously too late and anyway I suspect it would be blocked. There is real censorship in Britain and Ireland.
I wrote this perhaps for myself
“This IS a shameful article by Milne.
This issue has a long history. In the film “Reds” starring Warren Beatty, the main character played by Beatty entered into conflict with a Russian Bolshevik leader on exactly this. Beatty played the role of the great American Communist, John Reid. The Comintern of Lenin and Trotsky had set up an initiative to appeal to the Peoples of the East which was a valid and important initiative. But as portrayed in the film Zinoviev was seen making a big adaptation to Islam by mistranslating the words of Reid. It was no accident that Zinoviev was later to betray Trotsky and Lenin’s line by adapting to Stalin and Stalinism, and he realized too late his mistake, but the damage was done.
Fred Halliday has misreported this and has given a false analysis on this. In fact there was nothing but hostility from Lenin and Trotsky towards Islam, ever.
Milne represents a large section of the Left, what I think is preferable to refer to as the NeoLeft, or some other such term, because they do not stand on the same programme as Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin and especially Leon Trotsky on the issue.
I ask myself why I say “especiall” Trotsky. Not that I am a special advocate, because I reject that method of her worship etc, but soimply because Trotsky, or Bronstein, lived on and was the connector of those Russian Revolutionaries into the present. Hope that is well understood.
Leon Trotsky was most clear in the period from 1933 to his murder in 1940 on the need of the Jewish people to escape from Europe, to make their way to Palestine, and to set up there a Jewish state (note not a socialist or labourist state, he laid no conditions whatsoever nor could he or should he given that Jews were in great danger from the Nazis.)
A note especially to Alex here which I interpose. You are in at least a little agreement with F Gil White, but I ask myself why has Gil White also excised Leon Trotsky from the analysis of the situation.
One of these Nazis whom the Jews were in such danger from was the Arab from Palestine called Hajj Amin el Husseini, promoted by the British in the British Mandate for his antisemitism, promoted also to put down any moderate opposition among the Arabs to Husseini and his antisemitic extremism. The British were antisemitic over the course of the Mandate ending by barring all Jewish immigration even as the blood was flowing in Europe.
Trotsky was very clear in his support of the Jewish state. He stated clearly that Jews must find a place where they would be unmolested by antisemitism. In the latter regard he made a scathing reference to the “reactionary Mohammedans” having been asked a question about the 1929 Pogrom carried out against Jews in Hebron. Trotsky also stated that if Arabs could not desist from antisemitism then the prospect of the moving of populations would arise. At all cost Trotsky stood for the freedom of Jews from antisemitism. Trotsky saw the issue of the Jewish Homeland as one of the central issues facing humanity, and since revolutionary socialism has the future of humanity in its hands, it is very special responsibility for them above all. Milne has the most reactionary position possible towards the Jewish Homeland.
This has all been hidden by the present day Neoleft. Of course Milne is from that political strain, Stalinism, which actually carried out the foul murder of Trotsky. He was murdered by Ramon Mercader in Mexico in 1940, where Trotsky had found refuge at the invitation of the great Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera. Mercader remained a Stalinist, remained silent, but on his release from a Mexican prison in 1960 made his way to Russia via Cuba, and he was awarded the highest Medal of Honour by the Stalinists.
Milne and his ilk are the main pillar of support for the PLO. The PLO was a creation of the Arab Higher Committee which had been created by Hajj Amin el Husseini in the 1930s. Husseini was a close friend of Eichmann and was central in the Holocaust. Mahmud Abbas along with Arafat is one of the Founding Fathers of the PLO and was trained by these Nazis in the killing of Jews. Abbas is now promoted by traitorous Jews in the leadership of Israel, namely Livni and Olmert among others.
The killing of Jews goes on to this day and the main pillar of support for this in the West is all sections of the NeoLeft, including people who misname themselves as Trotskyists, such as Tariq Ali and others.
The article in question by Milne portrays him as a counter revolutionary and anti socialist of the first order. He is a political snake but that is doing a disservice to snakes who if left alone are harmless and useful creatures.
The murder of Leon Trotsky by the Stalinist machine, the murder of a whole generation of socialist revolutionaries by the Stalinists, was a blow that the revolutionary movement could never recover from. In the 1940s it was not long before a generation of political fraudsters appeared misnaming themselves as Trotskyists or followers of Trotsky. These included some who had been involved with Trotsky such as Cannon, others such as the Jew Hater Tony Cliff who was Jewish, Healy, Grant and others. The Redgraves come out of this situation where socialist revolutionary tradition of Trotsky on the Israel to be was carefully hidden by them from their members, and these movements all became synonymous with Jew Hatred, Israel baiting and support for Islam, and especially on the part of the WRP and SWP of the time, support for the arch reactionary and creature of American Imperialism, the Khomeiny movement. These above mentioned all have carefully hidden the actual historical figure of the Arab monster Hajj Amin el Hussein so that today not many in the youthful generation know, or have had a chance to know, the role of this horrific monster and what his significance is for Israel today.
On the issue of Islam specifically: It is my feeling that Imperialism is going to use Islam in the days of struggles which lie ahead for the working class. They have certainly used Islamist Fascists in Bosnia and in Kosovo.
Anyway I wrote the above piece but it is doubtful if it will feature ever on the Guardian.
I have also subscribed to the Irish Times but it is doubtful if they will ever publish any of my musings.
This raises a vital question as to why I engage Yamit.
The reason is that I want to raise these histoprical issues. I also want to probe why F Gil White gives avery biassed analysis of how the Nazis took power in 1933 in Germany.
