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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
@Michael
@Edgar
Thanks, Michael and Edgar for you fascinating stories.
It is a REALLY old story.
The tradition tells us that it was the women that urged the men (who had their doubts) to leave Egypt before the Exodus.
I’ve also heard that the story was the same with the exodus of about 1 million of the Jews of the USSR and the FSU in the 1970s and the 1990s.
@Edgar
Thanks, Edgar!
@MICHAEL s>
Xi sounds unbalanced. IF he has an aneurysm, it could have a slow seep w affecting vital brain areas…increasingly. That ZERO COVID policy sounds as if it could descend to shooting sufferers. A real shame that your daughter and family can’t leave. They must MAKE SURE not to catch COVID. I don’t know how they can do this.
I visualise a sort of situation reminiscent of the 1666 plague in England, where the London disaster was described by Samuel Pepys in his Diary.
Also more Gothically, by Harrison Ainsworth, in ..”Old St. Pauls”…which I have; also Daniel Defoe wrote a harrowing tale. chilling and highly descriptive……May G-D avoid it.
And thank you for your kind words for me and family. I highly appreciate them.
Pictures https://www.hotels.com/ho334687/kibbutz-lavi-hotel-galil-tachton-israel/
@Edgar I misread what you wrote, at first. Is Kibbutz Lavi still there and are your relatives and their children and grandchildren still there or did some return or go elsewhere as you did? Are you still in touch with them?
Oh, well, I answered at least part if my own question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavi
There’s a Lavi kibbtz Hotel
https://www.online-reservations.com/?hotelid=45966&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpv2TBhDoARIsALBnVnmXMwuD2pzICiP4VKxwpc5vxf3b6qALDORXDt4yiadXEO9-M_kQ6MoaAgiREALw_wcB
@Edgar
Sounds like you are suggesting you made aliya before 1948. I presme that’s a typo.
@Edgar
Sounds like you are suggesting you made aliya before 1948 but it was in the 60s or ’70s, as I recall your writing, right?
Thanks for sharing your story, Edgar.
Deferring to one’s wife is an old story. My great-grandfather was an early settler of Colorado (1867). After serving in the Civil War, he hoped to pursue a career in Law. He taught grown men how to read and write, as his “day job”. In those days, you had to “whoop” a feller before you could teach him; and he was likely as not to come at you with teeth and knives. The women decided this was no place to raise children, so they threatened to go back to Wisconsin, with or without their men. The men went along, so my father and I were both born in Wisconsin. My great-grandfather settled down to become a grocer, and my grandfather became a logger and scaler.
At the moment, a major concern of my wife and I is that our daughter and her family live in Communist China. The economic and political situation there is very tenuous — probably more dangerous than in Israel, and approaching Germany under Hitler; and my family there is not allowed to travel freely (as indeed, neither am I in the US).
The latest gossip in the Western media about the Middle Kingdom, is that Xi Jinping may be replaced by Li Keqiang. That, in itself, is enough to cause consternation q.v.
Xi and Li speaking from different scripts in China
Premier Li Keqiang is emphasizing job creation and economic stimulus while President Xi sticks doggedly to his ‘zero-Covid’ policy
by Jeff Pao May 13, 2022
— https://asiatimes.com/2022/05/xi-and-li-speaking-from-different-scripts-in-china/
Xi is rumored to have health problems (a brain aneurism), and Li has been more of a rival to Xi than a partner. A major problem that needs to be tackled there is the COVID pandemic, which has led to very oppressive lockdowns in major cities and ports such as Shanghai. China does not have a history of smooth regime changes; as often as not, dynasties are overthrown violently, sometimes with tens of millions of deaths resulting.
As the writing says, “God takes care of the sparrow, so I know He watches me”. May He bless and keep you and yours.
@READER-MICHAEL S._
I went on Aliya because I was brought up to believe that it was the goal of ALL Jews, a mitzvah of great distinction. To be in Eretz Yisrael was enough in itself that you need not ever say another prayer. The year I went, there were less than 300 from the U.K. and believe almost as few from the US. The Shaliach was so hopeless that I basically forced him to do his duty. As I’ve related here some time ago. I believe that I was the only Irish Jew on Aliya that year, although in the years following Independence, most of my relatives went to Israel, Kibbutz Lavi was mostly my relatives from Dublin. I visited there and there were scores of them, all happy and delighted to meet my wife and I, MUCH more so than they had been in Dublin. A different world and different air. I should have stayed right there with them
I recall my wonder at being in a street and surrounded by ALL Jews a feeling neveer to leave me,. The first tiem I saw a roll of toilet paper in a cluttered window with the label I*N HEBREW. I felt I was HOME.
