Shabbat shalom!
This will be a different JNR this week as we are heading to Washington DC for a weekend of family celebrations in honor of a milestone birthday for my sister Phyllis. Happy birthday Sis!
It’s getting tougher everyday to continue to support Israel as they plan to continue the battle with Hamas in Rafah. They need a month or two to finalize their game plan. What is certain is that there is sure to be enormous humanitarian fallout in the form of civilian collateral death and damage, and the images from the lame stream media will be hard to defend. But let me be clear on this: anyone who thinks Israel is going to bow to any pressure from Biden, or Schumer, or anyone else and agree to a permanent cease fire, or in anyway back off from finishing the job, they are badly mistaken. The Israeli people would not stand for it as they know anything less than annihilating Hamas’ infrastructure and military capability would continue to pose an existential threat to the country. There are at least 4 battalions of standing soldiers for Hamas in Rafah, and another estimated 4-6 battalions from other Gaza areas that have fled to Rafah. Combined, those battalions represent about 40% of Hamas’ fighting force. So, what do you think would happen if Israel pulls out and leaves those savage terrorists behind? Or, god forbid, Israel decides to give Gaza back to Hamas, who have sworn to commit many more October 7’s against the Jews in Israel? Israel needs to finish the job and they will and should.
But the pressure here and around the world continues to build. Most recently, more than 80 rock bands and several scheduled panelists have pulled out of the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, citing Israel defense ties among its organizers. Hundreds of antiwar protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and calling for an end to U.S. military assistance for Israel blocked the international terminal at the San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday. A tour promoting real estate in Israel and West Bank settlements that has become a flashpoint for controversy and pro-Palestinian protests canceled its final event in Brooklyn on Wednesday due to security concerns, an organizer said. South Africa said that IDF soldiers holding South African citizenship would be arrested if they tried entering the country. And those are just a few headlines.
Fortunately, only Biden’s rhetoric seems to have changed. For a real view on his support, just follow the missiles: we continue to send an arsenal of weaponry in support of Israel. And Israelis appreciate that support, and do not expect Biden to give up Michigan on their behalf. So, at least for now, Biden is hanging tough. But as the election gets closer, and the polls continue to show him in trouble, it will be tougher for him to hang in there.
What follows below is an essay from someone named Saul Goldman, an Israeli writer and commentator. I read it as a guest essay on Josh Hoffman’s “Future of Judaism” Substack. Israel is by no means a perfect country, and certainly has made it’s share of mistakes. Security through subjugation is one big one as is more settlements in the West Bank. And as you all know, I am no fan of Bibi Nut-and-yahoo and his right wing nut job coalition, and I think his policies are partly to blame for the current crisis. But Goldman raises some interesting ideas, and validates many thoughts I have had myself but could not articulate them nearly as well nor as courageously.
Enjoy the essay, and hey, let’s be careful out there.
Brad out.
A recent Jerusalem Post editorial called for a new solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“What is needed,” the Post wrote, “is some out-of-the-box thinking, a creative alternative to the two-state solution. It became axiomatic over the years to believe the only answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum is either a two-state solution or a binational state, both of which could endanger Israel as a Jewish state.”1
Its optimism is praiseworthy.
However, we must ask ourselves: Is this perseverance, or is it perseveration? The former has always been part of our successful history, but the latter is actually a symptom of mental illness.
It is understandable, after so much bloodshed, that we suffer from a collective or national form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But, are we really capable of solving the Palestinian crisis? Or, is the suggestion that we can be a sign of moral hubris?
Jews think it is stupid to fight. We prefer reasoned arguments. However, not everyone agrees. Historically, there were many cultures that revered the martial character: the Spartans, Romans, and the Germans to mention only a few. The great symbol of Islam is the sword and Islam, itself, means submission.
Nevertheless, Palestinians are quite capable of solving their own crisis if they are willing to do so. Remember the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb? The answer was one psychiatrist, but the light bulb has to want to change.
The question before us is: “Why” do the “poor Palestinians” not want to resolve their situation? The answer is not so difficult. The Palestinian identity has emerged from an inconspicuous history as just one of many Arab ethnicities.
Today, the Palestinian hidden behind a keffiyeh (a Palestinian scarf) and sporting an AK-47 has become a cultural superhero for the ignorant masses and for anyone with a chip on their shoulder because once their ancestors constituted an indigenous tribe in what is now a metropolitan center.
Contrary to the romance of being indigenous, the facts are that the colonizing Europeans conquered America; the indigenous Americans did not conquer London or Paris.