No man is above critique. It is in that frame of mind that I continue.
As I say we are united in making sure that that haven is created for the Jews, which is essentially Zion, which of course has clear religious symbolism because Jews have been persecuted by Christians and Islam because of their religion, Judaism, and their race, as Jews.
So on that theme I hope to add a little more.
felix:http://www.isracast.com/kotel.asx
Felix:http://www.isracast.com/2003.asp
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/founder-of-judaism.html
Felix start with this:
More than one hundred years ago author Mark Twain posed a fascinating question concerning the Jews:
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of smoke lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning, are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all ages: and has done it with his hands tied behind him.
All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?(1)
The answer to this question can be found in the remote beginnings of the Jewish people, in the earliest stories in the Bible.
As mentioned previously, history is a guidebook for the future. The early lessons of Jewish history reveal a pattern, so we have to pay extra special attention to anything that happens at this period of time. We also have to pay special attention to the characters themselves. Just as these early stories are the paradigm for future events, so too are the earliest personalities in Genesis the model for the collective nature of the Jewish people throughout history.
If this is the case, then from the Jewish perspective, the most important Biblical character to understand is Abraham. This is why I call Abraham “the proto-Jew.” He personifies everything that could be characterized as the “Jewish personality.” His strengths, mission, drive and idealism are reflected in all the generations of the Jewish people that come after him.(2)
Abraham was certainly one of the great truth-seekers of all time. He was also famous for his kindness and hospitality(3). But the attribute that probably stands out more than any other and truly epitomizes the essence of what Abraham, and therefore the Jewish people, is all about is drive. To stand alone for thousands of years against the entire world; to dedicate oneself, heart and soul, to the ultimate cause of perfecting the world requires tremendous strength of character. This drive is an outstanding feature of Abraham’s personality and we see its manifestation in every generation of the Jewish people. From Abraham onward, we see this idealism — an uncompromising drive to “change the world” — in the collective Jewish personality.
It is because of this drive that the Jews have historically been tremendous over-achievers and have been at the forefront of virtually every major advance, cause, or social movement in world history. (Jews have not only been awarded a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes for their intellectual contributions, but have led movements such as communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, labor unions, etc.)(4) Notes professor of Social Philosophy Ernest Van den Haag:
Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture? … The Jews have invented more ideas, have made the world more intelligible, for a longer span and for more people than any other group. They have done this indirectly, always unintentionally and certainly not in concert, but never the less comprehensibly… Jews continue to feel the yoke, the task, the moral mission of being Jews-of preserving themselves as such, and to the surprise, scorn, and at times hatred of the rest of the world, of refusing to become anything else… Jews may call themselves humanists, or atheists, socialists or communists…they may even dislike Jewishness and deny it in scientific terms. But, rarely do they refuse to carry it…They won’t give up being Jewish even when they consciously try to, when they change their names, intermarry, and do everything to deny Jewishness. Yet they remain aware of it, and though repudiating it, they cling to it; they may repress it, but do act it out symptomatically. Their awareness of their Judaism is shared by others simply because their denial is so ambivalent. Unconscious or not, at least some part of every Jew does not want to give up its Jewishness(5).
Thanks Alex any time I will con’t for Felix:
More than one hundred years ago author Mark Twain posed a fascinating question concerning the Jews:
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of smoke lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning, are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all ages: and has done it with his hands tied behind him.
All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?(1)
The answer to this question can be found in the remote beginnings of the Jewish people, in the earliest stories in the Bible.
As mentioned previously, history is a guidebook for the future. The early lessons of Jewish history reveal a pattern, so we have to pay extra special attention to anything that happens at this period of time. We also have to pay special attention to the characters themselves. Just as these early stories are the paradigm for future events, so too are the earliest personalities in Genesis the model for the collective nature of the Jewish people throughout history.
If this is the case, then from the Jewish perspective, the most important Biblical character to understand is Abraham. This is why I call Abraham “the proto-Jew.” He personifies everything that could be characterized as the “Jewish personality.” His strengths, mission, drive and idealism are reflected in all the generations of the Jewish people that come after him.(2)
Abraham was certainly one of the great truth-seekers of all time. He was also famous for his kindness and hospitality(3). But the attribute that probably stands out more than any other and truly epitomizes the essence of what Abraham, and therefore the Jewish people, is all about is drive. To stand alone for thousands of years against the entire world; to dedicate oneself, heart and soul, to the ultimate cause of perfecting the world requires tremendous strength of character. This drive is an outstanding feature of Abraham’s personality and we see its manifestation in every generation of the Jewish people. From Abraham onward, we see this idealism — an uncompromising drive to “change the world” — in the collective Jewish personality.
It is because of this drive that the Jews have historically been tremendous over-achievers and have been at the forefront of virtually every major advance, cause, or social movement in world history. (Jews have not only been awarded a disproportionate number of Nobel prizes for their intellectual contributions, but have led movements such as communism, socialism, feminism, civil rights, labor unions, etc.)(4) Notes professor of Social Philosophy Ernest Van den Haag:
Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture? … The Jews have invented more ideas, have made the world more intelligible, for a longer span and for more people than any other group. They have done this indirectly, always unintentionally and certainly not in concert, but never the less comprehensibly… Jews continue to feel the yoke, the task, the moral mission of being Jews-of preserving themselves as such, and to the surprise, scorn, and at times hatred of the rest of the world, of refusing to become anything else… Jews may call themselves humanists, or atheists, socialists or communists…they may even dislike Jewishness and deny it in scientific terms. But, rarely do they refuse to carry it…They won’t give up being Jewish even when they consciously try to, when they change their names, intermarry, and do everything to deny Jewishness. Yet they remain aware of it, and though repudiating it, they cling to it; they may repress it, but do act it out symptomatically. Their awareness of their Judaism is shared by others simply because their denial is so ambivalent. Unconscious or not, at least some part of every Jew does not want to give up its Jewishness(5).