I had a bad time there as you know, but there were good times too. Mt children were born there. I was married there. I’d never have left but my wife, who feared Arabs and was still at heart not quite a Jewish Jew (although she tried hard) pushed me to return to Canada to where here wealthy folks lived..
My opinion is, she’d achieved her goal, which was to get married, like her two sisters, had children, Wanted to get out of the cauldron which was Israel ack to more peaceful Canada, which she believed she understood. I deferred to my wife, as i usually did. I’ve regretted it ever since.
I urge Reader to make his plans sooner rather than later. He’ll be happy there. Argument is a way of life there and he will bein his element. Adam too.. All those I’ve mentioned ,plus Sebastien are strongly Zionist. If my children had not preferred to be in Canada I’d have returned long ago,. But they wouldn’t come with me.
Hi, Reader
You are right on the money here. Unfortunately for the world, the Jews aren’t the only beknighted sheeple in the world: Just about everyone has gone bat-crap crazy. In Oregon, we have our own Governor Kate Brown:
https://www.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2022-05/237738_5_.jpg
Modern-day Fascists like Gates and Zuckerberg are after all of us, not just the Jews. These are perilous times.
Rand Paul is one of the few decent people left in our federal government. G_d bless him and his family!!
@Michael https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/category/news/inspiring/
https://www.israel21c.org/topic/social-action/
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2019/09/09/scott-presler-trash-cleanup-baltimore/
@Reader
Uh, actually, I think it does. The Holocaust didn’t happen suddenly. In any case, take two valium in the morning and call me in the morning.
@Michael
@Mike By the way, the 3 qvechins bit was very Jewish sounding of you. Congrats and Mazeltov
@Michael S. “You just did the equivalent of a boxer hugging his opponent in the ring until the bell with that non-sequitur random rhetorical digression into religious gobbledygook. So responding in kind, I will end this round by quoting from 19th century American Depictions in cartoons of the sign above the cracker barrel in frontier and small town dry goods or general stores (and most probably::
on the Oregon Trail of legend)
“In God I Trust. All others Pay Cash.”
And as people often say when leaving the scene in Korean dramas. I will say.
“Cuhruhmb.” (Well, then.)
Sebastien, you asked me three questions:
1. What else can anyone do?
ANS: What I just told Reader, namely, “Trust in Adonai with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Thou shalt love Adonai with thy whole heart, and thy whole strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. These things work in Israel, and in America, and all over the world, in good times and bad.”
None of this should surprise you.
2. And who exactly are you accusing of hypocrisy?
ANS: Just about everyone, including me. Frankly, I don’t think I would be concerned about the Uygurs, if my own family weren’t in danger of being treated in the same way by the same people (the CCP). That said, will there be a “Expats in China Remembrance Day”? Will there be a wall erected, with my daughter’s name one it, along with the names of my grandchildren?” Of course not! Everyone cares about his own, and the Jews are no exception, nor the Americans, nor the Chinese. None of us can expect sympathy from anyone else.
3. and lack of empathy and why?
Unlike “letters of protest”, etc., empathy costs us nothing. You say, “Why?” I say, “Why not?”
Meanwhile, we’re all expected to shed great crocidile tears for the Ukrainians, who did such wonderful things for Joe Biden and his son, while we ignore our own country and our own borders. I weep a lot for my own children, and very little for the likes of Biden and Zelenskyy — even if some of them are Jewish.
Zechariah 12:
[12] And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart;
[13] The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart;
[14] All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.
and as Jesus said,
Matthew 24:
[12] And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
@Michael S.
Well, why are you so surprised?
If 1/3 of non-Jewish Amercians were slaughtered in their own Holocaust, I am sure everybody would be intensely concerned about it and expect the whole world to feel the same.
Jews are extremely naive when they expect everyone feel sorry for them, it’s true, all it does is to cause more antisemitism but the reason the Jews feel this way is because they throw themselves into everybody else’s cause “to fight for justice”, etc.
In my opinion, we must STOP getting into everybody else’s business and focus SOLELY on our own problems (like everybody else does).