The facts are that the Jews are indigenous to this land. They not only defeated the Arabs but built a thriving community which includes Arabs who chose to live in a Jewish state. These Jews provided work and healthcare to millions of putative Palestinians. And they also defended them when their cousins indiscriminately launch rockets.
It is not like the Iron Dome has a feature that allows its operators to exclusively shoot down incoming rockets on their way to killing Jewish Israelis, but not Arab Israelis.
Imagine, no one even said “thank you” to the Jews.
Nevertheless, there seems to be an upside to being the poor long-suffering Palestinian. He has become a cultural icon in the new “woke” civilization, in which everything we thought we knew and valued has been destroyed. Sex is no longer determined; it is chosen. Morality has become a tool of ideology.
However, the Palestinians’ rise as cultural icons is inversely proportionate to the demise of the West. In other words, like some Nazi Storm Trooper, the Palestinian is a hero to villains.
Isaiah warned us of a time when all of this would happen; when “people would call bad good.” In this biblical nightmare, murder is now resistance. If you are killed in a criminal or terrorist act, you become a martyr. True and false are no longer meaningful because facts are irrelevant.
The Palestinians may not be good at much, but they excel in lying. For example, they reinvented Jesus as a Palestinian. This lie resonates among Christians eager to push their claims of supersessionism — a Christian theological opinion that describes the idea that the Christian Church has superseded the nation of Israel assuming their role as God’s covenanted people, thus asserting that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant.
We live in the Culture of the Lie. Truth is cast aside. If I may quote the Psalmist:
“The righteous man no longer exists. People lie to one another. They say with our tongue we will prevail.”
And this is exactly what is happening. Palestinian supporters are glib and photogenic, and excel in newsworthy sound bites.
Yet only the Palestinians can solve the Palestinian crisis — because they created it. Only they can disentangle their people from a self-taught curriculum based upon ancient falsehoods.
Pursuing the light bulb analogy, we cannot emancipate Palestinians from years of their own indoctrination and mental bondage. Yes, the rebirth of Israel was hard on them. Many became refugees. As the comedian Bill Maher commented, “Just get over it, you lost.”2
Many people have been dislodged because of war, but they did not become professional refugees. They found a new home.
Resolving the Palestinian crisis means that facts supersede rhetoric. We Jews see that the Palestinians are in bondage and their plight hurts us. But, there is little that we can do until they, at least, ask us for help.
The freedom they seek cannot be given to them by Israel or by anyone else. Freedom begins in the mind. Politicians can create democracies that decompensate into chaos. But, meaningful individual liberty begins, as Baruch Spinoza and Moses before him proved, in the mind — in each individual soul.
A major obstacle in the way of this liberation is that no one really wants to help them. No one wants to tell them the truth. Instead, everyone wants to exploit them; to use them for their own political objectives. So the world encourages the Palestinians to blame the Jews for the sad facts of their fate. It is easier to blame than to accept responsibility.
Blame is something that resonates within every antisemitic culture; its origins stretch back to the medieval blood libels. One might innocently ask: Why would anyone want to give Hamas another chance? Why would anyone want such an evil regime to continue to ruin lives? Maybe, because they only murder Jews.
The Israelis did not take away their human rights; Hamas and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas did that — and millions of Palestinians acquiesced. They could have resisted. All over the world, people resist tyranny. Their enemy is not the democratic Jewish state, where their own cousins live in dignity and equality. Their enemy is the lie that they revere. Until the Palestinians stand up and fight for themselves, there will never be a solution.
Left alone, none of us would be free. Liberty is not a gift; it is an achievement. Voltaire was wrong. Man is not born free. He is born in bondage to his instincts and to his own habits. Erich Fromm helped us to understand our own fear of freedom. The Exodus story includes the poignant episode in which some of the Hebrews wanted to return to what they knew best: bondage.
Each of us contends against our own unconscious instincts and fears. Among those drives (which Sigmund Freud called the “Death Instinct”) is the impulse of un-freedom.
I am not suggesting that Israelis stand idly by. It is important that we understand how to help the Palestinians. But blaming the Jews will never “free Palestine.” And offering more concessions to their demands only justifies their deceitful deeds.
What is transpiring between Israel and the Palestinians is a mere vision of what awaits the world. People are beginning to realize, the sword of Islam is pointed at the soul of civilization. Our hope for peace is a meager one.
And we Israelis should be proud that we are fighting the only war worth fighting. It is not a war about territory or economics. It is not about who governs. It is about the transcendent rather than the immediate.
Moreover, the West must understand that this war has to be won — because it is about the values we cherish and the conceptions we fear.