Thank you Alex I read felix’s comment at 3am and didn’t have the strength to continue.
Felix
The Jew is neither mere “nation,” nor a “religion,’ But rather a religio-nation, a holy people. The Jew is a nation and a people with ties to a specific land but which was chosen to be special and holy and cleaving unto G-d’s
Law and mitzvot. That is what the Jew is and that is what has been changed and warped, due to the Exile.
What is the Jew? Thanks to the Exile, we have lost sense of the original, authentic, Divinely ordained and ordered concept of what is a Jew. On the one hand, there are those who have rejected the authority, let alone the Divinity, of Torah and mitzvot. For them, the Jew is a “people”, a “nation”. On the other hand, thanks to the
destructive nature of the Exile, and because events cut the Jew off from his land and from national existence, other Jews- who clove unto the Torah and the mitzvot – made Judaism into a “religion.” Both are cripples, one limping on the foot of “nationalism” and the other on the foot of “religion.” From the original, Divine concept of the Jew, there have arisen two essentially fraudulent concepts, one calling itself “religion” and the other “nationalism.”
Isolation. The Jew does not wish to be isolated. He fears being alone, without allies. He fears man, he trusts only in man and so – in the exquisitely Divine way of the Almighty – precisely that which he fears will be sent upon him. He fears to do that which the Almighty demands – to annex the territories and establish Jewish sovereignty over them, as part of the Holy Land of Israel. The Almighty repays him by turning them into burning caldrons of an intifada, with confused Israeli youth not knowing whether these Holy lands are indeed Jewish or “occupied”. While a world that is normal and knows that if land belongs to you then you annex it, feels free to condemn a country that does not do so as an “occupier”.
He fears to throw out the cancer raging in his midst – the Arab enemy – lest the world turn on him. He is repaid measure for measure by a grim Almighty as the world,! daily, condemns him for “oppression” of people that would not have been there had he had faith in G-d rather than fear of the Gentile.
In any event, the Jew will be isolated, and that is the greatest blessing imaginable. For so long as the Jew has even one ally, he will be convinced – in his smallness of mind – that his salvation came from that ally. It is only when he is alone – against all of his own efforts and frantic attempts – that he will, through no choice, be compelled to turn to G-d. And it is only when the Jew stands alone against a world unified in hatred against him, that the Almighty will turn, in His anger and wrath, against the nations that knew Him not, and His powerful arm that will bring salvation to the Jew will be the awesome proof to the nations that the Lord, G-d of Israel, is indeed One – the only One.
That is why isolation will be. That it is why it must be. It is the greatest of blessings, and the foolish Jew of little faith sees it only as a curse. Foolish Jew, Jew of Exile, whose soul and mind has been destroyed by that Exile, who has turned from a Jew of fa! ith into one of trembling before the man of dust
Unless. Unless we become the Jews we were meant to be. The Jews of chosenness. Of might and faith. Unless we ignore both the money and the honey of the United States and their empty threats and condemnation. Condemnation? It is dandruff to be brushed away before moving on to do the will of G-d. In any event, there is no choice. The United States will turn on Israel, slowly and subtly. The difference is that if we turn from the Gentile first, we will have the Almighty as the immediate staff and our comfort. If not, we will have neither the Gentile nor, for a terrible stage, the Almighty.
That’s what it all boils down to. Fear of America. The “international repercussions”. Condi (what is it?), Bush – to them we bow. It is the sin of our times – a sin that religious Jews are no less guilty of. Sure, there is a God, and He is the Omnipotent One – but when it comes to “tachlis” – Bush is the relevant one. Only fear of the world stops Israel from liquidating Arab terror once and for all. It is only fear of the gentile reaction which turns our infantry soldiers into cannon fodder as they are denied the necessary air cover, lest we kill “innocent Arabs”. Instead of instilling the message that we must believe in God and not Bush, we see the national camp encouraging the very opposite message. Demonstrations are held practically asking Bush’s permission to continue the war against the terror. Pathetic efforts are made to show that Israel and America are in the same boat. The idea that “Israel and America are leading the free world in the war against terror” comforts us. Indeed, it may sound nice, and there might even be short-term benefits in comparing Arafat to Bin-Laden, or paralleling America’s struggle against the Taliban with Israel’s struggle against the PLO. But the long term effects of this message are disastrous. It conditions us to think that the fate of the Jewish People is tied to our relationship with America. It conditions us to think that George Bush is greater than Burning sit and pray, and do nothing else. David went out against Goliath with the best weapon available to him, and by so doing, was not transgressing the rule “one should not trust in miracles”. And we too, need to go out with the best weapons available to us, and the fact is that we have sophisticated weapons – missiles, chemical and automatic, which, even though we bought it from the gentiles..
– The Religious Jew –
The “religious” Jew? Nay, say rather the Orthodox practitioner of Jewish ritual whose sojourn in an exile two millenia old has corrupted and and perverted the most basic of real Jewish values. Bearded and piously
payotic, or cleanshaven and woolly-skullcapped, they join with all the others in the ecumenical worship of the Golden Calf of our times: The Golden Exile.