Here it is from Jabotinsky:
@Michael S.
I am not saying that the US is slated for destruction.
Was Germany slated for destruction when it slaughtered or enabled the slaughter of 1/3 of the European Jews?
Germany was actually rewarded after the war with the Marshall Plan and the amnesty for the Nazi criminals.
I want the Jews to get out of the Diaspora because I am convinced that there will be a repeat of the Holocaust in the Diaspora, and it will be worse than the last one UNLESS the Jews get out NOW.
@Michael S. You backtracked to complain about “everybody.” You started with
Especially troubling coming from a Christian and disappointing considering your consistent philosemitism over the years.
It’s unfair singling out by Christians that make most Jews fear and mistrust even Christians who profess live for us.
Hi, Reader
I’m sure you mentioned your personal situation in other tweets. I just wanted to check my own memory.
I can understand your logic: God commanded the Jews to return to Israel, and to trust Him to keep them there. Well said, and I believe it. Of course, very few Diaspora Jews will actually return to — and stay in — the land God gave to them. The reason is natural and understandable: It is a very difficult personal choice, one few people of any ethnicity or religion would make without, literally, a bayonet in their backs.
You could very well be right, as well, in saying that it will be as bad or worse for Jews who, like Lot’s wife, longed to be in Sodom when it was about to be destroyed. What you are implying, is that this “Great Babylon” that we live in, in the US and other Western nations, is slated for destruction. Indeed, it is; and those Jews who cast their lot with us will certainly suffer with us perhaps even more.
Even so, Israel itself isn.t given a free pass. Zechariah 14 even spells it out: Israel will be attacked, and Jerusalem taken, even while its attackers die in a plague that resembles nuclear war.
Jew and Gentile alike, it seems, are caught between a rock and a hard place. We will all suffer; and, from the hardness of heart I see all around, we will all do so alone, with nobody to help us — in the US, in Europe, in Israel, in China, in Africa… it doesn’t matter where.
It’s “back to basics” time: Trust in Adonai with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Thou shalt love Adonai with thy whole heart, and thy whole strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. These things work in Israel, and in America, and all over the world, in good times and bad.
Of course, you know these things, and so do Sebastien et al. The one who does them will profit therefrom.
@Michael S.
What else can anyone do? And who exactly are you accusing of hypocrisy and lack of empathy and why? This feels like defamation.
Jews do more than anyone else on these issues and not many return the favor. Personally, I think we suffer from excessive empathy syndrome (A field I happen to be the world’s foremost expert in because I made it up, just now.)
Hi, Sebastien. You said,
That isn’t what I was talking about, namely, sending letters, protesting, etc. I was talking about heartfelt concern of Chinese for Uighurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong, Christians, etc., Jews for Christians, Muslims for Jews, etc. Everybody, it seems, is intensely concerned about things their group suffered in WWII, in the Antebellum US, in Turkish Armenia, you name it; and they expect the whole world to be as concerned as they are; yet they turn a blind eye to others, even to their near neighbors. I don’t expect everyone to write useless letters of protest. I’m just marvelling at the hypocrisy and lack of empathy. On top of all that, though, is the apparent notion, across the board, that when it’s their own turn to suffer, the whole world ought to weep for them.
They won’t.
For the defenders of the Azov battalion and Poland, here is a wonderful quote I found under a JPOST article from 2018:
@Sebastien Zorn
A hundred years ago in the Mandate Palestine it was the same and worse, HOWEVER, there was no Holocaust there in WWII.
If you think that Israel could be destroyed and the American Jews would be able to sit it out here in the US you are GRIEVOUSLY mistaken.
Just because you don’t see it coming doesn’t mean it isn’t – the Jews of Poland were so much in denial that not only they refused to listen to Jabotinsky in the 1930s but when the Germans started building the future ghetto wall around the mostly Jewish area of Warsaw, the Jews who lived there (already in misery) couldn’t figure out what it was for and came up with all sorts of wild ideas trying to figure it out.
@reader Lethal attacks here are comparatively rare, actually, and that’s without Iran and it’s proxies to contend with. No, it’s Israel’s six million I stay up at night worrying about. Jews who make aliya must know they are soldiers in a cause. It’s true, in the long run, our collective future lies in Israel and that sporadic outbreaks of violent antisemitic violence with lulls in between have always been the case in the diaspora, and this a permanent feature. If Israel purges herself of her fifth column and makes peace with the surrounding countries, a future without fear can be attained, but as you, yourself pointed out, that is not the reality, today.