Israel? Go up to the Land of Israel? Go up to the Land to which they turn in prayer three times daily – eticulously; never missing a ritual? Go up to the Land concerning which they shed hot tears every Tisha B’Av, anniversary of the national day of national mourning? Actually uproot themselves from the Exile and go dwell in the Zion and Jerusalem they piously seek every year, “next year?”
But the chandeliers and the expensive shaitel wig and the quicksand that is the good life are far more powerful than commandments.
“For you are to pass over the Jordan to go in to possess the Land which the L-rd your G-d giveth you, and you shall possess it and dwell therein…” Deuteronomy 11.
“And they scorned the desirable land…” Psalm 106
And so they invent all kinds of rationales, all cloaked in a tallit that is all blue. “Israel is also Exile…” “This is not the beginning of the redemption, merely the footsteps of the Messiah…”
Can one look at a state that rises miraculously after two millenia and watch an ingathering of exiles from a hundred lands and not see in this the beginning of the great vision and redemption? Regardless of the sins and
abominations in the land? No, that which we do not wish to do, we do not. But first, we must stamp the swine with the halachic label of kosher…
Nothing moves the “religious…” they have been inordinately twisted and corrupted by twenty centuries of abnormality. One simply cannot live as a minority for twenty centuries, two thousand years, supping at other’s
tables, pleading for a smile, a tolerant act, love, and remain normal. One cannot live in a stranger’s home and remain stable. A minority must, of necessity, inherit insecurities, complexes, fear, instability. A minority
must, of necessity, be exposed to and influenced by the majority culture that insidiously enters, corrupts, changes, lays its permanent hand on Judaism, so that the Jew assumes the Gentile value and assumes too, that it is Jewish.”
And no one can remain normal without a state, a nation, a concept of nationhood and statehood The religion that was totally intertwined with land and earth and nation and power becomes a pale vapid set of rituals. When roots have lost their hold on the land, they slowly die of malnutrition.
And so, they discover a new Zion and a New Jerusalem in the filth and impurity of the Exile. They immerse themselves in a ritualarium even as they wave high the impure creeping creature. They become Americans or
Englishmen or Frenchmen or Canadians of Mosaic piety, deeply pious piety. They stand firmly on the barricades to insure that their meat shall be more than merely kosher; that the gorgeous wig shall cover the rather plain woman as she wears her very expensive dress that overshadows her neighbor, but which properly covers the elbow as she installs her chandelier; that they shall live in the comfort of the swine and not have to risk the sufferings of the pure in Eretz Yisrael.
What matter that the rabbis decree that “a man shall rather live in the Land of Israel in a city with a majority of heathens rather than in the Exile in a city with a majority of Jews.” What matter that the rabbis proclaim that
“one who lives outside of Israel worships idols in purity…?” What matter that they intone that one who lives outside the land “is as one who has no G-d”? One knows how to explain away rabbinical injunctions when the spirit so desires…
The Jew waits. He waits to be a victim, twice over.
We are losing the real war and the immediate, urgent need is to save the Jew from himself. It is not an exaggeration to say that the State of Israel stands at an unparalleled crisis, one that truly threatens to bring unthinkable tragedy upon her. It is not the Arabs that pose this awful threat and the battlefront is not in Lebanon or the banks of the Jordan or where the Syrian and Israeli lines meet on the windswept Golan. The battlefront is within the State and the people. We are our own enemy. That which no Arab state was or is capable of doing, the Jew successfully sets about to do.
The battlefront and the issue is not a Jewish-gentile one, but the Jewish loss of perspective, confidence, inner strength, certitude and clear identity. For the first time, a serious breach in Israel’s war unity was seen and doubt and recrimination and guilt corroded the one weapon that made Israel superior, over the years, to Arab manpower and firepower: certainty and confidence in the justice of the Jewish cause. More and more Jews today, within and without the Jewish state, are unsure of the justice of that cause.
Let no one deceive us. It is not a fringe group that seethes with doubt and guilt. It is a growing number of intellectuals and pseudos, and worse–of students and young people who knew not Joseph and the events and realities of a generation ago. They are on both sides of the ocean: Israeli and non- Israeli Jews. They rot the state from within, they corrode the Jewish people with the vinegar of guilt and the poison of gentilized concepts. Cloaked in a mantle of morality sold in the marketplace of “Justice and Ethics,” it is really the cloth of frustrated and lost people, torn by contradiction and self-hate. The tragedy is that they stand in the pulpits, write the newspaper columns, broadcast the televised, selected news and lecture in the universities. Their main victims are youth, part of the lost generation whose Jewish values disappeared under the pressure of an American melting pot so avidly stirred by the American Jewish Establishment, and a secular Zionist stew, spiced by the Socialism of fools.
We pay the price today, of Israeli founding fathers who tore Judaism from Zionism and were convinced that one could produce a proud, knowledgeable and dedicated-unto-death New Hebrew nationalist. We pay the price of those who tore Judaism from the “primitive” Sephardi Jews and produced from the greatness of Sephardi Jewry the values of Dizengoff, with a vengeance. We pay the price of the American Jewish Establishment elite who called for the breaking down of barriers between Jew and non-Jew, for the implementation of the Eleventh Commandment, ” Thou shalt Melt,” for the interfaith and public schools and assimilation of gentile values and concepts. We pay for all this in a huge reservoir of gentilized Jews whose Ignorance of Judaism leads them to proclaim gentile darkness to be Jewish light and non- Jewish immorality to be Jewish ethics.
1) The Land of Israel in its entirely is Jewish and the Arabs or any other people have no claim to it in any way.
2) The Jewish-Arab dispute did not begin in 1967 or 1947 but has its roots in the very beginning of Zionist return. The issue is the very existence of a Jewish state of any size. Perhaps that meant that the Arabs will never make peace. If true, it is sad, but Zionism was not born to bring peace to the land: it was created to build a Jewish state. With peace– hopefully, but with or without, a Jewish state.
3) Israel has a right and obligation to annex all the liberated territories and settle Jews everywhere. If we have no right to Hebron, where Abraham lived, we surely have no right to Dizengoff Street, built in the twentieth century and where the first Jew never walked.
4) There is no “Palestinian” people. They are Arabs, part of the Arab nation, and trespassers in the Land Of Israel. If they cannot accept the permanence and inviolate character of the Jewish state, let them leave and live in any of the 22 Arab countries. And above all:
5) The Jewish destiny and future is predicated on the Jewish understanding that the Jewish people is a Chosen and special one: chosen at Sinai by the G-d of Israel and bound by an eternal covenant that compels it to walk in the way of Torah. What will be depends solely on that adherence to Jewish faith and laws. Day and night, this is the message that must go out to the Jew. Pride, not guilt. Faith, not fear. Chosenness, not doubt. And let the Jew learn to recognize the ” Palestinians” for what they really are. Let him learn of the pogroms and rapes of the 1920’s and 1930’s, long before there were “occupied lands.” Let him know what would be if the Arabs, G-d forbid, emerged victorious, thanks in great measure to Jewish naivete and knaves.
It will grow worse as the Jewish Vietnam experience grows in Israel, fueled by the Klutznicks and Brickners and Hillel rabbis and all the Jews who long ago lost their belief in a Jewish G-d or particular Judaism and, frantically, need a moral cause to justify their own Jewish existenc
Felix this is only a small glimpse of what it is all about a very small glompse and not very popular or mainstrean but I think with nuances this has to be ultimatly the way to go.
Hi Felix,
It’s been a while… Your discussion with Yamit is a very interesting one. I have no intention to interrupt it. I just wanted to tell you this:
There is a very strange and unique thing about Jews. We Jews are the only people (that I know of) whose identity and nationality are exclusively based on religion. This is proved by the fact that no country in the world other than Israel would offer you citizenship upon conversion to a religion.
Secular Jews will angrily tell you this is not true. They will say that Jewishness is also determined by traditions, food, holidays, etc. That’s nonsense. All Jewish traditions are religion-based, and those that are not (like Hanukkah) have gained religious status over time, as Judaism is a down-to-earth practical way of life. Jewish food is just like languages. It is the food of the country where the Jew lives plus kosher rules, just as Yiddish is a German-Jewish language, Ladino is Spanish-Jewish, Haktia is Arabic-Jewish, Romaniot is Greek-Jewish, then Persian-Jewish, etc. All of that is temporary. Only Hebrew remains intact over time, because it is the language of Judaism.
This strange characteristic of Jewish identity stems from the fact that for Jews religion is not only ‘religion’ in the modern sense of the term. Jewish religion is also ideology, a social pact and the source for a polity. In fact Islam has a lot in common with Judaism in that sense, but because it incorporated many practices that make a mockery of the Ten Commandments and the Torah rules regarding slavery, it became a sort of Christendom in the socio-political sense (except it is more honest in the sense that it preaches war and looting and makes war and looting).
Historically, atheism – both in the original Feuerbachian and then the Marxist sense – is an outcome of Judaism and Christianity. Just like Christianity’s moral basis is entirely taken from Judaism, atheistic humanism came from both, except it subtracts God from the process and replaces God by human-made worship targets. But because religiosity is a psychological inexorable feature of the human mind, atheism cannot be more than an aesthetic behavior. Thus, you don’t adore God, but you adore revolutionary socialism, leftism or whatever other ism you deeply cherish. It could be argued for example that the Torah’s egalitarian ideology inspired Baruch Spinoza, who inspired the European Enlightenment, which inspired the French Revolution, which caused oppressed Europeans to associate the Christian God with oppression and hence egalitarianism with atheism. But how is egalitarianism as such necessarily deity-less? It isn’t. Atheism is a result of a corrupt way of understanding the Jewish God. This is what underlies the joke “I’m an atheist, thank God”!
A good analogy can be drawn from music. Atonal music can be very compelling and moving when well composed. But how is good atonal music so compelling? By reference to tonal music. If you are not familiar with Bach and Beethoven, atonal music will make no sense to you. Likewise, atheism makes no sense except in reference to an existing God. This is why you term it “atheism” (Greek for ‘without God’), just as “atonal” means ‘without tonality.’ Even the very preposition “without” indicates the recognition of “with.” In other words, you can only conceive of atheism in reference to an existing God, which atheists prefer not to relate to for ideological and aesthetic reasons.
Best
Felix to do Justice to debate none of your questions or judgments which I consider to be based on false premises can not be dealt with in this type of forum. If you really want to discuss intelligently this subject with me email me AT roden_s@netvision.net.il I am also on skype!
Yamit
Does that mean that you think the world was created 5768 years ago. I am sure Ted does not think that, in fact, I know he doesn´t.
But whatever about that Paul Eidelberg is a very important man in these regards. This is why I am working on what he writes and what he believes and I am challenging him. Think of it as a unity but as a struggle within that unity.