@reader The Jewish Press IDF and Security Section sometimes has additional stories Arutz Sheva missed
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/idf/
@reader I check this page every day, sometime more than once in day. Nothing remotely like this going on here, most of the time.
Arutz Sheva Defence and Security section
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/section/25
@Reader The next threatened Holocaust we are trying to prevent could be in Israel. Can’t see that happening here anytime, soon. Jews actually getting killed here happens but not on a daily basis and I am getting this friom English language Israeli publications which I read every day, more often than American ones, actually.
if Chuck wants to persuade Rand, he has to show how the Ukrainian aid benefits the US and not about the brave people standing up to authoritarianism, like how this aid makes it unnecessary for us to send troops to fight Russians…
@Sebastien Zorn
I am not nagging, I am trying to save Jewish lives.
I know where I want to live and I am working on it but at my age it depends more on someone else’s will than mine.
@Michael S.
You don’t believe me, here it is from a faithful Christian:
https://davidstent.org/rachel-boskey-the-letter-i-didnt-want-to-write-august-30-2020/
@Michael S. This is how it happened. Declaring National Emergencies and suspending civil liberties under the provisions of the existing Constitution is the usual way democracies have been destroyed. We got a little taste of it thanks to Covid.
The Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree
@Reader
In the meantime, you’ll just nag everybody else, right?
“Mommy, Mommy, I don’ wanna go to Europe!”
“Shutup, and get your other foot in the care package (or another version, “keep swimming,” – From a children’ book of humor popular when I was little.
@ Michael S. Niemoller was a Nazi who reinvented himself after the war to popular acclaim. That bit about, first they came for, is nonsense he came up with then. That’s not the way it happened. Like most, if not all, catchy aphorisms, it’s a half-truth at best.
@Michael S.
If you are telling me the Israeli government needs to condemn China or Russia or anybody else when all that would do is bring down more heat from these ambivalent hostile actors, that is naiive.
@Michael S.
Not yet but I will, God willing (whether he wills or not is a different story).
@Sebastien Zorn
The Arab terrorism was there before (largely provoked by the British) and it will be there until the Jews decide to deal with it.
YES, Jews should or even MUST make aliyah out of fear for their safety.
That’s what the Jewish state was created for, and that’s why the Law of Return is worded they way it is.
The German Jews also thought they could sit it out in their dear, civilized Germany which “was the best country for the Jews until Hitler came to power”, the same goes for the three million Polish Jews who refused to listen to Jabotinsky and called him names when he told them to get out.
Reader,
Have you made aliyah (permanently) to Israel?
@Michael S.
It’s not a question of “cool”, it’s a question of life and death, or, rather, life or death (even taking into account the Arab terrorism in Israel).
The previous Holocaust was not the last one, and it CAN happen here.
During WWII it was far less comfortable and “cool” to live in Palestine under the British Mandate, however, those Jews who were there survived the war while the ones in the comfortable and civilized Europe didn’t.
Besides, if I have to die (we all do, sooner or later), I would rather die in the Holy Land.
@MIchael S. I gather you don’t have kids or are home schooling them?
“Man charged in Portland, Ore., synagogue and mosque vandalism spree
BY PHILISSA CRAMER MAY 8, 2022 11:52 AM
“Michael Bivins was charged with one count of arson and three counts of criminal mischief, according to Willamette Week, the weekly independent newspaper where many of his articles appeared.
The charges stemmed from three incidents at local houses of worship: a rock thrown through a window at Congregation Shir Tikvah April 30; a fire and graffiti at Congregation Beth Israel on May 2 and 4; and a fire at the Muslim Community Center of Portland May 3.”
https://www.jta.org/2022/05/08/united-states/man-charged-in-portland-ore-synagogue-and-mosque-vandalism-spree
“Antisemitic, anti-trans flyers distributed around Eugene, city condemns actions
Louis Krauss
Register-Guard
Feb, 2022
https://www.registerguard.com/story/news/2022/02/17/antisemitic-antitrans-flyers-eugene-oregon/6835868001/
@Reader I agree that Jews should make aliya in droves but not out of fear for their safety because antisemitic attacks in Israel by the Fakestinian fifth column and it’s Jihadist allies enabled by liberal Jews in high places who can’t bring themselves to see what’s in front of their very eyes, are far more frequent at this point in time. I’m not sure what you read on a daily basis but go to Arutz Sheva, TheJewishPress.com, Yeshiva World News, World Israel News and look under the headings like IDF or Defense or Security.