Let me take another paragraph from this man which I think shows that he is not a truthful operator at all, but a crooked one:
(Let me interpose something here. It is possible there is a basic misunderstanding. When Eidelberg talks about atheists and Israel he may be referring to the bigots who you find in the Israeli Communist Party, Pappe etc. But they are my enemy as well. They are antisemites)
There is a confidence trick played on the reader in the above passage by Edelfeld, in my opinion in any case. That is that Edenfeld deliberately confuses two things, being an atheistic Jew and being a Muslim. Why does he put these two concepts in the same paragraph. They are two entirely different things. It is surely possible to be a Jew and an atheist, but it is impossible to be a Jew and a Muslim!
The reason he puts them together in my opinion is that he wants to equate being an atheist with being a Muslim. I will not say Edelberg is a religious bigot, but in relation to atheism he IS indeed something of that sort is he not.
So to follow on from that, what happens to a Jew, who is very serious about all aspects of Israel as the Homeland for the Jews, but who does not believe there is any supernatural being, what happens to him? I don’t like to think about it. I have met the same sort of thing among Catholics in Ireland and it is not good.
Israel is in a state of war against Islam and antisemitism. Many things follow from that. One is that Muslims who live in Israel must have freedom to practice their religion, pray to the north, to the south to the east to the west, but on the issue of defending the country with gun in hand against Islam that is a different matter. If they cannot do that they are not Israelis and they must be expelled, because the state of war trumps everything else. It is a matter of survival, and a matter of protection of the place where Jews must have freedom from antisemitism.
Everybody has an agenda. I have one which in this case is to find a way where the Jews in Israel can be free of antisemitism. Gil White has one which is very definitely this too but also anti communism. Eidelberg has one here also. He wants all to be devout religious Jews. That is different. That is different from my stated position above.
Eidelberg thinks the fundamental is to be a devout religious Jew. I do not. I say create a spot on earth where Jews are free then the issues of religion, or no religion, can be argued out. Eidelfeld inverts the priorities almost totally. That makes Eidelfeld problematic to me indeed because he takes the spotlight away from the political necessities of physical organization and survival.
Yamit on this post quoted Mr Eltad also and in truth I have difficulty following.
This man has this central passage which I will repeat for reference:
I am not sure at all that this is what Jews yearn for. I feel it is a big assumption on the part of Eltad to claim “this is the kind of King for whom we yearn.”
An atheist, a dialectical materialist will answer to this puzzle. Before there were beings of any kind on this earth there was matter, and the most vital quality of matter is change, the only reality is matter in motion.
This matter cannot be destroyed, neither can it be created, which is the basis of physical science as far as I am aware.
It is not accidental that Edelberg just days ago featured on this site was attacking Charles Darwin, specifically the theory of evolution, but attacking Darwin from the position of a crank, or charlatan, making claims that are not verified or verifiable, in other words lies.
I have to warn Edelfeld and others, in this particular period of man’s history it is not possible to cut out of the discussion the materialist or the atheistic viewpoint and any attempt to do so will lead to a major theoretical defeat, and thus a physical defeat, for the Jewish people.
If science is uncovering the very early nationhood of the Jewish People in Israel, and we accept this, because it is verifiable, therefore true, then we also use the same verifiable and true methods to show that there was a species of creature half way roughly between ape and homo sapiens, and that homo sapiens also developed in to our own species, homo sapiens sapiens.
If the Jewish experience is to be made intelligle to us humans then it has to deal with all of these human achievements in an honest way. Where does the Jewish experience fit into this. A dialectical materialist does not think in terms of 5000 plus years. He thinks in terms of 4 billions of years. HG Wells opined that the Jews were the first nation conscious of themselves as a nation, with their own conscious record of life written down. Of course that is probably scanty knowledge, which I a non expert am demostrating here of the subject, but at least it is verifiable. Wells thought that on the return from Babylon the Jews were the finished article nationality wise.
What I find so difficult about Edelberg is what I also find difficult about Francisco Gil White, it is their what I would call in my Irish jargon, their leaping around the place. One day a stupid and ignorant attack on Darwin from Edelberg, another he is expecting all Jews to become religious Jews, but can the two coexist together, I mean can you attack Darwin in such an ignorant way and yet have any respect given to you on anything else. Similarly with Gil White, valuable researches on the lies of the Media re Milosevic and Yugoslavia etc, valuable research on the Nazi roots in Arab nationalism and antisemitism, then at the flick of a switch the most crassly ignorant attack on what he calls “Marxism” and a complete distortion of the historical rise of Nazism in Germany. Brilliance in one area, abysmal ignorance in another
On a major issue I do not agree with Edelberg and I do not agree with Gil White. As a revolutionary socialist I fight for the Jews to have a haven on earth, a home, a state, which is a place where they can be free from the curse of antisemitism. It seems to me that there they must be free to develop their ideas and thoughts and what they want to do with their lives, for example serve G-d, or find their own pleasure and magic in simply existing as human beings. Ity is their choice.
However it does not follow from this and it does not have to follow from this and definitely and unambiguously I do not think that Judaism is the revolutionary theory and practice of our times. I do not see how it is, or why it has to be.
Gil White like Edelfeld are anti-communists, note I did not say anti Stalinists, I said anti communists.
They have nothing whatsoever to say about the rich experiences of working class revolutionary theory or practice. Gil White dismisses it in a few hackneyed paragraphs.
There is a big difference here with professor Eidelberg, I am sure of it.
Freedom to practice religion is a fundamental freedom, but many people often overlook that this also means the freedom not to practice religion. Otherwise you return to the Spanish Inquisition.
Felix you may be correct and I do apologize to you for brushing you off in a manner not worthy of me or you ,again I beg your forgiveness!
How ? we each hae a different take on history. I come from the History of creation 5768 years ago and you from Trootsky Big Gap. Any thing I proffer re Judaism or traditions or our Jewish culture is viewed by you as the Opiate of the masses and revisionist History and of no consequence. If I talk in cultural and traditional influence and concepts which are part of most jews I coild be talking to a Martian, You view Human kind through the Prism of Socialist Communism of the Trotsky version and that relates to me not an iota,
While we can agree as to part of what our problem is we still do not view even the terminology with the same definitions. AT least not always. That you are concerned and in your own way want to HELP us I Love you for that and do not wish in any way to discourage you in continuation of that concern and help.
In short I feel inadequate to debate you on the issues to select and you define. I may always agree with some of your positions others not but you are relentless and unbending when it comes to ideology and how you perceive things, I always get the feeling that if you could approach me/us with an opemn mind cleared head we might have some Fantastic arguments, discussions, and debates.
Stay with us though This is just my opinion and I only speak for me!!!!!!!
As part of my struggle for clarity I would say that this man Eidelfeld must have his views placed under a microscope. I would say the same thing about all views, including my own. There is no other way for political clarity.
Let me give just one small example:
For example he writes this (he is speaking about Israel):
“Whoever heard of a democracy that not only lacks a Constitution (like England) but whose legislators (unlike England’s) represent political parties rather than constituents or citizens?”
Actusally people in Britain do not have very much control over those they elect, and those they elect are to a large measure today selected by their parties, and they toe the party line, they have got what they call “Whips”
It is not that Israel has a vary bad system and Britain a very good system which is the clear message Edelfeld tries to convey.
So in all truth Eidelfeld cannot use that image of England being democratic as opposed to Israel.
And the reform he talks about will not do the job that is needed.
There is another way to look at this.
There is an issue of power and there is an issue of bourgeois democracy. There is an apparent freedom of discussion etc, but the experience of both Yugoslavia and of Israel shows that this freedom is a mirage as far as free discussion in England or Ireland is concerned. It is useful to project the image of freedom but behind that there is a dictatorship, which is in essence a dictatorship of capital. So some years ago when the British miners were on strike all the agencies of the state, the police, the courts, the Media, were out in force to crush the miners. Furthermore the Labour Party, elected by workers, founded by workers, paid for by workers, was part of the crushing of the Miners in which crushing the full forces of the state were used. Suddenly the country was run like a dictatorship. Miners were physically blocked from travelling the Motorways and roads of Britain. Basic freedoms which seemed a matter of course suddenly in a moment of crisis for the capitalist state were no more.
Similarly on all the issues concerning Yugoslavia. There seemed (or so they claimed) to be freedom of debate in Britain. Almost overnight it became impossible to have a view defending Slobodan Milosevic heard or published on any of the main papers. And operators like Oliver Kamm were prepared to lie about issues like Srebrenica in the most bare faced manner.
Was Kammm a state operative? He may, and may not. Who knows! The point is that the capitalist state has groomed all kinds of people to play roles which become very obvious and blatant in moments of great crisis for that very capitalist state.
Edelfeld in talking about Israel does not deal with this aspect of things. Edelfeld has an agenda. He wants to portray Israel as a special, special case. To do this as we see he distorts the reality of life in Britain. Or…he does not tell the truth.
When you analyse people like this you find hidden meanings and begin to uncovwer reality. Israpundit just does not do this.
It seems thjat if you are in the club then certain things pass. Or perhaps there is just too much material on Israpundit for people to digest. Either way it is fatal.
I personally intend to continue to look at what Eidelfeld is saying.
Of course we are coming from different places but we have to meet on the historical ground. There is no other place for sentient human beings to meet except on historical ground.
You seem to use Judaism to wall yourself and it off from human intelligence and intellect. hence your closing of the discuussion. There is something extremely reactionary here, but I have met it before, seen it before and it may be connected to the insularity forced on the Jews duriong the horrific 2000 years of exile.
In many ways the response of Yamit especially above is the end of human knowledge and understanding, it is also an evasion of discussion, and in my opinion because of that it is a betrayal not only of the Jewish people but of all of us fighting against an intense oppression of the mind. Unless other people including Ted Belman come in and throw some light on this then I will not pursue it.
I am mainly concerned with fighting against antisemitism which has many manifestations, and some of these are very deadly affairs.
However you see the Homeland, whether as Zion, or just as a place, it must be a safeguard against antisemitism.
From this follows a lot of things.
The Palestinian state promoted by so many is the main issue. And it will be a very difficult task to stop that.
Concretely we must discuss how that can be stopped.
Concretely we must discuss how those who are Arab Israelis are to be dealt with.
Concretely we must deal with these politicians, Blair Bush Putin etc.
The roots of this Israeli ruling class, I think they emerge out of social democracy and stalinism, must be understood in order to combat and overthrow.
If you cannot discuss these things openly here with somebody like me who is very devoted then when can you discuss them?
Or do you have in Israpundit an exclusive Jewish club, an extension of your church?
I am telling you Yamit, and I am also telling Ted Belman the editor, that this is one issue that cannot be stuck into a bottle marked Jewish.
This is an issue concerning all of humanity. And I am not some Hallow Eve firecracker which fizzles, like some we have seen on Israpundit, then fizzles out. I am in this to the end.
I am in disagreement with Souith above. These are not just notations in civilation, because as an atheist I am saying to you that civilization, history and political life is all that we have got. And these issues of Cromwell and his bourgeois revolution against the King are real manifestations of a real world that we as human beings are capable of understanding.