Reader, ask Edgar how “cool” it is (not!) to make aliyah. You might be a zealous Jew — whether it be religious or secular — but I could safely bet that when you do aliyah, you will find yourself among some people who are not zealous for anything other than for their own interests.
I imagine it’s nice, to think one has a choice in these things: Wow! There are TWO places where I can feel at home! I can be at home where I am, or I can be at home in Zion! When we’re young, it seems as though we have many viable choices of where to live and what to do; but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that more and more, others are making choices for me; so my best “choice” is to be thankful for the place God has put me.
Before the Plandemic hit, I thought I could live in the US (where I wa born), or Australia (where I once lived), Canada (a friendly country, right next door), New Zealand, Hong Kong, China… If I were Jewish, I would add Israel to the list. Now, none of those places seem very attractive, save where I currently live; but even here in beautiful Oregon, tyrrany is waiting in the wings. God help us all, wherever we are.
I’m glad I don’t live in the Ukraine, for many reasons.
@Sebastien Zorn
Not yet.
When was the last time you read the Israeli English language publications?
Have you missed the news about Jews being beaten in the streets of New York and London?
In my opinion. “in order for antisemitism not to become a threat”, Jews should keep quiet and make aliyah in droves ASAP.
@Adam Dalgliesh
Just because there are Jews in Azov doesn’t stop the Azov people from being what they are.
There was a Jew fighting with the Chmielnicki’s cossacks in 1648 because he held a grudge against a rich Jew in his shtetl, and he wasn’t a convert to Christianity – when they came to hang him, he asked for a rabbi, not a priest.
Does this whitewash Chmielnicki and his bands slaughtering ~ 200,000 Jews?
Sebastien,
Many Jews are sitting by and ignoring the genocide going on in China. When it is their turn to suffer, there will be no one to speak up for them. Please see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqb52Jk2XgU
Here’s my take: Nobody’s killing Jews for being Jews, not Russians, not Ukrainians, so there’s no Nazi threat we need to worry about, symbolism notwithstanding. But, in order for antisemitism not to become a threat, Ukrainian Jews should support Ukraine, Russian Jews should support Russia, and Israeli and international Jewry should support who ever supports Israel most, and only to that extent.
Genesis 12:3:1
For anyone new to this blog, I’m a secular Jew and had a non-religious upbringing, but this where I am coming from.
ITS SHAMEFUL
It’s so shameful for Jews and Israel that there are Israeli Jews inside of the Azov Fascist movement of Ukraine.
Who are the Azov Fascists? They go back to the Fascist forces of Stepan Bandera who collected the Jews from their homes and made them crawl on the streets of Lviv on July 1, 1941. Then murdered them. With not a German Nazi in sight. They were COLLABORATING in the Holocaust of the Jews
Check out the horrible Google photos of the Lviv Pogrom of 1941
@Adam
In all European wars, you will find Jews fighting on both sides. It is no surprise that some Jews support and even fight for Ukraine, even in the Azov battalion. You for instance, support them. Whereas I support Russia.
For you to say that Azov is not antisemitic or Neo-Nazi, because they let Jews join it, is a very weak argument. They can let Jews join them and be antisemitic or neo-Nazi at the same time.
Many antisemites choose to have Jewish doctors and lawyers.
Ted, please forgive me for posting this long clipping (not the whole article) from Times of Israel.
I wanted Israpundit readers to get the point that the Azov battalion in its present form is not antisemitic or neo-Nazi. It is true that some Jews serve in the Azov Battalion, and its “Nazis” have made no effort to turn them away.
Putin has accused Israel of sending these men to join the Azov battalion. He claims they are Israelis. Some do have Ukrainian and Israeli dual citizenship.
He also has warned that these alleged “Israeli” voluntteers will not be treated as prisoners of war if captured, but will instead be treated as criminals.
“I know many who Jews who are currently at war, and not only in Mariupol,” he said.
Smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, eastern in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, May 5, 2022. (AP Photo)