But at least South did answer in a certain way.
Yamit is running screaming from the implications of this to seek refuge behind his Judaism, but I suspect that that is his take on Judaism. It seems to me that his Judaism is taking him away and out of the real world.
Shalom Felix,
Antisemitism is really a masked hatred of Christianity.
“The hatred for Judaism is at bottom hatred for Christianity”.
MOSES AND MONOTHEISM, Sigmund Freud, 1939, Section 1, pg 117.
Whatever is most acceptable to you, I’ll use. Admittedly I HATE Socialists because of their doctrine tied to its results.
Bhutto, democracy, bourgeois democracy, Chromwell, et al, are all just notations in the record of civilization.
I must not forget Trotsky.
Kol tuv,
Felix I wouldn’t expect you to understand . Nothing against you except we are coming from two different places and we cannot meet on common emotional and historical ground. Different culture, history and realities.
The Jewish people need a lot of things ; ask any ten Jews what he wants and you will get 12 different ans.
I do agree with some of your stuff though!!
I am afraid that between 3 and 4 I made an important entry re democracy, I hit submit but did not appear.
This is happening to many of my posts.
Is this common to others. Are posts over a certain length being held for moderation.
The absence means post 3 and 4 do not really gel.
In short my missing post was that democracy is used as a cover for tyranny and I used as one of many examples the murder of Milosevic under the name of “democracy”
Yamit
I do not understand the King thing of Eltad.
Jewish people need a place on earth free from antisemitism where they can argue these things out, and this also must include the right to argue for atheism, for a materialist conception of life.
But united in the belief and on the political programme of independence for the Jewish people, where their freedom from molestation is guaranteed.
The question is how in concrete terms can that be done.
What concretely to do about the US, Bush and Blair?
What concretely to do about Hamas, Fatah, Abbas, Rice, Olmert, Barak, the Labour Party, Likud, and also those Jews who are religious Jews but hate Israel.
And so on.
Please stay with us, those of us who are fighting for this in the real world.
South
I am hoping if you reply you do not call me a righteous gentile!!! I am really a revolutionary socialist.
This is my position in a nutshell. I want the Jewish people to have an area on earth, their area which is Zion, according to tradition and religion as well as practicality, where they can be free from antisemitism.
In this area they can be free to work out how they7 organize themselves on earth and part of this must be the way they worship, or even I suppose not worship.
The issue of democracy is a vital one. Bhutto was a democrat, she said often, but got killed.
Her father ditto.
What is democracy and what is bourgeois democracy?
Oliver Cromwell was a bourgeois democrat, he wanted Parliament not the King to rule. He found that having started he could not stop, he had to lead the carrying out of the execution of Charles, the first Regicide.
Milosevic was a democrat. He was President elected democratically by Serbs. He was transported to prison by NATO, he defended himself successfully, but still lost. He was poisoned by NATO, and by the ruling Imperialñist classes led by US, Britain and Germany.
The key thing though is that all of this happened in the Hague under the slogan of democracy.
Now Kosovo is being stripped from Serbia, a new Islamist state is being set up, also under the democracy of NATO, Britain and the US.
Democracy thus is connected with Power.
In his cell in NATO prison Milosevic had lost power.
I could go on
If I could take these in order
The Arabs who have sought to destroy Israel, especially trough the Arab League, are an existential dnger. They use the power that they have on the world capitlist market to destroy Israel which is their aim
It does not stop there. They have got allies, and these centre right now in those who support Abbas and call for a palestinian Arb Stte to be set up.
Then there is Iran and so on. Where to end.
There i world antisemitism and the way that Israel is treated.
Then there is a crisis within the leaderhip of the Jewish People. Which is essentially what South refers to, Yamit also, and which we should discuss in great clarity.
Lets see now which Torah Faith Based Jews is Eidelberg speaking of? the Heredi Community who are anti Zionist and have never made too many waves over the violation of Halacha in regards to giving up the Land of Israel? National Religious Party and Supporters whose leaders were forced to Quit the Sharon Govt. against their will by pressure from their Constituencies, months past when they should have? Those who demonstrate violently over Gay rights Parade in Jerusalem but are silent over GIVING UP PARTS OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL!!Those prostitutes that would sell their souls for the billions of shekels bilked from the secularists in Israel. Or should such people set an example by non service in the IDF, I could go on with a long list! Most Heredi Jews here are Hypocrites, we know they know it and they can’t defend it either but their numbers are growing and could be a majority here in 20 years. The same National religious Zionists that signed on to Road Map? I could go on!
Democracy is the problem not the solution to our condition here. Democracy panders to the lowest common denominator closes the doors of public service to those good men and women who are honest and qualified, and want to do what is best for the most. Democracy will never allow such a thing to happen. Most people given limited choices if the don’t drop out first will vote according to his perception of what is best for him according to self interest.
WE NEE
I think the time is approaching where we should consider reintroducing the office of KING! WE NEED A KING!
ill reigns over us and in our midst.
I urge everyone here to read this book.
The Arab barbarians are not the existential danger. They’ve been present even before the Flood.
The danger is the false rulers and their diaspora allies (eg Dershowitz, Foxman, Boxer).
Note the distinction between “Torah education” and “religious education”. Once was at a political meeting sitting next to a woman who was a Christian recruiter. She said her 2nd largest group of new converts was from JESNA, Jewish Education Services of North America.
I had the opportunity to present comments for the draft Jewish Constitution.
We will indeed overawe our enemies – but we need not worry about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
Kol tuv,